List of Archived Posts
2008 Newsgroup Postings (06/23 - 07/15)
- squirrels
- OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
- dollar coins
- dollar coins
- What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
- What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
- What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
- We're losing the battle
- dollar coins
- dollar coins
- We're losing the battle
- To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
- To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
- What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
- dollar coins
- What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
- We're losing the battle
- We're losing the battle
- dollar coins
- dollar coins
- dollar coins
- To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
- dollar coins
- dollar coins
- To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
- What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
- Op codes removed from z/10
- what newsgroup server do you use?
- We're losing the battle
- dollar coins
- OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
- What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
- CLIs and GUIs
- What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
- What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
- Data Breach Reports Up 69 Percent in 2008
- The wisdom of the ill informed
- What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
- dollar coins
- What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
- dollar coins
- NSFnet -- 20 Years of Internet Obscurity and Insight
- Intel: an expensive many-core future is ahead of us
- What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
- What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
- What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
- dollar coins
- What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
- dollar coins
- Another difference between platforms
- Another difference between platforms
- dollar coins
- dollar coins
- Virtual water cooler
- OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
- What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
- WoW security: now better than most banks
- What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
- dollar coins
- dollar coins
- dollar coins
- German court finds Bank responsible for malwared PC
- German court finds Bank responsible for malwared PC
- CLIs and GUIs
- lack of information accuracy
- Taxes
- lack of information accuracy
- lack of information accuracy
- lack of information accuracy
- lack of information accuracy
- lack of information accuracy
- lack of information accuracy
- tape blocking
- lack of information accuracy
- Are we approaching a "tipping point" with regard to business travel?
- lack of information accuracy
- lack of information accuracy
- CLIs and GUIs
- How powerful C64 may have been if it used an 8 Mhz 8088 or 68008 ?microprocessor (with otherwise the same hardware)?
- Calling Out
- dollar coins
- How powerful C64 may have been if it used an 8 Mhz 8088 or 68008 ?microprocessor (with otherwise the same hardware)?
- Taxes
- How powerful C64 may have been if it used an 8 Mhz 8088 or 68008 ?microprocessor (with otherwise the same hardware)?
- dollar coins
- recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology
- CLIs and GUIs
- CLIs and GUIs
- CLIs and GUIs
- CLIs and GUIs
- CLIs and GUIs
- CLIs and GUIs
- CLIs and GUIs
- CLIs and GUIs
squirrels
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: squirrels
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:31:31
krw <krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzz> writes:
"Open formats" didn't happen before the PC and M$.
sgml?
http://xml.coverpages.org/sgmlhist0.html
although didn't pass as iso standard until after PCs had appeared,
above mentions that major adopters (in early 80s) included
IRS and DOD.
GML had been invented by "G", "M", & "L", at the the science center
in 1969 ...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml
misc. past posts mentioning science center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:24:44
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
Tops10 had preemptive multitasking, but no good process concept.
You could connect 200+ terminals, and/or have a similar number of
network logins. No tcp/ip, decnet, and possibly LAT. Low to medium
job/process (they were the same) isolation. Fixed code mapped into
memory for libraries. No shell, you typed directly into the kernel.
I had gotten cp67 optimized on single processor 360/67 tuned to the
point that it could have 80 active users, 90th percentile subsecond
response for trivial, interactive commands, and 100% processor
busy. later, 3081s with vm370 running similar cms workload were
frequently supporting 300 active users with 90th percentile subsecond
response for trivial interactive commands and 100% processor busy.
i noted if the number of users increased proportional to processor power
... there would be more like 2000-3000 users being supported ... however
the increase in number of users were proportional to increase in disk
thruput (not processor thruput). I was making comments that the relative
system disk thruput had declined by a factor of ten times during the
period (i.e. processor & memory dramatically increased, while disk
thrput increased ... it increase much slower than the rest of the
system).
this somewhat irk'ed some of the executives in the disk division and the
disk division performance group was tasked to refute the comments.
after a couple weeks, they came back and had found that i had slightly
understated the relative system disk thruput decline. this turned into
some number of reports recommending how customers could improve system
thruput.
the both ran dynamic adaptive fair share scheduler (I had invented back
in the 60s as undergraduate)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
the original code i written was picked up and shipped in the cp67
product ... but was dropped in big simplification in the morph from
cp67->vm370. various user groups lobbied for my scheduler to be
re-introduce ... which was eventually done as a separate priced product
... the "resource manager". part of the dynamic adaptive fair share
scheduler was dynamically adapting to the "bottleneck". through the 70s,
the primary resource bottlenecks shifted from processor and real storage
to file i/o (and the vast increases in real storage was increasingly
being used for various kinds of caching strategies, compensating for the
increasing disk bottleneck).
In the early 70s on cp67, i had implemented low-level modification for
the cms filesystem, supporting page mapping paradigm. it preserved the
high-level cms filesystem semantics ... but implementation was done with
page maping ... rather than the 360 real i/o emulation. i then moved the
implementation to vm370. except for specialized implementation or two,
the support never leaked out in standard customer product. however, for
moderately i/o intensive application (in 3081 timeframe on 3380 disks)
it could improve elapsed time by a factor of three and at the same time,
reducing processor time. misc. past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap
misc. past posts mentioning 3081/67 comparison
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#31 Big I/O or Kicking the Mainframe out the Door
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#43 Bloat, elegance, simplicity and other irrelevant concepts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#55 How Do the Old Mainframes Compare to Today's Micros?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#10 Virtual Memory (A return to the past?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#46 The god old days(???)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#4 IBM S/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#66 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#62 any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#40 MVS History (all parts)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#61 MVS History (all parts)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#23 Smallest Storage Capacity Hard Disk?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#5 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#11 Microcode? (& index searching)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#20 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#8 What are some impressive page rates?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#9 What are some impressive page rates?
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
dollar coins
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:27:05
CBFalconer <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes:
In the past few years it has gone through about 2egoogol mergers
and acquisitions.
there are lots of comments that the only thing that survived the last
merger was the name.
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
dollar coins
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:41:35
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
from memory, the biggest mess in the Savngs and Loan crash was caused
by someone in charge of some community fund in California who would
not really have benefited from the risks he was taking. No point in
researching it, I am quite sure that a very similiar story will emerge
from this mess.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#104 dollar coins
there are lots of stories about young 20-somethings in mortgage
originators making multi-millions ... and higher ups in the
organizations making tens (and possibly hundreds) of millions.
on the investment banking side (buying the packaged toxic CDOs)
... there are equivalent stories. one measure was in the four yrs
run-up to the start of current credit mess, wall street firms paid out
over $100billion in bonuses. past references
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#76 Bush - place in history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#79 Bush - place in history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#52 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#66 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#42 The Return of Ada
some of the firms may not survive ... but a large number of individuals
benefited.
there was recent comment that the american bankers are the most
inventive in the world, that they've managed to totally screw up the
system at least once a decade regardless of the regulations
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#90 subprime write-down sweepstakes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#30 subprime write-down sweepstakes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#77 Do you think the change in
bankrupcy laws has exacerbated the problems in the housing market leading more people into forclosure?
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:52:59
pjb@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon) writes:
ps ax|wc -l gives rarely a number of process greater than 100. Right
now we have MacPros with 8 cores, in a few years they'll have 128
cores, and timesharing will be history. We will be able to simplify
the OS, by allocating a core on process creation and not do any
scheduling anymore. At least of "personal computers". Well perhaps
at one point this scheduling will be implemented in the processor, so
a constructor could advertise a 10,000 (virtual) core processor when
it has actually only 1,024 cores.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#100 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#102 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#103 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
sun announce 16 cores, each core with 16 threads (i.e. 256 concurrent processing)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/23/sun_niagara_k2/
the referenced wiki page observed that much of traditional time-sharing
was obsoleted with the proliferation of personal computers ... i.e. the
business that was being served by time-sharing services ... moved off to
personal computers.
the other perspective was that traditional time-sharing was primarily
oriented towards providing personal computing ... before the advent of
personal computers.
the issue in the increase in cores has been that traditionally personal
computing has seen thruput improvements with the increase in processor
speed. this is that even where a personal computer may have more than
one process ... that they seldom actually executing processor
instructions concurrently (little or no active time-slicing). this has
given rise to all the hand wringing over the last couple years as
processors have been stuck at processor speed wall ... and have
attempting to address greater thruput with more threads & cores. The
repeated refrain is that very little programming has been parallel and
therefor there is very little actual concurrent execution going on with
a multi-core &/or multi-threaded machine (regardless of the number of
processes).
