List of Archived Posts

2012 Newsgroup Postings (04/17 - 05/12)

Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Hard Disk Drive Construction
Did they apply Boyd's concepts?
Time to Think ... and to Listen
Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
Hardware v. People
Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Word Length
Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
Word Length
Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
The White House and Mortgage Fraud: So Far It's All Talk, No Action
Free $10 Million Loans For All! and Other Wall Street Notes
Born Fighting
Word Length
Let the IRS Do Your Taxes, Really
Word Length
Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
For He's a Jolly Good Scoundrel: On Sanford Weill
Word Length
Indirect Bit
Time to competency for new software language?
Time to competency for new software language?
Time to competency for new software language?
PDF vs. Bookie
Indirect Bit
which one came first
which one came first
Before Disruption...Thinking
Rome speaks to us. Their example can inspire us to avoid their fate
Back to the future: convict labor returns to America
The case against Lehman Brothers
University of Florida Eliminates Computer Science Department, Increases Athletic Budgets
Inequality and Investment Bubbles: A Clearer Link Is Established
Time to competency for new software language?
Hard Disk Drive Construction
UK firms need to 'fess up to security boobs
SIE - CompArch
STSC Story
Hi, Does any one knows the true origin of the usage of the word bug in computers to design a fault?
Oh hum, it's the 60s and 70's all over again
Time to competency for new software language?
Time to Think ... and to Listen
Hard Disk Drive Construction
Cartons of Punch Cards
Cartons of Punch Cards
Explination of S0C4 reason code 4 and related data areas
Cartons of Punch Cards
SIE - CompArch
Thinking in a Foreign Language
Does the Experiencing Self "Out-OODA" the Remembering Self?
Image if someone built a general-menu-system
Hard Disk Drive Construction
Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Hard Disk Drive Construction
Hard Disk Drive Construction
Making the Mainframe more Accessible - What is Your Vision?
Hard Disk Drive Construction
Hard Disk Drive Construction
Zakaria: by itself, Buffett rule is good
Hard Disk Drive Construction
One maths formula and the financial crash
Your Words Determine your Perspective
The old is new again - Not IBM related, but I hope interesting
Predator GE: We Bring Bad Things to Life
Cartons of Punch Cards
'Gutting' Our Military
Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy
The Army and Special Forces: The Fantasy Continues
When Mobile Telecommunications Routes Become Banks
New Study Debunks Idea That Human Performance Fits on A Bell Curve
Cartons of Punch Cards
Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things
Fed Report: Mortgage Mess NOT an Inside Job
Time to competency for new software language?
Vampire Squid
What are you experiences with Amdahl Computers and Plug-Compatibles?
Cartons of Punch Cards
The Failure of Central Planning
The Pentagon's New Defense Clandestine Service
Defense budget casualties light on civilian side
Why Can't Obama Bring Wall Street to Justice?
How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
Cartons of Punch Cards
The Dangers of High-Frequency Trading; Wall Street's Speed Freaks
How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
Defense acquisitions are broken and no one cares
Defense acquisitions are broken and no one cares
How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things
How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
What are you experiences with Amdahl Computers and Plug-Compatibles?
Time to competency for new software language?
How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
Hard Disk Drive Construction

Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:39:41 -0400
hancock4 writes:
It will be curious to how long _significant_ S/360 et al machines and code remain in service. It does seem that today little new stuff is written for S/360 and all new stuff is client/server (Java, Oracle, etc.) But while many companies are spending literally many millions of dollars to convert old large critical systems to client/server, that's still gonna take some time to complete.

I've mentioned before that large financial institutions spent billions (in aggregate) in attempt to move to straight-through processing.

financial has had batch settlement for ages ... "online" move starting in the 60s would typically just queue stuff for final handling in the overnight batch window processing.

in the 90s, a combination of growing business and increased globalization was putting extreme stress on the overnight batch window ... both significantly the amount of work needed to be done plus reducing the window size.

straight-through processing was going to be re-implementation with parallel processing with large numbers of "killer micros" to achieve the throughput necessary ... and billions were spent ... all falling for various reasons. A major factor was extensive use of "new" parallelization technology that looked good in the toy demos ... but failed to scale ... turning out to have 100 times the overhead (of the cobol batch it would be replacing) ... more than swamping any expected throughput increase from large numbers of killer micros.

in the 2006 time-frame took some new technology to financial industry organizations for new take on straight-through processing ... rather than the lots of (failed) roll-your-own parallelization efforts ... it took high-level business rules and decomposed them into fine-grain SQL operations (leveraging the massive work that has been done on efficient parallel RDBMS). Initially there was lots of interest ... but then nothing ... the comment was that there were still lots of people in the industry that bore the scars of the massive failures from the 90s.

side-effect of mapping business rules to fine-grain SQL is significant reduced effort & coding to produce a production application ... also significantly easier to modify and adapt as business rules evolve.

slightly related post "From Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#43
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#46

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

and this old post about Jan92 meeting in Ellison's conference room
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

disclaimer: I was at san jose research for part of the original relational/sql implementation and tech. transfer to endicott for SQL/DS ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr
recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#27 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
mentions that tech transfer and SQL/DS got out because corporation was all focused on EAGLE the big new DBMS effort. When EAGLE imploded, then there was some inquiries about how fast could system/r be ported to MVS

this recent post mentions possibility of mainframe for cloud computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#105 Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos

has max. out 80 processor z196 mainframe for $29M and rated at 50BIPS or $580,000/BIP vis-a-vis IBM has base price of $1815 for E5-2600 blades which have ratings of 527 BIPS (>11 times z196) or $3.15/BIP.

misc. recent posts mentioning straight-through processing and/or overnight-batch window:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#19 zLinux OR Linux on zEnterprise Blade Extension???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#42 Looking for a real Fortran-66 compatible PC compiler (CP/M or DOSor Windows
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#35 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#45 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#15 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#19 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#91 Mainframe Fresher
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#93 Itanium at ISSCC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#1 Itanium at ISSCC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#52 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#70 New IBM Redbooks residency experience in Poughkeepsie, NY
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#10 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#23 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#9 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#8 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#49 US payments system failing to meet the needs of the digital economy

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Hard Disk Drive Construction

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hard Disk Drive Construction
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:04:48 -0400
John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> writes:
That was a standard part of S/360 CKD drive. Each track was formatted into multiple records, each of which could have a key. A channel program could search down a track or cylinder to find a record with a desired key. That's how ISAM worked, and also how it searched the VTOC to find the entry for a file.

For slow systems like the 360/30 that usually only had one disk and couldn't do much else when the channel was active, it made sense. But since it tied up the channel so it couldn't do anything else while searching, on systems with multiple disks and faster CPUs, it wasn't so great, and VSAM switched to B-trees.


the other thing that CKD did was trade-off scarce real storage (for indexes) against (relatively) abundant channel capacity. however, at least by the mid-70s the trade-off was starting to invert.

i have an oft repeated tail of being called into large national retailer in the late 70s to scope a horrible performance/throughput problem (after several other people from around the corporation had been called in). They had dozen or so regions with something like half-dozen systems (something like 2-3 region per system) sharing program library disk in loosely-coupled (cluster) shared-disk configuration.

start of the day things started out not to badly ... but very quickly throughout on all the systems just seem to drop off a cliff. they started off the day in a "classroom" with several 6ft long tables piled high with performance activity data from all the systems.

after scanning much of the activity data from all the systems for 30-50mins ... I started to notice small correlation ... seems like one specific disk would hit approx. aggregate of 7 disk i/os per second (i.e. sum of activity across the different systems and reports) and stay there.

It turns out that not only does disk VTOC (volume table of contents) use CKD multi-track search for file location ... but PDS file library also uses multi-track search for library directory member lookup. The disk in question turned out to be the program library disk (shared with all the systems) with a three cylinder PDS directory. A program load would first do a multi-track search of the PDS directory ... requiring on the avg of cylinder and half. These were 3330 disks with 19tracks per cylinder spinning at 60 revs/second. The first multi-track search would take 19 revs ... or nearly 1/3rd second ... the 2nd multi-track search would take 9+revs (i.e. avg. search was cylinder and half) or 1/6th of a second ... followed by i/o to read the member ... maybe 30millisecs ... 330mills+170mils+30mills or approx. 530milliseconds for each program load ... or slightly less than two program loads/second throughput for the aggregate loosely-coupled system serving all regions for the national retailer.

There was some running rivalry between the IMS database product group and the group developing system/r ... original relational/sql implementation ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

The IMS group pointing out that system/r required twice the disk space (for the implicit index) and possibly five times the disk i/o (much of it navigating the index) to access a record (compred to IMS which has direct record pointers exposed as part of the data). System/r group pointed at the exposed record pointers contributed to a huge manual administrative and maintenance problem.

In the 80s, disks got much larger and disk prices dropped significantly making IMS's first point relatively mute. Also the amount of real system memory siginficantly increased ... allowing much of the relational indexes to be cache ... significantly mitigating the number of additional physical I/Os ... this was at a time when there was a big boom in database use ... creating competition for the few highly skilled DBMS people resources (somewhat inverting the IMS/RDBMS trade-offs from the 70s).

There was something of a battle about FBA (fixed block disks) that ibm had like 3310 & 3370 vis-a-vis the CKD disks like 3330, 3350, 3380. The "favorite son" operating system never did get around to supporting FBA disks ... even though no real CKD disks have been manufactured for decades ... requiring CKD to be emulated on top of real FBA. Misc. past posts mentioning CKD, FBA, multi-track searches, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dasd

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Did they apply Boyd's concepts?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 17 Apr, 2012
Subject: Did they apply Boyd's concepts?
Blog: Boyd Strategy
re:
http://lnkd.in/m3ZKBa

George Washington named Britain's greatest ever foe
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9204961/George-Washington-named-Britains-greatest-ever-foe.html

Patterns of Conflict spends lot of time on Napoleon as well as Blitz.

With regard to "Creation of the Blitzkrieg" Boyd references Guderian (not Rommel).

In briefings Boyd would reference Guderian's verbal orders only ... wanted to push decisions as low as possible to person on the spot ... and not wanting them to have to worry about after action reviews assigning blame for things that didn't go as planned

I'm currently reading Webb's "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America"
https://www.amazon.com/Born-Fighting-Scots-Irish-America-ebook/dp/B000FCKGTS

after having just finished: "Why Nations Fail"
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8

both spend quite a bit of time on Scottish influence in America ... "Why Nations Fail" describing "inclusive" organizations ... while Webb describes it as a "bottom-up" society. Both contrast it to the English being a top-down, exclusive society (for most of the period).

My wife's father had been given a set of books (that were Fiske's history lectures from the 1880s) for some distinction at West Point. There is a line in Fiske about the US form of government as democracy was largely because of the Scottish influence from the mid-Atlantic states ... it would have been quite different if the "English" immigrants had prevailed.

Born Fighting loc 1333-38:
Charles I, irritated and perhaps naive about the extent of his moral authority, ordered the General Assembly to disband. Refusing to do so, the Scots instead took to arms, recalling from Germany thousands of hardened soldiers and officers who had fought many campaigns under the Protestant leader Gustavus Adolphus, known widely as the father of modern warfare. Within a few months Scotland had assembled the strongest military force in Great Britain. Filled with the emotional resolve of a people daring to confront the powers above them, the Scottish army marched on England and shortly was occupying the ancient Scottish territory of Northumberland and parts of Durham below it. And King Charles had little to stand in their way.

... snip ...

Webb's somewhat biased with Scots-Irish breaking the British Army during the revolutionary war ... some number like this Born Fighting loc2477-81:
But while inside the Redcoat perimeter there was a whistle and a determined commander, along the steep slopes of the mountain were a thousand Indian war whoops, every one of them coming from fighting men who knew the battle plan and were their own commanders. Virginian William Campbell, the senior militiaman among them, had simply told his men to "shout like hell and fight like devils," and Ferguson could not keep up with the relentless, decentralized attack that used no volley firing and needed no orders from on high.

... snip ...

misc. posts & URLs referencing Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Time to Think ... and to Listen

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 17 Apr, 2012
Subject: Time to Think ... and to Listen
Blog: Boyd Strategy
re:
http://lnkd.in/PPe3NQ
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#78 Time to Think ... and to Listen
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#104 Time to Think ... and to Listen

Spinney has item today ....

Hardware v. People
http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2012/04/17/hardware-v-people/

... and from IBM Jargon (related to all the referenced comments about the Gerstner book review at tdaxp)
wild duck - n. A creative technical person who does unconventional things, or at least does things in an unconventional way. Implies respect, and an acknowledgment that many of that person's ideas turn out to be valuable. It is said that IBM does not mind having a few wild ducks around - so long as they fly in formation. This term was created by T._J._Watson Jr., who told a story (by the philosopher Kirkegaard) about a flock of wild ducks that landed near a farm. Some got fed by the farmer and stayed, and either died of obesity or got eaten. The truly wild ones flew away - and survived.

... snip ...

and a poster "How to Stuff a Wild Duck" (its hard to read ... but blown up, it is all the quotes that are intended to enforce conformity)
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/GO/wildDuck.html

the joke about "wild ducks" & "fly in formation" is attributed to the failure of Future System effort in the mid-70s (top executive reaction to loss of face with the failure) More recently for the centennial celebration there was video about a "wild duck" customer ... but no more references to "wild duck" employees.

misc. posts & URLs referencing Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 18 Apr, 2012
Subject: Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
Blog: MainframeZone
re:
http://lnkd.in/hg3T_d
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#94 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#99 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?

aka compared to e5-2600 blade ...mainframe cycles are going for approx. 200,000 times premium (however, the large cloud operators have claimed that they put together their own blades at approx. 1/3rd the cost of "brand name" blades ... potentially resulting in differential between standard cloud cycles and mainframe cycles is 600,000 times price difference).

"on-demand" offerings implies standard hardware provisioning for peak demand and can easily be 3-4 times that of nominal load operation ("on-demand" prices will have to include provisioning all the spare hardware that possibly is idle except at peak load periods ... although could have "off-shift" pricing incentives for using the excess capacity available during off-peak periods).

One of the things that early online cp67 offerings did in the 60s was move to datacenters serving large time-zone span ... on-demand peaks tend to occur at regular times during the day ... and troughs in one time-zone can be used to off-set peaks in other time-zones (as part of smoothing out load demand) ... note part of this was attacking huge transmission costs of the period.

x-posted to "Greater IBM"

IBM Sells Point-Of-Sale Business To Toshiba
http://it.slashdot.org/story/12/04/17/2127235/ibm-sells-point-of-sale-business-to-toshiba

comment in above "Is there really no money in hardware anymore?"

for other cloud operation ... this mentions that large cloud ... if its intranet was part of the public internet ... it would be the 3rd largest ISP operator

Going With the Flow: Google's Secret Switch to the Next Wave of Networking
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/04/going-with-the-flow-google/
Google reVAMPS network via OpenFlow
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/google-reVAMPS-network-via-openflow/74405
Google describes its OpenFlow network
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4371179/Google-describes-its-OpenFlow-network

misc. past posts mentioning online service operation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Hardware v. People

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 18 Apr, 2012
Subject: Hardware v. People
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/2fKbdLqt7Qv

Hardware v. People
http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2012/04/17/hardware-v-people/

from above:
For a good example of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex's (MICC's) value system -- which is hardware before ideas and people

... snip ...

and of course, Spinney(/Boyd) 1983 Time article ... gone behind paywall but lives free at wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070320170523/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html
also
https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html

Boyd's story in the early 80s was that SECDEF blamed him (Boyd) for the article and attempted to have him transferred to Alaska and banned from Pentagon ... however he had Congressional cover and there were countermeasures that blocked SECDEF. However in the 90s, it appears more&more of congress went over to the dark side .. possibly accounting for Spinney's use of MICC (as opposed to simply MIC).

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:56:10 -0400
note that a 2250-1 (attach to 360 channel) was about $100,000 ... and a 2250-4 (2250/1130) was about the same price (in effect 1130 was nearly free).

science center had 2250-4 and somebody ported pdp-1 spacewars to the macine. recent long-winded post (in linkedin "IBM Historic Computing")
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#38
referencing PDP1 spacewar at mit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewar
and 2250
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2250

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

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:18:41 -0400
hancock4 writes:
With the long years of hardware and operating experience behind it, the S/360 Z series is a damned robust machine. as you describe.

But... I hate to sound cynical, but I don't think DP management cares about that these days. They tell me the airlines are switching their reservation systems over to client server. It seems DP management has decided on client server.


recent post about redoing parts of airline res system nearly 20yrs ago (we had been brought in as consultants to look at what they called their ten impossible problems):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#70 Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem

used cluster of rs/6000s as servers ... however the aggregate processing power of the rs/6000 cluster was about the same "MIP-rate" as smartphone processor from middle of last decade (discussion here in a.f.c.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#80 Happy DEC-10 Day

one of the issues was airline res systems with old dumb terminals had horrible human factors and required trained operators to interface to applications. going to client/server allows significant improvement in user interface ... including out to end user for many of the functions.

more recent comparison of cloud computing blades (i.e. e5-2600) vis-a-vis latest z196 mainframe:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#4 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing
part of this thread:
http://lnkd.in/hg3T_d
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#94 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#99 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?

potentially a factor of 600,000 times processor cycle cost differential between mainframe and commodity cloud/server components.

I've pontificated here in a.f.c. periodically over the years about the implementation.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#24 BA Solves Y2K (Was: Re: Chinese Solve Y2K)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#100 Why won't the AS/400 die? Or, It's 1999 why do I have to learn how to use
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#103 IBM 9020 computers used by FAA (was Re: EPO stories (was: HELP IT'S HOT!!!!!))
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#136a checks (was S/390 on PowerPC?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#233 Computer of the century
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#0 2000 = millennium?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#94 Those who do not learn from history...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#21 Competitors to SABRE? Big Iron
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#20 Competitors to SABRE?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#26 Disk caching and file systems. Disk history...people forget
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#45 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#49 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#17 I hate Compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#0 TSS/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#3 News IBM loses supercomputer crown
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#2 Computers in Science Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#3 Why are Mainframe Computers really still in use at all?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#43 IBM doing anything for 50th Anniv?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#83 Summary: Robots of Doom
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#30 difference between itanium and alpha
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#3 Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#47 What makes a mainframe a mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#17 Rationale for Supercomputers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#6 Xah Lee's Unixism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#41 something like a CTC on a PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#47 Using the Cache to Change the Width of Memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#22 System/360; Hardwired vs. Microcoded
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#44 Intel engineer discusses their dual-core design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#7 HASP/ASP JES/JES2/JES3
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#5 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#6 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#9 Arpa address
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#4 How Many 360/195s and 370/195s were shipped?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#18 RAMAC 305(?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#9 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#10 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#16 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#18 50th Anniversary of invention of disk drives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#19 Pennsylvania Railroad ticket fax service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#28 Even worse than UNIX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#72 The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#8 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#45 64 gig memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#53 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#19 American Airlines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#34 American Airlines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#32 CLIs and GUIs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#1 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#5 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#53 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#54 another item related to ASCII vs. EBCDIC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#66 ACP, One of the Oldest Open Source Apps
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#42 Outsourcing your Computer Center to IBM ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#10 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#59 "Portable" data centers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#73 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#80 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#52 Article says mainframe most cost-efficient platform
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#53 Article says mainframe most cost-efficient platform
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#16 Sabre Talk Information?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#17 Looking for a real Fortran-66 compatible PC compiler (CP/M or DOS or Windows, doesn't matter)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#17 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#42 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#14 Sabre; The First Online Reservation System
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#43 Sabre; The First Online Reservation System
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#8 Multiple Virtual Memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#35 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#77 program coding pads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#35 Last Word on Dennis Ritchie
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#115 Start Interpretive Execution
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#8 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#9 The PC industry is heading for collapse

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:03:41 -0400
hancock4 writes:
I don't think the old dumb terminals were that hard to use. Yes, some training was required, but then, people hired for those jobs had no computer experience whatsoever. But at the same time, new people needed training to understand the application, and that hasn't changed. Today, people grow up using computers and understand the concept of entering data into a field and it not being registered until ENTER was hit.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#7 Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos

part of the impossible was that the archaic condensed syntax ... very sparce coded syntax.

i came back after two months with replacement implementation for "routes" that implemented all ten impossible ... and that was when the hand-wringing started. Eventually after nearly a year they said that they never actually wanted us to fix it ... just to be able to tell the parent board that they had us as consultants.

one of the things I did was the client part was much more intuitive and actually collapsed three different "manual" queries & response into a much more intuitive single query response. Part of the impossible was they wanted to be able to handle better than ten times the load (transaction rate) ... the new implementation was able to handle ten times the transactions rate ... even when each "new" transaction represented three old transactions (so was actually closer to 30 times the throughput and response ... especially considering it eliminated a lot of manual old stuff). basically the person had to have memorized huge amount of stuff that they would then string together, the output of the first query dictating much of the 2nd query they had to do and then the output from the 2nd query dictating the 3rd query.

about that time, my youngest had part time job in college for air freight forwarder and effectively had to use the same interface for scheduling freight (as was used for passengers). before he started he had to memorize a bunch of stuff ... besides the archaic transaction codes and syntax ... also had to memorize a large percentage of the 3-letter airport codes in the world.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Word Length

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Word Length
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:56:29 -0400
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
Note that there were only about 700 PDP-10's shipped, and 200 of them went to compuserve and many of the rest were shipped to Universities.

Not that many commercial systems when compared to either Burroughs or IBM.

Burroughs shipped over 1000 B3500's between 1966 and 1972.

The vax shipped just short of 1/2 million systems.


decade of vax shipments 78 thru 87 ... sliced and diced by model, year, us, non-us ... big percentage were micro-vax
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 18 Apr, 2012
Subject: Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
Blog: Mainframe Experts
re:
http://lnkd.in/djmeWv

Note that HASP (from nasa/houston) had started out doing something similar so that it could gain supervisor authority whenever it wanted. misc. past hasp, jes, &/or nji refs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#hasp

Boeing Huntsville got a 2-processor 360/67 (i.e. 360/65 with hardware virtual memory support) ... originally for tss/360 but eventually just ran it as two separate 360/65 MVT systems. They did modify MVT release 13 to make use of the hardware virtual memory. Problem was that they were using the machines for a several, long-running 2250 graphic design applications. Besides the overhead in MVT for storage management ... it had a well known problem with storage fragmentation ... which was enormously aggravated by long-running JOBS (like the 2250 graphic design applications). They utilized the virtual memory hardware to remap storage ... as antidote to the enormous storage fragmentation problems (never used for paging ... same number of virtual pages as real pages ... but could switch addresses around to provide contiguous range of storage ... to overcome MVT storage fragmentation).

This is later story about internal justification to move MVT to "virtual storage" ... initially VS2/SVS and later VS2/MVS (eventually shortened to just MVS) ... i.e. MVT storage management typically only used 25% of each partition ... directly supporting virtual memory would allow getting 16 partitions in a "real" 1mbyte machine
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#73

past posts in this thread & similar mainframezone thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#2 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#6 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#28 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#35 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#41 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#43 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#50 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#54 IBM cuts more than 1,000 U.S. Workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#64 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#79 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#3 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#27 NASA unplugs their last mainframe

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Word Length

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Word Length
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2012 09:59:08 -0400
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
It's speedo. Anyway I went to college with a 370 that used a pair of PDP-11s as terminal concentrators.

some number of univ. were talked into ordering 360/67 to run tss/360. when tss/360 didn't materialize like advertised ... most just ran them as 360/65 with os/360. However, some liked Michigan & Stanford, wrote their own virtual memory operating systems

reference to pdp8 as mts terminal controller:
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/gallery/gallery7.html
more mts
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/gallery/gallery8.html

trivia ... what else is the above person noted for?

