List of Archived Posts

2008 Newsgroup Postings (01/24 - 02/07)

folklore indeed
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
folklore indeed
folklore indeed
folklore indeed
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Current Officers
Diversity ( was Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?)
more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
New Opcodes
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Kerberized authorization service
New Opcodes
New Opcodes
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
New Opcodes
Diversity ( was Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?)
Diversity ( was Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?)
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Current Officers
Current Officers
Move over US -- China to be new driver of world's economy and innovation
New Opcodes
Current Officers
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Young mainframers' group gains momentum
Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
Data Erasure Products
Data Erasure Products
No Glory for the PDP-15
Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
Current Officers
Current Officers
Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bel?
Kernels
Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
Current Officers
Current Officers
Govt demands password to personal computer
Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee
more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
Morten Reistad? Marine Cables to Mid East cut?
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Current Officers
No Glory for the PDP-15
Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
What happened to resumable instructions?
Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
Fixing US broadband: $100 billion for fiber to every home
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
No Glory for the PDP-15
Palestine (was 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor"
Horses and Cars
Palestine (was 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor"
Neglected IT Tasks May Have Led to Bank Meltdown
Palestine (was 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor"
CPU time differences for the same job
WSCHED and WSYNC
Random thoughts
Random thoughts
CPU time differences for the same job
CPU time differences for the same job
CPU time differences for the same job
Human error tops the list of security threats
Does ARP Belong to Layer 2 Or Layer 3 OSI Reference Model???
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
CPU time differences for the same job
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
CPU time differences for the same job

folklore indeed

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 19:35:26
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Virtualization still hot, death of antivirus software imminent, VC says
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/121707-how-the-feds-are-dropping-the-ball-side-2.html

from above:

Another trend Maeder predicts for 2008 is, at long last, the death of antivirus software and other security products that allow employees to install and download any programs they'd like onto their PCs, and then attempt to weed out the malicious code. Instead, products that protect endpoints by only allowing IT-approved code to be installed will become the norm.

... snip ...


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#39 folklore indeed

along the same lines ... doesn't actually totally preclude download & install

Feds Say 'Adios' to Admin Rights on Windows; The Federal Desktop Core Configuration mandate for Windows XP and Vista clients goes into effect on February 1
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=144080

from above:
"This is definitely a move in the right direction. Even with the increase in stealthy attacks, 90 percent of attacks are still using known vulnerabilities" and many agencies aren't keeping up with those vulnerabilities, says Amrit Williams, CTO of BigFix. "This will let them assess their [desktop] environments against those configurations, then enforce them, and remediate machines."

... snip ...

Federal Desktop Core Configuration; FDCC
http://fdcc.nist.gov/

from above:
Under the direction of OMB and in collaboration with DHS, DISA, NSA, USAF, and Microsoft, NIST has provided the following resources to help agencies test, implement, and deploy the Microsoft Windows XP and Vista Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) baseline.

... snip ...

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:14:47
Lon <lon.stowell@comcast.net> writes:
NOTE: It looks like Toyota is conceding first place to GM for one more year. Saw a blurb in a financial rag that there may have been a misstatement of figures.

original post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#80 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

from earlier today ... GM Still No. 1, but not by much

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#76 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

In Global Race, G.M. Wins by a Day of Pickup Sales
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/business/24auto.html?ref=business

from above:
In a global market of more than 70 million vehicles, the difference between the two sales numbers, about 3,000, is roughly the number of pickup trucks that G.M. sells each day in the United States.

... snip ...

Toyota catches GM in global sales
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080123/ap_on_bi_ge/gm_toyota

from above:
Toyota is setting up more overseas plants and aims to sell 9.85 million vehicles this year, or 5 percent more than in 2007, under an ambitious plan announced last month. Toyota executives also project better U.S. sales this year.

GM would not give a global sales forecast for this year.


... snip ...

folklore indeed

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 04:53:14
kkt <kkt@zipcon.net> writes:
It will be interesting to see how much that affects worker's productivity. It seems like a lot of why PCs won over timeshared systems is that people could configure their own.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#0 folklore indeed

vm/cms timesharing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

offered quite a bit of personalization ... in fact, the commercial vm370-based timesharing service bureaus tended to create "padded cell" cms environments to restrict their customers from doing too much personalization (and shooting themselves in the foot). some of the more recent virtual appliance stuff could also be considered along the lines of the cms "padded cell" work.

for instance, the xmas exec incident, recent ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#87 CompUSA to Close after Jan. 1st 2008

on bitnet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

was a year before the morris worm on the internet

one of the places that vm/cms came up short ... were [are]as like the half-duplex 3270 terminal interface vis-a-vis human factors that you could get out of dedicated interface on pc.

in the internal "adventure" game incident of the late 70s ... there were programs developed for scanning personal CMS areas for copies of the game (for eradication). we made the case that public game area should be maintained with published management guidelines ... since the scanning was resulting in individuals obfuscating copies of the game to thwart the scanning.

another example was the author of rex(x) had developed a multi-user space war game that had interfaces that worked between cms users on the same machine and also supported concurrent operation over the network ... and deployed on the internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

some users reverse engineered the interface API and built an "automated" player program that had faster than human reaction times and began dominating the games. as a countermeasure there was an energy use penalty (that was added) which increased significantly as the elapsed time between operations decreased (below a nominally expected human reaction threshold).

past references to adventure game on cms:
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/2004g.html#49 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#57 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#0 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#1 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#2 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#4 Adventure game (was:PL/? History (was Hercules))
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#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

misc. past posts mentioning virtual appliance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#46 To RISC or not to RISC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#25 To RISC or not to RISC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#6 Multics on Vmware ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#8 vmshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#36 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#26 user level TCP implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#48 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#67 Operating systems are old and busted
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#70 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#3 Hypervisors May Replace Operating Systems As King Of The Data Center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#25 VMware: New King Of The Data Center?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#4 Why do we think virtualization is new?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#26 Oracle Introduces Oracle VM As It Leaps Into Virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#35 Oracle Introduces Oracle VM As It Leaps Into Virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#39 New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#41 New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#81 IBM mainframe history, was Floating-point myths
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#75 virtual appliance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#80 software preservation volunteers ( was Re: LINC-8 Front Panel Questions)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#59 old internal network references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#39 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#52 China's Godson-2 processor takes center stage

folklore indeed

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 08:49:07
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#0 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#2 folklore indeed

earlier post about personal computers being deployed into different enivronments with different requirements:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#39 folklore indeed

Control user installs of software
http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20080125/tc_infoworld/94778

from above:
San Francisco - I've written many times over the years, including as recently as last week, that letting users execute and install their own software will always allow viruses, worms, and Trojans to be successfully installed. Traditionally, I've recommended that users not have admin or root access, that they let system administrators choose what software is allowed and what is blocked. But this recommendation breaks down for several reasons.

... snip ...

folklore indeed

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:18:57
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Virtualization still hot, death of antivirus software imminent, VC says
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/121707-how-the-feds-are-dropping-the-ball-side-2.html

from above:

Another trend Maeder predicts for 2008 is, at long last, the death of antivirus software and other security products that allow employees to install and download any programs they'd like onto their PCs, and then attempt to weed out the malicious code. Instead, products that protect endpoints by only allowing IT-approved code to be installed will become the norm.

... snip ...


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#39 folklore indeed
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#0 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#2 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#3 folklore indeed

Growing virus production taxes security firms
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/25/malware_surge/

from above:
Malware samples reached 5,490,960 in 2007, five times more than the 972,606 recorded in 2006; which was itself almost three times more than the 333,425 recorded in 2005. The figures, compiled by AV-Test.org, represent a growth in the number of variants of the same piece of malware rather than the creation of numerous new malware strains.

... snip ...

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:36:12
jmfbahciv writes:
I do not understand why people are so incapable of planning ahead.

brain dysfunction not being able to transfer from short-term to long-term memory? ... so they lack any sense of consequence.

recent post referring to lane change brownian motion behavior
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#18 Traffic Jam Mystery Solved By Mathematicians
and earlier posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#17
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#4
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#7
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#5
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#12
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#34

there was some recent article about a sense of consequences tends to improve as an individual matures (possibly maturity is equated with being able to understand consequences?).

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 11:54:46
jmfbahciv writes:
I do not understand why people are so incapable of planning ahead.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#5 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

recently somewhat related news item ... possibly lots of mutants running around ...

Some People Just Never Learn
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/24/2220209

from above:
The scientists demonstrated that men carrying the A1 mutation are less successful at learning to avoid mistakes than men who do not carry this genetic mutation. This finding has the potential to improve our understanding of the causes of addictive and compulsive behaviors.

... snip ...

Some People Never Learn
http://www.tfot.info/news/1094/some-people-never-learn.html

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 06:37:17
krw <kkk@kkk.kkk> writes:
Nope. He and the bank have an understanding. He doesn't loan money and they don't sell cars.

actually there have been jokes about automobiles just being an excuse to sell loans.

recent post about cars being execuse to sell loans, ILCs and even automobile companies picking up ILC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#58 folklore indeed

there has been uproar, publicity and lobbying about Walmart picking up an ILC. Walmart position is that they would use it purely for the acquiring part of the credit card business. merchant interchange fees are to the acquiring institutions, the associations, and the issuing institutions; having their own acquiring institution would cover at least that part of the interchange fees.

lobbying is that Walmart would leverage the ILC to get into the consumer side of financial services.

misc. past posts mentioning interchange fees
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#16 AMD to leave x86 behind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#23 Value of an old IBM PS/2 CL57 SX Laptop
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#27 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#38 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#56 T.J. Maxx data theft worse than first reported
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#17 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#47 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#59 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#72 Free Checking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#35 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/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

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 07:20:49
krw <kkk@kkk.kkk> writes:
Didn't you notice the threadlets about the PRICE of diesel fuel (it's about 25-30% more expensive than gasoline here)? It is certainly not cheaper to drive a diesel car in much/most of the US.

more topic drift:

Startup Says It Can Make Ethanol for $1 a Gallon, and Without Corn
http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/news/2008/01/ethanol23

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

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 09:58:04
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
I would claim that Boyd applied his fighter pilot & "dog fight" background to (ground based) maneuver warfare ... including bypassing fixed fortifications. There have been numerous claims that way too much cannon fodder was wasted not doing that in the ww2 pacific campaign.

recent boyd reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#45 windows time service

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


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#71 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

during the 70s & 80s boyd spoke at academies and war colleges. i've noted before that during desert storm, you saw on tv some number of young army & marine majors/cols repeating maneuver warfare philosophy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#8 scheduling & dynamic adaptive

US News & Report also had an article on the subject referring to them as Boyd's "Jedi Knights".

there was some comments that the problem in the run-up to the current conflict was Boyd had died (in the interval ... being credited with the strategic battle plan for the earlier conflict)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#13 News Release

Marines sponsored the 2007 Boyd conference:
http://www.defense-and-society.org/boyd/2007_conference/vandergriff_richards_report.htm

from above:
As one of the senior USMC officers put it, the secret to applying Boyd is to absorb his philosophy and not try to reduce him to another process. Although the exact nature of future conflict is impossible to predict, and semantic hair-splitting is unlikely to prove productive, the concept of creating and exploiting chaos by operating inside an opponent's OODA-loops is alive and well. Unfortunately, we have a lot of work to do to catch up with and then surpass our transnational opponents, by whatever label you choose to identify them.

... snip ...

Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 12:21:58
John Byrns <byrnsj@sbcglobal.net> writes:
The interpreter I used years ago printed on only the 12 edge with the "standard" plug board installed and didn't print all 80 characters because the characters printed by the interpreter were larger than those printed by keypunches. I don't remember how many characters the interpreter could print on the top edge of the card, maybe somewhere around 60 characters or so? One interesting side effect of this was that the interpreted characters printed along the edge of an interpreted card didn't line up with the punches for the corresponding character column.

first time I manual did a custom "stage-2" sysgen ... I had the stage-2 cards interpreted (two lines, first 60 chars on top line, next 20, if any, on 2nd line).

normal os/360 gen ... you punched up a "stage-1" sysgen ... basically specifying configuration and options/features selected. this was actually set of very complex macros ... which were run thru the assembler ... that was all "punch" statements (no instructions/code) ... creating the stage-2 sysgen (around a box of cards).

normally the stage-2 sysgen was run "as-is" ... a single "job" with lots & lots of executable steps. I created job cards for most of the separate executable steps ... as part of running in started jobstream (as opposed to standard process of running under the "starter" system). I also extensively re-ordered the sequence of cards ... with aim of optimally ordering files & pds members (on disk) for optimized arm seek operation.

this was as part of os/360 MFT release 11 sysgen ... as part of transition from release 9.5 to release 11.

later, i could process the stage-2 sysgen card deck as CMS file with the editor. misc. past posts mentioning os/360 sysgen decks:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18 CP/67 & OS MFT14
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#22 Pre S/360 IBM Operating Systems?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#28 IA64 Self Virtualizable?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#21 Reviving the OS/360 thread (Questions about OS/360)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#93 MVS vs HASP vs JES (was 2821)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#50 Navy orders supercomputer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#48 VTOC position
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#12 checking some myths.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#39 is this correct ? OS/360 became MVS and MVS >> OS/390
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#24 Infiniband's impact was Re: Intel's 64-bit strategy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#45 cp/67 addenda (cross-post warning)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#51 cp/67 addenda (cross-post warning)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#51 HASP assembly: What the heck is an MVT ABEND 422?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#59 real multi-tasking, multi-programming
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#41 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#29 FW: Looking for Disk Calc program/Exec
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#41 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#6 Software for IBM 360/30 (was Re: DOS/360: Forty years)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#16 CPU time and system load
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#40 You might be a mainframer if... :-) V3.8
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#12 30 Years and still counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#7 HASP/ASP JES/JES2/JES3
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#0 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#38 IEH/IEB/... names?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#50 Various kinds of System reloads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#18 Various kinds of System reloads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#57 PDS Directory Question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#15 rexx or other macro processor on z/os?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#29 Mainframe Limericks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#93 How old are you?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#69 ServerPac Installs and dataset allocations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#33 JCL parms

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 19:11:55
krw <kkk@kkk.kkk> writes:
Frankly, I don't see what's wrong with the "Wally National Bank".

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#7 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 (GLBA)
http://minneapolisfed.org/pubs/region/00-03/glb-summary.cfm

from above:
Out With the Old

The 1933 Glass-Steagall Act's prohibitions on affiliations between banks and securities companies are repealed, as are the prohibitions on affiliations between the banking and insurance industries under the 1956 Bank Holding Company Act.

...

Unitary Thrift Holding Companies

The unitary thrift holding company structure permits a commercial firm to own a thrift, which are predominantly consumer lending institutions. The bill forbids regulators from approving any applications to become a unitary thrift holding company received after May 4, 1999. Moreover, the bill allows existing unitary thrift holding companies to be sold to financial companies. These provisions had the effect of preventing Wal-Mart from taking on this charter.


... snip ...

there was testimony on floor of congress that the purpose of the bank modernization act was to prevent microsoft and wal-mart from becomming banks.

there has also been comments that revoking Glass-Steagall has contributed to the current toxic CDO crisis.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

....

Bank of Wal-Mart Sustains Another Hit, Former Congressman Bliley Warns Congress About Wal-Mart
http://walmartwatch.com/press/releases/bank_of_wal_mart_sustains_another_hit_former_congressman_bliley_warns_congr/

now in the above, one of the objections to Wal-Mart becoming a bank, is the issue that Wal-Mart does business with China.

including:
The commercial ties between Wal-Mart and China pose particular risks now because China is loosening its artificial control of the valuation of its currency. The FDIC and individual customers of a Wal-Mart bank - an ILC without Federal Reserve oversight - could be at substantial risk not only because of the fluctuations of foreign economies, but simply by virtue of policy decisions made by the Chinese government.

... snip ...

however, in the current CDO crisis, financial institutions have taken quite a large amount of foreign investment.

Giant Write-Down Is Seen for Merrill
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/business/11wall.html?ref=business

including ...
In recent months, the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, Singapore's lesser-known government fund, invested $9.7 billion in UBS; Citigroup sold a $7.5 billion stake to the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority; and the China Investment Corporation poured $5 billion into Morgan Stanley.

... snip ...

Citigroup Could Write Down Up to $24 Billion
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Business/IndustryInfo/wireStory?id=4129442

from above:
The FT also reported on Saturday that Citigroup was putting the final touches to its second big fundraising, seeking up to $14 billion from Chinese, Kuwaiti and other investors.

... snip ...

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 08:55:52
Esra Sdrawkcab <admin@127.0.0.1> writes:
We have Tesco and Sainsbury (national supermarket chains in the UK) that provide banking facilities - I don't know if ASDA (Walmart) does. Ah, yes it does (or at any rate relabels someone else's services)


http://www.asdafinance.com/
http://www.sainsburysbank.co.uk/
http://www.tescofinance.com/


trying to inflame the opposition in the us?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#7 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#11 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

the website that had the "2006 Former Congressman Bliley" reference
http://walmartwatch.com/

from latest news on the front page:
Bank Of Wal-Mart = One More Withdrawal

What do Wal-Mart and Home Depot have in common? In addition to their sprawling size, both retailers wanted to buy banks in Utah and have submitted applications to the FDIC for industrial loan charters (ILCs).


... snip ...

previous ILC reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#58 folklore indeed

also from website front page (almost appears to play on both sides of the china issue):

Wal-Mart Can't Compete
http://walmartwatch.com/blog/archives/wal_mart_cant_compete/

from above:
Unfortunately for Wal-Mart, those prospects look grim. Despite celebrating the approval of Wal-Mart China's 100th store with flowery speeches from the US department of commerce secretary, Wal-Mart's potential is dismal.

... snip ...

previous referenced Utah ILC website
http://www.dfi.state.ut.us/IBSlist.htm

from above:


Industrial Banks - As of September 30, 2007

Advanta Bank Corporation
Allegiance Direct Bank
American Express Centurion Bank
BMW Bank of North America, Inc.
Capmark Bank
Celtic Bank
CIT Bank
EnerBank
Escrow Bank
Exante Bank
First Electronic Bank
Franklin Templeton Credit Corp.
GE Capital Financial
GMAC Bank
Goldman Sachs Bank
LCA Bank Corporation
Lehman Brothers Commercial Bank
Medallion Bank
Merrick Bank Corporation
Merrill Lynch Bank
Morgan Stanley Bank
Republic Bank
Sallie Mae Bank
Target Bank
The Pitney Bowes Bank, Inc.
Transportation Alliance Bank, Inc.
UBS Bank
Union Financial Services Corp
USAA Financial Services Corp.
Valley Loan Corporation
WebBank
World Financial Capital Bank
Wright Express Financial Services

... snip ...

