From: lynn@garlic.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2008 11:23:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#89 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative not transit specific ... but how payment things can go wrong ... lots of past posts referencing YES CARD vulnerability: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard it was chip card solution effort started in the mid-90s (about the same time we got involved in x9a10 financial standard working group) and we've characterized the effort as being focused on countermeasure to lost/stolen magstripe cards. the issue was that by the mid-90s, additional kinds of fraud had also become quite common place. in the x9a10 financial standard woking group scenaio ... it had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments ... aka ALL, as in ALL (not just point-of-sale, not just internet, not just face-to-face, not just credit, not just debit, not just stored-value, etc). as a result, x9a10 working group had to do detailed end-to-end threat and vulnerability studies of multiple different kinds of retail payments ... and come up with a solution that addressed everything (and also be superfast and super inexpensive ... w/o sacrificing security and integrity). with the intense myopic concentration on chipcard as solution to lost/ stolen magstripe card vulnerability ... it appeared to lead to situation where the rest of the infrastructure was made more vulnerable. in fact early part of this decade, at an atm industry presentation on YES CARD fraud ... as it started to dawn on the audience the actual circumstance ... there was a spontaneous outburst from somebody in the audience ... "do you mean that they managed to spend billions of dollars to prove that chipcards are less secure than magstripe cards" in that timeframe there was also a large pilot deployment in the states with a million or so cards. when the YES CARD scenario was explained to people doing the deployment ... the reaction was to make configuration changes in the issuing process of valid cards .... which actually had absolutely no effect on the YES CARD fraud ... which was basically a new kind of point-of-sale terminal vulnerability that had been created as a side-effect of the chipcard specification ... and involved counterfeit cards (not valid, issued cards). misc. past posts mentioning the x9.59 financial transaction standard (that was product of the x9a10 financial standard working group) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959 some number of other URLs referencing the boston transit: MIT case shows folly of suing security researchers http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/column/0,294698,sid14_gci1325406,00.html Massachusetts: MIT students deserve 'no First Amendment protection' http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10017438-83.html?hhTest=1 MIT Subway Hack Paper Published on the Web http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0%2c2817%2c2327898%2c00.asp Judge refuses to lift gag order on MIT students in Boston subway-hack case http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9112641 MIT Presentation on Subway Hack Leaks Out http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=161424 Exploits & Vulnerabilities: Subway Hack Gets 'A' From Professor, TRO From Judge http://www.technewsworld.com/story/64118.html?welcome=1218494580 -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: lynn@garlic.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:58:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post) On Aug 18, 9:51 am, Quadibloc wrote: Software was written as an afterthought, to help people use those beasts. Gradually, things like compilers and operating systems got included, and some precautions were taken to prevent competitors from freeloading on this effort; thus, IBM unbundled and started charging for software as plug-compatibles started to emerge. software was free ... 23jun69 unbundling was response to legal action by the gov. and others. it was not only software, but also included system services, hardware maintenance, lots of stuff. the company was able to make the case that kernel software should not be unbundled ... and allowed to remain free. lots of past posts about unbundling http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle one of the unbundling issues was software engineering services ... before unbundling ... groups of SEs would work at the customer site ... and brand new SEs would effectively get apprentice training as part of such a team. After unbundling ... all the SE time spent at the customer had to be charged for ... and nobody came up with a good mechanism for charging for SEs in training. This was what spawned the original idea for HONE (hands-on network experience) ... basically some number of (virtual machine) CP67 datacenters around the country providing SEs with hands-on operating system experience (dos, mft, mvt, etc). lots of past HONE postings http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone i've mentioned recently that as undergraduate in the 60s, i was also involved in doing a mainframe clone controller ... http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#23 Memories of ACC, IBM Channels and Mainframe Internet Devices and a write-up listing us as cause of the clone-controller (or pcm, plug-compatible) business. http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360pcm The 360 pcm/clone controller business was a major motivation behind the future system effort http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys however, the distraction of the future system business then helped/allowed some number of plug-compatible computers (as opposed to controllers) to gain a market foot-hold. After future system effort was killed, there was a mad rush to get stuff back into the 370 product pipeline and also figure out how to deal with the plug-compatible computers. Part of this was decision to start charging for kernel software (reverse earlier justification to not unbundle kernel software). Recent reference to talk that Amdahl gave at MIT in the early 70s about his justification (for plug-compatible mainframe company) that was used with the VCs/investors: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#54 performance of hardware dynamic scheduling As i've recently mentioned, the mad rush to get stuff back into the 370 product pipeline ... appeared to contribute to picking up a lot of 370 stuff i'd been doing for "CSC/VM" (all during the future system period). http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#72 Error handling for system calls http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#82 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#85 old 370 info and releasing as products. Part of the "CSC/VM" work was the "resource manager" which was packaged for release as a separate kernel product ... and it was also selected to be the guinea pig for change (in policy) to start charging for kernel software (effectively in reaction to the plug compatible processors that got a foot-hold in the market during the period of the future system distraction) as an aside ... a lot of what was in the "resource manager", i had earlier done as undergraduate in the 60s and had been released as part of cp67 ... but was dropped in the morph of cp67 to vm370. misc. past posts mentioning scheduler (major component of the resource manager) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:03:08 -0400 lynn writes: As i've recently mentioned, the mad rush to get stuff back into the 370 product pipeline ... appeared to contribute to picking up a lot of 370 stuff i'd been doing for "CSC/VM" (all during the future system period). http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#72 Error handling for system calls http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#82 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#85 old 370 info and releasing as products. Part of the csc/vm work was to release the "resource manager" as a separately packaged kernel product ... and it was also selected to be the guinea pig for change in policy to start charging for kernel software (effectively in reaction to the plug compatible processors that got a foot-hold in the market during the period of the future system distraction) re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#1 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post) a lot of the resource manager was actually stuff that i had done as undergraduate in the 60s on cp67 and released in that product ... but dropped in the morph from cp67 to vm370 ... which included some amount of simplification. For instance, the morph from cp67 to vm370 also dropped much of the fastpath stuff I had done in cp67 (especially in the interrupt handlers). One of the first thing I had done (once the science center had gotten a 370) was to re-implement a lot of fastpath stuff in vm370. That actually had been incorporated and shipped in something like release 1plc9 (i.e. "PLCs" were monthly updates ... plc9, would have been the 9th monthly update to the initial vm370 release). one of the of the other things that i got roped into ... besides some of the stuff mentioned in this recent post http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#83 old 370 info http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#85 old 370 info was a 5-way SMP project, code named VAMPS ... which was canceled before it shipped ... misc. past posts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bounce the basic design was then picked up when it was decided to release SMP support in the standard vm370 product. A problem was that the resource manager had already been shipped as guinea pig for charging for kernel software. As part of that activity, i got to spend a lot of time with contracts and legal people working on policies for kernel software charging. The "initial" pass (charging for kernel software) was that kernel software directly related to hardware operation would still be free (device drivers, smp support, etc) ... but other stuff could be charged for. misc. past posts mentioning unbundling and/or my resource manager being the guinea pig for change to start charging for kernel software http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle The already shipped resource manager didn't directly contain any SMP support ... but it did have some amount of kernel reorg and facilities that the SMP design was dependent on. When it came time to ship the SMP code ... it created something of a dilemma ... since it would violate policy to require the customer to purchase the "resource manager" in order for (the free) multiprocessing support to work. The dilemma was resolved by moving all the dependant code out of the resource manager and into the free kernel base (which was 80-90 percent of the actual lines of code in the initial/original resource manager release). past posts mentioning SMP (and/or charlie inventing the compare&swap instruction) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp other past posts in this thread: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#78 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#84 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#86 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#87 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post) -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Medical care Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:58:53 -0400 Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> writes: There are, unfortunately, too many nursing homes that fit this description. This level of care can be done on an industrial scale, and tends to be what Medicare and similar programs will pay for. To be better than that, needs a slightly higher staffing level, and requires a slightly higher grade of employee, supervised by managers that can tell the difference and who care about the residents' quality of life. Such facilities exist, but struggle to find enough residents that can pay the cost (often about twice the price at the industrial facility). in another fora ... in much earlier thread about retiring baby boomers increasing the retired population by a factor of four ... and the following generation has only half as many workers ... for overall increase of eight times in the ratio of retirees to workers ... one of the other posters complained that it was becoming increasingly hard to find workers providing geriatric services. however, i pointed out that the general explosion in the ratio of retirees to workers ... also applies to workers providing geriatic services (will find that there are only 1/8th as many workers per retiree, including workers for providing geriatic services). The other issue is that Medicare reimbursements are typically actually below cost of services .... forcing establishments to subsidize Medicare patients from other income sources ... or refusing to take Medicare patients. There have been some number of articles that one of the Japanese motivations for work on robots ... is to fill the gap in providing services to the geriatric generation. past posts mentioning baby boomer retirement http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#3 on-demand computing http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#16 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#69 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#99 The Workplace War for Age and Talent http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#1 The Workplace War for Age and Talent http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#50 CA ESD files Options http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#3 America's Prophet of Fiscal Doom http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#11 The Return of Ada http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#26 The Return of Ada http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#57 our Barb: WWII http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#56 The Price Of Oil --- going beyong US$130 a barrel http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#98 dollar coins http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#80 dollar coins http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#5 Republican accomplishments and Hoover http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#37 dollar coins -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:46:02 -0400 Charlton Wilbur <cwilbur@chromatico.net> writes: They're bureaucrats. The top-level ones are appointed as a reward for political toadying; the standard for a good decision is not whether it actually solves the problem but whether it's politically defensible. nearly all large static (bureaucratic) environments ... drift towards maintaining the status quo ... in static environment ... success isn't being able to overcome and deal with problems ... but in being able to get along with (and support) the other bureaucrats. it typically is only in changing environment ... where there is a higher premium placed on actually being able to solve problems ... than being able to get along & support the other members. for other drift ... a frequent example used was great britain appointing lords as military leaders going into WW1. there has been some suggestion that natural selection similarly contributes to the distribution of "myers-briggs" personality types ... that relatively static environments tend to favor the "social member" types ... as opposed to the "solve problem" types (which are frequently also labeled "independent" ... another indication of where society places its value) there then can be discontinuities ... when new problems actually need to be solved ... and frequently the knee-jerk response is to blame the ones that actually exposed the problems (as opposed to the bureaucracy responsible for the problems). There is a little of the emperor's new clothes parable in this. for other drift, Boyd saw a huge amount of this in attempting to address problems in large military bureaucracy) ... misc. past posts mentioning Boyd (and/or OODA-loops) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html and for more Boyd topic drift, there was recent note that Boyd's strategy and OODA-loops is now cornerstone of this executive MBA program http://www.familybusinessmba.kennesaw.edu/home -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:54:08 -0400 lynn writes: re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#89 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative not transit specific ... but how payment things can go wrong ... lots of past posts referencing YES CARD vulnerability: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#0 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative a post from more than two years ago discussing (new) appearance of flaws and vulnerabilities http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#33 including this reference to trials held in 1997 http://www-03.ibm.com/industries/financialservices/doc/content/solution/1026217103.html and reports of flaws, exploits, and vulnerabilities started to appear within a year or so of the trials (aka decade ago). now comes reports that flaws and vulnerabilities are a brand new discovery Criminal gangs in new Chip and Pin fraud http://www.workplacelaw.net/news/display/id/16140 Chip and pin fraud could hit city stores http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2008/08/15/chip-and-pin-fraud-could-hit-city-stores-91466-21537769/ Probe uncovers first chip-and-pin card fraud http://www.financialdirector.co.uk/accountancyage/news/2224006/probe-uncovers-first-chip-pin Chip And Pin Fraud On The Increase http://financialadvice.co.uk/news/2/creditcards/7542/Chip-And-Pin-Fraud-On-The-Increase.html Fraudsters hijacking Chip and Pin http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=263563&in_page_id=34 Police warn of new chip-and-pin fraud http://www.financemarkets.co.uk/2008/08/13/police-warn-of-new-chip-and-pin-fraud/ Gangs develop new chip-and-pin fraud http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article4525429.ece Criminals Crack Chip-and-Pin Technology Wide Open http://security.itproportal.com/articles/2008/08/14/criminals-crack-chip-and-pin-technology-wide-open/ Fraudsters have hijacked Chip and PIN http://security.itproportal.com/articles/2008/08/14/fraudsters-have-hijacked-chip-and-pin/ Police warn of security threat to every chip-and-Pin terminal http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/08/18/231841/police-warn-of-security-threat-to-every-chip-and-pin.htm Police Warns About Chip and Pin Shortcomings While More Scam Suspects Arrested http://security.itproportal.com/articles/2008/08/19/police-warns-about-chip-and-pin-shortcomings-while-more-scam-suspects-arrested/ Major bank card scam uncovered http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0818/breaking84.htm Chip and Pin protection cracked like a rotten foreign egg http://www.itwire.com/content/view/20035/53/ Gangs have cracked Chip and PIN cards, say police http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/08/13/231816/gangs-have-cracked-chip-and-pin-cards-say-police.htm Chip and PIN gang busted by specialist police unit http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/08/14/chip-pin-gang-busted-police New chip-and-pin danger http://www.qas.co.uk/company/data-quality-news/new_chip_and_pin_danger_2574.htm Credit card code? What code? http://www.latimes.com/business/investing/la-tr-insider17-2008aug17,0,6886084.story Analysis: The rise (and fall) of Chip and PIN http://www.itpro.co.uk/605568/analysis-the-rise-and-fall-of-chip-and-pin Warning as gang clone bank cards http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jZIV6H0MsQgs6-4vl4_tATlpXn_g -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:47:00 -0400 Roland Hutchinson <my.spamtrap@verizon.net> writes: You are more likely to have known it from music department concerts than from anything I ever had do do with the LOTS community, or maybe from my involvement in the successful effort to persuade the Stanford Libraries that their shiny new online public catalog would be a disaster for researchers (especially in music, but also in other humanities fields and elsewhere) if they went ahead and closed the card catalog without fixing some of the online system's most blatant shortcomings with respect to collocation, forms of entry, and cross references. The whole database was of course full of things that could be filed correctly by humans but were not uniform enough to appear identical to a machine of very little brain. (They kept the card catalog going for an extra year once enough people on campus realized what the problems were and started to complain and took the time to fix the worst of the problems; I'm afraid getting the complaining rolling was largely my doing.) re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#80 Book: "Everyone Else Must Fail" --Larry Ellison and Oracle ??? somewhat in conjunction with talking to the people at NLM (middle of last decade) ... we also dropped by people at lane medical library a couple of times ... there was small play related to superman. this timeline has it going online in '87. http://lane.stanford.edu/portals/history/chronlane.html and http://lane.stanford.edu/100years/history.html from above ... related to NLM (as opposed to LOIS) In the 1950s and 1960s, Lane's one and only reference librarian (Anna Hoen) spent her mornings scanning new journal arrivals and telephoning individual faculty to help them stay abreast of the current literature. In 1971, Lane joined a handful of experimental libraries to use AIM-TWX, the first computerized search protocol for Index Medicus (the precursor to MEDLINE). With the web revolution in the 1990s, Lane rapidly expanded its online journal subscriptions and provided access for physicians and students. ... snip ... a couple weeks ago we got a tour of LOC ... including going into the (physical) card catalog (1980 and earlier) http://www.loc.gov/rr/main/inforeas/card.html from above: The Main Card Catalog, located adjacent to the Main Reading Room on the first floor of the Jefferson Building, contains subject, author, title, and some other cards for most books cataloged by the Library through 1980 (1978 for subject cards). Each work cataloged is represented by a card or set of cards showing the name of the author, the title of the book, the place of publication, the publisher, and the date of publication. This information is followed by the number of pages or volumes, a brief description of the illustrative material, and the height in centimeters. If the book is part of a series, the name of the series is shown in parentheses after the size. A call number, consisting of a combination of letters and numbers, appears in the upper left-hand corner of the card and/or is printed in the lower portion