List of Archived Posts

2008 Newsgroup Postings (03/06 - 03/27)

independent appraisers

independent appraisers

EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits

Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical

independent appraisers

independent appraisers

Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical

Convergent Technologies vs Sun

Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical

EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits

independent appraisers

independent appraisers

Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical

independent appraisers

independent appraisers

independent appraisers

independent appraisers

independent appraisers

Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire

Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical

independent appraisers

Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical

Study Finds Sharp Math, Science Skills Help Expand Economy

More on GPS troubles

EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits

independent appraisers

independent appraisers

was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

US aerospace and defense sector braces for potential brain drain as Cold War workers retire

Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire

Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire

confluence of virtualization and trusted computing

independent appraisers

EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits

Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire

confluence of virtualization and trusted computing

Object-relational impedence

Panic in Multicore Land

Stalin, Re: Bush - place in history

Can electronic signature bring us non-repudiation and authenticity?

IBM sees decline in number of U.S IT pros, boom in China

US aerospace and defense sector braces for potential brain drain as Cold War workers retire

Panic in Multicore Land

independent appraisers

A new mathematical object was revealed yesterday

China overtakes U.S. as top Web market

independent appraisers

WWII

Wintel, Universities Team On Parallel Programming

How do OTP tokens work?

Toyota's Value Innovation: The Art of Tension

independent appraisers

independent appraisers

independent appraisers

How do OTP tokens work?

WWII

China overtakes U.S. as top Web market

independent appraisers

China overtakes U.S. as top Web market

China overtakes U.S. as top Web market

China overtakes U.S. as top Web market

Primaries (USA)

China overtakes U.S. as top Web market

Antivirus Inventor: Security Departments Are Wasting Their Time

Panic in Multicore Land

China overtakes U.S. as top Web market

IBM System 64

Virtualization's security threats

Virtualization's security threats

China overtakes U.S. as top Web market

Study Finds Sharp Math, Science Skills Help Expand Economy

Bush - place in history

China overtakes U.S. as top Web market

Bush - place in history

Multicore boom needs new developer skills

Bush - place in history

Bush - place in history

Bush - place in history

was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

Bush - place in history

A Super-Efficient Light Bulb

Is IT becoming extinct?

A Super-Efficient Light Bulb

Bush - place in history

was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

Primaries (USA)

Banks failing to manage IT risk - study

Is IT becoming extinct?

Has Banking Industry Overlooked Its Biggest Breach Ever?

Bush - place in history

WWII supplies

was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

Billion-dollar IT failure at Census Bureau

Data Centers Nearing Power-Usage, Cost Crisis

Bush - place in history

Bush - place in history

Bush - place in history

Bush - place in history

Innovation: biggest draw in the West

The Workplace War for Age and Talent

independent appraisers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: independent appraisers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:34:05

Walter Bushell <proto@oanix.com> writes:

That's what I meant, I think. If the bank or reloc company gets to
choose or in this case chose a list with the possibility of "refinement"
by the bank or reloc company, you get the results I specified -- the
only ones working will be the ones who give the bank or reloc company
the answer they want. It has to be a neutral party doing the
certification.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#59 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#66 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#69 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#70 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#76 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#77 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#78 independent appraisers

there have been similar comments about bond/cdo ratings
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#41 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#25 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#63 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#42 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#65 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

independent appraisers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: independent appraisers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:03:44

greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:

Its becoming obvious is that the present problem is just a
continuation of the S&L problem. greenspan is getting the blame,
justified or not

greenspan is federal reserve from the early 80s ... congress gives
federal reserve regulatory control over certain class of
banks. federal reserve can set prime rate for those banks and some
control over money for those banks.

part of the S&L mess was that (non federal reserve regulated) financial
institutions were allowed to reduce their reserves ... and wallstreet
created financial instruments to quickly aborb the newly available funds
... less convoluted than the current toxic CDOs

roll forward into the 90s ... congress repeals Glass-Steagall and
mortgages business changes ... nearly all of it outside the perview of
the federal reserve powers.

cycle of real estate inflation and frenzy speculation ... money wasn't
from deposits at federal reserve regulated financial institutions and
any federal reserve regulated institutions involved were clearing them
from their books ... so it didn't come under either federal reserve or
basel.

subprime decoupled the interest rate from federal reserve prime rate
(effectively by definition). in theory, federal reserve increasing the
prime rate should have cooled the whole mess ... but since it was now
decoupled from the prime rate and federal reserve regulatory control
... it had little effect.

so the bubble eventually bursts and craters with the federal reserve
being asked to step in a fix the mess. since federal reserves increases
to the prime had little effect on preventing the mess ... turning around
and lowering the prime ... isn't likely to appreciably clean up the
mess.

so on the other end ... the mortgage quality ... which should have been
under federal reserve regulatory control (for those institutions that
they have regulatory control over) ... comes back as toxic CDOs. It is no
longer direct loan quality & risk ... it has been turned into something
from wall street ... and bond ratings ... also something the federal
reserve doesn't have regulatory control over. Federal reserve,
retirement funds, etc ... can specify things like triple-A ratings are
required ... but the institutions making those ratings are not under
their control. A somewhat derogatory characterization is that those
loans have been "laundered" thru wallstreet (leave the institution books
as direct loans and comes back as wallstreet investment). however
federal reserve has governance over only small piece of what is going
on.

I would claim it is somewhat analogous to computer scheduling
implementations that 1) didn't have adequate instrumentation about what
really was going on and 2) scheduling decisions had superficial or no
direct control over actual resource consumption. i ran into this doing
resource management implementations as undergraduate in the 60s ...
lots of implementations were frequently layered on top of actual
operational kernel code with little or no direct interaction. misc.
past posts mentioning resource management
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

It may be slightly more related to proposals requiring legislation
having explicit metrics ... i.e. bills have explicit statements about
what they are suppose to accomplish and then regular evaluations whether
the legislation results are in any way related to their stated purpose.
This could have secondary effect that legislation providing gov.
agencies with their regulatory powers ... might require some
demonstartion that the regulatory powers are in any way effective at
achieving the agency's stated purpose.

It is less analogous to slow-start as countermeasure to internet
congestion ... since even tho slow-start has been shown to not be
directly related to congestion and also (or because) an unstable control
mechanism ... it does provide a form of control over the amount packets
dumped into the internet. this is something that we migrated to
rate-based controls ... which provides a much more effective mechanism
for all sorts of things (including congestion control). a couple recent
rate-based postings
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#19 MAINFRAME Training with IBM Certification and JOB GUARANTEE
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#28 MAINFRAME Training with IBM Certification and JOB GUARANTEE

other posts in this particular thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#59 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#66 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#69 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#70 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#76 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#77 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#78 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#0 independent appraisers

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:29:50

EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits
http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/9331

from above:

Integrated circuit piracy has risen in recent years as U.S. companies
started outsourcing production of newer chips with ultra-fine
features. Transferring chip blueprints to overseas locations opened new
doors for bootleggers who have used the chips to make counterfeit MP3
players, cell phones and computers, among other devices.

... snip ...

nearly a decade ago when we were working on what would satisfy
institutions as part of moving to a person-centric paradigm
... we were approached by some of the big fab operators about using a
side-effect to also address the copy-chip problem. It was
different than the above solution ... but would have also addressed
much of the same problem.

recent post mentioning working on person-centric paradigm solution
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#76 independent appraisers

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical ...
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:40:38

Stephen Fuld <S.Fuld@PleaseRemove.att.net> writes:

I remember this, was puzzled then and still remain puzzled.  How could
it be better to use some memory as a paging device, actually moving
data around in memory than simply using it as additional memory to
hold those same pages?  It certainly is counter-intuitive!  Can you
describe the problems with the page replacement algorithm
implementations that caused this anomalous behavior?

