List of Archived Posts

2009 Newsgroup Postings (05/15 - 05/31)

China deploys secure computer operating system
z/Journal Does it Again
z/Journal Does it Again
Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs
ATM/Debit Card Fraud On The Rise
mainframe replacement (Z/Journal Does it Again)
The coming death of all RISC chips
The coming death of all RISC chips
Supercomputers and electronic commerce
The Benefits of AIX Data Replication in HACMP
China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
China deploys secure computer operating system
IBM Mainframe: 50 Years of Big Iron Innovation
Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers
IBM Mainframe: 50 Years of Big Iron Innovation
China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
IBM unveils new Smart Cube appliance preloaded with Intuit QuickBooks
REGULATOR ROLE IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT FINANCIAL SCANDALS
Bank delivers card readers to secure customers
Does anyone know of merchants who have successfully bypassed interchange costs
China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs
IBM security expert: X86 virtualization not ready for regulated, mission-critical apps
The Paradox of Economic Recovery
Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys
Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys
Computer virus strikes US Marshals, FBI affected
Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis
My Vintage Dream PC
My Vintage Dream PC
My Vintage Dream PC
My Vintage Dream PC
My Vintage Dream PC
Computer virus strikes US Marshals, FBI affected
Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis
Who wants a giant poster of the history of Unix?
Project Whirlwind comes home
"Guardrails For the Internet"
Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis
Book on Poughkeepsie
Book on Poughkeepsie
May 26, 1981: Programmer-Attorney Wins First U.S. Software Patent
Book on Poughkeepsie
My Vintage Dream PC
IBM security expert: X86 virtualization not ready for regulated, mission-critical apps
Book on Poughkeepsie
Book on Poughkeepsie
IBM to Build Europe, Asia 'Smart Infrastructure'
My Vintage Dream PC
Cobol hits fifty
IBM 1401
64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
Book on Poughkeepsie
Punched Card Combinations
64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
Architectural Diversity
Punched Card Combinations
Book on Poughkeepsie
Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
"Guardrails For the Internet"
radar interfering with computer gear
My Vintage Dream PC
How practically risky is it to use unsecured IMAP
My Vintage Dream PC
My Vintage Dream PC
Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
My Vintage Dream PC
A Math Geek's Plan to Save Wall Street's Soul
A Math Geek's Plan to Save Wall Street's Soul
Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
Kansas City Fed Chief Espouses ACH for Debit Card Processing
The $4 trillion housing headache
64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already

China deploys secure computer operating system

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: China deploys secure computer operating system
Date: 15 May, 2009
Blog: Information Security Network
China deploys secure computer operating system
http://www.physorg.com/news161355225.html

from above:
China has installed a secure operating system known as "Kylin" on government and military computers designed to be impenetrable to US military and intelligence agencies, The Washington Times reported on Tuesday

... snip ...

and

China blocks U.S. from cyber warfare
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/12/china-bolsters-for-cyber-arms-race-with-us/
New Chinese Operating System Designed To Block US Intelligence Probes
http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1687563/new_chinese_operating_system_designed_to_block_us_intelligence_probes/index.html
Kylin reports unsubstantiated
http://threatchaos.com/2009/05/kylin-reports-unsubstantial/

and ... presumably any "secure computer operating system" would have countermeasures for anticipated attacks that might be under consideration.

The West should prepare for further cyberattacks; While we dither, China goes under the radar
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/the-west-should-prepare-for-further-cyberattacks-599031?src=rss&attr=newsall

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

z/Journal Does it Again

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: z/Journal Does it Again
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 08:35:32 -0400
scottyt.harder@GMAIL.COM (Scott T. Harder) writes:
I rather think that "they" (client/server model... "we're getting rid of the mainframe") tried that in the 90's.

there were lots of claims that SAA was countermeasure to client/server in the late 80s and early 90s. there was huge amount of leakage of applications out of the datacenter which significantly drove the market for non-datacenter computing and the whole non-datacenter disk drive market (enormous appetite for non-datacenter disk storage for all the applications leaving the datacenter and new generation of applications).

one of the senior people from the disk division got a talk scheduled at the annual communication world-wide conference ... and started out the talk by stating that the head of the communication division was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. and then went on to explain that the communication division was strangling the data transfer thruput into & out of the datacenter ... which contributed significantly to the huge spike for disk storage outside the datacenter. that wasn't so much getting rid of the mainframe ... but severely constrained datacenter growth.

my wife had run into similar battles with the communication group when she was con'ed into going to POK to be in charge of loosely-coupled architecture. She had come up with Peer-Coupled Shared Data architecture, and except for IMS hot-standby, saw very little uptake until sysplex. misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

She reached a (temporary) truce with the communication group where she could use anything she wanted to within the walls of the datacenter.

the issue was that the communication group had established large install base of products related to terminal emulation ... from early days of introduction of PCs. as PC became more powerful (and workstations became more plentiful) there was growing demand for more powerful data transport technologies (both thruput and function). this set the stage for things like SAA attempting to preserve the terminal emulation install base. misc. past posts mentioning terminal emulation period
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

an outgrowth of HSDT (high-speed data transport) project ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt
recent reference in this mailing list
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#72

we had come up with 3-tier architecture and was out pitching to customer executives ... and taking some amount of heat from the SAA crowd ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#3tier

in the 90s, there was a growth in clusters as mainframe replacement ... old post mentioning early Jan 92 meeting on cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

not long afterwards, the effort was transferred and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
and old email (cluster in a rack):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

which was then announced as a numerical intensive product within a couple weeks ... a couple news announcements in Feb 92
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#83
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#70

for a little additional topic drift ... old email about being torn between a NSFNET meeting in washington with the head of NSF and an 801 "cluster" meeting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email850315
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#47

in the 90s, there were billions spent on (failed efforts) redoing some number of mainframe production work on parallel, "killer micros". There were a large set of "online" mainframe applications that appeared in 70s & 80s ... which were somewhat an outgrowth of earlier batch operations. However, the business process still was dependent on overnight batch operations. In the 90s, with increasing business and globalization, there was huge stress being placed on these overnight batch windows.

Numerous efforts were attempted using "object-oriented" technologies to re-engineer these mainframe batch workloads; parallelizing and distributing workloads across large numbers of "killer micros". This was frequently straight-through processing ... each online operation was run to completion ... instead of delaying part of the processing to the overnight batch window. The problem was that the parallel, distribution object-oriented technologies introduced a factor of 100 times (two orders of magnitude) increase in processing overhead ... totally swamping any anticipated throughput benefits of large number of killer micros.

misc. recent posts mentioning "killer micros", overnight batch windows and straight-through processing:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#87 Cleaning Up Spaghetti Code vs. Getting Rid of It
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#43 Business process re-engineering
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#14 Legacy clearing threat to OTC derivatives warns State Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#55 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

z/Journal Does it Again

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: z/Journal Does it Again
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Sat, 16 May 2009 13:09:44 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
overnight batch window. The problem was that the parallel distribution object-oriented technologies introduced a factor of 100 times (two orders of magnitude) increase in processing overhead ... totally swamping any anticipated throughput benefits of large number of killer micros.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#1 z/Journal Does it Again

a lot of the "object-oriented" re-engineering failure was whole generation that had no concept of scale-up and speeds&feeds ... being accustomed to dedicated servers that operated at 5-10% avg. utilization.

some of the (failed) straight-through processing re-engineering efforts didn't even realize the magnitude of problem until they attempted scaled-up deployment.

that whole genre has somewhat come home to roost, being able to use large number of rack-mounted "blades" (reduced physical footprint) and virtualization, to obtain 10:1 reduction (or more) in number of (physical) servers (relatively easy to leverage virtualization to coalesce 10-20 such servers onto a single machine) ... and for some operations, an order of magnitude reduction in number of such datacenters.

there is some overlap with these activities and "cloud computing" initiatives.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs
Date: 16 May, 2009
Blog: Bond Markets
Three trillion dollars later...; There is no single big remedy for the banks' flaws. But better rules --and more capital -- could help
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13648968&source=hptextfeature

from above ...
The bonanza is intentional. Governments and regulators want the banks to make profits so that they regain their health faster after roughly $3 trillion of write-downs. It is part of the monstrous bargain that bankers have extracted from the state (see our special report this week). Taxpayers have poured trillions of dollars into institutions that most never knew they were guaranteeing. In return, economies look as if they have been spared a collapse in payment systems and credit flows that would probably have caused a depression.

... snip ...

Rebuilding the banks
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13604663&CFID=55928383&CFTOKEN=43010404

from above
The costs of this failure are massive. Frantic efforts by governments to save their financial systems and buoy their economies will do long-term damage to public finances. The IMF reckons that average government debt for the richer G20 countries will exceed 100% of GDP in 2014, up from 70% in 2000 and just 40% in 1980.

... snip ...

Barney Frank Backs Off
http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/04/barney-frank-defers-opinions-contributors-regulation.html

from above
The crisis did not begin when Lehman failed; it began in the summer of 2007 with the markets' sudden realization that the triple-A ratings on asset-backed securities were not accurate. The resulting loss of confidence in ratings was a powerful external shock to the market, causing a collapse in trading of all asset-backed securities. That market is still frozen, and the Fed's efforts to revive it through TALF have not borne fruit.

... snip ...

Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt

from above:
The bundling of consumer loans and home mortgages into packages of securities -- a process known as securitization -- was the biggest U.S. export business of the 21st century. More than $27 trillion of these securities have been sold since 2001, according to the Securities Industry Financial Markets Association, an industry trade group. That's almost twice last year's U.S. gross domestic product of $13.8 trillion.

... snip ...

cleaning up that $27T will take lots of work.

If You Think the Worst Is Behind Banks, Read This
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/05/12/if-you-think-the-worst-is-behind-banks-read-this.aspx

from above:
Don't confuse what that's saying: In terms of losses and writedowns, the next 18 months are expected to be worse than the preceding 18 months.

... snip ...

one of the issues is that the FED is trying to really pump up bank profit in various business lines as part of offsetting the anticipated write-downs that are still to come.

Bernanke Says Crisis Damage Likely to Be Long-Lasting
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=arpJXeelvfY4&refer=home

from above (something of an understatement):
Bernanke said the packaging and sale of mortgages into securities "appears to have been one source of the decline in underwriting standards" because originators have less stake in the risk of a loan.

... snip ...

There are some constraints on FED profit stimulus for bank lines of businesses to offset the anticipated write-downs that are still to come.

In recent history, a large profit center were the investment banking arms (courtesy of repeal of Glass-Steagall), heavy leveraging purchases of triple-A rated (securitized loan) toxic CDOs ... which is now the source of those anticipated write-downs still to come (i.e. past profits that are more analogous to Emperor's New Clothes metaphor).

In the past, 40% of bottom line has come from payment system fees (for some possibly closer to 60%). A lot of the profit from this line of business is related to business practices that are now under heavy pressure to be cleaned up. Also, a primary source of the funds are from merchant interchange fees ... which has been getting push back from merchants for some time ... but is significantly increasing in this economic downturn (for some merchants, interchange fees are their single largest expense). There may also be a technology involvement; there can be an order of magnitude difference between the interchange fees for payment transactions with the highest fraud rates and the interchange fees for payment transactions with the lowest fraud rates. Ever increasing fraud could motivate major shift to technologies that drastically reduce payment transaction fraud rates ... which could have a corresponding reduction in interchange fees.

misc past posts mentioning (triple-A rated) toxic CDOs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#14 What are the challenges in risk analytics post financial crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#15 What are the challenges in risk analytics post financial crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#21 Banks to embrace virtualisation in 2009: survey
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#31 Banks to embrace virtualisation in 2009: survey
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#42 Lets play Blame Game...?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#52 The Credit Crunch: Why it happened?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#63 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#73 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#74 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#77 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#79 The Credit Crunch: Why it happened?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#80 Are reckless risks a natural fallout of "excessive" executive compensation ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#1 Are Both The U.S. & UK on the brink of debt disaster?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#8 Do emperors from the banks have new clothes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#23 BarCampBank - informal finance rantathon in London
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#25 The recently revealed excesses of John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, while the firm was receiving $25 Billion in TARP funds makes me sick
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#36 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#37 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#49 US disaster, debts and bad financial management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#51 Will the Draft Bill floated in Congress yesterday to restrict trading of naked Credit Default Swaps help or aggravate?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#52 What has the Global Financial Crisis taught the Nations, it's Governments and Decision Makers, and how should they apply that knowledge to manage risks differently in the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#53 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#54 In your opinion, which facts caused the global crise situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#57 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#59 As bonuses...why breed greed, when others are in dire need?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#65 What can agencies such as the SEC do to insure us that something like Madoff's Ponzi scheme will never happen again?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#73 What can we learn from the meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#78 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#79 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#80 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#1 Audit II: Two more scary words: Sarbanes-Oxley
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#6 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#8 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#16 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#29 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#32 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#38 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#39 'WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#51 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#53 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#55 Who will give Citigroup the KNOCKOUT blow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#61 Accounting for the "greed factor"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#65 is it possible that ALL banks will be nationalized?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#67 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#0 PNC Financial to pay CEO $3 million stock bonus
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#7 Are Ctibank's services and products so vital to global economy than no other banks can substitute it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#16 The Formula That Killed Wall Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#18 HSBC is expected to announce a profit, which is good, what did they do differently?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#22 Is it time to put banking executives on trial?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#28 I need insight on the Stock Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#37 NEW SEC (Enforcement) MANUAL, A welcome addition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#42 Bernard Madoff Is Jailed After Pleading Guilty -- are there more "Madoff's" out there?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#46 Bernanke Says Regulators Must Protect Against Systemic Risks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#64 Should AIG executives be allowed to keep the bonuses they were contractually obligated to be paid?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#74 Why is everyone talking about AIG bonuses of millions and keeping their mouth shut on billions sent to foreign banks?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#77 Who first mentioned Credit Crunch?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#0 What is swap in the financial market?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#8 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#30 Timeline: 40 years of OS milestones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#36 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#53 Are the "brightest minds in finance" finally onto something?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#70 When did "client server" become part of the language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#31 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#35 US banking Changes- TARP Proposl
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#38 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#41 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#43 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#49 Is the current downturn cyclic or systemic?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#56 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#65 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#1 Future of Financial Mathematics?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#27 Flawed Credit Ratings Reap Profits as Regulators Fail Investors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#31 OODA-loop obfuscation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#34 Board Visibility Into The Business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#37 Future of Financial Mathematics?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#52 Future of Financial Mathematics?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#53 We Can't Subsidize the Banks Forever
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#61 Prosecute Bank Execs

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

ATM/Debit Card Fraud On The Rise

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: ATM/Debit Card Fraud On The Rise
Date: 18 May, 2009
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
ATM/Debit Card Fraud On The Rise
http://www.darkreading.com/security/attacks/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=217400522

from above:
Half of financial institutions experienced fraud complaints as a result of major data breaches like TJX and Heartland Payment Systems'

... snip ...

and
http://pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=211894&Itemid=33

from above
-- Responses from over 110 financial services representatives -- Only 35 percent use analytics to predict when to reissue cards; excessive card replacements due to lack of effective risk management tools -- Seventy-four percent lack real-time ATM-Debit fraud prevention capabilities -- Seventy percent of respondents saw an increase in fraud claims in 2008 as compared to 2007, of those with increased fraud claims, 58 percent experienced double digit growth. -- Over 80 percent expect ATM/debit card fraud attempts to increase in 2009 as compared to 2008, with 35 percent predicting a 10 to 14 percent growth rate this year.

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

mainframe replacement (Z/Journal Does it Again)

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: mainframe replacement (Z/Journal Does it Again)
Date: 18 May, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM
a couple archived posts in the above thread (from ibm-main mailing list)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#2

and x-over response/post in similar thread at ibmconnection.com greater ibm:

I think in the wake of failure of Future System effort, the line was that all the ducks had to fly in formation ... misc. past posts mentioning Future System
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

I had sponsored Boyd's briefings at IBM in the early 80s ... some past posts mentioning Boyd (and/or his OODA-loops)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd
and misc. URLs from around the web mentioning Boyd (&/or his OODA-loops)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd2

Past reference to a Boyd quote at the dedication of Boyd Hall, USAF Weapons School, Nellis Air Force Base, 17Sep1999
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#35 War, Chaos, & Business

"There are two career paths in front of you, and you have to choose which path you will follow. One path leads to promotions, titles, and positions of distinction.... The other path leads to doing things that are truly significant for the Air Force, but the rewards will quite often be a kick in the stomach because you may have to cross swords with the party line on occasion. You can't go down both paths, you have to choose. Do you want to be a man of distinction or do you want to do things that really influence the shape of the Air Force? To be or to do, that is the question." Colonel John R. Boyd, USAF 1927-1997

... snip ...

John had been pretty much disowned by the Air Force during his lifetime ... but the Marines adopted him, it was the Marines that were at Arlington ... and his papers went to Quantico.

One of John's biographies lists that he spent a year in 1970 in charge of spook base ... which was a $2.5B "windfall" for IBM (for a little corporate connection).

In 1969, I had been brought in to do virtual machines and online computing for the newly formed BCS ... and I thought Renton datacenter was large ... but $2.5B is nearly an order of magnitude larger than what was quoted for Renton.

misc other posts referencing the Boyd Hall dedication (& To be or to do):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#20 MS to world: Stop sending money, we have enough - was Re: Most ... can't run Vista
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#74 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#61 Lean and Mean: 150,000 U.S. layoffs for IBM?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#77 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#3 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#5 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#4 the Depression WWII
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#44 the Depression WWII
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#45 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#30 Taxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#25 The recently revealed excesses of John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, while the firm was receiving $25 Billion in TARP funds makes me sick

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The coming death of all RISC chips

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The coming death of all RISC chips.
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 10:16:25 -0400
Mayan Moudgill <mayan@bestweb.net> writes:
IBM FS!

and I've periodically claimed that John's direction with 801 ... misc. old email mentioning 801, iliad, romp, rios, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#801

was to go to the opposite extreme as FS ... misc. past posts mentioning FS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The coming death of all RISC chips

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The coming death of all RISC chips.
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 12:30:06 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
and I've periodically claimed that John's direction with 801 ... misc. old email mentioning 801, iliad, romp, rios, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#801

was to go to the opposite extreme as FS ... misc. past posts mentioning FS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#6 The coming death of all RISC chips

part of 801/risc going to the opposite extreme as future system was to never support smp & cache coherency/consistency ... in part because of the heavy penalty that cache consistency cost in 370 (and would have cost in FS).

that is one of the reasons that drove us to clusters ... somewhat related recent discussion in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#1 z/Journal Does it Again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#2 z/Journal Does it Again

now, in the mid-70s, we did get around some of it (cache consistency issues) with design for 16-way 370/158 ... which also never shipped ... in part because comments that it would take at least a decade or two, before the favorite son operating system would have support.

lots of past posts mentioning smp &/or invention of compare&swap instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Supercomputers and electronic commerce

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Supercomputers and electronic commerce
Date: 19 May, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM
some x-over between supercomputers and electronic commerce

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#2
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#5

at least one of the people involved in transferring cluster scale-up and telling us that we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors, was also involved with not allowing us to bid on the NSFNET backbone.

some old nsfnet related email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
and misc. posts on the subject
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

the head of NSF tried to help us with the internal politics by writing the company a letter 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO) saying that they really wanted us to work with NSFNET (and that what we already had running internally was at least five years ahead of all NSFNET backbone bid submissions). Turns out that just aggravated the internal politics.

