List of Archived Posts

2008 Newsgroup Postings (06/23 - 07/15)

squirrels
OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
dollar coins
dollar coins
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
We're losing the battle
dollar coins
dollar coins
We're losing the battle
To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
dollar coins
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
We're losing the battle
We're losing the battle
dollar coins
dollar coins
dollar coins
To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
dollar coins
dollar coins
To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Op codes removed from z/10
what newsgroup server do you use?
We're losing the battle
dollar coins
OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
CLIs and GUIs
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Data Breach Reports Up 69 Percent in 2008
The wisdom of the ill informed
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
dollar coins
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
dollar coins
NSFnet -- 20 Years of Internet Obscurity and Insight
Intel: an expensive many-core future is ahead of us
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
dollar coins
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
dollar coins
Another difference between platforms
Another difference between platforms
dollar coins
dollar coins
Virtual water cooler
OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
WoW security: now better than most banks
What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
dollar coins
dollar coins
dollar coins
German court finds Bank responsible for malwared PC
German court finds Bank responsible for malwared PC
CLIs and GUIs
lack of information accuracy
Taxes
lack of information accuracy
lack of information accuracy
lack of information accuracy
lack of information accuracy
lack of information accuracy
lack of information accuracy
tape blocking
lack of information accuracy
Are we approaching a "tipping point" with regard to business travel?
lack of information accuracy
lack of information accuracy
CLIs and GUIs
How powerful C64 may have been if it used an 8 Mhz 8088 or 68008 ?microprocessor (with otherwise the same hardware)?
Calling Out
dollar coins
How powerful C64 may have been if it used an 8 Mhz 8088 or 68008 ?microprocessor (with otherwise the same hardware)?
Taxes
How powerful C64 may have been if it used an 8 Mhz 8088 or 68008 ?microprocessor (with otherwise the same hardware)?
dollar coins
recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology
CLIs and GUIs
CLIs and GUIs
CLIs and GUIs
CLIs and GUIs
CLIs and GUIs
CLIs and GUIs
CLIs and GUIs
CLIs and GUIs

squirrels

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: squirrels
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:31:31
krw <krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzz> writes:
"Open formats" didn't happen before the PC and M$.

sgml?
http://xml.coverpages.org/sgmlhist0.html

although didn't pass as iso standard until after PCs had appeared, above mentions that major adopters (in early 80s) included IRS and DOD.

GML had been invented by "G", "M", & "L", at the science center in 1969 ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

misc. past posts mentioning science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:24:44
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
Tops10 had preemptive multitasking, but no good process concept. You could connect 200+ terminals, and/or have a similar number of network logins. No tcp/ip, decnet, and possibly LAT. Low to medium job/process (they were the same) isolation. Fixed code mapped into memory for libraries. No shell, you typed directly into the kernel.

I had gotten cp67 optimized on single processor 360/67 tuned to the point that it could have 80 active users, 90th percentile subsecond response for trivial, interactive commands, and 100% processor busy. later, 3081s with vm370 running similar cms workload were frequently supporting 300 active users with 90th percentile subsecond response for trivial interactive commands and 100% processor busy.

i noted if the number of users increased proportional to processor power ... there would be more like 2000-3000 users being supported ... however the increase in number of users were proportional to increase in disk thruput (not processor thruput). I was making comments that the relative system disk thruput had declined by a factor of ten times during the period (i.e. processor & memory dramatically increased, while disk thrput increased ... it increase much slower than the rest of the system).

this somewhat irk'ed some of the executives in the disk division and the disk division performance group was tasked to refute the comments. after a couple weeks, they came back and had found that i had slightly understated the relative system disk thruput decline. this turned into some number of reports recommending how customers could improve system thruput.

the both ran dynamic adaptive fair share scheduler (I had invented back in the 60s as undergraduate)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

the original code i written was picked up and shipped in the cp67 product ... but was dropped in big simplification in the morph from cp67->vm370. various user groups lobbied for my scheduler to be re-introduce ... which was eventually done as a separate priced product ... the "resource manager". part of the dynamic adaptive fair share scheduler was dynamically adapting to the "bottleneck". through the 70s, the primary resource bottlenecks shifted from processor and real storage to file i/o (and the vast increases in real storage was increasingly being used for various kinds of caching strategies, compensating for the increasing disk bottleneck).

In the early 70s on cp67, i had implemented low-level modification for the cms filesystem, supporting page mapping paradigm. it preserved the high-level cms filesystem semantics ... but implementation was done with page maping ... rather than the 360 real i/o emulation. i then moved the implementation to vm370. except for specialized implementation or two, the support never leaked out in standard customer product. however, for moderately i/o intensive application (in 3081 timeframe on 3380 disks) it could improve elapsed time by a factor of three and at the same time, reducing processor time. misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

misc. past posts mentioning 3081/67 comparison
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#31 Big I/O or Kicking the Mainframe out the Door
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#43 Bloat, elegance, simplicity and other irrelevant concepts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#55 How Do the Old Mainframes Compare to Today's Micros?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#10 Virtual Memory (A return to the past?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#46 The god old days(???)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#4 IBM S/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#66 Pentium 4 Prefetch engine?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#62 any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#40 MVS History (all parts)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#61 MVS History (all parts)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#23 Smallest Storage Capacity Hard Disk?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#5 index searching
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#11 Microcode? (& index searching)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#20 index searching
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#8 What are some impressive page rates?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#9 What are some impressive page rates?

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

dollar coins

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:27:05
CBFalconer <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes:
In the past few years it has gone through about 2egoogol mergers and acquisitions.

there are lots of comments that the only thing that survived the last merger was the name.

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

dollar coins

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:41:35
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
from memory, the biggest mess in the Savngs and Loan crash was caused by someone in charge of some community fund in California who would not really have benefited from the risks he was taking. No point in researching it, I am quite sure that a very similiar story will emerge from this mess.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#104 dollar coins

there are lots of stories about young 20-somethings in mortgage originators making multi-millions ... and higher ups in the organizations making tens (and possibly hundreds) of millions.

on the investment banking side (buying the packaged toxic CDOs) ... there are equivalent stories. one measure was in the four yrs run-up to the start of current credit mess, wall street firms paid out over $100billion in bonuses. past references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#76 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#79 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#52 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#66 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#42 The Return of Ada

some of the firms may not survive ... but a large number of individuals benefited.

there was recent comment that the american bankers are the most inventive in the world, that they've managed to totally screw up the system at least once a decade regardless of the regulations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#90 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#30 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#77 Do you think the change in bankrupcy laws has exacerbated the problems in the housing market leading more people into forclosure?

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

What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window  weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:52:59
pjb@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon) writes:
ps ax|wc -l gives rarely a number of process greater than 100. Right now we have MacPros with 8 cores, in a few years they'll have 128 cores, and timesharing will be history. We will be able to simplify the OS, by allocating a core on process creation and not do any scheduling anymore. At least of "personal computers". Well perhaps at one point this scheduling will be implemented in the processor, so a constructor could advertise a 10,000 (virtual) core processor when it has actually only 1,024 cores.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#100 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#102 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#103 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness

sun announce 16 cores, each core with 16 threads (i.e. 256 concurrent processing)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/23/sun_niagara_k2/

the referenced wiki page observed that much of traditional time-sharing was obsoleted with the proliferation of personal computers ... i.e. the business that was being served by time-sharing services ... moved off to personal computers.

the other perspective was that traditional time-sharing was primarily oriented towards providing personal computing ... before the advent of personal computers.

the issue in the increase in cores has been that traditionally personal computing has seen thruput improvements with the increase in processor speed. this is that even where a personal computer may have more than one process ... that they seldom actually executing processor instructions concurrently (little or no active time-slicing). this has given rise to all the hand wringing over the last couple years as processors have been stuck at processor speed wall ... and have attempting to address greater thruput with more threads & cores. The repeated refrain is that very little programming has been parallel and therefor there is very little actual concurrent execution going on with a multi-core &/or multi-threaded machine (regardless of the number of processes).

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

What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:21:44
Jean-Marc Bourguet <jm@bourguet.org> writes:
We already use timesharing (as I understand it, not sure it is as BAH means it). The ressource we are sharing aren't necessarily the processors -- giving everybody as many machines as architectures we support would be stupid --, but also memory -- giving everybody 64G would also be stupid -- or even data -- some customer data we need access to is restricted to stay on restricted and more heavily monitored machines.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#100 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#103 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#4 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

the traditional timesharing applied to more than just the mechanics of (time) sharing the processor for doing multiple things concurrently.

as mentioned in previous posts ... there are lots of similarities between the mechanics of online transaction processing and traditional timesharing ... however, traditional timesharing was effectively personal computing on a shared processor ... which started to disappear with the advent of (real) personal computers ... while online transaction processing continued to proliferate.

numerous references in other posts ... lots of the current web-based operations have lots of similarities to online transaction processing dating back to (at least) the 60s. recent post in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#102 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness

other recent posts mentioning cics
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#53 Really stupid question about z/OS HTTP server
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#89 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#11 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#24 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#53 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#71 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#78 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#12 pro- foreign key propaganda?

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

What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:56:13
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
Timesharing, OTOH, is driven by interrupts. All code is written with the assumption that anything can be interrupted and any time by any thing.

The tradeoffs made between the two developments are vastly different.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#4 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#5 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

traditional timesharing has been oriented towards personal computing ... interrupt driven tended to provide responsiveness to that personal computing activity ... the mechanisms it used were frequently the same as other activities that used multi programming/tasking.

at least by the 60s, timesharing systems ... that used virtual memory and paging ... created mechanisms to avoid various kinds of preemption to mitigate potential page thrashing (over commitment of real storage). i had done a flavor of this for cp67 when i was an undergraduate in the 60s. the way i did it, put me in some conflict with other mechanisms developed in the same period ... that had higher visibility in academic literature. this showed up in the early 80s when there was conflict over awarding a stanford phd to somebody that involved essentially what i had done in the 60s ... aka asked to provide documentation about situation where both flavors had been implemented on cp67 and compared ... old email reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email821019

in this post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#46

lots of past posts on such things
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

with the advent of processor caches ... there was an analogous issue (to page thrashing, page misses, and real storage over commitment) with processor cache misses and asynchronous interrupts. to improve thruput, strategies were put in place to delay asynchronous interrupt handling to improve both cache hit ratio and overall system thruput (it was even possible to improve the overall elapsed time to process asynchronous by delaying the processing). I had done this for vm370 in the mid-70s with dynamic adaptive scheduling in the resouce manager making decision about delaying asynchronous interrupts. I know some of the commercial time-sharing services that ported cp67 to 370 machines with processor caches doing something similar.

the "811" architecture (aka 370/xa) included a queued i/o interface to improve cache hit ratio and overall system thruput.

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

We're losing the battle

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: We're losing the battle
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:02:08
oldtimer@WANADOO.FR (Bruno Sugliani) writes:
Like someone said : i backup my servers with TSM on ts7700 in grid configuration with jaguar at the back , and it works ( and i tried it in AIX and z/OS and not much difference apart from the bill ) . Now i am sure that using DVD's in Z/os would slow down restoration , but then we would not think doing it .

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#97 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#99 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#101 We're losing the battle

tsm started out as renamed adsm. adsm was evoluation of workstation datasave facility ... and workstation datasave facility started out as CMSBACK ... which was deployed extensively internally

old cmsback related email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#cmsback

and various posts related to (CMSBACK, workstation datasave, adsm, tsm, and other) backup/archive
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#backup

disclaimer, i had created and deployed the original CMSBACK internally ... before it went thru various morphs eventually becoming the current tsm product.

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

dollar coins

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:28:35
Roger Blake <rogblake10@iname10.com> writes:
Of course one may also note who was in control of Congress during that period of time. Then again, nobody ever accused liberals of having a good grip on reality.

there was some story that in the 90s ... congress had a gap in actually closing a (projected) "balanced" budget ... in order to close the gap (in the projected balanced budget) ... they came up with the scenario that (in the 90s) the gov. was making significant revenue off of auctioning off bandwidth/spectrum ... and if they mandated the conversion from analog tv to digital tv ... that would free up enough bandwidth ... (using somebody's projections) which then could be auctioned off for enough money to claim a balanced budget.

recent posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#43 dig. TV
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#47 dig. TV
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#61 Primaries (USA)

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

dollar coins

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:11:07
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
Nope. I don't understand why they're not getting hit with lawsuits for doing illegal things. Muni mutual funds are supposed to be buying muni bonds, not futures or whatever name they call exotics-of-the-day.

problem was growing lack of confidence in the rating services (and everything that received triple-A rating, not just toxic CDOs). i've seen references to the mortgage originators "shopping" their toxic CDOs ... i.e. the toxic CDO seller pays for the rating ... and they would shop around until they found a rating service that would give their toxic CDOs the rating they wanted. the trust/confidence issue, because of the triple-A ratings given to toxic CDOs ... then spilled over into everything getting ratings (aka the whole toxic CDO & credit mess has impacted all sorts of things).

effectively all the bond sellers then found that they had to offer higher rates to attract buyers ... and even municipalities found that it was costing them a lot more ... which then starts to adversely affect their planned budgets.

holders of bonds and toxic CDOs have some audit rules about how to value what they have. With growing lack of trust in the triple-A ratings, some institutions were finding that selling (toxic) CDOs were only getting possibly 20 cents on the dollar. That sort of discount/write-down then can permeate the valuation of everything with triple-A rating (analogy is if houses on your street are selling for half their listed value, it is likely to drag down the appraised value of your house).

past posts mentioning triple-A rating service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#1 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#46 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#57 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#71 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#32 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#44 Fixing finance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#51 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#62 Credit crisis could cost nearly $1 trillion, IMF predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#104 dollar coins

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

We're losing the battle

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: We're losing the battle
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:23:28
R.Skorupka@BREMULTIBANK.COM.PL (R.S.) writes:
In my experience, Tandems are not "switches". They process card traffic. I'm aware of one migration from mainframe to Tandem. Here in Poland, vast majority of ATMs and POS's are non-mainframe. Even no mainframe "behind the Tandem". Only 3 banks are using mainframes at all. Was 4. The fourth one decided to drop the mainframe due to costs. The project was successful - no entry for re-boot hill. Oh, two big mainframe projects I'm aware exceeded planned timeframe and budget. Only one ATM network is using mainframe.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#97 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#99 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#101 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#7 We're losing the battle

in the 80s & 90s a lot of ATM stuff was done on Tandem machines with software (base24) from these guys
http://www.aciworldwide.com/company/

quicky search on tandem, atm, base24 turns up stuff like this:

July 19, 1999, Indian Public Banks Move Online Slowly
http://asia.internet.com/news/article.php/650391

tandem wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandem_Computers

some issues may be attributed to (after being acquired by HP, tandem line) being moved to Itanium base ... which has had its own issues.

more recently ACI has been quite active with IBM (besides over the yrs providing products on some number of other platforms)
http://www.aciworldwide.com/partners/sapartners.aspx?pid=118

old related post in this n.g. from last year (also reply to one of your posts):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#6 ATMs

as mentioned in the old post, we marketed our ha/cmp product against them in some number of markets
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

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

To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:02:20
D.J. <solosam75@cableone.net> writes:
Exactly. I saw a documentary on Military channel some months ago, it has also been on History Channel. The Panzer commander they interviewed about the Sherman said that who ever designed it and gave it to Allied troops should have been stod up against a wall and shot. Hewasalsoasked about the Firefly tank, and its 76 mm gun. Said he wasn't worried out that one either.

Boyd asserted that it was an explicit decision ... that they could be produced in mass quantities and eventually overwhelm the enemy by shear numbers (i.e. the idea if couldn't beat them with expertise, beat them with numbers & logistics) ... could create problem with the crews feeling that they were being used as cannon fodder ... a little drift ... wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_fodder

misc. posts mentioning boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd

misc. past posts mentioning sherman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#85 V-Man's Patton Quote (LONG) (Pronafity)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#30 Review of Steve McConnell's AFTER THE GOLD RUSH
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#3 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#10 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#11 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#16 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#27 Controversial paper - Good response article on ZDNet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#24 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#53 Chained I/O's
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#19 FW: Looking for Disk Calc program/Exec (long)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#11 The 8008
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#14 The 8008
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#14 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#28 was change headers: The Fate of VM - was: Re: Baby MVS???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#21 WWII supplies

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

To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this  about?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:14:50
Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> writes:
China doesn't have the regulatory structure in place, and what regulations there are can sometimes be overcome with bribes or cutting the official in on the action. I expect we'd see much the same if instead of China, we were getting the goods from, say, Kenya or Cambodia.

there have been claims that the current credit mess has had much less effect on china because their banks had much better governance ... recent reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

recent reference to toxic CDOs and credit mess
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#9 dollar coins

supposedly part of the impact in the US is the heavy leveraging allowed by investment banking (i.e. buy toxic CDO, borrow the full value, buy another toxic CDO, repeat 40-50 times ... so there is possibly only 2-3% actual equity ... trivial fluxuation in value totally wipes out the original investment) coupled with the repeal of Glass-Steagall in the late 90s (which had been passed in the wake of the '29 crash to keep the unregulate risky investment banking activity separate from safety and soundness of regulated banking) ... recent reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#1 subprime write-down seepsteaks

and, in fact, investment by Chinese "sovereign funds" is helping bail out US financial institutions ... some recent comments:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#65 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#16 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#13 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#16 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#20 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#55 independent appraisers

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

What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:27:38
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#6 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness

this is lots of (related) topic regarding bottlenecks and optimization for those bottlenecks. the referenced post is about delaying/queuing asynchronous interrupts to improve aggregate processor efficiency, cache hit ratios and overall system thruput.

this post is related to post that during the 70s, processor and real storage becoming less of system bottleneck and disk thruput becoming more & more primary system bottleneck (although there were periodic "shortages" of real storage ... where real storage was being stressed for file/disk caching as compensation for severe disk thruput bottleneck) ... mentioned here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#1 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness

this particular tale is (actually) about ATM machine support at LA (cal.) bank in the mid to late 70s.

in the late 70s, ACP (airline control program) was starting to be used in other industries (for high-performance transaction processing) to the extent that circa 1980 it was renamed TPF (transaction control faciilty). recent refs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#34 American Airlines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#39 American Airlines

now this recent thread (in mainframe mailing list) started with comment about somebody not getting a card transaction processed because of some outage ... had some drift
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#97 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#99 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#101 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#7 We're losing the battle

and then got into issues about what & how many different systems might be involved in payment transaction processing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#7 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#10 We're losing the battle

so to repeat theme in other parts of the thread ... timesharing has been traditionally "personal computing" implemented on shared processor ... and started to die out with the advent of personal computers for personal computing. traditionally a distinction has been made between online (transaction) processing and timesharing, even tho they may be implemented with similar or even identical technologies.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#100 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#4 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#5 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

so in the mid-70s (as disk thruput was becoming more & more of system bottleneck), a system engineer on customer LA bank account, implemented ATM transaction processing on a VM/CMS platform and claimed greater thruput than could be gotten from ACP/TPF running on the same hardware. The secret was a much more sophisticated transaction scheduling tied to disk arm motion optimization. Implementation had a CMS virtual machine where the ATM transactions arrived and other CMS virtual machines, one per dedicated disk arm. At moderate loading levels, and scheduling transaction as they arrived ... would result in effectively random disk arm motion.