of the card. ... snip ... -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Future architectures Newsgroups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,comp.arch,sci.electronics.design Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:15:47 -0400 nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) writes: I knew then when Intel 286 so-called virtual memory looked like, and I don't call it virtual memory. Nor, interestingly, did most of the people in IBM I talked to - they took a HELL of a long time to learn about virtual memory, but did eventually learn. Other people seem slower. of course I'll mostly agree with you ... except for small pockets like the science center http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech some of the people from ctss had gone to the science center on the 4th flr ... and some went to multics on the 5th flr. science center had done virtual machine implementation in the mid-60s. original was cp40 ... running on a modified 360/40 with address relocation hardware ... and morphed into cp67 when 360/67 (with standard address relocation hardware) became available. as undergraduate in the late 60s, i rewrote much of cp67 code ... including the virtual memory management and things like page replacement (including creating a global LRU page replacement ... when much of the academic efforts of the period were directed at local LRU page replacement). this showed up later in the early 80s ... when one of Jim's co-workers at Tandem had done his stanford phd thesis on page replacement algorithms (very similar to what i had done as undergraduate in the late 60s) and there was enormous pressure not to grant a phd on something that wasn't local LRU ... old communication http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email821019 in this post http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#46 a lot of the work that i had done as undergraduate in the 60s (that had been picked up and shipped cp67 product) ... was dropped in the simplification morph of cp67 (from 360/67) to vm370 (when general availability of address relocation was announced for 370 computers, i.e. 360/67 was only 360 model that had address relocation as standard feature). for other drift ... a recent folklore post about that period (mostly related to unbundling announcement and starting to charge for software) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#1 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#2 for other folklore ... the announcement that all 370s would ship with virtual memory support ... required that all the other operating systems had to now add support for address relocation. one of the big issues was the heritage of application programs creating (i/o) channel programs and passing them to the supervisor for initiation/execution. While instruction addresses went through address relocation ... i/o channel programs didn't ... they continued to be "real". This created a disconnect ... since application programs (running in virtual address mode) would now be creating the channel programs with virtual addresses. This required the supervisor to create a copy of the passed i/o channel programs (created by applications) and substituting real addresses for the virtual addresses. CP67 had this kind of translation mechanism from the very beginning ... since it had to take the I/O channel programs created in the virtual machines ... make a copy ... coverting all the virtual machine "virtual" addresses into real addresses. The initial transition of the flagship batch operating system (MVT) to virtual memory operation ... involved some simple stub code in MVT ... giving it a single large virtual address space (majority of code continued to run as if it was on real machine that had real storage equivalent to large address space) and crafting "CCWTRANS" (from cp67) into the i/o supervisor (for making the copies of application i/o channel programs, substituting real addresses for virtual). some recent posts mentioning "CCWTRANS" http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#45 authoritative IEFBR14 reference http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#68 EXCP access methos http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#69 EXCP access methos -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:34:30 -0400 "Joe Morris" <j.c.morris@verizon.net> writes: I posted earlier that the presentation was to be at BlackHat; based on the consensus of the articles quoted by Lynn it looks like my source was wrong and the planned presentation was at Defcon. Sorry 'bout that, Chief. re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#0 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative what is black hat and what is defcon can get quite blurred ... since they are held in conjunction. black hat, las vegas, 2-7aug http://www.blackhat.com/ defcon, las vegas, 8-10aug http://www.defcon.org/ picture shows DEFCON Federal Judge Throws Out Gag Order Against Boston Students in Subway Case http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/federal-judge-t.html this talks about DNS exploit: Black Hat 2008 Aftermath http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1202423911432 -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Unbelievable Patent for JCL Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:37:04 -0400 howard.brazee@CUSYS.EDU (Howard Brazee) writes: I'm trying to figure out how to use computers in this function of the patent office. It would have to know how to find software patent ideas under a different name, to look at graphics, and use foreign databases. Someday computers will be able to do that task, but possibly not until after patents have outlived their usefulness. there is some lore that (at least) some patents are apparently purposefully mis-categorized ... as part of strategy for subsequent litigation. I've seen some past references to bayesian cluster analysis of patent applications ... that found possibly 30percent of computer &/or software related patents filed in other categories. -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Unbelievable Patent for JCL Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:25:27 -0400 John.Mckown@HEALTHMARKETS.COM (McKown, John) writes: Historically, software was copyrighted or "trade secret". But some court case in the US really messed that up (don't remember the case name). Since then, software patents have been pretty much a "free ride". Only recently have the courts started getting after frivolous software patents. Imagine, if you will, what would have happened if software patents had been around in the MVT days. The only scheduling package would likely be CA-7. The only tape management package would be CA-1. And, if properly written, the patent for those would be so broad as to have exclude similar functionality on non-MVT/MVS systems! In the 60s, as undergraudate I had done a lot of dynamic, adaptive scheduling for cp67. A lot of this was dropped in the (simplification) morph from cp67 to vm370. I continued to do 360/370 (cp67 & vm370) stuff during the future system era ... recent discussion of the period related to unbundling: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#1 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#2 after future system effort was killed ... misc. past post http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys there was a mad rush to get stuff back into the 370 product pipeline (both software & hardware) ... and this was somewhat behind motivation to (re)releasing the stuff as "resource manager". Also, the distraction during the future system period is claimed to have significantly contributed to clone processors gaining market foothold. The original 23jun69 unbundling (response to various litigaction) managed to make the case that kernel software should still be free. However, the appearance of clone processors appeared to motivate change in policy and start to also charge for kernel software ... and my "resource manager" got selected to be guinea pig for kernel software charging. I also got told by people from corporate hdqtrs that my resource manager wasn't sophisticated enough ... that all the other resource managers in that era had lots of (manual) "tuning knobs" ... and my resource manager was deficient in the number of such "tuning knobs". It fell on deaf ears that the resource manager implemented its own dynamic adaptive scheduling ... and therefor didn't require all those manual tuning knobs ... and so I had to retrofit (at least the appearance) of some number of manual tuning knobs to get it by the corporate hdqtrs experts. Nearly a decade later (and nearly two decades after I had done the original work as an undergraduate for cp67), some corporate lawyers contacted me for examples of my original work. It supposedly represented "prior art" in some (scheduling) patent litigation that was going on at the time. -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:16:48 -0400
Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
That was followed by an IBM grant of some RTs, followed by RS/6000s running
AIX, taking another half row, and the NeXT cubes, and pretty soon you were hard
pressed to find a dumb terminal.
old posting with reference to summer '81 survey of (visits to) computing
at various institutions (CMU, Bell Labs, LBL, Stanford, MIT, others)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#61 MVS History (all parts)
from above (survey extract):
Stanford
Name CPU Mips Memory Disk Total Concurrent
(megs) (megs) Users Users
SAIL KL10(2) 3.6 10 1600 230 70
SCORE 20/60 2.0 4 400 230 55
VAX1 11/780 1.1 4 400 ? small
VAX2 11/780 1.1 2 200 ? small
IBM 4331 0.5 4 8-3310s 30 8
(16) Alto 0.3/4.8 0.25/4 2/32 16 16
... snip ...
the 4331 was part of a joint study with PASC and only in use by people
involved in the study.
the previous posting listed tables of machines at the mentioned
institutions (from the survey). the survey also included descriptions of
some number of other institutions ... including xerox sdd ... from that
survey:
They have more machines than people. There are 300 machines for 200
employees. At least five of the machines are DORADOs (3 mips); the rest
are a mixture of ALTOs, D machines, and Stars. Everyone has at least an
ALTO in his office. All the machines are tied together with a 10
megabit Ethernet. On the net there are at least two file servers and
various xerographic printers including a color printer
... snip ...
In addition to the table of machines at MIT ... the survey also
mentioned (at MIT):
The 26 LISP machines are connected to the CHAOS net, and
thus to several of the KA10s. Most of the VLSI work is being
done on these machines. MIT is currently building them at
the rate of two per month, at a cost of $50k to $100k each.
... snip ...
Visit to Larry Landweber at Univ of Wisc ... the computer
science dept:
CPU Mips
VAX 11/780 1.1
PDP 11/70 1.1
PDP 11/45 0.5
PDP 11/40 0.4
LSI 11/23 (8) 0.3
UNIVAC 1100/82
HP 3000
... snip ...
also mentioned in the survey (regarding univ. of wisc):
NSF has also just given Wisconsin, the Rand Corporation, and a few other
smaller universities a grant to develop CSNET, a network to connect
Computer Science research facilities. CSNET will connect ARPANET and
other existing networks together. (This is not the same as BITNET, the
RSCS based network being developed by CUNY and Yale). CSNET will be
used to send messages, mail, and files between all computer science
research groups.