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#40 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical

smaller real storage would result in cycling the reference bits more
often ... leading to improved differentiation of what was being used
within periods of time ... larger real storage extended the interval so
that there was less differentiation about actual page use (i.e. all
pages with any use at all during the extended period appeared to be
equally used).

there is also some possibility that the effective operation may
degenerate to FIFO ... aka default LRU can degenerate to FIFO ...
reference to coding slight of hand where LRU degenerates to random
instead of FIFO:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#16 Kernels

lots of posts about doing replacement algorithms dating
back to undergraduate in 60s
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

which 15 or so yrs later got me dragged into battle somebody was having
getting their Phd from stanford ... recent post:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#65 No Glory for the PDP-15

old communication on the subject
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email821019

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

independent appraisers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: independent appraisers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:32:16

jmfbahciv writes:

This makes no sense.  If the owner didn't occupy the house and the
house was occupied before the bubble breakage, then the people
living in the house had to be renting.  Just because the ownership
is in question should not force the people living there to vacate.
Their rent would be going into an escrow account or something.

These reports of vacancies are not making any sense to me at all.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#78 independent appraisers

i haven't actually seen percent numbers ... but i saw quite a few
"speculation" vacancies ... person sold to a speculator (and moved out
... or it was brand new property and never occupied) ... depending on
how long the speculator was planning on holding the property ... they
may or may not have felt that it was worth having tenent paying rent
during the speculation period. when the bubble bursts ... all of those
properties would be vacant.

somebody buys a property for $500k and expects to clear $50k after
holding it for a year. with no down and 3percent subprime ... they
would have $15k loan cost. the question is do they want the headache
of dealing with a tenant for the period. the loan cost is $15k and the
return is $50k ... say on the order of 300percent ROI in a year.
Especially if it is brand new property ... not ever having anybody
living it could be attractive. If it wasn't a brand new property, the
speculator may have had somebody come in a do some superficial work
...  and then wait for new buyer ... tenents could just represent
unnecessary complication for the flip.

in any case, just another example of nobody minding the store ... just
cranking out the mortgages as fast as possible ... and figuring that
since the mortgages will almost immediately be unloaded ... loan
quality was going to be somebody else's problem ... not theirs. if the
people buying the mortgages weren't evaluating the loan quality
... why should the originating lenders? this is somewhat the reference
to the musical chairs analogy (who is left holding the bag when the
bubble bursts)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#70 independent appraisers

... and effectively all of this outside of the federal reserve
regulatory authority

other posts in the thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#59 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#66 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#69 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#76 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#77 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#0 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#1 independent appraisers

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

independent appraisers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: independent appraisers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2008 10:08:08

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#78 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#4 independent appraisers

non-owner-occupied speculators ... holding properties off the market
for year or so ... would tend to inflate the apparent demand ...
helping fuel real estate price inflation (and also contributing to
over building).

speculators who anticipate real demand ... can rev up the suppliers to
start producing additional product before the demand actually
materializes.

however, later in the cycle ... i conjecture that economic modeling of
speculators, effectively holding product off the market ... would
start to look more like hording ... creating appearance of demand in
excess of actual. then the incremental, artificial scarcity goes thru
period of adjustment. an analogous hording of consumable products
tends to go thru more rapid adjustment. non-owner-occupied speculation
properties, using the hording analogy ... contributes to additional
property inflation ... which will have to go through an adjustment
period (when the anticipated demand doesn't immediately materialize).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical ...
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:36:12

Stephen Fuld <S.Fuld@PleaseRemove.att.net> writes:

I think I understand what you are saying, but given the availability
of scatter/gather I/O (data chaining in IBM speak), such aggregation
is just as easy from real memory as it is from extended.  Thus there
is no advantage to moving the pages to some special location to
aggregate them, and you have to pay the cost of the move.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#3 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical ...

3090 extended store had a synchronous fast move instruction custom for
the extended store ... sort of like a customized 4k move ... and
possibly also didn't affect processor cache (other than invalidates
... but didn't actually drag thru cache). i/o was not possible to
"extended store" ... i.e. any pages in extended stored that "aged out"
would have to be copied back to regular memory before doing any i/o.
one might consider this analogous to "page migration" ... something i
had implemented for fixed-head (and electronic store) paging disks in
the 70s (required moving pages back into storage before writting to
lower thruput disks) ... actually the page migration was more
generalized ... but fixed-head to non-fixed-head was most apparent
effect.

a little before 3090 (early 80s starting with 308x) ... both mvs and
vm got "big pages" ... basically custom page replacement that
attempted to aggregate a full track of a process pages (10 for 3380)
for a single transfer out. a subsequent fault on any member of a "big
page" ... would fetch all pages in a big page. the issue was
effectively trading off real storage (fetch of 40k) against 3380
access bottleneck (i.e. random access for 3380 vis-a-vis 3330 only
went up moderately ... but transfer rate went up by a factor of ten
times). the idea was somewhat approximate the thruput of fixed-head
disks ... with the much less expensive 3380s (attempting to always
perform full track operation per access, possibly even doing multiple
full track operations at the same cylinder position ... before any
requirement to move the arm).

big pages implemented a log-structured filesystem kind of logic (i.e.
disk arm access optimization) allocated space supporting the operation
was possibly ten times expected use ... moving cursor progressed
across surface ... with new write of a big page always going to next
available track on the leading edge of the moving cursor. advantage of
paging strategy (vis-a-vis log-structured filesystem) was there was no
"clean-up" requirement to periodically consolidate scattered written
file records into consecutive locations.

discussion around recent releases imply that support for "big pages"
has been dropped because associated processor overhead was exceeding
the benefit.

the original purpose of 3090 extended store was because of physical
packaging and requiring something that differentiated storage with
longer latency. this is somewhat akin to the old 360 LCS ... where
there was variety of both kinds of implementation ... 1) execution
directly out of LCS (with latency on every load/store) and 2) copying
from LCS down to faster storage. 3090 extended store only provided
hardware support for the "copying" strategy.

later machine generations addressed the latency associated with
physical packaging. however, it was still possible to configurate
microcode to partition standard memory as (hardware) emulated
"extended store".
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#40 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical ...

the issue was that there was some experience with customers getting
better thruput with some configured extended store (trading off lower
amount of standard addressable storage for some amount of extended
storage). one could claim that a better algorithm implementation could
approach the accuracy of working with smaller amounts of real memory
...  while obtaining the benefits of having one global addressable
memory (w/o requiring moving overhead).

for total other topic drift ... there was project to craft HiPPI I/O
support onto 3090 ... but standard channel interface wouldn't support
the 100mbyte/sec transfer ... so there was a hack to craft HiPPI
support into the side of the extended store bus. since the processor
didn't actually have channel program capability on the extended store
bus ...  I/O commands were implemented using a peek/poke kind of
architecture (using the extended store, 4k "copy" instructions to peek
& poke to reserved extended store addresses).