The CMS virtual machine handling incoming transactions had a sophisticated queuing and transaction optimization algorithm that calculated thruput optimization based on (small) delays in transaction activation, load levels, additional transaction arrival patterns, expected disk arm usage patterns, current arm position and arm position locations needed to service queued transactions. Slight delays in some transactions could result in changing nearly random (inefficient) disk arm motion to smooth (much more efficient) sweeps (handling multiple transactions in single sweep).

there was implication that the transaction scheduling facilities in ACP/TPF weren't sufficiently open enuf to allow the kind of implementation that was done on VM/CMS platform (and being able to calculate account disk record location)

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

dollar coins

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 06:49:56
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Company names used to say where they were from and/or what they did, "Corning Glass", "United Fruit", etc. Now they seem to be deliberately obfuscating the details as much as possible. Isn't "HSBCC" = "Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Corp?"

UK Midland ... overseas subsidiary was Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank ... they seemed to go thru brand consolidation and adopted HSBC for everything.

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

What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:03:24
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
this particular tale is (actually) about ATM machine support at LA (cal.) bank in the mid to late 70s.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#13 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

for some slight x-over into the mortgage, toxic CDO, credit mess topic ... recent posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#3 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#9 dollar coins

i was in the process of transferring from the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

to research ... and buying a house in cal. ... as well as having implementation meetings that included top executives at the bank. the 2nd in charge at the bank said that they couldn't help with the interest rate ... but he did make a call to the local branch office loan officer. this was back in the days when mortgage approval could take 3-4 weeks because of all the credit checks (i got loan approval the day after the call).

for other drift, misc. posts about original relatational/sql implementation at research (on vm/cms platform)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

and also being allowed to play disk engineer over in bldg. 14 and 15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

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

We're losing the battle

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: We're losing the battle
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:43:52
timothy.sipples@US.IBM.COM (Timothy Sipples) writes:
Nobody said Parallel Sysplex and GDPS are the only high availability clustered solutions in the market. But this whole thread got started because of a complaint about *planned* outages. One must not be sloppy here: "five nines" should have a business definition, and that definition does not typically distinguish between planned and unplanned outages. (Or at least people should say something like "five nines, excluding planned outages of up to [X] duration [Y] times per year.") If you're down, you're down.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#97 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#99 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#101 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#7 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#10 We're losing the battle

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

... against tandem (as well as s/88 aka stratus) ... there was a customer with five-nines application availability requirement (five minutes outage/annum). the non-clustered fault-tolerant solutions had software maintenance (scheduled) outages that far exceeded 5min/annum.

we had also coined the term disaster survivability and geographic survivability ... i.e. clustering at a distance ... as hardware and other components become more & more reliable ... localized disturbances were becoming a larger percentage of unplanned outages.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available

as mentioned earlier in the thread ... long ago and far away, my wife had been con'ed into going to POK to be in charge of loosely-coupled architecture ... where she created Peer-Coupled Shared Data.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

Lack of uptake (at the time) resulted in her not staying long in the position. Except for ims hot-standby ... it wasn't until sysplex that you started seeing her architecture being supported.

the long mainframe lead time ... was at least partial motivation for ha/cmp product (based on power platform rather than mainframe platform). it was also behind POK & Rochester objecting to ha/cmp contributions to the corporate continuous availability strategy document ... claiming that it would be years before they could have such support.

some folklore x-over ... Bruce's talk last month at Jim's tribute pointed out that his formulization of transaction semantics was the real significant enabler opening up online transactions (sufficient trust in computer operations vis-a-vis manual/paper operation). This was during the days of the original relational/sql implementation project at san jose research on vm/cms platform
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

Following Bruce's talk was some people from tandem (corresponding to Jim having left research for tandem). Two things mentioned in that time-frame was Jim defining the TPF thruput (ACP having been renamed TPF as more non-airlines started using it for transactions) as a transaction objective for Tandem systems. The other was the study showing that hardware was becoming significantly more reliable and other factors were increasingly becoming source of outages (planned, human mistakes, disturbances in localized geographical area, etc).

Jim later left Tandem for DEC database group in San Francisco. It was in this time-frame that I had something of an argument with him at '91 Asilomar SIGOPS ... where I was claiming I could do high availability on (clustered) commodity hardware (using ha/cmp methodology as example) and he claiming that it still required proprietary hardware (somewhat reflecting the Tandem and DEC vax/cluster affiliations). I've since noted that not too long later, he then had to be up on the stage for the announcement of the m'soft availability clustering ... recent reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#50 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation

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

We're losing the battle

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: We're losing the battle
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:08:07
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Following Bruce's talk was some people from tandem (corresponding to Jim having left research for tandem). Two things mentioned in that time-frame was Jim defining the TPF thruput (ACP having been renamed TPF as more non-airlines started using it for transactions) as a transaction objective for Tandem systems. The other was the study showing that hardware was becoming significantly more reliable and other factors were increasingly becoming source of outages (planned, human mistakes, disturbances in localized geographical area).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#16 We're losing the battle

old ACP/TPF related email from the period
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#email800325

in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#39 American Airlines

giving some numbers for 120 transaction/second TPF system

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

dollar coins

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:21:15
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
I don't understand a lot about this stuff. One would think that munis would be logically separated because it's tax-exempt. The fees are much lower than other bond funds because the managers don't have to spend as much time managing the fund.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#9 dollar coins

everything is rated. tax-exempt enters into investor calculating after-tax ROI. part of rating is probability of municipality (or anybody) declaring bankruptcy. the lower the rating, the higher the probability ... and the more risk that the investor is taking ... which means the higher the rate the municipality has to pay to attact investors (giving equal rating, municipalities generally pay lower rate ... being tax-exempt ... it doesn't take as much to have after-tax ROI).

when the toxic CDOs hit the fan ... there was a general confidence crisis and questioning regarding all ratings. then the "oracle from omaha" stepped in and started a new fund to specifically help prop up munis (values). in an interview, he said that he fully expected to make a profit out of the activity ... that it wasn't entirely altruistic

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

dollar coins

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:54:05
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
UK Midland ... overseas subsidiary was Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank ... they seemed to go thru brand consolidation and adopted HSBC for everything.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#14 dollar coins

oops ... this said that HSBC took over midland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midland_Bank

i had gotten the impression that HSBC had been directed from midland. the above says HSBC acquisition of midland in '92 was (up until then) the largest acquisition in banking history (possibly midland was actually larger than HSBC at the time?).

this does say that HSBC is UK/London bank
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC

this gives more of history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hongkong_and_Shanghai_Banking_Corporation

where the head of the bank moved from Hong Kong to London in 1941 (anticipating Japanese invasion).

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

dollar coins

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:19:04
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#9 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#18 dollar coins

for funds that already hold munis ... there are some regulations on how funds have to calculate the value of their current holdings. some of that has to do with what could they expect to get if they were to sell the holding on the open market. during the peak of the credit crisis when nobody felt they could trust triple-A ratings ... because so many triple-A ratings looked more like the emperor's new clothes fable ... nobody was willing to buy something if they had no idea what the real value might be. the "open market" disappeared ... so current holdings theoretically became worthless.

that was part of buffett stepping in to prop up miniciple tax-exempt bonds. he would "insure" tax-exempt munis ... proping up market and establishing confidence in the holdings (you might not trust the triple-A rating ... but you could trust buffett's insurance)

Warren Buffett to the Rescue, Credit Crisis Creates Opportunities
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article3723.html

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

To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:11:37
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
It's funny, we used to say "built like a Sherman Tank" to describe something extremely strongly built, like, say, a '56 Buick (or a well-built girl;-)

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#11 To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?

could be managing public opinion ... the opposite of reality ... like using the word security in the name of things that have no security. the other scenario is use by people who never actually saw a *real* tank.

i had uncle that spent 3-4 yrs in the conflict as (sheman) tank mechanic ... older threads in this n.g. on the subject mention drafting any people in the theater ... regardless of MOS, for tank crews (because of attrition). some possibility my uncle was too large to be a candidate.

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

dollar coins

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:28:02
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
business news programs are still claiming that there is $1 trillion inflation in these instruments and so far there has only been about $400b write-downs ... so that there is still $600b possible in write-downs to come.

much of that $1 trillion was pumped into the real-estate market bubble ... simplified assumption is if there is $1 trillion write-down in the valuation of the toxic CDOs ... there is corresponding $1 trillion deflating pressure in the real-estate market bubble.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#104 dollar coins

there have been past references to write-down sweepstakes leader moving back&forth between citigroup and ubs.

Citigroup faces $8.9 billion writeoff, capital need: Goldman
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSWNA730720080626

from above:
Tanona's forecast suggests deeper problems for Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit, who is trying to turn the bank around after nearly $15 billion of losses in the last two quarters, and more than $46 billion of credit losses and write-downs since the middle of 2007.

... snip ...

there have been periodic references raising the question why are the write-down announcements being spread out over such a long period of time ... rather than just announcing the total amount up front.

past mention of subprime write-down sweepstakes:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#1 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#28 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#32 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#48 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#49 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#51 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#90 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#30 subprime write-down sweepstakes

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

dollar coins

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:41:47
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
problem was growing lack of confidence in the rating services (and everything that received triple-A rating, not just toxic CDOs). i've seen references to the mortgage originators "shopping" their toxic CDOs ... i.e. the toxic CDO seller pays for the rating ... and they would shop around until they found a rating service that would give their toxic CDOs the rating they wanted. the trust/confidence issue, because of the triple-A ratings given to toxic CDOs ... then spilled over into everything getting ratings (aka the whole toxic CDO & credit mess has impacted all sorts of things).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#9 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#18 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#20 dollar coins

Rating Game Redux
http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/06/25/moodys-fitch-ratings-biz-wall-cx_lm_0626ratings.html

from above:
Earlier this month, the SEC proposed a different set of ratings for structured finance products, like CDOs, to distinguish their risks from single-issuer bonds, like municipal or corporate debt.

... snip ...

long-winded, decade-old post discussing several of the current problems, including needing better visibility into the underlying value of CDO-like instruments
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm

other recent articles on the subject

Too Clever By Half
http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/06/24/sec-rules-ratings-markets-bond-cx_md_0620markets38.html

from above:
Based on limited information available about what the CDOs contained, bond raters Fitch, Moody's and Standard & Poor's gave many of them triple-A gradings, indicating that their chances of going bad were remote.

... snip ...

as noted previously, toxic CDOs were used two decades ago in the S&L crisis to obfuscate underlying value.

How Fair Is Fair-Value Accounting?
http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/06/24/accounting-banking-sec-biz-cx_lm_0625sec.html

from above:
Rather than making things clearer, the fair-value accounting rules only point to the futility of pricing assets every day in highly volatile markets when the credit markets are frozen solid. The flip side to this? It's unlikely anyone would be complaining if asset values were rising and the markets weren't in crisis.

... snip ...

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

To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this  about?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:57:11
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
there have been claims that the current credit mess has had much less effect on china because their banks had much better governance ... recent reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#12 To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?

Goldman ICBC Piece Rises Fivefold as Chinese Bank Claims No. 1
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aoh4ppFuAltQ&refer=home

from above:
The bank's market capitalization of US$252 billion is almost twice that of JPMorgan, making ICBC the largest publicly traded financial institution on the planet.

Jiang's war chest contains $130 billion in cash and near- cash securities -- more than enough to buy a bank as big as Citigroup Inc. at its June 25 market value.


... snip ...

reference from today on more citigroup problems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#22 dollar coins

The ICBC article mentions that the chairman's salary is $260k, less than 1 percent of salary of JPMorgan Chase.

recent thread raising issue about US corp executive salaries
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#73 Should The CEO Have the Lowest Pay in Senior Management

a news program had pointed out in the US executive pay is currently running ratio of 400:1 pay of avg. worker ... up from ratio of 20:1 ... the ratio runs closer to 10:1 in other industrial countries.

above post also mentioned that (effectively) a significant percentage of the wall street financial institutional write-downs was payed out in bounus in the four year run-up to the current credit mess.

past posts mentioning the bonuses in the run-up to the current credit mess
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#28 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#9 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#50 fraying infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#76 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#79 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#95 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#32 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#52 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#66 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#42 The Return of Ada
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#57 our Barb: WWII
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#4 A Merit based system of reward -Does anybody (or any executive) really want to be judged on merit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#3 dollar coins

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

What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:40:02
Charlton Wilbur <cwilbur@chromatico.net> writes:
C'mon. Think. This kind of election-among-equals is currently being used for a large number of distributed processing tasks, and the computers have not taken over the world yet.

one of the people mentioned in the following (national virtual observatory) was one of the speakers at Jim's tribute last month and mentioned that they had just been given approval to task hubble to investigate in more detail.

Galaxy Zoo's blue mystery (part I)
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/33403/title/Science_%2B_the_Public__Galaxy_Zoos_blue_mystery_(part_I)
Science News / Galaxy Zoo's Blue Mystery (part 2)
http://sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/33436/title/Galaxy_Zoos_blue_mystery_(part_2)
Galaxy Zoo Produces a Rare Specimen
http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/06/22/1757215.shtml
What is Hanny's Voorwerp?
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080625.html

for other kind of distributed processing drift ... we've claimed that the payment gateway (part of what has come to be called "electronic commerce") was the original SOA
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

misc. recent posts mentioning Jim's tribute:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#38 Boyd again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#32 A Tribute to Jim Gray: Sometimes Nice Guys Do Finish First
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#34 American Airlines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#36 A Tribute to Jim Gray: Sometimes Nice Guys Do Finish First
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#37 American Airlines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#40 A Tribute to Jim Gray: Sometimes Nice Guys Do Finish First
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#50 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#51 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#54 Trusted (mainframe) online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#62 Ransomware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#63 DB2 25 anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#70 Next Generation Security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#94 Lynn - You keep using the term "we" - who is "we"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#95 Accidentally Deleted or Overwrote Files?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#97 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#16 We're losing the battle

misc. recent posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#4 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#5 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#6 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#13 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#15 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

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

Op codes removed from z/10

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Op codes removed from z/10
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:53:55
d10jhm1@US.IBM.COM (Jim Mulder) writes:
"Military secrets are the most fleeting of all." -- Spock, The Enterprise Incident, stardate 5027.4, Episode 59

The second most fleeting might be the marketing advantage provided by microcode assists. What one vendor can do in microcode, another usually can replicate in short order. So any such advantage from these assists would have run its course a few decades ago.

On horizontally microcoded machines, it was possible to obtain a performance benefit in some cases by providing microcode which could implement a frequently used code sequence faster by using some hardware parallelism that was not available to the general instruction set. That is not the case on IBM processors of the past decade, and in fact using the lock assists had become slower than not using them.


there were some comments at the time that the mvs/se microcode assists were part of the motivation for Amdahl's macrocode ... allowing them to track various fluctuations in hardware architecture (much simpler than it took to do the original by using a slight variation on 370 assembler) ... w/o having to resort to the difficulty and complexity of low-level horizontal microcoding. this then contributed to Amdahl being able to relatively easily implement hypervisor support ... much easier than it took to create pr/sm response on the 3090.

the "original" (vm/370) microcode assists were in two forms ... those things that implement the virtual machine rules for execution of supervisor instructions ... avoiding the interrupt and context switch overhead interrupting into the vm370 supervisor.

the other big benefit was on the "vertical" microcode machines ... initially 138/148 ... where there was an avg. of 10 microcode instructions executed for every 370 instruction ... and vm370 kernel pathlengths was dropped into microcode on nearly a 1-for-1 instruction basis (obtaining a 10:1 performance improvement). old post on selecting the parts of vm370 kernel that were moved into the microcode (criteria was that 148 had 6k bytes of available microcode space ... so the objective was to select the highest used 6k bytes of vm370 kernel instructions):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21 370 ECPS VM microcode assit

the issue with the high-end horizontal microcode machines was that various optimizations by the time of 3033 achieved nearly 1:1 parity between horizontal microcode and 370 instructions (370 instruction execution had gotten so efficient that there was nearly no difference between implementing the function in 370 instructions vis-a-vis implementing in microcode) ... aka for the "ECPS" class of things done originally for virgil/tully (138/148) would see no difference on 3033 (and later horizontal microcode) machines. that mostly left doing things in microcode/(macrocode) that could avoid overhead if implemented in straight machine instructions (like adding virtual machine rules to the execution of supervisor state instruction) ... aka things like hypervisor and pr/sm.

misc. past posts mentioning macrocode:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#44 Linux paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#48 Linux paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#9 Mainframe System Programmer/Administrator market demand?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#56 Wild hardware idea
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#59 Misuse of word "microcode"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#60 Misuse of word "microcode"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#24 Description of a new old-fashioned programming language
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#14 Multicores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#29 Documentation for the New Instructions for the z9 Processor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#40 POWER6 on zSeries?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#43 POWER6 on zSeries?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#48 POWER6 on zSeries?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#38 blast from the past ... macrocode
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#7 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#9 Mainframe Jobs Going Away
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#24 Harvard Vs Von Neumann architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#40 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#15 About TLB in lower-level caches
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#30 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#32 Code density and performance?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#35 Code density and performance?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#39 Using different storage key's
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#42 old hypervisor email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#14 32 or even 64 registers for x86-64?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#33 Assembler question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#34 Assembler question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#20 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#1 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#3 Has anyone ever used self-modifying microcode? Would it even be useful?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#9 Has anyone ever used self-modifying microcode? Would it even be useful?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#84 VLIW pre-history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#74 Non-Standard Mainframe Language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#96 some questions about System z PR/SM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#42 mainframe performance, was Is a RISC chip more expensive?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#32 New Opcodes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#33 New Opcodes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#42 New Opcodes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#80 Random thoughts

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

what newsgroup server do you use?

