Now now, not all of us slashdotters fear documentation, dependability etc :p

I don't work on mainframes, but I've worked in projects where mainframes have been involved as well as mainframe people, and in many ways it reminds me of my days in the military, the amount of dedication to logistics etc. Sure, to the run-of-the-mill "geek", it probably looks stifling, but for those of us who are used to teamwork etc, it's actually refreshing to have decent planning. Contrast that to working for academia... *shudders*

True, especially when you factor in the ECC or other checksumming, as well as the transparent encryption at no performance cost that are available on the mainframes.

As much as I use and abuse VMWare, it's not yet comparable to IBM Mainframe class virtualization.

Except that the HP Blade cluster has nothing on the mainframe in terms of reliability and data integrity.

It's not the decimal places as such. It's the fact that, if we step through the entire stack: Everything is rounded off properly(that means, no floating points math rounding errors), input from many concurrent sources without choking, reliability not just in terms of machine/OS/application uptime, but also in terms of data integrity(a modern mainframe does ECC, checksumming etc at every stage of data handling, even in transfers to and from RAM. With the proper configuration, you can also have it encrypted in transfer, at no cost in throughput or computational performance). The I/O also means it can crunch through all the conditionals listed in records much faster, including all banking and tax rules etc. In terms of physical hardware, everything is redundant, with the aforementioned ECC etc, and if you are serious, you sysplex it. And that's just for payroll/employee records. Virtualization is handled pretty much transparently, seeing as IBM has done it on mainframes since the 1960's. Security of the underlying system is excellent with superb compartmentalization and ACL's etc, such that the Linux images that you can run virtualized are less secure even in a hardened configuration.

For financials or insurance, it's everything mentioned above, and handling thousands of terminals/ATM's, handling transfers between accounts in real time etc. At a bank here in Sweden, the Unix/Linux crowd has been trying to move the bank away from mainframes for over 9 years now, but the mainframe division can show, year after year, that even with the support costs, it's cheaper to use the mainframe, because it's more reliable, and needs less infrastructure and manpower than the bundle-of-servers approach.

Only in some aspects, and GPGPU clusters have a hard time matching the transaction rates and number of concurrent I/O's of a Z9. I wouldn't want to use a GPGPU cluster for financial/payrolls, just as an example.

First of all, I was speaking about 1944 and onwards when the real tank to tank fighting against Panthers and Tigers took place for the UK and US. At that time, the UK had already shifted focus in doctrine, towards the Firefly and Cromwells, with other tanks relegated to support roles. As for the initial Panzer IV, that was a pre-war design, with the redesigns having started in early 1943 and deployment in 1943 and onward being designed for tank vs tank combat but could also support infantry, even more so when they got the L/48 gun.

The doctrine problem WAS a specific US problem at that time, and due to one very specific general, McNair, who saw no need for heavier tanks, specifically not ones designed to kill other tanks. In the end, Eisenhower had to finally override him to get only 76mm gun Shermans, as well as the few Pershings, sent to Europe.

And yes, I do know about the T20's and such that lead to what would eventually become the Pershing. Though the 90mm gun is a prime example of how even the Pershing was sabotaged to appease the doctrine, when the US had been offered the use of the British 17-pounder, which was superior.

As for the TD's, they could have been used offensively in different terrain. For example, the Hellcat and the Slugger would have been very interesting on the eastern front,

That figure was for the Sherman with the 76mm gun, and it wasn't just about landing a hit, it was about landing a crippling or destroying hit, which was rather more difficult

The ratios is an interesting thing: First of all, the only American tank designed to actually go into tank vs tank combat was the Pershing, because the doctrine, thanks to an idiot general in the US, was that Tank Destroyer battalions should do the combat with the tanks, while tanks should only support infantry. The M4 with a 76mm gun was an emergency solution, and the gun was just roughly comparable to the 75mm on the Panzer IV, that is, not at all comparable to the short 88 on the Tiger, or the long 75 on the Panther. (As an aside: many people mix the KWK 36 L/56 together with the KWK/PAK 43 L/71 in terms of fearsome, but they used completely different ammunition. The KWK 42 L/70, that is the Panthers long 75 was actually a better anti-tank gun than the short 88)

In terms of ratios, the only hard ones I've seen are in regards to the Tiger.

US estimated that to deal with a Tiger, they'd need 6 Sherman with 75mm guns, and they'd lose 5

Russia estimated that to deal with a Tiger, they'd need 5 T-34, and they'd lose 4

UK, with their Firefly augmented tank troops, estimated that they'd need a troop of 5, and they'd lose 3 ordinary Shermans while the Firefly got into a position to kill the Tiger, and that's because the Firefly had a gun almost comparable to the KWK 43 L/71.

In terms of impact, yes the T-34 had an impact on following tanks in the war, but the Panther had a much larger impact on everything that came later, including the Centurion and the Leopard 1, and even carrying on to modern designs.

A household where you have multiple heavy internet users, such as 1080p streaming, download of games/patches(City of Heroes and CCP for example use decent CDN's(that is, not Akamai), and can pretty much max out our 100Mb/s downstream), distro downloads, telecommuting, sending high-resolution RAW format photos around etc etc.