List of Archived Posts

2016 Newsgroup Postings (04/21 - 07/04)

Why Is the Obama Administration Trying to Keep 11,000 Documents Sealed?
Why Is the Obama Administration Trying to Keep 11,000 Documents Sealed?
Does OODA-loop observation carry a lot of baggage
Qbasic
Qbasic
Qbasic
Qbasic
Study: Cost of U.S. Regulations Larger Than Germany's Economy
What Does School Really Teach Children
IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)?
Qbasic
Study: Cost of U.S. Regulations Larger Than Germany's Economy
What Would Be Your Ultimate Computer?
What Would Be Your Ultimate Computer?
client/server & HTML
What Would Be Your Ultimate Computer?
Tesla and GM Will Probably Both Be Bankrupt in 10 Years
Cybercrime
What Would Be Your Ultimate Computer?
Banking; The Book That Will Save Banking From Itself
Computer theft 1971
What was a 3314?
What was a 3314?
Banking; The Book That Will Save Banking From Itself
What was a 3314?
How the computer transformed economics. And didn't
How the computer transformed economics. And didn't
Old IBM Mainframe Systems
Manazir: Networked Systems Are The Future Of 5th-Generation Warfare, Training
How the computer transformed economics. And didn't
AM radio Qbasic
How the Pentagon punished NSA whistleblowers
Dave Dayen's "Chain of Title" Reminds Us: The Obama Administration Could Have Jailed Wall Street Criminals. It Simply Chose Not To
The Network Nation, Revised Edition
The Network Nation, Revised Edition
PL/I advertising
The Network Nation, Revised Edition
First Non-Trivial Program You Developed
[BBC] US nuclear force 'still uses floppy disks'
The Network Nation, Revised Edition
The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
PL/I advertising
Old Computing
PL/I advertising
PL/I advertising
PL/I advertising
PL/I advertising
PL/I advertising
PL/I advertising
Fateful Choices
PL/I advertising
Penn Central PL/I advertising
PL/I advertising
PL/I advertising
PL/I advertising
PL/I advertising
PL/I advertising
PL/I advertising
PL/I advertising
PL/I advertising
History--early remote on-line computer access
History--early remote on-line computer access
PL/I advertising
PL/I advertising
PL/I advertising
PL/I advertising
PL/I advertising
Dynamic adaptive resource management (was: PL/I advertising
Raspberry Pi 3?
Open DoD's Doors To Cyber Talent, Carter Asks Congress
So, what was your computer birthplace?
Raspberry Pi 3?
Five Outdated Leadership Ideas That Need To Die
Is it a lost cause?
Raspberry Pi 3?
IBM refused to lay off workers for decades, and then America had to rethink its entire corporate strategy
IBM plans for the future - an imaginary tale
PDP-8 advertising
The World Crisis, Vol. 1
Is it a lost cause?
Cringely article about more IBM rumors
The mainframe is dead. Long live the mainframe!
"Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust
The mainframe is dead. Long live the mainframe!
The mainframe is dead. Long live the mainframe!
The World Crisis, Vol. 1
Too Big To Jail
Get Out Of Jail Free Card
"Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust
China builds world's most powerful computer
"Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust
"Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust
"Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust
Is it a lost cause?
"Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust
Is it a lost cause?
Multithreaded output to stderr and stdout
Is it a lost cause?
Trust in Government Is Collapsing Around the World
Trust in Government Is Collapsing Around the World
Multithreaded output to stderr and stdout
Is it a lost cause?
"Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust
Multithreaded output to stderr and stdout
Is it a lost cause?
How Private Contractors Have Created a Shadow NSA

Why Is the Obama Administration Trying to Keep 11,000 Documents Sealed?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Why Is the Obama Administration Trying to Keep 11,000 Documents Sealed?
Date: 21 Apr 2016
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#99 Why Is the Obama Administration Trying to Keep 11,000 Documents Sealed?

there was competition to be the next CEO of AMEX, the looser leaves, taking their protegee and goes to Baltimore taking over what was called a loan sharking business. They make some number of other acquisitions, eventually acquiring Citibank in violation of Glass-Steagall. Greenspan gives them an exemption while they lobby congress for repeal. They enlist several in DC, including the SECTREAS (and one of the former heads of Goldman-Sachs). After they get the repeal rolling, the SECTREAS resigns and becomes (described at the time) co-CEO of CITI. The protegee then leaves and becomes head of another of the four largest too big to fail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#greenspan

Around 1990, CITI had been the largest player in the home mortgage market and somebody does a risk analysis that shows minor changes in the interest rate will take down the institution. They sell off their mortgage portfolio, get out of the mortgage business and required a private (Saudi) bailout to stay in business. Roll forward to this century, they have lost "institutional memory" and are again heavily in the mortgage business. At the end of 2008, they have the most of the $5.2T toxic assets still carried off-book by the four largest too big to fail. The fall of 2008, those off-book toxic assets had been going for 22cents on the dollar; if they had been required to bring them back on the books, they would have to book $4T in losses, declared insolvent and forced to be liquidated.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo

One of the RS writers does a book "Griftopia". One of the chapters is about CFTC commodity trading which required substantial position in the commodity because speculators resulted in wild, irrational price swings. Then the CFTC sends out 19 secret letters allowing specific speculators to play resulting in wild, irrational price swings, including the huge spike in oil the summer of 2008. Later a senator releases the CFTC transaction details showing who was responsible for the huge spike in oil the summer of 2008, the press then lambastes the senator for violating corporate privacy (exposing who was responsibile).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#griftopia

Since 2008, the too big to fail have been fined aggregate of $300B, not just for the "economic mess" but also manipulating LIBOR, FOREX and commodities; money laundering for drug cartels and terrorists; tax evasion; robo-signing mills (and fraudulent foreclosures) and other misc. criminal activity (and nobody going to jail). There is a joke that the fines are so small compared to the amounts involved, that it is just being viewed as part of the cost of running criminal operation.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#libor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#money.laundering
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#tax.evasion

AMEX is in competition with KKR for private-equity take-over of RJR and KKR wins. KKR runs into trouble and hires away the president of AMEX (had been winner to be next AMEX CEO) to turn RJR around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate:_The_Fall_of_RJR_Nabisco
IBM has gone into the red and is being reorg'ed into the 13 "baby blues" in preparation for breaking up the company. The board then hires away the former president of AMEX to resurrect the company and reverse the breakup ... using some of the same techniques used at RJR
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml
Gerstner
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
posts referencing pensions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#pensions

Later the former president of AMEX leaves to become head of another large private-equity company ... which will do a LBO of the company that will employ Snowden.
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/
figuring out new ways to loot the gov.
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/

Note that private-equity industry had gotten such a bad reputation during the S&L crisis, that they changed the industry name to private-equity and junk bonds become "high-yield" bonds. Other trivia, when the director of CIA resigns in disgrace, he is hired by KKR. Private equity has lots of ways of looting their victim companies ... leaving them economic mess ... and accounts for over half the corporate defaults
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmons.html?_r=0

another private equity, OPM Contractor's Parent Firm Has a Troubled History
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/24/opm-contractor-veritas/

private equity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity

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

Why Is the Obama Administration Trying to Keep 11,000 Documents Sealed?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Why Is the Obama Administration Trying to Keep 11,000 Documents Sealed?
Date: 23 Apr 2016
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#99 Why Is the Obama Administration Trying to Keep 11,000 Documents Sealed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#0 Why Is the Obama Administration Trying to Keep 11,000 Documents Sealed?

Note that Glass-Steagall kept the unregulated risky investment banking separate from the regulated, taxpayer backed, depository institutions. The repeal of Glass-Steagall enabled the two kinds of institutions to co-mingle eventually, giving rise to too big to prosecute and too big to jail and putting taxpayers on the hook for the risky investment banking activity.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

In the late 90s when I was asked to help prevent the coming economic mess, some gov. LEOs described some "investment bankers" that managed to walk away "clean" from S&L crisis and were then in Internet IPO mills (invest a few million, hype for two years and then IPO for a few billion, preferred that the company then fails since it leaves the way clear for the next round of IPOs). Gov. LEOs predicted that these "investment bankers" were to get into mortgages next. Note that S&L crisis had 30,000 criminal referrals and 1,000 criminal convictions (with jailtime). The economic mess was 70 times larger than S&L crisis, so proportionally should be 70,000 criminal convictions with jailtime.

As I said securitized mortgages had been used during the S&L crisis for fraudulent mortgages and I was suppose to help improve integrity of supporting documents as countermeasures. However the investment bankers then started paying the rating agencies for triple-A ratings enabling no-documentation liar loans and able to sell-off all mortgages (into traditional bond market) as fast as they could be made. Previously depository institutions had used deposits for mortgages and earned money off the mortgage payments. Securitization and triple-A ratings turn the market into transaction business ... do the mortgage, skim off the top, and sell off as fast as possible. Paying for triple-A rating also eliminated any reason to care about borrowers' qualification or loan quality (largely responsible for being able to do over $27T 2001-2008).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo

The next progression was from not caring about loan quality (just how fast&many they could roll over) to actually demanding bad mortgages .... they could package securitized mortgages designed to fail, pay for triple-A rating, sell-off to their victim clients and then take out CDS gambling bets that they would fail.

From the law of unintended consequences and the no-documentation, liar loans ... the largest "fines" for the too big to fail so far has been for operating the robo-signing mills fabricating (missing) loan&mortgage documents.

OCC Bungled Foreclosure Settlement from Start to Finish
http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/178_45/occ-bungled-foreclosure-settlement-from-start-to-finish-1057304-1.html
$25 Billion Fine for A $32 Trillion Foreclosure Fraud Proof of Gov't + Bank Conspiracy
https://geopolitics.co/2015/11/16/25-billion-fine-for-a-32-trillion-foreclosure-fraud-proof-of-govt-bank-conspiracy/
Banks Still Fabricating Documents One Year After Robo-Signing Scandal Broke
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/01/310015/banks-still-fabricating-documents/

However, they were able to scam this too. First the fines are tax write-off. Second the fines were suppose to go to operations setup to administer the funds for the benefit of the foreclosure victims. However, many of these operations had been setup by the same people responsible for the fraudulent foreclosures and little of the money seems to actually make it to the victims (diverting to "administrative" and "legal" fees).

Trivia: in the early part of the century I was asked to attend sessions at the new hdqtrs of the Mortgage Bankers Association (in DC across the park from the IMF and World Bank). After the economic mess, CBS had segments about the head of the Mortgage Bankers Association holding press conferences advising public not to walk away from the underwater mortgages (but CBS pointed out that Mortgage Bankers Association had walked away from the mortgage on their hdqtrs bldg in DC).

past posts mentioning robo-signing mills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#10 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#8 Adult Supervision
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#13 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#68 Singer Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#55 General Mills computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#12 Why Auditors Fail To Detect Frauds?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#7 Beyond the 10,000 Hour Rule
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#69 Can Open Source Ratings Break the Ratings Agency Oligopoly?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#73 These Two Charts Show How The Priorities Of US Companies Have Gotten Screwed Up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#63 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#46 OT: "Highway Patrol" back on TV
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#73 Why DOJ Deemed Bank Execs Too Big To Jail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#80 Why DOJ Deemed Bank Execs Too Big To Jail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#29 The agency problem and how to create a criminogenic environment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#9 What Makes a Tax System Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#17 What Makes a Tax System Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#57 What the Orgy of "Lehman Five Years On" Stories Missed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#58 OT: NYT article--the rich get richer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#46 Wells Fargo made up on-demand foreclosure papers plan: court filing charges
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#70 Obama Administration Launches Plan To Make An "Internet ID" A Reality
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014g.html#54 Has the last fighter pilot been born?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#111 Maine Supreme Court Hands Major Defeat to MERS Mortgage Registry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014i.html#14 Instead of focusing on big fines, law enforcement should seek long prison terms for the responsible executives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014k.html#0 only sometimes From looms to computers to looms
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#16 weird apple trivia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#21 Senate Democrats vs. the Middle Class; Senators elected in 2008 made Obama's agenda possible, and its results have harmed most Americans
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#126 Wall Street's Revenge
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#131 Memo To WSJ: The CRomnibus Abomination Was Not "A Rare Bipartisan Success"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#17 Cromnibus cartoon
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#48 The 17 Equations That Changed The Course Of History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#54 How do we take political considerations into account in the OODA-Loop?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#90 NY Judge Slams Wells Fargo For Forging Documents... And Why Nothing Will Change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#92 Ocwen's Servicing Meltdown Proves Failure of Obama's Mortgage Settlements
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#0 S&L Crisis and Economic Mess
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#5 Swiss Leaks lifts the veil on a secretive banking system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#8 Shoot Bank Of America Now---The Case For Super Glass-Steagall Is Overwhelming
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#20 $2 Billion City Of Tampa Pension Story Major Media Missed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#22 Two New Papers Say Big Finance Sectors Hurt Growth and Innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#24 What were the complaints of binary code programmers that not accept Assembly?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#49 Global Fragility and the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#53 Servicers in DOJ s Crosshairs Following JPM Robo-Signing Settlement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#75 Hillary Remains Clueless About Regulation on the 28th Anniversary of the Keating Five Meeting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#88 How Wall Street captured Washington's effort to rein in banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#108 Occupy Democrats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#4 "Trust in digital certificate ecosystem eroding"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#5 7 years on from crisis, $150 billion in bank fines and penalties
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#18 Can we design machines to automate ethics?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#20 Wall Street Bailouts Are Finally Over, Right?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#28 Bernie Sanders Proposes A Bill To Break Up The 'Too Big To Exist' Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#76 Greedy Banks Nailed With $5 BILLION+ Fine For Fraud And Corruption
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#34 43rd President
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#39 Poor People Caused The Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#40 Poor People Caused The Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#47 Do we REALLY NEED all this regulatory oversight?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#71 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#80 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#93 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#95 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#4 Jeb: George W. Bush is a top foreign policy adviser
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#27 Federal Subsidies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#36 Eric Holder, Wall Street Double Agent, Comes in From the Cold
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#67 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#25 After 6 Years Of QE, And A $4.5 Trillion Balance Sheet, St. Louis Fed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#56 The long, slow death of the rule of law in America
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#65 Michael Hudson's New Book: Wall Street Parasites Have Devoured Their Hosts -- Your Retirement Plan and the U.S. Economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#70 AIG freezes defined-benefit pension plan
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#73 Economists' Tribal Thinking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#81 Now the DOJ Admits They Got it Wrong
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#4 Decimal point character and billions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#44 rationality
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#53 rationality
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#6 Repealing Glass-Steagall
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#8 Too Big To Fail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#10 25 Years: How the Web began
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#11 25 Years: How the Web began
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#16 1970--protesters seize computer center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#22 I Feel Old
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#26 1970--protesters seize computer center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#58 Wall Street strikes back against Bernie Sanders
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#71 Qbasic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#85 Wells Fargo "Admits Deceiving" U.S. Government, Pays Record $1.2 Billion Settlement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#94 Pension Funds at Risk

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

Does OODA-loop observation carry a lot of baggage

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Does OODA-loop observation carry a lot of baggage
Date: 24 Apr 2016
Blog: Facebook
in briefings, boyd would stress observation from every possible facet as countermeasure to observation and orientation bias.

Different viewpoints and perspectives can bring more complete understanding. Similarly, bringing together people with diverse backgrounds is not just different understandings but can be more complete understanding. This also strays into entrenched institutional status quo

Melding diverse understandings can be more comprehensive and take more time ... but the opposite extreme can be don't confuse me with facts ... other is the thinking fast & slow ... practice together for years to decrease elapsed time

One of the scenarios is where ignorance is represented as diversity

Old OODA-loop post from 2011:

In 1990 "computer semiotics", one of the "fathers" of computer artificial intelligence claims that AI was done all wrong because it failed to take into account memory and context. I've frequently related "orient" with "context" .... i.e. person is positioned within their environment ... but individual also positions information and the results of "observation" for constantly updating their internal context.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#35 Military Interest in Supercomputer AI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#61 Why did the OODA-loop tactic grow into a strategy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#14 IBM to invest 1.2B into Cloud Data Centers

P.B. Andersen, A theory of computer semiotics, cambridge university press,1990.

Recent NPR (radio) program said it was about unknown unknown ... but was about ignorance (and not knowing it) ... made me think of one of my long time refrains about the most difficult are people that think they know what they are doing.

Went into studies about ignorance and peoples' awareness. Groups of people were given various kinds of questionnaires and then asked how they thought they did. People in the bottom 20% correct answers believed they were in the top 1/3rd. People in the top 1/3rd tended to assess correctly about how many right answers ... but believe they had lower group ranking than they actually were.

People that performed the worst .... were also the worst judge about how knowledgeable they were.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

Personal cross-fertilization, undergraduate I did a lot of computer stuff, including dynamic adaptive resource management that was shipped in IBM products. "Operations Research" tended to use high-level FORTRAN programming language as opposed to low-level pedal to the metal machine language programming ... most practitioners were totally focused on step-by-step state transitions (somewhat analogous to the simplified OODA-loop). For dynamic adaptive resource management, I introduced lots of high-level "operations research" into low-level machine language programming. Typically trying to explain it to practitioners of low-level machine language programming ... I would get vague looks and comments about that I was probably a math major ... for the most part they had an orientation that had no overlap with operations research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research

dynamic adaptive resource managment, or fairshare scheduler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

A decade later in the 70s, for a newer version of dynamic adaptive resource management. We gathered years of monitoring data for hundreds of computer systems and profiled the primary characteristics. A synthetic workload was created where all the operational characteristics could be controlled. An (APL-language) analytical model of the dynamic adaptive resource management was created ... which was used to select a benchmark workload characteristics, predict the result, run the actual benchmark and compare the results with the predicted. There were 2000 benchmarks that took three months elapsed time to run. The analytical model selection of workload characteristics was programmed to statistically cover all possible characteristics for the first 1000 benchmarks. The next 1000 benchmarks were selected trying to find anomalous combinations.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#benchmark

When I met Boyd, I found what he had been doing for profiling and characterizing fighter design very similar to what I had been doing for dynamic adaptive resource management and profiling/characterizing computer operation.

trivia: lots of computer programming instills a step-by-step, sequential mindset ... analogous to the simplified OODA-loop. Early in my computer career I got steeped in parallel concurrent programming ... so the full OODA-loop was natural for me.

Since at least the start of the century, the holy grail in computers is a programming language that is naturally concurrent, parallel, instead of sequential, step-by-step (because of the move to processor chips with increasing number of cores). There is middle last decade story by senior VP of Intel being told by the head of microsoft that he has to start building faster single core chips and stop building multiple-core chips .... because parallel, concurrent programming is too hard. past refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#78 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#2 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#42 Panic in Multicore Land
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/2012j.html#44 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#90 Blades versus z was Re: Turn Off Another Light - Univ. of Tennessee
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#28 I.B.M. Mainframe Evolves to Serve the Digital World
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#48 New HD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#85 Parallel programming may not be so daunting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#118 By the time we get to 'O' in OODA
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#56 Which Books Can You Recommend For Learning Computer Programming?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#60 Which Books Can You Recommend For Learning Computer Programming?

parallel, concurrent programming
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

The issue is a step-by-step, serial mind set (orientation) has enormous difficulties dealing with lots of parallel, concurrent activities.

aka .... they want a new programming language paradigm that deals naturally/easily with parallel, concurrent (& distributed) operations ... the step-by-step, sequential programming languages have some similarities to rigid, top-down, command and control with strictly synchronized operations (and periodic observation that human thinking can be constrained by the language/words/constructs that have for thinking).

,,, sort if the cognitive equivalent to the one about if you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

boyd &/or OODA-loop
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

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

Qbasic

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Qbasic
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2016 22:55:34 -0700
Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> writes:
How long has it been since anyone has heard a modem connecting, with an acoustically coupled handset?

That should start something :)


I had 2741 had home using acoustic modem from march 1970 until mid-1977 ... when I transferred from cambridge science center ... posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

to san jose research when a got a 300 baud cdi miniterm that had built in acoustic modem 77-79 ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/miniterm.jpg

home miniterm and ... (handset plugged into back of terminal)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/miniterm2.jpg

home miniterm

I then got an ibm 3101 (glass teletype) with 1200 baud modem.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/home3101.jpg

home 3101

Computerworld 6Jun1977, pg47 mentions CDI miniterm with built-in modem and acoustic coupler
https://books.google.com/books?id=xDQbK7ORAh8C&pg=RA1-PA47&lpg=RA1-PA47&dq=cdi+miniterm+builtin+acoustic+modem&source=bl&ots=U_tajfvWkM&sig=xpbFs_1eBnD0GklfKxUOQJRV0LM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiPyYbojq7MAhUN92MKHWSiDPkQ6AEIKjAD#v=onepage&q=cdi%20miniterm%20builtin%20acoustic%20modem&f=false

pg47 also has a NSC HYPERchannel advertisement ... I did a lot of work with NSC and HYPERchannel over the years ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

NSC later came out with TCP/IP router that included ibm mainframe channel interface ... and I wrote the RFC1044 support for it in the IBM TCP/IP product ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

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

Qbasic

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Qbasic
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2016 10:00:04 -0700
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
pg47 also has a NSC HYPERchannel advertisement ... I did a lot of work with NSC and HYPERchannel over the years ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

NSC later came out with TCP/IP router that included ibm mainframe channel interface ... and I wrote the RFC1044 support for it in the IBM TCP/IP product ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#3 Qbasic

In 1980, STL was bursting at the seam and 300 people from the IMS group were being moved to offsite bldg with computer service back to STL datacenter. They had tried remote 3270 and found the human factors totally unacceptable. I was con'ed into doing channel extender support with local channel attached 3270s at the offsite bldg (with HYPERchannel A510s emulating mainframe channel running over T1 back to STL datacenter). In tests with two side-by-side local 3270s in STL, one HYPERchannel over T1 and one directly attached, users couldn't tell the difference.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#channel.extender

In the early 80s, we we were working with director of NSF and were suppose to get $20M to provide T1 interconnect (and some faster) between the NSF supercomputer centers (mostly using HYPERchannel). Then congress cuts the budget, some other things happens and finally NSF releases an RFP (based in part on what we already had running, including T1 link support). Internal politics prevents us from bidding and the director of NSF tries to help writing the company a letter 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO), but that just makes the situation worse (as does comments that what we already have running is at least 5yrs ahead of all RFP responses). The winning bid installs 440kbit links (not T1/1.5mbits links called for in the RFP) ... and then sort of to look like they are meeting the RFP specs, they install T1 trunks with telco multiplexor running multiple 440kbit links over the T1 trunks. As regional networks connect into the centers, it becomes the NSFNET backbone ... precursor to modern internet. some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
and past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

Network Systems was also the first with a T3 (45mbit) tcp/ip router product.

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

Qbasic

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Qbasic
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2016 10:08:39 -0700
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
In 1980, STL was bursting at the seam and 300 people from the IMS group were being moved to offsite bldg with computer service back to STL datacenter. They had tried remote 3270 and found the human factors totally unacceptable. I was con'ed into doing channel extender support with local channel attached 3270s at the offsite bldg (with HYPERchannel A510s emulating mainframe channel running over T1 back to STL datacenter). In tests with two side-by-side local 3270s in STL, one HYPERchannel over T1 and one directly attached, users couldn't tell the difference.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#channel.extender


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#3 Qbasic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#4 Qbasic

oh, and 3270 logo screen for the offsite IMS database group:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/vmhyper.jpg

3270 logo screen shot

and old Network Systems diagram:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/hyperlink.jpg

Network Systems slide

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

Qbasic

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Qbasic
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2016 11:38:18 -0700
Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> writes:
But in hobby circles, the acoustic modems may have hung on a bit longer, since one didn't need a DAA or approval of the whole modem. Steve Ciarcia certainly described an acoustic modem in the early eighties, I want to say 1984 but I don't know.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#3 Qbasic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#4 Qbasic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#5 Qbasic

The small rectangle flat card-swipe, point-of-sale terminals were an emulated pc/xt and could be heard with the funny modem connection noise for dial-up transactions (low-volume merchants that had separate dial-up for every transactions, now lots are moving to internet). Last decade there was some look at moving to 56kbit dialup, but with an avg. transaction size of 60bytes, the 56kbit modem protocol connect negotiation took longer than slow-speed negotiation & transmission of 60bytes.

for other topic drift, posts mentioning consumer dialup banking ... and justification for moving to the internet in the mid-90s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#dialup-banking

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

Study: Cost of U.S. Regulations Larger Than Germany's Economy

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Study: Cost of U.S. Regulations Larger Than Germany's Economy
Date: 27 Apr 2016
Blog: Facebook
Study: Cost of U.S. Regulations Larger Than Germany's Economy
http://freebeacon.com/issues/cost-us-regulations-germanys-economy/

In the Oct2008 congressional hearing testimony into the major role that the rating agencies played in the economic mess (accepting payments for triple-A ratings on junk), they detailed how the rating agencies business process became misaligned when they switched from the buyers paid for the ratings to the sellers paid for the ratings ... and it is almost impossible to regulate misaligned business process when entities have incentive to do the wrong thing. During the hearings a TV commentator observed that the rating agencies will never be federally persecuted because they can blackmail the gov. with lowering their credit rating.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo

Little known trivia, besides other authority the SEC had over the rating agencies ... Sarbanes-Oxley added additional provisions ... however SEC did about as much about that as it did about public company fraudulent financial filings. The rhetoric in congress was that SOX would prevent future ENRONS and guaranteed that executives and auditors did jail time ... but it required SEC do something. The joke became that SOX was big gift to the audit industry. Possibly because even GAO didn't believe SEC was doing anything ... it started doing reports of fraudulent financial filings ... even showing increase after SOX goes into effect (and nobody doing jail time)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#sarbanes-oxley
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#enron
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#financial.reporting.fraud.fraud

current head of SEC: "The Whites Go to the SEC: Why Wall Street Still Owns Washington"
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2013/03/the-whites-go-to-the-sec-why-wall-street-still-owns-washington/

head of SEC last decade is #4 on times list of those responsible for the economic mess (70 times larger than S&L crisis, S&L crisis had 30,000 criminal referrals and 1,000 criminal convictions with jailtime, proportionally economic mess should have 70,000 criminal convictions with jailtime).

2008 roundtable at annual economists conference ... claimed that just dealing with all the tax loopholes bought by special interests cost 5-6% of GDP. Large part of it is congress considered the most corrupt institution on earth ... including moving to tax loopholes that have short term sunsets ... requiring the special interests to keep making reoccurring payments to congress.

2002 congress lets fiscal responsibility act expire (required that spending couldn't exceed tax revenue). 2010 CBO report has 2003-2009, tax revenues were cut by $6T and spending increased by $6T for $12T budget gap compared to fiscal responsibility act (first time taxes were reduced to not pay for two wars; 2005, Comptroller General was including in speeches that nobody in congress was capable of middle school arithmetic for how badly they were savaging the budget).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#fiscal.responsibility.act

There was more than $27T triple-A rated toxic CDOs done by wallstreet during 2001-2008 ... largely enabled by being able to pay for triple-A on toxic assets. That doesn't include their designing securitized mortgage CDOs to fail, selling to their victim customers, and then taking out CDS gambling bets that they would fail (creating enormous demand for bad loans). During the same period there was less than $500B done through CRA (less than 2%).

Securitized mortgages had been used during the S&L crisis to obfuscate fraudulent mortgages (poster child was office bldgs in Dallas/Ft.Wroth that turned out to be empty lots). In the late 90s I was asked to try and help prevent the coming economic mess by improving the integrity of mortgage supporting documents. Then they start paying for triple-A ratings (when the sellers and the rating agencies knew they weren't worth triple-A, from Oct2008 congressional testimony into the role that the rating agencies played). Triple-A ratings trump supporting documents and they could start doing no-documentation, liar loans. They also no longer had to care about loan quality or borrowers qualifications and triple-A also met that they could start selling to institutions restricted to only dealing in safe investments (like large public & private pension funds, some accounts that it resulted in 30% loss in the funds and trillions shortfall in pension funds).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

From the law of unintended consequences, the largest fines on the too big to fail related to the economic mess, is for the robo-signing mills setup to fabricate the documents for the no-documentation, liar loans.

In 1999, when I was asked to help prevent the coming economic mess, a gov. LEO described how some wallstreet investment bankers had walked away clean from the S&L mess and were then currently running internet IPO mills, they would investment a few million, hype it for a couple years and then make a couple billion off IPO. It was preferred that the new companies would fail, because it left the field clear for the next round of IPOs. They were projected to get into mortgages next.

In this period, I was at a financial standards meeting hosted by prominent financial lobbying organization in DC. During the meeting I was asked to step out, there was somebody to see me. I was taken to an office and introduced to somebody that said they were from a NJ ethnic organization and had been asked to talk to me by a couple of wallstreet investment bankers, it wasn't personal, purely business. They were expecting $2B from an upcoming internet IPO and my criticism of the technology was projected to result in 10% reduction in that $2B ($200M) ... and would I please shutup. I went to some gov. LEOs and was told that wallstreet investment bankers are like that (some reference to amoral and sociopaths).

Who is to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-is-to-blame-for-the-financial-crisis/16015

What this misses was that the personal compensation for many at the too big to fail was so large that it overrode any concern that they might have for their institution, the economy and/or the country.

The article references William Black who was regulator that brought down many in the S&L crisis ... including Keating ... who had at one point wrote a "Kill Black" memo ... the notorious "Keating Five" only got their hands slapped for doing Keating's bidding.

Two (bloomberg) articles I've frequently quoted (more than $27T done by wallstreet 2001-2008, and four largest too big to fail were still carrying $5.2T offbook at the end of 2008) have gone 404 on their website in the last couple months. It is still possible to find lots of articles on the web referencing the articles ... and a little harder to find sites that have the full texts; "Mark Pittman, Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed with 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt, Bloomberg.com, October 27th, 2008" and "David Reilly, Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge, Bloomberg, March 25, 2009".

Jan2009 (a decade after I was asked to help try and prevent economic mess), I got asked to HTML'ize the Pecora Hearings (congressional 30s hearings into the '29 crash that resulted in Glass-Steagall and lots of jailtime), with lots of internal xrefs and URLs between what happened this time and what happened then (comments that the new congress might have appetite to do something). I work on it for awhile and then get a call saying it wouldn't be needed after all (references to enormous piles of wallstreet money totally burying capital hill).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall

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

What Does School Really Teach Children

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: What Does School Really Teach Children
Date: 27 Apr 2016
Blog: Facebook
Teachers Don't Like Creative Students
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/12/teachers-dont-like-creative-students.html

Muth in "Command Culture" highlights bullying/hazing in (US) military schools to beat out non-conformity (enforce group-think, conformity and hierarchy).
https://www.amazon.com/Command-Culture-Education-1901-1940-Consequences/dp/B009K7VYLI/

about former co-worker at the science center (also book at amazon) ... who was bullied as child because he was different ... "It's cool to be clever"
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cool-to-be-clever-edson-hendricks/id483020515?mt=8
It's Cool to be Clever: the true story of Edson C. Hendricks, the genius who invented the design for the Internet. Bullied as a child, Edson Hendricks went on to create the forerunner to the Internet. IT'S COOL TO BE CLEVER tells the true story of an inquisitive schoolboy in the 1950s who is bullied because he is so smart. He finds comfort in an imaginary world where he has machine parts, and no biological organs or emotions. Years later, Edson's strange capacity to "think like a machine" helps him create a way for computers to communicate. His "connectionless" network design is used in today's Internet.

... snip ...

a little topic drift, in the early 80s, we we were working with director of NSF and were suppose to get $20M to provide T1 interconnect (and some faster) between the NSF supercomputer centers. Then congress cuts the budget, some other things happens and finally NSF releases an RFP (based in part on what we already had running, including T1 link support). Internal politics prevents us from bidding and the director of NSF tries to help writing the company a letter 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO), but that just makes the politics worse (as does comments that what we already have running is at least 5yrs ahead of all RFP responses). The winning bid installs 440kbit links (not T1/1.5mbits links called for in the RFP) ... and then sort of to look like hey are meeting the RFP specs, they install T1 trunks with telco multiplexor running multiple 440kbit links over the T1 trunks. As regional networks connect into the centers, it becomes the NSFNET backbone ... precursor to modern internet. some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
and past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

more trivia: the internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime in the mid-80s. At the great switch-over from IMP/host to internetworking on 1Jan1983, the arpanet/internet had approx. 255 hosts and 100 IMP network nodes, while the internal network was rapidly approaching 1000 nodes (nearly ten times larger). internal net posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

I was blamed for online computer conferencing (precursor to social networking) on the internal network in the late 70s and early 80s ... folklore is that when the (IBM) corporate executive committee was told about online computer conferencing (and the internal nework) 5of6 wanted to fire me.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

Somewhat as a result, a researcher was paid to study how I communicate, sat in the back of my office for 9 months taking notes on face-to-face, telephone, went with me to meetings, also got copies of all my incoming and outgoing email and logs of all instant messages. Besides research report, material was used for a number of papers & books and a Stanford PHD (joint between language and computer AI). As it turned out the researcher had been ESL teacher earlier in their career.

Other trivia, my use of English was analyzed in detail ... and the observation was I used English as if it was a 2nd language ... even tho I'm not proficient in any other natural language ... although I've been known to dream in computer languages

long winded trivia

As undergraduate, the univ. hired me fulltime to be responsible for their production dataprocessing systems. Then summer of '69 I was brought into Boeing to help with the creation of Boeing Computer Services (consolidate all dataprocessing into independent business unit to better monetize the investment, even provide computer services to non-Boeing entities; 747-3 was flying the skies of Seattle getting FAA certification). At the time, I thought Renton datacenter was possibly the largest in the world, something like $300M in IBM equipment. Later I would sponsor John Boyd's briefings at IBM. He would mention he was very vocal about the electronic sensor across trails wouldn't work. Possibly as punishment, he was put in command of spook base (about the same time I was at Boeing) ... "spook base" reference gone 404, but lives on at the wayback machine (note reference to QU-22B drones, doesn't say that it was Boyd that issued the order or some later commander).
https://web.archive.org/web/20030212092342/http://home.att.net/~c.jeppeson/igloo_white.html

Boyd would say it had the largest air conditioned bldg in that part of the world. Boyd biography would say that "spook base" was a $2.5B windfall for IBM. Tribute to Boyd at USNI.
http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1997-07/genghis-john
... for those w/o membership, here
http://radio-weblogs.com/0107127/stories/2002/12/23/genghisJohnChuckSpinneysBioOfJohnBoyd.html
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.


... snip ...

Boyd also had this story about the USAF air-to-air missile used in Vietnam. Prior to Vietnam, he was asked to review the missile, they gave him detailed briefing and showed a film where the missile hit the flares on target drone every time. Boyd told them it would hit 10% or less. They asked how could that be? He asked them to rewind the film, play it again and had them stop it just before it hit the drone. He asked them what kind of guidance it had, they said heat seeking, he asked them what kind of heat seeking ... after a bunch of discussion, they eventually said pin-point. He then asked them what is the hottest part of jet plane. They said the jet engine ... he said "wrong", it is in the jet plume behind the plane. Roll forward to Vietnam and Boyd was correct, air force missile was hitting less than 10% of the time and they were loosing planes and pilots. Finally the USAF general in Vietnam grounds all the fighters until they can be switched to Navy sidewinders (which had 20+% hit rate, better than twice that of USAF missile). The USAF general lasts 3months before he is recalled to Pentagon. He had violated basic Pentagon principle, he was reducing USAF budget, not using USAF missiles, loosing fewer jets and pilots, but even worse he was increasing Navy budget by using Navy missiles (the war in Vietnam was an issue in the pentagon only to the extent it affected their budget).

