Problems you would love to have

IRS Computers Can't Handle Gates' Taxes

[pmac]

IRS Computers Can't Handle Gates' Taxes [news.moneycentral.msn.com]

The perpetrator himself, Microsoft co-founder and Chairman Gates revealed all at a conference in Lisbon: "Their normal computers can't deal with the numbers," he said of the hapless taxmen. "So I am constantly getting these notices telling me I haven't paid something, when really it is just on the wrong computer."

Dude has it rough.

[httpwebwitch]

Day will come when Mr. Gates will be asked to provide the machines to do his own tax computation. I wonder if it will come with a talking paperclip.

[sem4u]

IBM designed the original processing system for the IRS in the 1960s, which was largely tape and disk driven. Believe it or not the same system is used today, processing the bulk of America's tax returns including, presumably at one time at least, that of Gates.

And it still (mostly) works?

[grandpa]

Does anyone know for certain what language the code is written with? My guess would be COBOL. The stuff lasts forever.

[httpwebwitch]

NATO's Distant Early Warning system was still using 1950s technology (punch cards, vaccuum tubes) until well into the 1980s. Rememeber Reagan and his cold war? that was powered by tubes and programmed in FORTRAN.

My father (an IBM veteran) serviced a few big insurance companies that still had technicians on staff to maintain their tape machines and work in COBOL.

In these really big data systems, it's more cost-effective to maintain old equipment in COBOL than to rebuild everything in Java... Most big data-dependent companies (insurance, military, banking) upgraded in the late 1980s/early 1990s when computing power became affordable enough to justify the expense of making new software.

At my Mom's office (she's a programmer) they have a few big tape machines there in the front foyer of the IT wing, still in good working condition. Museum pieces. They aren't used for anything. The rumour is one of the tapes in it is not data, it's a recording of Bat Out of Hell by Meatloaf.

straying off topic... vintage tech is fascinating

[JollyK]

I have this near-irresistable urge to make some snarky comment here that would relate to Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux or somesuch.

You know, like, "Maybe the IRS should use a Mac instead," or "This wouldn't happen if they used Linux," or, heck, "They're obviously not using Windows XP yet which, as everyone knows, has a special built-in GatesTax function in the API."

But that would be obvious.

So I won't.

:-)

JK

[mcavic]

In these really big data systems, it's more cost-effective to maintain old equipment in COBOL than to rebuild everything

I know that's what people say, but it still baffles me.

[httpwebwitch]

it still baffles me.

Which costs more - patching a blowout in an old plaster wall, or ripping it down to erect drywall?

[mcavic]

patching a blowout in an old plaster wall, or ripping it down to erect drywall

True, but I'm talking about long-term cost/benefit, not just up-front cost. Of course, the software rewrites may be the most prohibitive, which I would certainly understand.