List of Archived Posts

2008 Newsgroup Postings (11/29 - 12/12)

ATM Skimmers: Watch Out for Electronic Theft Devices
What is better faster CPU speed or wider bus?
Payment Card + Digital Signature
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Basel Committee outlines plans to strengthen Basel II
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
If you had a massively parallel computing architecture, what unsolved problem would you set out to solve?
Can outsourcing be stopped?
Comprehensive security?
Blinkylights
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Comprehensive security?
Comprehensive security?
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
TOPS-10
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
What is the level of security in payment systems (credit and bank cards) nowadays?
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
realtors (and GM, too!)
CPU time/instruction table
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
SIM-based mobile signature solution to launch new applications
"True" story of the birth of the IBM PC
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Blinkenlights
Blinkenlights
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
"True" story of the birth of the IBM PC
Blinkenlights
Paris
fraying infrastructure
Online Bill Payment Website Hijacked - Users were redirected to a page serving malware
another one biting the dust?
another one biting the dust?
TOPS-10
pc/370
pc/370
Dilbert is non-fiction
Kaspersky calls for a more secure internet
Security is a subset of Reliability
Blinkenlights
Cheap Hack - Domain Name Market - Stolen Domains for Sale
21 million German bank account details on black market
PCI needs to address virtualization, experts say
TOPS-10
IBM drops Power7 drain in 'Blue Waters'
PC premiered 40 years ago to awed crowd
Blinkenlights
Stolen credit-card boom
TOPS-10
The vanishing CEO bonus
PC premiered 40 years ago to awed crowd
Have you told your Congressman how to VOTE on the auto bailout?
Is This a Different Kind of Financial Crisis?
Did you think about Virtualization Security?
OCO, documentation, support from IBM-Main, etc
What is securitization and why are people wary of it ?
New machine code
PC premiered 40 years ago to awed crowd
Should a national regulatory authority stimulate deployment of IPv6?
Curiousity: largest parallel sysplex around?
Curiousity: largest parallel sysplex around?
Curiousity: largest parallel sysplex around?
New machine code
TOPS-10

ATM Skimmers: Watch Out for Electronic Theft Devices

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: ATM Skimmers: Watch Out for Electronic Theft Devices
Date: November 29, 2008
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
ATM Skimmers: Watch Out for Electronic Theft Devices
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/65321.html

from above:
If your ATM card doesn't slide smoothly in or out of a machine, beware. You may have been victimized by a "skimmer," a tiny device that reads the magnetic strip on your card. Scammers can create a fake card by transferring your data to the magnetic strip on a gift card. With the aid of a tiny camera to capture your PIN, they can then raid your bank account.

... snip ...

There has been relatively recent article that signature-debit (single factor something you have authentication) has 15 times the fraud as pin-debit (multi-factor something you have authentication and something you know authentication). Normally multi-factor is considered more secure when the different factors have independent vulnerabilities (i.e. PIN is considered countermeasure to lost/stolen card).

However, skimmers that record both magstripe and PIN at the same time started to appear 15-20 yrs ago ... which represents a common vulnerability.

Another issue is the proliferation of something you know shared-secrets for authentication. 40yrs ago, I only had very few shared-secrets that I had to remember. However, with the proliferation of the shared-secret paradigm, I now have over a hundred shared-secrets to manage. The human factors short-comings with the proliferation shared-secret authentication paradigm is used to explain one study that found PINs were written on 1/3rd of ATM cards.

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

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

What is better faster CPU speed or wider bus?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is better faster CPU speed or wider bus?
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 09:02:50 -0500
MitchAlsup <MitchAlsup@aol.com> writes:
To a first order, doubling the width at the same frequency and doubling the frequency at the same width are equal in increasing performance. Both double the bandwidth of the bus.

So the question comes back around: which one has lower latency?


one of the justification for SCI (as part of NUMA configurations) was latency issue ... rather than (half-duplex) synchronous bus ... go to pair of fiber-optic serial links. memory requests became asynchronous packetized operations ... going out one link and the responses coming back in on the other link.

misc. recent posts mentioning SCI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#81 Random thoughts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#24 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#40 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#91 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#2 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#3 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#33 Making tea
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#36 Making tea
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#52 Serial vs. Parallel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#68 "The Register" article on HP replacing z

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

Payment Card + Digital Signature

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Payment Card + Digital Signature
Date: November 29, 2008
Blog: Credit Card Professionals
X9.59 financial standard provides for digial signature as means of authenticating the transaction (such a card was demo'ed at BAI in the 90s) ... misc. references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

part of the challenge was a chip that was more secure that the most secure chip currently then in use, but at the same time less expensive than the least secure chip currently then in use ... and still being able to perform a x9.59 financial transaction within the power & timing constraints for contactless at a transit turnstyle (high volume, high traffic, metro)

we had also got asked to help wordsmith the cal. state electronic signature legislation (and later federal legislation) ... misc. past references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#signature

one of the issues raised was apparent semantic confusion because the term "digital signature" and the term "human signature" both contain the word "signature". there are a lot of issues required to establish "intent" for "human signature" ... aka having read, understood, agrees, approves, and/or authorizes (which doesn't exist with straight forward digital signature operations).

as an aside. some of the parties involved in the cal. electronic signature legislation were also involved in privacy issues and had done detailed, in-depth consumer privacy surveys and found that the number one issue was "identity theft". A major faction of "identity theft" is "account fraud" (fraudulent financial transactions against existing accounts) resulting from data breaches. It was perceived that since little or nothing appeared to being done about data breaches, and that publicity might improve the situation ... given rise to the cal. state data breach notification legislation (which has since been repeated in several other states)

As an aside, starting in the 90s, FSTC (financial services technology consortium)
http://www.fstc.org/

had the FAST project (financial agent secure transactions) ... old reference from wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011122232015/http://www.fstc.org/projects/fastaggregation.cfm

basically started out looking at leveraging the 8583 infrastructure to do other kinds of transactions (than just payment authorization).

Part of the demos of x9.59 cards at BAI in the 90s included doing some number of FAST transactions.

With respect to mentioning "identity theft", there was recently threads in Smart Cards as well as payment fraud groups discussing a recent paper by the Kansas City Fed ... "Can Smart Cards Reduce Payments Fraud and Identity Theft".

Note that FSTC was setup as a consortium in the early to mid-90s under some legislation that was targeted at relaxing anti-trust provisions in order to promote migration of technology out of gov. agencies into commercial sector.

more, "old" FSTC reference:
https://web.archive.org/web/20020605055711/http://fstc.org/projects/fast/index.cfm

from above:
Financial institutions know a great deal about their customers and have spent considerable time developing relationships with customers. FAST is developing a framework to allow financial institutions to provide authentication and validation services to each other on behalf of their customers, enabling e-commerce to take place securely, while maintaining anonymity of the parties, privacy of sensitive data, and any payment obligations. The FAST framework will not compete with existing authentication models. Rather, it will provide an alternative authentication path when a common or interoperable system does not exist or when verification of additional attributes and functionality is required to complete a transaction securely. FAST will take advantage of current technologies and other industry initiatives wherever possible. The solution will also be technology-independent, based on an open platform and standards.

... snip ...

we had done some consulting with the person on the gov. side establishing FSTC. one of the gov. technologies from the early 90s that was being targeting for moving into commercial section was smartcard technologies ... one possible path was via FSTC (for financial) ... however, there were some gov. sponsored conferences where the technology was pitched to other market segments like health care, social services, etc.

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 11:28:36 -0500
What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/29/personal_computing/

note that CP/CMS provided personal computing starting in the mid-60s via the use of virtual machines. that later morphed into vm370/cms and in the early-to-mid 80s there was large scale upswing in number of installations in the mid-range market with 43xx machines

the appearance of PCs in the 80s ... started to subsume CMS position providing personal computing ... and also by the mid-80s, workstations and PCs were starting to take-over the mid-range computer market (not only saw diminishing sales in the mid-range 43xx follow-on machines ... but also for the mid-range VAX machines).

The "CMS" personal computing genre ... also saw uptake in the late 60s and 70s with the commercial time-sharing service bureaus
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

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

Basel Committee outlines plans to strengthen Basel II

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Basel Committee outlines plans to strengthen Basel II
Date: November 29, 2008
Blog: Banking and Finance Technologies
BIS outlines plans to strengthen Basel II
http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=19321

from above:
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has announced plans to address the fundamental weaknesses revealed by the financial market crisis related to the regulation, supervision and risk management of internationally-active banks.

... snip ...

note that the early drafts of Basel II included a new qualitative section ... in addition to the traditional quantitative sections. during the review process, the qualitative section was almost totally eliminated. there were snide comments about not really requiring anybody to know how things worked ... just so long that they could run the processes matching up numbers.

there have been numerous discussions over the yrs about the various credit securitization instruments significantly changed the character (& qualitative characteristics) of lending ... since lenders could effectively unload loans & mortgages almost immediately ... eliminating much of the motivation to pay attention to loan quality.

the current scenario was further highlighted in recent congressional hearings that said both the unregulated mortgage originators and ratings agencies knew that the toxic CDOs weren't worth triple-A ratings ... but that the unregulated mortgage originators were paying the rating agencies to give the toxic CDOs, triple-A ratings anyway (resulting in large number of institutions dealing in toxic CDOs that otherwise wouldn't have touched them).


https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm The Thread Between Risk Management and Information Security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay8.htm#bis7 BIS Papers No. 7 - Electronic finance: a new perspective and challenges
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#smallpay3 Small/Secure Payment Business Models
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm10.htm#cfppki19 CFP: PKI research workshop
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#49 replay & integrity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#50 E-banking is board-level Issue, Says Basel Committee
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#52 Committee calls for better e-banking security management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm16.htm#7 The Digital Insider: Backdoor Trojans ... fyi
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#14 Sarbanes-Oxley is what you get when you don't do FC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#15 Sarbanes-Oxley is what you get when you don't do FC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#41 An Understanding Database Theory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#23 More on garbage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#22 AOS: The next big thing in data storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#0 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#71 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#78 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#60 Seeking expert on credit card fraud prevention - particularly CNP/online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#61 Is Basel 2 out...Basel 3 in?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#62 Who do we have to blame for the mortgage crisis in America?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#63 Is Basel 2 out...Basel 3 in?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#64 Seeking expert on credit card fraud prevention - particularly CNP/online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#65 Would the Basel Committee's announced enhancement of Basel II Framework and other steps have prevented the current global financial crisis had they been implemented years ago?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#66 Would the Basel Committee's announced enhancement of Basel II Framework and other steps have prevented the current global financial crisis had they been implemented years ago?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#67 Would the Basel Committee's announced enhancement of Basel II Framework and other steps have prevented the current global financial crisis had they been implemented years ago?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#42 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#65 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#15 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#9 Do you believe a global financial regulation is possible?

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 10:20:30 -0500
Chris Barts <chbarts+usenet@gmail.com> writes:
Propelled in a large part by VisiCalc on the Apple II, introduced in 1979. I'm noticing your dates are a bit... IBM-quality.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#3 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

my brother used to be apple regional market rep ... supposedly the largest physical region in conus. when he came into town, i would sometimes get invited to business dinners that might include apple developers (a couple with mac developers before mac was announced ... where we could argue about what features should be in mac).

the apple II didn't seem to have big impact on CMS use ... i did try and see if I could get my brother to get terminal emulation configuration setup for apple II that I could use for home use ... in place of my miniterm (before i got 3101) ... recent post with some images
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#51 Baudot code direct to computers?

at the time, apple was using system/38 for its business computer ... manufacturing, deliveries, etc. my brother found out how to remotely dial-in to the system/38 and access the production information.

past post mentioning my brother being apple regional marketing rep:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#63 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM

referencing URL with 30yrs (1975-2004) of personal computer market share ... however the URL has gone 404 ... and wayback machine doesn't have the graphs:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070528014237/http://www.wowdailynews.com/pegasus/total_share.html

there is also reference to this URL (put the graphs are in PDF file that requires userid/password to download):
https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/

but in terms of volumes that were starting to replace corporate business use ... only C64 was in the same volume magnitude as the PC.

there have been lots of past threads where I've claimed that one of the big uptakes of the PC (in the business market) was terminal emulation. For businesses already planning on buying 3270 terminals ... the PC and 3270 terminal was nearly the same cost ... so it was frequently a no-brainer business justification to get thousands of PCs with 3270 emulation (in lieu of thousands of 3270s) ... single desktop footprint, single keyboard, single display, same cost, did both mainframe terminal operation as well as some number of local computing. large customers in the period had tens of thousands of 3270 terminals ... which were easy, ripe, low-hanging fruit (market) for PC with 3270 emulation.

Terminal emulation feature was also one of the things i would argue with mac developers (before mac was announced). lots of past posts mentioning terminal emulation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

for other mid-range topic drift ... past post mentioning decade (78-87) world-wide vax shipments, sliced&diced by year, model, US, non-US (start to see effect of workstations and PCs on mid-range volumes by mid-80s)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0 Computers in Science Fiction

other posts mentioning my brother being apple regional marketing rep:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#66 unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#44 Mainframe Emulation Solutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#46 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#47 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#56 old lisa info
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#3 The Genealogy of the IBM PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#4 The Genealogy of the IBM PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#44 1960s: IBM mgmt mistrust of SLT for ICs?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#32 IBM THINK original equipment sign

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 10:45:06 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
for other mid-range topic drift ... past post mentioning decade (78-87) world-wide vax shipments, sliced&diced by year, volume, US, non-US (start to see effect of workstations and PCs on mid-range volumes by mid-85)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0 Computers in Science Fiction


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#3 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#5 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

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

was larger than the internet/arpanet from just about the beginning until possibly sometime mid-85 to early-86 (same period that workstations and PCs started to take-over mid-range market).

one of the internal battles was that with PCs starting take-over the 3270 terminal market ... there was large install base of products from the communication division related to terminals &/or terminal emulation. the communication division was protecting that install base and there was growing strong opposition moving from terminal emulation to client/server (which would start to have big downside impact on that install base) where PC had full networking capability.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

in the mid-80s and forward ... internal network continued to be two-tier with only "mainframes" as networking nodes (in terms of volume ... huge numbers of mid-range 43xx machines) with PCs still participating as emulated terminals. however, the workstations & PCs that were starting to take-over mid-range market ... were also starting to appear as full-blown tcp/ip networking nodes (fueling big boost in number of arpanet/internet nodes).

we ran afoul of this in a number of ways ... as previous posts we had been working with various entities on what was to become the NSFNET backbone (the operational basis for modern internet). Our HSDT project:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

had our own high-speed backbone with T1 and higher-speed links and were pushing hard for T1 requirement for NSFNET backbone ... misc. old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
and old posts with references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

for various internal political reasons, we were prevented from bidding on the (T1) nsfnet backbone RFP. The director of NSF attempted to help by writing a letter to the company 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO) ... which included statements that what we already had running was at least five yrs ahead of all NSFNET backbone bid submissions. This just further aggravated the internal politics.

Another problem was in the late 80s, the communication division had come up with SAA ... which has been interpreted as helping hold the terminal emulation line against the encroaching client/server. we had come up with 3-tier networking architecture and was out pitching it to some (large commercial) customer executives ... which met with some amount of disfavor among the SAA folks ... misc. past references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#3tier

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

If you had a massively parallel computing architecture, what unsolved problem would you set out to solve?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: If you had a massively parallel computing architecture, what unsolved problem would you set out to solve?
Date: November 30, 2008
Blog: Hedge Funds
old post with reference to cluster scale-up work in the late 80s and early 90s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

in the 90s, many financial related sector spent billions on attempting to eliminate the overnight batch window to achieve straight through processing on massive number of parallel processors.. The issue was that much of the financial infrastructure is dependent on "settlement" that is performed in overnight batch windows ... basically dataprocessing technology left over from the 60s & 70s.

This started to change in the 70s & 80s when there was work on online & real-time transactions ... much of it based on work mentioned in this reference (in linkedin "Payment Systems Network") to "Father of Financial Dataprocessing" archived here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#27

however, typically only the "front-end" part of the operation was moved to online/real-time ... with completion &/or settlement deferred to processing in the overnight batch window.

In the 90s, severe strain was being placed on the overnight batch window ... a combination of increasing activity with more work needed to be done overnight and globalization tended to cut the elapsed time available.

billions were spent on re-engineering for straight through processing ... planning on large number of processing cores. Part of the technology was leveraging various kinds of "object oriented" technologies to distribute and coordinate all the parallel processing. However, frequently little work was done on thruput ... only well into the project finding out that the "object oriented" technologies were bloating processing by two orders of magnitude (compared to overnight batch window) and swamping any anticipated thruput benefits of the massive parallel processing

misc. past references to overnight batch window and/or straight through processing:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#51 Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#12 The Worth of Verisign's Brand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#13 The Worth of Verisign's Brand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#17 The Worth of Verisign's Brand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#21 The Worth of Verisign's Brand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#37 More Phishing scams, still no SSL being used
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#40 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#10 A way to speed up level 1 caches
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#31 Quote from comp.object
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#15 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#36 Future of System/360 architecture?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#3 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#5 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#19 Distributed Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#21 Distributed Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#37 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#44 Distributed Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#61 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#19 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#27 folklore indeed
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#72 whats the world going to do when all the baby boomers retire
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#81 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#3 on-demand computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#74 Too much change opens up financial fault lines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#92 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#30 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#31 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#73 Price of CPU seconds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#87 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#89 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#55 performance of hardware dynamic scheduling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#50 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#56 Long running Batch programs keep IMS databases offline
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#26 What is the biggest IT myth of all time?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#30 Automation is still not accepted to streamline the business processes... why organizations are not accepting newer technolgies?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#35 Automation is still not accepted to streamline the business processes... why organizations are not accepting newer technolgies?