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

From the dedication of Boyd Hall, United States Air Force Weapons School, Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. 17 September 1999


... snip ...

At the time of Boyd's passing, USAF had pretty much disowned him, it was the Marines that were at Arlington and his effects went to Quantico
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_M._Gray,_Jr.#Namesake

... this marine commandant had leveraged Boyd for makeover of the corp (note facebook drops the trailing period in the URL)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_M._Gray,_Jr.
another Gray reference
https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/hall_of_honor/2008/index.shtml

We still have Boyd conferences at Marine Corps Univ. Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War; pg9/loc205-11:
The grass was wet and the air was clean and sweet. The crowd gathered at Section Sixty, grave site number 3,660. The Marine colonel took from his pocket a Marine Corps insignia, the eagle globe and anchor. He marched out of the crowd, kneeled, and placed the insignia near the urn containing Boyd's ashes. Someone took a picture. In that frozen moment the light of the flash sparkled on the eagle globe and anchor, causing it to stand out sharply against the bronze urn and green grass. The black insignia drew every eye. As one, and without a command to do so, the young lieutenants snapped to attention. Placing the symbol of the U.S. Marine Corps on a grave is the highest honor a Marine can bestow. It is rarely seen, even at the funeral of decorated combat Marines, and it may have been the first time in history an Air Force pilot received the honor.

... snip ...

McNamara had been LaMay's staff planning the fire-bombing of German and Japanese cities (disclaimer: one of my wife's uncles was on LeMay's staff in the 50s). After WW2, McNamara went to the auto industry but came back as SECDEF for Vietnam, where Laos becomes the most bombed country in the history of the world (more tons than dropped in WW2 on Germany & Japan combined)
http://legaciesofwar.org/about-laos/secret-war-laos/
From 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped more than two million tons of ordnance on Laos during 580,000 bombing missions -- equal to a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24-hours a day, for 9 years -- making Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in history

... snip ...

Watch the US Drop 2.5 Million Tons of Bombs on Laos; Picturing the deadly legacy of America's secret war in the world's most bombed-out country.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/laos-vietnam-war-us-bombing-uxo

Boyd posts and URLS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

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

IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM's 96 column punch card (was System/3)?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2016 11:19:26 -0700
"Osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> writes:
In the late 50's I thought the main tape problem was that many of the tape drives were designed for telemetry and someone in their marketing department said "Hey, these would be great on computers, too". They weren't great at all.

Fifty years of storage innovation; Magnetic tape and beyond
https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_fifty.html
The Setting

June 1949: Recorded music was on 78 rpm platters and "wire recorders" were the mainstay of radio. Magnetic tape had only recently emerged from the laboratory into a few broadcasts. A room full of vacuum tubes and miles of wire accomplished what a handheld calculator would be able to do faster by the 1980s. Information storage meant books, filing cabinets or -- to those at the leading edge of data processing technology -- paper punch cards. Reels of tape, tape cartridges and programmable computers were the stuff of science fiction.

IBM was about to change all that.

The Challenge

A more compact means of storing data permanently had to be developed. The U.S. Social Security Administration was pressing IBM to solve this record storage problem -- acres of filing cabinets filled with punch cards containing social security data about every working American.


...
Byron Phelps, patent holder and principal figure in developing magnetic tape, recalled, "We had tried more dense paper cards for data storage, but the improvement was only a few times better. Punched paper tape offered no great advantage either. Magnetic tape had just come into its own in audio and offered the most promise."

... snip ...

IBM 701 Tape Drive; The First Magnetic Tape Drive for Computer Data Storage
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/701-tape.html
In 1949, IBM began to plan for a new storage and i/o medium to take the place of punched cards. The new medium would be more compact, faster, cheaper, and reusable. Magnetic tape technology had been used for audio recording and playback since World War II, and it was adapted for computer use -- initially in a prototype called the Tape Processing Machine (TPM), 1950-51. Of course computer data storage and retrieval is different from audio recording and playback, requiring accurate positioning (both forwards and backwards) to arbitrary spots and therefore much fancier motors, not to mention stress relief for the tape itself, accomplished with vacuum columns (invented by IBM). New digital recording techniques were developed allowing mapping of computer memory to tape with error detection, coding of records and boundaries, and so forth.

... snip ...

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

Qbasic

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Qbasic
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2016 22:25:08 -0700
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
The small rectangle flat card-swipe, point-of-sale terminals were an emulated pc/xt and could be heard with the funny modem connection noise for dial-up transactions (low-volume merchants that had separate dial-up for every transactions, now lots are moving to internet). Last decade there was some look at moving to 56kbit dialup, but with an avg. transaction size of 60bytes, the 56kbit modem protocol connect negotiation took longer than slow-speed negotiation & transmission of 60bytes.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#3 Qbasic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#6 Qbasic

CP67 was delivered to the university last week jan1968 with 1052 & 2741 terminal support ... that including automatic terminal recognition using controller SAD ccw to switch line/port scanner type. The university had some number of TTY/ascii ... so I added TTY/ascii terminal support ... also able to do automatic terminal recognition and using SAD ccw to switch between three different kinds of line/port scanner.

I then wanted to have single dial-in number for all terminal types for single pool ("hunt group") of ports. This almost, but not quite worked. While IBM terminal controller allowed switching line/port scanner type ... they hardwired baud rate/speed for each line. Automatic terminal type recognition work for leased lines (hardwired terminal to specific port) ... but wouldn't support single "hunt group" (needed two different pools differentiated by baud rate/speed).

This somewhat prompted the univ to start clone controller effort, using Interdata/3 ... built channel interface board for the Interdata/3, programmed Interdata/3 to emulate IBM mainframe terminal controller ... but also programmed to dynamical determine terminal baud rate/speed.

Later the implementation was upgraded to Interdata/4 handling channel interface and pool of Interdata/3s handling port interfaces.

four of us get written up responsibility for (some part of) clone controller business.

Later Perkin-Elmer buys Interdata and markets the box under the Perkin-Elmer logo. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

Around the turn of the century I visited a financial east coast datacenter that had one of the PE boxes handling majority of dialup point-of-sale terminal traffic in the eastern part of the US.

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

Study: Cost of U.S. Regulations Larger Than Germany's Economy

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Study: Cost of U.S. Regulations Larger Than Germany's Economy
Date: 30 Apr 2016
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#7 Study: Cost of U.S. Regulations Larger Than Germany's Economy

there is a change in the landscape ... 2008/2008, there was still some belief that the too big to fail would be held accountable ... since then nothing serious was done and the too big to fail have gotten much larger and powerful (including the enormous piles of wallstreet money totally burying capital hill).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

I recently finished this, more about removing documents How Wall Street Created a Nation: J.P. Morgan, Teddy Roosevelt, and the Panama Canal
https://www.amazon.com/How-Wall-Street-Created-Nation-ebook/dp/B00MDW60IY/

loc85-88:
Gathering evidence also became a daunting task. Copies of checks paid by J.P Morgan to Panamanians patriots, original testimonies taken under oath, and many other papers that proved the Wall Street conspiracy were mysteriously missing from libraries and private collections. Also, for years, people who had an interest in hiding the truth about the corruption had been buying and taking out of circulation incriminating photographs and revealing documents.

The person in the middle of all this was Cromwell of the wallstreet firm Sullivan&Cromwell. Cromwell then turns the firm over to John Foster Dulles, loc3367-70:
Meanwhile, his firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, flourished as one of Wall Street's preeminent law firms under the direction of his handpicked successors, John Foster Dulles and Arthur H. Dean

... snip ...

John Forster becomes one of the major entities rebuilding German's industry & military during the 20s&30s
https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Foster-Dulles-Allen-Secret-ebook/dp/B00BY5QX1K/

loc865-68:
In mid-1931 a consortium of American banks, eager to safeguard their investments in Germany, persuaded the German government to accept a loan of nearly $500 million to prevent default. Foster was their agent. His ties to the German government tightened after Hitler took power at the beginning of 1933 and appointed Foster's old friend Hjalmar Schacht as minister of economics.

... snip ...

from the law of unintended consequences, when the US 1943 strategic bombing program needed German industry & military target information, they got the locations and detailed plans from wallstreet.

more recent reference to Dulles bros legacy: How the CIA Writes History
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/25/how-the-cia-writes-history/

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

What Would Be Your Ultimate Computer?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Would Be Your Ultimate Computer?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 07 May 2016 13:25:04 -0700
"J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> writes:
I'd kind of like to have seen what MVS would have turned into if IBM had consumerized the 370 instead of going with Intel. Of course they'd never have opened it so it would have stayed pretty much like it did, but still one can dream.

I've written a lots before about how MVS carried with it enormous baggage from 360s and OS/360 ... including enormous reliance on CKD (CKD hardware emulation is still required by current versions even though CKD disks haven't been made for decades) and pointer passing APIs (even though there was separate address space for every application, an image of the MVS kernel would occupy half of every application virtual address space; further complicated were operating subsystems that had been outside the OS/360 kernel now resided in their own separate address space; pointer passing API calls between applications and subsystems required invention of the CSA ... an area in every virtual address space used for API parameters; CSA size had to be proportional to number of subsystems and their use, at one point CSA size was threatening to increase to the other half of every virtual address space ... leaving nothing for applications).

TYMSHARE did GNOSIS for 370 ... capability based operating system that had lot of overhead for 3rd party accounting. Different entities could provide applications, dbms, etc on TYMSHARE GNOSIS platform and they could account for and remit to 3rd parties revenue earned for customers using applications, dbms, etc.

When M/D bought TYMSHARE, GNOSIS was spun off to Key Logic ... where they stripped out the 3rd party accounting stuff. They then demonstrated transaction applications that would outperform IBM's TPF ... running on same hardware. Somewhat issue was that interfaces were at a modern design level ... so things worked out much more efficiently (even with the "overhead" of capability based security and integrity).

disclaimer: I was brought in to do the GNOSIS evaluation/audit as part of the spin-off ... and still have hardcopy of old GNOSIS spec.

GNOSIS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOSIS

documents
http://cap-lore.com/CapTheory/upenn/

related
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EROS_(microkernel)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CapROS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyotos

posts mentioning CKD, FBA, multi-track search, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dasd

some past GNOSIS posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#80 Still not convinced about the superiority of mainframe security vs distributed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#55 Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Internet, 1974
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#33 Delay between idea and implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#6 The Subroutine Call
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#57 Doug Englebart
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#58 Doug Englebart
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#58 'Free Unix!': The world-changing proclamation made 30yearsagotoday
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#59 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013n.html#6 ACA (Obamacare) website problems--article
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013n.html#13 Bounded pointers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#84 CPU time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#39 [CM] Ten recollections about the early WWW and Internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#44 [CM] Ten recollections about the early WWW and Internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#53 The mainframe turns 50, or, why the IBM System/360 launch was the dawn of enterprise IT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#40 Named Memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014i.html#53 transactions, was There Is Still Hope
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#82 Miniskirts and mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#43 [Poll] Computing favorities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#29 1976 vs. 2016?

some past CSA posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#33 My Vintage Dream PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#80 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#75 PDP-10 system calls, was 1132 printer history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#21 8-bit bytes and byte-addressed machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#30 Regarding Time Sharing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#22 Is Microsoft becoming folklore?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#51 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013g.html#15 What Makes code storage management so cool?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#71 'Free Unix!': The world-changing proclamation made 30 years agotoday
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#62 Difference between MVS and z / OS systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014g.html#83 Costs of core
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014i.html#86 z/OS physical memory usage with multiple copies of same load module at different virtual addresses
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014k.html#36 1950: Northrop's Digital Differential Analyzer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014k.html#39 1950: Northrop's Digital Differential Analyzer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014k.html#82 Do we really need 64-bit DP or is 48-bit enough?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#40 OS/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#46 Connecting memory to 370/145 with only 36 bits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#60 ou sont les VAXen d'antan, was Variable-Length Instructions that aren't
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#90 IBM Embraces Virtual Memory -- Finally
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#116 Is there a source for detailed, instruction-level performance info?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#78 Mainframe Virtual Memory

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

What Would Be Your Ultimate Computer?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Would Be Your Ultimate Computer?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 07 May 2016 17:16:31 -0700
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#12 What Would Be Your Ultimate Computer?

another MVS issue was that support staff were measured in dozens per system ... including large number of IBM personnel.

the shows up in early Amdahl sales going after univ. running VM370 and (univ of michigan) MTS ... since they didn't require the huge amount of IBM personnel helping support the systems (which users weren't going to get for non-IBM clone mainframes).

It also played a major factor in the enormous number of distributed 4300s that started in the late 70s ... large customers ordering hundreds at a time for deployment out in departmental areas (non-traditional datacenter locations, stock rooms, former conference rooms, etc). Issue was getting system support down to dozens of systems per support person rather than dozens of support people per system.

For awhile they tried to attribute the lack of MVS being deployed on the thousands of distributed 4300ss on the fact that the only CKD disks were the high-end 3380s (not suitable for non-datacenter areas), the mid-range (3370) and low-end (3310s) were all FBA. Eventually a CKD 3375 was announced (3370 with CKD hardware emulation) eliminating that as an excuse for MVS not being deployed into the thousands of distributed 4300s (back to the issue of requiring dozens of support personnel per system).

CKD, FBA, multi-track search, etc posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dasd

posts mentioning Univ. Of Mich. MTS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#63 The Atlas 2 and its Slave Store
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#76 DataPower XML Appliance and RACF
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#20 Teletypewriter Model 33
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#22 Teletypewriter Model 33
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#34 World's worst programming environment?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#6 The PDP-8/e and thread drifT?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#71 assembler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#23 [OT ] Mainframe memories
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014g.html#24 Fifty Years of BASIC, the Programming Language That Made Computers Personal
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014g.html#106 Fifty Years of nitpicking definitions, was BASIC,theProgrammingLanguageT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014i.html#67 z/OS physical memory usage with multiple copies of same load module at different virtual addresses
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#33 Univac 90 series info posted on bitsavers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#50 curly brace languages source code style quides
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014l.html#20 Do we really need 64-bit addresses or is 48-bit enough?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#29 The joy of simplicity?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#46 John Titor was right? IBM 5100
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#52 The Stack Depth
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#57 The Stack Depth
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#92 DEBE?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#35 Remember 3277?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#62 3705
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#78 Mainframe Virtual Memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#6 You count as an old-timer if (was Re: Origin of the phrase "XYZZY")

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

client/server & HTML

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: client/server & HTML
Date: 07 May 2016
Blog: Facebook
In 1969, GML was invented at the IBM Cambridge Science Center (also responsible for virtual machines, cp40/cms, cp67/cms, internal network, technology also used for university BITNET) ,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

a decade later GML morphs into ISO standard SGML, another decade, SGML morphs into HTML at CERN. First webserver/htmlserver in US was at CERN sister location SLAC ... on VM370/CMS system.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml
and
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/firstpages.shtml

SUN JAVA could be considered part of the silicon valley object-oriented craze in the late 80s through mid-90s. Apple did PINK operating system and SUN did SPRING (neither of which shipped, although at one point, I was asked if I would consider heading up effort to turn out SPRING as SUN product). SPRING had JAVA-like virtual machine client for distributed environment (nothing to do with HTML). Various claims are that JAVA grew out of GREEN effort at SUN ... having nothing to do with SPRING. trivia: when JAVA was announced as product, the head of the SUN business unit responsible for JAVA was somebody that I had known at the IBM Los Gatos lab (one of the last things he did before leaving IBM was mainframe PASCAL).

some past SPRING posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#3 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#33 Making tea
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/2010e.html#18 Senior Java Developer vs. MVS Systems Programmer (warning: Conley rant)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#47 Nonlinear systems and nonlocal supercomputing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#9 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/2011k.html#50 The real reason IBM didn't want to dump more money into Blue Waters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#94 Time to competency for new software language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#13 AMC proposes 1980s computer TV series Halt & Catch Fire
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#27 Java Security?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#21 New HD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#59 Teletypewriter Model 33
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#85 the suckage of MS-DOS, was Re: 'Free Unix!

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

What Would Be Your Ultimate Computer?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Would Be Your Ultimate Computer?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 07 May 2016 21:46:54 -0700
Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net> writes:
What about the HAL 9000? That would make a good ultimate (last) computer. But, maybe, the bugs have been corrected by now.

HAL Computer Systems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_Computer_Systems

Was head of workstation IBU (pc/rt & rs/6000) but had some unflattering words to say to IBM senior VP about being directed to not develope our own adapter cards ... but forced to use PS2 cards. Folklore is that eventually led to his departure from IBM .... and later forming HAL. HAL started out being H&L ... for the two founders. "L" was employed at a major silicon valley company and when the H&L plans became known, he was threatened with legal action and dropped out of the effort.

I've told story about the PS2 16mbit T/R microchannel card (that RS/6000 was directed to use) had lower per card throughput that the custom 4mbit T/R PC/AT bus card done for the PC/RT. The other PS2 microchannel cards had similar short comings (observation that if the RS/6000s were forced to use all PS2 microchannel, the RS/6000 throughput wouldn't be any better than PS2). misc. past posts mentioning ROMP, RIOS, PC/RT, RS/6000, power/pc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

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

Tesla and GM Will Probably Both Be Bankrupt in 10 Years

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Tesla and GM Will Probably Both Be Bankrupt in 10 Years
Date: 07 May 2016
Blog: Facebook
Tesla and GM Will Probably Both Be Bankrupt in 10 Years
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-07/tesla-and-gm-will-probably-both-be-bankrupt-10-years-video
I was originally looking at Tesla from a trading standpoint, but in comparing GM, both company`s Financial internals look bleak longer term. GM is a debt accumulating machine, and Tesla is the starter version of this model. The Automobile manufacturing Industry is a capital intensive business, but both these companies are laggards to best practices in the Industry at large. There is major trouble ahead for both companies at this level of financial mismanagement. Tesla is trying to grow too fast, and GM is a bloated Government style bureaucracy that requires major pruning to say the least.

... snip ...

In the early 80s, there was article in the Washington Post calling for 100% unearned profit tax on the US auto industry. The issue was that congress had pass import auto quotas to drastically reduce competition to give US industry enormous profits that were supposed to completely remake themselves. However, they just pocketed the money and continued business as usual.

In 1990, the industry had C4 task force to look at completely remaking themselves and since they were planning on heavily leveraging technology they invited representation from major technology vendors. In the meetings, they could clearly articulate what the foreign competition was doing and what they needed to do to change. One of the issue was that foreign competition had cut the industry elapsed time from idea to rolling off the line (7-8yrs, frequently ran two efforts in parallel offset 3-4yrs), in half ... and were in the process of cutting it in half again. That met foreign competition could react much more quickly/agile to changing preferences & technology.

Industry had also sold off parts business to private-equity operations. This further opened discontinuity between suppliers and design. Sub-assemblies could totally change over 7-8yr period and not fit in original design, requiring expensive redesign and rework. In any case, most recent bailouts demonstrate that they still continue business as usual and weren't able to remake themselves. Disclaimer: offline I would chide the reps from IBM mainframe group about how did they figure they contribute since they had many of the same problems.

posts mentioning C4
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#auto.c4.taskforce
posts mentioning private-equity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity

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

Cybercrime

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Cybercrime
Date: 11 May 2016
Blog: Facebook
A few years ago was that cybercrime (largely internet) had passed drugcrime (something like $400B-$500B) ... one might claim that there are also 2nd order lost opportunity costs.

2nd order, opportunity costs trivia; Note that internet effectively obsoleted the VANs (value added networks) from the 70s & 80s. One of the few still in operation are the financial card VANs using the justification that the internet isn't secure enough. These financial card VANs grew up to interconnect the 30,000 some institutions to provide real-time transaction support ... and had a heavy "interchange fee" for every transaction. Migrating to a secure internet basis could upset the status quo and the associated fees.

other trivia: long ago and far away we were brought in as consultants to a small client/server startup that wanted to do financial transactions on their server, they had also invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted to use, the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce". I had absolute authority over the webserver to payment network gateway (which has yet to be hacked), but could only make recommendations on the client-browser to webserver ... some of which were almost immediately violated contributing to some of the exploits that continue to this day.

more trivia: at the financial industry PDD-63
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_infrastructure_protection
meetings, one of the most important issues was to make sure that any information sharing ISAC wasn't subject to FOIA (the crooks already share the information, but they didn't want the public to know what was going happening).

we were tangentially involved in the cal. state data breach notification act. we had been brought in to help wordsmith the cal. state electronic signature act and many of the participants were also heavily involved in privacy issue. they had done detailed, in depth public survey and found the number one issue was fraudulent financial transactions, a majority as a result from data breaches. the problem was that little or nothing was being done about the breaches, the issue is that entities normally take security measures in self-protection. The data breaches weren't putting the institutions at risk, but the public. It was hoped that publicity from the breach notifications would motivate corrective actions. since then there have been a dozen or so federal bills introduced (none passed), about evenly divided between those similar to the original cal. legislation and those that would effectively eliminate most breach notifications.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#data.breach.notification.notification

signature posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#signature

cybercrime bigger than drug crime
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm23.htm#31 JIBC April 2006 - "Security Revisionism"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#45 Threatwatch: how much to MITM, how quickly, how much lost
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#25 Cybercrime Could Be As Destructive As Credit Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#44 Cybercrime cost $1 trillion last year, study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#38 Cybercrime running into trillions, experts claim
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#47 Cyber crime 'more profitable than drugs'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#56 Credit cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#58 Credit cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#20 Electronic Theft Costs Businesses More Than Physical Theft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#31 Cyber-crime: bigger than the drugs trade, and growing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#40 The Great Cyberheist
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#53 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#27 Measuring Cyberfraud, the fall rate of sky, and other metrics from the market for Silver Bullets
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#9 NSA chief criticises media and suggests UK was right to detain David Miranda
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#13 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#49 Let's Face It--It's the Cyber Era and We're Cyber Dumb
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#15 Banking Culture Encourages Dishonesty
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#19 Does Cybercrime Really Cost $1 Trillion?

interchange fees
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm23.htm#37 3 of the big 4 - all doing payment systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm26.htm#1 Extended Validation - setting the minimum liability, the CA trap, the market in browser governance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm26.htm#25 EV - what was the reason, again?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#32 The bank fraud blame game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#33 The bank fraud blame game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#1 2008: The year of hack the vote?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#18 Lack of fraud reporting paths considered harmful
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#47 delegating SSL certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#77 How safe do you feel when using a debit or credit card?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#81 not crypto, but fraud detection
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#82 Can we copy trust?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#rhose3 Rubber hose attack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#16 AMD to leave x86 behind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#23 Value of an old IBM PS/2 CL57 SX Laptop
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#27 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#38 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#17 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#47 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#59 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#72 Free Checking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#35 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#68 Poll: oldest computer thing you still use
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#31 Is the media letting banks off the hook on payment card security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#40 Is the media letting banks off the hook on payment card security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#64 Is the media letting banks off the hook on payment card security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#0 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#62 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#7 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#3 Govt demands password to personal computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#58 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#59 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#7 Payments start-up Noca takes aim at interchange Achilles heel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#59 Tesco to open 30 "bank branches" this year
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#60 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#20 IBM forecasts 'new world order' for financial services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#57 LexisNexis says its data was used by fraudsters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#62 Solving password problems one at a time, Re: The password-reset paradox
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#3 Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#19 Does anyone know of merchants who have successfully bypassed interchange costs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#78 Kansas City Fed Chief Espouses ACH for Debit Card Processing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#50 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#51 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#77 Financial Regulatory Reform - elimination of loophole allowing special purpose institutions outside Bank Holding Company (BHC) oversigh
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#1 Is it possible to have an alternative payment system without riding on the Card Network platforms?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#50 How can we stop Credit card FRAUD?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#39 Network Rivalry Sparks 10-Year Quadrupling of PIN-Debit Pricing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#49 Hacker charges also an indictment on PCI, expert says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#62 August 7, 1944: today is the 65th Anniversary of the Birth of the Computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#70 Post Office bank account 'could help 1m poor'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#98 Korean bank Moves back to Mainframes (...no, not back)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#86 Oldest Instruction Set still in daily use?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#44 Can't PIN be mandated in normal POS machines ? to avoid Losses / Frauds / NPA's ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#21 Should the USA Implement EMV?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#1 In SSL We Trust? Not Lately
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#26 In SSL We Trust? Not Lately
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#54 Trust Facade
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#69 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#45 Swipe this card; shopping could be cheaper
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#62 blasts from the past -- old predictions come true
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#0 Wal-Mart to support smartcard payments
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#28 The Durbin Amendment Ignites a Lobbying Frenzy on Capitol Hill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#7 taking down the machine - z9 series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#79 Five Theses on Security Protocols
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#39 Compressing the OODA-Loop - Removing the D (and maybe even an O)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#52 Payment Card Industry Pursues Profits Over Security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#13 "Compound threats" to appear in 2011 ?
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/2011b.html#11 Credit cards with a proximity wifi chip can be as safe as walking around with your credit card number on a poster
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#48 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#64 Are Americans serious about dealing with money laundering and the drug cartels?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#22 An online bank scam worthy of a spy novel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#23 Fight Fraud with Device ID
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#58 Pipeline and Network Security: Protecting a Series of Tubes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#49 Does outsourcing cause data loss?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#56 Does outsourcing cause data loss?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#38 ISBNs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#39 ISBNs
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
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#71 When Mobile Telecommunications Routes Become Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#3 Quitting Top IBM Salespeople Say They Are Leaving In Droves
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#32 Zeus/SpyEye 'Automatic Transfer' Module Masks Online Banking Theft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#28 Why Asian companies struggle to manage global workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#10 Does the IBM System z Mainframe rely on Security by Obscurity or is it Secure by Design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#12 Does the IBM System z Mainframe rely on Security by Obscurity or is it Secure by Design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#80 history of Programming language and CPU in relation to each other
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#10 The Knowledge Economy Two Classes of Workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#8 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#52 U.S. agents 'got lucky' pursuing accused Russia master hackers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#22 Steve B sees what investors think
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013o.html#60 Target Offers Free Credit Monitoring Following Security Breach
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#77 In a Cyber Breach, Who Pays, Banks or Retailers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#20 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#40 Missed Alarms and 40 Million Stolen Credit Card Numbers: How Target Blew It
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014g.html#76 Did these tech and telecom companies assess the risk and return with respect to Anti-Money Laundering challenges?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#37 Married Couples and the Financial Mess
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#84 Support Senator Warren's Postal Banking Proposal
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014i.html#37 Sale receipt--obligatory?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#61 Western Union envisioned internet functionality
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#55 Clearly I'm Not Reading This Right
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#11 Credit card fraud solution coming to America...finally
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#66 Lineage of TPF
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#67 Lineage of TPF
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#58 Qbasic

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

What Would Be Your Ultimate Computer?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Would Be Your Ultimate Computer?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 14 May 2016 09:37:51 -0700
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
Way too optimistic - more like the lowest individual IQ among the members divided by the square of the number of members. Consider the sequence - solitary thinker, small group of co-workers, committee, government department, rioting mob, nation deciding policy by referendum.

an analog is synchronized signal to propagate thru all member brain cells and return ... in chips, synchronized clocks became limiting factor as the number of circuits and clock speed increased ... prompting looking at various ways of not requiring complete synchronization.

in fiber links ... move away for half-duplex, serialized, end-to-end synchronization to continuus asynchronization flow in both directions.

as organizations get larger, synchronized coordinated operation becomes increasingly problematic. Boyd talks about providing high level objective and then leaving to individuals to make local, on-the-spot decision. A variation on it was his periodic example of Guderian and the blitzkrieg ... to further promote individual decision freedom, Guderian directed Verbal Orders Only ... he didn't want individuals being worried about after-action reviews (when they were making on the spot decisions). Boyd posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

Note however, bureaucracies will also leverage large committees to obstruct changing the status quo (including constant flow of have you adequately considered an infinite number of alteratives) as well as obfuscating responsibility and accountability

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

Banking; The Book That Will Save Banking From Itself

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Banking; The Book That Will Save Banking From Itself
Date: 14 May 2016
Blog: Facebook
Securitized mortgages had been used during the S&L crisis to obfuscate fraudulent mortgages (poster child was office bldgs in Dallas/Ft.Worth that turned out to be empty lots). In the late 90s I was asked to try and help prevent the coming economic mess by improving the integrity of mortgage supporting documents. Then they start paying for triple-A ratings (when the sellers and the rating agencies knew they weren't worth triple-A, from Oct2008 congressional testimony into the major role that the rating agencies played). Triple-A ratings trump supporting documents and they could start doing no-documentation, liar loans. They also no longer had to care about loan quality or borrowers qualifications and triple-A also met that they could start selling to institutions restricted to only dealing in safe investments (like large public & private pension funds, some accounts that it resulted in 30% loss in the funds and trillions shortfall in pension funds), largely enabling being able to do over $27T 2001-2008
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo

They then learned that they could do securitized mortgages designed to fail, sell to their victims and then take out CDS gambling bets that they would fail (creating enormous demand for bad mortgages). AIG was the largest holder of these CDS gambling bets and was negotiating to pay-off at 50cents on the dollar when the SECTREAS steps in and says that they can't payoff at less than face value, forces them to sign a document that they can't sue those making the bets and to take TARP funds to payoff at face value. The largest recipient of TARP funds is AIG and the largest recipient of face value payoffs is the firm formerly headed by SECTREAS.

The end of 2008, just the four largest TBTF were still carrying $5.2T in toxic assets off-book. TARP was originally passed to buy these toxic assets, but with only $700B appropriated it would hardly dent the problem. They then use TARP for other purposes (which may have been the strategy all along) and the FED does the real bailout behind the scenes, tens of trillions in ZIRP funds and buy trillions in off-book toxic assets at 98cents on the dollar. The FED fights a long legal battle trying to prevent disclosing what they were doing. When they loose, the FED chairman has a press conference where he said that he thought that the TBTF would use the ZIRP funds to help mainstreet, but when they didn't, he had no way to force them (but that didn't stop the ZIRP funds). Note supposedly part of the reason for choosing Bernanke as head of Federal Reserve was he was a depression era scholar; however the Federal Reserve had tried something similar then with the same results, so Bernanke should have had no expectations for something different this time.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

The rhetoric on the floor of congress was that the primary purpose of GLBA (now better known for repeal of Glass-Steagall that was added on) was if you already have a bank charter you get to keep it, but if you didn't you couldn't get one (targeted at preventing new entries from getting into banking, specifically mentioning WalMart and Microsoft). When FED starts bailout, some of the TBTF investment banks didn't have bank charters, so FED gives them banking charters (making them eligible for the tens of trillions in ZIRP funds), theoretically in violation of GLBA. Estimate that TBTF have been clearing $300B/annum off ZIRP funds since 2008.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#zirp

Jan2009 (decade after being asked to help try and prevent the economic mess) I was asked to HTML'ize the Pecora Hearings (30s congressional hearings into crash of '29, resulted in criminal convictions and Glass-Steagall; had been scanned fall 2008 at Boston Public Library) with lots of internal XREFs and URLs between what happened now and what happened then (comments that new congress might have appetite to do something). I work on it for awhile and then get a call saying it won't be needed after all (comments that there are enormous piles of wallstreet money totally burying capital hill).

From the law of unintended consequences the largest fines for TBTF related to economic mess are for the robo-signing mills fabricating the documents for the no-document, liar loans. Estimate that since 2008, the TBTF have been fined a total of $300B ... not just for the economic mess, but also money laundering for drug cartels and terrorists, LIBOR, FOREX and commodity manipulation, facilitating tax evasion, and other criminal activity. The joke is that the fines are so small compared to the amounts involved, they are just viewed as the cost of running a criminal operation (also from law of unintended consequences, TBTF has also led to too big to prosecute and too big to jail).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#money.laundering
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#libor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#tax.evasion

Trivia: Rhetoric on the floor of congress was that Sarbanes-Oxley would prevent future ENRONs and guarantee that executives and auditors did jail time, but it required SEC to do something. Possibly because even GAO didn't believe SEC was doing anything, it started doing reports of public company fraudulent financial filings, even showing uptic after SOX goes into effect (and nobody doing jailtime). Less well known, SOX also had provision for SEC to do something about rating agencies ... but it did as much about that as financial filing fraud. Other trivia: the congressional Madoff hearings had the person that had tried unsuccessfully for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff (SEC's hands were forced when Madoff turned himself in, there was comment that Madoff was looking for gov. protection from some unsavory characters he had defrauded).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#sarbanes-oxley
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#enron
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#financial.reporting.fraud.fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#madoff
regulatory capture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#regulatory.capture

Money and Banking Part 14: Financial Crisis
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2016/05/money-banking-part-14-financial-crisis.html
While visiting the London School of Economics at the end of 2008, the Queen of England wondered "why did nobody notice it?" In doing so, she echoed a narrative that had been promoted among some prominent economists: the Great Recession ('it') was an accident, a random extreme event and no one saw it coming. This narrative is false. Quite of few economists saw it coming and it was not an accident. A previous post showed how different theoretical framework about financial crisis lead to different regulatory responses. This post studies more carefully the mechanics of financial crisis and how an economy gets there.

... snip ...

other trivia: aka "even predicted it", in early 1999 when I was asked to help prevent the economic mess, I was told that there were investment bankers that walked away clean from the S&L crisis and were then into Internet IPO-mill (invest a few million, hype it for two years, do IPO for a couple billion, preferred that it then fails since it leaves the field open for the next round of IPOs) and were predicted next to get into securitized mortgages. There were 30,000 criminal referrals and 1,000 criminal convictions (with jailtime) for S&L crisis. The economic mess was 70 times larger than the S&L crisis, so proportionally there should have been 70,000 criminal convictions (with jailtime).

There was a point in the 2008 when investors start to realize that rating agencies can't be trusted and the muni-bond market froze. Buffett steps in and unfreezes the market by offering bond insurance.

During the congressional hearings into the role that the rating agencies played, one of the TV reporters commented online that there would never be prosecution of the rating agencies because they can blackmail the federal government with the threat of rating downgrade.

