List of Archived Posts

2003 Newsgroup Postings (12/12 - 12/31)

Weird new IBM created word

An entirely new proprietary hardware strategy

History of Computer Network Industry

Hyperthreading vs. SMP

Does OTP need authentication?

Hyperthreading vs. SMP

Does OTP need authentication?

IBM advertising artefact (what is it ?)

pointless embedded systems

virtual-machine theory

Secure web logins w random passwords

Order of Encryption and Authentication

Danger: Derrida at work

packetloss bad for sliding window protocol ?

64 bits vs non-coherent MPP was: Re: Itanium strikes again

packetloss bad for sliding window protocol ?

Star Trek, time travel, and such

Does OTP need authentication?

The BASIC Variations

socks & color

Dumb anti-MITM hacks / CAPTCHA application

Sun researchers: Computers do bad math ;)

1960s images of IBM 360 mainframes

1960s images of IBM 360 mainframes

Mainframe Training

Mainframe Training

Sun researchers: Computers do bad math ;)

The BASIC Variations

The BASIC Variations

Sun researchers: Computers do bad math ;)

Not A Survey Question

The BASIC Variations

Mainframe Emulation Solutions

[IBM-MAIN] NY Times editorial on white collar jobs going

The BASIC Variations

value of pi

Mainframe Training

The BASIC Variations

Mainframe Emulation Solutions

Mainframe Emulation Solutions

virtual-machine theory

comp.arch classic: the 10-bit byte

The BASIC Variations

Mainframe Emulation Solutions

Mainframe Emulation Solutions

Saturation Design Point

comp.arch classic: the 10-bit byte

pointless embedded systems

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: pointless embedded systems
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 16:11:31 GMT

dgriffi writes:

So, is it a Hard Thing to design a washing-machine computer that is
operated exactly the same as an old-fashioned clockwork one?
Methinks not.  A readout that indicates estimated finish time
doesn't make sense.  Isn't that sort of information supposed to be
on the main control knob anyhow?  If the metric doesn't correspond
to minutes, it's not hard to get an idea of how long a wash ought to
take.

I believe there was study of analogy/hands watch vis-a-vis a digital
read-out watch. the claim was that the hands provided a lot more
information content than the digital read-out. the hands not only told
what the current time is ... but the position tended to convey how
long since ... and how long to; with a digital watch you got what
the current time is ... but were forced to calculate how long since
and how long to.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

An entirely new proprietary hardware strategy

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: An entirely new proprietary hardware strategy
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 16:29:35 GMT

nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) writes:

It would be sheer lunacy.  SGI are the leaders in large-scale cache
coherence, probably followed by Sun, HP and IBM, and even SGI would
gasp at being asked to tackle that problem.  Wave a large enough
cheque and I am sure that something could be arranged ....

SCI defined distributed memory coherence ... there were
implementations by (at least) Convex (bought by HP), Sequent (bought
by IBM), and data general (EMC bought the dg disk array stuff ... the
sci stuff ???). current web page:
http://www.scizzl.com/

SCI standardization (driven out of SLAC) was going on somewhat
concurrently with FCS (driven by LLNL) and HiPPI (driven by LANL).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

History of Computer Network Industry

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: History of Computer Network Industry
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 00:22:07 GMT

Morten Reistad writes:

This is correct. It was first in 1983 the Internet became just that;
an internet. But proper routers were still a long way off. Even in
1987 Cisco were peddling the GS series; not exactly a sound construction.
It was first with the 4000 and 7000 that they had products that were
ready for serious production use.

It was amazing that Sun, HP and others let them keep that market for
so long. But I tried to convince Sun to get their ass moving in the
general direction of the Internet; and talked for deaf ears.

can you imagine the difficulty inside IBM? ... trying to convince
people like the guy that did APPN ... that he was wasting his time
trying to add networking to SNA (the sna group even non-concurred with
APPN announcement ... and so the announcement had to be escalated and
then rewritten to make sure there was no mention of any connection
between APPN and networking with SNA) ... instead come to work on
tcp/ip

a little thread drift ... archeological SUN story
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a John Hartmann's Birthday Party
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#67 Coulda, Woulda, Shoudda moments?

numerous renditions of RFC1044 implementation story:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#28 Log Structured filesystems -- think twice
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#14 mainframe tcp/ip
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#15 tcp/ip
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#17 middle layer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#34 ... cics ... from posting from another list
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#49 Edsger Dijkstra: the blackest week of his professional life
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#50 Edsger Dijkstra: the blackest week of his professional life
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#36 why is there an "@" key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#123 Speaking of USB ( was Re: ASR 33 Typing Element)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#90 Ux's good points.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#59 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#30 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#63 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#65 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#52 Pre ARPAnet email?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#33 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#44 Wired News :The Grid: The Next-Gen Internet?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#20 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#11 The demise of compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#43 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#45 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#67 Total Computing Power
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#31 general networking is: DEC eNet: was Vnet : Unbelievable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#58 IBM S/370-168, 195, and 3033
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#51 E-mail from the OS-390 ????
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#27 Beyond 8+3
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#67 3745 & NCP Withdrawl?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#29 360/370 disk drives
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#44 filesystem structure, was tape format (long post)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#28 diffence between itanium and alpha
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#77 COMTEN- IBM networking boxes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#79 COMTEN- IBM networking boxes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#33 Why only 24 bits on S/360?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#35 Why only 24 bits on S/360?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#37 Why only 24 bits on S/360?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#59 unix
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#43 A Dark Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#2 Fix the shuttle or fly it unmanned
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#26 Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#40 Cray to commercialize Red Storm

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Hyperthreading vs. SMP

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hyperthreading vs. SMP
Newsgroups: linux.redhat
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 02:15:55 GMT

wb writes:

How is memory contention (cache coherence) maintained
with these hyperthreading machines ? Does it require an
external memory agent ? In a SMP or NUMA, a memory
controller (MIP's called it an agent ) ensured that memory
integrity was kept. Can each virtual process instance be
making memory updates ?

hyperthreading just uses more than one instruction stream, typically
in an already superscaler processor ... sharing the same cache.

the superscaler processor has multiple instructions in flight already
... one of the purposes of superscaler is to compensate for cache
misses ... other instructions can proceed in parallel when one
instruction is stalled because of cache miss. The superscaler
processor may also have speculative execution when conditional
branches are encounterd .... i.e. assume that the direction of the
branch is to go one way ... and if it turns out not to ... back-out
all the instructions executed on the wrong path.

one of the first such efforts was a dual i-stream design for the
370/195 (some 30 years ago). 195 had 64 instruction pipeline ... but
w/o support for speculative executions ... so branches in the
instruction stream drained the pipeline. except for some specialized
codes, the 195s tended to run at half (or less) of theoritical thruput
because of the large number of conditional branches commonly found in
standard codes. the dual i-stream project defined two instruction
streams, a duplicate set of registers and a red/black bit flag tagging
each operation in the pipeline (indicating which instruction stream
the operation was associated with).

hyperthreading, in principle supports more than one instruction stream
concurrently within the context of already complex superscaler context
... using common processor cache.

in such configurations ... two or more physical/logical processors
(instruction streams) sharing the same cache won't have a cache
consistency problem (although they may have some serialization
issues). it is when there are multiple caches that the issue of
memory/cache consistency arises.

A possibly configuration is four physical processors with two physical
caches (where each physical cache supports two physical processors).
There are cache consistency issues involved in coordination between
the two caches (it is not between the four processors but between the
caches). If you add hyperthreading to each of the four physical
processors (say it now appears as eight logical instruction streams),
that change is possibly totally transparent to the cache operation and
the coherency operation between the two caches.

serialization of processors is typically done with automatic
operations like compare&swap ... but that is somewhat orthogonal to
the coherency implementation between caches (which can be totally
independent of the number/kind of instruction streams supported).

recent posting from somewhat related thread in comp.arch
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#1 An entirely new proprietrary hardware strategy

misc. past threads mentioning 370/195 dual i-stream work from 30 years
ago:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#38 IBM 370/195
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#73 The Chronology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#97 Power4 = 2 cpu's on die?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#15 360/370 instruction cycle time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#27 Pentium 4 SMT "Hyperthreading"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#63 Hyper-Threading Technology - Intel information.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#70 Pipelining in the past
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#76 Pipelining in the past
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#48 IBM Manuals from the 1940's and 1950's
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#60 S/360 undocumented instructions?

