List of Archived Posts

2006 Newsgroup Postings (04/15 - 04/19)

IBM 3380 and 3880 maintenance docs needed

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

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The Pankian Metaphor

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News Release

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

Taxes

TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?

TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?

TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?

The Pankian Metaphor

TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

Why are smart cards so dumb?

Why are smart cards so dumb?

Why are smart cards so dumb?

Why are smart cards so dumb?

The Pankian Metaphor

Old PCs--environmental hazard

Binder REP Cards (Was: What's the linkage editor really wants?)

Binder REP Cards (Was: What's the linkage editor really wants?)

News Release

The Pankian Metaphor

Taxes

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

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REP cards

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

The Pankian Metaphor

IBM 3380 and 3880 maintenance docs needed

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM 3380 and 3880 maintenance docs needed
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 17:05:31 -0600

Phil Payne wrote:

I've mentioned this before, but Fundamental Software has a huge
collection of manuals and old equipment.  When I was there once I
wandered around their lab and saw just about every device I could
remember.  They have the old parallel channel cable assembly machine
and all sorts of prehistoric stuff.  I know they have the maintenance
carts for most equipment and there's just a chance they have some
duplicates.

I remember the 3880 rollout, since the damn thing plays fast and loose
with the channel timings - it doesn't conform to the OEMI.  I think
the actual tag timing it uses is in the Functional Characteristics
manual.

There also used to be a contraption called a "Holly Box" for checking
a controller's tag timing.

bus&tag supposedly max'ed at aggregate channel cable distance of
200ft and 1.5mbytes/sec ... although i seem to remember actual devices
like 2305 had more like 80ft cable distance. there was end-to-end
handshake on every byte transferred.

datastreaming relaxed requirement for end-to-end handshake on every
byte ... which allowed it to double the aggregate channel cable
distance to 400ft and the data rate to 3mbyte/sec.

the 3880 controller supported datastreaming and 3mbyte/sec transfer
(for 3380 drives). the 3880 disk controller went from the (fast)
horizontal microcode engine in the 3830 handling everything to a split
operation with vertical microcode engine jib-prime handling control
functions and a special hardware path for data transfer in the 3880.

the 3880 supposedly was required to pass a product performance
acceptance test of being within 10% of 3830. for the test they used as
a two-drive VS1 system doing identical job stream with 3830 controller
and then replaced with 3880 controller (using same 3330 drives).

there was a problem with the jib-prime having higher latency
processing commands and control operations than the 3830 ... and so
they tried a little slight-of-hand. They raised operation complete to
the channel before all the control unit functions had completed. For
the VS1 acceptance benchmark, this allowed the completion of
controller operation cleanup to be overlapped with the VS1 interrupt
process and i/o handling (reflecting it back up to the application,
and the application scheduling the next operation).

I had done this rewrite of the input/output supervisor for engineering
lab (bldg. 14) and the product test lab (bldg.15)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

they had tried doing hardware development testing of single unit
(testcell) in an MVS environment ... and the i/o operation anomolies
and errors resulted in 15min. mean-time-between-failure for the MVS
system.  My rewrite of input/output supervisor was so that the system
wouldn't ever fail (because of anomolies and/or errors for i/o
activity) doing concurrent testing of multiple devices and at the same
time running under the table computer services for the engineers
(i.e. prior to that all testing had been stand-alone bare machine
... on several dedicated processors).

since i was responsible for the software ... when there was
significate anomolies with development hardware ... i would be the
first to be blamed (i.e. software not hardware) and would have to
diagnose the problem.

about 10am one monday, i got a call from the engineers in the product
test lab. they a 3033 (something like the second engineering machine
from the pok plant). we had gotten it configured with a bootlegged
3830 controller and 16 3330 drives for private timesharing computing
service ... in addition to its function of concurrent product test of
several development devices (which previously had to be done one at a
time with scheduled, bare machine time). The product test stuff rarely
accounted for a couple percent of the machine ... so the rest of
machine we could use for our own purposes.

In any case, the monday mid-morning call was that the timesharing
thruput and response had gone all to pieces and "what had I changed
over the weekend".  Since I hadn't changed anything, I had to discover
what changes they had made (which they initially denied doing any
changes at all).

So a lot more diagnosing and eventually found over the weekend that
the engineers had replaced the 3830 disk controller (for the 16 3330
drives) with a new product test 3880 controller. Lots more diagnostic
and strobing regarding what the 3880 controller was doing turned up a
real performance problem with the 3880 controller. While the two-pack
VS1 performance acceptance test had the gimmick that the 3880 was
presenting completion early ... allowing some of the 3880 processing
latency to be overlapped with VS1 I/O processing .... the VS1 was
essentially doing sequential, serialilzed disk i/o.

The 16 3330 drives and any reasonable set of concurrent activity
... was finding that when the 3880 completion was handled by the
interrupt processor ... I would frequently have queued I/O activity
and immediately redrive the 3880 with a new operation (while it was
still busy trying to cleanup from the previous request). The result
was that the controller had to reflect controller busy (cc=1, csw
stored, SM+BUSY) to the i/o initiation. That met that I had to requeue
the request that I had just attempted to start (on the pending queue).
Finally when the 3880 had completed whatever it was doing, since it
had reflected SM+BUSY, it now had to present a (new) control unit end
(CUE) interrupt indicating that it was now free. This caused a lot of
extra processing in both the 3880 controller and also in the software
... as well as resulting in significant additional delays for I/O
operations.

So it was back to the drawing board ... trying to make the 3880
control function processing more efficient and closer to that of the
previous 3830 disk controller. Fortunately, at the moment, we were
still six months away from 3880 first customer ship.

By first customer ship, processing had gotten better, but some things
weren't as good as 3830. Both 3880 and 3830 had provisions for
multiple channel interfaces. However, there was an enormous amount of
3880 processing and latency when switching from one channel interface
to another channel interface (on two consecutive i/o requests coming
in on different channel interface). I had done this really nifty and
super-efficient multiple channel thruput and load balancing support
(being able to maximize use of all possible channel interfaces from
the same processor). However, the channel switching overhead in the
3880 controller was so enormous that I had to fall back to much
simpler alternate path processing when dealing with 3880.

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 17:31:35 -0600

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#44 The Pankian Metaphor

somewhat along the theme of metrics, instrumentation, analysis,
benchmarking, being able to correlate projected results with actual
outcomes, auditing, etc ... recent article

Decision-Support Systems: Lessons from the Military
http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1540,1949797,00.asp

which then drifts into a Boyd story about critique of new heads-up
display for F16
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#4 Future architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#49 "Perfect" or "Provable"
security both crypto and non-crypto?

misc. past posts mentioning boyd
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd
misc. post from around the web mentioning boyd.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd2

i've mentioned before there was extensive instrumentation and metrics in
support of implementing the dynamic adaptive resource control
algorithms. also, as i've mentioned there was also extensive measurement
and benchmarking calibrating and validating the operation of the
resource management product. One sequence of 2000 benchmarks in
preperation for product release took 3 months elapsed time to run
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#bench

misc. recent posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#22 A very basic question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#30 A very basic question

a lot of the work I had done as an undergraduate in the 60s were
incorporated into cp67. However, some amount of that work was dropped in
the morph from cp67 to vm370. It was re-introduced in the resource
management product ... 30th anniversary of the product announce coming
up on May 11th
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#45 VM/370 Resource Manager

the resource manager also had the distinction for guinea pig for
charging for kernel software. charging for (application) software sort
of started with the unbundling announcement on 23jun1969. However, the
explanation to the gov was that kernel software was required for the
correct operation of the hardware therefor remained bundled (i.e.
"free"). Because of a number of factors (that i've discussed before), by
the mid-70s, attitudes were changing towards charging also for kernel
software. misc. past posts on the subject
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#unbundle

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 08:36:48 -0600

greymaus writes:

A lot of heavy trucking is owner operated, which is very efficent
costwise.

ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#44 The Pankian Metaphor

... the issue is that the significant subsidy of the road system for
the benefit of heavy trucking distorts the true aggregate trucking
infrastructure costs (road costs attributed to heavy trucking might
even be the majority of fully loaded infastructure costs for heavy
trucking operation)

the issue in the heavy trucking is that the majority cost of the road
system is almost totally heavy trucking related (aka driving factor in
design, building and cost of road system is driven by its use by heavy
trucking ... modulo city streets and bridges that limited the weight
of vehicles).

portions of heavy trucking can appear to be much more efficient
costwise ... only if the road costs (attributed to heavy trucking) is
totally discounted.

in one of the past threads, somebody mentioned that a major driver in
the interstate road system was for military purposes ... you might
make the case that engineering roads for heavy vehicles were actually
driven by national defense and military use ... and that heavy
trucking was able to make a niche for itself off (at least the
original design ... however, a major portion of ongoing maintenance is
directly heavy trucking driven)

trains tend to have the costs of the track bed fully accounted for
(and therefor in the prices they charge).  however, the road system
... is amortized across all possible users of the road system ... even
tho nearly all of the costs are driven by heavy trucking use. so heavy
trucking costs as fuel, equipment and people time accounted for in
their costs (and prices) ... but the road system costs related to
heavy trucking (i.e. road design, building and maintenance is nearly
all driven by its use by heavy trucking).

transportation prices charged by heavy trucking would be significantly
different if the fully loaded infrastructure costs (associated with
heavy trucking) was fully apportioned to heavy trucking use (as
opposed to being spread over all road uses, mostly in the form of
gov. taxes).

one might hypothosis that the facade of cheap trucking (significantly
subsidized from other sources) may be a good national policy
... helping integrate different physical regions. However, the
significant subsidizing of trucking costs ... and therefor prices
... would unnaturally bias customer choosing to ship by truck rather
than by other methods of transportation (like rail).

these references
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#41 Transportation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#42 Transportation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#20 Parallel programming again (Re: Intel

go into detail about factors (and costs) considered for road design
being solely related to use by heavy trucking.

one of the considerations from a national policy viewpoint, is
somewhat analogous to the reference to distortion of distribution
tables for evaluating tax activity. a national policy evaluation of
national distribution of goods (and the effect on the economy) would
be inaccurate if it only looked at truck and fuel costs. the road
costs are possibly the majority of the actual, fully loaded costs for
shipping goods by heavy truck (and aren't being directly accounted
for). not correctly apportioning the real road costs to heavy trucking
operation could result in incorrect assuptions and any resulting
decisions being wrong.

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 09:27:02 -0600

greymaus writes:

The old idea of the gambler covering `insider knowledge' gambling
under a cover of random choices, leaving enough profit to make it
worthwhile. True randomness would be very hard to achieve.

so true randomness may be hard to achieve ... all it has to be is
practically random ... and in the case of something like page
replacement algorithm ... have sufficiently random characteristics
that the choice is better than an extremely deterministic
implementation (like least recently used) ... when the assumptions
inherit in the deterministic implementation are wrong, i.e.  LRU is
based on the assumption that storage used in the recent past will be
in the near future. The LRU assumption is correct across many
operational environments and workloads ... but may be incorrect for
something like sequentially accessing some data.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#44 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

this is one of the areas that I got tss/360 with my cp67 enhancements
... both operating systems ran on the same 360/67 hardware.

they were testing early version of tss/360 at the univ. on the same
360/67 that I was using for testing cp67. tss/360 had a
one-level-store paradigm for disk/file operation .... not only were
binary executables memory-mapped but all files (even data files with
sequential access patterns) were memory-mapped. however, tss/360 only
had LRU-like algorithm for page replacement ... and no special
provisions for doing things like recognizing sequential access of
data files.

anyway, the univ had a lot of work that was fortran test ... i.e.
fortran compile, load, and execute. we put together a representative
fortran workload and ran it under both tss/360 and cp67 (using the
same hardware). for tss/360 test, it ran four simulated "users" all
executing the same fortran workload. On cp67, I ran 30 simulatated
"users", all concurrently executing the same fortran workload. The
avg. interactive response on tss/360 for four users was several
seconds. The avg.  interactive response for cp67 for 30 uses (running
the same workload) was subsecond.

One of the interesting gambling examples is comparison of Los Vegas
and gov. lottories. Supposedly the psuedo randomness in the Los Vegas
slots is setup to return something like 98-99 percent of bets. The
casinos slots keep only one to two percent on each slot played. The
casinos make their money on the churn ... expecting the slots to be
played over and over. On one hundred plays, the slots randomness would
supposedly retain 1-(.99**100) or about 1-.37 = .63 of the money.

Now a number of the state lottories claim to return on the order of
80precent (keeping 20percent on each play). Doing a similar type of
analysis (used for slots) of a weekly lottory ... if it were four
weeks of churn ... then it would be 1-(.8**4) or about 1-.4 = .6 of
the money (assuming constant starting amount for buying tickets and no
new money introduced each week).

Governments seem to have a strong preference for such lottories,
especially big winning lottories, since they also get to tax the
lottory winnings as income. As a result, the actual amount of money
retained by the gov. in each weekly lottory play is probably closer to
40 percent (20 percent that they take directly off the top as part of
the play and possibly another 20 percent that they take in taxes on
the lottory "winnings"). That makes the government take on four week
(weekly) lottery churn calculation closer to 1-(.6**4) or about 1-.13
= .87.

In the slots churn, an individual might start with hundred dollars in
quarters and after one hundred plays (on the avg), only have 37
dollars left.  The weekly gov lottory churn calculations is somewhat
obfuscated being spread across a large number of individuals and with
"new" (additional) money typically being introduced into the lottery
ticket infrastructure each week. Attempting to translate the
gov. lottery analysis into the casino slot scenario ... the example
might be a community decides to allocate $1m for buying lottery
tickets.  After the first drawing, the gov. keeps $200k and returns
$800k in winnings to the community.  However, the gov. also possibly
gets another $200k in taxes on the $800k distributed in winnings
... so effectively there is only $600k to buy lottery tickets the next
week. This continues for four weeks. In theory, after four weeks, the
gov. has $870k (of the original $1m) ... in effect, the gov. gets to
skim on the order of 40percent of the total bet each week (in a
combination of what it takes off the top and what it gets to take as
taxes on winnings treated as income).

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 09:43:41 -0600

greymaus writes:

It would be almost impossible to decide which jobs are subsidised
vis-a-vis those which are not.. Currency fluctuations would have a
big part in this, as in the case where the US dollar is the main, if
weakening, world currency. Some years ago the Argentinian currency
collapsed, which would make their produce, mostly agricultural, VERY
competitive on world markets. One of the main strengths of the US
economy is large-scale food exports, do you let that die, or help it
in some way. Suppose some town away in the middle of nowhere loses
its main industry, say a defence one, and there are people there who
can't move easily.. (This is more a problem in Europe than the
US).. Do you make spurious jobs for these people, keeping them in
the habits of employment?.. I know one place near here, where people
have settled into the the round of the off-licence, bookies shop,
casual jobs, petty crime thing.. If you provide too many of these
`soft' jobs, employers look at the figures for that area, and think
that there are not enough free people available for employment..

for economic analysis and policy decisions ... you don't have to know
exactly which jobs are subsidized. statistics and correlation can
determine a lot about an infrastructure ... w/o requiring that you
have exact information about any single item.

an example is my recent postings about performance analysis
and multiple regression analysis
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#22 A very basic question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#40 A very basic question

there was an example of long term analysis and pro-active operation
vis-a-vis purely firefighting and re-active.

there was an article in (I think) boston globe in the 70s about the
failing shoe and garment industries in new england and people being
put out of work with the closing of plants. they pointed out that
little or no economic planning is typically done in the US
... somewhat leaving it purely to market forces and trying to react
after the fact ... rather than planning ahead. They contrasted this to
economic planning done by Swedish gov. starting in the early 50s. The
gov. did detailed analysis of their industries ... calculating the
value of work provided by an individual in different industries. They
then established an economic policy for desired per person standard of
living. For industries where the value of individual work was less
than the target standard of living ... they created gov. incentives
for the companies to move to some other operation (where the worker
value did met the desired standard of living) ... modulo industries
that were deamed "strategic" ... where they specifically allocated the
budget and resources to subsidize.

Part of this was whether you take a pro-active position and economic
planning to deal with the anticipated situation ... or you wait for
it to happen and react to it after the fact.

a couple old posts on the subject:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#28 Offshore IT
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#52 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 13:46:27 -0600

ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#44 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#2 The Pankian Metaphor

the previous posting makes reference to standard road design being
predicated on the number of heavy truck axle-loads. There is a lot of
information of cost of building and maintaining miles of road design
for different heavy truck axle-loads. Therefor it should be possible
to normalize heavy truck related road building and mainteance costs by
dividing the per mile costs by the heavy truck axle-load design for
the road. That gives heavy truck infrastructure related costs
normalized to cost per heavy truck mile-axle-load.

aka
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#41 Transportation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#42 Transportation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#20 Parallel programming again (Re: Intel

there is also a lot of data available on gals./mile burned by
different kinds of heavy trucks. that also can be normalized by
dividing the heavy truck gals/mile by the number of axles for that
kind of heavy truck.

given that you have costs normalized per heavy truck mile-axle-load
and the gals used normalized per heavy truck mile-axle-load ... then
it is possible to divide

            cost/mile-axle-load          cost
            --------------------   =   ---------
            gals./mile-axle-load       gal. used

to come up with cost/gals-used. If the infrastructure wanted to
recover the heavy-truck road infrastructure related costs via a fuel
tax, the above calculations could be used to come up with the approx.
tax/gal for fuel sold for use in heavy trucks. At one time, I did
rough calculations that this might be on the order of $50/gal.

with modern technology ... it would be possible to install some sort
of gps black box in each truck and have weight stations read out the
value for mile-axle-loads and levey a direct road use fee (as opposed
to recoverying the heavy truck infrastructure related costs via a fuel
tax).

