On Fri, 31 Oct 2025 10:56:59 -0400, Phil Smith III <[email protected]> wrote:

> I feel like this answer is maybe sort of orthogonal to your points, but maybe 
> not?

Correct. Can you give another one?

> A startup? Thinking about Z? Be serious. They're all cloud/Linux etc., 
> because "Free".
> The percentage of startups who would even consider the mainframe is close to 
> zero.
> That doesn't make them right, but I'm confident in that assertion.

My question is what SHOULD be happening.

And thus using YOU personally as the startup owner.

> This is a non-trivial cost to us, but of course is invisible to
> management despite our best efforts.

Exactly.

Theoretically you should be able to make these clowns go bankrupt.

> There's also still a huge "IBM is evil" attitude out there.

Sure. I'm not even disputing that monopolies are bad. But the
solution isn't to start a circus.

> And since Linux is where most folks start tinkering these days,

That's a cultural problem, and no technical barrier to solving
that either.

> And yes, the customers are also clowns!

Sure. Your startup may be restricted to non-clown members of
the public. You advertise "sure, we're more expensive. That's
because when you ring up with a problem, we solve it, rather
than just telling you that no-one else has reported that problem,
try again another day".

That's literally the state of the world today.

> Nope, the boat has left the harbor.

Not necessarily.

Remember that software security thing that was released a
year ago or whatever that was bricking machines worldwide?

By accident.

And someone here mentioned - if that's what an accident can
do - what would a deliberate attack look like?

I would hope that some non-clowns would have woken up and
realized that this is not the way the world should be.

Is there a problem dividing the world into clowns and non-clowns?

Some non-clowns probably lack the knowledge though. But that
should be a relatively simple thing to explain. What on earth did
you expect for free?

BFN. Paul.

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