Prometheus 6

Unfortunately it's also a perfect metophor for our national infrastructure.

The state payroll system is based on the COBOL, or Common Business Oriented Language, programming language – a code first introduced in 1959 and popularized in the 1960s and 1970s.

California state computers can't handle pay cut, controller says
By Kevin Yamamura
Published 12:00 am PDT Tuesday, August 5, 2008

If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to issue minimum-wage checks to 200,000 state workers in less than a month, he may want to rehire any semi-retired computer programmers he terminated last week.

The massive pay cut would exhaust the state's antiquated payroll system, which is built on a Vietnam-era computer language so outdated that many college students don't even bother to learn it anymore.

Democratic state Controller John Chiang said Monday it would take at least six months to reconfigure the state's payroll system to issue blanket checks at the federal minimum wage of $6.55 per hour, though Schwarzenegger insists such a change should occur this month.

Experts say Chiang isn't joking when he describes the state's payroll system as a computing relic on par with vacuum tubes and floppy disks.