MTS was later ported to 370 and ran at many locations.

recent post mentioning above
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#63 The IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator

above also mentions that as undergraduate ... i added tty/ascii support to cp67 ... and then modified HASP ... adding tty&2741 terminal support and editor that implemented cms editor syntax (written from scratch since os/360 & cms programming conventions were so different).

also, I tried to get the 2702 to do something that it couldn't quite do ... which was much of motivation for univ. starting clone controller project ... taking Interdata/3 and adding channel interface board and programming ... to emulate mainframe terminal controller. Interdata picked it up and marketed it ... and then after perkin/elmer bought Interdata, they continued to be sold under P/E logo. At some point, four of us were written up as responsible for some part of 360 clone controller business ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

misc. other past posts mentioning Michigan &/or Stanford virtual memory operating system for 360/67
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#23 MTS & LLMPS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#25 MTS & LLMPS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#26 MTS & LLMPS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#91 Ux's good points.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#61 VM (not VMS or Virtual Machine, the IBM sort)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#44 WHAT IS A MAINFRAME???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#52 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#0 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#55 TSS/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#0 TSS/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#45 Valid reference on lunar mission data being unreadable?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#50 Wylbur?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#63 Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#54 SHARE MVT Project anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#64 PLX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#0 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#10 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#41 SLAC 370 Pascal compiler found
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#54 June 23, 1969: IBM "unbundles" software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#5 What is timesharing, anyway?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#30 Secure OS Thoughts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#41 Secure OS Thoughts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#42 S/360 undocumented instructions?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#21 TSO alternative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#46 DE-skilling was Re: ServerPak Install via QuickLoad Product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#47 Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#7 IBM operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#20 REXX still going strong after 25 years
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#39 System/360 40th Anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#4 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#4 RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#25 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#34 RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#20 RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#5 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#18 IBM, UNIVAC/SPERRY, BURROUGHS, and friends. Compare?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#56 Software for IBM 360/30
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#20 IBM/Watson autobiography--thoughts on?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#44 hasp, jes, rasp, aspen, gold
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#32 HASP/ASP JES/JES2/JES3
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#17 winscape?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#18 Change in computers as a hobbiest
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#31 MCTS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#19 Over my head in a JES exit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#4 Mainframe vs. xSeries
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#22 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#41 PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#42 Arpa address
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#42 Why Didn't The Cent Sign or the Exclamation Mark Print?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#43 MTS, Emacs, and... WYLBUR?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#3 MTS, Emacs, and... WYLBUR?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#7 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#7 IBM S/360 series operating systems history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#31 Wylbur and Paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#33 Wylbur and Paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#36 Wylbur and Paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#39 Wylbur and Paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#43 Wylbur and CRBE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#6 MTS *FS tape format?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#60 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#62 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#15 The SLT Search LisT instruction - Maybe another one for the Wheelers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#54 new 40+ yr old, disruptive technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#18 Folklore references to CP67 at Lincoln Labs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#23 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#84 IBM Floating-point myths
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#85 IBM Floating-point myths
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#32 MTS memories
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#47 MTS memories
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#44 Two views of Microkernels (Re: Kernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#78 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#65 APL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#1 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#70 An inComplete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#34 August 7, 1944: today is the 65th Anniversary of the Birth of the Computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#74 Best IEFACTRT (off topic)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#76 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#52 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#57 Adventure - Or Colossal Cave Adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#82 Adventure - Or Colossal Cave Adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#9 Adventure - Or Colossal Cave Adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#79 history of RPG and other languages, was search engine history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#82 history of RPG and other languages, was search engine history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#34 someone smarter than Dave Cutler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#41 someone smarter than Dave Cutler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#44 someone smarter than Dave Cutler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#67 Article says mainframe most cost-efficient platform
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#11 TSO region size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#42 Which non-IBM software products (from ISVs) have been most significant to the mainframe's success?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#6 IBM 360 display and Stanford Big Iron
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#73 Speed of Old Hard Disks - adcons
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#86 Utility of find single set bit instruction?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#41 Colossal Cave Adventure in PL/I
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#44 Colossal Cave Adventure in PL/I
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#81 Multiple Virtual Memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#8 Multiple Virtual Memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#56 Drum Memory with small Core Memory?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#73 Wylbur, Orvyl, Milton, CRBE/CRJE were all used (and sometimes liked) in the past
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#75 Wylbur, Orvyl, Milton, CRBE/CRJE were all used (and sometimes liked) in the past
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#78 Wylbur, Orvyl, Milton, CRBE/CRJE were all used (and sometimes liked) in the past
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#49 My first mainframe experience
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#63 Before the PC: IBM invents virtualisation (Cambridge skunkworks)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#19 From Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#61 Hybrid computing -- from mainframe to virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#15 S/360 operating systems geneaology

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 18 Apr, 2012
Subject: Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
Blog: MainframeZone
re:
http://lnkd.in/hg3T_d
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#94 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#99 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#4 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?

cloud from today:

$4,829-per-hour supercomputer built on Amazon cloud to fuel cancer research
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/4829-per-hour-supercomputer-built-on-amazon-cloud-to-fuel-cancer-research.ars

from above:
It ran for three hours on the night of March 30, at a cost of $4,828.85 per hour. Getting up to 51,132 cores required spinning up 6,742 Amazon EC2 instances running CentOS Linux. This virtual supercomputer spanned the globe, tapping data centers in four continents and every available Amazon region, from Tokyo, Singapore, and Sao Paolo, to Ireland, Virginia, Oregon, and California. As impressive as it sounds, such a cluster can be spun up by anyone with the proper expertise, without talking to a single employee of Amazon.

... snip ...

works out to be about 72cents/hr per EC2 ... mentioned that they were grabbing spare EC2 instances where-ever they became available in Amazon cloud (aka different datacenters spanning the globe).

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The White House and Mortgage Fraud: So Far It's All Talk, No Action

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 19 Apr, 2012
Subject: The White House and Mortgage Fraud: So Far It's All Talk, No Action
Blog: LinkedIn
The White House and Mortgage Fraud: So Far It's All Talk, No Action
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/the-white-house-and-mortg_b_1437203.html

from above:
The Obama Administration worked for months on a deal that would have let America's biggest banks off the hook for a crime wave of runaway mortgage fraud. All they had to do in return was pledge a negligible sum of money, to be paid by their shareholders and not themselves, and which they would dispense themselves. In return, crooked bankers received immunity from prosecution - and even from investigation.

... snip ...

"Confidence Men"
https://www.amazon.com/Confidence-Men-Washington-Education-ebook/dp/B0089LOKKS//

highlights that the economic advisery "A-team" helped get the president elected ... but they were going to hold those responsible accountable, so after the election, members of the "B-team" were the ones appointed (many who were participants in the financial mess)

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Free $10 Million Loans For All! and Other Wall Street Notes

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 19 Apr, 2012
Subject: Free $10 Million Loans For All! and Other Wall Street Notes
Blog: Facebook
Free $10 Million Loans For All! and Other Wall Street Notes
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/free-10-million-loans-for-all-and-other-wall-street-notes-20120419

from above:
In it, Bair points out that since we've been giving zero-interest loans to all of the big banks, why don't we do the same thing for actual people, to solve the income inequality program? If the Fed handed out $10 million to every person, and then got each of those people to invest, say, in foreign debt, we could all be back on our feet in no time:

... snip ...

references this by former head of FDIC: Fix income inequality with $10 million loans for everyone!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fix-income-inequality-with-10-million-loans-for-everyone/2012/04/13/gIQATUQAFT_story.html

recent posts mentioning too-big-to-fail getting free money:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#32 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#45 Fannie, Freddie Charge Taxpayers For Legal Bills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#46 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#55 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#45 Banks Repaid Fed Bailout With Other Fed Money: Government Report

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Born Fighting

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 19 Apr, 2012
Subject: Born Fighting
Blog: Facebook
Born Fighting
https://www.amazon.com/Born-Fighting-Scots-Irish-America-ebook/dp/B000FCKGTS

loc 4182-84:
They have become spoilers because in their view America's political elites, both Republican and Democrat, have grown together into an almost indiscernible 'hybrid royalty' that offers them little to choose from in terms of how the nation is actually being governed.

... snip ...

.... aka Kabuki Theater (1603-1629) all the way through
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabuki

recent post mentioning "Born Fighting"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#2 Did they apply Boyd's concepts?

recent posts mentioning Kabuki Theater:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#24 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#33 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#22 You can't do the math without the words
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#36 McCain calls for U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#61 Why Republicans Aren't Mentioning the Real Cause of Rising Prices at the Gas Pump
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#1 The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#58 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#88 Developing a Disruptive Mindset

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Word Length

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Word Length
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 10:58:12 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
OTOH, IBM timesharing was expensive and had a batch mindset behind their implementations (IBM's strength was data processing not user interfacing).

modulo the virtual machine lineage from the science center ... aka science center was started 1Feb1964 in 545 tech sq ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

some number of the ctss people went to the science center on the 4th flr ... and others went to Multics on the 5th flr. original virtual machine was cp/40 ... done on specially modified 360/40. this is an 1982 SEAS presentation on cp/40 (the author sent me a scanned PDF version and I OCR'ed)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/cp40seas1982.txt

other historic is Melinda's work which can be found here:
http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda#VMHist

there was lots of conflict and internal politics between the corporate favorite son operating system and lots of stuff that came out of the science center. the prevalence of the corporate batch somewhat overshadows the science center online&timesharing work ... but I've commented numerous times in the past ... the science center online&timesharing possibly had more customers than most other vendors online/timesharing offerings ... but it got less press because of the dominance of the corporate batch activity (in instances, it was the customers that kept the product alive when various internal dirty tricks would get corporate to degree that the product was terminated).

there were commerical virtual machine, online, timesharing services starting in the 60s ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

one of them was Tymshare out on the west coast ... which also had its own Tymnet telecommunication unit. Tymshare had done a vm370/CMS based online computer conferencing and in Aug1976 it offered service "free" to the (IBM usesr group) SHARE organizations as VMSHARE ... vmshare archives here.
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare
sometimes(?) "404" ... but also at wayback machine
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Let the IRS Do Your Taxes, Really

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 20 Apr, 2012
Subject: Let the IRS Do Your Taxes, Really
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/JML1iWUw7B9

Let the IRS Do Your Taxes. Really
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-17/let-the-irs-do-your-taxes-really.html

from above:
About 2 million California taxpayers who earn income only from wages (and from just one employer) are eligible for ReadyReturn, and an estimated 90,000 used it this year. The program, which has grown more popular each year, entails negligible costs; in fact, filing by ReadyReturn saves the state money compared with traditional returns. (It also eliminates the need for professional tax preparers, which has prompted Intuit, maker of TurboTax software, to spend heavily on lobbying and political campaigns in the state.)

... snip ...

constantly churning loopholes in (Federal) 70+k page tax code is claimed to be major source of funds for members of congress and major contributor to congress being the most corrupt institution on earth. also supposedly elimination of loopholes and drastically simplifying tax code could gain 5-6% in GDP (direct & indirect lost to dealing with complexity of current code)

Born Fighting
https://www.amazon.com/Born-Fighting-Scots-Irish-America-ebook/dp/B000FCKGTS

loc 4182-84:
They have become spoilers because in their view America's political elites, both Republican and Democrat, have grown together into an almost indiscernible 'hybrid royalty' that offers them little to choose from in terms of how the nation is actually being governed.

... snip ...

aka Kabuki Theater (1603-1629) all the way through
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabuki

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Word Length

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Word Length
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 23:04:49 -0400
Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> writes:
"Batch with a patch" is a lousy way to implement time sharing.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#16 Word Length

cp67 installed at the univ. jan68 had 10 level dispatcher (possibly from ctss?) ... if task hadn't been running for awhile ... it would start out with highest priority level that had shortest time allowed to execution ... if the task used all cpu ... it then dropped to the next lowest level (that had longer cpu allocation) ... repeat ... if it went to wait state it would move up level. this was demand page virtual memory mechanism ... but there was no real memory contention ... limiting the number of concurrent tasks that could compete for real storage (countermeasure to page thrashing).

couple months later (spring '68) ... lincoln labs. came out with a two-level dispatch/scheduler ... had fixed maximum of tasks in both queues as page thrashing countermeasure. fixed number tasks was based on cms fortran application real storage requirements at lincoln labs.

the page replacement algorithm was to examine every page in storage looking for page belonging to non-running tasks ... and if none were found ... it replaces the next available virtual page. The search loops around all real storage pages in real storage address order. The replaced real page ... is checkpointed as the next starting point.

There was single master list of all logged on virtual machines. When the dispatcher was run ... it searches for the "best" available tax to run. Dispatch overhead increases non-linear as number of logged on virtual machine increases ... since every logged on virtual machine is examined every dispatch. Dispatch overhead for this scanning starts to grow to 10% of total elapsed time.

So I added an additional list of just in-queue tasks maintained in dispatch priority order. Dispatch now just has to scan this list and find first in priority order.

There are a lot of reasons that entry is made into kernel ... which then runs through the general dispatch function (which is drastically shorten). I do a bunch of special case stuff called "fast-redispatch" which recognizes simple kernel calls that just re-deploys with the same task.

I start tracking each task resource use ... and use avg. recent resource utilization for priority calculation (along with timer value) ... for dispatch priority ... that determines ordering. This has a number of default ways of calculation ... one is estimating approximate "fair share" (based on contending resources) ... and default policy for priority becomes a function of resource resource use compared to "fair share" (becomes known in customer sites as "fair share" scheduler based on default resource scheduling).

I redo the page replacement to make use of hardware page reference bits ... as well as resetting ... looping around in real storage address order (global LRU page replacement and similar to clock nearly 15yrs later). I also do a mechanism for dynamically estimating task real storage requirements ... and limits the number of concurrent tasks that sum of estimated task real storage requirements that fit into currently available real storage.

After graudation I continue to do some refinement. However, in the morph of cp67 to vm370 ... there was enormous simplification and the "fair share" and the dynamic adaptive stuff is dropped. misc. past post mentioning scheduling&dispatching work
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
and various page replacement, global LRU, page thrashing control, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#clock

During the corporate Future System period i continue to do cp67 stuff and then convert a lots of stuff from cp67 to vm370 (as well as periodically ridiculing FS ... possibly not exactly career enhancing). misc. past posts mentioning FS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

some old email about moving bunch of stuff from cp67 to vm370 ... and changing my internal datacenter distribution from cp67 base to a vm370 base and "csc/vm" for internal datacenter distribution:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750430

during FS lots of 370 development was canceled, suspended, and/or cut way back (FS was going to completely replace 370 ... as 360 had completely replace earlier systems). When FS implodes, there is mad rush to get stuff back into 370 product pipelines. That contributes to releasing bunch of stuff I had been doing internally.

Now gov. action in the 60s resulted in 23Jun1969 "unbundling" announcement ... that included starting to charge for software ... however, corporation made the case that kernel software (operating system) should still be free. misc. past posts mentioning unbundling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

The "distraction" of the FS effort (and killing/suspending 370 efforts) is claimed to allowing clone processors to gain market foothold. Part of the FS implosion (& rise of clone processors) is decision to migrate to charging for kernel software. My effort is selected to be a separate batch of charged for kernel software & I get to spend bunch of time with business people about kernel software charging policies.

Part of the process includes somebody from corporate hdqtrs to review my package of software. He concludes that my scheduler doesn't have a bunch of customer setable parameters ... which is the "state-of-the-art" for all "modern" schedulers. I try to explain that stuff back in the 60s with cp67 was all about dynamic adaptive ... so that customers didn't have a whole bunch of parameters to set. He said he wouldn't sign-off on release until I have customer settable parameters. So I put in customer setable parameters ... document them, publish the code, and detailed description. However ... there is a "joke" ... the settable parameters are used in dynamic adaptive calculations ... the "degrees of freedom" for settable parameters is less than the "degrees of freedom" of the dynamic adaptive calculations (any customer setting can be offset by the dynamic calculations).

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 21 Apr, 2012
Subject: Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
Blog: MainframeZone
re:
http://lnkd.in/hg3T_d
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#94 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#99 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#4 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#12 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?

The big cloud operators ... with the cost of processing power having dropped so drastically, have pioneered efforts in their other major costs like cooling and power ... including heavy stress on things like BIP/watt (of course you need to have both a measure of processing power as well as power consumption to arrive at processing power per watt ... if you don't have measure of processing power, can't do processing efficiency per watt) ... and then making all the details "open" ... example from a year ago
http://gigaom.com/cloud/facebook-open-sources-its-servers-and-data-centers/
from 2009
http://www.greenm3.com/gdcblog/2009/3/11/google-efficient-data-centers-summit.html

for a little other perspective ... this is recent post discussing various things done for cp67 for use as commercial online service. part of the issue was drastically reducing operating costs for leaving the operation up 7x24 ... which included issue that it took quite awhile to cultivate offshift and weekend use ... however, the system needed to be left up and available for that to happen.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#83
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#101

this was in the days when systems were all leased and billing was based on the "system meter". one of the cp67 "tricks" was getting the "system meter" to coast to a stop ... when the system wasn't doing anything at the moment (but still left up and available for use). one of the culture contrasts was discussion of the mechanism of the "system meter" ... and the implementation of the MVS SRM ... the design which apparently hailed from the days before the transition from lease to purchase (aka if nothing else, the MVS SRM was guaranteed to keep the system meter running ... even if there was absolutely nothing else going on). other past posts mentioning commerical online use
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

past posts mentioning mega-datacenters:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#72 Price of CPU seconds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#68 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#79 Google Data Centers 'The Most Efficient In The World'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#56 IBM drops Power7 drain in 'Blue Waters'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#78 Entry point for a Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#27 A "portable" hard disk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#62 taking down the machine - z9 series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#51 Mainframe Hacking -- Fact or Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#14 Facebook doubles the size of its first data center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#3 When will MVS be able to use cheap dasd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#46 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#16 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#17 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#19 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#32 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#8 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#32 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#9 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#75 Check out June 2011 | TOP500 Supercomputing Sites
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#23 Cloud computing - is it a financial con trick?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#70 New IBM Redbooks residency experience in Poughkeepsie, NY
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#11 PKI "fixes" that don't fix PKI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#35 Last Word on Dennis Ritchie
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#19 Deja Cloud?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#32 Deja Cloud?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#43 Deja Cloud?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#44 Data Areas?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#53 HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#55 What is Cloud Computing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#63 Intel's 1 teraflop chip
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#75 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#86 Clouds in mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#22 1979 SHARE LSRAD Report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#122 Deja Cloud?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#11 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#20 21st Century Migrates Mainframe with Clerity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#24 21st Century Migrates Mainframe with Clerity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#78 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#80 Article on IBM's z196 Mainframe Architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#82 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#6 Cloud apps placed well in the economic cycle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#41 Are rotating register files still a bad idea?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#2 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#35 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#41 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#50 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

For He's a Jolly Good Scoundrel: On Sanford Weill

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 21 Apr, 2012
Subject: For He's a Jolly Good Scoundrel: On Sanford Weill
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/dAS6SgFK6XU

For He's a Jolly Good Scoundrel: On Sanford Weill
http://www.thenation.com/article/167472/hes-jolly-good-scoundrel-sanford-weill

other
http://news.muckety.com/2008/03/12/spitzer-falls-farther-and-faster-than-his-targets/1121

from above:
Jack Grubman, once the top telecom analyst on Wall Street who was famously humiliated after Spitzer published e-mails in 2002 suggesting he might have altered his stock picks to help his twin daughters get into an elite New York nursery school. Grubman also claimed in the e-mails that his 1999 picks were intended to help Sanford Weill win a power struggle at Citigroup. He paid a $15 million fine and was banned from working in the securities industry.

... and ...
Sanford Weill, who had built Citigroup into a global financial titan, but whose final months as chief executive officer were overshadowed by Spitzer's probe into the relationships between equity research analysts and investment bankers during the internet boom years. Under a 2002 settlement with Wall Street banks, Citigroup paid a $400 million fine, and Weill was forbidden to communicate directly with his company's equity research analysts.

... snip ...

more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup ,
http://www.innercitypress.org/citi.html ,
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877329,00.html

other posts mentioning Weill:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#13 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#46 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#71 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#97 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#2 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#32 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#51 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#66 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#36 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#41 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#67 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#70 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#16 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#28 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#84 what was the idea behind Citigroup's splitting up into two different divisions? what does this do for citigroup?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#51 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#60 70 Years of ATM Innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#61 70 Years of ATM Innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#82 Oldest Instruction Set still in daily use?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#28 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#41 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#79 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#51 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#52 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#5 PC industry is heading for more change

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Word Length

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Word Length
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2012 10:24:31 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
Wrong about the batch part. Part of the strength of a general purpose time-sharing system is that one could do either. If the batch processing was key to your business, you could develop the process on the time-sharing system, and move it into production onto its own dedicated system..if a whole system is needed.

What we didn't know how to do well, and IBM did, was huge disk farms. Jim saw one in Connecticut, the insurance capital of the world, which contained one file. This trip was part of the research for the TPS architectural spec.


branch manager managed to horribly offend a major customer ... who in retaliation ordered a clone processor. up until then, mainstream IBM held that while clone processors had made some headway in the technical and university markets ... they had yet to penetrate the "true blue" commercial market ... and this was going to be the first.

I was asked to go down and spend six months on site with the customer ... supposedly trying to talk the customer out of the clone processor order ... but it really was obfuscation & misdirection ... attempting to make it look like technical issues were involved. I knew many of the people in the branch office and at the customer ... and the customer wasn't going to back down ... in the huge football fields of "blue" boxes ... they were going to have (at least) one red box in the corner ... as part of demonstrating their displeasure.

In any case, I refused ... because it would have no impact on the results. I was told I had to do it anyway ... as part of drawing the attention away from the branch manager ... supposedly otherwise the branch manager's reputation in the corporation would be ruined (as having the first "true blue" commercial customer installing a clone processor) ... *and* the branch manager was best buds with the CEO (I needed to take this one as favor to the ceo ... otherwise I could kiss any possibility of a career in the company goodby).

misc past posts mentioning first clone processor at "true blue" commercial account (and being told I kill my career goodby):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#54 June 23, 1969: IBM "unbundles" software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#48 time spent/day on a computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#57 U.S. begins inquiry of IBM in mainframe market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#19 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#12 I actually miss working at IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#19 Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#43 What is IBM culture?

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Indirect Bit

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Indirect Bit
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2012 18:05:21 -0400
Fritz Wuehler <fritz@spamexpire-201204.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> writes:
Many 360 & 370 opcodes were microcoded and are to this very day on z/Arch. That does not imply the use of macros or traps, it's transparently supported by the processor. Interrupt handling is very expensive on MVS and I would be very surprised if FORTRAN used this for anything other than the normal SPIE processing of application programming exceptions such as zero-divide, underflow, etc. I would think the Extended Floating Point facility is nothing more than microcode assists but even so 4 flavors of hardware divide seem to be supported in the base architecture.

standard 360s up through 360/65 were microcoded ...

majority of 370s were microcoded. 370s up thru 145/148 were "vertical" microcode ... would look something like modern day "hercules" that emulates 370 on intel processors. 370 vertical microcode tended to avg. 10 native instructions per 370 emulated instruction.

i got roped into "ECPS" ... the follow-on to 135/145 was 138/148 ... it had faster technology and bigger memories ... it also had extra 6kbytes of space for "microcode". The idea was to find the 6kbytes of highest used instructions in the vm370 virtual machine kernel and recode in native microcode ... which got factor of 10 times performance improvemnt. old post with some of the analysis that went into deciding 6kbytes of vm370 kernel intructions moved to microcode.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21

155/158 & 165/168 were "horizontal" microcode machines.

transition from 155/165 to 158/168 was faster memory technology and various microcode optimization ... aka 165 avg. 2.1 machine cycles per 370 instruction to 1.6 machine cycles per 370 instruction.

in the middle of the 370 period ... corporation had the "Future System" effort that was going to completely replace 370 ... with something different ... as a result lots of 370 activity was suspended &/or killed. when "FS" imploded there was mad rush to the get products back into the 370 pipeline.

part of this was Q&D 303x in parallel with 370-xa 3081.

the 158 had "integrated channels" ... native engine had two sets of microcode ... one for channel operation and the other for 370 emulation sharing the engine. for 303x ... all the machines got external channels with the "channel director". This was actually a separate box with the 158 native engine with only the integrated channel microcode (& w/o the 370 emulation microcode). The 3031 was a 158 native engine with the 370 emulation microcode (and 2nd 158 native engine with integrated channel microcode). The 3032 was a 168-3 with new covers reconfigured to work with 303x channel director (i.e. native 158 engine with integrated channel microcode).

The 3033 started out being 168 wiring logic remapped to 20% faster chips. The new faster chips also had approx. ten times the circuits/chip that initially was going unused (3033 would be 20% faster than 168-3). There was then some optimization to make more use of the additional circuits/chip and 3033 eventually shipped approx. 1.5 times 168-3 (long with one or more channel directors ... 158 native engines with integrated channel microcode) ... 3033 getting very close to 1 370 instruction per machine cycle.

in the 303x time-frame ... the follow-on to 138/148 was 4331/4341 (again vertical microcode machines still approx 10:1 ratio of native to 370 instructions). there was various efforts to try and do something analogous for the 3033 ... however since 3033 was already close to one 370 instruction per machine cycle (in horizontal microcode) ... most such activity actually ran slower (on 3033).

in parallel with this there was work on 370-xa 3081 using warmed over "FS" technology ... described here
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm
misc. past references to future system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

I've frequently contended that the significant hardware complexity of "FS" played major role in 801/risc going to the opposite extreme.

1980, there was effort to use 801/risc "iliad" chips to converge/replace the large number of internal "CICS" (vertical) microcode engines ... 370 processors, other processors, large variety of controllers. etc. For a wide variety of reasons all those efforts floundered ... which saw some number of 801/risc engineers leaving and going to work on risc at other vendors.

part of this was to have been the 4361/4381 follow-ons to the 4331/4341. I contributed to analysis that shot the 801/risc Iliad for 4361/4381. The argument was that chips were getting big enough that it was starting to be possible to implement a significant part of 370 natively in silicon (rather than all microcode). This showed better price/performance than all microcode 370 on 801/risc. misc. past posts mentioning 801, risc, iliad, romp, rios, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Time to competency for new software language?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 22 Apr, 2012
Subject: Time to competency for new software language?
Blog: Mainframe Experts
re:
http://lnkd.in/Nfu3wc
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#74 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#84 Time to competency for new software language?

There is some amount written about John Boyd as the modern day "Sun Tzu" ... example: Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-The-Fighter-Pilot-Changed/dp/0316881465

and I sponsored John's briefings at IBM in the 80s. The first time, he just had Patterns of Conflict ... which made for a long day. The next time he had early version of Organic Design For Command And Control ... giving both briefings made for really long day.

In Jan, there was discussion in "Greater IBM": "Can a business be democratic? Tom Watson Sr. though so" ... part of my comments ... including some amount regarding Boyd:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#104
and more discussion in ibm-main mailing list
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#74 .
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#76

small piece from a (linkedin) Boyd discussion group
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#78

past posts &/or URLs from around the web referencing Boyd, OODA-loops, "To Be or To Do" ... etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

Boyd did stint as head of lightweight fighter plane at pentagon ... so had hand in f15, f16, & f18. old spinney article from us navy institute proceedings
https://web.archive.org/web/20010412225142/http://www.defense-and-society.org/FCS_Folder/comments/c199.htm

from above:
He used it to re-design the F-15, changing it from an 80,000-pound, swing-wing, sluggish behemoth, to a 40,000-pound fixed-wing, high-performance, maneuvering fighter. His crowning glory was his use of the theory to evolve the lightweight fighters that eventually became the YF-16 and YF-17 prototypes -- and then to insist that the winner be chosen in the competitive market of a free-play flyoff.