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 13:58:53 -0600

Keith writes:

How do you come up with this figure?  At $50/gal they'd be paying
$10-$20/mile.  That seems high for the maintence costs.

ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#44 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#2 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#5 The Pankian Metaphor

the issue is whether or not you choose to treat the cost of building a
road for specific number of axle-loads as part of the heavy truck
infrastructure costs ... in addition to the heavy truck related
maintenance costs.

... aka it is possible to design a road for military heavy vehicle use
against a number of heavy military vehicle axle-loads ... however the
major costs isn't against designing for a specific maximum load limit
... but actually for the number of heavy truck axle-loads (i.e. the
number of times a heavy truck travels the section of road). In which
case, it is likely the road design would apportion a relatively small
part of road building costs to military heavy vehical axle loads
... and the majority of the road building costs are still then
apportioned to regular commercial heavy truck useage (number of
commercial heavy truck axle-loads).

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 14:03:51 -0600

ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#44 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#2 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#5 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#6 The Pankian Metaphor

aka ... if you choose to recover costs thru fuel tax and choose to
charge less than the fully loaded calculated heavy trucking
infrastructure costs/gal ... then that is an economic policy decision
to subsidize commercial heavy trucking. It isn't necessarily a good or
bad thing ... but it should be recognized as an explicit economic
policy decision.

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 12:04:13 -0600

greymaus writes:

Sweden is a poor pointer. there was a meeting locally about
something of concern to the area, and a Swedish person spoke,
telling us how the Swedes had dealt with a similiar problem.. One of
the locals replied, `You trust your government, we don't trust
ours'.. A basic problem.  I agree the Swedes have controlled their
society's progress in a socially beneficial way, but that is part of
their being Swedish. How they will manage with the new Baltic
states, and Poland, providing low-wage industries is what they will
have to deal with now, they are already having to halt competition
from these countries to stop wages in Sweden collapsing.. Here,
Ireland, there is no bar on anyone coming in, but they must be paid
at Irish basic rates. Education is the best answer.. but technical
education, rather than liberal arts..

so are you arguing that you shouldn't have methodology of ecomonic
planning because sweden had did such a bad job ... or are you
commented that sweden just didn't do a good job. the issue of sweden
attempting economic planning is at least documented (indepdently of
whether they were experienced and/or did a good job). ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#4 The Pankian Metaphor

the point of the boston globe article (from the 70s) was that at least
sweden attempted to anticipate and be pro-active about some of the
problems ... where the new england situation was purely a react after
the fact ... as if it was not possible to predict such events in any
way. There may be a secondary issue that people are actually too
stupid to ever be succesful at doing such predictions and therefor it
should always be left to market forces adjusting afterwards.

however, it might still be useful to consider hypothetical approach to
the methodology (and then measure results, and then afterwards have
evidence whether humans are innately unable to correctly perform such
calculations). again, even if there are short comings as in the
comment about ability of humans to never achieve true randomness (it
doesn't negate the usefullness):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#3 The Pankian Metaphor

theoritically you take GNP for the country with best technology
available adjusting for existing GNP calculations.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm22.htm#42 Votes are coins stamped with the Red Queen's head

divide that by the number of people ... and that is first order
approximation to the best possible average standard of living
(modulo temporary abberations by borrowing against the future
and/or depleating long term resources).

repeat similar methodology for individual industries (aka industry
specific gnp divided by number of people).

set a national economic policy for overall average per person.

companies in industries below that level are incented to move into
other businesses. industries deemed strategic below the threshold will
be subsidized (either via price supports or augmented employee
benefits with gov. payments). However, the gov. funds for the
subsidies have to come out of excess revenues in other economic areas
of the country. For that excess to exist ... the non-strategic,
non-subsidized industries will actually require economic operations
above the targeted threashold in order to provide margin for the gov.
to use in subsidizing the strategic industries.

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 14:33:58 -0600

ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#4 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#8 The Pankian Metaphor

the other argument that might be made is that sweden might have been
significantly worse off if it hadn't adopted explicit economic
policies and/or adoption of explicit economic policies were done
because the alternative projects indicated a significantly worse
outcome (i.e. attempting action ahead of time ... rather than
waiting until afterwards ... in attempt to mitigate specific
economic outcomes).

however, as raised in the references
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#41 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#44 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#1 The Pankian Metaphor

to the comptroller general's talk
http://www.gao.gov/cghome/nat408/index.html America's Fiscal Future

... the talk mentioned that there is a problem that most economic
policies have poor metrics, instrumentation and audits to be able to
check whether they have actually accomplished anything at all in
addressing/meeting the stated objectives.

one might even claim that any general consensus about lack of proper
outcomes by gov. operations is analogous to bad outcomes by publicly
traded companies (making the news the past couple years) .... and
similar transparency and audit rules should be applied to gov.
operations (as are being enhanced for publicly traded corporations).
this would even further support the point in the comptroller general's
talk about lack of proper metrics, instrumentation and metrics in
gov. operations; although his point was related to gov. policies
somewhat specifically related to policy decisions with respect to
taxes and benefits.

It might be possible to extend the principle to nearly all gov.
operations ... modulo Boyd's observation regarding Guderian's use of
verbal orders only ... past posts mentioning the subject:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#120 atomic History
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#29 Review of Steve McConnell's AFTER THE GOLD RUSH
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#16 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#36 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#38 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#33 Star Trek: TNG reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#51 employee motivation & executive compensation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#27 The BASIC Variations
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#24 Timeless Classics of Software Engineering
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#86 Organizations with two or more Managers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#14 The Pankian Metaphor

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 15:44:25 -0600

ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#44 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#2 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#5 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#6 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#7 The Pankian Metaphor

so for another method of coming up with first order approximation, is
to move all existing fuel taxes to just heavy trucking fuel use.

the detailed road design articles claim that the number of heavy truck
axle-loads is the driving factor and that all other types of vehicle
use can be ignored. so first order approximation is to recover the
same current total fuel taxes by just taxing fuel used by heavy
trucks. the 2nd order approximation is that fuel taxes only cover a
portion of road building and operations. to get better approx.of total
heavy truck related infrastructure cost, divide the the initial
approxmimation by the fraction of total road build and operation costs
covered by fuel taxes.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#41 Transportation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#42 Transportation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#20 Parallel programming again (Re: Intel

so some guesses about actual values and then the formula ... and then
initial approximation.

first we need to know the current avg. fuel taxes/gal, lets say is
sixty cents for estimated avg. per gal. combined/total fuel taxes.

then we need to know the percent of total fuel consumption by heavy
trucking ... for calculations I'll use a maximum of .05 and a minium
of .01 (i.e. heavy trucking industry accounts for somewhere between
1percent and 5percent of total vehicle fuel consumption).

then first order approximation (moving nearly all fuel taxes from all
vehicles to just heavy trucking as first order approx) is within the
range of

    $.60/(max .05, min .01) = (min $12/gal, max $60/gal)

so the 2nd order approx. is what portion of total road costs (build
and operate) is covered by fuel taxes. for calculations lets assume
that it is somewhere in the .3 to .5 range (the rest funded by general
revenues). the improved calculation then is

   (min $12, max $60)/(max .5, min .3) = (min $24/gal, max $200/gal)

so an initial guestimate as to transferring fully loaded heavy
trucking infrastructure costs to the heavy trucking industry via the
use of per gal. fuel tax comes up to be in the range of between
$24/gal and $200/gal,

your actual mileage may vary if you come up with more accurate values
to my guestimates.

For instance, if you use a value of $.40/gal for total fuel tax, the
range drops to

  $.40/(max .05, min .01) = (min $8/gal, max $40/gal)
and
  (min $8, max $40)/(max. .5, min .3) = (min $16/gal, max $133/gal)

If it turns out that the heavy trucking industry only accounts
for half percent of total vehicle fuel consumption, it changes
the calculation to

   $.60/.005 = $120/gal
and
   ($120/gal)/(max .5, min .3) = (min $240/gal, max $400/gal)

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 16:11:11 -0600

greymaus writes:

I think that the state lotteries are really aimed against the
`numbers' racket (does that still exist?).. Here, lottery winnings
are not (AFAIK) taxed, which is an unnecessary burden, as the lower
income earners that comprise the majority of winners are inclined to
splurge on rubbish that yields large taxes for the government
anyway..

ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#3 The Pankian Metaphor

federal treats gambling and lottery winnings as income ... modulo
recorded losses and expenses (like money spent on lottory tickets).
states tend to follow federal definition of income, but nominally
taxed at a fraction of the federal rate.

one of the reasons that govs. tend to like the large individual
lottory winnings is that only a tiny fraction of the lottery win will
be offset by individual costs/expenses (making nearly the whole win
taxeable).

the state lottories have tended to make a big deal that retained
lottery income (after expenses) is used for really important things
like public schools; modulo some number of news reports about whether
lottory operation expense charges are excessive and/or whether actual
embezzlement is going on ... slightly related thread at:
https://www.financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/000699.html
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm23.htm#0 Separation of Roles - an example

however, they normally don't mention that govs. are possibly taking in
as much into the general fund with taxes on the winnings (as they are
skimming "off the top" in the initial take).

with regard to the casinos that are cropping up around the country on
"Indian reservations" ... there is getting to be more and more
publicity about gambling addictions (and significant increased social
infrastructure costs dealing with the problem)

for a little drift back to computing ... one of the first
early adopters for our ha/cmp product
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

was a new, very large gambling casino opening on Indian reservation in
conn. (supposedly compete w/atlantic city). There supposedly was going
to be an initial one week shake-out of all the operations (ha/cmp
system was being used to manage cash and supporting dataprocessing for
pit boss tasks).  However, 24hrs after starting tests, they decided to
go live and opened the doors.

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 17:14:28 -0600

greymaus writes:

True, but the road system is very adaptable. An atomic attack on a
rail nexus would stall things a bit, trucks could use minor routes to
bypass black spots..

so there may or may not be a conscious policy decision to create an
enormous subsidy (in extensive roads built specifically for very large
number heavy truck axle-loads) ... as increasing the country's
ability/agility to deal with various kinds of conflicts, exploits,
threats and vulnerabilities.

however, one might still want to have accurate information regarding
the actual magnitude of such a subsidy and also possibly do a
risk/benefit or cost/benefit analysis as part of economic
and competitive policy decision making.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#2 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#5 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#6 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#7 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#10 The Pankian Metaphor

for some drift .... following collection of posts are mostly
about financial fraud, exploits and vulnerabilities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#fraud

but there are some comments about general threat modeling  and
countermeasures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#cfppki13 CFP: PKI research workshop
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#cfppki14 CFP: PKI research workshop
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#cfppki15 CFP: PKI research workshop
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#cfppki19 CFP: PKI research workshop
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#2 Is cryptography where security took the wrong branch?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#3 Is cryptography where security took the wrong branch?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#8 Is cryptography where security took the wrong branch?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#17 New authentication protocol, was Re: Tinc's response to "Linux's answer to MS-PPTP"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#26 SSL, client certs, and MITM (was WYTM?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#28 SSL, client certs, and MITM (was WYTM?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm16.htm#11 Difference between TCPA-Hardware and a smart card (was: example: secure computing kernel needed)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm17.htm#3 Non-repudiation (was RE: The PAIN mnemonic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm17.htm#47 authentication and authorization ... addenda
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm17.htm#60 Using crypto against Phishing, Spoofing and Spamming
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#9 E-commerce attack imminent; Sudden increase in port scanning for SSL doesn't look good
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#10 E-commerce attack imminent; Sudden increase in port scanning for SSL doesn't look good
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#12 dual-use digital signature vulnerability
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#17 should you trust CAs? (Re: dual-use digital signature vulnerability)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#18 Any TLS server key compromises?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#20 RPOW - Reusable Proofs of Work
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#24 public-key: the wrong model for email?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#25 public-key: the wrong model for email?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm19.htm#5 Do You Need a Digital ID?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm19.htm#46 the limits of crypto and authentication
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm20.htm#28 solving the wrong problem
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#1 Is there any future for smartcards?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#5 Is there any future for smartcards?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#6 Clearing sensitive in-memory data in perl
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#11 Payment Tokens
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#27 X.509 / PKI, PGP, and IBE Secure Email Technologies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#28 X.509 / PKI, PGP, and IBE Secure Email Technologies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#33 X.509 / PKI, PGP, and IBE Secure Email Technologies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#34 X.509 / PKI, PGP, and IBE Secure Email Technologies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm22.htm#12 thoughts on one time pads
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm22.htm#16 serious threat models
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm22.htm#23 FraudWatch - Chip&Pin, a new tenner (USD10)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm22.htm#33 Meccano Trojans coming to a desktop near you
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#59 Security in RADIUS (RFC2865)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#20 which CPU for educational purposes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#37 Security of Oyster Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#20 Dumb anti-MITM hacks / CAPTCHA application
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#29 passwords
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#39 SSL certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004i.html#4 New Method for Authenticated Public Key Exchange without Digital Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004i.html#5 New Method for Authenticated Public Key Exchange without Digital Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004i.html#16 New Method for Authenticated Public Key Exchange without Digital Ceritificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004i.html#17 New Method for Authenticated Public Key Exchange without Digital Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004i.html#18 New Method for Authenticated Public Key Exchange without Digital Certificates
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#34 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#9 REVIEW: "Biometrics for Network Security", Paul Reid
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#57 Ancient history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#2 Innovative password security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#24 Hi-tech no panacea for ID theft woes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#43 Security of Secret Algorithm encruption
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#42 feasibility of certificate based login (PKI) w/o real smart card
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#31 AMD to leave x86 behind?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#31 Caller ID "spoofing"

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

News Release

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: News Release
Newsgroups: comp.security.firewalls
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 18:48:12 -0600

"Cliff" writes:

Many many reports.
Any of the older generals that were considered "the cold warrior" have a
different mindset than Rumsfeld. they have fought with him all the way.
Rumsfeld believes in a light, fast army with good use of special forces
instead of battalions fighting it out in open warfare. The "old guard"
believes in a massive miltary and overwhelming superiority of numbers which
just does not fit into todays scenarios.

this predates the current conflict and owes a lot to Boyd's influence.

a lot of anecdotal accounts have John Boyd being responsible for the battle
plan in the earlier Iraqi conflict (in quite a bit of conflict with
the old guard) .. an older post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#61 If you're going to bullshit, eschew moderation

a couple articles from around the web:
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/comments/c455.htm How Col. John Boyd Beat the Generals, August 12, 2002
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_32_18/ai_91210683 Insight on the News: How Col. John Boyd beat the generals

there were supposedly subsequent comments about the biggest problem with
the current conflict is that John Boyd had died in 1997.

a few recent posts mentioning John Boyd:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm22.htm#42 Votes are coins stamped with the Red Queen's head
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#14 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#41 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#1 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#9 The Pankian Metaphor

Another conflict involves the Crusader. a couple posting/articles on
the subject
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#14 Dangerous Hardware
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bbmilitary/jan-june02/crusader_6-19.html
http://www.carlylegroup.net/thebigguns.htm
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1304652

There are similar issues for both Abrahms and Crusader with regard to
rapid air deployment and transition to Boyd's maneuver warfare.

another article on the paradigm change:
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/Pentagon-Rumsfeld-Preemptive11mar05.htm

although Boyd was extremely instrumental in the F16 ... he was a
strong proponent behind the principles involved in the F20/Tigershark,
which significantly reduced the maint. requirement per hour flown as
well as level of technology and skill level needed to support the F16.

articles on Boyd and 4th generation warfare:
http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/003037.php
http://www.d-n-i.net/second_level/fourth_generation_warfare.htm
http://www.counterpunch.org/lind03082003.html
http://www.emergentchaos.com/archives/2005/01/boyds_relevance.html
http://www.dcmilitary.com/navy/tester/8_16/commentary/22780-1.html
http://www.tradeobservatory.org/library.cfm?filename=Fourth_Generation_Warfare.htm

lots of past postings mentioning John Boyd
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd
numerous articles from around the web mentioning John Boyd
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd2

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 07:57:52 -0600

greymaus writes:

I note that the Toyota car company (according to a newspaper report a
few weeks ago) is capitalized at 14 times the total of Ford and
General Motors... Is it time for the US to start spending on research
and development for ordinary peacetime uses, rather than wartime.

past reference to proposal for unearned profit tax on us automobile
industry:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#41 Reason Japanese cars are assembled in the US (was Re: American bigotry)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#52 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#22 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#2 Internet today -- what's left for hobbiests
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#23 auto industry

past reference to being called in to participate on c4 effort (i.e.
to aggresive apply dataprocessing to automobile industry
competiveness):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#41 Reason Japanese cars are assembled in the US (was Re: American bigotry)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#43 Reason Japanese cars are assembled in the US (was Re: American bigotry)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#22 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#44 IBM 610 workstation computer

as to percent of spending ... see comptroller general's talk
previously referenced:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#41 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#44 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#9 The Pankian Metaphor

and for a little recent topic drift
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#13 News Release