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:21:44
Jean-Marc Bourguet <jm@bourguet.org> writes:
We already use timesharing (as I understand it, not sure it is as BAH means
it). The ressource we are sharing aren't necessarily the processors --
giving everybody as many machines as architectures we support would be
stupid --, but also memory -- giving everybody 64G would also be stupid --
or even data -- some customer data we need access to is restricted to stay
on restricted and more heavily monitored machines.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#100 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#103 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#4 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
the traditional timesharing applied to more than just the mechanics of
(time) sharing the processor for doing multiple things concurrently.
as mentioned in previous posts ... there are lots of similarities
between the mechanics of online transaction processing and traditional
timesharing ... however, traditional timesharing was effectively
personal computing on a shared processor ... which started to disappear
with the advent of (real) personal computers ... while online
transaction processing continued to proliferate.
numerous references in other posts ... lots of the current web-based
operations have lots of similarities to online transaction processing
dating back to (at least) the 60s. recent post in this thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#102 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
other recent posts mentioning cics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#53 Really stupid question about z/OS HTTP server
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#89 folklore indeed
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#11 folklore indeed
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#24 folklore indeed
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#53 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#71 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#78 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#12 pro- foreign key propaganda?
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:56:13
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
Timesharing, OTOH, is driven by interrupts. All code is written
with the assumption that anything can be interrupted and any time
by any thing.
The tradeoffs made between the two developments are vastly different.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#4 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#5 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
traditional timesharing has been oriented towards personal computing
... interrupt driven tended to provide responsiveness to that personal
computing activity ... the mechanisms it used were frequently the same
as other activities that used multi programming/tasking.
at least by the 60s, timesharing systems ... that used virtual memory
and paging ... created mechanisms to avoid various kinds of preemption
to mitigate potential page thrashing (over commitment of real storage).
i had done a flavor of this for cp67 when i was an undergraduate in the
60s. the way i did it, put me in some conflict with other mechanisms
developed in the same period ... that had higher visibility in academic
literature. this showed up in the early 80s when there was conflict over
awarding a stanford phd to somebody that involved essentially what i had
done in the 60s ... aka asked to provide documentation about situation
where both flavors had been implemented on cp67 and compared ... old
email reference:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email821019
in this post:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#46
lots of past posts on such things
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock
with the advent of processor caches ... there was an analogous issue (to
page thrashing, page misses, and real storage over commitment) with
processor cache misses and asynchronous interrupts. to improve thruput,
strategies were put in place to delay asynchronous interrupt handling to
improve both cache hit ratio and overall system thruput (it was even
possible to improve the overall elapsed time to process asynchronous by
delaying the processing). I had done this for vm370 in the mid-70s with
dynamic adaptive scheduling in the resouce manager making decision about
delaying asynchronous interrupts. I know some of the commercial
time-sharing services that ported cp67 to 370 machines with processor
caches doing something similar.
the "811" architecture (aka 370/xa ... internal name from the nov78 date
for the architecture documents) included a queued i/o interface to
improve cache hit ratio and overall system thruput.
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
We're losing the battle
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: We're losing the battle
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:02:08
oldtimer@WANADOO.FR (Bruno Sugliani) writes:
Like someone said : i backup my servers with TSM on ts7700 in grid
configuration with jaguar at the back , and it works ( and i tried it in
AIX and z/OS and not much difference apart from the bill ) .
Now i am sure that using DVD's in Z/os would slow down restoration , but
then we would not think doing it .
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#97 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#99 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#101 We're losing the battle
tsm started out as renamed adsm. adsm was evoluation of workstation
datasave facility ... and workstation datasave facility started
out as CMSBACK ... which was deployed extensively internally
old cmsback related email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#cmsback
and various posts related to (CMSBACK, workstation datasave, adsm, tsm,
and other) backup/archive
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#backup
disclaimer, i had created and deployed the original CMSBACK internally
... before it went thru various morphs eventually becoming the current
tsm product.
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
dollar coins
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:28:35
Roger Blake <rogblake10@iname10.com> writes:
Of course one may also note who was in control of Congress during
that period of time. Then again, nobody ever accused liberals of
having a good grip on reality.
there was some story that in the 90s ... congress had a gap in actually
closing a (projected) "balanced" budget ... in order to close the gap
(in the projected balanced budget) ... they came up with the scenario
that (in the 90s) the gov. was making significant revenue off of
auctioning off bandwidth/spectrum ... and if they mandated the
conversion from analog tv to digital tv ... that would free up enough
bandwidth ... (using somebody's projections) which then could be
auctioned off for enough money to claim a balanced budget.
recent posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#43 dig. TV
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#47 dig. TV
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#61 Primaries (USA)
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
dollar coins
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:11:07
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
Nope. I don't understand why they're not getting hit with
lawsuits for doing illegal things. Muni mutual funds
are supposed to be buying muni bonds, not futures or whatever
name they call exotics-of-the-day.
problem was growing lack of confidence in the rating services (and
everything that received triple-A rating, not just toxic
CDOs). i've seen references to the mortgage originators "shopping"
their toxic CDOs ... i.e. the toxic CDO seller pays for
the rating ... and they would shop around until they found a rating
service that would give their toxic CDOs the rating they
wanted. the trust/confidence issue, because of the triple-A ratings
given to toxic CDOs ... then spilled over into everything
getting ratings (aka the whole toxic CDO & credit mess has
impacted all sorts of things).
effectively all the bond sellers then found that they had to offer
higher rates to attract buyers ... and even municipalities found that it
was costing them a lot more ... which then starts to adversely affect
their planned budgets.
holders of bonds and toxic CDOs have some audit rules about how to value what
they have. With growing lack of trust in the triple-A ratings, some
institutions were finding that selling (toxic) CDOs were only getting
possibly 20 cents on the dollar. That sort of discount/write-down then
can permeate the valuation of everything with triple-A rating (analogy
is if houses on your street are selling for half their listed value, it
is likely to drag down the appraised value of your house).
past posts mentioning triple-A rating service
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#1 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#46 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#57 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#71 Bush - place in history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#32 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#44 Fixing finance
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#51 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#62 Credit crisis could cost nearly $1 trillion, IMF predicts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#104 dollar coins
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
We're losing the battle
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: We're losing the battle
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:23:28
R.Skorupka@BREMULTIBANK.COM.PL (R.S.) writes:
In my experience, Tandems are not "switches". They process card
traffic. I'm aware of one migration from mainframe to Tandem.
Here in Poland, vast majority of ATMs and POS's are non-mainframe.
Even no mainframe "behind the Tandem".
Only 3 banks are using mainframes at all. Was 4. The fourth one
decided to drop the mainframe due to costs. The project was succesful
- no entry for re-boot hill. Oh, two big mainframe projects I'm aware
exceeded planned timeframe and budget.
Only one ATM network is using mainframe.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#97 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#99 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#101 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#7 We're losing the battle
in the 80s & 90s a lot of ATM stuff was done on Tandem machines
with software (base24) from these guys
http://www.aciworldwide.com/company/
quicky search on tandem, atm, base24 turns up stuff like this:
July 19, 1999, Indian Public Banks Move Online Slowly
http://asia.internet.com/news/article.php/650391
tandem wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandem_Computers
some issues may be attributed to (after being acquired by HP, tandem
line) being moved to Itanium base ... which has had its own issues.
more recently ACI has been quite active with IBM (besides over
the yrs providing products on some number of other platforms)
http://www.aciworldwide.com/partners/sapartners.aspx?pid=118
old related post in this n.g. from last year (also reply
to one of your posts):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#6 ATMs
as mentioned in the old post, we marketed our ha/cmp product
against them in some number of markets
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:02:20
D.J. <solosam75@cableone.net> writes:
Exactly. I saw a documentary on Military channel some months ago,
it has also been on History Channel. The Panzer commander they
interviewed about the Sherman said that who ever designed it and
gave it to Allied troops should have been stod up against a wall
and shot. Hewasalsoasked about the Firefly tank, and its 76 mm
gun. Said he wasn't worried out that one either.