lots of past mentions of compare and swap (again from 30 some years ago):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#0 360/67, was Re: IBM's Project F/S ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#14 S/360 addressing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#28 370 ECPS VM microcode assist
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#16 360/370 instruction cycle time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#42 IBM was/is: Imitation...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#73 CS instruction, when introducted ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#41 Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#61 Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#69 Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#70 Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#73 Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#74 Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#75 Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#76 Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#4 Extended memory error recovery
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#8 Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#9 Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#2 Most complex instructions (was Re: IBM 9020 FAA/ATC Systems from 1960's)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#34 IBM OS Timeline?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#8 Minimalist design (was Re: Parity - why even or odd)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#65 SMP idea for the future
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#67 SMP idea for the future
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#42 Cache coherence [was Re: IBM POWER4 ...]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#43 IBM 1800
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#52 Microcode?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#9 IBM Doesn't Make Small MP's Anymore
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#13 Hardware glitches, designed in and otherwise
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#45 Future architecture [was Re: Future micro-architecture: ]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#58 Spin Loop?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#59 Spin Loop?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#69 The problem with installable operating systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#12 cost of crossing kernel/user boundary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#18 cost of crossing kernel/user boundary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#20 Card Columns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#75 The relational model and relational algebra - why did SQL  become the industry standard?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#78 The relational model and relational algebra - why did SQL become the industry standard?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#17 CA-RAMIS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#67 The Pentium 4 - RIP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#12 Page Table - per OS/Process
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#15 Disk capacity and backup solutions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#30 One Processor is bad?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#5 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#19 Why did TCP become popular ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#20 UT200 (CDC RJE) Software for TOPS-10?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#58 atomic memory-operation question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#29 SR 15,15
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#32 who invented the "popup" ?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Does OTP need authentication?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Does OTP need authentication?
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,sci.crypt.random-numbers
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 16:13:15 GMT

"John E. Hadstate" writes:

Authentication has two different meanings:

(1) the message was sent by the person or organization that claims
to have sent it, and

(2) the message hasn't been altered.

from security pain taxonomy; privacy, authentication, integrity,
non-repudiation.

authentication taxonomy

• something you have
• something you know
  - shared-secret
  - non-shared-secret
• something you are
  - shared-secret
  - non-shared-secret

cryptographic techniques can implement checks for both authentication
and integrity (aka digital signatures).

encryption may implement both privacy and authentication ... but
straight encryption by itself might not implement integrity. redundant
information like (possibly encryption of) secure hash of the plaintext
can implement integrity check.

some sort of redundant information like parity, error correcting code,
or hash can be appended to the end of the plain text message and the
whole thing encrypted with a shared-secret (only known by sender and
receiver) ... achieving privacy, authentication, and integrity.

the message might be encrypted with shared-secret (achieving privacy
and authentication) and then the encrypted message digitally signed
(achieving authentication and integrity).

the plain text message can be digitally signed (achieving
authentication and integrity) and then the combined plaintext and
digital signature is encrypted with shared-secret (achieving privacy
and authentication).

doing both encryption and digital signature achieves both privacy and
integrity ... while effectively providing duplicate authentication.

note that sometimes checking the integrity of the message is referred
to as authentication of the message (integrity) ... which creates some
semantic abiguity regarding the word authentication (whether it refers
to the message integrity or the sending entity).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Hyperthreading vs. SMP

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hyperthreading vs. SMP
Newsgroups: linux.redhat
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 15:51:47 GMT

"Robert M. Riches Jr" writes:

Well said, except for one minor point of terminology.  At
least in my 17 year experience in microprocessor design,
superscaler basically meant having multiple parallel
execution units, so that multiple instructions could be sent
to execution in the same clock cycle--lowering the best-case
CPI below unity.  It is out-of-order execution (or "dynamic
execution" per Pentium Pro marketing literature) that allows
instructions to proceed when an earlier instruction is
stalled by a cache miss.

yes, slightly glossed over/sloppy to equate out of order and
superscaler. you can have bookkeeping for multiple instructions
in-flight supporting out-of-order execution ... in support of latency
compensation associated with instruction stalling (because of cache
misses). superscaler already has bookkeeping for multiple instructions
in-flight ... so the incremental complexity for out-of-order and
multiple threads tends to be much smaller.

non-out-of-order, but purely threaded example is tera (bought cray and
now goes by the cray name) .... with a high-speed computer with
possibly just about every instruction stalling and implements a large
number of instruction streams (threads). mta-2 with up to 128 hardware
threads:
http://www.cray.com/products/systems/mta/

from above:

Multi-threading
Each MTA processor has up to 128 RISC-like hardware threads. Each
thread is a hardware stream with its own instruction counter, register
set, stream status word and target and trap registers. A different
hardware stream is activated every clock period. This fundamental
hardware innovation provides scalable memory latency tolerance.

High-Bandwidth Interconnect
An extremely high bandwidth interconnection network lets each
processor access arbitrary locations in uniform shared memory at up to
2.5 gigabytes per second. About 25 active streams per MTA processor
are needed to overlap all memory latency with computational
processing.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Does OTP need authentication?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Does OTP need authentication?
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,sci.crypt.random-numbers
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003 17:32:01 GMT

"Douglas A. Gwyn" writes:

I haven't yet checked all the other replies, but one
thjing that can go wrong is that the message (header)
indicates the portion of the pad to use, the attacker
blocks delivery of a message (so that that portion of
the OTP is not destroyed by the intended recipient)
and keeps a copy, then sends the copy (spoof) later
at a time when the old plaintext should no longer be
accepted by the receiver.  (This is called a replay
attack.)  E.g., think of a stock transaction: "buy
100 shares of IBM stock", which may be a bad thing to
do once IBM shares start a downswing.  With proper
authentication, the attacker's spoof message will not
be accepted as coming from the original sender.

or man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack ... not traditional replay attack
where the attacker repeats a message that had been previously been
sent/received.

traditional replay attacks are accepted as authenticated coming from
the valid sender ... because they are a repeat of a message that in
fact came from a valid sender.

the issue on a delayed message is it a validly delayed message
... possibly because of intermediate communication glitches (like
email where some server has been down for a period of time) or a MITM
attack ... aka purposefully delayed to take advantage of
characteristic of some high level business process (in your example).

traditional replay attack (same message received more than
once) countermeasure, either has some unique identifier for each
message (and the recepient does something like keeping a log) or there
is protocol chatter where the recepient provides a unique challenge as
part of the initialization. Non-real-time based protocols (like email)
will tend to use unique sender originated value ... while real-time
protocols might tend towards protocol chatter initialization with
recepient doing something more like challenge/response.

something like delay sensitivity in the higher level business
processes might require other kinds of countermeasures ... i.e. given
that the higher level business processes may be sensitive to delays
... then they might have to have delay recognition ability ... because
the infrastructure can be susceptible to other types of delay
resulting failures (not just attacker inititiated delays).

to some extent the message integrity issue is similar.  transmission
level protocols tend have various kinds of redundant information with
regard to message integrity and transmission errors.  an attacker may
try to attack the message integrity in such a way that it is not
caught by the transmission error process(es).

this is one of the places that end-to-end shows up as a basic
security principle .... aka non-end-to-end solutions tend to provide
cracks in the infrastructure which give rise to infrastructure
vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities can just be plain systemic
failure issues (intermediate email server being out of service for
some period of time) or purposefully introduced by attacks (MITM
attack delaying message until after some specific event). Another
is MITM corruption of message integrity at some sort of intermediate
node that is not caught by the transmission based message integrity
services.

previous posting in this thead regarding taxonomy of authentication
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#4 Does OTP need authentication?

misc. past posts re: replay
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm9.htm#3dvulner5 3D Secure Vulnerabilities?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#6 NEWS: 3D-Secure and Passport
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#27 How effective is open source crypto?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#28 How effective is open source crypto? (addenda)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#29 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#31 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#30 Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#20 What is PKI?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#14 fingerprint authentication
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#70 Simple resource protection with public keys
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#25 Idea for secure login
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#50 public key vs passwd authentication?

misc. past posts re: MITM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay10.htm#84 Invisible Ink, E-signatures slow to broadly catch on (addenda)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#37 Who's afraid of Mallory Wolf?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay12.htm#36 DNS, yet again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#35 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#1 Who's afraid of Mallory Wolf?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#2 Who's afraid of Mallory Wolf? (addenda)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#3 Armoring websites
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#4 Who's afraid of Mallory Wolf?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#5 Who's afraid of Mallory Wolf?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#9 "Marginot Web" (SSL, payments, etc)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#39 An attack on paypal
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#43 PKI "not working"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#26 SSL, client certs, and MITM (was WYTM?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#27 SSL, client certs, and MITM (was WYTM?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#28 SSL, client certs, and MITM (was WYTM?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#29 SSL, client certs, and MITM (was WYTM?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#1 Are client certificates really secure?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#41 Solutions to Man in the Middle attacks?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#47 SSL MITM Attacks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#50 SSL MITM Attacks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#38 MITM solved by AES/CFB - am I missing something?!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#58 SSL integrity guarantees in abscense of client certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#11 Serious vulnerablity in several common SSL implementations?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#51 SSL Beginner's Question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#5 What good is RSA when using passwords ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#65 SSL certificate modification
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#63 SSL & Man In the Middle Attack
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#25 New RFC 3514 addresses malicious network traffic
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#38 What is Meet In The Middle Attack
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#23 Authentication protocol
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#25 Idea for secure login
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#6 The Original Interlock Protocol (what is...)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#36 Proposal for a new PKI model (At least I hope it's new)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#50 public key vs passwd authentication?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#10 Cracking SSL
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#30 Is this right?  Question about SSL and PKI
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#3 Bank security question (newbie question)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#4 Bank security question (newbie question)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#8 Bank security question (newbie question)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#22 securID weakness

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

IBM advertising artefact (what is it ?)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM advertising artefact (what is it ?)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 01:01:17 GMT

Manuel Viet writes:

I was given recently a somewhat curious object (sorry, i've no picture
to show, so i'll describe it the best i can). It's a metalic cylinder,
about 7 cm tall, glued to a black plastic base labeled IBM. What's
odd is that the cylinder bears lines of figures. Obviously, it's
destination is to hold pencils. But the person who gave me this one
said that he had another one where, instead of the lines of figures,
it's the frame of an invoice which is embossed on the cylinder.