for other topic drift ... past posts discussing big page (i.e. full
track transfers of multiple regular pages) implementation from early
80s:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#60 Defrag in linux? - Newbie question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#20 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#29 Page size (was: VAX, M68K complex instructions)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#48 Swapper was Re: History of Login Names
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#8 What are some impressive page rates?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#11 What are some impressive page rates?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#20 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#36 Do any architectures use instruction count instead of timer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#4 Handling variable page sizes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#7 Handling variable page sizes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#69 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#21 PDP10 and RISC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#5 Alpha performance, why?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#9 Alpha performance, why?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#16 Alpha performance, why?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#48 Alpha performance, why?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#12 Page Table - per OS/Process
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#61 1teraflops cell processor possible?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#62 1teraflops cell processor possible?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#13 Holee shit!  30 years ago!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#16 Paging query - progress
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#22 Shipwrecks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#39 100% CPU is not always bad
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#15 Exceptions at basic block boundaries
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#51  Q ALLOC PAGE vs. CP Q ALLOC vs ESAMAP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#41 25% Pageds utilization on 3390-09?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#18 Code density and performance?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#19 Code density and performance?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#21 Code density and performance?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#22 Code density and performance?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#2 virtual memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#3 virtual memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#4 virtual memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#11 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#13 virtual memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#35 REAL memory column in SDSF
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#37 REAL memory column in SDSF
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#39 REAL memory column in SDSF
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#18 Why magnetic drums was/are worse than disks ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#43 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#9 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#32 reading erased bits

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Convergent Technologies vs Sun

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Convergent Technologies vs Sun
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:58:32

Lon <lon.stowell@comcast.net> writes:

I would argue that although SNA and CCITT stacks in general were on
their way to the fossil yards, a major contributor may have been a
focus on TCP and let the big boys and girls fritter all their money
away on the designed by committee collosal waste of time, the 7 layer
model and OSI.    I wonder how much money IBM alone wasted in sheer
white papers attempting to claim that the old 3 layer SNA that could
be somehow stretched into a 5 layer SNA was really a full 7 layer
implementation.
Whereas with few exceptions, TCP was good enough that only a few
misguided networks were ever implemented with OSI.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#73 Convergent Technologies vs Sun
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#74 Convergent Technologies vs Sun

i've frequently claimed that the big advantage that IP brought was
internetworking and gateways. first generation networking viewed things
qmuch more as a single domain. the dramatic advantage that
internetworking and gateways brought was being able to interoperate
across multiple, fairly independent domains. part of IP secret was that
it made it fairly transparent to the end-user whether they were
interacting in the local domain or across multiple domains.

i've also observed that the internal network (non-sna)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

and possibly the major reason that it was larger than the
arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until mid-85 ... was
because each node contained a form of gateway support ... somewhat
simplifying interconnecting multiple domains.

removing impediment for interconnecting multiple domains didn't come to
arpanet/internet until the cut-over to internetworking protocol on
1/1/83.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical ...
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:57:57

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

Yes, but THAT extended store was designed to be cheaper by providing
ONLY such operations - i.e. the hardware couldn't be used as general
memory.  I thought that this thread was about using part of general
memory as an in-store paging device.

just mentioning runup to the situation ... and it actually wasn't
designed to be cheaper ... they would have preferred to not have
extended store at all. 3090 system thruput could benefit from the
additional storage.

3090 extended store was same physical memory technology but physical
packaging resulted in different latency ... so they somewhat backed into
putting it on a different bus ... that was wider and only operated with
special move instruction (it wasn't as good as single global addressable
memory ... but it was much better than having to do physical i/o).

later machines eliminated the physical packaging differentiation ...
but provided microcode configuration option to use regular memory
technology as (microcode/hardware) emulated extended storage ...  and
customers could select to treat storage as single global address space
... or partitioned between standard addressable storage and emulated
extended storage.

posts in this thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#40 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#3 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#6 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical

for other thread drift ... current generations of machines have separate
dedicated HSA (hardware storage area) ... uses include "system" disk
record caching:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#91 Z10 presentation on 26 Feb
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#31 IBM announce Z10 ..why so fast...any problem on z 9
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#39 IBM announce Z10 ..why so fast...any problem on z 9

as previously mentioned, in the late 70s, we did a special
implementation that would capture all disk record number access ... and
it was installed on several different systems in the san jose area
... capturing live activity for various kinds of application work
(engineering timesharing, administrative business, development,
etc). The information was used in I/O cache simulation ... which looked
at variety of different caching strategies.  One of the findings was
that for a given amount of electronic storage (for cache), optimal
system performance was with using all the storage as single global
system cache ... as opposed to various kinds of partitioning strategies
(where total aggregate electronic cache storage remained the
same)... channel level caches, control unit level caches, device level
caches.

This cache simulation work tended to validate my earlier findings in the
60s (as undergraduate) that global LRU implementation strategies
outperformed "local LRU" implementations (where "local LRU" is
equivalent to partitioning storage into various kinds of subsets).

These findings would also tend to support that single global addressable
area would outperform subsetting it into two different areas ... one of
them a simulated electronic paging device. For subsetting with some sort
of emulated electronic paging device, to provide improved throughput
... would indicate some kind of deficiency/idiosyncrasy in the
implementation (that the configuration variations, compensate for)

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2008 09:26:44

Chris Barts <chbarts+usenet@gmail.com> writes:

This sounds like a perfect opportunity for the shadier gray-market
operations to flood the "ordinary phone line or Internet connection"
with bogus requests, thus preventing the fabs that play by the rules
from making working chips. Maybe contract a worm maker to slip some
DDoS code into the next XP-killer and have the horde of zombies around
the world attack.

Even if nobody explicitly attacks it, a phone/Internet connection can
be a very fragile single point of failure. Vide the recent Mediterranean
outages. Don't fabs work on a rather thin margin? Wouldn't that be eaten
quite comprehensively by a few hours of unplanned downtime? Seems the
students behind this EPIC failure-to-be need to go back to class and
learn how the real world (fails to) work.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#2 EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits

lots of people have looked at skimming off cream by moving things to an
internet base w/o actually deploying an industrial strength operation
(aka nearly zero infrastructure cost overhead) ... one could claim that
it is on par with real estate speculators looking at 100precent (or
better) ROI/annum
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#4 independent appraisers

more than a decade ago, i gave a talk at combination IETF editor, ISI,
and USC graduate student seminar about why the base internet wasn't an
industrial strength operation.

lots of move to electronic commerce on the internet ... is the reduced
cost of doing business.

when we were out marketing our ha/cmp product
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

we coined the terms geographic survivability and disaster survivability
to differentiate from disaster/recovery. we looked at general scenario
of availability ... various kinds of environmental hazards, things like
floods ... but also attacks (aka single point of failure)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#available

later we were asked to consult with a small client/server startup that
wanted to do payment transactions on their server ... which is now
frequently referred to as electronic commerce ... which included
something called a payment gateway
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

one can make similar claims about electronic commerce having similar
environmental hazard vulnerabilities ... in fact, any internet
attachment ... and can have requirements for continuous available
operation ... and failure/attack countermeasures.
lots of past posts mentioning risk, fraud, vulnerabilities, exploits,
threats
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#fraud

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

independent appraisers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: independent appraisers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2008 10:27:50

Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:

The BigBadBank may be in a squeeze themselves, and may have to
sell off a bundle of loans to BiggerBadderBank at a discount. Rates
between these vary, but 60-85% of original value is a common band.
Reserve requirements often force banks to do this. They try to
hand off the most sellable items, normally loans that are only
slightly distressed, but still perfectly performing.

just caught tailend of business tv program that (i believe) made the
statement that UBS is unloading $22billion in mortgages (CDOs?) for
seventy cents on the dollar.

other posts in this thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#59 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#66 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#69 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#70 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#76 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#77 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#78 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#0 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#1 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#4 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#5 independent appraisers

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

independent appraisers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: independent appraisers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2008 10:47:19

jmfbahciv writes:

One of the special news reports this morning said that the people
selling the real estate were also issuing the loans.  Separation
of powers was not happening in this economic sector.  There were
no checks and balances...that's what happened with the S&Ls--the
checks and balances were removed by Congress.

back to the first post in this thread
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#59 independent appraisers

... issue in the 80s was some amount of property evaluation was
fraudulent ... which needed to be fixed ... also mentioned in
this old, frequently referenced post from the last century
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm The Thread Between Risk Management and Information Security

the above thread also talks about how to carry trusted property/mortgage
valuation thru the whole process as the mortgages got securitized
... i.e.

to be able to have an evidentiary trail to asset securitization pools
that are traded on the secondary market

however, there is not only the original evaluation ... but ongoing
real-time characteristics associated with the individual loans.

some recent posts mentioning dataprocessing required for evaluating the
aggregate characteristics of these asset securitization pools
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#25 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#66 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#70 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#21 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#87 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical ...
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2008 13:32:08

Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:

The "large memory" patches to BSD and Linux, to support >4G (3.75G, actually)
on a 32-bit ISA work in this fashion, plus some remapping of page tables.