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 08:22:41 -0600

greymaus writes:

What would replace the heavy trucks for the hauling that the railways
can't do?...

there is no suggestion that heavy trucks be replaced ...  there is
just a suggestion that the heavy trucking industry is possibly heavily
subsidized for one reason or another ... and if hauling by heavy
trucking industry accurately reflected the total infrastructure costs
... then there migth be different economic trade-off decisions.  one
is there might be more use of railways for long haul ... reducing the
overall magnitude of the heavy truck mile-axle-loads i.e. the subsidy
appears to be proportional to mile-axle-loads ... so long haul
trucking would appear to be major contributor to total aggregate
mile-axle-loads (since the longer the distance, the greater the
mile-axle-loads) ... and they would seem to be the major beneficiary
for any related mile-axle-load proportional subsidy.

rail would possibly be a major alternative choice for long haul
trucking ... especially if both (rail and heavy trucking) had to price
based on fully loaded infrastructure costs.

the issue isn't about replacing heavy trucking ... it is just a
suggestion that if heavy trucking hauling rates accurately reflected
fully loaded infrastructure costs ... that there might be some
different economic decisions ... or they might not ...  they might
just pay the higher price.

more detailed discussion of mile-axle-loads
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#5 The Pankian Metaphor

another example of skewed decisions based on subsidized pricing
... was large conglomerates growing rice in the delta near san
francisco ... even during past draughts. For whatever reason, water
was being provided charged 1/10th to 1/20th to certain organizations
what was being charged to most of the rest of the infrastructure
... even during periods of draught and most of the rest of the
infrastructure on water restrictions and rationing. part of the issue
was that rice growing is an extremely water intensive operation.
However, with certain organizations having access to quantities at far
below market value ... growing rice represented the maximum
return-on-investment (difference between the price they had to pay for
growing rice and the revenue they could get for that rice). In effect
they were being encouraged to use enormous amounts of water on an
extremely water intensive activity ... even during periods of
significant water rationing. The alternative might have been to grow a
significantly less water intensive crop.

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 08:29:27 -0600

greymaus writes:

Any big problems? (knowing that you have identified the casino fairly
narrowly, (are there that many Indian owned casinos in Conn?)), I
would understand that massive f***ups would not be mentioned.

ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#11 The Pankian Metaphor

also, i believe it may have also been the first in the state ... which
narrows it even further.

no, things went smoothly ... but there was a lot of anxiety during the
period and a sense that adequate testing had been sacrificed.
However, looking at the lost opportunity costs (the avg. profit they
nominally make per 24hrs for days they aren't operating), six days
turned out to be significant.

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 09:02:35 -0600

jmfbahciv writes:

This approach bothers me a lot.  Eventually, if not sooner,
all innovation is punished until nonexistence.  Innovation
requires a small time window w.r.t. reaction.  Government
controlled anything has to remove reacting to any stimulus
for its policies to work.  This is the problem with socialism
and 100% removal of capitalism.  Society stagnates.

the Boyd scenario is somewhat the lower/closer the decision is made,
the greater agility and adaptability. the first approximation is that
doing economic analysis to show that certain industries can only
support a specific worker standard of living ... w/o subsidies is at
least having informed decision making process. Creating a policy that
encourages businesses in activities with economic reward below
specific level to move to some other activity (possibly over 20 year
period) still isn't really bad. Having environment where there is
rigid top-down decision making usually is less adaptable and therefor
frequently less competitive ... again the boyd scenario about us
corporate structure in the 70s and 80s. misc. references:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#120 atomic History
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#29 Review of Steve McConnell's AFTER THE GOLD RUSH
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#45 A beautiful morning in AFM.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#16 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#59 Computer Naming Conventions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#38 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#33 Star Trek: TNG reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#21 MP cost effectiveness
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#51 employee motivation & executive compensation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#27 The BASIC Variations
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#86 Organizations with two or more Managers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#3 Computerworld Article: Dress for Success?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#14 The Pankian Metaphor

on the other hand it could be done in such a way that benefits.
there is the scenario that suggestion unearned profit tax
on the us automobile industry ... with the explanation that
the US gov. had taken certain actions to allow the industry
breathing room to remake themselves ... and they didn't appear
to be following those assumptions. recent reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#14 The Pankian Metaphor

a different example is one of the countries on the other side of the
pacific ... sometime (by at least the early 80s), they had made a
determination that IT was going to be an extremely important and
profitable part of world economy and they wanted to be the leader by
something like 2010 or 2020 (as well as provide industries with a
competitive advantage in almost every kind of operation). They
established that every company should invest some percent (X) of their
profits in IT ... and if they didn't, the gov. would take it in
tax. so in the late 80s, you saw things like steel and ship building
companies (from this country) investing heavily in IT startups in the
US (and other places in the world). One such was in the late 80s,
there was an announcement that one of these large heavy industry
corporations was buying half of Oracle corporation. However, the next
quarter, Oracle finances significantly improved and the deal was
canceled (Oracle had signed an enterprise license for an extremely
large number of seats with a large international corporation).

misc. past postings mentioning Boyd
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd
other URLs from around the web mentioning Boyd
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd2

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

TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 10:25:05 -0600

Joel C. Ewing wrote:

My impression of the PC clock is that it was never intended for any
purpose other than maintaining wall clock time, and as such has
appropriately low resolution.  My other impression is that there is some
Operating system involvement in maintaining its value on the PC:  that
the clock may run "slow" on a system that is totally maxed out or unable
to service interrupts for an extended period.  On the original S/360
introduced in 1964, I believe a System Timer, which also required
periodic interrupt servicing, was used to track clock time and it had
similar drift problems.  I believe the hardware TOD clock was introduced
with the following IBM S/370 architecture, so it has been around for at
least 30 years.

360 clock was full word at location 80 in storage. low-end 360s tic'ed
about at approx. 3mills. high-end 360s had high-resolution timer feature
that tic approx. 13micros. the period of the clock was the same, high
resolution clock tic'ed the lowest bit ... lower-resolution clock tic'ed
one of the other bits.

the clock making transition would generate an external interrupt ... so
could be used for things like time-slices (cp67 used it for maintaining
wall-clock, interval timing, and time-slices).

370 went to register paradigm ... and three separate constructs, the tod
clock, the clock comparator (interrupt when tod clock passed certain
time), and timer ... which could be used for time-slices and/or cpu
useage accounting. this lowered the software burden ... trying to make a
single time construct serve multiple different purposes.

the other issue for the change was main memory contention ... since the
360 timer hardware had to get the memory bus to update location 80.

i had done some amount of work on cp67 as an undergraduate in the 60s,
redoing the terminal support including adding ascii/tty terminal support
and was trying to make the 2702 terminal controller do some stuff that
it couldn't quite do (i.e. both automatic terminal recognition as well
as automatic baud rate). somewhat as a result, the univ. started a
project to build a clone controller (someplace there was an article that
blame us for the pcm controller business)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#360pcm

the 360 channel interface was reverse engineered, a channel interface
card was built and put in an Interdata/3 minicomputer programmed to
emulate 2702 functions. one of the early debugging problems was
attacking to the 360/67 channel and "red lighting" the 360/67 ...
stopping the processor. Turns out that the high resolution timer tics
and schedules an update of location 80 timer value, if the timer tics
again before the previous update has happened, it treats it as a
hardware error and stops the machine. It turns out that the channel
interface card had signaled the channel to obtain the memory bus for
transfer ... and needed to periodic interrupt the transfer to allow
other access (like the timer) to the memory bus.

As to timers in other processors ... we were doing high-speed networking
in the 80s
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

and were doing various things ... like I added RFC 1044 support to the
standard mainframe tcp/ip product. at the time, the standard product
would get about 44kbytes/sec aggregate sustained thruput with high
pathlength overhead (full 3090 processor at 44kbytes/sec). In some
tuning of RFC 1044 support at cray research ... between a cray and a
4341-clone ... we were getting 1mbyte/sec aggregate sustained using only
a fraction of the 4341 processor.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

we also had deployed our own high-speed backbone ... although when
NSFNET backbone RFP was published (operational precursor to current
internet), we weren't actually allowed to bid (although we were allowed
to act as the technology redteam with alternative technology proposal).
However, we did get a technology audit from NSF that concluded what we
already had operational was at least five years ahead of all bid
submissions for NSFNET backbone RFP. minor ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#38
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#12

one of the things we had done in our backbone implementation and
deployment was rate-based pacing ... which we claimed was significant
improvement over the windowing-based stuff for congestion control.

in fact, the month that the slow-start talk (windowing-based congestion
control) was given at the IETF meeting ... the annual sigcomm
proceedings had a paper how windowing-based congestion control was none
stable in larger heterogeneous networks (for a number of reasons).
The issue was that rate-based pacing required the availability of
reasonable set of timer-functions (in order to implement "rate"
construct ... i.e. activity per unit time).