The identity of the owners appear to be evident in some of the names.

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 09:18:55
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
I didn't either, but apparently we're living in the past. As someone said,the lender just packaged the loans and re-sold them, so they had no interest in verifying income. I guess I always thought there was some kind of law regulating lending, but that's not true either.

and those purchasing the packages ... frequently didn't bother either

article referenced previously

U.S. Mortgage Crisis Rivals S&L Meltdown
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119724657737318810.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

from above:
Indeed, coming up with a value for a CDO entails analyzing more than 100 separate securities, each of which contains several thousand individual loans -- a feat that, if done on any scale, can require millions of dollars in computing power alone.

... snip ...

oft repeated reference of long-winded post mentioning S&L "meltdown"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm Thread Between Risk Management and Information Security

other recent posts about even when they did some analysis, it didn't correctly evaluate the real risk:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#25 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#66 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#70 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 09:57:00
jmfbahciv writes:
They were not a half ton in my childhood days. I used sling bales up and down from the haymow.

there was adjustment in the bailer on size of the bail ... i remember handling alfalfa bales in range from about 40lb to 60lb (a few times, 80lb). how much moisture in the bale also affected the weight. as a kid ... throwing 40lb bale with either hand was fairly straight forward ... from ground to top of growing pile on flatbed (sometimes low trailer, sometimes regular truck).

recent reference, working in field at 8
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#18 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography

wiki page lists 50-70lbs ... also mentions 500-1000kg for large round bales
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfalfa

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 10:48:29
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
If we weren't so wasteful of land, and had reasonable pulbic transportation, there wouldn't be so many problems. Actually, IMO, Boston has one of the best setups for commuters, with commuter rail out as far as Foxboro, Natic, etc.

when i was taking it in the 70s ... portions of track were so bad that speed limit was 5mph (and even then rocked from side to side). oldtimers talked about when it was regularly 60-80mph along the stretch. there was joke about stretch of track out near acton referred to as the boxcar graveyard because of the large number of derailments (even with severely restricted speed limits).

misc. past posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#8 how to set up a computer system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#12 Home mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#41 TGV in the USA?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#43 Mainframe Emulation Solutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#7 OT Global warming
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#28 Penn Central RR computer system failure?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#14 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#45 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 11:13:37
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
All changed after the critiques of Milton Friedman and the 'Chicago boys', when the forbidden words became 'overlegislation', 'over regulation', and so on. Some would date it back way earlier when those who had experienced the horror of 1929 retired.. Imagine a banking business that employed children to gamble on the stock market?.. Well, we have. Its going to get worse, as we shift from the big companies that actually make something in countries that have laws that force disclosure (even if faulty), to the big manufacturing being done by God know who, in God knows where.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#13 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

well, the claim could also be made about the "kid" technologists behind the (massive failed) distributed/parallel, object-oriented implementations in the 90s are part of the same symptom ... recent post mentioning that the aftermath of those massive failures (in part because of introducing enormous bloat and inefficiencies) continue to have chilling effects
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#14 Break the rules of governance and lose 4.9 billion...

there were similar failures in the 90s with similarly ill-considered security and integrity solutions ... posts on other massive bloat and inefficient attempts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#bloat

or the apparent lack of institutional knowledge recognizing discontinuity between debit magstripes and credit magstripes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#67 Govt demands password to personal computer

this is also the theme of rapidly approaching retirement of large numbers of baby boomers leaving enormous voids in institutional knowledge
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#42 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#32 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#63 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#15 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#38 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#73 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#87 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#90 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#1 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:38:37
rpl <plinnane3@yahoo.com.invalid> writes:
I wonder how efficient the equipment the guy's standing next in the picture is... looks like it could be made barn/large-garage fittable.

"2 bales of hay into 5 gallons of fuel"... nice, if true. (a US bale is half a ton)


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#8 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

article also says:
May Wu, an environmental scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, says Coskata's ethanol produces 84 percent less greenhouse gas than fossil fuel even after accounting for the energy needed to produce and transport the feedstock. It also generates 7.7 times more energy than is required to produce it. Corn ethanol typically generates 1.3 times more energy than is used producing it.

... snip ...

from their website:
http://www.coskataenergy.com/economic-benefits.html

from above:
The United States alone accounts for 25% of global oil consumption, yet holds only 3% of the world's known oil reserves. Most known oil reserves - approximately 60% - are found in sensitive and volatile regions of the globe. An increasing strain on the world oil supply is also expected as developing countries become more industrialized and increase their energy demand.

... snip ...

another reference in the wired article:

DOE Selects Six Cellulosic Ethanol Plants for Up to $385 Million in Federal Funding Funding to help bring cellulosic ethanol to market and help revolutionize the industry
http://www.energy.gov/news/4827.htm

from above:
Cellulosic ethanol is an alternative fuel made from a wide variety of non-food plant materials (or feedstocks), including agricultural wastes such as corn stover and cereal straws, industrial plant waste like saw dust and paper pulp, and energy crops grown specifically for fuel production like switchgrass.

... snip ...

original post in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#80 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

other posts with this subject field:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#84 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#86 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#55 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#56 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#59 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#75 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#76 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#1 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#5 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#6 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#7 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#11 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#12 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#13 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#14 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#16 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:25:26
cb@mer.df.lth.se (Christian Brunschen) writes:
All I've been trying to say is that fundamentally, punched cards and punched tape are equal on the 'human-readability' scale, since they both require translation of patterns of holes into the corresponding characters.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#77 Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?

depends on the level of fluency ... i would claim that being fluent in Russian or Mandarin is significantly more difficult than being fluent in (at least card) punch holes.

there are similar past discussions about being fluent in hex dumps ... being able to interpret the information directly as machine instructions ... similarly dicussions vis-a-vis specifying program in english (or other "natural" language) and then translate into programming/machine language ... compared to just creating a program directly in that language:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#64 Programming in School (was: Re: Common uses...)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#37 Would the value of knowledge and information be transferred or shared accurately across the different culture??????
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#26 Losing colonies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#48 Losing colonies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#48 Secure design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#49 Secure design

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:32:34
David Powell <ddotpowell@icuknet.co.uk> writes:
We didn't use straw when dad kept pigs, but sacks of barley weighed 12 stone apiece. Just as well that cement now comes in 56lb bags, I can just about carry one, these days.

56lb?? ... what happened to 94lb?? ... post about carrying four bags at a time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#46 Students mostly not ready for math, science college courses

Concret technology
http://www.cement.org/tech/faq_unit_weights.asp

from above:
It is standard practice to consider a 94 lb bag of cement to be one cubic foot when freshly packed.

... snip ...

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 16:30:41
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
The raters used historical figures for mortgage defaults, which didn't apply here, since historical standrds for granting loans were being ignored. Otherwise this would have been a reasonable way to figure. One of the supposed advantages of securitizing the mortgages was that it spread out the risk.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#13 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

... or a reasonable way to not actually have to figure. it is like saying that round-robin spreads out cpu utilization ... w/o having to actually implement metrics about actual resource utilization. i figured that out as an undergraduate. misc. past posts about doing dynamic adaptive resource management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

recent posts mentioning actually needing accurate metrics
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#59 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#61 Geekonomics: The Real Cost of Insecure Software

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:37:04
krw <kkk@kkk.kkk> writes:
As Peter indicated, the metrics can be done at loan origination. You seem to be saying that it's then or never (not possible).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#20 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

the references are about the whole infrastructure being instrumented and there is ongoing analytics ... as in dynamic adaptive resource management ... where ongoing information is constantly being evaluated.

past posts mentioning CDO analytics
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#66 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#70 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#71 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

from past posts

How Conventional CDO Analytics Missed the Mark
http://www.bobsguide.com/guide/news/2007/Dec/20/Kamakura_Releases_Study:_How_Conventional_CDO_Analytics_Missed_the_Mark.html

again from above:
"Two years ago the Wall Street Journal in a page 1 story pointed out the dangers in relying on the copula approach for CDO valuation, but investors were slow to realize the magnitude of their model risk"

... snip ...

and

CDO Correlation: Reversal of Fortune; New Kamakura Study Proves Common CDO Assumptions Can Lead to Serious Valuation Errors
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=811168

Toyota Beats GM in Global Production

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 07:37:32
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#55 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#1 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/mar2008/pi20080318_697440.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclausive

semantics between sales and production ... possibly Toyota is gearing up for bigger increase in 2008 (than GM)??

from above:
Toyota has been racking up growth recently, riding on its reputation for quality and good mileage. Soaring gas prices are making smaller cars that are Toyota's forte increasingly in demand.

... snip ...

one of the things from nearly 20yr old automobile C4, was that foreign competition was significantly more agile in turning out brand new vehicle ... elapsed time from concept to rolling off the line ... being able to quickly adapt to changing market and/or other conditions. A lot of this was efficiently leveraging IT technology.

old posts mentioning C4 effort:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#41 Reason Japanese cars are assembled in the US (was Re: American bigotry)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#43 Reason Japanese cars are assembled in the US (was Re: American bigotry)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#61 TGV in the USA?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#43 Sprint backs out of IBM outsourcing deal
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#49 The Pankian Metaphor (redux)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#50 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#29 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#34 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#52 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#13 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#33 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#31 IBM obsoleting mainframe hardware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#4 Horrid thought about Politics, President Bush, and Democrats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#84 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:55:08
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
I remember reading an article once criticizing the basics of physics, which had an example of an abstract formula for a cow (assuming a spherical body, supported by four legs, etc) which showed that a cow was an impossiblity. A cow is a walking fermentation vessel.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#14 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

we once had a few cows get into an alfalfa field ... two of them were saved by puncturing their side, releasing the gas ... but a 3rd died (from the pressure). we pulled the 3rd to the side, strung it up and butchered it on the spot.

Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:18:00
eamacneil@YAHOO.CA (Ted MacNEIL) writes:
My degree is a major in computer science with a minor in statistics. My first job was as a capacity analyst. My degree was 100% applicable.

a lot of capacity planning came out of a lot of performance work at the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

... including modeling and workload profiling and the fundamentals for capacity planning.

science center had done the port of apl\360 for cms\apl ... and rather than the toy 16-32kbyte workspaces ... they could be as large as virtual memory/machine size.

cms\apl became the basis for much of the sales/marketing support applications on the world-wide hone system (sometime in the early 70s, branch office couldn't even submit mainframe orders that hadn't first been processed by hone application)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

one of the applications deployed on HONE was the performance predictor (system analytically model from the science center implemented in apl ... allowing branch people to characterize the customer's configuration and workload and then ask "what-if" questions regarding changes to configuration and/or workload.

the production science center online system (first cp67 and then vm370) was heavily instrumented and eventually had 7x24 activity data for approaching two decades and established similar standard for other internal systems.

besides the system analytical modeling (including the work that resulted in the performance predictor application) there was also a number of event-driven model implementations.

there were also a number of execution sampling implementations ... one which resulted in VS/Repack product in the mid-70s ... which would take trace of instruction address & storage references and do semi-automated program reorganization for optimal paging operation. Before release as a product, it was used extensively internally by several products making transition from real-storage environment to virtual storage environment (i.e. for instance, IMS made extensive use of the application).

another trace/sampling implementation was also used to determine what functions went into VM ECPS (i.e. 6k bytes of vm370 kernel instructions that represented approx. 70percent of kernel pathlength execution was moved to microcode).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21

another performance optimization methodology used at the science center was multiple regression analysis ... with the detailed 7x24 system monitoring ... it was possible to determine where the system was spending large percentage of its time.

i've mentioned before using this methodology on large 450k line cobol application that had been heavily studied and optimized over period of a couple of decades (using products like strobe). it ran on 40+ max configured mainframe CECs ($1.2b-$1.5b aggregate). i used multiple regression analysis to identify another 14percent performance improvement (that hadn't been turned up using the other methodologies). misc. recent references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#23 Strobe equivalents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#24 Curiousity: CPU % for COBOL program
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#50 Where can you get a Minor in Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#20 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#21 Distributed Computing

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:26:29
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
World Financial Capital Bank

... snip ...

The identity of the owners appear to be evident in some of the names.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#12 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

and for some unrelated Utah ILC drift

Blackstone's Alliance Data Deal Could Be Latest Victim of Credit Crunch
http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=1656

from above:
An Alliance Data press release indicated Blackstone was trying to blame federal bank regulators for throwing a monkey wrench into the deal. The release says Alliance received notice from a Blackstone affiliate late Friday that Blackstone does not anticipate satisfying a condition laid down by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the U.S. Treasury Department's unit that regulates national banks, that it approve a change in control of an Alliance-owned bank. Alliance Data owns World Financial Network National Bank. The company also owns a Utah-chartered industrial bank, World Financial Capital Bank, which is regulated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Collectively the two banks issue more than 100 million private-label credit cards for about 85 retailers.

... snip ...

also:
Indeed, No. 1 payment processor First Data Corp. went private in September just before the doors closed on other pending buyouts by private-equity firms as banks, spooked by rising defaults in subprime mortgages, started to tighten credit throughout the economy (Digital Transactions News, Sept. 25, 2007)

... snip ...

i.e.

It's Labry up And Bailis out As KKR Completes Its First Data LBO
http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=1526

Current Officers

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Current Officers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:40:26
bbreynolds <bbreynolds@aol.com> writes:
We have about run out of officers who served in Vietnam: look at their ribbons and see if you see one in the lower right area which is green and white with a silver ribbon (reads 1960- ); without that, the now senior brass doesn't have direct knowledge of the Vietnam guerilla experience. Senior generals now were senior staff officers during Desert Storm, and expect to have their name put on another Guderian/Schwartzkopf Blitzkrieg. However, they are fighting the sort of fight which the French lost in Algeria, the British lost in Malaysia, the Dutch in Indonesia, and the United States lost in South Vietnam.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#71 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#9 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

i.e. previous post mentioning the new generation of Boyd's "Jedi Knights"

the claim is that the desert storm battle plan was Boyd's ... that Schwarzkopf had a battle plan with tanks going head-to-head, slugging it out until the last tank left standing. past post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#35 Universal constants

reference from previous post:

Boyd's tactics and Operation Iraqi Freedom (illuminating background on Iraq strategy)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/899525/posts

from above:
Coram: When Cheney became secretary of defense, he was rare in that he knew more about strategy than most of his generals did. He called Boyd out of retirement in the early days of the Gulf war, and from him got an updating, if you will. And it was Boyd's strategy, not [Gen. Norman] Schwarzkopf's, that led to our swift and decisive victory in the Gulf war.

According to Bob Woodward's book, "The Commanders," Schwarzkopf was "playing" the DC warplanners when he gave them his initial battle plan (Hey-diddle-diddle, Up-the-middle). He expected that it would be rejected and that he would therefore get the extra troops he was asking for.


... snip ...

The (military channel) Legends of Air Power program on Boyd mentions the Coram version ... but not Woodward's.

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

Diversity ( was Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?)

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Diversity ( was Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 08:07:00
"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <urjlew@bellsouth.net> writes:
Should a computer programmer be fluent in more than one programming language? Does a knowledge of more than one computer programming language make the learning of a new computer programming language easier? How does knowing several computer languages affect the ability to view problems from different sides and consider different solution approaches? Do differences in the mother natural tongue affect the approaches to a solution of computer system problems? For example, would a Hebrew approach to a system of credit card sales be different from a Japanese approach and different from an Anglo German approach?

previous post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#77 Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?

for a little topic drift, there has been a lot done on using demographics in marketing to infer buying habits. however, in this post, there is reference being brought in as consultants to design and implement a system that would infer buying habits based on buying habits (small pilot with 60mil accounts and something like 1.5m transactions/day)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#56 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

recent post which had comment from a detailed, nine month study on how i communicate:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#57 Govt demands password to personal computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#64 Govt demands password to personal computer

somewhat related ... recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#88 folklore indeed

with reference to:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080111102934.htm

from above:
Psychological research has established that American culture, which values the individual, emphasizes the independence of objects from their contexts, while East Asian societies emphasize the collective and the contextual interdependence of objects. Behavioral studies have shown that these cultural differences can influence memory and even perception. But are they reflected in brain activity patterns?

... snip ...

a couple, somewhat related references turned up with quick web search:

Cultural and Linguistic Influence on Brain Organization for Language and Possible Consequences for Dyslexia: A Review
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3809/is_200606/ai_n17186270

from above:
Learning to read and write influences the functional organization of the brain. What is universal and what is specific in the languages of the world are important issues. Most studies on healthy bilinguals indicate that essentially the same neural mechanisms are used for first and second languages, albeit with some linguistic and cultural influences related to speech and writing systems, particularly between alphabetical and nonalphabetical languages.

... snip ...

Cultural and linguistic influence on neural bases of ‘Theory of Mind': An fMRI study with Japanese bilinguals
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WC0-4K42DGF-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=499feb326f577e852d06b366bb46da09

from above:
Theory of mind (ToM)--our ability to predict behaviors of others in terms of their underlying intentions--has been thought to be universal and invariant across different cultures. However, several ToM studies conducted outside the Anglo-American cultural or linguistic boundaries have obtained mixed results. To examine the influence of culture/language on neural bases of ToM, we studied 16 American English-speaking monolinguals and 16 Japanese-English bilinguals with second-order false-belief story tasks, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Several neural correlates of ToM including medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) were recruited by both cultural/linguistic groups. However, some other brain areas including inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) were employed in a culture/language-specific manner, during the ToM tasks. These results suggest that the ways in which adults understand ToM are not entirely universal.

