Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Settlement and bitcoins

An interesting explanation of how trading and settlement works, and some ideas on how Bitcoins could make that better.

Backup, backup, backup. And not to Amazon, if you're on Amazon.

A terrifying story.
Code Spaces had replicated services and backups, but those were all apparently controllable from the same panel and, thus, were summarily destroyed. The company says that some data still remains, and it's working with customers as best it can to provide access to what's left.
This is why I use tapes.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Lessons learned from mainframe usage

An excellent overview of what learning to program on a mainframe was like. GDGs for source control, oh my. This comment on what you needed to do to get terminal time is so excellent:
My junior year I didn't yet have keys to the building (I got them senior year so I could have office hours for the business-school freshmen I was teaching FORTRAN - that never made sense to me either...), so we worked out the following: unlock a window in the terminal room. Climb onto the first-floor roof of the student services building. Cross that to the sciences building. Climb the ladder to the astronomy observing platform on the top of the building. Go in that door, down the hall, out the window onto the roof *again*, then in through the terminal room window.