... snip ...
part of the survey was looking at split between institutions going to
individual (networked) personal computers ... versis terminals into
shared machines (in bell labs case "project" machines) ... much more
detailed Bell Labs portion of the summer '81 survey reproduced here
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#56 AT&T Labs vs. Google Labs - R&D History
other past posts in this thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#78 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#82 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#84 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#86 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#87 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#1 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#2 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#6 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post)
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:14:08 -0400 jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes: I saw his answer this morning. He said he worked with networks and was familiar with the concept. I don't understand this; do you, Lynn? Or could he be confusing the cybercurd with object oriented languages. This morning I asked if he read the bio of the guy who wrote it up. I'm getting a funny feeling about OO and object oriented confusions but I hope I'm wrong. re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#4 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative one possible scenario is that some amount of DOD networking is concentrated on cyber warfare ... both offensive and defensive. Boyd's OODA-loops evolved out of military conflict ... but his briefings started to get into applicability of OODA-loops to other types of competitive environments (commercial, business). a recent example Buzz of the Week: A cyberwar paradox http://www.fcw.com/print/22_26/news/153509-1.html?topic=security the above makes references to earlier articles about Air Force touting is cyber command and then article that it was suspending it: So it was curious that on Aug. 12, the same day of the New York Times story, former FCW reporter Bob Brewin broke the story for Government Executive — confirmed by FCW — that the Air Force was suspending its cyber command program. As trumpeted in Air Force TV ads, the Cyber Command was seen as a way for DOD to coordinate its cyber warfare initiatives, both offensive and defensive. In October 2007, FCW named Air Force Maj. Gen. William Lord, who was leading the command, as a government Power Player. ... snip ... additional conjecture is OODA-loop possibly being used out-of-context with no reference to its history and origin. as to my original post that also drifted into emperor's new clothes parable ... there is always the frequent references to what happens to the messenger (bearer of bad news). there could be more than a little of that in the injunction response to the MIT/transit presentation. i've also referenced the emperor's new clothes parable and long-winded decade old post that included mention of need for visibility into underlying values of CDO-like instruments (in part, because two decades ago, toxic CDOs had been used in the S&L crisis to obfuscate underlying values ... and "unload" the properties ... for significant more than they were actually worth). http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm there was an article in the washington post a couple days ago about documents from 2006 by GSE executives about their brilliant/wonderful strategy moving into subprime mortgage (toxic) CDOs ... sort of left hanging in the air was obviously the strategy wasn't that wonderful ... but no comment about replacing those executives (which has been happening at other institutions that had followed similar strategy). recent posts mentioning emperor's new clothes parable http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#40 dollar coins http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#60 dollar coins http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#69 lack of information accuracy http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#10 Why do Banks lend poorly in the sub-prime market? Because they are not in Banking! http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#16 dollar coins http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#27 dollar coins other past posts in this thread: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#89 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#0 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#5 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#8 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:44:22 -0400 Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes: Software was written as an afterthought, to help people use those beasts. Gradually, things like compilers and operating systems got included, and some precautions were taken to prevent competitors from freeloading on this effort; thus, IBM unbundled and started charging for software as plug-compatibles started to emerge. re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#1 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#2 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post) note that original 23jun69 unbundling announcement was in response to various litigation by the gov. and others. they had managed to make the case that kernel software sould still be free. however, with the distraction of future system http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys it is claimed to have significantly contributed to clone processors gaining foot-hold in the market. those clone processors then contributed to the decision to (also) start charging for kernel software (initially just kernel software that wasn't directly involved in low-level hardware support). somewhat related recent archeological post in comp.arch http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#7 Future architectures and recent resource manager archeological post in bit.listserv.ibm-main http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#10 Unbelievable Patent for JCL referencing in the mid-80s, being contacted by corporate lawyers involved in some sort scheduling related patent litigation and looking for copies of stuff that I had done nearly two decades earlier as undergraducate (as example of prior art) -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Anyone heard of a company called TIBCO ? Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:27:05 -0400 tbabonas@COMCAST.NET (Tony B.) writes: Supposedly they develop mainframe/open systems related products. shortly after they were established as independent company, we had been brought in for week's presentation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIBCO and from some '97 archive: Internet Publish and Subscribe Protocol TIBCO Inc., and more than a dozen Internet companies have endorsed a proposed new industry standard for the "push" model of information distribution over the Internet. The proposed standard, called publish and subscribe, will reduce Internet traffic and make it easier to find and receive information on-line. The companies, which include Cisco Systems, Inc., CyberCash, Informix, Infoseek, JavaSoft, Sun Microsystems, Verisign, NETCOM, and others in addition to TIBCO, announced plans, products and support for publish and subscribe. TIBCO and Cisco Systems are developing an open reference specification for publish and subscribe technology. ... snip ... -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:25:31 -0400 Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes: there was an article in the washington post a couple days ago about documents from 2006 by GSE executives about their brilliant/wonderful strategy moving into subprime mortgage (toxic) CDOs ... sort of left hanging in the air was obviously the strategy wasn't that wonderful ... but no comment about replacing those executives (which has been happening at other institutions that had followed similar strategy). re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#12 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative business news program just "asked" what did the GSEs do wrong? ... and their immediate answer: they bought $5bil in (toxic) CDOs with $80mil of capital ... i.e. heavily leveraged -- not quite 100times (the potential $25bil bailout estimates for GSEs seems to be all holdings) this seems penny-ante stuff compared to other institutions that have already taken approx. $500bil in write-downs (in frequently, previously triple-A rated toxic CDOs, and projections will eventually be $1-$2 trillion. -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:47:46 -0400 jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes: Getting their names and trying to follow where they go would be a wise way of predicting where the next mess will happen in 8-10 years. There's a guy, whose first name is Sandy and I can't remember his last, who seems to get in the middle of messes. I have not determined if he is an attractor or a catalyst yet. re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#12 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#15 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative try here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill as well as http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/demise.html news this morning is that Bernanke is saying that there won't be anymore making investment banks whole. a possible clinker is that with the repeal of Glass-Steagall (i.e. passed in the wake of the crash of '29 to keep the safety&soundness of regulated banking separate from unregulated, risky investment banking), there are now some regulated banking that have merged/acquired investment banking units (that got heavily leveraged into toxic CDOs ... like did the GSEs). some recent references to some of the process of repealing Glass-Steagal: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#36 dollar coins http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#41 dollar coins another post in a different thread: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#66 independent appraisers above references Citigroup paid $400mil fine in 2002 and the CEO was forbidden from communicating with various people in the company. -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:30:39 -0400 Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes: business news program just "asked" what did the GSEs do wrong? ... and their immediate answer: they bought $5bil in (toxic) CDOs with $80mil of capital ... i.e. heavily leveraged -- not quite 100times (the potential $25bil bailout estimates for GSEs seems to be all holdings) re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#12 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#15 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#16 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative any issue about GSEs executives loosing their jobs ... after bragging about how wonderful it was their (heavy leveraged) buying $5bil in toxic CDOs with only $80mil in capital (when similar activity by executives at other institutions were loosing their jobs) ... news today attributes comments by Buffett that if the GSEs weren't gov't backed institutions, they would have already been gone .... his company had been the largest Freddie shareholder around 2000 and 2001, but sold its shares after realizing that both companies were trying "to report quarterly earnings to please Wall Street" ... they needed to keep earnings growing to keep stock market happy and turned to accounting to do it. -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: IBM-MAIN longevity Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2008 16:48:13 -0400 Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes: BITNET 435 ARPAnet 1155 CSnet 104 (excluding ARPAnet overlap) VNET 1650 EasyNet 4200 UUCP 6000 USENET 1150 (excluding UUCP nodes) re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#2 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#6 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#12 IBM-MAIN longevity for a little *arpanet* (arpanet pre-tcp/ip made a distinction between the number of network IMP nodes and the number of hosts connected to IMPs) from RFC: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcidx4.htm#1296 1296 I Internet Growth (1981-1991), Lottor M., 1992/01/29 (9pp) (.txt=20103) (Refs 921, 1031, 1034, 1035, 1178) 08/81 213 Host table #152 05/82 235 Host table #166 08/83 562 Host table #300 10/84 1,024 Host table #392 10/85 1,961 Host table #485 02/86 2,308 Host table #515 11/86 5,089 12/87 28,174 07/88 33,000 10/88 56,000 01/89 80,000 07/89 130,000 10/89 159,000 10/90 313,000 01/91 376,000 07/91 535,000 10/91 