The president of AMEX is in competition to be the next CEO and wins. AMEX is then in competition with KKR for (private-equity) LBO take-over of RJR and KKR wins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate:_The_Fall_of_RJR_Nabisco

KKR runs into trouble with RJR and hires away the president of AMEX to turn it around. Then IBM has gone into the red and was being reorganized into the 13 "baby blues" in preparation for breaking up the company. The IBM board hires the former president of AMEX to reverse the breakup and resurrect the company.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner

He uses some of the same techniques he had used at RJR:
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml

Note that the industry had gotten such a bad name during the S&L crisis, that they had changed the name to private equity (and junk bonds became "high-yield" bonds). The industry has been a major customer of low interest rates for use in LBO buyouts of victim companies.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity

This article draws similarity between house flipping and private-equity take-overs ... except the loan to buy a company is put on the victim company's books and stays with the company even after it flips (instead of being paid off, private-equity can even sell a company for less than they paid and still walk away with enormous amount of money). Private equity victim companies also account for over half the corporate defaults (they are under enormous pressure to cut corners and generate money every way possible)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmons.html?_r=0

After the former president of AMEX leaves as head of IBM, he becomes the head of a major private equity company, one of the victim companies it acquires will be Snowden's employer. Last decade there was enormous uptic in gov. outsourcing to for-profit companies, many of which were snapped up in private-equity LBO take-overs ... including those doing security clearances & background checks were they were just filling out the paper work and not doing any checking
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/
they were also part of the rapidly spreading success of failure culture
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/

success of failure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#success.of.failuree

The looser in competition for the next CEO of AMEX, had left, taking their protegee and gone to Baltimore, taking over what was described as a loan-sharking business. They make some number of other acquisitions, eventually acquiring Citi in violation of Glass-Steagall. Greenspan gives them an exemption while they lobby congress for repeal of Glass-Steagall (the repeal enables TBTF, which then also leads to too big to prosecute and too big to jail). They enlist some number in DC in the repeal, including the SECTREAS (who also happens to have headed the same company as the SECTREAS during the economic mess last decade, joke that the treasury was the company's branch office in DC). After GLBA & repeal of Glass-Steagall is in the works, the SECTREAS resigns and joins Citi as what was described at the time as co-CEO. Later the protegee leaves Citi and becomes CEO of one of the other four largest TBTF
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#greenspan

there are laws against gov. agencies lobbying congress as well as companies using money from gov. contracts to lobby congress (ruling out beltway bandits that get all their work from the gov), this gets confused when beltway bandits are acquired by private-equity firms. there is also major "revolving doors" ... between wallstreet and regulatory agencies as well as between various gov. operations and private-equity firms (recent case of CIA director resigning in disgrace was immediately hired by KKR, same PE firm involved with former president of AMEX).

other trivia: in the rating agency congressional hearings there was testimony that the rating agencies business model became mis-aligned when they switched from buyers paying for ratings to the sellers paying ... and it is extremely difficult to regulate a business with mis-aligned business process that is incented to do the wrong thing.

in the 60s there was a number of online commercial service bureaus formed using cp67 virtual machine systems (from the ibm cambridge scinece center). two of them quickly moved up the value stream to provide online financial information & services to wallstreet. In jan2009, one of them was still around (on the web) and momentarily mentioned as helping evaluate the off-book toxic assets held by the TBTF (facade that TARP would be used to buy these toxic assets). It turns out about the time that the rating agencies' business model became mis-aligned, the service bureau had bought the pricing services division from one of the rating agencies ... which would be used in helping evaluate the assets for purchase.

Now the four largest TBTF were still holding $5.2T in off-book toxic assets the end of 2008. However, earlier in 2008, one of the four largest TBTF had sold several tens of billions of toxic assets at 22cents on the dollar. If the TBTF had been forced to bring all the toxic assets back on the books and "mark-to-market", they would have been declared insolvent and forced to be liquidated (lucky for them, the FED would buy those assets at 98cents on the dollar).

During the internet IPO bubble, we were in a financial standards meeting hosted by a major financial industry lobbying group at their hdqtrs in DC. During the meeting we were asked to step out to talk with somebody. We were taken to an office, the door was shut and we were introduced to person that said they were from a NJ ethnic group and had been asked to talk to us by a couple investment bankers. He said that we were criticizing some technology that was involved in one of their upcoming Internet IPOs where they were expecting to clear $2B and our criticism was pridicted to cause a 10% downside. We were asked to stop the criticism, it was nothing personal, purely business. We then went to a couple gov. agencies and were told that investment bankers are like that, frequently sociopaths and amoral. It was explained some number of investment bankers had walked/gotten away "clean" from the S&L crisis, where then running Internet IPO-mills and were projected to get into securitized mortgages next

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

Computer theft 1971

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Computer theft 1971
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 16 May 2016 18:30:21 -0700
hancock4 writes:
An article in C&A covers many of today's issues of computer theft and vandalism.

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/computersAndAutomation/197104.pdf

For the life of me, I can't understand why email software allows the automatic execution of an attached program merely upon the opening of an email. This has allowed innumerable security breaches, especially since saboteurs raid address books to find email accounts, so the email looks legitimate.


I've mentioned before 1996 MSDC at Mascone had all the banners saying "INTERNET" ... but the constant refrain in all the sessions were "Protect Your Investment" ... aka all the (visual) basic that were part of data files (not just email) that would be automatically executed.

the scenario was that it had grown up in the days of stand-alone machines and small, safe, closed LANs. the small, safe, closed LAN support was extended to support the wild, anarchy of the internet ... w/o any countermeasures for the threats & exploits of that environment.

priod to the mid-90s, the major source of internet exploits had been various kinds of c-language programming length issues. after the mid-90s, the automatic execution grew to half of exploits (the number of c-language length related exploits didn't decrease, but the automatic execution exploits exploded).

posts mentioning c-language length related exploits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#overflow

posts mentioning "protect your investment" &/or 1996 MSDC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#32 Frontiernet insists on being my firewall
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#87 CompUSA to Close after Jan. 1st 2008
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#63 who pioneered the WEB
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#9 The IETF is probably the single element in the global equation of technology competition than has resulted in the INTERNET
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#141 With cloud computing back to old problems as DDos attacks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#2 What are the implication of the ongoing cyber attacks on critical infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#18 Zeus/SpyEye 'Automatic Transfer' Module Masks Online Banking Theft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#32 Zeus/SpyEye 'Automatic Transfer' Module Masks Online Banking Theft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#37 Simulated PDP-11 Blinkenlight front panel for SimH
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#93 Gordon Crovitz: Who Really Invented the Internet?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#97 Gordon Crovitz: Who Really Invented the Internet?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#45 New HD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#68 Steve B sees what investors think
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#87 On a lighter note, even the Holograms are demonstrating
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#45 Western Union envisioned internet functionality
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#35 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#90 These hackers warned the Internet would become a security disaster. Nobody listened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#35 [Poll] Computing favorities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#39 [Poll] Computing favorities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#106 Computers anyone?

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

What was a 3314?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What was a 3314?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Mon, 16 May 2016 19:00:53 -0700
stevet@COPPER.NET (Steve Thompson) writes:
2314, 2419, 2311, these are just a few of the "IBM" DASD that I've had the pleasure of working with. I've forgotten the drum device numbers and the noodle snatcher model number.

2303 was "drum" (head/track) ran 300kbyte/sec transfer. 2301 was (effectively) 2303 that read/wrote four heads in parallel for 1.2mbyte/sec transfer .... 1/4th as many tracks but each track was four times larger (than 2303).

noodle snatcher ... data cell was 2321.

3330-i 19 tracks & 404 cylinders, 3330-ii 808 cylinders. 3340 smaller removable with enclosed pack. 3350 non-removable, 3344 was 3350 programmed to simulate multiple 3340s.
https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3330.html

3310 (low-end) and 3370 (mid-range) FBA (fixed block architecture).
https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3370.html

3380 was high-end CKD ... but starting to have fixed cells.
https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3380.html

2305 was fixed-head/track disk ... 2305-2, 11+mbyte, 1.5mbytes/sec transfer, 2305-1 5+mbyte, 3mbytes/sec transfer and half the rotational delay. pairs of heads were located on same data offset 180degrees, only needed avg. quarter of revolution (instead of half a revolution) for data to come under heads.
https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_2305.html

4300s sold thousands of machines in single or small orders .... but also it broke price/performance barrier ... so large corporations (including) IBM were getting hundreds at a time for placement out in departmental areas (stock rooms, taking over conference rooms, etc) ... sort of leading edge of the distributed computing tsunami.

An issue was the only dasd for the distributed environment was FBA (3310 & 3370) so MVS couldn't play in this exploding market. Eventually they got CKD 3375 simulation on 3370 ... but that didn't really solve the real problem where MVS was requiring dozens of people per system for care and feeding ... but this environment required single person care & feeding per dozens of systems (rather than dozens of people per system).

Note it has been decades since real CKD DASD have been manufactured ... all being simulation on industry standard fixed-block disks. past FBA & CKD posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dasd

trivia: starting in 70s, I started observing that disk performance wasn't keeping pace with system throughput. In the early 80s, I was saying that relative system disk throughput had declined by an order of magnitude over 15yrs period, "cp67, 360/67, 2314" compared to "vm370, 3081, 3380" .... aka processor throughput had increased by 40-50, disk throughput increased by 4-5 times (& typical 3081 systems had increased number of users proporational to disk throughput increase, not processor throughput).

some disk division executive took exception to my claim and the division performance analysis group was assigned to refute it ... they came back after a couple weeks and basically said I had slightly understated the issue. The analysis was then respun for a SHARE presentation on how to configure disks for throughput; SHARE 63, Presentation B874. posts mentioning B874:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#18 AS/400 and MVS - clarification please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#46 AS/400 and MVS - clarification please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#3 using 3390 mod-9s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#68 DASD Response Time (on antique 3390?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#5 Poster of computer hardware events?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#9 Poster of computer hardware events?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#88 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#71 308x Processors - was "Mainframe articles"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#7 My Vintage Dream PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#34 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#52 Hercules; more information requested
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#67 ACP, One of the Oldest Open Source Apps
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#1 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#70 25 reasons why hardware is still hot at IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#31 Wax ON Wax OFF -- Tuning VSAM considerations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#32 OS idling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#33 History of Hard-coded Offsets
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#18 Mainframe Slang terms
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#30 IBM Historic computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#35 CKD DASD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#61 Speed of Old Hard Disks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#1 Multiple Virtual Memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#59 Is the magic and romance killed by Windows (and Linux)?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#5 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#32 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#73 Tape vs DASD - Speed/time/CPU utilization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#39 A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#62 ISO documentation of IBM 3375, 3380 and 3390 track format
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#72 'Free Unix!': The world-changing proclamation made 30 years agotoday
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#49 Mac at 30: A love/hate relationship from the support front
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014l.html#90 What's the difference between doing performance in a mainframe environment versus doing in others
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#87 Death of spinning disk?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#0 Miniskirts and mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#110 Is there a source for detailed, instruction-level performance info?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#12 You count as an old-timer if (was Re: Origin of the phrase "XYZZY")

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

What was a 3314?

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: What was a 3314?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 18 May 2016 22:49:23 -0700
edgould1948@COMCAST.NET (Edward Gould) writes:
It addressing had MMBBCCHHR(R?) so I guess you could address it directly. Anyone remember how to do that? (progr5amming for a 2321 is a lost art (where is Seymour?).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#21 What was a 3314?

the "BB" was to select the BIN that the magnetic strips were located in.
https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_2321.html
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2321_Data_Cell
Generically, at the OS level, IBM defined the six bytes as BBCCHH, for Bin, Bin, Cylinder, Cylinder, Head and Head respectively.

... snip ...

referenced from:
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/os/R21.7_Apr73/GC28-6628-9_OS_System_Ctl_Blks_R21.7_Apr73.pdf

the bins (cells) rotated under the r/w heads.
https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_PH2321B.html
http://www.computer-history.info/Page4.dir/pages/Photostore.dir/images/Picture.1.jpg

as undergraduate, univ. hired me as fulltime support for the production ibm systems. the univ. library got an ONR grant to do online catalog ... and used part of the money to get a 2321 datacell. The project was also selected to be one of the original CICS product betatest sites and I got tasked with debugging/supporting CICS (one of the "bugs" was that CICS original implementation at customer site used specific set of BDAM options which was hardcoded in the source ... and the library had chosen a different set of BDAM options ... it took some dump analysis to discover the issue since it wasn't documented). past posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bdam

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

Banking; The Book That Will Save Banking From Itself

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Banking; The Book That Will Save Banking From Itself
Date: 18 May 2016
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#19 Banking; The Book That Will Save Banking From Itself

Cochrane Proposes "Restoring the Rule of Law" by Lettide facto ng CEOs Defraud with Impunity
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2016/05/cochrane-proposes-restoring-rule-law-lettide-facto-ng-ceos-defraud-impunity.html
In sum, as the Bank Whistleblowers United have explained, the rule of law has ended for financial elites. Financial CEOs became ever wealthier by leading the fraud epidemics that crushed our economy and caused immense harm to our people - and in every case the prosecutors and regulators did not even attempt to hold them personally accountable for their frauds.

... snip ...

The Bank Whistleblowers United - Who are We, and Why are We Trying to Help Implement Real Banking Reform?
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/02/the-bank-whistleblowers-united-who-are-we-and-why-are-we-trying-to-help-implement-real-banking-reform.html

too big to fail (& too big to prosecute, too big to jail) posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

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

What was a 3314?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: What was a 3314?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 19 May 2016 14:32:44 -0700
norman.hollander@DESERTWIZ.BIZ (Norman.Hollander) writes:
Track size. We actually used to use a 2305 "drum" definition for VIO. But if you genned 1 dummy address, you had to gen all 8. Made for a larger IO-gen. So we would go for the next best tracksize of the 2314. So- how many 4K pages fit into a track without wasting too much of it? Plus the 2314 was small, so quick sorts in VIO might be possible, but it prevented sorting a kabillion records. I'm pretty sure 2305 support was removed a long time ago, so you couldn't define it today. Probably true for the 2311/2314/2319. Last time I went through IODF, a fake 3390 (address DEFF) was defined as the only VIO capable device. With all the various Sort and Memory exits today, it's probably just a good history lesson. Oh- way back in the 70s, a company named Ampex (IIRC) made look alike (aka cheaper) memory and Disk storage. Think their mountable disk was the 3314. OK- discuss further...

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#21 What was a 3314?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#22 What was a 3314?

design point for 3090 needed lot more memory than originally planned ... combination of software bloat and 3880 disk controller was much slower than originally predicted (which then also required doubling number of channels, which required an additional TCM, joke was 3090 product was going to charge the disk division for the manufacturing cost of the additional TCM). Physical packaging problem for the additional memory required longer distance that exceeded the original latency specs ... so they invented expanded store ... with a very wide bus and software interface that could quickly move 4k page between processor memory and expanded store (but physically it was the same memory technology).

Slightly before that, one of the vendors started producing simulated 2305 "electronic paging device" ... using electronic memory ... and IBM bought a whole load of them for internal use (internal designation was "1655"). The question was asked why couldn't IBM produce such an electronic disk ... and the answer was every memory chip IBM was producing was already being sold as memory (and/or expanded store) ... which had a lot higher profit margin than electronic disk. The "1655" vendor did point out that they were using memory chips that had failed tests required for processor memory ... but could still be used in simulated electronic disk (with disk controller electronics being able to compensate for various memory issues).

The 3090 expanded store bus was than also used for supercomputer HIPPI 100mbyte/sec RAID disks. Standard 3090 channels couldn't remotely come close to handling HIPPI 100mbyte/sec ... so they came up with this hack to cut HIPPI interface into side of the expanded store bus ... and then they used reserved expanded store bus addresses to implement peek/poke kind of I/O semantics (to initiate HIPPI read/write I/O operations).

I/O trivia: 1980 I was con'ed into doing channel extender support for IBM STL lab that was moving 300 from the IMS group to off-site bldg .... with service back into the STL datacenter. They had tried "remote" 3270 and found it totally unacceptable (comapared to the direct channel attached 3270 human factors that they were use to). The channel extender support put a channel emulator at off-site bldg with direct channel attached 3270 controllers, Channel programs were down loaded to the remote channel emulator ... which went a long way to eliminating the enormous overhead & latency of channel interface protocol chatter. The vendor then wanted to get approval from IBM to release my support, but there was a group in POK playing with some serial stuff that objected (because they were afraid if my stuff was released, it would make it harder to get their stuff released).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#channel.extender

Then in 1988, I was asked to help LLNL get some serial stuff they were playing with standardized (the standard would include remote i/o program download&execution to eliminate significant I/O program protocol chatter latency). This quickly becomes fibre-channel standard (originally supporting 1gbit/sec concurrent transfers in both directions).

Then in 1990, the POK group gets their stuff released as ESCON when it is already obsolete.

Then some POK people get involved in fibre-channel standard and define a heavy-weight protocol that drastically reduces the native throughput ... that is eventually released as FICON. Latest published "peak I/O" throughput was z196 using 104 FICON to get 2M IOPS. At about the same time a (single) fibre-channel was announced for E5-2600 blade claiming over million IOPS (two such fibre-channel having higher native throughput than 104 FICON running over 104 fibre-channel).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#ficon

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

How the computer transformed economics. And didn't

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: How the computer transformed economics. And didn't.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 20 May 2016 09:51:11 -0700
How the computer transformed economics. And didn't.
http://ineteconomics.org/ideas-papers/blog/how-the-computer-transformed-economics-and-didnt

note "360" picture about 3/4s of the way down the page ... is MTS 360/67

i.e.
https://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/gallery/gallery8.html

and economics related drift

Cochrane Proposes "Restoring the Rule of Law" by Letting CEOs Defraud with Impunity
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2016/05/cochrane-proposes-restoring-rule-law-lettide-facto-ng-ceos-defraud-impunity.html
In sum, as the Bank Whistleblowers United have explained, the rule of law has ended for financial elites. Financial CEOs became ever wealthier by leading the fraud epidemics that crushed our economy and caused immense harm to our people -- and in every case the prosecutors and regulators did not even attempt to hold them personally accountable for their frauds.

... snip ...

The Bank Whistleblowers United -- Who are We, and Why are We Trying to Help Implement Real Banking Reform?
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/02/the-bank-whistleblowers-united-who-are-we-and-why-are-we-trying-to-help-implement-real-banking-reform.html

too big to fail (& too big to prosecute, too big to jail) posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

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

How the computer transformed economics. And didn't

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How the computer transformed economics. And didn't.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 20 May 2016 11:28:31 -0700
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#25 How the computer transformed economics. And didn't.

... also "Inside Job" gets into "captured" regulatory agencies (like SEC) having major role in the economic mess ... but also gets into the capture of major economic advisers as contributing ... including after the bubble hit, advice to wallstreet to put as many under financial obligation as means of helping obfuscate and misdirect away from those responsible
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Job_(2010_film)

the capture of economists is also covered in "Economists and the Powerful: Convenient Theories, Distorted Facts, Ample Rewards"
https://www.amazon.com/Economists-Powerful-Convenient-Distorted-Economics-ebook/dp/B01B4X4KOS/

too big to fail (& too big to prosecute, too big to jail) posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

past posts mentioning above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#51 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#62 Search Google, 1960:s-style
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#64 IBM Is Changing The Terms Of Its Retirement Plan, Which Is Frustrating Some Employees
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#20 The Big Fail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#57 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#73 More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#44 Adair Turner: A New Debt-Free Money Advocate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#50 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#89 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#29 The agency problem and how to create a criminogenic environment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#1 What Makes a Tax System Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#8 What Makes a Tax System Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#48 Ex-Wall Street chieftains living large in post-meltdown world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#52 Lehman Brothers collapse: was capitalism to blame?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#76 The Scholars Who Shill for Wall Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013o.html#81 Academics Who Defend Wall St. Reap Reward
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#3 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#68 Economists and our responsibilities to society
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#24 Forget the McDonnells. We're ignoring bigger, more pernicious corruption right under our noses
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#67 Economics Has a Math Problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#73 Economists' Tribal Thinking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#28 rationality
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#102 Qbasic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#84 Wells Fargo "Admits Deceiving" U.S. Government, Pays Record $1.2 Billion Settlement

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

Old IBM Mainframe Systems

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Old IBM Mainframe Systems
Date: 20 May 2016
Blog: Facebook
Univ. had 709 with 1401 and were sold 360/67 (supposedly for tss/360). As part of the transition, they initially got a 360/30 replacement for the 1401 ... which could run 1401 hadware emulation. My first student programming job was to rewrite the 1401 front-end software to run in 360 mode (even tho it could have continued to run in 1401 hardware emulation). The university was still doing card-based class registration (students would get class mark sense cards and fill in their name ... which then got punched into the card). Large number of card trays (3000cards/tray) were then processed. I wrote code that all cards would read into 2540 (middle) stacker3. If there was a problem, there would be a blank (brightly colored) card punched behind it in stacker3. After processing, it was easy to pick out registration problems from the brightly colored cards in the trays. I was then hired fulltime responsible for the production IBM systems.

Much later, I had HSDT project that was doing T1 and faster speed links, primarily with non-IBM gear ... last T1 support that IBM had done was 2701 from 20yrs earlier. I was told that the Armonk CFO office would give me additional funding if I could show some IBM content. Finally fouund the T1 ZIRPEL Series/1 card done by FSD for gov. accounts whose 2701s were falling apart. The next problem was IBM had just bought ROLM, ROLM had been using Data General computers ... and after the purchase, ROLM ordered a whole load of Series/1 ... and new Series/1 order delieveries were now more than a year out. The head of ROLM datacenter, I had known in their prior life several years earlier at IBM ... and managed to do some horse trading to get delivery some of the ROLM Series/1s. HSDT posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

Somewhat as a result, somebody in the Series/1s organization cons me into working with one of the (former) baby bells ... that had done a PU4/PU5/NCP emulation on Series/1 ... working on plan to turn it out as type1 IBM product. We proceed to orgranize the effort in what we believed would wall-off all possible CPD corporate dirty tricks. I make a presentation on how it implements significant more performance and function at much reduced cost compared to CPD 3725-based infrastructure, at a SNA architecture review board meeting in Raleigh; small part of that presentation in this old post (from 1999):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#67

CPD then tries to discredit the detailed analysis comparison with the 3725 ... however, for nearly the whole life of HONE, I provided & supported enhanced operating systems ... so HOME allows me to use HONE ... and the 3725 analysis came from the (official) CPD configurators ... and the Series/1 numbers came from real live customer operation.

What CPD then does to get the effort killed can only be described as truth is greater than fiction.

other trivia, the 23Jun1969 "unbundling" announcement starts to charge for application software, SE services, maintenance, etc. One of the issues was that a lot of SE training was sort of apprenticeship as part of large group onsite at customer shop. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

With unbundling, they couldn't figure out how to not charge for this apprentice activity. Eventually they came up with providing "hands on network environement" (HONE), several DPD datacenters providing CP67 (done by the IBM cambridge science center) virtual machine systems with online access to branch offices (for SEs to practice their operating systems skills). Science Center had also done port of APL\360 to CMS as CMS\APL and HONE started also providing online APL-based sales&marketing support tools. Eventually the HONE online sales&marketing support starts to dominate all HONE activity (and virtual guest operating system use dwindles asway). With the increasing complexity of IBM hardware products, customer orders increasingly require to have been pre-processed by HONE "configurator".
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

One of my hobbies after I join IBM is to provide & support enhanced operating systems for internal datacenters (including HONE), first CP67-based and later VM370-based. I also spend some time working with various VM370 customers ... one is TYMSHARE that provides commercial online CMS services. One of the things they develop is a CMS-based online conferencing systems (precursor to social media) ... which they also make available for free starting in Aug1976 to the IBM user group SHARE as "VMSHARE" ... archive here:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare
sometimes(?) "404" ... but also at wayback machine
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

I work with TYMSHARE to get regular distribution of all VMSHARE files to make available online on IBM internal systems (including HONE). One of the most difficult issues was that the IBM lawyers were afraid that information from customers would contaminate internal IBM employees.

posts referencing SNA/ARB presentation in raleigh:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#106 IBM Mainframe Model Numbers--then and now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#119 Computer, supercomputers & related
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#239 IBM UC info
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#17 I'm overwhelmed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#53 APPC vs TCP/IP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#59 Multithreading underlies new development paradigm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#64 distributed locking patents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#66 oddly portable machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#79 "Database" term ok for plain files?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#87 Motorola/Intel Wars
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#43 Any Series/1 fans?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#45 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#47 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#54 WHAT IS A MAINFRAME???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#0 What good and old text formatter are there ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#31 OT?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#4 Sv: First video terminal?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#72 California DMV
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#74 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#49 any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercompu
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#23 IA64 Rocks My World
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#21 3745 and SNI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#31 3745 and SNI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#52 misc loosely-coupled, sysplex, cluster, supercomputer, & electronic commerce
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#9 NCP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#23 Alpha vs. Itanic: facts vs. FUD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#11 The demise of compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#56 Computer Naming Conventions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#42 Beginning of the end for SNA?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#60 Mainframes and "mini-computers"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#2 Computers in Science Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#48 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#0 HONE was .. Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#8 Avoiding JCL Space Abends
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#16 s/w was: How will current AI/robot stories play when AIs are
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#32 why does wait state exist?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#50 Cirtificate Authorities 'CAs', how curruptable are they to
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#11 Card Columns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#28 difference between itanium and alpha
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#76 COMTEN- IBM networking boxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#4 cp/67 35th anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#2 Fix the shuttle or fly it unmanned
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#29 IBM 3725 Comms. controller - Worth saving?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#9 how long does (or did) it take to boot a timesharing system?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#49 new to mainframe asm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#12 network history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#53 history books on the development of capacity planning (SMF and RMF)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#31 IBM 3705 and UC.5
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#1 Self restarting property of RTOS-How it works?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#56 1401-S, 1470 "last gasp" computers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#8 IBM's mini computers--lack thereof
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#14 IBM's mini computers--lack thereof
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#15 DUMP Datasets and SMS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#50 Mainframe Linux Mythbusting (Was: Using Java in batch on
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#4 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#20 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#80 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#40 sizeof() was: The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#27 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#1 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#45 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#23 Memories of ACC, IBM Channels and Mainframe Internet Devices
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#63 Early commercial Internet activities (Re: IBM-MAIN longevity)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#4 Cost of CPU Time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#60 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#3 VTAM security issue
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#66 ACP, One of the Oldest Open Source Apps
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#0 Small Server Mob Advantage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#21 Small Server Mob Advantage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009s.html#51 DEC-10 SOS Editor Intra-Line Editing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#83 Entry point for a Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#2 Entry point for a Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#62 Is email dead? What do you think?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#16 Other early NSFNET backbone
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#15 I actually miss working at IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#32 SNA/VTAM Misinformation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#83 History of APL -- Software Preservation Group
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#26 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#43 VNET 1983 1000 NODES
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#98 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#100 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#20 Writing article on telework/telecommuting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#57 VM Workshop 2012
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#82 zEC12, and previous generations, "why?" type question - GPU computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#13 Should you support or abandon the 3270 as a User Interface?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#57 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#58 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#43 IBM 7070 Question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013g.html#36 What Makes code storage management so cool?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#37 The Subroutine Call
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#67 OSI: The Internet That Wasn't
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#46 Teletypewriter Model 33
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013n.html#26 SNA vs TCP/IP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#7 Last Gasp for Hard Disk Drives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#66 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#56 The Road Not Taken: Knowing When to Keep Your Mouth Shut
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#84 Inaugural Podcast: Dave Farber, Grandfather of the Internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#99 Systems thinking--still in short supply

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

Manazir: Networked Systems Are The Future Of 5th-Generation Warfare, Training

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Manazir: Networked Systems Are The Future Of 5th-Generation Warfare, Training
Date: 20 May 2016
Blog: Facebook Boyd
Manazir: Networked Systems Are The Future Of 5th-Generation Warfare, Training
https://news.usni.org/2016/05/18/manazir-networked-systems-are-future-of-5th-generation-warfare-training

Fully meshed network (everybody is directly connected to everybody else) is somewhat similar to span of control studies for optimal group size. There was "7" as magic number that manager could handle seven people (when they are relatively independent activity ... possibly couple more if roles are homogeneous with little variation).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Span_of_control

group size N, number of subordinate interactions N*(N-1)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Span_of_control#Theoretical_considerations

Early 90s, we were brought in as consultants to small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server, they had also invented this technology they called "SSL" they wanted to use ... frequently now referred to as "electronic commerce". At the time internet was still any-to-any routing (i.e. every router had to potentially have table entry for every possible destination address) ... and I was doing a "high availability" implementation that if there was any fault in the internet infrastructure ... attempt to reconfigure alternate way of getting to destination. Before deployment, internet transitioned from any-to-any, to hierarchical routings ... rather than every destination potentially having unique routing, groups of addresses were all routing specific way ... (somewhat like original telephone area code, before cellphones and any phone number could be any place). In any case, I had to come up with a totally different fault tolerant, high availability strategy.

In the 80s, involved in something similar but different related to SAFENET-II (navy warfare) ... all sensors (radar, etc), command center, and firing stations, etc ... were all interconnected with highly redundant infrastructure (theoretically continue to operate with 80% damage). Rather than point-to-point addressing (mesh) did multi-cast. Different origin locations transmitted information tagged with information category (rather then destination address). Receiving stations then received not only directly addressed information ... but also multi-cast tagged information that they were interested in. Radar didn't have to know the destination addresses, rather they self identified the information and receivers decided what information they needed.
https://books.google.com/books?id=75PJE_i3f3kC&pg=PT173&lpg=PT173&dq=safenet-ii&source=bl&ots=DXtU7BdMdh&sig=yUdtGH3NsE47ZdvcHXXkYfI8Z3M&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwifqJ_J1ufMAhWpxYMK

a little topic drift, related to "span-of-control" ... in Boyd's Organic Design For Command & Control ... he would talk about the US created a rigid, top-down command and control for entry into WW2 to leverage the few skilled resources handling huge numbers with no skills or experience (requiring at least five times the officer ratio to implement the rigid command&control). He would contrast it with Guderian's Verbal Orders Only for the blitzkrieg. He would describe it as encouraging the person on the spot to make decisions and not have to worry about after action post-mortems. In the 80s, he would describe US corporate culture starting to be contaminated with former WW2 officers, steeped in military rigid, top-down, command and control (assuming only those at the very top knew what they were doing ... and the rest of organization had no idea).

Boyd postings and Web URL refs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

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

How the computer transformed economics. And didn't

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How the computer transformed economics. And didn't.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 21 May 2016 09:17:44 -0700
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#25 How the computer transformed economics. And didn't.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#26 How the computer transformed economics. And didn't.

1989, economic model of the CITI (variable rate) mortgage portfolio (at the time the largest player in the mortgage market) was donethat showed small changes would result in the portfolio taking down the institution. CITI then sold off the portfolio, got out of the market and required a private (Saudi) bailout to stay in business. long-winded past discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm

Middle of last decade (15yrs after CITI almost imploded), one of the people that had been involved in the previous CITI analysis wrote articles that the economic models then being used weren't correctly accounting for the risk.

Towards the end of 2008 there were a number of articles trying to show that the economic mess was the result of using bad computer models as well as trying to blame risk managers at the institutions. However, there were a few articles about institution risk managers who said that business executives were forcing them to fiddle model input until they got the desired results, aka GIGO (and called for risk managers having protection from business executive influence). Note that CITI was one of the biggest players in the economic mess (demonstration ephemeral nature of institutional memory; aka the triple-A rated toxic securitzed mortgages were convoluted form of mortgage portfolio helping obfuscate what was really going on).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo

other past refs to 1989 private bail-out
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#64 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#26 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#57 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#27 The Zippo Lighter theory of the financial crisis (or, who do we want to blame?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#45 Productivity And Bubbles
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/2011k.html#89 The Grand Message in the Conceptual Spiral
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#73 Did You Hear the One About the Bankers?
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/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/2014b.html#24 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#67 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#72 Qbasic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#11 Qbasic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#86 Wells Fargo "Admits Deceiving" U.S. Government, Pays Record $1.2 Billion Settlement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#0 Why Is the Obama Administration Trying to Keep 11,000 Documents Sealed?

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

AM radio Qbasic

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: AM radio Qbasic
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 22 May 2016 09:02:53 -0700
Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> writes:
He looked at the map. Dragon to the north and a traditional enemy, US and offshore power with no economic interests.

And how did we end up in on the wrong side of a war of national liberation?! O well, we have a record of popping up tyyrrants all over the globe.

Now we need the Vietnamese as allies against Chinese expansionism. Fortunately they are clear sighted enough to recognize that they need an alliance with us.

The Vietnamese even cleared up that little problem we caused by bombing Cambodia. Oh yes, the incident our peerless leaders staged to start the war reminded me "Great White Father speak with forked tongue.".

Trust a used car salesman before a banker and a banker before a priest, don't trust a politician.


there are recent references that our bombing in vietnam is still killing people today. however there is also what we did in laos.

McNamara had been LaMay's staff planning the fire-bombing of German and Japanese cities (disclaimer: one of my wife's uncles was on LeMay's staff in the 50s). After WW2, McNamara went to the auto industry but came back as SECDEF for Vietnam, where Laos becomes the most bombed country in the history of the world (more tons than dropped in WW2 on Germany & Japan combined)
http://legaciesofwar.org/about-laos/secret-war-laos/
From 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped more than two million tons of ordnance on Laos during 580,000 bombing missions -- equal to a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24-hours a day, for 9 years -- making Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in history

... snip ...

Watch the US Drop 2.5 Million Tons of Bombs on Laos; Picturing the deadly legacy of America's secret war in the world's most bombed-out country.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/laos-vietnam-war-us-bombing-uxo

recent refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#28 Kill Chain: The Rise of High Tech Assassins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#38 past of nukes, was Future of support for telephone rotary dial ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#89 Your earliest dream?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#13 Fully Restored WWII Fighter Plane Up for Auction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#42 No, the F-35 Can't Fight at Long Range, Either
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#52 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#77 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#87 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#55 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#60 For those who like to regress to their youth? :-)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#8 What Does School Really Teach Children

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

How the Pentagon punished NSA whistleblowers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: How the Pentagon punished NSA whistleblowers
Date: 22 May 2016
Blog: Facebook
How the Pentagon punished NSA whistleblowers
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/how-pentagon-punished-nsa-whistleblowers

posts mentioning whistleblower
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#whistleblower

old related article
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/
note in the wake of the whistleblowing, congress put the agency on probation and had outside entities manage projects ... but that may have just been part of the massive increase in outsourcing that went on last decade (70% of the budget and over half the people)
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/

posts mentioning success of failure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#success.of.failuree

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

Dave Dayen's "Chain of Title" Reminds Us: The Obama Administration Could Have Jailed Wall Street Criminals. It Simply Chose Not To

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Dave Dayen's "Chain of Title" Reminds Us: The Obama Administration Could Have Jailed Wall Street Criminals. It Simply Chose Not To.
Date: 23 May 2016
Blog: Facebook
Dave Dayen's "Chain of Title" Reminds Us: The Obama Administration Could Have Jailed Wall Street Criminals. It Simply Chose Not To.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2016_05/dave_dayens_chain_of_title_rem060614.php

A lot of statute of limitations have expired .... however, they are still subject to Sarbanes-Oxley. Rhetoric on the floor of congress was that Sarbanes-Oxley would prevent future ENRONs and guarantee that executives and auditors did jailtime (also much simpler to demonstrate that fraud had occurred and requiring jailtime for executives and auditors that "approved" fraudulent reports).

However, it required that SEC do something. Possibly because even GAO didn't believe that SEC was doing anything, they started doing reports of public company fraudulent financial filings, even showing increase after Sarbanes-Oxley goes into effect (and nobody doing jailtime).

Trivia: Jan2009 I was asked to HTML'ize the Pecora hearings (30s senate hearings into crash of '29, resulted in jailterms and Glass-Steagall) with lots of internal hrefs and URLs between what happened this time and what happened then (comments that the new congress would have appetite to do something). I work on it for awhile and then get a call saying it wouldn't be needed after all (comments about enormous piles of wallstreet money totally buried capital hill).

and SEC item from today: SEC Conference Features Former Official Calling for Fraudsters to be Protected from Career Harm
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/05/sec-conference-features-former-official-calling-for-fraudsters-to-be-protected-from-career-harm.html

Sarbanes-Oxley posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#sarbanes-oxley
ENRON posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#enron
Financial Reporting Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#financial.reporting.fraud.fraud
Too Big To Fail (too big to prosecute and too big to jail)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
"Pecora Hearings" and/or Glass-Steagall
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall

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

The Network Nation, Revised Edition

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The Network Nation, Revised Edition
Date: 23 May 2016
Blog: Facebook Online History
The Network Nation, Revised Edition
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/network-nation
A visionary book when it was first published in the late 1970s, The Network Nation has become the defining document and standard reference for the field of computer mediated communication (CMC)

... snip ...

I was blamed for online computer conferencing on the intenal network in the late 70s & early 80s. Folklore is that when the corporate executive committee was told about online computer conferencing (and the internal network) 5of6 wanted to fire me. In the wake of the blowup there was several taskforces to investigate the phenomena ... including one that brought in Hiltz and Turoff as consultants.