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

Can outsourcing be stopped?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Can outsourcing be stopped?
Date: November 30, 2008
Blog: Greater IBM
past post in this thread, also archived here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#55

with respect to comment about global competition in the 80s ... there was a lot of it from the early 70s. Amdahl gave a talk on his new startup at mit in the early 70s. one of the questions from some student in the audience was about his being a foreign corporation (i.e. most of the backing and manufacturing coming from overseas).

another question was what argument did he use to get investment in a clone computer corporation. his response was that customers had already spent a couple hundred billion dollars on 370 software ... and even if IBM were to totally walk away from 370 (could be considered a veiled reference to Future System project which was radically different from 370 and targeted to completely replace 370), there would be enough customer 370 software to keep him in business through the end of the century.

lots of past posts referencing future system project:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

old post with quotes (from fergus/morris book) about long term effect of future system failure on the company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#33 IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984?

also some quotes about motivation for future system project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#16

from article by former executive that worked on FS
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm

longer, recent related post in usenet a.f.c regarding unbundling, clone controllers, clone processors, open source, future system, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#48

somewhat related, I had gotten talked into working on the ECPS micocode assist for the 370/148 and then spent a year off & on running around the world helping pitch the virgil/tully (138/148) business case to various marketing organizations (not only domestic, EMEA, and AFE, but also some number of individual countries) . In the mid-70s, mid-range foreign 370 clones were considered a significant competitive factor in many parts of the world ... old post referencing some of ECPS technical stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21

for other topic drift ... additional quotes from fergus/morris book ... this time deciding to not use the much superior cp/x86 ... but launch a new OS2 project instead ... in the same thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#30 IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984?

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

Comprehensive security?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Comprehensive security?
Newsgroups: alt.computer.security
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:02:59 -0500
ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld (Moe Trin) writes:
RFC1855 was from 1995. Usenet is about 15 years older than that, and computer networks go back years before even that. Do you remember the original 3 MHz Ethernet? It predates the S-100 and Apple I, never mind the Apple ][ or IBM PC. We finally retired our last 3Base5 subnet about fifteen years ago.

the internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until possibly late '85 or early '86.

from old reference giving network sizes circa '85

BITNET   435
ARPAnet 1155
CSnet    104 (excluding ARPAnet overlap)
VNET    1650
EasyNet 4200
UUCP    6000
USENET  1150 (excluding UUCP nodes)

old announcement for the first gateway between the internal network and CSnet:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#email821022
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#0

... BITNET (and EARN) was educational network sponsored by the corporation using similar technology to that used for the internal (VNET) network ... misc. past bitnet/earn posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

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

I got blamed for doing computer conferencing on the internal network in the late 70s and early 80s ... there then followed some number of investigations into this "new" phenonama. somewhat as a result, a researcher was paid for nine months to sit in the back of my office for nine months to take notes on how I communicated; they also got copies of all my incoming and outgoing email as well as logs of all instant messages. In addition to (corporate) research report, the material was also used for a Stanford phd thesis in the mid-80s (joint between language and AI departments) as well as some number of papers and books. misc. past posts mentioning computer mediated communication
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

most of the machines on the internal network ran a virtual machine operating system ... orginally developed by the science center in the mid-60s. In the late 60s and early 70s there saw some number of commercial time-sharing service bureaus formed leveraging virtual machine operating systems as the base platform ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

one such was company called TYMSHARE ... which also developed computer conferencing facility on their platform. In the mid-70s, TYMSHARE offered "free" use of the computer conferencing facility to the vendor customer organization ... website here:
http://www.share.org/

and archive of that computer conferencing starting August 1976 is archived here:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

for related ... this post has some pictures of online home setup in the late 70s through mid-80s ... which for part of the time, also included a compact microfiche viewer (at work had access to microfiche printer)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#51

this recent post discusses some of the virtual machine platform characteristics
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#62

"security" was important issue for the commercial time-sharing service bureaus ... but also important to some number of gov. agencies that also used the platform (starting in the 60s & 70s)... minor reference here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

for the heck of it, my rfc index
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

in the RFCs listed by section, clicking on the "Date" field ... brings up frame given RFCs by date.

and for the fun of it, some posts in recent thread from usenet news a.f.c:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#3 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#5 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#6 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

other nostalgia, some postings related to Interop '88 held in san jose
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#interop

this was somewhat leading edge of the federal gov. mandates that required eliminating tcp/ip (internet), replacing it with OSI (gosip stuff) ... and there were lots of OSI products in the booths that year at interop.

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

Blinkylights

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Blinkylights
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 18:19:39 -0500
hawk writes:
I'm coming to the game late, but that's exactly the problem, and why they're dead.

If a bank has 1000 in assets, and 900 in liabilities, it's happily solvent with a 10% equity. When that $1000 drops to $750, it's now at $-150--it's assets could not pay its depositors.


the implosion of the speculation bubble and huge write-offs started well before real estate values started to fall (although the bursting of the speculation bubble eventually also started downward fall of real estate inflation heading back to pre-speculation prices possible around 2001 levels).

unregulated mortgage originators were providind a lot of fuel for real estate speculation by packaging up mortgages as toxic CDOs and selling them off. this post has 2003 reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#68 Obama, ACRON, subprimes

that securizing loans and mortgages was removing motivation for the lenders to manage loan quality.

congressional hearings a couple weeks ago had testimony that both the unregulated mortgage originators and the rating agencies knew that the toxic CDOs weren't worth the triple-A ratings ... but mortgage originators were paying the rating agencies to give the toxic CDOs, triple-A ratings anyway (the word "fraud" was periodically mentioned).

This resulted in large number of institutions dealing in toxic CDOs that wouldn't have otherwise touched them (and paying more than they were worth).

That started to fall apart last year ... with rapid drop in the value of toxic CDOs (well before major drops in real estate values) ... where there were cases of institutions unloading toxic CDOs at 22cents on the dollar ... and taking huge losses. the news started having references to "write-down sweepstakes" (all the institutions that would have to take losses) ... and betting that citibank would win (since it was so heavily involved in such instruments).

the implosion of the toxic CDO market and plummenting trust in the rating agencies ... started to dry up funds for lending organizations (that had become dependent on constantly unloading toxic CDOs for their source of funds). with funds drying up, this burst the real estate speculation bubble ... which then precipitated the drop in real estate prices.

aggravating the situation were executives leveraging toxic CDOs and fiddling the books (in other ways) to inflate corporate results ... in order to significantly boost their bonuses. the gao has been doing database of increasing number of financial restatements by public companies (despite SOX). Basically, the corporate results are inflated in various ways in order to boost executive bonuses. Later the corporate results may or may not be restated, but the bonuses aren't forfeited. a business school article from last spring estimated 1000 executives are responsible for 80percent of the current crisis and it would go a long way to improving the situation if the gov. could figure how they could loose their jobs.

past posts mentioning "write-down sweepstakes"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#12 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#32 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#36 Lehman sees banks, others writing down $400 bln
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#57 Credit crisis could cost nearly $1 trillion, IMF predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#0 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#1 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#27 Two views of Microkernels (Re: Kernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#28 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#31 VTAM R.I.P. -- SNATAM anyone?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#32 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#42 The Return of Ada
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#47 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#48 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#49 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#50 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#51 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#89 Credit Crisis Timeline
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#90 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#29 What is your definition of "Information"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#30 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#22 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#1 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#11 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#12 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#67 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#70 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#80 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#95 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#28 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#57 Blinkenlights

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:14:06 -0500
"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <urjlew@bellsouth.net> writes:
You forget the character art produced on teletypes and high speed printers: Honey, Playboy bunny, Alfred E Neuman et.c. I am sure that whatever the equipment was capable of was produced.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#3 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#5 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#6 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

virtual machine system was created by science center in the mid-60s. in the 60s and 70s ... some number of commercial timesharing systems built offerings from virtual machine systems ... first cp67 and then later (cp67 follow-on) vm370. misc. past posts mentioning commercial timesharing service bureaus built off virtual machine systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

one such timesharing service bureaus was TYMSHARE. one of the stories told about TYMSHARE in the mid-70s was some status meeting to upper management reported that games were starting to appear on TYMSHARE service. upper management reaction was to instruct staff to remove all games from TYMSHARE computers. staff then informed upper management that game playing was accounting for 30% of TYMSHARE client usage charges.

a couple recent TYMSHARE references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#45 Usenet - Dead? Why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#9 Comprehensive security?

some old email mentioning adventure for cms:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email780405
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email780405b
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#email780414
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#email780517
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#email790912

and past posts mentioning adventure game on cms:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#44 Call for folklore - was Re: So it's cyclical.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#18 The History of Computer Role-Playing Games
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#4 Zork and Adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#6 Zork and Adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#15 "Atuan" - Colossal Cave in APL?

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:41:16 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#3 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#5 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#6 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#12 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

oh, recent post mentioning other "demo" programs on internal corporate vm370 systems (at least late 70s and early 80s)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#71 Password Rules

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:18:50 -0500
"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <urjlew@bellsouth.net> writes:
But I don't remember IBM picking that fruit. On the other hand third party 3270 emulator cards proliferated, and were very versatile.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#3 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#5 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#6 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#11 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#12 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

there were ibm sales to business using other vendor boards as well as 3270/PC announced in Oct83

previous flavor of this thread last year references the 25yrs of personal computing market share ... however as mentioned that has gone 404 ... doing a quick search, turns up reference ...

Technology; Desktop Links To Mainframes (15Mar1984)
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980DE4DC1339F936A25750C0A962948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

following regarding business market for terminal emulation:
Total sales of the hardware and software needed for the links totaled $222 million in 1983 and will double to $545 million in 1984, according to International Resource Development, a Norwalk, Conn., market research firm. Most major mainframe software companies have entered the market. Some are teaming up with microcomputer software companies. Many of the micro-mainframe links developed by software companies work only with I.B.M. or I.B.M.-compatible personal computers, and only with software made by the manufacturer of the link. Some smaller companies are making the communications circuit boards, the best known being the IRMA board from Digital Communications Associates of Norcross, Ga.

... also from same article:
One reason Apple Computer Inc. did not succeed with its Lisa computer last year was that the machine could not be linked to I.B.M. mainframes, a situation now remedied.

... snip ...

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2008 08:08:17 -0500
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
I keep reading your posts without thinking to ask a couple of obvious questions, to wit: 1. What was the genesis of the idea of virtual systems? CP/67 is the first I'm aware of, were there any earlier systems, or systems which embodied some of the ideas? 2. The 360/67 was intended as a vehicle for TSS/360, which wouldn't necessarily need the same architectural support as CP/67. Did the idea of a virtual machine precede the /67 and therefore the necessary support was included, or was it just a fortuitous circumstance? 3. Who came up with the idea?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#3 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#5 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#6 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#11 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#12 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#13 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

old a.f.c. post with lots of extracts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#78 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)

from Melinda's history
https://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda#VMHist

one of the footnotes:
24 Creasy had decided to build CP-40 while riding on the MTA. ''I launched the effort between Xmas 1964 and year's end, after making the decision while on an MTA bus from Arlington to Cambridge. It was a Tuesday, I believe.'' (R.J. Creasy, private communication, 1989.)

... snip ...

cp40 was first virtual machine system ... done at the cambridge science center ... lots of old posts mentioning science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

built on a 360/40 that had been specially modified with virtual memory hardware. when 360/67 with standard virtual memory offering became available, cp40 morphed into cp67.

cambridge had thot that they would get the corporate mission to build time-sharing system ... but it went instead to another group for tss/360. cambridge went ahead with an effort anyway (much of the time having to be hidden from the rest of the corporation).

read some snipets about the whole process in the old archived post ... or go to Melinda's paper which has a whole lot more detail.

note that some number of the people at the science center had previously worked on CTSS (time-sharing system) and then went to the science center on the 4th flr of 545 tech sq. some number of other people that had worked on ctss joined multics project on 5th flr of 545 tech sq.

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2008 08:18:33 -0500
Chris Barts <chbarts+usenet@gmail.com> writes:
No, I was making a joke based on her IBM-centric view of history, jumping from IBM mainframes and midrange systems directly to IBM PCs without so much as mentioning the very successful Apple and Commodore personal systems released long before IBM was making successful systems for the average home user.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#3 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#5 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#6 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#11 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#12 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#13 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#14 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

note that the original comments weren't about "PC" personal computing in the 70s ... it was about CMS being personal computing starting back in the 60s and then much of the CMS use later subsumed in the mid-80s by "PC" personal computing (aided and abetted by terminal emulation).

for details about "PC" personal computing history ... i subsequently referenced long running thread in a.f.c. last year ... although one of the referenced websites (from that thread) with 30yrs of details about broad range of different hardware ... had gone 404.

and as per my "signature" line ... i had been home user since March of 70 ... still haven't found pictures of 2741 ... although have posted pictures of the 2741 typeball I still have for that terminal
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#36

... some of my home pictures in this recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#51

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2008 08:26:13 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
old a.f.c. post with lots of extracts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#78 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)

from Melinda's history
https://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda#VMHist

one of the footnotes:

24 Creasy had decided to build CP-40 while riding on the MTA. ''I launched the effort between Xmas 1964 and year's end, after making the decision while on an MTA bus from Arlington to Cambridge. It was a Tuesday, I believe.'' (R.J. Creasy, private communication, 1989.)

... snip ...


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#14 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

oh, & other old posts mentioning bob creasy:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21 370 ECPS VM microcode assist
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#54 How Do the Old Mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#126 Dispute about Internet's origins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#127 Dispute about Internet's origins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#59 360 Architecture, Multics, ... was (Re: X86 ultimate CISC? No.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#10 VM: checking some myths.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#6 Microcode?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#44 cp/67 (coss-post warning)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#3 The Chinese MD5 attack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#4 Robert Creasy, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#10 Virtual memory and memory protection
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#38 SHARE reflections
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#21 MVCIN instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#47 The rise of the virtual machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#27 PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#21 history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#52 CMS (PC Operating Systems)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#1 Designing database tables for performance?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#36 Wylbur and Paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#41 Virtual Storage implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#51 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#64 CSA 'above the bar'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#29 Intel Ships Power-Efficient Penryn CPUs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#54 new 40+ yr old, disruptive technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#77 IBM Floating-point myths

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

Comprehensive security?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Comprehensive security?
Newsgroups: alt.computer.security
Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:46:20 -0500
ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld (Moe Trin) writes:
That's very easy to believe. In 1983, we had about five hundred systems at the facility I was working at (I'm still under a very strict NDA), and we had just three systems that had access to [D]ARPAnet. If you look at the databases from the five RIRs (AfriNic, APNic, ARIN, LACNic and RIPE), by the end of 1983, there were just 1686 network allocations and assignments world wide (I'm sure you recall they were handing them out like water back then), and I think that's actually over-reporting.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#9 Comprehensive security?

for other trivia ... the technology for the internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

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

... which (as mentioned) originated virtual machine systems starting in mid-60s.

there was big explosion in number of nodes on the internal network in the late 70s and early 80s (which went from 300 nodes in '79 to 1000 nodes in '83) ... a large number were virtual machine mid-range 43xx machines. this period saw big increase in number of mid-range systems ... DEC sold a lot of vax machines in this market segment ... old post giving decade of vax numbers, sliced&diced by yr, model, US/non-US
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0

a lot of 43xx machines were installed internally ... but even much larger at customers sites (although not necessarily public network connected). one of the difference between vax & 43xx ... was quite a few customers ordered 43xx machines in lots of tens or even hundreds at a time. various old email with 43xx references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#4341

an example is this old email from marketing rep wanted to bring by their (large) customer for a visit ... to talk about 20 4341s ... which turned into an order for 210 4341s (by the following fall):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#email790404b

in this post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15

not long later a customer had a single order for nearly a thousand 4341 machines.

another old email with marketing rep wanting help with large cal. bank customer with order for sixty 4341s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email800311b

in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#5

LLNL was talking about similar kind of order.

for other drift ... this was reference to slight difficulty in getting class A allocation in '88
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#email881216

in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#53

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

Comprehensive security?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Comprehensive security?
Newsgroups: alt.computer.security
Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:33:16 -0500
ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld (Moe Trin) writes:
I'm still amazed at all of the connectivity that was out there so long ago, and how trusting we were. Sure, our sensitive stuff was behind an air-gap, but there was a lot of stuff accessible that would give the auditors heart attacks today.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#9 Comprehensive security?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#17 Comprehensive security?

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

with its cp67 virtual machine system ... also provided accessed to some number of students and other non-employees from cambridge area institutions of higher learning. this required significant security provisions because of various (corporate) secrets resident on the system.

two specific scenarios

1) the most senstive of corporate secrets were the detailed information about all the corporate customers started on the cambridge system. besides other activities, the science center had ported apl\360 to cp67/cms for cms\apl. As part of doing that moved ... APL workspace size was increased from typical 16k-32k bytes (in real memory apl\360) to several megabytes (in cms virtual machine). this also required redoing apl's storage management to make it more virtual memory friendly. in addition, functions that could access system services were added (like read/write files). The net was cms\apl could really be used for real-world applications. APL had a reputation for use in business modeling ... but it took drastically increasing the workspace size and supporting system services to open it to real world problems. The business planners from corporate hdqtrs in NY started using the system remotely ... along with having loaded the most sensitive of corporate business secrets.

2) before 370 was announced (as well as virtual memory support in 370), cambridge started a joint development project with the endicott manufacturing facility to create a 370 virtual machine ... running on 360/67 cp67 system. this required a feature option ... and simulating all the architecture and instruction differences in 370 (from 360). Before announcement of 370 ... all this information was closely guarded corporate secret ... but cambridge was regularly running "370s" as virtual machines on the cambridge cp67/cms service (and kept "hidden" from non-employees)

note other systems from the era frequently used air-gap for security (because it otherwise didn't exist in the system). cp67 had a lot of security built into basic infrastructure.

some of this may have been the area. some number of people that had worked on CTSS had come over to the science center on the 4th flr of 545tech sq. Some number of other people that worked on CTSS went to Multics effort on 5th flr of 545tech sq.

Multics also has some security history ... as referenced in this previously mentioned email, air force data services was multics installation:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#email790404b

and a gateway on the internet was dockmaster, mentioned here:
http://www.multicians.org/site-dockmaster.html

reference to air force multics vulnerability analysis (from 1974):
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/history/karg74.pdf

and reference to that work ... paper mentioned in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#42 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:10:56 -0500
Chris Barts <chbarts+usenet@gmail.com> writes:
I still think this is IBM-centric, because calling CMS 'personal' is laughable: It was only usable on very expensive hardware owned by corporations, universities, and other large organizations. That is the opposite of 'personal' as it's generally understood now. It's only 'personal' in comparison to standing in line to submit batch jobs.