Boyd asserted that it was an explicit decision ... that they could be
produced in mass quantities and eventually overwhelm the enemy by shear
numbers (i.e. the idea if couldn't beat them with expertise, beat them
with numbers & logistics) ... could create problem with the crews
feeling that they were being used as cannon fodder ... a little drift
... wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_fodder
misc. posts mentioning boyd
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd
misc. past posts mentioning sherman
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#85 V-Man's Patton Quote (LONG) (Pronafity)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#30 Review of Steve McConnell's AFTER THE GOLD RUSH
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#3 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#10 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#11 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#16 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#27 Controversial paper - Good response article on ZDNet
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#24 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#53 Chained I/O's
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#19 FW: Looking for Disk Calc program/Exec (long)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#11 The 8008
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#14 The 8008
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#14 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#28 was change headers: The Fate of VM - was: Re: Baby MVS???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#21 WWII supplies
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:14:50
Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> writes:
China doesn't have the regulatory structure in place, and what
regulations there are can sometimes be overcome with bribes or cutting
the official in on the action. I expect we'd see much the same if
instead of China, we were getting the goods from, say, Kenya or
Cambodia.
there have been claims that the current credit mess has had much less
effect on china because their banks had much better governance
... recent reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
recent reference to toxic CDOs and credit mess
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#9 dollar coins
supposedly part of the impact in the US is the heavy leveraging allowed
by investment banking (i.e. buy toxic CDO, borrow the full value, buy another
toxic CDO, repeat 40-50 times ... so there is possibly only
2-3% actual equity ... trivial fluxuation in value totally wipes out
the original investment) coupled with the repeal of Glass-Steagall
in the late 90s (which had been passed in the wake of the '29 crash to
keep the unregulate risky investment banking activity separate from
safety and soundness of regulated banking) ... recent reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#1 subprime write-down seepsteaks
and, in fact, investment by Chinese "sovereign funds" is helping bail
out US financial institutions ... some recent comments:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#65 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#16 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#13 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#16 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#20 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#55 independent appraisers
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:27:38
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#6 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
this is lots of (related) topic regarding bottlenecks and optimization
for those bottlenecks. the referenced post is about delaying/queuing
asynchronous interrupts to improve aggregate processor efficiency,
cache hit ratios and overall system thruput.
this post is related to post that during the 70s, processor and real
storage becoming less of system bottleneck and disk thruput becoming
more & more primary system bottleneck (although there were periodic
"shortages" of real storage ... where real storage was being stressed
for file/disk caching as compensation for severe disk thruput
bottleneck) ... mentioned here
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#1 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
this particular tale is (actually) about ATM machine support at LA
(cal.) bank in the mid to late 70s.
in the late 70s, ACP (airline control program) was starting to be used
in other industries (for high-performance transaction processing) to
the extent that circa 1980 it was renamed TPF (transaction control
faciilty). recent refs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#34 American Airlines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#39 American Airlines
now this recent thread (in mainframe mailing list) started
with comment about somebody not getting a card transaction
processed because of some outage ... had some drift
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#97 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#99 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#101 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#7 We're losing the battle
and then got into issues about what & how many different
systems might be involved in payment transaction processing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#7 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#10 We're losing the battle
so to repeat theme in other parts of the thread ... timesharing has
been traditionally "personal computing" implemented on shared
processor ... and started to die out with the advent of personal
computers for personal computing. traditionally a distinction has been
made between online (transaction) processing and timesharing, even tho
they may be implemented with similar or even identical technologies.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#100 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#4 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#5 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
so in the mid-70s (as disk thruput was becoming more & more of system
bottleneck), a system engineer on LA bank account, implemented ATM
transaction processing on a VM/CMS platform and claimed greater thruput
than could be gotten from ACP/TPF running on the same hardware. The
secret was a much more sophisticated transaction scheduling tied to disk
arm motion optimization. Implementation had a CMS virtual machine where
the ATM transactions arrived and other CMS virtual machines, one per
dedicated disk arm. At moderate loading levels, and scheduling
transaction as they arrived ... would result in effectively random disk
arm motion.
The CMS virtual machine handling incoming transactions had a
sophisticated queuing and transaction optimization algorithm that
calculated thruput optimization based on (small) delays in transaction
activation, load levels, additional transaction arrival patterns,
expected disk arm useage patterns, current arm position and arm position
locations needed to service queued transactions. Slight delays in some
transactions could result in changing nearly random (inefficient) disk
arm motion to smooth (much more efficient) sweeps (handling multiple
transactions in single sweep).
there was implication that the transaction scheduling facilities in
ACP/TPF weren't sufficiently open enuf to allow the kind of
implementation that was done on VM/CMS platform (and being able to
calculate account disk record location)
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
dollar coins
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:49:56
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Company names used to say where they were from and/or what they did,
"Corning Glass", "United Fruit", etc. Now they seem to be
deliberately obfuscating the details as much as possible. Isn't
"HSBCC" = "Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Corp?"
UK Midland ... overseas subsidiary was Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank
... they seemed to go thru brand consolidation and adopted HSBC for
everything.
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:03:24
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
this particular tale is (actually) about ATM machine support at LA
(cal.) bank in the mid to late 70s.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#13 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
for some slight x-over into the mortgage, toxic CDO, credit mess topic
... recent posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#3 dollar coins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#9 dollar coins
i was in the process of transferring from the science center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
to research ... and buying a house in cal. ... as well as having
implementation meetings that included top executives at the bank. the
2nd in charge at the bank said that they couldn't help with the interest
rate ... but he did make a call to the local branch office loan
officer. this was back in the days when mortgage approval could take 3-4
weeks because of all the credit checks (i got loan approval the day
after the call).
for other drift, misc. posts about original relatational/sql
implementation at research (on vm/cms platform)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr
and also being allowed to play disk engineer over in bldg. 14
and 15
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
We're losing the battle
Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: We're losing the battle
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:43:52
timothy.sipples@US.IBM.COM (Timothy Sipples) writes:
Nobody said Parallel Sysplex and GDPS are the only high availability
clustered solutions in the market. But this whole thread got started
because of a complaint about *planned* outages. One must not be sloppy
here: "five nines" should have a business definition, and that definition
does not typically distinguish between planned and unplanned outages. (Or
at least people should say something like "five nines, excluding planned
outages of up to [X] duration [Y] times per year.") If you're down, you're
down.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#97 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#99 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#101 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#7 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#10 We're losing the battle
when we were out marketing ha/cmp
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
... against tandem (as well as s/88 aka stratus) ... there was a
customer with five-nines application availability requirement (five
minutes outage/annum). the non-clustered fault-tolerant solutions had
software maintenance (scheduled) outages that far exceeded 5min/annum.
we had also coined the term disaster survivability and geographic
survivability ... i.e. clustering at a distance ... as hardware and
other components become more & more reliable ... localized disturbances
were becoming a larger percentage of unplanned outages.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available
as mentioned earlier in the thread ... long ago and far away, my wife
had been con'ed into going to POK to be in charge of loosely-coupled
architecture ... where she created peer-coupled shared data.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata
Lack of uptake (at the time) resulted in her not staying long in the
position. Except for ims hot-standby ... it wasn't until sysplex that
you started seeing her architecture being supported.
the long mainframe lead time ... was at least partial motivation for
ha/cmp product (based on power platform rather than mainframe
platform). it was also behind POK & Rochester objecting to ha/cmp
contributions to the corporate continuous availability strategy document
... claiming that it would be years before they could have such support.
some folklore x-over ... Bruce's talk last month at Jim's tribute
pointed out that his formulization of transaction semantics was the real
significant enabler opening up online transactions (sufficient trust in
computer operations vis-a-vis manual/paper operation). This was during
the days of the original relational/sql implementation project at san
jose research on vm/cms platform
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr
Following Bruce's talk was some people from tandem (corresponding to
Jim having left research for tandem). Two things mentioned in that
time-frame was Jim defining the TPF thruput (ACP having been renamed
TPF as more non-airlines started using it for transactions) as a
transaction objective for Tandem systems. The other was the study
showing that hardware was becoming significantly more reliable and
other factors were increasingly becoming source of outages (planned,
human mistakes, disturbances in localized geographical area, etc).