After turning this upside down, I came to the conclusion that in fact
those cyclinders were made to print on punch cards before they were
used.

i've seen quite a few of them over the years ... pen/pencil holder
with engraved image of lines of punch card. I believe that they were
just made that way for pen/pencil holders .... (but what do i know)

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

pointless embedded systems

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: pointless embedded systems
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 14:04:46 GMT

Larry Elmore <ljelmore_@_comcast_._net> writes:

Alaska can definitely get colder than that. I've lived there, and been
out when it was below -40C. Same in Montana. There was a 10 or 11 day
stretch in 1988/89 when the low was below -40 every night. Of course,
at those temperatures, almost no engine will start unless you've got a
block heater plugged in, anyway.

one year that i was at the university ... it had one night distinction
of the coldest for the nation one night (-52f) which was somewhat
unusual for the area. the high the next day -27f. as a temporary
measure, you run a 60 watt light bulb next to the engine. at -52f
... supposedly you can throw a glass of water into the air and it
freezes(?) before it hits the ground.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

virtual-machine theory

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: virtual-machine theory
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 14:23:13 GMT

gilmap writes:

You (and several other recent participants in this thread) are
confusing IBM's VM(tm) product with the subject of Virtual Machine
Theory.  Remember, there's a legitimate discipline of Computer
Science beyond the study of IBM's hardware and software.

Concerning the remarks about the effects of the various DIAGs,
on a realistic Virtual Machine (not (tm)), DIAG should have the
same effect as perceived by the program as on the real hardware.

long ago and far way ... as an undergraduate ... in cp/67, i faked a
disk CCW to do seek, search, tic, read/write operation as CC=1, csw
stored; i.e. it was a synchronous disk operation for cms.

bob adair (at the science center) made a big point that i was
violating the virtual machine architecture ... that all violations of
the virtual machine architecture should be done with a diagnose
instruction ... since the diagnose instruction is defined as model
dependent. misc. science center refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

the "theory" was that you could have a 360/vm model i.e. instead of
360/67 ... it would be 360/vm ... aka a valid model of 360 that
conformed to everything in the pricinple of operations for true 360
operation ... but was allowed to define the implementation of the
diagnose instruction according to the claim that it was a virtual
machine model of the 360 (as opposed to a 360 model 30, or a model
40, or a model 65, etc) .... aka each model of the 360 was allowed to
define what the diagnose instruction did on that model (i.e.
definition of what the diagnose instruction did was model dependent).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Secure web logins w random passwords

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Secure web logins w random passwords
Newsgroups: alt.security
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 03:09:56 GMT

lkandia@seerx.com (Luke Kandia) writes:

I am looking for a vendor for a smartcard login system.  This would be
used in conjunction with an SSL website, to thwart keystroke logging
and trojan software from capturing passwords that could be re-used.

The device is credit card sized with a keypad and LCD display.  When
you login you are asked to enter a series of digits (or
alphanumerics) into your card.  The card then processes the input
using a built in algorithm to generate a password on the LCD
readout.  This password is only valid for one login.

I have seen such a device in action a few years back utilized as a
means of accessing a firewall product called Borderware.  It appeared
to work well.  I would greatly appreciate any news on where I could
track down such a device, that being the software and hardware.

there is a calculator looking device that is used in europe for online
& telephone banking ... that is challenge/response aka it really isn't
a one time password ... it is a challenge/response system (i.e.
you get a challenge ... and using some shared-secret, generate
a correct response).

some discussion of such a device:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#57 Q: Internet banking
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#9 Smart Card vs. Magnetic Strip Market
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#55 Security Issues of using Internet Banking
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#17 What is microcode?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#37 Keeping old hardware alive?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#3 Bank security question (newbie question)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#8 Bank security question (newbie question)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#9 Bank security question (newbie question)

note the three posts in the above on "bank security question" discuss
challenge/response in the context of not having any sort of SSL or any
other countermeasure for man-in-the-middle attacks.

there is an internet standard for something called one-time-password
which is not a challenge/response system .... the following post has
much more detailed discussion on OTP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#46
and pointers to several posts on a straight forward
evesdropping/MITM attack against OTP ... note that OTP is
justified as being solution for passwords in the presence of
evesdropping; if you preclude evesdropping, then it also be precluding
the basic justification for having OTP (as opposed to some other
solution).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Order of Encryption and Authentication

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Order of Encryption and Authentication
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 03:23:56 GMT

nobody writes:

Referring to the paper at:

http://palms.ee.princeton.edu/fiskiran/repository/CRYPTO/krawcyzk01order.pdf

This is a discussion of the order of encryption and message
authentication; the conclusion presented by the author is that
encryption should be done before authentication.  That is, encrypt the
message then send the ciphertext + mac of the ciphertext:

within the context of security taxonomy PAIN:

• privacy
• authentication
• integrity
• non-repudiation

... privacy is encryption, authentication is authentication of the
sender (not authentication of the message) and integrity is the
message wasn't modified (i.e. validating its integrity).

things like MAC imply "authentication" in the context of validating
the integrity of the message ... and not authentication of the sender
of the message.

digital signature combines authentication (of the sender) and
(validating of) integrity into a single operation i.e. extract SHA-1
from the digital signature using the sender's public key ... and then
check the extracted SHA-1 against the currently calculated SHA-1 for
the message ... if they match then it was both transmitted by the
appropriate sender AND wasn't modified in transit.

it can create some amount of confusion if the word authentication is
used for connoting both authentication of the message and
authentication of the sender.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Danger: Derrida at work

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Danger: Derrida at work
Newsgroups: comp.programming,alt.folklore.computers,comp.software-eng
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 14:40:16 GMT

"J.Clarke" writes:

FWIW, I took an abstract algebra course in 1974 that was taught by a
very sharp lady with a PhD that she had held for more than 20 years.
She was not the only female professor in that math department.  Later
on, in 1977, I took a graduate level complex variables course from
another very sharp (also very pretty and very pregnant) woman who was a
good deal younger and had thus held her PhD for a shorter time.

Still, comparatively speaking, women in math and the sciences were a
distinct minority at that time.  Later on in industry the company I
worked for had just recently hired their first group of female
engineers--they weren't the first female engineers that the
company had hired--there had been one earlier but she had long since
retired--but they were the first that had been hired in quantity.  The
old guys weren't quite sure what to make of them.

mid-90s, we were doing some consulting for the census department
getting ready for 2000. they were going to have an review/audit by
some gov. person that specialized in very large databases ... so we
were brought in to handle it all on the census side.

sort of towards the end of the day during a coffee break ... there was
some kibitzing about backgrounds and he mentioned something about
graduating from u.of.mich, my wife said so did she, and she asked what
department? The reply was engineering graduate school, and my wife
said so was she. My wife asked what years ... and he replied. my wife
said so was she, and that she was the only femaile in the engineering
graduate school at that time.  He replied, no she wasn't, somebody
else was. My wife said that was her. He looked at her and said you've
gotten older ... so my wife said so had he.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

packetloss bad for sliding window protocol ?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: packetloss bad for sliding window protocol ?
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 04:21:06 GMT

robertwessel2@yahoo.com (Robert Wessel) writes:

This description is misleading at best.  In a sliding window protocol
the acks flow back to the sender in parallel to the data packets.  So
long as the ack rate keeps up with the data packet rate (and there's
no packet loss), the sender will never have to wait, except as forced
by link throughput considerations.

note that there was a paper in sigcomm circa 1988 about the same time
as slow-start publication. i believe the paper showed that slow-start
would never stabalize in real-world internet because acks tended to
bunch and several arrive at one time. one of the congestion problems
supposedly that window algorithm is supposed to address is
characterized by back-to-back packet arrival at intermediate nodes.

supposedly the hope has been that windowing algorithm would achieve
homogeneous even distribution of ack arrivals back to the sender ...
which then would result in an even distribution of packets being sent.
one of the problems is that packet transmission and ack returns tend
to exhibit totally different transit characteristics.

in theory, the intermediate nodes would like to control the
inter-packet arrival interval ... which is somewhat related to packet
transmission rate ... but is really directly related to inter-packet
transmission interval.

because of ACK bunching characteristic in real world networks
.... they are almost totally useless for controlling inter-packet
transmission interval. ACKs are several levels of indirection away
from inter-packet transmission interval.