A lot of the tcp/ip implementations in the period were on platforms that
lacked any reasonable set of timer features ... and so therefor it was
somewhat necessary for them to do a purely event-based paradigm ...
rather being able to implement a time-based paradigm.

of course, it helped doing rate-based stuff with also having been
heavily involved with dynamic adaptive resource management as an
undergraduate in the 60s ...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 10:50:03 -0600

greymaus writes:

Where in this system is the contribution from private autos.. I was
amazed the last time I was in the US at the amount of roadbuilding
going on.. The massive networks of roads around US cities are really
private auto projects.. At what point from the cities would you start
to count.. to consider that the highways are mainly for heavy truck
use.?

the design and cost of the majority of the road systems are based on
heavy truck mile-axle-load requirements. consumers have somewhat been
encouraged to participate and make use of the infrastructure ...  in
part because the current infrastructure is being paid for by fuel use
tax levied across all users of fuel (if consumers are using 99-plus
percent of the fuel ... that gives an enormous base to spread the
costs across).

I didn't say that the highways are mainly for heavy truck use ...
i said that the design, cost, and maintenance are almost all
drive by heavy truck (axle-load) useage

I don't know where you came up with highways are mainly for heavy
truck use.

I have said that the design, cost, life-cycle, buidling, maintenance,
aka ... nearly everything ... is driven by the number of heavy-truck
axle-loads. The highway building and standards document i've
frequently recently referenced state the highway design criteria is
solely based on target number of heavy truck axle-loads ... that any
use by consumer vehicles is immaterial; aka consumer vehicle use has
no impact.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#44 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#2 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#5 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#6 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#10 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#12 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#15 The Pankian Metaphor

you appear to have misread what I have wrote.

If one conjectures there is a policy to have a subsidized extensive
highway network with high heavy truck axle-load design point ....  and
that consumer vehicle use has little or no impact on such highway
operation or design ... then it might be desirable to encourage lots
of consumer vehicle use so that they are relatively complacent in
paying possibly 99plus percent as a road use fuel tax ... as opposed
to an infrastructure cost fee ... which might shift nearly the entire
bill to the heavy trucking industry.

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 12:32:51 -0600

greymaus writes:

One report on the French riots this year blamed the high degree of
automation in the car plants there for the decline in the sort of
jobs needed by socio-economic groups such as the rioters belong to.

so one might conjecture that you trade-off gov. advanced, pro-active
economic planning that attempts to start 20 years earlier
... attempting to make the transition over a much longer & graceful
period of time ... as opposed to relying on market forces which
frequently may operate as discontinuites.

the issue with disruptive change is that business/commercial parties
may have significant vested interest in maintaining the status quo as
long as possible ... or at least possibly until they have retired.

individual gov. officials may have less vested interest in maintaining
the status quo long after things should have adapted and changed;
however what they decide may be incorrect based on insufficient or
inaccurate data and/or lack of experience.

so sometimes there is trade-off between having vested interests with
the skill and experience to make better decisions about change (but
refuse to do it) and people w/o a lot of vested interest in the status
quo and aren't adverse to change ... but don't necessarily have the
skill and experience to make quality decisions about change.

part of the writeup by the census department wasn't about
socio-economic grouping ... the correlation turned out to be with
level of training and education ... as improving the ability to change
and adapt. the socio-economic grouping may turn out to be a result of
the difficulting in changing and adapting (and correlated with level
of training and eduction) as opposed to the cause of any difficulting
in being able to change and adapt (you may be in a socio-economic
group because of inability to change and adapt ... as opposed to being
unable to change and adapt because you are in any specific
socio-economic group). The census report also had something about half
of the highschool graduate aged people were functionally illiterate
(very low level of education and skills) ... and the trend was that
the percentage was increasing (in part because the complexity of
society was increasing and therefor the level of skills and education,
needed to be functionally literate, was increasing).

given the premise in the reference calling for unearned profit tax
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#14 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#41 Reason Japanese cars are assembled in the US (was Re: American bigotry)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#52 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#22 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#2 Internet today -- what's left for hobbiests
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#23 auto industry

the referenced census department report (from the early 90s) about
half of jobs in manufacturing are subsidized ...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#44 The Pankian Metaphor

might have included automobile manufacturing workers ... since
according to the unearned profit tax article ... the gov. was limiting
competitive imports as a means of increasing/subsidizing the
automobile industry profits ... which the industry was to turn around
and use to remake itself. The point of the unearned profit tax article
was that the industry wasn't using the increased industry profits to
remake itself into more agile and competitive operation. It wasn't
until almost 15 years later that there was even the C4 effort billed
as remaking the industry to be more competitive
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#14 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#41 Reason Japanese cars are assembled in the US (was Re: American bigotry)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#43 Reason Japanese cars are assembled in the US (was Re: American bigotry)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#22 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#44 IBM 610 workstation computer

and that was approx. 15 years ago.

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

Taxes

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Taxes
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 13:25:55 -0600

Charles Richmond writes:

I *know* that I had a damn good programming job during the Clinton
years.  And I know that job went to India or China.

the various census reports in the early 90s based on the 1990 census
indicated that the jobs were likely going in any case. I remember
being in HK in the early 90s and reading a newspaper article that did
somewhat of a competitive analysis of the ability of India in the
outsourcing market vis-a-vis the Chinese province right across from
HK.

Part of the early 90s reports said that half of all technical Phd
graduates from cal. institutions were foreign born and had some
probability of returning home at some point in the future. What
happened was the presence of all those foreign born technical experts
helped sustain the internet boom that took off in the later half of
1990s. That boom created quite a strain on dataprocessing skill base.

It also happened to correspond with a major dataprocessing project
bubble involving Y2K remediation of core legacy business
processes. Since a lot of the dataprocessing skill base was being
siphoned off to the internet boom, many corporations were forced into
outsourcing the y2k remediation of their core business processes. At
the time, a lot of industry viewed it as not very attractive career
track ... since it had a specific end (and the internet explosion was
obviously going to go on forever).

The issue was then that the internet boom faltered soon after the y2k
remediation projects finished. You now had a bunch of internet gurus
competing for jobs with people that had worked on y2k remediation
... and a lot of these jobs were associated with the long term core
business processes (which had been around before the internet boom,
around during the internet boom, and around long after the internet
boom). Who had a lot of the skills to deal with these long term core
business process systems? ... the companies in India and China that
had earlier taken the Y2K remediation work (that lots of people
weren't interested in). The business relationships built up as part of
Y2k remediation projects (as well as skills acquired) served these
outsourcing companies well afterwards (helping accelerate a lot of
other outsourcing).

The other point made was that the half of the skill base that had
contributed to making the internet boom possible (i.e. the foreign
born technical experts) ... where now finding that returning home was
starting to look a lot more attractive ... aka whole industry
activities were moving out of the country.

In the early 90s when we were doing some technical recruiting at
cal. univ., we were finding that the ONLY 4.0 students were from
foreign born countries. In the mid-90s, I saw stories about a
significant number of these foreign born students were on
gov. scholorships (from their native country) and that they were
expected to graduate (preferrably w/4.0), enter various critically
identified industry jobs ... and after a period of 5-10 years ...
return home, bringing skills back with them. I was told about some
areas in major us corporations that had whole departments (in specific
areas, one such cited was optics; aka optical computing, fiber-optics,
lasers, etc) totally staffed by foreign born individuals that had been
on (their native gov.) funded scholarships and expected to return home
at some point.

I got bits and pieces recently of somebody reporting economic analysis
(on Bloomberg?)  that included some numbers about current
engineers/technical graduates. The numbers that I believe were China
was now graduating something like 400,000, Russia (I may have gotten
that wrong, possibly it was India instead) was now graduating
something like 300,000 and US was currently graduating only something
like 20,000.

the issue for possibly at least the last 20 years wasn't if it would
happen, but when. the competition created by the internet boom and y2k
remediation (happening concurrently) helped make it sooner rather than
later (since companies were being forced to ship y2k remediation work,
for core business processes, overseas, in part because so much of the
us computer skills were being siphoned off into the internet boom;
this in turn laid in place numerous outsourcing business relationships
... that should have otherwise taken much longer to evolve).

past postings commenting about outsourcing y2k remediation work laying
much of the business groundwork for continuing outsourcing activity.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#57 OT: The dynamics of the Indian IT industry
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#56 Offshore IT ... again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#2 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#16 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#24 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#29 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#32 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#37 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#38 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#42 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#43 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#50 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#52 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#18 IT jobs move to India
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#19 IT jobs move to India
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#14 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#18 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#39 Who said "The Mainframe is dead"?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#5 I am an ageing techy, expert on everything. Let me explain the Middle East to you
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#18 Low Bar for High School Students Threatens Tech Sector
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#22 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#30 Many engineers lack even a four-year degree
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#30 I am an ageing techy, expert on everything. Let me explain the
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#52 360 longevity, was RISCs too close to hardware?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#66 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#20 I told you ... everybody is going to Dalian,China
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#16 Outsourcing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#16 Is a Hurricane about to hit IBM ?