617,000 01/92 727,000 ... snip ... by comparison VNET (internal network hosts and nodes were equivalent): reference to more than 300 nodes in 1979 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#7 reference to 1000 nodes in 1983: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#22 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#112 reference to nodes approaching 2000 in 1985 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#49 other internal network posts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: IBM-MAIN longevity Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2008 08:50:19 -0400 Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes: By the time the Internet was commercialised July 1st 1993, there were more than 100 institutions connected, 14 of which didn't pass muster with the AUPs and were fully commercial. The user group uucp service had 520 paying customers, of which around 450 had everyday dialup sessions. By early 1995 there were over 300 leased-line customers, half of which connected over frame relay; and over 10000 dialup accounts. in '92, got a full usenet satellite feed (in bound) ... in return for doing (sat modem) device drivers for a couple different platforms and an article for (june '93) boardwatch magazine (picture of me in the backyard with the dish). one of the machines was 486 w/dos and waffle. misc. past refs: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#38 Vanishing Posts... http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#39 I'll Be! Al Gore DID Invent the Internet After All ! NOT http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#66 UUCP email http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#16 Newsgroups (Was Another OS/390 to z/OS 1.4 migration http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#11 An Out-of-the-Main Activity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#17 What if phone company had developed Internet? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#16 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers dish was significantly smaller than the 4.5m dishes for tdma system on internal network (working with nearly a decade earlier) ... had started with some telco T1 circuits, some T1 circuits on campus T3 collins digital radio (microwave, multiple locations in south san jose) and some T1 circuits on existing C-band system that used 10m dishes (west cost / east coast). then got to work on design of tdma system with 4.5m dishes for Ku-band system and a transponder on sbs-4 (that went up on 41-d, 5sep84). misc. past posts mentioning 41-d: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#27 Tysons Corner, Virginia http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#28 Western Union data communications? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#29 IBM 3725 Comms. controller - Worth saving? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#14 Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#23 Health care and lies http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#60 JES2 NJE setup http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#21 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#17 Ethernet, Aloha and CSMA/CD - http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#55 5963 (computer grade dual triode) production dates? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#11 An Out-of-the-Main Activity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#16 Why I use a Mac, anno 2006 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#31 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer" http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#41 Year-end computer bug could ground Shuttle http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#61 Damn past posts in thread: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#81 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#83 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#85 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#0 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#1 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#2 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#3 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#4 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#5 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#6 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#7 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#8 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#9 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#10 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#12 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#13 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#16 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#17 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#19 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#20 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#18 IBM-MAIN longevity -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: IBM-MAIN longevity Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2008 12:19:33 -0400 Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes: dish was significantly smaller than the 4.5m dishes for tdma system on internal network (working with nearly a decade earlier) ... had started with some telco T1 circuits, some T1 circuits on campus T3 collins digital radio (microwave, multiple locations in south san jose) and some T1 circuits on existing C-band system that used 10m dishes (west cost / east coast). then got to work on design of tdma system with 4.5m dishes for Ku-band system and a transponder on sbs-4 (that went up on 41-d, 5sep84). re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#19 IBM-MAIN longevity other posts mentioning various "HSDT" activities http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt in 1980, the STL lab was starting to burst at the seams (it had only opened 4yrs earlier ... dedicated the same week the smithsonian air&space opened) ... and the decision was made to move 300 people from the IMS database group to offsite location. The group looked at using "remote" 3270s into the STL mainframes ... but found the response totally unacceptable. The decision was then made to go with local 3270s at the remote location using HYPERChannel as (mainframe) channel extender ... over a T1 circuit (on the campus T3 collins digital radio serving the area). I got involved to write the driver support for HYPERChannel. The channel extender support wasn't (totally) software transparent. HYPERChannel had a (remote) A51x channel emulation box that (mainframe) controllers could connect to. Normal mainframe channel operation executed channel programs directly out of mainframe memory. However, the latency over remote connections made this infeasible ... so the mainframe device driver had to scan the channel program and make a emulated copy which was downloaded to the memory of the HYPERChannel A51x box ... and then executed direclty out of A51x memory. This is analogous to virtual machine operating system has to do scanning channel program and making a shadow copy ... which has real addresses sustituted for the virtual machine's "virtual" addresses. recent discussion (in comp.arch) of virtual machine requirement creating channel program copies http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#7 Future architectures shot of 3270 logo screen used: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/vmhyper.jpgas i've mentioned in the past, there was no noticeable difference in 3270 terminal response ... and overall system thruput actually increased 10-15 percent (the issue being that the HYPERChannel A220 local channel interface had much lower channel busy overhead than the 327x controller boxes ... doing the same operations). misc past references: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#24 CP spooling & programming technology http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#27 Mainframes & Unix http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#38 How to learn assembler language for OS/390 ? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#68 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#22 Disk caching and file systems. Disk history...people forget http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#46 3270 protocol http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#7 Blade architectures http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#60 Mainframes and "mini-computers" http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#61 GE 625/635 Reference + Smart Hardware http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#43 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#67 Total Computing Power http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#22 303x, idals, dat, disk head settle, and other rambling folklore http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#33 The attack of the killer mainframes http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#29 FW: Is FICON good enough, or is it the only choice we get? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#13 Device and channel http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#22 Channel Distances http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#23 Channel Distances http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#34 TOD clock discussion http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#19 Why so little parallelism? -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2008 15:19:40 -0400 jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes: I saw somebody reference OODA-loops in sci.physics two days ago. He was talking about DARPA and listing goals and actions. I asked him yesterday if he's read about OODA-loops. I'll find out later what his answer is. for another reference, four part video of Boyd (circa 1990) ... talks about a number of things, review of F15, Toyota system, etc, as some of the issues that I've posted before related to US automobile C4 effort: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbb48uUOkqQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5c3yMy-llA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5TTeMCoRhM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbbh9bYOOok there are some others that can be found: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh0k9kc3EY0 past posts mentioning Boyd http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html misc. recent posts mentioning US automobile C4 effort: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#84 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#9 folklore indeed http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#22 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#68 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#30 VMware signs deal to embed software in HP servers http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#31 IBM announced z10 ..why so fast...any problem on z 9 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#50 Toyota's Value Innovation: The Art of Tension http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#65 Is a military model of leadership adequate to any company, as far as it based most on authority and discipline? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#31 Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#2 Republican accomplishments and Hoover http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#50 update on old (GM) competitiveness thread http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#58 Mulally motors on at Ford -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Future architectures Newsgroups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,comp.arch,sci.electronics.design Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:10:07 -0400 nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) writes: Aside: does anyone know why the "Harvard" approach was promoted from being a trivial but important variation of Von Neumann to being of equal rank, starting about 20 years ago? Because it assuredly ain't so, despite the nonsense in Wikipedia, and almost all programming languages have used separate code and data "address spaces" since the invention of COBOL and FORTRAN, and were/are always talked about as using the Von Neumann model (as they do). at the time (in following email), i was still on kick about (the same) shared pages appearing at different virtual addresses in different virtual address spaces (or even the same shared pages appearing at different virtual address in the same virtual address space) ... misc. related posts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#adcon from long ago and far away (with regard to 3090): Date: 11/17/83 13:40:41 To: wheeler The machine has a split cache, the instruction cache is managed with real addresses. No problems. The operand cache is managed with two directories: one holds LOGICAL addresses (i.e. mixture of real and virtual), and the other holds real addresses. It appears to the outside world to be managed with real addresses. I can think of no reason why shared pages will be peculiar in this environment. ... snip ... top of post, old email index related old email about the 3090 cache operation http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#email831118 in this post, also mentioning 801 (separate I&D cache) from 1975: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#42 Flash 10208 this (earlier) email mentions 5880 (amdahl mainframe clone) having separate I & D caches http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#email810318 in this post http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#38 blast from the past ... macrocode misc. posts mentioning 801 (romp, rios, power/pc, etc). http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801 One of the differences between 801 split cache and the 3090 (5880) split cache ... was that 3090 (& 5880) managed cache consistency (between I & D caches) in hardware ...while 801 required software to flush D-cache & invalidate I-cache (like program loaders which may have modified instruction streams ... in the data cache ... in order to make sure that modifications in the D-cache were correctly reflected in the I-cache instruction stream). other old email mentioning 801 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#801 semi-related recent post in this thread (discussing virtual memory & paging from the 60s): http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#7 Future architecture for related topic drift ... "small" shared segments in ROMP chip (801 used later in PC/RT) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email841114c http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email841127 in this post: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#36 Multiple mappings and (this time, Iliad chip ... another 801) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#email830420 in this post: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#37 To RISC or not to RISC similar post along this line http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#22 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#82 Taxes -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:43:30 -0400 Greg Menke <gusenet@comcast.net> writes: If you say so.. Analyzers, scopes and software tools make dedicated blinky led's basically irrelevant for troubleshooting. semi-related post mentioning bit-error-testers on link: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#16 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#17 IBM-MAIN longevity http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#19 IBM-MAIN longevity the "real" indicator (since all the links required link encryptors) was when the sync light went out on the link encryptors. getting link encryptors back in sync was more painful than simply resending block-in-error ... part of the motivation for 1) FEC (forward error encrypting) and 2) transition away from link encryptors to (strong) packet encryption. other motivation was a lot of money was being spent on link encryptors (circa 85/86, there was some comment that the internal network had over half of all the link encryptors in the world). old email mentioning PGP-like public key encryption http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email810515 in this post http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#12 more secure communication over the network other old email mentioning public key and/or crypto http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#crypto recent crypto related thread drift: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#87 New test attempt http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#86 Own a piece of the crypto wars http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#43 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness) and for other drift, some old posts mentioning working with cyclotomics regarding FEC: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#1 4M pages are a bad idea (was Re: AMD 64bit Hammer CPU and VM) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#53 Free Desktop Cyber emulation on PC before Christmas http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#27 shirts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#37 Why doesn't Infiniband supports RDMA multicast http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#43 360 longevity, was RISCs too close to hardware? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#27 Data communications over telegraph circuits http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#29 Just another example of mainframe costs http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#4 Even worse than UNIX http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#82 folklore indeed http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#19 IBM-MAIN longevity -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Some confusion about virtual cache
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:30:52 -0400
nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) writes:
Sorry - I wasn't clear. I didn't mean that the segment could be only
read or written, but that stores and fetches of parts of it (e.g.
words) would be atomic. It would have full memory semantics, but
would not be as fast as unshared memory, even in the absence of any
clashes.
801/risc philosiphy was solidly opposite of supporting cache consistency
and smp operation/configruaiton. in the late 80s, there was a four
processor "single chip rios" effort done that had flag for segments that
would bypass cache (i.e. data in segments identified as "non-cached"
would have memory load&stores that would bypass caching). standard
application data ... either non-shared and/or r/o shared ... would have
segments identified as cache'able ... but data requiring multiprocessing
serialization ... would be positioned in segments identified as non-cached.
we had done something analogous for 370 16-way SMP more than a decade
earlier (that didn't ship as a product).
another example of restructuring data (for 801/risc rios) was the aix
journaled filesystem ... where all the unix filesystem metadata was
collected in storage area that was flagged as "transaction" memory i.e.
allowed identifying changed/modified filesystem metadata for
logging/journaling ... w/o requring explicit logging calls whenever
there was modification of transaction data.
misc. past posts mentioning 801, risc, romp, rios, power, power/pc, etc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801
misc. past posts mentioning "live oak" (four processor, single-chip
rios)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#21 Cache coherence [was Re: TF-1]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#17 I hate Compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#57 Another light on the map going out
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#40 Tru64 and the DECSYSTEM 20
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#40 Why so little parallelism?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#41 Why so little parallelism?
some of the above makes reference to the ("alternative") cluster
approach ... trying to heavily leverage commodity priced components (w/o
cache consistancy ... that was eventually announced as the corporate
supercomputer) ... misc. old email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa
for other topic drift
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#22 Future architectures
... reference more detailed 3090 cache description ... has a small
"fast" logical (aka virtual) index ... that was kept consistent with
the larger real index
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#email831118
in this post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#42 Flash 10208
the 370 16-way SMP effort in the mid-70s ... leveraged charlie's
invention of the compare&swap instruction ("CAS" was chosen because they
are charlie's initials) ... misc. past posts mentioning SMP and/or
compare&swap instruction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Taxes Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:03:55 -0400 Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes: Government is in the business of seeing how far it can milk the taxpayers without removing vital body parts in the process. Are Your Tax Dollars Paying for Excessive CEO Salaries? http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/08/ceo_taxpayers.html the author was interviewed on tv business news show this morning along with a lobbyist. the author used the line that there are some secretaries (in financial institutions) paying a higher tax rate than their CEO bosses. The lobbyist attempted to position the argument in terms of CEOs reasonably should have larger salaries than secretaries ... obfuscating the reference to "loop-holes" congress have passed that allows CEOs to have a lower tax rate. It wasn't directly the size of the salary ... but it could be reasonably expected to see both at least having the same tax rate. this is separate to past references regarding executives now have a salary ratio that is 400:1 that of standard workers ... up from ratio of 20:1 ... and much more than then 10:1 found in other cultures/countries http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#73 Should The CEO Have the Lowest Pay In Senior Management? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#24 To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#76 lack of information accuracy http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#71 Cormpany sponsored insurance -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:54:45 -0400 jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes: Getting their names and trying to follow where they go would be a wise way of predicting where the next mess will happen in 8-10 years. There's a guy, whose first name is Sandy and I can't remember his last, who seems to get in the middle of messes. I have not determined if he is an attractor or a catalyst yet. re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#12 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#15 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#16 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative i've noted before about past comment (on one of the tv business news shows) regarding Bernanke's litney about needing new regulations ... that american bankers are the most inventive in the world and they've managed to totally screwup the system at least once a decade regardless of the measures put in place attempting to prevent it: 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? Looking at various recent articles ... there are a couple of items that I found (interesting?): 1) claims that the current credit problem was because (toxic) CDOs were too hard to evaluate 2) that wall street doesn't see the enormous profits going into the future (that they saw in the earlier part of this decade by heavily leveraging toxic CDOs). wallstreet supposedly had the creme de la creme of financial experts, earning enormous compensation (took in well over hundred billion in just bonuses in 2002-2007 period) ... and they supposedly weren't able to figure out that trillions of dollars in poor quality (&/or subprime) mortgages were disappearing and then reappearing as triple-A rated toxic CDOs. assuming purely random difficulty with evaluating (triple-A rated) toxic CDOs ... then there should be as much under-evaluation as there was over-evaluation ... implying that there would be as much "write-ups" (i.e. selling toxic CDOs at 200percent profit) as there are "write-downs" (selling toxic CDOs at 22cents on the dollar ... eventually there will possibly be $1tril - $2tril in write-downs) an alternative interpretation was that (triple-A rated) toxic CDOs were being used just like toxic CDOs were used two decades ago during the S&L crisis to unload property at significant higher value (people selling the toxic CDOs understood the value, leveraging toxic CDOs so that the buyers would pay a much higher premium ... obfuscating the actual underlying value). as to profit/earnings ... from an institutional standpoint, it would look like the profits of a couple yrs ago ... are turning out actually to be enormous losses (to the institution, it isn't likely the responsible individuals are going to return their salaries and bonuses). long-winded, decade old post discussing various things ... including needing visiability into underlying values of CDO-like instruments http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm misc. past posts mentioning the $137bil in wall street bonuses for 2002-2007: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#76 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/2008i.html#73 Should The CEO Have the Lowest Pay In Senior Management? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#3 dollar coins http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#24 To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#75 lack of information accuracy http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#11 dollar coins -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:24:05 -0400 Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes: long-winded, decade old post discussing various things ... including needing visiability into underlying values of CDO-like instruments http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#26 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative for other recent news tidbits ... Report: FBI saw mortgage crisis coming in '04 http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laland/2008/08/report-fbi-saw.html Anyone smell a stench? The FBI knew about the housing scams in 2004 http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/258992 FBI saw threat of mortgage crisis http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mortgagefraud25-2008aug25,1,4792318.story -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:32:46 -0400 Louis Krupp <lkrupp@pssw.nospam.com.invalid> writes: UNIX was an emotional subject back in the day. It got a little bit of time at DECUS, but not a lot, although that may have changed since I stopped going in 1985 or so. Back at the ranch (I was working for a university), academics liked UNIX, but computing center staff (and, I suspect, most DEC employees) were happy with VMS. One of my coworkers derided VMS as a "1960s style OS," but when logins to UNIX took forever because it was doing a linear search through /etc/passwd, he explained that UNIX hadn't been intended to support lots of users. (This was in the early 80's, and I don't remember which version of UNIX we were using. We may have been running it on a PDP/11. I remember the screen editor by Interactive Systems -- ined or something.) As would have been expected, arguments about the relative values of operating systems generated more heat than light. something similar slightly more than a decade later with growing loads on webservers (and other servers) and linear search of FINWAIT. There was assumptions about "sessions" being long-running and very few sessions would ever be in the process of being closed. The use of TCP (by HTTP) violated assumptions about sessions (in part because HTTP wasn't a session oriented protocol). there was period when lots of webservers found themselves spending 90-95% of their cpu running FINWAIT list. advent of web useage was affecting other session protocols also. i've mentioned being called in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions ... which is frequently now referred to as electronic commerce ... misc. past posts mentioning part of that infrastructure called payment gateway http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway they had growing number of FTP (download) servers ... started out people "purchasing" the browser and downloading. this was before front-end boundary routers doing load-balancing routing of incoming transactions to pool of backend servers (first saw being developed and deployed at Google). (Growing number of ) Server names were qualified with numeric suffix; 1, 2, ... 10, etc. The last one I remember was large sequent box (I think given "20" suffix in the server name). The sequent people said that they had previously had to deal with large number of unix scale-up issues ... having commercial customers with heavy loads ... things like 20,000 telnet sessions. -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Quality of IBM school clock systems? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:14:04 -0400 Roland Hutchinson <my.spamtrap@verizon.net> writes: People with absolute pitch have to _learn_ relative pitch just like the rest of us in the course of musical training. It's just a very different task for them to learn it, since they have a great deal of interference from their absolute pitch sense, and sometimes it is neglected in their training because they can go a long ways without it in tasks (such as dictation and score reading) that others often have great difficulty with. news item from today 'Perfect Pitch' In Humans Far More Prevalent Than Expected http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080826080600.htm from above: Humans are unique in that we possess the ability to identify pitches based on their relation to other pitches, an ability called relative pitch. Previous studies had shown that animals such as birds, for instance, can identify a series of repeated notes with ease, but when the notes are transposed up or down even a small amount, the melody becomes completely foreign to the bird. ... snip ... -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Taxes Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:41:34 -0400 greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes: I suppose, not being in the US. There were a whole lot of really stupid ideas (seen from now) in most of the affected countries, one of the worse was something called CFD here, which ended up costing one man over a billion euros (so far). Greed, eating into the social cohesion of countries like acid. Re: Knowing that the whole lot was going to collapse, I have been telling people that for years, but was described as being jealous of the success of the con men, now some of the victims hate me more than the ones that swindled them. Cassandra wasn't popular either. re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#25 Taxes old line about being told that they could have forgiven you for being wrong, but they were never going to forgive you for being right ... a few past references: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#61 arrogance metrics (Benoits) was: general networking http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#16 cost of crossing kernel/user boundary http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#71 Offshore IT http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#14 I am an ageing techy, expert on everything. Let me explain the http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#26 MS to world: Stop sending money, we have enough - was Re: Most ... can't run Vista http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#48 time spent/day on a computer http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#3 IBM Unionization http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#6 The history of Structure capabilities http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#34 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff the other line from dedication Boyd Hall at USAF weapons school: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#35 War, Chaos, & Business (web site), or Col John Boyd http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#20 MS to world: Stop sending money, we have enough - was Re: Most ... can't run Vista http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#74 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#61 Lean and Mean: 150,000 U.S. layoffs for IBM? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#77 IBM Unionization http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#3 IBM Unionization http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#5 IBM Unionization http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#4 the Depression WWII http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#44 the Depression WWII http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#45 windows time service other posts referencing Boyd http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Baudot code direct to computers? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:31:16 -0400 hancock4 writes: For a great many years the five-bit Baudot code was for data transmission. When computers or tab machines would communicate, data would be punched on cards, converted to Baudot tape, transmitted, and then the process reversed. IBM had a machine to convert from Baudot to Hollerith and vice versa (I assume other vendors did as well). In the early 1960s ASCII was developed which computers could use directly without a separate tape conversion process. That allowed Teletypewriters to act as terminals to a computer in an active on-line real time environment. [This is a very simplistic summary.] A very popular computer terminal was the Teletype model 33. This was an ASCII machine. Were there computers that supported direct Baudot connections, either as one way (e.g. broadcasting messages) or two way (on line inquiry)? I believe a very early Bell Labs computer (circa 1939) used Baudot TTYs as their terminal in a real time set up. lots of Series/1s ... from long ago and far away: Date: 12 April 1985, 20:07:33 EST To: wheeler Hi! ... The feed pipe is now 14.4kbps async. 5 bit Baudot. They are going to convert but WE feel it might not be on the same schedule as we are, sooo.. we feel the Series/1 is required to convert the 5bit Baudot to ASCII until the other system is complete. ... snip ... top of post, old email index later that year ... http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F06E7D9133BF931A2575AC0A963948260 -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: IBM THINK original equipment sign Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:26:45 -0400 ibm-main@TPG.COM.AU (Shane) writes: When I was at Amdahl, the tech services manager of one of (the ???) biggest Aussie customers had a pretty good collection of vendor mugs. He made a point of ensuring vendors got a competitors mug for coffee. Lots of fun around tender time - the "out-of-town" hot-shot salesmen didn't know which way to look when he made them a brew. Especially in a multi-vendor briefing .... ;-) Ah ... thems were the days. when my brother was regional marketing rep for Apple (largest physical region in conus) ... he would almost fawn over much he liked other vendor (IBM) coffee mugs and would offer to trade Apple mugs if he could have those really neat mugs. -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Taxes Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:55:01 -0400 jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes: I don't understand this one. I haven't seen anything on the income tax forms that would support this claim on pure income. Are they talking about the capital gains 10% rate? re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#25 Taxes the referenced article http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/08/ceo_taxpayers.html lists $20billion in executive compensation tax loop-holes. the article does contribute to confusing effective tax rate (i.e. actual tax paid divided by total compensation) by mentioning "encourage excessive executive pay". Lower effective tax rate (because of tax loop-holes) is separate issue from the dramatic change in ratio of executive pay to worker pay ... exploding from ratio of 20:1 to 400:1 (compared to ratio of 10:1 in most of the rest of the world). One could make the case that with a lower effective tax rate (than workers) ... that the effective ratio of executive pay to worker pay is actually larger than the gross (before tax) ratio (if the 400:1 ratio is gross before tax compensation ... might the after tax compensation ratio be more like 500:1?). -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Future architectures Newsgroups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,comp.arch,sci.electronics.design,alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:37:00 -0400 rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) writes: Well, you couldn't tell it by me!! ;-} I started coding in 1965, and *none* of the machines I learned on[1] had *any* caches yet, not even the venerable DEC PDP-10 (KA10) we got in 1970 (FCS Sep. 1967) -- and in those days the -10 was used for quite significant timesharing loads! Not until the KL10 (FCS June 1975) did the PDP-10 series get any cache at all.