Now there are 4 layers of memory; the 640k for booting, the 16M for
old-style DMA and 24-bit processes, 4G for 32-bit access, and the
"large memory" beyond 4G.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#40 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#3 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#6 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#8 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical

the "original" of this was 3033 >16mbyte support.

360/67 had 24bit and 32bit addressing modes ... 370 retrenched to just
24bit addressing (real & virtual) modes.

come up to 3033 ... disks had relative slower system thruput, fixed
storage requirements were increasing , 3033 was running into real
thruput crunch with 16mbyte real memory constraint.

370 architecture had 16bit page table entry ... 12 bit real (4k byte)
page number, 2 defined bits and 2 undefined bits. 3033 did a hack to
allow addressing 64mbytes ... by allowing the 2 undefined bits to be
concatenated to the 12bit page number (for 14bit number). real & virtual
addressing was still limited to 24bit ... but pagetable/tlb could
translate that into 26bit address.

normal channel programs were 24bit ... but "IDALs" (indirect data access
lists) were introduced with for 370 channel programs ... which had 31bit
address field for data transfers. the original objective of IDALs was
that CCWs in channel programs have to be processed synchronously and
prefetching wasn't allowed. the "problem" was scatter/gather i/o
transfers crossing page boundaries and non-contiguous ... which in 360
required data-chaining. however, there were some situation where there
would be overrun because the (data-chaining) chained to CCW couldn't be
fetched within the time constraints. IDAL addresses were allowed to be
prefetched ... which facilitated converting virtually contiguous data
transfers ... to non-contiguous real data transfers (because of
non-contiguous virtual pages).

in any case, IDAL allowed for channel programs on 3033 to do i/o into
and out of real storage above the 16mbyte line (although all the actual
channel programs had to exist below the 16mbyte line).

the remaining problem was that their were certain operations requiring
virtual pages to be below the 16mbyte line ... if the page had
originally been above the 16mbyte line ... it then would have to be
moved below the line. an early design called for writing such a page to
disk and then bringing it back in below the 16mbyte line. i did a hack
for them that fiddled some page table entries and used a MVCL in special
virtual address space to move virtual pages back and forth between below
the 16mbyte line and above the 16mbyte line.

old email reference trying to explain that the page table, MVCL hack was
much better than the I/O strategy.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#email800121

old email discussing perturbations to global LRU with two distinct
areas for virtual pages (above and below the 16mbyte line)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#email860124

other old email discussing global LRU
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#globallru

posts mentioning page replacement algorithms
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

past posts discussing the 3033 >16mbyte hack
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#82 "all-out" vs less aggressive designs (was: Re: 36 to 32 bit transition)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#4 Alpha performance, why?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#24 New RFC 3514 addresses malicious network traffic
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#34 Playing games in mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#8 were dumb terminals actually so dumb???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#41 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#38 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#44 Wars against bad things
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#34 increasing addressable memory via paged memory?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#19 address space
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#30 HASP/ASP JES/JES2/JES3
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#44 POWER6 on zSeries?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#13 VM maclib reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#2 virtual memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#27 Old Hashing Routine
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#23 Multiple mappings
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#34 Just another example of mainframe costs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#59 IBM to the PCM market(the sky is falling!!!the sky is falling!!)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#56 CSA 'above the bar'

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

independent appraisers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: independent appraisers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2008 14:08:00

jmfbahciv writes:

But the chairman is not trying; he can't do anything.  IMO he
did exactly the wrong thing just to pretend he was trying.

he can do things that he has authority to do and/or control over.

my assertion has been that the majority of the problem exists outside
the area that the federal reserve has control over.

federal reserve can increase/decrease prime rate to banks under federal
reserve authority

subprime mortgages were effectively decoupled from the prime rate

federal reserve can increase/decrease funds to banks under federal
reserve authority

asset securitization was obtaining funds from wall street as well as
moving the loans off financial institution books.

as in the S&L crisis ... large percentage of institutions
originating subprime mortgages weren't under authority of federal
reserve.

asset securitization had moved stuff that had been primarily banking
function (over which the federal reserve has some control over) to
wallstreet (which the federal reserve has little control over ... and is
normally treated in significantly more lax manner than banking).

repeal of Glass-Steagall wiki page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-Steagall_Act

from above:

On November 12, 1999, President Bill Clinton signed into law the
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of
1933. One of the effects of the repeal is it allowed commercial &
investment banks to consolidate.[citation needed] Economist Robert
Kuttner has criticized the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act as
contributing to the 2007 subprime mortgage financial crisis.

... snip ...

above wiki reference has URL to PBS program on "The Long Demise of
Glass-Steagall "
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/demise.html

from above:

Following the merger announcement on April 6, 1998, Weill immediately
plunges into a public-relations and lobbying campaign for the repeal of
Glass-Steagall and passage of new financial services legislation (what
becomes the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999). One week
before the Citibank-Travelers deal was announced, Congress had shelved
its latest effort to repeal Glass-Steagall. Weill cranks up a new effort
to revive bill.

... snip ...

misc. past posts mentioning Glass-Steagall:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#11 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#87 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#42 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study

other past posts in this thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#59 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#66 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#69 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#70 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#76 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#77 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#78 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#0 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#1 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#4 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#5 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#10 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#11 independent appraisers

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

independent appraisers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: independent appraisers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:59:10

Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:

Just the thing I spoke about; although 70% seems low.

Here it would be a very useful defense for the homeowner to
be able to take over his own debt at the given rate, and get a
BigFriendlyBank or Corporation to take over the debt at the
reduced rate. At 70%, and a long horizon on the loan most
homeowners should be able to cope again.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#10 independent appraisers

UBS Declines on Report "Fire Sale" May Lead to More Writedowns
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=a3vVSQtKj2uM&refer=europe

from abvoe:

UBS AG fell to a five-year low in Swiss trading after JPMorgan Chase
& Co. analysts said it probably sold 25 billion francs ($24
billion) of mortgage-backed securities in a "fire sale" and may
have more writedowns.

... snip ...

and

Prices of about 70 cents on the dollar for the Alt-A assets in the fire
sale are "realistic," Abouhossein said.

... snip ...

other posts in this thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#59 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#66 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#69 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#70 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#76 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#77 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#78 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#0 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#1 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#4 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#5 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#11 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#13 independent appraisers

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

independent appraisers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: independent appraisers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2008 16:34:53

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#10 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#14 independent appraisers

a little more ...

UBS fire-sale
http://www.financialnews-us.com/?page=ushome&contentid=2449999494

from above:

Analysts said they believed the Swiss bank had sold its Alt-A
investments to Pimco for 70 cents on the dollar, taking a deep discount
on a CHF26.6bn ($25.7bn) portfolio. UBS' shares fell 4% to CHF30.92
after touching a new five-year low of CHF30.88, more than the 1.2% fall
in the DJ Stoxx European bank index.

... snip ...

and ...