One of the places for acks & windows were intended was low level link
level control where the receiving side set the worst case resource
availability for purposes of the sender. The sender would never
attempt to transmit more than N packets w/o an ack ... because the
receiving side had at most N buffers reserved for packet reception for
that link.

One possible scenario that ack/window has trouble addressing is an
intermediate node that is multiplexing the same sent of buffers among
multiple senders. That sharing of buffers could be such that
there is less than a full single buffer per sender .... which would
require a fraction of a single packet sliding window (even when an ACK
came back a delay in transmission is still required before the next
packet should go out).

Another view, the final destination has most of the control over
deciding when to transmit an ACK; ack/windows is somewhat related to
world of directly connected senders and receivers, which is not very
represented of the current store&forward networking
infrastructure.

the claim is in non-stable ack environment (real world networks)
... that the only really effective way to control inter-packet
transmission interval (related to things like congestion control) is
to directly control the inter-packet transmission interval.

a couple past threads regarding direct control of inter-packet
transmission interval:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#38 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#46 Fast TCP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#57 Window field in TCP header goes small

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

64 bits vs non-coherent MPP was: Re: Itanium strikes again

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 64 bits vs non-coherent MPP was: Re: Itanium strikes again
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 14:39:37 GMT

Robert Myers writes:

The applications of 30 years ago anticipated limited available memory
and thus were broken up into small, carefully designed blocks called
overlays that were designed to be swapped in and out.

If there is any corresponding practice in widespread use, I am unaware
of it.  No application developer will benefit particularly from
worrying that more than one program might be occupying memory, and
thus, they don't.

tss/360 didn't ... it assumed flat virtual memory and so laid out
(what had been) traditionally real-storage compact implementations and
relied on individual (4k) page faulting ... with little or no
hints/assists above or below the interface (like no prefetching when
recognized sequential reading). the synchronous 4k page faulting would
drastically increase elapsed time ... compared to any paradigm that
packaged somewhat for expected common real storage sizes and had much
better transition between phases.

another type of problem was the porting of apl\360 to cms\apl. apl\360
nominally had small workspaces, typically of 16kbyte to 32kbytes which
were effectively swapped in total. the apl\360 storage allocation was
on every assignment to (re)allocate the next available (higher)
storage location and mark any former locations garbage. When the
allocation reached the top of workspace ... it would do garbage
collection and compact all allocated storage to lowest possible
addresses. That worked ok in the somewhat real-storage apl\360
environment ... but was disasterous in cms\apl environment where the
workspace appeared to be all of the virtual address space (which was
typically larger than real storage).

space/time memory access plots .... virtual storage addresses on the
vertical, time on the horizontal ... printed on backside of green-bar
wide paper in six foot lengths and assembled along corridor wall
... showed a saw-tooth effect of original apl\360 port to virtual
memory ... storage location use showed a very rapid rise to the top of
virtual memory and then a solid line dropping back down (garbage
collection) followed again via a very rapid rise.

about the same time that the apl\360 port was going on a virtual
memory use analysis tool was being developed ... which was used for
generating the mentioned access plots. The tool was used in helping
validate a rewrite of the apl storage management algorithm for
operation in virtual memory environments.

features developed in the tool eventually supported things like giving
it a storage location load map of application running in virtual
memory ... where it would attempt to optimally re-order individual
module placement in the application to minimize page faults. after a
couple years, this was released as a product in 1976. For relatively
decent modularized large applications ... it could show some decent
improvement (scenarios where the total number of distinct virtual
pages needed by the application typically exceeded available real
storage) ... aka it tended to produce more compact (but more tightly
bound) working sets.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

packetloss bad for sliding window protocol ?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: packetloss bad for sliding window protocol ?
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 16:29:42 GMT

noselasd@frisurf.no (Nils O. Selåsdal) writes:

The real world does not work like that. ;-)

Please also read RFC 2960 , a rather nice and robust protocol.

the latest RFC in the genre is 3649 a couple days ago.

3649 E
 HighSpeed TCP for Large Congestion Windows, Floyd S., 2003/12/12
 (34pp) (.txt=79801) (was draft-ietf-tsvwg-highspeed-01.txt)

as always ... you can go to
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

the lower frame is currently 3601-3900 so it is possible to scroll
the lower frame until the above entry appears. as always, clicking
on the ".txt=" field retrieves the actual RFC.

also in the main frame, it is possible to select Term (term->RFC#)
from the RFCs listed by section and scroll down to "congestion",
i.e.

congestion
 see also performance
 3649 3540 3522 3520 3517 3496 3477 3476 3474 3473 3468 3465 3451
 3450 3448 3436 3390 3309 3210 3209 3182 3181 3175 3168 3159 3124
 3097 3042 2997 2996 2988 2961 2960 2914 2889 2884 2872 2861 2816
 2814 2753 2752 2751 2750 2749 2747 2746 2745 2582 2581 2556 2490
 2481 2414 2382 2380 2379 2309 2210 2209 2208 2207 2206 2205 2140
 2098 2001 1859 1372 1254 1110 1106 1080 1018 1016 896 813 449 442
 210 59 19

clicking on any RFC number brings up that RFC summary in the lower
frame, clicking on the ".txt=" field retrieves the actual RFC.

It is also possible to scroll to entry for "Transport Area" (i.e.
RFCs put out by the Transport Area working group).

Transport Area
 see also congestion
 3649 3522 3517 3448 3436 3390 3309 3168 3042 2988 2414

a couple from above:

3448 PS
 TCP Friendly Rate Control (TFRC): Protocol Specification, Floyd S.,
 Handley M., Padhye J., Widmer J., 2003/01/27 (24pp) (.txt=52657)
3390 PS
 Increasing TCP's Initial Window, Allman M., Floyd S., Partridge C.,
 2002/09/31 (15pp) (.txt=36177) (Obsoletes 2414) (Updates 2581)
3168 PS
 The Addition of Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to IP, Black
 D., Floyd S., Ramakrishnan K., 2001/09/14 (63pp) (.txt=170966)
 (Obsoletes 2481) (Updates 793, 2401, 2474)

random past rate-based related threads:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#11 "Mainframe" Usage
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#44 Wired News :The Grid: The Next-Gen Internet?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#38 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#45 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#57 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#56 Moore law
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#28 Western Union data communications?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#31 Western Union data communications?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#55 Cluster and I/O Interconnect: Infiniband, PCI-Express, Gibat
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#59 Cluster and I/O Interconnect: Infiniband, PCI-Express, Gibat
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#44 filesystem structure, was tape format (long post)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#54 Rewrite TCP/IP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#64 UT200 (CDC RJE) Software for TOPS-10?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#1 FAST - Shame On You Caltech!!!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#19 tcp time out for idle sessions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#46 Fast TCP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#13 packetloss bad for sliding window protocol?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Star Trek, time travel, and such

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Star Trek, time travel, and such
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 16:02:47 GMT

hawk@slytherin.ds.psu.edu (Dr. Richard E. Hawkins) writes:

I've encountered very few worthwhile time travel tails.  Most suffer
from serious design problems, in which there's nothing really at stake,
as another try coculd start a second earlier, or that if the "timeline"
can be changed--but with some people from the other still
present--*both* timelines probably still exist, and the problem isn't
solved, and so forth.  In many tales, ther is inexplicable time pressure
at both spots in time, even though people can jump freely . . .

_Guns of the South_ dealt with it by having a
fixed jump in the machine, which kept actions in the two timelines in
synch (and was really just a way of creating the alternate history
anyway).  A novella I read had a time traveller researching the Odin
mythology, and actually causing it, which was interesting.  And a couple
of others, but *very* few.

