On: The oldest computer in use by the U.S. government

[soneil]

That's actually a very difficult comparison to make, because your expectations of them are so entirely different.

Will your phone:

  * Still be useful in 5 years
  * Still be functioning in 10 years
  * Still be receiving vendor support in 50 years

The actual "wow, my phone is faster than a 5-year-old desktop" makes fun headlines, but is entirely irrelevant.

[amelius → soneil]

If governments insisted that all hardware should come with a spec that runs on a universal virtual machine, then today I could probably run the old machine on my phone. But alas, thanks again to an unvisionary government, we're stuck with old hardware.

[avereveard → amelius]

IBM i software was compiled as platform independent binary and converted into machine specific code by the operating system. Ok, it's a propietary spec far from being open etc, but the tech is there and even better than a vm (in certain aspects)