Jim later left Tandem for DEC database group in San Francisco. It was in
this time-frame that I had something of an argument with him at '91
Asilomar SIGOPS ... where I was claiming I could do high availability on
(clustered) commodity hardware (using ha/cmp methodology as example) and
he claiming that it still required proprietary hardware (somewhat
reflecting the Tandem and DEC vax/cluster affiliations). I've since
noted that not too long later, he then had to be up on the stage for the
announcement of the m'soft availability clustering ... recent reference:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#50 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
We're losing the battle
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: We're losing the battle
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:08:07
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Following Bruce's talk was some people from tandem (corresponding to Jim
having left research for tandem). Two things mentioned in that
time-frame was Jim defining the TPF thruput (ACP having been renamed TPF
as more non-airlines started using it for transactions) as a transaction
objective for Tandem systems. The other was the study showing that
hardware was becoming significantly more reliable and other factors were
increasingly becoming source of outages (planned, human mistakes,
disturbances in localized geographical area).
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#16 We're losing the battle
old ACP/TPF related email from the period
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#email800325
in this post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#39 American Airlines
giving some numbers for 120 transaction/second TPF system
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
dollar coins
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:21:15
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
I don't understand a lot about this stuff. One would think that munis
would be logically separated because it's tax-exempt. The fees are
much lower than other bond funds because the managers don't have to
spend as much time managing the fund.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#9 dollar coins
everything is rated. tax-exempt enters into investor calculating
after-tax ROI. part of rating is probability of municipality (or
anybody) declaring bankruptcy. the lower the rating, the higher the
probability ... and the more risk that the investor is taking ... which
means the higher the rate the municipality has to pay to attact
investors (giving equal rating, municipalities generally pay lower rate
... being tax-exempt ... it doesn't take as much to have after-tax ROI).
when the toxic CDOs hit the fan ... there was a general confidence
crisis and questioning regarding all ratings. then the "oracle from
omaha" stepped in and started a new fund to specifically help prop up
munis (values). in an interview, he said that he fully expected to
make a profit out of the activity ... that it wasn't entirely
altruistic
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
dollar coins
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:54:05
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
UK Midland ... overseas subsidiary was Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank
... they seemed to go thru brand consolidation and adopted HSBC for
everything.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#14 dollar coins
oops ... this said that HSBC took over midland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midland_Bank
i had gotten the impression that HSBC had been directed from
midland. the above says HSBC acquisition of midland in '92 was (up until
then) the largest acquisition in banking history (possibly midland was
actually larger than HSBC at the time?).
this does say that HSBC is UK/London bank
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC
this gives more of history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hongkong_and_Shanghai_Banking_Corporation
where the head of the bank moved from Hong Kong to London in 1941
(anticipating Japanese invasion).
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
dollar coins
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:19:04
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#9 dollar coins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#18 dollar coins
for funds that already hold munis ... there are some regulations on
how funds have to calculate the value of their current holdings. some
of that has to do with what could they expect to get if they were to
sell the holding on the open market. during the peak of the credit
crisis when nobody felt they could trust triple-A ratings ... because
so many triple-A ratings looked more like the emperor's new
clothes fable ... nobody was willing to buy something if they had
no idea what the real value might be. the "open market" disappeared
... so current holdings theoritically became worthless.
that was part of buffett stepping in to prop up miniciple tax-exempt
bonds. he would "insure" tax-exempt munis ... proping up market and
establishing confidence in the holdings (you might not trust the
triple-A rating ... but you could trust buffett's insurance)
Warren Buffet to the Rescue, Credit Crisis Creates Opportunities
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article3723.html
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:11:37
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
It's funny, we used to say "built like a Sherman Tank" to describe
something extremely strongly built, like, say, a '56 Buick (or a
well-built girl;-)
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#11 To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
could be managing public opinion ... the opposite of reality ... like
using the word security in the name of things that have no security. the
other scenario is use by people who never actually saw a *real* tank.
i had uncle that spent 3-4 yrs in the conflict as (sheman) tank
mechanic ... older threads in this n.g. on the subject mention
drafting any people in the theater ... regardless of MOS, for tank
crews (because of attrition). some possibility my uncle was too large
to be a candidate.
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
dollar coins
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:28:02
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
business news programs are still claiming that there is $1 trillion
inflation in these instruments and so far there has only been about
$400b write-downs ... so that there is still $600b possible in
write-downs to come.
much of that $1 trillion was pumped into the real-estate market bubble
... simplified assumption is if there is $1 trillion write-down in the
valuation of the toxic CDOs ... there is corresponding $1 trillion deflating
pressure in the real-estate market bubble.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#104 dollar coins
there have been past references to write-down sweepstakes leader moving
back&forth between citigroup and ubs.
Citigroup faces $8.9 billion writeoff, capital need: Goldman
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSWNA730720080626
from above:
Tanona's forecast suggests deeper problems for Citigroup Chief Executive
Vikram Pandit, who is trying to turn the bank around after nearly $15
billion of losses in the last two quarters, and more than $46 billion of
credit losses and write-downs since the middle of 2007.
... snip ...
there have been periodic references raising the question why are the
write-down announcements being spread out over such a long period of
time ... rather than just announcing the total amount up front.
past mention of subprime write-down sweepstakes:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#1 subprime write-down sweepstakes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#28 subprime write-down sweepstakes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#32 subprime write-down sweepstakes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#48 subprime write-down sweepstakes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#49 subprime write-down sweepstakes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#51 subprime write-down sweepstakes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#90 subprime write-down sweepstakes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#30 subprime write-down sweepstakes
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
dollar coins
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:41:47
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
problem was growing lack of confidence in the rating services (and
everything that received triple-A rating, not just toxic
CDOs). i've seen references to the mortgage originators "shopping"
their toxic CDOs ... i.e. the toxic CDO seller pays for
the rating ... and they would shop around until they found a rating
service that would give their toxic CDOs the rating they
wanted. the trust/confidence issue, because of the triple-A ratings
given to toxic CDOs ... then spilled over into everything
getting ratings (aka the whole toxic CDO & credit mess has
impacted all sorts of things).
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#9 dollar coins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#18 dollar coins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#20 dollar coins
Rating Game Redux
http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/06/25/moodys-fitch-ratings-biz-wall-cx_lm_0626ratings.html
from above:
Earlier this month, the SEC proposed a different set of ratings for
structured finance products, like CDOs, to distinguish their risks from
single-issuer bonds, like municipal or corporate debt.
... snip ...
long-winded, decade-old post discussing several of the current problems,
including needing better visibility into the underlying value of
CDO-like instruments
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
other recent articles on the subject
Too Clever By Half
http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/06/24/sec-rules-ratings-markets-bond-cx_md_0620markets38.html
from above:
Based on limited information available about what the CDOs contained,
bond raters Fitch, Moody's and Standard & Poor's gave many of them
triple-A gradings, indicating that their chances of going bad were
remote.
... snip ...
as noted previously, toxic CDOs were used two decades ago in the
S&L crisis to obfuscate underlying value.
How Fair Is Fair-Value Accounting?
http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/06/24/accounting-banking-sec-biz-cx_lm_0625sec.html
from above:
Rather than making things clearer, the fair-value accounting rules only
point to the futility of pricing assets every day in highly volatile
markets when the credit markets are frozen solid. The flip side to this?
It's unlikely anyone would be complaining if asset values were rising
and the markets weren't in crisis.
... snip ...
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:57:11
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
there have been claims that the current credit mess has had much less
effect on china because their banks had much better governance
... recent reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#12 To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
Goldman ICBC Piece Rises Fivefold as Chinese Bank Claims No. 1
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aoh4ppFuAltQ&refer=home
from above:
The bank's market capitalization of US$252 billion is almost twice that
of JPMorgan, making ICBC the largest publicly traded financial
institution on the planet.
Jiang's war chest contains $130 billion in cash and near- cash
securities -- more than enough to buy a bank as big as Citigroup Inc. at
its June 25 market value.