Citigroup To Shrink Mortgage Holdings By $45 Billion
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200803070425DOWJONESDJONLINE000534_FORTUNE5.htm

from above:

"We see the speculated level of 70 cents on the dollar as realistic in a
fire sale," J.P. Morgan's Kian Abouhossein said a research note. The
current market price is close to 84 cents on the dollar.

... snip ...

other reference to citi:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm The Thread Between Risk Management and Information Security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#13 independent appraisers

More credit costs seen weighing on banks, brokers; Citigroup may face
$12 billion in additional write-downs, Goldman says
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/goldman-sees-citigroup-facing-12/story.aspx?guid=%7B69B32AA2%2D5E60%2D48A5%2DBD90%2DDB67644BEEC7%7D

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

independent appraisers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: independent appraisers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2008 19:00:03

Banks face "systemic margin call," $325 billion hit: JPM
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/pri/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1240531&sectionID=5
Banks face "systemic margin call," $325 billion hit: JPM
http://in.us.biz.yahoo.com/rb/080308/wallstreet_losses_jpm.html?.v=1

Bloomberg: Citigroup May Need Cash as Losses Mount
http://www.monitordaily.com/Story_Page.asp?News_ID=20829&Type=AlsoToday

from above:

Citigroup received $7.5 billion in November from a sovereign wealth fund
in Abu Dhabi and is reportedly getting another $14.5 billion from
investors, including the governments of Singapore and Kuwait.

Bloomberg quoted Sameer al-Ansari, the chief executive officer of Dubai
International, who said, "It will take a lot more than that to rescue
Citi and other financial institutions."

... snip ...

other posts in the saga ...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#59 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#66 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#69 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#70 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#76 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#77 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#78 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#0 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#1 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#4 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#5 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#10 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#11 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#13 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#14 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#15 independent appraisers

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

independent appraisers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: independent appraisers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 08 Mar 2008 20:57:37

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#13 independent appraisers

OCC Statement On Reporting Of Securitized Subprime Adjustable Rate
Residential Mortgages
http://www.occ.treas.gov/ftp/release/2008-27.htm

from above:

The OCC supports the data collection efforts related to the HOPE NOW
alliance, and believes that long-term sustainable loss mitigation
techniques that preserve homeownership are generally in the best
interest of borrowers, servicers, and investors because such strategies
are typically less costly than foreclosure, particularly when applied
before default.

... snip ...

4oct06 guidanced referenced in the above

Guidance on Nontraditional Mortgage Product Risks
http://www.occ.treas.gov/ftp/bulletin/2006-41.html

from above:

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of
the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation,
the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the National Credit Union
Administration (the agencies) have jointly issued the attached
"Interagency Guidance on Nontraditional Mortgage Product Risks." The
guidance discusses how institutions can offer nontraditional mortgage
products in a safe and sound manner and in a way that clearly discloses
the benefits and risks to borrowers.

... snip ...

... and

The guidance expects financial institutions to recognize and mitigate
the risks inherent in these products. This includes ensuring that loan
terms and underwriting standards are consistent with prudent lending
practices, including credible consideration of a borrower's repayment
capacity. It also includes ensuring that consumers are provided clear
and balanced information about the relative benefits and risks at a time
that allows them to make informed decisions.

... snip ...

one of the issues via-a-vis Glass-Steagall ... was it theoritically kept
some amount of the investment banker speculation activity separate from
commercial banking ... after the experience of the late 20s.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#11 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#87 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#42 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#59 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#1 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#13 independent appraisers

and misc. reference to toxic CDOs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#42 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#65 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#70 independent appraisers

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 2008 03:03:20

Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire
http://origin.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_8504495

IBM's Building 25 - the focus of preservation lawsuits and a planned
big-box retailer - was destroyed in a Saturday fire, leaving a charred
husk of a structure preservationists had hailed as the precursor to
modern high-tech campuses and where the forerunner to the hard drive was
invented.

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical ...
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 2008 03:24:11

Brian Boutel <fake@fake.org> writes:

ISTR that VMS (at least in the early part of its life) kept some pages
as a staging area, i.e they were marked for paging out, but it hadn't
yet happened, so if they came back into use they could be retrieved
cheaply. I don't know whether copying of contents was used, or simply
updating tables.

standard LRU (whether global LRU or local LRU) tended to degrade to FIFO
... as previously mentioned, I had done a slight of hand coding trick
where LRU would degrade to RANDOM instead of FIFO ... i.e.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#3 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical ...

and showed much better thruput characteristics.

synchronous page replacement ... when there was page fault ... invoke
the page replacement algorithm ... find a page for replacement ... and
allocate that page for replacement by the faulting page ... could run
into additional latency delays ... if the page selected for replacement
had been changed and first requires writing to backing store ... before
it can be "replaced".

asynchronous page replacement ... would attempt to keep a small pool of
pages immediately available for replacement ... i.e. the production of
pages to be replaced running slightly ahead of the consumption of the
pages ... attempting to mitigate the replace latency (when the page
needed to be written). It was possible to "reclaim" pages in such a pool
... if an application page faulted on one ... prior to it being
acctually allocated for replacement. Circa 1980, somebody had thought up
this brilliant strategy for the favorite son operating system ... and
also called me about implementing such a "reclaim" strategy for VM.  I
commented that since my days as an undergraduate in the 60s, it had
never occured to me not to have implemented such a "reclaim" strategy
(in the implementation i had done for cp67 and later vm370 case, the
page table entry invalid flag was marked invalid ... but the page number
not actually zeroed ... until the real page number was assigned for some
other virtual page, reclaim then just involved updating table info.

then there is "duplicated" vis-a-vis "no-duplicated" stratigy with
regard to managing secondary backing store location.

In the duplicate strategy ... the backing store location would remain
allocated, even if a page had been fetched into main memory for use.  If
the page was subsequently selected for replacement, the page hadn't been
changed and the backing store location was still valid ... the write
could be avoided and the real storage location could be immediately
available for use.

In the no-duplicate strategy ... the backing store location is
deallocated when the page is brought into main memory. Subsequent
selection of the page for replacement would always require it to be
written out.

The duplicate strategy could reduce page i/o traffic ... and also reduce
latency ... especially in synchronous page replacement strategy. The
no-duplicate strategy increases the amount of page i/o traffic, but
eliminates the amount of secondary storage required ... especially in
situations with large real storage configurations and somewhat
constrained disk space (i.e. eliminates duplicates of a page both on
disk and in real memory).

Another early disagreement with the people working on moving the
favorite son batch operating system from purely real storage into
virtual memory operation (initially os/v2 svs and then os/vs2
mvs). their modeling had "found" that a page replacement strategy could
reduce page i/o activity and latency if it were to first explicitly
search for a non-changed page ... before resorting to selecting a
changed page. My contention was that it would horribly distort any LRU
operational characteristics ... but they went ahead and did it
anyway. It wasn't until a number of years into MVS releases that they
realized that this "micro optimization" was selecting high-use, shared
program execution virtual pages before lower use private application
(changed) data pages. Of course this was only applicable to the
"duplicate" strategy where it was possible to avoid the write of a a
non-changed page selected for replacement.

other posts in this thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#40 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#6 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#8 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#12 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical

misc. old email discussing things like global LRU vis-a-vis local LRU
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#globallru

and previous posts mentioning page replacement algorithms
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

previous posts specifically mentioning dup/no-dup strategies:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#12 managing large amounts of vm
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#13 managing large amounts of vm
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#9 talk to your I/O cache
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#13 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#42 Question re: Size of Swap File
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#55 mainframe question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#78 Swap partition no bigger than 128MB?????
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#10 hollow files in unix filesystems?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#16 hollow files in unix filesystems?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#19 hollow files in unix filesystems?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#20 index searching
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#11 What are some impressive page rates?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#20 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#26 Blade architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#5 Alpha performance, why?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#62 1teraflops cell processor possible?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#17 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#18 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#20 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#19 fast check for binary zeroes in memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004i.html#1 Hard disk architecture: are outer cylinders still faster than inner cylinders?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#27 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#28 IBM's mini computers--lack thereof
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#8 IBM 610 workstation computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#45 using 3390 mod-9s
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#18 how much swap size did you take?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#41 virtual memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#11 The Pankian Metaphor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#0 old discussion of disk controller chache
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#60 FBA rant
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#61 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

independent appraisers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: independent appraisers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 2008 11:36:20

jmfbahciv writes:

