bridanp

Depends on the model honestly. You purchase the maximum capacity frame you would ever want to run on the z14, and then you purchase the capacity you actually want to run right now. IBM has 4 models listed in the specs, so you purchase one of those models, then you configure the z14 to run at a certain capacity. You are about dead on with it being $300k for a basic frame, but then you have to add the "maintenance" to run your stated capacity. And then you pay a monthly fee for whatever capacity your company actually runs.

That's what we do anyway. Companies can run full capacity frame and not do the sub-capacity pricing, but that's a lot more up front. Better, IMO, to pay the monthly rate and spread the cash payments out over 5 years.

My company was to move completely away from Office to Google's suite of products 3 years ago. Except for just the few macro jockeys that required Excel. It's harder to get approval for an Office license now, but most people that had Office 3 years ago, still have it today (except for Outlook, that one is gone). It's really Excel that seems to keep people from moving to Google's product, though. Word and the others aren't that big a problem.

As someone who is just a bit over the age of 40, I do spend most of my TV watching time with Youtube. However, my viewing habits are not for watching these channels in question. I'm more into the killing 10 minutes paradigm. I choose Youtube because I can search for something I'm interested in, get a bunch of hits, and just pick one. If I like it, I let it keep going, if not, I skip it or just turn it off. I don't like investing a lot of time in searching through the Netflix/Hulu catalog, and eventually deciding via "meh".

As far as these types of popular or personality cult channels go, I pass. I don't understand the draw. I understand the ones where you watch people play video games; that makes sense. What I don't understand is watching people open boxes, reaction videos (where you watch someone react to a video they are watching), or those videos where people are complaining about something/someone on Youtube/Twitter/Facebook/Snapchat and how that affects them.

My wife showed me a video earlier of some kids laying under a trampoline, and on top of the trampoline was balloon slowing filling with water. The kids are giggling because they know what's going to happen, they just don't know when: the balloon will pop and they'll get soaked. But the balloon continues to fill with water until it's almost the size of the trampoline top itself. It seems likes it's taking forever to fill, and the balloon is much larger than anyone in the video expected. Maybe it won't pop...and then it finally does. The inevitable happens and the kids are soaked.

I don't think the argument is whether we are or are not in a bubble. It seems pretty clear that a bubble is filling around us (whether that is a slow or quick fill is a personal point if view). The argument really should be how long do we continue to risk getting soaked versus staying dry (keeping our investments). I think some are finding a solution by removing themselves from the equation and taking their investment dollars elsewhere. And that singular act, if/when it starts to exponentially grow, will ultimately decide the timing of the burst.

Millions of page views? Unless you're running a photo sharing site, it seems like this should be more than $200/month. Assuming you know adsense best practices about ad placement, ad sizing, text versus image, have you talked to a consultant about options? I'm not one, just thinking if I had millions of views, that would be the next step.

Not sure this is an aside or not, but I see a lot of big bank versus credit union in the comments, and that's just not really the case here in my opinion. I work for a large regional bank and I see a lot of similarities in this story to my own company, especially in the number of audits being requested and the rules they are having to follow (Bitcoin for one). I'll agree that a large part of the rules we have in place are self inflicted: some we asked for and some we caused in the aftermath of the financial crisis. These constant audits we've been faced with since the 2008 time period just chew up enormous amounts of time that we could better spend with innovattion and making the customer experience better overall. It's really unfortunate that his idea of creating a financial institution with real innovation is being stopped by bureaucracy that is probably 80℅ unnecessary regulation.

Yes, you are right there, and thank you for clarifying that. I should have been more clear that the zIIP is useful to Linux through accessing data via z/VM. You can't offload all of the I/O, but you can offload some of it if accessing the mainframe for data. Or so I remember at this point. It's been a few years since leaving my mainframe systems programmer position.

It's called a zIIP engine (http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/hardware/features/ziip/) and it utilizes the IFL also (http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/os/linux/solutions/ifl.html). We use the zIIP on our z13 basically to offload any work that takes a ton of I/O (DB2 data serves, dataset scans for performance monitoring, RMF and CICS reporting). It ends up saving a lot of money monthly because we are charged by maximum number of MSU's during any four-hour window of the month. The zIIP reduces the number of MSU's needed at any given time. In our case, 5-10.

Back in 2005, I installed SuSe on an s/390 box. If you could throw a lot of memory at it or MIPs, then it would run pretty well, and could be used as a file or email server. But anything that crunched data was horribly slow. Can't say that it's any better now, but if it's utilizing the zIIP, I'm sure it's miles above where it was 10 years ago.

Still, pretty high cost of ownership on the mainframe to get this. I can't imagine many people buying a million dollar mainframe just to run Linux. Seems like those who have a mainframe already would have been like us: let's partition out a Linux instance and try it out.

When the news people themselves become the story, at what point do we realize as a society that we have no reason to concern ourselves with it? TechCrunch used to be a great place for tech type news, but then this fellow (founder I suppose) became their main story.

That sounds right. So if I hear about these type things on the news daily, then I "change my route" and don't watch it nor read about it.

I'm confused as to why so many comments on the story are stuck on the very few lines regarding taxes. The vast majority really leads back to his Mom's abilities to seek out ways to provide for him and then putting him in front of opportunities that eventually helped him become who he is.

If she had not been so active in putting him in the right places at the beginning, his life would have been vastly different.

But I can't place where he advocates higher taxes or the misuse of tax money.

It all feels a little like handwringing, doesn't it? We think we can solve the problem by gun control but then you realize there are too many guns out there already that it won't work (or at least not for many years).

So we go for the bullets, but then people who grew up around sport shooting can tell us it's nothing to sit down and create dozens of rounds in a free night. My own experience reminds me of loading a dozen shells with my Dad when I was 10 in just a couple hours so we could hunt the next morning. So the idea of limiting the bullets (or at least shells) won't work unless the materials are also regulated.

The mental health aspect seems to be one of the best ideas but then that might just depend on universal health actually being put into place. Without it, many people will go without due to the expense of mental facilities.

So yeah handwringing. We want someone to do something and fast but none of the options seem easy, quick, or realistic. So we might need to pick the one or two that will work eventually, maybe 5-10 years down the road, and take it from there.

Just seems like someone trying to make a story out of nothing to me. I'm enjoying watching the German men in their gymnastics routine and this women's weight lifting is pretty cool. But I wouldn't have watched it this morning or afternoon live on any device. Sunny Saturdays are not meant for watching television.