... any reasonably unrestricted precision time travel ... sort of
implies that you could have an infinite number of tries to get it the
way you want it to ... most plots have people achieving things thru
some large number of interactions ... unrestricted precision time
travel could just about do away with story plots.

the other technology is the transporter. i've repeatedly claim that
the scanning technology is significantly simpler than the
decomposition and recomposition technology ... and therefor scanning
technology is likely to have been available scores of years earlier.
an amplication of such scanning technology is just have people sit in
near stasis in some sort of concoon with the scanning technology being
used. you do away with the bridge, talking, verbal interactions,
commands, etc. sort of a variation on the matrix ... but not needing
the late '90s virtual reality. again, little or no plot & action that
people in current society are likely to relate to.

misc refs to past transporter threads (it is deja vu, we are having
the same conversation)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#6 Sci Fi again was:  THIS WEEKEND: VINTAGE
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#8 Sci Fi again was:  THIS WEEKEND: VINTAGE

misc refs: to past time machine/travel threads
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#1 Year 2000: Why?
ttp://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#55 ibm time machine in new york times?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#38 ibm time machine in new york times?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#40 ibm time machine in new york times?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#41 ibm time machine in new york times?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#42 ibm time machine in new york times?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#45 ibm time machine in new york times?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#46 ibm time machine in new york times?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#3 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#20 diffence between itanium and alpha
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#9 Why did TCP become popular ?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Does OTP need authentication?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Does OTP need authentication?
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 16:44:20 GMT

Michael Amling writes:

What term, if not message authentication, do we use for the process
of verifying that some message is actually from Aunt Maude? If we know
Aunt Maude's public key and we know that Aunt Maude is careful with
her private key, and that ... a few other things ..., we can verify
messages as coming from Aunt Maude. A good definition here would help
us to focus on those aspects that make message authentication (as I
see it) possible. When the MAC key or public key is found floating in
a bird bath, there's no way to know that anyone has been careful with
anything, it's impossible to verify that messages came from anyone or
anywhere, and hence there can hardly be said to be "data origin
authentication".

a security taxonomy is pain

• privacy (aka encryption)
• authentication
• integrity
• non-repudiation

an authentication taxonomy is (one or more) 3-factor

• something you have
• something you know
• something you are

authentication doesn't require identification .... aka the stereotype
swiss bank account or the torn dollar bill sometimes seen on TV
programs with respect to something like anonymous informat line or
anybody from a collection of people that happens to know the correct
passphrase (Klinger walking patrol on MASH).

one of the claims about x.509 identity digital certificates from the
early 90s never catching on was the enormous privacy and liability
problems with having publicly presented identity information. some
number of the PKI trials in the mid-90s had gone to relying-party-only
certificates ... containing possibly no more than some account number
and a public key (although still possibly 4k bytes in size or larger)
... just to get around the enormous privacly and liability problems
associated with identity certificates.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#rpo

non-repudiation can start to get into the area of not only prooving
who originated it ... but possibly also prooving that they intended to
originate it and also possibly that they are in agreement with the
T&Cs outlined in the contents ... aka a legal signature ... as opposed
to a digital signature (sometimes some semantic ambiguity because both
terms contain the word signature).

typically a digital signature is an integrity and authentication
technology ... but not necessarily an identification ... aka can infer
one, two (or possily three) factor authentication from the
digital signature; the entity originating the signature demonstrated
something you have (say hardware token) and/or something you
know (pin/password).

there are also sometimes confusion over "auth" systems. "auth" can
refer to either authentication and/or authorization ... even though
they are very distinct business processes. however, sometimes both
kinds of "auth" business processes are collapsed into the same system
... where authentication is a pre-requisite to authorization.

some past threads regarding authentication vis-a-vis identification:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#53 Authentication white paper
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#58 PKI's not working
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#60 PKI's not working
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#66 Confusing Authentication and Identiification?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#68 Confusing Authentication and Identiification?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#72 Account Numbers. Was: Confusing Authentication and Identiification? (addenda)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#73 Account Numbers. Was: Confusing Authentication and Identiification? (addenda)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay12.htm#0 Four Corner model. Was: Confusing Authentication and Identification? (addenda)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay12.htm#1 Confusing business process, payment, authentication and identification
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay12.htm#2 Confusing business process, payment, authentication and identification
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay12.htm#3 Confusing business process, payment, authentication and identification
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay12.htm#4 Confusing business process, payment, authentication and identification

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The BASIC Variations

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The BASIC Variations
Newsgroups: comp.lang.basic.misc,alt.lang.basic,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 14:55:33 GMT

Nick Spalding writes:

When I joined IBM as a CE in 1963 I heard of but never saw such a
booklet.  The cynical view in the CE community was that most of the now
forbidden practices were the personal invention of old man Watson.

my impression was that the booklet was somehow associated with
gov. litigation ... the corporation has to show that it is taking
steps to educate/remind employees that such activities are not
tolerated. while the gov. may sue a company for engaging in various
practices .... a company is an abstraction ... the abstraction doesn't
actually do anything ... it is the members of the corporation that do
things. If an individual does something ... it isn't sufficient that
the corpoation prooves that it never instructed the individual to do
it ... it must also proove that it specifically told the individual
not to do it.

Corporations are now also being held responsible for other kinds of
individual behavior ... and as a result corporations need to proove
that they have taken steps to instruct individuals that such behavior
is not tolerated.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

socks & color

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: socks & color
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 17:08:34 GMT

hawk@slytherin.ds.psu.edu (Dr. Richard E. Hawkins) writes:

I have yet to see anything but the occasiona grey that's long enough to
be comfortable in boots--the top of the boots, particualrly the handles,
rub funny against bare leg.

two dozen white crew length ... and a dozen white calf length.  most
boots aren't too bad, but i've had one pair recently that seem to use
particularly stiff plastic thread for attaching the boot pulls.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Dumb anti-MITM hacks / CAPTCHA application

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Dumb anti-MITM hacks / CAPTCHA application
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 15:17:08 GMT

Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> writes:

Alice and Bob, two random strangers, discover each other through an
online personals ad and want to have a secure phone conversation or
online chat.

missing some pieces ... how does ivan know that bob is the person that
alice discovered in the personals ad ... or how does ivan know that
alice is the person that bob discovered in the personals ad
(regardless of whether or not bob & alice trust ivan for anything).

much simpler to just include your public key in the personals ad ...
then there is a direct relationship between the personals ad and the
entity in the personals ad ... aka the people running the personals ad
can attest to the fact that the person that took at the ad is the
person that has the public key (with the caveat how does anybody trust
personal ads in the first place).

this is the authentication scenario.

it is along the lines of various threat models against the whole SSL
domain name server certification process ... which goes something
like:

the ssl domain name server certification authority industry is
somewhat backing a proposal that when people register a domain name,
they also register a public key. currently when some asks for a ssl
domain name server certificate ... they have to provide a bunch of
identification information ... which the CA then tries to match
against a bunch of identification registered with the domain name
registration authority ... to make sure that the person requisting the
certificate is the same as the person that owns the domain. this
identity matching process can be a fairly expensive, time-consuming,
and error prone process.

so the proposal is that when you register your domain name, you also
register a public key. then when a CA gets a request for a SSL domain
name certificate ... they just required that it be digitally signed;
the CA then retrieves the associated public key from the domain name
registration authority and performs a straight-forward authentication
operation on the digital signature (as opposed to having to retrieve a
bunch of identification information from the domain name registration
authority and perform the expensive, time-consuming, and error-prone
identity matching process).

such a solution does present something of a catch-22 for the SSL
domain name certificate industry ... in theory if the certification
authority can retrieve the correct domain name owner's public key from
the domain name registration authority ... then so can everybody else
in the world; meaning that if I can directly get the correct public
key directly from the domain name registration authority .... why is a
3rd party domain name certificate needed to certify somebody's public
key as correct.

in much the same way ... the person placing a personal ad can register
their public key directly with the ad. If their public key is part of
their ad ... then to the extent somebody is basing something on the ad
... then that person can be assured of talking to the entity that
placed the ad.

lots of past discussions about the SSL domain name certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcerts

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Sun researchers: Computers do bad math ;)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Sun researchers: Computers do bad math ;)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 18:06:34 GMT

"del cecchi" writes:

I don't think of a chip as a do or die scenario.  And building the chip
or protein will reveal errors. Just way fewer and easier to find ones.
Here is an example for you programmer folks.  Imagine writing one of
those big programs, takes 30 or 40 people a year or two.  million lines
of code more or less.  You can do whatever you want, but to actually
compile and run it will cost 1 million USD.  Oh and it takes 4 months to
compile and load, probably 6 months total until you find out it works.
If you want to change something it costs between .5 and 1 million
dollars and takes 2 to 4 months, depending on exactly what the change
is.

How would that change your development methodology and tools?

one place is anything human rated .... following is something I had
dredged up from 20 years ago (posted by somebody else) with regard to
dates (slightly related to a y2k thread) ... however, point three
mentions a minor software fix:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#24 BA Solves Y2K (Was: Re: Chinese Solve Y2K)



Date: 7 December 1984, 14:35:02 CST

3.We have an interesting calendar problem in Houston.  The Shuttle
Orbiter carries a box called an MTU (Master Timing Unit).  The MTU
gives yyyyddd for the date.  That's ok, but it runs out to ddd=400
before it rolls over.  Mainly to keep the ongoing orbit calculations
smooth.  Our simulator (hardware part) handles a date out to ddd=999.
Our simulator (software part) handles a date out to ddd=399.  What we
need to do, I guess, is not ever have any 5-week long missions that
start on New Year's Eve.  I wrote a requirements change once to try to
straighten this out, but chickened out when I started getting odd
looks and snickers (and enormous cost estimates).