The YF-16, which won, is still the most maneuverable fighter ever designed. The production successors, the not-so-lightweight F-16 (Air Force) and the F/A-18 (the Navy-Marine Corps aircraft that evolved from the YF-17), together with the F-15, dominate the skies today. Naturally, Boyd believed they could have been much better war machines if the bureaucrats had not corrupted their thoroughbred design with so many bells and whistles. Nevertheless, more than any other single person, the Mad Major is responsible for our nation's unsurpassed air superiority, which began in the mid-1970s and continues to this day


... snip ...

(later) SECDEF blamed Boyd for this 1983 Time article and tried to have him banned from the pentagon
https://web.archive.org/web/20070320170523/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html
also
https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html

When Gray was commandant, he leveraged Boyd for make-over of the Marine Corp. Gray showed up and talked for 2hrs at the Boyd conference last fall held at Marine Corps Univ (it wasn't planned ... so it blew schedule for rest of the afternoon, but nobody complained)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_M._Gray,_Jr.

(linkedin garbles the trailing period in the above url)

first time I scheduled John at IBM, I tried to do it through employee education ... initially they agreed ... but as I supplied them with more information about his talk, they changed their mind ... and suggested the audience be restricted to senior members of competitive analysis dept (the explanation was exposing general employees to Boyd's talks would be counter productive to the training given managers in handling employees)

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Time to competency for new software language?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 23 Apr, 2012
Subject: Time to competency for new software language?
Blog: Mainframe Experts
re:
http://lnkd.in/Nfu3wc
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#74 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#84 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#23 Time to competency for new software language?

"7 programming myths -- busted!"; The tools are sharper, but software development remains rife with misconceptions on productivity, code efficiency, offshoring, and more
http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/7-programming-myths-busted-190890

from above:
It sounds logical. By off-loading coding work to developing economies, software firms can hire more programmers for less. That means they can finish their projects in less time and with smaller budgets.

But hold on! This is a classic example of the Mythical Man-Month fallacy. We know that throwing more bodies at a software project won't help it ship sooner or cost less -- quite the opposite. Going overseas only makes matters worse.


... snip ...

And paper given at 1982 SEAS on the original virtual machine implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/cp40seas1982.txt

from above:
Perhaps what is significant is not the ability to sit down and plan invention but the ability to recognize innovation when it occurs spontaneously. Such was the case with a software system called CP/40, originally planned as a measurement tool it has grown to become an equal partner with IBM's two other operating systems DOS/VSE and MVS.

... snip ...

CP40 was done on a modified 360/40 with virtual memory hardware and then morphed into CP67 when 360/67 (360/65 with virtual memory hardware standard) came along ... and then morphed into vm370 (when 370s with virtual memory). The "official" operating system for 360/67 was tss/360 ... which at peak supposedly had 1200 people working on it ... at a time when the science center had 12 people doing cp67/cms. Misc. past posts mentioning science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

recent post about billions spent by financial industry in unsuccessful attempt to convert from mainframe overnight batch window to straight-through processing on large numbers of parallel "killer micros"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#0

for other drift ... following posts just happen to be in linkedin Boyd group.

There was lots of working at the science center on performance, performance gathering, modeling, profiling ... some of it eventually evolving into "capacity planning". recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#18

goes into some detail about the corporate failed "Future System" effort ... and then mad rush to get stuff back into 370 product pipelines (claim is that lack of products for period allowed clone processors to gain market foothold) ... and one of the items was my scheduling work that I had done for cp67 as undergraduate in the 60s but dropped in the cp67->vm370 morph. misc. past FS refs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

Part of the dynamic adaptive scheduling work was automated benchmarking ... running thousands of benchmarks to validate that the dynamic adaptive code handle wide variety of workloads and configurations. The last set was 2000 validation benchmarks that took three months elapsed time to run ...the first was 1000 of carefully selected configurations and workloads. The final 1000 was chosen by an automated modeling program (written in APL) ... that looked at the dynamic adaptive algorithm, all possible configurations and workloads and all previous benchmark results ... in attempt to chose "anomalous" combinations that might present problems for the dynamic adaptive code. misc. past posts mentioning automated benchmarking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#benchmark

When I started the automated benchmarking ... I would throw in workloads that were ten times heavier than anything seen in the real world ... and the system would constantly crash. I then had to do a large number of integrity enhancements in order to eliminate all such failures (which was then included in release of my dynamic adaptive resource manager). misc. past posts mentioning dynamic adaptive resource manager
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

Note that a different version of the APL-based model was also offered on HONE system (virtual machine based systems provided online world-wide sales&marketing support). Branch office people could enter detailed customer workload and configuration information and then ask "what-if" questions about changes in workload &/or configuration. misc. past posts mentioning HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

Later in San Jose they let me play disk engineer. They were running mainframe development device stand-alone testing ... scheduled 7x24 around the clock. At one time they had tried to use MVS for on-demand, concurrent testing ... but found that in those conditions, MVS had 15min MTBF. I offered to rewrite input/output supervisor to make in bullet proof and never fail ... the resulting ability to do anytime, on-demand, concurrent testing significantly improved development productivity. I then wrote an internal-only document describing all the works and happen to make passing reference to the MVS 15min MTBF ... which brought done the wrath of the MVS group on my head. misc past posts mentioning getting to play disk engineer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Time to competency for new software language?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 23 Apr, 2012
Subject: Time to competency for new software language?
Blog: Mainframe Experts
re:
http://lnkd.in/Nfu3wc
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#74 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#84 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#23 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#24 Time to competency for new software language?

A couple recent posts about congress gets an enormous amount of money doing what they are asked to do (and seems immaterial whether they know what they are doing or not ... just that they do it). A lot of the rest is all Kabuki Theater (periodic reference in local washington area press) ... is all performance.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#17

it shows up in the Boyd/Spinney campaign against MICC (military-industrial-congressional complex, claim is that is what Eisenhower originally intended to say)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#5

but MICC is almost small change compared to FRCC (financial-regulatory-congressional complex). CBS 60mins had example last night in their episode about Lehmans ... and their shifting $50B offshore just before quarterly report and then moving it back right afterwards. Ernst&Young, SEC, and FRB all had people onsite during the period and watched it happen ... nobody stopped it, nobody reported it, and nobody has even been charged/prosecuted (comparable to Madoff in magnitude ... but the agencies appeared to be part of it; aka Madoff congressional hearings included person that unsuccessfully tried for decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff).

other recent posts mentioning MICC, FRCC &/or Kabuki Theater:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#3 We are on the brink of a historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#5 We are on the brink of a historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#8 Ruminating on Strategic Thinking II. : Social Conditions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#24 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#33 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#38 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#39 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#22 You can't do the math without the words
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#50 They're Trying to Block Military Cuts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#51 How would you succinctly desribe maneuver warfare?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#53 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#56 Update on the F35 Debate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#16 IBM cuts more than 1,000 U.S. Workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#36 McCain calls for U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#42 China's J-20 Stealth Fighter Is Already Doing A Whole Lot More Than Anyone Expected
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#53 "Scoring" The Romney Tax Plan: Trillions Of Dollars Of Deficits As Far As The Eye Can See
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#60 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#61 Why Republicans Aren't Mentioning the Real Cause of Rising Prices at the Gas Pump
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#68 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#1 The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#40 Who Increased the Debt?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#58 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#68 Glory Days of Army Acquisition Were Not So Glorious
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#71 Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#72 Sunday Book Review: Mind of War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#78 Time to Think ... and to Listen
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#88 Developing a Disruptive Mindset

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

PDF vs. Bookie

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: PDF vs. Bookie
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 23 Apr 2012 10:16:38 -0700
mitchdana@GMAIL.COM (Dana Mitchell) writes:
And another disparaging remark against IBMs 'Information Center': I'm trying to use two different levels for IBM i this morning, both of them are stuck on 'indexing'.... they then eventually fail. Information center indeed!

a couple recent posts mentioning ibm's "Information Center" in thread about "user-friendly"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#11 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#12 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#27 From "Who originated the phrase user-friendly" thread

in the early 80s, it was a bunch of vm/4341s going into branch offices for sales & marketing (frequently identified with "IC" suffix in their internal network node-name) ... augmenting the online vm/hone sales&marketing support systems ... including a couple old emails
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#email810921
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#email820826
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#email821027

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Indirect Bit

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Indirect Bit
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:51:18 -0400
MitchAlsup <MitchAlsup@aol.com> writes:
We had been granted access to the machine room where a 360/67 an 1108, and several PDP machines were "kept away from the madding crowds" for practical useful student purposes.

One night in 1973 we opend up the doors of the 360/67 and found 2 wires hanging, well marked as to what pins they should be attached (in that cabinet.) So, since it was 3:00 AM and no one was around and no jobs running, brought the machine to a quiessent point, attached the wires and ran diagnostics. The only thinigs that changesd wer that the 128-bit FP instructions now ran in microcode rather than as sowtware trap assists.

Apparently IBM wanted several tens of thosands of dollars to enable instructions already present in the machines shipped.

We disconnedted the wires and continues along out assigned duties.


early 70s saw transition from leased machines to purchase. there were all sort of things about lease charges based on use. back in the tab machine days ... paid higher lease for card reader that ran faster ... even though slow&fast reader were the same with different belts (there was scenario that running faster did require more maintenance).

for overall system ... machines had "system meter" that determined monthly lease ... "system meter" ran whenever processor &/or channel were doing something. for the cp67-based online commerical offerings there was quite a bit of work for 7x24 operations. early on wanted to have channel programs active to accept any incoming terminal characters ... but not wanting the "system meter" to run when nothing was actually happening (sort of chicken and egg ... needed to have actual use to justify leaving system up ... but systems had to be left up 7x24 in order to encourage off-shift & weekend use). other stuff was supporting operator-less and "dark room" operation.

"prepare" channel program CCW would let the channel go idle (allowing "system meter" to coast to stop if nothing else going on) ... but still be able to kick things off when characters did start coming in.

turns out that all processors and channels had to be idle for at least 400milliseconds before "system meter" would coast to stop.

some indication that MVS had a different cultural heritage and some of SRM design originated before transition from lease to purchase ... since it had a fixed timer wakeup every 400milliseconds ... which would have made sure that the "system meter" never came to a stop (even if there was otherwise absolutely nothing going on).

some past posts about 7x24 online operation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

which one came first

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: which one came first
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:50:19 -0400
Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> writes:
If you're going to count non-Unix systems, Multics had memory-mapped files back in the 60's. In fact, that was the ONLY way to access files on Multics -- the equivalents of open(), read() and write() were in a library that used memory mapping.

Multics was the system that inspired Unix, but they didn't copy this aspect, I think because the early Unix hardware didn't have sufficient virtual memory features.


tss/360 ("official" system for 360/67) was all memory mapped files ... but wasn't very smart about it ... just mapped and then lots of 4k page faults. along with other inefficiencies ... tss/360 ran a four user fortran compile & execute slower than cp67/cms ran equivalent 30 user fortran compile & execute (on identical hardware). tss/360 never did get very far and was decommitted ... although a few customers did managed to keep in alive and justify tss/370. Later in the early 80s, there was a special project for AT&T to take a stripped down tss/370 kernel (SSUP) that would have unix layer on top.

in the first half of the 70s, company did Future System effort ... which was going to replace 360/370 ... and was suppose to be all memory mapped.

i was at the science center on 4th flr (multics was on the 5th flr) and did a memory mapped file system for cms. I had learned quite a bit what "not to do" watching tss/360 ... I also figured that i could also do as well as people on the 5th flr (as well as critical of future system not really knowing what they were doing ... drawing analogy with long playing cult film down at central sq). misc. past posts mentioning 545 tech sq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

misc. past posts doing cms memory mapped filesystem ... was deployed internally, but didn't make it into product.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

I could get 3 times the thruput (of standard cms filesystem) for moderate i/o application. part of the issue was cms running in virtual machine used channel programs for i/o (including file i/o). 360/370 channel programs were "real" ... so channel programs created in virtual machine had to be "copied" into real channel programs with real addresses. Going to memory mapped filesystem allowed me to eliminate a whole layer of emulation and enabled a doing a lot of optimization (that wasn't possible with a channel program emulation paradigm).

however in the wake of both tss/360 and future system memory map issues ... there was lots of resistance to memory map paradigm (even if there was lots of internal sites running it and showing improved performance).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

which one came first

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: which one came first
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 21:49:15 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#28 which one came first

360/67 had 1mbyte segments, 256 4k pages ... and 24bit and 32bit virtual addressing modes (16 1mbyte and 4096 1mbyte)

370 just had 24bit virtual addressing ... but had 1mbyte and 64kbyte virtual segment sizes and 4kbyte and 2kbyte virtual page size options.

the original 370 virtual memory specification had a bunch of additional options ... included r/o shared segment bit in segment table entries. 370s were announced and shipped before virtual memory feature was announced ... virtual memory later had to be retrofitted. most machines implemented the full 370 virtual memory specification ... and in the cp67/cms to vm370/cms transition, cms was reorganized to make use of the 64kbyte "read-only" (protected) shared segments (16 4kbyte shared pages). problem arose retrofitting the full 370 virtual memory specification to 370/165 ... and in order to get back six months in schedule ... it was decided to drop several virtual memory features ... included r/o shared segment protection (370 models that had already implemented the full set of features had to go back and remove the dropped features).

vm370/cms was then stuck with how to have protected shared segments when the hardware support had been dropped.

360 (and 370) had 2k "storage-protect" keys ... left over from 360 real-storage protection ... 4bit key for every 2kbyte of storage and PSW field ... if PSW field matched the storage key ... store operations were allowed (psw key of zero turned off store protect).

vm370/cms retreated to real hack to emulate segment protect ... cms virtual machine with any shared "segments" always had its psw key set to "15" and all non-shared storage set to "15" ... and all 2k areas in "shared segment" were set to zero (preventing all stores in shared pages).

w/o memory-mapped filesystem ... cp67 & vm370 had a real hack ... special area in paging system ... appropriate privileges could execute "savesys" command that wrote image of virtual pages to the special area. The machine "IPL" command was allowed to be a name of the special area (as alternative to device address) ... which would map virtual memory to the saved named area. "named systems" have special configuration specifying the pages saved/restored ... and the segments designated as "shared" (& protected)

i could elimiante all that in cp67 with memory-mapped filesystem ... and then moved the support to vm370 base. One of the big problems I constantly fought was os/360 "relocatable address constants". CMS borrowed compilers and applications from os/360 ... as well as many conventions. os/360 relocatable address constants were application on disk ... the application is fully read into (emulated real) storage ... and all relocatable address constants were swizzled to correspond with the address where application was loaded.

memory-mapped filesystem should allow executiable applications mapped to any available addres w/o having to thread way through lots of the image ... swizzling all the address constants (making them absolute). Swizzled "absolute" addresses (after loading) also results in problems with sharing exact same image in different virtual address spaces.

tss/360 addressed the design by having the address fields in application images as relative to some virtual address space specific field. For me, I was constantly battling the os/360 relocatable address constant convention used by cms ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#adcon

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Before Disruption...Thinking

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 23 Apr, 2012
Subject: Before Disruption...Thinking
Blog: zen
Before Disruption...Thinking
http://zenpundit.com/?p=8176

Boyd discussion on the disruptive thinkers thread:
http://lnkd.in/PPe3NQ

including various references that MBAs are part of the problem, another recommendation for MBA business style: Sayonara Sony: How Industrial, MBA-Style Leadership Killed a Once Great Company
http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2012/04/20/sayonara-sony-how-industrial-mba-style-leadership-killed-once-great-company/

old favorite on systematic improvement (gone 404 but lives on at wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20060831110450/http://www.software.org/quagmire/

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Rome speaks to us. Their example can inspire us to avoid their fate

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 23 Apr, 2012
Subject: Rome speaks to us. Their example can inspire us to avoid their fate.
Blog: Fabius Maximus
Rome speaks to us. Their example can inspire us to avoid their fate.
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/37764/

The other scenario is that it is all Kabuki Theater (as some washington news periodically comment) ... the objective is to plunder as much as possible and then cover it up. Greenspan was there in the late 90s when the hedge funds imploded and had to be bailed out (obfuscation was that the models the hedge funds were using, couldnâ't predict the implosion), and then again when the CDO market imploded (trying to use the same explanation). He was there in the events leading up to repeal of Glass-Steagall; first giving the exemption for the merger of Travelers and Citi, pending getting the law change. A lot of the political conflict is periodically referred to as also being part of the obfuscation and Kabuki Theater.

Boyd had some congressional cover when he & Spinney took on MIC ('83 Time article gone behind paywall but lives free at wayback machine).
https://web.archive.org/web/20070320170523/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html
also
https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html

Boyd would tell story that SECDEF blamed him for the article and tried to have him assigned to Alaska and banned from Pentagon. But going into the 90s, it appeared that they all went over to the dark side ... which could account for Spinney's strident references about MICC (including "congress" as part of the problem). However, the FRCC (financial regulatory congressional complex) is much larger than the MICC.

estimated $27T in (triple-A rated toxic) CDOs done during the bubble
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

there is CBO report that last decade there was $6T cut in tax revenues along with $6T increase in spending (compared to baseline, baseline had surpluses retiring all Federal debt by 2010) ... for a $12T budget gap (pretty much kicked off after congress allows the fiscal responsibility act to expire in 2002). $2T (of the $6T increase) was for MICC, $1T for the wars and $1T for ????
http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?documentid=4623

note cdi.org has moved to
http://www.pogo.org/straus/
... missing $1T is now
http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/defense-budget/2010/what-did-the-rumsfeld-gates-pentagon-do-with-1-trillion.html

More on Greenspan and letting large amounts just walk away
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=home&sid=aYJZOB_gZi0I

for more recent on the "Fall of Romam Empire"
https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Roman-Empire-Barbarians-ebook/dp/B000SEI0JQ

misc recent posts mentioning Kabuki Theater, Greenspan, Lehman:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#48 Fed's image tarnished by newly released documents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#70 Regulatory Agency logo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#24 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#33 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#67 How Economists Contributed to the Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#95 Bank of America Fined $1 Billion for Mortgage Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#99 New theory of moral behavior may explain recent ethical lapses in banking industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#13 Study links ultrafast machine trading with risk of crash
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#22 You can't do the math without the words
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#31 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#39 Greek knife to Wall Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#44 New Citigroup Looks Too Much Like the Old One
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#5 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#16 IBM cuts more than 1,000 U.S. Workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#36 McCain calls for U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#39 Fannie and Freddie must go - here's how
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#45 Banks Repaid Fed Bailout With Other Fed Money: Government Report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#61 Why Republicans Aren't Mentioning the Real Cause of Rising Prices at the Gas Pump
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#69 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#71 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#1 The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#57 speculation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#58 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#88 Developing a Disruptive Mindset
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#15 Born Fighting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#17 Let the IRS Do Your Taxes, Really
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#25 Time to competency for new software language?

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Back to the future: convict labor returns to America

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 23 Apr, 2012
Subject: Back to the future: convict labor returns to America
Blog: Fabius Maximus
Back to the future: convict labor returns to America
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/37817/

Why Nations Fail - The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8

has original English Jamestown effort attempted to emulate Spanish model, enslave the local natives and live off their efforts .. but natives around Jamestown didn't have the numbers and/or organization and the colony almost starved the first two years. They then moved on to enslaved British as substitute.
Convicts had to perform "compulsory work," essentially just another name for forced labor, and the guards intended to make money out of it. Initially the convicts had no pay. They were given only food in return for the labor they performed. The guards kept what they produced. But this system, like the ones with which the Virginia Company experimented in Jamestown, did not work very well, because convicts did not have the incentives to work hard or do good work. (pg 277)

... aka just reverything to English charters for Maryland, Virginia, and Carolina

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The case against Lehman Brothers

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 23 Apr, 2012
Subject: The case against Lehman Brothers
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/eLzJkbdPao8

The case against Lehman Brothers
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57417397/the-case-again-lehman-brothers/

There was some reference that Ernst&Young, SEC, and FRB had people on site watching it all happen and didn't both to do anything. This old item claims "escaped scrutiny" ... instead of just sat and watched
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&refer=home&sid=aYJZOB_gZi0I

recent posts mentioning "escaped scrutiny":
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#48 Fed's image tarnished by newly released documents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#67 How Economists Contributed to the Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#31 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#44 New Citigroup Looks Too Much Like the Old One
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#5 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#57 speculation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#31 Rome speaks to us. Their example can inspire us to avoid their fate

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

University of Florida Eliminates Computer Science Department, Increases Athletic Budgets

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 23 Apr, 2012
Subject: University of Florida Eliminates Computer Science Department, Increases Athletic Budgets
Blog: Facebook
University of Florida Eliminates Computer Science Department, Increases Athletic Budgets
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2012/04/22/university-of-florida-eliminates-computer-science-department-increases-athletic-budgets-hmm/

maybe it goes along with:
http://ideas.time.com/2012/04/23/are-we-sliding-backwards-on-teaching-evolution/#ixzz1ssRQwBYR

and
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/37817/
also
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#32

... dumb everybody down and turn into free labor.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Inequality and Investment Bubbles: A Clearer Link Is Established

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 24 Apr, 2012
Subject: Inequality and Investment Bubbles: A Clearer Link Is Established
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/eNwUixLEyqV

Inequality and Investment Bubbles: A Clearer Link Is Established
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120419153917.htm

goes along with:
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2011/10/journal-why-the-us-middle-class-is-broken.html
and
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/37817/
and post in above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#32 Back to the future: convict labor returns to America
and follow-up
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/37841/

and somewhat along the "convict labor" theme:

New Congressional Bill Makes DMCA Look Tame
http://slashdot.org/story/06/04/24/0358210/new-congressional-bill-makes-dmca-look-tame?sbsrc=thisday

from above:
Among the provisions is lowering the standards for 'willful copyright violation' and increasing the corresponding prison term to 10 years.

... snip ...

references:
http://news.cnet.com/Congress-readies-new-digital-copyright-bill/2100-1028_3-6064016.html?tag=nefd.top
and
http://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/hr2391

recent posts mentioning DMCA &/or bubbles:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#17 What's your favorite quote on "accountability"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#21 Zombie Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#30 Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#32 Wall Street Bonuses May Reach Lowest Level in 3 Years
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#47 Avoiding a lost decade
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#72 Chris Dodd's SOPA crusading
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#79 Bain: A consulting firm too hot to handle? (Fortune, 1987)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#82 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#88 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#16 Interview of Mr. John Reed regarding banking fixing the game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#19 "Buffett Tax" and truth in numbers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#43 Where are all the old tech workers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#47 Where are all the old tech workers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#54 The New Age Bounty Hunger -- Showdown at the SEC Corral
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#56 What's the most interesting thing you do in your non-work life?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#65 Why Wall Street Should Stop Whining
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#84 A Conversation with Peter Thiel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#95 Bank of America Fined $1 Billion for Mortgage Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#2 Occupy the SEC (Securities & Exchange Commission)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#5 Too big not to fail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#19 Occupy the SEC Pitches An Extreme Makeover of Wall Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#30 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#31 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#32 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#37 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#45 Fannie, Freddie Charge Taxpayers For Legal Bills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#46 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#52 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#54 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#62 Why Is Finance So Big?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#63 The Economist's Take on Financial Innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#2 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#5 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#11 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#13 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#16 IBM cuts more than 1,000 U.S. Workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#36 McCain calls for U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#39 Fannie and Freddie must go - here's how
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#48 IBM cuts more than 1,000 U.S. workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#52 Goldman Exec Quits In A Scathing NYT Op-Ed About How The Firm Abuses Its Clients
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#61 Why Republicans Aren't Mentioning the Real Cause of Rising Prices at the Gas Pump
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#68 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#71 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#1 The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#20 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#23 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#40 Who Increased the Debt?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#42 Who Increased the Debt?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#86 CISPA legislation seen by many as SOPA 2.0
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#31 Rome speaks to us. Their example can inspire us to avoid their fate

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Time to competency for new software language?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 24 Apr, 2012
Subject: Time to competency for new software language?
Blog: Mainframe Experts
re:
http://lnkd.in/Nfu3wc
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#74 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#84 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#23 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#24 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#25 Time to competency for new software language?

A related programming language issue is parallelization; at least since multi-core ... a "holy grail" has been a programming language that supports automagic parallelization. The issue is that as processor chips become increasingly multi-core ... there is an increasing need to write parallelized applications.

The current problem is most current programming language paradigms are sequential, one-at-a-time instruction ... and very few people using current programming languages are able to effectively produce parallelized implementations (aka in effect, manually managing the parallelized operation using various system constructs within a purely sequentially oriented programming language paradigm).

A possible solution is programming language at a much higher level of abstraction ... where the "compiler" is given great deal of freedom in translating to highly parallel operation (instead of "plodding" step-by-step operation).

I recently referenced this in mainframe news item discussion
http://lnkd.in/FzUcpC

about falling hardware revenue ... and the financial industry has been a mainstay of the mainframe business ... the financial industry had spent billions in the 90s on failed attempts to redo overnight batch window mainframe applications for straight-through processing on large numbers of parallel "killer micros". references this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#0

past posts mentioning parallel programming "holy grail":
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#15 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#34 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#19 Distributed Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#44 Are multicore processors driving application developers to explore multithreaded programming options?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#63 Intel: an expensive many-core future is ahead of us
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#72 Transactional Memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#26 What is the biggest IT myth of all time?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#9 Age
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#8 No command, and control
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#21 Eurofighter v F16
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#35 Having left IBM, seem to be reminded that IBM is not the same IBM I had joined
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#122 Deja Cloud?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#57 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#15 Why do people say "the soda loop is often depicted as a simple loop"?