... snip ...

more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 08:30:58
it now has been over 40yrs since i started work on virtualization technology.

different strengths of virtualization are being used for addressing a broad range of issues in the IT industry ... from server farm efficiencies to client security.

a few news items from the past 24hrs: Virtualization: Virtualization: The Key to an Efficient Data Center
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/61414.html Microsoft's Broadened Virtualization Strategy
http://weblog.infoworld.com/virtualization/archives/2008/01/microsofts_broa.html
Microsoft: Virtually End-To-End
http://www.informationweek.com/news/cloud-computing/infrastructure/240002733
InfoWorld's Virtualization Executive Forum Kicks Off Monday, February 4th
http://www.infoworld.com/pressreleases/archives/2008/01/infoworldas_vir_1.html
Virtualization Market Heats Up
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Virtualization/Virtualization-Market-Heats-Up/
The Move From Physical To Virtual
http://www.informationweek.com/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205918022
Action Plan: Putting Virtualization In Project Life-Cycle Stages Of Planning -- Virtualization
http://www.informationweek.com/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205918226
Platform Computing VM Orchestrator | Virtually Speaking
http://blogs.zdnet.com/virtualization/?p=329
Virtualization taking thin clients mainstream?
http://www.echannelline.com/usa/story.cfm?item=22877
Opinion: Server virtualization opens door to smart planning
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Storage&articleId=9059580&taxonomyId=19
Xsigo I/O Virtualization On TechWebTV
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/03/hundreds_of_ser.html
Virtualization Wars, What Can Vmware Learn From The Past?
http://www.dabcc.com/article.aspx?id=6985
Changing Virtualization Services In Wake Of VMware Server ESX 3i
http://www.dabcc.com/article.aspx?id=6979
VMware, A $1 Billion-A-Year Company, Slips Below 2008 Expectations -- Virtualization
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206100656
VMware stock plummets, but it won't ease pricing in 2008 -- Server Virtualization Blog
http://servervirtualization.blogs.techtarget.com/2008/01/28/vmware-stock-plummets-but-it-wont-ease-pricing-in-2008/

New Opcodes

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: New Opcodes
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:00:00
m42tom-ibmmain@YAHOO.COM (Tom Marchant) writes:
It also says, "894 instructions (668 implemented entirely in hardware)"

The latest POO lists about 750 instructions. I know that there are a few not listed in the POO. Still, it sounds like it's a lot over 50.


as per past discussions re the architecture "red book" (i.e. cms script file where command line option would print the full machine architecture or just the POO subset, full machine architecture was distributed in red 3ring binders) and compare&swap instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

getting an instruction added could require a lot of justification.

so one way of parsing the reference to 50+ added instructions to improve compiled code efficiency ... could be referring to over 50 of the added instructions were justified for improving compiled code efficiency (w/o saying anything at all about the total number of added instructions and/or what was the justification for any of the other added instructions).

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:39:44
jmfbahciv writes:
Oh, good grief. Did you understand anything about the thought process that was being presented?

some of the issue is related to this quote of his ... i've referenced in past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#35 War, Chaos, & Business (web site), or Col John Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#20 MS to world: Stop sending money, we have enough - was Re: Most ... can't run Vista
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#74 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#61 Lean and Mean: 150,000 U.S. layoffs for IBM?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#45 windows time service

and the contrast between how he was treated by the mainstream and his many accomplishments.

Kerberized authorization service

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Kerberized authorization service
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.kerberos
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:03:10
Ken Hornstein <kenh@cmf.nrl.navy.mil> writes:
I am not that sure, actually. Every time I look at SAML, I re-remember my biggest issue with it - the spec is frickin' huge (379 pages for all of the documents for SAML 2.0). Also, it's rather "webby" ... I mean, the protocol is based on HTTP? You need an XML library? And it seems that you probably need SOAP in there as well. Every example I've seen of it clearly is web-oriented. I guess I see the advantage to using it when you have an already-bloated web server, but cramming all of that into sshd? Ugh.

i remember sitting in on an early vendor SAML presentation about implementation/deployment for coalition forces.

at the end, i went up to talk to the person doing the presentation (cto or some other person from the vendor) and commented that the message flows looked exactly like cross-domain kerberos (except using SAML formated messages). after some further discussion, he conceded that there are only so many ways that such a thing could be accomplished.

kerberos was done in project athena at mit with equal funding by two computer companies (there were two project athena assistant directors, one from each vendor). somewhat as a result we would get to periodically go by and review what was going on. one week we were there, got to participate in early design sessions for cross-domain kerberos.

one of the assistant directors i had worked at with at the science center ... at the time of project athena was down the street ... but earlier had been at 545 tech sq ... misc. past references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

for other topic drift ... gml had been invented at the science center in 1969 and subsequently morphed into sgml, html, xml, and saml. misc. past references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

and for even more topic drift ... misc. posts about kerberos and pk-init
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#kerberos

New Opcodes

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: New Opcodes
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:42:36
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#29 New Opcodes

justification is justification ... not all have to be there based on the same justification.

as an aside ... there was some similar speculation two decades ago about such stuff. there was even some speculation that one of the other clone processor vendors creation of "macrocode" was to enable them to quickly adapt to such things (be more agile in tracking, implementing, deploying changes).

misc. past posts mentioning macrocode.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#44 Linux paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#48 Linux paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#9 Mainframe System Programmer/Administrator market demand?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#56 Wild hardware idea
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#59 Misuse of word "microcode"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#60 Misuse of word "microcode"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#24 Description of a new old-fashioned programming language
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#14 Multicores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#29 Documentation for the New Instructions for the z9 Processor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#40 POWER6 on zSeries?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#43 POWER6 on zSeries?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#48 POWER6 on zSeries?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#38 blast from the past ... macrocode
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#9 Mainframe Jobs Going Away
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#32 Code density and performance?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#35 Code density and performance?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#39 Using different storage key's
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#42 old hypervisor email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#33 Assembler question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#34 Assembler question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#20 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#1 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#3 Has anyone ever used self-modifying microcode? Would it even be useful?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#9 Has anyone ever used self-modifying microcode? Would it even be useful?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#84 VLIW pre-history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#74 Non-Standard Mainframe Language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#96 some questions about System z PR/SM

New Opcodes

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: New Opcodes
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:47:05
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
as an aside ... there was some similar speculation two decades ago about such stuff. there was even some speculation that one of the other clone processor vendors creation of "macrocode" was to enable them to quickly adapt to such things (be more agile in tracking, implementing, deploying changes).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#29 New Opcdoes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#32 New Opcdoes

actually such speculation dates back three decades to the introduction of cross-memory instructions and dual-address space mode on 3033

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

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:54:55
jmfbahciv writes:
History of man is filled with this kind of jealousy and fear.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#30 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

we had signed up for the (last really good) "early out" program a year before we took it (the year the company went into the red).

in the executive exit interview ... one of the comments was that they could have forgiven me for being wrong ... but they were never going to forgive me for being right

misc. past references/posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#61 arrogance metrics (Benoits) was: general networking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#16 cost of crossing kernel/user boundary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#71 Offshore IT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#14 I am an ageing techy, expert on everything. Let me explain the
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#26 MS to world: Stop sending money, we have enough - was Re: Most ... can't run Vista
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#48 time spent/day on a computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#3 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#6 The history of Structure capabilities

other topic drift:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#57 Govt demands password to personal computer

New Opcodes

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: New Opcodes
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:18:43
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
actually such speculation dates back three decades to the introduction of cross-memory instructions and dual-address space mode on 3033

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#29 New Opcdoes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#32 New Opcdoes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#33 New Opcdoes

part of the speculation was that the cross-memory/dual-address space instructions used more STOs (segment table origins) simultaneously ... and the 3033 had inherited its TLB (and STO-associative) implementation from 168. The additional concurrent STO use activity was putting pressure on TLB-miss and therefor performance.

one the other hand, large 168 & 3033 installation were facing enormous pressure on amount of application addressable space ...

aka pasts posts about pointer passing paradigm from real memory heritage dictated the SVS and subsequent MVS implementation with the kernel appearing in the application address space. The MVS design included moving (non-kernel) subsystems into their own address space ... dictating the common segment implementation (supporting squirreling away data for pointer passing APIs). Larger installations were having to constantly grow the common segment ... with 24bit addressing (16mbyte), kernel taking up 8mbytes ... and the common segment growing from 4mbytes to 5mbytes (and more) ... was only leave 3-4mbytes (or less) for applications (even tho there was a virtual address space per application).

the future system distraction had redirected a lot of effort into non-370 activity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

when future system was killed, there was mad rush to get stuff back into the 370 product pipeline. 370-xa was going to take 7-8 yrs (with 31-bit addressing, access registers, program call & return, etc). the stop-gap was 3033 ... which was 168 wiring/logic remapped to faster chip technology. The increasing machine capacity was adding more applications, tending to grow the common segment and putting massive pressure on available (virtual) memory for applications.

There was speculation that 3033 cross-memory and dual-address space hardware changes was purely to create incompatibilities for the clone processor vendors ... however there was more than enuf other justification, even if the clone vendors hadn't existed at all (intermediate step on the way to access registers) ... aka dual-address space instructions allowed subsystem to reach directly into the calling application's virtual address to direclty access values pointed to by the passed pointers (w/o requiring the common segment hack).

Diversity ( was Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Diversity ( was Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:39:10
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
previous post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#77 Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?

for a little topic drift, there has been a lot done on using demographics in marketing to infer buy habits. however, in this post, there is reference being brought in as consultants to design a system that would infer buying habits based on buying habits (small pilot with 60mil accounts and something like 1.5m transactions/day)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#56 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#27 Diversity ( was Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?)

one of the more interesting challenges of the project was that we had been brought in when 2/3rds of the budget had already been spent. we had to scrap what had been done and start from scratch with new design, implementation and deployment ... AND do it all within the remaining 1/3rd of the budget (even coming in under budget).

the original was another one of those toy demo efforts that started appearing in the period ... frequently mentioned in past posts ... loads of leading edge technology used for toy demos ... but incapable of any scale-up.

Diversity ( was Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Diversity ( was Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:51:51
"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <urjlew@bellsouth.net> writes:
Now remove the reference to a specific profession, i.e. computer programmer, and replace natural language(s) for computer programming languages, and ask the same/analogous questions!

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#27 Diversity ( was Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#36 Diversity ( was Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?)

some of this might be considered to have happened with legacy stuff being mostly batch cobol and re-engineering efforts attempting to use C++ and corba ... with C++/corba toy demos, then attempting to scale-up into production, finding that there was factor 100 times increase in overhead (vis-a-vis legacy batch cobol) ... this was repeated numerous times ... not just in payment transaction processing.

some of this has been accompanied trying to move massive backend repositories off IMS to some RDBMS ... there continues to be claims that the majority of these infrastructures are still IMS/VSAM.

and for a little other topic drift
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#24 Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee

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

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:35:21
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
I would claim that Boyd applied his fighter pilot & "dog fight" background to (ground based) maneuver warfare ... including bypassing fixed fortifications. There have been numerous claims that way too much cannon fodder was wasted not doing that in the ww2 pacific campaign.

recent boyd reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#45 windows time service


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#71 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#9 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#26 Current Officers
2008c.html#30 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

... another reference ...

The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division, by Bing West and Major General Ray Smith, USMC (Ret)
http://www.strategypage.com/bookreviews/221.asp

from above:
In one key example, a young Marine tasked with capturing a critical oil distribution pumping station asks MG Smith his thoughts on Colonel John Boyd's maneuver warfare theories. Boyd, based on his experience as a fighter pilot, hypothesized that victory goes to the side that thinks, decides, and acts faster than its adversary. The authors use the Army command's logistics-driven interruption of the Marines' speedy advance on Baghdad to illustrate the cultural differences between the two services and the nature of Boyd's lessons in action. They capture Marine generals' concerns that the Army might continue "stacking BBs" indefinitely while the Iraqis put together a coherent defense, and cover the subsequent bad press and political pressure from Washington that end the pause.

... snip ...

past posts mentioning logistics driven, rigid command & control:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#120 atomic History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#16 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#65 Dijkstra on "The End of Computing Science"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#86 Organizations with two or more Managers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#45 time spent/day on a computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#55 time spent/day on a computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#89 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#45 No Glory for the PDP-15

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

Current Officers

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Current Officers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:39:21
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
the claim is that the desert storm battle plan was Boyd's ... that Schwarzkopf had a battle plan with tanks going head-to-head, slugging it out until the last tank left standing. past post:

i.e., not only did boyd provide the strategic battle plan for the conflict,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#26 Current Officers

but his "jedi knights" were responsible for executing much of the tactical operations during the conflict.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#36 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#45 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#71 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#9 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#38 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

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

Current Officers

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Current Officers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:52:05
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
i.e., not only did boyd provide the strategic battle plan for the conflict,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#26 Current Officers

but his "jedi knights" were responsible for executing much of the tactical operations during the conflict.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#36 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#45 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#71 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#9 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#38 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#39 Current Officers

aka, the "jedi knights" primarily referred to the ground conflict ... while in the air, Boyd was responsible for designing many of the planes that were flying ... and the pilots flying those planes learned from a training manual he had written.

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

Move over US -- China to be new driver of world's economy and innovation

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Move over US -- China to be new driver of world's economy and innovation
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:06:55
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Move over US -- China to be new driver of world's economy and innovation
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/giot-mou012408.php

from above:

The study's indicators predict that China will soon pass the United States in the critical ability to develop basic science and technology, turn those developments into products and services – and then market them to the world. Though China is often seen as just a low-cost producer of manufactured goods, the new "High Tech Indicators" study done by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology clearly shows that the Asian powerhouse has much bigger aspirations.

... snip ...


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#78 Move over US -- China to be new driver of world's economy and innovation

and related:

China Now the No. 1 Tech Nation
http://blogs.cioinsight.com/research_central/content001/globalization/georgia_tech_china_now_the_no_1_tech_nation.html

from above:
"Since World War II, the United States has been the main driver of the global economy. Now we have a situation in which technology products are going to be appearing in the marketplace that were not developed or commercialized here. We won't have had any involvement with them and may not even know they are coming."

... snip ...

possibly also related:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#44 China's Godson-2 processor takes center stage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#52 China's Godson-2 processor takes center stage

New Opcodes

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: New Opcodes
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:24:06
m42tom-ibmmain@YAHOO.COM (Tom Marchant) writes:
There may have been speculation within IBM that Macrocode, and the architecture that enabled it, was to make it easier to develop new features. I can tell you that I was at Amdahl at the time working on the 580. That was definitely a major reason for it.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#29 New Opcodes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#32 New Opcodes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#33 New Opcodes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#35 New Opcodes

well, how should i have phrased it? ...

i would run into lots people ... including at the monthly SLAC meetings ... and frequently be asked for advice ... there was lots of issues about not divulging confidences ... even confidences for companies i didn't work for.

complicating things, i had a nearly complete set of individually serial numbered (candy striped) 811 documents (i.e. architecture documents).

Current Officers

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Current Officers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:11:19
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
aka, the "jedi knights" primarily referred to the ground conflict ... while in the air, Boyd was responsible for designing many of the planes that were flying ... and the pilots flying those planes learned from a training manual he had written.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#26 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#39 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#40 Current Officers

for a little more computer oriented ... Boyd ran datacenter in the early 70s at "spook base". I had thot that the renton datacenter was large ... but the "spook base" datacenter has been described as a $2.5b windfall for ibm (possibly the largest in the world at the time).

while he was tolerated in some of his plane designs ... there was strong opposition to his work on F16. the opposition was so strong that the air force threw its legal forces into proving that he had stolen millions of dollars in gov. property (the supercomputing time he was using for the F16 design work) so they could throw him into Leavenworth for the rest of his life. fortunately, they were never able to find how he was doing it and they gave up (even tho they knew it had to be going on) ... aka Boyd anticipating that they might pull something like this, he had thoroughly hidden his tracks.

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

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:01:21
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
hot news item in real time is that some trader at a french bank involving nearly $8billion was responsible for large part of world market volatility over the past week.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#75 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#82 Break the rules of governance and loose 4.9 billion

... and (although systemic risk and things like insiders have always been significant issues ... just not in the popular press)

The Rise of Systemic Financial Risk
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/20133/

from above
One natural hypothesis is that the global sell-off that happened early last week was a direct outcome of Societe Generale's unwinding of these rogue trades. We don't have any conclusive evidence yet, but it's not an outlandish conjecture given the circumstances surrounding the massive fraud that was allegedly committed. According to Societe Generale, the problem was discovered on Saturday [January 19], and the firm began unwinding their portfolio at the first possible opportunity. If it turns out that this "unwind" was on the scale of a billion dollars or more, it is plausible that the unwind itself triggered the global sell-off--first in Asia, then in Europe, and then in the U.S.

... snip ...

one account was that there was over $50bil in positions ... all betting on the market going up. when they discovered the problem ... and watched the market falling ... they unloaded the positions (worried that if they stayed in, the resulting loss would be much worse) ... which created something of a panic.

... recent post mentioning insider problems and possible someday state-of-the-art getting back to 25yrs ago ... with work on collusion countermeasures (i.e. multiple individuals attempting to subvert insider controls).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#26 folklore indeed

misc. past posts mentioning systemic risk:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay2.htm#fed Federal CP model and financial transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay2.htm#cadis disaster recovery cross-posting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay2.htm#aadspriv Account Authority Digital Signatures ... in support of x9.59
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm2.htm#risk another characteristic of online validation.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm2.htm#straw AADS Strawman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm2.htm#strawm3 AADS Strawman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm3.htm#cstech7 cardtech/securetech & CA PKI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#smallpay2 Small/Secure Payment Business Models
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay10.htm#13 Smartcard security (& PKI systemic risk) thread in sci.crypt n.g
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay10.htm#19 Misc. payment, security, fraud, & authentication GAO reports (long posting)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#22 A crazy thought?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#41 AADS, X9.59, & privacy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#156 checks (was S/390 on PowerPC?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#238 Attacks on a PKI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#240 Attacks on a PKI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#36 "Trusted" CA - Oxymoron?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#34 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#45 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#35 Security Concerns in the Financial Services Industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#54 The demise of compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#7 Opinion on smartcard security requested
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#31 You think? TOM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#5 What good is RSA when using passwords ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#64 Can you use ECC to produce digital signatures? It doesn't see
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#11 AES-128 good enough for medical data?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#2 Authenticated Public Key Exchange without Digital Certificates?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#5 Authenticated Public Key Exchange without Digital Certificates?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#14 US fiscal policy (Was: Bob Bemer, Computer Pioneer,Father of ASCII,Invento
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#10 Revoking the Root
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#11 Revoking the Root
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005v.html#3 ABN Tape - Found
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#26 Debit Cards HACKED now
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#28 Key exchange
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#17 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#12 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#39 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#41 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#48 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based

Young mainframers' group gains momentum

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Young mainframers' group gains momentum
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:06:04
Young mainframers' group gains momentum
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/021508-kpo-identified-as-the-next.html
Young mainframers' group gains momentum
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9060499

from above:
ZNextGen, an organization aimed at young mainframe programmers, has gained significant momentum since it was created roughly two years ago through IBM and its user group, Share, according to its leaders.