So NSFNET backbone started out with many of the nodes at NSF supercomputer sites ... besides providing gateways to regional networks ... basically the operational basis for the modern internet ... aka actually providing internetworking between networks. old email mentioning major sites ... before we were reigned in and not allowed to continue:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#email860501

& 9Jan92 list of NSFNET backbone sites in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#73

so a few months after early Jan92 meeting mentioned here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

we took advantage of the early out program. now, two of the other people at the same meeting, later left and show up at a small client/server startup responsible for something called the "commerce server". We were brought in to consult on doing payment transactions on the server ... the small client/server startup had also invented something called "SSL", that they wanted to use. The result is now frequently referred to as electronic commerce.

somewhat as result of the work on electronic commerce, in the mid-90s, we were asked to participate in the x9a10 financial standard working group, which had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments. the result was the x9.59 financial standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

we also generated quite a bit of patent applications ... summary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadssummary.htm

we had gotten to point of packaging the claims as over 60 patent applications and it looked like it was going to exceed 100 before we were done. however, somebody took a look at the cost of filing so many patents ... and directed that all the claims be repackaged as nine patent applications. some time later, the patent office came back and said something about getting tired of patents filed with humongous number of claims (presumably to save on filing fees) and that the claims had to be re-organized into larger number of applications.

some old cluster scale-up related email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The Benefits of AIX Data Replication in HACMP

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The Benefits of AIX Data Replication in HACMP
Date: 19 May, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM
The Benefits of AIX Data Replication in HACMP
http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-management/wp/benefits-aix-data-replication-in-hacmp-996

from above:
Clusters. For IT departments looking to bring their AIX environments up to the next step in data protection, IBM's PowerHA (HACMP) connects multiple servers to shared storage via clustering. This offers automatic recovery of applications and system resources if a failure occurs with the primary server. But clustering only makes the server resilient, not the data storage. That is where real-time replication of the data store is essential. Learn all about how AIX data replication works and how it benefits HACMP clusters.

... snip ...

lots of past posts mentioning ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

a little x-over with this (linkedin) "mainframe replacement" discussion ... also archived here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#2
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#5
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#8

I had come up with "ha/cmp" in part to indicate all the work on cluster scale-up ... the default product name would have otherwise been ha/6000. the ha/cmp name gained momentum and even after the scale-up work was transferred and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than 4 processors ... that product name continued.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
Date: 19 May, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM
China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5325805/Chinas-yuan-set-to-usurp-US-dollar-as-worlds-reserve-currency.html

from above:
Prof Roubini argues that China is better placed than the US to provide a reserve currency for the 21st century because it has a large current account surplus, focused government and few of the economic worries the US faces.

... snip ...

There have been discussions about why Japan's yen didn't come into forefront ... and the explanation has been that the total size of the (Japan's) economy wasn't large enough to back a world trade currency. This was used as justification that euro might become a candidate based on aggregate size of the combined economies of the european union. So the logic follows that with projections that China's economy eventually exceeds that of the US ... that it becomes a candidate.

Americas - Brazil and China eye plan to axe dollar
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/996b1af8-43ce-11de-a9be-00144feabdc0.html
Brazil, China talks could moot ditching dollar
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090519/wl_afp/chinabrazildiplomacytradecurrency_20090519072318
Brazil, China talks could moot ditching dollar
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8UEOG1O0
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.716df1deadc3c9e574febd0bf5c04483.331&show_article=1
US Dollar Faces Death Of A Thousand 'Yuan Currency Swap' Deals
http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle/articleid/3197520

part of the latest has been references that the trust in the US financial infrastructure was severely damaged with the latest crisis (including the fact that those issuing toxic CDOs & toxic asset-backed securities could buy triple-A ratings) ... i.e. some x-over from the yin & yang discussions:

Barney Frank Backs Off
http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/04/barney-frank-defers-opinions-contributors-regulation.html

from above:
The crisis did not begin when Lehman failed; it began in the summer of 2007 with the markets' sudden realization that the triple-A ratings on asset-backed securities were not accurate.

... snip ...

Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt

from above:
The bundling of consumer loans and home mortgages into packages of securities -- a process known as securitization -- was the biggest U.S. export business of the 21st century. More than $27 trillion of these securities have been sold since 2001, according to the Securities Industry Financial Markets Association, an industry trade group. That's almost twice last year's U.S. gross domestic product of $13.8 trillion.

... snip ...

recent posts in financial yin yang threads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#53 What every taxpayer should know about what caused the current Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#56 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#65 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#1 Future of Financial Mathematics?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#27 Flawed Credit Ratings Reap Profits as Regulators Fail Investors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#29 Transparency and Visibility
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#31 OODA-loop obfuscation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#34 Board Visibility Into The Business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#53 We Can't Subsidize the Banks Forever
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#59 We Can't Subsidize the Banks Forever
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#61 Prosecute Bank Execs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#76 Undoing 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#77 A new global system is coming into existence
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#3 Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

China deploys secure computer operating system

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: China deploys secure computer operating system
Date: 19 May, 2009
Blog: Information Security
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#0 China deploys secure computer operating system

recent reference in Schneier's blog:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/05/kylin_new_chine.html

some entries in the blog make reference to SELinux

for topic drift about hardened operating system ... old entry from selinux mailing list
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

now i was doing a lot of work on it as undergraduate in the 60s ... including getting requests from the vendor that might be considered of a security related nature .... but I didn't learn about the referenced customer set until much later.

and ...

Much ado about Kylin
http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/964?ref=rss

from above:
China is not the only country to work on a more secure operating system. The National Security Agency has worked with researchers to produce Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux), a locked-down version of the operating system for sensitive applications.

.... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

IBM Mainframe: 50 Years of Big Iron Innovation

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM Mainframe: 50 Years of Big Iron Innovation
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 19 May 2009 17:00:28 -0400
patrick.okeefe@WAMU.NET (Patrick O'Keefe) writes:
But getting back to the memory lane slide show, I'm a bit surprised the 650 is not included. It may not have been much when compared with the 70x processors from the same time and didn't have any descendants (that I know of), but I think it had a pretty big customer base.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#68 IT Infrastructure Slideshow: The IBM Mainframe: 50 Years of Big Iron Innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#70 Mainframe articles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#71 308x Processors - was "Mainframe articles"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#72 Mainframe articles

650 wiki page (mentions 2000 systems)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_650
650 archive page (mentions 2000 systems, annc 1953, manufactured until 1962)
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/650/650_intro.html
columbia 650 page
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/650.html

from above:
IBM sometimes refers to the 650 as its first computer, although it is predated by at least ASCC (1943) and SSEC (1947), which were not products, and the 701 (1952), which definitely was. Perhaps it is more accurate to call it IBM's first commercial business computer (since the 701 was intended for scientific use), and the first computer to make a meaningful profit.

... snip ...

a couple recent threads in a.f.c. discussing 650s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#35 Why do IBMers think disks are 'Direct Access'?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#39 1401's in high schools?

701 wiki page, "defense calculator" (its "business siblings" were 702 & 650)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_701
701 archive page:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/701/701_intro.html
columbia 701 page ("19 units were built")
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/701.html

columbia 704 page
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/704.html
704 archive page (annc 7may1954, withdrawn 7apr1960)
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PP704.html

709 wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_709
709 archive page
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PP709.html
columbia's 709 page
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/ibm709.html
computer history 709 scanned document
http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/IBM/IBM.709.1957.102646304.pdf

when I started at the univ., they had a 709, using 1401 for "spooling" front-end. 1401 did card->tape and tape->printer/punch ... tapes were carried between the 1401 tape drive and 709 tape drive. 709 ran ibsys monitor tape->tape.

the univ. was going to get 360/67 to run tss/360 as replacement for the 709/1401 combination.

along the way, they first got a 360/30 to replace the 1401. The 360/30 could run the 1401 MPIO (tape<->unit record) program in 1401 hardware emulation mode.

I got a student job to port the 1401 MPIO program to 360/30 (I would guess as an exercise in gaining familiarity with 360). I got to design & implement my own device drivers, interrupts, task monitor, storage management, 1052 interface, etc. I eventually had a 2000 card assembler program ... with assembler directives where it would either generate an os/360 program that ran with DCBs or a stand-alone program that handled all its own start i/os and interrupts and was loaded with BPS loader. Assembling on 360/30 ran nearly 30 minutes elapsed time for the "stand-alone" version. The os/360 "version" took additional 25 minutes to assemble, since it took approx five minutes elapsed time for each DCB macro.

The 360/67 eventually arrived and replaced the 709 and the 360/30 ... however tss/360 wasn't operational and so the '67 spent nearly all of its time running as a 360/65 with os/360 (eventually cp67 installed at the univ, and I got to play with it on weekends, since the 360/67 continued to run os/360 production during the week).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 08:20:19 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#17 Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#21 Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#23 Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#24 Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#28 Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#58 Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers

slightly related:

Net security needs ground-up rebuild
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,,25502812-5013040,00.html

from above:
IT professionals need to name and shame lazy software developers and refuse to deal with dangerous operating systems instead of pretending more security will defeat steadily increasing cyber-threats, US security consultant Daniel Klein has warned.

...
The internet community needed to stop talking to Windows 98, for instance, and that could be enforced at internet service provider level, Mr Klein said

... snip ...

and somewhat on the other-side

https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#0 China deploys secure computer operating system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#11 China deploys secure computer operating system

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

IBM Mainframe: 50 Years of Big Iron Innovation

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM Mainframe: 50 Years of Big Iron Innovation
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 09:06:49 -0400
hancock4 writes:
Wasn't the 702 introduced before the 650? That was a commercial oriented computer.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#12 IBM Mainframe: 50 Years of Big Iron Innovation

702 wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_702

... announced 25sep53, withdrawn 1oct54, first (production) install jul55.

650 wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_650

... announced in 1953 and first shipment in 1954, 2000 systems thru 1962

archive (650) magnetic drum press release (14jul53)
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/650/650_pr1.html

from above:
In addition to its large numerical capacity, the calculator also features a "Table Look-up" operation which facilitates the automatic searching of rate tables such as occur in the utilities, life and casualty insurance, transportation and other commercial fields.

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
Date: 21 May, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#10 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency

Some estimates that dollar use as reserve currency adds about 30% to the value of the dollar. Loosing the status ... would result in much further downside pressure on US economy and US standard-of-living. As in previous reference ... the recent financial mess (and things like being able to "buy" triple-A ratings) has severely damaged trust in US financial infrastructure ... which could accelerate a change.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

IBM unveils new Smart Cube appliance preloaded with Intuit QuickBooks

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM unveils new Smart Cube appliance preloaded with Intuit QuickBooks
Date: 21 May, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM
IBM unveils new Smart Cube appliance preloaded with Intuit QuickBooks
http://www.fiercecio.com/techwatch/story/ibm-unveils-new-smart-cube-appliance-preloaded-intuit-quickbooks/2009-05-19

from above:
The new IT delivery model centers on the use of an appliance called a "Smart Cube." The Smart Cube is a secure, automated appliance designed to deliver integrated business applications directly to the client. According to IBM, it takes just four easy steps to get one up and running.

... snip ...

another article

IBM goes live with Smart Cube appliance server; The modern day AS/400
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/20/ibm_smartcube_appliances/

from above:
After nearly two years of development and more than six months of a beta spin in India - where there are some 35 million small and medium businesses that are looking to computerize their operations - IBM has finally brought its Smart Cube appliance servers and the related application software Smart Market to the United States.

... snip ...

the article goes on about how S/38 had many of the same features as the AS/400 ... but the AS/400 offered enormously better price/performance.

I've pontificated several times that there were big price/performance change starting with 43xx and vax machines in very late 70s ... which resulted in big explosion in that market segment ... continued up thru the mid-80s. However, in the mid-80s 43xx & vax machines started loosing out to emerging workstations and increasing size/sophistication of PCs.

Some old email about 43xx growth in that market segment:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx

old post showing similar growth in vax (sliced in diced by model, year, us/non-us, etc):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

REGULATOR ROLE IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT FINANCIAL SCANDALS

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: REGULATOR ROLE IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT FINANCIAL SCANDALS
Date: 21 May, 2009
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
In the congressional hearings into Madoff, there was a person testified that had been trying for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff.

25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis; Phil Gramm
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877330,00.html

from above:
He played a leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the 1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banks from Wall Street. He also inserted a key provision into the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that exempted over-the-counter derivatives like credit-default swaps from regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Credit-default swaps took down AIG, which has cost the U.S. $150 billion thus far.

... snip ...

Gramm and the 'Enron Loophole'
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/business/17grammside.html

from above:
Enron was a major contributor to Mr. Gramm's political campaigns, and Mr. Gramm's wife, Wendy, served on the Enron board, which she joined after stepping down as chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

... snip ...

Phil Gramm's Enron Favor
https://web.archive.org/web/20080711114839/http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-01-15/news/phil-gramm-s-enron-favor/

from above:
A few days after she got the ball rolling on the exemption, Wendy Gramm resigned from the commission. Enron soon appointed her to its board of directors, where she served on the audit committee, which oversees the inner financial workings of the corporation. For this, the company paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in stocks and dividends, as much as $50,000 in annual salary, and $176,000 in attendance fees,

... snip ...

Greenspan Slept as Off-Books Debt Escaped Scrutiny
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=home&sid=aYJZOB_gZi0I

from above:
That same year Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt opposed an attempt by Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to study regulating over-the-counter derivatives. In 2000, Congress passed a law keeping them unregulated.

... snip ...

Born must have been fairly quickly replaced by Gramm's wife, before she left to join Enron.

In the wake of Enron, Congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley ... placing much of the responsibility on SEC ... but didn't do anything about the underlying problem (which then resulted in AIG).

Possibly because GAO, also didn't think that SEC was doing much ... they started a database of financial filings with problems (which supposedly should have been prosecuted by SEC ... at least under SOX)
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-06-1079sp

from above:
The database consists of two files: (1) a file that lists 1,390 restatement announcements that we identified as having been made because of financial reporting fraud and/or accounting errors between July 1, 2002, and September 30, 2005, and (2) a file that lists 396 restatement announcements that we identified as having been made because of financial reporting fraud and/or accounting errors between October 1, 2005, and June 30, 2006.

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Bank delivers card readers to secure customers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Bank delivers card readers to secure customers
Date: 21 May, 2009
Blog: Payment Systems Network
Bank delivers card readers to secure customers
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com.au/articles/32285-Bank-delivers-card-readers-to-secure-customers

from above:
Deploying hardware solutions like card readers to minimise fraud with online transactions might seem a sensible step, but the odds are good that you won't be able to justify it purely in cost terms.

... snip ...

Note that part of the perception may be affected by similar (unsuccessful) card reader deployment effort around the start of this decade/century ... that was a major disaster ... resulting in a rapidly spreading opinion that smartcards weren't practical in the consumer market. It turns out that the roots of the disaster weren't particularly the smartcards but the type of card reader being distributed and primarily the way the particular card reader interfaced to consumer PCs.

Recent discussion about this with respect to ephemeral/fleeting institutional knowledge (period of 4-5 years) regarding consumer support problems with after-market PC devices from the 80s & 90s.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#26 Return of the Smart Card?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Does anyone know of merchants who have successfully bypassed interchange costs

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Does anyone know of merchants who have successfully bypassed interchange costs
Date: 21 May, 2009
Blog: Payment Systems Network
Part of testimony on floor of congress was a (major) purpose of GLBA was to prevent m'soft and walmart from becoming financial institutions (i.e. financial modernization act was if you were already a financial institution, you got to stay a financial institution ... but if you weren't ... you weren't going to be).

Earlier part of this decade, WalMart was working on obtaining a Utah ILC ... and there was lots of press from community banks about getting congress to close loop holes. Walmart's response was that the purpose of acquiring the Utah ILC ... was so that it could be its own acquirer ... and at least avoid that part of interchange fees ... that it wasn't actually planning on becoming an issuer. While just becoming its own acquirer wouldn't have affected community banks and/or issuers ... there have been some estimates that Walmart accounts for 25-30% of retail transactions in the country ... so it would have affected some acquiring banks revenue/interchange fees.

Misc. past posts discussing the Utah ILC:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#42
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#47
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#7

Note that Walmart (and other merchants) had earlier prevailed in class action anti-trust lawsuit against the associations ... past reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#47
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#59

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
Date: 21 May, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#10 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#15 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency

There was a conference/outing of (US) economists end of last summer and video posted of one of their round-table discussions. The main point of the discussion was that the a major portion of greed and corruption around congress is related to the tax-code & lobbying. The suggestion was that if the US went to a flat-rate tax ... it would reduce the current 65,000 page tax code to possibly 500 pages, eliminate much of the current graft and corruption and provide a 3-4% boost to the economy (resources that are currently diverted to effectively non-productive activity dealing with the complexity of the current tax code).