But not when that rate goes up.  The problem, (isn't it?) is that
the loans' interest rates don't go down when the prime goes down.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#1 independent appraisers

loan origination is when subprime adjustable rate mortgage is
decoupled from prime. the loans are then securitized ... moved to
wallstreet and unloaded from the books.

the organization originating the loan are looking for this subprime
characteriztic to help close the loan. by the time it becomes a
problem, *asset securitization* has cleared it from their books and it
is somebody else's problem.

some number of speculators are looking to take advantage of this
decoupled from the prime ... anticipating having flipped the property
before the rate adjusts.

during the initial period ... the subprime rate is decoupled from the
prime rate ... then, after the initial period ... the loan rate
becomes adjusted based on prime ... but it appears that all of the
players were not anticipating that as a problem.

after the initial period, the adjustable formulae is usually prime
plus something. based on extremely low initial subprime rate ... all
(positive?) values for the prime could result in the first adjustment
to be upward.

some amount of speculation appeared to be anticipating taking
advantage in early window of unsustainable real estate inflation.

other posts in this thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#59 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#66 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#69 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#70 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#76 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#77 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#78 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#0 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#4 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#5 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#10 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#11 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#13 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#14 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#15 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#16 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#17 independent appraisers

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical ...
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 2008 12:07:39

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

So did MVS and, I believe, many other mainframes.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#19 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical ...

as mentioned ... not in early releases. somebody got an award for coming
up with the idea for mvs (very late 70s) ... and then i got a call if
they could also apply it to vm (and get another award?). i replied i had
never not done it that way since undergraduate days in the 60s.

i somewhat facetiously suggested that instead of giving awards for
making things the way they should have been originally ... the original
people responsible should be given negative awards.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Study Finds Sharp Math, Science Skills Help Expand Economy

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Study Finds Sharp Math, Science Skills Help Expand Economy
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:25:15

Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:

Maybe the parental support, but studies have looked at groups of
students from the same neighborhoods and income levels, and the
charter schools seem to do better.  Some have longer school days
and/or classes on Saturdays.

the major articles have been about the poor competitiveness of this
country (overall & specifically the education system) vis-a-vis other
countries ... and the resulting competitiveness/economic disadvantage it
places the country. in the past, abundance of natural resources in the
country have somewhat been able to compensate for difficiencies of the
citizens.

the neighborhood/demographic differences can obfuscate/excuse
fundamental national competitiveness problems

recent article from last week

Class Size Alone Not Enough To Close Academic Achievement Gap
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080228112004.htm

from above:

"Given that class size reduction is an intervention that benefits all
students, it's tempting to expect that it also will reduce the
achievement gap," he added. Previous research, however, has provided
weak or no evidence that class reduction benefited lower-achieving
students more than others. The Northwestern study underscores that
research

... snip ...

which seems to say ... increasing resources for all equally doesn't
close achievement gaps. in situations where there is limited resources
... is it in socieity's interest to improve the highest achievers or the
lowest achievers?

there have been past threads about managers being able to improve the
productivity of their employees ... a scenario is manager spending the
majority of their time can double an employee's productivity.

where there is productivity distribituion ... the most productive
employee representing half the group's productivity and the least
productive employee representing five precent of the group's
productivity ... for which employee should the manager spend the
majority of their time. Past studies have indicated managers spending
most of their time with the least productive ... however economic
modeling can show that is not in the group's best interest ...
a few past posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#13 Why? (Was: US Military Dead during Iraq War
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#47 time spent/day on a computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#32 ANN: Microsoft goes Open Source

recent past posts in this thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#52 Education ranking
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#55 Education ranking
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#60 Education ranking
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#81 Education ranking
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#83 Education ranking
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#13 Education ranking
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#61 Study Finds Sharp Math, Science Skills Help Expand Economy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#63 Study Finds Sharp Math, Science Skills Help Expand Economy

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

More on GPS troubles

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: More on GPS troubles
Newsgroups: misc.transport.road,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 06:51:05

John Varela <OLDlamps@verizon.net> writes:

There are places in the Boston area where, if you miss your left turn or
encounter a No Left Turn sign you think, "I'll just go up a block, make a
right, a right, and a right and I'll be okay."  Uh-uh.  You're off into some
local streets with no idea how to get out again.

first time i flew in to logan, arrived about 11pm ... i rented a car and
it was suppose to be 30 minutes to the hotel. i got caught in one of those ...
and it was well after 3am before i got to the hotel.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 07:10:37

Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:

EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits
http://www.technologynewsdaily.com/node/9331

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#2 EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#9 EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits

Fighting the black market: crypto-locks for CPUs, other ICs
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080309-fighting-the-black-market-crypto-locks-for-cpus-other-ics.html

from above:

Once the circuit's original logic is properly connected to EPIC, a
randomly-generated Common Key will be created. This key is communicated
to the IP holder and then erased. The chip is then packaged and ready
for activation. At power-up, the chip generates a private and public
Random Chip Key (RCK-Pri and RCK-Pub), both of which are burned into a
set of electrically-programmed fuses. The fab would then send the new
IC's RCK-Pub to the owner of the IC itself. Said owner would then
transmit an Input Key back to the fab. The Input Key corresponds to the
already-communicated Common Key wrapped in a double-encryption layer
consisting of the private Master Key and RCK-Pub.

... snip ...

sounding more & more like how they wanted to leverage the work on
person-centric solution a decade ago to address the copy-chip problem.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

independent appraisers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: independent appraisers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:17:37

kkt <kkt@zipcon.net> writes:

Maybe.  The same branch of one bank in Seattle was robbed something
like five times in a year.  Last I heard the robber was still at
large.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#77 independent appraisers

quicky use of search engine
http://www.bankersonline.com/articles/bhv03n05/bhv03n05a2.html

from above:

1991 Record Breaking Year

The FBI's report on crimes against federally insured financial
institutions established 1991 as yet another record breaking year for
bank robberies. Statistics for 1991 showed 9,381 bank robberies occurred
nationwide, an increase of 20% over 1990's recorded 7,837. The numbers
include commercial banks, mutual savings banks, savings and loans, and
credit unions.

... snip ...

and

"Robbery Capital Of The World"

If the national robbery statistics reveal a tragic tale, California's
are terrifying. In 1991 better than one in three bank robberies in the
nation occurred in California-with a large majority taking place in "The
Robbery Capital of the World," Los Angeles. If you think bank robbery is
a problem in your city, consider Los Angeles where on July 29, 1992,
five Bank of America branches were robbed in a single hour. For 1991,
the FBI recorded 2,355 bank robberies in its Los Angeles Regional
Office, which covers five counties. This far surpasses the earlier
record set in 1983 when 1,833 robberies occurred.