... snip ...

SHARE zNextGen
http://www.znextgen.org/

from above:
zNextGen, a user-driven community for new and emerging System z professionals that has the resources to help expediate your professional development skills.

... snip ...

Toyota Beats GM in Global Production

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:58:22
Bernd Felsche <bernie@innovative.iinet.net.au> writes:
It provides for expansion in "smarter jobs" and for shorter working hours by allowing more people in the same position (e.g. 4 x 6-hour shifts vs 3 x 8-hour). Individual productivity increases need not be reflected proportionately in pay. Doing more work with less effort for less time and receiving about the same take-home pay is a reward. More of the person is being employed; a different balance of physical and intellectual effort.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#22 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production

the original post was with respect to "smarter" throughout the infrastructure ... "smarter" also as in more competitive.

one of the major points about c4 ... wasn't just about producing better products ... but about quickly being able to change & adapt the products being offered to changing market/consumer demands (timely products that customers actually want can be vastly superior to any kind of product that customers don't want).

the public had somewhat gotten accustomed to it taking 7-8 yrs elapsed time for new automobile products .... almost a foreign concept that totally new product might be possible within a single model year (or even less).

one of the other "smarter" references in past postings mentioning c4 and automobile product "agility" ... was that with the import quotas ... they figured out that they could sell that many, high-end luxary vehicles ... and so completely changed the product offering (effectively to a product, that with approx. the same amount of work, produced a product which sold for 5-10 times as much).

Data Erasure Products

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Data Erasure Products
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 31 Jan 2008 18:33:02 -0800
ibm-main@CSS.AU.COM (Stephen Mednick) writes:
it's not a case of how valuable the data is, more importantly it's to do with what the security classification is that has been assigned to the data. Depending on the data's security classification dictates the media overwriting/sanitisation method that is it be deployed in accordance with government requirements.

security classification is simplification ... like role-based access qcontrol is simplification for permissions. ... recent post on dealing with permissions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#26 folklore indeed

the issue normally reduces to what is the threat model? security classification tends to be associated with threat model where divulging the information is not desirable ... and classification level attempts to make the measures to prevent information divulging proportional to the damange that might happen if the information is divulged (and/or the effort that an attacker will go to in order to get the data). For magnetic media this might be something like overwriting a specific number of times with (different) random data ... nist standard:
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-88/NISTSP800-88_rev1.pdf

An example of how this gets simplified is example of consumer financial information stored at a merchant. The "damage" gets translated into security proportional to risk ... and the risk is what is the value of the information to the merchant ... old post on the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#61 Security Proportional To Risk

The problem is that the real threat model and therefor risk, is that the value of the information to the consumer (and to any attacking crook) is possibly one hundred times larger than the value of the information to the merchant. The merchant is required to keep transaction logs (and the associated account numbers) for some period as part of mandated business processes.

The information value (to the merchant) is some part of the merchant's profit margin on the transaction ... for hypothetical example for some number of product transactions, this could be $10,000. The value of the information to the crook, is related to the credit limits associated with the individual accounts. This could conceivable be $10,000,000 (totally unrelated to the value of the information to the merchant, i.e. some portion of the profit on the purchased products). Since the value to the crook can be 100 to 1000 times larger, the attacking crooks can afford to outspend the defending merchants by possibly one hundred times.

in the mid-90s, the x9a10 financial standard working group had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments. Part of this was looking in detail at end-to-end vulnerabilities and threat models ... as part of coming up with x9.59 financial standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

part of the x9.59 financial standard was eliminating the usefulness of the account transaction log information (at merchants) to attacking crooks .... i.e. it didn't involve trying to prevent attacking crooks from getting at the information ... it just made the information useless to crooks for performing fraudulent financial transactions.

A different example was we also got involved in co-authoring the financial industry x9.99 privacy standard. As part of that we had to look at both GLBA and HIPAA (financial transactions can used for medical procedures which may be listed).

One of the issues in HIPAA is that there is a real requirement to make some amount of medical procedure information available. At a result, HIPAA allows for information to be available if it can't be associated with an individual (aka "deidentified").
deidentified Under the HIPAA Privacy Rule, data are deidentified if either (1) an experienced expert determines that the risk that certain information could be used to identify an individual is 'very small' and documents and justifies the determination, or (2) the data do not include any of the following eighteen identifiers

... snip ...

As part of working on x9.99, we put together a privacy merged taxonomy and glossary ... see:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/privacy.htm

for other details see notes at
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/index.html#glosnote

Data Erasure Products

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Data Erasure Products
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:56:26
lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler) writes:
the issue normally reduces to what is the threat model? security classification tends to be associated with threat model where divulging the information is not desirable ... and classification level attempts to make the measures to prevent information divulging proportional to the damange that might happen if the information is divulged (and/or the effort that an attacker will go to in order to get the data). For magnetic media this might be something like overwriting a specific number of times with (different) random data ... nist standard:
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-88/NISTSP800-88_rev1.pdf


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#47 Data Erasure Products

oh, and note recent article:

'Erased' personal data on agency tapes can be retrieved, company says
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0108/012308j2.htm

from above:
Personal and sensitive government data -- including employees' personal data -- on magnetic tapes that federal agencies erase and later sell can be retrieved using simple technology, according to an investigation conducted by a storage tape manufacturer.

... snip ...

the above article references a GAO report/study:
According to its September 2007 report (GAO-07-1233R), GAO concluded it could not find "any comprehensible data on any of the tapes using standard commercially available equipment and data recovery techniques, specialized diagnostic equipment, custom programming or forensic analysis."

... snip ...

i.e. gao report
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d071233r.pdf

old article from last sept:

Government sale of used magnetic tape storage not a big security risk, GAO reports
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/19807

No Glory for the PDP-15

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: No Glory for the PDP-15
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2008 08:20:35
jmfbahciv writes:
No mini OS could it as a mainframe. Calling the VAX a mainframe was purely a marketing spin when Bell eliminated the PDP-10 product line.

modulo mainframe "architecture" ... i.e. 43xx and vax sold into same "midrange" market segment (although there were more 43xx than vax) ... but the 43xx boxes had the same "architecture" as their larger mainframe brothern. large numbers of 43xx ran virtual machine timesharing system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

but more familiar "batch" OS also ran natively (on bare hardware) and/or as "guests" (in virtual machines)

past posts of decade of vax sales, sliced & diced by year, model, us/non-us.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0 Computers in Science Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#37 Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#31 PDP-1

for 43xx, besides selling a few at a time ... there were also large corporate sales involving multiple hundred at a time ... old email about one gov. agency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#email790404
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#email790404b

in these posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#12 Multics Nostalgia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15 dempartmental servers

The internal proliferation of mid-range machines on the internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

contributed to the internal network approaching 1000 nodes at the time the internet/arpanet great cut-over to tcp/ip (1jan83) ... when internet/arpanet had something like 200-255 nodes (the count apparently depending on whether IMPs were counted or connected hosts were counted).

Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2008 09:03:34
steve@TRAINERSFRIEND.COM (Steve Comstock) writes:
WAIT! STOP! Is an AIX machine a mainframe??? I don't think so. I know the definition is a slippery one, but to me a mainframe is a Syztem z machine, or one of its predecessors (or a competitive machine from the past; maybe Unisys today).

there have been a couple different AIXs.

there is the risc flavor.

research and opd were working on a 801/risc (romp) follow-on to the displaywriter. when that got killed, the group looked around for something else to apply the machine for ... and settled on the unix workstation market. they got the group that had done the port of at&t unix for pc/ix to do a similar port. this morphed displaywriter follow-on was released as pc/rt and the system as aix "v2". it becamse aix "v3" for rios/power chips on the rs/6000.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

independent of that there was the port of UCLA's locus unix look-alike to 370. it was sort of a unix SAA strategy ... with the same system announced as aix/370 and aix/386. locus provided for transparent networked filesystem as well as fairly transparent process migration .... i.e. executing code could move to different processors (even to different kinds of processors ... for some value of "transparent"). aix/370 was upgraded to aix/esa

wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_AIX_(operating_system)

the above is slightly garbled. it mentions much of aix v2 kernel was written in PL/I programming language. pl.8 language and cp.r operating system had been developed for 801/risc and was being used for the displaywriter follow-on. when that project was killed ... and the machine retargeted for unix workstation ... sort of needed something to do for all the pl.8 programmers. A "VRM" (virtual resource manager) was defined implemented in pl.8 ... with an "abstract" virtual machine interface. The vendor that had done the pc/ix port then was instructed to port to the defined abstract interface. The claim was that this could be done faster and with less total resources than having the vendor implement directly to bare metal. This was shown to be incorrect ... and had other implications ... since things like new device drivers ... required both a VRM implementation as well as a AIX implementation. The VRM was dropped as part of AIX V3 and move to RIOS/POWER chips.

Current Officers

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Current Officers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2008 09:21:47
jmfbahciv writes:
According to Schwartzkopf's book there was one Army guy who stopped his advancing (I think from west) which allowed the Iraqis to get home. This guy was from the "old school" of warring and didn't understand Boyd's. Note that this is how I interpreted what Gen. S. said. Since I don't know anything about military stuff, I could have read it wrong.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#26 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#39 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#40 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#43 Current Officers

Boyd's strategy had the enemy forces being cut off from the flank and all captured. There have been various explanations why that part was suspended and the enemy forces allowed to escape (including old school needing to bring up massive logistics to overwhelm and win ... as well as political).

lots of boyd posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd

various URLs from around the web
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd2

one of the above:
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jrboyd.htm

from above:
Even though he gave them many of the tools that made Operation Desert Storm such a sweeping success in 1991, the brass continued to hate Boyd with such a passion that, as a final sign of contempt, they sent only a single general as their official representative at his funeral.

... snip ...

others:
Col. John Boyd: The Most Influential Unknown Hero
http://www.sftt.org/dwa/2003/1/1/2.html
BOYD: THE FIGHTER PILOT WHO CHANGED THE ART OF WAR
http://www.clanboyd.info/military/johnboyd/
"Genghis John"
http://www.belisarius.com/modern_business_strategy/gaillard/article.htm
How Col. John Boyd beat the generals;
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_32_18/ai_91210683
How Col. John Boyd Beat the Generals
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/comments/c455.htm

Current Officers

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Current Officers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:55:44
jmfbahciv writes:
Just think what he might have done if Alphas were available.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#26 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#39 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#40 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#43 Current Officers

some people mistake processing power for intelligence. boyd had a story about reviewing the latest & greatest air force air-to-air missile.

he was shown all the specs and then films of the missile hitting its target every time and claims that it had nearly a 100percent KP (hit the target nearly every time).

boyd then told them it would hit the target only about 10percent of the time. they said, how could that be ... all the trials had it hitting the target every time. so boyd had them reshow the film ... and just before the missile was to hit ... he had them stop the film ... and asked them what kind of guidence system they had ... they replied heat-seeking, he asked them what kind of heat-seeking, they eventually replied pin-point heat-seeking. he then asked them where was the hottest part of a jet airplane. after he explained, they packed up all their stuff and left.

later the airforce general in vietnam ... grounded all fighter planes and changed over all planes to (navy) sidewinder missiles (which were better than twice as good at hitting enemy planes as the air force 10 percent). after 3 months, the general was called on the carpet in the pentagon. It wasn't so much that he was loosing less planes and pilots and shooting down more of the enemy ... but that he was causing the airforce to loose budget share to the navy (using navy missiles rather than airforce missiles).

in any case, a better/faster processor for the pinpoint heat-seeking guidance ... would have just more accurately sent the missile to the wrong part of the sky. their mistake was that they assumed that the hottest part of a jet plane was actually part of the plane. in all the trials they had used propeller drones with flares attached to the plane.

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

Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2008 01:16:29
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
Locus TNC (Transparent Network Computing). Morphed into OSF1/AD, IIRC.

Unisys did a similar OS (SVR4/MK (mk for microkernel, based on Chorus)) for the OPUS product 1989-1997. Became part of the Amadeus project with USL and the EC (can't remember the name of the EC initiative).


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#50 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?

the palo alto group had been working with UCLA on locus and had it installed on series/1 and some 68k machines. they were also working on bsd port for 370. their bsd/370 product was redirected to pc/rt and offered as "AOS" on the (bare metal) PC/RT (counter example as to the minimal effort it took to do a unix port to the native hardware as opposed to the difficulty involved in dealing with the VRM as in the AIXV2 offering). the palo alto group also produced the aix/370 and aix/ps2 offerings (using locus).

the corporation equally funded mit project athena with dec ... and each had an assistant director at the project ... which turned out things like kerberos and X (windows, as well as some number of other things) ... recent kerberos reference/post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#31 Kerberized authorization service

the corporation also funded cmu andrew projects (to the tune equal to the combined corporations' funding at mit) ... which turned out things like andrew filesystem, andrew widgets, mach, and camelot.

OSF design meetings were something of a mashup of locus, project athena, andrew, hp/apollo domain, and (at least) aix distributed filesystem. wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Software_Foundation

from above:
OSF's standard Unix implementation was known as OSF/1 and was first released in 1992.[2] For the most part, it was a failure; by the time OSF stopped development of OSF/1 in 1994, the only vendor using OSF/1 was Digital, which rebranded it Digital UNIX (later known as Tru64 UNIX after Digital's acquisition by Compaq).

... snip ...

during this period ... we were sometimes around the cambridge area, but mostly busy with our ha/cmp product (for aix):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
and this old reference to parallel oracle meeting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#15
and these old emails on ha/cmp scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

cmu mach (microkernel) showed up in a number of implementations, including NeXT and the current apple operating system ... recent post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#20 folklore indeed
and wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_kernel

above has reference to "A comparison of Mach, Amoeba and Chorus"
http://www.cdk3.net/oss/Ed2/Comparison.pdf

camelot (as encina) was included in the transarc spinoff (along with andrew filesystem) and then directly purchased (joke in previous reference about funding it three different times) ... which has shown up as an aix transaction "cics". wiki page ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transarc

osf was supposedly alternative to att/sun official "unix". camelot/encina was an alternative to att tuxedo transaction processing (which was spun off and eventually showed up at BEA, recently purchased by oracel). wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuxedo_(software)

For a totally different mainframe amadeus drift ... in the late 80s, my wife had done a short stint as chief architect of (this) amadeus (which was being done sort of as a european alternative to the united and american mainframe systems) that started off with the old eastern airline res system
http://www.amadeus.com/
and wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadeus_CRS

other mainframe unixes in the 80s were Amdahl uts system and the special product done for internal AT&T use, which layered unix interface on top of a stripped down tss/370 kernel.

Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bel?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bel?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2008 01:46:16
hwillard@MEGAPATHDSL.NET (Henry Willard) writes:
Other than having AIX in the name and being ports based on some version of Unix, AIX/ESA and AIX/370 didn't have much in common with the AIX that runs on System p.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#50 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#53 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?

one of the issues about the various mainframe unix ports running under vm370 ... was that the effort to add mainframe ras & erep to unix base was significantly larger than doing the straight-forward port. running the unix port in a virtual machine ... could leave the ras and erep processing to the base virtual machine kernel. another small issue was getting field engineering sign-off on machine/hardware service unless there was adequate/approved ras and erep.

had this discussion about the vast difference in mainframe ras & erep and various other systems, with other attendees at this old nasa dependable computing conference:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011004023230/http://www.hdcc.cs.cmu.edu/may01/index.html

Kernels

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Kernels
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2008 02:02:12
CBFalconer <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes:
There are two fundamentally different views of kernels. In one, the kernel is minimized and, as far as possible, kernel operations are performed by processes, which are on equal terms with all other processes (except possibly for priority). This keeps things nicely organized, but can become abysmally slow.

In another, the kernel operations are integrated into (and loaded with) the actual kernel. Things become more complicated, and generally faster, and generally require more memory. Linux is an example of this.