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: what newsgroup server do you use?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 27 Jun 2008 14:00:09 -0700
tlongfellow writes:
Verizon fios has just dropped all bit.* newsgroups from their service. (I am lobbying for more than the 'Big-8' list they offer)

recommendations in alt(.folklore.computers) because of similar:

<http://www.teranews.com> (1 time charge) (free) <http://news.aioe.org> (free) <http://dotsrc.org> (free) <http://www.x-privat.org/international.php> (free) <http://motzarella.org/?language=en> (free) <http://gmane.org/> (mail-lists via news) (free) <http://www.newsfeeds.com/signup.htm> (pay) <http://www.individual.net/> (low pay)

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

We're losing the battle

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From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: We're losing the battle
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 28 Jun 2008 02:56:53 -0700
E99071@JP.IBM.COM (Timothy Sipples) writes:
Whether you're seeing these particular trends at your bank or not is interesting, but from an industry view I think this is a reasonable (and unsurprising) generalization. (Certainly the biggest application provider in this market, ACI Worldwide, recognizes these trends.) And you shouldn't be surprised when you start to see these trends hitting your bank in the coming years if they haven't already. There's an awful lot of pressure in the banking industry to gain efficiencies, reduce costs, and improve service levels.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#10 We're losing the battle

for some other topic drift ... a couple recent posts (from a.f.c) about implementation of ATM machine support on VM/CMS platform in the 70s (references to getting higher thruput than acp/tpf implementation on the same hardware)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#13
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#15

also had more recent experience earlier in this decade involving modifications to ATM network processing for (NACHA) processing trials ... for (AADS) debit card transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

... on the internet. The NACHA RFI response was submitted for us by somebody else, because we weren't members of NACHA
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/nacharfi.htm

report on the result of the trials can be found here (23july2001) ... describing some of the processing modifications to support the trials of doing debit transactions over the internet
https://web.archive.org/web/20020204041928/http://internetcouncil.nacha.org/Projects/ISAP_Results/isap_results.htm

indirect reference in article in mar/apr 2005 ibm systems magazine article (although some of the historical info is slightly garbled)
https://web.archive.org/web/20190524015712/http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/stoprun/Stop-Run/Making-History/

included some amount of working with ACI.

other posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#97 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#99 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#101 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#7 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#16 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#17 We're losing the battle

for other drift, some old ACP/TPF related email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#email800325

in this recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#39

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

dollar coins

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 06:33:25
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
Under the old regime, yes. An "AAA" is worth as much as an IUO written on an invoice from an automobile association. Noone will trust them again.

Make a numeric regime instead. Estimated 10 year default risk in %. The federal US would score 5.6 based on history, France would score around 8, Germany around 14. IBM and companies in its class around 1.0. yes, IBM has a lower historical risk of going bust than the larger national states. Of the 60 or so companies in the "IBM class", 4 have ever gone bust or made a default, ever.

International Harvester was the most spectacular one.


i've mentioned visiting this company before
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#25 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#66 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#70 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#21 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#87 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#64 independent appraisers

they do fairly sophisticated default probablities on tens of thousands of corporations from around the world. Their (june) monthly newsletter:
Kamakura Corporation announced Monday that its monthly index of troubled public companies showed strong improvement in May after deteriorating in 9 of the previous 10 months. Kamakura's troubled company index decreased significantly in May to 12.7%, down from 13.7% in April. The 1.0% decline is the biggest monthly improvement in credit quality since January 2007. At the current 12.7% level, the index shows that credit conditions are better than 48.7% of the monthly periods since the start of the index in January 1990. Kamakura defines a troubled company as a company whose default probability is in excess of 1%. The index covers more than 20,000 public companies in 30 countries using the fourth generation version of Kamakura's advanced credit models.

... snip ...


http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/mmframe?prid=402416&attachid=770178

something sticks in the back of my mind that one of the Kamakura's founders was involved in doing the next generation in variable rate mortgage evaluations in the late 80s ... mentioned here leading to citigroup getting out of the mortgage business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm

the playout of strong global demand for commodities implies lots of companies are doing lots of business ... even tho the rise in prices is resulting in some amount of pain in the states.

recent posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#98 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#104 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#2 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#3 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#8 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#9 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#14 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#18 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#19 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#20 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#22 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#23 dollar coins

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

OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 09:02:57
Peter_Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Later, Unix understood multiple processes, but didn't know threads from a hole in the ground. MVS had threads ("tasks") but not multiple processes per job. We're finally getting to the point where we can have both. OS/2 made extensive use of threads, which gave it the reputation of being hard to write applications for, since the typical windoze programmer was unfamiliar with threads.

old emails about being contacted by the os2 group about helping them with scheduling/dispatching (resource management)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#email871204
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#email871204b

in this post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#60 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

for other drift old email about 3tier (middle layer) networking architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#email890308

in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#19 Device and channel

and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email890519

in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#10 What's a mainframe

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

What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 09:06:03
Peter_Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Backups. The mainframe feature I miss most on my pecee is having nightly backups done for me without the need to think of them. I don't need Apple's "time machine" that keeps all the backups on the same disk, I mean something that maks one, or perhaps more, backups to different media.

Also, I seem to always have something at home I need at work, and visa-versa. If I happen to think of it I can upload it somewhere, or e-mail it to myself, but central networked file storage would be nice. No, I don't allow FTP or remote logins to any of my systems because of security concerns.


TSM will do it ... if in connected environment with a TSM machine.

recent posts about having created CMSBACK which evolved into workstation datasave facility, then morphing into ADSM and then being renamed TSM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#7 We're losing the battle

old email regarding original CMSBACK:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#cmsback

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

CLIs and GUIs

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CLIs and GUIs
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:26:52
CBFalconer <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes:
This brings up the fundamental difference between the interfaces, and the desires of their users. A GUI presents the user with a limited range of options, and says "choose one of these". A CLI allows the user to express their desires in whatever language they and the machine both understand. Thus the GUI user is driven by the computer, and the CLI user drives the computer.

Since both have their place, the better machines allow the user to choose at any time.


in the early days of GUIs an issue was how to take advantage of all the screen real estate .... in the fullscreen edit scenario it was display more of the context of the file being edited. in default environment, it was to provide a context for casual user who wouldn't be expected to have memorized options and features ... and so the context provided was in lieu of the level of knowledge that could be expected of a (CLI) "power" user.

one of the discussions in that time-frame was whether or not people using a computer for several hrs a day could be expected to have some level of expertise ... possibly equivalent to that required for driving a car. of course, over the years ... the skill level needed to drive a car appears to have declined ... so possibly it isn't a useful comparison anymore.

for a little drift, old airline reservation CLI ... extremely archaic/obtuse continued for ages. we had been called in to consult on some of the applications over a decade ago. we actually did work on replacement for the ROUTES application (find candidate flt segments to get between origin and destination). the traditional CLI typically required three distinct commands looking at various kinds of different information.

part of what we had been called in was to address the ten impossible things ... one which involved aggregate thruput. part of the replacement implementation was speeding things up by a factor of 100 ... but then we leveraged the speed-up and the screen real-estate to be able to display all the information from the three traditional different CLI operations in a single response. The "capacity" result was that number of transactions per second only increased by a factor of ten times (but ten times more stuff was being done in each transaction and something that would have involved several interactions using three different kinds of commands were now being done in that one transaction).

lots of past posts mentioning airline res systems and/or doing a little work on a ROUTES application replacement:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#17 Old Computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#100 Why won't the AS/400 die? Or, It's 1999 why do I have to learn how to use
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#103 IBM 9020 computers used by FAA (was Re: EPO stories (was: HELP IT'S HOT!!!!!))
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#136a checks (was S/390 on PowerPC?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#20 Competitors to SABRE?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#26 Disk caching and file systems. Disk history...people forget
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#69 Block oriented I/O over IP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#45 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#49 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#17 I hate Compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#0 TSS/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#3 News IBM loses supercomputer crown
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#2 Computers in Science Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#3 Why are Mainframe Computers really still in use at all?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#12 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#43 IBM doing anything for 50th Anniv?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#83 HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#83 Summary: Robots of Doom
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#67 Tweaking old computers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#48 InfiniBand Group Sharply, Evenly Divided
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#30 difference between itanium and alpha
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#67 unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#3 Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#47 What makes a mainframe a mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#6 Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#44 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#58 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#14 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#6 Xah Lee's Unixism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#23 Demo: Things in Hierarchies (w/o RM/SQL)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#29 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#26 IBM 3614 and 3624 ATM's
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#85 The TransRelational Model: Performance Concerns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#22 The Soul of Barb's New Machine (was Re: creat)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#41 something like a CTC on a PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#67 intel's Vanderpool and virtualization in general
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#47 Using the Cache to Change the Width of Memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#22 System/360; Hardwired vs. Microcoded
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#44 What was new&important in computer architecture 10 years ago ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#44 Intel engineer discusses their dual-core design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#7 HASP/ASP JES/JES2/JES3
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#5 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#6 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#9 Arpa address
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#4 How Many 360/195s and 370/195s were shipped?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#18 RAMAC 305(?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#18 50th Anniversary of invention of disk drives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#52 US Air computers delay psgrs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#22 Bidirectional Binary Self-Joins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#41 US Airways badmouths legacy system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#41 Fast and Safe C Strings: User friendly C macros to Declare and use C Strings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#28 Even worse than UNIX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#72 The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#8 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#45 64 gig memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#53 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#19 American Airlines

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

What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:37:20
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
Pretend you are very young and take pleasure in practicing cracker techniques. Would you leave that fridge alone? What kinds of things would you try to "break"?

one scenario is yes card exploit (late 90s, early part of this decade with payment card chip implementation ... doesn't have to be young/pleasure motivation ... but can be other kinds of motivation):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard

related postings of various kinds of other integrity/infrastructure failures (using the naked transaction metaphor, somewhat related to not providing end-to-end integrity)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#payments

we did some work in this area a decade or so ago with the AADS chips strawman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aadsstraw

after having been called in to consult with a small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server and had this technology called SSL they had invented and wanted to use ... frequently now referred to as electronic commerce
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

... we got involved with the x9a10 financial standard working group ... which in the mid-90s had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments ... which resulted in the x9.59 financial standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

we then semi-facetiously commented that we would take a $500 milspec part, aggressive cost reduce it by 2-3 orders of magnitude while at the same time, increasing the integrity. some of this shows up in the AADS patent portfolio
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadssummary.htm

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

What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:42:42
Kim Enkovaara <kim.enkovaara@iki.fi> writes:
Crooks also robbed the banks in the past. The methods just change, but there are ways to fight the criminals.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#33 What is "timesharing"

part of it is mostly return-on-investment (ROI) for criminals ... of course, there are exceptions (which even make the news) involving people that have no idea of what they are doing ... but the vast majority of fraud involve some amount of skill (both insiders and outsiders).

in the past we've characterized the implementations behind things like yes cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard

as point solution ... i.e. authentication early in the process and then leaving the rest of the infrastructure vulnerable ... this is also related to our use of the naked transaction metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#payments

the other analogy we've used is a paradigm that results in the defenders having significantly lower resources than available to the attackers ... recent post discussing some of those issues (because the value to those having to defend is a trivial amount compared to the value to the attackers):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#101

the other analogy that we've used in the implementations around the yes cards was that they appeared to start with the assumption that a specific technology was the answer ... and then they formulated everything else based on having already decided on what the answer was. the criticism then frequently is that there are a constant stream of fixes & enhancements in atttempt to address the shortcomings (because of not actually starting with a comprehensive solution)

we contrast this to the x9.59 financial standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

done in the x9a10 financial standard working group, where detailed end-to-end thread and vulnerability was done ... a solution was devised to address what was found in the detailed end-to-end investigation and then various technologies were selected to complement assist detailed end-to-end solution.

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

Data Breach Reports Up 69 Percent in 2008

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Lynn Wheeler <lynn@xxxxxxxx>
Date: June 30, 2008
Subject: Data Breach Reports Up 69 Percent in 2008
Blog: Information Security - UK
Data Breach Reports Up 69 Percent in 2008
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/06/data_breach_reports_up_69_perc_1.html

from above:
While the share of breaches due to data on the move fell nearly eight percent from last year, that slack was picked up by insider theft. Data breaches due to information stolen by someone inside the company increased from just six percent of the total in 2007 to nearly 16 percent so far this year. Another 13.5 percent of breaches came from subcontractors who lost or stole their clients' customer data.

... snip ...

In the past, I've seen reports about "suspected" data breaches involving insiders as being significantly under reported.

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

The wisdom of the ill informed

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@xxxxxx>
Subject: Re: The wisdom of the ill informed
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:49:11
To: James A. Donald <jamesd@xxxxxx>
CC: Arshad Noor <arshad.noor@xxxxxxx>,
Cryptography <cryptography@xxxxxx>
Mailing List: cryptography
James A. Donald wrote:
Committees of experts regularly get cryptography wrong - consider, for example the Wifi debacle. Each wifi release contains classic and infamous errors - for example WPA-Personal is subject to offline dictionary attack.

One would have thought that after the first disaster they would have hired someone who could do it right, but as Ian long ago pointed out, in "the market for silver bullets", they are unable to tell who can do it right. The only people who know who the real experts are, are the real experts. If you knew who to hire, you could do it yourself, and probably should do it yourself. So they hire expert salesmen, not cryptography experts.


the other scenario was that the cryptography part was done from such a myopic standpoint ... that they failed to consider the end-to-end infrastructure.

I've repeatedly heard excuses that the cryptographers in the wifi debacle believed that they could only design a solution based on significant hardware restrictions/constraints. part of what i observed ... by the time any of them shipped ... the hardware restrictions/constraints no longer existed .

the other thing that i observed was that with relatively trivial knowledge about chips ... it was possible to come up with an integrated solution that incorporated both the necessary hardware and the necessary cryptography ... there has got to be some analogy here someplace about the blind trying to describe an elephant; in addition to the "point solution" analogy, failing to take in the overall infrastructure.

i've repeatedly claimed that we did that in the AADS chip strawman solution
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

including addressing all the issues that later showed up in scenarios like with the yes cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescards

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

What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:04:08
Kim Enkovaara <kim.enkovaara@iki.fi> writes:
The data mining software used for this heuristics and monitoring is very complex, but what I have heard it is very effective against external and also internal threats. Bigger threat might be that someone in the bank tries to do something creative.

old post with description of one of the fraud patterns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#13 The new urgency to fix online privacy

a lot of this has been beefed up for identity theft scenarios ... long ago and far away, it was presumed that major activity was lost/stolen cards ... but that has been subsumed by data breaches and crooks using the information for internet transactions (card-not-present) or producing counterfeit cards. lots of past posts mentioning fraud, exploits, vulnerabilities, threats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#fraud

past studies have claimed that up to seventy percent of identity theft have involved insiders ... although recent data breach report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#35 Data Breach Reports Up 69 Percent in 2008

claims that insiders are involved in somewhat lower percentage of overall data breach reports (which can include simple lost data).

misc. other recent related posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#8 Hannaford case exposes holes in law, some say
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#10 Hannaford case exposes holes in law, some say
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#27 Hannaford case exposes holes in law, some say
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#28 Hannaford case exposes holes in law, some say
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#4 You won't guess who's the bad guy of ID theft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#86 What mode of payment you could think of with the advent of time?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#21 Worst Security Threats?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#24 Credit Card Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#42 Security Breaches
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#53 Digital cash is the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#55 Is data classification the right approach to pursue a risk based information security program?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#61 Could you please name sources of information you trust on RFID and/or other Wireless technologies?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#70 Next Generation Security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#76 Security Awareness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#83 Certificate Purpose
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#101 We're losing the battle

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

dollar coins

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:45:15
sidd <sidd@situ.com> writes:
your faith in these men is most touching, considering their track record

Greenspan, 2006, Jan 31: "...said he did not recall whether he mentioned the dramatic growth in subprime loans to his successor Ben Bernanke."

Bernanke, congressional testimony, 2006: U.S. house prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years, noted Bernanke, currently chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, in testimony to Congress's Joint Economic Committee. But these increases, he said, "largely reflect strong economic fundamentals," such as strong growth in jobs, incomes and the number of new households.

Bernanke, June 2007: "the troubles in the subprime sector seem unlikely to seriously spill over to the broader economy or the financial system."

more delicious quotes easily found thru search engines. they were horribly wrong. Roubini, Krugman, Shiller, buncha others were right.

i saw this coming in 2005, so did many, many others in the banking and realestate business.

we are all subprime now.


long winded, decade old post discussing much of the current problems including the need for greater visibility into value of toxic CDO instruments.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm

recent posts regarding commentary that related write-downs are expected to be $1 trillion ... of which something like $400b has already occurred. simplified calculations for that $1 trillion in (toxic CDO related) write-downs could involve a like amount ($1 trillion) inflation in real estate bubble (which then leaks into other parts of the economy). with the bubble burst in the toxic CDO values and expected $1 trillion write down ... there could be an expected corresponding $1 trillion deflation in real estate values.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#57 Credit crisis could cost nearly $1 trillion, IMF predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#59 Credit crisis could cost nearly $1 trillion, IMF predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#62 Credit crisis could cost nearly $1 trillion, IMF predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#3 America's Prophet of Fiscal Doom
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#73 Should The CEO Have the Lowest Pay In Senior Management?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#77 Do you think the change in bankrupcy laws has exacerbated the problems in the housing market leading more people into forclosure?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#98 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#104 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#22 dollar coins

nominally the subprime loans are "subprime" in the sense that the quality of the loan was not expected to be very high. these loans supposedly had been targeted for first time home owners with no credit history. however, they were also "subprime" in the sense that the initial teaser interest rate was way below (and decoupled from) the fed "prime rate".

recent stats claim that approaching 2/3rds of the "subprime" loans, instead went to people with credit history (possibly non-owner-occupied speculators, looking to flip house after year or two).

nominally the fed influences economy by reducing prime rate to increase economic activity (possibly increasing inflation) or increasing prime rate to decrease economic activity ... with corresponding decrease in inflation. the claim could be made that the subprime, subprime loans (with initial rate decoupled from the fed prime rate) had already fueled the economy ... relying on the incorrect/inaccurate valuation of toxic CDOs.