... snip ... top of post, old email index

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

1960s images of IBM 360 mainframes

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 1960s images of IBM 360 mainframes
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 05:43:56 GMT

cjs2895@hotmail.com (cjs2895) writes:

I'm looking for large 1960s images of IBM 360 mainframes that I can
use for my desktop background. Color or B/W. I've Googled for a couple
hours and the best I've been able to find is some System 360 marketing
materials that someone scanned (and even touched up!). Everything else
I've come across tends to be small and low resolution.

you may have sparked something with the geocities url ... since
it is saying that it has temporarily exceeded its transfer limit

are the newcastle ones are too small?
http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/events/anniversaries/40th/webbook/photos/index.html
this seems to be reasonably large size:
http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/events/anniversaries/40th/images/ibm360_672/slide07.jpg

these are probably marketing material scans at columbia
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/datacell.html
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/2311.html

there are some misc. here:
http://www.nfrpartners.com/comphistory/

and a couple 360 front panel pictures here
http://www.punch-card.co.uk/toppage1.htm

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

1960s images of IBM 360 mainframes

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 1960s images of IBM 360 mainframes
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 02:34:00 GMT

Brian Inglis writes:

On 370 systems, the CICS dumps were a few MB of partition, and VSE
or VM OS dumps were usually 16MB of memory in the same format. ISTR
CICS (and probably VM) had a trace table as part of the dump (or
somewhere in the dump), so you started with the last entry and
worked your way back from there to find the cause of the dump, and
then further back to the origin of the problem.

introduced in cp/67 as part of fast reboot ... was writing dump to
disk ...  instead of to the printer (and then automatigically
rebooting) ... from van vleck's home page
http://www.multicians.org/thvv/
includes story about cp/67 crashing 27 times in same day:
http://www.multicians.org/thvv/360-67.html
the comparison with multics somewhat gave rise to the development
of the "new storage system" ... see rest of story in above.

i had done the tty support for cp/67 when an undergraduate and ibm had
shipped in product. I had implemented using one byte arithmatic under
the assumption that tty line lengths were never more than 255
(actually never more than 80). In the above, I believe somebody had
done something like a mod to cp/67 for supporting an ascii plotter or
graphics device with long lines (1200bytes?) ... and the length of
transferred data calculations got messed up.

in any case, when I was trying to do some fancy stuff with 2702
controller for tty & 2741 and found out it couldn't be done with 2702
somewhat led to project to build pcm controller to replace the 2702
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360pcm
and getting blamed for helping start the ibm pcm controller industry

later when playing with rex (now called rexx) ... i made some
assertion that i could write a replacement for the VM/370 dump reader
(a large, all assembler application supported by an organization in
endicott) in rex that ran ten times faster (rex was/is an interpreted
language) with ten times more function in less than 3 months elapsed
time ... only working on it only half time
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dumprx

and for some addition drift, some old rexx postings:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#29 20th March 2000
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#30 20th March 2000
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#31 20th March 2000
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#32 20th March 2000
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#33 20th March 2000
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#57 Amiga Rexx
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#58 Amiga Rexx
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#59 Amiga Rexx
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#60 Amiga Rexx

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Mainframe Training

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframe Training
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 04:26:52 GMT

charlie@ibm-main.elektro.cmhnet.org (Charlie Smith) writes:

Going back and reading this whole thread makes me just slowly shake
my head - over the newcomers in this field that think IBM is going
to change.  Since I started working with their stuff almost 40 years
ago, IBM has been a marketing driven company.

there was a side-jog during FS days .... which i somewhat snidely made
the analogy to a cult movie that had been playing forever down in
central sq about the inmates being in charge of the institution (ww2,
allies enter a french town that had been vacated and was currently
populated by inmates from the local asylum). with canceling of FS
... there was strong pendulum swing back from heavy technology
side. some of my past references to FS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
a little bit here ... but mostly url for the above:
http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/fs.html

note with regard to above, FS was way more than single-level store
.... note that SLS had somewhat been implemented in tss/360 and did
poorly.

specific extract from fs posting that has pointer to anoother
reference/view on fs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#16 [OT] FS = IBM Future System

to some extent the extract in the above reference is to PCM
controller stuff ... which i've been blamed for helping originate:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360pcm

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Mainframe Training

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframe Training
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 04:48:33 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:

http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#17 [OT] FS = IBM Future System

oops that should have been
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#16 [OT] FS = IBM Future System

i.e. "16", not "17". it references and has extracts from a (PDF) paper
"The rise and fall of IBM" which can be found at:
http://www.ecole.org/Crisis_and_change_1995_1.htm
http://www.ecole.org/IndexCC_english.htm

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Sun researchers: Computers do bad math ;)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Sun researchers: Computers do bad math ;)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 18:01:33 GMT

Robert Myers writes:

When you are approaching problems you _don't_ understand and where you
have no tools, you are sometimes reduced to random experimentation.
When you have to make something work, and you know that Murphy's law
rules, you use redundancy.

Numerical modeling of physical processes is not a field where we
should be reduced to random experimentation.

What Jonah Thomas suggested has something in common with extreme
programming, except that, in extreme programming, you gain synergy of
insight and lose the presumed lack of correlation of random errors.

mayy or may not have anything to do with anything ... but when doing
the resource manager ... after doing a whole lot of benchmarks and
examining long term snapshot performance numbers from a large number
of systems ... a parameterised synthetic workload, bunch of automated
benchmarking processes, an analytical APL model, and a model of
nominal operating envelopes (for observed environments and workloads)
were developed.

then predefined something like 1000 benchmarks that sort of covered
all points along the edges of the operational envelope ... large
sampling of points within the operational envelope and a lot of points
well outside any observed operational environment. the benchmarks were
automated and turned loose ... with the measured results being fed
into the apl model ... in part to help calibrate its operation. after
the first 1000 benchmarks or so ... then another 1000 benchmarks were
done with operational & workload points selected by the apl model
... looking for anomolies and/or other points of operational
interest. the 2000 benchmark suite took something like 3 months
elpased time to run (with some amount of checking and updating along
the way).

misc. past posts about the benchmarking
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bench
misc. past post about the resource manager & related stuff
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

the resource manager announcement letter
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#45 VM/370 Resource Manager

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The BASIC Variations

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The BASIC Variations
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 21:15:08 GMT

"Kelli Halliburton" writes:

Actually, it means that the organization chart is WRONG and should
be rewritten to reflect the _de facto_ organization of the company.

Companies should be allowed to evolve to a steady productive state,
then the documentation should reflect that state, rather than
forcing the company to conform to arbitrarily-imposed documentation.

not all organizations are hierarchical ... and/or not all aspectcs or
operational characteristics of an organization are hierarchical.

sometimes org charts are for the people that need the comfort of an
hierarchical organizaton ... and possible something of a test for
people as to how an organization really operates.

one of boyd's observations was that a lot of US corporations
organizational struture during at least the 70s and 80s (and probably
material taught in MBA schools) were the result of young men that had
been part of US military organization during WW2 ... and were then
"coming of age".

The scenario was that entering WW2, US had very few experienced
military personal and had to greatly expand the numbers quickly. The
solution was to quickly deploy a large number of inexperienced people
in an extremely regid, tightly controlled, top-down organization
... attempting to leverage the few expereience military personal that
were available. these people who had acquired their knowledge of how
to run large organizations from this ww2 period ... were then moving
into positions of major responsibilities during the 70s and 80s (and
attempting to replicate the extremely rigid, tightly controlled,
top-down structure).

he contrasted it to the blitzkreig where Guderian effectly wanted the
person on the spot to make the decisions .... and is reputed to have
asked for verbal orders only. This was supposdly to convey the idea
... that there weren't going to be any evidence after the fact for the
auditors to go around and try and blame somebody or another for making
less than perfect decisions.

random past Guderian posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#120 atomic History
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#29 Review of Steve McConnell's AFTER THE GOLD RUSH
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#30 Review of Steve McConnell's AFTER THE GOLD RUSH
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#16 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#36 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#38 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#33 Star Trek: TNG reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#43 Star Trek: TNG reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#51 employee motivation & executive compensation

misc past boyd posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler -  http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

The BASIC Variations

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The BASIC Variations
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 16:00:35 GMT

Charles Shannon Hendrix writes:

Unfortunately, it seems this stuff is rarely used right, and a lot of
people get all tied up in who is "highest", or has the most arrows
pointing at him.

But certainly you *can* document an organization and its people,
processes, and communications, and make it useful.

there is also sometimes a tools issue ....

if a hierarchical database is used for maintaining the information
... then an organization which uses reporting/manager hierarchy for
administrative purposes and not for goals & responsibilities ... may
have an organization that is not straight-forward to represent.

a relational database might have a single "reports to" column ... and
it may be extremely difficult to actually represent all the (possibly
non-uniform) interactions that really occur (to some extent, design
point for relational databases have been bank accounts with single
uniform account index and uniform related fields).

it may be possible to *document* anything. however, for some tools, it
may be extremely difficult to implement a repository that captures all
the information that has been documented ... and keeps it up to date.

random past system/r refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Sun researchers: Computers do bad math ;)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Sun researchers: Computers do bad math ;)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 19:23:58 GMT

Robert Myers writes:

But you weren't simulating anything.  You were testing and getting
your results into a manageable form.  Testing is a circumstance where
we often *are* reduced to random experimentation.

