InterviewSolution
Saved Bookmarks
InterviewSolution
| 1. |
Solve : Government is using old computers. Very, very Old.? |
|
Answer» The full title is: Some U.S. government agencies are using IT systems running Windows 3.1, the decades-old COBOL and Fortran programming languages, or computers from the 1970s.Hey, COBOL was my first computer language. Quote The government is spending more than US$80 billion a year on IT, and "it largely doesn't work," Chaffetz said during a House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. "The federal government is years, and sometimes decades, behind the private sector."Are they saving money. Do the voting machines still use pooch cards? (Haven't see a pinch card for 35 years. No, it was paper tape.) Somebody said... Quote "When you're still using technology and computer systems from the '70s and the '80s, this is not a problem that started in 2012," he added. "How can you really sit here and tell us this is money?" The article godson to state that... Quote Closing an additional 2,000 data centers, in some cases moving to the cloud, could save $5.4 billion, he said. "We need to definitely get more modern," he said.My question is: What will is cost to NOT spend the 4.5 billion on new equipment'? Do they even have a guess about what it costs to keep using floppy drives? Comments? Gov job I have still uses DEC Alpha systems running OpenVMS. The system is still used because its just about bulletproof. As well as its used in integration with old 1990s era electronics with cards that it talks to that are running 386DX33 and 486DX50 processors over a data bus and serial communications as well as short haul modems that run to other MACHINERY that use this central system of processing information, and it would cost tens of millions to REPLACE the system throughout the country requiring a new custom engineered system, so we maintain it across the country. The DEC Alpha uses a 2.1GB SCSI Hard Drive and this system is a vital part of the businesses ability to process data. I cant talk about any other specifics as for its confidential, but here are specs of what is safe to share without getting into hot water. Additionally systems with old OS and Hardware are fine to operate beyond the normal intended by manufacturer life cycle especially if they are offline immune from hackers and malware. We still use ( Pentium II, III, 4, D ) computers running Windows NT 4.0 thru XP SP2 or 3 as well as have a bunch of old AMD Athlon MP 1800+ to MP 2600+ Dual Processor rack mount servers. Many of these used in clusters so if you lose a system or two, you have the rest of the old team keeping everything going. Most of the cluster systems have their days, and a reboot when they act up you can get SAY another 6 days out of the slice before it acts up again. When it finally acts up to the point that its corrupted, reload the software to it from an image, reconfigure its unique identity which is different from image default, and only replace it if its a problem more frequent than once a week it might act up for a old cluster slice where you have like 18 servers running and its almost roulette as to which one will crash or freeze up next requiring a reboot to get it back into the cluster group. With the 18 servers running we could get by with about 6 running and 12 down if we needed to, but we strive for 100% uptime even though we are working with systems that are over 10 years old which eventually die and I then need to replace fans, power supplies, replace dead RAM stick etc, or hard drive etc. Workstations are Dual Core Pentium HP Business Class SFF with Windows 7 Pro fully patched and very secure. My stance on this is, as long as its safe to do so, and operating costs are low to keep old hardware going, why not run older hardware. Sure it might not be efficient on electricity, but sometimes old computers need to stay paired with old electronics that they work with. Additionally lots of the software was designed around older single core processors and you run into oddities if you try to run that old software on newer OS's. So the OS staying that out of date build is guaranteed to work, but going with a new OS or later SP breaks the software.I'm with Dave on this one. The way that Governments or other entities using old Software or hardware is painted as a negative is rather odd; it's a spin. You can spin it the other way- they are using Proven hardware and software. The costs they are seeing has nothing to do with being out of date and is likely organizational issues that simply won't be resolved by replacing the hardware and software, because it is the processes involved that are likely flawed. Governments are similar to a business. They should avoid spending money wherever possible. For a business, if the software allows them to do business, then it's good enough. Same here. By way of example, our customers woulds till be on the ancient THEOS based mainframe system if it still met their business needs. They refused to move to the new software instead having the old OS migrated to Virtual machines when hardware started to significantly outpace it (32-bit only, no multi-threading, no support for SATA drives, etc). It was only when they finally added one workstation to many and the networking stack of their servers started to basically implode that they started to seriously consider alternatives to having to reboot the system twice every hour. Now many of them are on full windows systems. Have they saved money? No. Does the software do the job better? Not really, and it needs a bit of retraining. I'm of the mind that the "inexhorable forward march" concept where "legacy" systems should be replaced just because they are old is probably powered by the very companies that stand to make the most from it. I worked for Defense Finance & Accounting Center (DFAS), which is part of Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), for many years and left there in 1997. I can tell you no one was using Win 3.1 when I left. All desktop computers were running Windows 95. A year or so ago, I had a CONVERSATION with a young woman who works in there now. And now, everyone has laptops. So, in the federal defense agency where I worked, I gather they are not using ancient hardware. I also know, from talking to another person who I knew when I worked there, that an old COBOL system that was used for decades has been replaced by a new software system (I don't know what programming language the new system is based on). But, the situation probably varies by agency, as alluded in the article. |
|