Another result was that a researcher was paid to study how I communicated, they sat in the back of my office for nine months taking notes on how I communicated (face-to-face, telephone, went with me to meetings). They also got copies of all my incoming and outgoing email and log of all my instant messages. The material was used for research reports, papers, books and Stanford PHD (joint between language and computer AI).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

The corporate internal network was larger than the ARPANET/Internet from just about the beginning until sometime in the mid-80s .... at about the great changeover of ARPANET/Internet to internetworking protocol on 1Jan1983, ARPANET/Internet had approx 100 IMP netowrk nodes and around 255 connected hosts ... while the corporate internal network was rapidly approaching 1000 network nodes .... which it passed a few months later. ARPANET/Internet was somewhat limited by getting approval for IMPs ... but corporate network also had its problems with requirement that all links had to be encrypted ... including opposition from various govs. around the world ... especially when links crossed national boundaries (in the mid-80s, the major link encryptor vendor made claim that the corporate internal network had more than half of all the link encryptors in the world)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internet

Starting in the early 80s, the corporation sponsored a university network using technology similar to the internal network (from the IBM cambridge science center) which for a time was also larger than ARPANET/Internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

It was called "EARN" in europe ... old email from person looking for online applications for EARN:

Date: 03/20/84 15:15:41
To: wheeler

Hello Lynn,

I have left LaGaude last September for a 3 years assignement to IBM Europe, where I am starting a network that IBM helps the universities to start.

This network, called EARN (European Academic and Research Network), is, roughly speaking, a network of VM/CMS machines, and it looks like our own VNET. It includes some non IBM machines (many VAX, some CDC, UNIVAC and some IBM compatible mainframes). EARN is a 'brother' of the US network BITNET to which it is connected.

EARN is starting now, and 9 countries will be connected by June. It includes some national networks, such as JANET in U.K., SUNET in Sweden.

I am now trying to find applications which could be of great interest for the EARN users, and I am open to all ideas you may have. Particularly, I am interested in computer conferencing.


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

One of the people in Paris on EARN does listserv ... similar to the internal corporate application (although the internal application supported both pure mailing list mode and a usenet-like mode)
http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv-history.asp

Both BITNET mailing list and usenet forums migrate to internet ... and many of the BITNET mailing lists are also gatewayed to usenet under "bit.listserv" ... for example "bit.listserv.ibm-main" ... and usenet forums are also gatewayed to google groups
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/bit.listserv.ibm-main
and
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/alt.folklore.computers

TYMSHARE had implemented an online computer conferencing system on their VM370/CMS system. In Aug1976, TYMSHARE starts providing it for free to the IBM mainframe user group SHARE as VMSHARE ....all the VMSHARE archives here
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare
sometimes(?) "404" ... but also at wayback machine
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

TYMSHARE ref
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymshare
they also branch off into TYMNET
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymnet
aka
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymnet#Beginnings:_Tymshare

GML was invented in 1969 at the IBM cambridge science center (responsible for virtual machine cp40/cms, later morphs into cp67/cms, the internal network and some number of other things; cp67/cms later turns into vm370/cms). A decade later GML morphs into ISO standard SGML.
https://web.archive.org/web/20231001185033/http://www.sgmlsource.com/history/roots.htm

After another decade SGML morphs into HTML at CERN. The first webserver in the states is on the SLAC vm370/cms system.
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/firstpages.shtml
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

trivia: some of the CTSS people had gone to the 5th flr to do MULTICS ... other CTSS people went to the science center on the 4th flr.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

other trivia ... before ms/dos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS
there was seattle computer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Computer_Products
before seattle computer there was CP/M,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M
before developing CP/M, kildall worked with CP/67 at npg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Postgraduate_School

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

The Network Nation, Revised Edition

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The Network Nation, Revised Edition
Date: 24 May 2016
Blog: Facebook Online History
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#33 The Network Nation, Revised Edition

The HONE datacenter bldg faced on california,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

and across the back parking lot was complex of bldgss that faced on Page Mill that included the Palo Alto Science center and a couple other IBM operations. PASC was responsible for a number of things including the less well known IBM 5100 portable computer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5100

It was relatively easy for me to make a loop visiting TYMSHARE, Dialog, and HONE and then go to evening monthly BAYBUNCH meetings hosted by SLAC ... and afterwards the get together at OASIS.

If it was SBC and BASIC on IBM mainframe ... then it was possibly CPS that supported BASIC and Conversational PLI. CPS was done by the Boston Programming Center on 3rd flr 545 tech sq ... but lot of the development was done by Allen-Babcock, including performance microcode for the 360/50
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/allen-babcock/cps/CPS_Progress_Report_may66.pdf

When the CP67/VM370 development initially split off from the science center, they moved to the 3rd flr taking over the Boston Programming Center ... which included porting version of CPS to CMS. The increasing size of the VM370 development group outgrew the 3rd flr and they move to the vacant SBC bldg out in Burlington Mall. MIT Project MAC/Multics was on 5th flr, science center was on the 4th flr, boston programming center was on part of 3rd flr (the other part was listed as a law office, but actually was a gov. agency), and the science center machine room was on the 2nd flr, there was a cafe/lunch room on the 1st flr.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

Other trivia, the science center originally wanted a 360/50 to do the hardware changes for supporting virtual addressing ... but nearly all the spare 360/50s were going to the FAA air traffic control system project ... so they had to settle for 360/40. They originally develop cp40/cms on the 360/40 with hardware modifications supporting virtual memory. When 360/67 becomes available that came standard with virtual memory hardware, cp40/cms morphs into cp67/cms.

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

PL/I advertising

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 May 2016 14:22:29 -0700
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
And, of course, this is despite the fact that Grace Hopper was pivotal in bringing COBOL into existence, or that most computer programmers, having undergone the transition known as "puberty", don't quite look upon girls the way boys in Grade 1 do. (But back in the 1960s, their view of women probably hadn't yet broadened to include thinking of them as equal colleagues in such fields as computer programming!)

a couple Jean Sammet refs:

The early history and characteristics of PL/I
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1198410
Jean Sammet
http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/hall/bios/Jean,Sammet/
Jean E. Sammet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_E._Sammet
History of Programming Languages
https://books.google.com/books?id=Hy-jBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA575&lpg=PA575&dq=jean+sammet+pl/i&source=bl&ots=jk2J0gwVZ3&sig=SMeh2LCC9VY9YiWdNyBj0fRMffw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZu9ul0PPMAhVH22MKHdBBA_8Q6AEIPDAF#v=onepage&q=jean%20sammet%20pl%2Fi&f=false

I mentioned before that Jean was at the Boston Programming Center on the 3rd flr of 545 tech sq (the science center was on the 4th flr -- virtual machines, internal network, gml, etc, -- and MIT Project MAC/multics was on the 5th floor)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

boston programming center was doing CPS ... basic & conversational PLI.
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/allen-babcock/cps/CPS_Progress_Report_may66.pdf

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

The Network Nation, Revised Edition

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The Network Nation, Revised Edition
Date: 24 May 2016
Blog: Facebook Online History
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#33 The Network Nation, Revised Edition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#34 The Network Nation, Revised Edition

As undergraduate in the 60s, univ. hired me fulltime to be responsible for production IBM dataprocessing systems. IBM had sold them 360/67 for TSS/360 which never quite came to production fruition ... so the machine mostly ran as 360/65 with os/360 (not using virtual memory). In last week of Jan1968, some people came out from IBM Cambridge Science Center to install (virtual machine) CP67/CMS. CP67 has some automatic terminal identification fro 2741s and 1052s ... but the univ. had some number of tty33 & at least one tty35 ... so I added tty/ascii terminal support ... with implementation supporting automatic terminal identification for 2741s, 1052, and TTYs.

I then wanted to do a single dial-up number with single pool of numbers ("hunt group") and single pool of terminal ports ... which almost worked, but not quite ... while it was possible to dynamically associate different terminal port/line scanners with each port ... the line speed for each port was hardwired. This was somewhat the motivation for the Univ. to start a clone controller project using a Interdata/3 programmed to emulate IBM terminal controller (and needed to reverse engineer mainframe channel interface, a built a board for the Interdata/3) ... implementing both automatic terminal type and speed recognition. Later this is enhanced with a Interdata/4 for the channel interface and a cluster of Interdata/3s handling the port interfaces ... this gets written up blaming four of us for (some part of) IBM clone controller business.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

Later Perkin/Elmer buys Interdata and continues to market the box under the Perkin/Elmer name. I run into one of these boxes in large datacenter around the turn of the century handling majority of dialup point-of-sale terminals east of Mississippi.

Note that Michigan had also been sold 360/67s ... and they developed the Michigan Terminal System ... and did their own terminal controller using PDP (shows some TTY)
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/gallery/gallery7.html
and
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/gallery/gallery8.html

this article use to be online at DIALOG, but still lives at wayback machines: Online Before the Internet, Early Pioneers Tell Their Stories, Part 2: Growth of the Online Industry
https://web.archive.org/web/20050115000851/http://www.dialog.com/about/history/pioneers2.pdf

and Part 1:
https://web.archive.org/web/20050123104257/http://www.dialog.com/about/history/pioneers1.pdf

In the 60s as undergraduate, I was hired fulltime to be responsible for their production IBM systems. The univ. library gets an ONR grant to do an online catalog ... and they use some of the money for IBM 2321 datacell. The library is also selected for betatest site for original IBM CICS product. I'm tasked to provide support & debugging. One of the issues is that the original CICS had hardcoded some specific BDAM disk access options ... and the library had used a different set of options. Took a while to find what was causing the failure.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#cics

PIONEERS talks about NLM doing their online system about the same time. Nearly 30iyrs later I'm called into NLM and two of the people responsible for the 60s implementation are still there ... and the NLM implementation is still using BDAM (but they had written their own "monitor" ... didn't use CICS). I do some work on NLM taxonomy and ontology.

commercial online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#online

old posts mentioning NLM (&/or UMLS):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#26 Misc. more on bidirectional links
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#27 History of Microsoft Word (and wordprocessing in general)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#1 Off-topic everywhere [was: Re: thee and thou
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#51 Author seeks help - net in 1981
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#0 Search for Joseph A. Fisher VLSI Publication (1981)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#53 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#45 XML, AI, Cyc, psych, and literature
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#50 XML, AI, Cyc, psych, and literature
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#53 c.d.theory glossary (repost)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#7 The Network Data Model, foundation for Relational Model
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#52 Specifying all biz rules in relational data
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#47 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#67 Relational vs network vs hierarchic databases
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#0 Relational vs network vs hierarchic databases
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#23 Network databases
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#41 Oldest active information system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#57 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#45 Where should the type information be?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#47 Where should the type information be?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#34 CJ Date on Missing Information
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#27 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#80 Book: "Everyone Else Must Fail" --Larry Ellison and Oracle ???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#6 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#74 Speculation ONLY
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#44 Lawyers & programming (x-over from a.f.c discussion)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#88 Continous Systems Modelling Package
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#38 U.S. house decommissions its last mainframe, saves $730,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#25 Old datasearches
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#9 Adventure - Or Colossal Cave Adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#73 IBM 3670 Brokerage Communications System
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#10 Boyd & Beyond 2010, review at Zenpundit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#39 Compressing the OODA-Loop - Removing the D (and maybe even an O)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#5 Lessons Learned from the Iraq War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013g.html#87 Old data storage or data base
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#77 Bloat
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#55 Difference between MVS and z / OS systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#63 Do we really?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#64 Do we really?

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

First Non-Trivial Program You Developed

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: First Non-Trivial Program You Developed
Date: 24 May 2016
Blog: Facebook Online History
As undergraduate in the 60s I did extensive modifications to CP67 (resource management/scheduling, virtual memory/paging, pathlength optimization, disk i/o scheduling, etc) that were shipped in the product. As part of morph of cp67 to vm370 much of the code was dropped as part of extensive simplification (resulted in lots of customer complaints).

In the 23jun1969 unbundling announcement (as part of various legal activity), IBM started charging for (application) software, but managed to make the case that kernel software should still be free.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

In the early 70s, IBM started the "future system" effort that was completely different from 360/370 and was going to completely replace 370. During this period I continued to work on 360/370 including re-implementing lots of stuff I had done for CP67 on VM370 (and making other enhancements) ... which was deployed at large number of internal datacenters (also periodically ridiculing the "future system" effort ... which wasn't exactly career enhancing)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

The lack of products during the "future system" period is credited with giving the clone mainframe makers market foothold. Finally when "future system" imploded, there was mad rush to get stuff back into the 370 product pipelines. Part of this was decision to release lots of my stuff to customers in the product. The rise of clone mainframe makers also resulted in decision to start transition to charging for kernel software ... and my "resource manager" was selected as the first guinea pig. At the time, people in the "field" DPD divison (sales, marketing, support) got first two months of lease for software that was sold to customers. The month before my "resource manager" was to be released (which was priced at $890/month), the science centers were moved to DPD hdqtrs (and people no longer eligible for field software sales program). The Resource Manager very quickly passed thousand mainframe customers. I begged to be still classified in the field ... even willing to trade my salary for the compensation from the field software sales program.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

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

[BBC] US nuclear force 'still uses floppy disks'

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: [BBC] US nuclear force 'still uses floppy disks'
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 26 May 2016 07:28:21 -0700
JimP <solosam90@gmail.com> writes:
There was a news item on local news this week. They mentioned that the IRS and SSA use decades old computers. It would cost millions, a mere drop in the bucket budget wise, to replace them so of course they haven't been replaced yet.

just about every fed. gov. agency has had multiple dataprocessing modernization projects that failed over the last 20-30yrs ... many of the failed projects have run billions (not millions).

reference to the Success of Failure culture in for-profit gov. contractors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#success.of.failuree

misc past posts mentioning dataprocessing modernization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#29 Using the Cache to Change the Width of Memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#52 US Air computers delay psgrs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#38 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies (Actually, Working under the table!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#41 IBM--disposition of clock business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#45 IBM--disposition of clock business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#1 Is it possible to have an alternative payment system without riding on the Card Network platforms?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#19 STEM crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#89 FAA air traffic facility consolidation effort already late
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#42 Simulated PDP-11 Blinkenlight front panel for SimH
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#45 Simulated PDP-11 Blinkenlight front panel for SimH
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#7 Is there a connection between your strategic and tactical assertions?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#7 From build to buy: American Airlines changes modernization course midflight
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#19 Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#74 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#42 The Mainframe is "Alive and Kicking"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#70 Internet Mainframe Forums Considered Harmful
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#69 PDCA vs. OODA
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#3 Let's Face It--It's the Cyber Era and We're Cyber Dumb
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#19 The IBM Strategy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#59 A-10
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#76 Greedy Banks Nailed With $5 BILLION+ Fine For Fraud And Corruption
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#20 Credit card fraud solution coming to America...finally
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#42 No, the F-35 Can't Fight at Long Range, Either
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#17 the legacy of Seymour Cray
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#45 rationality
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#39 Failure as a Way of Life; The logic of lost wars and military-industrial boondoggles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#107 Qbasic - lies about Medicare

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

The Network Nation, Revised Edition

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The Network Nation, Revised Edition
Date: 30 May 2016
Blog: Facebook Online History
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#33 The Network Nation, Revised Edition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#34 The Network Nation, Revised Edition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#36 The Network Nation, Revised Edition

Starting in 1st part of the 80s, I had a project I called HSDT that was doing T1 and faster network links. some old posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

We were also working with director of NSF to do T1 links linking the NSF supercomputer centers and were suppose to get $20M. Then congress cuts the budget, some number of other things happen and finally NSF releases an RFP (in part based on what we already have running, including T1 network links), but internal politics prevent us from bidding. The director of NSF tries to help and writes the company a letter 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO) but that just makes the internal politics worse (as does comments that what we already have running was at least 5yrs ahead of all RFP responses). The regional univ. networks connect into the centers which results in NSFNET backbone ... precursor to the modern internet. some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
and some old posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

The winning bid actually installs 440kbit links (not T1) ... and possibly to create the appearance of T1, they have T1 trunks with telco multiplexors running multiple 440kbit links per T1 trunk (we make snide remarks that some of the T1 trunks may in turn be multiplexed over telco T5 trunks ... so who don't they could claim it was a T5 network).

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

The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
Date: 31 May 2016
Blog: Facebook Online History
reference to thread from year ago with some new comments from this year:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#10 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable

As I reference elsewhere ... the internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime in the mid-80s ... we constantly had to deal with threats and countermeasures ... and all links required crypto (which met some hard battles with various national entities around the world ... especially when links cross national boundaries, one reference had internal network with more than half of all the link encryptors in the world).

As undergraduate in the 60s, I was doing a lot of IBM mainframe coding (related to online, virtual machine) ... which was picked up and shipped in standard product. IBM would even periodically suggest things that I should consider ... in retrospect some may have originated from this customer set (which I didn't find out about until much later) ... from long ago and far away (gone 404, but lives on at the wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

In HSDT with T1 and faster links I really hated what I had to pay for T1 link encryptors and faster ones were really hard to find. I got involved in doing a different kind of link encryptor that would cost less than $100 to build and support multiple megabytes/sec. I had an argument with the corporate crypto product group that it severely compromised crypto standard. It took 3months to figure out how to explain to them what was really going on (that it was actually significantly stronger crypto). It turned out to be hollow victory ... I was told I could build as many as I wanted to ... but there was only one entity that could use them ... and they all had to be shipped to an address in Maryland. It was when I realized that there was 3 kinds of crypto 1) the kind they don't care about, 2) the kind you can't do and 3) the kind you can only do for them.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

other trivia ... I have some old email where there was work starting in early 80s on PGP-like operation with public key ... possibly accounts for later opposition to (public key) digital certificate infrastructures for majority of operations ... since we had already worked through a lot of the threats.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#crypto

Somewhat for having done electronic commerce, we got invited to work in US financial standard group (ISO chartered, and chairs ISO financial standard group) ... the X9A10 financial standard working group had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for *ALL* retail payments. We defined a standard in such a way that it just used crypto for strong authentication and eliminated the need to encrypt the data to prevent fraudulent transactions (which has been the majority use of "SSL"). It resulted in lots of ambivalence ... financial institutions charge a lot for "trust" ... and this somewhat commoditized a lot of what they do. Govs. liked the idea there was no encryption ... but hated the idea that it didn't require every transaction to be easily identified with digital certificate.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

There is patent portfolio that are all assigned and somewhat sitting there not being used. We had been working with boutique law firm ... and looking at well over 100 patents ... when some executive looked at the cost of filing patents and directed that all the claims be consolidated in 9 patents (besides we would each get $6k award/patent). Later the patent office came back and said it was getting tired of these humongous patents where the filing fee didn't cover the cost just to read all the claims ... and directed that the claims had to be repackaged as at least 2-3 dozen patents.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

more posts from last year's thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#11 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#12 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#13 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#15 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#16 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#19 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#24 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#25 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#26 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#28 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#30 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#35 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#37 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#38 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#42 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#45 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#49 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable

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

PL/I advertising

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2016 17:03:04 -0700
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
In the late 60s, 70s and early 80s DEC was way ahead of where the computing market was going. DEC was implementing heterogenous networks when IBM was still insisting homogenity. Timesharing with batch functionality was preparing the masses for the PC computing era. I could go on but this list will create stupidity havoc :-).

mainstream OS/360, MVS ... sold large number of systems in the 60s and 70s ... however there was a fairly large number of online virtual machine CP67/CMS and then VM370/cms ... just not as many as OS/360 & MVS.

MVS/SNA was also dumb terminal paradigm sold to customers. However the IBM cambridge science center had done virtual machines, CP67, CMS, internal network (non-SNA and technology also used for univ. BITNET/EARN, which had lots of DEC machines), GML and other stuff.

science center posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
internal network posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
bitnet/earn posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

4300s came along in late 70s and sold against VAX ... 4300s sold about the same as VAX in the mid & low range market ... however large corporations were also doing 4300 orders for hundreds of machines at a time for deployment out in departmental areas ... sort of leading edge of distributed computing tsunami. VAX orders sliced and diced by years, model, US/non-US ... showing mid-range market starting to move to workstations & large PCs in 2nd half of the 80s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0
old 4300 email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx

however, the communication division was not above all sorts of internal dirty tricks to try and preserve their dumb terminal paradigm (including in the 2nd half of the 80s, telling corporate hdqtrs that the internal network that it needed to be converted to SNA or otherwise it might stop working). old internal network email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#vnet
old NSFNET email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
NSFNET posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

the above has references to the communication group distributing internal mis-information about needing to convert the internal network to SNA/VTAM ... as well as other SNA/VTAM about it could be used for the NSFNET backbone.

I've also periodically referenced senior disk engineer getting a talk scheduled in the late 80s at the annual, internal, world-wide, communication group conference ... supposedly on 3174 performance ... but opened the talk with the statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The issue was that the communication group had strangle-hold on datacenters with their corporate startegic ownership of everything that crossed the datacenter walls .... heavily fighting off distributed computing and client/server trying to preserve their dumb terminal paraidgm and install base. The disk division was seeing the effects of data fleeing datacenters to more distributed computing friendly platforms with drop in disk sales. The disk division had come up with a number of solutions that were all vetoed by the communication group
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal

I've also mentioned that in the mid-80s, I gave a presentation at SNA architecture review board meeting in Raleigh comparing a customer implementation of PU4/PU5 emulation onf Series/1 (where SNA RUs were encapsulated in real network) to 3725 configuration. The Series/1 data came from customer 60,000 terminal network. First the communication group said that the 3275 information was totally inaccurate. However, I pointed out that it was taken from the communication group 3725 configurator on HONE (provided by the communication group for ordering 3725). Then they tried all sorts of other ways to discredit the analysis. Part of my presentaton
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#67
part of the customer presentation at Common user meeting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#70

I actually had a plan to turn the series/1 pu4/pu5 emulation out as as type-1 product, porting to rs/6000 base ... where we thought we had walled off all possible communication group dirty tricks. What they then did can only be described as truth is stranger than fiction.

The disk division as somewhat work-around to the problems with the communication group ... started doing investment in startups that were providing open architecture distributed commputing support for mainframe. This was primarily being done by the disk division VP of software ... and he would periodically ask us to help with some of his investments.

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

Old Computing

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Old Computing
Date: 2 June 2016
Blog: Facebook Retirees
I got a IBM 2741 with acoustic modem at home Mar1970 for online access. I had it until summer 1977 when it was replaced with 300 baud CDI miniterm, which was replaced a couple years later with IBM 3101 glass teletype with 1200 baud modem.

I ordered IBM/PC in the employee purchase plan when it was originally announced ... but the lead time was so long ... by the time it was delivered, the street price had dropped under what I had paid.

With the proliferation of PCs online, IBM developed a special 2400baud internal modem card ... that operated as normal modem ... but for internal online access, it would negotiate encrypted connection (the card had tamper resistant goop over the crypto stuff). This was used for all home terminal and hotel/traveling road warrior. Threat analysis had found that hotel PBX rooms were high exploit target. Picture of my IBM/PC with company tieline
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/homepc.jpg

home pc

CDI miniterm ... Also compact microfiche viewer ... work had microfiche "printer" with 24hrs turn around
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/miniterm.jpg

home miniterm

2741 "APL" typeball
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aplball.jpg

2741 apl typeball

IBM Cambridge Science Center (responsible for virtual machines, CP67, internal network, GML, bunch of other things) ported APL\360 to CMS for CMS\APL and made it available on its CP67 service. Typical APL\360 workspace was 16kbytes-32kbytes ... but CMS\APL opened up workspace size to virtual memory size ... also CMS\APL added API for for accessing system services like file read/write ... as a result started to see "real" applications being developed. One of possible highest profile with remote access were the business modeling people from Armonk that loaded the holiest of information (detailed customer information) on the Cambridge system. The Cambridge CP67 system required very high level of security ... because the corporate highest security level information ... but also because there was (local & remote) access by students from various universities in the Boston area.

Prior to 23June1969 unbundling announcement, field SEs got training on customer sites, essentially apprentice-like program as part of large group. After unbundling, they couldn't figure out how *NOT* to charge for these apprentice SEs. This was motivation for the DPD virtual machine CP67 datacenters with remote access from branch offices for guest operating system experience (HONE, hands-on network environment). However, HONE also started offering CMS\APL based sales&marketing support application which ... which came to dominate all HONE activity (and the guest operating system activity dwindles away)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

One of my hobbies was providing enhanced operatings systems for internal datacenters in the 70s & 80s ... and HONE was long-time customer.

A large part of HONE included (CMS\APL based) "configurators" ... by the mid-70s, it was no longer possible to directly create a computer order ... and became a requirement that orders first had to be processed by (HONE) configurator.

I once gave a presentation at a SNA Architecture Review Board meeting in Raleigh comparing a large customer developed PU4/PU5 emulation implemented on Series/1 for their 60,000 IBM terminals compared to 3725-based configuration needed to support the same environment. CPD loadly yelled foul that the 3725 configuration wasn't correct ... but all the 3725 data was taken directly out of the CPD 3725 configurator on HONE. Then they tried to discredit the comparison in every other way they could think off. The problem of course was that the Series/1 based implementation was less than 1/4 the cost of a 3275 configuration and had significantly more function and performance. Part of my presentaton
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#67
part of the customer presentation at Common user meeting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#70

There was lots of work done on HONE to try and disguise that the sales&marketing support implementation was based on CMS (and not MVS). Some branch office manager would get promoted to DPD hdqtrs with HONE reporting to them ... and eventually realize it was VM370/CMS. Apparently they figured that they would make their career by having HONE moved to MVS and assign the organization to do the move. The organization would work on it for a year before it was declared a failure, the executive would move on ... and before too long it would be repeated again. Sometime in the 80s, they started blaming me for not being able to move HONE to MVS ... because of the enhanced operating systems I was supplying.

They also let me wander around the San Jose plant site. Bldg 14&15 machine rooms (disk engineering development and product test) were running stand-alone testing, prescheduled 7x24 around the clock. At one time they had tried MVS, but they found it had 15min MTBF (requiring manual re-ipl) in that environment. I offered to rewrite IO supervisor to make it bullet proof and never fail ... allowing any number of on-demand concurrent testing ... greatly improving productivity. I wrote up internal report describing what needed to be done ... but unfortunately happened to include reference to the MVS15min MTBF ... I was told later that brought down the wrath of the MVS group on my head ... they weren't able to get me terminated ... but apparently they would do whatever else they could.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

In the 80s, I also had a project that I called HSDT ... doing T1 and faster speed links. We were also working with the director of NSF and were suppose to get $20M to interconnect the NSF supercomputer centers. Congress then cut the budget, some other things happen and finally releasing RFP (in part based on what we already had running). Internal politics prevented us from bidding. The director of NSF tries to help by writing the company a letter 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO) ... but that just makes the internal politics worse (as does comments that what we already had running was at least 5yrs ahead of all RFP responses). Note as regional networks, connect into the centers it becomes NSFNET backbone ... precursor to modern internet.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

bldg14 "test cells" testing channel interface mainframe verification.

bldg. 15 got early engineering 3033 and 4341 for channel interface testings. doing so well ... put in online service using 3033 with 3830 & 16 3330 drives (even multiple testcells, used only couple percent of cpu). One monday morning ... bldg15 called asking what I had done to the system over the week (online response had degraded enormously) ... i said nothing ... after lots of investigating ... it turns out that they had upgraded the 3830 to engineering 3880. Turns out 3880 controllers had some serious performance problems with large number of concurrent disk i/o (didn't showup in single drive functional tests). Fortunately it was still six months before 3880 FCS, so there was time to hack some fixes.

The univ. got 2250mod1 (direct 360 channel attach). I modified cp67/cms editor and hooked in the CMS l2250 library from MIT lincoln labs (developed for fortran graphics application) to drive the 2250. when I joined the IBM science center, they had 2250mod4 (same price as 2250mod1, but instead of 360 channel controller it had a 1130 computer). Somebody had rewrote the MIT PDP spacewar game to run on the 1130/2250. two people used left & right half of the keyboard to play the game.

The 2250mod1 follow-on would have been the (ibm logo'ed) tektronics graphics display tube that hooked/plugged into the side of 3277 terminal. Note that in transition from 3272/3277 to 3274/3278 ... that was no longer possible. To reduce the cost of making 3278 terminal, they moved lots of the electronics back into the 3274 controller ... which made impossible a lot of things done with 3277. That also significantly drove up the coax cable protocol chatter and latency for 3278 ... making minimum hardware response .3-.5 seconds compared to .086seconds for 3277 (making it impossible to have quarter second response on terminals after 3277). We complained to the 3274/3278 product administrator about the terrible effects it had on interactive computing ... he eventually responded that 3274/3278 wasn't designed for interactive computing but data entry. old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19

Note that IBM eventually had a 3250 follow-on which was a IBM-logo'ed graphics display from Sanders.

The enormous 3274/3278 protocol chatter and latency shows up later in 3270 terminal emulation cards for IBM/PC. 3277 emulation card had three times the upload/download throughput of 3278 emulation card.

somewhat related, in late 80s, a senior disk engineer got a talk scheduled at the annual, world-wide, internal communication group conference supposedly on 3174 performance, but opened the talk that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The issue was that the communication group had stranglehold on datacenters with the corporate strategic responsibility for everything that crossed the datacenter walls and were strongly fighting off distributed computing and client/server trying to preserve their dumb (emulated) terminal paradigm and install base. The disk division was seeing the effects of data fleeing the datacenter to more distributed computing friendly platforms with drop in disk sales. The disk division had come up with numerous solutions to address the problem ... but were constantly vetoed by the communication group (as threatening their status quo). A few short years later the company goes into the red and was being reorganized into the 13 "baby blues" in preparation for breaking up the company.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal gerstner posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner

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

PL/I advertising

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2016 09:23:52 -0700
David Wade <dave.g4ugm@gmail.com> writes:
IBM already had VM/CMS since 1972 (and CP/67 before) which had no Batch. It is a pure personal computing environment. You could do single step debugging of your OS, patch the OS, most anything. Much closer to a modern personal computing environment than anything DEC offered except perhaps stand-alone PDP-11's.

The trouble is that as such it removes control from Central IT/DP departments. IBM's marketing was top-down. They sold to the board. They wanted to sell control. VM/CMS didn't fit that model BUT PROFS runs in VM/CMS so they needed it for PROFS.

DEC's marketing was "bottom up", they sold to the techy people, the designers and innovators. For them it was natural.

Of course when the PC came along I don't think either camp realized how paradigm changing it was.

In summary I think to look at IBM as a monolith selling MVS is very narrow minded. It had many divisions and sold many things. I remember when I first used an IBM phone system on one of the IBM1800 based "PABX's" it sold in the UK I was awestruck at the facilities available compared to the ones I had been used to.

The selectric typewriter with exchangeable fonts is a work of mechanical genius.

Its a pity about the "light pen" a mouse is much easier to use, but perhaps touch screens and gestures are a similar paradigm...

.. but of course the sadest thing of all is that DEC rejected the idea of a personal computer, when really that was what they had built their business on...


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#35 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#41 PL/I advertising

PROFS trivia ... the group gathered a bunch of stuff internal inside IBM ... including a very early version of the internal VMSG. Later when the VMSG author attempted to offer them a much enhanced version ... they tried to get him terminated (since they had already taken credit for it). Everything quieted down when he demonstrated that every PROFS email in the world carried his initials in a non-displayed field. After that, the VMSG author only shared the source with me and one other person.

as previously mentioned the technology used for the internal network (developed at the ibm cambridge science center ... along with virtual machine cp67/cms and other stuff) was also used for the corporate sponsored BITNET (and EARN in europe). From just about the beginning the internal network was larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime in the mid-80s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
and BITNET/EARN was also larger than internet for some time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet
bitnet(/earn)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET

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

PL/I advertising

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2016 09:41:55 -0700
Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
There was a compiler, I'm unclear if it was ever released - I haven't been able to find it. Didn't Xenakis write it?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#35 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#41 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#43 PL/I advertising

note when the CP67/CMS group split off from the science center, they moved to the 3rd flr taking over the IBM Boston Programming Center (which was doing CPS, basic and conversational PLI). Later as the group expanded with the transition from CP67/CMS to VM370/CMS, they outgrew the 3rd flr and moved out to Burlington Mall into the vacant (former) SBC bldg.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

During much of this period, mainstream IBM was also doing "Future System" (was totally different 360/370 and was going to completely replace it) ... and was trying to shutdown 370 efforts (credited with giving 370 clone processor makers a market foothold).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

when "future system" imploded, there was mad rush to get stuff back into 370 product pipeline. As part of that the head of POK managed to convince corporate hdqtrs to kill the vm370/cms product, shutdown the burlington mall group and move all the people to POK ... or otherwise he wouldn't be able to meet the MVS/XA ship schedule ... some 7-8yrs later. Note that Endicott managed to salvage the vm370/cms product mission (and ship thousands of vm/4300 systems) but they had to reconstitute a vm370/cms group from scratch.

The shutdown of burlington mall group was stealth operation, the people weren't going to be told until the very last minute ... to minimize the number that would be able to escape the move. However, the information leaked early ... and there was a witch hunt to identify the source of the leak ... fortunately for me, nobody gave up the source. Later there was a joke that the head of POK was one of the largest contributors to DEC VMS (because so many people escaped the POK move and went to work for DEC).

Old post with a couple names ... some that might be recognized
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#8

the list of the names in above was when they were still on the 3rd flr. I think they may have grown to nearly a couple hundred out in burlington.

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

PL/I advertising

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2016 11:00:26 -0700
David Wade <dave.g4ugm@gmail.com> writes:
IBM already had VM/CMS since 1972 (and CP/67 before) which had no Batch. It is a pure personal computing environment. You could do single step debugging of your OS, patch the OS, most anything. Much closer to a modern personal computing environment than anything DEC offered except perhaps stand-alone PDP-11's.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#35 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#41 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#43 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#44 PL/I advertising

as an aside, a rudimentary "CMSBATCH" was developed ... but (also) since CP67 & VM370 provided virtual machine capability ... it was also possible to deploy guest operating system on same machine ... and use various forms of RJE as interaction between the interactive and batch.

note when Endicott was taking over the vm370 product mission (low & mid-range), they attempted to integrate vm370 into every machine they shipped ... starting with 138/148 (follow-on to 135/145 and precursor to 4300s) ... but was overruled by corporate hdqtrs (under heavy pressure from POK high-end mainframes).

I got sucked into some of this ... Endicott con'ed me into doing a lot of the work on ECPS (vm370 microcode "assist" initially for 138/148) old ref
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21

we even got to the point were VS1 would run faster in VM370 virtual machine than it did stand-alone (special VS1 virtual machine "hand-shaking" ... where it handed off to vm370 to do some stuff, rather than directly in VS1).

later 4300s archieved some technology break throughs ... not only competing with VAX ... in traditional computing ... but also large corporations putting them out in every departmental area, leading edge of the distributed computing tsunami.

Head of POK also played some corporate dirty tricks because a datacenter vm370 cluster of 4300s were also significantly cheaper than high-end mainframes, more aggregate processing and I/O, much lower environmental resources and floorspace.

The communication group tried to block making mainframe TCP/IP product available ... there was big battle which they finally lost ... and they then changed tactics ... since they had corporate strategic responsibility for everything that crossed the datacenter walls ... TCP/IP had to be released through them. The resulting product release to customers would consume a 3090 processor getting 44kbytes/sec. I did the enhancements for RFC1044 and in some tuning tests at Cray Research between a Cray and 4341 ... got 4341 channel speed throughput using only modest amount of 4341 processor ... possibly 500 times improvement in bytes moved per instruction executed. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

Both the communication group and the POK highend mainframe ... would engage in all sorts of activity trying to protect their status quo.