The claim could then be made that when the valuation problems with the toxic CDOs hit the fan, along with the corresponding write-downs and economic corrections ... there was no non-negative fed prime rate that could possibly offset those economic corrections. However, lowering the fed prime rate could/did put enormous downward pressure on the value of the dollar ... significantly increasing prices for commodities (already under upward pressure in the global market) ... and exacerbating inflation; double whammy:

• mortgage originators could unload loans as toxic CDOs w/o having to pay any attention to loan quality ... and could offer teaser introductory loan rates decoupled from the fed prime rate.

• rating services incorrectly rated these toxic CDOs ... which allowed enormous amounts of money to be pumped into the credit industry (based on the incorrectly rated toxic CDOs)

some amount of this was understood since toxic CDOs had been used two decades ago during the S&L crisis to obfuscate the underlying values.

misc. recent posts on the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#0 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#70 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#1 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#13 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#51 subprime write-down sweepstakes

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

What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:39:25
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
old post with description of one of the fraud patterns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#13 The new urgency to fix online privacy

a lot of this has been beefed up for identity theft scenarios ... long ago and far away, it was presumed that major activity was lost/stolen cards ... but that has been subsumed by data breaches and crooks using the information for internet transactions (card-not-present) or producing counterfeit cards. lots of past posts mentioning fraud, exploits, vulnerabilities, threats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#fraud


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#37 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

part of the issue is a countermeasure to lost/stolen card has been the person realizes that the card is missing, reports it, and then the issuing institution, deactivates the account number .... so online transactions are no longer authorized.

in the identity theft scenario, the person doesn't realize something has gone wrong ... until they start seeing fraudulent transactions showing up (which might be weeks later). identity theft scenarios (resulting in fraudulent transactions against the acccount) started showing up at least by the 80s. a major source of the information for identity theft were various kinds of breaches. the "naked transaction" metaphor discussions point out some fundamental paradigm flaws that heavily contribute to fraudulent financial transactions.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#payments

recent item from today:

Citibank ATM breach reveals PIN security problems
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/tec_atm_breach

from above:
The scam netted the alleged identity thieves millions of dollars.

...

Hackers are targeting the ATM system's infrastructure, which is increasingly built on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system and allows machines to be remotely diagnosed and repaired over the Internet.


... snip ...

for some drift ... recent posts mentioning having been involved in ATM network support in the 70s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#13 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#15 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

for other drift, we had been brought in to help word-smith the cal. state (and then the federal) electronic signature legislation.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#signature

some of the organizations involved in the electronic signature legislation were also heavily involved in privacy issues and had done some in-depth consumer surveys. they found the two top consumer privacy issues were
• identity theft (mostly fraudulent account transactions)

• denial of service (institutions using personal information to the detriment to the individual)


... and that a major source of identity theft was various kinds of security breaches and data breaches ... which was seeing little or no corrective action. this was major motivation behind the cal. state data breach notification legislation (which subsequently saw similar legislation in most other states), hoping that shinning a spotlight on the source of the problem would lead to corrective action.

some recent related posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#76 Security Awareness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#35 Data Breach Reports Up 69 Percent in 2008

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

dollar coins

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:30:16
sidd <sidd@situ.com> writes:
the property bubble took off after the tax break on home sales, and the tax deduction for mortgage payments. but it really went nuts in 2004-2006 when all prudence was defenestrated. thats when we fired a great number of clients for fear they would be liable for all manner of fraud.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#38 dollar coins

i would claim that the severity of the bubble is because of the enormous amounts of money pumped into the market because

1) all the loans, regardless of quality, could be immediately unloaded as toxic CDO

2) selling an unlimited number of toxic CDOs w/o regard to underlying quality, provided an enormous source of funds to make even larger number of loans w/o regard to quality.

nominally, various market forces would significantly dampen such questionable economic activity (traditional market feedback forces), keeping it from getting totally out of hand. however, the incorrect/inaccurate toxic CDO valuation allowed (real) value considerations to be decoupled from the amount of money being pumped in (which would traditionally have been a limiting force).

also, the subprime teaser rates ... effectively decoupled from the fed's prime rate ... provided an economic stimulus (equivalent to lowering the prime rate) ... however, it was based on false information that was not a sustainable economic force. when the toxic CDOs hit the fan ... there had to be economic correction ... which could not be offset by actual lowering of the fed's prime rate. there is possible a trillion dollars that is effectively a case of the emperor's new clothes fable. avoiding the economic correction might only be possible by some sort of magic act that somehow creates that missing trillion dollars.

the question then is whether actually lowering the fed prime rate could provide any additional economic stimulus (over the effect of the economic stimulus provided by the subprime, subprime loans) ... i.e. there may have only been downside to lowering the rate ... and no possible upside/benefit.

the problems with incorrect/inaccurate toxic CDO valuation also creates a question in the rating institutions ... and quite a bit of unrelated economic transactions are based on having confidence in those rating institutions.

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

NSFnet -- 20 Years of Internet Obscurity and Insight

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: NSFnet -- 20 Years of Internet Obscurity and Insight
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 06:29:12
NSFnet -- 20 Years of Internet Obscurity and Insight
http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/07/01/2124239.shtml

NSFnet celebrates 20 years of Internet obscurity, inspiration
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/29491

from above:
That was the email sent to users of the NSF's fledgling NSFnet to announce that the network's backbone had been upgraded to a "blazing T-1 speed." NSFnet was created by NSF a few years earlier in an attempt to create a computer network similar to the Department of Defense's ARPANET.

... snip ...

NSF and the Birth of the Internet
http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nsf-net/textonly/index.jsp

from above:
Hans-Werner Braun, former Principle Investigator for NSFNET at MERIT Networks: "The original 56 kilobits-per-second NSFNET backbone using Fuzzball-based LSI 11 nodes, became operational in mid-1986 between the five new NSF supercomputer centers and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The rather open-access nature of the NSFNNET -- a new routing paradigm -- constituted a challenge for the Internet, which until then was basically a hierarchical structure centered around the ARPANET. With the NSFNET, there was suddenly multiple national backbones with very different administration and modes of operations. In my opinion, the NSFNET activities most certainly propelled the Internet out of the U.S. Department of Defense research context, and paved the way towards today's global and very broad cyberinfrastructure."

... snip ...

and some old email from the period
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

and various posts mentioning the subject
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

as referred to in the email, we had been working with NSF and various participating organizations on T1 backbone. Already, as part of our HSDT project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

we had T1 (and faster speed) links on the internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

and were looking to do something similar for NSFNET. somewhere along the way, internal politics got involved and we were prevented from directly participating. the director of NSF sent a letter to CEO, hoping to fix the situation ... even claiming what we already had running was at least five yrs ahead of all NSFNET bid submissions. however that just seemed to aggravate the internal politics. however, we believe our participation contributed to the NSFNET RFP specifying requirement for T1 links.

Note that the winning bid did not actually provide T1 links ... but just supported 440kbit links. possibly somewhat to meet the letter of the RFP, T1 trunks were installed with telco multiplexors that ran multiple 440kbit links over T1 trunks. We somewhat facetiously noted that some of those T1 trunks were likely, in turn, multiplexed over higher speed telco trunks ... possibly even T5 trunks ... so one might claim that NSFNET backbone was T5 operation (not just T1 operation).

Some of the quotes from the referenced articles somewhat repeat my periodic refrain about tcp/ip being the technology basis for the modern internet, NSFNET was the operational basis for the modern internet, and CIX was the business basis for the modern internet.

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

Intel: an expensive many-core future is ahead of us

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Intel: an expensive many-core future is ahead of us
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 06:53:51
Intel: an expensive many-core future is ahead of us
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080702-intel-an-expensive-many-core-future-is-ahead-of-us.html

from above:
Intel has bad news for software developers. It's been hinted at already, but now the company has stated explicitly: it's not enough for software developers to be targeting dual, quad, or eight cores. No, the future holds tens, hundreds, or thousands of cores, and developers are going to have to bite the bullet and write programs that will scale to such systems.

... snip ...

recent posts mentioning multiple core chips:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#3 on-demand computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#83 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#89 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#26 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#79 Any benefit to programming a RISC processor by hand?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#37 Panic in Multicore Land
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#42 Panic in Multicore Land
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#6 It's Too Darn Hot
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#14 Was CMS multi-tasking?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#61 performance of hardware dynamic scheduling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#100 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#4 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

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

What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:11:05
Kim Enkovaara <kim.enkovaara@iki.fi> writes:
There is nothing secret in the implementation. The secret thing is the private key inside the thing, and the key is different in each instance and can be even changed when needed (or revoked). The key is in the order of 1000 bits long prime number for example. The security is based on mathematical properties where one operation is not very expensive but the inverse operation is expensive. For example multiplication two big prime numbers is easy, but factoring them is really hard problem.

the 1000 bits (or longer) is countermeasure to brute force attack (trying all possible values) when using prime numbers .... i.e. the prime numbers are rather sparce ... so to get a large number of different/possible values ... it has to get to very large sized numbers.

some old crypto related email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#crypto

including this one discussing PGP-like (public key) implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email810515
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#12 more secure communication over the network

we started working on ecc digital signature stuff in the mid-90s in conjunction with x9.59 financial standard protocol
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

in the mid-90s the x9a10 financial standard working group had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments. this would require a light weight end-to-end payload ... some discussion of other public key payment related specifications from the period that had factor of 100* times payload and processing bloat
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#bloat

however we had also been asked (challenged?) to be able to support proximity chip transit applications. so in addition to very light weight payload ... it would need a (chip) implementation that was extremely power efficient and fast ... which effectively forced us into a ecdsa implementation (in the 90s).

the chip public key implementations (using prime/rsa) from the period were

1) the standard chips from the period had very poor random number capability ... this effectively would rule out dsa & ecdsa ... just leaving rsa (assuming that you weren't going to get involved in fixing the chip problem). dsa & ecdsa required random number as part of the internal signature process (on the chip) ... something that rsa didn't require

2) rsa was very, very (extremely) slow (unable to meet the couple tenths of second elapsed time for transit application)

3) rsa was very, very power hungry ... requring more power than was possible in a proximity implementation

there was some efforts to speed up rsa chip implementation with addition of 1k-bit multiplier ... however this greatly increased the size of the chips and also increased the amount of power draw (already exceeding proxity implementation) while only somewhat reducing the elapsed time (still way too long for transit elapsed time requirements).

the combination of all the business requirements pushed us into tweaking chip design and using ec/dsa for x9.59 transactions in order to (also) meet requirements for proximity chip transit application.

for other drift ... recent post about kinds of crypto
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#87 New test attempt
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#86 Own a piece of the crypto wars

and small ecc footnote ... one of the inventors was in the research math department at the time.

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

What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:32:43
Peter_Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
What's wrong with barcoding? Rfid is overkill.

epc rfid was designed as further (inventory) labor (i.e. cost) savings vis-a-vis barcode. I can still remember (in early 80s) when there was novel suggestion to add barcodes to inventory tags ... and barcode scanners to portable electronic computers ... for corporate inventory activity.

epc web page:
http://www.epcglobalinc.org/home

in theory, inventory device doesn't actually have to "see" (find) the barcode for inventory. with cheap enuf epc rfid chips ... they can be applied to every consumer package. then inventory doesn't even need to count items on the shelves (of specific barcode) ... walking down the aisle with portable rfid reader can perform inventory (possibly just put it on some sort of automated carrier ... possible behind the shelf ... and eliminate the person altogether.

with respect to chip for x9.59 transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#43 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

aka "aads chip strawman"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

another objective was to make it extremely inexpensive ... we semi-facetiously said that we would start with $500 milspec part and (in addition to the previously mentioned requirements) aggresively cost reduce it by 2-3 orders of magnitude while increasing the integrity.

big part of chip cost is manufacturing ... which is basically constant per "wafer" ... the per chip cost is then the number of chips that can be sliced from a wafer. in the 90s ... we were getting very close to the (epc) rfid size (and therefor costs). an obstacle to further cost reduction was the technology used to cut chips from wafer (size of chips were getting so small that the percentage of wafer lost to the cuts was exceeding the percentage of the wafer for actual chips). It was in the early part of this decade with new technology that drastically reduced wafer area lost to the cuts ... that significant futher cost reduction was possible i.e. greatly increasing number of (very small) chips from single wafer.

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

What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:54:59
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
so we're back to passwords again. Biometrics won't work well. Lynn do you remember thinking tank meetings that talked about what passwording could and couldn't do? The bottom line is that passwords are an annoyance that prevents casual cracking.

lots of posts discussing numerous issues with pins/passwords ... as kind of shared-secret metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#secrets

as a kind of something you know from 3-factor authentication paradigm


https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#3factor

part of the "aads chip strawman" from the 90s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

we did a lot of work on person-centric paradigm for chip authentication ... as something you have authentication as well as option multi-factor authentication ... where the chip could accept a PIN ... that was a something you know authentication ... but was a "secret" paradigm ... as opposed to a shared-secret paradigm (aka the pin was known by your chip ... but nowhere else).

discussions of other related requirements for the aads chip strawman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#43 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#44 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

the person-centric aspect was what things were necessary to get an institution (gov, commercial, financial, etc) to accept a hardware token provided by an individual ... as opposed to requiring that the person (only) use a specific token issued by the institution. some amount of this show up in the aads patent portfolio
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadssummary.htm

in an person-centric paradigm ... if something you have tokens were to become prevalent ... then the person would need only one such token (or possibly a very few) ... rather than one token from every institution that the person deals with (on the order of the combination of the aggregate number of physical keys, cards, pins, and passwords a person currently has to deal with).

other activities in support for person-centric operation ... was defining various standards for (aads) authentication. previously mentioned has been x9.59 financial standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

however there was also work done for an AADS RADIUS (dominant authentication mechanism used on the web today)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#radius

as well as an AADS KERBEROS (extensively supported by large number of different implementations including the underlying implementation for m'soft operation)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#kerberos

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

dollar coins

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:53:22
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
i would claim that the severity of the bubble is because of the enormous amounts of money pumped into the market because

1) all the loans, regardless of quality, could be immediately unloaded as toxic CDO

2) selling an unlimited number of toxic CDOs w/o regard to underlying quality, provided an enormous source of funds to make even larger number of loans w/o regard to quality.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#38 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#40 dollar coins

news program just now had segment about several regional and local/community banks are in trouble over the correction in the real estate bubble. at the height of the bubble ... all sorts of speculation, projects, borrowing, etc was being pumped into (residential) real estate activity.

with bursting of the residential real estate bubble and associated economic correction ... many of these activities are under severe pressure. a big factor was that the incorrect/inaccurate valuation of (toxic) CDOs was big factor in allowing possible (unjustified) trillion dollars to be pumped into the market. with the toxic CDOs hitting the fan, there are projections that there may eventually be one trillion in associated (toxic CDO) write-downs. simplified calculations would imply that there will be a similar/corresponding one trillion deflation in the real estate market.

however, one of the previous references to the effects spreading out into other parts of the economy ... now seems to include some number of regional/local financial insitutions making loans (construction, development, speculation, resources, etc) for real estate related projects ... which are now facing significant problems (because of the correction). one of the comments was that many of these institutions are up against a rock and a hard place ... and there will be some that won't survive.

for some computer related topic drift ... having done dynamic adaptive feedback controls (for computer scheduling and resource management) as undergraduate in the 60s ... misc. references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

i have a tendency to try and identify mechanisms that provide controls, regulation, throttling, etc in dynamic systems ... and what happens when the expected controls are ineffective or become decoupled from the things that they are supposed to throttle. i contend that accurate valuation of toxic CDOs was a critical throttling/control mechanism ... and when that failed ... the whole system headed for disaster.

and as previously, long winded, decade old post discussing some number of the current problems ... including need for visibility into the underlying values of things making up CDO-like instruments.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm

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

What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:14:45
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
This seems to be the system used here for dogs, and proposed for other (meat) animals. As I wrote elsewhere, that presents a problem because the chips are so small that they move extensively in the body, unless inserted very carefully.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#44 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

chips are easily packaged in various kinds of carriers ... like embedded in the ear-band that has been used to "brand" cows, horses, pigs, etc. actual rfid chips are now like specs of dust ... they would have to be embedded in something else just to be handled.

when i was kid, on one round-up, i was in charge of can of disinfectant, real (hot) branding, horns cut/chopped, and steers created. my job with the can of disinfectant was to spray it on the areas that had been cut. had to watch for squirts of blood from cutting the horns (which could easily be 6' or more).

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

dollar coins

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:11:34
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
very hard. (controls on finances) because the whole structure changes in reaction to the controls already in place. Some sort of Hegelian theory is needed, (thesis -> antithesis ->synthesis: which inturn turns into the thesis of the following cycle). I wonder if it is even possible. (People are enjoying the ride so much on the upswing that it is not politically viable to act to slow the process)

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#46 dollar coins

first thing is to have accurate measurement (ratings) ... lots of (natural) feedback mechanisms will then work effectively (w/o explicit controls).

i had done something with global LRU implementation as undergraduate in the 60s. a side-effect of the way it was coded dynamically adjusted the reset interval based on demand ... as page demand/contention went up ... the interval between resetting pages decreased ... as the page demand/contention went down ... the interval between resetting pages increased (basically the page reset interval was directly coupled to the page demand as a side effect of the coding implementation ... w/o a separate explicit control).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

the importance of accurate visibility into underlying values in toxic CDO was raised in decade old, long winded post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm

w/o accurate measurement/visibility ... the investment bankers appeared to believe they discovered an unlimited supply of risk free (triple-A) invesments (toxic CDOs).

if they had realized the real risk ... it would have likely significantly moderated their investment (it has in many other situations). there is some temptation to draw an analogy with ponzi schemes ... which also involves lots of people investing in something that they have no accurate/realistic information.