At the end of the discussion there was observation that it possibly would only be 2-3 yrs before there were new methods of greed and corruption invented ... and semi-humorous observation that Ireland was strongly lobbying to retain the current tax-code ... since a lot of US businesses setup operations in Ireland (as means of escaping it)

past posts on the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#37 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#71 Cormpany sponsored insurance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#49 Taxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#87 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#43 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#44 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#53 Are the "brightest minds in finance" finally onto something?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#83 Architectural Diversity

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
Date: 21 May, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#10 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#15 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#20 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency

recent article mentioning pros & cons of dollar decline:

The incredible shrinking dollar
http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/21/markets/thebuzz/index.htm?postversion=2009052113

above mentions that since the US led the world into recession/depression that it would be the first out ... the other scenarios are that the US caused the financial mess, that it sold $27T of possibly toxic securitized loans to the world ... which are not only being held by large US financial institutions but also around the world ... which needs cleaning up. However, in the US there is also the issue of the mess resulting from the indiscriminate borrowing/lending (which then were packaged up and sold around the world) that also has to be worked out.

misc. other recent news items:

Foreclosures stymie efforts to revive economy
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30854314/

U.S. Stocks Tumble as Jobless Claims Revive Recession Concern
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=agq_iz8Bxdr8&refer=home

from above:
Comments from former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan after the close of trading yesterday suggested he sees a bigger capital shortfall in the banking system than reflected in regulators' stress tests.

... snip ...

Greenspan Says Banks Still Have a 'Large' Capital Requirement
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a25ocYh4V5vI&refer=worldwide

Britain no longer a AAA nation? It could happen, S&P warns
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2009/05/britain-was-put-on-notice-today-that-it-could-lose-its-aaa-credit-rating-because-of-massive-government-borrowing-a-warning-t.html

Stocks Tank On Fear Of US Downgrade
http://www.businessinsider.com/first-the-uk-is-the-us-next-to-lose-its-aaa-2009-5

from above:
But it may ultimately be a long while before the ratings agencies make such a potentially cataclysmic change in America, in part because the ratings agency monopoly is owed to the kindness of the US government.

... snip ...

At issue, in the efforts to forestall major economic catastrophe, the US gov. is pumping huge amounts of money into the financial infrastructure ... resulting in enormous debt burden.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
Date: 22 May, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#10 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#15 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#20 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#21 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency

more on the dollar decline ... just part of the economic crisis

Brown Goes Full Circle as Debt Raises Rating Doubt
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aFVACM4c4WXo&refer=home

and

Geithner Vows to Cut U.S. Deficit on Rating Concern
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=au5M0WphL81g&refer=worldwide

from above:
The dollar extended declines today after Treasuries and American stocks slumped on concern the U.S. government's debt rating may at some point be lowered. Bill Gross, the co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., said the U.S. "eventually" will lose its AAA grade.

... snip ...

these are the same rating agencies that are deeply involved in the root causes of the current economic crisis .... contributing to unregulated, non-depository lending institutions being able to unload everything they wrote w/o regard or concern for loan quality or borrowers qualification. No-documentation, no-downpayment, (introductory) 1% interest only payments became quite attractive to speculators (since carrying cost was quite a bit less than real-estate inflation in many parts of the country ... & planning on flipping before rates adjusted).

As mentioned elsewhere I had been doing quite a bit with the OCR scans of the early 30s Glass-Steagall (Pecora) hearings ... turning into html files, cross-index, etc. ... from pg. 7281 of hearings:

BROKERS' LOANS AND INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION

For the purpose of making it perfectly clear that the present industrial depression was due to the inflation of credit on brokers' loans, as obtained from the Bureau of Research of the Federal Reserve Board, the figures show that the inflation of credit for speculative purposes on stock exchanges were responsible directly for a rise in the average of quotations of the stocks from sixty in 1922 to 225 in 1929 to 35 in 1932 and that the change in the value of such Stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange went through the same identical changes in almost identical percentages.


... snip ...

there is a correspondence between the speculation in the real-estate market leveraging (ARM) loans from non-depository institutions (which used securitization as source of funds) and the speculation in the '20s stock market using brokers' loans.

misc. past posts mentioning BROKERS' LOANS:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#77 Who first mentioned Credit Crunch?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#8 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#40 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#27 US banking Changes- TARP Proposl
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#38 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#49 Is the current downturn cyclic or systemic?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#53 What every taxpayer should know about what caused the current Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#56 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#65 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs
Date: 22 May, 2009
Blog: Bond Markets
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#3 Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs

Accounting Changes Not Factored into the Stress Tests
http://seekingalpha.com/article/139173-accounting-changes-not-factored-into-the-stress-tests

from above:
The new FASB accounting changes will force banksters to move roughly $1 trillion in "off balance sheet assets" onto their balance sheets. These "assets" have been hidden off-balance sheet precisely to allow the bankers to avoid write-downs on them, avoid having to increase bank reserves to meet statutory requirement -- and avoid putting aside additional loan-loss reserves.

... snip ...

the other periodic reference is the mark-to-make-believe rule.

U.S. Stocks Tumble as Jobless Claims Revive Recession Concern
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=agq_iz8Bxdr8&refer=home

from above:
Comments from former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan after the close of trading yesterday suggested he sees a bigger capital shortfall in the banking system than reflected in regulators' stress tests.

... snip ...

Greenspan Says Banks Still Have a 'Large' Capital Requirement
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a25ocYh4V5vI&refer=worldwide

another factor limiting FED pumping money into the financial infrastructure attempting to spend the way out of the current mess:

Geithner Vows to Cut U.S. Deficit on Rating Concern
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=au5M0WphL81g&refer=worldwide

from above:
The dollar extended declines today after Treasuries and American stocks slumped on concern the U.S. government's debt rating may at some point be lowered. Bill Gross, the co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., said the U.S. "eventually" will lose its AAA grade.

... snip ...

these are the same rating agencies that are deeply involved in the root causes of the current economic crisis .... contributing to unregulated, non-depository lending institutions being able to unload everything they wrote w/o regard or concern for loan quality or borrowers qualification. No-documentation, no-downpayment, (introductory) 1% interest only payments became quite attractive to speculators (since carrying cost was quite a bit less than real-estate inflation in many parts of the country ... & planning on flipping before rates adjusted).

recent related thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#10 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#15 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#20 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#21 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#22 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

IBM security expert: X86 virtualization not ready for regulated, mission-critical apps

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM security expert: X86 virtualization not ready for regulated, mission-critical apps
Date: 22 May, 2009
Blog: Information Security Network
IBM security expert: X86 virtualization not ready for regulated, mission-critical apps
http://www.fiercecio.com/techwatch/story/ibm-security-expert-x86-virtualization-not-ready-regulated-mission-critical-apps/2009-05-22

from above:
Indeed, virtualization makes it difficult to meet regulatory requirements such as the PCI DSS. Corman, who is the principal security strategist for IBM's Internet Security Systems division, said, "If you have a choice, I highly recommend you don't adopt virtualization for any regulated project".

... snip ...

original article: X86 virtualization not ready for regulated, mission-critical apps, IBM security expert says; Virtualization opens new attack surfaces, regulatory risks
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/060409-cybercriminals-refine-data-sniffing-software-for.html

virtualization can be leveraged to limit scope of attacks .... but going back possibly nearly 40yrs ... virtualization can also be leveraged by insiders to mask activities (included fraudulent behavior).

slightly related

Prepare for Insider Onslaught, FIRST Warns Business, Government
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/05/prweb2439744.htm

while I did a lot of work on this stuff as undergraduate in the 60s ... i didn't learn about these customers until much later:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The Paradox of Economic Recovery

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The Paradox of Economic Recovery
Date: 22 May, 2009
Blog: Payment Systems Network
A lot of the lending was by unregulated, non-depository institutions that then packaged up the loans (securitization), bought triple-A ratings and sold them off (using securitization as source of funds, in place of deposits). A lot was purchased by investment banking arms (courtesy of repeal of Glass-Steagall) of large (regulated) commercial banks and held off-balance.

Because of being able to unload via securitization, the loan originators no longer had to care about loan quality or borrower qualification. Speculators found no-documentation, no-down, 1% interest payment only mortgages extremely attractive (planning on flipping before rates adjusted & carrying costs was much lower than real-estate inflation in many parts of the country ... possibly 2000% ROI ... with the speculation further fueling the inflation).

The Man Who Beat The Shorts
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1117/114.html

from above:
Watsa's only sin was in being a little too early with his prediction that the era of credit expansion would end badly. This is what he said in Fairfax's 2003 annual report: "It seems to us that securitization eliminates the incentive for the originator of [a] loan to be credit sensitive. Prior to securitization, the dealer would be very concerned about who was given credit to buy an automobile. With securitization, the dealer (almost) does not care."

... snip ...

Bernanke Says Crisis Damage Likely to Be Long-Lasting
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=arpJXeelvfY4&refer=home

from above (something of an understatement):
Bernanke said the packaging and sale of mortgages into securities "appears to have been one source of the decline in underwriting standards" because originators have less stake in the risk of a loan.

... snip ...

Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt

from above:
The bundling of consumer loans and home mortgages into packages of securities -- a process known as securitization -- was the biggest U.S. export business of the 21st century. More than $27 trillion of these securities have been sold since 2001, according to the Securities Industry Financial Markets Association, an industry trade group. That's almost twice last year's U.S. gross domestic product of $13.8 trillion.

... snip ...

I've been doing quite a bit with the OCR scans of the early 30s Glass-Steagall (Pecora) hearings ... from pg. 7281 of hearings:

BROKERS' LOANS AND INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION

For the purpose of making it perfectly clear that the present industrial depression was due to the inflation of credit on brokers' loans, as obtained from the Bureau of Research of the Federal Reserve Board, the figures show that the inflation of credit for speculative purposes on stock exchanges were responsible directly for a rise in the average of quotations of the stocks from sixty in 1922 to 225 in 1929 to 35 in 1932 and that the change in the value of such Stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange went through the same identical changes in almost identical percentages.


... snip ...

there is a correspondence between the speculation in the real-estate market leveraging (ARM) loans from non-depository institutions (which used securitization as source of funds) and the speculation in the '20s stock market using brokers' loans.

Accounting Changes Not Factored into the Stress Tests
http://seekingalpha.com/article/139173-accounting-changes-not-factored-into-the-stress-tests

from above:
The new FASB accounting changes will force banksters to move roughly $1 trillion in "off balance sheet assets" onto their balance sheets. These "assets" have been hidden off-balance sheet precisely to allow the bankers to avoid write-downs on them, avoid having to increase bank reserves to meet statutory requirement -- and avoid putting aside additional loan-loss reserves.

... snip ...

.. oh, similar thread/discussion ... comments archived here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#3 Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#23 Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys
Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory
Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 00:35:48 -0400
paul c <toledobythesea@oohay.ac> writes:
VAX died for other reasons, not that one. One I can remember is DPL which stood for "Dennis' Programming Language". Probably the Beaver was into it too.

mid-range market got overtaken by workstations and growing sophisticated PCs ... old post with VAX sales sliced & diced by model, year, US/non-US:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0

mid-range 370s (43xx) competed with VAX in the same mid-range market and saw similar growth and fall-off ... although 43xx actually out-sold VAXs, in part because of large customer accounts that would order 43xx machines in units of hundreds at a time.

the follow-on to the 4341 was the 4381 ... which was expecting to see similar explosion in number of machines sold ... but by the time 4381 came out ... the mid-range market was already starting to be taken over, as lower-end machines (workstations and PCs) were moving up (taking over the mid-range market).

the following post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#1

quotes from a jan88 "dec professional" article about OLTP in vax cluster ... and the overhead cost of the (vaxcluster) distributed lock manager.

one of the things I did when starting work on DLM for HA/CMP was talk to sybase and ingres about shortcomings in vaxcluster DLM and worked on mechanisms to minimize the overhead (as well as drastically reducing the recovery time) misc. past posts mentioning ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys
Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory
Date: Sat, 23 May 2009 10:19:24 -0400
toby <toby@telegraphics.com.au> writes:
If expressing exact rationals is what you want, then that is trivially done using integer arithmetic - as is fixed point decimal. Hardware decimals, which essentially died with the VAX, don't help you express rationals.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#26 Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys

decimal hardware as one of the things that differentiated commercial & scientific/defense machines back in the 50s

recent thread in a.f.c. discussing 650 (commerical, announced 1953) and 701 (defense calculator announced 1952)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#12 IBM Mainframe: 50 Years of Big Iron Innovation

360s bascially converged the scientific and commercial lines ... providing hardware support for decimal operations ... in addition to binary and floating point.

the person responsible for rexx language ... did a lot of the work on decimal floating point standard ... recent reference (in comp.arch)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#84 Decimal roolz, was Architectural Diversity

references IEEE decimal floating-point specification
http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/ARITH.2001.930114

and some number of decimal floating-point articles from wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Cowlishaw

when Jim left for tandem ... he tried to hand off consulting with IMS on me ... old email reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801016
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801006

recent reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#15 Confessions of a Cobol programmer

there is still quite a bit of Cobol use, which will make heavy use of hardware decimal support (if available), recent thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#12 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting

quote from referenced article
Some 75% of the world's businesses data is still processed in Cobol, and about 90% of all financial transactions are in Cobol, according to Arunn Ramadoss, head of the academic connections program at Micro Focus International PLC, which provides software to help modernize Cobol applications.

... snip ...

decimal instructions (dating back to 360s) section in recent mainframe principles of operation
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/8.0?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Computer virus strikes US Marshals, FBI affected

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Computer virus strikes US Marshals, FBI affected
Date: 24 May, 2009
Blog: Information Security Network
Computer virus strikes US Marshals, FBI affected
http://www.technologyreview.com/wire/22694/

from above:
The U.S. Marshals confirmed it disconnected from the Justice Department's computers as a protective measure after being hit by the virus; an FBI official said only that agency was experiencing similar issues and was working on the problem.

... snip ...

Talk/comments i've given at number of conferences is that product originally with kitchen table top design pt. with large number of applications (including games) that take over all the resources of the machine ... then adds private networking for local groups in a non-hostile environment ... then the networking support is leveraged to use as a internet appliance in an extremely hostile environment.

The net is some amount of use with diametrically opposing requirements ... no countermeasures at all and at the same time requirements for extremely stringent countermeasures (slight analogy with using a swimsuit for deep space walk).

Past couple yrs there has been some forays into 40+yr old virtualization as means of simultaneously supporting the diametrically opposing requirements. However, this recent item is that if virtualization can be used to fool the bad guys ... insiders (and others) could also leverage virtualization for fraudulent activity:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#24 IBM security expert: X86 virtualization not ready for requlated, mission-critical apps

slightly related thread about getting badgered into interviewing for position of chief security architect in redmond:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#7 Hypervisors May Replace Operating Systems As King Of The Data Center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#5 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#37 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#80 Making tea
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#60 The 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#18 Top 10 Cybersecurity Threats for 2009, will they case creation of highly-secure Corporate-wide Intranets

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis
Date: 24 May, 2009
Blog: Systems Thniking
These are references to infrastructure changes that resulted in effectively eliminating paying any attention to credit risk at all.

The Man Who Beat The Shorts
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1117/114.html

from above:
Watsa's only sin was in being a little too early with his prediction that the era of credit expansion would end badly. This is what he said in Fairfax's 2003 annual report: "It seems to us that securitization eliminates the incentive for the originator of [a] loan to be credit sensitive. Prior to securitization, the dealer would be very concerned about who was given credit to buy an automobile. With securitization, the dealer (almost) does not care."

... snip ...

Bernanke Says Crisis Damage Likely to Be Long-Lasting
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=arpJXeelvfY4&refer=home

from above (something of an understatement):
Bernanke said the packaging and sale of mortgages into securities "appears to have been one source of the decline in underwriting standards" because originators have less stake in the risk of a loan.

... snip ...

Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt

from above:
The bundling of consumer loans and home mortgages into packages of securities -- a process known as securitization -- was the biggest U.S. export business of the 21st century. More than $27 trillion of these securities have been sold since 2001, according to the Securities Industry Financial Markets Association, an industry trade group. That's almost twice last year's U.S. gross domestic product of $13.8 trillion.

... snip ...

I've been doing quite a bit with the OCR scans of the early 30s Glass-Steagall (Pecora) hearings ... from pg. 7281 of hearings:

BROKERS' LOANS AND INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION

For the purpose of making it perfectly clear that the present industrial depression was due to the inflation of credit on brokers' loans, as obtained from the Bureau of Research of the Federal Reserve Board, the figures show that the inflation of credit for speculative purposes on stock exchanges were responsible directly for a rise in the average of quotations of the stocks from sixty in 1922 to 225 in 1929 to 35 in 1932 and that the change in the value of such Stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange went through the same identical changes in almost identical percentages.


... snip ...

there is a correspondence between the speculation in the real-estate market leveraging (ARM) loans from non-depository institutions (which used securitization as source of funds) and the speculation in the '20s stock market using brokers' loans.

A lot of lending was by unregulated, non-depository institutions that could immediately package up the loans, "buy" triple-A ratings and sell them off as triple-A rated toxic CDOs. Speculators found no-documentation, no-down, 1% interest only payment ARMs quite attractive, since the carrying cost was much less than real-estate inflation in many areas of the country (planning on flipping before rate reset; speculation also further fueling the inflation).

A lot of regulated depository institutions were providing the funding ... but by a circuitous route with their investment banking arms (courtesy of repeal of Glass-Steagall) buying them (triple-A rated toxic CDOs) up and carrying them off-balance. This circuitous path, besides bypassing regulations, generated significant amount of extra fees, commissions and bonuses (that wouldn't have happened if it had been traditional lending) ... however, the profits were largely illusion (the Emperor's New Clothes metaphor) ... and basis for majority of current write-downs.

and similar thread/discussion ... comments archived here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#3 Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#23 Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs

The other scenario, is where risk departments were raising red flags, the business people overruled them and/or directed that the input data be fiddled until they got the desired output (garbage in, garbage out).

How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/how-wall-streets-quants-lied-to-their-computers/
and
Subprime = Triple-A ratings? or 'How to Lie with Statistics' (gone 404 but lives on at the wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20071111031315/http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/07/25/subprime-triple-a-ratings-or-how-to-lie-with-statistics/

a couple of long-winded, decade old posts mentioning some of the current problems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskaads

also mentions in 1989 that citigroup (largest player in the market at the time) figured out that ARM mortgage portfolio could take down the institution (and nearly did) ... and got out of the business. Much of the $27 trillion (triple-A rated) toxic CDOs are a flavor of ARM portfolio.

role forward to the current time ... and the institutional knowledge from 1989 seems to have evaporated ... in ability to evaluate large ARM portfolios packaged as (triple-A rated) toxic CDOs

Citigroup's Place on a Roll of Shame
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/10/news/citigroup_loomis.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009041014

from above:
But neither competitors nor Congress liked open-bank assistance, wondering why the institutions getting it shouldn't just be allowed to fail. So a 1991 banking law called FDICIA, and a subsequent amendment to a related law, essentially barred the FDIC from granting such assistance -- except in instances of systemic risk

... snip ...