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Hard Disk Drive Construction

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hard Disk Drive Construction
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:27:50 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
Not reallly being symmetric and not having scenarios where one CPU has to stop doing real work because another CPU has hogged a resource it needs. There are more. Alan Wilson published a Datamation article about our SMP implementation (can't recall the issue and my copy is packed somewhere).. probably around 1983. there were also course materials which we prepared which would have talked about this. I wonder if any of that stuff ended up on-line somewhere.

There was also an unpublished paper about their experiences when they SMPed Unix, IIRC, System V but I don't think that is anywhere online.


Charlie invented compare-and-swap instruction (name chosen because "CAS" are Charlie's initials) when he was doing fine-grain cp67 multiprocessor (360/67) locking at the science center. 360/67 functional spec
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/functional_characteristics/GA27-2719-2_360-67_funcChar.pdf

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

we then attempted to get the instruction included in 370 ... but it was initially rebuffed with comment that the POK favorite son operating system people claimed that test-and-set was sufficient (aka single global kernel lock ... aka lots of systems had symmetrical multiprocessor application operation but used a single global "spin-lock" at entry to kernel)

However, there was a comment/challenge about coming up with non-multiprocessor specific uses for compare-and-swap ... thus were born the application multi-threaded/multiprogramming examples ... useful for enabled applications whether or not they are running on single processor or on multiprocessor ... which got compare-and-swap justified for 370 and examples continue to appear in current day pinciples of operations
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/A.6?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320

misc. past posts mentioning multiprocessor and/or compare-and-swap instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

UK firms need to 'fess up to security boobs

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 24 Apr, 2012
Subject: UK firms need to 'fess up to security boobs
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/HQw9qcFSRAe

UK firms need to 'fess up to security boobs
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/24/david_willetts_cyber_security_infosec/

from above:
Willetts compared UK firms' current treatment of online security problems with the manner in which banks treated cases of fraud a decade ago, when a policy of secrecy turned out to be counterproductive.

... snip ...

we were tangentially involved in the cal. state data breach notification legislation ... having been brought in to help wordsmith the electronic signature legislation. numerous of the members were heavily into privacy issues and had done indepth public surveys. number one issue was identify theft, namely the kind involving account fraud (fraudulent financial transaction) as result of some data breach. There was little or nothing being done ... and they appeared to hope that the publicity from the notification would prompt corrective action (as well as alert the public to take actions).

An issue was that normally security measures are taken to protect the entities interests ... in this case those suffering breaches didn't have anything directly at risk ... since the fraudulent transactions were occurring against individual's accounts.

misc. recent posts mentioning breaches:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#0 Revolution Through Banking?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#35 Israel vows to hit back after credit cards hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#65 Reject gmail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#91 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#3 Why Threat Modelling fails in practice
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#70 Four Sources of Trust, Crypto Not Scaling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#71 Password shortcomings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#3 zSeries Manpower Sizing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#6 The 15 Worst Data Security Breaches of the 21st Century
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#11 The 15 Worst Data Security Breaches of the 21st Century
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#51 How would you succinctly desribe maneuver warfare?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#8 Time to pull the PIN!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#11 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#49 Do you know where all your sensitive data is located?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#63 Fans of Threat Modelling reach for their guns ... but can they afford the bullets?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#8 America needs a 2-page tax code
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#17 Data theft: Hacktivists 'steal more than criminals'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#29 Visa, MasterCard warn of 'massive' security breach
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#32 Visa, MasterCard warn of 'massive' security breach
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#33 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#37 The $30 billion Social Security hack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#79 What's the takeaway on Audit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#82 Fighting Cyber Crime with Transparency

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

SIE - CompArch

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 24 Apr, 2012
Subject: SIE - CompArch
Blog: IBM Historic Computing
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#62 SIE - CompArch

for the fun of it ... vm/370 running in 370-xa mode:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#email860122
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#email860123
in this post (has other old emails and covers several additional subjects)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#87

and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#email870508
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#30

after FS imploded, head of POK convinced corporate to kill vm370 product, shutdown the development group and move all the people to POK ... or otherwise MVS/XA wouldn't be able to meet its ship schedule. They were going to not tell the people until just before they had to move ... minimize the number of people that might escape. However, the information leaked early ... resulting in witch hunt for the source of the leak. There was also a joke that head of POK was one of the biggest contributors to VAX/VMS ... for the number of people escaping to work at DEC. Endicott eventually was able to salvage the vm370 product mission but had to reconstitute a development group from scratch ... some amount on vmshare archives about questionable vm370 code quality during that period:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

Part of the effort in POK was a virtual machine *only* tool (vmtool) supporting MVS/XA development (and SIE microcode) ... but never intended for customer availability. Gradually they realized they would need to deliver vmtools to customers as aid in MVS to MVS/XA conversion ... but still never intended for the type of use seen by vm370.

In the mean time, somebody in Rochester got vm370 running in 370-xa mode and there became start of political infighting ... since vm370 had much better features, function, and performance ... vis-a-vis vmtool at the time ... but POK was increasingly committed to releasing their product ... eventually getting the Rochester port shot down.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

STSC Story

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 24 Apr, 2012
Subject: STSC Story
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/116060095457534579153/posts/BP74VpXbiMt

Prior to unbundling, a lot of branch office people got training as part of team at customer accounts. After 23Jun69 unbundling there was no way to continue that approach. An attempt to provide a substitute, "HONE" was createdm several cp67 virtual machine datacenters to provide branch people with operating system "hands-on" practice (in virtual machines). The cambridge science center also ported apl\360 to cp67/cms for cms\apl (storage management had to be redone for large demand page virtual memory workspaces) ... and some number of applications were developed in APL and deployed on HONE for sales&marketing support. Eventually these (APL) applications came to dominate all HONE activity (and HONE clones started sprouting up all over the world). Part of cms\apl was API for cms system services ... the combination of large virtual memory workspaces and system services API allowed large class of (new to APL) "real-world" application. Palo Alto science center then did apl\cms for vm370/cms as well as 370/145 APL microcode assist (and US HONE datacenters were consolidate across the back parking lot from PASC).

PASC was on page mill. US HONE datacenters were consolidated at 1501 Cal. (across the back parking lot) in the mid-70s (it has a different occupant now). For trivia ... a more recent bldg. was next door at 1601 Cal. ... FACEBOOK had moved in there ... until they recently moved to the old SUN campus. 1501 had large number of vm370 multiprocessor 370/168 configured in "single system image" (load balancing and fall-over) ... possibly largest in the world at the time. In the early 80s, US HONE was replicated in Dallas ... with single-system image extended to cover the two datacenters.

misc. past posts mentioning HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

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

Summer of 1969, I was con'ed into "joining" Boeing ... setting up cp67/cms system in corporate hdqtrs at boeing field ... was a 360/30 (used for corporate payroll) machine room that had to be built out to hold 360/67 ... was the beginning/start of BCS ... even tho BCS wasn't official until the following year (was among 1st half dozen BCS employees). I went to the science center in 1970.

At the science center ... one of my hobbies was doing highly modified production operating systems for internal datacenters ... HONE was one of my long-time "customers" starting with cp67 and then vm370.

Note the way cambridge science center did (cp67/cms) CMS\APL system services API, drew a lot of criticism from the APL community ... which eventually responded with "shared variables" as an API paradigm ... and APL/SV. The (vm370/cms) apl\cms and apl/sv eventually merged with vs/apl.

One of the enhancements I had done (first cp67/cms and then vm370/cms) was a memory mapped filesystem ... which was significantly more efficient than the emulated channel program based implementation (didn't get released for customers but saw extensive internal use). One of the early adopters to leverage the memory mapped filesystem was HONE ... using it for "shared" image of the APL executable across multiple CMS virtual address spaces.

past posts mentioning memory-mapped filesystem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Hi, Does any one knows the true origin of the usage of the word bug in computers to design a fault?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 24 Apr, 2012
Subject: Hi, Does any one knows the true origin of the usage of the word bug in computers to design a fault?
Blog: Old Geek
re:
http://lnkd.in/v2fj-A

from this "Old Geek" discussion:
http://lnkd.in/5iXpFi

before there was ms/dos there was seattle computer,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS
before seattle computer there was cp/m,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Computer_Products
before there was cp/m there was cp67/cms
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M

kildall worked on cp67/cms at npg (gone 404, but lives on at the wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20071011100440/http://www.khet.net/gmc/docs/museum/en_cpmName.html

npg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Postgraduate_School

cp67/cms
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/CMS

note that the above mentions CTSS is common ancestor to a number of things.

above mentions first release may 1968, however three people came out from cambridge science center the last week of jan 1968 and installed cp67/cms at the univ. ... misc. past posts mentioning science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

I sponsored Boyd's briefings at IBM. One of his biographies mentioned he served a stint in command.of."spook base" .... which was a $2.5B "windfall" for IBM (over $17B today). spook base url ... gone 404 but lives on at wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030212092342/http://home.att.net/~c.jeppeson/igloo_white.html

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Oh hum, it's the 60s and 70's all over again

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 24 Apr, 2012
Subject: Oh hum, it's the 60s and 70's all over again.
Blog: Google+
re:
http://lnkd.in/RjryJt

This MainframeZone discussion: Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
http://lnkd.in/hg3T_d

discusses some similarities and differences

part of the discussion in the mainframezone thread was about leasing and the "system meter" ... in the 60s, mainframes were leased and charges were based on "system meter" which ran whenever the cpu and/or channels were doing something.

part of the effort was leaving the systems up 7x24 for online access but significantly reducing costs ... especially offshift and weekends when things were still not heavily used (something chicken&egg ... needed the system up 7x24 to encourage offshift/weekend use ... but needed offshift/weekend use to justify leaving systems up 7x24). Part was eliminating need for offshift operator ... "dark room" operations. Another part was special channel program that would allow the "system meter" to coast to stop when there was no activity ... but still ready to take-off as soon as any characters started arriving.

univ. library got an onr grant to do online catalog ... part of the money went for a 2321 "data cell". effort also got selected as betatest site for the original cics product. ... and i got tasked to support/debug the implementation (one "bug" was library was using different BDAM options than had been used at customer where cics was originally developed). some past posts mentioning cics &/or bdam
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#cics

gml was invented at the science center in 1969 (letters selected because they are the first letter of last name of the inventors ... then needed to invent words for the letters)
https://web.archive.org/web/20231001185033/http://www.sgmlsource.com/history/roots.htm

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

a decade later, gml morphs into iso international standard sgml. a decade after that sgml morphs into html at cern
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/

first web server outside europe is the vm370/cms at slac
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml

descended of the cp67/cms system from the science center where it all started.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Time to competency for new software language?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 24 Apr, 2012
Subject: Time to competency for new software language?
Blog: Mainframe Experts
re:
http://lnkd.in/Nfu3wc
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#74 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#84 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#23 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#24 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#25 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#36 Time to competency for new software language?

One relatively widely used construct for implementing parallel operation is the compare-and-swap instruction originated on mainframe but now found on most multiprocessor platforms.

Charlie had invened compare-and-swap (CAS are his initials) while working on fine-grain cp67 multiprocessing locking at the science center. The initial attempt to get compare-and-swap included as part of 370 was rebuffed with comment that the POK favorite son operating system people felt that test-and-set was more than sufficient. Direction was that if compare-and-swap were to be included as part of 370, uses other than straight multiprocessor operation had to be shown. This led to the multi-threaded/multi-programming examples (that were included in principles of operation and can still be found there to this day) for applications like high-throughput DBMS implementations (where it can be used to manage multiprogrammed DBMS when running on both single processor and multiple processors). misc. past posts mentioning smp and/or compare-and-swap
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

We were doing ha/cmp ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

and this reference to jan1992 meeting in Ellison's conference room
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

some old ha/cmp regarding cluster scale-up ... for both numerical intensive with national labs & other institutions as well as commercial dbms
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

the last email was end of jan1992 ... possibly only hrs before the cluster scale-up part is transferred and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors. a couple weeks later it is announced as supercomputer for numerical intensive only:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1

folklore/rumor is that then oracle reverse engineered some ha/cmp pieces and used it for deployment on other platforms.

disclamer: i was at sjr in late 70s and early 80s when original sql/relational implementation .... system/r ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

there was tech transfer from sjr to endicott for sql/ds. story is that it leaked out under corporate radar because everything was focused on doing EAGLE. When EAGLE imploded, there was request about how fast would it take to do port of system/r to MVS (for what would become DB2). However, one of the people mentioned in the Ellison conference room meeting claims to have handled the tech transfer of SQL/DS from Endicott back to STL for what would become DB2.

For other trivia ... two of the other people in the Ellison conference room meeting, later left and go to work for a small client/server startup responsible for something called commerce server. By that time we had also left (in part over transfer of cluster scale-up) and we were brought in as consultants because they wanted to do payment transactions on the server ... the startup had also invented something called "SSL" they wanted to use ... the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce".

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Time to Think ... and to Listen

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 25 Apr, 2012
Subject: Time to Think ... and to Listen
Blog: Boyd Strategy
re:
http://lnkd.in/PPe3NQ
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#78 Time to Think ... and to Listen
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#104 Time to Think ... and to Listen
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#3 Time to Think ... and to Listen

also "Before Disruption ... Thinking"
http://zenpundit.com/?p=8176

Supposedly holy grail for vc people investing in silicon valley startups was somebody that had both a technical degree and an MBA ... and did a 300pg business plan. however, supposedly a common characteristic of startups that had survived the first couple years was that they had completely changed their business plan at least once during the period (agile and adaptable). Basically on well traveled paths, the combination of technical degree and an MBA teaches what not to do ... but going into the new & unknown, they may be of little use (and the MBA may be counter-productive, an analogy is commanders that have been super successful in past campaigns, may be the least able to adapt to changing conditions).

misc. past posts mentioning silicon valley startups
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#64 Western Union history--data communications passed it by
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#39 Agile Workforce
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#84 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#70 Compressing the OODA-Loop - Removing the D (and maybe even an O)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#82 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#0 I actually miss working at IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#90 PDCA vs. OODA
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#45 You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#20 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?

Another common characteristic (startups), if new things that are being tried, there is a high percentage of failures (a characteristic of somebody that has never tried something new, is somebody that has never had a failure). On the other hand, entities part of MICC and/or doing federal contracts ... a common characteristic is the refrain to never leave money on the table ... and knowingly continue down a path of failure until the current contract is run out (possibly only consider adapting with the follow-on contract ... aka the pervasive Success of Failure culture).

misc. past posts mentioning Success of Failure culture:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#25 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#41 U.S. house decommissions its last mainframe, saves $730,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#19 STEM crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#26 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#38 F.B.I. Faces New Setback in Computer Overhaul
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#18 taking down the machine - z9 series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#78 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#5 Off-topic? When governments ask computers for an answer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#69 No command, and control
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#0 America's Defense Meltdown
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#45 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#32 Congratulations, where was my invite?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#34 Congratulations, where was my invite?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#72 77,000 federal workers paid more than governors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#36 Having left IBM, seem to be reminded that IBM is not the same IBM I had joined
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#79 Innovation and iconoclasm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#33 China Builds Fleet of Small Warships While U.S. Drifts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#41 Rafael Team with Raytheon to Offer Iron Dome in the U.S
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#48 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#0 Justifying application of Boyd to a project manager
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#8 The True Cost of 9/11 -- Includes 18 Veteran Suicides a Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#17 Washington's Cult of Continuous Failure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#25 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#30 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#34 Scotland, was Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#39 Beyond Patriot? The Multinational MEADS Air Defense Program
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#7 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#66 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#34 21st Century Management approach?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#63 21st Century Management approach?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#142 We are on the brink of a historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#145 What's Wrong With the US Defense R&D Budget?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#14 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#15 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#39 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#42 Strategy subsumes culture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#76 IBM Doing Some Restructuring?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#80 U.S. Cybersecurity Debate Risks Leaving Critical Infrastructure in the Dark
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#86 Spontaneous conduction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#36 McCain calls for U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#42 China's J-20 Stealth Fighter Is Already Doing A Whole Lot More Than Anyone Expected
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#44 Faster, Better, Cheaper: Why Not Pick All Three?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#57 Study Confirms The Government Produces The Buggiest Software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#60 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#20 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Hard Disk Drive Construction

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hard Disk Drive Construction
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:39:38 -0400
cb@mer.df.lth.se (Christian Brunschen) writes:
The one I have starts like this:

An SMP Implementation - A Retrospective

James M. Flemming
Christopher A. Beute
October 31, 1991
The following are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation: DEC, VAX, and UNIBUS


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#37 Hard Disk Drive Construction

for other folklore ... announcement for (first) symmetric multiprocessing for vms (release 5)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#46
included in these old emails:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email880324
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email880329

above also includes somebody's comment that VMS was still not kernel "threaded" as of 1994.

part of the above email discussion about symmetric multiprocessing was that it was needed for large DBMS scale-up competition. also some mention that ultrix symmetric multiprocessing didn't come until two years later.

past posts mentioning compare-and-swap and/or smp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Cartons of Punch Cards

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Cartons of Punch Cards
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:58:03 -0400
"Joe Morris" <j.c.morris@verizon.net> writes:
At my PPOE we had a 3031 that for a short time after delivery had a no-cost extra feature: "Branch Maybe," aka an intermittent failure of one of the condition code latches. The diagnostics did eventually find this one, probably (I don't remember) via margin checking.

recent disucssion of 303x machines in comp.arch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#22 Indirect Bit

303x was Q&D effort to get stuff back into 370 product pipeline (after Future System imploded) ... in parallel with 370-xa and 3081 ... which was going to take much longer.

the 370/158 was horizontal microcode engine shared between running the 158 integrated channel microcode and the 370 emulation microcode.

for 303x machines, they took the 370/158 microcode engine with just the integrated channel microcode (and no 370 microcode) to create the 303x "channel director".

a 3031 was pair of 370/158 engines ... one was a 370/158 engines running just the 370 emulation microcode and a second was the 303x channel director (dedicated to running the 370/158 integrated channel microcode).

misc. past posts mentioning future system effort (was going to completely replace 360/370, during the FS activity 370 efforts were being suspended and/or killed ... which is created with allowing the 370 clone processors to get market foothold).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

even tho 370-xa & 3081 took much longer to get out (being done in parallel with 303x effort) ... it was a lot of warmed over future system stuff ... some discussion here:
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm

this has some old RAIN benchmarks for 158, 3031 & 4341 ... showing 3031 running (370) faster than 158 ... aka dedicated microcode engine ... instead of shared between 370 emulation and integrated channel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#0 Is a VAX a mainframe?

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Cartons of Punch Cards

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Cartons of Punch Cards
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:24:31 -0400
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
The big driver for technology has been "entertainment" (for some values of "entertainment"). P@rn was a big driver for the internet, and at one point was the biggest user. I think the most popular app for the iPad is "angry birds." It wouldn't be my preferred direction, but mostly I'm happy to see the technology developed so the stuff I favor can get dragged along and we can run TOPS-10 and VM/370 on our laptops.

i've mentioned long ago & far away we were brought as consultants into small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server; they also had invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted to use; the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce". recent reference in this (linkedin) "MainFrame Experts" discussion regarding interconnection between parallel DBMS, electronic commerce and supercomputers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#43 Time to competency for new software language?

over time we would visit some of the big electronic commerce outsourcers/hosted ... they hosted the websites and provided the electronic commerce services. One very large outsource pointed out that their top ten websites were all P@rn ... and all ten websites had much more hits per month than the #1 website in the public lists of largest number hits per month (these guys were in it for the business not for webby publicity ... which they didn't need).

the other point was that the game&software e-commerce websites had better than ten times the fraud rates for P@rn (some snide comments that P@rn customers are enormously more ethical than gaming&software customers).

for other internet lore ... tcp/ip is the technology basis for the modern internet, nsfnet backbone was the operation basis for the modern internet and CIX was the business basis for the modern internet. misc. past posts mentioning internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internet

and past posts mentioning NSFNET
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

we had been working with various of the entities leading up to the NSFNET backbone. when the NSFNET backbone RFP was released, internal politics prevented us from bidding. the NSF director attempted to help by writing a letter to the corporation (copying the CEO ... little things like what we already had running was at least five years ahead of all the RFP responses) ... but that just made the internal politics worse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

this old email reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email870109

is truncated ... but was a forwarded collection of large number of internal emails from the communication group involving huge amount of misinformation and FUD regarding potential of being able to use SNA/VTAM for the NSFNET backbone ... in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#21 SNA/VTAM for NSFNET

this was in period when the communication group was spreading misinformation about needing to also convert the internal network to SNA/VTAM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#email870302
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#email870306
more discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#4 Is email dead? What do you think?

but obviously if the internal network was to be converted to something, it would have been much more efficient and cost/effective to have converted the internal network to tcp/ip.

misc. past posts mentioning internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Explination of S0C4 reason code 4 and related data areas

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Explination of S0C4 reason code 4 and related data areas
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 26 Apr 2012 07:51:36 -0700
shmuel+ibm-main@PATRIOT.NET (Shmuel Metz , Seymour J.) writes:
This is a case where I prefer the Burroughs notation; they called the equivalent flag the presence bit, which is more neutral.

page transfers/io is done with channel programs which have real addresses.

virtual memory has segment and page tables that map specific virtual memory pages to real pages. when a virtual page is selected for replacement, the corresponding page table entry invalid bit is set, the contents of the real page is written out, the replacing virtual page is read into the real page location, and then the corresponding page table entry invalid bit (for the replacing virtual page) is trned off.

this is copy of presentation on cp/40 given at 1982 SEAS meeting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/cp40seas1982.txt

where they modified standard 360/40 to support virtual memory. In the 360/40, there were 64 4kbyte real pages. The added hardware gave each 4k real page had an virtual address space identifier (somewhat analogous to storage keys) plus a virtual page number. Running a virtual machine involved loading a virtual address space identifier into control register. In virtual address mode ... all real pages would be interrogated for matching virtual address space identifier plus matching virtual page number.

cp/40 morphed into cp/67 when standard 360/67 with virtual memory hardware becamse available ... which looked much more like 370 virtual memory segment and page tables ... that continue through the various generations.

I've claimed that the 801/risc effort was at least partially in reaction to the enormous complexity of the (failed) future system effort (which was going to completely replace 360/370 ... but imploded before even being announced) ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

... where 801/risc was going to the opposite extreme (to FS) by eliminating a lot of hardware complexity and simplifying the hardware. One of the things in 801/risc were "inverted pagetables" ... which are effectively much more like the 360/40 virtual memory implementation. 801/risc romp chip instead of having a virtual address space identifier had a 12bit virtual segment identifier (aka "STE" associative ... rather than the 360/370 "STO" associative). romp had 32bit virtual addressing with 16 256mbyte segments. When going to run something ... the segment identifiers were loaded into the 16 segment registers.

Running in virtual address space mode would peal off the top 4bits of virtual address space and index the corresponding segment register, pull out the segment identifier ... and then use the virtual segment identifier plus segment virtual page number to look for the associated real page number.

In 801/ROMP, rather than turning off the invalid bit ... to indicate virtual page is available ... the corresponding segment-id plus segment-virtual-page-number is loaded (for corresponding real page).

misc. past posts mentioning 801, risc, romp, rios, power, power/pc, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Cartons of Punch Cards

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Cartons of Punch Cards
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:19:38 -0400
David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b@dd-b.net> writes:
I remember writing a program to make striped decks of cards. You put blank cards of different colors in the reader and punch, and ran the program (with a control card first in the reader), and it then stacked you a deck in the common hopper (still blank; then you could use that as the blank cards for a new object deck or a source copy or something you wanted to really stand out).

I had early undergraduate job doing part of univ. registration. lots of tables in stadium ... line up for class you want, get a card and fill in ... sense cards produced punched cards and would be read in by 2540 and feed to central stacker (shared by both reader and punch), registration was validated ... if there was some problem ... would then punch a blank card behind it. All the registration cards were uncolored (plain manila card stock). Cards in the punch had colored stripe across the top.

when all the cards were back in large number of card trays ... the problem registration cards could be identified by the colored card immediately behind them in the tray.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

SIE - CompArch

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 26 Apr, 2012
Subject: SIE - CompArch
Blog: IBM Historic Computing
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#62 SIE - CompArch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#39 SIE - CompArch

Actually I have big problem with os/360 "relocatable load modules" ... since the image on the disk contains control information regarding location of all the embedded address constants. as part of loading a relocatable load modules ... the loader runs through this control information ... swizzling all the address constants in the module to correspond to the loaded address ... aka the addresses aren't relocatable ... in the sense the address is good regardless of where the module is loaded ... it is just that there is a bunch of loader gorp going through the module image patching/changing all the addresses.

I had done a memory mapped filesystem for cp67/cms and then moved it to vm370/cms (I claimed that it avoided loads of the performance deficiencies that the TSS/360 had as well as what Future System would have had ... if it hadn't been killed off). I discuss it recently in some detail here (in memory mapped discussion)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#28
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#29

This is something that TSS/360 did get right ... the application address fields were actually displacement into the control structure ... the image of the application could be mapped into any address (and in fact the same exact application could be mapped into multiple different virtual address spaces at different virtual addresses). The control structure was private to each address space ... and the addresses were swizzled in the control structure ... as to where the application happened to appear in that particular virtual address space.

The application image could be mapped and shared at arbitrary virtual address w/o the loader having to run through potentially every application virtual page making modifications ... before the application would be allowed to run.

I had continued to do 370 stuff all during the Future System period (when they were suspending &/or killing off 370 activities) ... even periodically ridiculing FS activities. Then when FS imploded there was mad rush to get stuff back into 370 product pipelines. This contributed to the development group picking up a bunch of my stuff for VM370 Release 3 ... and the decision to release other stuff as the Resource Manager. some old email about my morph from cp67 to vm370 and also csc/vm (one of my hobbies was providing production, highly modified operating systems to internal datacenters)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212 .
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102 .
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750430 .