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

PL/I advertising

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2016 17:58:34 -0700
Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
Some is very good (JES2), and a lot is very, very bad.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#35 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#41 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#43 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#44 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#45 PL/I advertising

we use to have a joke about really good products had originally been developed at datacenter ... frequently customer datacenters ... but also some internal datacenters (like ibm cambridge science center) ... before being turned over to type-1 development group for maintenance. JES2 started out before being renamed (JES2 messages can still have their HASP ids).

posts mentioning HASP, JES, NJE/NJI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#hasp

Original HASP networking support use to have letters "TUCC" in cols 68-71. It did have a problem, nodeid definitions used empty entries in the 255 HASP table (not occupied by psuedo device definitions) ... which tended limited a HASP to around 160 node definitions. It also intermixed network information in the header with job control information ... this resulted in HASP/JES systems at one release level would crash a HASP/JES at a different release level (with slightly different header format), which would also bring down the OS360/MVS operating system.

The networking support from the IBM cambridge science center had none of those problems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

The cambridge software was also well layered ... so it was easily possible to write drivers that talked to other systems ... including JES/NJI. This was in large part responsible for the internal network passing 255 nodes early on (a JES node with 160 node limit also had shortcoming that it would trashcan any traffic where it didn't have table entry for either the origin node or the destination node ... so internal network had to relegate HASP/JES to boundary nodes).

Eventually there was a large library of internal NJI VNET/RSCS drivers to help keep MVS system systems from crashing. The VNET/RSCS drivers had custom code to reformat JES headers to the format specificly required by the (boundary node) MVS/JES system that was on the other end of the wire. Even internal locations that were strictly MVS/JES ... would still have gateway VM370/RSCS node for networking ... to get around problem of having to keep all MVS/JES systems in the local area always at the same exact release level.

There was one other issue which almost prevented JES2 from ever shipping its NJI networking support. After 23Jun1969 unbundling announcement,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

it required (application) software to be charged for. Pricing requirements was that price charged per copy had to cover the infrastructure costs for that copy plust the aggregate number of sales had to cover the original development costs. Lots of IBM operations had hard time adapting to the requirement. Typically IBM did three price (low, medium and low) customer forecasts with the forecasted size times the price had to also cover the original development costs. It turns out JES2 networking (and other os360/MVS products) had no price forecast that met the requirements.

On the other hand ... the strategic IBM direction was heading in the direction that vm370 should be killed and no new products could be announced. However, the JES2 group did some slight of hand bookkeeping, it turns out that the legal requirement allowed that organization meet the requirement. VM370/RSCS networking could be announced at $30/month and still meet the requirements (but that was never going to happen because of efforts trying to kill off VM370 product). However, a merged MVS/JES networking with VM370/RSCS networking could be announced for something like $600/month/copy (in effect, the excess profit made off the VM370/RSCS customers would subsidize JES networking).

As an aside, eventually in the 80s, JES2 networking was enhanced to support up to 999 nodes (instead of the empty slots left over in the 255 entry psuedo device table) ... but by that time, the internal network had already passed 1000 nodes.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

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

PL/I advertising

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2016 08:33:48 -0700
Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
It was probably the lowest-overhead and slickest piece of code I've ever seen. Of course (sorry Lynne) I also forgot VM.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#35 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#41 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#43 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#44 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#45 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#46 PL/I advertising

i use to pontificate that there tended to be more attention paid to VM pathlengths because there was always trivial comparison of total CPU used by some operating system running stand alone/native and total CPU used when running in virtual machine (other operating systems, you couldn't get the CPU used when run with & w/o the operating system).

Part of the reason we could get VS1 running with higher throughput under VM ... than stand alone, was

1) VS1 (& DOS/VS) implemented 2k virtual pages ... for early 370 environment when real stoarge was significantly constrained ... late 70s, 1mbyte and larger memory sizes ... VS1 had single 4mbyte virtual address space with 2k pages, VS1 handshaking defined 4mbyte virtual machine with 1-to-1 mapping between VS1 virtual address space and the virtual machine address space ... and let VM370 do the paging with more efficient 4k page sizes (for the larger real storage).

2) I did much more efficient page replacement algorithm in VM370 and page i/o subsystem with much shorting pathlength (than VS1).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#clock

however, the initial transition from cp67 to vm370 dropped a lot of my code, with less efficient algorithms and significantly increased pathlength. During FS, 370 efforts were being shutdown, but I continued to do 360&370 stuff all during the Future System period ... even periodically rediculing FS activity (which wasn't exactly career enhancing activity)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

and one of my hobbies was providing production operating systems to internal datacenters (initially cp67 and then later vm370). When FS imploded, there was mad rush to get stuff back in 370 product pipelines ... which contributed to decision to release lots of my stuff that I had moved to VM370.

When POK convinced corporation to kill vm370 and move all the people to POK to support MVS/XA ... Endicott had to reconstitute a development group from scratch. The VMSHARE archives (online computer conferencing that TYMSHARE made free to SHARE user group organization starting in Aug1976) has some amount to say about their code quality during this period.
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare
sometimes(?) "404" ... but also at wayback machine
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

Besides code quality, the reconstituted development group tended to be composed of people with traditional operating system backgrounds ... focused on implementing feature/function with little concern about pathlengths. They were also implementing stuff inside the vm370 monitor that had no business there ... should have instead been done outside the kernel in virtual address spaces. One of the issues is that it was significantly easier to understand how to add code to small, compact, straight forward monitor kernel ... but after some number of years with large number of people doing that, it became to look like spaghetti code in traditional operating systems ... looosing all concept of KISS (and "it isn't done when there is nothing left to add, it is done when there isn't anything left to remove").

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

PL/I advertising

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2016 10:06:11 -0700
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
I'm not sure there was much of a standard at that time. IBM had HDLC over bisync lines, Burroughs had an analogous BDLC over bisync lines. The higher level protocols in SNA and BNA were proprietary not standards. X25 was being developed during that timeframe, but wasn't widely adopted outside of a few niche markets (financial, IIRC).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#35 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#41 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#43 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#44 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#45 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#46 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#47 PL/I advertising

during the very early days of SNA development ... my wife was co-author of alternative architecture ... AWP39 "peer-to-peer networking" (title partially because SNA co-opted "networking" for dumb terminal communication). She then was con'ed into going to POK responsible for loosely-coupled (aka cluster) architecture ... where she did Peer-Coupled Shared Data architecture. She didn't last very long in POK ... in part because of little uptake of the architecture (except for IMS hot-standby until SYSPLEX and Parallel SYSPLEX) and in part because of constant battles with communication group trying to force her to use SNA for loosely-coupled operation.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

Later she did a (short) stint as chief architect of AMADEUS (european airlines res system scaffolded off the old Eastern System/One) ... however the SNA forces got her removed because she backed X.25 (removal didn't did the SNA forces much good because AMADEUS went with X.25 anyway).

aka SNA wasn't a "system", wasn't a "network", and wasn't a "architecture" ... it was VTAM dumb terminal ... other IBM corporate entities that tried to build hardware to the SNA architecture ... tended to find it didn't work ... to get something to work, they had to do extensive reverse engineering of VTAM operation.

Upthread (and many other times), I've referenced a senior disk engineer giving a talk claiming that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of disk division (because communication group was fighting off networking, distributed computing, client/server, etc ... trying to preserve their dumb terminal paradigm and install base).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal

past posts mentioning AMADEUS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#49 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#76 Other oddball IBM System 360's ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#67 unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#47 What makes a mainframe a mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#6 Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#7 Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#23 Demo: Things in Hierarchies (w/o RM/SQL)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#29 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#22 System/360; Hardwired vs. Microcoded
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#8 EBCDIC to 6-bit and back
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#4 How Many 360/195s and 370/195s were shipped?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#9 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#19 Pennsylvania Railroad ticket fax service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#52 US Air computers delay psgrs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#72 The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills
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/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/2009j.html#33 IBM touts encryption innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#55 IBM halves mainframe Linux engine prices
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#59 "Portable" data centers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#23 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#29 someone smarter than Dave Cutler
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/2011.html#41 Looking for a real Fortran-66 compatible PC compiler (CP/M or DOSor Windows
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/2011d.html#74 Multiple Virtual Memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#77 program coding pads
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
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#5 Interesting News Article
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#41 System/360--50 years--the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#13 Should you support or abandon the 3270 as a User Interface?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#69 IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe cuts as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#7 Last Gasp for Hard Disk Drives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014g.html#54 Has the last fighter pilot been born?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#84 ACP/TPF
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#58 Man Versus System

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

Fateful Choices

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Fateful Choices
Date: 3 June 2016
Blog: Facebook

https://www.amazon.com/Fateful-Choices-Decisions-Changed-1940-1941-ebook/dp/B000UMAEKO/

Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941 (Ian Kershaw), pg233/loc4797-4801:
Within the United States, lend-lease was the trigger to huge increases in armaments spending. Already in 1941, defence expenditure, as a proportion of gross national product, was almost ten times higher than it had been in 1939. Borrowing, not taxation, accounted for most of the increased spending–a new and lasting trend in financing. The mass-production techniques used meant, too, that big business grew even bigger and its dominance of industrial output more swollen. In essence, the military-industrial complex of postwar America had its foundations in lend-lease.230

note it has lots of references to isolation legislation .... but other accounts claim that the neutrality acts were sponsored by members of congress as countermeasure to the enormous war profiteering they saw during WW1 ... and that major capitalists were behind press on anti-isolationism. June1940, Germany had a victory celebration at the Waldorf-Astoria with major industrialists. Lots of them were there to hear how to do business with the Nazis, "Intrepid", loc1925-29:
One prominent figure at the German victory celebration was Torkild Rieber, of Texaco, whose tankers eluded the British blockade. The company had already been warned, at Roosevelt's instigation, about violations of the Neutrality Law. But Rieber had set up an elaborate scheme for shipping oil and petroleum products through neutral ports in South America. With the Germans now preparing to turn the English Channel into what Churchill thought would become 'river of blood,' other industrialists were eager to learn from Texaco how to do more business with Hitler.

Fateful Choices, pg378/loc7641-43:
Could not even a last-minute prevention of war have been attained if the United States, instead of bringing down the shutters at the end of November through Hull's peremptory Ten Points, had been prepared to continue with the President's suggested ‘modus vivendi'?

it doesn't mention that the Hull memo had been drafted by Harry Dexter White, who was working on behalf of the Soviets, he had been given the draft of the demands by the Soviets, who wanted Japan embroiled in Pacific war with the US, preempting Japan from attacking Russia ... at a time when Russia was also heavily involved with fighting Germany.
https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Bretton-Woods-Relations-University-ebook/dp/B00B5ZQ72Y/
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_note
According to Benn Steil, director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, while "no single individual can be said to have triggered" the Pearl Harbor attack, Harry Dexter White "was the author of the key ultimatum demands". Steil also maintains "the Japanese government made the decision to move forward with the Pearl Harbor strike after receiving the ultimatum."

past posts mentioning Hull Note:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#55 past of nukes, was Future of support for telephone rotary dial ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#70 God No, the U.S. Air Force Doesn't Need Another Curtis LeMay
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#39 Shout out to Grace Hopper (State of the Union)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#74 Qbasic

pg382/loc7692-95, Chapter 9, "Berlin, Autumn 1941 Hitler Decides to Declare War on the United States" ... seems to totally discount that many in US were supporting Germany. John Foster Dulles was major factor in rebuilding German economy and military in the 20s&30s. "The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War" loc865-68:
In mid-1931 a consortium of American banks, eager to safeguard their investments in Germany, persuaded the German government to accept a loan of nearly $500 million to prevent default. Foster was their agent. His ties to the German government tightened after Hitler took power at the beginning of 1933 and appointed Foster's old friend Hjalmar Schacht as minister of economics.

loc905-7:
Foster was stunned by his brother's suggestion that Sullivan & Cromwell quit Germany. Many of his clients with interests there, including not just banks but corporations like Standard Oil and General Electric, wished Sullivan & Cromwell to remain active regardless of political conditions.

loc938-40:
At least one other senior partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, Eustace Seligman, was equally disturbed. In October 1939, six weeks after the Nazi invasion of Poland, he took the extraordinary step of sending Foster a formal memorandum disavowing what his old friend was saying about Nazism.

... snip ...

from the law of unintended consequences, when the 1943 American Strategic Bombing program needed German military and industrial target information, they got the locations and detailed plans from wallstreet.

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2016 12:56:07 -0700
Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
PA1050 was the name of the package in TENEX for running DEC's user applications (CUSPs, in DEC parlance). It trapped the Tops-10 monitor calls and emulated them as far as necessary to execute things like the FORTRAN compiler and other useful items. The name itself comes from the designation for a PDP-10 with the full feature operating system, which DEC designated a 10/50. (There were in the catalog 10/10, 10/20, 10/30, and 10/40 configurations; it appears to be the case that only the 10/40 and 10/50, and the dual-processor 10/55, were ever sold.)

as I've mentioned some of the CTSS people went to Project Mac on 5th flr of 545tech sq to do Multics .... and others went to the IBM science center on the 4th floor and did virtual machines, internal network, etc.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

The initially wanted a 360/50 to modify the hardware to support virtual memory ... but had to settle for 360/40 because so many of the 50s were going to the FAA air traffic controller project. They implemented cp40 & CMS to run in virtual machine ... but CMS monitor started out being able to run "stand-alone" on the real 360/40. When 360/67 eventually came along with virtual memory hardware standard ... cp40 morphs into cp67 ... with CMS running in virtual machine (but still able to run on real 360, it wasn't until vm370 when they inserted check in CMS to not run unless it was running in a virtual machine).

Very early on in CMS, they added enough OS system services simulation to support compilers and their runtime execution environments ... and other useful things. There was joke early in MVS, that the 64kbyte OS/360 simulation in CMS was more cost effective than the 8mbyte OS/360 simulation in MVS.

Later on, when the vm370/cms group was out in Burlington Mall they significantly expanded the OS system services simulation ... including native read/write of OS/360 format disks. However, before it was able to be released, the burlington mall group was shutdown, primary person responsible disappears into the DEC VMS group ... and the implementation disappears w/o a trace (possibly everything that was in Burlington got wiped).

earlier reference to POK getting vm370/cms product killed because they needed the people transferred to POK for MVS/XA
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#44 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#47 PL/I advertising

other trivia, first install of cp67/cms outside science center was at Lincoln Labs (univ I was at was the 3rd in Jan1968). Lincoln Labs wrote a CMS library for the IBM 2250 graphics display for use with Fortran applications. At the univ., I modified the CMS editor to interface with the Lincoln Labs. 2250 library to drive large graphics display
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2250

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Penn Central PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2016 16:40:16 -0700
hancock4 writes:
Today, many employers do not care what their employees think. Any employee with a problem will be shown the door.

In the past, employers did. One good example of a leader of a merged company was Walter P. Marshall, the new president of Western Union. He came from Postal Telegraph and unified the companies.


AMEX spun off a lot of its dataprocessing in 1992 as First Data in what was the largest IPO at the time.

Later FDC and First Financial were somewhat in competition to buy WU, FDC dropped out in part because WU wasn't in really good financial shape.

Before the end of century, FDC and First Financial merged ... and FDC had to spin off MoneyGram (part of what it got when FDC was spun off from AMEX) ... because the merged company also owned WU (which still wasn't doing good).

By the middle of last decade, the explosion in illegal workers (after the start of the century) sending paychecks home spiked WU revenue until it represented half of FDC's bottom line. In that time-frame the President of Mexico invited FDC executives to Mexico, promising to put them in jail. Somewhat after that, FDC spun off WU in an IPO.

Along the way there was a proposal for WalMart to get into financial transactions (i.e. the original rhetoric on the floor of congress as to the primary purpose of GLBA ... later better known for repeal of Glass-Steagall ... was if you already had a banking charter you got to keep it, but if you didn't you couldn't get one ... specifically calling out WalMart and Microsoft (i.e. keep new technology competition out of the banking industry). There was a structure to do something like .10-.15 cents per transactions ... but the WU vice-president got it nixed because he was pushing a proposal to WalMar where WU would do such transactions for >>$1 (instead of $.10). It turns out that it wasn't just WU ... there were other financial institutions also lobbying WalMart with schemes for >>$1plus/transaction.

Note WalMart sued the card associations around the turn of the century because they were forcing point-of-sale debit to go thru as "signature debit" which had a significantly higher interchange fee ... than if it went through as "PIN-debit" ... and WalMart won ... something like $billion dollar+ settlement. Just recently I saw WalMart has filed a similar legal action against the card associations over EMV is being done as signature transaction (where everywhere else in the world, EMV is "chip&pin").

As I've periodically posted in past there was a large EMV/chip&pin pilot in the US around the turn of the century ... but it was in the Yes Card period (the chip vulnerabilities turned out to make the fraud worse than magnetic strip fraud, if you could believe). reference to some of the vulnerability at the bottom of this 2002cartes trip report ... gone 404, but lives on at the wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030417083810/http://www.smartcard.co.uk/resources/articles/cartes2002.html
past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard

there was presentation of Yes Card in 2003 at the "ATM Integrity Task Force" meeting by Federal LEO ... which prompted somebody in the audience to exclaim that "they managed to spend billions to prove that chips are less secure than magstripe". All evidence of the large US pilot then disappears and some reference that it might be a long time before it was tried again in the US (let the vulnerabilities and bugs be worked out in other jurisdictions).

--
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 04 Jun 2016 16:28:13 -0700
Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> writes:
Having looked at a LOT of mainframe C and PL/I generated code, I have yet to see a compiler manage base registers better than a novice. In fact, much worse.

I don't know why compilers fall short in this area. Perhaps they just fail to understand what the code is doing.

I see generated code load and re-load the same base register over and over a few instructions apart. The compilers seems to have one or 2 registers they want to use and just ignore other UNUSED registers.

I've never seen a compiler use one of my favorite tricks, when you call a subroutine that only uses 2 or 3 registers, there is no reason to save any registers other than the ones used.

As far as remembering which registers are in use, that's what scrolling is for.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_allocation
this has been around for long time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_allocation#Isomorphism_to_graph_colorability

former co-worker had left research and was working as consultant in silicon valley starting in the early 80s. one of his early projects was taking a 370 C-compiler and significantly enhancing optimization for a VLSI chip design shop wanting UCB/BSD chip design tools ported to vm370.

subroutine optimization then has to save/restore those registers that it has decided to use. more sophisticated is optimization for treating multiple module program as single unit for compile/optimization.

hardware has also gotten more complex with things like (hardware) register rename
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_renaming
from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_renaming#History
The IBM System/360 Model 91 was an early machine that supported out-of-order execution of instructions; it used the Tomasulo algorithm, which uses register renaming.

The POWER1 is the first microprocessor that used register renaming and out-of-order execution in 1990.


... snip ...

some past ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#18 why doesn't processor reordering instructions affect most
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#24 Description of a new old-fashioned programming language
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#14 Multicores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#59 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#50 "Death of the mainframe"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#62 Optimization, CPU time, and related issues

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

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hardware has also gotten more complex with things like (hardware)
register rename

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_renaming
from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_renaming#History
The IBM System/360 Model 91 was an early machine that supported out-of-order execution of instructions; it used the Tomasulo algorithm, which uses register renaming.

The POWER1 is the first microprocessor that used register renaming and out-of-order execution in 1990.

... snip ...

some past ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#18 why doesn't processor reordering instructions affect most
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#24 Description of a new old-fashioned programming language
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#14 Multicores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#59 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#50 "Death of the mainframe"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#62 Optimization, CPU time, and related issues

--
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Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 05 Jun 2016 10:20:34 -0700
usenet@only.tnx (Questor) writes:
Your claim is that DEC hastened the arrival of the PC business which is utter nonsense. You are completely ignoring the fact that DEC was demonstrably way behind in the PC business.

Timesharing was available on many other computers besides those from DEC. And it can very easily be argued that people whose only experience was using batch would be even more motivated to have their own machine than people who had used timesharing. And lots of people, like myself, wanted their own computer before they ever used one, timesharing or otherwise.


(cp67 & vm370) CMS effectively provided a (time-sharing) personal computer environment. mid-range computer technology met some price/performance threshold and saw large corporations deploying hundreds&thousands of 4300 (vm370) systems out in departmental areas ... leading edge of the distributed computing tsunami. some old 4300 email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx

and ..

before ms/dos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS
there was seattle computer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Computer_Products
before seattle computer there was cp/m,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M
before cp/m, kildall worked with cp67/cms (precursor to vm370) at npg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Postgraduate_School

I've pontificated several times before that early big uptake of IBM/PC was that IBM/PC with terminal emulation was about the same price as 3270 terminal. Large corporations with no effort, could switch from an already justified business case for tens of thousands of 3270 terminals to tens of thousands of IBM/PC with terminal emulation. The IBM profit margin on IBM/PC also provided lots of room for clone PC makers to easily sell into the market ... and the size of the market and business with corporate budget attracted lots of software developers.

Later, as the technology, market & business evolved, The IBM communication group was strongly fighting off distributed computing and client/server, trying to preserve status quo, their dumb terminal paradigm and install base.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 05 Jun 2016 14:13:29 -0700
Bob Eager <news0006@eager.cx> writes:
(incidentally, the principal architect of the SMP code on that (circa 1981) was one Bill Laing, later to do the same for VMS)

old discussion of vms symmetric multiprocessor support in VMS release 5 announcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email880324
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email880329
in this post with VAX 8800 symmetric multiprocessor announcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#46

... and the potential that it would improve vax/vms DBMS throughput

past posts mentioning multiprocessor and/or compare-and-swap instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp
CAS chosen because they are charlie's initials, invented compaer-and-swap while working on cp67 multiprocessor fine-grain multiprocessor locking at the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

initial attempts to get compare-and-swap into 370 architecture were rebuffed because the POK favorite-son operating system people claimed that test-and-set was sufficient. People that owned 370 architecture said to justify compare-and-swap needed to come up with non-SMP locking uses, thus were born the examples still in the IBM mainframe principles of operation where multi-threaded applications (not locked for interrupts, like large DBMS) can use it for serialization (as opposed to strictly locking).

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 05 Jun 2016 14:22:54 -0700
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
Most of the time. However, if you're running a large sort, or one of your programs goes into a CPU loop, your data-processing machine has suddenly become compute bound, and if the OS doesn't deal well with the mix you can have problems.

For instance, Univac's OS/3 would not time-slice jobs of equal priority. In this case, that big sort or looping program would bring all other running jobs of equal or lower priority to a grinding halt - even totally I/O-bound tasks like file copying.


I did dynamic adaptive resource management as undergraduate at the Univ. in the 60s ... which IBM picked up and distributed in their operating system product. The implementation included both "feed forward" and "feedback" ... part of the reason I was so taken with John Boyd when I met him in the 80s and sponsored his briefings at IBM.

Unlocking the Power of Colonel John Boyd's OODA-Loop
http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/military-people-and-ideas/2015/unlocking-the-power-of-john-boyd-OODA-loop.html

Observation feeds forward to Orientation, Orientation feeds forward to Decide, Decide feeds forward to Action, and finally Action feeds forward to Observation ... which results in feedback loop ... and all four are operating continuously and asynchronously

Feedforward, Behavioral and Cognitive Science
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedforward,_Behavioral_and_Cognitive_Science
Feed forward (control)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_forward_(control)
A control system which has only feed-forward behavior responds to its control signal in a pre-defined way without responding to how the load reacts; it is in contrast with a system that also has feedback, which adjusts the output to take account of how it affects the load, and how the load itself may vary unpredictably; the load is considered to belong to the external environment of the system.

... snip ...

posts & Web pages referencing John Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

Original dynamic adaptive resource manager, customers sometimes referred to as "fair share"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

... because default policy was fair share resource allocation ... with priorities that allowed more or less than fair share (each time-slice had relative deadlines that were dynamicalloy adjusted if process was getting more or less than allocated resource). Then it was possible to override fair share & priorities to give fix percent of resources ... typically for batch work while rest competed for the remaining with fair share (and all sort of dynamics for processes using more or less than their allocated resources).

I've periodically mentioned that one of my hobbies for a couple decades was providing enhanced operating systems to internal datacenters. I was once listening to director of one very large internal datacenter complain about regular status meetings where the significant number of different development organizations constantly complaining about they wanted more resources than the other organizations.

I offered to implement "group fair share" ... where he could give fixed resources to specific organizations ... and then it would fair share within those fixed resources the members of that group. The director looked horrified at the suggested ... he said that the internal politics and complaints were bad enough as it were ... but he could give a pat answer that he could do anything about it. He said imagine if it got out that he could give priority to different organizations ... then the demands and internal politics would totally explode.

Note that today nearly all IBM mainframes today are configured with LPAR (logical partition) support ... basically hardware/microcode mechanism for partitioning the machine into multiple systems. The specifications for CPU resource allications to the different LPAR systems can be fairly sophisticated.

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 06 Jun 2016 09:04:42 -0700
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
Could any user mount/dismount media and have their own private disk packs?

re
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#54 PL/I advertising

out in the departmental areas ... it would be whether department gave people access to the room ... which frequently was in the department stock room or converted conference room.

however these new departmental 4300s would tend to be configured with FBA disks, 3310 or larger 3370 which weren't mount/dismount ... however the FBA disks could be partitioned and give users their own private partition.

4300s significantly reduced floor space and environmental requirements, as did FBA disks .... besides price/performance making them cost effective, enabling the deployment out into departmental areas. The other issue was only needing minimal service/upkeep ... rather than needing scores of people per system like POK favorite son datacenter system (MVS) ... had to manage scores of systems per person.

The MVS group thot that the inhibiting factor being able to play in this exploding market of thousands of departmental 4300s ... was because there wasn't a departmental CKD disk. The only CKD drive was high-end 3380 but required datacenter floor space and environmentals ... and MVS didn't support FBA (still doesn't to this day, decades after the last CKD drive was built, all CKD are simulation on industry standard fixed-block disks). Eventually 3375 came out, CKD simulation on 3370 ... but that didn't address the significant problem of requiring scores of support people per system (rather than being able to support scores of systems per person).

This is old email from Jim Gray saying that I needed to help Bank of America which was getting 60 4300s for distributed environment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email800311b

... they required little more physical access control. Part of this was that the original relational/SQL was System/R done on vm/145 in bldg28/SJR ... and BofA was early System/R installation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

I've also mentioned that in '79, I got con'ed into doing benchmarks for national lab that was looking at getting 70 4341s for compute farm ... sort of the leading edge of modern supercomputers. For some trivia, decade later I was working on cluster scale-up for HA/CMP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

... both for scientic/technical (with LLNL and other national labs) and commerical ... this is old post about Jan1992 meeting in Ellison's conference room about cluster scale-up for commercial
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
within a couple weeks, cluster scale-up was transferred, we were told we couldn't work on anything that had more than 4 processors ... some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

another couple weeks, it was announced as IBM supercomputer for scientific/technical *ONLY*
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1 920217
later that spring article about IBM caught by surprise in the interest in cluster supercomputers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2 920511

for other trivia .... more recently, before he disappeared, Jim Gray con'ed me into inviewing for chief security architect in redmond, the interview dragged on for a few weeks, but we couldn't agree on what needed to be done. Jim said I couldn't report directly to him because he already had this guy that use to be at DEC, reporting to him.

--
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2016 08:36:30 -0700
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
for other trivia .... more recently, before he disappeared, Jim Gray con'ed me into inviewing for chief security architect in redmond, the interview dragged on for a few weeks, but we couldn't agree on what needed to be done. Jim said I couldn't report directly to him because he already had this guy that use to be at DEC reporting to him.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#54 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#55 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#56 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#57 PL/I advertising

aka
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Bell

some trivia from above:
During the 1980s he became involved with public policy, becoming the first and founding Assistant Director of the CISE Directorate of the NSF, and led the cross-agency group that specified the NREN.

... snip ...

other trivia, for some of presentations to director of NSF, he would sit in on. old email about working with director of NSF initially on interconnecting the NSF supercomputer centers.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

I've mentioned before, initially we were suppose to get $20M, but then congress cuts the budget, some other things happen, and finally NSF releases RFP. Internal politics prevents us from bidding, director of NSF tries to help, writing the company a letter 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO), but that just makes the internal politics worse. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

--
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Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2016 08:59:01 -0700
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
<grin> What was it about the computer biz which caused all of this? You and your wife had similar problems.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#54 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#55 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#56 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#57 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#58 PL/I advertising

In the mid-70s, I got sucked into working on design/implementation for 5-way SMP ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bounce

same time that I was con'ed into doing a lot of work for Endicott on ECPS (microcode performance assist) ... old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21

the 5-way got canceled before announced ... however afterwards got involved in a 16-way SMP. Along the way we got some of the POK processors engineers working on 3033 to work on it in their spare time. Lots of people around POK thot it was really great ... until somebody told the head of POK that it could be decades before the POK favorite son (batch) operating system would have 16-way SMP support. At that point the head of POK invited some of us to never visit POK again ... and told the processor engineers working on 3033 to totally focus on the 3033 and don't get distracted again.

Part of the issue was that 16-way SMP was a lot more interesting than 3033 ... which was Q&D effort to get something out after the failure of FS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

using 168-3 logic design remapped to 20% faster chips (FS politics had been killing off 370 efforts and the lack of 370 products during the period is credited with giving the clone computer makers a market foothold) ...

i.e. 303x "channel director" was 158 engine with just the integrated channel microcode and w/o the 370 microcode. 3031 was two 158 engines, one with just the 370 microcode and the 2nd with just the integrated microcode (aka channel director). 3032 was 168-3 with new covers and reconfigured to work with 303x channel director for external channels. And 3033 started out 168-3 logic design remapped to 20% faster chips.

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

History--early remote on-line computer access

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: History--early remote on-line computer access
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2016 10:44:31 -0700
Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> writes:
A friend who had a summer job at MIT in '63 worked at a hardcopy terminal connected to a (the? :-) central computer. (time share? I'm not sure of the correct term for the tech used.) When a higher priority job ran, the terminal would print WAIT and become unresponsive for a bit.

from early on (mid-60s) CMS did something of the reverse (apparently inherited from CTSS) ... as it received service ... it would send down tilt/rotate code to 2741 ... which wouldn't actually print anything ... just "wiggle" the selectric typeball. You could specify the BLIP function ... change the "wiggle" to actually print character ... like "#" and get something like modern "progress".

ctss
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System
also references
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_CP/CMS

talks about begating Multics, CP/CMS and most other time-sharing systems.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

I've joked about completely replacing original CP67/CMS scheduling (as undergraduate in the 60s) that I conjectured it may have come from CTSS ... because a couple decades later found something similar in UNIX ... and assumed it may have traced back to common CTSS heritage.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

some past "blip" posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#12 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#56 wrt code first, document later
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#71 Early attempts at console humor?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#72 Early attempts at console humor?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#16 Early attempts at console humor?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#18 Early attempts at console humor?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#39 S/360 undocumented instructions?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#40 MAD Programming Language
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#28 When nerds were nerds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#12 pointless embedded systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#37 PDP-10 and Vax, was System/360--50 years--the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#33 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#39 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#63 NYT: N.S.A. Chief Says Phone Logs Halted Terror Threats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#7 What Makes a Tax System Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#11 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#91 IBM Data Processing Center and Pi

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

History--early remote on-line computer access

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: History--early remote on-line computer access
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2016 10:54:29 -0700
for other topic drift, there is recent, closed, relatively small "the real history of online" on facebook ... some of my (archived) posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#33 The Network Nation, Revised Edition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#34 The Network Nation, Revised Edition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#36 The Network Nation, Revised Edition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#37 First Non-Trivial Program You Developed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#39 The Network Nation, Revised Edition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#40 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable

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

PL/I advertising

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 08 Jun 2016 10:34:04 -0700
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
What a way to kill the fun. Could the OS have been written so that adding a CPU was similar to adding another disk drive on a channel? That's how JMF approached our head-in-the-sand problems.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#59 PL/I advertising

one of the things I did in dynamic adaptive resource management, was time a series of execution patterns to determine the CPU resources available ... there were a couple customers were running decade old versions of the system ... that had been moved to newer and faster processors over the period ... and it would dynamically adapt.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

the 16-way processor system was higher end machine, field upgrade required significant work by customer engineers (to add/remove processor).

the earlier 5-way SMP work was behalf of the Boeblingen 125 group. Corporate had slapped Boeblingen hands over the 115/125 implementation. They had done 9-position memory bus that could plug in up to nine microprocessors (a little like adapter cards). The 115 had all microprocessors the same, one with 370 instruction microcode (and channel simulation), and 2-8 microprocessors that were loaded with i/o controller microcode (disks, communication devices, etc). ALl these microprocessors were the same ... about 800KIP machines (370 simulation running at 10:1 or about 80KIP 370).

125 was identical to 115 but the microprocessor running 370 microcode was 1.2mips native, getting about 120kips 370.

5-way SMP was to allow 2-5 of the memory bus positions having 1.2MIP microprocessor plugged in. I had enormous latitude in defining microcode features .... much more than I had for ECPS microcode performance assist for Endicott's 134/148 machines.

I did microcode queued interface for disk controller ... allowing disk controller to do real-time reorder for execution ... and real-time redrive queued requests (some superset what would be defined later for 370/xa SSCH). I also did something similar with queued task microcode interface for CPU execution (this was 1975) ... something like would be seen later for i432 ... aka number of processors was transparent to the low level operating system software (effectively processor software went to finish/wait, and microcode would pull off any pending work and dispatch it) ... however higher level scheduling was aware of processor cycles in the configuration for dynamic resource management (would have to power off the machine to add/remove microprocessors).

Corporate didn't allow this machine (feature) to be announced ... somewhat similar to Corporate didn't allow Endicott to ship all 138/148 (and later 4331/4341) machines with virtual machine feature pre-installed at the factory (sort of like all mainframes are shipped today with LPAR support).

some past 5-way SMP posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bounce

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

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

PL/I advertising

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 08 Jun 2016 11:13:01 -0700
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
I did microcode queued interface for disk controller ... allowing disk controller to do real-time reorder for execution ... and real-time redrive queued requests (some superset what would be defined later for 370/xa SSCH). I also did something similar with queued task microcode interface for CPU execution (this was 1975) ... something like would be seen later for i432 ... aka number of processors was transparent to the low level operating system software (effectively processor software went to finish/wait, and microcode would pull off any pending work and dispatch it) ... however higher level scheduling was aware of processor cycles in the configuration for dynamic resource management (would have to power off the machine to add/remove microprocessors).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#59 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#62 PL/I advertising

as in ECPS, lots of kernel 370 code (in ECPS case 70% of pathlength) on nearly 1:1 basis for 10:1 speedup.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21

However, got more stuff into the 5-way ... but also higher-level function ... like queued interfaces ... not only faster operatoin, but also improved the throughput of the operation (since eliminated a lot of the synchronized interrupt delays to redrive disk i/o or CPU tasks.)

later, the i432 guys gave a presentation at Asilomar SIGOPS meeting where they said that putting high level, advanced function (like multiprocessor dispatching) into the machine was big problem. For them everything went directly into silicon (not microcode) ... any fixes/enhancements required replacement with new silicon chip ... not simple matter of updating microcode

some past 5-way SMP posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bounce

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

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

PL/I advertising

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2016 10:00:31 -0700
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
Did you ever figure out the reason they didn't want to ship it?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#59 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#62 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#63 PL/I advertising

ibm tried to have carefully positioned low, mid, high range systems. besides 115/125 being hardware implementation that could easily add/drop microprocessors ... which violated some corporate strategy, a 5-way 125 started to heavily overlap mid-range processor throughput. Also, at the time, the other IBM operating systems only supported single processor operation ... or at base, barely supported 2-processor SMP ... the idea of shipping VM370-based system that was significantly more advanced than all the others ... brought a lot of complaints ... this was also in the period that the POK/MVS group was actively advocating that VM370 product be killed.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bounce

In fact, the 5-way 125 SMP overlapped the processing power of the 148 ECPS ... there were escalation meetings by the two groups on opposite side of table ... and since I was doing both, I had to alternate opposites of the table arguing both positions.