Stay away from Citigroup
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/11/28/stay-away-from-citigroup-c/

from above:
Using household terms such as "QSPEs" and "VIEs," Pandit revealed that Citi has more than $1.2 trillion dollars in off-balance sheet assets. These off-balance sheet entities are similar in structure to Enron's SPVs (special purpose vehicles)

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

My Vintage Dream PC

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: My Vintage Dream PC
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.folklore.computers,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 20:14:22 -0400
"JosephKK"<quiettechblue@yahoo.com> writes:
Another newbie. I have been reading since 1983, clear back when there barely was USENET.

i've been blamed for computer conferencing on the internal network in the late 70s and early 80s ...

the internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until possibly late '85 or early '86 ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

some old pictures including online at home between 77 & mid-80s (still haven't found any pictures of online at home from early 70s):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#oldpicts

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

My Vintage Dream PC

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: My Vintage Dream PC
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.folklore.computers,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 09:19:47 -0400
"Bill Leary" <Bill_Leary@msn.com> writes:
The "home terminal" with the roll of thermal paper. I used one of those too. I'm trying to remember the name of the hardware, but the best I'm coming up with is that it began with a "T." I also recall that paper tended to do bad things if left exposed to sunlight. It faded even if stored away from light too.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#30 My Vintage Dream PC

a couple of the "old" pictures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#oldpicts

are CDI miniterm i had at home (as well as compact microfiche viewer at home) ... that used rolls of thermal paper ... similar to what i've had in recent fax machines ... thread from last year
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#37
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#38
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#51

before that ... for most of the 70s at home, it was 2741 selectric ... that could take individual sheets ... pretty much like selectric typewriter ... however most of the time i had boxes of greenbar, fan-fold printer paper (i still have selectric apl typeball and there are a couple recent picutres)

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

My Vintage Dream PC

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: My Vintage Dream PC
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.folklore.computers,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 09:25:08 -0400
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
I was going to say Texas Instruments, but that doesn't look like the one I remember. What a great feeling to get a lightweight terminal that ran 3X as fast as a "standard" TTY and had a built-in acoustic coupler instead of a separate unit. In this respect, at least, times have changed for the better.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#30
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#31

there is some vague recollection that cdi miniterm had earlier been TI miniterm??; 300 baud instead of standard tty 110 baud. possibly that TI spun-off/sold-off miniterm(?) ... that or it was purely a clone.

an (ascii) 3101 (glass teletype) with 1200 baud modem ... replaced the cdi miniterm at home ... before getting an (my own personal) ibm/pc at home to replace the 3101.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

My Vintage Dream PC

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: My Vintage Dream PC
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.folklore.computers,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.computers,alt.computer
Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 09:44:49 -0400
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
And that's why the monitor needs to be "separate" from the user code. MS' development tradition is to take the "shortcuts" and directly access exec code or put the app code in the exec. this allows any old user mode program to spray bits all over the disks and core even it's protected with hardware.

It takes time and lots of design meetings to get people to agree on a UUO or CALLI interface. MS' development folklore was to always to this stuff the "short" way, w.r.t. wallclock time.

Just look at the mindset of Gates when he was getting started. This mindset was carried into corporate and has become part of its folklore.


slightly related recent thread about security/integrity (and system design point)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#28 Comuter virus strikes US Marshals, FBI affected

one of the things about current mainframe batch system is that its (360) heritage was from small/limited real-memory (single address, no virtual memory) ... supervisor/kernel code was in same address space as application code. pervasive use of pointer passing in API between application code and supervisor/kernel.

initial translation of this paradigm into (370) virtual memory was single (16mbyte/24bit) virtual address space ... basically simulated 360 envorinment but with the appearance of larger real memory; the supervisor/kernel still occupied the same address space as applications and retained extensive pointer-passing API.

next morph was to have multiple virtual address spaces ... one per application. it almost simulated 360 environment ... supervisor/kernel and application occupying same address space ... but now there was one virtual address space per application (with the same supervisor/kernel image appearing in each address space).

this had some unintended consequences. 370 was 16mbyte/24bit virtual address space ... which was laid out with 8mbytes of the kernel/supervisor image in each adderss space ... and theoretically 8mbytes for each application.

the problem was a number of "sub-system" services which had been outside the kernel/supervisor ... and were now in their own unique virtual address space (just like applications) ... however there was problem with conventions that normal application pointer-passing API "calling" these subsysttem services (which no longer resided in the same virtual address space). the hack/work-around was something called the "common segment" that appeared in every virtual address space (similar to the kernel/supervisor image). applications would reserve space in the common segment, move API parameters into their reserved common segment space and perform sub-system service call, passing pointer to the common system area. This common system area could also be used by subsystem to return values to the application.

The problem was that size of common segment was basically proportional to number of subsystems and application activity. By the time of 3033, large installation were needing common segment area that were 5-6 mbytes in size ... leaving only 2-3 mbytes for application use (each application had dedicated 16mbyte virtual address space ... but half that went to the supervisor/kernel image and then 5-6 mbytes for common segment).

misc. past posts mentioning common segment and pointer passing API
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#57 Handling variable page sizes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#0 Handling variable page sizes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#13 Page Table - per OS/Process
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#6 If the x86 ISA could be redone
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#26 PCIe as a chip-to-chip interconnect
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#54 CKD Disks?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#18 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#53 The mid-seventies SHARE survey
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#57 Moving assembler programs above the line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#18 address space
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#48 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#25 Multiple address spaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#28 Multiple address spaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#32 Multiple address spaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#33 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#38 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#44 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#10 What part of z/OS is the OS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#32 MIPS architecture question - Supervisor mode & who is using it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#42 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#23 threads versus task
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#23 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#16 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#59 IBM to the PCM market(the sky is falling!!!the sky is falling!!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#27 user level TCP implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#10 IBM 8000 series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#73 The name "shell"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#75 The name "shell"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#26 Does software life begin at 40? IBM updates IMS database
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#68 Direction of Stack Growth
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#56 CSA 'above the bar'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#69 CSA 'above the bar'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#16 segmentation or lack thereof
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#75 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#35 New Opcodes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#69 Regarding the virtual machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#14 Kernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#33 IBM Preview of z/OS V1.10
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#60 Different Implementations of VLIW
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#29 DB2 & z/OS Dissertation Research
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#53 Old XDS Sigma stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#40 Opsystems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#31 TOPS-10
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#32 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#34 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#55 Graphics on a Text-Only Display
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#59 Why do IBMers think disks are 'Direct Access'?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

My Vintage Dream PC

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: My Vintage Dream PC
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 12:31:22 -0400
cstacy@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) writes:
GE Terminet

But that wasn't portable. And it was a weird belt printer.

http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/GE/GE.TermiNet300.1971.102646207.pdf

He's probably referring to the TI Silent 700.

I used all those, but mostly a "CDI" which was similar to a Silent 700 but a little nicer - slightly deeper with a less wide profile, and it was APL.

I can't find any pictures or anything online for the CDI, but I think I still have the manual. I'll scan it for Bitsavers one of these days.


ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#30 My Vintage Dream PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#31 My Vintage Dream PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#32 My Vintage Dream PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#33 My Vintage Dream PC

a couple of my pictures of CDI miniterm at home (along with compact microfiche viewer) shown here (along with misc. other "old" pictures)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#oldpicts

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Computer virus strikes US Marshals, FBI affected

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Computer virus strikes US Marshals, FBI affected
Date: 24 May, 2009
Blog: Information Security Network

https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#28 Comuter virus strikes US Marshals, FBI affected

cloud computing and netbooks starting to look more like the (virtual machine) commercial time-sharing that started in the late 60s.

pc/rt sort of painted themselves into that corner in the mid-80s ... but for a different reason. romp started out to be a displaywriter follow-on ... with 801/romp/risc running cp.r. when that project was killed ... they looked around for something else and hit on the unix workstation market. they hired the company that had done pc/ix (for the personal computer) to do aix. however they had all these pl.8 programmers that needed something to do. they came up with the "VRM" (implemented in pl.8) that provided an abstract virtual machine interface ... and the unix port for AIX (V2, to differentiate from pc/ix) would be to that interface. The subsequent claim was that would be faster than having the outside company learn 801 for a bare metal port (which turned out to be wrong, demonstrated by subsequent port of BSD to the bare metal). However, it turned out to do new device support ... required implementing both an AIX device driver as well as a VRM device driver. For rios/power & aix v3 ... the whole VRM was eliminated (in theory all the employees had picked up C by then).

so virtualization came back to power this decade ... but it is virtual native machine ... as opposed to the abstract layer that had been implemented with VRM. web page:
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/virtualization/

misc. old email mentioning 801, iliad, romp.rios, power, etc:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#801

mainframe virtualization pushed more and more capability into the hardware ..... initially as part of minimizing virtual machine overhead.

in the early 80s, Amdahl came out with hypervisor ... which was subset of virtual machine all "implemented" in hardware. ibm responded with pr/sm on the 3090. pr/sm evolved into "logical partitions" ... where it is possible to define multiple virtual machines directly in the hardware (with some restrictions), it seems that majority of mainframes now operate with logical partitions defined. within logical partitions, it is possible to run traditional mainframe batch operating systems, virtual machine operating systems, as well as linux operating systems.

early part of this decade some customer demonstrated a virtual machine operating system running in a test logical partition (somewhat restricted subset of all machine resources) ... which in turn provided 42,000 virtual machines running linux.

wiki lpar page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LPAR

2005 description of lpar support on power
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/systems/library/es-dynamic/

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis
Date: 25 May, 2009
Blog: Systems Thinking
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#29 Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis

Three trillion dollars later...; There is no single big remedy for the banks' flaws. But better rules --and more capital -- could help
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13648968&source=hptextfeature

from above ...
The bonanza is intentional. Governments and regulators want the banks to make profits so that they regain their health faster after roughly $3 trillion of write-downs. It is part of the monstrous bargain that bankers have extracted from the state (see our special report this week). Taxpayers have poured trillions of dollars into institutions that most never knew they were guaranteeing. In return, economies look as if they have been spared a collapse in payment systems and credit flows that would probably have caused a depression.

... snip ...

Rebuilding the banks
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13604663&CFID=55928383&CFTOKEN=43010404

from above
The costs of this failure are massive. Frantic efforts by governments to save their financial systems and buoy their economies will do long-term damage to public finances. The IMF reckons that average government debt for the richer G20 countries will exceed 100% of GDP in 2014, up from 70% in 2000 and just 40% in 1980.

... snip ...

Barney Frank Backs Off
http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/04/barney-frank-defers-opinions-contributors-regulation.html

from above
The crisis did not begin when Lehman failed; it began in the summer of 2007 with the markets' sudden realization that the triple-A ratings on asset-backed securities were not accurate. The resulting loss of confidence in ratings was a powerful external shock to the market, causing a collapse in trading of all asset-backed securities. That market is still frozen, and the Fed's efforts to revive it through TALF have not borne fruit.

... snip ...

If You Think the Worst Is Behind Banks, Read This
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/05/12/if-you-think-the-worst-is-behind-banks-read-this.aspx

from above:
Don't confuse what that's saying: In terms of losses and writedowns, the next 18 months are expected to be worse than the preceding 18 months.

... snip ...

one of the issues is that the FED is trying to really pump up bank profit in various business lines as part of offsetting the anticipated write-downs that are still to come. There are some constraints on FED profit stimulus for bank lines of businesses to offset the anticipated write-downs that are still to come.

Accounting Changes Not Factored into the Stress Tests
http://seekingalpha.com/article/139173-accounting-changes-not-factored-into-the-stress-tests

from above:
The new FASB accounting changes will force banksters to move roughly $1 trillion in "off balance sheet assets" onto their balance sheets. These "assets" have been hidden off-balance sheet precisely to allow the bankers to avoid write-downs on them, avoid having to increase bank reserves to meet statutory requirement -- and avoid putting aside additional loan-loss reserves.

... snip ...

the other periodic reference is the mark-to-make-believe rule.

Greenspan Says Banks Still Have a 'Large' Capital Requirement
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a25ocYh4V5vI&refer=worldwide

Geithner Vows to Cut U.S. Deficit on Rating Concern
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=au5M0WphL81g&refer=worldwide

from above:
The dollar extended declines today after Treasuries and American stocks slumped on concern the U.S. government's debt rating may at some point be lowered. Bill Gross, the co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., said the U.S. "eventually" will lose its AAA grade.

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Who wants a giant poster of the history of Unix?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Who wants a giant poster of the history of Unix?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 19:14:10 -0400
Who wants a giant poster of the history of Unix?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/25/unix_poster/

from above:
That's right - this 40 foot poster includes over 1,000 versions of 150 different types of Unix.

... snip ...

Open-System Fans of the World Unite!
http://www.fpdimages.com/html/StoreOpenSystemsBanner.htm

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Project Whirlwind comes home

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Project Whirlwind comes home
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 25 May 2009 19:15:17 -0400
Project Whirlwind comes home
http://www.physorg.com/news162485135.html

from above:
The Project Whirlwind Computer collection -- a compilation of pioneering digital computing research conducted at MIT in the 1940s and 1950s -- has been transferred back to the Institute from the MITRE Corporation, and its contents are being opened to the public for the first time.

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

"Guardrails For the Internet"

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: "Guardrails For the Internet"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 09:29:54 -0400
Sony CEO Proposes "Guardrails For the Internet"
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/05/26/1223224/Sony-CEO-Proposes-Guardrails-For-the-Internet
Guardrails for the Internet: Preserving Creativity Online
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-lynton/guardrails-for-the-intern_b_207459.html

similar thread here from a couple yrs ago
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#27 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#28 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#29 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#30 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#31 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement

this is a guardrails thread ... but related to C language characteristics (at one time, accounted for majority of exploits on the internet)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#48 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#50 [Lit.] Buffer overruns

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis
Date: 26 May, 2009
Blog: Systems Thinking
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#29 Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#36 Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis

In congressional hearings last fall into the rating agencies, it was repeatedly stated that both those issuing the toxic CDOs and the rating agencies knew that the toxic CDOs weren't worth triple-A ratings ... but the issuers were paying for & getting triple-A ratings anyway. Part of the statements was that the seeds for this were sown in the early 70s, when the rating agencies switched from the buyers paying for the ratings to the sellers paying for the ratings, mis-aligning the business process and opening things up for conflict of interest.

There have been periodic comments that regulation is significantly more difficult when people are motivated to do the wrong thing ... than when they are motivated to do the right thing.

There were even some comments during the hearings last fall, that there is the possibility that rating agencies might be in the position to blackmail the US gov. ... using the threat of downgrading the gov's triple-A rating as leverage.

In january, there were a couple news items mentioning that the gov. was using interactive data to help evaluate institutional assets (off-balance, toxic CDOs). Interactive data web site makes mention that they bought the pricing services division from one of the rating agencies in the early 70s (about the time it was mentioned that the rating agencies' business process became mis-aligned).

disclaimer: i interviewed with interactive data in the late 60s ... but didn't join.

misc. recent posts mentioning interactive data:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#21 Banks to embrace virtualisation in 2009: survey
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#31 Banks to embrace virtualisation in 2009: survey
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#79 The Credit Crunch: Why it happened?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#70 When did "client server" become part of the language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#41 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#49 Is the current downturn cyclic or systemic?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#27 Flawed Credit Ratings Reap Profits as Regulators Fail Investors

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Book on Poughkeepsie

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Book on Poughkeepsie
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 17:40:10 -0400
rfochtman@YNC.NET (Rick Fochtman) writes:
Consider, if you will, the sweet innocence of childhood. ;-) How many of us remember the days of punched cards, either 80-column or 96-column? Or the 1442 "Multifunction Card Machine", also known as "Mother Fletcher's Card Mulcher"? Or the venerable 2540? or the 2501 Optical Card Reader? Or the 3505/3525?

1442 wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1442

picture of 2560 MFCM (attached to 360-20)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DM_IBM_S360.jpg

2540
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/2540.html

my first programming course was introduction to fortran, the univ. had 709 running (tape->tape) ibsys using 1401 providing front-end card->tape and tape->printer/punch (for 709) with program "MPIO" ... tapes were hand moved from 1401 to 709.

univ. was selected to replace 709/1401 with 360/67 running tss/360, wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360-67

as part of the process, the 1401 was replaced with 360/30 and could run 1401 hardware emulation with 1403 printer and 2540 card reader/punch.

recent reference in this post/thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#12 IBM Mainframe: 50 Years of Big Iron Innovation

above mentions I got student job to "port" the 1401 MPIO program to 360/30 (running native), even tho the program ran fine in 1401 hardware emulation (i got to design and implement my own monitor, interrupt handler, device drivers, console interface, storage management, etc).

eventually 360/67 arrived, replacing the 709 & 360/30 ... but tss/360 wasn't ready ... so it spent its time as 360/65 running os/360.

the univ. did registration when class information was entered on card with number two pencil. The cards were run through 519 reproducing punch with mark sense feature. under os/360, cobol program read the punch cards (from 2540) and processed the information as part of registration.

the 2540 had card punch feed on one side and card reader feed on the other side with five stackers in the middle ... two for the punch, two for the reader, and one in the middle that could used by both reader & punch.

I got to do the 2540 channel programming for the registration program. All the class registration cards were plain manila, being read one at a time into the (common) center stacker. The registration program would do some validity checking of a read card and if there was an some error, punch a blank card into the center stacker (following the card in error). The punch feed was loaded with cards that had a colored stripe along the top edge.