... snip ...
reference from today on more citigroup problems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#22 dollar coins
The ICBC article mentions that the chairman's salary is $260k,
less than 1 percent of salary of JPMorgan Chase.
recent thread raising issue about US corp executive salaries
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#73 Should The CEO Have the Lowest Pay in Senior Management
a news program had pointed out in the US executive pay is currently
running ratio of 400:1 pay of avg. worker ... up from ratio of 20:1
... the ratio runs closer to 10:1 in other industrial countries.
above post also mentioned that (effectively) a significant percentage of
the wall street financial institutional write-downs was payed out in
bounus in the four year run-up to the current credit mess.
past posts mentioning the bonuses in the run-up to the current credit
mess
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#28 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#9 folklore indeed
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#50 fraying infrastructure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#76 Bush - place in history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#79 Bush - place in history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#95 Bush - place in history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#32 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#52 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#66 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#42 The Return of Ada
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#57 our Barb: WWII
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#4 A Merit based system of reward -Does anybody (or any executive) really want to be judged on merit?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#3 dollar coins
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:40:02
Charlton Wilbur <cwilbur@chromatico.net> writes:
C'mon. Think. This kind of election-among-equals is currently being
used for a large number of distributed processing tasks, and the
computers have not taken over the world yet.
one of the people mentioned in the following (national virtual
observatory) was one of the speakers at Jim's tribute last month and
mentioned that they had just been given approval to task hubble to
investigate in more detail.
Galaxy Zoo's blue mystery (part I)
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/33403/title/Science_%2B_the_Public__Galaxy_Zoos_blue_mystery_(part_I)
Science News / Galaxy Zoo's Blue Mystery (part 2)
http://sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/33436/title/Galaxy_Zoos_blue_mystery_(part_2)
Galaxy Zoo Produces a Rare Specimen
http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/06/22/1757215.shtml
What is Hanny's Voorwerp?
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080625.html
for other kind of distributed processing drift ... we've claimed that
the payment gateway (part of what has come to be called "electronic
commerce") was the original SOA
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway
misc. recent posts mentioning Jim's tribute:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#38 Boyd again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#32 A Tribute to Jim Gray: Sometimes Nice Guys Do Finish First
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#34 American Airlines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#36 A Tribute to Jim Gray: Sometimes Nice Guys Do Finish First
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#37 American Airlines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#40 A Tribute to Jim Gray: Sometimes Nice Guys Do Finish First
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#50 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#51 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#54 Trusted (mainframe) online transactions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#62 Ransomware
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#63 DB2 25 anniversary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#70 Next Generation Security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#94 Lynn - You keep using the term "we" - who is "we"?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#95 Accidentally Deleted or Overwrote Files?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#97 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#16 We're losing the battle
misc. recent posts in this thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#4 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#5 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#6 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#13 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#15 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
Op codes removed from z/10
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Op codes removed from z/10
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:53:55
d10jhm1@US.IBM.COM (Jim Mulder) writes:
"Military secrets are the most fleeting of all." --
Spock, The Enterprise Incident, stardate 5027.4, Episode 59
The second most fleeting might be the marketing advantage
provided by microcode assists. What one vendor can do in
microcode, another usually can replicate in short order. So
any such advantage from these assists would have run its course
a few decades ago.
On horizontally microcoded machines, it was possible
to obtain a performance benefit in some cases by providing
microcode which could implement a frequently used code sequence
faster by using some hardware parallelism that was not available
to the general instruction set. That is not the case on IBM processors
of the past decade, and in fact using the lock assists had become
slower than not using them.
there were some comments at the time that the mvs/se microcode assists
were part of the motivation for amdahl's macrocode ... allowing them to
track various fluctuations in hardware architecture (much simpler than
it took to do the original by using a slight variation on 370 assembler)
... w/o having to resort to the difficulty and complexity of low-level
horizontal microcoding. this then contributed to amdahl being able to
relatively easily implement hypervisor support ... much easier than it
took to create pr/sm response on the 3090.
the "original" (vm/370) microcode assists were in two forms ... those
things that implement the virtual machine rules for execution of
supervisor instructions ... avoiding the interrupt and context switch
overhead interrupting into the vm370 supervisor.
the other big benefit was on the "vertical" microcode machines
... initially 138/148 ... where there was an avg. of 10 microcode
instructions executed for every 370 instruction ... and vm370 kernel
pathlengths was dropped into microcode on nearly a 1-for-1 instruction
basis (obtaining a 10:1 performance improvement). old post on selecting
the parts of vm370 kernel that were moved into the microcode (criteria was
that 148 had 6k bytes of available microcode space ... so the objective
was to select the highest used 6k bytes of vm370 kernel instructions):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21 370 ECPS VM microcode assit
the issue with the high-end horizontal microcode machines was that
various optimizations by the time of 3033 achieved nearly 1:1 parity
between horizontal microcode and 370 instructions (370 instruction
execution had gotten so efficient that there was nearly no difference
between implementing the function in 370 instructions vis-a-vis
implementing in microcode) ... aka for the "ECPS" class of things done
originally for virgil/tully (138/148) would see no difference on 3033
(and later horizontal microcode) machines. that mostly left doing things
in microcode/(macrocode) that could avoid overhead if implemented in
straight machine instructions (like adding virtual machine rules to
the execution of supervisor state instruction) ... aka things
like hypervisor and pr/sm.
misc. past posts mentioning macrocode:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#44 Linux paging
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#48 Linux paging
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#9 Mainframe System Programmer/Administrator market demand?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#56 Wild hardware idea
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#59 Misuse of word "microcode"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#60 Misuse of word "microcode"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#24 Description of a new old-fashioned programming language
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#14 Multicores
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#29 Documentation for the New Instructions for the z9 Processor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#40 POWER6 on zSeries?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#43 POWER6 on zSeries?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#48 POWER6 on zSeries?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#38 blast from the past ... macrocode
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#7 IBM 610 workstation computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#9 Mainframe Jobs Going Away
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#24 Harvard Vs Von Neumann architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#40 IBM 610 workstation computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#15 About TLB in lower-level caches
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#30 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#32 Code density and performance?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#35 Code density and performance?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#39 Using different storage key's
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#42 old hypervisor email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#14 32 or even 64 registers for x86-64?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#33 Assembler question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#34 Assembler question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#20 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#1 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#3 Has anyone ever used self-modifying microcode? Would it even be useful?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#9 Has anyone ever used self-modifying microcode? Would it even be useful?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#84 VLIW pre-history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#74 Non-Standard Mainframe Language?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#96 some questions about System z PR/SM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#42 mainframe performance, was Is a RISC chip more expensive?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#32 New Opcodes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#33 New Opcodes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#42 New Opcodes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#80 Random thoughts
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
what newsgroup server do you use?
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: what newsgroup server do you use?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 27 Jun 2008 14:00:09 -0700
tlongfellow writes:
Verizon fios has just dropped all bit.* newsgroups from their
service. (I am lobbying for more than the 'Big-8' list they offer)
recommendations in alt(.folklore.computers) because of
similar:
<http://www.teranews.com> (1 time charge) (free)
<http://news.aioe.org> (free)
<http://dotsrc.org> (free)
<http://www.x-privat.org/international.php> (free)
<http://motzarella.org/?language=en> (free)
<http://gmane.org/> (mail-lists via news) (free)
<http://www.newsfeeds.com/signup.htm> (pay)
<http://www.individual.net/> (low pay)
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
We're losing the battle
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: We're losing the battle
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 28 Jun 2008 02:56:53 -0700
E99071@JP.IBM.COM (Timothy Sipples) writes:
Whether you're seeing these particular trends at your bank or not is
interesting, but from an industry view I think this is a reasonable (and
unsurprising) generalization. (Certainly the biggest application provider
in this market, ACI Worldwide, recognizes these trends.) And you shouldn't
be surprised when you start to see these trends hitting your bank in the
coming years if they haven't already. There's an awful lot of pressure in
the banking industry to gain efficiencies, reduce costs, and improve
service levels.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#10 We're losing the battle
for some other topic drift ... a couple recent posts (from a.f.c)
about implementation of ATM machine support on VM/CMS platform in the
70s (references to getting higher thruput than acp/tpf implementation
on the same hardware)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#13
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#15
also had more recent experience earlier in this decade involving
modifications to ATM network processing for (NACHA) processing trials
... for (AADS) debit card transactions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads
... on the internet. The NACHA RFI response was submitted for us by
somebody else, because we weren't members of NACHA
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/nacharfi.htm
report on the result of the trials can be found here (23july2001)
... describing some of the processing modifications to support the
trials of doing debit transactions over the internet
http://web.archive.org/web/20020204041928/http://internetcouncil.nacha.org/Projects/ISAP_Results/isap_results.htm
indirect reference in article in mar/apr 2005 ibm systems magazine
article (although some of the historical info is slightly garbled)
http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/marchapril05/stoprun/10020p1.aspx
included some amount of working with ACI.
other posts in this thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#97 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#99 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#101 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#7 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#16 We're losing the battle
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#17 We're losing the battle
for other drift, some old ACP/TPF related email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#email800325
in this recent post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#39
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
dollar coins
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 06:33:25
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
Under the old regime, yes. An "AAA" is worth as much as an IUO
written on an invoice from an automobile association. Noone will
trust them again.