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

TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 14:04:09 -0600

Shmuel Metz , Seymour J. wrote:

The interval timer caused interference with memory accesses, which was
more of a problem for I/O channels than for the CPU. It was an
autodecrement word in low storage, and caused an interrupt when it hit
zero. The largest possible interval was a matter of hours, so OS/360
used something called the 6-hour pseudo clock to deal with wraparound
issues.

somewhat idle observation about memory contention ... but the 360/65 and
360/67 were essentially the same hardware with dynamic address
translation (DAT) box added to the 360/67. The 360/67 could be run with
plain vanilla os/360 operating system (w/o activating DAT) and it
appeared to act in all respects like a 360/65.

the 360/67 multiprocessor was a different animal. it had provisions for
multi-ported memory (processors and i/o access concurrently to memory).
It also had a "channel controller" ... allowing all processors to access
all channels ... something not seen again until 3081 with 370/xa.

the multi-ported hardware introduced about a 10percent additional memory
access latency (but reduced memory contention). a 360/67 "half-duplex"
running purely compute bound application ... had a "MIP" rate that was
about ten percent less than a "simplex" 360/67 (or 360/65).

However, cambridge science center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

had an opportunity to replace a 360/67 "simplex" with a 360/67
"half-duplex" ... running the identical same software, workload, and
configuration. The "half-duplex" had approximately 20 precent higher
processor thruput than the "simplex". This would appear to imply that
on a standard 360 (65 or 67) that I/O memory contention could have
possibly 30 percent impact on processor thruput (aka the "half-duplex"
with no memory contention was nominally ten percent slower than simplex
... but under normal i/o load and memory contention, memory contention
appeared to have slowed down a "simplex" processor until it was
approx. 20% slower than "half-duplex" ... rather than 10% faster).

TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 20:24:44 -0600

for a detail description of architecture operations ... the reference is
principles of operation
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/CCONTENTS?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DN=SA22-7832-03&DT=2004050412120

section 4.6 timing
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9AR004/4.6?SHELF=EZ2HW125&DT=19970613131822

section 4.6.1 time-of-day clock
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9AR004/4.6.1?SHELF=EZ2HW125&DT=19970613131822

section 4.6.1.1 format
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9AR004/4.6.1.1?SHELF=EZ2HW125&DT=19970613131822&CASE=

section 4.6.1.4 setting and inspecting the clock (including some
description of UTC)
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9AR004/4.6.1.4?SHELF=EZ2HW125&DT=19970613131822&CASE=

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:21:41 -0600

greymaus writes:

My point, and what I was trying to say, is that costs should be
proportional to use..

and my point is that "prices" should be proportional to costs.  if you
have "prices" significantly different than costs you can be
encouraging extremely bad/poor economic behavior. If it costs $2 to
grow something in a greenhouse next door and it costs .25 to grow the
same something in San Janquine valley ... and the price of shipping
something from San Janquine valley to your location is .25 ... then
you might have somebody selling that something in your local area for
.75.

this would be poor economics if the fully loaded infrastructure costs
to transport the something from San Janquine valley to your location
is $5 (the overall infrastructure would have to cover the difference
in some kind of subsidy in support of bad/poor economic behavior).

another case might be corporations being encouraged to grow rice
during a draught period when everybody else is having their water
rationed.

the fully loaded cost of a consumer vehicle using the highway is
negligable ... other than possibly apportioning some small fraction of
the original build costs of the highway. the fully loaded costs of a
heavy truck using a highway is enormous ... since the whole highway
design, build costs, and depreciation (wear & tear) is totally related
to the number of heavy truck axle loads. in this scenario is that the
cost of a heavy truck using a highway is enormously larger than the
cost of a consumer vehicle using the highway. however, the road use
fuel tax method results in only a trivial differentiation between
consumer vehicle use and heavy truck use.

the closer corollary is flat-rate pricing ... say two people submit
jobs to be run in dataprocessing service ... one job consumes a few
seconds of processor time, no i/o, no disk space ... the other job
consumers days of processor time, enormous amounts of i/o, and huge
disk resources. since they both have used the system by submitting
jobs, a flat-rate pricing would charge both of the jobs exactly the
same.

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:29:17 -0600

greymaus writes:

Reports from Germany are that second generation Turks are becoming
alienated from German society .. retreating into Turkish ghettos..
Some only able to speak Turkish.. Must enquire further. Not a good
development, if it proves to be true. Same thing happening among the
Moroccan and Algerian immigrants in France.. Again, bad direction.

the "guest worker" issues in various parts of Europe date back at
least two decades (at least based on remembering business trips and
seeing articles in the local press). I remember being on a business
trip in Zurich 10-15 years ago and they had a large population of
guest workers from a country that had just won the world cup. there
were large celebrations that night which somewhat then contributed to
number of guest worker articles in the press.

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:45:30 -0600

jmfbahciv writes:

This method bothers me.  It doesn't include a consumer's part of the
cost.  I may never use a road but I sure as hell use the products
that are trucked on that road.  To dump the costs of development and
maintenance on the truckers seems to be an inefficient way of
funding the infrastructure.  It implies that the payments of these
costs have to filther through more hands
(trucker->depot->distributor->retailer->consumer->garbage).

the issue is that if an infrastructure has enormously hidden subsidies
... consumers might not make valid informed economic buying decisions.
The transportion of goods increase their costs ... if those costs
aren't directly exposed ... people may be encouraged to consume
significant amounts of goods with enormous (hidden) transportation
costs.

It is possible that a certain level of transportion infrastructure is
in the national interest ... not just for invidiual consumers ...  and
therefor should be subsidized. However, roads are designed, built, and
maintained based on the number of heavy truck axle-loads.

Completely hiding the true subsidized costs ... might encourage
consumers to make economic buying decisions that increase the number
of heavy truck axle-loads by a factor of ten or hundred times more
than what was deamed necessary in the national interest. This could
lead to enormous and unnecessary expediture of resources ... far in
excess of what had been anticipated in any original policy planning
decision.

If heavy trucking had to pay fully loaded infrastructure represented
by their mile-axle-load activity ... the price of goods they transport
would then be increased. then consumers would be better able to make
informed buying decisions. this would be market forces at work and
potentially result in more optimimal use of resources. when true
infrastructure costs are hidden and not exposed ... then the
efficiency of market forces to optimally utilize resources can be
significantly subverted.

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:56:43 -0600

jmfbahciv writes:

Now learn where the monies of the auto makers are going.  They
cannot afford R&D.  The US can't afford R&D for the same reasons.
The US doesn't spend most of their money on war; they spend the most
money on dying people.  According to the people I heard on CSPAN
last night, it's a trillion US dollars/year.

the comptroller general talk had something about there being enormous
increases in gov. spending as a percent of gnp over the past 50 years
... however the defense budget as percent of gnp is the same as it was
50 years ago.
http://www.gao.gov/cghome/nat408/index.html America's Fiscal Future

there was some other article for long-existing US steel companies ...
that something like 50percent of their current costs come from
retirement benefits that they are now paying. this somewhat comes from
the long years of NOT having fully funded retirement plans (rather
than fully contributing during the years that the retirement
obligation were incurred, leave it to paying out of future operating
revenue).  Some number of companies are declaring backruptcy just to
get out from under the enormous retirement benefits ... that they had
dutifully avoided fully funding for so many years (effectly
transferring the burden to the gov).

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 11:00:40 -0600

jmfbahciv writes:

Yes.  However, there are applications where this conservatism
is the ideal method; military is an example.  You cannot have
the strategy for winning the war (I think I'm using the correct
term) decided at the grunt level.  hmm...Now I've just mixed me
all up.  I may actually be learning this stuff.

Boyd scenario is that the overall strategic objectives are decided at
the top and the low-level tactical decisions are made as low as
possible (in part, how to actually go about doing something).  The
heavy, top-down structure makes both the strategic and any local,
tactical decisions at the top.

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 11:05:39 -0600

I remember various visits to Sweden and the apparent dichotomy faced
by gov. liqueur stores. The gov. had taken over the selling of liqueur
and imposed enormouse taxes to discourage consumption (as national
policy?). However, the gov. liqueur stores were also running TV
advertisements for their products.