After processing, with all the cards back into card trays (about box & half of cards or around 3000 per tray) ... it was easy to pick out registration cards with problems because of the colored top-edge of the blank punch card.

punch card wiki page ... includes pictures of cards ... along with top-edge of a box (2000) of cards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_programming_in_the_punch_card_era

university also required that punch card jobs be submitted using plain manilla cards and IBSYS/JCL/WATFOR job cards punched on top-edge "red stripe" cards. Submitted jobs were collected in card tray and load of cards were periodically loaded into the 2540 for processing (and placed back in card tray).

eventually there was pile of printed output. the operator would split off a job's printed output (using "seperator" page to delimit print job) ... match it with the next card deck job in the card tray ... identified/deliminated by the top edge red stripe card(s) ... for most jobs, the folded printed output and the card deck would then be wrapped with rubber band.

job submission area had large open "mail boxes" (with no doors over the front). job output would be placed in appropriate box based on person's last name. output would be found by looking through everything in the box for your name.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Book on Poughkeepsie

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Book on Poughkeepsie
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 17:58:36 -0400
eamacneil@YAHOO.CA (Ted MacNEIL) writes:
I remember two models -- KP-26 & KP-29. I had my own (as probably did others) card 'programmed' for certain stops, so I didn't have to space over. I guess that was the precurser to tab stops on a 327x terminal.

based on whether or not, 327x terminal was being used as upgrade to keypunch card entry ... or used as upgrade to 2741 selectric terminal (i.e. 026 keypunch stops or typewriter tab settings).

we got into argument about whether 3278 was purely a keypunch entry machine ... or possibly might also be used for interactive computing. part of the problem was that some cost cutting in the transition from 3272/3277 to 3274/3278 .... moved a lot of function that had been in the 3277 head back into the 3274 controller (cutting cost of manufacturing 3278).

this significantly increased processing overhead delay in the 3274 and made it much less suitable for interactive computing. the interactive delays didn't really show up for keypunch entry work ... and TSO response was so slow that the transition from 3272/3277 to 3274/3278 wasn't noticable. old post with some measurements
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19 3270 protocol

part of the issue was that with electronics in the head of 3277, it was possible to tweak the operation to make it much more acceptable for interactive computing. one was with a little bit of soldering in the keyboard it was possible to alter the "repeat delay" and the "repeat rate" timing. also it was possible to add a small fifo to eliminate the problem that if you happened to hit a key at the same time a system write to the screen was going on ... the keyboard would lock up (and the keystroke was lost). the keyboard then had to be unlocked before continuing (was terribly annoying).

there were also early arguments about whether program function keys were going to be dropped from 3278 ... or if it was possible to get them as option.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

May 26, 1981: Programmer-Attorney Wins First U.S. Software Patent

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: May 26, 1981: Programmer-Attorney Wins First U.S. Software Patent
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 20:20:29 -0400
May 26, 1981: Programmer-Attorney Wins First U.S. Software Patent
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/05/dayintech_0526

for lots of topic drift ... post on connection between supercomputers and electronic commerce
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#8

which then dfifts into discussing this patent portfolio
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadssummary.htm

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Book on Poughkeepsie

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Book on Poughkeepsie
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 08:41:48 -0400
eamacneil@YAHOO.CA (Ted MacNEIL) writes:
We used to joke about how IBM found a way to get rid of all their olld 96-column stock. In Canada (I don't know if elsewhere), the original Banking Machines used that form factor to print receipts on.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#41 Book on Poughkeepsie
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#42 Book on Poughkeepsie

recent posts mentioning atm machines & los gatos lab (as well as managing magstripe standards)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#77 Z11 - Water cooling?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#24 IBM tried to kill VM?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#6 ATMs At Risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#45 Mainframe Hall of Fame: 17 New Members Added
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#51 Mainframe Hall of Fame: 17 New Members Added
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#39 PIN Crackers Nab Holy Grail of Bank Card Security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#25 New standard for encrypting card data in the works; backers include Heartland

wiki ibm 3624 (& 3614) ATM machines (& los gatos lab)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3624

for some reasons above wiki page even references on of my old posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#25

there was an early incident with atm machine across from a fast food restaurant and kids feeding tiny packets of ketchup into the card read slot (subsequent added countermeasure to differentiate between atm card & other things).

also from wiki page:
The transaction records printed by the 3624 and used by customers to verify their transactions were approximately 3 inches square and on similar card stock to punch cards. When performing deposits, customers were instructed to place a special transaction record inside of the deposit envelope to aid in the processing of the transaction by the back office staff.

... snip ...

above also has URL for picture of (canadian bank) 3624
http://www.rbc.com/history/anytimeanywhere/images/photos/self_serve2.gif

and wiki magstripe page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_stripe

invented by ibm and coding standards managed out of los gatos lab from "1966 to 1975".

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

My Vintage Dream PC

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: My Vintage Dream PC
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 08:52:39 -0400
Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> writes:
So will baked clay tablets and carved stone, which are the ultimates in data retention.

Nanotech Memory Could Hold Data For 1 Billion Years
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/26/1353219
New Memory Material May Hold Data For One Billion Years
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090525105418.htm

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

IBM security expert: X86 virtualization not ready for regulated, mission-critical apps

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM security expert: X86 virtualization not ready for regulated, mission-critical apps
Date: 27 May, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM Connection
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#24 IBM security expert: X86 virtualization not ready for regulated, mission-critical apps

Past studies have found that upwards of 70% of identity theft have involved insiders (even in the internet age).

There use to be lots of work on multi-party operations as countermeasure to (individual) insider fraud ... which then gave rise to collusion ... which then started various collusion countermeasures. Rise of the internet diverted some of that attention to external attacks.

somewhat related to internet exploits:

Sony CEO Proposes "Guardrails For the Internet"
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/05/26/1223224/Sony-CEO-Proposes-Guardrails-For-the-Internet

also

Guardrails for the Internet: Preserving Creativity Online
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-lynton/guardrails-for-the-intern_b_207459.html

this is similar thread here from a couple yrs ago in (usenet) a.f.c.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#27 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#28 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#29 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#30 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#31 Internet like city w/o traffic rules, traffic signs, traffic lights and traffic enforcement

similar thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#20 Why does Windows allow Worms?

this is a guardrails thread ... but related to C language characteristics (at one time, accounted for majority of exploits on the internet)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#48 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#50 [Lit.] Buffer overruns

misc. past posts mentioning C programming language related exploits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#overflow

earlier post in similar thread looking at CVE database and attempting to profile and categorize exploits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#43 security taxonomy and CVE

part of trying to deal with CVE entries were that they were pretty free form and it took some amount of processing to try and categorize exploits.

Security Experts Raise Alarm Over Insider Threats; Economic troubles raising the stakes on potential threats, FIRST members say
http://www.darkreading.com/insiderthreat/security/vulnerabilities/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=217700183

People, process limitations hamper x86 virtualization
http://www.infoworld.com/d/virtualization/people-process-limitations-hamper-x86-virtualization-760

note in the above ... it mainly refers to virtualization adding complexity ... and complexity tends to create additional opportunities for attackers. It doesn't talk about the problem of (skilled) insiders leveraging virtualization to mask activity and avoid detection.

quote from the artcile
"Way too often, people have a perfectly PCI-compliant datacenter, they virtualize it and then they fail."

.... snip ...

note that some number of perfectly PCI-compliant datacenters have had exploits (w/o any help from virtualization). The issue is that the "attack surface" is so broad that it is effectively impossible to cover everything. I've periodically mentioned that even if the planet was buried under miles of (information hiding) encryption ... it still wouldn't be able to prevent information leakage.

some number of recent references in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#3 Cybersecurity hearing highlights inadequacy of PCI DSS

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Book on Poughkeepsie

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Book on Poughkeepsie
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 10:49:14 -0400
ibm-main@TPG.COM.AU (Shane) writes:
So long as it wasn't an object deck. Very early on I got into the habit of diagonally marking (the edge of) decks with a texta. Just in case.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#41 Book on Poughkeepsie
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#42 Book on Poughkeepsie
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#44 Book on Poughkeepsie

when science center people came out in Jan68 to install cp67 at the univ. ... all assemblies were still done on os/360 ... the card decks punched ... output "binary" from assembler placed in order in card tray with bps loader in front ... and cp67 kernel built by ipling/loading that deck from the 2540 (which would then write kernel image to disk).

not all that different from punching up "stage1" os/360 sysgen deck ... assembling it under the "starter system" ... which then punched out "stage2" sysgen card deck ... which turned around and read/ran from reader.

patching/fixing cp67 required re-assembly of the specific module (under os/360) and replacing the specific module "binary" in the card tray and rebooting. since there were 60+ "modules" in the cp67 kernel ... got into the habit of diagonally marking each module "binary" along with writing module name across the top edge ... similar to what is shown in picture of box of cards:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_programming_in_the_punch_card_era

except the full cp67 "binary" was more than box of cards (2000) but less than single card tray (3000 cards).

later in '68, cp67 assembly had been moved under cms ... and the cp67 kernel build was done by punching the different decks to virtual punch ... which was routed to virtual reader ... and the cp67 cards "ipl'ed" from the virtual reader.

I had also started process of doing highly optimized os/360 sysgens, building os/360 2314 system packs with datasets and PDS members carefully ordered on the disk to optimize arm seek operation. Part of this was fiddling the production system and the starter system pack ... so I could run (os/360) stage1 sysgen under (os/360) production system.

I would then run the (os/360) stage2 punch card output through interpreter
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/interpreter.html

which read the punch holes and printed the corresponding alphabetic across the top. A slight problem, was compared to 026/029, the print was larger than the column size ... only printing 60(?) characters across the width of card ... so full 80 characters had to be printed on two lines.

I would then carefully reorder the cards in the (os/360) stage2 sysgen ... so when the new (os/360) system disks were built (under production system, instead of starter system) ... the order of the datasets and PDS members were optimized for seek operation.

at the fall68 SHARE meeting in Atlantic City ... i gave a presentation on some of the work I had done rewriting cp67 to reduce pathlength as well as running os/360 in virtual machine ... and some comments about the optimization done for os/360 (whether running on bare iron or in virtual machine).

misc posts with pieces of that share presentation:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18 CP/67 & OS MFT14
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#22 Pre S/360 IBM Operating Systems?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#28 IA64 Self Virtualizable?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#21 Reviving the OS/360 thread (Questions about OS/360)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#93 MVS vs HASP vs JES (was 2821)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#12 checking some myths.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#16 CPU time and system load

One of the os/360 problems I had was periodic PTFs would replace PDS members ... which would mess up my carefully placement and PTF activity over six month period noticeably degrade thruput (I would have to carefully rebuild PDS with member ordering to restore performance).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Book on Poughkeepsie

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Book on Poughkeepsie
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 14:13:29 -0400
scottyt.harder@GMAIL.COM (Scott T. Harder) writes:
VBG. Too funny. I've heard many stories about card decks being dropped every which-way, but what did you have to do when that happened? Were they numbered or denoted in some way where you could put the deck back together? Must have been, but what a job; like trying to find a mis-filed tape. ;-) And, I would think that everything else came to a halt while the deck was re-ordered.

one of the standard drop decks stories is placing cards on top of 1403N1 ... when the printer ran out of paper ... it would automatically lift the cover ... dumping whatever was on top of the printer; coffee cups and card decks (i.e. rubber band around smaller decks would hold cards together when dumped on floor ... but larger decks ... the rubber band wasn't strong enough to hold the cards together or if it was box of cards w/o buffer band).

standard assembler "ISEQ" statement specifies the columns (normally defaulted to 73-80) that the assembler was to check sequence numbers for correct order ... reference:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wdzinfo/v7r0/topic/com.ibm.ent.asm.zos.doc/topics/fn1lrmst146.htm

standard sort would be start in column 80 and then pull cards out of stackers in correct order and then sort on column 79 (i.e. stacker 1 would have all "1x" cards ... and the "x" would be in correct order because of previous sort). Then sort on column 78 (again stacker 1 would have all "1xx" cards ... and the "xx" could be in correct order because of previous two sorts).

once things were in CMS files with virtual (cp67) punches and readers ... it was possible to use CMS sort command to correctly reorder card sequence. some reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#47

CMS "update" command also made use of the sequence number fields to select card images to be deleted &/or replaced. However, it (the original CMS update command implementation) still required manual effort (in the CMS editor) to set sequence number field for replaced cards.

As undergraduate ... I was making so many (CP67 & CMS) source changes ... having to manually type-in the sequence numbers for inserted/replaced card images ... that I hacked the program to accept specification for automatically generating the sequence numbers. It survives today as the "$" field on the cms update command "INSERT" and "REPLACE" statements.

Standard process started out with CMS exec that would find an "update" file and apply it to the base assembly source file ... creating a temporary file ... which was then assembled and "binary" output file generated.

Subsequently there was support added for multi-level updates where the "front-end" exec would look for multiple update files to be applied in specific order ... before assembling. Later, the multi-level update process (as well as the "$" sequence number field generation) was incorporated directly into the update command (and source editors ... both for applying updates before editing as well as saving changes in update file format).

In the 70s, internal development of quite a few products were being done on cp67/cms (later vm370/cms) using the CMS multi-level update process. There was something of disconnect for some of the os/360 (mvt/svs later MVS) products because of conflicts the standard os/360 distribution management (some conflicts between the cms stuff being converted to os/360 distribution). One product that had this problem for some time was JES.

misc. past posts mentioning cms multi-level update process:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#39 CMS update
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#66 History of project maintenance tools -- what and when?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#1 History of project maintenance tools -- what and when?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#59 A POX on you, Dennis Ritchie!!!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#43 Sequence Numbbers in Location 73-80
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#30 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#30 Status of Software Reuse?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#39 Behavior in undefined areas?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#45 HASP/ASP JES/JES2/JES3
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#5 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#6 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#10 IBM 3090/VM Humor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#7 About TLB in lower-level caches
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#5 3380-3390 Conversion - DISAPPOINTMENT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#38 Over my head in a JES exit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#45 sorting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#14 SEQUENCE NUMBERS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#19 Source maintenance was Re: SEQUENCE NUMBERS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#45 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#26 Assembler question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#42 vmshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#48 vmshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#12 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#11 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#32 What I miss in my OS

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

IBM to Build Europe, Asia 'Smart Infrastructure'

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM to Build Europe, Asia 'Smart Infrastructure'
Date: 27 May, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM Connection
IBM to Build Europe, Asia 'Smart Infrastructure'
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/netsys/article.php/3822101/IBM-to-Build-Europe-Asia-Smart-Infrastructure.htm

from above:
IBM has earmarked $3 billion to finance so-called smart infrastructure projects in Europe and Asia likely to receive government stimulus support.

... snip ...

some more detail:

IBM Goes Global With $5B Stimulus Financing Initiative
http://www.crn.com/it-channel/217700298;jsessionid=N4L4FEHBN4EJIQSNDLOSKH0CJUNN2JVN

from above:
As with the U.S. funding, IBM said the new global stimulus funding will be offered through its IBM Global Financing arm and could take the form of deferred payment plans, flexible financing options and low-interest-rate loans, structured lines of credit, and specialized financing packages for aligning payments to revenue streams generated by IT projects.

... snip ...

Basically $5B for loans and lines of credit ... sort of to take up some of the slack caused by the financial mess with securitized loans and the buying of triple-A ratings.

The Man Who Beat The Shorts
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1117/114.html

from above:
Watsa's only sin was in being a little too early with his prediction that the era of credit expansion would end badly. This is what he said in Fairfax's 2003 annual report: "It seems to us that securitization eliminates the incentive for the originator of [a] loan to be credit sensitive. Prior to securitization, the dealer would be very concerned about who was given credit to buy an automobile. With securitization, the dealer (almost) does not care."

... snip ...

Bernanke Says Crisis Damage Likely to Be Long-Lasting
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=arpJXeelvfY4&refer=home

from above (something of an understatement):
Bernanke said the packaging and sale of mortgages into securities "appears to have been one source of the decline in underwriting standards" because originators have less stake in the risk of a loan.

... snip ...

Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt

from above:
The bundling of consumer loans and home mortgages into packages of securities -- a process known as securitization -- was the biggest U.S. export business of the 21st century. More than $27 trillion of these securities have been sold since 2001, according to the Securities Industry Financial Markets Association, an industry trade group. That's almost twice last year's U.S. gross domestic product of $13.8 trillion.

... snip ...

Barney Frank Backs Off
http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/04/barney-frank-defers-opinions-contributors-regulation.html

from above
The crisis did not begin when Lehman failed; it began in the summer of 2007 with the markets' sudden realization that the triple-A ratings on asset-backed securities were not accurate. The resulting loss of confidence in ratings was a powerful external shock to the market, causing a collapse in trading of all asset-backed securities. That market is still frozen, and the Fed's efforts to revive it through TALF have not borne fruit.

... snip ...

misc. recent posts mentioning above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#52 Future of Financial Mathematics?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#3 Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#10 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#36 Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#40 Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

My Vintage Dream PC

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: My Vintage Dream PC
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 15:23:34 -0400
Roland Hutchinson <my.spamtrap@verizon.net> writes:
At a density of 1 TB per square inch, a billion years MTBF sounds pretty good. (I like the comment on Slashdot: "If you don't misplace it")

However, clay tablets and carved stone can be read with the Mk I Eyeball, which can be an advantage, given that the longer the time horizon the more probable at least one collapse of technological civilization in the meantime becomes.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#45 My Vintage Dream PC

it is possible that being able to recover data (assuming it is recognized as data) wouldn't be much harder than decoding dead languages (or DNA sequences)

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Cobol hits fifty

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Cobol hits fifty
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 08:56:13 -0400
Cobol hits fifty
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/28/cobol_fifty/

from above:
Cobol, the venerable computer language so beloved of Y2K-fearing businesses, has hit 50 years young today, having been invented on the 28th of May 1959 at a meeting of the Sort Range Committee at the Pentagon.

The news comes from Cobol specialists Micro Focus, who tell us that there are two hundred as many Cobol transactions as there are Google searches ever day, and that here in the UK we're all using Cobol-powered applications a average of ten times daily.


... snip ...

related ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#30 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#32 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#34 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#55 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#60 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#64 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#6 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#12 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#15 Confessions of a Cobol programmer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#20 IBM forecasts 'new world order' for financial services

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

IBM 1401

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM 1401
Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 10:40:46 -0400
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.vmesa-l
rschuh wrote:
The smaller systems, the 360-20 and 360-30 had a 1401 emulator mode. It was a h/w or mc based feature. I don't know whether larger machines had it. There was also a 1410 emulator mode on the -40. I do not know of any 1401 support that ran under DOS, but my DOS experience is miniscule.