As I've mentioned in the past, 12-18 months later, POK did manage to convince corporate to kill vm370 product, shutdown the group and tried to move all the people to POK MVS/XA group, except some that managed to escape to DEC VMS group. Endicott managed to save the vm370 product mission ... but had to rebuild a development organization from scratch. Endicott then tried to have VM370 built into every system shipped from the factory ... which was (also) overruled by Corporate.

Later Endicott came out with 4341 mid-range ... which was starting to impact high-end systems. datacenter 4341 clusters had more aggregate processor power, memory, i/o capacity, lower environmental and floor space at lower cost than high-end POK mainframe. Also large numbers of distributed 4341s (leading edge of distributed computing tsunami) was starting to siphon processing for high-end datacenters. At one point, POK was so threatened that it managed to convince corporate to cut the allocation of critical 4341 manufacturing component in half.

Before the 3033 shipped, still under development ... was the 16-way effort ... after the 5-way SMP got killed, and we had some of the 3033 processor engineers working on it in their spare time ... it was going great guns ... until somebody told the head of POK that it could be decades before the POK favorite son (batch) operating system had 16-way SMP support.

Going further back, while working on fine-grain multiprocessor locking for CP67 (precursor to vm370) at the science center,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

Charlie invented compare&swap instruction (the instruction name taken from Charlie's CAS initials) ... initial attempts to get it added to 370 was rebuffed because the POK favorite son operating system people rebuffed it ... claiming that test&set was more than sufficient for multiprocessor operation ... aka they were still running (2-way) multiprocessor support with global kernel spin-lock (a single spin-lock used for system call entry into the kernel would execute test&set spin-lock ... aka only single processor executing kernel code at a time, if the other processor required kernel execution, it would spin on test&set instruction waiting for the other processor to exit kernel mode).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

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

PL/I advertising

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2016 10:00:31 -0700
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
Did you ever figure out the reason they didn't want to ship it?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#59 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#62 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#63 PL/I advertising

ibm tried to have carefully positioned low, mid, high range systems. besides 115/125 being hardware implementation that could easily add/drop microprocessors ... which violated some corporate strategy, a 5-way 125 started to heavily overlap mid-range processor throughput. Also, at the time, the other IBM operating systems only supported single processor operation ... or at base, barely supported 2-processor SMP ... the idea of shipping VM370-based system that was significantly more advanced than all the others ... brought a lot of complaints ... this was also in the period that the POK/MVS group was actively advocating that VM370 product be killed.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bounce

In fact, the 5-way 125 SMP overlapped the processing power of the 148 ECPS ... there were escalation meetings by the two groups on opposite side of table ... and since I was doing both, I had to alternate opposites of the table arguing both positions.

As I've mentioned in the past, 12-18 months later, POK did manage to convince corporate to kill vm370 product, shutdown the group and tried to move all the people to POK MVS/XA group, except some that managed to escape to DEC VMS group. Endicott managed to save the vm370 product mission ... but had to rebuild a development organization from scratch. Endicott then tried to have VM370 built into every system shipped from the factory ... which was (also) overruled by Corporate.

Later Endicott came out with 4341 mid-range ... which was starting to impact high-end systems. datacenter 4341 clusters had more aggregate processor power, memory, i/o capacity, lower environmental and floor space at lower cost than high-end POK mainframe. Also large numbers of distributed 4341s (leading edge of distributed computing tsunami) was starting to siphon processing for high-end datacenters. At one point, POK was so threatened that it managed to convince corporate to cut the allocation of critical 4341 manufacturing component in half.

Before the 3033 shipped, still under development ... was the 16-way effort ... after the 5-way SMP got killed, and we had some of the 3033 processor engineers working on it in their spare time ... it was going great guns ... until somebody told the head of POK that it could be decades before the POK favorite son (batch) operating system had 16-way SMP support.

Going further back, while working on fine-grain multiprocessor locking for CP67 (precursor to vm370) at the science center,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

Charlie invented compare&swap instruction (the instruction name taken from Charlie's CAS initials) ... initial attempts to get it added to 370 was rebuffed because the POK favorite son operating system people rebuffed it ... claiming that test&set was more than sufficient for multiprocessor operation ... aka they were still running (2-way) multiprocessor support with global kernel spin-lock (a single spin-lock used for system call entry into the kernel would execute test&set spin-lock ... aka only single processor executing kernel code at a time, if the other processor required kernel execution, it would spin on test&set instruction waiting for the other processor to exit kernel mode).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

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

PL/I advertising

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2016 10:39:04 -0700
Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> writes:
Both yes and no. Yes, the technical implementation of the 360 and 370 series were substantially more complicated than the PDP10s. But IBM had a very good set of interface specifications that had to be stable, to the point of supporting third party products. (and we all know that those are never 100% compatible. You just have to make do).

So the design could be broken up a lot more, and be done by different teams. And to a point, other development coild be reused and reused again; in different pacakging. And because of the much higher volume, both in units sold and number of models; this "LEGO design" was a lot more feasible.


the other part of the robust technical specification was that totally different computers had to meet the same compatible operation. 115/125, 135, 145, 155, and 165 were five totally different hardware implementations that had to support same compatible software operation.

there was folklore about the gov. legal action and the BUNCH testimony. Claim is that all five testified in the late 50s, the computer industry realized that the single most important requirement for future commercial success was a line of completely compatible computers (the computer industry was rapidly growing and customers were having to frequently upgrade the computers to keep abreast of the growing computer demand, having to completely rewrite software was barrier to upgrades and market growth). The testimony was that only Watson @IBM was able to force the different plant managers to toe the compatible requirement.

In the early 70s, Amdahl gave a talk at large, full MIT auditorium. Some of the audience was giving him a hard time about being front for the Japanese (half the funding and all the manufacturing was Japanese). He was also asked what argument did he use to convince venture capital to invest/fund his operation. He said that with a couple hundred billion in customer developed 360 software, even if IBM were to totally walk away from 360 (possibly veiled reference to Future System), the customer software base would keep him in business through the end of the century.

posts in this thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#35 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#41 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#43 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#44 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#45 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#46 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#47 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#48 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#50 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#52 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#53 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#54 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#55 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#56 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#57 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#58 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#59 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#62 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#63 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#64 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#65 PL/I advertising
h

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

Dynamic adaptive resource management (was: PL/I advertising

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Dynamic adaptive resource management (was: PL/I advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2016 10:19:51 -0700
"Jack Myers" <jmyers@n6wuz.net> writes:
There was nothing to prevent migrating the Network Evaluator from VS1 to CMS, so I did that. The planners were already using VM/CMS to prepare their batch jobs.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#56 PL/I advertising
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#62 PL/I advertising

trivia: I had done dynamic adaptive resource management as undergraduate in the 60 for cp67. It took into account resource usage ... but with some coding tricks that resulted in significantly shorter pathlength.

In the morph from cp67 to vm370 ... there was a lot of "simplification" ... and all of the dynamic adaptive resource management was dropped, the priority API was the same ... but it resulted in very simplified queue ordering ... not based on resource utilization ... and there were enormous number of situations where it failed to achieve the desired objectives.

I eventually ported all the stuff from CP67 to VM370 with additional enhancements and one of my hobbies was making enhanced operating systems available to internal datacenters. Finally in 1976, it was decided to ship a subset as the "resource manager" ... however the decision was made to also make it guinea pig for starting to charge for kernel code ... as a separate add-on kernel component. At approx. $900/month, it was pretty much limited to customers with high-end systems.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

aka ... legal actions was somewhat behind the 23jun1969 "unbundling" announcement, including starting to charge for (application) software, however IBM managed to win the argument that kernel software should still be free.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

then during the early-mid 70s, company had future system effort that was completely different and was to completely replace 370 ... and internal politics was killing off 370 efforts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

the lack of new 370 offerings during the FS period is credited with giving clone system makers a market foothold. With the failure of FS, there was mad rush to get new 370 offerings into product pipeline. The rise of clone system makers also contributed to decision to start transition to charging for kernel software.

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

Raspberry Pi 3?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Raspberry Pi 3?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2016 11:28:49 -0700
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
From time to time I glance at a 16GB SD card and reflect that it holds a thousand times the theoretical memory limit for large IBM 360 machines (theoretical because not even the largest installations could affort it). Or that the price of disk storage has fallen by seven orders of magnitude in that time - and that the above SD card holds more than all the disks in a large installation of the time.

I just got a 200GB mini-SD card for cellphone. In the past I've had opportunity to comment that memory access latency measured in terms of count of processor cycles is comparable to 60s disk access latency (measured in terms of 60s processor cycles) ... which has given rise to designs that decompose instructions into risc micro-ops and out-of-order and speculative execution ... all trying to help compensate for the (relatively) enormous memory latency.

In the 70s, I had started commenting that disk relative system throughput was decreasing ... early 80s, I observed that disk relative system throughput had decreased by an order of magnitude over a period of 15 years (processor got 40-50 times faster, disks got 3-5 times faster). part of early 80s comparison chart ... in this old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#31

disk division executive took exception and assigned the division performance group to refute the claims. After a couple weeks they came back and effectively said that I had slightly understated the problem. They then respun the analysis (disks increasingly becoming major throughput bottleneck) for SHARE presentation about how to configure to improve system throughput ... SHARE 63, Presentaton B874, some past posts mentioning B874
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#18 AS/400 and MVS - clarification please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#46 AS/400 and MVS - clarification please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#3 using 3390 mod-9s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#68 DASD Response Time (on antique 3390?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#5 Poster of computer hardware events?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#71 308x Processors - was "Mainframe articles"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#7 My Vintage Dream PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#34 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#52 Hercules; more information requested
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#67 ACP, One of the Oldest Open Source Apps
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#1 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#70 25 reasons why hardware is still hot at IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#31 Wax ON Wax OFF -- Tuning VSAM considerations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#32 OS idling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#33 History of Hard-coded Offsets
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#18 Mainframe Slang terms
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#35 CKD DASD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#61 Speed of Old Hard Disks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#1 Multiple Virtual Memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#5 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#32 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#73 Tape vs DASD - Speed/time/CPU utilization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#39 A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#62 ISO documentation of IBM 3375, 3380 and 3390 track format
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#72 'Free Unix!': The world-changing proclamation made 30 years agotoday
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014l.html#90 What's the difference between doing performance in a mainframe environment versus doing in others
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#87 Death of spinning disk?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#0 Miniskirts and mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#110 Is there a source for detailed, instruction-level performance info?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#12 You count as an old-timer if (was Re: Origin of the phrase "XYZZY")
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#21 What was a 3314?

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

Open DoD's Doors To Cyber Talent, Carter Asks Congress

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Open DoD's Doors To Cyber Talent, Carter Asks Congress
Date: 11 June 2016
Blog: Facebook
Open DoD's Doors To Cyber Talent, Carter Asks Congress
http://breakingdefense.com/2016/06/open-dods-doors-to-cyber-talent-carter-asks-congress/

One of Boyd stories was about when he was head of lightweight fighter design at the pentagon and would have heated, animated technical discussions with subordinates, lieutenants & captains. The one-star he reported to, found it very unprofessional and eventually called a meeting in large room and removed Boyd (for unprofessional conduct). Fortunately, a week later, a 4-star called same meeting in same room, reinstated Boyd, and told the one-star to never do that again.

He would tie that in briefings to the rigid, top-down command&control developed by the military during WW2 to deploy large numbers with little experience and leverage the few skills available. He would also comment that US corporate culture was being contaminated by former military officers (steeped in rigid, top-down command&control) climbing corporate ladders ... with infrastructure that effectively assumes that only those at the very top knew what they were doing.

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

One of the work arounds to the federal personal policies has been to out-source to commercial companies ... but that has given rise to a different set of problems with beltway bandits and the success of failure culture ... where beltway bandits find that they make much more money off a series of fialures.
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/

success of failure posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#success.of.failuree

in the pursuit of profit, they also have increasingly cut corners like those doing security clearances, filling out the paperwork but don't actually do background checks ... or eliminating "pairs of eyeballs" (aka multi-party operations as countermeasure to insider threats) for sensitive operations
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/

A periodic discussion about graduate cybersecuty programs is a lot of the students have come out of culture that awards peer points for finding and exploiting vulnerabilities ... and it is hard to motivate them to work on building secure systems. There are lots of players for one reason or another aren't heavily vested in secure systems.

In the 80s, there was a pascal language based TCP/IP (internet) protocol stack that had none of the vulnerabilities of the c-language based implementations. These c-language related vulnerabilities were the major source of exploits during much of the 90s.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#buffer

At the 1996 MSDC at Moscone all the banners said "internet" but the refrain in all the sessions was "preserve your investment". In the 80s, personal computers applications were extended to automatically executed (visual basic) scripts for small, safe, business local area networks. In the mid-90s, this LAN support was being extended to the internet with no additional vulnerability countermeasures (or change in environment of automatically executed scripts) for the wide-open anarchy of the internet. By the turn of the century, the exploits from automagic executed scripts had grown to they equaled the exploits from c-language related vulnerabilities.

Trivia: a lot of these agencies ran software that I did dating back to when I was an undergraduate in the 60s ... however, I wasn't told about them until much later ... gone 404, but lives on at the wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

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

So, what was your computer birthplace?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: So, what was your computer birthplace?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2016 15:48:29 -0700
hancock4 writes:
Of course, these days, relocation to a distant locale is almost a must. (Some folks gotta go overseas.) That's tough part for a lot of people who have families, as relocation with a spouse and kids is very hard. Our neighborhood had some families move in from the rust-belt when the kids were juniors and seniors in high school. By that point, the social networks are established, and the older kids had trouble fitting in. They weren't happy.

one of the analysis about part of the downturn with the economic mess ... was a lot of US economic vitality has been worker mobility ... from the law of unintended consequences ... the underwater mortgages had significantly restricted worker mobility.

that was separate from a press conference that Bernanke had shortly after Federal Reserve lost legal action requiring them to disclose what they were doing (aka with only $700B allocated for TARP, it was way too small for the bailout, most of it was used for window dressing and other stuff ... and it was the Federal Reserve providing tens of trillions in ZIRP funds for the "real" bailout). Bernanke said that he had assumed that the too big to fail would use the tens of trillions in ZIRP funds to help main street, but when they didn't he had no way to force them (but that hasn't stop the ZIRP funds). Note that supposedly one of the reasons Bernanke was chosen as FED chairman was because he was student of the great depression, however the FED had tried something similar then with the same result (so Bernanke should have had no expectation for anything different this time).

fed chairman posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#fed.chairman
too big to fail (too big to prosecute, too big to jail) posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
Pecora hearing posts (congressional hearings into the '29 crash resulted in glass-steagall and jail terms)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#zirp

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

Raspberry Pi 3?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Raspberry Pi 3?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2016 09:46:42 -0700
"Charles Richmond" <numerist@aquaporin4.com> writes:
You must *not* have heard of the new *huge* data center for the NSA that opened in Utah...

https://www.wired.com/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center


there is the rapidly growing success of failure culture
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/

some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#success.of.failuree

and huge uptic in outsourcing last decade (in just these agencies, 70% of budget and over half the people)
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/

we've made snide remarks that the failures are just excuse for enormous increases in contracts for appropriations to technology related for-profit commercial operations (if the amount of spending doesn't fix the problem, then spend more).

The "spies like us" reference that private equity operations ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity

have heavily moved into doing LBO takeover of gov. contractors ... the outsourcing and private equity has some possible overlapping motivations 1) gov. agencies can't spend budget on congress, 2) gov. contractors can't spend money from gov. contracts on congress; however private equity owners can spend all sorts of money on congress (and it is ambiguous whether the money actually comes from gov. contractors) ... and there is enormous amount of money to be skimmed off from gov. contractors (like article references security clearances were outsourced ... and they were just filling out the paper work and not actually doing background checks ... making more money available to their private equity owners)

Note that former president of AMEX after he leaves as head of IBM, becomes head of large private equity company ... and will do LBO take-over of company mentioned in the "spies like us" article and employer of Snowden.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner

Standard process going back to at least 70s-80s (in financial and gov) is multi-party operations for sensitive operations (as countermeasure to insider threats). After the Snowden event, I raised the issue of what happened to multi-party operations. A few weeks later there was some press item that the gov. was looking at (returning to?) multi-party operations for sensitive operations. One question about not having multi-party operation, was that (also) a cost cutting move by the gov. contractor??

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

Five Outdated Leadership Ideas That Need To Die

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Five Outdated Leadership Ideas That Need To Die
Date: 12 June 2016
Blog: Facebook
Five Outdated Leadership Ideas That Need To Die
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2016/06/10/ten-outdated-leadership-ideas-that-need-to-die/

In Boyd's briefings he talked about former military officers (steeped in rigid, top-down, command&control) beginning to contaminate US corporate culture. some past posts & URLs from around the internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

This has been used to explain the culture of only those at the very top know what they are doing and the enormous spike in executive compensation

The Milton Friedman Doctrine Is Wrong. Here's How to Rethink the Corporation
http://evonomics.com/milton-friedman-doctrine-wrong-heres-rethink-corporation/

other refs

Want to Kill Your Economy? Have MBA Programs Churn Out Takers Not Makers
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/06/want-to-kill-your-economy-have-mba-programs-churn-out-takers-not-makers.html

and a little topic drift

The damage to productivity from open plan was quantified in the excellent book "Peopleware" by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister.
https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Tom-DeMarco-ebook/dp/B00DY5A8X2/

A good IBM example is the success of software development at Hursley lab over many years, compared with several less successful projects a few miles away in the open-planned offices of IBM UK. Interestingly, two programmers at Hursley occupied a 128 sq ft office, whereas the open plan areas had 100 sq ft per programmer. So less productive and more expensive in space! But yes, the pointy-haired-boss can watch over them

...

From 70s, "Real Programmers" tome:
Real Programmers never work 9 to 5. If any real programmers are around at 9am, it's because they were up all night.

...

aka, avoid distracting interrupts from phone calls, meetings, and pointy-headed bosses.

some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#31 High Level Language Systems was Re: computer books/authors (Re: FA:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#39 Why Use *-* ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#72 So I tried this //vm.marist.edu stuff on a slow Sat. night,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#58 When/why did "programming" become "software development?"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#43 An a.f.c bibliography?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#24 Systems software versus applications software definitions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#43 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#24 Public disclosure of discovered vulnerabilities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#11 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#35 "MVS Experience"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#5 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#23 Scary Sysprogs and educating those 'kids'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#24 Scary Sysprogs and educating those 'kids'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#89 Real Programmers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#15 What were the complaints of binary code programmers that not accept Assembly?

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

Is it a lost cause?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is it a lost cause?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers, comp.sys.raspberry-pi
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2016 10:20:16 -0700
Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> writes:
How does 'sophomore' map onto a traditional British/NZ degree system, at least as I knew it? AQ BSc is/was usually three years with an MSc adding another year and the PhD taking a few years more after that.

I learnt Algol 60 before being exposed to assembler and found that useful since, by the time I learnt my first assembly language, I already understood the principles of conditional branches, loops and how to structure a program as a set of functions.


spring soph yr got a 2hr intro to fortran class (1st exposure to computers). that summer I was hired to do re-implementation of 1401 MPIO for 360/30. The univ had 709 with 1401 as unit record front-end for 709 (709 ran tape-to-tape, with tapes manually transferred between 709 and 1401, MPIO was 1401 program that card reader -> tape and tape -> printer/punch). The univ was sold a 360/67 replacement, as interim transition, the 1401 was replaced with 360/30. The 360/30 had 1401 hardware emulation mode ... so could run 1401 MPIO directly. I was hired to implement in 1401 MPIO in native 360 assembler, got to design and implement my own monitor, device drivers, interrupt handler, error recovery, storage management, console interface, etc. Univ. shutdown normal operations at 8am sat until 8am monday ... and I would have the whole datacenter to myself for 48hrs straight. Monitor evanutally was slightly over box (2000) cards ... with conditional assembly for stand-alone mode and running under os/360 with open/close, get/put i/o (stand-alone version took 30mins to assemble, os/360 mode took over hr to assemble, os/360 I/O DCB macros took approx 5mins each to assemble under early OS/360 PCP releases on 360/30).

I got other tasks when school started in the fall, and continued to have 48hr dedicated weekend time (although making monday classes was little hard after 48hrs w/o sleep). The following year, I was hired fulltime responsible for IBM production operating system.

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

Raspberry Pi 3?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Raspberry Pi 3?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2016 13:07:13 -0700
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Standard process going back to at least 70s-80s (in financial and gov) is multi-party operations for sensitive operations (as countermeasure to insider threats). After the Snowden event, I raised the issue of what happened to multi-party operations. A few weeks later there was some press item that the gov. was looking at (returning to?) multi-party operations for sensitive operations. One question about not having multi-party operation was that (also) a cost cuting move by the gov. contractor??

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#68 Raspberry Pi 3?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#71 Raspberry Pi 3?

DoD Expands Concerning Insider Threat Program to Contractors
http://www.pogo.org/blog/2016/06/dod-expands-concerning-insider-threat-program.html
While this change addresses a valid concern that classified information pertinent to our national security must be protected, the Project On Government Oversight and other good governance organizations fear it will be used to target whistleblowers. ITPs threaten whistleblowers' ability to report waste, fraud, and abuse because they do not differentiate between genuine threats and those who are acting in the interest of the public

... snip ...

aka, embarrassing gov. agencies is considered a worse threat than any foreign adversaries.

whistleblower posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#whistleblower

also from article
In a PowerPoint presentation given by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) at their internal insider-threat webinar, titled "Simple Steps and Guidance to Secure Classified Networks," ODNI placed NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake in the same "insider threat" category as the Fort Hood and Navy Yard shooters, Nidal Hasan and Aaron Alexis. The same PowerPoint defined insider threats as "any employees and contractors who damage an entity's reputation...by exposing inside information." By this definition, there is no difference between whistleblowers who expose government wrongdoing in hopes of fixing problems, like Drake, and people wishing to do harm to national security, like Hasan and Alexis.

... snip ...

aka even when following law requiring reporting to responsible congressional oversight committee and for that, was charged under the same statutes used to charge Snowden. Drake's charges were eventually dropped ... although some of the information eventually shows up in the success of failure series of articles
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/
success of failure posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#success.of.failuree

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

IBM refused to lay off workers for decades, and then America had to rethink its entire corporate strategy

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM refused to lay off workers for decades, and then America had to rethink its entire corporate strategy
Date: 14 June 2016
Blog: Facebook
IBM refused to lay off workers for decades, and then America had to rethink its entire corporate strategy
http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-corporate-america-history-2016-6

we took the last really good buyout ... with bridge to retirement, past post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#28
Major motivation was that we had been doing cluster scale-up as part of our HA/CMP product ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
and had been working with national labs on technical&scientific ... but also with major RDBMS vendors on commercial ... old post with reference to meeting in Ellison's office Jan1992 on commercial scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
and some old email from the period on the subject
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa
within a couple weeks cluster scale-up had been transferred, announced as supercomputer and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors ... news item 17Feb1992, announced for scientific & technical *ONLY* (part of it may have been mainframe DB2 had been complaining if I was allowed to proceed, it would be at least 5yrs ahead of what they were doing)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1
news item later that spring 11May1992, IBM caught by surprise(?) in the national lab interest in cluster
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2

note that more than decade earlier, I was coned into doing 4341 benchmarks for national lab that was looking at getting 70 4341s for "compute farm" (sort of the leading edge of coming cluster supercomputing tsunami) ... and had been working on&off with national labs on various projects since then (for instance in 1988, I was asked to help LLNL standardized some serial stuff they had which quickly becomes fibre channel standard, including some stuff I had done in 1980 on channel-extender technology) ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#channel.extender
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#ficon

from law of unintended consequences, after we had left, two of the other people in the Ellison meeting had left Oracle and were at a small client/server startup responsible for something they called a "commerce server" and we were brought in as consultants because they wanted to do payment transactions on their server, the startup had also invented something they called "SSL" they wanted to use, the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce".

Also, contributing to the decision to leave was I had over 50 weeks of accrued vacation ... besides getting paid to take leave with bridge to retirement, I would get a years salary for the vacation (they had recently announced excess vacation would start evaporating)

From "truth is stranger than fiction" ... I had been told several times during by time at IBM that I had no career or promotions. The first day at home on bridge to retirement (with no possibility of coming back), I get a letter at home saying I had just been promoted.

reference to major changes in ibm retirement
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml

attributed to new CEO
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
posts referencing pensions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#pensions

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

IBM plans for the future - an imaginary tale

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: IBM plans for the future - an imaginary tale
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 15 Jun 2016 14:52:35 -0700
johnmattson.it@GMAIL.COM (John Mattson) writes:
IBM made mistakes back in the 1980's and 1990's from which they may never really recover. 1) Doing away with the THINK motto. It seems about the time they did this is when many of them stopped thinking. 2) Stopped giving the systems almost free to colleges which stopped the flow of trained personnel. MS and Apple learned from this mistake. 3) They almost eliminated VM for heavens sake, and now others have re-invented it and taken the market. Someone clearly was NOT THINKing. 4) They invented the PC and did not see the potential in it. It's like Edison inventing the light bulb, saying "That's nice" and walking away. Inexcusable.

IBM cut the 50s/60s 40% (or greater) education discount with the 23Jun1969 unbundling announcement in the wake of various legal actions. past unbundling posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

in the early 80s, IBM tried to recover, creating ACIS (academic computing) ... started out with $300M to give away to univ. MIT Project Athena got $25M (Project Athena equally funded by $25M from DEC), X-windows, kerberos, etc. CMU got $50M ... went into MACH, Camelot, some number of others (lots of places would use MACH, including newer Apple operating system).

ACIS also sponsors EARN & BITNET (where this mailing list originated)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

... using similar technology used by the internal network (larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime mid-80s)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

originally developed by the IBM Cambridge Science Center ... also responsible for virtual machines, inventing GML in 1969 (morphs into SGML a decade later, after another decade morphs into HTML), and some number of other things ... past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

I've frequently pontificated that early uptake of IBM/PC was 3270 terminal emulation ... IBM/PC with 3270 terminal emulation was about the same price as 3270 terminal ... a large corporation with tens of thousands of 3270s already justified could switch order to IBM/PC with little or no additional business justification effort ... and get single desk footprint that did mainframe terminal and some local computing.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal gerstner posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner

my brother was Apple regional marketing rep (largest physical region in CONUS) and would periodic come to town and I would get invited to some business dinners. I got to argue with MAC developers (before MAC was even announced) that it needed terminal emulation (they responded that it was for the kitchen table and would never be contaminated by business uses). Silicon valley was different place back them ... at Hacker's Conference, people could bring unnounced products and be played with by others that worked for competitors.

However, communication group didn't track as personal computers become more powerful. I've periodically mentioned that senior disk engineer got a talk scheduled at the annual, internal, world-wide, communication group conference supposedly on 3174 performance ... but opened the talk with the statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The issue was that the communication group had stranglehold on datacenters with corporate strategic responsibility for everything that crossed datacenter walls ... and were strongly fighting off distributed computing and client/server, trying to preserve their dumb terminal (emulation) paradigm and install base. The disk division was seeing the effects of data fleeing the datacenter (to more distributed computing friendly platforms) with drop in disk sales. The disk division had come up with a number of solutions to address the problem, but they were constantly vetoed by the communication group.

A few short years later the company goes into the red and was being re-organized into the 13 "baby blues" in preparation for breaking up the company. The board then brings in a new CEO to resurrect the company and reverse the breakup.

Starting in the early 80s, I had a project called HSDT ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

with T1 and faster speed links and we were working with director of NSF to connect the NSF supercomputer centers. We were suppose to get $20M, but then congress cuts the budget, some number of other things happen, and then NSF releases a RFP (largely based on what we already had running) but internal politics prevent us from bidding. The NSF director tries to help by writing the company a letter 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO) with support from other gov. agencies, copying the CEO, but that just makes the internal politics worse (as well as the comments that what we already had running was at least 5yrs ahead of all RFP responses). As regional networks connect into the centers it becomes the NSFNET backbone, precursor to the modern internet ... some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

in this period the communication group was spreading misinformation internally that SNA/VTAM could be used ... somebody collected the misinformation email and forwarded to us ... heavily snipped and redacted to protect the guilty
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email870109

in this time, they were also spreading misinformation internally that the internal network had to be converted to SNA/VTAM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#email870302
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#email870306

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

PDP-8 advertising

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PDP-8 advertising
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2016 15:00:38 -0700
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
Minis, on the other hand, had much simpler file formats, and sending or receiving a few bytes through a serial port was trivial. I remember how much fun it was when I set up my IMSAI, and could do terminal I/O by simply toggling in a dozen instructions through the front panel. Porting Adventure and Dungeon to the mainframe was pretty hairy, especially the terminal I/O part.

I first saw Adventure on vm/cms at TYMSHARE, they had brought it over from Stanford SAIL PDP10 to their PDP10 and the fortran was fairly straight-forward move to their vm/cms system. They told the story that when TYMSHARE CEO found out that customers were playing games on their systems, he ordered all games removed ... he apparently changed his mind when they showed him that it had grown to account for something like 30% of their revenue.

past posts mentioning adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#169 Crowther (pre-Woods) "Colossal Cave"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#33 Adventure Games (Was: Navy orders supercomputer)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#44 Call for folklore - was Re: So it's cyclical.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#12 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#43 Hardest Mistake in Comp Arch to Fix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#46 Any DEC 340 Display System Doco ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#69 IBM system 370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#40 The real history of computer architecture: the short form
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#34 Playing games in mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#49 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#56 Xah Lee's Unixism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#20 Whatever happened to IBM's VM PC software?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#45 History of performance counters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#38 Systems Programming for 8 Year-olds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#18 Question about Dungeon game on the PDP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#16 Newsgroups (Was Another OS/390 to z/OS 1.4 migration
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#15 Fast action games on System/360+?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#25 Fast action games on System/360+?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#28 Fast action games on System/360+?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#3 Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#18 The History of Computer Role-Playing Games
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#0 10 worst PCs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#17 Newbie question on table design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#39 Newbie question on table design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#6 Zork and Adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#8 Original Colossal Cave Adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#15 "Atuan" - Colossal Cave in APL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#2 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#61 Primaries (USA)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#47 Seeking (former) Adventurers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#11 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#12 New machine code
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#13 New machine code
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#16 August 7, 1944: today is the 65th Anniversary of the Birth of the Computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#57 Adventure - Or Colossal Cave Adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#75 Adventure - Or Colossal Cave Adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#82 Adventure - Or Colossal Cave Adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#84 Adventure - Or Colossal Cave Adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#4 Adventure - Or Colossal Cave Adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#33 SHAREWARE at Its Finest
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#83 3270 Emulator Software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#88 Baby Boomer Execs: Are you afraid of LinkedIn & Social Media?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#70 VMSHARE Archives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#30 Colossal Cave Adventure in PL/I
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#31 Colossal Cave Adventure in PL/I
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#35 Colossal Cave Adventure in PL/I
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#41 Colossal Cave Adventure in PL/I
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#9 Colossal Cave Adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#38 Invention of Email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#58 Altair Star Trek in assembly?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#6 Some fun with IBM acronyms and jargon (was Re: Auditors Don't Know Squat!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#68 Should you support or abandon the 3270 as a User Interface?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#77 Spacewar! on S/360

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The World Crisis, Vol. 1

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The World Crisis, Vol. 1
Date: 15 June 2016
Blog: Facebook
The World Crisis, Vol. 1
https://www.amazon.com/World-Crisis-Winston-Churchills-Collection-ebook/dp/B00FFD2DP2/

written in 1920s about 1911-1914 ... Winston explains steps leading to our mess in the middle east ... started with planning to move from 13.5in to 15in guns; loc2012-14:
From the beginning there appeared a ship carrying ten 15-inch guns, and therefore at least 600 feet long with room inside her for engines which would drive her 21 knots and capacity to carry armour which on the armoured belt, the turrets and the conning tower would reach the thickness unprecedented in the British Service of 13 inches.

loc2080-83:
For instance, nearly a hundred men were continually occupied in the Lion shovelling coal from one steel chamber to another without ever seeing the light either of day or of the furnace fires. The use of oil made it possible in every type of vessel to have more gun-power and more speed for less size or less cost. It alone made it possible to realize the high speeds in certain types which were vital to their tactical purpose. All these advantages were obtained simply by burning oil instead of coal under the boilers.

loc2087-89:
To build any large additional number of oil-burning ships meant basing our naval supremacy upon oil. But oil was not found in appreciable quantities in our islands. If we required it, we must carry it by sea in peace or war from distant countries.

loc2123-24:
An unbroken series of consequences conducted us to the Anglo-Persian Oil Convention.

... snip ...

which continues through WW1, the interval between WW1 and WW2, WW2, up through to the 50s ... including Kermit Roosevelt's 1953 overthrow of the elected government to install the Shah (who would not interrupt Britain's supply of oil)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Roosevelt,_Jr.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
... and Schwarzkoph (senior) training of the secret police to help keep Shah in power
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVAK

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Is it a lost cause?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is it a lost cause?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers, comp.sys.raspberry-pi
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2016 09:37:52 -0700
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
Not in data base management work. That requires a different style of thinking. A gray area is networking which is data base layers within layers.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#73 Is it a lost cause?

long ago and far away, we were brought into small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server, the startup had also invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted to use, the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce". I had absolute authority over the webserver to payment gateway implementation/operation (interface to financial networks) which has had no reported exploits ... but could only make recommendations as to the implementation/operation for the client/server interface. Almost immediately some number of the recommendations were violated, which continue to account for some number of exploits that continue to this day. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

Part of "SSL" involved variation on x.509 digital certificates ... which I fairly quickly started referring to as redundant and superfluous. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcerts

At annual ACM SIGMOD (aka DBMS) meeting held in silicon valley during that period, in a full ballroom, somebody in the audience asked the panel what all this x.5xx stuff was about ... and one of the panel members said that it was a bunch of networking engineers trying to re-invent 1960s DBMS technology.

disclaimer ... much earlier I was involved in the original relational/SQL implementation ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

when Jim Gray was leaving for Tandem, he was plaming stuff off on me.

other topic drift

june 17th of 1995 ... the largest online service provider started having some its internet facing servers crash. for the next two months they had everybody they could think of come in to look at it ... but it continued to crash. so aug. 17, somebody flew out to west coast and bought me a hamburger after work and while i ate it ... explained the symptoms. i then gave him a q&d work around patch that was applied later that night. afterwards i made the rounds of the usual vendors that sell stuff that involves tcp/ip and/or connecting to the internet ... suggesting that maybe they do something to address the problem; nobody was interested. almost exactly a year later a similar symptom hit a service provider in manhatten which made the press ... and now you saw the usual players telling the press about how fast they were addressing the problem. some past refs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#51 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#11 Caller ID "spoofing"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#21 recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#35 Builders V. Breakers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#11 Top 10 Cybersecurity Threats for 2009, will they cause creation of highly-secure Corporate-wide Intranets?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#60 Core characteristics of resilience
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#14 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#104 On a lighter note, even the Holograms are demonstrating
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#25 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable

In the 80s, there was a pascal language based TCP/IP (internet) protocol stack that had none of the vulnerabilities of the c-language based implementations. These c-language related vulnerabilities were the major source of exploits during much of the 90s. some past refs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#buffer

At the 1996 MSDC at Moscone all the banners said "internet" but the refrain in all the sessions was "preserve your investment". In the 80s, personal computers applications were extended to automatically executed (visual basic) scripts for small, safe, business local area networks. In the mid-90s, this LAN support was being extended to the internet with no additional vulnerability countermeasures (or change in environment of automatically executed scripts) for the wide-open anarchy of the internet. By the turn of the century, the exploits from automagic executed scripts had grown to they equaled the exploits from c-language related vulnerabilities. After-market business grew up attempting to recognize scripts with known exploit signatures (viruses).