I suspect MS is gradually becoming aware that CPUs are now sufficiently fast, and memory sufficiently cheap, that the first type (the mini-kernel) is quite satisfactory today. This realization is at least 20 years late.


and somewhere in all this are cp67 and vm370 virtual machine kernels and some of the more recent spin-offs ... where the differentation between processes is being used to address a wide variety of existing system problems; security, service, administration, etc. some of the performance issues are addressed with hardware implemented assists (in part because the interfaces are relatively well defined and known).

a subset of the virtual machine operations are LPARs ... where all the partitioning logic has been dropped into the hardware (providing a somewhat subset of virtual machine facilities, in part by dedicating resources, like real memory).

a little x-over from this mainframe thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#50 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#53 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#54 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?

where there is some reference to using mainframe virtual machine systems to provide appropriate RAS and EREP facilities. other posts in the thread make references to having several hundred production linux systems hosted on single machine.

some of the more recent arguments for transition to virtual machine based environment and things like virtual appliances have to do with both ease of development & test ... as well as administration in large datacenter operations. some recent posts mentioning the virtual appliance (and/or the old time term service virtual machine):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#46 To RISC or not to RISC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#25 To RISC or not to RISC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#6 Multics on Vmware ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#8 vmshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#36 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#26 user level TCP implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#48 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#67 Operating systems are old and busted
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#70 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#3 Hypervisors May Replace Operating Systems As King Of The Data Center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#25 VMware: New King Of The Data Center?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#4 Why do we think virtualization is new?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#26 Oracle Introduces Oracle VM As It Leaps Into Virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#35 Oracle Introduces Oracle VM As It Leaps Into Virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#39 New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#41 New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#81 IBM mainframe history, was Floating-point myths
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#75 virtual appliance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#80 software preservation volunteers ( was Re: LINC-8 Front Panel Questions)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#59 old internal network references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#39 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#52 China's Godson-2 processor takes center stage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#2 folklore indeed

Toyota Beats GM in Global Production

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2008 10:15:28
Bernd Felsche <bernie@innovative.iinet.net.au> writes:
Although highly individual, everybody must strike a balance between rest, recreation, work and self-development. The last of these is often overlooked; especially as something that needs to be done. Not a novel concept; it's been around for at least 4 centuries in Western (European) culture.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#22 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#46 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production

one could claim that many aspects of life-long self-development is relatively recent phenonema ... and can be considered related to transition to information age. an aspect of this can be considered focus on people finding difficulty accepting change after being in the same job for 20-30 yrs.

industrial age was much more characterized with relative slow change and many people could live their whole life doing approx. the same thing year after year (although previous agricultural age was even much more static environment).

one might claim the difference between taking 7-8 yrs to produce a new automobile (from concept to rolling out the factory) and being able to do a new automobile in single model yr (or less) .... is the transition from industrial age to information age ... aka c4 was effort attempting to leverage information technology to facilitate the transition from the old era to a much more agile and adaptable era.

public education of children could be considered to providing enough schooling to deal with the higher skill levels needed to deal with industrial jobs ... say, compared to earlier farm jobs.

implicit in information age and associated more rapid change ... would not just focus on the higher education quality required ... but that it would need to also be a life-long process. The country is having difficulty just grappling with the increasing quality level required of the current educational infrastructure ... and hasn't started to face the issue that it is going to have to become a lifelong process (lots of evidence that the overall education quality not only isn't improving, that it isn't even maintaining status quo ... and is actually declining).

some past posts mentioning educational ranking ... real issue is that should have already been dealt with ... and the issue to be grappling with is lifelong learning, constantly increasing adult literacy rate, etc:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#38 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#58 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#78 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#80 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#82 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#10 About 1 in 5 IBM employees now in India - so what ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#16 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#19 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#20 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#27 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#38 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#39 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#44 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#45 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#46 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#51 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#52 vm folklore, new, 40+ yr old technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#63 An old fashioned Christmas
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#64 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#69 Controlling COBOL DDs named SYSOUT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#71 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#72 whats the world going to do when all the baby boomers retire
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#39 competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#52 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#55 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#57 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#60 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#62 competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#73 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#81 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#83 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#3 on-demand computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#6 Science and Engineering Indicators 2008
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#13 Education ranking

Current Officers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Current Officers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2008 10:30:01
jmfbahciv writes:
I wonder how many techs said something and were ignored?

It's a good story. We spent oodles of time finding field test sites that, collectively, had all the gear we had to support.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#52 Current Officers

i think the problem in this case, was that the techs never actually went out and did a detailed heat signature of an operating plane ... just assumed that the hottest part of a jet plane ... was part of the plane.

for some topic drift ... there was a different kind of discontinuity but similar corporate reaction ... when the VPN concept was introduced in IETF meeting ... discussed in this recent posting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#23 Dutch Transport Card Broken

router vendors that didn't have products with processors capable of the required VPN crypto operations, appeared to go into stalling mode in the standards meetings.

actually most of the above thread divurged into how other things were "broken" ... and what could be done to fix them
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#24 Fixing SSL (was Re: Dutch Transport Card Broken)

other postings in the thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#15 Dutch Transport Card Broken
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#16 Dutch Transport Card Broken
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#20 Fixing SSL (was Re: Dutch Transport Card Broken)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#21 Dutch Transport Card Broken
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#22 Dutch Transport Card Broken

Current Officers

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Current Officers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2008 11:12:59
jmfbahciv writes:
Oh, I was thinking of the cost of the gear and the limitations a 360 had w.r.t. scheduling jobs. He wouldn't have had to "steal" time to get run done.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#26 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#39 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#40 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#43 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#51 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#52 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#57 Current Officers

something of an aside, Boyd's command of "spook base" and the ibm equipment there (possibly largest datacenter in the world at the time, aka "$2.5b windfall for ibm") ... and the supercomputer time he "stole" as part of designing F16 ... were totally different/unrelated. However, one might claim that the scheduling of jobs in traditional supercomputers was even more difficult than any batch scheduling in the os/360 (batch) operating system. I would hazard a guess that the "supercomputers" weren't even from the same vendor.

the issue of using even (gov) workstation level machines for design of F16, could have still been construed as theft of gov. property ... its just that rarely was accounting audit trail kept of workstation use, so it would be much more difficult to make a case. given that they didn't want him designing F16, they would have come up with some other attack strategy.

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

Govt demands password to personal computer

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Govt demands password to personal computer
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2008 13:41:04
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
In referecnce to something else, our local edition of the UK sunday times had this story, written by an financial reporter 'Jill Kirby'.. She had an account, with some direct debits, and an assosiated debit card, which she never used, just left in a drawer. Now, according to this account, she got a phone call from the bank, because of some unusual activity on this card. The Bank's theory was that the number was generated randomly, and matched to bank ID codes.. Could that happen?..

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#67 Govt demands password to personal computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#68 Govt demands password to personal computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#72 Govt demands password to personal computer

and for something similar:

middle banking in a english muddle
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/000999.html

the above has a reference to this URL:

Middle England's identity crisis
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2007/dec/15/scamsandfraud

from above:
It's a middle England commuter town where the chief topic of conversation is usually the weather or train delays. But now the Hertfordshire town of Letchworth is coping with an explosion of identity theft, the victim of gangs of fraudsters who target one community, siphon as much money as possible out of bank accounts then move, locust-like, to neighbouring areas.

... snip ...

the first reference also points to this URL:

Digital Money Forum: Don't worry, it still works fine
http://digitaldebateblogs.typepad.com/digital_money/2008/01/dont-worry-it-s.html

from above:
I don't know if you saw this wonderful story in The Guardian back in December, but it was about the English town of Letchworth (the world's first garden city) and the essence of the story was that card fraud is so out-of-control that a kind of panic has set in.

... snip ...

the above also points to this URL:

Has chip-and-pin failed to foil fraudsters?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/03/hitechcrime.news

with respect to yes card exploit ... lots of discussion in these posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard

Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2008 14:32:28
bdissen@DISSENSOFTWARE.COM (Binyamin Dissen) writes:
Well, back when I was starting SP'ing (Western Electric), slightly earlier than your time frame, that was the job.

You first figured out the bug, and then reported it to the vendor. There wasn't as much hand holding as nowadays. You were expected to do most of the research yourself.

Of course, nowadays with OCO and no fiche, this would be a bit harder.


some 40yrs ago, back when i was an undergraduate and doing a lot of virtual machine kernel hacking ... i would get requests for new features from the vendor. in later years, i conjectured (that because of the nature of some of the requests) ... some may have originated from some gov. agency.

for some slight topic drift:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2008 19:03:23
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
it now has been over 40yrs since i started work on virtualization technology.

different strengths of virtualization are being used for addressing a broad range of issues in the IT industry ... from server farm efficiencies to client security.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#28

item from today:

SOA's Perfect Mate? Virtualization 2.0 will go beyond server consolidation, making applications more agile and scalable to fit a service-oriented architecture.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206500035

from above:
Server virtualization makes most IT pros think consolidation, and it's easy to see why: One machine taking over tasks that previously required two or four or 10 equals powerful cost savings, both in hardware and in management, heating, and cooling. But consolidation is only the first step. The greatest benefit of virtualization will come from increased flexibility realized by chopping up servers into smaller units of resources like CPUs, memory, and disk space, which are then pooled and allocated to apps on demand.

... snip ...

a little x-over
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#55 Kernels

in theory, regular operating systems were theoretically able to spread out resources across the application requirements. part of the issue were the administrative burden to manage all the possible interactions at low level. virtualization contributes to simplifying (KISS) those interactions.

for a little more drift (from today)

SocGen - the FC solution, the core failure, and some short term hacks...
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001001.html

the above has references to various operations that appear to love complexity.

and for recent post referencing 40+ yr old technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#60 Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee

Morten Reistad? Marine Cables to Mid East cut?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Morten Reistad? Marine Cables to Mid East cut?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 02 Feb 2008 20:01:32
some sample of other references ...

Cable damage in Mediterranean disrupts Internet in Mideast
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9060339
Millions in Middle East Lose Internet
http://slashdot.org/articles/08/01/31/037204.shtml
Internet in India Slowed by Middle East Outage
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/142046/internet_in_india_slowed_by_middle_east_outage.html
Internet Outages Hit India, Middle East
http://www.physorg.com/news122029714.html
Internet in India slowed by Middle East outage
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/013108-young-mainframers-group-gains.html
Cut cable disrupts Internet in Middle East
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/013108-internet-in-india-slowed-by.html
Cut cable disrupts Internet in Middle East
http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20080131/tc_infoworld/94977
Cable cuts force rerouting of Internet traffic around the world
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyId=16&articleId=9060463&taxonomyId=16&articleId=9060463
New cable cut compounds net woes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7222536.stm

A third underwater cable is cut in Middle East
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9060658
A third underwater cable is cut in Middle East
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9060658&pageNumber=2

from above:
Traffic inbound to that region from the U.S., Europe and other parts of Asia is slowed, with an average Web site taking four times longer to load than normal because of constraints in available bandwidth, he added. In other words, a page that takes one second to load can now take up to an average of four seconds to load.

... snip ...

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 01:56:42
krw <krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzz> writes:
Ever hear of Dun and Bradstreet?

wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dun_%26_Bradstreet

and for a little cp67 history ... wiki pages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_CP/CMS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/CMS

... one of the commercial cp67 timesharing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

spin-offs from the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

was ncss ... wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_CSS
computerhistory page
http://www.computerhistory.org/corphist/view.php?s=documents&id=22

which was bought by D&B in 1979 (I believe I once saw a reference that one of the NCSS people eventually rose to head up D&B).

For a little D&B history, profile:
http://www.ketupa.net/dnb.htm

for a little more topic drift ... one of the other companies owned by D&B:
John Moody (1868-1958) established what became Moody's Investors Service - acquired by Dun & Bradstreet in 1962 and spun off in 2000 - when he published Moody's Manual of Industrial & Corporation Securities. There is an account of the company in his autobiography The Long Road Home (1933) and Fast by the Road (1942).

Moody's status is reflected in Thomas Friedman's 1996 comment that

there are two superpowers in the world today in my opinion. There's the United States and there's Moody's Bond Rating Service. The United States can destroy you by dropping bombs, and Moody's can destroy you by downgrading your bonds. And believe me, it's not clear sometimes who's more powerful.


... snip ...

and Moody's is one of the organizations that has been involved in recent CDO meltdown. misc. past posts mention CDO and bond rating problems:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#25 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#66 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#70 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#90 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#11 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#13 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#21 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

Current Officers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Current Officers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 02:28:44
jmfbahciv writes:
But the Marines put a black ribbon on his stone. That showed class. If I ever get to their place near D.C., I want to put a yellow rose at the feet of the statue the Marines have in the lobby.

I'm in the DC area ... anybody want to meet at the Marine museum
http://www.usmcmuseum.org/index.asp

directions:
http://www.usmcmuseum.org/Visitor_Location.asp

that part of 95 can be a real bear (one of the offspring has to commute it).

Boyd's papers are actually on base at the Marine Corps Univ.
http://www.belisarius.com/modern_business_strategy/boyd/boyd_papers.htm

from above:
The Marine Corps University, Quantico, Virginia, holds the personal papers and archives of the late Air Force Colonel John R. Boyd. In the archive, Colonel Boyd's papers are divided into fourteen records series. The first series is composed of books, which he heavily annotated. The degree of importance Boyd placed on the information is witnessed by how heavily he marked the pages.

... snip ...

for other drift, Boyd reference as combat fighter pilot
http://www.aviation-history.com/airmen/boyd.htm

from above:
During the 1950s, John Boyd dominated fighter aviation in the U.S. Air Force. His fame came on the wings of the quirky and treacherous F-100; the infamous "Hun." Boyd was known throughout the Air Force as "Forty-Second Boyd," because he had a standing offer to all pilots that if they could defeat them in simulated air-to-air combat in under 40 seconds, he would pay them $40. Like any gunslinger with a name and a reputation, he was called out many times. As an instructor at the Fighter Weapons School (FWS) at Nellis AFB, he fought students, cadre pilots, Marine and Navy pilots, and pilots from a dozen countries, who were attending the FWS as part of the Mutual Defense Assistance Pact.

He never lost.


... snip ...

past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#26 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#39 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#40 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#43 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#51 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#52 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#57 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#58 Current Officers

No Glory for the PDP-15

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: No Glory for the PDP-15
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 10:46:01
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
*Any* system will thrash, or else shut down processes, if you don't have enough memory. You're trying to provide at least some service to all users. If you could just start removing processes from the active list and swap them out, you can avoid most thrashing, until you try, for example, to rotate a bitmap that's too big to fit into memory.

i got into several different areas of this when doing a lot of changes to virtual machine operating system as undergraduate in the 60s ... recent reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#60 Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee

and this recent D&B reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#63 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

drifts into several historical references about the period (D&B) acquiring one of the commercial virtual machine timesharing companies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

the references include some references to improving (CP67) paging (and scheduling) efficiencies of the system to be commercially successful ... and some (mostly) academic state-of-the-art references in the period.

the original "release 1" cp67 installed at the univ, the last week of jan68 ... and a ten level dispatcher (purported to some how be traced back to ctss) and no page thrashing controls ... and a very rudimentary page replacement algorithm (would scan all of memory searching for page belonging to a non-active process ... if none found, then effectively reverted to FIFO).

a little later, there was a replacement dispatcher, authored by one of the people at lincoln labs (who was to shortly become one of the initial members of new cp67 commercial timesharing companies) that simplified to a two-level dispatcher but with some controls for limiting page thrashing. basically there had been some determination of the avg real-storage requirements for typical workload at lincoln labs. A table was created that gave the maximum number of concurrent processes (for the two dispatching queues, based on the lincoln lab experience). However, there was no dynamic monitoring of actual workload to see if page thrashing was still occurring.

So as part of other work i was doing in reducing pathlength ... i cut the pathlength for paging operations by nearly an order of magnitude. Also, page i/o operations were being performed as independent FIFO operations. I changed the overall disk infrastructure to support ordered seek queueing ... and for page i/o operations ... page requests for the same "arm" position could be chained together into single i/o transfer operation (and ordered to transfer maximum amount per revolution). For the 2301, fixhead "drums", that met that all queued requests could be reordered and transferred in single i/o operation ... with optimal page transfers per revolution. For a 2301 drum, this improved the peak page transfers from approx. 80/sec to 300/sec. This significantly improved the efficiency of the underlying paging infrastructure.

For page replacement, I implemented a global LRU replacement algorithm that made use of the 360/67 hardware storage reference bits. Most of this work was absorbed into the basic system product for distribution.

For dispatching, I developed some code to monitor real storage requirements and dynamically adjust the needed real storage required for each process. The number of concurrent processes then was limited by the aggregate real storage requirements of the active concurrent processes.

Lots of past posts on this work
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

Almost 15yrs later, the global LRU work led to getting dragged into somewhat raging conflict between "local LRU" replacement factions and somebody doing Stanford Phd thesis on global LRU. Jim Gray had left for Tandem and the Stanford student embroiled in the conflict was an employee at Tandem ... and Jim asked if I could give him some help.

It turned out that the Grenoble Science Center had done a "local LRU" implementation for cp67 (conformed to standard academic literature on the subject) in the early 70s and published papers on the results, including in CACM. Grenoble had nearly identical configuration and workload to Cambridge ... but had 1mbyte real storage 360/67 (155 pages after fixed storage requirements) compared to Cambridge's 768kbyte real storage 360/67 (104 pages after fixed storage requirements). Except for the "local LRU" vis-a-vis global LRU ... the two systems were built from very similar base system. The Cambridge operation supported 75-80 concurrent users with subsecond response ... while the Grenoble only support 35 concurrent users (doing similar workload) with similar response (only half the workload even tho they had 50 percent more real storage available for paging).

old cover communication (I also included copies of some of the backup detailed performance analysis that grenoble had provided to me)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email821019
in this post on the subject
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#46 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?

some past posts mentioning the "local/global" LRU issues
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#1 Multitasking question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#0a Cache
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#0b Hypothetical performance question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#54 qn on virtual page replacement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#18 Old Computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#11 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#34 Optimal replacement Algorithm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#36 Optimal replacement Algorithm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#49 Swapper was Re: History of Login Names
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#30 Computer History Exhibition, Grenoble France
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#55 Alpha performance, why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#6 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#59 real multi-tasking, multi-programming
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#13 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004i.html#0 Hard disk architecture: are outer cylinders still faster than
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#7 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#73 Athlon cache question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#53 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#37 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#48 Secure design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#47 Moving assembler programs above the line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#15 Exceptions at basic block boundaries
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#28 IBM's mini computers--lack thereof
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#23 Code density and performance?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#14 Expanded Storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#15 {SPAM?} Re: Expanded Storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#16 {SPAM?} Re: Expanded Storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#0 using 3390 mod-9s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#28 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#31 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#36 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#41 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#42 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#14 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#17 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#18 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#22 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#12 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#14 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#0 DASD Response Time (on antique 3390?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#19 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#21 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#12 Trying to design low level hard disk manipulation program
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#34 REAL memory column in SDSF
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#43 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#17 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#35 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#3 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#23 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#56 SVCs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#7 A way to speed up level 1 caches
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#5 Poster of computer hardware events?