360/30 had 1401 microcode emulation ... actually 360/30 front panel switch that selected 360 microcode "emulation" (since 360 was implemented as microcode on 360/30) and 1401 microcode "emulation"

recent stories in ibm-main mailing list about univ. getting 360/30 to replace 1401 (in staged processs of replacing 709/1401 combo with 360/67 which was suppose to run with tss/360).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#12 IBM Mainframe: 50 Years of Big Iron Innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#41 Book on Poughkeepsie

709 ran ibsys, tape->tape, a lot of fortran student jobs. 1401 was front-end "spooling" handling card reader-> tape & tape->printer/punch for the 709 ... with tapes being manually moved from 1401 tapes and 709 tapes.

Even tho the 1401 "MPIO" program ran perfectly fine on 360/30 in 1401 emulation mode (switch to emulation mode and boot MPIO from 2504 reader, effectively same as if running real 1401) ... I got a student job to re-implement it in 360 ... I got to design my own monitor, interrupt handling, device drivers, storage management, console interface, etc. Eventually was 2000 card program with assembler directive that would either generate a "stand-alone" program or version that ran under os/360. Stand-alone version took approx. 30 minutes to assemble ... version that would run under os/360 took nearly an hour to assemble since it took approx. five minutes elapsed time per DCB macro.

The univ. eventually got a 360/67 ... but since tss/360 wasn't ready, it spent nearly all its time running os/360 as 360/65. 360/65 (and 360/67) had 709x microcode emulation support (as opposed to 1401 emulation available on lower-end 360s).

Last week of January 1968, three people from the science center ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

came out to the univ. to install (virtual machine) cp67. at the time, cp67 wasn't really up to the univ. os/360 production workload ... but I got to play with it quite a bit on weekends. some discussion detailed in these posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#47 Book on Poughkeepsie
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#48 Book on Poughkeepsie

misc. other recent related posts in ibm-main mailing list thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#14 IBM Mainframe: 50 Years of Big Iron Innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#42 Book on Poughkeepsie
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#44 Book on Poughkeepsie

360/30 functional characteristics has reference to 1401/1440/1460 compatibiilty feature (GA24-3255)
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/functional_characteristics/GA24-3231-7_360-30_funcChar.pdf

1401 simulator for os/360 contributed program:
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/360D-11.1.019_1401simCorr_Sep69.pdf

it might not have been all the difficult to port above to CMS???

1401/1440/1460 Emulator Programs (under dos/360)
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/GC27-6940-4_360_1401emul.pdf

360/65 functional characteristics
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/functional_characteristics/A22-6884-3_360-65_funcChar.pdf
360/67 functional characteristics
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/functional_characteristics/A27-2719-0_360-67_funcChar.pdf

lists optional feature: 709/7040/7044/7090/7094/7094II Compatibility

single processor 360/67 was nearly identical to single processor 360/65 except with addition of virtual address translation hardware.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 11:32:56 -0400
Roland Hutchinson <my.spamtrap@verizon.net> writes:
That use of "die" sounds a little bit funny to this non-chipmaker (though I have become used to it).

I think of fabs churning out a stream of chips in much the same way that a mint produces coins. Of course in a mint, the die is not the product stamped out, but the business end of the machine that does the stamping.


fabs turn out wafers ... in this decade there has been moved from 8in/200mm to 12in/300mm wafers. basically manufacturing cost is per wafer ... move to larger wafers allows cost to be amortized across a larger number of chips.

wafers are tested and then sliced & diced into individual chips.

in parallel with move to larger wafers ... there has been process changes that reduce circuit size. given same relatively same number of circuits per chip ... the number of chips per wafer can significantly increase (with combination of reduction in physical circuit size and the larger wafer size).

part of the issue with more processors/cores per chip ... is holding physical size of chip relatively constant (while the number of circuits per physical area significantly increases).

in the late 90s ... we faced a problem with drastically reducing the number of circuits (and physical size) per chip ... because the physical "sawing" of chips was starting to take up larger physical part of the wafer (than the chip physical area) ... which placed a limit on the ability of increasing number of chips per wafer.

turns out that "EPC" RFID chips were running into same limit (i.e. small chips that were being targeted to replace UPC barcodes on products ... being able to inventory electronicly) ... and there was effort to develop new technologies for wafer slice&dice that drastically reduced the size of the cut. Instead of large thousands of chips per wafer, possibly large tens of thousands of chips per wafer.

we had started with .65 circuit size ... and initial move was to .2 circuit size ... which results in slightly better than factor of ten times reduction in chip size (for same number of circuits) ... along with increase in wafer size from 8in to 12in ... a little bit better than twice the wafer area. Except for the cut size for cutting a lot larger of number of chips ... it would have represented increase of 30 times in the number of chips per wafer (given same circuits per chip) ... or a theorical reduction in manufacturing cost per chip of 30 times.

We had previously started out by looking at the actual functions required for the chip ... and had aggresively reduced the number of circuits required by nearly a factor of ten ... which theoretically would have represented a (combined) increase of 300 times in number of chips per wafer.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 12:03:17 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#53 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already

in the mid-90s, I would semi-facetiously comment that I would take a $500 milspec part, aggresive cost reduce it by 2-3 orders of magnitude while improving the integrity.

part of the process was slightly tweaking how business work so that a lot of post-fab chip processing could be liminated (another factor of four times/chip).

altogether it was something over 1000 times ... but heavily dependent on new wafer cutting technologies (which was outcome of EPC RFID market segment).

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

with some of patents related to process
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadssummary.htm

some of the patent effort discussed in this post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#8 Supercomputers and electronic commerce

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Book on Poughkeepsie

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Book on Poughkeepsie
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 15:10:31 -0400
TrailingEdgeTechnologies <bbreynolds@aol.com> writes:
Another use for the 1mm-hole form factor for cards would have been a step between the original 80-column and 51-column cards used for toll collection and the current mag stripe cards.

for a little topic drift ... wiki mag-stripe page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_stripe

"invented by IBM under a contract with the US government for a security system"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Parry

magstripe standards then managed out of the IBM Los Gatos lab from 1966 to 1975.

IBM los gatos also 3624 (& 3514) ATM (cash) machine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3624

... transaction records printed by 3624 was on approx. 3in sq card similar to card stock.

earlier post in thread mentioning 3614/3624
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#44 Book on Poughkeepsie

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Punched Card Combinations

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Punched Card Combinations
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 17:34:25 -0400
Clark.Kidd@ASG.COM (Clark Kidd) writes:
If a particular column didn't get punched correctly, you could always "patch" the card by putting it back in the keypunch machine and re-punching that one column. But how about if there were too MANY holes? I remember they made some small silver adhesive squares that could be placed over a hole so that it wouldn't be read. I have seen some very large programs (object decks of 1000+ cards) that were patched this way rather than recompiling the program and wasting CPU time and punched cards. Of course, it was usually a simple change such as changing a constant or correcting a bad branch.

recent references getting student job to port 1401 MPIO card->tape and tape->printer/punch application to 360/30
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#12 IBM Mainframe: 50 Years of Big Iron Innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#41 Book on Poughkeepsie

the univ. datacenter would normally shutdown at 8am Sat. until 8am Mon. and they would let me have the place to myself for that 48hrs (Monday classes were a little difficult after having been awake for 48hrs).

fix/re-assemble of the "stand-alone" version would require rebooting OS/360 and then 30 minutes to assemble the 2000 statement/card program (testing the OS/360 version didn't require rebooting, but assembly was nearly an hour because each DCB macro took approx. 5 minutes to assemble).

after awhile, it was faster to patch the "object" deck ... but locating the desired 12-2-9 (aka x'02') TXT card ... duplicating the card to the affected columns and then "multi-punching" the desired changes ... and then duplicating the remaining columns. after some amount of practice, I got to the point where I could fairly quickly fan the object deck looking for the TXT card with the desired address/displacement ... and then doing the duplication & multi-punch patch for the replacement card.

past post with detailed format for object cards (esd, txt, etc cards):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#60 Text

past post with 12-2-9 TXT card format and table given card punch codes to hex (and character) value.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#69 IBM System/3 & 3277-1

other posts mentioning becoming very familiar with card punch codes and/or 12-2-9 object card format:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#17 unit record & other controllers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#4 1401 overlap instructions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#8 finding object decks with multiple entry points
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#14 IBM Model Numbers (was: First video terminal?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#45 Commenting style (was: Call for folklore)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#1 DISK PL/I Program
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#17 Google loves "e"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#24 Systems software versus applications software definitions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#54 12-2-9 REP & 47F0
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#47 What is written on the keys of an ICL Hand Card Punch?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#1 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#17 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#43 Binder REP Cards (Was: What's the linkage editor really wants?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#58 REP cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#64 Large Computer Rescue
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#1 The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#11 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#30 Why these original FORTRAN quirks?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#44 64 gig memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#70 IBM System/3 & 3277-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#8 Anybody remember Keypunch cards?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#32 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#46 Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#83 Java; a POX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#42 IBM 029 keypunch -- 0-8-2 overpunch -- what hex code results?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#43 IBM 029 keypunch -- 0-8-2 overpunch -- what hex code results?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#56 IBM 029 keypunch -- 0-8-2 overpunch -- what hex code results?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#57 IBM 029 keypunch -- 0-8-2 overpunch -- what hex code results?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 18:13:22 -0400
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
Man! I'm going have so many communication problems. I still say core when I talk about physical memory. Why in the whole fucking world did was the term "core" transformed to mean CPU?

one of the things that is people intensive is designing a new processor. as circuits shrank ... it was possible to get multiple copies of all the circuits of a single processor chip ... combined together on single chip ... cut the circuit size in half & quadruple number of circuits in an area.

with a little fiddling ... take the single-chip, single-core processor circuit design (w/o some of the support circuit infrastructure) and replicate it four times ... laying it out in a single chip using circuit size that has been cut in half (w/o having to do a whole new processor circuit design).

a enlarged image of the physical circuit layout ... it is even frequently possible to recognize the replicated cores.

multi-core wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-core_%28computing%29

the two other issues was that increasing the execution frequency that had somewhat been following decrease in circuit size ... ran into some number of problems ... one was resistance, power consumption, & heat as frequency went up; another was the physical distance that signals had to travel (in relation to frequence); another was dealing with with serialization constraints of single processor design with four times (or 8, 16, 64, etc) as many circuits.

in theory ... two processor operation (in single chip) potentially provides twice as many instructions executed w/o increasing frequency (and significant power & heat), lot less complexity to do a core processor design with much smaller number of circuits ... and then replicate that design multiple times on single chip (attempting to obtain some benefit from being able to throw significantly larger number of much smaller circuits into the same physical area). The big increase in number of circuits in a chip (holding the physical size of chip relative constaint) is also much larger L1 and even L2 (on-chip) caches.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 20:33:05 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#53 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#54 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#57 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already

a more detailed discussion of switch to multi-core processor chips:
http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/multicore/reviewf.php

one of the comparison is single core processor in 45nm technlogy at 1V, two core processor at 4GHz requires 107W and single core processor at 7.8GHz requires 430W.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Operating Systems for Virtual Machines

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 09:07:24 -0400
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Thinking about VM's brought up a question. Have there been OS's written *specifically* to run in Virtual Machines? (Other than CMS, of course?) It would seem like a great opportunity to have lightweight OS's, since the VMM can be depended on to do a lot of things you'd normally have the OS do.

Thinking about VM/370, which I know better than the others, the OS does the paging and error recovery, so you could leave most of this out. It doesn't, but easily could be modified to present a unified device interface. VM handles the terminals and could provide a simpified interface here too.

It seems like a great opportunity that went to waste, or largely to waste.


at the science center ... vnet was ... was basis for the internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

the author commented that less than two decades ago they were involved in project involving one of the (popular) "real-time" O/S ... and noticed something familiar. they double checked and the internal monitor routine ... the logic flow and the comments on the C statements ... was identical to the corresponding VNET internal monitor routine and the comments on the 360 assembler statements.

then there is current genre of virtual appliances ... which seem to be more frequently a stripped down and modified monitor ... tailored for running in virtual machine.

a couple past posts mentioning real-time O/S & vnet similarity:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#23 MERT Operating System & Microkernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#56 CAS and LL/SC (was Re: High Level Assembler for MVS & VM & VSE)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#32 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#25 VMware: New King Of The Data Center?

misc. past posts mentioning virtual appliances ... and the corresponding term from late 60s & early 70s, service virtual machines:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#46 To RISC or not to RISC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#25 To RISC or not to RISC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#6 Multics on Vmware ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#8 vmshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#36 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#26 user level TCP implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#48 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#67 Operating systems are old and busted
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#70 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#3 Hypervisors May Replace Operating Systems As King Of The Data Center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#4 Why do we think virtualization is new?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#26 Oracle Introduces Oracle VM As It Leaps Into Virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#35 Oracle Introduces Oracle VM As It Leaps Into Virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#39 New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#41 New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#81 IBM mainframe history, was Floating-point myths
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#75 virtual appliance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#80 software preservation volunteers ( was Re: LINC-8 Front Panel Questions)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#59 old internal network references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#39 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#52 China's Godson-2 processor takes center stage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#2 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#55 Kernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#11 Kernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#15 Kernels
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/2008l.html#14 recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#21 recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#67 Is Virtualisation a Fad?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#68 New technology trends?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#22 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#57 VMware renders multitasking OSes redundant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#62 Virtualization: What is it exactly?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#56 Computer History Museum

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Architectural Diversity

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Architectural Diversity
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 09:36:06 -0400
cstacy@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) writes:
The "Java" in "JavaScript" means nothing, except that Netscape Corporation and SUN Microsystems came up with a deal (after both languages were around) to rename "LiveScript" to "JavaScript" as a cross-promotional marketing effort. The ensuing confusion indicates that this was successful.

javascript was a browser scripting language.

i've been under the impression that java was outgrowth of spring (by sun, genre of object-oriented operating systems from the period, similar to pink at apple) ... which had a component of light-weight footprint ("client-side stub interpreter") that could be downloaded to client (disclaimer, at one point we were brought to look at spring to consider running effort to turn it into released product).

however, past thread have claimed that java was outgrowth of totally unrelated effort at sun (another disclaimer, at time of java announce, sun general manager of business unit that included java had previously been vp of software development at MIPs and much earlier had been one of two people responsible for pascal compiler at ibm los gatos lab).

past post mentioning java, spring, client-side stub interpreter, green:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#51 A Speculative question

above includes abstract from spring section on client-side stub interpreter ... which mentions that it "traded" 125k bytes of stub code for 13k bytes of stub descriptions and 4k bytes of stub interpreter.

misc. past posts mentioning spring and/or green:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#46 Where are they now : Taligent and Pink
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#6 Java as a first programming language for cs students
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#32 Whom Do Programmers Admire Now???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#76 Difference between Unix and Linux?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#60 The next big things that weren't
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#45 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#28 A Speculative question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#53 defination of terms: "Application Server" vs. "Transaction Server"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#37 Von Neumann machines. The key to space and much else
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#51 The Fate of VM - was: Re: Baby MVS???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#69 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#1 The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#46 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#17 Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Punched Card Combinations

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Punched Card Combinations
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 12:21:13 -0400
"Charlie Gibbs" <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
Yes, those old assemblers were painfully slow. When I wrote my own assembler for the Univac 9300 (similar to, but not exactly like, the 360/20) it met one of my design goals by being twice as fast as the stock Univac assembler; a 2000-card program assembled in 20 minutes instead of 40, which meant a lot when we programmers had rock-bottom priority on the production (i.e. only) machine.

Rumour has it that the assembler for the Univac 90/30 (more or less like the 360/50) was hacked from 360 assembler source code that someone found in the trunk of a car. (Another rumour says that IBM wanted it stolen.) My rewrite again ran twice as fast - OS/3's equivalent of the DCB macro was equally painful.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#56 Punched Card Combinations

there is folklore that the person doing op mnemonic lookup implementation in the original 360 assembler was told that he had to do it in 256bytes (total) ... and as a result ... stored the mnemonic to 360 op-code table on disk ... which had to be reread for every statement. there significant speedup when somebody rewrote code to use memory resident table.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Book on Poughkeepsie

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Book on Poughkeepsie
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 12:37:23 -0400
jeverdon@US.IBM.COM (Jodi Everdon) writes:
Did you happen to read the last issue of z/OS Hot Topics? I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the story of page 4. It's the first is our series. Our next issue comes out in August with more in the series. We are also publishing another installment on the Website in June.

Here's a link to the site:

http://www.ibm.com/systems/z/os/zos/bkserv/hot_topics.html


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#41 Book on Poughkeepsie

doesn't mention specialty cards with different colored stripes across the top. submitted card decks tended to be accumulated in trays and then processed as tray full of cards (say 3000 or so ... when individual card decks might be 50-300 cards). job cards (or equivalent) were required to be punched in color-striped card (at the university was red striped).

the top red-stripe made it easier for operator to separate tray full of cards into individuals jobs (after processing) ... usually as part of matching up printed output (with printed separator pages that had line of stars printed across perforation ... making it easier for operator to separate printed output into individual jobs ... for matching with corresponding card deck).

the red-stripe cards (for identifying separation between jobs) became less critical when readers were installed in self-service input/output rooms ... "hot" 2501 self-service card reader ... possibly at remote location ... printed output might (or might not) appear in real-time.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Operating Systems for Virtual Machines

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 13:16:41 -0400
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Thinking about VM/370, which I know better than the others, the OS does the paging and error recovery, so you could leave most of this out. It doesn't, but easily could be modified to present a unified device interface. VM handles the terminals and could provide a simpified interface here too.

one of the issues with aix/370 and (possibly also Amdahl's uts) was that it was offered under vm370. for aix/370 the explanation was that 370 field service division required very specific error recovery as well as error recording for diagnostic and maintenance purpose. the issue of adding such support to aix/370 was several orders larger project than the straight forward port of the C-code to 370 ... a few past posts mentioning the issue:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#19 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#37 A Glimpse into PC Development Philosophy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#34 Power5 and Cell, new issue of IBM Journal of R&D
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#24 Seeking Info on XDS Sigma 7 APL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#38 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#9 Open z architecture and Linux questions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#41 New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#54 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bel?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#47 Linux zSeries questions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#55 Virtual

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#59 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines

in the case of vnet ... it had its own drivers for communication lines ... but used a stylised interface to the cp67&vm370 spool for local delivery/service. the problem in this case ... while it was a 4k-byte block interface ... it was synchronous operation. it wasn't too bad with 2400 baud and 4800 baud links ... but it became a much more serious problem with multiple 56kbit full-duplex links. A combination of the synchronous interface and spool disk arm contention with other virtual machines could reduce vnet spool thruput to 4-5 4k blocks/sec ... and since it was blocked from execution (aka synchronous) during spool operation, it could represent a major bottleneck.

