In 65 short years, the humble transistor evolved into an artificial life form called Watson, a computer system that recognizes natural language and, in 2011, handily defeated two former champions on the TV quiz show Jeopardy.

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The computer giant has implemented a natural-language system at T.

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Instead of trying to revamp JIMS with brand-new technology, Harris County has stuck to its grand-design architecture by migrating its legacy database to the more current Model 204 Database Management System, made by Computer Corporation of America, and rewriting Cobol applications in the Model 204 language.

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That much make sense: Given how much of a data center is virtualized, and the management of that becoming something of an overarching operating system, servers may start to look something like what assembly language does now in a single computer: something critical, but not something people look at a lot, and not a place to stake your fortune.

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