A small subset of the CMS changes for shared segments was picked up for VM370 release 3 (but not the page mapped filesystem stuff) ... and then the CP group retrofitted the additional shared segment features to the "ip-by-name" (dmksnt) paradigm (as what they called DCSS ... instead of the much more efficient mechanism with memory mapped filesystem).

However, one of the big problems I was constantly fighting with the full solution was the os/360 address constant convention ... and periodically fiddling code to make it work much more like the tss/360 paradigm.

misc. past posts mentioning future system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
misc. past posts mentioning cp67/cms & vm370/cms memory mapped filesystem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap
and posts mentioning constant ongoing battle with os/360 address constant paradigm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#adcon

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Thinking in a Foreign Language

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 26 Apr, 2012
Subject: Thinking in a Foreign Language
Blog: Tempo
re:
http://www.tempobook.com/2012/04/26/thinking-in-a-foreign-language/

I was blamed for online computer conferencing on the internal network in the late 70s & early 80s. Somewhat as a result, a researcher was paid to sit in the back of my office for 9 months, taking notes on how I communicated (face-to-face, telephone, etc), they also went with me to meetings, got logs of all my instant messages and copies of all my incoming and outgoing email. The material was used for research report, Stanford PHD thesis (joint language and computer ai) and some number of papers and books. The researcher had previously spent several years as an ESL (English as 2nd language) teacher and we had some number of discussions about different languages having/lacking constructs for specific concepts. There was an observation that my use of English is more characteristic of a non-native English speaker (although English is my first language and only natural language that I'm really proficient in, although I was language "proficient" in various computer languages; i.e. could think & dream)

misc. past posts mentioning computer mediated communication
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Does the Experiencing Self "Out-OODA" the Remembering Self?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 27 Apr, 2012
Subject: Does the Experiencing Self "Out-OODA" the Remembering Self?
Blog: Boyd Strategy
re:
http://lnkd.in/vChQPx

since I made the claim about similarity between coup d'oeil and "fingerspitzengefuhl" ... in this "Boyd" discussion
http://lnkd.in/R-ZqQc
and my post archived here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#95

I thot I would weigh in. Myers-Briggs talks about personality types and preferences ... and analogy in NLP is sensory input preferences; visual, audio, tactile. Myers-Briggs talks about understanding differences in how personality types operate can improve human interactions. NLP talks about understanding people's sensory input preferences can improve their learning (also that visual processing "buffers" are much larger than audio buffers).

OODA-loop is a visual oriented metaphor (i.e. observe), as is coup d'oeil, while "fingerspitzengefuhl" is a tactile oriented metaphor. Tactile might be more oriented towards craftsman that creates something with their hands. I would claim that there could also be an audio oriented metaphor ... possibly related to music.

it also mentions Ramachandran ... who presents studies about blind people able to adapt their visual processing centers for audio processing, creating sense of 3D spatial representation from audio input.

coup d'oeil and "fingerspitzengefuhl" is repeated in this "Boyd" discussion
http://lnkd.in/wkmFbf
my post also archived here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#26

for other "preference" topic drift ... this more recent "Boyd" discussion
http://lnkd.in/A3xcY5
my post archive here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#14

References "Quiet" and the rise of the "cult of personality" at the expense of "character" in 20th century America ... which would correspond to Boyd's To Be or To Do.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Image if someone built a general-menu-system

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Image if someone built a general-menu-system
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:16:12 -0400
"Harry Vaderchi" <admin@127.0.0.1> writes:
Good lord! It's written in the present tense! I recall using ISPF in the early 80's.

a little folklore regarding ISPF (from early 80s) ... parts of corporation still having trouble adapting to 23jun69 unbundling announcement more than decade later (charging for application software):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#33 XEDIT on MVS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#42 CMS load module format

aka product price had to cover product costs ... but the bookkeeping could be done at a development organization level were aggregate costs are spread across multiple products.

misc. past posts mentioning 23jun69 unbundling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

other screen/menu was cms ios3270 ... among other things it was used in the 3090 service processor ... aka the 3092 (3090 service processor) was pair of 4361s running highly customized version of vm370/cms release 6 ... and all the service menus were done in cms ios3270. gcard ios3270 was an attempt reproduce greencard ... i've done a q&d conversion of gcard ios3720 to html ... here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html

recent posts mentioning 3092:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#58 Why can't the track format be changed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#23 M68k add to memory is not a mistake any more
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#38 A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#63 Typeface (font) and city identity

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Hard Disk Drive Construction

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hard Disk Drive Construction
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:59:03 -0400
David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b@dd-b.net> writes:
Wait, this must be a name collission. To me "hyperchannel" is the proprietary cross-vendor networking technology of Network Systems Corporation here in Minneapolis, where I worked for a few years. (They were bought by Storage Tek, who was bought by Sun, who was bought by Oracle.)

I worked with Gary Christensen, Ken Hardwick, Jim Hughes and a few others ... in 1980, I did hyperchannel remote device driver when STL was moving 300 people from the IMS group to offsite building and they refused to go with "remote 3270s" back to STL datacenter. Tried to get it released for customer use ... but there was a group in POK that thought it was in competition for something they were trying to get out; and they managed to get releasing the code killed (i.e. they were trying to get what became ESCON released ... which took them another decade) ... I think it was then Jim Hughes that had to recreate it from scratch. misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

Part of my implementation was to emulate a "channel check" failure when there was uncorrectable error over hyperchannel telco transmission. this was one of the things copied in the NSC implementation. After 3090s had been in the field for a year, the 3090 product administrator contacted me and said that 3090 was designed to have 3-5 "channel checks" in aggregate across all customers over a year's period ... but industry reporting was showing 20 "channel check" failures (aggregate across all customers). Turns out most of them were in HYPERchannel remote device software support ... and I was asked to "fix it". I did a little research and determined that for all intents and purposes, reflecting "Interface Control Check" (IFCC) would accomplish the same thing as "channel check" (and not mess up the industry reporting statistics) ... and got Jim Hughes to make the change.

also later, I added rfc1044 support to vm tcp/ip. The vm tcp/ip code was getting about 44kbytes/sec thruput on 3090 ... using nearly a whole 3090 processor. In some tuning tests at Cray Research ... I got 4341 channel speed thruput (about 1mbyte/sec) using only a modest amount of the cpu (between 4341 and a cray) misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

recent posts mentioning internal politics prevented us from bidding on NSFNET Backbone RFP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#47

I was then making periodic disparaging remarks about the group that "won" the RFP. Then when the RFP for the T1->T3 upgrade came out ... I was asked to be the "red team" (possibly they were going to shut me up by doing side-by-side comparison) and a couple dozen people from half-dozen labs around the world were the "blue team". In the final (red/blue) review ... I presented first ... and then the blue team presented. Five minutes into the blue team presenation, the executive running the show pounded on the table and explained that he would lay down in front of a garbage truck before he let any but the blue team proposal go forward ... so I got up and walked out of the meeting (and a few other people left with me). misc. past posts mentioning NSFNET backbone
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:22:08 -0400
Charlton Wilbur <cwilbur@chromatico.net> writes:
But that's key: given the market situation when the Mac switched to PowerPC, if Apple had put people in a situation where buying a new Mac involved a painful transition, they would have evaluated Windows. Especially at that point in time, where there was a lot of marketing noise about the diversity of PPC operating systems that were just around the corner.

remember the PPC effort was called Somerset ... but was also called AIM (apple, ibm, motorola) ... aka apple didn't just switch to the PPC .. they were part of the group in design.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC

we had been doing ha/cmp ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

and the executive we reported to, had previously been at motorola. when somerset was started ... he then went over to head it up. 801/risc and the then current rios ... were multi-chip, single processor design (in fact, part of ha/cmp was cluster since it wasn't possible to do rios multiprocessor scale-up).

objectives for somerset included single-chip as well as multiprocessor support.

rumor about apple move off PPC was that nobody was working on (really) low-power follow-on chips.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Intel_processors

as to the power/pc wiki page one of the items:

In 2003, BAE SYSTEMS Platform Solutions delivered the Vehicle-Management Computer for the F-35 fighter jet. This platform consists of dual PowerPCs made by Freescale in a triple redundant setup.

... snip ...

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Hard Disk Drive Construction

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hard Disk Drive Construction
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2012 09:17:31 -0400
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
This thread has got me thinking; we;re already at or on the verge of a major "paradigm shift." Ever since I can remember - since the days computers started doing more than one thing at a time - the major limiting factor has been the CPU. Everything has been oriented toward keeping the CPU as close to 100% busy as possible. Now we're getting to the point that most systems have more CPU than they need or can reasonably use. What's the limit now - disk access, network, something else? We can waste lots of CPU to speed other things up. Dedicate cores to networking, disk access, etc.

another approach is pipelined streams (form of message passing) where each process in the stream has its own core. in the 80s, SGI specialized in this for hardware graphics processing acceleration. One of the people at SGI (had created UUCP when at AT&T) started XTP ... sort of the graphics accelerator stream equivalent for network messages. In the late 80s, I was on the XTP technical advisery board (despite strong objections from the communication group) ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#xtphsp

some current graphics cards talk about having several hundred (or more) processors. cards have aggregate performance of teraflops/sec and several "supercomputers" have been build with large number of graphics "GPUs" where the processing has been programmed for things other than graphics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_%28microarchitecture%29

GPU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_processing_unit

from above:
Acceleration can then be obtained by either interpreting multiple programs simultaneously, simultaneously running multiple example problems, or combinations of both. A modern GPU (e.g. 8800 GTX or later) can readily simultaneously interpret hundreds of thousands of very small programs.

... snip ...

3200 stream processors:
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1141/1/

stream processing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_processing

recent posts on current latency for memory access (cache miss), measured in number of cpu cycles ... is comparable to 60s latency for disk access (again measured in number of 60s cpu cycles).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#57 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#58 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#79 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#4 Memory versus processor speed

there is no programming method for software threading (to provide overlapped concurrency) ... so out-of-order execution (while waiting for cache miss operation ... execute other instructions in the same i-stream) and hardware threading (simulated multiprocessor, multiple i-streams).

an extreme of this was the company that bought the cray name had a non-cache machine with 256 hardware threads/i-streams (rather than trying to use cache to compensate for huge memory access latency penalty ... it used huge number of hardware threads for overlapped execution).

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Hard Disk Drive Construction

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hard Disk Drive Construction
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2012 11:54:58 -0400
"Joe Morris" <j.c.morris@verizon.net> writes:
Some programs written for the IBM PC used track 81 for copy protection, and broke when run on clones that had the temerity to use drives that exactly met the published specifications of 80 tracks.

old thread about wanting to "rescue" images from 5.25" diskettes and somebody selling/shipping me a 5.25" drive.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#57

but i had some number diskettes formated by "dos1.86" ... an internally available dos system with lots of enhancements ... including formating 10 sectors/track (instead of 9 sectors/track)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#36

I had a vanilla dos6 diskette that I used to "rescue" several disk images ... but wasn't able to process the diskettes formated 10sectors/tracks.

other parts of thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#35 Turbo C 1.5 (1987)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#37 Turbo C 1.5 (1987)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#56 Turbo C 1.5 (1987)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#4 Turbo C 1.5 (1987)

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Making the Mainframe more Accessible - What is Your Vision?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 29 Apr, 2012
Subject: Making the Mainframe more Accessible - What is Your Vision?
Blog: MainframeZone
re:
http://lnkd.in/UgU7uE

I finally got permission to put up scan of (dec1979) SHARE LSRAD report (Towards More Usable Systems):
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/share/The_LSRAD_Report_Dec79.pdf

which discussed a lot of things.

Earlier in the year there was a long running thread on "User-Friendly" in the usenet alt.folklore.computers and the linkedin "Old Geeks" ... the "Old Geeks" discussion URL
http://lnkd.in/pzAwcV

misc. past posts mentioning LSRAD report:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#50 IBM 705 computer manual
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#1 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#38 Fw: Tax chooses dead language - Austalia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#40 old tapes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#47 repeat after me: RAID != backup
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#70 A New Role for Old Geeks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#0 Wanted: SHARE Volume I proceedings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#13 Old EMAIL Index
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#33 IBM S/360 Green Card high quality scan
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#85 Two terrific writers .. are going to write a book
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#88 digitize old hardcopy manuals
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#89 Make the mainframe work environment fun and intuitive
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#62 1979 SHARE LSRAD Report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#70 1979 SHARE LSRAD Report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#72 CRLF in Unix being translated on Mainframe to x'25'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#10 1979 SHARE LSRAD Report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#11 1979 SHARE LSRAD Report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#14 1979 SHARE LSRAD Report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#15 1979 SHARE LSRAD Report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#22 1979 SHARE LSRAD Report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#146 IBM Manuals
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#19 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Hard Disk Drive Construction

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hard Disk Drive Construction
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2012 10:01:09 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
Is it possible that you are getting to deep into the details? There isn't any general solution across all comptuer systems and networks. What you want is an OS and hardware to take advantage of the resources available and deliver the computing services (which includes CPU runtime) in a manner which minimizes overhead but maximizes throughput. these dynamics can't be hardcoded (I'm saying this badly) but has to be determined when the OS is running and dealing with reality. This is because the computing climate can change from one thing rapidly to another. That's what timesharing is all about.

I had done dynamic adaptive scheduling as undergraduate in the 60s for cp67 ... part of it was attempting to "schedule to the bottleneck" ... i.e. recognize that resources other than cpu might be system throughput constraint ... although cpu was major issue at the time ... and I also rewrote significant parts of cp67 kernel to drastically reduce kernel pathlengths.

much of this was dropped in the morph from cp67->vm370. I continued to work on cp67 ... including during the "Future System" period (even criticizing their activity) ... some past FS posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

then I moved a bunch of work from cp67->vm370 ... some old email on the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750430

... and one of my hobbies was producing enhanced production operating systems for internal datacenters (i.e. references to csc/vm). For some reason, in 1975, there was also some agreement with AT&T Longlines to allow them to have a csc/vm copy.

this turned out to be a one-time shot ... but then circa 1983, the national AT&T marketing rep tracked me down ... and asked for help getting AT&T longlines off the csc/vm system. Over the years, they had made their own modifications to the system and propagated it to several of their own datacenters ... moving it from machine generation to machine generation (example was generalized psuedo devices ... cms on specific machine in one datacenter ... could have tape drive access ... as if it was a local device ... that was located on a completely different machine in different datacenter ... using telco link between the machines to carry the data).

The specific issue was the specific csc/vm they got was a non-multiprocessor version ... just ran on single processor. In 1983, IBM was shipping the latest generation as 3081 ... which was multiprocessor only (didn't have a single processor option ... although company eventually did come out with single processor 3083 ... primarily motivated by the lack of multiprocessor support in TPF/ACP ... aka airline control program). AT&T longlines was threatening to replace all their old single-processor IBM 370s with latest (more powerful) Amdahl clone 370 (which had single processor versions). The objective was to move AT&T longlines to more current version of vm370 that had multiprocessor support ... and therefor could replace their older 370s with (IBM) multiprocessor machines. This reference has some FS, 3081, and Amdahl discussion
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm

In any case, the base system strategy was to have processor specific tables for use in scheduling (solely based on cpu use). The dynamic adaptive code in csc/vm had managed to adapt from the 370 machines that AT&T had in 1975 through a couple generations of new processors (actually it also adapted to having multi-processor cpu resources, but the base system also ahd to have multi-processor support).

past posts mentioning scheduling work
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

for other reference ... a couple linkedin discussions on useable systems
http://lnkd.in/UgU7uE
http://lnkd.in/pzAwcV

the linkedin "old geek" overlaps quite a bit with the "user-friendly" discussion that also went on here in a.f.c.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#11 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#12 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#15 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#22 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#31 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#33 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#36 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#38 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#43 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#44 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#7 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?

a few old posts mentioning csc/vm leaking to AT&T longlines:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#14 characters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#35 Mainframes & Unix (and TPF)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#15 OSes commerical, history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#5 IBM XT/370 and AT/370 (was Re: Computer of the century)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#74 Scheduling aircraft landings at London Heathrow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#60 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#3 Oldest program you've written, and still in use?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#4 Buffer overflow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#11 The demise of compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#11 OS Workloads : Interactive etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#32 IBM was: CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#66 OT (sort-of) - Does it take math skills to do data processing ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#23 Cost of computing in 1958?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#17 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#46 unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#76 1950s AT&T/IBM lack of collaboration?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#4 1950s AT&T/IBM lack of collaboration?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#25 Are there any authentication algorithms with runtime changeable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#23 1960s images of IBM 360 mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#35 40th anniversary of IBM System/360 on 7 Apr 2004
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#32 The attack of the killer mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#58 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#25 auto reIPL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#31 z/VM performance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#21 IBM 3090/VM Humor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#36 Metroliner telephone article
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#55 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#54 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#56 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#6 Open z/Architecture or Not
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#15 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#29 Need Help filtering out sporge in comp.arch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#30 hacked TOPS-10 monitors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#41 IT managers stymied by limits of x86 virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#14 DASD or TAPE attached via TCP/IP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#82 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#7 Is the magic and romance killed by Windows (and Linux)?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#18 The PC industry is heading for collapse

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Hard Disk Drive Construction

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hard Disk Drive Construction
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2012 10:35:51 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#59 Hard Disk Drive Construction

part of the evolution of dynamic adaptive later at the cambridge science center was the science center put in lots of effort into performance monitoring, performance modeling, workload profiling, system profiling ... some of which eventually evolves into "capacity planning".

early on, science center started doing 7x24 performance data gathering and by mid-70s had nearly a decade of data on their own systems. the technology & tools were adapted by many of the internal datacenters ... and also by mid-70s there was at least years of data regarding a few hundred of other systems that covered wide variety of hardware configurations and workloads.

on of the tools was an analytical system model implemented in APL. this model was calibrated/validated from the huge repository of real live data. a version of the model was made available on the internal (world-wide sales & marketing support) HONE system ... some past HONE posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

on HONE it was called the performance predictor marketing people to input customer configuration and workload profile and ask "what-if" questions regarding changes in workloads &/or configurations.

In parallel, I developed automatic benchmarking process that used a parameterised synthetic workload ... which I could use to approximate a wide range of real-world workloads (based on extensive data gathering from internal systems). some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#benchmark

Part of Future System was suspending/killing 370 activity (although I continued to work on 370 and periodically ridicule FS). When FS imploded, there was mad rush to get stuff back in 370 product pipeline ... which likely contributed to deciding to release bits and pieces of my work ... included some of the dynamic adaptive stuff (as "wheeler" scheduler or "resource manager").
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

Finaly part leading up to releasing "resource manager", there were 2000 "automated" benchmarks that took 3months elapsed time to run. The first 1000 "automated" benchmarks were taken to represented a wide variety of observed workloads and configurations ... as well as large number of "stress tests" ... well outside any observe actual behavior. The final 1000 was done with a variation of the performance predictor ... the results off all previous benchmarks were feed into the model ... the model would then select a different set of parameters ... in part looking for anomolous circumstances. The benchmark would run, the predictor would compare against prediction ... and then repeat the process 1000 times.

The combination helped validate that the model corresponded with real-world data ... and that the resource manager was managing actual resources as per dynamic design.

misc. past posts mentioning performance predictor:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#13 LINUS for S/390
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#46 Withdrawal Announcement 901-218 - No More 'small machines'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#31 Hercules etc. IBM not just missing a great opportunity...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#32 Hercules etc. IBM not just missing a great opportunity...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#64 ... the need for a Museum of Computer Software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#45 cp/67 addenda (cross-post warning)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#28 Origin of XAUTOLOG (x-post)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#15 Disk capacity and backup solutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#29 Sun researchers: Computers do bad math ;)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#42 command line switches [Re: [REALLY OT!] Overuse of symbolic constants]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#53 history books on the development of capacity planning (SMF and RMF)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#31 capacity planning: art, science or magic?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#9 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#10 Multi-processor timing issue
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#1 Self restarting property of RTOS-How it works?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#6 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#33 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#48 Secure design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#1 Single System Image questions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#15 Exceptions at basic block boundaries
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#12 Performance and Capacity Planning
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#17 More on garbage collection
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#18 Code density and performance?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#30 auto reIPL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#34 Not enough parallelism in programming
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#44 winscape?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#15 {SPAM?} Re: Expanded Storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#16 {SPAM?} Re: Expanded Storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#17 {SPAM?} Re: Expanded Storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#18 {SPAM?} Re: Expanded Storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#22 A very basic question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#30 A very basic question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#34 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#25 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#3 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#23 Strobe equivalents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#25 CPU usage for paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#24 Curiousity: CPU % for COBOL program
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#28 Why these original FORTRAN quirks?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#77 Sizing CPU
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#65 Non-Standard Mainframe Language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#68 High order bit in 31/24 bit address
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#41 Age of IBM VM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#21 Distributed Computing
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'?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#76 A Math Geek's Plan to Save Wall Street's Soul
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#43 SNA: conflicting opinions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#17 How to reduce the overall monthly cost on a System z environment?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#62 LPARs: More or Less?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#81 Percentage of code executed that is user written was Re: Delete all members of a PDS that is allocated
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#8 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#15 Age
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#17 What non-IBM software products have been most significant to the mainframe's success
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#41 Central vs. expanded storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#48 origin of 'fields'?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#63 Collection of APL documents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#41 CPU utilization/forecasting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#49 Dyadic vs AP: Was "CPU utilization/forecasting"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#49 My first mainframe experience
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#63 JCL CROSS-REFERENCE Utilities (OT for Paul, Rick, and Shmuel)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#53 HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#50 Can any one tell about what is APL language

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Zakaria: by itself, Buffett rule is good

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 29 Apr, 2012
Subject: Zakaria: by itself, Buffett rule is good
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/jM376FFeXMG

Fareed Zakaria GPS
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/27/watch-gps-how-corrupt-is-china/

Just mentioned that additional taxes (Buffett rule) by itself was good ... but it just added another provision to the US tax code that is the most complex and most corrupt in the world (others claim its major contributor to congress being the most corrupt institution on earth)

There was CBO report that in the past decade there was a $6T reduction in fed tax revenue and $6T increase in fed spending (compared to "baseline" that had surpluses eliminating all federal deficit by 2010); effectively kicked off after congress allowed fiscal responsibility act to expire in 2002 (aka last decade created a $12T budget gap). The congressional activities after allowing fiscal responsibility act to expire in 2002, appeared to prompt the comptroller general to start including in his speeches references to nobody in congress is capable of middle school arithmetic (because of the extreme things that they started doing to balanced budget).

this reference is $2+T (of the $6T) increase
http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?documentid=4623

note cdi.org has moved to
http://www.pogo.org/straus/
... missing $1T is now
http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/defense-budget/2010/what-did-the-rumsfeld-gates-pentagon-do-with-1-trillion.html

was for MICC ... $1+T for the wars and the other $1+T went where?

The tax code is over 70k pages; eliminating all special provisions should reduce it to 500pages and gain 5-6% in GDP (direct and indirect costs associated with dealing with the current complex code) ... as well as enormously reducing the lobbying and corruption in washington.

economists looked at two different things 1) the amount that the gov. actually collected in taxes ... and what was needed for balanced budget and 2) enormously complex and corrupt tax code (and as result, congress is most corrupt institution on earth)

independent of #1 ... eliminating the complexity and corruption can increase GDP by 5-6% (a couple years ago they joked about strange bed fellows lobbying against eliminating tax code complexity ... including the tax preparation industry). GDP is around $15T so 6% is nearly $1T (or nearly $1T/year is estimated lost because of tax code complexity and corruption).

somebody's followup that while "by itself" it is good ... but it also bad politics
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/04/29/fareed-zakaria-shocker-buffett-rule-bad-politics-obama

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Hard Disk Drive Construction

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hard Disk Drive Construction
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:43:28 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
How long did was that data kept? I'm assuming it was part of the running system. Was it ever written to disk and then read at boot time? Or did the history start anew with each boot?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#59 Hard Disk Drive Construction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#60 Hard Disk Drive Construction

history kept appending (typically) every five minutes until somebody archived the file and reset (even across boots).. while i was there, no data had been thrown away (but when cambridge science center was shutdown ... all stuff went away). i'm not aware of policies at other datacenters ... i know people at the science center periodically collected data from large number of internal datacenters ... at least several months at time.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

there were a couple of these performance gathering apps that were packaged and made available to customers. i referenced in another thread how the vm performance products was absorbed into the ispf product group (the ispf group had a couple hundred people, the vm performance products had three people ... both product lines had approx. same total revenue ... the combination allowed combining aggregate costs calculated againt product price ... in effect allowing lowering the price of ispf with subsidizing ispf development using the vm performance products revenue ... after the combination, effectively all enhancements to vm performance products was suspended ... so all revenue could go to covering ispf development cost)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#53 Image if someone built a general-menu-system

i had lots of stuff from science center days copied onto newer tapes (including performance data from the 2000 sequence of benchmarks) up through mid-80s. Much of that was lot when the almaden datacenter had operations problem with random tapes being mounted as scratch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#14 A Dark Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#42 vmshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#51 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#8 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#13 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#4 Why do IBMers think disks are 'Direct Access'?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#66 Evolution of Floating Point
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009s.html#17 old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#51 Source code for s/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#96 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#65 Adventure - Or Colossal Cave Adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#32 Need tool to zap core
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#45 Is email dead? What do you think?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#39 1971PerformanceStudies - Typical OS/MFT 40/50/65s analysed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#89 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#3 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#4 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#80 TSO Profile NUM and PACK
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#29 Congratulations, where was my invite?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#12 Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#16 Dennis Ritchie

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

One maths formula and the financial crash

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 1 May, 2012
Subject: One maths formula and the financial crash
Blog: Facebook
One maths formula and the financial crash
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17866646

Congressional hearings into the rating agencies had the toxic CDO sellers paying the rating agencies for triple-A ... when all knew they weren't worth triple-A ... much of the rest is obfuscation and misdirection (one commentator during the hearings made the observation that the rating agencies will likely avoid federal prosecution with the threat of fed gov. credit downgrade). Other reports had the business people directing the risk managers to fiddle the model inputs until the desired results were achieved (and numerous calls for risk managers being given powers to make them less vulnerable to the business people) ... again much of the rest is obfuscation and misdirection.