Make a numeric regime instead. Estimated 10 year default risk in %.
The federal US would score 5.6 based on history, France would
score around 8, Germany around 14. IBM and companies in its class
around 1.0. yes, IBM has a lower historical risk of going bust
than the larger national states. Of the 60 or so companies in the
"IBM class", 4 have ever gone bust or made a default, ever.
International Harvester was the most spectacular one.
i've mentioned visiting this company before
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#25 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#66 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#70 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#21 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#87 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#64 independent appraisers
they do fairly sophisticated default probablities on tens of thousands
of corporations from around the world. Their (june) monthly newsletter:
Kamakura Corporation announced Monday that its monthly index of troubled
public companies showed strong improvement in May after deteriorating in
9 of the previous 10 months. Kamakura's troubled company index decreased
significantly in May to 12.7%, down from 13.7% in April. The 1.0%
decline is the biggest monthly improvement in credit quality since
January 2007. At the current 12.7% level, the index shows that credit
conditions are better than 48.7% of the monthly periods since the start
of the index in January 1990. Kamakura defines a troubled company as a
company whose default probability is in excess of 1%. The index covers
more than 20,000 public companies in 30 countries using the fourth
generation version of Kamakura's advanced credit models.
... snip ...
http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/mmframe?prid=402416&attachid=770178
something sticks in the back of my mind that one of the Kamakura's
founders was involved in doing the next generation in variable rate
mortgage evaluations in the late 80s ... mentioned here leading
to citigroup getting out of the mortgage business
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
the playout of strong global demand for commodities implies lots of
companies are doing lots of business ... even tho the rise in prices is
resulting in some amount of pain in the states.
recent posts in this thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#98 dollar coins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#104 dollar coins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#2 dollar coins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#3 dollar coins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#8 dollar coins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#9 dollar coins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#14 dollar coins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#18 dollar coins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#19 dollar coins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#20 dollar coins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#22 dollar coins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#23 dollar coins
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 09:02:57
Peter_Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Later, Unix understood multiple processes, but didn't know threads
from a hole in the ground. MVS had threads ("tasks") but not multiple
processes per job. We're finally getting to the point where we can
have both. OS/2 made extensive use of threads, which gave it the
reputation of being hard to write applications for, since the typical
windoze programmer was unfamiliar with threads.
old emails about being contacted by the os2 group about helping them
with scheduling/dispatching (resource management)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#email871204
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#email871204b
in this post:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#60 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
for other drift old email about 3tier (middle layer) networking
architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#email890308
in this post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#19 Device and channel
and
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email890519
in this post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#10 What's a mainframe
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 09:06:03
Peter_Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Backups. The mainframe feature I miss most on my pecee is having
nightly backups done for me without the need to think of them. I
don't need Apple's "time machine" that keeps all the backups on the
same disk, I mean something that maks one, or perhaps more, backups to
different media.
Also, I seem to always have something at home I need at work, and
visa-versa. If I happen to think of it I can upload it somewhere, or
e-mail it to myself, but central networked file storage would be
nice. No, I don't allow FTP or remote logins to any of my systems
because of security concerns.
TSM will do it ... if in connected environment with a TSM machine.
recent posts about having created CMSBACK which evolved into workstation
datasave facility, then morphing into ADSM and then being renamed TSM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#7 We're losing the battle
old email regarding original CMSBACK:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#cmsback
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
CLIs and GUIs
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CLIs and GUIs
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:26:52
CBFalconer <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes:
This brings up the fundamental difference between the interfaces,
and the desires of their users. A GUI presents the user with a
limited range of options, and says "choose one of these". A CLI
allows the user to express their desires in whatever language they
and the machine both understand. Thus the GUI user is driven by
the computer, and the CLI user drives the computer.
Since both have their place, the better machines allow the user to
choose at any time.
in the early days of GUIs an issue was how to take advantage of all the
screen real estate .... in the fullscreen edit scenario it was display
more of the context of the file being edited. in default environment, it
was to provide a context for casual user who wouldn't be expected to
have memorized options and features ... and so the context provided was
in lieu of the level of knowledge that could be expected of a (CLI)
"power" user.
one of the discussions in that time-frame was whether or not people
using a computer for several hrs a day could be expected to have some
level of expertise ... possibly equivalent to that required for driving
a car. of course, over the years ... the skill level needed to drive a
car appears to have declined ... so possibly it isn't a useful
comparison anymore.
for a little drift, old airline reservation CLI ... extremely
archaic/obtuse continued for ages. we had been called in to consult on
some of the applications over a decade ago. we actually did work on
replacement for the ROUTES application (find candidate flt segments to
get between origin and destination). the traditional CLI typically
required three distinct commands looking at various kinds of different
information.
part of what we had been called in was to address the ten impossible
things ... one which involved aggregate thruput. part of the replacement
implementation was speeding things up by a factor of 100 ... but then we
leveraged the speed-up and the screen real-estate to be able to display
all the information from the three traditional different CLI operations
in a single response. The "capacity" result was that number of
transactions per second only increased by a factor of ten times (but ten
times more stuff was being done in each transaction and something that
would have involved several interactions using three different kinds of
commands were now being done in that one transaction).
lots of past posts mentioning airline res systems and/or doing a little
work on a ROUTES application replacement:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#17 Old Computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#100 Why won't the AS/400 die? Or, It's 1999 why do I have to learn how to use
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#103 IBM 9020 computers used by FAA (was Re: EPO stories (was: HELP IT'S HOT!!!!!))
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#136a checks (was S/390 on PowerPC?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#20 Competitors to SABRE?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#26 Disk caching and file systems. Disk history...people forget
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#69 Block oriented I/O over IP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#45 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#49 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#17 I hate Compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#0 TSS/360
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#3 News IBM loses supercomputer crown
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#2 Computers in Science Fiction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#3 Why are Mainframe Computers really still in use at all?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#12 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#43 IBM doing anything for 50th Anniv?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#83 HONE
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#83 Summary: Robots of Doom
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#67 Tweaking old computers?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#48 InfiniBand Group Sharply, Evenly Divided
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#30 diffence between itanium and alpha
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#67 unix
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#3 Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#47 What makes a mainframe a mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#6 Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#44 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#58 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#14 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#6 Xah Lee's Unixism
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#23 Demo: Things in Hierarchies (w/o RM/SQL)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#29 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#26 IBM 3614 and 3624 ATM's
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#85 The TransRelational Model: Performance Concerns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#22 The Soul of Barb's New Machine (was Re: creat)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#41 something like a CTC on a PC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#67 intel's Vanderpool and virtualization in general
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#47 Using the Cache to Change the Width of Memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#22 System/360; Hardwired vs. Microcoded
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#44 What was new&important in computer architecture 10 years ago ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#44 Intel engineer discusses their dual-core design
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#7 HASP/ASP JES/JES2/JES3
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#5 IBM 610 workstation computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#6 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#9 Arpa address
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#4 How Many 360/195s and 370/195s were shipped?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#18 RAMAC 305(?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#18 50th Anniversary of invention of disk drives
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#52 US Air computers delay psgrs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#22 Bidirectional Binary Self-Joins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#41 US Airways badmouths legacy system
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#41 Fast and Safe C Strings: User friendly C macros to Declare and use C Strings
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#28 Even worse than UNIX
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#72 The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#8 nouns and adjectives
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#45 64 gig memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#53 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#19 American Airlines
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:37:20
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
Pretend you are very young and take pleasure in practicing cracker
techniques. Would you leave that fridge alone? What kinds of things
would you try to "break"?