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

Another difference between platforms

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Another difference between platforms...
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:13:34
graeme@ASE.COM.AU (Graeme Gibson) writes:
..but "blind" is completely out of court here and cannot go unchallenged in this forum. If CKD compatability had been abandoned then I've no doubt that it would have broken thousands of applications and would have been regarded by the customer base as a total show-stopper when considering an upgrade to any version of "MVS" or "S/390" or "z/OS" without CKD support.

the issue (initially) wasn't about CKD being abandoned but starting with MVS supporting FBA ... and transition period from CKD to FBA.

i was told that even providing them with fully tested and integrated FBA support in MVS ... it would still cost $26m to ship the support and I had to show (significant, incremental) ROI for that $26m (including opportunity costs vis-a-vis spending it somewhere else). at the time, the claim was that they were shipping as many disk drives as they could build ... and therefor (at best) customers would buy FBA in lieu of CKD ... with no incremental revenue.

one business case was life-cycle costs ... there have been enormous costs sunk into incremental enhancements to CKD ... that would have much more cost-effectively done as transition to FBA.

lots of past posts mentioning CKD issues (and/or being told I had to show ROI business case for the $26m to ship FBA support in MVS):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dasd

for other topic drift, misc. past posts about being allowed to play disk engineer in bldgs. 14 & 15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

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

Another difference between platforms

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Another difference between platforms...
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:54:38
Alan_Altmark@US.IBM.COM (Alan Altmark) writes:
But the limitations of the FBA architecture mean that, for example, I cannot share a RACF/VM database when deployed on FBA. Even if CP's simulation of FBA on SCSI was updated to include RESERVE/RELEASE, it wouldn't work because there is no concept of channel path groups and no "lockout" mechanism in the SCSI controllers.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#49 Another difference between platforms...

i had done a alternative architecture for channel path groups that required much fewer circuits to implement and was much simpler to virtualize ... and would have been easily applied to FBA.

on the other hand ...

i've mentioned before having done a lot of work for HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

... it started as virtual machine facility for branch office SEs to keep up their skills using operating systems ... after the 23jun69 unbundling announcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

... but quickly transitioned in providing online timesharing services for (world-wide) sales&marketing support (by the mid-70s, salesmen couldn't even submit a customer 370 order that hadn't first been processed by a HONE application). Nearly all the sales&marketing support applications were implemented in APL ... which was extremely processor hungry.

I provided HONE with highly enhanced vm370 kernel ... misc. old email doing internal vm370 kernel distributions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#email800501
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#email830705

i had done vm370 multiprocessor support for us HONE datacenter ... so they could upgrade to multiprocessors in the complex for additional processing power. misc. past posts mentioning SMP and/or compare&swap instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

invented by charlie at the science center (the name compare&swap was created because CAS are charlie's initials)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

The european HONE datacenter originally did single-system image support which was integrated and made available for the (internal) world-wide HONE distribution. Instead of using reserve/release to serialize/sequence loosely-coupled operation ... they used a special CKD search channel program to implement the semantics of the compare&swap instruction (which is much more efficient than reserve/release).

More efficient still is the (originally) ACP locking RPQ ... recent post/thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#39 American Airlines

The US HONE datacenter used combination to create the largest single-system-image operation (at the time) ... with load-balancing and fall-over/recovery across the complex. Somewhat because the datacenter was located in Cal. ... in the early 80s it was replicated, first in Dallas and then a 3rd in Boulder ... with load-balancing and fall-over/recovery across the replicated, geographically distributed sites.

As an aside ... when we did ha/cmp product:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

we had used (scsi) device reserve/release commands to implement "cluster" (i.e. loosely-coupled) operation.

however, one of the issues in ha/cmp work ... old post reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
and old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

one of the issues was to have a facility in the i/o fabric to "lock-out" suspected failed processor (in large clusters) as part of cluster reconfiguration. the issue is something of race-condition where a processor may have stalled ... rather than actually failed ... and any operations that processor may think it is supposed to be doing ... needs to be prevented/locked-out ... after cluster reconfiguration has completed. this is sort of the inverse of reserve/release ... instead of exclusive access for specific processor ... it allows all processors to access the device except for the processor(s) that are removed from active cluster configuration.

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

dollar coins

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:57:30
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
i had done something with global LRU implementation as undergraduate in the 60s. a side-effect of the way it was coded dynamically adjusted the reset interval based on demand ... as page demand/contention went up ... the interval between resetting pages decreased ... as the page demand/contention went down ... the interval between resetting pages increased (basically the page reset interval was directly coupled to the page demand as a side effect of the coding implementation ... w/o a separate explicit control).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#46 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#48 dollar coins

i use to talk about implementing (scheduling, paging, etc) controls in zero instructions ... create natural coupling between activity and other mechanisms that had side-effect of regulating the activity. the real trick was implementing optimal control algorithms in zero instructions.

the contention then is somewhat the effect of toxic CDO ratings ... large risks would should dampen the appetite. breaking the coupling between the actual risk and the stated risk ... opened up huge appitite for supposedly (triple-A) zero-risk instruments. An (again, somewhat the ponzi analogy), there were those that were all too happy to satisfy the demand.

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

dollar coins

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:13:11
never+mail@panix.com.invalid (Michael Roach) writes:
You'd be surprised what a 5% drop can do. During the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, truckers were asked to voluntarily restrict deliveries to early morning and late evening hours and many residents took their vacations at this time time to escape the perceived traffic (and associated smog) nightmare. Traffic was free-flowing all the time and I sometimes had to visit customers in Santa Ana, San Bernardino, Pasadena, downtown L.A., and Santa Monica in one day (I never had to make the Grand Tour and add San Diego to the trip!) After a couple days, I realized I no longer needed to delay my start time to avoid heavy traffic. This was all due to a 5% drop in volume during peak traffic periods.

past thread/posts that above some traffic load level ... certain driving practices ... by possibly less than one percent of the drivers, would trigger change from free flowing traffic to congested stop and go.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#4 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#7 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#10 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#5 sorting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#12 sorting

and related post on airplane congestion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#61 Up, Up, ... and Gone?

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

Virtual water cooler

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Lynn Wheeler <lynn@xxxxxxxx>
Date: July 3rd, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Subject: Virtual water cooler
Personality types, ala Myers-Briggs, would be a differentiation; "Es" seem to have greater preference for the physical water cooler; Movies have stereotyped "geeks", frequently with very strong "I" orientation.

I had gotten blamed for online computer conferencing on the internal network in the late 70s and early 80s ... at the time there was a lot of pontification hypothesizing such benefits for the technology (the internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime summer ‘85).

Somewhat as a result, i got a researcher that was paid to sit in the back of my office for nine months, taking notes on how I communicated. They also got copies of all my incoming and outgoing email ... as well as logs of all instant messages. The information turned into a research report on computer mediated conversation (also used as Stanford PhD thesis, joint between language and computer AI) ... as well as some number of subsequent papers and books.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

I would contend that having long-term online access ... including online terminal access at home since mar70 ... significantly contributed to being involved in the activity.

One of the observations from the period was that large organizations tended to have people that acted as information hoarders ... also frequently information gateways ... attempting to enhance their corporate stature by careful management of information. Online computer conferencing tended to cut across all those lines (significantly increasing information sharing) ... somewhat obsoleting such individuals.

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

OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:08:31
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
These days we don't actually print them. We use //SYSMDUMP DD and IPCS to analyze and/or browse them. I think unix works similarly.

when rex(x) was in its infancy ... i wanted to demonstrate that rex(x) wasn't just another pretty command scripting language. i undertook to demonstrate the power (of rex) by re-implementing (vm370's) IPCS in rex.

the standard IPCS implementation was a few tens of thousand of assembler lines of code. the goal was, in half-time over three months, implement (in rex) a IPCS replacement that ran ten times faster (took some slight of hand since assembler code was being replaced with interpreted rex) *and* having ten times more function.

everything was pretty much done within the first month or so ... a major use of (vm370's) ipcs was analyzing (vm370) kernel failures ... so i started work on categorizing types of failures and building library of (rex) code that automatically looked for various failure signatures.

it was eventually in use by nearly all internal datacenters and corporate customer support personal (PSRs) ... but for whatever reason i couldn't get it released as product to customers. what i was able to do was get approval for a SHARE presentation describing *DUMPRX* ... where I effectively spent the whole session describing how others might do a similar implementation.

misc. past posts mentioning dumprx
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dumprx

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

What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:00:25 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
as a kind of something you know from 3-factor authentication paradigm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#3factor


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#43 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#44 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#45 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

part of the issue is that multi-factor authentication is assumed to be more secure based on the different factors NOT having common vulnerabilities. PIN represents (shared-secret) something you know authentication and (magstripe) card represents something you have authentication.

Starting at least in the 80s, skimming and harvesting attacks were compromising end-points and other points in infrastructure to obtain (static) information for replay attacks. An end-point compromise met that attackers could obtain the static magstripe information to create a counterfeit something you have card AND the associated something you know PIN (i.e. common vulnerability invalidating assumptions about multi-factor authentication being more secure).

as previously referenced, the x9a10 financial standard working group in the mid-90s had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments (we had gotten involved after working with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server ... which is now commonly referred to as electronic commerce) ... the x9a10 work resulted in the x9.59 financial standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

which includes countermeasures for skimming, harvesting and replay attacks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#harvest

recent posts mentioning ATM machines ... including having done some work back in the 70s on ATM support:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#10 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#13 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#15 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#28 We're losing the battle

... and news references from this week about recent ATM compromise:

Hackers Take the US Banking Industry by Storm - Citibank and Microsoft to blame?
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Hackers-Take-the-US-Banking-Industry-by-Storm-89077.shtml
Citibank ATM network hacked
http://www.heise-online.co.uk/news/Citibank-ATM-network-hacked--/111045
Accused hackers steal PINs from Citibank ATMs (data breach)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008028857_atm02.html
Clothes don't make this man: Sweatshirt helps nail Citibank card
scammer
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/070308-citibank-card-scammer-sweatshirt.html?t51hb
Clothes don't make this man: Sweatshirt helps nail Citibank card
scammer
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/072308-design-flaws-besides-vulnerabilities-hurt.html
Charges Filed in $2m Citi ATM Fraud
http://www.epaynews.com/index.cgi?survey=&ref=browse&f=view&id=121507862113743148197&block=
Security Hole in Citibank ATMs Underscores Larger Security Flaws in
Banking Networks According to TraceSecurity
http://ca.us.biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080702/clw082.html?.v=101
Emergent Chaos: On Banking Security
http://www.emergentchaos.com/archives/2008/07/on_banking_security.html
Citibank ATM breach reveals PIN security problems
http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/02/news/citibank_atms.ap/index.htm?section=money_latest
ATM breaches more likely at stores than banks
http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/02/pf/atm_security/index.htm?section=money_latest
Security breach for Citibank ATMs inside 7-Elevens / It's unclear
where in network that PINs were stolen
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/01/BUID11I7G7.DTL
PIN Numbers Are Vulnerable to Hackers
http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1459836/pin_numbers_are_vulnerable_to_hackers/index.html
Encryption: Swindle Exposes Flaws in Citibank ATM Security
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/63658.html
Google Search Identifies Citibank PIN Number Thief
http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/client/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=208802221
Citibank PIN Hack: Deja Vu
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=158078
Citibank ATM breach reveals PIN security problems
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/tec_atm_breach
Citibank ATM breach reveals PIN security problems
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/douglas_engelbart_hyperscope.php
Hackers Steal PINs From Citibank ATMs, Security Breach Raises Concerns
About The Availability Of Private Information
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/01/national/main4226061.shtml

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

WoW security: now better than most banks

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@xxxxxx>
Subject: Re: WoW security: now better than most banks.
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:59:22 -0400
To: Perry E. Metzger <perry@xxxxxx>
CC: cryptography@xxxxxx
Perry E. Metzger wrote:
My bank doesn't provide any sort of authentication for logging in to bank accounts other than passwords. However, Blizzard now allows you to get a one time password keychain frob to log in to your World of Warcraft account.

post in thread here a yr ago (1jul07) about financial institutions attempting some (disastrous) deployments in the 99/00 time-frame ... and then instead of taking blame for deployment problems ... there was quickly spreading opinion that hardware tokens weren't practical in the consumer market place
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#34 The bank fraud blame game

as noted in another post ... the disastrous failures were somewhat a case of institutional knowledge not permeating different parts of the organizations.

banking conferences in the mid-90s were attributing the existing online banking migration to the internet in large part motivated by significant customer support problems with serial port modems (mostly with the serial port part).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#38 The bank fraud blame game

that even if a little bit of the experience from the earlier online banking programs had carried over into the later hardware token deployments ... much of the deployment problems could have been averted.

In any case, the claim could be made that the industry is still attempting to recover from those disasters.

a couple other posts on the same subject in other threads:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#65 Poll: oldest computer thing you still use
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#22 'Man in the browser' is new threat to online banking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#11 Public Computers

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

What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:07:48 -0400
Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
Root the laptop, steal the private key and use a keylogger to grab the passphrase along with any and all passwords used for ssh connections.

long recognized problem with how easy it is to compromise personal computer systems. that was large part of the design for EU FINREAD standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#finread

which included some amount regarding assuming that the personal computer might be compromised. it wasn't just moving private key out into an external hardware token ... making it very, verify difficult to actually steal the private key. the issue then is a compromised personal computer could still generate various kinds of fraudulent transactions to be "authenticated" by the private key in an external hardware token. part of EU FINREAD standard include various design features for compromised personal computer to fool an external hardware token ... including its own keypad for pin-entry (not accessible from personal computers) and small display to give summary of operation being performed.

trusted computer module (independent chip in personal computer) had somewhat different design point (although implementation used nearly identical hardware) ... which was to provide scaffolding system "trust" ... in theory, making it much more difficult to compromise a personal computer. home page:
https://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org

old posts referencing giving aads chip strawman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

talk in trusted computer track at intel developer's forum
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#36 Maximum RAM and ROM for smartcards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#61 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#63 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#42 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#20 Patents, Copyrights, Profits, Flex and Hercules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#37 Apple files patent for WGA-style anti-piracy tech
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#76 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#31 confluence of virtualization and trusted computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#35 confluence of virtualization and trusted computing

the guy running trusted computing effort was in the front row ... and i quiped that it was nice that over the previous few years that the design of the trusted computer module started to look more & more like aads chip strawman ... he quipped back something about I didn't have to deal with a committee of couple hundred people helping me design the chip.

this is (crypto-related) post from today about efforts to deploy hardware tokens for consumer use nearly a decade ago
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#56 WoW security: now better than most banks

and the experience in the disastrous deployment set things back significantly ... including bringing to a half all sorts of other efforts ... apparently even the EU FINREAD effort (various deployments difficulties lead to a rapidly spreading opinion that hardware tokens weren't practical in the consumer market).

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

dollar coins

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 17:33:26 -0400
"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <urjlew@bellsouth.net> writes:
Has anybody done a definitive study on which is more efficient systemwise and more economical: A sizable cash withdrawal followed by using cash for small transactions, versus, payment for all transactions with plastic? In the first case on loses some interest, and the audit trail for budget analysis. In the second it appears that the processing charges are much higher which tends to increase prices nullifying any savings.

studies of fast food operations show that there is average of seven percent "shrinkage" between what is rung up at the cash register and what gets deposited in the bank.

on the other hand there are lots of complaints regarding the size of interchange fees for these operations ... c-stores have claimed that interchange fees are their largest expense (higher than labor, rent, etc).

some news URLs from this week on the interchange fee subject:

Gasoline Marketers Underwhelmed by New Visa Interchange Rates
http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=1830
FTC, DoJ Are Leery of Bills That Would Regulate Interchange Rates
http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=1827
NACS Launches Retail Campaign Against Card Interchange Fees
http://www.paymentsnews.com/2008/06/nacs-launches-2.html
Merchants Comment on Visa Interchange Fee Changes for Fuel
http://www.paymentsnews.com/2008/06/merchants-comme.html

above have references to these websites:

Pumptopper Program
http://www.nacsonline.com/NACS/Resources/CreditCardFees/Pages/PumptopperProgram.aspx
Unfair Credit Card Fees
http://www.unfaircreditcardfees.com/

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

dollar coins

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 21:57:07 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
on the other hand there are lots of complaints regarding the size of interchange fees for these operations ... c-stores have claimed that interchange fees are their largest expense (higher than labor, rent, etc).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#58 dollar coins

misc. other recent posts mentioning interchange fees
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#16 AMD to leave x86 behind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#23 Value of an old IBM PS/2 CL57 SX Laptop
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#27 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#38 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#56 T.J. Maxx data theft worse than first reported
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#17 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#47 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#59 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#72 Free Checking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#35 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#39 a fraud is a sale, Re: The bank fraud blame game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#68 Poll: oldest computer thing you still use
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#31 Is the media letting banks off the hook on payment card security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#40 Is the media letting banks off the hook on payment card security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#64 Is the media letting banks off the hook on payment card security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#0 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#62 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#7 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#90 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#3 Govt demands password to personal computer

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

dollar coins

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:49:08 -0400
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
I replied then that I thought the figure on the small side. Some back of the envelope calculations would tend to find double that amount a likely result.

We may exclude the homeowners who are able to cope, and will have to do the writeoffs on their own books. With that correction, $1T sounds reasonable. But the other $1T will still be missing from the economy.

In the "Always look on the bright side of life" lane, $2T is still "only" about two months worth of US production. No need to go into a depression for.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#22 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#38 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#40 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#46 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#48 dollar coins

or not exactly missing from the economy ... but more a case of never really there (although showing up on various balance sheets) ... more akin to the parable about the emperor's new clothes fable ... giving some justification to drawing parallel with ponzi schemes ... except the paper trail is a lot more complicated.

article on banks still holding lots of assets looking to unload (at write-downs?):

Crunch Still On, Banks Stay Tight
http://www.forbes.com/business/2008/07/03/banking-credit-loans-biz-wall-cx_lm_0703loans.html

from above:
Citigroup is trying to sell or run off $500 billion of assets it doesn't want any more, including leveraged loans to finance buyouts, mortgages and derivatives in its trading book.

... snip ...

older related article:

Can Banking Shake The Crisis?
http://www.forbes.com/2008/06/10/banking-national-city-biz-wall-cx_lm_0610banking.html

from above:
Monday, New York Fed chief Timothy Geithner, the architect of JPMorgan Chase's rescue of Bear Stearns in March, was drumming up support for greater regulation of Wall Street firms to lessen the risks of systemic meltdown.

... snip ...

this article about the loss of confidence in triple-A ratings effect on tax-free munis (large increases in the interest rate they have to pay):

Municipal Market 'Fire in the Disco' Burns Borrowers
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=apzVtzPXqSc0&refer=home

recent muni discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#9 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#18 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#23 dollar coins

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

German court finds Bank responsible for malwared PC

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Lynn Wheeler <lynn@xxxxxxxx>
Date: July 6, 2008 10:27 AM
Subject: German court finds Bank responsible for malwared PC
Blog: Financial Cryptography
re:
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001071.html

Some related discussion in this recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#56 WoW security: now better than most banks

about lots of work being done in late 90s on compensating procedures for well recognized vulnerabilities of (internet connected) personal computers ... mostly compensating procedures involving various kinds of hardware tokens. then a particular disastrous deployment saw retrenching from all the efforts (rapidly spreading opinion that hardware tokens were not practical in the consumer market).

post-mortem analysis turned up that (deployment) problems had little to do with hardware tokens themselves, but (after-market) installation and configuration problems (regarding interfaces connected via serial port).

there were presentations at banking conferences in the mid-90s about the transition to internet for online banking.

one class of presentations was moving the existing (consumer) online banking from bank-specific dialup to internet based ... the issue was that there was significant customer support costs with dial-up modems (connected via serial port) and associated bank provided software. moving to the internet basically shifted all such support costs to ISP (and other vendors) ... which were then also amortized across a much larger set of applications (not just banking).

an observation was made that it was unfortunate that the institutional knowledge (about serial-port problems from the earlier generation of online banking) wasn't used to avoid the later hardware token deployment problems.

the other class of presentations (from mid-90s banking conferences) was that internet (& personal computers using the internet), were too vulnerable to use for "cash management" ... aka commercial/business version of "online banking".