If the hardware satisfied perfectly the idealization of a model, or if
you were willing to accept the risk that it didn't, you could obtain
hard bounding estimates for system performance, and random sampling of
points wouldn't do it.  How sharp an estimate you got for system
performance would depend on the details of the model and on how hard
you were willing to work.

The working assumption of engineers is that there will always be
"corner cases" that you may not discover by random testing and that
there is nothing you can do about that.

If you have a credible analytical model of a system, you shouldn't
*have* to live with unknown corner cases.  Whether it is worth it to
you to have that certainty about system performance depends on who you
are and what you are doing, but if you want results that bound
performance *for certain* (to within the limits of the model
idealization), standard floating point arithmetic won't cut it.
the whole discussion seem less preposterous.

the apl analytical model was simulating lots of stuff .... it was
being calibrated by the actual benchmarks. the last 1000 benchmarks
were based on the analytical model selecting new points to test based
on past observations and then checking to see if the measured
benchmarks correlated with the predications from the model (some
random coverage ... but also looking for edge conditions).

the apl analytical model was also rolled into a sales support tool
(called the performance predictor) on HONE (sales & field support
world-wide ... the US HONE datacenter had on the order of 40,000 users
defined ... at one time possibly the largest single system image
operation around) ... misc. hone & apl refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

customers could extract certain configuration, workload, and
performance charactertics from their actual operation and provide it
to their sales support people ... which would load it onto the HONE
system ... and then be able to ask what-if questions about changing
workload &/or configuration. it was sales support ... in that the
performance predictor could be used to help justify additional
hardware sales.

Not A Survey Question

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Not A Survey Question
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 20:03:15 GMT

edgould@ibm-main.ameritech.net (Edward A. Gould) writes:

Just curious as ro which release of MVS that has shipped has tthe
biggest code change (from IBM).

And a followup question which release of MVS caused the biggest
headaches to the end users? ie Most code that had to be recoded and
or recompalations. (I will stay neutral on this one as I have an
opinion).

This came up while I was defending the MF to a comp sci "kid". Of
course the "kid" had no concepts of 100's of thousands of programs
but it was an interesting (to me) discussion.

slight drift ... when amdahl was giving a talk at mit in the early
'70s regarding the founding of amdahl computers ... he was asked
something about the business case getting funding for doing ibm clone.

the answer was something about (at that time) customers had something
like $100b invested in ibm mainframe application software ... a
significant portion of which would still be around for at least the
next 30 years. the predication possibly even included any knowledge
he might have had about ibm's direction (at the time) to leave 360/370
and move to FS ... misc. FS refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

one might guess that the number is ten times larger now ...  and
possibly value of business dependent on that software is another order
of magnitude larger (i.e. at least $10t).

370 market chronology
http://web.archive.org/web/20050207232931/http://www.isham-research.com/chrono.html

from above, amdahl corp founded 10/70 ... so I guess the MIT talk  was
spring 1971 (FS was starting to gear up).

random past threads regarding the subject:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#44 WHAT IS A MAINFRAME???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#23 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#20 MVS on Power (was Re: McKinley Cometh...)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#36 mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#13 unix
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#15 unix
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#20 unix
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#58 40th Anniversary of IBM System/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#32 IBM system 370
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#3 A Dark Day

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The BASIC Variations

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The BASIC Variations
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 17:46:47 GMT

"Judson McClendon" writes:

His point is valid. Not every job can be done better by a computer.
I once wrote a cost tracking system for a local county government.
In their garage the system kept up with every expenditure on each
vehicle: gas, oil, parts, labor, etc. The garage manager had an index
card file with the part numbers for the lubricants and expendable
parts (e.g. spark plugs & filters) for that vehicle. When he asked if I
could computerize it for him, I told him sure, but there was no way
I could improve on what he already had, unless the data on the cards
needed to be available at multiple locations (it didn't). He had
100% uptime and instant access, his system couldn't have been less
expensive, and his access and update procedures were so simple
that everyone in his shop understood it perfectly and intuitively. He
also didn't have to depend on anyone else for it to work. :-)

early in my college years, I had summer job as foreman on relatively
small remote construction job (30 workers). one of the things i got in
the habit of doing was getting there an hr before everybody else and
walking the job doing inventory of everything in my head, rate of
progress, use of materials, and projecting requirements for additional
material (delivery had a 4-5 day lag, real emergencies might get
something in 3days). there were all sorts of adjustments in real
time. the last six weeks were a little hectic because early in the
project there had been lots of weather delays and it was coming down
to missed deadline penalties ...  so we were on 84hr work week.

some computerized stuff could have helped for supply chain management
and just in time delivery ... although i'm not sure about accuracy of
computerized work model on this particular job and having it
dynamically adjust for the change-over from 40hr to 84hr work
week. along with that would have been issues about interface,
information representation and method of inputing stuff like rate of
progress, useage of materials, etc. The last six weeks, the extra 13th
hour everyday was a real drag ... but it isn't clear that there is yet
computerized paradigm that would be more efficient (but possibly
better than somebody that wasn't spending the extra hour everyday).

originally the job schedule and deliveries had been worked out in some
detail ... but a combination of the weather delays, unanticipated
real-world problems, and then extended work week (trying to avoid
deadline penalties) pretty much threw it completely out of whack.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Mainframe Emulation Solutions

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframe Emulation Solutions
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 18:16:07 GMT

Sander Vesik writes:

heh. maybe they are moving off a 10+ year old machine that was a bit
underwhelmed with workload so seeing as IBM doesn't make small z/series
machines they have no other option?

you know, the pc/370 and similar things never did really catch on...

the xt/at/pc/370 were targeted at interactive market ... a lot of
interactive response on the real mainframes was because of shared
caching of lots of stuff across large number of users.

scaling the number of users down by factor of 100, real storage down
by factor of 100, and disk speed by factor of 10 .... resulted in
available real storage being less than working set of typical
mainframe application ... which tended to throw the system into
constant page thrashing ... and having ten times slower disks severely
aggravated the pain of the page thrashing situation in an interactive
scenario (aka scaling down from real mainframe to pc370 resuling in
some non-linear effects).

current generation of pc machines can have real storage sizes and disk
performance compareable to mainframe configurations.

side comment about mainframe emulation ... the original 360 machines
were mostly microcoded engines .... many of the machines saw avg. of
ten microcode instruction for every 360 instruction (i.e.  the
microcode engine had mip rate ten times higher than the resulting 360
mip rate). this is not that different from various of the current
generation of mainframe simulators running on intel platforms.

collection of misc. mainframe microcode threads:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360mcode

slightly related is recent comment about >30yr old business case for
mainframe clone
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#30 Not A Survey Question
there is huge amount of mainframe software (costing trillions of
dollars to originally develop) that still satisfies business
requirements (and can be cheaper to continue running than rewriting).

misc. past posts related to xt/at/pc/370:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#42 bloat
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#46 Rethinking Virtual Memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#23 Old IBM's
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#120 atomic History
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#16 How many Megaflops and when?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#56 South San Jose (was Tysons Corner, Virginia)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#70 Maximum Length of an URL
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#39 Future hacks [was Re: RS/6000 ]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#52 Why not an IBM zSeries workstation?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#55 Why not an IBM zSeries workstation?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#2 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#43 Economic Factors on Automation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#49 Can I create my own SSL key?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#28 IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984??
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#25 Root certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#34 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#37 Thread drift: Coyote Union (or Coyote Ugly?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#59 PKI/Digital signature doesn't work
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#9 Net banking, is it safe???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#19 Very CISC Instuctions (Was: why the machine word size ...)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#20 Very CISC Instuctions (Was: why the machine word size ...)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#32 IBM OS Timeline?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#24 HP Compaq merger, here we go again.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#49 PC/370
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#38 "war-dialing" etymology?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#41 "war-dialing" etymology?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#45 IBM 5100 [Was: First DESKTOP Unix Box?]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#4 IBM Mainframe at home
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#49 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#50 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#52 Mainframes and "mini-computers"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#17 s/w was: How will current AI/robot stories play when AIs are
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#27 End of Moore's law and how it can influence job market
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#52 Computing on Demand ... was cpu metering
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#52 Big Brother -- Re: National IDs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#51 Top Gun
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#50 MP cost effectiveness
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#8 Alpha performance, why?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#56 ECPS:VM DISPx instructions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#56 OT What movies have taught us about Computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#40 IBM system 370
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#23 TGV in the USA?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#55 Origin of "Function keys" question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#65 Share lunch/dinner?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

[IBM-MAIN] NY Times editorial on white collar jobs going

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: [IBM-MAIN] NY Times editorial on white collar jobs going
 overseas.
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 18:44:01 GMT

jmaynard@ibm-main.conmicro.cx (Jay Maynard) writes:

The sad fact (and I say this knowing what it means for my prospects
of employment) is that, like the American steelworker, the American
IT worker is now too expensive to compete in the global market. We
are going to have to accept that jobs are going to be neither as
plentiful nor as well-paying as they once were. If we do not, we
will reach the same end by simply not having the companies exist to
work for.