Individual compensation for doing triple-A toxic CDO transactions (including the CDS gambling bets) more than offset any concern they might have had regarding the effect they would have on their institution, the economy, and/or the country. One humorous reference in the industry during the bubble, was what institutions would be holding the junk when the music stopped (musical chairs analogy to the activity). reference to $27T was done during the bubble:
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

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/
and How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/how-wall-streets-quants-lied-to-their-computers/

again much of the rest is obfuscation and misdirection

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Your Words Determine your Perspective

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 2 May, 2012
Subject: Your Words Determine your Perspective
Blog: Boyd Strategy
re:
http://lnkd.in/E5A8Vi

Your Words Determine your Perspective
http://www.creativitypost.com/create/your_words_determine_your_thoughts

This could be considered analog to Boyd's comments about observing something from every possible facet ... using different words changes perspective. Another on the same website: "How Geniuses Think"
http://www.creativitypost.com/create/how_geniuses_think

there is some overlap here

Thinking in a Foreign Language
http://www.tempobook.com/2012/04/26/thinking-in-a-foreign-language/

Some conjecture that Boyd's experience in fighter planes, providing lots of different physical perspectives, contributed to his arrival at needing lots of different intellectual perspectives (which using different words and/or languages would be part of) ... and dog fights would have helped "connect the dots" for OODA-loop. Faster loops would be of importance in dog-fights ... but lots of different perspectives could contribute to OODA-loop quality (and brain studies are showing different experiences/thoughts results in new connections in the brain ... conjecture is new/different brain connections would play a role in creativity and invention).

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The old is new again - Not IBM related, but I hope interesting

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From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: The old is new again - Not IBM related, but I hope interesting
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 2 May 2012 07:14:13 -0700
John.McKown@HEALTHMARKETS.COM (McKown, John) writes:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=plugable_multiseat_kick&num=1

This is a USB device which can plug into a normal PC running Linux (Fedora 17 is mentioned). You then connect a DisplayLink monitor, USB keyboard and mouse to the device. And you have a multi-user system on a single PC. Not a "server" PC with other PCs connected as "clients", but just one single PC. Reminds me of what could be done with MP/M-80 (the multiuser version of CP/M-80), except back then it was a serial (RS-232?) connected keyboard/display. Or, maybe, an S/360 with a 2260(?) or 3272(?).


cp67 (ran on 360/67) delivered to the univ. jan1968 had support for 2741 (selectric typewriter with computer/rs-232 interface) and 1052 (sort of like 360 1052-7 operators console with rs-232 interface) terminals.

the univ. had ascii/tty terminals ... so I added tty/ascii terminal support. the 2741/1052 support did games with switching terminal controller SAD command ... associated terminal specific line-scanner with each port/line ... so I added tty/ascii support in similar manner. I had wanted to have single dial-up number (hunt group) for all dial-up terminals ... but ibm terminal controller had taken short-cut ... while it was possible to change line-scanner, the line-speed was hard-wired for each port/line ... 2741&1052 operated at same line-speed, but tty/ascii was different speed.

this somewhat was motivation for univ. to start clone controller project, reverse engineered 360 channel interface and build channel interface board for Interdata/3 programmed to emulate ibm terminal controller (but also supporting dynamic line-speed). Interdata then takes the implementation and markets as clone controller; Perken-Elmer then buys Interdata and continues to market under their own brand (30 yrs later ran across one in large east coast datacenter handling large percentage of point-of-sale dial-up terminals in the US). There is some write-up blaming four of us for (some part of) IBM clone controller business. past posts mentioning clone controller
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

This claims a major motivation for the Future System effort was clone controller business. There is also some implication that major design criteria for SNA was tight integration between NCP&VTAM ... a continuation of the FS goals:
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm

And then Ferguson & Morris book, "Computer Wars: The Post-IBM World", Time Books, 1993, mention that distraction of Future System and killing off work on 370 products ... and then after Future System imploded and delays in getting 370 efforts restarted, allowed clone processors to gain market foothold. misc. past posts mentioning FS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

before there was ms/dos there was seattle computer,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS
before seattle computer there was cp/m,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Computer_Products
before there was cp/m there was cp67/cms
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M

kildall worked on cp67/cms at npg (gone 404, but lives on at the wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20071011100440/http://www.khet.net/gmc/docs/museum/en_cpmName.html

npg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Postgraduate_School

cp67/cms
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/CMS

there is also folklore that person that did mp/m-80 had done a lot of work on cp67/cms &/or vm370/cms

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Predator GE: We Bring Bad Things to Life

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 2 May, 2012
Subject: Predator GE: We Bring Bad Things to Life
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/b2aFxnxuGoj

Predator GE: We Bring Bad Things to Life
http://www.thenation.com/blog/167625/predator-ge-we-bring-bad-things-life

"Age of Greed" points out that Welch leveraged GE financial operations, growing them to half GE's profits and using them to
manage its quarterly earnings, engaging in the last couple of weeks of every calendar quarter in various that could push earnings up on the last day or two before the quarter's end" .. "Though earnings management is a no-no among good governance types," wrote two CNNMoney financial editors, "the company has never denied doing it, and GE Capital is the perfect mechanism.

Its been going on for at least the last decade. In the wake of Enron/Worldcom ... congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley ... which required SEC to do something. However, possibly because GAO didn't believe SEC was doing anything, it started reports of public company fraudulent financial filings ... showing uptic even after SOX
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-06-1079sp

Supposedly under SOX all the top executives would be doing jail time. There was recent item on web about Enron was dry run and it worked so well it has become institutionalized.

SOX also had provision for SEC to do something about the rating agencies ... and it was the rating agencies that accepted payments from CDO sellers to give triple-A ratings ... even when they all knew that the toxic CDOs weren't worth triple-A ... came out in congressional hearings into the role that the rating agencies played in the economic mess (some tv news had comment that the rating agencies will likely avoid federal prosecution for their pivotal role with the threat of federal gov. rating downgrade).

Estimated $27T in (triple-A rated toxic) CDOs done during the bubble
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

The lack of SEC action also came up in the congressional Madoff hearings by the person that had tried unsuccessfully for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff

"Confidence Men" highlights that the economic A-team played a significant role in getting the president elected ... and then after the election, the A-team was going to hold those responsible for the economic mess, accountable ... and the "B-team" were appointed instead (many of whom played roles in creating the economic mess; possibly because they weren't going to hold themselves accountable ... they weren't going to hold others accountable either).
https://www.amazon.com/Confidence-Men-Washington-Education-ebook/dp/B0089LOKKS//

Problem with Stiglitz' "Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy"
https://www.amazon.com/Freefall-America-Markets-Sinking-ebook/dp/B0035YDM9E

is that possibly a 3rd or so is good for zinger quotes ... including:
With lending frozen, the Fed took on a new role -- it went from being a lender of last resort to being a lender of first resort. Large companies often get much of their funds not from banks but by borrowing "from the market", the form of what is called commercial paper. When that market also froze, venerable giants like GE couldn't borrow. In some cases, like GE, it was partly because the company had a division that had gotten involved in making bad loans. When the market wouldn't buy this commercial paper, the Fed did. But in doing so, the Fed had gone from being a bankers' banker to being the nation's banker.

... snip ...

recent posts mentioning sarbanes-oxley, sec, toxic CDOs, madoff, etc:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#1 The war on terabytes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#5 We are on the brink of a historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#18 SEC v. Citigroup, How to Avoid (Greater) Disaster
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#21 Zombie Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#26 What's your favorite quote on "accountability"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#32 Wall Street Bonuses May Reach Lowest Level in 3 Years
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#70 Regulatory Agency logo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#19 "Buffett Tax" and truth in numbers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#44 What's the most interesting thing you do in your non-work life?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#53 Can America Lead the World's Fight Against Corruption?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#54 The New Age Bounty Hunger -- Showdown at the SEC Corral
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#65 Why Wall Street Should Stop Whining
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#87 The Benefit and The Burden
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#95 Bank of America Fined $1 Billion for Mortgage Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#0 New theory of moral behavior may explain recent ethical lapses in banking industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#4 Bank of America Fined $1 Billion for Mortgage Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#13 Study links ultrafast machine trading with risk of crash
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#25 Goldman Sachs P.R. Chief's Accidental Exit Interview
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#30 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#31 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#32 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#36 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#37 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#38 The Death of MERS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#45 Fannie, Freddie Charge Taxpayers For Legal Bills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#46 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#48 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#49 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#52 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#54 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#5 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#12 Gordon Gekko Says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#16 IBM cuts more than 1,000 U.S. Workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#32 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#39 Fannie and Freddie must go - here's how
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#42 China's J-20 Stealth Fighter Is Already Doing A Whole Lot More Than Anyone Expected
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#52 Goldman Exec Quits In A Scathing NYT Op-Ed About How The Firm Abuses Its Clients
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#20 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#23 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#30 Senators Who Voted Against Ending Big Oil Tax Breaks Received Millions From Big Oil
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#40 Who Increased the Debt?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#42 Who Increased the Debt?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#53 GOLD STANDARD GOOD OR BAD?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#57 speculation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#58 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#25 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#31 Rome speaks to us. Their example can inspire us to avoid their fate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#63 One maths formula and the financial crash

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Cartons of Punch Cards

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Cartons of Punch Cards
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 02 May 2012 19:53:47 -0400
"Joe Morris" <j.c.morris@verizon.net> writes:
The vulnerability of the US technological infrastructure in general is something that the companies responsible for it are too often ignoring, while at the same time providing continued employment to their swarms of insects^W lobbyists who are fighting to prevent the establishment of regulatory requirements for security and resiliance. Sadly, they have the ear (and stacks of deposit tickets) of politicians who insist that any regulation, no matter how urgently needed is bad, Bad, BAD, and must be rejected on the grounds that companies that have a financial incentive to do nothing can be trusted to work for the common good.

From "Confidence Men", quote attributed to Volcker in discussion with civil engineering professor about decline in civil engineering programs (institutions were skimming infrastructure funds for other purposes, as result no engineering infrastructure jobs):
Well, I said, 'The trouble with the United States recently is we spent several decades not producing many civil engineers and producing a huge number of financial engineers. And the result is s**tty bridges and a s**tty financial system!

... snip ...

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

'Gutting' Our Military

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 3 May, 2012
Subject: 'Gutting' Our Military
Blog: Google+
'Gutting' Our Military
http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/gutting-our-military

last decade $2+T military spending over baseline ... $1+T for the wars and a second $1+T went where?
http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?documentid=4623

note cdi.org has moved to
http://www.pogo.org/straus/
... missing $1T is now
http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/defense-budget/2010/what-did-the-rumsfeld-gates-pentagon-do-with-1-trillion.html

CBO report has baseline surplus eliminating all debt by 2010, however last decade there was $6T reduction in tax revenues (compared to baseline) and $6T increase in spending (including the military $2+T) for $12T budget gap ... starting after congress allowed the fiscal responsibility act to expire in 2002. Last decade, the comptroller general would included in speeches that nobody in congress was capable of middle school arithmetic (based on what they were doing to balanced budget).

The Jet That Ate the Pentagon:
http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=4735

There was analysis the F35 project was parceled out to hundred congressional districts in order to make it difficult for congress to cancel the budget ... it keeps the funds flowing but adds enormously to probability of technical failure with all the little pieces coming from all over. There also was recent article anti-earmark backers reverything to congressional norm and looking for handouts for their districts.

Putting lipstick on the DOD Acquisition Pig
http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=4732

Which Pentagon Budget Numbers Are Real? You Decide!
http://defense.aol.com/2012/02

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 3 May, 2012
Subject: Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/NUCYaLxAr1m

Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy
https://www.amazon.com/Freefall-America-Markets-Sinking-ebook/dp/B0035YDM9E

pg.123:
On the initial vote, on September 29, 2008, the TARP bill was defeated by twenty-three votes in the House of Representatives. After the defeat, the Bush administration held an auction. It asked, in effect, each of the opposing congressmen how much they needed in gifts to their districts and constituents to change their vote. Thirty-two Democrats and twenty-six Republicans who voted no on the original bill switched sides to support TARP in the revised bill, passed on October 3, 2008. The congressmen's change of vote was prompted in part by fears of a global economic meltdown and by provisions ensuring better oversight, but, for at least many of the congressmen who had changed their votes, there was a clear quid pro quo: the revised bill contained $150 billion in special tax provisions for their constituents. No one said that members of Congress could be bought cheaply.

... snip ...

pg.80:
Nine lenders that combined had nearly $100 billion in losses received $175 billion in bailout money through TARP and paid out nearly $33 billion in bonuses, including more than $1 million apiece to nearly five thousand employees. Other money was used to pay dividends, which are supposed to be a sharing of profits with shareholders. In this case, though, there were no profits, just government handouts.

... snip ...

Original stated purpose for TARP was purchase of toxic assets ... however with only $700B it couldn't come close to addressing the problem ... so it was really met for other uses. Article that just the four largest too-big-to-fail had $5.2T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs at the end of 2008
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home

Total of $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs were done during the bubble
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

pg.176:
The cleverest fees, however, were the "interchange" fees imposed on merchants that accepted their cards. As the cards came into wider use as cardholders were offered various reward enticements to put charges on the cards, store owners felt they had to accept them; they would otherwise lose too many sales to competitors that did. Visa and MasterCard knew this -- and knew that meant that they could exploit the merchant. If the banks charged 2 or 3 percent of the cost of a product, most merchants would still accept the cards rather than lose sales. The fact that modern computers rendered the actual costs negligible was irrelevant. There simply wasn't any effective competition, and so the banks could get away with it. To make sure that markets didn't work, they insisted that the merchant neither inform customers of the true cost of using the card nor impose a charge for use of the card.

... snip ...

Part of card associations in the 70s/80s was the rise of value added networks (VANs) ... however in the 90s, the internet obsoleted all the VANs ... they only ones hanging on are those of card associations ... their demise will also contribute to driving transaction costs to zero. There was report from couple years that payment transaction fees was less than 10% of bottom line for European institutions and 40% for US institutions (for some large issuers, more like 60% of bottom line) ... as a result Europe had less resistance to paradigm changing technology

past posts mentioning $5.2T & $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#21 Zombie Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#32 Wall Street Bonuses May Reach Lowest Level in 3 Years
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#19 "Buffett Tax" and truth in numbers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#65 Why Wall Street Should Stop Whining
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#95 Bank of America Fined $1 Billion for Mortgage Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#30 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#31 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#32 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#36 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#37 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#38 The Death of MERS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#45 Fannie, Freddie Charge Taxpayers For Legal Bills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#46 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#52 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#54 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#55 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#5 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#32 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#42 China's J-20 Stealth Fighter Is Already Doing A Whole Lot More Than Anyone Expected
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#23 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#40 Who Increased the Debt?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#42 Who Increased the Debt?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#58 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#31 Rome speaks to us. Their example can inspire us to avoid their fate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#63 One maths formula and the financial crash
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#66 Predator GE: We Bring Bad Things to Life

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The Army and Special Forces: The Fantasy Continues

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 3 May, 2012
Subject: The Army and Special Forces: The Fantasy Continues
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/1edrV4wQeBz

The Army and Special Forces: The Fantasy Continues
http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2012/05/03/the-army-and-special-forces-the-fantasy-continues/

from above:
The fundamental truth: the U.S. lacks the capacity (as does any industrial country) to reshape the internal characteristics of another nation. The history of colonialism is littered with failure, not success, in trying to do so. Americans are no better, however inexhaustible our good will, at executing such a mission successfully.

... snip ...

.. it has rarely been about remaking the country ... just plundering the resources ... i.e. the "natural resource curse"

a couple books:

The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World
https://www.amazon.com/The-Next-Convergence-Multispeed-ebook/dp/B004EPYWCO/
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-Man-ebook/dp/B001AFF266

.... "natural resource curse" for developing countries because of developed countries creating huge graft&corruption in the rulers ... for stealing the resources ... cites Botswana as rare exception.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

When Mobile Telecommunications Routes Become Banks

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 4 May, 2012
Subject: When Mobile Telecommunications Routes Become Banks
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/QnVMU7y685z

When Mobile Telecommunications Routes Become Banks
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2012/05/when-mobile-telecommunications-routes-become-banks

In the mid-90s, there were lots of reports about how the telcos were going to take over the payment industry from the banks (a major source of profits). There was lots of lobbying that payments require bank charter ... and rhetoric on the floor of congress was that the major purpose of GLBA was if you didn't already have a bank charter, you couldn't get one (although GLBA is now better known for repeal of Glass-Steagall)

overlap with comments in this book about "interchange fees"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#69 Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy

other recent posts mentioning "interchange fees":
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#78 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#96 Infographic: Online payment security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#16 Wonder if they know how Boydian they are?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#82 Fighting Cyber Crime with Transparency

recent posts mentioning GLBA &/or Glass-Steagall:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#0 Revolution Through Banking?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#9 Anyone sceptically about Two Factor Authentication?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#11 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#25 You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#35 Israel vows to hit back after credit cards hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#56 IBM researchers make 12-atom magnetic memory bit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#60 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#16 Interview of Mr. John Reed regarding banking fixing the game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#40 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#88 Original Thinking Is Hard, Where Good Ideas Come From
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#12 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#31 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#32 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#43 M68k add to memory is not a mistake any more
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#52 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#54 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#2 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#4 Computer Programmers Only 5th Most Sleep Deprived Profession
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#5 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#56 Server time Protocol and CICS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#59 A computer metaphor for systems integration
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#68 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#69 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#73 Execution Velocity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#79 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#1 The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#4 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#15 Why do people say "the soda loop is often depicted as a simple loop"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#16 Wonder if they know how Boydian they are?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#25 We are on the brink of historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#27 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#28 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#30 Senators Who Voted Against Ending Big Oil Tax Breaks Received Millions From Big Oil
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#41 Why Are the Fed and SEC Keeping Wall Street's Secrets?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#45 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#47 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#57 speculation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#62 Typeface (font) and city identity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#67 Typeface (font) and city identity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#73 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#74 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#93 Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#100 Indirect Bit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#11 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#22 Indirect Bit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#24 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#31 Rome speaks to us. Their example can inspire us to avoid their fate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#36 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#37 Hard Disk Drive Construction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#43 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#56 Hard Disk Drive Construction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#65 The old is new again - Not IBM related, but I hope interesting

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

New Study Debunks Idea That Human Performance Fits on A Bell Curve

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 4 May, 2012
Subject: New Study Debunks Idea That Human Performance Fits on A Bell Curve
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/gh9oJs2ec7P

New Study Debunks Idea That Human Performance Fits on A Bell Curve
http://www.businessinsider.com/new-study-debunks-idea-that-human-performance-fits-on-a-bell-curve-2012-5

In 1995 there was a "2020" discussion group (what will US economy like in 2020) that raised this issue

old archived post in the 2020 discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#8aa

past refs to highly skewed distribution in 2020 discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#82
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#22
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#20

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Cartons of Punch Cards

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Cartons of Punch Cards
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 04 May 2012 11:32:37 -0400
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
Couple of weeks later, a gunman walked onto the local newscast and held a gun on David Horowitz. Security was much tighter after that.

80s, lots of datacenters were show places ... had access security but glass windows to showoff great technology ... typically on ground floor where people walking by could look in.

then somebody drove auto through glass entrance. after that lots of changes ... no more ground floor glass display, lots of large concrete "planters" & berms to block auto drive thrus.

from ibm jargon:
drive-in branch - n. ISG HQ in Bethesda, Maryland. Named for an incident in 1982 when a former IBM employee drove his car through the doors of the building (which never was a branch office, in fact) and went on a shooting spree that killed or injured a number of people. Many of the fortifications around the entrances of IBM buildings date from this incident. This usage is unfortunately quite common, being used by those unaware of the details of the incident. It is considered to be in bad taste by those who lost friends and colleagues. Rusty Bucket

... snip ...

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 4 May, 2012
Subject: Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things
http://www.npr.org/2012/05/01/151764534/psychology-of-fraud-why-good-people-do-bad-things

In the wake of enron/worldcom, congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley ... supposedly prevent something similar from happening again ... except it required SEC to do something. Possibly because GAO didn't believe SEC was doing anything, it started reports of public company fraudulent financial filings ... showing uptick even after SOX:
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-06-1079sp

Supposedly under SOX all those top executives would be doing jail time. There was recent item on web about: "Enron was dry run and it worked so well it has become institutionalized"

This came up also in the Madoff congressional hearings by the person that had tried unsuccessfully for a decade to get SEC do something about Madoff (SEC was finally forced to do something when Madoff turned himself in). The person was asked if new regulations were needed ... he replied that while new regulations might be needed, much more important would be transparency and visibility (which is antithetical to wallstreet culture).

SOX also had item in it about SEC doing something about the rating agencies. In the rating agencies congressional hearings ... the rating agencies played the pivotal role in the economic mess ... with the CDO sellers paying the rating agencies for triple-A ratings on toxic CDOs .... even when they all knew the toxic CDOs weren't worth triple-A (since then there has been obfuscation and misdirection concerning mathematical models not being accurate).

note one of the accounting firms has been publishing surveys about whether a person knows anybody in their company that has been guilty of significant fraudulent and/or unethical behavior. The avgs. appear to be twice as bad for the financial industry than other industries (references to employees being directed to do whatever it takes).

recent posts mentioning SEC, Madoff, and/or toxic CDOs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#1 The war on terabytes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#4 The Myth of Work-Life Balance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#5 We are on the brink of a historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#18 SEC v. Citigroup, How to Avoid (Greater) Disaster
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#21 Zombie Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#26 What's your favorite quote on "accountability"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#30 Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#70 Regulatory Agency logo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#97 Is SSL Cert Holder ID Verification A Joke?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#19 "Buffett Tax" and truth in numbers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#44 What's the most interesting thing you do in your non-work life?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#53 Can America Lead the World's Fight Against Corruption?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#54 The New Age Bounty Hunger -- Showdown at the SEC Corral
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#62 An approach to Dump formatting of Control Blocks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#65 Why Wall Street Should Stop Whining
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#67 How Economists Contributed to the Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#71 Password shortcomings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#87 The Benefit and The Burden
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#90 IBM Doing Some Restructuring?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#95 Bank of America Fined $1 Billion for Mortgage Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#0 New theory of moral behavior may explain recent ethical lapses in banking industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#2 Occupy the SEC (Securities & Exchange Commission)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#4 Bank of America Fined $1 Billion for Mortgage Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#5 Too big not to fail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#7 The Convergence of PKI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#13 Study links ultrafast machine trading with risk of crash
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#19 Occupy the SEC Pitches An Extreme Makeover of Wall Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#21 Study links ultrafast trading with risk of crash
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#25 Goldman Sachs P.R. Chief's Accidental Exit Interview
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#30 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#31 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#32 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#36 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#37 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#39 Greek knife to Wall Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#44 New Citigroup Looks Too Much Like the Old One
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#45 Fannie, Freddie Charge Taxpayers For Legal Bills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#46 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#48 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#49 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#52 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#54 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#62 Why Is Finance So Big?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#63 The Economist's Take on Financial Innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#5 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#10 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#11 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#12 Gordon Gekko Says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#13 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#16 IBM cuts more than 1,000 U.S. Workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#32 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#34 Gordon Gekko Says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#39 Fannie and Freddie must go - here's how
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#42 China's J-20 Stealth Fighter Is Already Doing A Whole Lot More Than Anyone Expected
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#48 IBM cuts more than 1,000 U.S. workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#52 Goldman Exec Quits In A Scathing NYT Op-Ed About How The Firm Abuses Its Clients
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#68 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#69 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#71 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#20 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#23 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#25 We are on the brink of historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#30 Senators Who Voted Against Ending Big Oil Tax Breaks Received Millions From Big Oil
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#40 Who Increased the Debt?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#41 Why Are the Fed and SEC Keeping Wall Street's Secrets?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#42 Who Increased the Debt?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#57 speculation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#58 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#70 Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#71 Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#5 Hardware v. People
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#23 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#25 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#31 Rome speaks to us. Their example can inspire us to avoid their fate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#33 The case against Lehman Brothers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#35 Inequality and Investment Bubbles: A Clearer Link Is Established
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#66 Predator GE: We Bring Bad Things to Life
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#69 Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#71 When Mobile Telecommunications Routes Become Banks

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Fed Report: Mortgage Mess NOT an Inside Job

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 5 May, 2012
Subject: Fed Report: Mortgage Mess NOT an Inside Job
Blog: Facebook
Fed Report: Mortgage Mess NOT an Inside Job
http://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/05032012_mortgage_crisis_securitizatio.asp

Congressional hearings into the pivotal role that rating agencies played had testimony that the toxic CDO sellers were paying the rating agencies for triple-A rated when both knew that they weren't worth triple-A. During the hearings some news coverage commented that the rating agencies would likely avoid federal prosecution with threat of gov. credit rating downgrade. Since then there is been numerous comments about issue of mathematical models being obfuscation and misdirection. There have been several articles about making risk managers more independent of the business people because of numerous stories that the risk managers were directed to fiddle the model inputs to come up with the results the business people wanted.