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

German court finds Bank responsible for malwared PC

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Lynn Wheeler <lynn@xxxxxxxx>
Date: July 6, 2008 02:13 PM
Subject: German court finds Bank responsible for malwared PC
Blog: Financial Cryptography
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#61 German court finds Bank responsible for malwared PC

some amount of this is long-time, well understood personal computer vulnerabilities ... especially when connected to the internet ... and also well understood the inability of after-market security products to effectively deal with the multitude of problems (i.e. often repeated refrain that security has to be built in).

since retrenching of the various hardware token based efforts of the late 90s (after disastrous deployments ... mostly unrelated to actual hardware token characteristics) ... the current security buzzword is virtualization.

for little topic drift ... my (current) linkedin tag-line is 40+ virtualization experience, online at home since Mar70:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynnwheeler

I had done a lot of work as undergraduate in the 60s, that was being picked up and shipped in commercial product. At the time, I would periodically get requests to do certain things ... for inclusion in commercial product. Some yrs later, I hypothesized that some of the requests may have originated with various gov. organizations ... indirect reference here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

which strongly influences my belief that security has to be built into the infrastructure .... after-market solutions are only poor piecemeal patchwork.

a current strategy is to leverage virtualization to address multitude of fundamental vulnerabilities (much better than any of the after market products, which are also increasingly becoming ineffective). Note that there are still a few ways to compromise the virtualization countermeasures ... and one of the problems (in the current environment) is that none of the existing after market security products are effective against such compromises (accelerating those product obsolescence)

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

CLIs and GUIs

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CLIs and GUIs
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:12:37 -0400
kkt <kkt@zipcon.net> writes:
In fact, there are text-based browsers that don't use the rodent device. lynx, links, and friends. they all support bookmarks.

The very long URLs are rarely typed. They are generated by a web-wide search (google, altavista, etc.) or by a search or navigation within a single web site. Or they are cut and pasted into the browser.


that is subject of my periodic observations about one of the areas where SSL security was subverted.

as periodically stated before, we were called in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server ... which is now frequently referred to as *electronic commerce*. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

they also had invented this thing called SSL that they wanted to use ... as a result we had to do some detailed, end-to-end business process audits ... including of these new operations calling themselves certification authorities.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcert

part of the SSL audit was requirement that the end-user supply the SSL/HTTPS URL (and understand the relationship between the webserver they think they are talking to and the corresponding URL). The browser then provides the assurance between that (SSL/HTTPS) URL and the webserver they are actually talking to. Both parts were absolutly necessary in order to provide the assurance that the webserver somebody thot they were talking to was the webserver they were actually talking to.

Almost immediately *electronic commerce* sites found that SSL was reducing their thruput by 90percent or more. As a result, there was almost immediately a retrenchment to *electronic commerce* websites no longer using SSL for standard shopping (i.e. the initially provided URL was no longer using SSL ... and so was unvalidated). Then at some point, there is a checkout/pay button (provided by the unvalidated website) which provides an SSL URL.

A fundamental requirement for safety & soundness of *electronic commerce* was that the website that the user thought they were talking to was the website they were talking to (which required the user understand the relationship between websites and the URLs they provided, which were in turn, validated).

Now, the only thing that SSL commonly provides is that whatever webserver that the webserver claims to be (since they are now providing the URL, not the user) is the webserver that they are. This having become common practice ... can also be claimed to be behind a lot of phishing and impersonation email ... there being a major disconnect in the current environment between users awareness of the webservers they think they are talking to ... and the corresponding URL (that awareness being a fundamental cornerstone for SSL security).

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

lack of information accuracy

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: lack of information accuracy
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:49:05 -0400
so an issue is all the use of computers and general increase of complexity in modern environments
*) increasing/promoting information inaccuracy

*) the level of information inaccuracy has always been this bad and computers and IT are resulting it being exposed.


GAO has been building database of audit and financial statements of publicly traded companies that are refiled to correct information inaccuracies. The percentage of these refilings ... even since SOX ... is not decreasing. Is it possible that such statements have always been so inaccurate, but in earlier ages the inaccuracies weren't being exposed (or is there a real increase in number of inaccurate audit and financial statements):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#61 Is Basel 2 out...Basel 3 in?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#66 Would the Basel Committee's announced enhancement of Basel II Framework and other steps have prevented the current global financial crisis had they been implemented years ago?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#67 Would the Basel Committee's announced enhancement of Basel II Framework and other steps have prevented the current global financial crisis had they been implemented years ago?

Relatively minor example is (apparent) increasing number of resumes with inaccurate information ... is this a case of resumes always having been so inaccurate ... and current information technology is more likely to expose the inaccuracies ... or is the current complex society promoting/enabling increase in resumes with inaccurate information.

The toxic CDOs are current poster child for leveraging complexity with objective of (promoting/obfuscating) inaccurate information.

There is some analogy with complexity and security. The toxic CDOs are extremely complex ... the complexity specifically being leveraged to obfuscate the actual underlying values (two decades ago in the S&L crisis). Some technologists have featured how hard it is to compromise an extremely complex security operation. However, once such a complex security operation has to be replicated ... then complexity-related mistakes create enormous number of vulnerabilities (in nearly every case, far outweighing the security benefits of the complexity). This is the KISS scenario ... any widely used real security is almost always inversely proportional to complexity. A few recent KISS posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#61 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#52 Any benefit to programming a RISC processor by hand?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#47 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#97 Is virtualization diminishing the importance of OS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#18 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#75 Outsourcing dilemma or debacle, you decide

recent posts mentioning toxic CDOs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#42 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#65 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#70 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#17 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#43 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#46 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#51 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#52 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#71 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#75 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#94 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#36 Lehman sees banks, others writing down $400 bln
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#37 Virtualization: The IT Trend That Matters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#51 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#59 Credit crisis could cost nearly $1 trillion, IMF predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#62 Credit crisis could cost nearly $1 trillion, IMF predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#64 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#32 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#9 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#12 To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#18 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#23 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#38 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#40 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#46 dollar coins

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

Taxes

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Taxes
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:53:32 -0400
D.J. <solosam75@cableone.net> writes:
The days of being charged for CPU time is gone. And my laptop doesn't heat up while reading ascii text. So I am somewhat confused by what you posted.

the "free cpu cycles" genre led to some number of (software) systems never actually entering wait state ... but entering a processor loop that was accounted for as "waiting".

note that has changed with increasing awareness of heat/power issues ... as well as moves to virtualization. Such "waiting" loops actually have some cost.

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

lack of information accuracy

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: lack of information accuracy
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:05:54 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#64 lack of information accuracy

SEC, Fed Agree to Collaborate on Supervising Wall Street
http://www.financetech.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=209601142

from above:
Under the agreement, the SEC and the Fed will share information and cooperate across a number of important areas of common interest including anti-money laundering, bank brokerage activities under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, clearance and settlement in the banking and securities industries, and regulation of transfer agents.

... snip ...

so is this admitting that congress may have created a problem when they included provision for repeal of Glass-Steagall? ... which had been passed in the wake of the crash of '29 to keep the safety & soundness of regulated banking separated from risky, unregulated banking?

misc. recent posts mentioning Glass-Steagall
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#11 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#87 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#42 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#59 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#1 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#13 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#17 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#43 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#46 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#53 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#71 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#73 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#75 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#79 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#94 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#96 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#97 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#2 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#4 CDOs subverting Boyd's OODA-loop
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#16 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#44 Fixing finance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#51 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#52 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#57 Credit crisis could cost nearly $1 trillion, IMF predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#59 Credit crisis could cost nearly $1 trillion, IMF predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#66 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#67 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#1 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#28 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#32 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#89 Credit Crisis Timeline
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#12 To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?

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

lack of information accuracy

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: lack of information accuracy
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:27:16 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#64 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#66 lack of information accuracy

tv business news program in real time discussing Paulson's speech ... and questioning whether he really said that current owners of (toxic) CDOs ... will have recourse against the toxic CDO originator as well as toxic CDO issuer.

this is scenario that if some loan (in a toxic CDO) defaults ... that the current toxic CDO owner may not only go after the person defaulting ... but also can sue the originator that packaged/securitized the loans as toxic CDO as well as the institution that sold/issued the toxic CDO.

one might claim that this would (at least partially) correct the existing disconnect which prevents valid (financial market) feedback control mechanism.

some recent pontification along this line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#46 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#48 dollar coins

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

lack of information accuracy

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: lack of information accuracy
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:56:08 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
tv business news program in real time discussing Paulson's speech ... and questioning whether he really said that current owners of toxic CDOs ... will have recourse against the toxic CDO originator as well as toxic CDO issuer.

this is scenario that if some loan (in a toxic CDO) defaults ... that the current toxic CDO owner may not only go after the person defaulting ... but also can sue the originator that packaged/securitized the loans as toxic CDO as well as the institution that sold/issued the toxic CDO.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#67 lack of information accuracy

SEC: Credit rating firms were rife with conflicts of interest
http://www.usatoday.com/money/markets/2008-07-08-sec-report_N.htm

from above:
The three main credit rating agencies failed to rein in conflicts of interest in giving high ratings to risky securities backed by subprime mortgages, federal regulators said Tuesday.

... snip ...

a couple recent posts mentioning "shopping" toxic CDOs ... toxic CDO originators keep going until they got the rating they wanted:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#90 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#9 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#23 dollar coins

and long winded, decade old post ... discussing some of the current problems ... including needing visibility into underlying values of packaged CDO-like instruments
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm

and for something a little different:

Toxic CDOs Given Up for Dead Coming to Life With Pension Funds
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a0TGMrBy2PyE&refer=home

from above:
While CDOs are backed by more than a hundred bonds, Re- Remics typically combine fewer than a dozen, allowing holders to more easily analyze the debt.

... snip ...

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

lack of information accuracy

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: lack of information accuracy
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:01:38 -0400
sidd <sidd@situ.com> writes:
i argue that the present crisis stem from lack of insight on the part of regulators rather than lack of information. to wit, here is a revealing but to my view, rather shocking, admission by former president of the fed, St. Louis, (from 1998 on, he retired on Mar. 31)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/05/BU7B11JL8P.DTL

i quote: "We all understood that the house price increases could not continue. We did not think through the possibility of a significant price decline and large-scale defaults and foreclosures. ... We understood there was abusive lending and practices that were stripping equity out of households. I don't remember the issue ever being raised that it could lead to defaults."


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#64 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#66 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#67 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#68 lack of information accuracy

the demand for subprime loans is rather limited ... so normal market supply&demand forces would have prevented run away mortgage origination ... and limiting the big real estate price inflation bubble.

my assertion is that the mortgage originators had rather limited amount of money to loan ... also had they kept the loans they would have to pay a lot more attention to quality.

however, they found that they could unload all the loans they could make, w/o regard to quality ... as (triple-A rated) toxic CDOs. the appetite for triple-A rated toxic CDOs seemed infinite (even if they weren't really triple-A). They could loan, sell as toxic CDO, take that money, make another loan, sell as toxic CDO, ... and repeat hundreds of times.

the number of "prime" loans (for real triple-A rating) are limited ... and (if they had to retain them) ... the originators wouldn't have wanted to make very many subprime loans.

the originators wouldn't have been able to unload very many subprime loans ... if they hadn't been rated triple-A. The secret of keeping the real estate mortgage bubble fueled was being able to rate all those toxic CDOs as triple-A ... even when they weren't.

they could then turn the originating of an unlimited number of subprime loans into a money generation process ... apparently always being able to unload them as (triple-A rated) toxic CDO ... which gave them the money back to repeat the process (possibly an unlimited number of times ... taking their percentage off each one).

the secret to keeping the process fueld (past the first few initial subprime loans) was the ability to unload unlimited number of subprime loans as triple-A rated toxic CDOs.

the long-winded, decade old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm

discusses some of the current issues ... including needing visibility into underlying value CDO-like instruments ... as in toxic CDOs had been used two decades ago in S&L crisis, to obfuscate underlying value and underload (possibly distressed) properties.

nominally abusive lending practices would have been limited by standard market supply & demand forces ... since the number of institutions wanting to purchase non triple-A rated toxic CDOs would have been severely limited ... and such mortgage originators would have quickly run out of money to fuel their machine. It was maintaining the supply of money (fueling the machine) by being able to unload the loans as triple-A rated toxic CDOs ... that allowed the problem to grow to the current magnitude.

the interesting part wasn't that people didn't know that lots of subprime loans were being made. It was the apparent participation by large numbers supporting the emperor's new clothes fable where all those subprime loans were apparently disappearing and all of these triple-A rated toxic CDOs were magically appearing (in their place)

these "inaccurate" triple-A rated toxic CDOs is what fueled the growth of the problem to the magnitude that it has become.

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

lack of information accuracy

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: lack of information accuracy
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:12:44 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
SEC, Fed Agree to Collaborate on Supervising Wall Street
http://www.financetech.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=209601142

from above:

Under the agreement, the SEC and the Fed will share information and cooperate across a number of important areas of common interest including anti-money laundering, bank brokerage activities under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, clearance and settlement in the banking and securities industries, and regulation of transfer agents.

... snip ...


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#66 lack of information accuracy

later this afternoon, business tv program were commenting that the Fed doesn't have enuf staff (bank examiners) to deal with the current number of institutions they are responsible for (and associated regulations) ... if Fed is really going to take on such additional responsibilities, the Fed will have to significantly increase the staff (, training & skill level).

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

lack of information accuracy

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: lack of information accuracy
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:45:22 -0400
sidd <sidd@situ.com> writes:
i agree that the rating agencies share blame
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aa2D1eC6Ed6s

email from a rating firm described in SEC report: "Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters"

but preventing this is exactly the job of the regulators. I have reread the interview with Mr. Poole, and i find it even more shocking this time around. Please bear with me, I repost the entire exchange from
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/05/BU7B11JL8P.DTL


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#64 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#66 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#67 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#68 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#69 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#70 lack of information accuracy

deceptive loans & mortgages are ftc issue ...

Protecting America's Consumers
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menus/consumer/credit.shtm

from above
To find FTC information and consumer publications on a specific Credit & Loans topic, click on a category name from the list below.

• Your Rights: Credit Reporting * Credit Cards & Consumer Loans • Credit Reports & Scoring * In Debt? • Mortgages/Real Estate • Privacy


... snip ...

unloading them as toxic CDOs (i.e. information accuracy issue) and being able to repeat the process potentially hundreds of times ... allowed the problem to escalate into national economic issue.

safety and soundness of regulated banks include regulations about amount of capitailization.

lots of the current situation involved mortgage originators that aren't regulated banks ... and possibly hadn't been considered a serious issue because of their limited access to funds. however, the use of toxic CDOs (to unload their mortgages) basically gave them an unlimited supply of money.

The triple-A rating for these toxic CDOs providing the amount of fuel to fan the flame ... difference between quickly extinquished blaze vis-a-vis national event.

The other dicussions on news programs today were about the magnitude of the problem; nominally the Fed would allow the unregulated risky behavior/institutions to follow the normal course and let organizations fail. The degree that these toxic CDOs have permeated the national economic structure has created systemic risk. The thread goes that the current scenario trades off saving some of these institutions ... averting the systemic risk ... but creating moral hazard.

This is sort of the argument about whether to pay ransom demands in kidnap situations ... which could promote more kidnapping (expectation of being paid ransoms). Expectation of not being held accountable for extremely risky behavior (by being bailed out by federal gov) can promote even more extreme risky bahavior ... i.e. creation of moral hazard.

misc. recent articles mentioning moral hazard from news search engine ...

PLAYING 'CHICKEN' WITH RISK
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/08/AR2008060801810.html
US banking system is doomed
http://business.theage.com.au/us-banking-system-is-doomed-20080624-2w9p.html Preparing for Bear Stearns II?
http://seekingalpha.com/article/84145-preparing-for-bear-stearns-ii
President of Federal Reserve Bank Views on Risks and Prospects for the U.S. Economy
http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle+articleid_2377200~title_President-of-Federal.html

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

tape blocking

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:31:52 -0400
Subject: Re: tape blocking
To: HillGang II: The Gathering
robert klein wrote:
Back in the 3420 days, yes I'm dating myself, there was a manual that gave the layout of a tape starting with the leader, header records, then a data block, then an interrecord gap, followed by a data block and so on. Since this is from memory, the above may not be 100% accurate. The volume of data writen to tape could be increased by using larger and larger blocksizes to reduce the number of interrecord gaps which wasted tape. The CMS Tape command allowed for a 64K block vs the normal 4K block. I used that option to load a database dump on a single tape.

it is sort of like CKD and FBA w/disk .... both disks and tapes allowed physical formating ... but those days are long gone.

original CMS tape command blocked 800 byte physical blocks.

VMFPLC (for maint) was modified tape command that allowed 4k byte physical blocks.

however, both CMS tape and vmfplc wrote a separate "short" FST block ... (for small file, vmfplc could write a 800 "short" block). the issue here was that even with larger blocking ... for lots of "small" files ... there were still two interrecord gaps (old style tape/vmfplc could still be mostly interrecord gap if there were lots of small files).

After future system project was killed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

there was a mad rush to get stuff back into the 370 pipeline. somehow pok convinced the company that they needed the whole vm development group in order to make schedule of getting mvs/xa out the door. The strategy was the vm product was killed, the vm development group shutdown, and all the people moved to POK to work support mvs/xa development. fortunately, endicott was able to acquire the vm mission and save the product ... although they needed to reconstitute a development almost from scratch.

anyway ... in all the uproar ... apparently they lost the source for VMFPLC.

fortunately, I was able to dig up a copy from somewhere.

somewhat as part of providing highly modified vm kernel to internal installations ... I provided much of vm technology for HONE ... the vm370-based online system providing world-wide sales & marketing support.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

One of the things that HONE asked for was improved backup/archive system ... so i built them one ... starting off with the tape interface being a highly modified version of VMFPLC. One of the things I did was both increase the maximum physical blocking factor (per file) and also combine the FST physical record with data record. This cut the number of interrecord gaps (for small files) in half ... although initially ... there was still a minimum of one interrecord gap per file (down from two).

