From what I understand, they log in to a citrix-like webpage called IBM Host On Demand and then start a java applet which is essentially a 16-color 3270 emulator that's connected to z/OS mainframe.
I work with a lot of COBOL dinosaurs in the bank, I often like to watch them work on their 16-colors IBM z/OS host terminals, it's quite mesmerizing. Sometimes they show me some interesting code that was written before I was alive (I'm 36), or tell me stories about big mainframe incidents in the '80s, where they would get called in the middle of the night and flown to a different country to fix a bug because there was no remote desktop back then.
Surely that's not why the interface is a laggy 10fps piece of shit and the touch latency is over 200ms. If my iPhone 3GS from 2009 can display the UI in 60fps without lagging like crazy then so can a $100k BMW that's straight from the factory. It doesn't need hundreds of extra modules.
I wouldn't even mind replacing the analog meters with a computer screen if it worked well. Instead it's a laggy slideshow where the tachometer is just basically an arrow randomly appearing in different places a couple times per second.
Crazy right? Here in europe they just tell me that my medication isn't covered and I have to pay the whole price for it - if I don't like it, I can switch the government and move somewhere else.
A Colorado university recently proved that lying is a good political strategy because candidates who lie to their voters do not lose support even if caught and proven to be spreading falsehoods. Not really sure if that really contributed to humanity but here you go.
I have a hard time believing an eight year old child was watching Doom 3 developer talks and telling his kindergarden friends about buffer shadows and Carmack's Reverse.