And I still think you're passing too lightly over the microcomputers of the 1970s, in particular the Commodore 64 and the Apple II. Many thousands of both machines were sold, helping to lauch the software industry as we know it, home networking (via BBSes and BBS networks like Fidonet), and computer programming as a hobby not constrained by whether you could get an account on a real computer. Those computers represented a much bigger change to society than the first timesharing machines or even the first computer network.


I've claimed that in mid-60s ... when they let me have the university dataprocessing center from 8am sat. until 8am monday ... that the 64kbyte 360/30 was my personal computer (for the 48hr period) ... recent reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#70 Employees sue for non-paid PC boot-up time

the 360/30 was my dedicated, personal computer for the whole 48hrs ... even tho the number of people in the world at the time with such access might have been counted in the tens. there is even folklore about some in that early hobbyiest generation ... being those people not having the qualifications to be given access the univ. datacenter resources. later the 360/30 was replaced with 360/67 ... and i continued to have dedicated 48hr exclusive use for some time.

I don't pass over "lightly" ... there were whole magazines dedicated to the phenonama for decades ... lots of the articles still can be found on the web. I would claim that it is trying to provide a more balanced view from the other side ... which has had orders of magnitude less coverage. As I mentioned before ... the number of sales of those machines were discussed in some detail in thread from last year ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#5 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#12 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

which had reference to detailed actual numbers of machines by year.

the "personal computing" economic argument/thread has periodically appeared before in a.f.c. ... it doesn't make the "personal" computing any less so for the people involved ... the economic issue just effects how many.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#55 Multics
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#0 Usenet invented 30 years ago by a Swede?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#18 CAS and LL/SC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#54 The mid-seventies SHARE survey
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#35 Systems Programming for 8 Year-olds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#8 big endian vs. little endian, why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#27 PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#43 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#27 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#56 360/30 memory

a similar argument is used regarding the example hobbyiest (level of skill & expertise) & relative cost of "personal computing" of the late 70s was a barrier to entry to the general public "personal computing" that is prevalent today (skill, economic and size of user community).

the size of the "mainframe" personal computing population significantly increased with the availability of virtual machines and cp67/cms ... and there was some amount of uptake at several universities. the 360/67 was much more expensive machine than the 360/30 that i started with ... but the virtual machine paradigm allowed it to be "personally" used concurrently by a much larger population. by the mid-70s with 370s and vm370 ... the total aggregate, world-wide user population would have been somewhere around large hundreds of thousands. this would have been at least as large as the total, aggregate number of hobbiest personal computers in existance through the late 70s (aggregate numbers similar, but tended to be different populations).

I would make the case that the personal computing experience (in terms of number of people) with CMS was at least as large as the total number of hobbyist machines .... and contributed as much to the paradigm going into the late 80s and early 90s. the hobbyiest dedicated hardware had some amount of human interaction ... but the availability of resources tended to limit the sophistication of the applications.

One of the reasons that mid-range mainframe (43xx & vax) market started to shrink ... was that the resources on workstation and large PCs in the late 80s were finally reaching the point where applications from those platforms could finally be migrated.

one might also claim that one of the reasons that the c64 and apple-II market started to disappear was that their limited resource paradigm didn't adapt well to being able to effectively make use of machines with increasing amounts of hardware resources i.e. cross-over point where larger and more sophisticated "mainframe" applications were able to migrate to PCs (with the necessary available hardware resources).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#11 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#12 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#13 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#14 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#15 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#16 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

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

TOPS-10

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: TOPS-10
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:25:23 -0500
Bernd Felsche <berfel@innovative.iinet.net.au> writes:
The next step is integration into NUMA; directly addressable, non-volatile memory. Discussions about standards have begun. Expect DDR-like slots on server boards and high-end PCs within 2 years.

there was large research project in the early 80s along this line called "system memory" ... which sort of targeted at using NUMA addressing for cluster environment (somewhat akin to standardization done for SCI ... that showed up in sequent, convex, sgi, data general, etc NUMA machines). the standard "system memory" could be volitile ... but there was a subset of "system memory" called "lock memory" which was non-volitile as well as non-single point of failure.

"in-memory" databases have somewhat been moving in this direction because of the significant increases in real storage sizes ... but they have had to use compensating procedures to deal with volitile nature of the memory (in order to achieve ACID transaction properties). the "in-memory" databases claim ten times the thruput compared to equivalent traditional "disk" paradigm DBMS running on the same exact hardware resources (and providing same level of ACID transaction properties) ... some past posts mentioning databases with "in-memory" paradigm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#51 Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#23 Relational Model and Search Engines?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#23 OS's with loadable filesystem support?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#8 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#51 The Chant of the Trolloc Hordes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#10 The Chant of the Trolloc Hordes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#71 What do you think is holding up the use of cellphone-initiated micro payments in the U.S.?

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2008 07:15:46 -0500
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
2. The 360/67 was intended as a vehicle for TSS/360, which wouldn't necessarily need the same architectural support as CP/67. Did the idea of a virtual machine precede the /67 and therefore the necessary support was included, or was it just a fortuitous circumstance?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#14 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#16 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

virtual machines was combination of

1) base 360 strict implementation of differentiation between "supervisor" instructions and "problem" instructions ... with traps to intercept all "supervisor" instructions ... allowing emulation

2) virtual address space ... to isolate all addressable components of the virtual machine ... from other virtual machines and cp67 kernel.

3) LPSW instruction that allowed to switch between the cp67 kernel space, supervisor state to virtual machine virtual address space, problem state ... in single instructionl

4) precise interrupts that allowed switch from virtual machine virtual address space, problem state back to cp67 kernel, supervisor state in single operation (with exact address and state of the interrupt).

for the most part, except for (360/67) virtual memory part ... it was inherent in the base 360 infrastructure.

360/67 virtual addressing provided for 1mbyte segments in either 24bit virtual addressing (max 16 segments) or 32bit virtual addressing (max 8192 segments). standard cp67 just used it to simulate flat address space for each virtual machine.

to some extent tss/360 went crazy with move to purely page-mapped infrastructures. applications were laid out in large virtual memories w/o a lot of regard to locality of reference. typical 360/67 machines were 512k byte or 768k byte machines ... and the (growing) complexity of the tss kernel was 400k bytes (many universities were upset when told they had to upgrade from original 512k order to 768k for tss to run).

cms picked up a lot of it software from os/360 applications/software with os/360 emulation. this had the advantage of having some locality of reference organization ... from its target of small 360 real memories ... organized into phases and explicit switching from one phase to another.

we did synthentic fortran program edit, compile and execute workload and ran it under both cp67 and tss/360 on the univ. 768k byte 360/67. cp67/cms with 30 users running the workload had better thruput and interactive response than tss/360 did running only four users.

tss/360 did provide for shared segments and location independence which didn't exist in the os/360 software genre. working storage, constants and executable code tended to be intermixed in os/360 ... making (read-only) sharing difficult ... although os/360 did have the concept of reentrant ... which sort of was a equivalent for sharing same image. however, os/360 also freely intermixed address location dependencies with everything else.

at the university i had done a lot of pathlength performance work ... old reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18 CP/67 & OS MFT14

one of the issues was simulating the 360 real address origined channel programming for i/o ... which required intercepting the virtual machines SIO instruction and then creating a copy of the channel program using real addresses (in place of virtual addresses) as well as fixing all affected virtual pages at some real address. this was large pathlength item.

at the univ. for CMS I had done a precursor to "diagnose i/o" ... basically still the real-address paradigm ... but assumed a "stylized" channel program ... which significantly reduced the simulation pathlength.

later in the 70s, I attempted to introduce a "paged-mapped" API into the cp67 kernel ... which eliminated all the problems with channel program simulation ... sort of taking model from both tss/360 ... and the multics working going on the 5th floor of 545 tech sq (floor above the science center). for a little recent multics topic drift:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#18 Comprehensive security?

One of the things that i was very sensitive to was having page-mapped implementation but still avoiding the lack of reference locality that contributed to the horrible tss/360 performance. this was part of the software that I would migrate from cp67 to vm370 mentioned in these old emails:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750430

and lots of other past posts mentioning the page mapped work
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

I also provided for a "segment" sharing infrastructure off the page mapped infrastructure (and also provided a non-page mapped version of the segment sharing implementation). The "segment" sharing API supported address location independence (i.e. the same segment coulde appear concurrently at different locations in multiple different virtual address spaces) ... however, trying to get os/360 genre code adapted to location independence was frequently a challenge (or punted and just left at fixed location). lots of past posts discussing trials & tribulations trying to adapt os/360 genre code to location independent paradigm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#adcon

for a little more topic drift ... as undergraduate ... besides the pathlength performance work ... I had also done a lot of work on dynamic adaptive resource management (scheduling algorithms) ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

and page replacement algorithms ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

in the early 70s, cambridge science center had a 768kbyte real storage, 360/67 ... while the grenoble science center had a 1mbyte real storage, 360/67. my page replacement work involved doing approximation to "global" LRU as standard. Grenoble decided to take cp67 and modify it to support a "local" LRU page replacement strategy and a "working set" dispatcher (which was something of the rage in academic literature at the time).

It turned out that with Cambridge & Grenoble running similar workloads, and Cambridge system having 104 "pageable pages" (after fixed real storage requirements) and Grenoble system having 156 "pageable pages" (after fixed real storage requirements), the Cambridge system with 75-80 users had about the same performance has the Grenoble system with 30-35 users.

misc. past posts mentioning Grenoble
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#65 No Glory for the PDP-15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#70 New test attempt
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#79 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#64 Crippleware: hardware examples

much later tss some uptake in special bid internally inside at&t. a stripped down version of tss/370 kernel was done called ssup ... with at&t unix layered on top (in place of tss api). misc. past posts mentioning ssup:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#1 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#49 Any benefit to programming a RISC processor by hand?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#82 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post)

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:02:02 -0500
cb@mer.df.lth.se (Christian Brunschen) writes:
One major difference between having an account on a timesharing system ecen if that account gives the illusion of having a machine of your own, i.e., a virtual machine) vs having a personal computer is that both give you _access to_ computing resources, but only the personal computer also gives you _control over_ them. Using resources that are under someone else's control, you always have to work within what they permit; when you yourself control the resource, you can allocate it as you want, even in a way that someone else would call 'inappropriate' or 'frivolous'.

Just using the example of calendars with ASCII art of pinups: with a timesharing system, or virtual machines running on someone else's physical machine, you have to have that someone's permission (explicit or tacit) to store and/or print them; with a personal computer, you yourself decide whether that is an appropriate use of the computing and storage resources.

So while personal computers may not give more actual resources (and possibly actually less resources!) than using a share of a more powerful computer, they give _control_, which is a further, and in some ways much bigger, change over merely allowing access to computing resources.

This repeats itself when it comes to being able to run software of your devising. If you have a computer where you can only use prebuilt programs, then that may be useful; but if you then get control over what programs you run on that computer, including ideally the ability to write your own (or have someone else write them for you), that raises the game to a whole new level.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#19 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

which is become frequent hobbyiest refrain some of the latest personal computers ... loosing much of that control. In the past I've somewhat drawn the analogy with many of the modern "consumer friendly" automobiles and vehicles of the 50s ... which still allowed owner to nearly do everything by themselves.

note that big uptake for CMS ... was, in fact, people writing their own software ... during the 70s, there was something of explosion of new software being written in CMS environments.

This also showed up in some of the skirmishes about games on the system ... mentioned in this reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#11 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

and it also follows the comments about in the late 80s ... as the hardware resources became much more powerful ... saw a withering of both the hobbyist genre ... and the mid-range ... with large amount of applications that had been running on mid-range machines migrating to these more powerful PCs.

the original sql/relational implementation, system/r was done on vm370 in the 70s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

and saw proliferation on workstations in the 80s ... but didn't make transition to PCs until possibly early 90s.

now, firefox browser is even making using of sql/relational for its storage. I have an application that copies the firefox places.sqlite file ... and then executes SQL statements to extract information ... misc. past references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#35 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#71 Mainframe programming vs the Web
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#85 Which of the latest browsers do you prefer and why?

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

What is the level of security in payment systems (credit and bank cards) nowadays?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: What is the level of security in payment systems (credit and bank cards) nowadays?
Date: December 2, 2008
Blog: Payments & Cards Network
We had been working with a couple of people in the early 90s on large database scale-up ... referenced in post here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

who left and joined a small client/server startup. we were brought in to consult because the startup wanted to do payment transactions on their server and had invented this technology called SSL they wanted to use. Part of that deployment is something called a payment gateway ... past references here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

we had also to do end-to-end review of everything related to SSL included walk-thrus of these new operations calling themselves certification authorities. For the server to payment gateway ... we also specified additional compensating procedures to improve the security of the way SSL operated (compared to how it operated between the browser and web servers).

then in the mid-90s, we were asked to participate in the x9a10 financial standard working group which had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for ALL retail payments. As part of that work, there were detailed, end-to-end threat and vulnerability studies of the various retail payment environments. that work resulted in the x9.59 financial standard with some references here: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

One of the issues was the vulnerability of the current infrastructure to skimming, evesdropping, data breaches and other mechanisms involving capturing static information from existing operations and being able to leverage that information for performing fraudulent transactions. Part of x9.59 financial standard was to slightly change the existing paradigm so all that information was useless to crooks/attackers. X9.59 did nothing about securing the infrastructure from data breaches, skimming, and/or similar kinds of exploits ... what x9.59 did was nullify the threats of fraudulent transactions that resulted from such exploits.

This also had the side-effect of eliminating the major use for SSL in the world today ... this earlier effort we did now associated with what is called "electronic commerce" ... i.e. the major use of SSL in the world today is associated with hiding financial transactions details as countermeasure to crooks being able to use the information for fraudulent transactions. With x9.59 , it is no longer necessary to hide the information (since the threat of fraudulent financial transactions arising from exposure/leakage of that information has been eliminated).

recent similar discussions archived here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#13 What risk of possible data leakage do you see for your organization?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#16 Is Information Security driven by compliance??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#22 What risk of possible data leakage do you see for your organization?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#64 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#2 Keeping private information private
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#5 Privacy, Identity theft, account fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#7 Dealing with the neew MA ID protection law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#20 Donald Knuth stops paying for errata
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#21 Would you say high tech authentication gizmo's are a waste of time/money/effort?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#67 Web Security hasn't moved since 1995
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#74 2008 Data Breaches: 30 Million and Counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#13 Web Security hasn't moved since 1995
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#71 What do you think is holding up the use of cellphone-initiated micro payments in the U.S.?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#2 Payment Card + Digital Signature

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:06:43 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#11 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#19 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#22 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

for minor x-over from thread in linkedin "greater ibm connection" group:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#55 Can outsourcing be stopped?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#8 Can outsourcing be stopped?

which got into the area of competition. part of the thread involved various quotes from fergus/morris book ... first with this post related to future system effort in the early 70s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#33 IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984?

lots of old posts mentioning future system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

however, another part of that old thread was this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#30 IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984?

which had a quote that instead of starting with (the vastly superior) cp/x86 as basis for new personal computing platform, there was a decision instead to launch OS/2. we had run into something similar with Boca before the original PC (acorn) announcement ... where Boca initially didn't object to other internal locations producing the software for the PC ... but then later deciding to go with an external operation. One interpretation was that there would be no internal politics & competition from an external organization under contract.

cp/x86 had been developed as part of provided a flavor of vm370 on ibm/xt platform (washington). I got blamed for slipping washington announce by six months (which i have vague recollection was announced same time as 3270/pc) ... because it of some problems that I found that really needed to be fixed before shipping to customers.

past references to acorn (code name for what became 5150/ibmpc):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#79 Coulda, Woulda, Shoudda moments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#31 difference between itanium and alpha
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#9 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#19 PC history, was PDP10 and RISC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#16 unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#24 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#27 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#8 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#48 Hey! Keep Your Hands Out Of My Abstraction Layer!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#45 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#41 Device Authentication - The answer to attacks lauched using stolen passwords?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#29 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#31 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#44 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#5 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#35 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers

past references to "washington" (vm370 in pc/xt package):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#20 Very CISC Instuctions (Was: why the machine word size ...)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#4 IBM Mainframe at home
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#27 End of Moore's law and how it can influence job market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#56 ECPS:VM DISPx instructions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#40 IBM system 370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#7 Whatever happened to IBM's VM PC software?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#6 Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#36 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#56 DCSS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#14 RCA Spectra 70/25: Another Mystery Computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#7 Has anyone ever used self-modifying microcode? Would it even be useful?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#25 modern paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#5 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#41 z/VM usability
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#61 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#43 Intel Ships Power-Efficient Penryn CPUs

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:33:17 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
however, another part of that old thread was this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#30 IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984?

which had a quote that instead of starting with (the vastly superior) cp/x86 as basis for new personal computing platform, there was a decision instead to launch OS/2. we had run into something similar with Boca before the original PC (acorn) announcement ... where Boca initially didn't object to other internal locations producing the software for the PC ... but then later deciding to go with an external operation. One interpretation was that there would be no internal politics & competition from an external organization under contract.

cp/x86 had been developed as part of provided a flavor of vm370 on ibm/xt platform (washington). I got blamed for slipping washington announce by six months (which i have vague recollection was announced same time as 3270/pc) ... because it of some problems that I found that really needed to be fixed before shipping to customers.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#24 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

for other "CP" folklore ... there is the cp/40 and cp/67 done at the science center (although it slightly changed to vm370):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#14 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

then in the mid-70s, the 801/risc group started work on cp/r ... misc. past posts mentioning 801, risc, romp, rios, pc/rt, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

the above mentions cp/86 done as part of packaging vm370 for the pc (morris/furgus book mentions it was superior to os/2).

there was also cp/m ... posts in old threads mentioning that the author of cp/m had previously used cp67/cms at npg school at monterey ... past threads/references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#5 small bit of cp/m & cp/67 trivia from alt.folklore.computers n.g. (thread)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#38 [REALLY OT!] Overuse of symbolic constants
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#40 Which Monitor Would You Pick??????
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#41 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#31 DEC and news groups

webpage gone 404, but from the wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20071011100440/http://www.khet.net/gmc/docs/museum/en_cpmName.html

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

realtors (and GM, too!)