As an aside ... the native vnet drivers were much more efficient than the nji/nje drivers ... and by sometime in the 80s ... vnet was only shipping nji/nje drivers ... possibly to mitigate any comparison with the (poorer) support in jes. However, for the internal backbone ... a full-duplex, native VNET driver was done (primarily used with internal 56kbit network links) and a special Y-connector was used ... to get around the 360 half-duplex channel interface ... the Y-connector split full-duplex traffic into two separate channel ports/address ... one dedicated for incoming and one dedicated for outgoing. misc. past internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

As part of HSDT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

I did a flavor of this for running vnet traffic thru HSDT T1 & higher-speed (backbone) links. I could easily have 1mbyte/sec aggregate thruput requirement on a machine ... where the spool interface might provide 20kbyte/sec thruput.

I had much earlier implemented (cp67 & vm370) paging mapped facility ... that allowed for synchronous and asynchronous API semantics ... as well as having done a mapping of CMS filesystem to the paged mapped semantics
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

So i adapted a flavor of this for vnet"spool" usage ... including various "spool" usage for contiguous allocation and asynchronous operation ... in attempt to provide at least 1mbyte/sec thruput capability to vnet ... recent page-mapped filesystem reference ... including contiguous allocation & multi-block reads:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#39 Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind

and drawing some similarity to how part of the current (linux) ext3->ext4 is being handled (keeping spool on-disk format transparent so existing applications continued to work)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#55 Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind

as part of the effort ... I did a demonstration of lifting the kernel assembler code ... and moving it into a virtual address space with a vs/pascal implementation (something I referred to as spool file system ... or SFS) with the objective of making it much faster and much more efficient than the assembler kernel implementation. This could be considered half-way between a stripped down operating system (running in its own virtual machine virtual address space) and something that had been previously part of the vm370 kernel moved into separate address space. misc. past SFS references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#43 Migrating pages from a paging device (was Re: removal of paging device)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#44 PDP-10 Archive migration plan
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/2004g.html#19 HERCULES
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#3 History of C
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#38 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#28 MVCIN instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#35 Charging Time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#21 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#22 Was CMS multi-tasking?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#44 Architectural Diversity

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Operating Systems for Virtual Machines

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 13:31:26 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
As part of HSDT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

I did a flavor of this for running vnet traffic thru HSDT T1 & higher-speed (backbone) links. I could easily have 1mbyte/sec aggregate thruput requirement on a machine ... where the spool interface might provide 20kbyte/sec thruput.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#59 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#63 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines

for slightly related topic drift ... the original mainframe tcp/ip support was done as a service virtual machine operations ... with virtual machine having custom interface to the other virtual machines using tcp/ip services. it was implemented in vs/pascal ... and has the characteristic that it didn't suffer from the buffer overrun exploits that are common in C language implemention.

However, there were issues with some of the code pathlengths and the standard vendor controller interface ... such that it got 44kbyte/sec thruput using a 3090 processor of cpu power.

As part of related HSDT activity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

I did the rfc 1044 support and in some testing at Cray Research, got 1mbyte/sec thruput (hardware interface limit) between 4341 and Cray ... using only a modest amount of the 4341 cpu (approaching three orders of magnitude improvment in bytes-moved per instructions executed).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Operating Systems for Virtual Machines

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 29 May 2009 13:40:04 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#59 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#63 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#64 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines

and for a little more drift ... the vm370 tcp/ip implementation was eventually offered on mvs. in the vm370 tcp/ip vs/pascal implementation there was special "diagnose" instruction interface with the vm370 kernel. for the port to MVS ... the code was effectively moved over nearly unmodified ... by writing emulation for those "diagnose" instruction functions.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

"Guardrails For the Internet"

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "Guardrails For the Internet"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 09:51:08 -0400
Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> writes:
Hypothesis: his business model is dead.

From the cited article:

Contrast the expansion of the Internet with what happened a half century ago. In the 1950's, the Eisenhower Administration undertook one of the most massive infrastructure projects in our nation's history -- the creation of the Interstate Highway System. It completely transformed how we did business, traveled, and conducted our daily lives. But unlike the Internet, the highways were built and operated with a set of rational guidelines. Guard rails went along dangerous sections of the road. Speed and weight limits saved lives and maintenance costs. And officers of the law made sure that these rules were obeyed. As a result, as interstates flourished, so did the economy. According to one study, over the course of its first four decades of existence, the Interstate Highway System was responsible for fully one-quarter of America's productivity growth.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#39 "Guardrails For the Internet"

the current scenario are newpapers ... with printed versions disappearing and moving to internet.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

radar interfering with computer gear

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: radar interfering with computer gear
Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 09:46:22 -0400
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.vmesa-l
Walter wrote:
When examined after each failure, the core (yes, real core) memory was always wiped clean. That computer (and its tech) was housed in a metal box (IIRC, about 6'x10', 8' high) which was transportable on the back of a 2 1/2 ton ("6-by") truck, or by helicopter> It was located about 15 feet from another similar box with all the radar gear inside, and large radar dish on the top. After a few days of random core wipes, someone noticed that the core wipe only happened when the door to the computer hut was momentarily opened as the radar dish swept past. While aimed much higher, there was enough residual power from the dish to wipe the computer's core memory clean. Memory was reloaded (back on track now) from dependable paper tape.

old thread about Mt. Umunhum interfering with (stanford) SAIL computer:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#23

the referenced URL has gone 404
http://www-db.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/AIlab/SailFarewell.html
but is here:
http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/AIlab/SailFarewell.html

from above:
I got proper air conditioning a short time later, but unfortunately developed a bad case of hiccups that struck regularly at 12 second intervals. My assistants spent a number of days trying to find the cause of this mysterious malady without success. As luck would have it, somebody brought a portable radio into my room one day and noticed that it was emitting a "Bzz" at regular intervals -- in fact, at the same moment that I hicced. Further investigation revealed that the high-powered air defense radar atop Mt. Umunhum, about 20 miles away, was causing some of my transistors to act as radio receivers. We solved this problem by improving my grounding.

... snip ...

for other drift ... later posts in the previously mentioned ibm-main thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#42 Book on Poughkeepsie
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#44 Book on Poughkeepsie
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#47 Book on Poughkeepsie
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#48 Book on Poughkeepsie
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#55 Book on Poughkeepsie
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#56 Punched Card Combinations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#61 Punched Card Combinations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#62 Book on Poughkeepsie

and a recent, separate virtual machine thread in a.f.c:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#59 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#63 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#64 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#65 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

My Vintage Dream PC

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: My Vintage Dream PC
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.folklore.computers,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.computer
Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 11:27:34 -0400
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
Using IBM systems means that you were exposed to a mindset that was based on handling huge amounts of data processing, not huge numbers of users demanding instant gratification. Both require different tradeoffs when developing the monitor and supporting software.

they let me play disk engineer in bldg 14&15 in the late 70s & early 80s ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

there was joke that i worked 4-shift week, 1st shift in sjr/bldg.28, 2nd shift in bldgs. 14&15, 3rd shift in stl/bldg.90, and 4th shift at HONE.

part of what kick it off were all the test cells were running "stand-alone", dedicated machine time (one at a time). They had tried MVS ... for possibly doing multiple testing concurrently ... but MVS (at the time) MTBF was 15-minutes. Basically these were devices under development and tended to have error rates that wouldn't be found in normal business operation.

I sat a task to rewrite i/o supervisor so that it was completely bullet proof and never fail ... allowing on-demand, concurrent/multiple testing ... significantly improving productivity. One of the problems was that I happened to mention the MVS MTBF number in an internal report describing the effort. Even tho it wasn't for public consumption ... it still brought down the wrath of the MVS organization on me (informally I was told that any corporate level awards or anything else at the corporate level would be blocked by the MVS organization).

Another informal example (old email) of statements that the MVS organization objected to (even when they were purely for internal consumption):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801015
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#1 "The Elements of Programming Style"

... basically prior to product ship, a collection of 57 normally expected 3380 errors were specified ... and with hardware aid ... they could be generated on demand. All resulted in MVS crashing ... and in 65% of the cases there was no indication of what was the problem that forced the re-IPL.

It contributed to being periodically being told that I didn't have a career with the company.

Possibly the largest (virtual machine) time-sharing service during the period was HONE. It had started out with cp67 for branch office young SEs being able to work with operating systems after 23jun69 unbundling announcement. misc. past posts mentioning unbundling:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

It eventually transitioned to providing online world-wide sales & marketing support. The multiple cp67 (in the US) transitioned to vm370 and clones started to be created at various places around the world. In the late 70s, the various US HONE datacenters were consolidated in single place (multiple loosely-coupled SMP processors). That HONE operation had something approaching 40,000 defined users in the 1980 timeframe. misc. past posts mentioning HONE (&/or APL)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

How practically risky is it to use unsecured IMAP

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How practically risky is it to use unsecured IMAP
Newsgroups: comp.security.misc,comp.os.linux.security
Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 13:36:48 -0400
flaps@dgp.toronto.edu (Alan J Rosenthal) writes:
Oh... and... I can't let someone's mention of credit card numbers go by without commenting. Credit card numbers aren't passwords.

in effect knowledge of credit card number is sufficient to perform a fraudulent financial transactions ... that makes them something you know authentication ... in the same way that PINs & passwords are something you know authentication.

from 3-factor authenticaton model ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#3factor

something you have
something you know
something you are

we had been called in to consult with a small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server ... the small client/server startup also had invented something called "SSL" that they wanted to use; it is now frequently referred to as "electronic commerce". Part of that effort included doing something called a "payment gateway" ... some number of past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

somewhat as result of that effort, in the mid-90s, we were invited to participate in the x9a10 financial standard working group which had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments (i.e. ALL, credit, debit, stored-value, ACH, internet, face-to-face, point-of-sale, unattended, i.e. ALL). As part of that we did detailed, end-to-end threat and vulnerability studies of various retail payments. The outcome of that effort was the X9.59 financial standard ... some refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

One of the major identified threat & vulnerabilities were data breaches, skimming, evesdropping, etc ... i.e. being able to obtain credit card numbers (frequently from previous transactions) for the purpose of account fraud (sub-category of identity theft) and fraudulent transactions. One of the things done in the x9.59 financial standard was to slightly tweak the paradigm, making such information useless to crooks for the purpose of fraudulent financial transactions.

Now, the major use of SSL in the world today is hiding the transaction information (& account numbers and credit card numbers) as part of the effort for "electronic commerce". It turns out that x9.59 eliminates that need/use of SSL (i.e. eliminating credit card numbers as a something you know authentication). It also eliminates the threat and vulnerability from the majority of data breaches that have been in the news.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

My Vintage Dream PC

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: My Vintage Dream PC
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.folklore.computers,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.computer
Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 13:53:10 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#68 My Vintage Dream PC

original relational/sql implementation was all done on vm370 at sjr (bldg. 28) misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

there was then technology transfer to endicott for sql/ds (on vm370). one of the people mentioned in this jan92 meeting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

claimed then to have done the technology transfer from endicott back to stl (bldg. 90) for DB2.

with regard to HONE ... the consolidated US HONE center was in Cal. ... after an earthquake ... in the early 80s, there was a replicated center in Dallas (with dynamic load-balance & fall-over not only within datacenter of loosely-coupled processors but extended to span geographically replicated centers) ... then the Dallas replicated center was followed with a 3rd replicated center in Boulder.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

My Vintage Dream PC

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: My Vintage Dream PC
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.folklore.computers,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.computer
Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 14:24:16 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
I sat a task to rewrite i/o supervisor so that it was completely bullet proof and never fail ... allowing on-demand, concurrent/multiple testing ... significantly improving productivity. One of the problems was that I happened to mention the MVS MTBF number in an internal report describing the effort. Even tho it wasn't for public consumption ... it still brought down the wrath of the MVS organization on me (informally I was told that any corporate level awards or anything else at the corporate level would be blocked by the MVS organization).

Another informal example (old email) of statements that the MVS organization objected to (even when they were purely for internal consumption):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801015


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#68 My Vintage Dream PC

I guess I had also tweaked the mainstream organization when during FS, I drew parallel with cult movie playing in central sq (something about the inmates being in charge of the institutions). it didn't help that FS was a mega-effort that was canceled w/o even being announced ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

I had sponsored Boyd's briefings at IBM in the early 80s.... so his line about "be or do" resonated ... referenced in this recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#5 mainframe replacement (Z/Journal Does it Again)

quote used at dedication of Boyd Hall, USAF Weapons School, Nellis Air Force Base, 17Sep1999
"There are two career paths in front of you, and you have to choose which path you will follow. One path leads to promotions, titles, and positions of distinction.... The other path leads to doing things that are truly significant for the Air Force, but the rewards will quite often be a kick in the stomach because you may have to cross swords with the party line on occasion. You can't go down both paths, you have to choose. Do you want to be a man of distinction or do you want to do things that really influence the shape of the Air Force? To be or to do, that is the question." Colonel John R. Boyd, USAF 1927-1997

... snip ...

past posts mentioning Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd
and misc. URLs from around the web mentioning Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd2

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Operating Systems for Virtual Machines

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 09:20:52 -0400
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Most of the device I/O emulated the real thing, but the system used DIAG instructions for spool file and terminal stuff, which were much simpler.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#59 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#63 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#64 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#65 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines

A big overhead in (360&370) I/O was scanning and duplicating the channel programs. The issue is that channels use "real" addresses. A virtual machine channel program would have virtual addresses ... and might even refer to addresses that weren't resident in real memory.

cp67 ccwtrans would scan the virtual machine's channel program which could have a large number of CCWs and complex operation along with TIC (branch) operations, creating a copy/duplicate of each CCW with a shadow/copy CCW, checking the associated virtual address, making sure that associated virtual address was fixed in real storage (for the duration of the I/O operation) and replacing the virtual address with the real address.

I had done a lot of work optimizing CP67 pathlength for os/360 operation as undergraduate in the 60s ... reference to old presentation I made at Atlantic City SHARE meeting fall68 regarding cp67 pathlength optimization work (as well as a lot of unrelated os360 disk arm thruput optimization)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18 CP/67 & OS MFT14

I started looking at CP67 pathlength for CMS operations. One was for cms filesystem (disk) I/O operation ... which was always effectively synchronous; setup channel program CCWs, perform disk SIO operation, enter wait-state, take disk I/O interrupt. Since it was single user operation with no multitasking, it made no attempt to overlap other operations with disk i/o. Futhermore, the disk channel program CCWs never varied ... were always the same (seek, search-id-equal, tic-8, read/write, also cms formated disk records with ID-field that was essentially nearly the same as seek argument).

So I defined a new kind of disk CCW opcodes (using 8bits that weren't currently used/defined) that took as argument the combined seek/search field, i/o transfer address, and length ... that was defined as "immediate", i.e. the SIO finished with CC=1, operation finished. This eliminated generalized CCW scanning & duplication overhead, as well as the dispatching & simulation overhead for entering wait-state, and then subsequent virtual interrupt, etc. Benchmarks showed something like 30% cpu reduction for lots of typical CMS workload.

this got me into trouble with the people at the science center ... since I had done something that violated the 360 architecture. The philosophy was to use the (supervisor state) DIAGNOSE instruction ... which was defined in the 360 architecture as implementation being "model" dependent. The science center latched onto this for effectively the facade of a virtual machine model ... implementation defined by cp67.

So the (cms filesystem disk) DIAGNOSE I/O instruction (there is only a single '83' diagnose instruction ... so the instruction "displacement" field was used to select the large number of different virtual machine function being selected) was defined that was similar to SIO with CMS disk I/O CCWs. Rather than generalized scanning of the CCWs ... it just verified that it had the expected characteristics of standard CMS disk I/O CCWS ... with stylised copied CCWs (eliminated the overhead of generalized scanning of one CCW at a time). That DIAGNOSE function was also defined as synchronous. This had slightly more overhead than the CCW opcode implementation that I had originally done ... but didn't violate virtual machine purity.

When this was added to standard (CP67) CMS, it was done in such a way that CMS started up ... did some diagnose fiddling to determine if it was running on real machine (w/o cp67) or in virtual machine with diagnose i/o support. For the CMS morph from cp67 to vm370, the ability to run on real hardware was crippled.

CMS terminal was virtual 1052 (the operator's console on real 360). There was relatively straight-forward mapping from virtual 1052 to 2741 or TTY (line terminals). With the introduction of 3270s as terminals, initial support continued line terminal emulation (analogous to the early glass teletypes). Later there was "full screen" diagnose I/O operation that effectively took 3270 screen fields directly from virtual to real 3270.

Standard CP67 spool I/O interface started out standard reader, punch, printer CCW simulation. Printer/punch output went to 4k-byte (spool) disk buffers. Real reader cards went to 4k-byte (spool) disk buffers. Virtual reader simulation involved taking card (or printer) images out of 4k-byte (spool) disk buffers.

A special spool diagnose i/o interface was defined (primarily for vnet) that allowed directly reading a 4k-byte spool disk buffer image (bypassing the line/ccw at a time simulation).

After joining the science center ... I did (originally CP67) a (diagnose) API that supported paged-mapped operations to normal virtual machine disk space areas ... and then all the changes in CMS filesystem to use the page-mapped API interface.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

The paged-mapped API had all sorts of bells & whistles under the covers. One of the things it would do was allow asynchronous operation ... start disk i/o transfer and allow cms to execute concurrently (used fiddling of page valid bits for serialization rather than explicit code in cms).

Also built on the paged-mapped API was facility for shared segments between (virtual machine) virtual address spaces (using definitions from the cms filesystems).