Stiglitz' "Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy"
https://www.amazon.com/Freefall-America-Markets-Sinking-ebook/dp/B0035YDM9E

spends a lot of time on the big banks changing the mortgage business (from long-term profits on spread between what they paid for deposits and earned from loans) to purely "fee-based" operation for fronting the operation (and as a result only motivation was executing as many mortgages as fast as possible). It also repeatedly cites agencies not performing their duties (including the Federal Reserve).

Securitization of loans was not new ... it was used at least during the S&L crisis to hide fraudulent loans. In the late 90s we were asked to look at improving the integrity of documents used in securitized mortgages ... however with the rise of "no-documentation" loans ... there were no longer any question about whether documents were fraudulent or not. The big difference this time was the toxic CDO sellers being able to pay for triple-A ratings resulting in $27T business (rather than hundreds of millions) ... triple-A rating trumped the documents.
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

GLBA & repeal of Glass-Steagall played a role ... but unregulated load originators (not just depository institutions) could make "liar loans" (no-documentation, no-down) and pay for triple-A ratings (when all knew they weren't worth triple-A) to immediately sell them off. Compared to S&L crisis, this allowed them to sell to institutions restricted to only dealing in triple-A ... like large retirement funds .. so instead of possibly tens of millions in securitized loans (during S&L) it became tens of trillions (a million times more with possibly a million times more damage to the economy). All the time, the responsible regulatory agencies just watching from the sidelines. GLBA repeal of Glass-Steagall allowed regulated depository institutions to acquire unregulated risky investment banking arms ... where they could also play in the triple-A rated toxic CDOs (and other things) ... just the four largest too-big-to-fail were carrying $5.2T toxic CDOs "off-book" at the end of 2008:
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home

With only $700B appropriated for buying toxic assets (TARP) ... it wouldn't have come remotely close to fixing the problem ... so a completely different strategy had to be devised.

Note however, rhetoric on the floor of congress was that the primary purpose of GLBA was to prevent institutions that didn't already have a banking charter from getting a banking charter (reducing competition to the main banking institutions). However for the federal reserve bailouts ... some purely investment banking houses were given banking charters (which should have been precluded by GLBA) ... so that they could also receive various federal reserve assistance.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Time to competency for new software language?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 5 May, 2012
Subject: Time to competency for new software language?
Blog: Mainframe Exports
re:
http://lnkd.in/Nfu3wc
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#74 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#84 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#23 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#24 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#25 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#36 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#43 Time to competency for new software language?

In the early 80s, I wanted to demonstrate that REXX wasn't just another pretty scripting language ... and chose a rewrite of IPCS (large assembler written application) ... part of the demonstration was it would be done less than half time over 3 month period, have ten times the function of the base IPCS as well as ten times the performance. I finished early and so started implementation of library that did automated analysis looking for large variety of failure signatures (still had maybe 1/10th the lines of code and enormous lower resource than original ... and with a little slight of hand ... did run ten times faster). I thought that it would eventually be released to customers but for whatever reason could never get approval (although it eventually came to be used by nearly every internal datacenter as well as nearly every customer support PSR). some past posts on the subject
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dumprx

old email reference to the 3090 service processor people (3092) group wanted to include it as part of their product:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#email861031 .
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#email861223

One of the things that I noticed was that assembler required the programmer had to manually manage the contents of hardware registers ... and that resulted in a major source of failures ... especially associated with registers containing address pointers and the correct contents hadn't been loaded.

Later I got interested in something similar about the "C" language. The original mainframe tcp/ip product had been implemented in vs/pascal. For various reasons, the base implementation got 44kbytes/sec throughput using nearly all of a 3090 processor. I did the implementation RFC1044 support and in some tuning tests at Cray Research, I got 1mbyte/sec throughput between Cray and 4341 (i.e. 4341 channel speed) using only modest amount of 4341 processor (possibly 500 times improvement in bytes moved per instruction executed).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

Now tcp/ip protocol stacks done in the "C language" have had an enormous number of buffer overflow failures over the years (a frequent failure characteristic of almost every application implemented in "C" language) .... which the vs/pascal implementation never had. This short coming of the C language was also somewhat highlighted in the MULTICS security evaluation (implemented in PLI) which also claimed to have never had a buffer overflow problem. Some past posts mentioning "C language" propensity for buffer overflow bugs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#overflow

Some number of reference posts were in the a.f.c. newgroup ... which would periodically include Dennis Ritchie (RIP) ... one of the people involved in "C language" (and UNIX operating system).

Semi-health related ... I was one of the authors of the financial industry privacy standard ... as part of the activity we had meetings with several from the health industry ... included some of the people that had created draft back in the 70s. One of the issues was privacy (and security) of health information ... especially in large dataprocessing systems ... and various ways that PII leaks into the financial system (like financial statement that might have line item for payment of a specific kind of health test ... or payment to a institution or lab that only deals in specific kind of health issue).

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Vampire Squid

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 6 May, 2012
Subject: Vampire Squid
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/KSTvFvrJM5u
We should have recognized that the outsized proportions of the financial sector -- in the years before the crisis, some 40 percent of corporate profits were in that sector -- indicated that something was wrong

Stiglitz version of Taibbi's "Vampire Squid" (Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, pg188) .. recent ("Vampire Squid") post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#84

There have been several stories about auto industry structuring their books so that building autos showed nearly no profit with nearly all the profit being shifted to auto loans. This could possibly be attributed to the call for 100% unearned profit tax on the US auto industry ... recent post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#78

Similarly, GE financial operations were grown to half GE profits, recent post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#66
another recent post referencing Stiglitz
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#75

possibly how the books are structured(?):

Revisiting: How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much
http://www.forbes.com/sites/haydnshaughnessy/2012/05/06/revisiting-how-germany-builds-twice-as-many-cars-as-the-u-s-while-paying-its-workers-twice-as-much/

Stiglitz in "Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy" has item that ratio of CEO pay to worker has exploded after having been 40:1 thirty years ago and in some cases is now thousand to one ... and CEO pay may be twice that of 2nd in charge. Past reports was the ratio had been 20:1 for a long time (10:1 in most of the rest of the world) and exploded to 400:1 ("Age of Greed" also had item that it spiked over 500:1 during the economic mess). Another 30yr comparison:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html
in this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/jobs-will-follow-a-strengthening-of-the-middle-class.html
related discussion:
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/37841/

other past posts mentioning "Vampire Squid":
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#27 In the News: SEC storms the 'Castle'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#6 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#53 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#55 America's Defense Meltdown
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#59 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#21 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#40 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#130 vampires in financial infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#144 Fingerspitzengefuhl
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#19 "Buffett Tax" and truth in numbers

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

What are you experiences with Amdahl Computers and Plug-Compatibles?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 6 May, 2012
Subject: What are you experiences with Amdahl Computers and Plug-Compatibles?
Blog: MainframeZone
re:
http://lnkd.in/at94Sb

Early 70s, company started Future System project ... that was going to completely replace 370 with something different ... internal politics suspended/killed 370 projects. This reference motivation for Future System was clone controller business:
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm

Early 70s, Amdahl had talk in large (filled) auditorium at MIT ... we walked over from the science center. During the talk somebody asked him what justification did he use with the investment people ... he said that companies had invested large billions in 360 software development and even if IBM were to completely walk away from 360 (could be considered a veiled reference to FS), that software base would be enough to keep him in business through the end of the century. When FS imploded there was mad rush to get stuff back into 370 product pipelines.

Ferguson & Morris book, "Computer Wars: The Post-IBM World", Time Books, 1993, mention that distraction of Future System and killing off work on 370 products ... and then after Future System imploded and delays in getting 370 efforts restarted, allowed clone processors to gain market foothold. misc. past posts mentioning FS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

Part of the mad rush was remapping 168-3 wiring diagram to 20% faster chips for 3033 in parallel with kickoff of 370/xa and 3081 ... some discussion mentioned here (including some discussion of cost effectiveness of 3081 technology compared to Amdahl):
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm

Recent post with longer-winded post on the subject in comp.arch post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#22

above also mentions ECPS ... post mentioning giving detailed ECPS implementation presentation at baybunch meeting and getting grilled by Amdahl hypervisor people:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#69

Recent post discussing first Amdahl install at large, true-blue commercial account (prior installations had been univ. & scientific):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#21

During FS period, I continued to work on 360/370 and periodically ridicule FS activities (also not especially career enhancing). The mad rush after FS imploded, possibly contributed to decision to release various pieces of things I had been doing during FS period, some more discussion here (from linkedin IBM Historic Computing thread)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#50

23Jun69 unbundling announcement had starting to charge for application software and other stuff (in part in response to gov. litigation), however the company managed to make case that kernel software was still free. One of the items was "resource manager" and it was chosen to be guinea pig for transition to starting to charge for kernel software ... and I got to spend a lot of time with business people on kernel software charging policies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle
more in this long-winded recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#18

past posts mentioning doing clone controller project at univ as undergraduate and getting blamed for some part of the clone controller business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

The other thing that Ferguson&Morris mention regarding the failure of FS:

Most corrosive of all, the old IBM candor died with F/S. Top management, particularly Opel, reacted defensively as F/S headed toward a debacle. The IBM culture that Watson had built was a harsh one, but it encouraged dissent and open controversy. But because of the heavy investment of face by the top management, F/S took years to kill, although its wrongheadedness was obvious from the very outset. "For the first time, during F/S, outspoken criticism became politically dangerous," recalls a former top executive.

... snip, and ....

... and perhaps most damaging, the old culture under Watson Snr and Jr of free and vigorous debate was replaced with sycophancy and make no waves under Opel and Akers. It's claimed that thereafter, IBM lived in the shadow of defeat

... snip ...

mentioned in this MainframeZone discussion
http://lnkd.in/EUvPwk
also archived in this long-winded post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#38

AT&T was having IBM do a drastically stripped down TSS/370 kernel (limited availability follow-on to TSS/360) ... that AT&T was going to layer UNIX above (relying on TSS/370 for device support and error recovery). Some of us had tried to get approval to hire person that Amdahl hired for UTS.

During development at Amdahl ... when it was still GOLD (before UTS announcement) there was discussion of some of the issues (silicon valley was somewhat more relaxed back then). One of the people responsible for HASP had done something called RASP ... basically a little like a combination of MFT-II and TSS/370 ... that was candidate in place of VS2 (i.e. starts out SVS then morphs into MVS). When it lost, person left and joined Amdahl in Dallas and was working on a RASP do-over (in clean room, there was some litigation and code examination to look for exact copy .. but only a couple really trivial turned up). I suggested that some of the GOLD people in silicon valley could work with people in Dallas ... to do something similar to what AT&T was planning with TSS/370. However, there was some amount of discord between the two groups ... and of course I wasn't even an Amdahl employee.

Recent post with some of the RASP/MVS lore
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#73

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Cartons of Punch Cards

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Cartons of Punch Cards
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 07 May 2012 07:57:55 -0400
"Charles Richmond" <numerist@aquaporin4.com> writes:
I still watch Leave It to Beaver, Andy Griffith, Father Knows Best, and the original Star Trek via the internet with my streaming video player and Netflix.

drove down to mt airy (aka mayberry) last week to take pictures of headstones (have lots of ancestors from the area, my sister has been researching such things and had list of cemeteries to visit, also did some research for her at local library that has local books on such stuff) ... local chamber of commerce and tourist information all oriented around mayberry, house where griffith was born, etc.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The Failure of Central Planning

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 7 May, 2012
Subject: The Failure of Central Planning
Blog: Facebook
The Failure of Central Planning
http://www.resilientcommunities.com/weekend-edition-the-failure-of-soviet-harvard-and-wall-street-knowledge/

Both Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy and Why Nations Fail talk about imperfect information leads to problems ... no intrinsic difference between gov. planning and non-gov. Recent wallstreet "dark markets" (lack of transparency and visibility) just as bad as any gov. planning.

Periodically obfuscation and misdirection about complexity of CDOs. Securitization had been used during S&L crisis to obfuscate fraudulent mortgages. Late 90s we were asked to look at improving integrity of supporting documents for securitized mortgages (CDOs). However sellers being able to pay rating agencies for triple-A ratings (when both knew they weren't worth triple-A ... testimony from congressional hearings into pivotal role the rating agencies played in the mess) enabled no-documentation loans (triple-A rating trumps documentation; also no-documentation, means no need for documentation integrity). S&L crisis maybe millions in securitized mortgages ... triple-A rating was targeted to enable marketing to institutions (like large retirement funds) restricted to triple-A ... and so $27T during the bubble (million times more):
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

... note all the time, responsible regulatory agencies just sitting on the sidelines watching.

recent posts mentioning "Freefall" &/or "Why Nations Fail":
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#31 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#34 The never-ending SCO lawsuit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#35 The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#36 The never-ending SCO lawsuit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#57 speculation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#60 Candid Communications & Tweaking Curiosity, Tools to Consider
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#70 Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#2 Did they apply Boyd's concepts?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#32 Back to the future: convict labor returns to America
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#66 Predator GE: We Bring Bad Things to Life
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#69 Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#70 The Army and Special Forces: The Fantasy Continues
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#71 When Mobile Telecommunications Routes Become Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#74 Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#75 Fed Report: Mortgage Mess NOT an Inside Job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#77 Vampire Squid

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The Pentagon's New Defense Clandestine Service

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 7 May, 2012
Subject: The Pentagon's New Defense Clandestine Service
Blog: Facebook
The Pentagon's New Defense Clandestine Service
http://www.phibetaiota.net/2012/05/marcus-aurelius-the-pentagons-new-defense-clandestine-service/

During internet bubble ... some number of former intelligence employees were applying for cybersecurity positions in silicon valley. comments were that agencies were required to reduce spending equal to what was being spent on bosnia. (maintaining balanced budget w/o increasing taxes) ... which resulted in some number of people being turfed. By comparison, CBO report says last decade (after congress allowed fiscal responsibility act to expire in 2002), taxes revenue was reduced $6T at the same time spending increased by $6T creating $12T budget gap (compared to baseline .. which had all federal debt retired by 2010). Middle of last decade, head of GAO (comptroller general) would include in speeches that congress wasn't capable of middle school arithmetic (because of what it was doing to the budget).

part of the comments in that period was that agencies were specifically targeting HUMINT to turf ... claiming they could be replaced with electronics.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Defense budget casualties light on civilian side

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 7 May, 2012
Subject: Defense budget casualties light on civilian side
Blog: Facebook
Defense budget casualties light on civilian side
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/6/defense-budget-casualties-light-on-civilian-side/

I can't tell exactly what it means. Major campaign platform was reversing enormous outsourcing ... does numbers include outsourced or not?

OMB guidance expected on measuring insourcing, outsourcing costs
http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20120329/PERSONNEL04/203290303/1050

from above:
Over the last decade, spending on service contractors has outpaced spending on federal employees, McCaskill said, citing figures from the Federal Procurement Data System and the Congressional Research Service. The cost of service contracts has increased by 79 percent, from $181 billion to $324 billion, she said. At the same time, spending on the total federal civilian workforce increased by 35 percent, from $170 billion to $229 billion

... snip ...

somewhat caught between civil service that may want to do as little as possible against beltway bandits that have no interest in doing the right thing and their growing Success of Failure culture.

recent posts referencing Success of Failure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#14 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#15 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#39 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#42 Strategy subsumes culture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#76 IBM Doing Some Restructuring?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#80 U.S. Cybersecurity Debate Risks Leaving Critical Infrastructure in the Dark
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#86 Spontaneous conduction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#36 McCain calls for U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#42 China's J-20 Stealth Fighter Is Already Doing A Whole Lot More Than Anyone Expected
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#44 Faster, Better, Cheaper: Why Not Pick All Three?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#57 Study Confirms The Government Produces The Buggiest Software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#60 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#20 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#70 Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#71 Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#104 Time to Think ... and to Listen
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#44 Time to Think ... and to Listen

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Why Can't Obama Bring Wall Street to Justice?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 8 May, 2012
Subject: Why Can't Obama Bring Wall Street to Justice?
Blog: Facebook
Why Can't Obama Bring Wall Street to Justice?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/05/06/why-can-t-obama-bring-wall-street-to-justice.html

note "Confidence Men"
https://www.amazon.com/Confidence-Men-Washington-Education-ebook/dp/B0089LOKKS//

highlights that the economic advisery "A-team" helped get the president elected ... but they were going to hold those responsible accountable, so after the election, members of the "B-team" were the ones appointed (many who were participants in the financial mess)

recent posts referencing "Confidence Men":
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#17 What's your favorite quote on "accountability"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#21 Zombie Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#44 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#47 Avoiding a lost decade
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#48 Fed's image tarnished by newly released documents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#72 Chris Dodd's SOPA crusading
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#43 Where are all the old tech workers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#2 Occupy the SEC (Securities & Exchange Commission)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#5 Too big not to fail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#19 Occupy the SEC Pitches An Extreme Makeover of Wall Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#63 The Economist's Take on Financial Innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#13 The White House and Mortgage Fraud: So Far It's All Talk, No Action
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#66 Predator GE: We Bring Bad Things to Life
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#67 Cartons of Punch Cards

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 8 May, 2012
Subject: How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
Blog: IBMers
Cringely Predicts IBM Will Shed 78% of US Employees By 2015
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/04/19/164226/cringely-predicts-ibm-will-shed-78-of-us-employees-by-2015

"Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy" makes a point that it was specifically the Protestent work ethic, savings, and focus on literacy for all ... that was a major factor in the rise of the US. "Why Nations Fail - The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Property" has original English Jamestown effort attempted to emulate Spanish model, enslave the local natives and live off their efforts .. but natives around Jamestown didn't have the numbers and/or organization and the colony almost starved the first two years. They then moved on to enslaved British as substitute. Fiske's history lectures (from 1880s) has the US form of government as democracy was largely because of the Scottish influence from the mid-Atlantic states ... it would have been quite different if the "English" immigrants had prevailed. Some of this is also discussed in "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America".

"Computer Wars: The Post-IBM World" (Ferguson&Morris) regarding the failure of IBM's Future System in the mid-70s:

Most corrosive of all, the old IBM candor died with F/S. Top management, particularly Opel, reacted defensively as F/S headed toward a debacle. The IBM culture that Watson had built was a harsh one, but it encouraged dissent and open controversy. But because of the heavy investment of face by the top management, F/S took years to kill, although its wrongheadedness was obvious from the very outset. "For the first time, during F/S, outspoken criticism became politically dangerous," recalls a former top executive.

... snip, and ....

... and perhaps most damaging, the old culture under Watson Snr and Jr of free and vigorous debate was replaced with sycophancy and make no waves under Opel and Akers. It's claimed that thereafter, IBM lived in the shadow of defeat

... snip ...

In the wake of Enron/Worldcom, congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley ... but required SEC to do something. Possibly because GAO didn't think SEC was doing anything it started doing reports of public company fraudulent filings ... even showing uptic after SOX:
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-06-1079sp

Under SOX, all of the executives should be serving jail time. Recently seen on web: Enron was dry run and it worked so well it has become institutionalized.

Lack of SEC doing anything came up in congressional hearings into Madoff by the person that had tried unsuccessfully for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff (SEC was finally forced to do something when Madoff turned himself in).. It also comes up in the congressional hearings into the pivotal role that rating agencies played in the economic mess (selling triple-A ratings on toxic CDOs when the rating agencies knew they weren't worth triple-A) ... and SOX had included provision for SEC to do something about rating agencies. Stiglitz's "Freefall" ends with section on "Rewriting History" (regarding all the regulatory agencies sitting on the sidelines watching the financial mess happen), specifically calling out Treasury and Federal Reserve.

Review of Gerstner's IBM book ... also includes my response with several references that had been posted to "Greater IBM"
http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2012/02/10/review-of-who-says-elephants-cant-dance-by-louis-gerstner.html

One of my references is "Strategic Intuition" where it compares Microsoft, Apple, Google and Gerstner's resurrection of IBM.

recent posts mentioning "Freefall", "Why Nations Fail", "Strategic Intuition", etc:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#89 Where are all the old tech workers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#92 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#95 Can anyone offer some insight
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#104 Can a business be democratic? Tom Watson Sr. thought so
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#26 Strategy subsumes culture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#59 Original Thinking Is Hard, Where Good Ideas Come From
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#74 IBM Doing Some Restructuring?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#31 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#34 The never-ending SCO lawsuit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#35 The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#36 The never-ending SCO lawsuit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#57 speculation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#60 Candid Communications & Tweaking Curiosity, Tools to Consider
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#70 Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#2 Did they apply Boyd's concepts?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#32 Back to the future: convict labor returns to America
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#66 Predator GE: We Bring Bad Things to Life
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#69 Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#70 The Army and Special Forces: The Fantasy Continues
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#71 When Mobile Telecommunications Routes Become Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#74 Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#75 Fed Report: Mortgage Mess NOT an Inside Job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#77 Vampire Squid
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#80 The Failure of Central Planning

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Cartons of Punch Cards

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Cartons of Punch Cards
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 May 2012 14:01:36 -0400
David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b@dd-b.net> writes:
Looks like Oracle bought them :-). Makes sense, database systems frequently need high availability.

(early Jan92) meeting in ellison's conference room about high availability as well as cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

posts on doing our high availability (HA/CMP) product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

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

last email in above ... end of Jan92 ... was possibly just hrs before cluster scale-up was transferred and we were told we couldn't work anything with more than four processors. a couple weeks later cluster scale-up is announced as supercomputer for scientific & numerical intensive only
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1 920217
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2 920511

for other drift ... posts on original relational/sql implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The Dangers of High-Frequency Trading; Wall Street's Speed Freaks

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 8 May, 2012
Subject: The Dangers of High-Frequency Trading; Wall Street's Speed Freaks
Blog: Facebook
The Dangers of High-Frequency Trading; Wall Street's Speed Freaks
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/08/wall-streets-speed-freaks/

Spitzer's "Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy" talks open markets needing transparency and visibility (nearly opposite of wallstreet) ... high frequency trading is about beating other traders and provides no useful benefit to society. In the congressional Madoff hearings, the person that had tried unsuccessfully for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff, was asked if new regulation was needed. He replied that while new regulation may be needed, much more important was to have transparency and visibility.

recent posts mentioning "Freefall", Madoff, and/or transparency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#4 The Myth of Work-Life Balance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#5 We are on the brink of a historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#18 SEC v. Citigroup, How to Avoid (Greater) Disaster
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#26 What's your favorite quote on "accountability"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#30 Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#70 Regulatory Agency logo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#71 What's your favorite quote on "accountability"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#87 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#19 "Buffett Tax" and truth in numbers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#44 What's the most interesting thing you do in your non-work life?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#54 The New Age Bounty Hunger -- Showdown at the SEC Corral
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#65 Why Wall Street Should Stop Whining
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#67 How Economists Contributed to the Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#70 Four Sources of Trust, Crypto Not Scaling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#95 Bank of America Fined $1 Billion for Mortgage Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#0 New theory of moral behavior may explain recent ethical lapses in banking industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#4 Bank of America Fined $1 Billion for Mortgage Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#13 Study links ultrafast machine trading with risk of crash
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#25 Goldman Sachs P.R. Chief's Accidental Exit Interview
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#31 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#36 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#37 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#39 Greek knife to Wall Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#44 New Citigroup Looks Too Much Like the Old One
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#52 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#54 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#12 Gordon Gekko Says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#16 IBM cuts more than 1,000 U.S. Workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#32 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#69 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#71 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#23 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#57 speculation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#82 Fighting Cyber Crime with Transparency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#25 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#66 Predator GE: We Bring Bad Things to Life
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#69 Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#71 When Mobile Telecommunications Routes Become Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#74 Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#75 Fed Report: Mortgage Mess NOT an Inside Job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#77 Vampire Squid
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#80 The Failure of Central Planning
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#84 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 9 May, 2012
Subject: How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
Blog: IBMers
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#84 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?

One of the Federal Reserve recent "Rewrite History" was about securitized mortgages (CDOs) not being new with the recent financial mess. They had been used during S&L mess to obfuscate fraudulent mortgages ... but without triple-A ratings they possibly only sold millions. In the late 90s, we had been asked to look at improving the integrity of securitized mortgage supporting documents. However, the CDO sellers discovered that they could pay rating agencies for triple-A ... even when the rating agencies knew they weren't worth triple-A ... opening market to institutions restricted to only dealing in triple-A (like large retirement funds). They also discovered that triple-A trumps documentation and they could do "no-documentation" mortgages (and with no documentation, there was no more documentation integrity issues). As a result they could do trillions (instead of just millions ... aka a million times more) ... reference to doing $27T during the economic mess:
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

For instance, recent CBS 60mins segment on Lehman had Ersnt&Young, SEC, and FRB all with people sitting onsite at Lehman and they just watched as the activity unfolded
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-case-against-lehman-brothers/

tempting to draw analogy with 3-monkeys (Japanese: san'en or sanzaru, or sanbiki no saru, literally "three monkeys"; "see no evil", "hear no evil", "speak no evil")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_wise_monkeys

other GAO reports on public company fraudulent financial filings
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-03-395R
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-678

recent posts mentioning Lehman, 3-monkeys, and/or fraudulent financial filings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#54 Report: Fed Officials Joked About Housing Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#70 Regulatory Agency logo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#95 Bank of America Fined $1 Billion for Mortgage Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#99 New theory of moral behavior may explain recent ethical lapses in banking industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#13 Study links ultrafast machine trading with risk of crash
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#31 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#39 Greek knife to Wall Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#39 Fannie and Freddie must go - here's how
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#45 Banks Repaid Fed Bailout With Other Fed Money: Government Report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#69 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#71 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#25 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#31 Rome speaks to us. Their example can inspire us to avoid their fate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#33 The case against Lehman Brothers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#74 Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Defense acquisitions are broken and no one cares

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 10 May, 2012
Subject: Defense acquisitions are broken and no one cares
Blog: DODBUZZ
Defense acquisitions are broken and no one cares
http://www.dodbuzz.com/2012/05/03/defense-acquisitions-are-broken-and-no-one-cares/

SECDEF blamed Boyd for this '83 article:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070320170523/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html
also
https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html

and tried to have him banned from the Pentagon ... however Boyd had some congressional cover. Since then they appear to all have gone over to the dark side ... accounting for the more strident comments about MICC (instead of simply MIC).

part of the wayback machine URL turned into asterisks ... almost looks like automated card processing software leaving the trailing four digits ... just the digits turned into asterisks 2007032017

'83 article gone behind paywall but lives free at wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070320170523/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html
also
https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html

Boyd would tell story about taking 18months preparing for the article ... making sure the person on the magazine cover had permission in writing to release every detail. When SECDEF couldn't get that individual thrown in jail, he went after Boyd. Supposedly afterwards Pentagon came up with new document classification "NO-SPIN" unclassified, but not to be given to Spinney.