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

TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 11:09:46 -0600

"Tim Shoppa" writes:

Interesting. So the hardware clock is actual ticks since the beginning
of the epoch, and the programmer is responsible for adding in leap
seconds etc.

i got to spend 3 months on a timer "task force" with others in the
early 70s as part of defining 370 clock. the two major discussions
that i remember were

1) the epoch was original stated as being the start of the centry
... so was the time since 1jan1990 or 1jan1990

2) what to do about leap seconds.

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

TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 11:49:48 -0600

oops, finger slip

should have been: 1jan1900 or 1jan1901

the problem with the original definition is that most people thot that
the century began 1jan1900 ... when it actually began 1jan1991. so
do you enforce the original definition or just go with the public.

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 12:16:14 -0600

lets say you have a heavily loaded highway infrastructure that was
built for a specific number of heavy truck axle-loads; i.e. the
highway design specifications say that highways are designed and have
lifetimes based purely on the number of heavy truck axle-loads.
futhermore, consumer vehicle use has no impact on the design, wear and
tear, lifetime, etc of the highway.

Nominally "use" based pricing involves an assumption that "use" is
proportional to cost/overhead related to the use. The assumption is
not valid if there is strong bi-model distribution of use ... where
majority of "use" has nearly zero cost and the other major
distribution "use" involves effectively all of the cost. A nominal
objective is to have the total revenue cover the total costs.

if longhaul goods appear cheaper than local goods (possibly because of
the heavy transportation subsidy), consumers could decide to increase
their purchase of distance goods by a factor of 100 (because the heavy
subsidy is distorting efficiency of market forces). Increasing the
purchase of distance goods by a factor of 100 could increase the
number of heavy truck axle-loads by a factor of one hundred.
Increasing the number of heavy truck axle-loads by a factor of one
hundred can result in the road wearing out 100 times faster (than
possibly the original subsidy decision had budgeted for).

in the current subsidy infrastructure, the primary way of increasing
the subsidy by 100 times is by encouraging consumer vehicle traffic to
increase 100 times (resulting in consumer vehicles using 100 times
more fuel and paying 100 times more road use fuel tax). since consumer
vehicle use of the highway is stated as having negligable effect on
the highway ... nearly all consumer vehicle use and the related road
use fule tax for consumer vehicle use is pure revenue (having neglible
effect on highway lifetime, maintenance, etc costs at all).

Therefor the total amount of the revenue from consumer vehicle use of
the infrastructure (which has neglible cost impact on that
infrastructure) can be used to offset the cost impact attributed to
the number of heavy truck axle-loads (which is the primary
factor/thing that affects use-cost for highway design, maintenance,
and lifetime).

ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#44 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#2 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#5 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#10 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#19 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#24 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#26 The Pankian Metaphor

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

TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 12:24:38 -0600

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:

finger slip

1jan1990 or 1jan1991

the problem with the original definition is that most people thot that
the century began 1jan1990 ... when it actually began 1jan1991. so
do you enforce the original definition or just go with the public.

manage two different finger slips

1jan1900 or 1jan1901

the problem with the original definition is that most people thot that
the century began 1jan1900 ... when it actually began 1jan1901. so
do you enforce the original definition or just go with the public.

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 14:52:04 -0600

Walter Bushell writes:

But the cost to consumers would be distributed by how much shipping
they use and not by how much driving they do. It would mean farming
in NY state would be much more attractive relative to California.

Fair cost accounting is necessary for free markets to behave properly.
Not charging the damage to the roads by trucking to the truckers
damages the railroads, and takes money out of people who drive.

the other way of looking at it is that the market derives its
efficiency from supposedly being a dynamic adaptive feedback system.

i had done a lot of dynamic adaptive feedback systems as an
undergraduate in the 60s ... my implementations being picked up and
shipped in products. some of the implementation was dropped in the
morphing from 360s to 370s in the early 70s ... but a couple years
later I was allowed to reduce it as separate Resource Manager product
... the 30th ann. of the "blue letter" announcement coming up on May
11th.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

so a big part of a dynamic adaptive feedback systems is

1) the decisions are based on accurate information (requirement for
good metrics and instrumentation)

2) effective control mechanisms.

The efficiency of the market feedback control system is, in
part, based on what the market (consumers frequently, but not
necessarily exclusively) are willing to pay (as an effective control
merchanism, from #2 above). The problem is that subsidies can
significantly distort the accuracy of the information (true, fully
loaded infrastructure costs ... as opposed to some price that may have
little or nothing to do with fully loaded infrastructure costs).

So not charging the fully loaded price ... can significantly skew the
market behavior as well as the efficiency of the market
paradigm.

A trivial example goes back to one of the opening examples about
provisions in the tax code for certain types of tax-free bonds
i.e. like in support of miniciple water purification plant. There
becomes a gov. policy that the building of miniciple water
purification plants should be encouraged for the good of the community
and nation. Maing the bonds for building miniciple water purification
plants mean that the local district doesn't have to pay as much to
attract investment (reducing the cost to build the plants).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#43 The Pankian Metaphor

For a little drift from dynamic adaptive feedback market forces ...
you can have quiet a bit of confusion in legislative bodies when they
have difficulty in reconciling

1) policies encouraging the building of water treatment plants through
the provisions for tax-free bonds (lowering the cost and overhead to
attract investment for the building of the miniciple water treatment
plant)

2) policies where everybody should pay minimum (same or larger)
percentage tax on earned income (regardless of the source of the
income).

Back to dynamic adaptive feedback market forces ... the market
as a dynamic adaptive feedback system can have a very short period
(possibly because lots of people have difficulty looking ahead and/or
they lack any long term memory ability).

Subsidies can adversely affect the efficiency of dynamic adaptive
feedback market by distorting the information (aka prices) that
decisions are based on (in effect, efficiency of the market is
based on prices having something to do with the associated fully
loaded infrastructure costs).

However, dynamic adaptive feedback market .... even with
accurate data may result in less than optimal results if the window
that it operates over is too small.

Part of calibrating the resource manager was a set of couple thousand
automated benchmarks that took three months elapsed time to run.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#bench

After the initial thousand or so benchmarks (large variations in
configurations, workloads, and control functions), the remaining
benchmark characteristics were under the control of a variation of the
performance predictor (implemented in APL).

One of the things that the performance predictor implementation was
programmed for was "hill climbing" algorithm that basically varied
some number of benchmark characteristics looking for optimal
solutions. A well recognized characteristic of such a methodology, is
that if you take into account too small a scope ... you may find the
top of a local hill (i.e. local optimal solution) ... but fail to
find the top of the highest hill (global optimal).

sometimes, gov. polices can be characterized as totally distorting
information (possibly via subsidies) used by the market to
arrive at solution ... resulting in totally undesired outcomes. other
times, gov. policies may skew the information used by the
market to assist it in arriving a more optimal (global)
solution ... by skewing the market information (subsidies, tax
credits, etc) based on larger scope (time) calculations than the
market normally operates with.

One might postulate that the example of the country insisting that all
major companies invest at least X percent of their profits in IT
innovation (or the gov. would take it as taxes) might be example at
attempting the later.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#17 The Pankian Metaphor

misc. past posts mentioning the performance predictor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#46 Withdrawal Announcement 901-218 - No More 'small machines'
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#64 ... the need for a Museum of Computer Software
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#45 cp/67 addenda (cross-post warning)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#28 Origin of XAUTOLOG (x-post)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#15 Disk capacity and backup solutions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#29 Sun researchers: Computers do bad math ;)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#42 command line switches [Re: [REALLY OT!] Overuse of symbolic constants]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#31 capacity planning: art, science or magic?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#10 Multi-processor timing issue
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#1 Self restarting property of RTOS-How it works?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#6 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#33 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#48 Secure design
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#1 Single System Image questions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#15 Exceptions at basic block boundaries
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#12 Performance and Capacity Planning
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#17 More on garbage collection
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#30 auto reIPL
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#34 Not enough parallelism in programming
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#15 {SPAM?} Re: Expanded Storage
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#17 {SPAM?} Re: Expanded Storage
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#22 A very basic question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#30 A very basic question

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

The Pankian Metaphor

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Pankian Metaphor
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 15:36:33 -0600

greymaus writes:

Last time I was in the States, in Washington (!), I asked one of the
locals how far one would have to drive to see real countryside... He
said, 40-50 miles, inside that big fed outfits (Fort Meade).. country
estates, stud farms... Airports.. I remember vegetable farms on Staten
Island, any there now?. All based on cheap transport.

transportation has gotten significantly less expensive than it was
many years ago. for a large physically distributed country
... overcoming distance sensitive issues is good policy.

there are trade-offs. some of the cheap transport can because
it has actually gotten cheaper and less expensive.

However, some may appear to be less cheaper than it actually is. My
original post on this subject
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#42 The Pankian Metaphor

referenced the (state of cal. transportation) documents (that claimed
to be industry standard) for the criteria for building highways
... aka criteria for building highways is based on the number of
planned heavy truck a