Part of the motivation for the page-mapped stuff was being on the 4th flr of 545 tech sq (science center) and Multics was doing all the paged mapped stuff on the 5th flr. However, I had also watched (as undergraduate) the IBM SE doing various testing of tss/360 on weekends (competing with me for weekend time on 360/67) ... and lots of the performance difficulties in the way that tss/360 had done its page-mapped implementation.

misc. past posts discussing the cms filesystem diagnose i/o operation:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#95 Early interupts on mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#42 Domainatrix - the final word
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#31 2 questions: diag 68 and calling convention
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#62 history of CMS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#60 MIDAS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#33 dasd full cylinder transfer (long post warning)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#7 What is timesharing, anyway?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#36 S/360 undocumented instructions?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#9 virtual-machine theory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#66 System/360 40 years old today
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#9 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#72 IUCV in VM/CMS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#23 360 DIAGNOSE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#54 Q ALLOC PAGE vs. CP Q ALLOC vs ESAMAP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#58 Q ALLOC PAGE vs. CP Q ALLOC vs ESAMAP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#8 2nd level install - duplicate volsers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#51 other cp/cms history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#56 DCSS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#7 Why these original FORTRAN quirks?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#45 SVCs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#28 SVCs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#33 Historical curiosity question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#57 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#72 A question for the Wheelers - Diagnose instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#0 A question for the Wheelers - Diagnose instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#56 CSA 'above the bar'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#41 Age of IBM VM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#50 Running REXX program in a batch job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#68 It keeps getting uglier
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#96 source for VAX programmers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#9 Was CMS multi-tasking?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#41 Was CMS multi-tasking?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#47 Intel: an expensive many-core future is ahead of us
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#21 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#33 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#38 "True" story of the birth of the IBM PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#46 pc/370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#56 Computer History Museum

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Operating Systems for Virtual Machines

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 09:25:16 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#72 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines

It turns out that os/360 in its move from real-storage paradigm to virtual memory paradigm ran into similar issue with channel program translation. The legacy os/360 operation has applications building channel programs in application space and executing an EXCP (svc0), passing pointer to the start of the channel program. When the application address space became virtual, then the (EXCP/svc0) channel programs suffered from the same virtual->real address problem as cp67 (with virtual machine channel programs). The initial prototype for moving (real address) MVT into VS2 ... involved hacking a little bit of virtual addresss table stuff on the side of MVT and borrowing CCWTRANS (channel program scanning and replicating routine) from CP67. This was hacked into the EXCP processing so that copies of application channel programs were made with real addresses (nearly identical to the way that cp67 made copies of virtual machine channel programs).

misc. past posts mentioning favorite son operating system borrowing CCWTRANS from cp67 as part of moving from real storage paradigm to virtual memory paradigm:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#68 Mainframe operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#34 What level of computer is needed for a computer to Love?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#37 IBM OS Timeline?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#38 IBM OS Timeline?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#36 History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#39 VAX, M68K complex instructions (was Re: Did Intel Bite Off More Than It Can Chew?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#70 hone acronym (cross post)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#65 The problem with installable operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#67 The problem with installable operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#62 PLX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#49 Linux paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#51 Linux paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#0 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#13 Page Table - per OS/Process
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#14 Page Table - per OS/Process
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#27 Microkernels are not "all or nothing". Re: Multics Concepts For
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#18 virtual-machine theory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#59 real multi-tasking, multi-programming
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#40 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#50 Chained I/O's
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#26 PCIe as a chip-to-chip interconnect
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#54 CKD Disks?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#57 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#49 The mid-seventies SHARE survey
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#45 Moving assembler programs above the line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#47 Moving assembler programs above the line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#18 address space
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#45 HASP/ASP JES/JES2/JES3
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#41 Instruction Set Enhancement Idea
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#25 MVCIN instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#7 2nd level install - duplicate volsers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#31 Is VIO mandatory?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#38 Is VIO mandatory?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#25 Multiple address spaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#5 3380-3390 Conversion - DISAPPOINTMENT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#33 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#5 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#27 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#25 Mainframe Limericks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#27 oops
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#39 REAL memory column in SDSF
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#27 IBM S/360 series operating systems history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#46 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#0 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#6 IBM S/360 series operating systems history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#33 Historical curiosity question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#26 user level TCP implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#35 IBM obsoleting mainframe hardware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#41 Virtual Storage implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#69 GETMAIN/FREEMAIN and virtual storage backing up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#2 Real storage usage - a quick question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#41 Age of IBM VM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#68 EXCP access methos
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#7 Future architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#50 Old XDS Sigma stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#31 TOPS-10
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#56 Computer History Museum
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#59 Why do IBMers think disks are 'Direct Access'?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

My Vintage Dream PC

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: My Vintage Dream PC
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.folklore.computers,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.computer
Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 09:42:23 -0400
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
Yep. That seemed to be true in our neck of the woods, too. The problem was that a majority of people couldn't understand this.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#71 My Vintage Dream PC

besides the lines about having no career and Boyd's reference regarding deciding to be or to do ... a couple of the other lines that they used were

the best I could hope for was to not be fired and allowed to do it again

they would have forgiven me for being wrong, but they were never going to forgive me for being right

old account about battling for a 30% raise so that I would be earning the same as the (HR) starting salary offers to new hires (that I was interviewing to work under my direction).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#48 time spent/day on a computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#75 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#83 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#94 IBM Unionization

misc past posts referencing the line about forgive you for being wrong but were never going to forgive for being right
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#61 arrogance metrics (Benoits) was: general networking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#16 cost of crossing kernel/user boundary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#71 Offshore IT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#14 I am an ageing techy, expert on everything. Let me explain the
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#26 MS to world: Stop sending money, we have enough - was Re: Most ... can't run Vista
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#3 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#6 The history of Structure capabilities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#34 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#30 Taxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#41 IBM--disposition of clock business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#27 Microminiaturized Modules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#56 Old-school programming techniques you probably don't miss

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Math Geek's Plan to Save Wall Street's Soul

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: A Math Geek's Plan to Save Wall Street's Soul
Date: 31 May, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM
somewhat related to long term Kamakura references ...

A Math Geek's Plan to Save Wall Street's Soul
http://slashdot.org/submission/1010769/A-Math-Geeks-Plan-to-Save-Wall-Streets-Soul

Revenge of the Nerd; Paul Wilmott is out to save Wall Street's soul -- one dork at a time.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/200015

The Certificate in Quantitative Finance
http://wilmott.com/cqf.cfm

other posts in the Greater IBM "yin yang" financial disruption thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#27 Flawed Credit Ratings Reap Profits as Regulators Fail Investors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#29 Transparency and Visibility
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#33 Treating the Web As an Archive
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#34 Board Visibility Into The Business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#37 Future of Financial Mathematics?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#53 We Can't Subsidize the Banks Forever
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#59 We Can't Subsidize the Banks Forever
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#61 Prosecute Bank Execs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#76 Undoing 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#77 A new global system is coming into existence
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#3 Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#10 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#15 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#20 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#21 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#22 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#23 Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

A Math Geek's Plan to Save Wall Street's Soul

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: A Math Geek's Plan to Save Wall Street's Soul
Date: 31 May, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#75 A Math Geek's Plan to Save Wall Street's Soul

Somewhat related to testing models as opposed to revering them ... as part of work on dynamic adaptive resource management ... I had done a lot of work on automated benchmarking ... misc. past posts mentioning automated benchmarking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bench

for final part of preparing to release dynamic adaptive resource management as the "resource manager" product ... a final series of 2000 automated benchmarks were run (this was after several thousand benchmarks had already been run) that took three months elapsed time. Several hundred of the benchmark profiles were explicitly specified. The rest used a modified version of the Performance Predictor ... this was an analytical system performance model implemented in APL at the science center and deployed on HONE system allowing branch office/sales to ask/answer "what-if" questions regarding changes to customer configurations and/or workload. misc. posts mentioning HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

For the automated benchmarks, the Performance Predictor was modified to take into account past workloads & configurations and the associated results (as well as details of the dynamic adaptive resource manager), and then select a different workload &/or configuration for the next benchmark. After the benchmark was run, it would compare the predicted benchmark values with the actual measured benchmark values. Based on the most recent results and past benchmarks, it would repeat the process for the next benchmark. This not only measured the "resource manager" ... but also validated its results with prediction from the analytical model (as well as cross-validating the performance predictor model).

misc. past posts related to bits & pieces of the "resource manager"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

recent posts mention performance predictor:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#24 Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#75 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#81 Intel: an expensive many-core future is ahead of us
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#42 APL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#41 Automation is still not accepted to streamline the business processes... why organizations are not accepting newer technologies?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#5 Why do IBMers think disks are 'Direct Access'?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Operating Systems for Virtual Machines

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 12:54:06 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#59 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#63 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#64 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#65 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#72 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#73 Operating Systems for Virtual Machines

somewhat related to how vm370 implementating virtual machines and cross-over with smp/multi-core.

normally the majority of vm370 simulation on behalf of virtual machine has been serialized with the execution of the virtual machine ... typically on the same processor.

a "problem" (opportunity?) showed up with 3081 and ACP (airline control program, in the process of name morphing to TPF or transaction processing facility because of some number of financial networks beginning to use it).

308x wasn't going to be offered in non-SMP flavor ... only multiprocessor operation ... and ACP/TPF didn't have support for multiprocessor (it had support for non-shared memory, loosely-coupled, but didn't have support for tightly-coupled shared-memory operation). As a result, the only way for a ACP/TPF customer to get it operating on 3081 was running VM370 on native hardware (supporting smp, shared-memory) and running ACP/TPF in a virtual, uni/single processor virtual machine.

For dedicated ACP/TPF environment ... with two processor, 3081, this resulted with one processor effectively being idle majority of the time. Something as a sop to such ACP/TPF customers, VM370 was "enhanced" to decouple some amount of virtual machine simulation, so it could run asynchronously on the 2nd processor, overlapped with ACP/TPF execution. This provided possibly 10-20 percent thruput improvement for those dedicated ACP/TPF customers.

The downside was that the majority of asynchronous changes went into the underlying vm370 kernel infrastructure. This resulted in large number of customers with multiple virtual machines running vm370 smp operation 100% busy on all CPUs, experiencing 10-15% throughput degradation. The issue was that the additional multiprocessing coordination to allow overlapped asynchronous operation of simulation and virtual machine execution ... introduced an additional 10-15% processor overhead (which wasn't necessary in environment with multiple virtual machines already maintaining all CPUs at 100% utilization).

misc. past posts mentioning SMP operation (and/or invention of compare&swap instruction)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

later the corporation offered a single processor 3083 (in large part for the ACP/TPF customers). In the 360 & 370 worlds, multiprocessor operation was totally replicated hardware ... so that a multiprocessor configuration could be divided and run as multiple single processors. The two-processor 3081 was referred to as "DYADIC" as part of implying that it was a single system with only mulitple processor execution ... to fully replicated components that could be run independently. The result was a 3083 wasn't really "half" of a 3081 ... it was really a 3081 with only a single processor (possibly not quite as blatent as the AMD 3-core chips ... where the speculation is that the fourth core has been disabled).

misc. recent posts mentioning ACP &/or TPF:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#40 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#14 Was CMS multi-tasking?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#38 American Airlines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#57 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Kansas City Fed Chief Espouses ACH for Debit Card Processing

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Kansas City Fed Chief Espouses ACH for Debit Card Processing
Date: 31 May, 2009
Blog: Payment Systems Network
Kansas City Fed Chief Espouses ACH for Debit Card Processing
http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=2222

from above:
He contrasts the ACH with the existing signature- and PIN-based debit systems. Signature-debit cards, he says, are too quick to impose costly fees on cardholders for insufficient funds, while PIN-debit cards are becoming increasingly expensive to merchants. "Even that highly efficient form of debit access is falling into the syndrome of padding bank revenues without commensurate increases in user value," he said.

... snip ...

Part of the interchange fee issue is based on having physical interchange.

When the associations first came into being there was very little means for interconnectivity between processing centers. The associations adding interchange ... effectively as a form of VAN (value added network) ... which was common in the 70s and 80s. One of the things that happened with the ubiquitous spreading of the Internet was that it basically obsoleted the VANs (majority disappearing over the past decade or two).

The other issue was with consolidation and outsourcing ... a few years ago the claim was that something like 90 percent of transactions were handled by six datacenters (and they had installed direct private high-speed replicated links for connectivity, sort of a special purpose VAN market niche not completely obsoleted yet by the internet). At the time, there was some amount of confrontation between the operators of those datacenters and the associations regarding any (physical) "interchange" added value.

There was also some confrontation regarding interpretation of the "on-us" interchange rules ... regarding transactions that completely serviced within a single datacenter (even when different financial institutions were involved).

and old article from May 2006

Payments Technologies Vie For Banks' IT Dollars
https://web.archive.org/web/20060526221137/http://www.epaynews.com/index.cgi?survey=&ref=browse&f=view&id=1147439455861413176&block=

highlighting a distinction between European financial institution payment operations and US financial institution payment operations:
Payments revenues at European banks typically represent 10 per cent of annual revenues, while in the US, this figure is nearer to 40 per cent

... snip ...

any reduction in interchange fees would appear to have a much bigger impact in the US compared to Europe.

some other recent posts mentioning interchange:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#7 Payments start-up Noca takes aim at interchange Achilles heel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#51 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#64 Western Union history--data communications passed it by
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#60 Lack of bit field instructions in x86 instruction set because of patents ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#15 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#59 Tesco to open 30 "bank branches" this year
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#8 Revolution Money raises $42m
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#60 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#20 IBM forecasts 'new world order' for financial services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#25 New standard for encrypting card data in the works; backers include Heartland
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#57 LexisNexis says its data was used by fraudsters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#62 Solving password problems one at a time, Re: The password-reset paradox
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#64 What happened to X9.59?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#3 Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#19 Does anyone know of merchants who have successfully bypassed interchange costs

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The $4 trillion housing headache

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The $4 trillion housing headache
Date: 31 May, 2009
Blog: Greater IBM
other posts in thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#65 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#67 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#2 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#7 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#8 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis

The $4 trillion housing headache; House prices have returned to 2002 levels, but mortgage debt hasn't deflated from its bubbly highs.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/27/news/mortgage.overhang.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009052716

from above:
To get the mortgage debt-to-GDP ratio down to a more normal level such as the 46% average of the 1990s, Americans would have to cut their mortgage debt to $6.6 trillion from $10.5 trillion at the end of 2008. The last time the national mortgage debt count was below $7 trillion was 2003, according to Federal Reserve data.

... snip ...

The $4 trillion housing headache is comparable in size to the $5.2 trillion in off-balance toxic assets (large percent mortgage backed securities) held by major banks that have to also be cleaned up.

Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home

from above:
So investors betting for quick solutions to the financial crisis could be disappointed. The tangled web that banks wove over the years will take a long time to undo.

At the end of 2008, for example, off-balance-sheet assets at just the four biggest U.S. banks -- Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase Co. and Wells Fargo Co. -- were about $5.2 trillion, according to their 2008 annual filings.


... snip ...

misc. posts from last year observing that the real-estate speculation bubble was deflating but was only about half-way to its 2001/2002 reset point (and drop might continue past the reset point because of adverse things that can happen when speculation bubble bursts).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#21 Michigan industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#29 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#40 Success has many fathers, but failure has the US taxpayer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#52 Why is sub-prime crisis of America called the sub-prime crisis?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 19:45:11 -0400
Bernd Felsche <berfel@innovative.iinet.net.au> writes:
One should. Those systems are usually NUMA and each chip can physically access directly only the memory attached to that chip. An external "hyper-transport" or data channel of identical functionality, connects between multiple processor chips to transfer data from "another chip's memory" to the local memory. Cache coherence is required between the memory pages/lines on all the registered chips, slowing access until the non-local chips all release that physical memory reference.

some of this started with SCI in the early 90s.

DG & Sequent did a 486 four processor (1 processor/chip) board with shared cache. SCI provided 64-port NUMA memory architecture ... each board/cache having port on SCI (for up to 256 processor).

Convex did a pa-risc two processor (1 processor/chip) board with shared cache. SCI provided 64-port NUMA memory architecture ... each board/cache having port on SCI (for up to 128 processor).

convex used a flavor of mach to drive product called exemplar. there was stuff to provide processor/memory affinity to maximize performance, minimize latencies. there was also support to partition the processors into multiple SMP configurations (and being able to emulate clusters of SMP) using memory transfer to simulate cluster i/o.

SGI also did SCI numa with MIPS processors.

multi-core chips today are somewhat what multi-chip boards use to be

misc. past posts mention sci, numa, exemplar, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#8 Is a VAX a mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#12 Small IBM shops
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#46 Small IBM shops
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#85 what makes a cpu fast
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#54 VM & VSE news
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#55 VM & VSE news
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#10 "Soul of a New Machine" Computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#52 Itanium2 performance data from SGI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#39 Flex Question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#65 Cost of Message Passing ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#3 Hyperthreading vs. SMP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#0 comp.arch classic: the 10-bit byte
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#37 Memory Affinity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#6 Memory Affinity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#20 shared memory programming on distributed memory model?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#13 Performance and Capacity Planning
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#16 Performance and Capacity Planning
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#17 Performance and Capacity Planning
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#26 IBM Plugs Big Iron to the College Crowd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#37 What was new&important in computer architecture 10 years ago ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#38 What was new&important in computer architecture 10 years ago ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#43 Numa-Q Information
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#46 Numa-Q Information
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005v.html#0 DMV systems?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#16 Would multi-core replace SMPs?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#32 UMA vs SMP? Clarification of terminology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#14 Expanded Storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#1 Multiple address spaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#7 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#40 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#41 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#42 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#43 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#44 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#45 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#43 One or two CPUs - the pros & cons
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#55 PowerPC or PARISC?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#8 Is no one reading the article?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#9 Is no one reading the article?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#38 Wanted: info on old Unisys boxen
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#30 V2X2 vs. Shark (SnapShot v. FlashCopy)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#32 V2X2 vs. Shark (SnapShot v. FlashCopy)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#25 A way to speed up level 1 caches
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#3 University rank of Computer Architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#13 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#49 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#72 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#1 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#81 Random thoughts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#40 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#3 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#6 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#8 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#12 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#19 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#21 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#2 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#5 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#10 Different Implementations of VLIW
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#11 Different Implementations of VLIW
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#18 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#33 Making tea
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#36 Making tea
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#68 "The Register" article on HP replacing z
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#1 What is better faster CPU speed or wider bus?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#20 TOPS-10
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#44 another one biting the dust?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#72 Curiousity: largest parallel sysplex around?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#5 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970


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