This turned into CMSBACK which was deployed at a number of other internal systems ...

old email mentioning cmsback
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#cmsback

and misc. posts mentioning backup/archive
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#backup

CMSBACK eventually grew into the Workstation Datasave Facility product and then morphed into ADSM before being renamed TSM (the current name that the product goes by).

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

lack of information accuracy

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: lack of information accuracy
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:12:44 -0400
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
Will it keep Congress of muddling the mess anymore? What is the dangers of bypassing Congress?

i had noticed last fall, when there were various members of congress pontificating about low presidential approval ratings ... it was at a time when it stood at three times congressional approval ratings ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#20 Education ranking

Congressional Performance; Congressional Approval Falls to Single Digits for First Time Ever
http://rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/congressional_performance/congressional_performance

Congress' approval plunges to 9 percent
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=69088

from above (again, yet, still?):
Against President Bush's much-publicized poor approval ratings, today's poll shows Congress' numbers have plunged to less than a third of the president's.

... snip ...

and then ...

Can A More Powerful Fed Really Help The Banks?
http://www.forbes.com/business/2008/07/08/bernanke-fed-banks-biz-wall-cx_lm_0708mortgage.html

other posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#64 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#66 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#67 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#68 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#69 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#70 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#71 lack of information accuracy

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

Are we approaching a "tipping point" with regard to business travel?

Refed: **, - **
From: Lynn Wheeler <lynn@xxxxxxxx>
Date: 09 Jul 2008, 09:43 am
Subject: Are we approaching a "tipping point" with regard to business travel?
Blog: Greater IBM
In 1985, Bert Moldow was instructor in communications at IBM's SRI (downtown manhatten) and con'ed me in to giving an all day seminar on our high speed data transport project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

I got the redeye from SFO to Kennedy, spent all day talking at SRI and was back on the west coast less than 24hrs after I had left.

At that time, IBM owned most of SBS (satellite business systems) and SBS was working with the World Trade Centers ... getting televideo conference rooms into many WTC buildings around the world.

As i've mentioned before ... I got blameed for online computer conferencing on the internal network in the late 70s and early 80s.
https://www.xing.com/app/forum?op=showarticles;id=9630503;articleid=9634066#9634066

from long ago and far away ...
Date: 85/01/17 16:25:47
To: WHEELER

Lynn,

If you recall the last time I was out in San Jose I mentioned that I would like you to give the pitch on "High Speed Data Transport" to my up and coming class on Survey of Computer Networks. We can cover travel and will arrange for a hotel for you. Would you be available Feb. 7 or 12? I currently have other dates but would like to have this early in the course. Bert Moldow (SRI)


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

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

lack of information accuracy

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: lack of information accuracy
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:51:06 -0400
Walter Bushell <proto@xxx.com> writes:
You would be surprised at the obvious things people can ignore, if ignoring the obvious thing is essential to keeping their job or even getting a big bonus.

... it might not even be a case of having to ignore anything. some number of these things are referred to as preditory practices ... not w/o reason; even preditors actually seeking out such situations ... and only viewing from a perspective of personal self-interest.

Implicit in comments about ignoring ... is some assumption that predictors might even care about such things.

related posts mentioning bonuses in the run-up to the current situation:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#76 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#79 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#95 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#32 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#52 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#66 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#42 The Return of Ada
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#4 A Merit based system of reward -Does anybody (or any executive) really want to be judged on merit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#73 Should The CEO Have the Lowest Pay In Senior Management?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#24 To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?

earlier posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#64 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#66 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#67 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#68 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#69 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#70 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#71 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#73 lack of information accuracy

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

lack of information accuracy

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: lack of information accuracy
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:09:33 -0400
"Charlie Gibbs" <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
But please, let us call it by its proper sugar-coated name: "revenue enhancement".

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#75 lack of information accuracy

for a little x-over from a post that just showed up in bit.listserv.ibm-main ... that referenced three articles:
1. Wall Street Journal, June 18, page B2 "China Embraces Old-School Business Guru" byline; George Anders 2. Wall Street Journal, July 7, page R4 "How Offshore Outsourcing Affects Customer Satisfaction" byline: Jonathan Whitaker, M.S. Krishman, and Clares Fornell 3. Time magazine, July 7 Column "The Curious Capitalist" by Justin Fox "Employees First!"

and one of the (Drucker) quotes:
• The essential activities of business are innovation and marketing; it's a mistake to fixate on profits

... snip ...

one might claim that focus on short-term returns is motivated by desire to (personally) get (possibly humungous) short-term rewards (personally sucking as much out of the infrastructure as possible).

This is related to the thread that current ratio of (US) executive compensation to worker compensation is running 400:1 ... when it used to run 20:1 ... and in the rest of the world it is running 10:1... recent post/reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#73 Should The CEO Have the Lowest Pay In Senior Management?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#24 To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?

... any facade about the general good is evaporating.

business news programs today are about both Paulson and Bernanke lobbying congress for emergency regulatory powers ... since most of the current problem has mostly occurred outside regulatory authority.

reference to business news program a couple week ago referring to Bernanke's push for greater regulatory powers ... and observing that American bankers are the most innovative in the world, having managed to mess up the system at least once a decade regardless of the regulations:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#90 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#30 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#77 Do you think the change in bankrupcy laws has exacerbated the problems in the housing market leading more people into forclosure?

the other subject on business news programs today is related to the post on moral hazard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#71 lack of information accuracy

and whether organizations that have may have been less than prudent in their behavior, be allowed to fail ... including any GSEs (government sponsored enterprise).

One issue is whether the risky behavior is mostly organizational behavior or personal behavior ... letting organizations fail may have little impact on personal risky behavior (given that they have their compensation whether or not the organization goes under). This is somewhat the business school article that possible 1000 are responsible for 80percent of the current mess (and it would go a long way to fixing the situation if the gov. could see to it that those people lost their job).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#32 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#44 Fixing finance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#52 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#66 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#32 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#89 Credit Crisis Timeline
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#4 A Merit based system of reward -Does anybody (or any executive) really want to be judged on merit?

and how to discourage (personal) risky behavior (for personal gain) that is likely to severely adversely affect the whole infrastructure.

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

CLIs and GUIs

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CLIs and GUIs
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 10:26:12 -0400
Roland Hutchinson <my.spamtrap@verizon.net> writes:
ISO standard, eh? Some Johnny-come-lately version of the language, then. I don't remember libraries in Jensen and Wirth.

los gatos lab started out with metaware's TWS ... past reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#71 What terminology reflects the "first" computer language ?

in support of implementing a number of languages in support of vlsi design tools ... one such was pascal ... started out on mainframe. this eventually evolved into the pascal mainframe product and then was also made available for rs/6000.

this pascal was also used for implementation of the mainframe tcp/ip product. the language had the advantage that it didn't suffer from the strong tendency for buffer length programming mistakes that have shown up in C language implementations.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#overflow

as i've commented before this base (mainframe) tcp/ip implementation did have some thruput limitations ... getting about 44kbytes/sec thruput using a 3090 processor. I did the rfc1044 support and in some tuning tests at cray research got 1mbyte/sec thruput between 4341-clone and cray ... using only a modest amount of the 4341-clone (nearly three orders of magnitude ... 1000 times ... improvement in bytes per instruction)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

in the corporate difficulties in the early-to-mid 90s ... some amount of the corporate reorganization involved moving to COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) products ... for internal use ... included some amount of vlsi design tools. part of the strategy included turning over some number of the internal tools to external vendors. one such VLSI design tool was a >50k line (mainframe & 6000) pascal application. part of the turn-over was porting the application to pascals (that ran on other platforms). I got tasked to do the port and my experience was that none of these pascals (on other platforms) had ever seen a 50k+ line application ... apparently mostly being used for toy applications and educational activities.

in this time-frame ... the vs/pascal product responsibility was in STL ... which was also heavily involved in ISO committee.

misc. past posts mentioning vs/pascal:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#36 why is there an "@" key?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#15 Computer of the century
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#18 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#66 Mainframe Spreadsheets - 1980's History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#19 Beyond 8+3
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#27 Beyond 8+3
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#33 dasd full cylinder transfer (long post warning)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#44 filesystem structure, was tape format (long post)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#77 COMTEN- IBM networking boxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#52 Question about Unix "heritage"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#26 Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#63 SPXTAPE status from REXX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#16 When nerds were nerds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#21 TSO alternative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#25 More complex operations now a better choice?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#41 REXX still going strong after 25 years
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#42 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#19 HERCULES
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#27 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#34 August 23, 1957
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#33 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#30 First single chip 32-bit microprocessor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#33 Listserv for TCPIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#35 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#51 something like a CTC on a PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#14 something like a CTC on a PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#20 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#63 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#65 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#11 Cerf and Kahn receive Turing award
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#30 The Mainframe and its future.. or furniture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#0 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#1 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#43 Systems Programming for 8 Year-olds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#58 Q ALLOC PAGE vs. CP Q ALLOC vs ESAMAP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#11 ISA-independent programming language
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#16 ISA-independent programming language
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#28 MVCIN instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#33 Power5 and Cell, new issue of IBM Journal of R&D
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#36 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#12 Barbaras (mini-)rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#10 What part of z/OS is the OS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#11 What part of z/OS is the OS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#25 VM SPOOL question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#9 32 or even 64 registers for x86-64?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#32 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#45 To RISC or not to RISC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#31 To RISC or not to RISC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#44 waiting for acknowledgments
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#29 Descriptive term for reentrant program that nonetheless is
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#29 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#35 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#12 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#10 moving on
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#12 Special characters in passwords was Re: RACF - Password rules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#21 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#29 Being "Open" (Was: Mainframe vs. "Server")
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#8 whiny question: Why won't z/OS support the HMC 3270 emulator
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#41 Fast and Safe C Strings: User friendly C macros to Declare and use C Strings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#60 Fast and Safe C Strings: User friendly C macros to Declare and use C Strings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#61 Fast and Safe C Strings: User friendly C macros to Declare and use C Strings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#14 Newbie question on table design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#16 Newbie question on table design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#70 Using rexx to send an email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#26 user level TCP implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#11 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#54 Newbie question on table design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#58 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#50 64 gig memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#61 (Newbie question)How does the modern high-end processor been designed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#68 CA to IBM TCP Conversion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#48 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#45 Are there tasks that don't play by WLM's rules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#46 Are there tasks that don't play by WLM's rules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#50 Running REXX program in a batch job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#22 Linux zSeries questions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#22 Was CMS multi-tasking?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#25 CA ESD files Options
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#29 CA ESD files Options
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#41 Was CMS multi-tasking?

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

How powerful C64 may have been if it used an 8 Mhz 8088 or 68008 ?microprocessor (with otherwise the same hardware)?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How powerful C64 may have been if it used an 8 Mhz 8088 or 68008 ?microprocessor (with otherwise the same hardware)?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 10:44:24 -0400
Peter_Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Bzzzzt. Wrong again. PLUS was a Univac Language (Programming Language for Univac Systems). The IBM languages were PL/S, PL/AS, PL/X, etc.

minor reference to the language support group
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email800920
... in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#17 Jim Gray is Missing

being disbanded earlier in future system period
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

i.e. everything would migrate to the new platform.

which, in turn, impacted original relational/sql implementation:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

After FS was terminated, the pls group was reconstituted, put only supported pls on mvs ... not on vm/370 ... the major system/r work was all being done on vm/370.

as mentioned ... part of this was that the after FS was killed, there was a mad rush to get products back into the 370 product line ... and the POK group managed to convince the corporation that in order to make the mvs/xa ship schedule ... all the vm370 developers needed to be moved to POK to support mvs/xa development (which then required killing off vm370 product). Endicott managed to rescue the vm370 product mission ... but had to essentially reconstitute the development and support groups from scratch. recent post/reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#72 tape blocking

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

Calling Out

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Calling Out
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:31:17 -0400
stremler writes:
Passwords *would* help -- at least, shared-secrets -- as there can then be a challenge and a response, so that the purported repairman can be authenticated before being allowed in the building.

Nothing the repairman *has* will be of any use in authentication; tools? Would the secretary or guard know what the appropriate tools are or aren't? Uniform? Easy-peasy to fake. Badge? Same.


recent reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#45 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#55 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)

lots of past posts about shared-secrets paradigm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#secrets

as well as posts specifically about harvesting/skimming/evesdropping exploits against particular kind of static data which can simply be replayed for fraudulent financial transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#harvest

part of AADS chip strawman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

was a something you have hardware token that was sufficiently difficult to counterfeit and used dynamic data (rather than static data, easily subject to replay attacks). it would also support something you know pin/password ... that was a secret ... as opposed to a shared-secret aka the personal hardware token validated the correct secret was used. in this scenario the multi-factor authentication, i.e. both something you have and something you know is considered more secure ... since the pin acts as a countermeasure to lost/stolen token.

one of the issues recognized in the AADS chip strawman scenario ... was that if the existing institutional-centric hardware token paradigm was to ever take-off ... that people would be faced with having a unique hardware token in lieu of every existing key, card, pin, and/or password (running to large scores or hundreds). as a result, there was a lot of work that went into the AADS chip strawman for enabling a person-centric paradigm ... i.e. addressing the issues preventing an institution from accepting a person provided token (as opposed to having to issue their own).

misc. recent posts discussing person-centric paradigm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#76 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#2 EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#24 EPIC, Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#54 How do OTP tokens work?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#84 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

one of the aads things demonstrated at the world-wide retail banking convention a decade ago ... was AADS for authorization. This had some similarities to digital certificates associated with trusted software ... but more like a one-use "certificate" for specific purpose ... like specific authenticated entity was permitted to do a specific thing (possibly at a specific time) ... w/o the certificate part.

The model is the current real-time authorization point-of-sale retail transactions ... the responsible person authenticates the transaction ... which is transmitted to the appropriate institution ... which responds with an approved/authorized or denied. Slightly tweaking the paradigm ... allowed point-of-entry to sent off request asking if the associated entity was an adult (21 or over). In this particular case, the door entry would allow anyone over 21. However, there was nothing preventing it being restricted to specific person or persons at specific times (aka the electronic analogy of doorman provided with instructions to let in specific person at specific time ... with significantly more sophisticated authentication required).

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

dollar coins

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:40:00 -0400
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
Good reason to build so many nuclear plants that the only thing we need oil for is to make plastics.

Supplies from the U.S. and Canada should be sufficient to meet demand for *that* purpose for a long time to come.


and corn for food.

cspan has had a number of energy related programs today.

one of the first was somewhat around the cal. state (electrical) energy fiasco ... but somewhat generalized to other parts of the infrastructure and the rest of the country. comment was that for the last 30-40 yrs, regulators at all levels of gov have encouraged not investing in (or rather pillaging) the infrastructure; just living off what is already there. one is tempted to think of the generations that came after the building of the pyramids ... that lacked sufficient education and organization that they resorted to scavanging the pyramids for bldg. materials (along with the generations of grave robbers).

the result has been major "fraying" of the infrastructure ... recent threads/posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#18 Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#19 Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#60 Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#62 Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#25 Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#53 Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#58 Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#59 Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#60 Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#43 fraying infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#48 fraying infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#50 fraying infrastructure

the other point brought up was that significant portion of the population are predators and need policing. while too strict regulations can be counter productive ... "police" that are asleep on the job can be equally bad (not all the preditors are out there doing armed stickups). one point made was that the foreign oil cartels seemed to have taken their model from the (US) robber barons (i remember reading a book with that title in high school) of a century ago. That cartels practice (collusion and) supply management as means of manipulating price (the ones in the US a century ago spawned the anti-trust legislation).

there was then discussion on the need for opening up additional US lands for drilling ... that there are currently 30million acres that have been off-limits to the oil companies for drilling. Much of this is off-shore and only in the past decade has the technology become available to make drilling possible.

then there was a counter argument; that the oil industry currently has leases for 68million acres that they haven't drilled on ... and which hasn't required the invention of any new drilling technologies. it supposedly has much more available reserves than the "unleased" 30 million acres. supposedly congress will introducing use it or loose it legislation next week ... that the existing 68million acres should be more than enuf to keep the oil industry busy for a couple decades ... w/o needing to give them leases for another 30million acres.

recent threads/posts about some other difficulty with new oil production projects is the impending baby boomer retirements
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#42 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#56 The Price Of Oil --- going beyong US$130 a barrel

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

How powerful C64 may have been if it used an 8 Mhz 8088 or 68008 ?microprocessor (with otherwise the same hardware)?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How powerful C64 may have been if it used an 8 Mhz 8088 or 68008 ?microprocessor (with otherwise the same hardware)?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:56:54 -0400
Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> writes:
The VAX was supposed to give relief from the address space woes, but the new and more complex processor was expensive, and so the machines tended not to have much more memory than the 11/70s that they replaced. VMS tended to do a lot of paging, and the userland portions of the OS was written in PLUS and was not nearly as tightly localized, so most of it was resident in acutal use, leaving too little memory for user programs.

Berkeley's Unix was 4.2BSD by the time it was widely deployed. It was as tight as the PDP-11 version (it was mostly the same code, except that the ARPAnet support had been added in), and all of userland was exactly the same as the 2BSD predecessor, just recompiled. The result was that Unix supported twice the number of users on an equivalent configuration that VMS did.


one could claim a similar comparison between tss/360 and cp67 ... both virtual memory time-sharing systems available for 360/67 (cp67 also continued virtual machine concept carried over from cp40).

tss/360 was corporate strategic time-sharing system ... which was a real resource hog ... initially suppose to be viable in 256kbyte real storage ... but during the development cycle the minimum real storage was increased to first 512kbytes and then heavily recommended minimum of 768kbytes.

early cp67 in 1st half of '68 (before i got a chance to rewrite significant portions) would have higher thruput and better response for 30 users doing fortran compile, linkedit and execute ... than tss/360 with 4 users doing same fortran (program) compile, linkedit and execute.

one of tss/360's claims that it was much more multiprocessor efficient than other operating systems ... since it could get 3.5 times the thruput on two processor (smp) than on single processor. This was actually that a single processor 360/67 was limited to 1mbyte real storage and a two processor smp 360/67 allowed two 1mbyte storages to be combined. The issue was that after tss/360 fixed kernel requirements in one mbyte, ... the limited remaining real storage for user use resulted in high paging rate. Adding a 2nd 1mbyte, increased available real storage for users by more than a factor of 4-5 ... significantly reducing page thrashing (given hardware multiprocessor overhead and software multiprocessor overhead ... two-processor raw processor thruput for users would nominally only be about 1.5 times that of single processor).

by comparison, cp67 on 256kbyte 360/67 could actually achieve significant thruput.

misc. past posts mentioning multiprocessor work and/or charlie's invention of compare&swap instruction while working on cp67 fine-gran locking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

at the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

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

Taxes

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Taxes
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 17:28:10 -0400
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
On linux, firefox is loading 47 shared objects at startup time. That's a significant amount of the load time right there. Can't do anything until that part is done.