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: realtors (and GM, too!)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:36:22 -0500
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
As the company moves towards the latter part of phase three the demands for steady profits becomes an ironclad regime; unless management comes up with a good story to move up closer to 2) again. This is a mid-life kick. Jack Welch did this to GE, and the financiers were _very_ happy to cooperate. Mr Gates does this to Microsoft all the time. Financiers do know very well that companies that do not actively renew will migrate to phase 4.

i was at MDC held moscone jan96 ... and some people were really worried (the one where there was the internet all over the place ... but the constant subtext/refrain was "preserve investment" ... which was code for they weren't going to obsolete all the basic programmers)

... they had studies that existing products already did everything that 95% of the people needed ... and there was no real reason for them to acquire anything more. this was after more than a decade of constantly/incrementally adding the new features that people required.

the next stage appeared to move into the '60s automobile retail marketing paradigm; motivating people to constantly buying the latest & greatest product even when there was no longer any significant functional motivation.

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

CPU time/instruction table

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CPU time/instruction table
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:50:59 -0500
joarmc@SWBELL.NET (John McKown) writes:
On the current machines, there are two classes of instructions. The "simple" instructions (like SR and LA and so forth) are "hard wired". The more difficult instructions (such as MVCLE) are "millicoded". So, if you can replace a millicoded instruction with a small number of "hard wired" instructions, then you should be better off, speed wise. However, once again, IBM does not document which instructions are "hard coded" and which are millicode. I have heard that IBM has, at times, "fixed" a "broken" hard coded instruction by replacing it with a millicoded instruction installed by the CE.

An earlier genre was macrocode that was introduced on 5880 .... basically a flavor of modified 370 that ran in special mode. It was used to implement hypervisor on 5880.

eventually the response on 3090 was pr/sm ... which was a significantly more complex implementation having to be done in much lower level microcode. some old email discussing 5880 and MAcro-code
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#email810318

in this post/thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#38 blast from the past ... macrocode

some of the Amdahl people had talked to me (offline) at baybunch (monthly meetings held at slac) about macrocode and hypervisor implementation (year earlier than above email).

the above post also includes another old email mentioning as9000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#email810421

for other topic drift ... here is old discussion about difference between 3081 and 3090 with respect to hardware/microcode implementation tradeoff (with examples regarding SIE instruction):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#email810630

in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#27 virtual memory

compare that with this discussion of millicode:
http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/journal/rd/483/heller.html

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:36:33 -0500
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
The problem with control is that it also implies responsibility. With a PC you have to install your own software, run your own backups (or more likely fail to run them), install your own patches, defrag and cleanup your own disk, etc. On a shared system, these things are all done for you.

The ideal system is a mixture, as most timesharing systems are. You get a base of installed, checked-out, and regularly patched software. You get backups without having to ask for them. Then, if you want to develop and/or install software of your own, you can do that also.


i had originally done cmsback for internal installations archive/backup/restore ... a couple old emails
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#cmsback

it went thru several internal versions ... and finally released to cusotmers as product called "workstations datasave" ... with some number of agents that ran on workstations and PCs that supported backup/restore to the mainframe. workstation datasave morphed into ADSM and later was renamed TSM ... "ADSTAR" disk division was spun off ... and ADSTAR distributed storage manager ... was transferred to the tivoli group and renamed Tivoli Storage Manager. wiki reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Tivoli_Storage_Manager

various old posts mentioning backup, archive, restore, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#backup

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:35:20 -0500
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
Both the -10 and -20 OSes gave each user control. things were more complicated but I won't go into it here. Operations could set limits on resources if they became scarce. Most operational limits were done via cross-charging. After ANF-10 was distributed, line printers could be placed outside the machine room.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#22 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

a different kind of "control" in cms ... dating back to the mid-60s was (relatively high overhead) "lookup" on every kernel call.

basically terminal input had abbreviation and synonyms ... but eventually everything was "tokenized" into common format ... that was used for kernel calls, executable applications, EXEC (command scripts file), etc.

entry into kernel would go thru resolution process that involved first looking for an EXEC (command script file) in various file systems, then binary executable file in various file systems ... and then finally whether or not it was a kernel call.

in effect, any user could do a great deal of customization ... even pre-empting kernel calls with a local EXEC or local application ... or making a kernel call directly from a command script.

this increased vulnerable to various kinds of network-based attacks. this is somewhat analogous to common (personal computer hardware) desktop transition from safe, local/closed networking environments (w/o countermeasures for hostile attacks ... where the capability of automatigically executing various kinds of embedded BASIC was added to broad range of applications) ... to the wide-open hostile anarchy of the internet.

an example was that BITNET had a morris worm kind of attack ... a year before the morris worm ... misc. past posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#87 CompUSA to Close after Jan. 1st 2008
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#2 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#58 Linux zSeries questions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#26 CA ESD files Options
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#44 Two views of Microkernels (Re: Kernels

past posts mentioning BITNET (&/or european EARN)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

on the other hand ... it made the development, distribution, evolution of new &/or modified applications extremely easy ... all was need was a copy on personal filesystem ... or a shared, local filesystem (that coupled with open source ... making it easy to enhance/change something).

it eased the uptake of REXX ... as an alternative EXEC (command interpretor) as well as the internal network for distributed development ... misc past references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#29 20th March 2000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#10 5-player Spacewar?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#8 VM: checking some myths.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#35 Newbie TOPS-10 7.03 question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#3 HONE, Aid, misc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#2 IBM OS source code
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#13 Today's mainframe--anything to new?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#41 Systems Programming for 8 Year-olds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#43 Systems Programming for 8 Year-olds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#58 Q ALLOC PAGE vs. CP Q ALLOC vs ESAMAP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#31 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#64 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#54 Using rexx to send an email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#8 Xephon, are they still in business?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#54 Discussions areas, private message silos, and how far we've come since 199x

I would claim that it eased the uptake of GML ... invented at the science center in '69
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

modified versions of the standard CMS "script" (document formating) command could be created ... and easily distributed/tested (w/o requiring any participation by the "owners" of the system ... this also contributed to proliferation of games).

some recent comments about one such scenario was the "waterloo" script flavor being involved in the evolution from sgml to html (some recent posts):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#65 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#15 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#47 System z10 announcement (in English)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#100 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#86 CLIs and GUIs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#88 CLIs and GUIs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#59 CHROME and WEB apps on Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#64 CHROME and WEB apps on Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#91 How did http get a port number as low as 80?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#67 Web Security hasn't moved since 1995

other past posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#3 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#5 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#6 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#11 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#12 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#13 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#14 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#15 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#16 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#19 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#21 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#24 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#25 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#28 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

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

SIM-based mobile signature solution to launch new applications

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: SIM-based mobile signature solution to launch new applications
Date: December 3, 2008
Blog: Payments & Cards Network
In the early 90s, we did some consulting for the person on the gov. side setting up fstc ... reference
http://www.fstc.org/

and one of the tasks was trying to help move some gov. smartcard technology into the commercial sector (w/o much success). We then did some investigation and observed that there had been a lot of work in the 80s in the area of standardizing smartcard "contacts" ... the issue at the time was that smartcards represented a from of portable, lightweight compact computing ... but lacked any portable input/output technology. The solution was to create an international standardization for interoperable input/output stations supporting smartcards. (aka iso 7816).

The issue by the mid-90s was the original assumptions were no longer valid ... with the appearance of various kinds of portable input/output technologies (cellphones, PDAs, etc) ... and (iso7816) smartcards were effectively no longer relativent ... only issue was how long would it take to realize it. An issue was whether people would prefer to carry around a lot of computing capability with no way of directly accessing it ... or would they prefer all that computing capability to have directly accessible input/output.

That, in part, was why in the 90s, we put all the work into format agnostic for the AADS chip strawman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

and the AADS patent portfolio covers a broad range how digital signatures might be used (independent of device format)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadssummary.htm

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

"True" story of the birth of the IBM PC

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: "True" story of the birth of the IBM PC
Date: December 3, 2008
Blog: Greater IBM
there is similar story regarding the people behind SUN coming to IBM to ask IBM to produce the workstations. In a meeting at the Palo Alto science center ... representatives from Boca, YKT research and SJR research all claimed to be producing something far superior to what the people described as SUN workstations.

One of the issues with regard to terminal emulation ... it significantly improved the early uptake of IBM/PC ... recent post with reference to 1984 NY Times article on the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#13 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

part of the issue going into the late 80s ... was PC and networking technology was advancing to the point where client/server was starting to play a bigger role ... and terminal emulation was then starting to represent a market inhibitor. The initial reaction was attempting to protect the significant customer install "terminal" oriented base. This created some amount of tension ... contributing to customers starting to look to other vendors for solutions. In this period, we had come up with 3-tier architecture and was out pitching it to customer executives ... and taking lots of arrows from the forces attempting to preserve the "terminal emulation" paradigm.

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:37:00 -0500
krw <krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzz> writes:
A cow-orker had a few 360/85s in P'ok as his "personal computers" over several weekends. He was running statistical ASTAP and needed kabillions of cycles. They brought down the programmer's VM systems on Friday evening and IPL'd MVS for him. He had the only userid on the systems until Monday morning when they suspended any jobs he was running and IPL'd VM for the programmers. BTV didn't much like the bill for CPU time.

using the operators console as his terminal??

360/85 (nor 195s) didn't have virtual memory support ... wouldn't have run vm or mvs ... maybe 165-II or 168?

palo alto science center had a couple hr program that they would submit to the sjr mvt370/195 system ... the backlog was such that the turn around was several weeks.

eventually palo alto science center setup their vm370/145 so this application ran in the "background" (along with some checkpoint/restart) the application got little or no thruput during weekday 1st shift ... but available cycles frequently really improved offshift and weekends. it worked out that they actually got better turn around from vm370/145 ... than they had been geting from sjr's (heavily loaded) mvt370-195 (service).

nearly as bad was turn around the disk division was getting for the physical airbearing simulation for design of (3380) thinfilm floating heads (of sjr's mvt370-195).

i've mentioned before that they let me play disk engineering in bldgs 14&15.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

part of the reason was they had lots of processors that were dedicated for "testing" engineering "testcells" (engineering disk/controller hardware under development). they had tried using MVS ... in order to improve productivity ... being able to do multiple tests concurrently ... instead of stand-alone scheduled (7x24 around the clock) test time. problem was in that environment ... there was 15min MTBF for mvs.

i undertook to rewrite i/o supervisor to make it bullet proof to never fail ... this allowed bldgs. 14&15 to move testing into operating system environment ... lots of concurrent testing ... and any amount of testing "on demand" ... which greatly improved engineering productivity.

bldg 15 (product test lab) would also typically get 2nd or 3rd engineering machine of any processor ... 4341, 3033, etc. the new engineering 3033 in bldg. 15 was only about half the peak mip rate of 370/195 ... but the "testcell" testing (even several testcells concurrently) only used a percent or two of the processor. we would setup things for friends that might soak up the excess 3033 processor time. head-design, airbearing simulation could get nearly real-time turn-around on the 3033 (none of these "engineering" machines were official datacenter service operations ... so there was no "billing").

... note BTV had separate problem with MVS on 168s. MVS system design took split each application 16mbyte virtual address space, placing 8mbyte image of the kernel in every virtual address space. Then there was minimum of 1mbyte "common segment" image that appeared in every virtual address space ... leaving a maximum of 7mbytes for application execution (lots of customers had common segment at 4-5mbytes ... leaving only 3 or 4 mebytes for application use).

in any case, MVS best possible case was 7mbytes for application execution ... and some of the BTV fortran simulation applications were pushing the 7mbyte limit ... i got contacted about moving some of the applications to CMS ... allowing nearly the whole 16mbyte virtual address space for BTV applications ... past post with BTV reference about moving MVS app to CMS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#23

misc. past posts mentioning airbearing simulation for design of 3380 thinfilm heads:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#39 195 was: Computer Typesetting Was: Movies with source code
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#30 Weird
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#63 Help me find pics of a UNIVAC please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#74 They Got Mail: Not-So-Fond Farewells
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#51 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#52 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#69 Multics Concepts For the Contemporary Computing World
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#20 360 Microde Floating Point Fix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#45 hung/zombie users ... long boring, wandering story
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#21 40th anniversary of IBM System/360 on 7 Apr 2004
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#15 harddisk in space
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#15 360 longevity, was RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#25 CKD Disks?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#8 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#4 System/360; Hardwired vs. Microcoded
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#5 System/360; Hardwired vs. Microcoded
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#44 Intel engineer discusses their dual-core design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#29 IBM microwave application--early data communications
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#6 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#0 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#13 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#14 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#6 Google Architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#18 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#42 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#41 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#18 Why so little parallelism?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#27 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#31 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#43 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#44 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#46 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#83 Disc Drives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#13 Interrupts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#64 Disc Drives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#52 Drums: Memory or Peripheral?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#77 Disk drive improvements
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#60 recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology

past posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#3 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#5 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#6 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#11 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#12 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#13 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#14 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#15 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#16 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#19 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#21 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#22 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#24 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#25 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#28 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#29 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Date: December 3, 2008
Blog: Greater IBM
part of the previous mentioned thread with quotes from fergus/morris book ... includes mention that fergus/morris book includes description of meeting where it was decided to not leverage (vastly superior) cp/86 (which had been created as part of support xt/370) ... but instead to start the (inferior) os/2 project.

this post in usenet a.f.c. flavor of the thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#21

mentions that i had done the precursor to "diagnose i/o" as undergraduate on cp67 in the 60s ... as pathlength optimization for cms. I got admonished by bob adair at the science center for violating 360 architecture in my original flavor of the implementation. it was permissible to redo it with the "diagnose" instruction ... because the 360 principles of operation defined the implementation of the "diagnose" instruction as "model" dependent. So this fiction was created for a virtual machine model implementation of the "diagnose" instruction.

As mentioned in detailed description in the above reference post ... i then did some significant redo of cp67/cms including page-mapped filesystem and redoing how it could possible "share" any executable image in the page-mapped filesystem. Only a very small part of these changes ever shipped in product.

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:01:36 -0500
krw <krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzz> writes:
It's possible, though I don't recall that we had any 370s at the time. We had all the "recalled" /85s, and little else until the 3033s. Who knows what modifications they had on them though.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#32 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

i never heard of any 85s being retrofitted with virtual memory hardware.

155s & 165s initially came out w/o any virtual memory hardware.

it was a massive effort (just design) to retrofit virtual memory hardware to 165 ... and then it was a large hardware package to install the virtual memory hardware already in customer shops ... to make it a 165-II.

as implied, SJR was running MVT on 370/195 until sometime after 3033 introduction. MVT ran on real memory ... and TSO was even available for MVT. I would believe that a lot end-users using mvt/tso could be migrated to mvs/tso with little awareness ... other than the "memory" regions might go from possibly a couple hundred K-bytes to a couple M-bytes.

the initial version of os/vs2 (virtual memory/storage) was minor modifications to MVT running in a single virtual address space (i.e. SVS or single virtual storage). Then there was some additional changes for transition from SVS to MVS supporting a separate virtual address space for every application ... although the pervasive pointer-passing API paradigm ... required an image of the kernel appeared as an 8mbyte area in every 16mbyte application virtual address space.

as an aside ... long running (48hr weekend) simulation jobs ... would likely allow lots of time to eat and even sleep ... wouldn't have to spend the whole 48rs/weekend at the keyboard (w/o sleep) ... even if it wasn't the operators/machine console ... recent reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#70 Employees sue for non-paid PC boot-up time

i've commented before that just the design effort to retrofit virtual memory hardware to 165 was so extensive that it was going to slip the 370 virtual memory announce schedule by six months. there was escalation meetings to start dropping features from virtual memory architecture in order to buy back the six months for the 165 effort. this was eventually done ... included features that were already implemented on other 370 models and in use by kernel software. the elimination of the features to get the 165 effort back on schedule met that other 370 models (which had already implemented full virtual memory architecture) had to go back and eliminate those features (and kernel software organizations that already had features using the additional features ... had to redo their implementations).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#35 Why IBM use 31 bit addressing not 32 bit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#15 360/370 instruction cycle time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#16 360/370 instruction cycle time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#8 Minimalist design (was Re: Parity - why even or odd)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#51 Handling variable page sizes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#2 Handling variable page sizes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#68 Tweaking old computers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#10 Coherent TLBs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#23 Tweaking old computers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#6 If the x86 ISA could be redone
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#5 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#18 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#53 System/360; Hardwired vs. Microcoded
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#57 System/360; Hardwired vs. Microcoded
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#59 System/360; Hardwired vs. Microcoded
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#1 System/360; Hardwired vs. Microcoded
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#45 Moving assembler programs above the line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#45 HASP/ASP JES/JES2/JES3
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#13 VM maclib reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#38 Is VIO mandatory?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#0 About TLB in lower-level caches
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#5 About TLB in lower-level caches
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#4 Mainframe vs. xSeries
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#9 Hadware Support for Protection Bits: what does it really mean?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#5 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#61 Is the teaching of non-reentrant HLASM coding practices ever defensible?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#32 Running OS/390 on z9 BC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#14 more shared segment archeology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#16 more shared segment archeology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#43 z/VM usability
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#28 IBM 360 Model 20 Questions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#35 IBM obsoleting mainframe hardware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#41 Virtual Storage implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#70 GETMAIN/FREEMAIN and virtual storage backing up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#62 CSA 'above the bar'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#79 IBM Floating-point myths
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#96 Old hardware

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

Blinkenlights

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Blinkenlights
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:12:17 -0500
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
Correct. CDOs aren't very complicated, really, as financial instruments go. You take a number of mortgages, rate them, organise payments etc; and make s formal security out of them.

or not rate the underlying mortgages ... as recent congressional testimony ... just pay the rating companies to hand out triple-A ratings (regardless of the underlying values).

one of the tv business shows yesterday had on a couple CEOs from rating companies that were not paid by the issuers of the instruments ... but were paid by those buying the instruments; they had some very unflattering references to the big rating companies that were handing out the triple-A ratings on toxic CDOs.

long-winded, decade old post includes references to needing accurate visibility into CDO-like instruments
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm

misc. recent posts mentioning congressional hearings into CDOs & rating agencies:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#78 Who murdered the financial system?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#80 Can we blame one person for the financial meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#3 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#9 Do you believe a global financial regulation is possible?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#47 In Modeling Risk, the Human Factor Was Left Out
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#11 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#12 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#16 realtors (and GM, too!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#18 A few months of legislative vacuum - is this a good thing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#19 Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#20 How is Subprime crisis impacting other Industries?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#32 I was wondering what types of frauds the audience think will increase?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#49 Have not the following principles been practically disproven, once and for all, by the current global financial meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#50 Obama, ACORN, subprimes (Re: Spiders)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#69 if you are an powerful financial regulator , how would you have stopped the credit crunch?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#10 Blinkylights

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

Blinkenlights

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Blinkenlights
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:23:40 -0500
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
The problem with CDOs is that it disassociates the owner and the debtor, and does not give transparant views into the risk. This is why Scandinavia has laws that bind these to a financial instutution; so they cannot just be offloaded. We learnt this lesson in our housing crash of 1988/89.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#35 Blinkenlights

recent post with article about company that was being "hammered" by wallstreet apparently because it included a reference in their 2003 annual report about problems introduced by CDOs disassociating lenders from the loans:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#68 Obama, ACORN, subprimes (Re: Spiders)

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

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

... snip ...