Toyota Beats GM in Global Production

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 11:13:27
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:

https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#22 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#46 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production

one could claim that many aspects of life-long self-development is relatively recent phenonema ... and can be considered related to transition to information age. an aspect of this can be considered focus on people finding difficulty accepting change after being in the same job for 20-30 yrs.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#56 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production

in the early 90s (in the same timeframe as attending some of the c4 meetings looking to remake the us automobile industry) we would also go by somers (at the time, new large, corporate "pyramid power" bldg) and hassle some of the executives about how the business was changing and the corporation needed some radical adjustments to adapt to the changing environment. we would eventually get agreement regarding the facts of the issue ... but we could return a couple months later and see no change.

one interpretation was that the individuals were looking at attempting to maintain the status quo until after they had retired ... they felt their 30 yrs of experience was perceived to be a lot more valuable (and their income tied to perception of their value) given that the environment doesn't change.

the scenario was that there was a whole generation, who all felt it to be to their personal benefit to stave off change (until after they were gone). it wasn't even necessarily a conscience conspiracy ... just a lot of individuals who happened to feel they would benefit by the same objective (attempting to stave off change until after they were gone).

then comes 1992 and the company goes into the red.

somewhat related post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#34 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

misc. past references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#123 Speaking of USB ( was Re: ASR 33 Typing Element)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#5 IBM Somers NY facility?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#43 Mainframe Emulation Solutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#62 microsoft antitrust
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#8 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#29 Mainframe Linux Mythbusting (Was: Using Java in batch

What happened to resumable instructions?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What happened to resumable instructions?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 14:33:21
gilmap@UNIX.STORTEK.COM (Paul Gilmartin) writes:
o Page faults? How are page faults handled for resumable instructions? Is a fault generated for any page in the range of either operand, with the OS attempting to stage both, or does a fault possibly for each resumption.

the resumable instructions were storage-to-storage operations with address and length specified in registers for both source and destination. requirement was that the registers be appropriately updated as the instruction proceeded ... so that on any interrupt, all registers will have been appropriately updated (and therefor on restart, the instruction would resume from the appropriate position).

the problem wouldn't so much the psw address being correct on the interrupt ... the issue was that all registers actually reflecting the correct values (i.e. working copies of the values weren't squirreled away in other hardware location).

prior to mvcl/clcl ... instructions would pretest start and end location for both (2k) storage protection and 4k page fault. with mvcl/clcl, the testing had to be done incrementally for every byte processed (although there were later optimizations that would do it in larger blocks, and then fall back to per byte mode ... for any residual).

highly pipelined machines gets into lots of issues with what are the current (visible) register contents at any point in time (lots of different parallel executing circuits with possibly their own register values). newer machines also have extensive hardware ras with status checkpoint and instruction retry (to mask various kinds of transient hardware glitches) ... instructions that execute incrementally aggravate status checkpointing overhead (and instruction retry logic).

i actually ran into early problem with 370/125 implementation on vm370. at vm370 boot (on real machine), it would load maximum values into mvcl (initialized to clear storage) and kick it off, it would zero all of real storage ... interrupting when it hit the end of real storage. early 370/125 microcode had a "bug" where it was still "pretesting" origin & end for mvcl/clcl and aborting the instruction before starting ... which to vm370 made it appear like there was no real storage.

vm370 was originally targeted at supporting 256kbyte machines ... prior to announce of 370/125 ... and was never announced for 370/125. at this point, a customer had requested assistance in getting vm370 running on 370/125. while vm370 had non-swappable kernel support ... the amount of fixed kernel had somewhat bloated between the original announce ... and this point ... which also significantly aggravated vm370 operation in 256k real storage.

recent post referring to having done lots of work in 60s as undergraduate on cp67 ... much of which got picked up and shipped in the product:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#65 No Glory for the PDP-15

one of the other things that i had done for cp67 in the 60s was making portions of the kernel pageable ... which wasn't shipped in cp67 product ... but was picked up for vm370 product. however, since the initial release ... things had gotten lax between what was in the fixed kernel and what was in the pageable kernel.

by the time of the customer vm370 370/125 request to the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

I had moved much of the cp67 work (that had been dropped in the cp67 to vm370 morph) as well as adding lots of new stuff ... and was supplying highly modified vm370 systems to large number of internal datacenters. some old email references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102

and part of getting vm370 up and running on 370/125 also involved going thru lots of kernel infrastructure and significantly reducing the fixed storage footprint for running in 256kbyte real storage machine.

Toyota Beats GM in Global Production

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 15:03:26
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
the scenario was that there was a whole generation, who all felt it to be to their personal benefit to stave off change (until after they were gone). it wasn't even necessarily a conscience conspiracy ... just a lot of individuals who happened to feel they would benefit by the same objective (attempting to stave off change until after they were gone).

then comes 1992 and the company goes into the red.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#66 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production

one aspect of the C4 meetings were numerous vendors were invited to participate representing different areas ... the corporation had both representatives from the mainframe organization as well as the 801/risc processor organization

a major objective of c4 was addressing how to leverage information technology to reduce total elapsed product lifecycle from 7-8yrs down to 1-2yrs.

privately, we observed that the mainframe organization was still on a 7-8yr cycle for their products and it was somewhat ironic they were being asked to help with problems of reducing product lifecycle to 1-2yrs.

the mainframe organization product lifecycle dates back (at least) to the death of future system product in the 70s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

in the aftermath there was mad rush to get products back into the 370 pipeline. 370-xa (i.e. 3081, 31bit addressing, other stuff) was going to take 7-8yrs. as an interrim stopgap, 3033 project was started, initially involved remapping 168 logic to faster chip technology. after getting 3033 out, that group could start on 3090 (overlapped with 3081 effort).

by comparison the 801/risc new rios chipset (rs/6000, power) had been done in much shorter time (although the total complexity could be considered to be less).

now besides the other stuff ... los gatos vlsi lab had developed the LSM ... parallel logic simulation engine ... that would do chip design logic simulation at 25,000-50,000 times faster than 3033. use of the hardware logic simulation was credited with helping bring in the rios chipset a year early.

now besides the other stuff we were doing in the rs6000 group ... like ha/cmp project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

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

one of our other hobbies that we kept going was hsdt
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

and the associated internal high-speed backbone ... which provided the high-bandwidth connectivity for shipping chip designs and logic simulation between the rios chip designers and the logic simulation engine.

other posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#22 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#46 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#56 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production

other recent posts mentioning c4 activity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#24 Need Help filtering out sporge in comp.arch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#84 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#86 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#9 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#51 Current Officers

Toyota Beats GM in Global Production

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 16:19:30
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
This is why it is so worrysome that the US, the leading economy, is getting so short of engineers. This is a ton of business you hand to the rest of the developed world on a plate.

re: Science And Engineering Indicators 2008 (released 15jan2008, updated 1Feb)
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind08/

recent posts mentioning reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#57 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#6 Science and Engineering Indicators 2008

there have been several references to not only aren't there the next generation of engineers in the country ... but there is an upcoming crisis that so many of the current engineers are of the baby boomer generation who will be retiring over the next couple years.

the upside articles refer to there possible being lots of part-time work for those retirees.

Fixing US broadband: $100 billion for fiber to every home

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Fixing US broadband: $100 billion for fiber to every home
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 16:25:54
Fixing US broadband: $100 billion for fiber to every home
http://arstechnica.com/anews.ars/post/20080131-fixing-us-broadband-100-billion-for-fiber-to-every-home.html

from above:
The US is in desperate need of 100Mbps "big broadband." That's the conclusion of a new report from EDUCAUSE (PDF), a group that represents IT managers at over 2,200 colleges and universities.

... snip ...

and:
The report opens by citing the familiar, dreary facts: US broadband might now be widely available, but it's slow and relatively expensive. Between 1999 and 2006, the US fell from third place to 20th in the International Telecommunications Union's broadband usage measurements. When it comes to average connection speeds, the US isn't beaten just by Japan but also by France, Korea, Sweden, New Zealand, Italy, Finland, Portugal, Australia, Norway, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, and Germany. And it's not about population size or density, either; Finland, Sweden, and Canada beat us on most broadband metrics despite having lower population density. Finally, we're getting beat on price, coming in 18th worldwide when it comes to cost per megabyte.

... snip ...

this is similar to other measures of US ranking at or near the bottom of industrial nations across a broad range of different categories.

reference educause paper:

A Blueprint for Big Broadband
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodMarketingSystem/pricespreads.htm

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 16:53:02
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
and for a little cp67 history ... wiki pages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_CP/CMS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/CMS


the above wiki pages include family tree tracing both cp40/cms & cp67/cms (at the science center on 4th flr 545 tech sq)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

and multics (5th flr 545 tech sq) back to ctss; as well as ctss incluencing ibm m44/44x, tss/360, and tso (all ibm).

It also points to this "time-sharing" wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing

which also references this wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing_system_evolution

all with several timesharing system references.

The expanded "family tree" also lists CTSS influencing both major DEC time-sharing systems as well as CP/M, MS-DOS derived systems.

it doesn't make a lot of detail about other cp67 derived commercial time-sharing services ... which included at least tymshare and idc (in addition to NCSS).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

it also doesn't mention BCS. Recent post mentioning getting hired to help get BCS going
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#36 windows time service

part of BCS was consolidating the various datacenter operations into a separate business ... in theory turning it into a profit center (instead of a cost/expense operation). Part of that included allowing BCS to market services to other operations than just internal Boeing locations.

The wiki time-sharing system evolution lists some number of other kinds of online systems ... like ACP, APL\360, CICS, ROSCOE, WILBUR ... as well as some number of systems done for other vendor platforms.

No Glory for the PDP-15

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: No Glory for the PDP-15
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:36:01
Johnny Billquist <bqt@update.uu.se> writes:
And they are also (atleast the Unixy systems) pretty monolithic kernels. But most operating systems now seem to weight in at the multi-megabyte sizes or locked-down memory.

Unfortunately, this is what people nowadays mean by "small". :-)


previous post discussing some work i did on page thrashing in the 60s as an undergraduate (much of it incorporated and released in standard product)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#65

recent x-over post from mainframe list
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#67

that includes discussion of adding changes to the cp67 virtual machine kernel making portions of it pageable. this wasn't released in cp67 kernel ... but in the morph from cp67 to vm370 (when a lot of stuff that i had done were dropped), it was included. however, as real storage sizes increased ... not a lot of attention was given to maintaining optimal operation ... knee-jerk was to just add stuff to vm370 kernel.

above discusses going back a couple yrs afterwards and updating some of the work to improve operation on systems with 256kbytes of real storage.

part of the above makes references to some old email having later migrated a lot of code from cp67 (that had been dropped) to vm370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102

part of the above work included making changes to various kernel process-related control structures ... that allowed them to be paged out for quiesced or idle processes (further increasing pageable pages in real storage constrained environments). some amount of these features were included as part of my resource manager product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

for other drift a couple recent posts referencing wiki time sharing history pages
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#63
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#71

Palestine (was 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor"

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Palestine (was 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 21:59:49
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
Egypt is a choke point for all international telecommunications. Wired magazine had a write-up of this a few years ago. By irony, the second biggest choke point for the entire Internet resides at the location of the ancient Library of Alexandria.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#62

one of the recent articles has pictorial of major cable routes

How one clumsy ship cut off the web for 75 million people
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/feb/01/internationalpersonalfinancebusiness.internet
The internet's undersea world
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Technology/Pix/pictures/2008/02/01/SeaCableHi.jpg

more detailed mediterranean picture:

Effects of Fibre Outage through Mediterranean
https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/Effects+of+Fibre+Outage+through+Mediterranean

and some more recent articles

Ships did not cut internet cables: Egypt
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/04/2153455.htm
Internet and phone services near normalcy
http://www.gulfnews.com/nation/Technology/10186994.html
Hydra-headed nature helps Net rebound after cable cut
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Internet_/Hydra-headed_nature_helps_Net_rebound_after_cable_cut/articleshow/2753865.cms
FICCI survey: not much loss due to the underwater cable damage
http://www.hindu.com/2008/02/04/stories/2008020453391300.htm

Horses and Cars

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Horses and Cars
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 23:03:34
CBFalconer <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes:
Well, cars in the US have been fitted with catalytic converters. What is holding up refitting the horse population?

in past threads related to this ... articles were referenced about horseless carriage would be the saviour of the enormous horse pollution problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#18 Did Intel Bite Off More Than It Can Chew?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#31 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers

Palestine (was 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor"

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Palestine (was 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2008 08:32:49
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Hydra-headed nature helps Net rebound after cable cut
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Internet_/Hydra-headed_nature_helps_Net_rebound_after_cable_cut/articleshow/2753865.cms


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#62 Morten Reistad? Marine Cables to Mid East cut?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#73 Palestine (was 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor"

some more ...

Fourth Undersea Cable Taken Offline In Less Than a Week
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/08/02/04/0158249.shtml
Internet problems continue with fourth cable break
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/510132-internet-problems-continue-with-fourth-cable-break?ln=en

Neglected IT Tasks May Have Led to Bank Meltdown

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Neglected IT Tasks May Have Led to Bank Meltdown
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:59:22
Neglected IT Tasks May Have Led to Bank Meltdown
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/142137/neglected_it_tasks_may_have_led_to_bank_meltdown.html

from above:
The bank has accused 31-year-old employee Jerome Kerviel of creating a fraudulent trading position in the bank's computers that ultimately caused it to lose around euro4.9 billion (US$7.3 billion).

Kerviel achieved this by, among other things, misappropriating computer passwords, the bank said. It has revealed few other technical details of what caused the losses.


... snip ...

other stories mentioned that there was possibly $50b in unsanctioned trading positions ... and they lost $7bil-some getting out of them.

recent posts mentioning the incident
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#13 Break the rules of governance and lose 4.9 billion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#14 Break the rules of governance and lose 4.9 billion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#75 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#82 Break the rules of governance and lose 4.9 billion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#44 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

collected posts mentioning problems with shared-secret, pin, password based infrastructures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#secrets

misc. past posts mentioning insiders, multi-party transactions as countermeasure to insider fraud, collusion for multi-party fraud, and collusion countermeasures ... also infrastructure structural measures like role-based access control
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm3.htm#kiss10 KISS for PKIX. (authentication/authorization seperation)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm6.htm#pcards The end of P-Cards?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm6.htm#pcards2 The end of P-Cards? (addenda)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#auth Who or what to authenticate?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#rhose4 Rubber hose attack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#rhose15 when a fraud is a sale, Re: Rubber hose attack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm8.htm#rhose17 [Fwd: Re: when a fraud is a sale, Re: Rubber hose attack]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm9.htm#pkcs12d A PKI Question: PKCS11-> PKCS12
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#10 Federated Identity Management: Sorting out the possibilities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#33 two questions about spki
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm16.htm#13 The PAIN mnemonic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#17 should you trust CAs? (Re: dual-use digital signature vulnerability)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#8 simple (&secure??) PW-based web login (was Re: Another entry in the internet security hall of shame....)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm23.htm#0 Separation of Roles - an example
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm23.htm#10 PGP "master keys"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#36 Interesting bit of a quote
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#40 Interesting bit of a quote
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#53 Doom and Gloom spreads, security revisionism suggests "H6.5: Be an adept!"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#13 Break the rules of governance and lose 4.9 billion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#56 E-commerce security????
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#32 Looking for security models/methodologies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#26 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#15 US fiscal policy (Was: Bob Bemer, Computer Pioneer,Father of ASCII,Invento
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#37 MVS secure configuration standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#38 MVS secure configuration standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#11 Revoking the Root
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#1 More on garbage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005v.html#2 ABN Tape - Found
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#30 Caller ID "spoofing"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#16 Value of an old IBM PS/2 CL57 SX Laptop
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#33 Password Complexity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#32 The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#40 New attacks on the financial PIN processing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#39 Silly beginner questions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#26 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#82 Break the rules of governance and lose 4.9 billion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#44 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#47 Data Erasure Products

Palestine (was 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor"

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Palestine (was 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:51:19
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#62 Morten Reistad? Marine Cables to Mid East cut?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#73 Palestine (was 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#75 Palestine (was 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor"

another ...

Analyzing the Internet Collapse
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/20152/

from above:
Whatever the cause, the effects were immediate. According to its telecommunications ministry, Egypt initially lost 70 percent of its connection to the outside Internet and 30 percent of service to its call-center industry, which depended less on the lines. Between 50 and 60 percent of India's Net outbound connectivity was similarly lost on the westbound route critical to the nation's burgeoning outsourcing industry.

... snip ...

internet contributing to (technology) work becoming distance insensitive ... an enabler for outsourcing (and/or telecommuting)

misc. past posts mentioning distance insensitive
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#33b High Speed Data Transport (HSDT)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#69 oddly portable machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#31 Offshore IT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#33 [IBM-MAIN] NY Times editorial on white collar jobs going
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#57 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

CPU time differences for the same job

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CPU time differences for the same job
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2008 10:58:20
marty.wertheim@BANKOFAMERICA.COM (Wertheim, Marty) writes:
The discussion on high speed buffers and internal cache misses is right on target. I've got a set of benchmarks that are plain vanilla COBOL programs - no DB2, or anything. One of them steps through 8 tables of 16 MB each (hopefully not your typical COBOL program). On a 2094-717, that program will run in 60 seconds of CPU time when the CEC is 50% busy, 180 seconds of CPU time when the CEC is 95% busy. Other programs using less memory have more stable CPU times, but even with a program using 7MB, CPU times doubled when the CEC got up to 98%. If anyone wants to send me an email off line, I can send you an Excel showing the numbers I've seen.

when caches first appeared ... they weren't large enuf to contain multiple contexts ... always loosing on interrupts which resulted burst of high cache misses changing context.

one of the things that I did relatively early for large cache 370s ... was dynamically monitor interrupt rate ... and dynamically transition from running applications enabled for i/o interrupts to running disabled for i/o interrupts (when i/o interrupt rate was higher than some threshhold). this was trade-off between timeliness of handling i/o interrupts (responsiveness) and total thruput. above the i/o interrupt rate threshhold ... it was actually possible to process i/o interrupts faster when running disabled for i/o interrupts.

running disabled for i/o interrupts tended to significantly improve application cache hit rate ... which translated into higher mip rate (instructions executed per second) and application executing in less elapsed time. at the same time, i/o interrupt handling tended to be "batched" ... which tended to improve the cache hit rate of the interrupt handlers ... making them run faster. it was possible to experience both increased aggregate thruput and faster aggregate i/o interrupt handling ... when running disabled for i/o interrupts ... and taking i/o interrupts at specific periods. this was part of what i got to ship in my resource manager
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

also in the mid-70s, about the time future system got killed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

i was asked to do a smp project (which never shipped) which involved up to five 370 processor configuration ... and extensive microcode capability. as part of leveraging the microcode capability ... i put the multiprocessor dispatching function into microcode ... basically software managed the dispatch queue ... putting things on in specific order ... the multiprocessor microcode would pull stuff off the dispatch queue ... service it and at interrupt/interval ... move it to different queue (this was something similar seen in later intel 432). I also created a similar microcode managed queue for i/o operations ... something like what was later seen in 370-xa.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bounce

For standard 370 (two) multiprocessor cache machines ... i did two level operations for cache "affinity" ... attempting to keep processors executing on the same processor that they were previously executing on (and therefor being able to reuse information already loaded into cache). Traditional 370 (two-way) multiprocessor cache machines slowed down processor cycle by ten percent to accommodate cross-cache chatter between the two processors ... aka a 2-processor machine started out nominal "raw" thruput as 1.8times a single processor. System software multiprocessor overhead then would further reduce (application) thruput ... so there was typical rule-of-thumb that 2-processor had 1.3-1.5 times a single processor.