2nd time now seems to be fixed ... if you get the wayback machine welcome screen ... hit the "Impatient!" on the right-hand side. ... hit the "Impatient!" on the right-hand side.

pages 3&8 appear to not be at the wayback machine & tries to take you to the original website

Spinney/Boyd/Time article was 30yrs ago, things have just gotten worse. CBO had report that last decade, congress decreased tax revenues by $6T and increased spending by $6T for $12T budget gap (compared to baseline which had surpluses eliminating all federal debt by 2010) ... really starting after congress allowed fiscal responsibility act to expire in 2002. Over $2T was DOD/MIC ... $1+T for wars and $1+T went where?
http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?documentid=4623

note cdi.org has moved to
http://www.pogo.org/straus/
... missing $1T is now
http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/defense-budget/2010/what-did-the-rumsfeld-gates-pentagon-do-with-1-trillion.html

In the middle of last decade, the comptroller general would include in speeches that nobody in congress was capable of middle school arithmetic (because of how they were savaging the budget).

There is also spreading Success of Failure culture where the large system integrators, gov. contractors, and beltway bandits realize that they make more money off series of failures (less money left on the table)
http://www.govexec.com/management/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/

For a really good look at too-big-to-fail try Stiglitz:
https://www.amazon.com/Freefall-America-Markets-Sinking-ebook/dp/B0035YDM9E

... also two years ago there was several articles about the too-big-to-fail doing money laundering for drug cartels ... which also made them too-big-to-jail.

There was early 80s article calling for 100% unearned profit tax on auto industry. The scenario was that the import quotas reduced competition to give them significant increased profits which they were suppose to use to completely remake themselves. Instead they just pocketed the profits and continued business as usual. In 1990, the industry had C4 task force to look at completely remaking themselves (they were planning on heavily leveraging technology, so representatives from major technology vendors were invited). They could accurately describe the competition and changes that needed to be made ... but major stakeholders again continued business as usual.

Several recent claims that Eisenhower originally was going to say Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex ... but shortened it at the last minute ... I've used MICC example for FRCC .. Financial-Regulatory-Congress Complex .. and PRCC .. Pharmaceutical-Regulatory-Congressional Complex.

One of the analysis of problems with F35 was that it was purposefully structured to spread work around to large number of different congressional districts to make it cancel proof. A side-effect was that it also greatly increased problems involved with integrating all the different pieces from all over.

Complimenting spreading Success Of Failure culture (referenced upthread) is Spinney's theme on "Perpetual War":
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/domestic-roots-of-perpetual-war.html
... references his article here:
http://www.challengemagazine.com/extra/054_069.pdf

recent posts mentioning too-big-to-fail, Success Of Failure, Perpetual War, and/or Time '83 article:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#14 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#15 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#39 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#42 Strategy subsumes culture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#75 The Winds of Reform
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#76 IBM Doing Some Restructuring?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#80 U.S. Cybersecurity Debate Risks Leaving Critical Infrastructure in the Dark
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#86 Spontaneous conduction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#93 Original Thinking Is Hard, Where Good Ideas Come From
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#50 They're Trying to Block Military Cuts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#51 How would you succinctly desribe maneuver warfare?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#53 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#36 McCain calls for U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#42 China's J-20 Stealth Fighter Is Already Doing A Whole Lot More Than Anyone Expected
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#44 Faster, Better, Cheaper: Why Not Pick All Three?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#46 Is Washington So Bad at Strategy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#53 "Scoring" The Romney Tax Plan: Trillions Of Dollars Of Deficits As Far As The Eye Can See
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#57 Study Confirms The Government Produces The Buggiest Software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#60 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#20 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#25 We are on the brink of historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#40 Who Increased the Debt?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#58 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#68 Glory Days of Army Acquisition Were Not So Glorious
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#70 Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#71 Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#72 Sunday Book Review: Mind of War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#78 Time to Think ... and to Listen
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#104 Time to Think ... and to Listen
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#5 Hardware v. People
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#23 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#31 Rome speaks to us. Their example can inspire us to avoid their fate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#44 Time to Think ... and to Listen
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#61 Zakaria: by itself, Buffett rule is good
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#68 'Gutting' Our Military

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Defense acquisitions are broken and no one cares

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 10 May, 2012
Subject: Defense acquisitions are broken and no one cares
Blog: DODBUZZ
Defense acquisitions are broken and no one cares
http://www.dodbuzz.com/2012/05/03/defense-acquisitions-are-broken-and-no-one-cares/
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#88 Defense acquisitions are broken and no one cares

The internal network originated at the science center and was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until late '85 or early '86. The arpanet had centralized control design and implementation that was inhibiting its growth and big change was to internetworking protocol (tcp/ip) on 1jan83 (significantly contributing to its overtaking internal network a couple years later). misc. past posts mentioning internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

The technology basis for the modern internet is tcp/ip; the operational basis for the modern internet was NSFNET backbone; and the business basis for the modern internet was CIX. Some past email about working with participants on what would become NSFNET backbone. When NSFNET backbone RFP was released, internal politics prevented us from bidding; the director of NSF tried to help by writing a letter to the corporation (he had comments like what we already had running was at least five years ahead of all RFP responsess), but that just aggravated the internal politics. some old NSFNET related email from the period:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

Reference to scientific center co-worker (responsible for the internal network) talking to the arpanet people about internet design ("the genius who invented the design for the Internet"):
http://iheartthisapp.com/cool-to-be-clever-edson-hendricks-interactive-storybook-app-for-children-6/

others at the science center were responsible for inventing GML in 1969. misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml
A decade later, GML morphs into ISO standard SGML. After another decade, SGML morphs into HTML at CERN
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/
and first webserver outside europe was on the SLAC (virtual-machine based) VM370 system
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml

reference to invention of virtual machine systems at the science center in the 60s (from presentation at 1982 SEAS meeting):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/cp40seas1982.txt

Remember the FEDS (including DOD) in the late 80s had mandate to eliminate the internet and tcp/ip and move to OSI (GOSIP)

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 10 May, 2012
Subject: How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
Blog: IBMers
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#84 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#87 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?

note that recent news is FACEBOOK is telling market & stockholders that it isn't in it for short term profit.

there was recent threads in several DOD/military blogs (frequently related to Boyd; I had sponsored Boyd's briefings at IBM in the 80s) about needing disruptive/innovative thinkers .. and one suggestion was sending officers to business school (for MBAs) might be useful (in addition to the various military colleges/universities). My response was that MBAs are right smack in the middle of the MICC (military-industrial-congressional complex) and responsible for lot of our current problems ... pervasive throughout the culture totally focusing quarterly results ... this even got a lot of play in the early 80s "TANDEM MEMOS" ... I included one TANDEM MEMO post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#email810511
in this recent response:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#78

For "TANDEM MEMO" entry from IBM JARGON ... I included it in this "Greater IBM" post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#16

as I periodically mention, I was blamed for online computer conferencing on the internal network in the late 70s and early 80s ... folklore is that when the executive committee was told about online computer conferencing (and the internal network), 5of6 wanted to fire me. Also referenced in this blog's "How to spot an old IBMer"
http://aussiestorageblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/how-to-spot-an-old-ibmer/

Another part in the 80s, was the executive committee was also predicting doubling of revenue ($60B to $120B) mostly on basis of mainframe related sales and had a big massive internal building program to double mainframe related manufacturing capacity ... even when that business is starting to move in the other direction (and the company goes into the red a few short years later). Also during the last half of the 80s there appeared to be a massive uptick in the executive fasttrack program (also possibly based on predicting doubling mainframe sales) ... with large numbers being rotated through specific business unit positions ... frequently it seemed leaving scorched earth in the wake. recent reference in this (Boyd related) blog posting:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#45

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 10 May, 2012
Subject: Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#74 Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things

Stiglitz's "Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy" ends with section "Rewriting History" about responsible federal agencies that sat on the sidelines and watch the financial mess unfold (and are now trying to obfuscate and misdirect)

Recent CBS 60mins segment on Lehman had Ersnt&Young, SEC, and FRB all with people sitting onsite at Lehman and they just watched as the activity unfolded
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-case-against-lehman-brothers/

tempting to draw analogy with 3-monkeys (Japanese: san'en or sanzaru, or sanbiki no saru, literally "three monkeys"; "see no evil", "hear no evil", "speak no evil")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_wise_monkeys

other GAO reports on public company fraudulent financial filings
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-03-395R .
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-06-678

For SOX to act as deterrent, people have got to believe SEC is doing something and that there would be some high probability for jail time ... which the GAO reports pretty much show there is not (lots of public company fraudulent financial reporting).

This is similar to this reference to belief there is little risk that SEC will take action in other wallstreet related activities:
http://nypost.com/2007/03/20/cramer-reveals-a-bit-too-much/

There have been some number of reports indicating that wallstreet also attracts a high percentage of amoral and sociopaths (frequently has little appreciation for future consequences). This is long-winded discussion on Google+ on the subject with several URL references to studies/reports:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/6vknTW3SRX8
(New theory of moral behavior may explain recent ethical lapses in the banking industry) also archived in these two pieces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#99 and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#0

this is another long-winded Google+ discussion that goes into some of the Enron issues ... including reference to somebody that served on the board of directors and was member of the board's audit committee
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/TvXxxQM22ZR
the above is also archived in this piece
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#31

recent posts referencing either GAO reports on public company fraudulent financial filings and/or observation that wallstreet players have little to fear from SEC:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#1 The war on terabytes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#5 We are on the brink of a historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#18 SEC v. Citigroup, How to Avoid (Greater) Disaster
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#26 What's your favorite quote on "accountability"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#70 Regulatory Agency logo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#19 "Buffett Tax" and truth in numbers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#44 What's the most interesting thing you do in your non-work life?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#53 Can America Lead the World's Fight Against Corruption?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#54 The New Age Bounty Hunger -- Showdown at the SEC Corral
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#87 The Benefit and The Burden
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#0 New theory of moral behavior may explain recent ethical lapses in banking industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#13 Study links ultrafast machine trading with risk of crash
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#45 Fannie, Freddie Charge Taxpayers For Legal Bills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#54 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#5 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#10 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#12 Gordon Gekko Says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#16 IBM cuts more than 1,000 U.S. Workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#39 Fannie and Freddie must go - here's how
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#23 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#30 Senators Who Voted Against Ending Big Oil Tax Breaks Received Millions From Big Oil
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#57 speculation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#66 Predator GE: We Bring Bad Things to Life
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#84 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#87 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 10 May, 2012
Subject: How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
Blog: IBMers
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#84 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#87 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#90 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?

During the FS period, I continued working on 360/370 and periodically ridiculed the FS efforts (which wasn't exactly career enhancing). Then in the mid-80s, I had simple calculation showing hardware becoming commodity and the corporate margins would take the company into the red (which wasn't also exactly career enhancing when the top executives were saying the exact opposite).

possibly early 70s (instead of 80s) convert IBM lease & rental ... in Tandem Memos there were some claims it was done by retiring CEO so that they would have big bump in compensation that year (and didn't have to worry about what happened afterwards).

for other drift, somebody in Tandem Memos included some number of Watson's & Learson's "Management Briefings" ... some pieces from 8May1981 (31yrs ago):

Management Briefing
Number 1-72: January 18, 1972
ZZ04-1312

TO ALL IBM MANAGERS:

Once again, I'm writing you a Management Briefing on the subject of bureaucracy. Evidently the earlier ones haven't worked. So this time I'm taking a further step: I'm going directly to the individual employees in the company. You will be reading this poster and my comment on it in the forthcoming issue of THINK magazine. But I wanted each one of you to have an advance copy because rooting out bureaucracy rests principally with the way each of us runs his own shop.

We've got to make a dent in this problem. By the time the THINK piece comes out, I want the correction process already to have begun. And that job starts with you and with me.

Vin Learson


... snip ...

I'm sure this "box" won't render correctly on linkedin:


+-----------------------------------------+
|           "BUSINESS ECOLOGY"            |
|                                         |
|                                         |
|            +---------------+            |
|            |  BUREAUCRACY  |            |
|            +---------------+            |
|                                         |
|           is your worst enemy           |
|              because it -               |
|                                         |
|      POISONS      the mind              |
|      STIFLES      the spirit            |
|      POLLUTES     self-motivation       |
|             and finally                 |
|      KILLS        the individual.       |
+-----------------------------------------+

"I'M Going To Do All I Can to Fight This Problem . . ."
by T. Vincent Learson, Chairman

... snip ...

This recent mention of late 80s and the NSFNET backbone RFP and internal politics preventing us from bidding (director of NSF even wrote the corporation a letter, but that just made the internal politics worse):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#89

one of the references was lots of communication group making various claims ... in effort to get the internal network converted to SNA/VTAM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
... and also at the same time also making claims about SNA/VTAM could be used for the NSFNET backbone ... mentioned in this reference to collection of NSFNET related email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

this email was sent to us by somebody in the communication group ... who had collected numerous examples of misrepresentation regarding SNA/VTAM with respect to NSFNET backbone
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email870109

heavily abbreviated and redacted to protect the guilty including some that were also involved in the executive fasttrack program. There are references that SNA/VTAM could be used for the NSFNET backbone ... which it couldn't ... that NSFNET backbone might have IBM mainframes ... which most didn't. The NSFNET backbone RFP was also for T1 links ... SNA/VTAM not only didn't have TCP/IP support ... it also didn't support T1 links. This is some discussion of 3737 (and old emails from end of 1988) ... which came along later as a contrived mechanism for appearing to support T1:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#75
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#77

there was severe SNA-specific contortions in the 3737 to spoof the host VTAM in trying to achieve T1 thruput.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

What are you experiences with Amdahl Computers and Plug-Compatibles?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 10 May, 2012
Subject: What are you experiences with Amdahl Computers and Plug-Compatibles?
Blog: MainframeZone
re:
http://lnkd.in/at94Sb
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#78 What are you experiences with Amdahl Computers and Plug-Compatibles?

in the late 80s, not so much Amdahl specific ... but large mainframe in general

note in the late 70s there was the rise of the mid-range ... both ibm 4300s and dec vax. in the small number of unit orders, 4300s and vax sold similar numbers ... big different in 4300s was large corporate orders large tens to several hundred units. 4361/4381 (follow-on to 4331/4341) were expecting continued large increase in sales ... but large PCs and workstations were starting to take the mid-range ... with both 4300s and vax showing drop-off. This can be seen in decade of VAX numbers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0

the large corporate 4300 orders were sort of leading edge of the distributed computing wave ... internally going into department supply & conference rooms (contributing to conference rooms becoming a scarce corporate commodity) and huge increase in vm/4341s contributing to big explosion in the number of internal network nodes.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

internally, distributed vm/4341s were siphoning off lots of computing from central datacenters ... and in the late 70s, 4341 clusters had more aggregate compute power, were cheaper, smaller floor space, less power & cooling requirement that 3033s (some internal politics where 3033 executives tried to have allocation of critical 4341 manufacturing component cut in half). some old 4300 related email from the period
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#4341

however, the last half of the 80s ... not only saw mid-range mainframes disappearing but also increasing impact on high-end datacenter mainframes decline. recent posts in (closed, linked) "IBMers" discussion group
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#90 .
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#92

that senior executives predicting revenue would double from $60B to $120B mostly on mainframe related sales and had massive internal building program to double mainframe manufacturing capacity ... when that business was already starting to move in the other direction and in a few short years, the company goes into the red.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Time to competency for new software language?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 11 May, 2012
Subject: Time to competency for new software language?
Blog: Mainframe Experts
re:
http://lnkd.in/Nfu3wc
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#74 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#84 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#23 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#24 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#25 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#36 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#43 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#76 Time to competency for new software language?

Possibly slightly convoluted history of Java post from decade ago:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#51

before we left IBM we had been involved in both FCS ... fiber channel standard ... pushed by people that we had been working with at LLNL on cluster scale-up ... old referernce in this post about Jan92 meeting in Ellison's conference room
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
and this old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

and SCI standard ... pushed by guy at SLAC.

Some POK channel engineers get involved in FCS standards and propose various extremely unnaturual things ... as part of trying to layer mainframe channel on top ... which eventually morphs into FICON.

SCI standard gets used by Convex (for exemplar), SGI, Data General, and Sequent (NUMA-Q) ... IBM eventually buys Sequent thinking that they will do something with NUMA-Q ... but then the responsible executive retires and it is eventually shutdown.

At the same time, both Apple and SUN are doing C++, object operating systems (PINK and Spring respectively). Apple's PINK gets cut back ... but some survives for a while as Taligent (object oriented GUI application development environment). Spring winds down ... but some of it may still survive as JAVA ... Spring had a client-side stub interpreter which may or may not be related to Green ... which is basis for current JAVA (as per the references in the 2003 post ... aka Spring's client-side interpreter was designed to drastically reduce size of download client program ... aka "traded 125k bytes of stub code for 13k bytes of stub description and 4k bytes of stub interpreter").

In any case, a former SUN hardware engineer was working on TIC chip (a simplified SCI) that he wanted to use as distributed interconnect for 10,000 SUN machines in Campus environment ... running Spring. They were looking at winding down Spring ... but before doing so ... we were asked to look at taking over the program and turning it out as commercial operating system (we did do a week review ... but nothing really came of it) ... aka drawing on the work that we had been doing with FCS for high-availability, cluster scale-up (before scalup work transferred and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors)

We also get dragged into Taligent (former Apple PINK operating system) for one-week JAG/review to see what it would take to morph it into a business critical application development environment ... Taligent has object classes organized frameworks ... we determine that there needed to be 1/3rd hit to existing frameworks ... plus a couple new "business critical" frameworks.

Much earlier (late 70s & early 80s) I was working with VLSI chip design tools group ... two people in the group do a 370 PASCAL implementation for internal tool development. This eventually morphs into vs/pascal product (also used for things like original mainframe tcp/ip product implementation) ... however both of the original develops leave ... but remain in silicon valley. In the mid-90s, one shows up as the General Manager of the SUN business unit responsible for JAVA.

Aside on just-in-time (JIT). In the early 70s, I had written a PLI program that analyzed assembler/bal listings and attempted to represent the program as psuedo PLI/Pascal like language.

Circa late 79 or early 80, I was contacted by the Iliad/801 ... 801/risc had been created in the mid-70s ... in the late 70s, there was an effort to converge all internal microprocessors to 801/risc ... included those used to implement low & mid-range 370. There was effort that would make the follow-on to the 4331/4341, 801/Iliad based microprocessor. Standard low-end/mid-range 370s were vertical microprocessor that tended to avg. ten native instructions for every 370 instruction. In any case, the 801/Iliad low/mid-range 370 was looking at not only being able to do straight 370 interpretation ... but also implement some more sophisticated analysis of 370 code and be able to do JIT (just-in-time) conversion of highly used 370 code. For various reasons the 801/Iliad efforts floundered ... and most things continued with CISC chips ... although there was the 801/ROMP effort that was originally targeted for displaywriter follow-on ... and when that floundered, it morphed into unix workstation (disclaimer: I contributed to whitepaper that showed why 4361/4381 should be CISC processor rather than 801/Iliad). some past 801, iliad, romp, rios, power, power/pc, etc posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

In any case, JIT technology was then later used by some of the commercial implementations that simulated 370 on Intel platforms ... as well as being used for some JAVA implementations (and some number of other things).

other unrelated item from Sowa (regarding failure of IBM's Future System, and poor competition of 3033 & 3081 with clone processors)
http://jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm

Note one of the final "nails" in the FS coffin was a study by the Houston Scientific Center ... that if an FS machine was built out of the fastest, then available technology (370/195) and ran ACP/TPF (Eastern's System/One reservation system that was run on 370/195), it would have the throughput of a 370/145 (aka a throughput loss of possibly 30 times; would need 30 such machine running in parallel for the throughput of ACP/TPF on 370/195) ... several posts upthread referencing other issues with FS.

I've periodically claimed that the person responsible for 801/risc created it to be the exact opposite of what was being done in the FS project. One of the things done in the 801/risc effort was the PL.8 compiler (PLI subset) for use of all programming ... somewhat filled the bill that Multics used their PLI for implementation of the full system ... or unix used C.

other past posts mentioning PINK, SPRING, Taligent, etc:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#10 Taligent
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#42 IBM's Workplace OS (Was: .. Pink)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#45 IBM's Workplace OS (Was: .. Pink)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#46 Where are they now : Taligent and Pink
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#48 Where are they now : Taligent and Pink
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#66 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#10 Simpler technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#23 IA64 Rocks My World
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#32 Whom Do Programmers Admire Now???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#36 Proper ISA lifespan?
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/2008e.html#12 Kernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#3 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#17 Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#80 Senior Java Developer vs. MVS Systems Programmer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#9 Far and near pointers on the 80286 and later
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#15 Far and near pointers on the 80286 and later
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#53 Far and near pointers on the 80286 and later
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#59 Far and near pointers on the 80286 and later
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#50 The real reason IBM didn't want to dump more money into Blue Waters

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 11 May, 2012
Subject: How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
Blog: IBMers
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#84 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#87 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#90 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#92 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?

For the fun of it ... recent item from this week

This Is What China Gets Right About Education, And What The US And Europe Get Wrong
http://www.businessinsider.com/china-education-schools-2012-5

then this item

U.S. Education Reform and National Security
http://www.cfr.org/united-states/us-education-reform-national-security/p27618

from above:
The United States' failure to educate its students leaves them unprepared to compete and threatens the country's ability to thrive in a global economy and maintain its leadership role, finds a new Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) sponsored Independent Task Force report on U.S. Education Reform and National Security.

... snip ...

In the early 90s, there was long article in Hong Kong paper about how India was better positioned for outsourcing than China ... citing India's history as a British colony ... with lots of English language and trained civil servants to maintain necessary infrastructure (vis-a-vis China) ... and what China would have to do to be able to better compete in outsourcing.

A lot of this was pretty much ignored through the 90s ... in part because of high demand for IT skills ... especially during the last half of the 90s with combination of the Internet bubble and Y2K remediation. It wasn't until after the Internet bubble burst and Y2K remediation efforts had finished ... that started to see complaints about all the jobs that had been migrating overseas. In the later half of the 90s, it wasn't cost issue, it was extreme competition for scarce IT resources between normal IT requirements, Internet bubble, and Y2K remediation (wasn't enough resources in the US to go around).

misc. past posts mentioning Y2K remediation:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#214 Ask about Certification-less Public Key
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#2 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#39 Who said "The Mainframe is dead"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#66 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#20 I told you ... everybody is going to Dalian,China
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#16 Is a Hurricane about to hit IBM ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#21 Taxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#40 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#7 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#39 India is outsourcing jobs as well
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#26 The new urgency to fix online privacy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#36 Students mostly not ready for math, science college courses
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#19 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#81 Is IT becoming extinct?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#65 How do you manage your value statement?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#27 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#55 Can outsourcing be stopped?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#2 IBM 'pulls out of US'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#9 Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#18 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#37 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#37 Young Developers Get Old Mainframers' Jobs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#63 U.S. students behind in math, science, analysis says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#67 I would like to understand the professional job market in US. Is it shrinking?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#83 Senior Java Developer vs. MVS Systems Programmer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#53 Of interest to the Independent Contractors on the list
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#65 Of interest to the Independent Contractors on the list
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#19 Personal use z/OS machines was Re: Multiprise 3k for personal Use?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#76 Mainframe hacking?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#41 60 Minutes News Report:Unemployed for over 99 weeks!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#39 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#44 Programmer Charged with thieft (maybe off topic)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#69 No command, and control
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#32 CMS Sort Descending?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#67 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#49 Does outsourcing cause data loss?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#18 Great Brian Arthur article on the Second Economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#44 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#94 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#2 NASA unplugs their last mainframe

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Hard Disk Drive Construction

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hard Disk Drive Construction
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 12 May 2012 09:15:39 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
"Data" can be code depending on who is reading it. If the OS is reading an exe file which will be executed in behalf of some user, then, while it's reading the exe, those bits are data.

Unitl the writing on a piece of paper is in machine-readable format, the person doing the keystrokes is inputting raw data.


this shows up even more in architectures with separate "store-in" instruction caches and data caches that lack "consistency". scenario is any fixup that is done on the instruction image as part of loading results in changed ("instruction") cache lines in the data cache ... however if execution was to start and I-cache starts to fetch lines from memory ... they wouldn't reflect the changes made (as data); the changes are still resident in the D-cache (and haven't be reflected to memory).

On such architectures, loading software needs to execute an instruction that explicitly flushes changed D-cache lines back to memory ... so they will be available for the I-cache.

for other drift ... there have been some recent threads about the hierarchy of data, information, knowledge, wisdom&understanding.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970


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