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

What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:53:31 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:

https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

part of the reason was they had lots of processors that were dedicated for "testing" engineering "testcells" (engineering disk/controller hardware under development). they had tried using MVS ... in order to improve productivity ... being able to do multiple tests concurrently ... instead of stand-alone scheduled (7x24 around the clock) test time. problem was in that environment ... there was 15min MTBF for mvs.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#32 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

later, i got informed by somebody in research that including the reference to "MVS 15min MTBF" in an internal corporate report (not available to customers) so offended some people in the MVS software group ... i could forever kiss goodby to any prospects of corporate level award (from the disk division) for the work ... or any other kind of corporate recognition.

misc. past posts mentioning problems with MVS organization over mentioning "MVS 15min MTBF":
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#2 "The Elements of Programming Sytle"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#28 What is "command reject" trying to tell me?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#42 Keep VM 24X7 365 days
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#33 IBM S/360 series operating systems history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#48 time spent/day on a computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#25 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#27 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers

and some related old email (in some of the above posts):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#email800402
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801015

in other contexts ... i had seen reference to there being somewhere over 400 executives in the company that could non-concur with something (i.e. say "NO").

this was used to explain why mainframe field service non-concurred with announcing mainframe UNIX running direclty on hardware. the issue was field service expected some kinds of RAS and EREP reporting ... which was an effort (to add the features to UNIX) that was several times larger than just the straight-foward (UNIX) port to the mainframe. as a result, the mainframe UNIX offerings ran under VM ... w/VM providing the necessary RAS and EREP reporting expected by field service.

also when Rochester went to announce APPN, the communication division "non-concurred" ... there was several week executive escalation .. which resulted in revision of APPN documentation eliminating any implication that APPN (networking) was in any way related to SNA (communication).

the corporate heavy-weight bureaucracy was used to justify the IBUs (independent business unit) which were supposedly exempt from much of the internal concurrance atmosphere ... the best known is the original PC business unit.

although later, it didn't mean that the PC business unit didn't practice it. when the risc workstation business unit wanted to offer their own high-performance microchannel adapter cards ... the PC business unit non-concurred and "insisted" that AWD help their corporate brethren and use the PS2 adapter cards. I made some observation at the time, that it would make sure that a RS/6000 ran only as fast as a PS2 ... aka adapter cards can have a lot of cost/performance trade-offs ... for instance the amount of latency it takes to handle SCSI disk commands or graphical operations. An example was the 16bit, ISA 4mbit T/R adapter cards used by the PC/RT, had higher adapter thruput than the PS2 32bit, microchanntel 16mbit T/R adapter cards.

other past posts mentioning the MVS 15min MTBF:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#19 checking some myths.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#32 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#10 index searching
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#22 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#31 why does wait state exist?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#62 PLX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#21 40th anniversary of IBM System/360 on 7 Apr 2004
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#35 40th anniversary of IBM System/360 on 7 Apr 2004
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#21 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#15 360 longevity, was RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#39 RS/6000 in Sysplex Environment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#15 360 longevity, was RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#35 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#49 Moving assembler programs above the line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#44 Intel engineer discusses their dual-core design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005v.html#6 DMV systems?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#14 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#36 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#6 Google Architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#27 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#21 A way to speed up level 1 caches
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#7 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#9 Poster of computer hardware events?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#42 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#52 Throwaway cores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#58 Intel: an expensive many-core future is ahead of us
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#61 CHROME and WEB apps on Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#55 Virtual

past references to problem APPN had:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#51 APPC vs TCP/IP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#53 APPC vs TCP/IP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#89 "Database" term ok for plain files?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#54 WHAT IS A MAINFRAME???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#31 3745 and SNI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#28 Buffer overflow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#54 Computer Naming Conventions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#43 Beginning of the end for SNA?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#48 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#12 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#48 Why did OSI fail compared with TCP-IP?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#20 Vnet : Unbelievable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#49 unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#9 Why did TCP become popular ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#55 History of Computer Network Industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#2 History of Computer Network Industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#39 Mainframe Emulation Solutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#12 network history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#31 IBM 3705 and UC.5
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#8 EBCDIC to 6-bit and back
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#9 EBCDIC to 6-bit and back
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#15 DUMP Datasets and SMS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#20 Ethernet, Aloha and CSMA/CD -
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#52 Need Help defining an AS400 with an IP address to the mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#21 Sending CONSOLE/SYSLOG To Off-Mainframe Server
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#45 Mainframe Linux Mythbusting (Was: Using Java in batch on z/OS?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#48 6400 impact printer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#49 6400 impact printer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#55 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#39 sizeof() was: The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#62 Friday musings on the future of 3270 applications
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#46 Are there tasks that don't play by WLM's rules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#10 IBM System/3 & 3277-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#42 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#61 CHROME and WEB apps on Mainframe?

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

"True" story of the birth of the IBM PC

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: "True" story of the birth of the IBM PC
Date: December 4, 2008
Blog: Greater IBM
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#31 "True" story of the birth of the IBM PC

I was blamed for 6month slip in washington announce. I had done some page fault rate and locality reference studies on the initial washington storage size. there was severe page thrashing strain with regard to the original storage sizes ... in part based on size of cms applications (being accustomed to larger real storage sizes) and partly because paging was routed over to cp/86 runing on the 8088 processor and done using the 100ms/access XT hard disk. The schedule slip was to increase the base real storage size to the product.

some related in recent posts in different thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#24 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#25 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

washington decided to pick up some kernel software that I had done more than a decade earlier on cp67/cms that had never shipped to customers. one was my 1.5bit page replacement algorithm ... which did much better task of selecting pages for replacement (lowering overall page fault rate) ... it was had an especially dramatic difference in real storage constrained environment. another was part of the work i had done for cms paged-mapped filesystem. One of the advantages it gave in washington was allowing application execution to overlap while portions of the application was still being brought in/over from the XT (100ms/access) hard disk. It execution attempting to reference executable image not yet resident ... it would trap with page fault. This is compared to the cms diagnose I/O interface that (while reduced pathlength overhead) it required the full executable image to be fetched from the filesystem into virtual memory before execution could even start.

recent post referencing (cms) diagnose i/o in linked Greater IBM thread "What if the computers went back to the '70s too?"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#33

and long-winded recent post discussing page mapped filesystem work in similar thread in usenet a.f.c
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#21 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

later product ... more compatible with CMS application execution resource requirements of the period. ... was a74 ... announced as 7437
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#email880622
part of nov88 infoworld artile on 7437 in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#4 IBM Mainframe at home

however, i have some old updates i did for a74 ... listed in this old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#56 ECPS:VM DISPx instructions

the "update time/date" ... from one of the files:
./ R 00251000 $ 251000 200 05/20/85 11:26:15

part of the issue was that between the cms application execution environment of the mid-60s and cms applications of early to mid-80s ... many things had gotten quite "bloated".

note in earlier reference to '84 NYT article ... the NYT article had references to 3270/pc, xt/370 as well as pc 3270 emulation cards from other vendors.

before announcement of PC there was scenario of ibm SE rewriting cms (document formating) script command for radio shack pc (which was significantly less bloated compared to real storage & processor requirements of the regular cms script command of the period) ... old email with reference to radio shack computer work ("get most of the CMS function into a user's terminal")
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801016

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

Blinkenlights

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Blinkenlights
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:04:39 -0500
sidd <sidd@situ.com> writes:
on a related note, i see large rate cuts in europe today. Would you care to comment on the efficacy or lack thereof, of these ?

on the too big to fail ... there was just mention that several EU banks have exposures larger than their respective country's GDP.

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

Paris

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Paris
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:35:12 -0500
CBFalconer <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes:
About 1960 I recall standing on the outside of that, and considering whether or not to walk across and investigate the Arc de Triomphe. I decided against it, and lived.

i was in Paris several times in the early 70s ... some of it related to installing dataprocessing as part of EMEA hdqtrs moving from Westchester to La Defense.

One evening I was out in Champs-Elysees ... and mass of people on the streets pretty much cut traffic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champs-%C3%89lys%C3%A9es

Election returns were being posted on the side of Le Figaro bldg.

wiki reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_presidential_election,_1974

HONE (Hands-On-Network-Environment) had evolved from (CP67) virtual machine (time-sharing) service ... as mechanism of branch-office SE training (being able to ipl various operating systems in virtual machine) ... to CMS (virtual machine) time-sharing service ... providing (eventually world-wide) sales & marketing support applications (initially CP67/CMS and CMS\APL ... but transitioning to vm370/cms and APL\CMS). misc. HONE (&/or APL) references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

one of the issues i had during the period was figuring out how to read my email back in the states.

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

fraying infrastructure

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: fraying infrastructure
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:47:13 -0500
current talk is pumping $700b into (finally) getting around to doing something about the fraying infrastructure ... as a two-prong attack ... both an economic stimulas ... as well as repairing the fraying infrastructure.

one issue is whether it would turn the country into a "big dig" ... where possibly as little as 10% actually goes to the projects (say $70B) and the rest goes to line various pockets.

a couple past posts mentioning big dig:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#25 TGV in the USA?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#73 Cormpany sponsored insurance

and past mention of "fraying infrastructure":
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#18 Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#60 Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#42 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#43 fraying infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#47 System z10 announcement (in English)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#48 fraying infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#49 Any benefit to programming a RISC processor by hand?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#50 fraying infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#53 Why Is Less Than 99.9% Uptime Acceptable?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#54 news maintenance: Prison pushes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#3 America's Prophet of Fiscal Doom
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#98 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#24 To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#80 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#61 Historian predicts the end of 'science superpowers'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#68 Historian predicts the end of 'science superpowers'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#71 Cormpany sponsored insurance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#25 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#36 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#38 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#8 Taxcuts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#13 Michigan industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#35 Builders V. Breakers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#41 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History

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

Online Bill Payment Website Hijacked - Users were redirected to a page serving malware

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Online Bill Payment Website Hijacked - Users were redirected to a page serving malware
Date: December 2, 2008
Blog: Payments Systems Network
Online Bill Payment Website Hijacked - Users were redirected to a page serving malware
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Online-Bill-Payment-Website-Hijacked-99262.shtml

from above:
Two domain names belonging to the e-bill payment service CheckFree have been hijacked by an Estern European cybercriminal gang. The DNS records for the domains have been altered to point to a malware distribution server.

... snip ...

Securing DNS records has been a long-winded, on-going discussion.

similar to related thread "Web Security hasn't moved since 1995" in "Greater IBM" and some number of other linkedin groups.

a few of the posts from that thread archived here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#67
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#78

and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#13

above also references:

Delays in DNS security baffling: Mockapetris
http://www.cbronline.com/news/security/delays_in_dns_security_baffling_mockapetris_171108

some trivia ... Paul worked at the science center in the early 70s.

other recent checkfree exploit references:

Digging Deeper Into the CheckFree Attack
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/12/digging_deeper_into_the_checkf.html?nav=rss_blog
Criminals Take Control of CheckFree Web Site
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20081205/tc_pcworld/criminalstakecontrolofcheckfreewebsite Online payment site hijacked by notorious crime gang
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/03/checkfree_hijacked/
Hackers Hijacked Large E-Bill Payment Site
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/12/hackers_hijacked_large_e-bill.html

we had been called in to consult with small client/server company that wanted to do payments on their server ... and they had this technology called SSL they had invented, they wanted to use. As part of this effort we had to do end-to-end review of SSL ... including the business processes & operations of these new things calling themselves certification authorities.

One of the issues identified ... is a DNS hijack might also enable the hijacker to obtain a valid domain name SSL certificate for the hijacked domain. misc. past posts mentioning domain name SSL digital certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcerts

and other posts mentioning various public key issues with respect to the domain name infrastructure, and DNSSEC (as well as domain name SSL digital certificates)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#catch22

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

another one biting the dust?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: another one biting the dust?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2008 11:45:34 -0500
eric-ibmmain@WI.RR.COM (Eric Bielefeld) writes:
I'm sorry to hear about that. As I've posted on this list before, I went through the same thing from 2004 to 2006. P&H Mining got rid of their MP3000, and replaced it with RS6000's. Those are i series, right? Everything runs on SAP in a different state. They seem to be happy with it. If you can get retraining, take it. There seems to be a lot bigger job market in that area than z/OS.

i & p series get a little confused.

there was a project circa 1980 to replace the myriad of internal microprocessors with 801/risc processors ... misc. past references to 801, risc, romp, rios, power/pc, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

the microprocessor for as/400 (follow-on to s/38) was going to be 801 (iliad) and the microprocessor for 4341-follow-on was going to be 801 (iliad). many of the projects ran into problems ... and both the as/400 and 4341-following (4381) were redirected to risc processors.

roll forward a decade ... rs/6000 rios was complex chipset (on my desk at moment is slightly green, clear plastic paper wap with six chips) that didn't have any support for cache consistency and smp support. a new project was started called somerset that was joint between ibm, motorola, apple, etc ... to do a single chip power/pc ... effectively with some cache consistency (smp support) from motorola (sort of adapted from motorola's 88000 risc processor).

the executive we were reported to when we were doing ha/cmp product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

went over to head up somerset.

the rochester group also got involved to do a flavor of power/pc that would finally replace the as/400 cisc microprocessor with an 801 risc (which was how as/400 was suppose to start out). there were little issues like most of the group was working on 64-bit address power/pc chip design ... while rochester was insisting on a 65-bit (as part of implementing some as/400 architecture feature).

rs/6000s have had both (multi-chip) rios/power machines as well as single-chip (multiprocessor) power/pc chips.

... as an aside ... one of the reasons that we were doing ha/cmp scale-up; minor reference in this old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
and some (earlier) old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

as "cluster" (loosely-coupled) ... was that was all there was with power/RIOS at the time ... not having support for cache consistency and tightly-coupled multiprocessor operations.

over the years ... i & p series hardware continues to converge ... difference looking more and more like what sort of software was booted.

POWER4 System Microarchitecture
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/p/hardware/whitepapers/power4.html

from above:
With POWER4, the convergence of iSeries and pSeries microprocessors will reach a new level. POWER4 was designed from the outset to satisfy the needs of both of these systems.

... snip ...

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

another one biting the dust?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: another one biting the dust?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2008 12:36:54 -0500
Al Kossow <aek@spies.com> writes:
The PowerPC 601 was based on the single chip RSC (RIOS Single Chip) and was produced by IBM. These went into the first generation Apple machines and the RISC upgrade cards for the 68K machines, and the Mac clones.

The 603, 604, ... were AIM (Apple IBM Motorola) designs out of Somerset. 604 was the first AIM part with cache coherency protocols on the bus.

Be's BeBox built a two processor SMP system with the 603.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#43 another one biting the dust?

RSC ... was also used in four processor live oak ... w/o cache consistency there was something slightly akin to NUMA. virtual segments could be tagged as being shared/non-cached ... or non-shared/cached. private application virtual segments could be tagged as non-shared/cached and run at "full" speed. stuff that required multiprocessor sharing ... would be in virtual segment that was tagged as "shared" and the data woldn't be cached (all load/stores bypassing cache and going directly to storage).

misc. past posts mentioning 601, RSC, and/or live oak
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#25 Merced & compilers (was Re: Effect of speed ... )
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#21 Cache coherence [was Re: TF-1]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#60 "all-out" vs less aggressive designs (was: Re: 36 to 32 bit transition)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#73 how old are you guys
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#37 John Mashey's greatest hits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#23 IA64 Rocks My World
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#28 Proper ISA lifespan?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#17 I hate Compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#14 "Soul of a New Machine" Computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#81 McKinley Cometh
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#57 Another light on the map going out
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#22 why doesn't processor reordering instructions affect most
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#28 Two subjects: 64-bit OS2/eCs, Innotek Products
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#40 Tru64 and the DECSYSTEM 20
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#40 Why so little parallelism?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#41 Why so little parallelism?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#55 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#24 Some confusion about virtual cache

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

TOPS-10

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: TOPS-10
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2008 12:48:38 -0500
Mensanator <mensanator@aol.com> writes:
REALLY expensive. When I got my Apple ][, it was over $1400 and included only two (of three) rows of 4k memory chips. A single set of 16k chips cost over $500, which would double the price!

recent discussion in "greater ibm" linkedin thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#31 "True" story of the birth of the IBM PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#38 "True" story of the birth of the IBM PC

that got a sidetracked discussion 3270/pc & pc/370

as mentioned ... i got blamed for pointing out that CMS applications had got so bloated that they didn't really fit in "PC" sized memories anymore (six month slip while they upgraded memory)

... and from long ago and far away, following is piece of the directions to get 512k .... for those internal installations that had original memory boards and needed to upgrade

10-25-83

The following list details the required deletes and adds to a Percheron
Memory card to obtain a total real memory size of 512K.
This card is functionally equivalent to the card logics sent out for
board layout on 10-3-83.