I did some slight of hand in the system software for multiprocessor and processor affinity ... and had one two-processor configuration where one processor would chug along about 1.5times mip rate of uniprocessor (because of improved cache hit rate ... despite the machine cycle being ten percent slower) and the other processor abot .7-.9times uniprocessor mip rate. The effective aggregate application thruput was slightly over twice uniprocessr ... because of some slight of hand in software implementation and cache affinity.

The change-over to 3081 was supposed to only be a multiprocessor machine ... so there was never any need to mention the uniprocessor/multiprocessor hardware thruput differences.

In the early 90s, machines started appearing where there were caches in the 1mbyte-4mbyte range ... this was larger than the real-storage sizes when i first started redoing virtual memory and page replacement algoritms as an undergraduate in the 60s ... recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#65 No Glory for the PDP-15
other references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

Some of the major software vendors, like DBMS offerings ... were doing the equivalent of "page squeeze" performance tests ... based on cache sizes. This is old post with extract of presentation i gave at fall68 share in Atlantic City .... it includes some results of lots of optimization work that I had been doing as undergraduate. Part of it was carefully redoing OS/360 stage-2 sysgen ... so i carefully placed datasets and PDS members on disk for optimal arm seek operation (speeding up "stand-alone" os/360 by almost three times for typical univ. workload). It also gives some amount of results of rewriting cp67 virtual machine pathlengths (speeding up various kernel paths by 10 to 100 times). However, it also includes a "page squeeze" test ... showing thruput of OS/360 running in virtual machine ... as the amount of real storage was reduced:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18 CP/67 and OS MFT14

One of the RDBMS vendors that we worked with on our ha/cmp product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
a meeting mentioned here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
and some old email mentioning scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

talked about extensive work that they were doing with processor vendors ... to make sure that server configurations included cache sizes large enuf to allow efficient thruput. At the time, they had a significant thuput jump between 2mbyte cache and 4mbyte cache (similar to thruput curve given in old Share presentation for OS/360 running in virtual machine as real storage was reduced).

More recently, I had an application where i changed the default storage accessing pattern to one tailored for cache operation and got a five times increase in thruput (effectively increasing instruction executed per second, or MIP-rate, by factor of five times).

I had also been involved in original relational/sql implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

and getting it out as product. I was also involved in some other kinds of dbms implementations that are much more knowledge and "real-world" data oriented. I have my own implementation of such a beast ... and running on a 1.7mhz processor with 2mbyte cache ... it has twice the thruput compared to running on a 3.4mhz processor with a 512kbyte cache (at least for this application ... a 1.7mhz processor with 2mbyte cache has twice the effective MIP-rate of a 3.4mhz processor with 512kbyte cache).

The penalty of a cache miss has similar effects on system thruput (and effective instructions executed per second ... or MIP rate) as oldtime page faults.

for othe drift, i use our manager for "real-world" data
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/index.html

for doing our ietf rfc index
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

and various merged taxonomies and glossaries
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/index.html#glosnote

there are a number of benchmark applications available on the web that measure various characteristics of cache operation/efficiency ... which include accessing increasing amounts of real storage to find where operations are no longer contained in machine caches.

I've mentioned before the VS/Repack product put out by the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

which did detailed trace of instruction and storage use ... and profiled its operation for a virtual memory environment ... including being able to do semi-automated program reorganization (for improved virtual memory operation). VS/Repack precursors were used extensively by a number of internal product groups ... including IMS .. helping with the transition from real storage to virtual memory environment. Because of operation similarities between cache and virtual memory paging ... this type of analysis is still performed by many products (for optimizing both cache and virtual memory execution characteristics). recent post mentioning VS/Repack:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#24 Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee

WSCHED and WSYNC

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: WSCHED and WSYNC
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2008 11:04:46
jmfbahciv writes:
Not really. Either CPU could run the scheduler at any time. That's why every piece of code, that could be made reentrant, was. The locks had to be when modifying the lists. And that was usually a word of memory. I don't have online access to the sources at the moment and I can't remember where I put JMF's SMP tututorial materials.

old email about VAX/VMS not getting SMP multiprocessing until VMS release 5
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email880324
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email880329

in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#46 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?

by comparison, charlie had invented the compare&swap instruction when he was doing fine-grain locking work on cp67 smp support
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

Random thoughts

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Random thoughts ...
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:26:54
m42tom-ibmmain@YAHOO.COM (Tom Marchant) writes:
I don't know what you mean when you say the cache line was split across domains. I forget whether a line was 32 bytes, but it always cantained the data from a line of storage. The cache was split into an instruction cache and a data cache, though. There was significant logic needed to deal with that.

801/risc ("harvard") architecture allowed for independent instruction and data caches ... but didn't provide for hardware cache consistency. this met that self-modifying instructions were out ... and for "store-into" data caches (which didn't automatically flush every change to storage) ... there were special "flush" cache instruction for use by loaders (i.e. program loaders have peculiar characteristic that they can be treating instructions as data ... which then have to get out to storage ... before the changes can possibly show up in the instruction cache).

Amdahl's machine at the time was somewhat viewed as remarkable being able to provide i-cache and d-cache consistency.

a few old posting discussing 5880
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#38 blast from the past ... macrocode
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#31 MCTS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#35 Code density and performance?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#27 Why so little parallelism?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#34 Assembler question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#20 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?

including some old email from the period (which includes reference to 5880 announcement with separate instruction and data cache):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#email810318

Random thoughts

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Random thoughts ...
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:17:57
some cache x-over discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#78 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#80 Random thoughts

in general cache size and cache implementation can affect effective mip rate. there are some number of benchmark applications on the web that attempts to profile and characterize those details.

variability concurrent activity, other application executing as well as possible interrupt rates ... can also affect cache hit/miss ratios ... and therefor effective mip thruput ... which, in turns affects measured cpu use.

there is also "capture" ratio issues ... which can also affect measured cpu use. recent post/thread on the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#42 Inaccurate CPU% reported by RMF and TMON

there are a lot of common/similar technology issues with dealing with various kinds of caches (virtual memory, database caches, hardware caches, etc).

for other topic drift regarding effective thruput with regard to database caches in a loosely-coupled environment ... we looked at this when we were doing scale-up ... old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa
and old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

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

a lot of dbms caches have been the equivalent of hardware "store-thru" caches ... both the log and the main dbms being updated about the same time. some of the dbms implementations did an optimization analogous to "store-into" caches ... sometimes referred to as fast-commit; aka as soon as the log entry was written, the transaction was treated as committed, ... the associated datatbase records writes would be delayed ... being combined with large number of other record writes for optimization of disk arm motion. Also subsequent changes to the same record ... prior to their writes ... would effectively combine multiple changes into smaller number of writes.

The problem was that these fast commit strategies would be negated when working in a loosely-coupled environment. If a transaction came in on a (loosely-coupled) processor ... different from a processor which had a "changed" record ... not yet written to disk ... before the related locks could be obtained ... all such changed records would first have to be written to their "home" dbms disk location.

As part of doing scale-up work for ha/cmp distributed lock manager ... also worked out being able to do any direct cache-to-cache copies ... piggy-backed with granting lock (in a "store-into" cache, fast commit, dbms environment).

some of the processor cache implementations had implemented cache-to-cache copies (on miss) ... say, some of the numa hardware (aka we had participated in SCI meetings and consulted with some of the vendors that did NUMA SCI implementations, included one later bought by your favorite mainframe vendor) ... but they didn't have to worry about dbms failure recovery. This can get really tricky attempting to correctly merge logs and do transaction log redo ... in a loosely-coupled environment with multiple independent logs. at the time, we originally worked it out, most of the dbms implementations were still rather dubious that it could work correctly under all possible failure scenarios.

random past posts mentioning sci:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#8 Why Do Mainframes Exist ???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#25 SGI O2 and Origin system announcements
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#40 Comparison Cluster vs SMP?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#39 John Mashey's greatest hits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#85 what makes a cpu fast
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#11 Climate, US, Japan & supers query
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#12 OT - Internet Explorer V6.0
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#17 I hate Compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#16 Disappointed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#10 "Soul of a New Machine" Computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#78 Q: Is there any interest for vintage Byte Magazines from 1983
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#83 HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#45 M$ SMP and old time IBM's LCMP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#52 Itanium2 performance data from SGI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#0 Clustering ( was Re: Interconnect speeds )
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#6 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#57 Another light on the map going out
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#30 Not A Survey Question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#1 Saturation Design Point
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#6 Memory Affinity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#68 bits, bytes, half-duplex, dual-simplex, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#40 clusters vs shared-memory (was: Re: CAS and LL/SC (was Re: High Level Assembler for MVS & VM & VSE))
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#50 something like a CTC on a PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#20 shared memory programming on distributed memory model?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#12 Device and channel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#19 Device and channel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#18 Is Supercomputing Possible?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#13 Today's mainframe--anything to new?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#13 Performance and Capacity Planning
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#28 IBM/Watson autobiography--thoughts on?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#46 IBM's mini computers--lack thereof
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#55 54 Processors?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#4 54 Processors?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#6 Cache coherency protocols: Write-update versus write-invalidate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#37 What was new&important in computer architecture 10 years ago ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#38 What was new&important in computer architecture 10 years ago ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#43 Numa-Q Information
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005v.html#0 DMV systems?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#14 Expanded Storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#1 Multiple address spaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#7 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#40 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#41 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#43 One or two CPUs - the pros & cons
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#52 TCP/IP and connecting z to alternate platforms
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#46 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#55 PowerPC or PARISC?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#8 Is no one reading the article?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#9 Is no one reading the article?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#24 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#33 Assembler question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#2 IBM sues maker of Intel-based Mainframe clones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#11 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#38 Wanted: info on old Unisys boxen
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#3 University rank of Computer Architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#78 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#55 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#13 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#72 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM

CPU time differences for the same job

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CPU time differences for the same job
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:16:38
Tom.Schmidt@OASSOFTWARE.COM (Tom Schmidt) writes:
z/VM "waits" with a CPU loop (so it doesn't need to come out of a wait state when it is waiting) so it would run just as hot when it was idle as otherwise. (Unless there is special code to account for machine perspiration?) Search the archives at http://listserv.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html

arg, if that is true, ... i must have been gone, way too long. virtual machine hypervisor was very careful about "waiting" ... both because of

1) supporting virtual/virtual ... i.e. it might actually be running in a virtual machine ... so it really might be stealing cycles from other applications

2) lot of work had been done in the 60s to make it cost efficient ... somewhat motivated by various customers using platform for commerial timesharing service bureaus.

there was obvious work to make the system operate as efficiently as possible ... aka dispatching, scheduling, paging, pathlengths, etc ... as well as making the processing accounting as accurate as possible.

however, there was additional features helping make the transition to offering 7x24 availability of online environment.

this started in the period when systems were normally leased and processors had "cpu meters" ... and system lease charges were based on value accumulated by the cpu meter. one of the tricks developed ... was making sure that the cpu-meter stopped ... when the system was up and available but otherwise idle. other work was enhancing offshift operation ,,,, when usage might be light or non-existent ... allowing operations w/o onsite operator; aka leave the system up & available for offshift, remote logins ... but otherwise minimize as close to zero as possible, cost of system operation.

it wasn't just necessary to put the machine into wait state to stop the cpu meter ... but also quiesce all i/o ... but leave the system available for accepting things like incoming keystrokes.

One of the idiosyncrasies of the cpu meter operation was that if it was running and everything stopped ... the meter would continue to run for 400 milliseconds before it actually stopped (i.e. for the cpu meter to actually stop, idle had to be for periods longer than 400 milliseconds).

trivia question ... what was the wakeup interval for the mvs srm?

CPU time differences for the same job

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CPU time differences for the same job
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2008 07:53:04
Tom.Schmidt@OASSOFTWARE.COM (Tom Schmidt) writes:
I've been running VM more off than on since PLC 5 and I'm certain that the behavior that I referenced WAS in VM... at some point. But if you & Lynn Wheeler say it isn't there now, I'll believe you (unless/until I can prove you wrong, of course).

But I know back in the VM/HPO or (maybe) early VM/XA days it was true that VM put itself into a tiny loop while it waited for work. The loop was in a unique-to-VM PSW key so that the hardware monitor (the "speedometer") could tell the difference between work and wait.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#82 CPU time differences for the same job

there were a number of specific environment experiments done in that time frame ... for one reason or another.

one of the first was for acp/tpf on 3081. acp/tpf didn't support multiprocessor support ... and there wasn't going to be a non-multiprocessor machine.

normally to simulate a privilege instruction (not handled by the microcode) ... interrupt into the vm kernel, do the simulation, and return to the virtual machine. this "overhead" will tend to be constant from run to run ... directly part of doing work for the virtual machine. over the years, attempts were made to get this as small as possible and/or have it done directly in the hardware of the machine.

the other overhead is the cache/paging scenario ... fault for page not in memory and there is overhead to bring the page into memory. this is analogous to cache miss ... and the program appears to execute slower because of the latency to process the cache miss. this can be variable based on other activity going on in the real machine (analogous reasons for both cache misses and page faults).

in the acp/tpf scenario ... if essentially just about the only workload was acp/tpf ... the 2nd 3081 processor would be idle. so there was a hack developed for things like SIOF emulation ... interrupt into the kernel, create an asynchronous task for SIOF emulation, SIGP the other processor and return to acp/tpf virtual machine. Creation of asynchronous task, signaling the other processor, taking the interrupts, plus misc. multiprocessing locking/unlocking drove up total avg "overhead" by ten to fifteen percent. However, the SIOF and ccw translation offloaded to run asynchronously on the idle 3081 resulted in net thruput benefit for the single acp/tpf scenario.

The "problem" was that the implementation drove up the total avg "overhead" by ten to fifteen percent for every customer running VM on multiprocessor ... even those where the other processors weren't idle.

For pure topic drift ... there is something analogous going on in the current environment with multi-core processors being introduced into the desktop/laptop (personal) computing environment.

Eventually, 3081 with the 2nd processor was removed and announced as 3083 (for acp/tpf customers). Since 3081 still had the cross-cache chatter 10 percent cycle slowdown scenario i've described for 370 multiprocessor ... they were able to run the single 3081 (aka 3083) processor nearly 15percent faster. even later still, acp/tpf eventually supported multiprocessor.

"Active wait" was another such experiment ... where a specific hardware configuration and workload gained a couple percent if the system effectively polled for something to do.

from long ago and far away:
DATE: 04/19/85 20:58:47
To: wheeler

On 4/10/85 xxxxxx presented his latest results to management and others and I thought you might be interested to hear how we stack up against HPO. These are runs of VM/XA SF1 (which is Mig. Aid releases 3 and 4 rolled up into one package now), with about 2K LOC of enhancements to boost the performance. The enhancements include processor-local true runlists and "active wait", with a master-only runlist also. They also include a significant rework of the drum paging code and rework of the SSKE code (for non-resident pages only?). And other things which I just forget now. All these things collectively saved a whole lot of execution time.

As a result, SF1 now can handle 80% of the number of CMS users that HPO can handle, whereas earlier it was only about 60% as many as HPO.


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

now, the HPO base they are referring to still has the 10-15 percent multiprocessor "penalty" that had been introduced for the acp/tpf environment. There were also a list of a dozen or so other carefully chosen workload and configuration items to try and weight the comparison in VM/XA SF1 favor (CMS workload truely trivial, trivial paging activity, homogeneous well-behaved CMS workload ... but lots of them). I don't remember the exact VM/XA SF1 processor cycles for "active wait" trade-off vis-a-vis actually being in wait state (and VM/XA was a totally different implementation from VM/HPO).

The "active wait" was along the same lines as the "delayed queue drop" fix from the same era. There was a bug in identifying "idle" activity and dropping "idle" tasks from active queue (decommitting resources) ... for some virtual machines under some circumstances. Rather than fix the bug ... whenever something was identified as idle, introduce a couple hundred millisecond delay before actual "queue drop" (for everybody). Under specific configuration & workload considerations, systems showed improved thruput with the "delayed queue drop" fix ... but could make thruput in other environments worse. The actual solution should have been to fix the underlying bug ... rather than layering fixes on top.

CPU time differences for the same job

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CPU time differences for the same job
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2008 08:33:06
lists@AKPHS.COM (Phil Smith III) writes:
This entire discussion is interesting to a VMer. VM has always done VTIME and TTIME: VTIME is the CPU time used by the guest, TTIME is the VTIME plus CP overhead. VTIME should be repeatable independent of system load; TTIME is what varies. VMers talk about "T/V ratios", i.e., "How well are we doing in terms of overhead?" (Goal=1.00)

TTIME "overhead" is frequently viewed as CPU that would not be there if ran on the real machine (w/o vm). VTIME should be approx. the cpu time running on (bare) real machine (w/o vm, although it has all the vaguries and caveats with respect to cache misses, interrupts, etc).

the jokes have been (for the other mainframe systems) that if customers could run their applications with and w/o the underlying (mainframe) operating systems ... there would be much less bloat in those systems. in vm case, there was significant more pressure to have highly optimized implementation (because of the with and without issue).

as a result ... there were various scenarios over the years ... where if customers could configure their other mainframe operating systems to rely on the underlying VM for various functions ... things actually ran faster than on the bare machine.

one of those was VS1 "handshaking" ... where it was possible to turn off VS1 virtual paging ... and turn over the responsibility to VM ... it wasn't just that it made VS1 run faster (when running in virtual machine) ... but actually could have VS1 running faster ... than when running w/o VM at all.

other recent posts related to this subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#78 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#80 Random thoughts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#81 Random thoughts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#82 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#83 CPU time differences for the same job

Human error tops the list of security threats

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Human error tops the list of security threats
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2008 08:57:22
Human error tops the list of security threats; Seventy-five per cent of surveyed companies listed human error as the leading cause of security failures
http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;299130717;fp;4194304;fpid;1

from above:
Seventy-five per cent of companies listed human error as the leading cause of security failures such as breakdowns and systems outages. Forty-eight per cent also cited operations and technology lapses as key causes of security failures. Problems resulting from third parties such as contractors and business partners, meanwhile, received 28 per cent of the votes as a root cause of security failures.