one scenario is yes card exploit (late 90s, early part of this decade
with payment card chip implementation ... doesn't have to be
young/pleasure motivation ... but can be other kinds of motivation):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard
related postings of various kinds of other integrity/infrastructure
failures (using the naked transaction metaphor, somewhat related
to not providing end-to-end integrity)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#payments
we did some work in this area a decade or so ago with the AADS chips strawman
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aadsstraw
after having been called in to consult with a small client/server
startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server and had
this technology called SSL they had invented and wanted to use
... frequently now referred to as electronic commerce
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway
... we got involved with the x9a10 financial standard working group
... which in the mid-90s had been given the requirement to preserve the
integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments
... which resulted in the x9.59 financial standard
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
we then semi-facetiously commented that we would take a $500 milspec
part, aggressive cost reduce it by 2-3 orders of magnitude while at the
same time, increasing the integrity. some of this shows up in the AADS
patent portfolio
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadssummary.htm
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:42:42
Kim Enkovaara <kim.enkovaara@iki.fi> writes:
Crooks also robbed the banks in the past. The methods just change,
but there are ways to fight the criminals.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#33 What is "timesharing"
part of it is mostly return-on-investment (ROI) for criminals ... of
course, there are exceptions (which even make the news) involving people
that have no idea of what they are doing ... but the vast majority of
fraud involve some amount of skill (both insiders and outsiders).
in the past we've characterized the implementations behind things
like yes cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard
as point solution ... i.e. authentication early in the process and then
leaving the rest of the infrastructure vulnerable ... this is also
related to our use of the naked transaction metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#payments
the other analogy we've used is a paradigm that results in the defenders
having significantly lower resources than available to the attackers ...
recent post discussing some of those issues (because the value to those
having to defend is a trivial amount compared to the value to the
attackers):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#101
the other analogy that we've used in the implementations around the yes
cards was that they appeared to start with the assumption that a
specific technology was the answer ... and then they formulated
everything else based on having already decided on what the answer was.
the criticsm then frequently is that there are a constant stream of
fixes & enhancements in atttempt to address the shortcomings (because of
not actually starting with a comprehensive solution)
we contrast this to the x9.59 financial standard
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
done in the x9a10 financial standard working group, where detailed
end-to-end thread and vulnerability was done ... a solution was devised
to address what was found in the detailed end-to-end investigation and
then various technologies were selected to complement assist detailed
end-to-end solution.
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
Data Breach Reports Up 69 Percent in 2008
From: Lynn Wheeler <lynn@xxxxxxxx>
Date: June 30, 2008
Subject: Data Breach Reports Up 69 Percent in 2008
Blog: Information Security - UK
Data Breach Reports Up 69 Percent in 2008
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/06/data_breach_reports_up_69_perc_1.html
from above:
While the share of breaches due to data on the move fell nearly eight
percent from last year, that slack was picked up by insider
theft. Data breaches due to information stolen by someone inside the
company increased from just six percent of the total in 2007 to nearly
16 percent so far this year. Another 13.5 percent of breaches came
from subcontractors who lost or stole their clients' customer data.
... snip ...
In the past, I've seen reports about "suspected" data breaches
involving insiders as being significantly under reported.
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
The wisdom of the ill informed
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@xxxxxx>
Subject: Re: The wisdom of the ill informed
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:49:11
To: James A. Donald <jamesd@xxxxxx>
CC: Arshad Noor <arshad.noor@xxxxxxx>,
Cryptography <cryptography@xxxxxx>
Mailing List: cryptography
James A. Donald wrote:
Committees of experts regularly get cryptography wrong - consider, for
example the Wifi debacle. Each wifi release contains classic and
infamous errors - for example WPA-Personal is subject to offline
dictionary attack.
One would have thought that after the first disaster they would have
hired someone who could do it right, but as Ian long ago pointed out,
in "the market for silver bullets", they are unable to tell who can do
it right. The only people who know who the real experts are, are the
real experts. If you knew who to hire, you could do it yourself, and
probably should do it yourself. So they hire expert salesmen, not
cryptography experts.
the other scenario was that the cryptography part was done from such a
myopic standpoint ... that they failed to consider the end-to-end
infrastructure.
I've repeatedly heard excuses that the cryptographers in the wifi
debacle believed that they could only design a solution based on
significant hardware restrictions/constraints. part of what i observed
... by the time any of them shipped ... the hardware
restrictions/constraints no longer existed .
the other thing that i observed was that with relatively trivial
knowledge about chips ... it was possible to come up with an
integrated solution that incorporated both the necessary hardware and
the necessary cryptography ... there has got to be some analogy here
someplace about the blind trying to describe an elephant; in addition
to the "point solution" analogy, failing to take in the overall
infrastructure.
i've repeatedly claimed that we did that in the AADS chip strawman solution
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads
including addressing all the issues that later showed up in scenarios
like with the yes cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescards
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:04:08
Kim Enkovaara <kim.enkovaara@iki.fi> writes:
The data mining software used for this heuristics and monitoring
is very complex, but what I have heard it is very effective
against external and also internal threats. Bigger threat might be
that someone in the bank tries to do something creative.
old post with description of one of the fraud patterns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#13 The new urgency to fix online privacy
a lot of this has been beefed up for identity theft scenarios ... long
ago and far away, it was presumed that major activity was lost/stolen
cards ... but that has been subsumed by data breaches and crooks using
the information for internet transactions (card-not-present) or
producing counterfeit cards. lots of past posts mentioning fraud,
exploits, vulnerabilities, threats
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#fraud
past studies have claimed that up to seventy percent of identity theft
have involved insiders ... although recent data breach report
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#35 Data Breach Reports Up 69 Percent in 2008
claims that insiders are involved in somewhat lower percentage of
overall data breach reports (which can include simple lost data).
misc. other recent related posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#8 Hannaford case exposes holes in law, some say
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#10 Hannaford case exposes holes in law, some say
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#27 Hannaford case exposes holes in law, some say
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#28 Hannaford case exposes holes in law, some say
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#4 You won't guess who's the bad guy of ID theft
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#86 What mode of payment you could think of with the advent of time?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#21 Worst Security Threats?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#24 Credit Card Fraud
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#42 Security Breaches
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#53 Digital cash is the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#55 Is data classification the right approach to pursue a risk based information security program?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#61 Could you please name sources of information you trust on RFID and/or other Wireless technologies?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#70 Next Generation Security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#76 Security Awareness
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#83 Certificate Purpose
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#101 We're losing the battle
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
dollar coins
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:45:15
sidd <sidd@situ.com> writes:
your faith in these men is most touching, considering their track record
Greenspan, 2006, Jan 31: "...said he did not recall whether he
mentioned the dramatic growth in subprime loans to his successor Ben
Bernanke."
Bernanke, congressional testimony, 2006:
U.S. house prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two
years, noted Bernanke, currently chairman of the president's Council
of Economic Advisers, in testimony to Congress's Joint Economic
Committee. But these increases, he said, "largely reflect strong
economic fundamentals," such as strong growth in jobs, incomes and the
number of new households.
Bernanke, June 2007:
"the troubles in the subprime sector seem unlikely to seriously spill
over to the broader economy or the financial system."
more delicious quotes easily found thru search engines. they were
horribly wrong. Roubini, Krugman, Shiller, buncha others were right.
i saw this coming in 2005, so did many, many others in the banking and
realestate business.
we are all subprime now.
long winded, decade old post discussing much of the current problems
including the need for greater visability into value of toxic
CDO instruments.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
recent posts regarding commentary that related write-downs are
expected to be $1 trillion ... of which something like $400b has
already occured. simplified calculations for that $1 trillion in
(toxic CDO related) write-downs could involve a like amount ($1
trillion) inflation in real estate bubble (which then leaks into other
parts of the economy). with the bubble burst in the toxic CDO
values and expected $1 trillion write down ... there could be an
expected corresponding $1 trillion deflation in real estate values.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#57 Credit crisis could cost nearly $1 trillion, IMF predicts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#59 Credit crisis could cost nearly $1 trillion, IMF predicts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#62 Credit crisis could cost nearly $1 trillion, IMF predicts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#3 America's Prophet of Fiscal Doom
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#73 Should The CEO Have the Lowest Pay In Senior Management?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#77 Do you think the change in bankrupcy laws has exacerbated the problems in the housing market leading more people into forclosure?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#98 dollar coins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#104 dollar coins
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#22 dollar coins
nominally the subprime loans are "subprime" in the sense that the
quality of the loan was not expected to be very high. these loans
supposedly had been targeted for first time home owners with no credit
history. however, they were also "subprime" in the sense that the
initial teaser interest rate was way below (and decoupled from) the
fed "prime rate".
recent stats claim that approaching 2/3rds of the "subprime" loans,
instead went to people with credit history (possibly non-owner-occupied
speculators, looking to flip house after year or two).
nominally the fed influences economy by reducing prime rate to increase
economic activity (possibly increasing inflation) or increasing prime
rate to decrease economic activity ... with corresponding decrease in
inflation. the claim could be made that the subprime, subprime loans
(with initial rate decoupled from the fed prime rate) had already fueled
the economy ... relying on the incorrect/inaccurate valuation of toxic
CDOs.