Deletes:

     MSUDS(L)       CUT INNER LAND FROM J1-30 TO U93-14 ON SOLDER SIDE

MSLDS(L)       CUT INNER LAND FROM J1-31 TO U93-13 ON SOLDER SIDE

Adds:

     Add 20 modules to the memory card in the following locations:

1)   74S04  (U96) - glue on top of U94 upside down
2)   74LS08 (U97) - on top of U86   ***

Solder the pins of U97 as follows:

***  U97-1     U86-1
***  U97-7     U86-7
***  U97-10    U86-10
   ***  U97-14    U86-14
BEND OUT ALL REMAINING PINS.

3-20)   6665's (U98-U115) - add according to the chart below:
all pins with the exception of 4 and 15 should be
soldered to the ones below.  4 and 15 should be
               bent out for the addition of yellow wires.

     U98  - U37                    U107 - U28
U99  - U20                    U108 - U47
U100 - U39                    U109 - U30
U101 - U22                    U110 - U49
     U102 - U41                    U111 - U32
U103 - U24                    U112 - U51
     U104 - U43                    U113 - U34
U105 - U26                    U114 - U53
U106 - U45                    U115 - U36
GLUE 2 RESISTORS (30 OHM 1/4 WATT) ON THE BOARD TO THE LEFT OF C51.
... snip ...

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

pc/370

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: pc/370
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2008 10:55:02 -0500
John Byrns <byrnsj@sbcglobal.net> writes:
"pc/370", is that the computer built in an IBM PC cabinet that replaced the Intel 8088 with a Motorola 68000 chip modified to execute the IBM 370 instruction set? IIRC the ucode in the 68000 was replaced with new ucode to run the 370 integer instructions set, while the decimal and character string instructions were trapped and emulated in software. I wonder if there were any special instructions included in the ucode to facilitate that emulation? IIRC there was also an Intel floating point chip in the box, I assume this was also modified to support the IBM floating point format rather than the native Intel format?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#45 TOPS-10

some description here:

System/370 capability in a desktop computer (IBM SJ v23n3, 1984)
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/233/ibmsj2303E.pdf

from above:
A desktop computer with System/370 capability was produced by enhancing the IBM Personal Computer with additional hardware and developing software that provides a compatible interface. The computer, the IBM Personal Computer XT/370, and this software allow users to run most System/370 Conversational Monitor System application programs unaltered in a desktop environment. The evolutionof the development and details of the function of the hardwareand software are described.

... snip ...

and
The PC XT/370 offers most of the facilities provided by a System/370 mainframe with the following exceptions. I/O instructions are not implemented since there are no 110channels. However, there are equivalent functions implemented via the "DIAGNOSE" instruction. Since DAT is somewhat unique in its implementation on the PC XTNO, some modification of the "LOAD REAL ADDRESS" and "PURGE TLB" instructions is required.

... snip ...

there is more discussion in above on "pg. 250".

supervisor instructions like SIO interrupted into the CP kernel ... but could be simulated in other ways ... SIOs were translated and signals to cp/88 running on the 8088. basically it is kind of multiprocessor operation ... the pc/370 was totally contained on adapter boards separate from cp/86 running on 8088 on the PC/XT (some slight analogy to hercules that completely simulates on i86 w/o any 370 hardware).

as per the previous posts ... the 370 "real memory" was being upgraded from 384k bytes to 512k bytes before pc/370 product ship to customers.

recent posts to cp/86
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#14 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#25 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

old reference to fergus/morris book with quote about decided to not use the (much superior) cp/86 ... but instead start the os/2 project instead (somewhat NIH from boca):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#30 IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984?

semi-related subject about boca being constituted as an IBU ... but later in the decade not adverse to using corporate muscle to coerce others:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#37 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

from long ago and far away:

Date: 13 January 1983, 09:28:09 EST
To: wheeler
From: somebody in Endicott

Lynn, sounds great about your getting a Washington. I think the best best thing may be to get the code from Endocott, rather that Ykt. YYYY welcomes any ideas you have for improving the performance of the paging. When you want CP source, ask YYYY at GDLS2, I have CMS source. We were just speculating what the system might be like with 2 hard disks in an expansion unit, a floppy, and one of the "hard-disk" memory cards replacing the other floppy. We could designate that the page file be put on the hard-disk.... which could help performance somewhat!


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

as noted else where ... CMS applications were somewhat more disk intensive (compared to PC applications) and were also bloated compared to earlier implementations that ran on cp/40 on 256k byte 360/40. All of this was extremely exhasberated by being hosted on the 100ms/access XT hard disk.

for other topic drift (and the subject of terminal emulation ... both promoting PC uptake ... as well as increasing mainframe use):

Date: 02/07/83 15:56:02
To: wheeler

hello lynn,

i am looking for a quantification of a consensus opinion that states that intelligent workstations (personal computers, displaywriters) when hooked up to mainframes (308x) foster the growth of the mainframe, not impede that growth.

i would appreciate your opinion on the matter in general, and if you have oberved some correlation.

i am looking at putting a business case together for the ANR card on the personal computer.

if you have any questions, please let me know. thanks,


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

ANR card was 3277 emulation

lots of past posts discussing the various phases that terminal emulation went through
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

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

pc/370

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: pc/370
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2008 11:39:30 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#46 pc/370

and this email ... some additonal topic drift with respect to terminal emulation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#email830207

the above "business case" was akin to what the SHARE ... reference
http://www.share.org/

user group organization put together to try and convince the corporation not to kill off vm/370. Basically, vm370/cms "personal computing" installations, showed rapid increase in mainframe computer use ... one customer "show case" example, replaced 1800 with 370/135 vm370/cms which was then upgraded to 370/168 vm370/cms. "personal computing" oriented use increased dramatically faster than batch/commercial application use.

the introduction of mainframe connected PC ... started to subsume the CMS "personal computing" use ... but also showed continued increase in mainframe processor cycles. This was something of snowball effect ... increasing uptake of both PCs as well as mainframe use (things like using mainframe for storage of things needed by the PC).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#3 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#13 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#15 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

later as sophistication of PC increased ... the terminal emulation spigot began to represent a bottleneck ... compared to emerging client/server. As a result ... there was starting to be increase in non-mainframe disk sales ... for data storage ... as a countermeasure to the increasing limitations of the terminal emulation spigot.

things like SAA appeared to be effort to stave off advancing client/server ... and preserving the terminal emulation install base.

at one point, one of the senior people from the disk division used something of a ruse to get a talk at the annual world-wide communication division conference. the talk started off with the statement that the communication division was going to be (responsible for) the demise of the (mainframe) disk division (because of their continued opposition to more powerful mainframe connectivity mechanisms).

lots of past posts mentioning terminal emulation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

as i've mentioned in the past, we got caught in part of this when we came up with 3-tier network architecture and was out pitching it to customer executives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#3tier

as i've mentioned before ... besides vm370 being viewed as competition by the mainstream, favorite son operating system ... in the wake of the demise of future system project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

there was mad rush trying to get stuff back into the 370 software and hardware product pipeline. as part of that, the favorite son operating system made the case that vm370 group had to be dissolved and all the people transferred to POK to support development of mvs/xa ... as part of making mvs/xa product schedule. this implied killing off the vm370 product. however, the mid-range/endicott group made the case to pickup responsibility for vm370 (although they had to reconstitute a group nearly from scratch).

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

Dilbert is non-fiction

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Dilbert is non-fiction
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2008 14:15:40 -0500
Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> writes:
Livingston was really the best in the field. Their engineers provided most of the good ideas to IETFs PPP group, and they came up with RADIUS authentication which allowed national modem bank networks to authenticate against the userid databases of their ISP customers. They started out with software on SUNs and gradually focused on competing with US Robotics for the T1 banks. I think the product line survived until it got rebadged with a Lucent nameplate after several mergers.

in the early 90s ... there was small scale ISPs being setup all over the place ... I did the livingston radius configuration for one such organization ... for their dialup modem pool.

misc. past posts discussing doing an AADS digital signature authentication flavor for RADIUS (registering public keys in the database in lieu of password):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#radius

from my rfc index
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

click on Term (term->RFC#) in the RFCs listed by section ... and then click on "RADIUS" (in the Acronym fastpath section)

i.e.
remote authentication dial in user service (RADIUS )
see also authentication , network access server , network services
5176 5090 5080 5030 4849 4818 4679 4675 4673 4672 4671 4670 4669 4668 4603 4590 4372 4014 3580 3579 3576 3575 3162 2882 2869 2868 2867 2866 2865 2809 2621 2620 2619 2618 2548 2139 2138 2059 2058


clicking on RFC number, brings up the RFC summary in the lower frame. Clicking on the ".txt=nnnn" field (in a RFC summary) 1retrieves the actual RFC.
2058 -
Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS), Rigney C., Rubens A., Simpson W., Willens S., 1997/01/03 (64pp) (.txt=118880) (Obsoleted by 2138) (See Also 2059) (Refs 768, 1144, 1321, 1352, 1700, 1717) (Ref'ed By 2072, 2107, 2194)


and from rfc 2058:
RADIUS was originally developed by Livingston Enterprises for their PortMaster series of Network Access Servers.

... snip ...

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

Kaspersky calls for a more secure internet

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Kaspersky calls for a more secure internet
Date: December 7, 2008
Blog: Computer Security and Forensics
Kaspersky calls for a more secure internet
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2232134/governments-banks-failing-web

from above:
Governments and banking institutions are still failing to pay enough attention to internet security, and allow too much responsibility to rest on the shoulders of consumers

... snip ...

Note some of this is somewhat related to news item about CheckFree breach ... mentioned in various linkedin groups ... and some archived here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#42 Online Bill Payment Website Hijacked - Users were redirected to a page serving malware

as well as to recent references to "Web Security hasn't moved since 1995"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#67 Web Security hasn't moved since 1995
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#78 Web Security hasn't moved since 1995
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#13 Web Security hasn't moved since 1995

and recent post in Comprehensive Security thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#18

about various security issues from the early 70s ... and mentioning old post from 2002 regarding article about "Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#42

and a recent topic, from today in Financial Cryptography blog:

Security is a subset of Reliability
http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001117.html

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

Security is a subset of Reliability

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Security is a subset of Reliability
Date: December 7, 2008
Blog: Financial Cryptography
re:
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001117.html

What should I say? ... that is how we always treated when doing business critical dataprocessing.

It is how we viewed it when we were doing ha/cmp (high availability) product ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

and post referencing meeting on ha/cmp and database scale-up in jan '92
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

two of the people in the above mentioned meeting left a year or so later to join a small client/server startup responsible for something called the "commerce server". We were called in as consultants because the startup wanted to payment transactions on the server (they startup had invented something called "SSL" they wanted to use). Part of the effort was something called the payment gateway ... some past posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

and the effort is now frequently referred to as "electronic commerce".

post regarding recent checkfree attack and reference to "Web Security hasn't moved since 1995"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#42

and related from today:

Kaspersky calls for a more secure internet
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2232134/governments-banks-failing-web

from above:
Governments and banking institutions are still failing to pay enough attention to internet security, and allow too much responsibility to rest on the shoulders of consumers

... snip ...

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

Blinkenlights

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Blinkenlights
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2008 10:32:53 -0500
sidd <sidd@situ.com> writes:
on a related note, i see large rate cuts in europe today. Would you care to comment on the efficacy or lack thereof, of these ?

from today:

Government Rescue Plans Need Fleshing Out--BIS
http://www.financetech.com/utils/www.banktech.com/story/enews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=167100238

from above:
The Bank of International Settlements says central banks' plans to rescue their national banks might being doing more harm than good.

... snip ...

i.e. from the guys responsible for basel accords
http://www.bis.org/

... recent posts mentioning BIS and/or Basel accords:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#71 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#78 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#0 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#42 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#65 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#1 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#86 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#90 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#30 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#15 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#39 The human plague
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#9 Do you believe a global financial regulation is possible?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#3 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#4 Basel Committee outlines plans to strengthen Basel II

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

Cheap Hack - Domain Name Market - Stolen Domains for Sale

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Cheap Hack - Domain Name Market - Stolen Domains for Sale
Date: December 8, 2008
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
Cheap Hack - Domain Name Market - Stolen Domains for Sale
http://blogs.eweek.com/cheap_hack/content/domain_name_market/stolen_domains_for_sale.html

from above:
The reports are long on assertion and lack hard evidence, but they certainly seem plausible. Domain theft is not as common as it was before domain locks became standard features of registrars, but it's still possible to lose your domains if a thief gains control over your registrar account or your e-mail address. Attempts to use phishing techniques to steal registrar accounts are an old problem, and one can lose control of an e-mail account in any number of ways.

... snip ...

This is related to the checkfree attack/exploit. Domain name hijacking has long been identified as a vulnerability ... including to SSL domain name digital certificates ... lots of past post discussing the vulnerability
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#catch22

This is one of the things we were worried about when we were called to come in and consult with small client/server startup that wanted to payment transactions on their servers ... and had invented this technology called SSL they wanted to use. There have been a number of recent ongoing threads that this is at least part of what DNSSEC has been designed to address.

some recent posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#42 Online Bill Payment Website Hijacked - Users were redirected to a page serving malware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#49 Kaspersky calls for a more secure internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#50 Security is a subset of Reliability

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

21 million German bank account details on black market

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: 21 million German bank account details on black market
Date: December 8, 2008
Blog: Payment Systems Network
21 million German bank account details on black market
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=081206224148.ie9uiizl

from above:
The details of bank accounts held by 21 million Germans are for sale on the black market for 12 million euros (15 million dollars), a German magazine reported Saturday.

... snip ...

lots of past posts mentioning account harvesting exploits:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#harvest

another article:

Magazine Reporters Arrange To Buy 21 Million Identities - identity theft/Vulnerabilities
http://www.darkreading.com/security/vulnerabilities/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212300197

we've tried to use 3 different metaphors with regard to the problem

dual-use metaphor

account numbers are needed as part of numerous business processes with respect to financial operations ... and therefore have to be readily available. at the same time, frequently in the current paradigm, knowing the account number is sufficient for use as authentication ... as a result of the authentication requirement, the account number has to be completely confidential and never divulged (to anybody). we've frequently commented that as a result of the diametrically opposing requirements (both readily available and never divulged), the planet could be buried under miles of information hiding encryption and still not be able to prevent information leakage

security proportional to risk metaphor

the value of the account number to a merchant is some portion of the after-tax profit on the transaction, while the value of the account number to a crook is worth the account balance/credit-limit; the value to the crook can be 100 times greater than the value of the information to a merchant. as a result we've frequently commented that a crook may be able to outspend by 100 times attacking the system as a merchant can afford to spend defending the system

naked transaction metaphor

transactions are vulnerable where ever they exists; lots of past posts and discussion started with the financial cryptography blog
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#payments

we had looked at this in the mid-90s when asked to participate in the x9a10 financial standard working group which had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments. detailed end-to-end threat and vulnerability studies eventually resulted in the x9.59 financial standard to address a wide range of exploits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

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

PCI needs to address virtualization, experts say

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: PCI needs to address virtualization, experts say
Date: December 8, 2008
Blog: Payment Systems Network
PCI needs to address virtualization, experts say
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid14_gci1341598,00.html

from above:
The PCI DSS standard for protecting cardholder data doesn't account for virtualized servers, which some say opens the door to audit problems.

... snip ...

Since the inception (over 40yrs ago), virtualization has been extensively used in support of security.

However, it is also possible for attackers to leverage virtualization to defeat countermeasures. In the past decade ... I've found a number of fraud/exploit countermeasures that were trivially vulnerable if they happened to be in a virtualized environment.

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

TOPS-10

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: TOPS-10
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:23:02 -0500
Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> writes:
Ah, but to optimize programing one had to take into account the timing. Or perhaps that was more common in drum based computers such as the IBM 650 where each instruction had the address of the next instruction to execute.

we did something similar to optimize page transfer algorithms ... in i/o channel programming ... being able to do head switch and be able to catch the next record ... so there was full track of record transfers in one revolution.

basically a head position (all of a drum or all of a fixed-head disk ... or all tracks in same cylinder/head-location) ... somewhat random record transfer requests could be queued for the same head position ... but different tracks. this required additional channel command words and latency in processing. an attempt was made to lay out all records on different tracks at the same "angular" position ... so that the electronic lantency to process switch head command ... could be done in the time rotation occurred between the end of the previous record position and the start of the "next" record.

misc. past posts mentioning head switching issues and being able to pick-up records w/o additional revolution
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#7 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#11 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#12 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#17 index searching
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#22 303x, idals, dat, disk head settle, and other rambling folklore
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#64 System/360 40 years old today
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#65 System/360 40 years old today
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#66 System/360 40 years old today
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#41 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#43 Hard disk architecture: are outer cylinders still faster than inner cylinders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#22 MVCIN instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#40 REAL memory column in SDSF
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#19 old vm370 mitre benchmark
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#23 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#55 Intel: an expensive many-core future is ahead of us

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

IBM drops Power7 drain in 'Blue Waters'

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM drops Power7 drain in 'Blue Waters'
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:10:16 -0500
IBM drops Power7 drain in 'Blue Waters'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/08/power7_bluewaters_data_center/

from above:
During a talk at the recent SC2008 supercomputing event in Austin, Texas, someone said it would not be long before power companies would be giving away supercomputers to any governmental agency or corporation that signed a long-term power contract.

...
Stephen Elbert, a researcher at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, explained that there are plenty of data centers out there burning 60 to 70 megawatts and that a few have already broken through the 100 megawatts barrier. "Beyond that, you have to be your own power company." Or, to do a deal with one, as Google has done with the Bonneville Power Administration in its The Dalles, Oregon data center.