Unixware consolidated a bunch of X and desktop libraries into a metalibrary that required only a single load to speed desktop app startup; should probably look into something like that for linux. It was a clever approach, you'd still link the application against all the individual libraries, but at runtime they'd all resolve to the metalibrary.


(801/risc) aix did something similar ... but for a different reason.

in the 70s, 801 was pushed somewhat as the exact opposite in (hardware) complexity vis-a-vis the (aborted) future system project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

part of the (hardware) simplicity was use of 16 hardware segment registers and inverted page table design ... with no hardware domain protecture. proprietary operating system and pl.8 programming language would compensate (trade-off) for numerous hardware simplicity.

pl.8 would only produce valid programs and the operating system would only load valid (pl.8) programs for execution (to compensate for no hardware domain protection). virtual memory segment architecture was limited to what was left over with the 16 hardware segment registers (that weren't being used for other purposes). pl.8 programs and library routines would compensate by inline changing segment register values (no hardware protection) as easily as general purpose (address) registers would be changed.

one of the 801/risc targets was a displaywriter follow-on with ROMP chip. when that project was killed ... they looked around and decided to rebrand for the unix workstation market. this required introducing hardware protection domain (since potentially untrusted applications might be loaded). this then resulted in no more in-line changing the segment registers ... but requiring kernel calls to make changes to the virtual address space.

i had done architecture for how to simulate multiple (different) small shared segments within larger 801 segment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email841114c
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email841127
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#36 Multiple mappings

anyway, the net was that aix found itself faced with the number of concurrent, different shared objects being what could be defined using the segment registers left over after other uses (much less than 16). this then left to aix having to define (few) large shared object libraries ... up to 256mbyte in size (32bit addressing in the 80s).

lots of old posts/references to 801, risc, romp, rios, power, power/pc, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801
and old 801 email refers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#801

semi-related old email about working on virtual cache design for iliad (32bit 801 where cache lines are based on virtual addresses ... rather than real addresses ... cache line direct with virtual address w/o latency to do virtual->real translation ... unless cache miss)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#email830420
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#37 To RISC or not to RISC

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

How powerful C64 may have been if it used an 8 Mhz 8088 or 68008 ?microprocessor (with otherwise the same hardware)?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How powerful C64 may have been if it used an 8 Mhz 8088 or 68008 ?microprocessor (with otherwise the same hardware)?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:46:50 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
one could claim a similar comparison between tss/360 and cp67 ... both virtual memory time-sharing systems available for 360/67 (cp67 also continued virtual machine concept carried over from cp40).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#82 How powerful C64 may have been if it used an 8 Mhz 8088 or 68008 ?microprocessor (with otherwise the same hardware)?

another comparison why cp67 had much lower bloat than tss/360 ... was supposedly at about the time there were a total of 12 people working on cms & cp67 at the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

there were possibly 1200 people working on tss/360 ... aka it was practically impossible for 12 people to have created the amount of bloat that was possible with 1200 people.

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

dollar coins

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: dollar coins
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:31:37 -0400
sidd <sidd@situ.com> writes:
speaking of crookery, fed reserve just posted:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/bcreg/20080714a.htm

a nice primer to some of what was going on, and a sad testimonial to the complete disregard for sane lending guidelines.

i quote

"Prohibit a lender from making a loan without regard to borrowers' ability to repay the loan from income and assets other than the home's value"

"Require creditors to verify the income and assets they rely upon to determine repayment ability."

"Creditors and mortgage brokers are prohibited from coercing a real estate appraiser to misstate a home's value."

"Companies that service mortgage loans are prohibited from engaging in certain practices, such as pyramiding late fees. "


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#71 lack of informationa accuracy

so, in theory ... FTC should have been protecting borrowers from questionable practices all along ... by all and any institutions (including the large number of institutions that don't come under federal reserve regulations).

the federal reserve is suppose to have oversight regarding safety and soundness of the institutions that come under its regulations (not so much a consumer protection issue ... but correctly evaluating the quality of the loans made). a lot of safety and soundness has to do with percent of capital reserves and the evaluation quality of the liabilities on their books ... along with the FDIC which has operating rules for the institutions that it provides insurance for.

my contention was that given all the rules and regulations there should have only been a very limited amount of capital to pump into questionable quality loans (i.e. from standpoint of banking regulation as opposed to FTC consumer protection issue). Being able to unload large number of such loans with triple-A rated (toxic) CDOs, kept the pipeline full of money.

FTC should have kept the loans from being made. Federal reserve, fdic, OCC, etc ... would have required that if any such loans were made ... to have been correctly evaluated/rated. In theory, the source of funds for low rated mortages sould have been minimal.

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

recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:28:39 -0400
Latest Figures Confirm That Server Virtualization Is the Wave of the Future
http://www.booknotes.org/Watch/158365-1/Robert+Coram.aspx

from above:
A recent report from IDC concerning the European market showed that 35 percent of servers purchased there in 2007 were being virtualized. And 52 percent of those bought in 2008 were going to be virtualized.

... snip ...

Server Virtualization Now Firmly Embedded in European Organizations, According to IDC Survey
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp;jsessionid=3LTWKAKR12T5ACQJAFDCFFAKBEAVAIWD?containerId=prUK21327108

and ...

Linux based virtualisation - the way to save money and go green
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/19418/1141/1/0

Using Virtualization to Secure Your Users' Desktops
http://eclipse.sys-con.com/read/607996.htm

other recent posts on this subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#68 Virtualization's security threats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#37 Virtualization: The IT Trend That Matters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#39 Virtualization: The IT Trend That Matters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#46 Virtualization: The IT Trend That Matters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#45 How can companies decrease power consumption of their IT infrastructure?

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

CLIs and GUIs

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CLIs and GUIs
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 21:13:12 -0400
Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
RUNOFF was originally written for the CTSS operating system on the IBM 7094, and later ported to Multics. A port to Unix was called roff, which led to nroff, troff, and eventually groff.

CTSS/Multics RUNOFF inspired the DEC product by that name. It also (seems to have) inspired a program called SCRIPT written for CP-67/CMS (hi, Lynn!), which was ported to OS/360 TSO as NSCRIPT. The University of Waterloo created a new SCRIPT on the basis of NSCRIPT; I'm not clear on whether IBM took the Waterloo version back internally or not, I only worked with the Waterloo.

Three IBM researchers named Goldfarb, Mosher, and Lorie created a set of SCRIPT macros which Goldfarb named Generalized Markup Language, or GML. This underwent ISO standardization, to become Standard Generalized Markup Language, or SGML, of which HTML is an offshoot/variant.

So Roland's comparison of (PDP-10) RUNOFF and HTML is very much on the mark(up).


recent post on script, gml, sgml, html, webserver, etc history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#47 System z10 announcement

so lots and lots of past posts about script, gml, sgml
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

"G", "M", and "L" invented gml at the science center in 1969
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

sgml is precursor to html, xml, et all

cms script had been done in the mid-60s at the science center ... some of the CTSS people had gone to the science center on the 4th flr of 545 tech sq ... and others went to multics on 5th flr of 545 tech sq.

gml/sgml history reference here:
http://xml.coverpages.org/sgmlhist0.html
and here https://web.archive.org/web/20231001185033/http://www.sgmlsource.com/history/roots.htmn

ctss runoff reference
http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/CC-244.html

reference tracing evolution from sgml to html at cern:
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/

first webserver outside europe was on the slac vm system
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml

waterloo script webpage
http://csg.uwaterloo.ca/sdtp/watscr.html

another recent post with archeological waterloo script references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#95 Old hardware

for other topic drift ... past posts being on ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

marketing tour in the far east ... and doing a call on bank in hong kong ... and while riding up the elevator ... somebody (relatively recent graduate of univ. of waterloo) asking if i was the wheeler of the "wheeler scheduler" (which they had studied at the univ).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#22 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#43 Latest Principles of Operation

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

CLIs and GUIs

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CLIs and GUIs
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:47:15 -0400
Charlton Wilbur <cwilbur@chromatico.net> writes:
Exactly - the local DNS server does the caching. Local as in "nearby on the network," not local as in "on your machine."

I don't know if my router caches any DNS information. I know when I was running a nameserver on my firewall (to have DNS and reverse DNS for 192.168.* for hosts on the soft underbelly of the firewall) I set it up to cache, and didn't notice much of a performance difference at all.


for a little topic drift ... recent news

Patch domain name servers now, says DNS inventor
http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;913204298;fp;4;fpid;1382389953

there has been a whole slew of other articles for the last week or so ... misc. sample
Cross-industry vendor alliance plugs DNS vulnerability
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080714-cross-industry-vendor-alliance-plugs-dns-vulnerability.html
DNS Could Allow Spoofing (953230)
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-037.mspx
Is DNSSEC the Answer to Internet Security?
http://news.earthweb.com/security/article.php/3758566
DNS researcher convinces sceptics that bug is serious
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/scrt/6605CB414E779280CC257485007BECE2?opendocument&utm_source=security&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=security

for other topic drift ... some comments related to dnssec
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#catch22

and for some archeological reference to inventor of dns having done stint at the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

in the early 70s. ... misc. random past posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#15 Resolving an identifier into a meaning
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#43 Mockapetris agrees w/Lynn on DNS security - (April Fool's day??)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#45 Mockapetris agrees w/Lynn on DNS security - (April Fool's day??)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay12.htm#18 DNS inventor says cure to net identity problems is right under our nose
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay12.htm#36 DNS, yet again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#10 X.500, LDAP Considered harmful Was: OCSP/LDAP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#11 Resolving an identifier into a meaning
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#49 InfiniBand Group Sharply, Evenly Divided
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#24 New RFC 3514 addresses malicious network traffic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#25 New RFC 3514 addresses malicious network traffic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#36 Proposal for a new PKI model (At least I hope it's new)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#42 Longest Thread Ever
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#33 Even worse than UNIX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#71 Poll: oldest computer thing you still use
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#48 Half a Century of Crappy Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#45 Folklore references to CP67 at Lincoln Labs

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

CLIs and GUIs

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CLIs and GUIs
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:16:56 -0400
Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
Well sort of, HTML is an SGML described by an SGML DTD,

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#86 CLIs and GUIs

see description as HTML evolved from the syntax of (univ of waterloo's script) SGML into HTML (actually GML ... precursor to SGML):
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/

from above (reference to 1990 "html" documents):
After further study of these documents and others in the same subdirectory, it became apparent that most of the early HTML tags were actually taken from the CERN SGMLGuid language, which itself was a variant of AAP (an early SGML language). For example, title, hn, p, ol and so on are all apparently taken from this language. The only radical change was the addition of the all important anchor (<a>) link, without which the WWW wouldn't have taken off.

... snip ...

oops and previous post ... URL for first webserver outside europe was on the slac vm system
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml

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

CLIs and GUIs

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CLIs and GUIs
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:15:48 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#86 CLIs and GUIs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#88 CLIs and GUIs

for other topic drift ... CERN had done a bake-off between CMS and TSO and presented a report at SHARE ... circa 1974. Copies of the report inside the company were stamped confidential - restricted (i.e. available on a need-to-know basis only). The issue was that corporation was strongly pushing VS2 (& TSO) ... against CMS and virtual machines (in large part, CMS and virtual machines were pushed by customers and SHARE ... effectively in opposition to much of mainstream corporate marketing).

this had some significant downside impact on the HONE system ... the interal, world-wide sales & marketing system. HONE (Hands-On Network Environment) had started out after 23jun69 unbundling announcement with some number of CP67 virtual machine systems .... to provide online access to branch offices. The unbundling announcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

not only started charging for application software ... but also "system engineering" time. Prior to unbundling, lots of system engineering training was sort of apprentice operation ... part of a team at customer site. With unbundling, customer onsite activity had to be charged for ... so a lot of learning exercise couldn't be justified and therefor couldn't be charged for. A new mechanism was needed to provide *apprentice* system engineers with expierence. HONE was to allow system engineers experience with operating systems running in (CP67) virtual machines (online access from branch offices).

the science center had also done a port of APL\360 to (CP67) CMS for CMS\APL. This subsequently morphed into APL\CMS in the VM370 time-frame. There were rapid development of a large number of sales & marketing tools on CMS\APL and being deployed on HONE. Eventually HONE use came to be totally dominated by these applications (and the use of HONE by system engineers running guest operating systems in virtual machines dwindled away).

The corporation had a "fast-track" program for promising young executives ... and HONE was in the sales & marketing organizations and would tend to get a new executive every year or so ... somebody being cycled thru the position as part of the "fast-track" program ... giving them experience in different parts of the company.

The problem was that a new "fast-track" executive would come in as head of HONE ... and be mortified that the sales & marketing organization was being all run on vm370/cms ... and not the corporation's favorite-son, flagship product VS2 (&TSO). They seem to think that they would make their name in the corporation by migrating HONE to VS2 ... which they could accomplish by just giving the order. Most productive work on HONE would stop for 6-12 months while everybody was set to work on moving applications to VS2. It would then be proved that it wasn't going to be practical. Then things would try and settle back to normal, until the process was repeated when the next, new "fast-track" executive was brought in (possibly every 18-24 months)

recent posts mentioning that over extended period of time, I provided HONE with lots of software and support
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#50 Another difference between platforms
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#72 tape blocking

lots of past posts mentioning HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

misc. past posts mentioning CERN CMS/TSO bakeoff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#19 Why did TCP become popular ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#16 When nerds were nerds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#26 IEH/IEB/... names?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#35 Fw: Tax chooses dead language - Austalia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#34 PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#29 old tapes

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

CLIs and GUIs

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CLIs and GUIs
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:44:01 -0400
Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
Interesting this talks of Script GML as SGML rather than the meta language "Standard Generalized Markup Language" as referred to in the first official standard for HTML - see lower down the page from infomesh where it says:

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#86 CLIs and GUIs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#88 CLIs and GUIs

i.e. the reference basically talks about HTML documents started out as CERN documents that had SGML/GML markup ... with addition of "<a href>" & "<a name>" tags for hypertext operation.
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/

standards specification coming some time after HTML had already saw significnat world-wide deployment.

earlier posts from this year mentioning the website:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#65 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#15 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#47 System z10 announcement (in English)

lots of past posts mentioning gml & sgml (gml having been invented at the science center in 1969 and later evolved into sgml)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

part of the issue, also, was that GML was fairly wide-spread use prior to the standardization as SGML.

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

CLIs and GUIs

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CLIs and GUIs
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:03:49 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#86 CLIs and GUIs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#88 CLIs and GUIs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#89 CLIs and GUIs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#90 CLIs and GUIs

a lot of script documents during the 70s would have "dot" (runoff-like) markup intermixed with gml markup.

for comparison drift ... i had gotten blamed for online computer conferencing on the internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

i've also mentioned that i've had online access at home (effectively continuously) since early march 1970.

sort of one of the results was that a researcher got assigned to study how I communicated ... sat in the back of my office for nine months taking notes; was provided copies of all my incoming and outgoing email as well as logs of all instant messages. somewhere along the way, there were monthly status reports as well as final research report ... which was also a stanford phd thesis (joint between language and computer AI)

an excerpt from the first monthly status report ... "script" with "dot" (runoff-like) markup:
.ju off .cw % .in 10 .ll 72 .ce on .ss .sk 25 COMPOSITION AS CONVERSATION: The Computer Terminal as Medium of Communication .ss .sk 6 .ce off .ju on .in 48

... snip ...

the 2nd monthly status report ... switched to "script" with "gml" markup


:frontm.
:titlep.
:title stitle='Composition as Conversation Second Report'
COMPOSITION AS CONVERSATION: The Computer
:title.Terminal as Medium of Communication
:title. Second Research Report
:date. October 8th, 1984
:author.
:address.
:aline.San Jose CA
:etitlep.
:body.
:h1.ACHIEVEMENTS
:h2.ADMINISTRATIVE

... snip ...

one of the big differences between gml and sgml was the switch from colon/period delimiters for tags to less-than/greater-than delimiters for tags.

for other topic drift ... lots of past posts regarding the study and/or computer mediated communication
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

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

CLIs and GUIs

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CLIs and GUIs
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:19:15 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#91 CLIs and GUIs

also during the 70s and 80s it wasn't unusual to find script documents with a mixture of "dot" markup and "gml" markup.

there was also something called *easy script* ... which was sort of halfway inbetween "dot" commands and "gml":


.ez on
.bt //Programming Technology//
.sk 15
.ce Programming Technology
.sk 10
.in 20
Lynn Wheeler
.in 0
.pa
.sk 5
.ce Issues:
.sk 5
&B.Programming Language
&B.Source Language Debugging
&B.Source Editor
&B.Maintenance Tools
&B.Information Management
.sk 5

... snip ...

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

CLIs and GUIs

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CLIs and GUIs
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:07:00 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#91 CLIs and GUIs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#92 CLIs and GUIs

mixture of mixing "dot" and "gml" markup ... announcement for (1983) Boyd briefing. Earlier briefings had been nearly all day for just Patterns of Conflict ... he then added Organic Design for Command and Control ... craming them both into a single day (i.e. briefing continued well past 3pm)


.nf
Thurs, Dec. 1st
8:00 AM to 3:00 PM
General Seminar
Research Auditorium
.sk 2
Patterns of Conflict
.sk
Organic Design for Command and Control
.sk 2
Col. John Boyd (ret.)
.sk 2
.fi
:p.The first talk analyzes conflict
from a historical perspective.
The second talk discusses the various ingredients of leadership
and team considerations necessary to resolve challenge in
a variety of settings.
:p.Col. Boyd is a major military strategist, the inventor
of Boyd's law, and the father of the F16.
:p.The talk will be open to non-IBM employees.
.sk 2
Host: Lynn Wheeler

... snip ...

lots of past posts mentioning John Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd
and various URLs from around the web mentioning John Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd2

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




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