The claim could then be made that when the valuation problems with the
toxic CDOs hit the fan, along with the corresponding
write-downs and economic corrections ... there was no non-negative fed
prime rate that could possibly offset those economic corrections. However,
lowering the fed prime rate could/did put enormous downward pressure
on the value of the dollar ... significantly increasing prices for
commodities (already under upward pressure in the global market)
... and exacerbating inflation; double whammy:
• mortgage originators could unload loans as toxic CDOs
w/o having to pay any attention to loan quality ... and could offer
teaser introductory loan rates decoupled from the fed prime rate.
• rating services incorrectly rated these toxic CDOs
... which allowed enormous amounts of money to be pumped into the
credit industry (based on the incorrectly rated toxic CDOs)
some amount of this was understood since toxic CDOs had been
used two decades ago during the S&L crisis to obfuscate the
underlying values.
misc. recent posts on the subject:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#0 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#70 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#1 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#13 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#51 subprime write-down sweepstakes
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:39:25
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
old post with description of one of the fraud patterns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#13 The new urgency to fix online privacy
a lot of this has been beefed up for identity theft scenarios ... long
ago and far away, it was presumed that major activity was lost/stolen
cards ... but that has been subsumed by data breaches and crooks using
the information for internet transactions (card-not-present) or
producing counterfeit cards. lots of past posts mentioning fraud,
exploits, vulnerabilities, threats
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#fraud
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#37 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
part of the issue is a countermeasure to lost/stolen card has been the
person realizes that the card is missing, reports it, and then the
issuing institution, deactivates the account number .... so online
transactions are no longer authorized.
in the identity theft scenario, the person doesn't realize something has
gone wrong ... until they start seeing fraudulent transactions showing
up (which might be weeks later). identity theft scenarios (resulting in
fraudulent transactions against the acccount) started showing up at
least by the 80s. a major source of the information for identity theft
were various kinds of breaches. the "naked transaction" metaphor
discussions point out some fundamental paradigm flaws that heavily
contribute to fraudulent financial transactions.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#payments
recent item from today:
Citibank ATM breach reveals PIN security problems
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/tec_atm_breach
from above:
The scam netted the alleged identity thieves millions of dollars.
...
Hackers are targeting the ATM system's infrastructure, which is
increasingly built on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system and
allows machines to be remotely diagnosed and repaired over the Internet.
... snip ...
for some drift ... recent posts mentioning having been involved in
ATM network support in the 70s
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#13 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#15 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
for other drift, we had been brought in to help word-smith the
cal. state (and then the federal) electronic signature legislation.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#signature
some of the organizations involved in the electronic signature
legislation were also heavily involved in privacy issues and had done
some in-depth consumer surveys. they found the two top consumer privacy
issues were
• identity theft (mostly fraudulent account transactions)
• denial of service (institutions using personal information to the
detriment to the individual)
... and that a major source of identity theft was various kinds of
security breaches and data breaches ... which was seeing little or no
corrective action. this was major motivation behind the cal. state data
breach notification legislation (which subsequently saw similar
legislation in most other states), hoping that shinning a spotlight on
the source of the problem would lead to corrective action.
some recent related posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#76 Security Awareness
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#35 Data Breach Reports Up 69 Percent in 2008
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
dollar coins
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:30:16
sidd <sidd@situ.com> writes:
the property bubble took off after the tax break on home sales, and
the tax deduction for mortgage payments. but it really went nuts in
2004-2006 when all prudence was defenestrated. thats when we fired a
great number of clients for fear they would be liable for all manner
of fraud.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#38 dollar coins
i would claim that the severity of the bubble is because of the enormous
amounts of money pumped into the market because
1) all the loans, regardless of quality, could be immediately unloaded
as toxic CDO
2) selling an unlimited number of toxic CDOs w/o regard to
underlying quality, provided an enormous source of funds to make even
larger number of loans w/o regard to quality.
nominally, various market forces would significantly dampen such
questionable economic activity (traditional market feedback forces),
keeping it from getting totally out of hand. however, the
incorrect/inaccurate toxic CDO valuation allowed (real) value
considerations to be decoupled from the amount of money being pumped
in (which would traditionally have been a limiting force).
also, the subprime teaser rates ... effectively decoupled from the fed's
prime rate ... provided an economic stimulus (equivalent to lowering the
prime rate) ... however, it was based on false information that was not
a sustainable economic force. when the toxic CDOs hit the fan ... there
had to be economic correction ... which could not be offset by actual
lowering of the fed's prime rate. there is possible a trillion dollars
that is effectively a case of the emperor's new clothes fable.
avoiding the economic correction might only be possible by some sort
of magic act that somehow creates that missing trillion dollars.
the question then is whether actually lowering the fed prime rate
could provide any additional economic stimulus (over the effect of the
economic stimulus provided by the subprime, subprime loans) ...
i.e. there may have only been downside to lowering the rate ... and no
possible upside/benefit.
the problems with incorrect/inaccurate toxic CDO valuation also
creates a question in the rating institutions ... and quite a bit of
unrelated economic transactions are based on having confidence in
those rating institutions.
--
40+yrs virtualization experiance (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
NSFnet -- 20 Years of Internet Obscurity and Insight
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: NSFnet -- 20 Years of Internet Obscurity and Insight
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 06:29:12
NSFnet -- 20 Years of Internet Obscurity and Insight
http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/07/01/2124239.shtml
NSFnet celebrates 20 years of Internet obscurity, inspiration
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/29491
from above:
That was the email sent to users of the NSF's fledgling NSFnet to
announce that the network's backbone had been upgraded to a "blazing
T-1 speed." NSFnet was created by NSF a few years earlier in an attempt
to create a computer network similar to the Department of Defense's
ARPANET.
... snip ...
NSF and the Birth of the Internet
http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nsf-net/textonly/index.jsp
from above:
Hans-Werner Braun, former Principle Investigator for NSFNET at MERIT
Networks: "The original 56 kilobits-per-second NSFNET backbone using
Fuzzball-based LSI 11 nodes, became operational in mid-1986 between the
five new NSF supercomputer centers and the National Center for
Atmospheric Research. The rather open-access nature of the NSFNNET -- a
new routing paradigm -- constituted a challenge for the Internet, which
until then was basically a hierarchical structure centered around the
ARPANET. With the NSFNET, there was suddenly multiple national backbones
with very different administration and modes of operations. In my
opinion, the NSFNET activities most certainly propelled the Internet out
of the U.S. Department of Defense research context, and paved the way
towards today's global and very broad cyberinfrastructure."
... snip ...
and some old email from the period
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
and various posts mentioning the subject
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet
as referred to in the email, we had been working with NSF and various
participating organizations on T1 backbone. Already, as part of our HSDT
project
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt
we had T1 (and faster speed) links on the internal network
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
and were looking to do something similar for NSFNET. somewhere along the
way, internal politics got involved and we were prevented from directly
participating. the director of NSF sent a letter to CEO, hoping to fix
the situation ... even claiming what we already had running was at least
five yrs ahead of all NSFNET bid submissions. however that just seemed
to aggravate the internal politics. however, we believe our
participation contributed to the NSFNET RFP specifying requirement for
T1 links.
Note that the winning bid did not actually provide T1 links ... but just
supported 440kbit links. possibly somewhat to meet the letter of the
RFP, T1 trunks were installed with telco multiplexors that ran multiple
440kbit links over T1 trunks. We somewhat facetiously noted that some of
those T1 trunks were likely, in turn, multiplexed over higher speed
telco trunks ... possibly even T5 trunks ... so one might claim that
NSFNET backbone was T5 operation (not just T1 operation).
Some of the quotes from the referenced articles somewhat repeat my
periodic refrain about