... snip ...

a couple past posts mentioning BPA &/or mega-datacenters:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#68 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#79 Google Data Centers 'The Most Efficient In The World'

for other drift, one of the frail infrastructures on the verge of failing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#87 STUDY: Lights Out In 2009?

and this reference that any big gov. initiative to address the failing/fraying instrastructures hopefully doesn't turn into a "big dig" project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#41 fraying infrastructure

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

PC premiered 40 years ago to awed crowd

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: PC premiered 40 years ago to awed crowd
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:07:08 -0500
PC premiered 40 years ago to awed crowd
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/08/MN1714IRRA.DTL

from above:
The Dec. 9, 1968, unveiling of the primitive device with a mouse and interactive screen - in a now-legendary demonstration by its inventor, Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute - drew a rousing, standing ovation from the computing cognoscenti who recognized the significance of what they had just seen.

... snip ...

some recent "personal computing" threads/posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#10 For the History buff's an IBM 5150 pc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#20 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#6 It's Too Darn Hot
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#97 Is virtualization diminishing the importance of OS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#4 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#5 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#6 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#13 What is "timesharing" (Re: OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#33 Making tea
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#76 Multi-Factor Authentication - Moving Beyond Passwords for Security of Online Transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#3 GPG
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#3 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#13 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#15 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#19 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#24 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#25 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#47 pc/370

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

Blinkenlights

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Blinkenlights
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2008 05:13:20 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
or not rate the underlying mortgages ... as recent congressional testimony ... just pay the rating companies to hand out triple-A ratings (regardless of the underlying values).

one of the tv business shows yesterday had on a couple CEOs from rating companies that were not paid by the issuers of the instruments ... but were paid by those buying the instruments; they had some very unflattering references to the big rating companies that were handing out the triple-A ratings on toxic CDOs.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#35 Blinkenlights

The Crash Of 2008: A Mathematician's View
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081208203915.htm
The crash of 2008: A mathematician's view
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/w-tco120808.php

from above:
Markets need regulation to stay stable. We have had thirty years of financial deregulation. Now we are seeing chickens coming home to roost. This is the key argument of Professor Nick Bingham, a mathematician at Imperial College London, in an article published today in Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society.

There is no such thing as laying off risk if no one is able to insure it. Big new risks were taken in extending mortgages to far more people than could handle them, in the search for new markets and new profits. Attempts to insure these by securitisation -- aptly described in this case as putting good and bad risks into a blender and selling off the results to whoever would buy them -- gave us toxic debt, in vast quantities.


... snip ...

the word "fraud" was periodically used in the congressional hearings looking at paying rating agencies to give the toxic CDOs triple-A ratings.

the article also mentions bankers "complaining" about problems with their computerized risk models ... however, this is reference to wall street deciding on the results and then fiddling the inputs to the computer models until they got the desired output:

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

and PBS program looking at the wall street fix (wall street influencing congress regarding deregulation)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/

misc. past posts referring to the PBS program
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#13 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#46 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#71 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#97 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#2 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#51 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#66 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#89 Credit Crisis Timeline
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#36 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#41 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#67 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#70 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#16 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#53 Your thoughts on the following comprehensive bailout plan please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#78 Isn't it the Federal Reserve role to oversee the banking system??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#82 Fraud in financial institution
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#18 Once the dust settles, do you think Milton Friedman's economic theories will be laid to rest
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#19 What's your view of current global financial / economical situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#28 Does anyone get the idea that those responsible for containing this finanical crisis are doing too much?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#37 The human plague
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#51 Why are some banks failing, and others aren't?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#8 Global Melt Down
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#9 Do you believe a global financial regulation is possible?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#26 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#57 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#61 Blinkenlights

misc. past posts mentioning "wall street" fiddling inputs to computer models:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#49 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#52 Technology and the current crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#53 Your thoughts on the following comprehensive bailout plan please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#56 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#65 Whether, in our financial crisis, the prize for being the biggest liar is
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#69 Another quiet week in finance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#72 Why was Sarbanes-Oxley not good enough to sent alarms to the regulators about the situation arising today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#78 Isn't it the Federal Reserve role to oversee the banking system??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#80 Why did Sox not prevent this financal crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#82 Fraud in financial institution
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#15 Financial Crisis - the result of uncontrolled Innovation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#18 Once the dust settles, do you think Milton Friedman's economic theories will be laid to rest
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#19 What's your view of current global financial / economical situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#26 SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act), is this really followed and worthful considering current Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#28 Does anyone get the idea that those responsible for containing this finanical crisis are doing too much?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#34 The human plague
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#75 In light of the recent financial crisis, did Sarbanes-Oxley fail to work?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#82 Greenspan testimony and securization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#83 Chip-and-pin card reader supply-chain subversion 'has netted millions from British shoppers'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#8 Global Melt Down
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#70 Is there any technology that we are severely lacking in the Financial industry?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#49 Have not the following principles been practically disproven, once and for all, by the current global financial meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#50 Obama, ACORN, subprimes (Re: Spiders)

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

Stolen credit-card boom

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Stolen credit-card boom
Date: December 9, 2008
Blog: Payment Systems Network
Stolen credit-card boom
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/money/story.html?id=d1a1f0d1-1cea-4287-95b3-ce4da90e3eaa

from above:
Symantec estimates the sale value of credit cards (information) in the underground economy was over $276 million US. But the potential spending spree on these credit cards would be $5.3 billion.

... snip ...

similar issue to account information harvesting mentioning in this news item: "21 million German bank account details on black market" comments also archived here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#53

the above is also mentioned in this financial cryptography blog entry:
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001121.html

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

TOPS-10

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: TOPS-10
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:22:21 -0500
"Charlie Gibbs" <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
Or plated-wire memory, such as we had on the Univac hardware I used, might have become more widespread.


http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Plated_wire_memory

One advantage of plated-wire memory was non-destructive readout. The memory used in the Univac 9300 boasted a 600-nanosecond cycle time - not bad for 1966.


small item from today (nanowires):

Research shows there could be no end in sight for Moore's Law
http://www.physorg.com/news148054154.html

from above:
The resulting transistors based on NPL's germanium nanowire technology, which could revolutionise computing and electronic devices, could realistically be 10 years away.

... snip ...

and

New hybrid nanostructures detect nanoscale magnetism
http://www.physorg.com/news147967643.html

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

The vanishing CEO bonus

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The vanishing CEO bonus
Date: December 10, 2008
Blog: Greater IBM
A couple of issues over the past decade.

GAO has been doing database of increasing number of public company financial restatements. Basically, executives fiddle the books in order to boost the bonuses (despite SOX). Then later the financials may be restated but the bonuses aren't forfeited. One of the worst examples was freddie was fined $400m in 2004 for $10b statement fiddling/inflation and the CEO replaced ... but allowed to keep tens (hundred?) of millions.

There was recent published study of 270(?) some public companies that redid their executive compensation plan after having problems with financial statement fiddling and executive bonuses. Supposedly executive compensation has been changed to be much more closely aligned with the health and well being of the corporation ... and as a result the companies are performing much better.

there was an article a couple months ago that ratio of avg. executive compensation to avg. worker compensation recently had exploded to 400:1 after having been 20:1 for a long time ... and 10:1 in much of the rest of the world.

and from an article The Fed's Too Easy on Wall Street
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-03-19/the-feds-too-easy-on-wall-streetbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice

from above:
Here's a staggering figure to contemplate: New York City securities industry firms paid out a total of $137 billion in employee bonuses from 2002 to 2007, according to figures compiled by the New York State Office of the Comptroller. Let's break that down: Wall Street honchos earned a bonus of $9.8 billion in 2002, $15.8 billion in 2003, $18.6 billion in 2004, $25.7 billion in 2005, $33.9 billion in 2006, and $33.2 billion in 2007.

... snip ...

some part of the $700B wallstreet bailout possibly goes to replenish the $137B sucked out of the infrastructure (as reward for their part in creating the current situation).

... update

Bailed-Out Banks Dole Out Bonuses; Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup, Others Mum on How They Are Using TARP Cash
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Business/story?id=6498680&page=1

from above:
Goldman Sachs, which accepted $10 billion in government money, and lost $2.1 billion last quarter, announced Tuesday that it handed out $10.93 billion in benefits, bonuses, and compensation for the year.

... snip ...

so in this case ... all of the bailout money went to bonuses

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

PC premiered 40 years ago to awed crowd

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PC premiered 40 years ago to awed crowd
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2008 10:59:58 -0500
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
You sure do keep forgetting that DEC existed. Consider the PDP-8.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#57 PC premiered 40 years ago to awed crowd

one class of personal computing was games ... in the 60s, somebody at the science center had ported spacewar to 2250m4 (i.e. a 2250 vector graphics display driven by 1130)

picture of 2250-m4
http://www.ibm1130.net/functional/DisplayUnit.html
from 1130 "website"
http://www.ibm1130.net/

also pictures of 1130 here
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/1130/1130_intro.html

and columbia univ. 1130 picture here:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/1130.html

above mentions that 1130 "was a testbed for the first graphical user interface (Alan Kay, The Reactive Engine, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Utah, 1969)"

another 2250-m4 picture:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/2250.html

in the 70s, sometimes on weekends, my kids would play 1130/2250 spacewars at the science center.

2250 had function keypad and lightpen. there was something a little like a mouse that was small clear plastic with cross-hairs that is moved over the graphics tablet ... it didn't reflect cursor on the screen but position on the graphics tablet.

Lincoln Labs had done 2250 (fortran) driver library for 2250M1 (i.e. mainframe channel attached 2250 display) for CMS which was distributed as part of cp67/cms. In mid-68, I hacked the (LL) 2250 driver into the side of CMS editor ... for full-screen editor.

misc past posts mentioning Engelbart's demo &/or NLS/Augment:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#22 No more innovation? Get serious
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#26 Who Owns the HyperLink?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#31 stupid user stories
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#4 markup vs wysiwyg (was: Re: learning how to use a computer)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#48 XML, AI, Cyc, psych, and literature
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#12 Flat Query
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#50 stacks: sorting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#54 Douglas Engelbart's HyperScope 1.0 Launched
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#53 folklore indeed

other recent articles that reference Engelbart's 40 yr old demo:
'The Mother of all Demos,' 40 years later
http://content.zdnet.com/2346-9595_22-254656.html
The Mouse Turns 40
http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/08/12/09/163205.shtml
The mouse hits 40-year milestone
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7768481.stm
The computer mouse turns 40
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9123050
The Mighty Mouse Celebrates 40th Anniversary
http://www.crn.com/it-channel/212300554
A 40-year-old computer demo that still amazes
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/12/11/A_40yearold_computer_demo_that_still_amazes_1.html
The computer mouse turns 40 Macworld
http://www.macworld.com/article/137400/2008/12/mouse40.html?lsrc=rss_main
The computer mouse turns 40
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/121108-a-40-year-old-demo-that-still.html
A 40-year-old demo that still amazes
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/121608-swedish-police-warn-of-tampered.html
A 40-year-old Demo That Still Amazes
http://www.pcworld.com/article/155307/a_40yearold_demo_that_still_amazes.html
The Computer Mouse Turns 40
http://www.pcworld.com/article/155203/the_computer_mouse_turns_40.html
First Computer Mouse Unveiled 40 Years Ago Today
http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1608493/first_computer_mouse_unveiled_40_years_ago_today/index.html
The Mother of All Demos - 150 years ahead of its time
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/11/engelbart_celebration/

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

Have you told your Congressman how to VOTE on the auto bailout?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Have you told your Congressman how to VOTE on the auto bailout?
Date: December 10, 2008
Blog: Change Management
There was an article in the early 80s about the auto industry remaking themselves. Supposedly the import quotas were to give the industry breathing room and significant increased profit (because of lowered competition) in order to totally remake themselves.

The article observed that the time & money was being squandered (not being used for the intended purpose) ... and called for a 100% unearned profit tax on the industry. This appears to be at least part of the source of the periodic comments about the industry has been making bad decisions for at least 20-30 yrs (some claiming 50yrs ... aka should have been able to avoid even getting into the situation requiring import quotas)

misc. past posts mentioning the 100% unearned profit tax article:
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/2001d.html#43 Economic Factors on Automation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#52 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#22 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#2 Internet today -- what's left for hobbiests
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#23 auto industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#14 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#17 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#20 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#49 The Pankian Metaphor (redux)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#33 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#72 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#88 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#11 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#24 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#28 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#39 competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#84 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#77 Tell me why the taxpayer should be saving GM and Chrysler (and Ford) managers & shareholders at this stage of the game?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#10 realtors (and GM, too!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#22 Is Pride going to decimate the auto Industry?

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

Is This a Different Kind of Financial Crisis?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Is This a Different Kind of Financial Crisis?
Date: December 11, 2008
Blog: Government Policy
The crash of 2008: A mathematician's view
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/w-tco120808.php

from above:
Markets need regulation to stay stable. We have had thirty years of financial deregulation. Now we are seeing chickens coming home to roost. This is the key argument of Professor Nick Bingham, a mathematician at Imperial College London, in an article published today in Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society.

There is no such thing as laying off risk if no one is able to insure it. Big new risks were taken in extending mortgages to far more people than could handle them, in the search for new markets and new profits. Attempts to insure these by securitisation -- aptly described in this case as putting good and bad risks into a blender and selling off the results to whoever would buy them -- gave us toxic debt, in vast quantities.


... snip ...

the word "fraud" was periodically used in the congressional hearings looking at paying rating agencies to give toxic CDOs, triple-A ratings (as a result of the triple-A rating, there was an enormous increase in those that would deal in these toxic CDOs ... as well as enormous increase in amount of money available to unregulated mortgage originators).

the article also mentions bankers "complaining" about problems with their computerized risk models ... however, this is reference to wall street deciding on the results and then fiddling the inputs to the computers models until they got the desired output:

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

and pbs program looking at the wall street fix (wall street influencing congress regarding deregulation)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/

there was somebody on CSPAN a couple weeks ago who mentioned that during the congressional session that repealed Glass-Steagall, financial institutions contributed $250m to congress and during the most recent session that approved wall street bailout, financial institutions contributed $2B to congress.

recent article about company that was being "hammered" by wallstreet apparently because it included a reference in their 2003 annual report about problems introduced by toxic CDOs disassociating lenders from the loans:

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

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

... snip ...

and from an article The Fed's Too Easy on Wall Street
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-03-19/the-feds-too-easy-on-wall-streetbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice

from above:
Here's a staggering figure to contemplate: New York City securities industry firms paid out a total of $137 billion in employee bonuses from 2002 to 2007, according to figures compiled by the New York State Office of the Comptroller. Let's break that down: Wall Street honchos earned a bonus of $9.8 billion in 2002, $15.8 billion in 2003, $18.6 billion in 2004, $25.7 billion in 2005, $33.9 billion in 2006, and $33.2 billion in 2007.

.... snip ...

some part of the $700B wallstreet bailout presumably goes to replenish the $137B sucked out of the infrastructure (as reward for their part in creating the current situation).

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

Did you think about Virtualization Security?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Did you think about Virtualization Security?
Date: December 10, 2008
Blog: Information Security
news item discussion copyied from some of the linkedin groups
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#54 PCI needs to address virtualization, experts say

PCI needs to address virtualization, experts say
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid14_gci1341598,00.html

from above:
The PCI DSS standard for protecting cardholder data doesn't account for virtualized servers, which some say opens the door to audit problems.

... snip ...

Since the inception (over 40yrs ago), virtualization has been extensively used in support of security ... trivia reference:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

I hadn't known about the gov. users until much later. I was doing a lot of work on the system as an undergraduate in the 60s ... and would sometimes get requests to add various features from the vendor (later, in retrospect might have originated from gov. users)

However, it is also possible for attackers to leverage virtualization to defeat countermeasures. In the past decade ... I've found a number of fraud/exploit countermeasures that were trivially vulnerable if they happened to be in a virtualized environment.

this is also some cross-over with "21 million German bank account details on black market" .... some also archived here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#53

Part of security typically includes some aspect of 3-factor authentication ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#3factor

Authentication can involve something (unique) something you have that may involve some sort of static data. An example is the magnetic stripes on payment cards.

In the past decade there have been claims about various kinds of physical device or media that is guaranteed to respond with a unique value which can't be duplicated (implying something unique for something you have authentication). However, some number of these have turned out to be vulnerable to attacker-controlled virtualized environment ... which can trivial emulate any static value.

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

OCO, documentation, support from IBM-Main, etc

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OCO, documentation, support from IBM-Main, etc.
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:41:33 -0500
ibmmain@INTERGATE.COM (Arthur T.) writes:
It's been a long time since IBM went OCO. When they did, didn't they promise better documentation to make up for the inability to see what the programs are actually doing?

part of transition to OCO ... was no longer distributing source and source maintenance (at least in the virtual machine cp67 and vm370 worlds) ... and so it pretty much put an end to user modified code ... to compensate, there was suppose to be lots of user exits.

there were a number of commercial timesharing service bureaus that were formed in late 60s and early 70s using virtual machine cp67 and/or vm370. one of these was Tymshare ... which had also created a CMS-based computer conferencing platform. A version of this was made available to SHARE as VMSHARE in Aug76 ... vmshare archive:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

a couple of OCO forums from vmshare archive:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=OCO&ft=PROB
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=OCOBUS&ft=MEMO
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=OCO:BDAY&ft=MEMO

an entry from one above:
Today is OCO's tenth birthday

Ten years ago today, IBM announced its Object Code Only policy.

The VM community understood at once what a grave error IBM was making in adopting that policy. Indeed, members of the community had already put a good deal of effort into dissuading IBM from making that dramatic change in its relationship with its customers, to no avail.


... snip ...

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

What is securitization and why are people wary of it ?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: What is securitization and why are people wary of it ?
Date: December 11, 2008
Blog: Derivatives Markets
recent article about company that was being "hammered" by wallstreet apparently because it included a reference in their 2003 annual report about problems introduced by toxic CDOs disassociating lenders from the loans:

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

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

... snip ...

another article:

The crash of 2008: A mathematician's view
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/w-tco120808.php

from above:
Markets need regulation to stay stable. We have had thirty years of financial deregulation. Now we are seeing chickens coming home to roost. This is the key argument of Professor Nick Bingham, a mathematician at Imperial College London, in an article published today in Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society.