... snip ...

my previous comment was that armed robberies would have to increase by
maybe a factor of 1000 ... to maybe 10million/annum instead of 10k (or
less) ... cybercrime effort is on the order of a armed robbery but ROI
can be on the order of 1000 times greater.

also ... bank crime statistics (1jan2006 - 31dec2006)
http://www.fbi.gov/publications/bcs/bcs2006/bank_crime_2006.htm

above lists 7272 robberies, burlaries, and larcenies. "loot" was taken
in 6674 (92percent) of the 7272 incidents ... amounting to a total of
something less than $73m. Investigation to date identified 39percent
of the 9010 persons known to be involved.

by comparison various kinds of identity theft and cybercrime reports
losses in the $50b to $500b range (1,000 to 10,000 times that of
aggregate bank robberies).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

independent appraisers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: independent appraisers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:26:29

Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:

by comparison various kinds of identity theft and cybercrime reports
losses in the $50b to $500b range (ten to 100 times that of aggregate
bank robberies).

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#77 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#25 independent appraisers

oops, finger slip ... that should be 1,000 to 10,000 times that of
aggregate bank robberies

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:46:47

jmfbahciv writes:

My folks are poor.  They have always had enough to eat.  They knew how
to grow it or shoot it or hook it.  I don't think diet is the best
metric to use.  There were "poor and starving" in Appalachia during
the prime time of the War on Poverty; this never made any sense to me.

sometime 35-40 yrs ago, there was series of articles about seniors
living on social security only being able to afford to buy canned pet
food to eat. at the time, we thought 1) people getting social security
were receiving huge amount of money, 2) buying canned pet food was
extravagent, 3) independent of cost, canned pet food had low
nutritional content .... and therefor extremely poor price performance
(unimaginable anybody could be so extremely foolish and extravagent to
waste good money on canned pet food). There were lots of food stuffs
that were both cheaper than canned pet food as well as significantly
higher nutritional content.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

US aerospace and defense sector braces for potential brain drain as Cold War workers retire

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: US aerospace and defense sector braces for potential brain drain as Cold War workers retire
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:57:26

greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:

Around here, they are not crooks, but they seriously lack expertise.
Some of them have been stung by the subprime crises.

i've heard comments about many in the profession would otherwise have a
hard time making it as a used car salesman ... similar during S&L crises
in the 80s. explanation has been that it nominally requires significant
lower competence level to make it in regulated business.

original post in this thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#71 US aerospace and defense sector braces for potential brain drain as Cold War workers retire

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:44:04

Marc Auslander <marcslists@optonline.NOSPAM.net> writes:

IIRC, the building was "upgraded" to make it earthquake resistant by
adding a new outer shell.  I'm surprised that this upgraded version
got landmark status.  Or am I confused about which building it was?

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#25 Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire

bldg 28 ("research" before almaden facility was built) was two story
cement structure in the form of triangle (with central courtyard)
... when elevated 85 was built it cut thru the bldg. 28 back parking
lot. bldg 28 had a seismic retrofit ... basically a new bldg. built
around the outside exterior of the old bldg. ... designed to "hold up"
the old bldg (in case of earthquake).

not a very good airal picture ... the "gigantic, new" (mid-80s) bldg.
50 is in the mid-center foreground:
http://www.ajnordley.com/IBM/Air/SSD/index.html

bldg. 28 is in the upper right corner of cottle rd & 85 intersection
(aka no satellite image)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&output=html&hl=en&q=5600+Cottle+Rd.+San+Jose,+CA+95193&zoom=3

first thing i thot of was that it was bldg. 10(?), one story wood structure
to the left of main gate

now i'm having trouble placing which was bldg. 25.

bldg. 12 was hdqtrs straight ahead thru the main gate (and also got a
new shell in seismic retrofit).

bldg. 26 was large one story warehouse like bldg that back along
cottle rd ... and was mostly large glasshouse datacenter.

i also did a lot of work in bldg 14 & 15 (in row with bldg. 12), disk
engineering & disk product test lab. ... to the east & north of
bldg. 28
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

most recent google satellite map shows bldg. 12, 26, 28 ... all leveled.
bldg 14, 15, & 50 are still standing.

lunchroom (bldg ???) behind bldg. 12 is still standing.

i.e.
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

and enter
5600 Cottle Rd, San Jose, Ca.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:03:23

Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:

now i'm having trouble placing which was bldg. 25.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#18 Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#29 Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire

looking at the (google map) satellite photo ... with all the other 02x
bldgs. bulldozed ... the remaining bldg. in the 02x line along cottle is
the one story wooden bldg. complex at the north of the area along the
railroad tracks.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

confluence of virtualization and trusted computing

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: confluence of virtualization and trusted computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:29:46

Secret sharers gain security, time; General Dynamics, IBM build NSA
program that facilitates dissemination of classified data
http://www.washingtontechnology.com/print/23_04/32398-1.html?topic=security

from above:

The high-assurance platform began in 1999 when NSA's research unit, the
National Information Assurance Research Laboratory, created the NetTop
program to test whether virtualization could enable the agency to host
several secure domains on a single computer.

... snip ...

and

The Trusted Computing Group (TCG), a consortium of almost 200 IT vendors,
is also working with the two prime contractors and the agency to ensure
that the program meets all regulations and intelligence community
requirements.

... snip ...

in some long past visit to the cryptological museum
http://www.nsa.gov/museum/

i had talked them into letting me have a copy of the MISSI (multi-level
security) video tape they played ... i told them i wanted to make a
parody of it.

misc. recent posts mentioning trusted computing (and/or giving talk on
assurance at trusted computing track at IDF) and/or virtualization:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#18 Remembering the Cray-1
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#30 hacked TOPS-10 monitors
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#41 IT managers stymied by limits of x86 virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#50 IT managers stymied by limits of x86 virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#59 old internal network references
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#74 Virtualization Wave
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#3 on-demand computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#8 on-demand computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#39 folklore indeed
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#43 IT managers stymied by limits of x86 virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#0 folklore indeed
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#4 folklore indeed
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#28 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#61 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#13 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#15 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#16 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#17 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#19 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#20 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#23 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#43 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#44 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#59 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#60 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#91 z10 presentation on 26 Feb
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#10 Kernels
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#30 VMware signs deal to embed software in HP servers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#57 Any benefit to programming a RISC processor by hand?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#76 independent appraisers

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

independent appraisers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: independent appraisers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:34:58

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#10 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#14 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#15 independent appraisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#16 independent appraisers

not as big an exposure as UBS ... but some discussion of toxic CDO
write-downs:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/14/news/companies/mclean_rbs.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008021507

from above:

RBS said that net of hedges and writedowns, it had GBP 1.1 billion (or
roughly $2.2 billion) of high grade CDOs containing commercial loan
collateral, prime and subprime mortgage collateral, as well as GBP 1.3
billion (or roughly $2.6 billion) of exposure to "mezzanine CDOs based
predominantly on residential mortgage collateral." RBS marked the high
grade CDOs at 90% of face value, and the mezzanine CDOs at 70% of face
value, citing "outputs from our proprietary model, market data, and
prudent valuation adjustments."

Only RBS knows exactly what securities it owns, and the market price can
vary dramatically. But a source on a Wall Street trading desk (who is
not commenting on RBS specifically), says that in general, the
high-grade CDOs are worth between 35 cents on the dollar and 75 cents on
the dollar, and the mezzanine CDOs are worth between 10 cents to 50
cents on the dollar. That would imply substantial addition writedowns
for RBS.

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:54:31

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#2 EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#9 EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#24 EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits

other aspect of copy-chips

Counterfeit Chips Raise New Terror, Hacking Fears
http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/03/10/1855201.shtml
Could Cheap Chinese Electronics Come to an End?
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4253919.html
Counterfeit Chips Raise Big Hacking, Terror Threats, Experts Say
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4253628.html

from above:

Individuals, companies and federal agencies could all be at risk from
foreign governments or criminal enterprises. A computer chip built with
a subtle error might allow an identity-theft ring to hack past the
encryption used to connect customers with their banks. Flash memory
hidden inside a corporation's networked printers could save an image
file of every document it printed, then send out the information. In a
disturbing national-security scenario, overseas agents might be able to
hard-wire instructions to bring down a Department of Defense system on a
predetermined date or in response to an external trigger. In the time it
took to bring the systems back online, a military assault could be
underway.