[2] look a virtual memory systems from 60s ... cp40 (on 360/40 with custom virtual memory hardware) and cp67 (on 360/67 that came standard with virtual memory) the size of real storage and the relative page-miss latency to paging drum (in processor cycles) is compareable to modern processor caches and relative cache-miss latency to memory. somewhat related earlier post in this thread http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#1 Future architectures besides the mentioned paging algorithm work as undergraduate in the 60s, i had also done a lot of scheduling algorithm and other performance related work (all of it shipping in cp67 product). in the (simplification) morph from cp67 to vm370 ... a lot of that work was dropped. i had moved a lot of the work (that had been dropped in the morph) to vm370 and made it available in internally distributed systems ... some recent posts with references http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#72 Error handling for system calls http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#82 Yet another squirrel question when the future system project failed http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys there was something of a mad rush to get stuff back into the 370 product pipeline (which had been neglected ... some assumptions that future system would replace 370). this was possibly some of the motivation to pickup & release much of the stuff that I had been doing (during the future system period). some recent references: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#1 Yet another squirrel question http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#10 Unbelievable Patent for JCL one of the features that I had added with moving a lot of my stuff from cp67 to vm370 ... was some scheduling cache optimization (with the increasing use of caches on 370 processors). Nominally, system was enabled for (asynchronous) i/o interrupts ... which can have lot of downside pressure on cache hit ratio. The scheduler would look at relative i/o interrupt rates ... and change from general enabled for i/o interrupts to mostly disabled for i/o interrupts with periodic check for pending i/o interrupts. This traded off cache-hit performance against i/o service time latency. for other topic drift ... there was survey of some number of operations during the summer of '81 (which included some KL10 and Vax systems) this post has some excerpts from that survey (along with some comments about time-sharing comparison between cp67 and some KL10 systems): http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#61 other posts with other excerpts from that survey http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#56 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#11 other past posts mentioning scheduling/performance work http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare other past posts mentioning paging algorithm work http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: IBM THINK original equipment sign Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:00:46 -0400 sebastian@WELTON.DE (Sebastian Welton) writes: I have an original IBM Thinkpad. This is a small brown pocket notepad with the word 'THINK' printed on the front and 'IBM' on the back (pn 520-6430 nad 520-6431) still with the original paper pad inside but I think I'll keep it as its quite amusing showing people. I have a couple of the brown pocket notepads ... but i also have (round, clear, globe): http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/vnet1000.jpgit has gotten a little dinged over the years. the internal network http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet was larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime possibly mid-85. past reference mentioning the 1000th node http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#112 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#22 another post mentioning corporate locations that added one or more new hosts/nodes on the internal network that year http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#8 Arpa address the internal network was originally developed at the science center http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech the same place that originated virtual machines, GML, lots of interactive stuff. for recent slightly related networking post about a couple yrs earlier (1980) ... 300 people from the IMS group having to be moved to offsite location ... because STL had filled up (includes screen shot of the 3270 logon logo): http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#20 IBM-MAIN longevity One of the interesting aspects of the internal network implementation was that it effectively had a form of gateway implementation in every node. this became important when interfacing with hasp/jes networking implementations. part of the issue was that hasp/jes networking started off defining nodes using spare slots in the 255-entry table for psuedo (unit record) devices ... typical hasp/jes might have only 150 entries available for defining network nodes. hasp/jes implementation also had a habit of discarding traffic where the originating node and/or the destination node wasn't in its internal table. the internal network quickly exceeded the number of nodes that could be defined in hasp/jes ... and its proclivity for discarding traffic ... pretty much regulated hasp/jes to boundary nodes. by the time hasp/jes got around to increasing the limit to 999 nodes ... the internal network was already over 1000 nodes ... and by the time it was further increased to 1999 nodes ... the internal network was over 2000 nodes. hasp/jes implementation also had a design flaw where the network information was intermingled with other hasp/jes processing control information (as opposed to clean separation). the periodic outcome that two has/jes systems at different release levels were typically unable to communicate ... and in some cases, release incompatibilities could cause other hasp/jes systems to crash (there is infamous scenario where a san jose hasp/jes system was crashing hurseley hasp/jes systems). The combination of the internal networking support started accumulating some number of "release-specific" hasp/jes "drivers" ... where an intermediate internal network node was configured to start the corresponding hasp/jes driver for the system on the other end of the wire. As the problems with release incompatibilities between hasp/jes systems increased ... the internal network code evolved a canonical hasp/jes representation ... and drivers would translate format to the specific hasp/jes release (as appropriate). In the hursley crashing scenario ... somebody even got around to blaming the internal network code for not preventing a san jose hasp/jes systems from crashing hurseley hasp/jes systems. By the time, BITNET started http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet they had pretty much eliminated shipping native drivers ... just the hasp/jes compatible drivers ... even tho the native drivers were much more efficient and had higher thruput than the hasp/jes drivers ... although the native drivers did continue to be used on the internal network (note these were NOT SNA). misc. past posts mentioning hasp/jes (including hasp/jes networking support) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#hasp -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: IBM THINK original equipment sign Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:40:33 -0400 re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#35 IBM THINK original equipment sign and for something different ... a 2741 APL typeball http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aplball.jpg http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aplball2.jpg
the science center (besides virtual machines, gml, a lot of online, interactive stuff, timesharing, performance work, monitoring, profiling, early work that led to capacity planning, etc) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech also had taken apl\360 and ported it to cms ... which was released as cms\apl ... did a lot of work on apl storage management as part of transitioning from a small (16k-32k byte) workspace real-storage swapped environment to a large (up to 16mbyte) workspace virtual storage paged environment. there was also work done allowing apl access to system resources like files and external data. having "large" workspaces and ability to access files and other system facilities enabled a much broader variety of real-world applications. one such was the business planners in corporate hdqtrs ... had the most sensitive of corporate information (detailed customer data) loaded on the cambridge system ... and they accessed the cambridge cp67 system remotely from corporate hdqtrs ... for the development and execution of business models (type of thing that is now frequently done with spreadsheets). this required some amount of attention to security details ... since the cambridge cp67 system also was used by non-employees from various educational institutions in the boston area (and as mentioned in my signature line ... i've had online home access since Mar70). also as mentioned in this recent post http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#1 in the wake of 23jun69 unbundling announcement ... HONE (hands-on network experience) started out being a number of cp67 virtual machines systems to give branch office SEs remote access keeping up their skills/practice with operating systems. misc. past posts: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone however, somewhat in parallel, some number of CMS\APL based sales & marketing applications were being develop ... and they eventually come to dominate all HONE use ... and the original virtual machine purpose dwindled away. CMS\APL (from the cambridge science center on cp67 cms) was eventually replaced with APL\CMS (from the palo alto science center on vm370 cms ... PASC also did the apl\cms 370/145 microcode assist). -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Baudot code direct to computers? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:25:52 -0400 Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> writes: Would they have already had a character generator ROM for the mainframe work? They wanted to use parts that were readily available, rather than making them from scratch. If they'd already been making an EBCDIC character generator ROM, then that would fit since it didn't require that it be specially built for the project. Of course, if they'd used EBCDIC, then that would have meant off the shelf printers (at least cheap off the shelf printers) weren't usable, and that likely affected the decision. They wanted to fit into the world they were moving into, not set some "standard" that everyone would have to move to. note that prior to the pc ... there was 3101 (glass teletype) which also had an available printer ... part of the move into lower cost terminal market ... there wasn't any 3270 &/or SNA devices in that price range. 3101 did support local buffer and "block mode" operation. for the home terminal program ... there was an implementation for (fullscreen) 3270 emulation with 3101 block mode ... and stuff with optimized screen updates (was some of the data already on the screen ... but at a different position ... that could just involve some shuffling). the home terminal 3270 emulation optimization got significantly fancier when PCs started replacing 3101s ... lots of compression and other encoding ... also relying on much bigger buffer of previously transmitted data at the PC ... so control might just indicate display stuff that was already someplace in the PC buffer. I thot i had picture at home of 3101 ... but could only find picture with cdi miniterm (and microfiche viewer) from '79 ... and then later a PC with printer and two monitors (but no picture from period between the two with 3101). old email mentioning 3101 and/or topaz http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email791011 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email791011b http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email800301 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email800311 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email800312 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email800314 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email810820 in these posts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#0 Why so little parallelism? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#4 Why so little parallelism? http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#31 "The Elements of Programming Style" for other topic drift ... these old emails mentioned getting APL character set support on TOPAZ http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email791011 http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email800301 recent APL related post with pictures of 2741 APL type ball http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#36 IBM THINK original equipment sign note that 2741 ternminal wasn't EBCDIC in the sense that EBCDIC bytes could be transmitted down the wire ... 2741 terminals required incoming/outgoing translate tables just like ASCII terminals required incoming/outgoing trans