There is no such thing as laying off risk if no one is able to insure it. Big new risks were taken in extending mortgages to far more people than could handle them, in the search for new markets and new profits. Attempts to insure these by securitisation -- aptly described in this case as putting good and bad risks into a blender and selling off the results to whoever would buy them -- gave us toxic debt, in vast quantities.


... snip ...

a long-winded, decade old post that included mention needing visibility into the underlying value of securitized instruments
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm

during the congressional hearings into (securitized mortgages) toxic CDOs ... the word "fraud" was used several times referfing to toxic CDO issuing organizations paying rating organizations for triple-A ratings (even though both parties knew that the toxic CDOs didn't deserve triple-A ratings). The triple-A rating significantly increased the organizations that would deal with the instruments ... and funds available to the issuers.

Toxic CDOs had been used two decades ago during the S&L crisis to obfuscate the underlying values.

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

New machine code

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: New machine code
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:56:22 -0500
Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
As far as I can see the main paths went like this
+=======> MSDOS => Windows => +
|                             |
CP/M => MP/M => XENIX => Windows .Net => MacOS
|             |
Assorted UNIX => +=> BSD       +=> Linux
Novell Netware belongs in there too fed from MSDOS but I'm not sure where it led.

With people entering at various points and some taking shortcuts.


UNIX supposedly has some trace back to Multics ... on 5th flr of 545 tech sq. and both cp67 (on 4th flr of 545 tech sq) and Multics trace back to ctss.

recent reference to person responsible for CP/M having worked with cp/67 at npg school:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#25 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?

at some silicon valley thing long ago and far away ... two people who worked on vm370 at customer shops (in the valley) mentioned that they were doing this thing they called mp/m.

current mac/os has some heritage to NeXT to MACH ... from andrew project at cmu .. there was some exchange of people between SJR and CMU during the andrew period ... in part because company was funding andrew activities to the tune of $50m ... and one of the SJR people (and CMU alumni) went in to be local liaison with andrew activities. misc. past next/mach references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#73 Unisys A11 worth keeping?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#22 The Mac is like a modern day Betamax
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#44 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#26 IBM Plugs Big Iron to the College Crowd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#43 Numa-Q Information
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#59 CHROME and WEB apps on Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#60 CHROME and WEB apps on Mainframe?

there was this early LAN server project called DataHub being done by the san jose disk division ... and some amount of the effort was being done under a work-for-hire contract by a small group in Provo (one of the people from san jose was commuting between san jose and provo nearly every week). At some point the corporation decided to abandoned the project and let the Provo group have rights to everything that had done. Not long later a new startup appeared in Provo with a name starting with the letter "N".

Date: 11/16/81 13:04:39
To: wheeler

Hi!

I'd like copies of the small CMS stuff, and any info you can share on the Unix for CMS meeting -- as you know, we're looking at using some Unix-like design and/or operators in the design of the DataHub.

Otherwise, things were pretty quiet while you were away -- as in, the system was often VERY quiet (due to no CMS, etc.)... Good to have you back. Stop over some time tomorrow if you can.


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

also included here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#31 "The Elements of Programming Style"

the "small CMS" stuff was being done at Cambridge and is referenced in the SJ article on xt/370 ... mentioned here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#46 pc/370

misc. past posts referring to DataHub:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a John Hartmann's Birthday Party
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#40 No more innovation? Get serious
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#19 When will IBM buy Sun?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#79 Coulda, Woulda, Shoudda moments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#33 Over-the-shoulder effect
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#26 MP cost effectiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#13 Alpha performance, why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#16 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#23 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#9 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#36 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#39 Token-ring vs Ethernet - 10 years later
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#31 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#17 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#49 How difficult would it be for a SYSPROG ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#21 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#86 The Unexpected Fact about the First Computer Programmer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#35 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#53 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#8 MAINFRAME Training with IBM Certification and JOB GUARANTEE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#36 Making tea

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

PC premiered 40 years ago to awed crowd

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PC premiered 40 years ago to awed crowd
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:06:45 -0500
Roland Hutchinson <my.spamtrap@verizon.net> writes:
For that matter, consider the Lisp Machine.

recent reference to the group trying to get 801 processor for Lisp machine and being offered 8100 instead
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#22 CLIs and GUIs

old copies of the email referencing the request for 801 processor (for lisp machine):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#email790711
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#email790711
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#email790711
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#email790711

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

Should a national regulatory authority stimulate deployment of IPv6?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Should a national regulatory authority stimulate deployment of IPv6?
Date: December 12, 2008
Blog: Telecommunications
note in the late 80s & early 90s, some number of govs. had mandated the elimination of internetworking and replacement with OSI (careful about national authorities).

then there was ipv6 and ipsec ... both required replacing the existing installed operating systems (and their kernel based tcp/ip stacks).

the exhaustion of ip numbers was somewhat alleviated with NAT & 10-net convention ... old post referring to 10-net (rfcs 1597, 1627, 1917, 1918)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#38

my rfc index
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

ipsec requirements were somewhat addressed with SSL and VPN (which didn't require replacing every kernel tcp/ip stack). VPN was originally introduced at gateway committee at the '94 IETF meeting ... which seemed to cause a lot of consternation with the ipsec group. It was somewhat moderated when they started referring to VPN as light-weight ipsec (and then everybody else could refer to ipsec as heavy-weight ipsec). related old post discussing appearance of SSL and VPN
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#34

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

Curiousity: largest parallel sysplex around?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Curiousity: largest parallel sysplex around?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:57:54 -0500
joarmc@SWBELL.NET (John McKown) writes:
Thanks for the info. The reason that I ask is a bit weird. I'm on a list similar to this one, but for the iSeries machine. I was just talking about relative processing. One person pointed me to the i 595 system. That is mucho bigger than the biggest z10EC, as best as I can tell. Now, I've tried to explain that huge shops on z/OS don't run on a single machine, but use multiple machines joined together in a parallel sysplex. I don't think that I ever explained parallel sysplex well enough for them to understand (likely cause I'm not all that knowledgeable).

So, this was just for "bragging rights" over on the iSeries forum. Not really important.


"tightly-coupled" or "loosely-coupled" (or "cluster" in other domains)

archaeological trivia ... my wife had been con'ed into taking position in POK responsible for loosely-coupled architecture ... where she created Peer-Coupled Shared Data architecture ... misc. past posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

which (except for IMS hotstandy) didn't see a lot of uptake until parallel sysplex (which contributed to her not staying long in the position). part of the issue at the time was there was quite a bit more effort going into tightly-coupled technologies. the other part was she was in frequent battles with SNA organization; there was temporary truce during her stint ... where she could use peer-to-peer technologies within the walls of glasshouse ... but SNA had to be used when crossing the boundaries of the glasshouse.

this is recent thread discussing doing "cluster" (loosely-coupled) scale-up for rios ... in part, because the processor lacked any provisions for cache consistency protocol
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#43 another one biting the dust
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#44 another one biting the dust

old post referencing jan92 meeting regarding some of the cluster scale-up activity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

just before the effort was transferred and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors.

old email discussing various aspects of cluster scale-up work
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

reference to really big scale-up from recent SC2008 supercomputer event:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#56 IBM drops Power7 drain in 'Blue Waters'

SC2008 website:
http://sc08.supercomputing.org/

top 500 (supercomputer) website:
http://www.top500.org/

other trivia ... pieces of old threads about distributed lock manager related to cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#43 distributed lock manager
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#63 Intel: an expensive many-core future is ahead of us

part of where we got into trouble with medusa and cluster scale-up ... was that instead of simply restricting to numerical intensive supercomputer ... there was all the activity on commerical and dbms scale-up.

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

Curiousity: largest parallel sysplex around?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Curiousity: largest parallel sysplex around?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:51:21 -0500
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
My understanding was that since the old IBM 370 machines that had the parallel sysplex feature used a common main memory, this was essentially very similar to what was done when PC servers placed two chips on the same motherboard for SMP - symmetric multiprocessing - and is therefore not too much different, on the basic architectural level, as what today's dual-core and quad-core chips do.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#71 Curiosity: largest parallel sysplex around?

old IBM 370 (& 360) came in both tightly-coupled shared memory multiprocessing and well as loosely-coupled non-shared memory (but shared i/o) multiprocessing (aka more akin to cluster).

• tightly-coupled ... shared memory
• loosely-coupled ... non-shared memory, but shared access to common
devices, primarily disks.

it was possible to have multiple tightly-coupled SMPs configured in (single) loosely-coupled configuration.

corporate parallel sysplex webpage:
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/advantages/pso/index.html

parallel sysplex overview:
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/advantages/pso/sysover.html

from above:
Parallel Sysplex technology builds on and extends the strengths of zSeries e-business servers by linking up to 32 servers with near linear scalability to create the industry's most powerful commercial processing clustered system. Every server in a Parallel Sysplex cluster has access to all data resources and every "cloned" application can run on every server. Using the zSeries "Coupling Technology," the Parallel Sysplex technology provides a "shared data" clustering technique that permits multi-system data sharing with high performance read/write integrity. This "shared data" (as opposed to "shared nothing") approach enables workloads to be dynamically balanced across all servers in the Parallel Sysplex cluster

... snip ...

wiki parallel sysplex page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_Sysplex

as mentioned, at one point, my wife was talked into going to POK to be in charge of loosely-coupled architecture (i.e. this is more akin to cluster). misc. past posts referencing her Peer-Coupled Shared Data architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

part of the battle was having a more sophisticated coupling facility for loosely-coupled environment than the "channel-to-channel" architecture available at the time (there was even battles to add more sophisticated capability to 3088/trotter ... than simple straight-forward channel-to-channel operation).

wiki for current parallel sysplex coupling facility
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupling_Facility

there was a research project in the early 80s called "system memory" which provided a specialized kind of NUMA-memory ... and the architecture was referred to as "closely-coupled" ... not quite real shared-memory. A specialized flavor of "system memory" was "lock memory" (very similar to wiki description for "lock" use). "System memory" used memory access semantics (somewhat similar to NUMA-operation in a SCI configuration).

announcement for 64-processor "quad-core" mainframe (with power equal to nearly 1500 x86 servers) ... aka 16 4-core processor chips in single SMP:
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/23592.wss

aka could have thirty-two 64-processor machines in a parallel sysplex.

some recent posts mentioning Z10
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#91 z10 presentation on 26 Feb
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#31 IBM announced z10 ..why so fast...any problem on z 9
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#39 z10 presentation on 26 Feb
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#41 IBM announced z10 ..why so fast...any problem on z 9
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#47 System z10 announcement (in English)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#60 z10 presentation on 26 Feb
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#57 "Engine" in Z/OS?

360s & 370s had shared memory SMP ... i.e. tightly-coupled (mainframe speak for SMP). the difference between 360/67 SMP ... nad the 360 & 370 genre of (tightly-coupled) SMP ... was the 360/67 SMP had all processors sharing/addressing all the same real storage ... as well as sharing/addressing all the same real (I/O) channels. The standard 360 & 370 (tightly-coupled) SMP only had the processors sharing/addressing all the same real storage ... but private/indendent I/O channels.

On standard 360/370 SMP ... SMP I/O channel configuration was simulated by having multi-channel attachments to "shared" I/O control units (i.e. a i/o controllers were attached to multiple-channels).

There was also "loosely-coupled" configurations ... i.e. where there was *NO* shared real-storage ... but there was shared I/O devices (via the same multi-channel attachment feature that was used for simulating all processors in SMP configuration having direct addressable i/o operations).

It was possible to combine tightly-coupled configurations (i.e. shared real storage) and loosely-coupled configurations ... in a single complex. Possibly the largest such installations in the late 70s, was the single-system-image work done for the (vm370 based) US HONE system ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

In the early 80s, this work on (vm370 base) US HONE system was extended for geographic survivability (countermeasure to earthquakes, in the mid-70s the various HONE datacenters had been consolidated in single location in california) ... i.e. purely communication oriented with some amount of careful replication of common system image ... first and 2nd image in Dallas and then a 3rd image in Boulder

Tightly-coupled coordination/communication could in large part be done with shared-memory locations ... with some aid of signal processor instruction (to wakeup &/or tap other processors on the shoulder). Part of (370) tightly-coupled operation was the invention of the compare&swap instruction by Charlie (CAS are his initials) at the science center ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

when he was working on fine-grain (tightly-coupled) multiprocessor locking on cp67 ... misc. past posts mentioning SMP and/or compare&swap instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

misc. past posts mentioning parallel sysplex:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#13 Computer of the century
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#31 Computer of the century
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#29 OT?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#30 OT?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#73 7090 vs. 7094 etc.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#2 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#69 Wheeler and Wheeler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#46 The Alpha/IA64 Hybrid
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#47 Sysplex Info
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#25 Crazy idea: has it been done?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#6 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#68 META: Newsgroup cliques?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#60 The figures of merit that make mainframes worth the price
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#24 IBM Spells Out Mainframe Strategy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#16 RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#38 RS/6000 in Sysplex Environment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#25 The future of the Mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#43 Development as Configuration
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#0 Cluster computing drawbacks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#7 54 Processors?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#25 Data communications over telegraph circuits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#30 auto reIPL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#37 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#15 DUMP Datasets and SMS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#44 hasp, jes, rasp, aspen, gold
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#23 Channel Distances
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005v.html#0 DMV systems?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#32 UMA vs SMP? Clarification of terminology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#24 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#46 using 3390 mod-9s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#19 Over my head in a JES exit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#52 Need Help defining an AS400 with an IP address to the mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#2 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#4 Google Architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#6 Google Architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#45 Mainframe Linux Mythbusting (Was: Using Java in batch on z/OS?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#33 When Does Folklore Begin???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#26 garlic.com
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#4 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#42 Keep VM 24X7 365 days
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#23 Another "migration" from the mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#49 VLIW pre-history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#97 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#99 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#16 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#70 Should a national regulatory authority stimulate deployment of IPv6?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#71 Curiousity: largest parallel sysplex around?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#30 Drive letters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#35a Drive letters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#36 What is MVS/ESA?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#37 What is MVS/ESA?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#40 Comparison Cluster vs SMP?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#57 Reliability and SMPs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#71 High Availabilty on S/390
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#77 Are mainframes relevant ??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#128 Examples of non-relational databases

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

Curiousity: largest parallel sysplex around?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Curiousity: largest parallel sysplex around?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:09:43 -0500
Scott.Rowe@JOANN.COM (Scott Rowe) writes:
Well, I've never heard of a large PowerPC server, I think you are referring to POWER.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#71 Curiousity: largest parallel sysplex around?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#72 Curiousity: largest parallel sysplex around?

as mentioned here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#43 another one biting the dust?

power (rios) started out multi-chip, high-end processor that didn't have any provisions for multiprocessor operation (no cache consistency operation). paperweight image with (original) six chip rios/power
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/riospw.jpg

rios chip set

power/pc was targeted for single-chip implementation that would have (eventually) cache consistency support for smp, tightly-coupled, shared-memory, multiprocessor operation.

this is item (referenced in the above) to converge the two

POWER4 System Microarchitecture
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/p/hardware/whitepapers/power4.html

from above:
With POWER4, the convergence of iSeries and pSeries microprocessors will reach a new level. POWER4 was designed from the outset to satisfy the needs of both of these systems.

... snip ...

as referenced ... one of the reasons that we were doing cluster scale-up in this period (jan92)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

was because there was no cache consistency support (original power ... and multiprocessor power/pc didn't yet exist).

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

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

and there was nothing in medusa (architecture) that would preclude having clusters (i.e. loosely-coupled) of tightly-coupled multiprocessors.

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

New machine code

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: New machine code
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:50:48 -0500
Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
Lynn, did you ever see a paper on porting the TENEX user interface to VM/370, substituting an SVC for the PDP-10 JSYS instruction? Came out around 1983, possibly from someone in southern California.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#68 New machine code

no recollection and/or reference to that ... '82, there was stripped downed tss/370 kernel for at&t that had unix layered on top ... as well as project for various vm370 enhancements to directly support unix semantics for forking (and some number of other things) ... as part of layering unix on top of vm370

i sponsored a corporate advanced technology symposium in spring of '82 that had presentations on some of the topics. past reference to the symposium
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a

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

TOPS-10

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: TOPS-10
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:20:48 -0500
Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
The restriction on use of R0 is hardware dependent; the use of R14 and R15 for linkage purposes is strictly conventional, and not even followed by all of IBM's software. (The System/360 was my first assembler language, more than 10 years before I learned Macro-20.)

the issue with R0 was how to specify no "base" and/or no "index" register as part of operand address calculation ... "RX" instructions had displacement field plus two register fields ("base" and "index") for operand address calculation; other instructions just had displacement and single (base) register for operand address calculation.

A value of "0" in the instruction register base (& index) field was used to indicate "no register" (as opposed to register zero). For other instruction register fields, a value of "0" would refer to register zero.

In general, a "0" in an instruction register field used in calculating a storage address ... would indicate "no register" ... as opposed to use the contents of register zero.

For example, using "to" field of zero in branch and link register instruction ... would not branch to any location ... but would just load the following address (which was a gimick for establishing known addressability when couldn't rely on any other mechanism).

some code from long ago and far away:


•        COMES HERE WHEN END-OF-DISK REACHED ...               J0001PAM 16021000
•                                                              J0001PAM 16022000
         DROP  R11                                             J0001PAM 16023000
YESEND   BALR  R11,0                                           J0001PAM 16024000
         USING YESEND+2,R11                                    J0001PAM 16025000
         LTR   R7,R7          CYLINDER COUNT = 0?              J0001PAM 16026000
         BNZ   YESEND1        NOPE, CONTINUE                   J0001PAM 16027000
         B     ERR10          YEP, MUST BE A DISK ERROR        J0001PAM 16028000

... snip ...

the "USING" instruction told the assembler to assume that the contents of R11 contained the address of "YESEND+2" and could be used in generating instruction operand storage (base+displacement) addresses.

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




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