In the late 90s, before he passed, the internet standards editor had me give a talk about why the internet wasn't industry quality dataprocessing (what happens when you let little kids play with computers) ... antivirus&passwords were 20yr regression (Postel also used to let me help with STD1). some internet related posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internet

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

Cringely article about more IBM rumors

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Cringely article about more IBM rumors
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 16 Jun 2016 09:44:42 -0700
john.archie.mckown@GMAIL.COM (John McKown) writes:
​Thanks. I was thinking of the CPs used by user software. It's interesting that the I/O channels use a Power chip.​

In 1988, I was asked to help LLNL standardize some serial stuff they had ... which quickly becomes the fibre channel standard ... one of the early implementations was for rs/6000 circa 1991. later some POK channel engineers become involved and define a heavy-weight protocol running over fibre-channel standard that drastically reduces the native throughput ... eventually released as FICON
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#ficon

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

The mainframe is dead. Long live the mainframe!

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The mainframe is dead. Long live the mainframe!
Date: 15 June 2016
Blog: Facebook
The mainframe is dead. Long live the mainframe!
http://www.cringely.com/2016/06/15/mainframe-dead-long-live-mainframe/

max configured z13 is rated around 100BIPS, latest e5-2600 blade is 1500BIPS or better for 1/1000 the price. The intel-based mainframe emulators have avg 10-15 native instructions per mainframe emulated instructions ... so e5-2600 blade could easily hit throughput of max. configured z13 for 1/1000 the cost. IBM legal action put most of that emulator work on the shelf, but it might make a come-back.

disclaimer: I did some consulting for a major commercial multi-thread implementation that would max out high-end sequent (up to 256 i486 processors, this was before IBM bought sequent and shut it down).

the last published max mainframe I/O throughput was for z196 that got 2M IOPS using 104 FICON (running over 104 fibre-channel standard). About the same time there was fibre-channel announced for e5-2600 blade claiming over million IOPS (i.e. FICON is a heavy weight protocol that drastically cuts the native fibre-channel throughput). Two such e5-2600 fibre channel would have higher native throughput than 104 FICON (running over 104 fibre-channel). disclaimer: 1988, I was asked to help LLNL standardize some serial stuff they had which quickly became fibre-channel standard ... including some channel optimization work that I had done in 1980; this was before POK channel engineers got involved and defined protocol that drastically reduced the native fibre-channel throughput ... eventually released as FICON.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#ficon
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#channel.extender

Note those mainframe emulators would do CKD emulation using industry standard disks ... so could native fibre-channel i/o with industry standard fixed-block disks ... rather than FICON to controller emulating CKD with industry standard fixed-block disks ... being able to come close to native throughput rather than the FICON crippled throughput.

recent posts mentiong e5-2600:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#15 Dilbert ... oh, you must work for IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#19 Fibre Chanel Vs FICON
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#23 IBM's 3033; "The Big One": IBM's 3033
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#27 Qbasic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#74 Fibre Channel is still alive and kicking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#103 You count as an old-timer if (was Re: Origin of the phrase "XYZZY")
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#104 You count as an old-timer if (was Re: Origin of the phrase "XYZZY")
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#24 CeBIT and mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#28 CeBIT and mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#60 Which Books Can You Recommend For Learning Computer Programming?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#61 Can commodity hardware actually emulate the power of a mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#24 What was a 3314?

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

"Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2016 19:08:54 -0700
hancock4 writes:
Lately, I've been reading about the Vietnam War, especially the early years. As mentioned, I recommend Haberstram's "The Best and the Brightest".

Anyway, the defense business certainly did make a ton of money off the war. However, I do not hold them accountable for it. The government asked them to do a job, and they did it.

I blame the high-ups in government, the people who had access to the facts and deliberately hid them from the people. This would include McNamara, Gen. Paul Harkins, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, LBJ, and JFK, among others.


mcnamara was LaMay's staff planning the fire bombing of half dozen german cities and then fire bombing 67 japanese cities (years later in interview, he quotes lamay as saying if US had lost the war, they would have been prosecuted for war crimes). after ww2, mcnamara leaves for auto industry but comes back as SECDEF for vietnam ... where Laos becomes most bombed country in the world
http://legaciesofwar.org/about-laos/secret-war-laos/
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/laos-vietnam-war-us-bombing-uxo

... recent posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#60 For those who like to regress to their youth? :-)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#8 What Does School Really Teach Children
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#30 AM radio Qbasic

some of the special forces accounts have their strategy of pacification working ... but that westmoreland stepped in and wanted big traditional military battles ... justifying regular army promotions for his buddies.

As undergraduate, I was fulltime at the Univ. responsible for the IBM production systems. The last summer, I was hired as fulltime employee helping form Boeing Computer Services (consolidate all dataprocessing in an independent business unit to monetize the investment). Later I got to know John Boyd and sponsored his briefings at IBM. Boyd's bios has him in command of "spook base" about the same time I was at Boeing ... and "spook base" was a $2.5B "windfall" for IBM (in 1970 dollars). Boyd said that he was strong/vocal opponent of the sensors across the trail as not working ... so being put in command.of."spook base" may have been punishment. reference to "spook base" ... gone 404, lives on at "wayback" machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030212092342/http://home.att.net/~c.jeppeson/igloo_white.html

note, above has some of the planes at "spook base" fitted out as drones ... capable of being flown w/o human on board.

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

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

The mainframe is dead. Long live the mainframe!

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The mainframe is dead. Long live the mainframe!
Date: 17 June 2016
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#81 The mainframe is dead. Long live the mainframe!

fundamental ... from 2006 (this is after ibm bought and shutdown sequent) ... part of fundamental ncluded ability to JIT translate (repeatedly executed) mainframe code snipets directly to native for execution
http://www.tech-news.com/another/ap200610b.html

during the 70s&80s, some of the Amdahl people would show up at the monthly baybunch meetings at SLAC ... and we would go out afterwards to one of the watering holes around Stanford and shoot the breeze.

what I knew of the PSI people ... it was also originally developed to run on SPARC ... in additional to Intel. Part of the issue was that Fujitsu had significant stake in Amdahl ... as well as the 64bit sparc that HAL was doing.

note that low-end & mid-range 360s/370s were something like intel emulators ... they averaged ten native instructions for every 360/370 instruction. In 1975, Endicott sucked me into ECPS for 138/148 ... basically static moving 6kbytes of highest executed kernel instructions into native microcode (getting 10:1 speedup; fundamental JIT could be looked at as a dynamic version of ECPS ... but applied to all mainframe code). This is old post with kernel pathlengths sorted by frequency of execution, 6kbytes of kernel 370 code accounted for 79.55% of kernel CPU execution (moving to ECPS got 10:1 speedup)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21

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

The mainframe is dead. Long live the mainframe!

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The mainframe is dead. Long live the mainframe!
Date: 17 June 2016
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#81 The mainframe is dead. Long live the mainframe!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#83 The mainframe is dead. Long live the mainframe!

senior disk engineer got a talk scheduled in the late 80s at the annual, internal, world-wide, communication group conference ... supposedly on 3174 performance ... but opened the talk with the statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The issue was that the communication group had strangle-hold on datacenters with their corporate startegic ownership of everything that crossed the datacenter walls .... heavily fighting off distributed computing and client/server trying to preserve their dumb terminal paraidgm and install base. The disk division was seeing the effects of data fleeing datacenters to more distributed computing friendly platforms with drop in disk sales. The disk division had come up with a number of solutions that were all vetoed by the communication group.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal

A few short years later, the company has gone into the red and the company was being reorged into the 13 "baby blues" in preparation for breaking up the company. Then the board brings in former president of AMEX to resurrect the company and reverse the breakup
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
... using some of the same techniques he used at RJR:
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml

Earlier AMEX & KKR had been in competition for private-equity LBO take-over of RJR, KKR wins but runs into some trouble and hires away the president of AMEX to turn it around (note the industry had gotten such a bad name during the S&L crisis that they change the industry name to private equity and "junk bonds" were renamed "high yield bonds")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate:_The_Fall_of_RJR_Nabisco

Later, the former president of AMEX leaves IBM to become the head of another large private-equity company ... which will do LBOs of beltway bandits, including the future employer of Snowden (companies in the private-equity mill are under enormous pressure to cut corners in every way possible to generate money for their parent company)
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/

Note in the 90s, mainframe use had drastically dwindled down to core of industries that had complex, high-value, high-risk operations ... a major segment was wallstreet and financial (some speculation that it was wallstreet/financial that backed former president of AMEX as head of IBM to keep the company from being broken up). In the 90s, major segments of financial had large mainframe legacy applications doing overnight batch settlement ... the overnight batch windown was under enormous pressure with globalization reducing the size of the window and increasing workload.

In the 90s, there was billions spent on straight-through processing settlement on large numbers of parallel "killing micros". However, the industry was using off-the-shelf industry parallelization libraries that had 100 times the overhead of cobol batch. The implementors were advised of this but ignored it ... it wasn't until some large scale pilots that it was acknowledged that the overhead totally overwhelmed the increased throughput expected from large number of killer micros (unfortunately I was one of the people warning implementers of the problems, trivia: in the executive interview leaving IBM, I was told they could have forgiven me for being wrong, but they were never going to forgive for being right).

A decade ago, I was involved in another attempt that leveraged the enormous work that had been done by major RDBMS vendors (including IBM) on parallelization cluster scale-up. The technology supported high-level business rule specification that generated fine-grain SQL statements that were easily parallelized. Major financial operations have mainframe machine rooms with scores of max. configured mainframes (that are constantly upgraded every 12-18months), sized to handle the overnight batch settlement workload (that continue to account for major mainframe use, last time I did the analysis, 2014 4th qtr financials sold the equivalent of 50 max. configured mainframes/year, before that it had been around 200/year).

We did simulated straight-through processing workload that was several times larger than one of these datacenters ... that was easily handled and were working with one of the major financial standards organizations. At first everything was going great guns and then came to brick wall. Finally we were told that industry had many executives that bore the scars of the failed efforts in the 90s and it would have to wait for a whole new generation.

some recent posts mentioning straight-through processing and overnight batch window
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#3 We need to talk about TED
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#81 CPU time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#83 CPU time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#22 US Federal Reserve pushes ahead with Faster Payments planning
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#90 Why do bank IT systems keep failing ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#10 Can the mainframe remain relevant in the cloud and mobile era?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#69 Is end of mainframe near ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#74 Is end of mainframe near ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#78 Over in the Mainframe Experts Network LinkedIn group
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014g.html#14 Is end of mainframe near ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#71 Decimation of the valuation of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#119 Holy Grail for parallel programming language
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#170 IBM Continues To Crumble
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#78 Is there an Inventory of the Inalled Mainframe Systems Worldwide
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#65 A New Performance Model ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#2 More "ageing mainframe" (bad) press
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#112 Is there a source for detailed, instruction-level performance info?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#25 1976 vs. 2016?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#48 Windows 10 forceful update?

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

The World Crisis, Vol. 1

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The World Crisis, Vol. 1
Date: 17 June 2016
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#78 The World Crisis, Vol. 1

80s, US was supporting Saddam in Iran/Iraq war, including supplying WMDs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran-Iraq_war

early 90s, sat. recon analyst notified administration that Saddam was preparing to invade Kuwait. The administration said Saddam would do no such thing and proceeded to discredit the analyst. Then the analyst notifies that Saddam was preparing to invade Saudi Arabia, he administration now has to choose between Iraq and Saudi Arabia
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Strange-Journey-Intelligence-ebook/dp/B004NNV5H2/

early last decade, cousin of White House chief of staff Card, was dealing with Iraq in the UN and given proof that the WMDs (tracing back to the US in the 80s) were decommissioned. The information was provided to Card, Powell and others, however before it went public, cousin was committed to Texas Military Hospital
https://www.amazon.com/EXTREME-PREJUDICE-Terrifying-Story-Patriot-ebook/dp/B004HYHBK2/

NY times series from fall 2014 about finding the decommissioned WMDs (tracing back to the US) and the information was kept classified for a decade (note Card's cousin book about the decommissioned WMDs was published in 2010, four years before the information was declassified).
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html

past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#wmds

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

Too Big To Jail

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Too Big To Jail
Date: 17 June 2016
Blog: Facebook
Too Orange To Jail? US Government Drops Suit Against Countrywide's Mozilo
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-17/too-orange-jail-us-government-drops-suite-against-countrywides-mozilo

#1 on times list of those responsible for economic mess
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877339,00.html

too big to fail (too big to prosecute, too big to jail)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

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

Get Out Of Jail Free Card

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Get Out Of Jail Free Card
Date: 17 June 2016
Blog: Facebook
HR 5424, "Investment Advisers Modernization Act," a "Get Out of Madoff and Other Frauds for Free" Bill, Passes Financial Services Committee
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/06/hr-5424-investment-advisers-modernization-act-a-get-out-of-madoff-and-other-frauds-for-free-bill-passes-financial-services-committee.html

madoff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#madoff
regulatory capture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#regulatory.capture

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

"Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2016 23:02:55 -0700
mausg writes:
There were several long range raids on the Rumanian oil fields at Ploetsi(sp?) but there were large amounts of oil still going to Germany till the Soviets took over that country. As to steel mills, the raids on the Ruhr did not stop steel production. There were raids on the ball-bearing factories in Eastern Germany in 1943, the bombers flying on to Italy, for reasons of range, which resulted in heavy losses to the US bombers involved.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#82 "Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust

John Foster Dulles (along with others like Prescott Bush) in the 20s&30s were major force in rebuilding Germany's economy and military. From the law of unintended consequences, The US 1943 strategic bombing program needed industrial and miliary target locations in germany, they got plans and location information from wallstreet.
https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Foster-Dulles-Allen-Secret-ebook/dp/B00BY5QX1K/

loc865-68:
In mid-1931 a consortium of American banks, eager to safeguard their investments in Germany, persuaded the German government to accept a loan of nearly $500 million to prevent default. Foster was their agent. His ties to the German government tightened after Hitler took power at the beginning of 1933 and appointed Foster's old friend Hjalmar Schacht as minister of economics.

loc873-79:
Sullivan & Cromwell floated the first American bonds issued by the giant German steelmaker and arms manufacturer Krupp A.G., extended I.G. Farben's global reach, and fought successfully to block Canada's effort to restrict the export of steel to German arms makers.

loc905-7:
Foster was stunned by his brother's suggestion that Sullivan & Cromwell quit Germany. Many of his clients with interests there, including not just banks but corporations like Standard Oil and General Electric, wished Sullivan & Cromwell to remain active regardless of political conditions.

loc938-40:
At least one other senior partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, Eustace Seligman, was equally disturbed. In October 1939, six weeks after the Nazi invasion of Poland, he took the extraordinary step of sending Foster a formal memorandum disavowing what his old friend was saying about Nazism

... snip ...

US Army Air Corp insisted that all the budget went to building heavy strategic bombers, it wasn't necessary to spend any money on long range fighter escort. The British pointed out that the Americans refused to learn from the German experience in the Battle For Britain ... and would have to relearn it the hard way for themselves.

One of the other problems was from 5-6miles high, it was nearly impossible to hit a target (regardless of claims for Norden sites). Towards the end, McNamara was LeMay's staff planning fire bombing German cities and later Japanese cities (difficult to miss a whole city).

"The European Campaign: Its Origins and Conduct" (strategic bombers were used on Omaha), loc2582-85:
The bomber preparation of Omaha Beach was a total failure, and German defenses on Omaha Beach were intact as American troops came ashore. At Utah Beach, the bombers were a little more effective because the IXth Bomber Command was using B-26 medium bombers. Wisely, in preparation for supporting the invasion, maintenance crews removed Norden bombsights from the bombers and installed the more effective low-level altitude sights.

... snip ...

past posts mentioning Norden bombsights:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#90 Friden Flexowriter equipment series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014k.html#12 1950: Northrop's Digital Differential Analyzer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#53 IBM Data Processing Center and Pi
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#79 past of nukes, was Future of support for telephone rotary dial ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#82 past of nukes, was Future of support for telephone rotary dial ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#62 past of nukes, was Future of support for telephone rotary dial ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#13 Fully Restored WWII Fighter Plane Up for Auction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#120 For those who like to regress to their youth? :-)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#91 Qbasic

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

China builds world's most powerful computer

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: China builds world's most powerful computer
Date: 29 June 2016
Blog: Facebook
China builds world's most powerful computer
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36575947
For the first time since the list began, China has overtaken the US with 167 computers in the top 500 while the US has 165. "Considering that just 10 years ago, China claimed a mere 28 systems on the list, with none ranked in the top 30, the nation has come further and faster than any other country in the history of supercomputing,"

... snip ...

In the 80s Boyd was including in briefings that former military officers (steeped in rigid top-down command and control) were contaminating US corporate culture with only those at the very top were experienced and qualified to make decisions. However it was about that time articles were starting to appear that MBAs were destroying US corporations with their myopic focus on quarterly results, monopolies and maintaining status quo (inhibiting change and innovation). This was further aggravated later in the 80s with the appearance of 6-sigma and iso9000 with the focus on manufacturing paradigm of exactly reproducing the same part every time. Boyd posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

this is tale of IBM's advanced computer project in the 60s, IBM executives shuts in down in the late 60s because they were afraid that it would advance the computer state of the art too fast, and they would loose control of the market.
https://people.computing.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.html

I encountered such stuff frequently during my career. The last one eventually prompting decision to leave was cluster scale-up for our HA/CMP (High Availability Cluster Multi-Processing) ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

Was working with national labs on cluster scale-up for scientific and technical ... but also working with RDBMS for commercial scale-up ... i worked out method for efficiently coordinating large number of processors doing database operations. We were having meetings with major RDBMS vendors to implement/support the technology ... and then cluster scale-up was transferred, announced as IBM supercomputer for scientific and technical *ONLY* ... and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors. Part of the issue is that IBM had little install base in the supercomputer/national lab market .... so it didn't threatened status quo there. However, the traditional mainframe commercial people (majority of IBM revenue) were complaining if I was allowed to go ahead, it would be years ahead of anything they had.

MBA programs increasingly taught monopolies, control of the market, maintaining status quo ... and sacrifice the future to make quarterly numbers, etc

End of Oct1991 an IBM senior VP retires and efforts he sponsored are audited/reviewed, including the supercomputer effort in kingston; almost immediately a new person is brought in for the kingston effort and an internal ibm conference on supercomputer technology (essentially trolling the company for technology) is announced for mid-jan 1992. One of the engineers we are working with insists on presented at the conference, we tell him he doesn't understand internal politics and nothing good will come from his presentation.

Just prior to the conference, we had meeting in Ellison's conference room with Hester, a couple other IBMers, Ellison, the people that we had been working with at Oracle to discuss 128-way deployment by ye1992, old post referencing the meeting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

then the conference happens, the project is transferred and announced as ibm supercomputer and we are told we can't work on anything with more than four processors. This is old email around the period discussing both cluster scale-up with the national labs as well as for RDBMS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

ibm press item from 17feb1992 (for technical and scientific *ONLY*)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1
ibm press item from later that spring, 11may1992 (company was surprised by interest in cluster)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2

in the wake of being told we can't work on anything with more than four processors, we decide to leave and are gone that summer.

Note we were working on RDBMS with non-IBM because there wasn't an IBM alternative. IBM had mainframe implementation ... but the OS2 had only recently chartered toronto to do a C-language, non-mainframe, portable implementation ... which wasn't ready for business critical. The major non-IBM RDBMS vendors had production UNIX implementation, but no cluster. They did have VAX-cluster implementation that shared the same source base. I worked with the non-RDBMS vendors and did a design&implementation that implemented VAX-cluster API semantics ... but addressed the VAX issues that the vendors felt were hurting scale-up.

Trivia ... I had been involved off&on with national labs dating back to 1979 when I was dragged into doing some 4341 benchmarks for national lab who were looking at getting 70 4341s for a compute (cluster) farm.

semi-related thread that i've been posting over in military facebook group

Note that the most advanced and powerful processors are used by the tens of thousands in building these supercomputers. However the same processors are used in things like advanced, real-time signal processing in applications like radar ... improving locating and identifying even low-observable targets. Spring of 2015, DOD put such chips on export control. At a supercomputer conference China demonstrated last fall that they had started building their own. Now they are showing mass production for use in the largest supercomputers on the planet. recent posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#20 DEC and The Americans
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#55 How to Kill the F-35 Stealth Fighter; It all comes down to radar ... and a big enough missile
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#89 Computers anyone?

In the past, frequencies capable of locating stealth aircraft weren't precise enough for use in targeting. Systems were built using frequencies that were precise enough for targeting, but weren't able to scan the whole horizon capable of locating stealth aircraft. Folklore the shoot down of the F117 was it always flew the same pattern, so it wasn't necessary to locate the aircraft ... just concentrate targeting radar on the same position. A combination of latest advanced processors and multi-band radar ... frequencies capable of locating stealth aircraft ... and once located, computer turn-over to targeting radar.

This is made easier in the F35 with its design as bomb truck assuming F22s would be flying cover to handle high threat adversaries. Standard stealth shaping for the F35 was maintained for the front aspect .... but shaping was compromised in several other parts of the airframe ... significantly increasing radar signature from those aspects.

Newer generation of chips are much more power efficient ... in addition to significant more powerful ... some claims that it could reduce the number of transmit/receive pairs in f22 radar by nearly order of magnitude (approx 2000 to 60) w/o loss of capability ... which would also be enormous power requirement reduction

rigid top-down command and control quote is from Boyd briefings ... which i started to sponsor at IBM in the early 80s.

testimony to boyd in usni proceedings
http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1997-07/genghis-john
for those w/o subscription, copy here
http://radio-weblogs.com/0107127/stories/2002/12/23/genghisJohnChuckSpinneysBioOfJohnBoyd.html

from above:
One hardly expects the Commandant of the Marine Corps to agree with a dovish former Rhodes Scholar, or an up-from-the-ranks, brass-bashing retired Army colonel, or a pig farmer from Iowa who wants to cut the defense budget. Yet, within days of each other in mid-March 1997, all four men wrote amazingly similar testimonials to the intellect and moral character of John Boyd, a retired Air Force colonel, who died of cancer on 9 March at the age of 70.

General Charles Krulak, our nation's top Marine, called Boyd an architect of victory in the Persian Gulf War. General Krulak was "awed" by Boyd's intellect, character, integrity, and his selfless devotion to our nation's welfare. James Fallows, Editor of U.S. News and World Report, claimed that Boyd's "ideas about weapons, leadership, and the very purpose of national security changed the modern military." Retired Army Colonel David Hackworth, one of our nation's most decorated combat soldiers, wrote that Boyd's "legacy will be that integrity--doing the hard right over the easy wrong--is more important than all the stars, all the plush executive suites and all the bucks." And in a 20 March speech, Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) declared that John Boyd, "the leader of the Military Reform Movement," was a man who "always set the example of excellence--both morally and professionally."


... snip ...

Boyd told story about being vocal critic about the electronic sensor net across the trail in vietnam ... possibly as punishment, he was put in command.of."spook base" ... reference here gone 404, but lives on at the wayback machine
https://web.archive.org/web/20030212092342/http://home.att.net/~c.jeppeson/igloo_white.html

as an aside, boyd's biographies refer to "spook base" as a $2.5B windfall for IBM (in 1970 dollars).

Boyd started briefings at IBM with just Patterns of Conflict ... and then added "Organic Design of Command and Control" ... both being done in single day ... some references here:
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/compendium-colonel-john-boyds.html

Amdahl quote from the clemson web page
https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.html
Bob Evans came out to ACS with about five technical people and they held a shoot-out. We won and I was made the lab manager. The first thing I did was have the two smaller computers costed. I then submitted the three system plan to corporate pricing. The single highest speed computer was a loss leader. The second smaller computer added made a break-even program. Adding the third even smaller computer came out with normal profit! IBM management decided not to do it, for it would advance the computing capability too fast for the company to control the growth of the computer marketplace, thus reducing their profit potential. I then recommended that the ACS lab be closed, and it was.

... snip ...

One of the typical scenarios from last decade that we reviewed at Marine Corps Univ. is request for artillery fire in Afghanistan had to be bucked up to district command. A small group was under heavy fire from a whole lot of bad guys in city square, it took 40mins to get approval to start firing ... by that time all the bad guys had left ... and the local civilians had returned to the square (whole lot of collateral damage).

a wiki summary of patterns of conflict
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_of_Conflict
Patterns of Conflict was a presentation by Colonel John Boyd outlining his theories on modern combat and how the key to success was to upset the enemy's "observation-orientation-decision-action time cycle or loop", or OODA-loop. Patterns developed the idea of a "counter-blitz", a blitzkrieg in reverse, with numerous attacks followed by withdrawals to the rear. The aim was to confuse the enemy by presenting no apparent strategy, reveal the enemy's intentions through the strength of the response, and present a misleading picture of the defender's own actions in order to disrupt the attacker's future plan of action.

First presented in 1976, Patterns grew enormously popular through the 1970s, and was re-presented on many occasions, including a personal presentation to Dick Cheney in 1981. A 1980 presentation to the US Marine Corps led to the development of an entirely new doctrinal system. Boyd's ideas also became the basis for the AirLand Battle, the US Army's European warfighting doctrine from 1982 into the late 1990s. Patterns has been widely regarded as one of the most influential works of warfighting theory of all time and has been compared to the writings of Sun Tsu.[1] Based on Patterns and the work that followed, Boyd has been called "America's greatest military theorist".[2]


... snip ...

In the lobby of Marine Corps library (and gray research institute, across the street from Marine Corps univ) has displays honoring prominent marines ... Boyd's is the only display to a non-marine ... from my facebook postings
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1640474247359&l=142bf5f95d

Jan1992 Ellison/Oracle cluster scale-up meeting trivia. One of the senior Oracle people in the meeting tells story of being the person in STL responsible for SQL/DS technology transfer from Endicott to STL for DB2 (note i was involved in the original relational/sql System/R tech transfer from ibm san jose research to Endicott for SQL/DS). After we left IBM, two of the other Oracle people in the meeting (that we had been working with) leave and show up at a small client/server startup responsible for something called commerce server. We are brought in as consultants because they want to do payment transactions on the server, the startup had also invented this technology they call "SSL" they want to use; the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce".

related part of the original thread ... note some of the people involved in block our being able to bid on NSFNET, were also involved in transfer of the cluster scale-up.

10 RED TEAMING LESSONS LEARNED OVER 20 YEARS
https://www.oodaloop.com/featured/2015/10/22/10-red-teaming-lessons-learned-over-20-years/

we were working with the NSF director on interconnect for the NSF supercomputer centers and were supposed to get $20M. Congress then cut the budget, some other things happened and finally NSF releases an RFP (largely based on what we were already doing), however internal politics prevent us from bidding. The director of NSF tries to help by writing the company a letter 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO) with support from other agencies, but that just makes the internal politics worse (as does comments that what we already had running was at least 5yrs ahead of all bid responses). As regional networks connect into the centers, it becomes the NSFNET backbone, precursor to the modern internet.

For upgrade bid for the NSFNET backbone, i was asked to be the red team (possibly trying to quiet my ridicule of what was done for the initial bid; there were couple dozen people from half dozen labs that were the blue team). At the final review, I presented first ... and then a few minutes into the blue team presentation ... one of the executives pounded on the table and said he would lay down in front of a garbage truck before he let any but the blue team proposal go forward. some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
and posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

and another part

The Management Myth Most of management theory is inane, writes our correspondent, the founder of a consulting firm. If you want to succeed in business, don't get an M.B.A. Study philosophy instead
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-management-myth/304883/

Boyd is credited with battle plan for desert storm including the "left hook" (which failed) to cut off the republican guard when they retreated. At least 3 excuses for the failure ... 1) commander was steeped in synchronized, rigidly coordinated united front ... he wasn't going to get way out ahead behind the republican guard (called for in the plan) 2) Boyd didn't realize that the effective speed of M1s was way less than the rated speed (for other than short dashes) .... aka the enormous M1 maintenance and fuel requirements tightly tethers M1 to their supply, 3) the administration didn't really want to defeat Saddam, just slap his hands.

with regard to #3, the administration was supporting iraq in the iraq/iran war, including supplying iraq with WMDs. New administration, the former vice president is now president and a sat. photo recon analyst reports that Iraq is marshaling forces to invade Kuwait. The administration says Saddam would do no such thing and discredits the analyst. Later, the analyst reports that Iraq is marshaling forces to invade Saudi Arabia, now the administration must choose between Iraq and Saudi.

Note Desert Storm lasted 43days, only last 100hrs was land war. GAO desert storm air effectiveness study included finding that A10s were so easily destroying Iraqi tanks that the Iraqi tank crews were walking away from the tanks (sitting ducks). During the last 100hrs there are several accounts of tremendous land tank battles with coalition forces taking no damage (but fails to mention whether the Iraqi tanks had anybody home).

One of Boyd's "acolytes" had been in the 1st USAF academy graduation class and on fast track to general when he says Boyd destroyed his career by challenging him to do what was right. Burton was doing stint in pentagon procurement and directed to review Bradley ... and found it had lots of problems and forced them to be corrected (which is credited with saving lots of lives in Desert Storm). He was then forced to retire early (while the person that headed the Bradley program got promoted). He wrote a book "Pentagon Wars" which HBO made into (somewhat fictionalized) movie. Burton also along the way had got the price of 30mm shells (used by A10) cut by nearly order of magnitude to @$13 (a million were used in Desert Storm for total cost of $13M and considered the most cost effective of anything used in Desert Storm ... while the other stuff ran to billions of dollars). Burton also had proposal for mini-A10 with 5-barrel gun that could be forward deployed and maintained .... however these days it would probably be a drone.

some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex

other trivia: when yoda announced he was to retire
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/24/yoda-has-left-the-building/

there was a campaign to have one of the boyd people elected the new yoda.
http://thediplomat.com/2015/06/the-future-of-net-assessment-at-the-pentagon/
In other words, if the principle customer of a net assessment is the U.S. Secretary of Defense, and you, as the new director of net assessment, call a bloated bureaucracy like the Pentagon your home, chances are that your analysis is much more heavily influenced by your environment than it is by actual developments in the world. Marshall acknowledged the problem of this in his theory of bureaucratic politics (and many of Marshall's disciples recognize similar issues in different levels of analysis), yet I posit (...)[that] the problem is not just one of escaping a bureaucracy, but that of a lack of ability to disenthrall ourselves from the American analytical mindset overall, to the detriment of good defense analysis.

... snip ...

Middle 80s, top executives were predicting that income doubles mostly based on mainframe revenue ... and there was massive internal building program to double mainframe manufacturing capacity. There were a whole lot of new (fast track) MBAs being rotated around various positions every 6months or so ... apparently grooming them for the new much larger IBM ... although some of the victim organizations were suffering in the process. Note that mainframe business was already starting to move in the other direction ... although to point that out wasn't exactly appreciated at the highest levels. my wife would periodically really annoy IBM executives reminding them that i had never been wrong ... later in my executive exit interview I was told that they could have forgiven me for being wrong, but they were never going to forgive me for being right.

Late 80s, a senior disk engineer got at talk scheduled at internal annual world-wide communication group conference supposedly on 3174 performance ... but open the talk with the statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The issue was that the communication group had strategic responsibility for everything that crossed the datacenter walls and were fiercely fighting off client/server and distributed computing, trying to preserve their (emulated) dumb terminal paradigm and install base. The disk division was seeing data fleeing the data center to more distributed computing friendly platforms with drop in disk sales. The disk division had come up with several solutions to address the problem but they were constantly being vetoed by the communication group.

posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal

A few short years later, the company had gone into the red and was being reorged into the 13 "baby blues" in preparation for breaking up the company ... when the board brings in the former president of of AMEX to reverse the breakup and resurrect the company ... using some of the same techniques he used at RJR.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate:_The_Fall_of_RJR_Nabisco
i.e.
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml

new CEO posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
posts referencing pensions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#pensions

folklore/trivia ... after leaving but before the breakup was reversed, we were contacted by somebody in the bowels of Armonk about helping with the mechanics of the breakup. Lots of operations had MOUs with other divisions about using supplier contracts ... all the supplier contracts had to be cataloged and all the dependent MOUs had to be identified and turned into contracts (since these MOUs would then be across different corporations). --
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

"Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2016 19:09:43 -0700
mausg writes:
There is a famous picture taken from the air, of a bridge in Northern France, surrounded by craters, which was eventuall taken out by skilled pilots of the `Dambusters' squadron. The issue was still relevent during the Vietnam war, with b-62s bombing the trails from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia, to south Vietnam which were innefective. One Vietnamese commander claimed later, thet they realized that the US was depending on devices that detected ammonia fumes, from urine, and the Viets put Coke bottles of urine all along the areas that they didn't need.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#82 "Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#88 "Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust

strategic bombing from 5-6miles up were so ineffective (even with Norden sights), may have been motivation for fire bombing cities ... since it was almost impossible to miss a city with fire bomb. McNamara (LeMay's staff) planning the german and japanese city firebombing ... then comes back as SECDEF for Vietnam.

Boyd's story was that he was very vocal about bombing the trails wouldn't work ... was then put in command of "spook base" (possibly as punishment). "Spook base" reference gone 404 ... but lives on at wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030212092342/http://home.att.net/~c.jeppeson/igloo_white.html

Boyd biography claims that "spook base" was $2.5B windfall for IBM (in 1970 dollars). Somebody claims that state department totalled up the number of trucks that DOD claimed destroyed by bombing on the trails ... exceeded the number of trucks in all of SE Asia. Note also the bombing makes Laos the most bombed country in the world
http://legaciesofwar.org/about-laos/secret-war-laos/
and
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/laos-vietnam-war-us-bombing-uxo

In between, USAF produced the (fabricated) "bombing gap" analysis for Eisenhower ... that Soviets had large numbers of advanced bombers and was used to justify responding by US building enormous numbers of advanced bombers (huge increase in DOD budget for USAF). A key thing to remember about the U2 flts was that they supplied Eisenhower with the information debunking the USAF analysis (possibly also major motivation behind Eisenhower warning about the military-industrial complex in his goodby speech).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex

Boyd had another story about USAF in Vietnam concerning USAF (and military-industrial) budget. Before Vietnam, Boyd was asked to review the new USAF air-to-air missile. They showed him lots of details where it hit every time. He predicted it would be lucky to hit 10% of the time. They said that can't be true. He asked what kind of guidence, they said heat seeking. He asked what kind of heat seeking, and eventually got them to say "pin-point". He then asked where is the hottest part of jet fighter. They said the engine ... he said no, it is in the plume some 30yrds behind the jet (the only time it would hit is with shot straight up the tail pipe).