... snip ...

this could be considered an interesting intersection with studies that show that up to 70% of fraud involve insiders.

we had been called into consult with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their servers ... and they had they technology they had invented called SSL that they wanted to use for the process. part of this resulted in something called a payment gateway ... something that acted as interface between the webservers on the internet and the payment networks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

now in this recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#81 Random thoughts

referencing ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
and ha/cmp scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

there was reference to meeting mentioned in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

now two of the people listed at the above meeting ... showed up later at the small client/server startup in charge of something called the commercer server (the startup had also invented something called "SSL" that they wanted to use ... it is sometimes now referred to as electronic commerce).

what was happening was more and more of the merchant commerce servers were being done with rdbms implementations.

a well documented emerging threat ... was that these rdbms platforms were fairly complicated and required regular care & feeding by DBAs and others. this maintenance work would typically involve physical disconnect from the internet ... then disabling all the fraud/threat countermeasures ... in order to allow the maintenance work to proceed. because of the rdbms maintenance complexity ... there were frequently glitches and the work would overrun its downtime window (frequently in slow, overnight period). Then in a rush to get the systems back up and on the air ... they would forget to reenable all the fraud/threat countermeasures.

Suggestions floated at that period ... were compliance and verification software that wouldn't allow re-attachment to the internet unless all security and threat countermeasures were back in place and operational.

Does ARP Belong to Layer 2 Or Layer 3 OSI Reference Model???

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Does ARP Belong to Layer 2 Or Layer 3 OSI Reference Model???
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2008 10:30:45
iLRainyday <iLRainyday@gmail.com> writes:
I have posted this topic at somewhere else,but nobody could gives me a definitive answer,so I post it here and hope someone make it clear for me:)

osi layer 2 is point-to-point interface

osi layer 3 is network layer ... figuring out which point-to-point interface to use

LANs, MACs, ARP, etc ... aren't covered by OSI reference model ... the physical interface has some of the characteristics of a point-to-point interface. however, the networking characteristics of LANs can be considered to place them in the middle of networking stuff defined in OSI layer 3.

ISO compounded the problems with the OSI reference model by passing out an edict that ISO networking standards (and work by ISO nationally chartered bodies) could only be done on protocols that conformed to the OSI reference model (which was also a ISO standard).

I was involved in trying to get HSP (high-speed protocol) work done in X3S3.3 (the US ISO chartered standards body responsible for standards work related to OSI layers 3&4).

eventually HSP standards work couldn't be considered in x3s3.3 (and ISO) because it violated OSI reference model:

1) went directly from transport interface to the mac interface bypassing network interface ... violating OSI reference model

2) supported "internetworking" layer (i.e. IP) ... something that doesn't exist in the OSI reference model ... and violates the OSI reference model (aka may require sending traffic to a "gateway" responsible for internetworking between networks ... not having internetworking ... there are also no gateways).

3) interfaced to LAN/MAC ... which doesn't exist in OSI reference model, and therefor violates the OSI reference model.

ARP is part of the LAN/MAC genre not defined in OSI ... so it takes a lot of really hard squinting to pretend to see it fitting.

misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#xtphsp

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:33:34
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
from past posts

How Conventional CDO Analytics Missed the Mark
http://www.bobsguide.com/guide/news/2007/Dec/20/Kamakura_Releases_Study:_How_Conventional_CDO_Analytics_Missed_the_Mark.html

again from above:

"Two years ago the Wall Street Journal in a page 1 story pointed out the dangers in relying on the copula approach for CDO valuation, but investors were slow to realize the magnitude of their model risk"

... snip ...

and

CDO Correlation: Reversal of Fortune; New Kamakura Study Proves Common CDO Assumptions Can Lead to Serious Valuation Errors
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=811168


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#21 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

there is some rumor that people involved in the late 80s evaluation of citibank problems in the mortgage market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm The Thread Between Risk Management and Information Security

were involved in 1990 forming company mentioned in the above reference.

...

Now They Tell Us; Moody's says it's hard to evaluate the risk in complex mortgage securities
http://www.forbes.com/home/wallstreet/forbes/2008/0211/040b.html

from above:
It's well known that debt rating agencies like Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's underestimated the trouble brewing in subprime mortgages, awarding top marks to securities now creeping close to default. But now Moody's has released a report conceding that rating agencies weren't up to the task. Any expectation it could fully uncover risk in the maze of complex financial instruments was, it says, "somewhat unrealistic."

... snip ...

other recent mention of moody's
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#63 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

Merrill Hit With Fraud Charges
http://www.forbes.com/home/wallstreet/2008/02/01/merrill-subprime-fraud-biz-cx_lm_0201merrill.html

from above:
The charges come a day after Merrill agreed to buy back the CDOs, paying Springfield the $13.9 million it had invested last spring. Merrill acknowledged Thursday that the city had not expressly approved the purchase. The investment bank said Friday the problem was not widespread, but rather a sales practice issue, and unique to the Springfield situation.

... snip ...

Credit Crisis: Where Was The SEC?
http://www.forbes.com/home/wallstreet/2008/02/05/sec-cmos-banking-biz-wall-cx_lm_0206sec.html
Six years after the lessons of Enron and a decade after Long-Term Capital collapsed, regulators still can't seem to blunt the damage complex securities can have on financial markets. Why?

...

Regulators are taking a hard look at how banks structured, priced and sold mortgage-laden securities, but by the estimate of some it's too little and too late. "I don't think all the king's horses and all the king's men will put this together again," says Gary Aguirre, a former SEC lawyer.


... snip ...

recent post mentioning Glass-Steagall
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#11 Toytoa Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

for some additional topic drift ... recent post mentioning sox
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#27 Break the rules of governance and loose 4.9 billion

CPU time differences for the same job

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CPU time differences for the same job
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2008 19:59:20
eamacneil@YAHOO.CA (Ted MacNEIL) writes:
Most of the time, I had already told them that there was an I/O bottleneck, tape-drive contention, scheduling, etc. issue. But, they told me to upgrade the processor, anyways. Yes, we usually needed the processor, but the other issues would usually give us a better improvement.

starting in the mid-to-late 70s ... i was observing that systems were becoming more i/o bound ... and increasing real storage was more and more being used to compensate for i/o limitations.

part of the issue was the work that i was doing on dynamic adaptive resource scheduling ... included some stuff to dynamicly adapt to resource bottlenecks. real storage, paging i/o and processor time was becoming less & less frequently primary bottleneck.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

along the way i had made the comment that relative system disk thruput technology had declined by an order of magnitude over a number of years. at some point this drew the attention of some execs in the disk division ... who asked their performance group to refute the statement.

after a couple weeks, the group came back and said that i had somewhat understated the situation. part of the analysis was eventually reworked as disk thruput recommendations for a share presentation.

old post with acknowledgment from b874 at share 63:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#68 DASD Response Time (on antique 3390?)

old post with summary from presentation b874 at share 63:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#18 AS/400 and MVS - clarification please

other post with reference to b874
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#3 using 3390 mod-9s

in the 80s there was increasing shift to using real storage to compensate for increasing disk i/o thruput limitations. an example is upswing of relational databases.

the original relational/sql effort was done on vm370 platform at research
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

there was some discussions that went on with the ims people in stl (as well as consulting with them) vis-a-vis the difference between 60s dbms and relational dbms. the stl view-point was that relational implicit index doubled the physical disk space requirement and significantly increased the disk i/os for accesses (to process the index structure) ... compared to the direct record pointers (part of data infrastructure) then in common use. the relational position was that the implicit indexes, abstracted away directly exposing record pointers ... significantly reducing the manual maintenance in the care and feeding of dbms.

the big upswing in amount of system real storage during the 80s allowed for relational index structure to be cached ... significantly reducing the i/o penalty. disk storage also became significantly cheaper starting to tip the balance between hardware/thruput costs (for relational) vis-a-vis skills & manual costs (for 60s dbms technologies).

for other topic drift ... posts about getting to play disk engineer in disk engineering (bldg 14) and product test lab (bldg 15)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

past posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#78 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#80 Random thoughts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#81 Random thoughts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#82 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#83 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#84 CPU time differences for the same job

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:23:59
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
So, I have been shopping around. New bank gives a tailored package of cards; so now I have separate VISA, Debit, main creditcard, and two $150 limit cards. One for the intensive network use with all the $5 stuff for domains, spare parts, VAT bits for transport etc. and another for all the shady taxis and bars. Plus a package of ten one-time credit cards numbers.

during the standards process for x9.59
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

one of the possible problems/objections was that x9.59 standard required that the account number used for x9.59 transactions could not be used with any other kind of transactions (i.e. non-x9.59 financial transactions).

one of the things in x9.59 standard is countermeasure for replay attacks ... i.e. somebody skimming an existing transaction and/or data breaches involving transaction logs ... and then using the information for fraudulent transactions.

one-time account numbers, which have been around for over a decade, are specifically for only addressing replay attacks. however, they've not really caught on since there are lots of useability difficulty for consumers.

the specific issue with account number used for x9.59 transactions, not being usable for other kinds of transactions ... implied that during any kind of transition period ... there would have to be two account numbers for every account (one for x9.59 transaction and one for non-x9.59 transactions) ... and the issue claimed was that there was starting to be a scarcity of spare account numbers. The point was made that one-time account numbers will exhaust available numbers much faster than any x9.59 transition

furthermore, past some quiescent perioid ... previously non-x9.59 account numbers can actually be re-assigned for x9.59 use ... since any secret/authentication related characteristics for account numbers have been eliminated in the x9.59 environment.

somewhat related recent news items:

Chip&PIN cards: 1 in 5 cloned?
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001002.html
Fraud: 1 in 5 Cards Cloned At ATMs and Chip & Pin
http://www.financedaily.co.uk/showNews.aspx?loadid=00951
UK Fraud Reaches 12-Year High
http://www.epaynews.com/index.cgi?survey=&ref=browse&f=view&id=1202386285837043222&block=
middle banking in a english muddle
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/000999.html
Middle England's identity crisis
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2007/dec/15/scamsandfraud
Digital Money Forum: Don't worry, it still works fine
http://digitaldebateblogs.typepad.com/digital_money/2008/01/dont-worry-it-s.html
Has chip-and-pin failed to foil fraudsters?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/03/hitechcrime.news

with respect to YES CARD exploit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard

misc. past posts mentioning one-time account numbers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm17.htm#42 Article on passwords in Wired News
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#0 public key vs passwd authentication?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#6 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#15 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#19 T.J. Maxx data theft worse than first reported
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#36 sizeof() was: The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#3 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#10 Crypto Related Posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#67 folklore indeed

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:48:22
jmfbahciv writes:
They call them "gift cards" over here. I object to having to have to pay sales tax twice on the same amount of money.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#89 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

gift cards ... or stored value cards ... are different. they started out being issued by merchants ... although the processing was outsourced by independent party.

they were a contrast to the chipcard offline stored value that were starting to appear in europe about the same time.

the scenario at that time was there were lots of places in europe where online connectivity (for financial transactions) was either not easily available and/or extremely expensive. the "offline" chipcards addressed the difficulty in europe with online connectivity.

the magstripe stored-value cards that appeared in the us in the same time-frame addressed the same sort of market segment ... but it highlighted the big different between online connectivity in the US vis-a-vis europe at the time. recent post that strayed into this subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#26 Fixing SSL (was Re: Dutch Transport Card Broken)

the magstripe gift cards, get by some banking regulations because the value in the stored-value card ... is purchased from the merchant (it isn't a deposit account) ... the merchant manages the available value ... which then can be used for exchange for other products (which is also treated as a purchase, govs can make out by treating both transactions as real financial transactions).

it is attractive to the merchants since they have the float on the unused balance ... and there isn't the significant interchange fee use associated with other kinds of payment cards. Of course the interchange fee issue is somewhat blurred if a standard bank payment card is used for purchasing value that goes on/into the gift card.

as an aside ... in the mid-90s, when the x9a10 financial standard working group was given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments ... that met ALL as in ALL ... debit, credit, gift, stored-value, point-of-sale, internet, non-internet, face-to-face, ... ALL.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

misc. past posts mentioning stored-value cards:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm6.htm#digcash IP: Re: Why we don't use digital cash
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm6.htm#terror12 [FYI] Did Encryption Empower These Terrorists?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#idcard2 AGAINST ID CARDS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm9.htm#smallpay Small/Secure Payment Business Models
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#27 Solving the problem of micropayments
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#28 Solving the problem of micropayments
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#31 The Bank-model Was: Employee Certificates - Security Issues
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm16.htm#12 Difference between TCPA-Hardware and a smart card (was: example: secure computing kernel needed)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#38 How to store the car-valued bearer bond? (was Financial identity...)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#1 Is there any future for smartcards?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm22.htm#10 thoughts on one time pads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#42 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/2001m.html#4 Smart Card vs. Magnetic Strip Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#22 Opinion on smartcard security requested
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#23 Opinion on smartcard security requested
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#36 economic trade off in a pure reader system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#41 Why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#14 EMV cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#18 Opinion on smartcard security requested
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#22 Opinion on smartcard security requested
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#23 Opinion on smartcard security requested
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#55 Beware, Intel to embed digital certificates in Banias
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#54 Smartcards and devices
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#12 US fiscal policy (Was: Bob Bemer, Computer Pioneer,Father of ASCII,Invento
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#43 Methods of payment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#44 Methods of payment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#34 Maximum RAM and ROM for smartcards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#14 Value of an old IBM PS/2 CL57 SX Laptop
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#41 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#12 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#29 The new urgency to fix online privacy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#76 folklore indeed

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2008 10:09:34
jmfbahciv writes:
I wasn't talking about debit cards. I was talking about the throw-away cards one can buy in the stores. You can buy a $50 card but you pay sales tax for that $50. When you use the card, you pay sales tax on the item you purchased.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#89 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#90 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

the early magstripe gift card implementation (by outsourcer, being offered to merchants) used an "HA" platform implementation from some other vendor. Early in initial pilot deployments there was a hardware/process glitch that resulted in some corruption of the account balance database.

we were asked to come in as consultants to do a debriefing and analysis of the incident. in initial sit down with the vendor, the responsible executive started out with a pitch that was essentially word-for-word marketing presentation that i had previously put together for our ha/cmp product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

CPU time differences for the same job

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CPU time differences for the same job
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2008 12:18:43
Neal Eckhardt <neckhardt@penntraffic.nospam.com> writes:
We also had the batch window running so long that we were missing deadlines, and the CIO asked me to review the program stream to see what could be done to make it run faster (yea, good luck with that, they were all database programs and that's a different group). I told him that our new CPU (of essentially the same speed) that was due to arrive in two weeks had two processors rather than the four processors our current machine had, and the problem would probably be resolved with the installation of our new CPU.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#88 CPU time differences for the same job

the issue raised in post about disk thruput ... was over a period of years, processors got around 50 times faster in a period that disks only got 3-4 (maybe 5) times faster. Some claims are that the relative abundance of processor power led to a lot of (processor) implementation inefficiencies ... which could be relatively straight forwardly improved if anybody were to pay any attention.

as circuit size decreased ... and processor thruput increased ... lots of signal latencies started to play larger and larger factor. the latencies (measured in number of processor cycles) that played a part in processor/disk thruput ... started to also dominant processor & real storage ... and in much the same way that real storage started to be used as caches to compensate for disk thruput ... processor caches became more & more important for compensating for memory latency. in fact, using processor cycles as a measure of memory access time ... became one way of easily recognizing the problem (memories got faster, but processors got much, much faster) ... especially when references were to cache-miss and memory latency measured in possibly thousands of processor cycles.

for little drift, recent posts mentioning improving application hitting (overnight) batch window limits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#74 Too much change opens up financial fault lines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#24 Job add for z/OS systems programmer trainee

and for something totally different ... recent discussion of electronic commerce implementations running into problems hitting overnight window limit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#85 Human error tops the list of security threats

multitasking and multithreading have been used in the past attempting to mask disk access latencies ... keeping processor busy while something was waiting for disk access.

earlier in this decade ... there were chip "hyperthreading" solutions also looking at keeping processor functional units busy ... compensate/mask cache-miss & memory access latency. the number of processor functional units weren't actually increased ... but there was hardware emulation of two processors ... basically two instruction streams, two sets of registers, etc ... but actual execution being done by common functional units.

possibly the original in this genre was a project to do a dual i-stream implementation for 370/195 (i.e. emulation of two-processor smp) ... which never actually shipped as product. the issue was that 195 had a 64 instruction pipeline that could execute instructions concurrently with common set of functional units. the pipeline could go a long way towards masking the difference in processor thruput and memory latency (w/o actually having a cache). The problem was that the amount of processor logic/memory supporting this function was rather limited. These days, chip implementations may have several hundred positions for dealing with branch prediction and speculative execution (and backing out instructions not actually branched to). In the 370/195, except in very special cases, branches would drain the pipeline. Normal codes, with typical branch usage, resulted in 195 running at half peak thruput (it took careful programming to keep 195 operating at peak thruput). The "idea" behind the dual i-stream was to have two sets of independent instruction streams ... both operating at (possibly) half peak thruput ... but combined, capable of keeping the 195 pipeline fully stocked with instructions.

misc. past posts mentioning dual i-stream as (one of the) mechanism for compensating/masking increasing memory latencies (as measured in processor cycles)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#38 IBM 370/195
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#73 The Chronology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#97 Power4 = 2 cpu's on die?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#15 360/370 instruction cycle time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#27 Pentium 4 SMT "Hyperthreading"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#63 Hyper-Threading Technology - Intel information.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#70 Pipelining in the past
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#76 Pipelining in the past
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#48 IBM Manuals from the 1940's and 1950's
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#60 S/360 undocumented instructions?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#3 Hyperthreading vs. SMP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#27 dual processors: not just for breakfast anymore?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#1 A POX on you, Dennis Ritchie!!!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#18 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#5 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#19 The Soul of Barb's New Machine (was Re: creat)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#22 System/360; Hardwired vs. Microcoded
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#1 Intel engineer discusses their dual-core design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#14 Multicores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#6 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#29 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#0 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#10 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#51 The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#2 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#21 Very slow booting and running and brain-dead OS's?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#41 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#10 Beyond multicore
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#20 Abend S0C0
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#37 Intel memory latencies




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