IBM Mainframe challenge
You may or may not know but every year IBM hold a contest for university students - such as myself - to have a go at playing a round with a mainframe. This is IBM’s way of trying to get more students into the mainframe sector of the IT market as soon there will be a need for new technicians and no one really wants to do it at the moment.
Anyway, if you apply for this contest you are given a username and passcode and given access to mainframe with the aim to complete certain tasks. There are prizes for each task/stage in the competition and you get some mainframe experience and something to write on your CV.
Unfortunately my username and password don’t seem to work so I can’t take part in the competition. This coupled with me forgetting the start date as ruined my chances of winning anything. I guess there is always next year?
Why computer networks suck
As part of my 2nd year at Newcastle University I have to do a module called CSC2003 - Computer Systems and Networks. Not to bad you might think? WRONG - the module is fine (even though we’ve only done the networks part so far) but it’s the coursework.
Why oh why would anyway think it’s a good idea to represent a computer network using Java. Then from there expect us to setup a network from this which works on a PAR and PiggyBack acknowledge algorithm.
It is rubbish. The end.