Roll forward to vietnam and Boyd is correct. One day, the USAF one-star in Vietnam grounds all fighters and switches them to (navy) sidewinders which had better than twice the hit rate. The general last three months before pulled out to the Pentagon. He is told that he is reducing USAF budget (not using USAF missiles, loosing less USAF fighters) .... but worst of all he is increasing the Navy's budget share (for many in the pentagon, Vietnam only existed to the extent that it affected their money).

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

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

"Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2016 19:20:05 -0700
hancock4 writes:
They produced about 10,000 C-47's (DC-3's), and a great many were available surplus after the war. Secondary regional carriers and freight haulers snapped them up. The US govt had built or upgraded many airfields nation wide, and these became regional airports. Plenty of wartime pilots worked at regional or freight haulers.

All of this helped grow the US aviation business. In the meantime, the railroads were stuck with a war-exhausted physical plant and high taxes.


The 100th c-47 sent to chinese ... after the war knocked around the world for a while before being picked up by Johnson & Johnson and refurbished for senior executive plane ... under contract with Pan Am to operate (it shows up in air shows still flying).

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

"Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2016 20:06:18 -0700
JimP <solosam90@gmail.com> writes:
I'm not so sure that people don't revere Custer based on several documentaries I've watched. Myself, I think he did a good job in 1860-1865. However, his attacks out west were against villages with few men there. When he got into a battle with warriors, he lost. There were mitigating circumstances, not just numbers.

The Comanche Empire
https://www.amazon.com/Comanche-Empire-Lamar-Western-History-ebook/dp/B001HZZ05C/

Sheriden adopted Sherman's scortched earth policies (from civil war) for the Indian Wars ... raid their compounds, killing non-combatants and destroying sources of food, loc4695-99:
Short of troops and wary of open battles, the army set out to deprive the Comanches of shelter and sustenance by destroying their winter camps, food supplies, and horse herds. By the early 1870s this kind of total warfare against entire populations was an established practice in the U.S. Army. Sherman had pioneered it against the Confederacy in his "March to the Sea," and Sheridan had introduced a stripped-down version of it to the plains in his 1868-69 winter campaign against the Cheyennes.

... snip ...

While most accounts have Sherman destorying food sources and other infrastructure ... he tried to keep his forces from massacring woman and children .... while Sheriden's indian campaign was more like genocide.

Generals South, Generals North: The Commanders of the Civil War Reconsidered
https://www.amazon.com/Generals-South-North-Commanders-Reconsidered-ebook/dp/B012A1WML6/

loc6085-88:
Despite the mixed results of his approach to cavalry and the moral ambiguity (in the Indian Wars verging on genocide) of his policy of waging war on civilians, it cannot be denied that Sheridan was a superb leader of troops, a fine tactician, and an aggressive fighter, who was especially effective in forcing Lee to surrender his Army of Northern Virginia in the closing weeks of the Civil War.

... snip ...

past ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#44 Qbasic

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

Is it a lost cause?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is it a lost cause?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers, comp.sys.raspberry-pi
Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2016 08:13:54 -0700
Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> writes:
Sigmas were (in)famous for having something like 224 interrupt vectors (when IBM 360/370 only had 7 and had to poll to determine which device interrupted). Each interrupt vector basically held a program status doubleword, so an exchange PSD made for fast response.

360/370 had svc, i/o, program, external/timer, machine-check interrupts ... loaded new psw (instruction address) from low store at same time as storing old psw (interrupted instruction address). interrupts stored information about the interrupt, in the case of i/o interrupt, it stored the interrupting device address (channel, controller, device) and the status (channel status word).

old ios3270 version of "green card" that I did q&d convert to html

low store layout for interrupting, old/new psw, csw, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html#4

channel status word (for i/o interrupt)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html#6

certain kinds of remote terminals had several terminals connected to single device address/port/line ... so there was additional work to find out which of several remote terminals ... sharing same line ... was responsible.

note that 360/370 interrupts didn't save/restore registers ... so there was standard interrupt handlers to store registers of the interrupted process and load registers for the interrupt handler.

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

"Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2016 07:20:55 -0700
Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> writes:
At the very least the average Congress Critter is a better public speaker. Sometimes mentioning the issues and offering plausible solutions helps getting elected too.

more like pandering to the listeners. local DC news will periodically refer to congress as Kabuki theater ... what you see for public consumption (including strife between the parties) has little to do with what is really going on (including being staged to keep public distracted from what is really going on) some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#kabuki.theater

there are studies that people become more entrenced in their political beliefs the more they are exposed to facts that are inconsistent with those beliefs. a couple past refs.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#39 Words Are Thinking Tools: Praxotype
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#52 Steve B sees what investors think
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#104 The SDS 92, its place in history?

from above:

When Beliefs and Facts Collide
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/upshot/when-beliefs-and-facts-collide.html
When Beliefs and Facts Collide
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/07/06/1229251/when-beliefs-and-facts-collide

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

Is it a lost cause?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is it a lost cause?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers, comp.sys.raspberry-pi
Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2016 11:52:27 -0700
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
When the Titan was at Cambridge students were encouraged to try to break the security and report success which sometimes led to a job with the department with instructions to close the hole they found.I just missed it but by all accounts the Titan was a hard nut to crack - by comparison hacking the 370 was discouraged as being too easy.

lets say that the standard batch systems were too easy ... I worked on cp67 as undergraduate in the 60s and didn't learn about these customers until much later (ref gone 404, but lives on at wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

tymshare provided their cms-based computer conferencing system to share as VMSHARE starting in aug1976 ... archives here
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare
sometimes(?) "404" ... but also at wayback machine
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

at least one of the agencies was quite visible/active from at least mi-70s to mid-80s ... share installation "codes" were three letter assignments ... and vmshare posts were "signed" by organization's installation code ... one of the three letter gov. agencies chose as their three letter installation code "CAD" (folklore it stands for "cloak and dagger").

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

early on made its online cp67 system available as service to other ibm installations as well students/staff/facultry in the boston/cambridge area.

science center had also ported apl\360 to cms as cms\apl and one set of users were the corporate business planners in armonk ... doing customer and market simulation models. They load the most valuable of corporate assets on the cambridge system ... detailed customer data ... and they needed to be strongly protected from non-employees (including student/staff/faclity from various educational institutions in the boston/cambridge area).

early on two early online cp67 service bureaus were formed by people leaving science center and MIT lincoln labs. Both operations fairly early moved up value chain providing financial information to wallstreet. They also had to demonstrate fairly strong security/integrity because the service was being used by various wallstreet competitors that viewed a lot of what they were doing as highly proprietary (somewhat analogous to the computerized HFT of today) ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

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

Multithreaded output to stderr and stdout

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Multithreaded output to stderr and stdout
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 2 Jul 2016 12:08:15 -0700
0000000433f07816-dmarc-request@LISTSERV.UA.EDU (Paul Gilmartin) writes:
I'm trying to envision how to use WAIT/POST to do that since no more than one task can be WAITing on a given ECB. I vaguely recall long ago writing code that used a variant of a CS example in PoOps to manage a queue of ECBs.

charlie had invented compare-and-swap when he was doing fine-grain multiprocessing locking for cp67 at the science center ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

initial attempts to get it included as part of 370 were repulsed, the 370 architecture owners said that the POK favorite son operating system people (os/360 and descendants) were saying that TS (test&set) was more than sufficient for multiprocessor support (they had been coming from a single global system spin-lock that was obtained by first-level interupt handlers).

thus was born the science center examples how multi-threaded applications (not necessarily running on multiprocessor) could use compare-and-swap ... that still appear in principles of operation.

early application uptake of compare-and-swap were the large multi-threaded DBMS and transaction processing. In the 80s, you start seeing other hardware platforms implementing instructions with comapre-and-swap semantics (especially those selling into transaction and DBMS markets).

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

Is it a lost cause?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is it a lost cause?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers, comp.sys.raspberry-pi
Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2016 12:36:42 -0700
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#93 Is it a lost cause?

closer to the sigma was series/1. the series/1 peachtree processor was significant more capable than what was selected for the 37x5 communication controllers. early 70s, the science center ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

strongly lobbied the communication group to choose the preachtree processor for the 3705 (rather than the processor they were designing) ... and lost.

the folklore is that the official series/1 RPS system had been done by some former kingston os/360 MFT people that moved to boca and tried to reimplement os/360 MFT ... which wasn't good match for the series/1. The folklore for the alternative EDX system was originally done by some summer co-op students at IBM San Jose Research physics lab.

Late 70s, early 80s, one of the baby bells did a 37x5/NCP emulator on series/1 .... the encapsulated SNA RUs in real network, emulated SNA sessions as "cross domain" (i.e. VTAM emulation with no-single-point-of-failue session management out in distributed series/1). Mid-80s, I got sucked into turning it into type-1 product. We tried to put in brickwalls anticipating the corporate dirty tricks that the communication group was well known for. What the communication group then did can only be described as truth is stranger than fiction.

Old post with part of presentation that I gave in Raleigh at SNA architecture review board meeting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#67

part of presentation by one of the original implementors at '86 common user group meeting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#70

continue the lost cause theme ... periodically repeated, in the late 80s, a senior disk engineer got a talk scheduled at the world-wide, internal-only, annual, communication group conference, supposedly on 3174 performance ... but opened the talk with the statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The issue was that the communication group had corporate strategic "ownership" of everything that crossed datacenter walls and they were strongly fighting off client/server and distributed computing trying to preserve their (emulated) dumb termina paradigm and install base. The disk division was seeing data fleeing the datacenter to more distributed computing platforms with drop in disk sales. The disk division had come up with a number of solutions to address the problem, but they were constantly vetoed by the disk division. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal gerstner posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner

a few short years later, the company goes into the red and was being reorged into the 13 "baby blues" ... in preparation for breaking up the company.

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

Trust in Government Is Collapsing Around the World

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Trust in Government Is Collapsing Around the World
Date: 2 July 2016
Blog: Facebook
Trust in Government Is Collapsing Around the World
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/07/trust-institutions-trump-brexit/489554/

disclaimer: 1999 I was asked to try and help prevent the coming economic mess. securitized mortgages had been used during the S&L crisis to obfuscate fraudulent mortgages and I was asked to look at improving the integrity of mortgage supporting documents as countermeasure. They then find that they can pay the rating agencies for triple-A ratings. The triple-A ratings mean that they can start doing no-documentation liar loans, securitize, pay for triple-A and sell as fast as they can make them (no longer needing to care about buyers qualifications or loan quality). The triple-A ratings also open the market to operations that are restricted to "safe" investments (like large public & private pension funds). Federal Reserve, FDIC, and SEC that have jurisdiction do nothing. Oct2008 congressional hearings into the pivotal role that the rating agencies played say that both the sellers and the rating agencies knew they weren't worth triple-A. This is largely the enabler to do over $27T done 2001-2008. A tv reporter during the hearings comments that he believes that there would never be any criminal prosecution.

With no-documentation mortgages, there is no longer any issue of supporting documentation integrity. From the law of unintended consequences, the largest fines for the too big to fail are for the robo-signing mills fabricating the documentation for the (no-documentation) mortgages.

A decade later, Jan2009 I'm asked to HTML'ize the Pecora hearings (30s senate hearings into '29 crash that resulted in criminal convictions and Glass-Steagall) with lots of internal HREFs and URLs between what happened this time and what happened then (references that the new congress might have an appetite to do something). I work on it awhile and then get a call saying it won't be needed after all (references to enormous piles of wallstreet money totally burying capital hill).

Note that in the wake of ENRON, the rhetoric in congress was that Sarbanes-Oxley would prevent future ENRONs and guarantee executives and auditors did jail time, but it required SEC to do something. Possibly because even GAO didn't think SEC was doing anything, GAO started doing reports of fraudulent public company financial filings (even showing increase after SOX goes into effect) and nobody doing jailtime. Less well known is that SOX also had requirement for SEC to do something about the rating agencies .... but they did as little about them as the public company fraudulent financial filings.

Every now and then local DC press will refer to congress as Kabuki Theater .... what you see publicly has little to do with what is really going on. In this case, Congress can get a lot of public press on things like SOX&Enron, when they know that the responsible regulatory agencies aren't actually going to do anything. Something similar showed up in the Madoff congressional hearings, they had testimony from the person that had tried unsuccessfully for a decade to try and get SEC to do something about Madoff.

toxic CDO posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo
sarbanes-oxley posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#sarbanes-oxley
fraudulent financial filings posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#financial.reporting.fraud.fraud
enron posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#enron
madoff posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#madoff
Kabuki Theater posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#kabuki.theater
regulatory capture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#regulatory.capture

2001-2008 there was over $27T done in triple-A rated toxic CDOs. large amounts being sold to public & private pension funds restricted to only dealing in safe investments ... as a result loosing significant amount of their value .... there is now lots of obfuscation and misdirection regarding how much pensions there should be.

2010 CBO report that after congress allows fiscal responsibility act (requires that spending can't exceed tax revenue) to expire in 2002, there is $6T cut in tax revenue and $6T increase in spending for $12T budget gap (2002-2009, first time taxes were cut to not pay for wars). Since 2010, only modest fixes in budget so deficit is now over $18T (still less than the $27+T done by wallstreet).

Closest is Medicare Part-D, first major bill in 2003. CBS 60mins does expose of 18 republicans responsible for getting bill through congress, just before final vote, they make a one line change (that prevents competitive bidding) and prevent CBO from distributing effects of the change. 60mins shows drugs from VA (that allows competitive bidding) that are 1/3rd the price under Part-D. US Comptroller General says that Part-D becomes a long-term $40T swamping all other budget items (and starts to include in speeches that no members of congress are capable of middle school arithmetic for what they are doing to the budget). 60mins that 6months after the bill passes that all 18 have resigned and are on drug industry payroll.

fiscal responsibilit act
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#fiscal.responsibility.act
medicare part-d
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo
comptroller general
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#comptroller.general

Glass-Steagall (from Pecora hearings) separated unregulated risky investment banking from (FDIC) regulated safe depository institutions. The original rhetoric in congress was that primary purpose of GLBA was if you already had banking charter you got to keep it, but if you didn't, you couldn't get one (aka purpose was to protect banks from new competition with new technology upsetting the status quo).

The president of AMEX was in competition to be next CEO and wins. The looser takes his protegee and leaves, going to Baltimore taking over what has been described as a loan sharking business. They make some number of other acquisitions eventually taking over Citibank in violation of Glass-Steagall. Greenspan gives them an exemption while they lobby congress for repeal of Glass-Steagall (removing separation between FDIC insured/regulated and unregulated risky investment banking, enabling too big to fail) ... which is tacked on to GLBA. Folklore is that wallstreet paid congress $250M for GLBA, about evenly divided between the two parties, the original bill passed purely along party lines and the president was going to veto it, they then go back and tack on some other stuff and eventually passes with a (veto-proof) 90-8. Later the protegee leaves citibank and becomes CEO of another of the top four too big to fail.

The end of 2008, just the four largest too big to fail are carrying $5.2T in (investment banking) off-book toxic assets; some $50B had been sold a couple months earlier at 22cents on the dollar ... if the assets were forced to be brought back on the books, the institutions would be declared insolvent and forced to be liquidated. The Federal Reserve does a bailout behind the scenes ... buying trillions in toxic assets at 98cents on the dollar and providing tens of trillions in ZIRP funds (TARP with only $700B appropriated is pure sham). Since the unregulated risky investment banking would have brought down the regulated depository institutions, that had to be prevented ... giving rise to the term too big to fail. Apparently this provided a sense of impunity (systemic risk) and later they were found to also be laundering money for drug cartels and terrorists and weren't prosecuted ... giving rise to terms too big to prosecute and too big to jail. It didn't stop with the money laundering, they've also not been criminally prosecuted for manipulating LIBOR, FOXEX and commodity markets, providing tax evasion services for wealthy clients, doing their own tax evasion and other criminal activity. They've been fined a total of $300B during the period for the criminal activity, but the joke is that it is so small compared to the amounts involved, it is just viewed as cost of running a criminal enterprise.

Glass-Steagall and/or Pecora Hearings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
too big to fail (too big to prosecute, too big to jail)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
greenspan
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#greenspan
money laundering
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#money.laundering
LIBOR
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#libor
tax evasion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#tax.evasion
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#zirp

for other drift: AMEX is in competition with KKR for private equity take-over of RJR and KKR wins (note that the industry had gotten such a bad reputation during the S&L crisis that they renamed the industry private equity and junk bonds became "high yield" bonds). KKR runs into trouble with RJR and hires away the president of AMEX to turn it around
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate:_The_Fall_of_RJR_Nabisco
IBM has gone into the red and was being reorganized into the 13 "baby blues" in preparation for breaking up the company. The board then hires away the former president of AMEX to reverse the breakup and resurrect the company ... using some of the same techniques used at RJR
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml

The former president of AMEX then leaves and becomes head of another one of the largest private equity companies (which will do private equity take-over of Snowden's employer). Private equity have been characterized as "house flipping" except they place the loan for the company purchase on the victim's books ... putting the company under enormous pressure to service the debt (cut corners and make money every way possible). The large private equity companies are free to lobby on behalf of their owned companies (ordinarily a company only doing business with the gov. can't use money from gov. contracts to lobby congress). There was enormous outsourcing to such companies last decade, 70% of intelligence budget and over half the people is now outsourced. The for-profit companies doing security clearances were found to be filling out the paper work but not doing the background checks.
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/
Private equity can flip a company for less than they paid and still walk away with boat loads of money. Victim companies in private equity mill have accounted for over half the corporate defaults.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmons.html?_r=0
for whatever reason the defaults don't show up on the credit rating of the original (private equity) borrowers ... but their victim companies

The company responsible for the OPM problems is owned by a private equity company with long history of problems.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/24/opm-contractor-veritas/
the enormous rise of outsourcing last decade, especially to private equity victim companies, goes along with the spreading success of failure culture where they make more money off a series of failures (than correctly doing it the first time).
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/
note that KKR is the company that hires Petreaus when he resigns in disgrace from the CIA.

private equity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
success of failure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#success.of.failuree

Oraiginally paying for triple-A eliminated any reason to care about borrower's qualifications or loan quality. However, they then find they can design toxic CDOs to fail, pay for triple-A, sell to their victims, and then take out CDS gambling bets they would fail (creating enormous demand for bad loans, before they just didn't care whether they were good or bad). Now in addition to the fees and commissions on over $27T in securitized loans ... they also have a take on the CDS gambling bets. AIG was the largest holder of these CDS gambling bets and negotiating to pay off at 50cents on the dollar when the Secretary of the Treasury steps in and says they have to sign an agreement that they can't sue those making the gambling bets and take TARP funds to pay off at face value (which may have been the whole original reason for TARP funds). The largest recipient of TARP funds is AIG and the largest recipient of face-value payoffs is the company previously headed by the secretary of the treasury. (there was joke last decade that dept. of treasury was the company's branch office in washington)

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

Trust in Government Is Collapsing Around the World

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Trust in Government Is Collapsing Around the World
Date: 2 July 2016
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#98 Trust in Government Is Collapsing Around the World

trivia: "team B" fabricated Russian capability (to justify enormous military budget increase) but the CIA director won't agree to the analysis. White House Chief of Staff Rumsfeld asks the CIA director to resign and replaces him with somebody that would agree to the analysis, Bush1. Rumsfeld then becomes SECDEF and is replaced as chief of staff by his assistant Cheney.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_B

80s, US is supporting Iraq in the Iran/Iraq war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War
including supplying WMDs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran-Iraq_war
former CIA director and vp bush1 says he doesn't know anything about
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_affair
because he was fulltime administration point person deregulating financial industry ... creating S&L crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis
along with other members of his family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis#Silverado_Savings_and_Loan
and another
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE0D81E3BF937A25753C1A966958260
who then: Lehman's Gift To Jeb Bush For Funneling Pension Money: A $1.3 Million Consulting "Job"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-19/lehmans-gift-jeb-bush-funneling-pension-money-13-million-consulting-job
more recent: Wall Street Fine Print: Retirees Want FBI Probe Of Pension Investment Deals
http://www.ibtimes.com/wall-street-fine-print-retirees-want-fbi-probe-pension-investment-deals-2250476

S&L had 30,000 criminal referrals and 1,000 criminal convictions with jail time (unless you had friends/family in high places). Economic mess is 70 times larger than the S&L crisis but has had no criminal convictions (proportional there should be 70,000 criminal convictions with jail time).

more trivia: early 90s, sat. recon analyst notified administration that Saddam was preparing to invade Kuwait. The administration said Saddam would do no such thing and proceeded to discredit the analyst. Then the analyst notifies that Saddam was preparing to invade Saudi Arabia, the administration now has to choose between Iraq and Saudi Arabia (Bush1 is president and Cheney is now SECDEF)
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Strange-Journey-Intelligence-ebook/dp/B004NNV5H2/

Last decade, the cousin of White House chief of staff (Card) is dealing with Iraq in the UN and given proof that the WMDs have been decommissioned ... which is forwarded to Card, Powell and others ... before it can be made public, the cousin is locked up in military hospital. (Bush2 is president, Cheney is VP, and Rumsfeld is SECDEF again). The cousin eventually gets out and publishes a book in 2010.
https://www.amazon.com/EXTREME-PREJUDICE-Terrifying-Story-Patriot-ebook/dp/B004HYHBK2/

NY times series from fall 2014 about finding the decommissioned WMDs (tracing back to the US) and the information was kept classified for a decade (corroborates details in cousin's book published 2010)
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html

even more trivia: In the 50s, USAF fabricated the "bomber gap" with the Russians justifying huge increase in USAF budget. important thing about the U2 flts was that it debunked the USAF "bomber gap" ... possibly contributing to Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex in his goodby speech.

military-industrial(-congressional) complex
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex

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

Multithreaded output to stderr and stdout

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Multithreaded output to stderr and stdout
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 2 Jul 2016 17:33:39 -0700
mike.lamartina@MCLEANSOFT.COM (Mike La Martina) writes:
After reading the story of Compare and Swap for, lo, all these many years, I am sorry but I must ask.

Charlie who?


aka Charlie's initials are CAS ... part of the effort was to choose mnemonic (compare-and-swap) that were Charlie's initials
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

IBM funds MIT project athena for $25M and then DEC funds another $25M, both IBM and DEC get an associate director of Project Athena. Charlie leaves the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
and becomes the IBM associate director of Project athena (pg 10):
http://simson.net/ref/athena/Q_and_A_Draft_October31_1986.pdf

(don't list a DEC person yet, pg3 list financing of $25M by both IBM & DEC)

another ref at the bottom here
http://tech-insider.org/unix/research/1987/0901.html

In late80s/early90s time-frame one of the things we got to do was IBM periodic review Project Athena (at that time both DEC and IBM had assosciate directors). One of the visits was in the middle of designing Kerberos cross-domain support (that I was asked to sit thru). decade later was sitting thru industry presentation on SAML implementation for coalition forces ... and pointed out that their SAML message flows were the same as the Kerberos cross-domain message flows.
http://web.mit.edu/kerberos/
http://www.kerberos.org/
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Assertion_Markup_Language

Other trivia ... with the legal actions and 23June1969 unbundling announcement ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

IBM also cuts way back on its univ. programs and educational discounts. With the winding down of these efforts in the early 80s, IBM creates the univ. ACIS organization, initially has $300M fund to support univ. activities. Some of it goes to fund much of BITNET (& EARN)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

where this (ibm-main) mailing list originated. $25M for Project Atena comes from ACIS. There is also $50M for CMU (MACH ... shows up in NeXT and apple/OS when Jobs returns; camelot, andrew filesystem, etc) and many other univ. programs.

one of the biggest users of kerberos is:
https://software.intel.com/sites/manageability/AMT_Implementation_and_Reference_Guide/WordDocuments/microsoftactivedirectoryandkerberossupport.htm

originally implemented under contract by small corporation in seattle area that specialized in kerberos. The CEO of the small corporation at the time, had previously been head of the POK mainframe division ... and later was head of the PC division and involved in some of the OS2/windows issues
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2

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

Is it a lost cause?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is it a lost cause?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers, comp.sys.raspberry-pi
Date: Sun, 03 Jul 2016 07:49:03 -0700
The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
MMm. well lets say you construct a CALL TABLE or JUMP TABLE ...and modify the contents.

or even have the power to write to the PC stack ...

you don't need explicit machine instructions to effect self modifiable code.

And indeed as multitasking scheduler is in a sense self modifying code.

Effect an interruption, save the context, switch the stack pointer, restore new context and IRET.


performance issue shows up in machines that prefetch and decode a block of instructions ... where instruction modified may have already been fetched and decoded. also shows up in machines with separate I&D caches where I-cache is assumed to be read/only ... and storage modifications only show up as D-cache (I-cache issues similar to I-stream having already fetched and decode instruction before modification occurs).

recent (Boyd) thread with post about having done dynamic adaptive resource management (as undergraduate in the 60s, IBM picked up and included in CP67
https://slightlyeastofnew.com/2016/06/29/bookends/

past posts on dynamic adaptive resource management (sometimes referred to as "fair share" because "fair share" was default resource policy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

Boyd posts & URLs from around the web
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

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

"Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: "Computer & Automation" later issues--anti-establishment thrust
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Jul 2016 08:13:17 -0700
mausg writes:
Winston Churchill wrote something about that "Democracy is not a perfect system, but there is no alternitive"

Amazon has had (some one day only) free or nearly free offers on many of Churchill's books, ran across a reference in book he wrote in the 20s explaining much of the current mess in middle east ... started with wanting to switch from 13.5in guns to 15in guns.

loc2012-14:
From the beginning there appeared a ship carrying ten 15-inch guns, and therefore at least 600 feet long with room inside her for engines which would drive her 21 knots and capacity to carry armour which on the armoured belt, the turrets and the conning tower would reach the thickness unprecedented in the British Service of 13 inches.

loc2080-83:
For instance, nearly a hundred men were continually occupied in the Lion shovelling coal from one steel chamber to another without ever seeing the light either of day or of the furnace fires. The use of oil made it possible in every type of vessel to have more gun-power and more speed for less size or less cost. It alone made it possible to realize the high speeds in certain types which were vital to their tactical purpose. All these advantages were obtained simply by burning oil instead of coal under the boilers.

loc2087-89:
To build any large additional number of oil-burning ships meant basing our naval supremacy upon oil. But oil was not found in appreciable quantities in our islands. If we required it, we must carry it by sea in peace or war from distant countries.

loc2123-24:
An unbroken series of consequences conducted us to the Anglo-Persian Oil Convention.

... snip ...

which continues through WW1, the interval between WW1 and WW2, WW2, up through to the 50s ... including Kermit Roosevelt's 1953 overthrow of the elected government to install the Shah (who would not interrupt Britain's supply of oil)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Roosevelt,_Jr.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
... and Schwarzkoph (senior) training of the secret police to help keep Shah in power
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVAK

Iran eventually revolts under the cruel regime ... which is at least part of the motivation for supporting Saddam in the Iran/Iraq war (including supplying WMDs)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran-Iraq_war

early 90s, sat. recon analyst notified administration that Saddam was preparing to invade Kuwait. The administration said Saddam would do no such thing and proceeded to discredit the analyst. Then the analyst notifies that Saddam was preparing to invade Saudi Arabia, he administration now has to choose between Iraq and Saudi Arabia
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Strange-Journey-Intelligence-ebook/dp/B004NNV5H2/

early last decade, cousin of White House chief of staff Card, was dealing with Iraq in the UN and given proof that the WMDs (tracing back to the US in the 80s) were decommissioned. The information was provided to Card, Powell and others, however before it went public, cousin was committed to Texas Military Hospital
https://www.amazon.com/EXTREME-PREJUDICE-Terrifying-Story-Patriot-ebook/dp/B004HYHBK2/

NY times series from fall 2014 about finding the decommissioned WMDs (tracing back to the US) and the information was kept classified for a decade (corroborates details in Cards cousin's book published 2010)
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html

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

Multithreaded output to stderr and stdout

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Multithreaded output to stderr and stdout
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 3 Jul 2016 08:46:37 -0700
jcewing@ACM.ORG (Joel C. Ewing) writes:
The plethora of links at the referenced URLs never even gave a direct answer to the question "Charlie Who".

One of the paragraphs at the many sub-links at the given URLs refers to him as "Charlie S.", another as "Charlie Salisbury", so apparently it was a Charlie A. Salisbury who worked for IBM somewhere in the realm of hardware design. I found some non-garlic.com links suggesting there is/was at some point a Charlie Salisbury at IBM as an Engineering Manager or a Service Delivery Manager, but no indication whether this was a reference to the same CAS Charlie. IBM could easily have had multiple employees over the years with the same first-last name.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#96 Multithreaded output to stderr and stdout
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#100 Multithreaded output to stderr and stdout

specifically said that CAS Charlie was later IBM associate director at MIT Project Athena ... and provided MIT Project Athena URL references.

of course there are lots of other Charlies in the world (even at IBM), which is true regardless of how I might have answered the request.

other trivia ... first ran into Charlie in the late 60s when Univ. set me to CP67 conference in silicon valley. There were a number of silicon valley area custmers at the time that had gotten 360/67s

Charlie was IBM SE on the Lockheed (MOL, manned orbital laboratory) program which had gotten a triplex 360/67 ... which had some enhancements somewhat analogous to the 360/65s for the FAA air traffic control program. On standard multiprocessor 360/67 the configuration controller switch settings were available from the control registers (see detailed information in 360/67 functional characteristics at bitsavers also shown in 360/67 "blue card"). For the Lockheed MOL triplex 360/67 it was also possible for software to make configuration changes by loading different values in the control registers.

At the time, there was also a silicon chip company running cp/67 on 360/67 and Navy Postgraduate school (in Monterey) was running cp/67 on 360/67.

other trivia ... before ms/dos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS
there was seattle computer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Computer_Products
before seattle computer there was CP/M,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M
before developing CP/M, kildall worked with CP/67 at npg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Postgraduate_School

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

Is it a lost cause?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is it a lost cause?
Newsgroups: comp.sys.raspberry-pi, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Jul 2016 13:17:21 -0700
Lew Pitcher <lew.pitcher@digitalfreehold.ca> writes:
- an IMS & DB2 based Online Banking system that guaranteed sub-second response time for all financial and inquiry tansactions to well over 10000 active VTAM-supported terminals spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific in Canada, down the eastern seaboard in the US, and in many foreign countries (such as Japan, England, Spain, etc.) - a VTAM/TCPIP/MQSeries-based data transport (that, for reasons beyond my paygrade was written in COBOL) that moved financial transactions between internal mainframe systems, external mainframe systems, customer-based mainframe systems, and our internal web services, again with sub-second response time.

IMS originally done DBMS for apollo program
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Information_Management_System

IMS group was later moved to STL (since renamed silicon valley lab). Original sql/relational was System/R done on vm370 370/145 at san jose research ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

The follow-on to IMS DBMS was suppose to be EAGLE ... and while the corporation was preoccupied with EAGLE, it was possible to do tech transfer to Endicott for release as SQL/DS. Later when EAGLE imploded, they asked how fast would it take to port relational to MVS ... which is eventually released as DB2, originally for analytical & decision support *ONLY*).

Along the way Jim Gray left IBM Research for Tandem ... and was palming stuff on to me ... consulting with the IMS group ... and helping support Bank of America ... an early System/R customer.

I've mentioned this reference to meeting in Ellison's conference room Jan1992 on HA/CMP cluster scale-up. The Oracel senior VP in the meeting would periodically tell the story that he did the SQL/DS tech transfer from Endicott to STL for DB2
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

Along the way, the (mainframe) DB2 group was complaining if I was allowed to continue, it would be *at least* 5yrs ahead of anything they were doing. Within a few weeks of the Ellison meeting, cluster scale-up was transferred, announced as IBM supercomputer and we were told that we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors.

old cluster scale-up email around Jan1992 period
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

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

a little x-over with this post in the thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#97 Is it a lost cause?

my wife was in the JES group and worked on loosely-coupled JES2 & JES3 (co-author of JESUS which specified how to combine all the necessary features of JES2 & JES3 into single product ... which never happened). She was then con'ed into going to POK to be the (mainframe) loosely-coupled architect (mainframe for cluster). While there she did Peer-Coupled Shared Data architecture ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

she didn't remain long because 1) little uptake (except for IMS hotstandby until SYSPLEX and Parallel SYSPLEX) and 2) communication group was constantly trying to force her into using SNA/VTAM for loosely-coupled operation.

In the mid-80s, IMS hot-standby got really interested in the SNA/NCP/VTAM emulator work. The problem was that while IMS hot-standby could fall over in minutes, VTAM session restart time (on the standby processor) grew non-linear, 20+k terminals could take 90mins elapsed time. It was straight-forward for the SNA/NCP/VTAM emulation to maintain (active) shadow sessions on the IMS standby processor so take-over for everything was a couple of minutes (instead of an hour or more).

note that in the late70/early80s, there was a lot of work on subsecond interactive response. YKT research was touting they had the best online systems in the company with avg. quarter second system response. The issue was that local channel-attached 3272 controlers with 3277 terminals had .086 hardware response. To get quarter second human response, needed .164 system response. I had a number of online systems with 90th precentile .11 sec trivial system response ... for .196 second human response ... old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19

problem was that the replacement for 3272/3277 was 3274/3278 ... where they had moved a lot of electronics out of the terminal head back into the (shared) controller ... and hardware response tended to be between .283 to .530 seconds (for best case, fastest, direct channel attached 3274 controller) ... making it impossible to achieve quarter second response seen by the human user. We made complaints to the 3274 about the worse human factors for 3274/3278 ... and were eventually told that 3274/3278 wasn't designed for interactive computing ... but for "data entry".

past posts mentioning Thadhani publishing studies on showing improved human productivity with .25sec (or better) response (seen by human).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#53 3270 Terminal
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#84 Is there an SPF setting to turn CAPS ON like keyboard key?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#12 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#13 From 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/2012b.html#2 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#19 Writing article on telework/telecommuting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#15 cp67, vm370, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#37 Why File transfer through TSO IND$FILE is slower than TCP/IP FTP ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#37 PDP-10 and Vax, was System/360--50 years--the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#1 3270 response & channel throughput
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#55 Dualcase vs monocase. Was: Article for the boss
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#44 System Response
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#127 How Much Bandwidth do we have?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#4 You count as an old-timer if (was Re: Origin of the phrase "XYZZY")
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#8 You count as an old-timer if (was Re: Origin of the phrase "XYZZY")

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

How Private Contractors Have Created a Shadow NSA

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: How Private Contractors Have Created a Shadow NSA
Date: 4 July 2016
Blog: Facebook
How Private Contractors Have Created a Shadow NSA
https://www.thenation.com/article/how-private-contractors-have-created-shadow-nsa/

when Gerstner left CEO of IBM he went to carlyle ... "the private-equity firm that had become the nation's ninth-largest defense contractor by 2001." ... Carlyle LBOs include BAH (Snowden's employer).

Among them was Halliburton, the Texas oil-services and logistics firm. In 1995, after retiring as George H.W. Bush's defense secretary, Dick Cheney became the CEO of Halliburton. Over the next five years, he transformed the company into one of the world's largest military contractors. Around the same time, the elder Bush was hired as a senior adviser to the Carlyle Group. By the time Cheney became George W. Bush's vice president in 2001, outsourcing was official policy, and the migration of senior-level government officials into the defense and intelligence industries was standard practice


... snip ...

and increasing outsourcing of gov. to for-profit companies ... especially those that had been acquired by private-equity operations.

as well as spreading success of failure culture among the for-profit beltway bandits
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/

especially the private-equity owned, for-profit companies that are under intense pressure to generate money anyway/everyway possible .... in the following the companies that security clearances were outsourced to, were just filling out the paperwork and not actually doing the background checks
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/

Gerstner
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
private equity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
success of failure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#success.of.failuree

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







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