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:10:35

Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:

http://www.preservation.org/ibm25_background.html

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#30 Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire

here is 025 at top left corner of the satellite image with lots of
other plant site bldgs/stuff bulldozed
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=5600+Cottle+Rd,+San+Jose,+Ca.&sll=37.242253,-121.804583&sspn=0.015152,0.010128&ie=UTF8&ll=37.24748,-121.800249&spn=0.015151,0.010128&t=k&z=16

satellite image zoom in on 025 ... including the covered walkway from the
preservation background photo:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=5600+Cottle+Rd,+San+Jose,+Ca.&sll=37.242253,-121.804583&sspn=0.015152,0.010128&ie=UTF8&ll=37.252764,-121.802128&spn=0.000947,0.000633&t=k&z=20

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

confluence of virtualization and trusted computing

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: confluence of virtualization and trusted computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:26:57

Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> writes:

I guarantee failure, no matter what they're trying to do.
A 200-member committee can't even decide when to have lunch;
the only thing they *can* do is design a camel with 200! humps.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#31 confluence of virtualization and trusted computing

a few past references to giving a talk at trusted computing track at
past intel developer's forum ... and quiping to the guy running the
committee (in the front row) that it was interesting to see that the
tpm had started to look more & more like the aads chip strawman
over the previous couple of yrs.  he quiped back that i didn't have a
committee of 200 people helping me with the design.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#48 Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm22.htm#41 FraudWatch - Chip&Pin, a new tenner (USD10)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm23.htm#56 UK Detects Chip-And-PIN Security Flaw
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#12 #4.2 Simplicity is Inversely Proportional to the Number of Designers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#42 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#36 what does xp do when system is copying
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#57 Any benefit to programming a RISC processor by hand?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Object-relational impedence

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Object-relational impedence
Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory,comp.object,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:02:57

"David Cressey" <cressey73@verizon.net> writes:

I don't think of 1971, when I wrote the garbage collector for MDL  as "the
early days of garbage collection."  The "early days" would have been in the
1950s when McCarthy wrote the garbage collector for LISP.   The MDL garbage
collector was more ambitious than the Lisp garbage collector.  But I had the
advantage of learning from  the work that had already been done.

apl also did new storage allocation on every assignment ... and did
garbage collection & compaction when space in workspace was exhausted.

the science center (4th flr of 545 tech sq)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

ported apl\360 to cp67/cms ... and had to rework the garbage
collection. typical apl\360 workspace was 16kbyte-32kbyte real storage
... and whole workspace was always swapped as single unit.

cms allowed for multiple mbyte (virtual memory, paged) workspaces
... and the apl\360 garbage collection implementation resulted in severe
page thrashing ... which had to be redone for virtual memory environment
before release of cms\apl.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

part of work on apl virtual memory garbage collection used some
application monitoring and modeling tools also done at the science
center ... which was eventually released as vs/repack product in the
mid-70s (included semi-automated program reorganization for virtual
memory operation).

vs/repack technology was used by a number of internal product groups
(including various dbms like IMS) as part of transition from real
storage to virtual storage environment.

the followon to cp67, vm370 was used (originally on 370/145 in bldg. 28) for
the original relational/sql implementation, system/r
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#systemr

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Panic in Multicore Land

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Panic in Multicore Land
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 07:51:25

Panic in Multicore Land
http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/08/03/11/068231.shtml
CPU designers debate multi-core future
http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=206105179

above article mentions adapting moore's doubling every 18months from
processor speed to number of cores (as way of increasing computing
power)

misc past posts mentioning multiprocessors and/or invention of
compare&swap instruction for supporting multiprocessor/multithreaded
operaton
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

misc. recent posts mentioning multi-core:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#0 on-demand computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#3 on-demand computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#35 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#83 CPU time differences for the same job
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#81 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#89 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#90 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#26 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#79 Any benefit to programming a RISC processor by hand?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Stalin, Re: Bush - place in history

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Stalin, Re: Bush - place in history
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 08:40:01

lawrence claimed that extremism was a constant reoccuring theme ...
possibly on century intervals. a few past references:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#70 If you're going to bullshit, eschew moderation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#14 Why? (Was: US Military Dead during Iraq War
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#47 Mickey and friends

most recent scenario is the level of financial resources, planning, and
sophistication.

possibly cite the difference between armed bank robberies and cybercrime
... a factor of 10,000 / four orders of magnitude ... recent reference:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#25 independent appaisers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#26 independent appaisers

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Can electronic signature bring us non-repudiation and authenticity?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Can electronic signature bring us non-repudiation and authenticity?
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:42:46

tenxian <hi.steven.tu@gmail.com> writes:

Can digital signature guarantee non-repudiation and authenticity?

recent discussion mentioning the subject in this blog entry:
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001013.html

there is distinction between "electronic signature" and "digital
signature".

after we were brought in to help wordsmith cal. state electronic
signature legislation (and then similar federal legislation) ... we
would observe that possibly there was enormous semantic confusion
stemming from both "digital signature" and "human signature" containing
the word "signature". misc. past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#signature

posts in old thread in this n.g. mentioning non-repudiation:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#30 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#34 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#39 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#40 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#41 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#42 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#43 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#44 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#45 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#46 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#47 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#50 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#51 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#52 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#54 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#56 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#57 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#58 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#59 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#60 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#72 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#73 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

IBM sees decline in number of U.S IT pros, boom in China

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM sees decline in number of U.S IT pros, boom in China
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:11:13

IBM sees decline in number of U.S IT pros, boom in China
http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid26_gci1305047,00.html

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

US aerospace and defense sector braces for potential brain drain as Cold War workers retire

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: US aerospace and defense sector braces for potential brain drain as Cold War workers retire
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:43:44

kkt <kkt@zipcon.net> writes:

I guess that's another regional difference.  Checks were frequently
used at the grocery store for the weekly shopping.  Smaller amounts
could be cash.

"back then" ... local grocery store would carry accounts that were
cleared when people got their monthly checks (urban) ... or in the fall
after harvest (rural). old post w/reference settling accounts after
harvest
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#38

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Panic in Multicore Land

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Panic in Multicore Land
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008 10:50:45

Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:

These are certainly interesting articles. Of course, if the only thing
that improves in the future is the number of cores, we are in a lot of
trouble. Putting memory on the chip was only briefly mentioned a few
times, but it would seem that this should be part of the answer.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#37 Panic in Multicore Land

Microsoft's Top Visionary Sees A Parallel World; Craig Mundie,
Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, is sure he has a good
handle on where technology is going. When is another story.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206903390

from above:

Mundie, who took over as Microsoft's lead visionary from co-founder Bill
Gates in 2006, is preparing the company for a technology shift that he
expects will be as big as the rise of the personal computer or the
Internet: parallel computing.

... snip ...

past ref:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#90 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path

post from last year mentioning older thread on the subject
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#78 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

also referenced in the post:

Microsoft super sizes multi-threaded tripe:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/01/mundie_mundie/

from above:

Microsoft, to its credit, has multi-threaded the calculations in Office
Excel 2007. But that's about where the credit ends.

Intel and AMD executives fail to hide their disappointment with
Microsoft well on the multi-threaded software front.

During a speech last June, Intel SVP Pat Gelsinger said the following:

"A couple of years ago, I had a discussion with Bill Gates (about the
multi-core products). He was just in disbelief. He said, 'We can't write
software to keep up with that.'"

Gates ordered the Intel executive to keep pumping out faster product.