there was slightly different take. ten years or so ago ... census
published some numbers .. that something like 50 percent of the US
highschool graduate aged people were functionally illiterate ...  and
that even if the schools continued at the current level ...  the
complexity of the world was increasing, effectively raising the
minimum level for functionally literate.

at about the same time, supposedly half of the phd graduates in
technical areas from universities in the state of cal. ... were
foreign born ... and doing recruiting ... just about the only 4.0 were
foreign born. it was documented that some number of them had their
education paid for by their home gov. and they were advised to get
jobs in certain strategic areas for 5-8 years and then return home to
do technology transfer.

about the same time, I remember reading an article in Hong Kong paper
giving pros & cons of province in mainland china going after
world-wide high-tech outsourcing vis-a-vis similar efforts in india.
A lot of focus was on differences in fundamdental infrastructure
helping or hindering expanded high-tech business efforts. a lot of
this was really sparked by y2k resource requirement bubble (temporary
spike in requirement for resources that forged relationships which
continued after the y2k effort had completed).

to large extent this all was kicked off, not by lower costs ... but
scarcity of resources.

later in the '90s, it appeared that the internet boom could not have
really occured w/o those fifty percent of foreign born high-tech
workers (filling fifty percent or more of the new jobs created by the
internet boom).

slightly related past post on high-tech globalization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#65 Dijkstra on "The End of Computing Science"

note that there is cross-over between the thread on telecommuniting
and high-tech globalization ... many of the same technologies that
enable telecommuniting ... also make some kinds of work, distance
insensitive (little difference between it happening at home or
happening on the other side of the world). a couple past posts about
telecommuniting technology being distance insensitive:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#33b High Speed Data Transport (HSDT)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#69 oddly portable machines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#59 Is Al Gore The Father of the Internet?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The BASIC Variations

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The BASIC Variations
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 20:17:04 GMT

Nick Spalding writes:

I once met a man who ran a business supplying spare parts for heavy
construction machinery.  He had employed some chancer to set him up a
system (using BLIS COBOL on a Nova 2) to handle his business who turned
out to be incompetent and had been sent packing.  He had picked up the
pieces himself and had put together quite an impressive system.  I asked
him how he had handled stock control and he said that he had totally
ignored it for the following reason.

"If I send someone in to count the number of widgets in stock he will
come back and tell me a number.  I send someone else and he comes back
with a different number.  I go in myself and count them and get a
different answer again.  What is the point of trying to computerise
something like that?"

grocery stores have been using barcodes for stuff like that, however
barcode can have some problem working in a more open (especially
outside) environment with all sorts of issues like dirt, grease, no
real check-out stand, etc.

a lot of the RFID stuff appears to be moving towards electronic
barcode ... pushing standard for a very large number space ... and not
greatly affected by dirt, grease, etc.

the initial scenario is noting when inventory drops below threshold
and time to replenish ... the next scenario is noting the rate that
inventory is used ... and doing supply chain and just in time
delivery.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

value of pi

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: value of pi
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 23:02:21 GMT

lancev@ibm-main.listperfect.com (lance vaughn) writes:

Sorry, John, But I must disagree.  The value of Pi is quite exact.
If it were not, it would be useless mathematically.

You are confusing resolution with exactness.  Strictly speaking,
Pi is a transcendental function with an exact value but without
resolution (that is, its value cannot be represented by a finite
number of decimal digits).

pick a simpler example ... 1/3rd.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Mainframe Training

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframe Training
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 23:06:57 GMT

john.mckown@ibm-main.uiciinsctr.com (McKown, John) writes:

I guess that is, in a sense, true of all of us. This has been true
for me since I lost access to the console on the 1620. In most of my
jobs, I've been "remote" from the computer, either on a different
floor or building.  The only difference is the reliability and speed
of the connection. And the option to relieve stress by screaming at
the programmers or managers, depending on who is bugging me <GRIN>.

i got 2741 at home in march of '70 ... and have pretty much have had
one means or another for telecommuting from home since then.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The BASIC Variations

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The BASIC Variations
Newsgroups: comp.lang.basic.misc,alt.lang.basic,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 17:11:25 GMT

erewhon@nowhere.com (J French) writes:

Sounds interesting - but no context I am in :
comp.lang.basic.misc,alt.lang.basic

I am aware that most PC/Micro innovations are just re-inventions of
long established technology

is that like alt.beer.making?

there can be a multitude of issues for business continuity &
disaster survivability. fault tolerant frequently is
viewed at micro-level for continuing when there are failures ... it
can also be fall-over and recovery at a higher, macro-level
... and can be general principles regardless of the technology used.

one of the scenarios was this thing called the payment gateway in
support of this stuff that was going to be called e-commerce.  in
existing, circuit-based infrastructure, nominally, first level problem
determination was doable by the call center in five minutes.  one of
the early payment gateway tests had trouble call ... that after three
hrs of manual investigation closed the trouble ticket as NTF (no
trouble found).

this was a straight-forward application implementation and
stress-testing. my assertion has been that to turn a typical
application into a service offering takes 4-10 times more code.  In
this case, went back to the drawing board and did about ten times as
much work as the base application implementation (investigating all
possible failure modes) and possibly four times as much code ...  with
objective that the application (handling payment transaction) either
had to 1) recover from all possible infrastructure faults or 2)
provide sufficient information where first level problem determination
could be achieved in five minutes.

One of the issues was that while the iso8583 messages could be
formated into tcp/ip packets ... there was lots of integrity
provisioning that had been built up around circuit-based network that
didn't exist in the translation to open internet packet-based network
... for instance who do you get a SLA (service level agreement)
from?

at this level ... it is pretty much a methodology and approach (aka
like not a recreational activity), independent of things like
technology and computer languages.

misc. collected stuff regarding ha/cmp
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

various previous NTF/e-commerce retellings ...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#16 Old Computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn2 Assurance, e-commerce, and some x9.59 ... fyi
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn3 Assurance, e-commerce, and some x9.59 ... fyi
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#43 Credit Card # encryption
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#37 Calculating expected reliability for designed system
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#53 Microsoft worm affecting Automatic Teller Machines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#15 A Dark Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm16.htm#20 Ousourced Trust (was Re: Difference between TCPA-Hardware  and a smart card and something else before

misc SLA postings (although there is probably some drift into serial
link adapter as opposed to service level aggreement):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay10.htm#53 First International Conference On Trust Management
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#31 OT?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#50 Egghead cracked, MS IIS again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#48 Where are IBM z390 SPECint2000 results?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#23 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#85 The demise of compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#28 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#29 Buffer overflow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#32 What goes into a 3090?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#73 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#11 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#12 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#53 Microsoft worm affecting Automatic Teller Machines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#37 Why only 24 bits on S/360?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#15 Mainframe Tape Drive Usage Metrics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#49 Thoughts on Utility Computing?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#54 An entirely new proprietary hardware strategy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#64 1teraflops cell processor possible?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Mainframe Emulation Solutions

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframe Emulation Solutions
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 17:40:16 GMT

"Del  Cecchi" writes:

Never was clear what you would do with that little 370, at least I
couldn't figure out anything.  And the little 370 follow ons didn't
do too well either, 4331, racetrack, et al.  Meanwhile S/34, 36, 38
sold a bunch as did comparable systems from other companies.

Was it price, performance, applications, operating system, software
pricing?  Who knows.

the mid-range, 4341 & vax saw a big explosion starting in the very
late '70s ... in large part departmental & distributed computing.
their follow-ons didn't do nearly as well as the market was starting
to drift to PCs and workstations.

possibly one of the issues for 4331 was there was still some amount of
manual care&feeding ... so the total cost of ownership for 4331
possibly wasn't all that different than 4341 (people costs starting to
dominate hardware costs).

my repeated assertion is that the internet exceeded the size of
the internal network sometime mid-85 because
1) introduction of gateway/internetworking on 1/1/83 to the
internet/arpanet
2) proliferation of workstations and then PCs as network nodes.

for various reasons, there was strong pressure to maintain PCs and
workstations attachment to mainframes as emulated terminals (as
opposed to network nodes)

some vax specific numbers:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0 Computers in Science Fiction
misc. past departmental/distributed computing postings:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#16 middle layer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15 departmental servers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#23 Alpha vs. Itanic:  facts vs. FUD
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#2 The demise of compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#7 The demise of compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#4 IBM Mainframe at home
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#52 Bettman Archive in Trouble
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#30 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#64 IBM was: VAX again: unix

some past threads regarding terminal emulation ... and some discussion
that while it allowed for early & quick attachment of PCs and
workstation, later on, large terminal emulation infrastructure
inhibited moving them to more capable network participation:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#6 Computer of the century
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#35 VMS vs. Unix  (was: Why are Suns so slow?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#13 IBM's mess (was: Re: What the hell is an MSX?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#14 IBM's mess (was: Re: What the hell is an MSX?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#83 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#16 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0