From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: My Vintage Dream PC Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.folklore.computers,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.computer Date: Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:40:24 -0400jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
at least he was making more than the new hires ... so that the new hires have something to complain about ... as opposed to the new hires starting out being offered 1/3rd more than JMF (what was the line from one of stargate shows, something about the young having a lot to learn).
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: IBM to Build Europe, Asia 'Smart Infrastructure' Date: 1 June, 2009 Blog: Greater IBM Connectionre:
In the congressional hearings into the rating agencies last fall, it was mentioned several times that the both the issuers of asset-backed securities and the rating agencies knew that the asset-backed securities weren't worth the triple-A ratings ... but the issuers were paying for and getting triple-A ratings anyway.
The comment was that the seeds for this were from the early 70s, when the rating agencies changed from the buyers paying for the ratings to the sellers paying for the ratings; misaligning the business process and opening up for conflict of interest.
In Jan. there were some news items that the gov. was making use of interactive data for evaluating the toxic assets held by financial institutions. Interactive data websites mentions that the bought the services division from one of the rating agencies in the early 70s (about the time it was mentioned that the rating agencies' business process became mis-aligned).
Unregulated, non-depository lending institutions were able to leverage securitization as a source of funds. Securitization (immediately selling off the loans with triple-A ratings) also eliminated any motivation to pay any attention to borrows' qualification or loan quality. Speculators found no-documentation, no-down, 1% interest only payment ARMs extremely attractive since the carrying cost was much less than real-estate inflation (with the speculation further driving inflation).
Regulated, depository lending institutions were actually providing a lot of this funding with their investment banking arms (courtesy of repeal of Glass-Steagall) buying the toxic assets and carrying off-balance.
Result was enormous real-estate inflation bubble that is still
"bursting", huge amount of excessive home mortgage debt and enormous
amount of toxic assets being carried off-balance by major financial
institutions. Recent post in the yin yang financial disruption thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#79 The $4 trillion housing headache
One of the things about running the loans through the circuitous route with
• unregulated, non-depository institutions making the loans, • packaging the loans up as asset-backed securities, • paying for triple-A ratings ... • and selling them off ... • and much of the (triple-A rated) asset-backed securities being bought up by the investment banking arms (courtesy of repeal of Glass-Steagall) of regulated depository institutions to be carried off-balance
... besides bypassing regulations .... was that lots of individuals were getting enormous fees, commissions and bonuses from the process ... that doesn't exist in the traditional regulated loan process (it didn't matter that the resulting mess might take down the institutions and/or the economy).
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: China-US Insights on the Future of the Auto Industry Date: 1 June, 2009 Blog: Greater IBM ConnectionToyota & GM sold approx. same number vehicles in 2007. ... it isn't just the most recent economic downturn, article from last fall:
Dumbest People' Industry Image May Cost Wagoner Job
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=ap8pS2oslvn0&refer=home
a couple quotes from above:
"Wagoner has run the world's largest automaker for the past eight
years, presiding over $73 billion in losses beginning in 2005."
"There's the feeling that next to financial services, automotive execs
are the dumbest people in the world"
"It's pretty clear that management has made some pretty bad decisions
over the last 20 years"
"Toyota generated pretax profit of $922 per vehicle on North American
sales in 2007, while GM lost $729"
... snip ...
with decades old culture permeating all aspects of the organization, it would appear to take more than simple bankruptcy to significantly change course.
there was article in the early 80s (I believe washington post) that called for 100% unearned profit tax on the US auto industry. The line went that the gov. imposed temporary import quotas (reduced competition) to give the US auto industry breathing spell & profits to completely remake themselves. Since they squandered the time and spent the profits on business as usual ... the profits should have 100% tax because they were not earned, but a result of the gov. import quotas (reducing competition). The article went on to say something about the reduced competition allowed US auto makers to raise prices by thousands of dollars over a period of few years (enormous cost/subsidy born by US consumer)
In the early 90s, the industry had a C4 "task force" that invited in some number of technology vendors (decade after the washington post article) to help look at leveraging technology to completely remake themselves. One of the major issues was that the new model business process in the US auto industry was on the order of 6-8 year elapsed time. Foreign competition had first moved plants to the US (to get around some of the import quota) and also significantly reduced the elapsed time to bring out new model (first to 3 yrs and by then approaching 18 months, in theory now possibly be done in under a model year). In a fluid, changing environment, this represented enormous competitive advantage to those foreign operations, being able to quickly adapt products to changing consumer preferences.
oh ... both mainframe and workstation groups had people at the C4 meetings. I somewhat chided the mainframe people, since at the time, their product cycle elapsed time was similar to the us auto industry.
misc. past posts mentioning proposal for 100% unearned profit tax
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/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#22 Is Pride going to decimate the auto Industry?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#63 Have you told your Congressman how to VOTE on the auto bailout?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#18 What next? from where would the Banks be hit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#20 Five great technological revolutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#57 Garbage in, garbage out trampled by Moore's law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#20 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: IBM interprets Lean development's Kaizen with new MCIF product Date: 2 June, 2009 Blog: Greater IBM ConnectionIBM interprets Lean development's Kaizen with new MCIF product
reference quote in above: "Should software development be Lean or Agile?"
In the us auto industry C4 taskforce (early 90s) ... the characteristic highlighted was agile ... it not only allowed their competition to rapidly adapt to changing consumer preferences and market conditions ... but also technology changes ... although there has also been sense of efficient along with agile.
A little x-over from another thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#2 China-US Insights on the Future of the Auto Industry
There has also been some of this in past discussions comparing Ford &
Toyoto in Boyd blogs ... especially related to OODA-loops ... being
more agile and accurate than your competition (I had sponsored Boyd's
briefings at IBM in the early 80s).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#50 Toyoto's Value Innovation: The Art of Tension
somebody's related boyd/OODA-loop blog post (theory of constraints, lean, and agile methodologies) from a year ago:
One Revolution Through the OODA-Loop
http://kallokain.blogspot.com/2008/04/one-revolution-through-OODA-loop.html
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:31:38 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
article here on SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark comparisons (includes
ops/watt for xeon x5550, opteron 2435 & 2389)
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17005/6
other posts in the thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#53 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#54 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#57 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#80 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: My Vintage Dream PC Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.folklore.computers,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt Date: Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:09:20 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Tech is the UK's industry of the future
http://www.itpro.co.uk/611188/tech-is-the-uk-s-industry-of-the-future
and computer conferencing is the new, new thing ...
Noel Quinn, head of commercial banking in the UK for HSBC, said:
"Industry, skills and technology such as social media and social
networking, created during economic hardship, are destined to become the
tools of the trade for many of tomorrow's businesses."
... snip ...
other related posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#31 My Vintage Dream PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#32 My Vintage Dream PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#34 My Vintage Dream PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#71 My Vintage Dream PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#74 My Vintage Dream PC
somewhat result of getting blamed for computering conferencing on the
internal network ... a researcher was paid to sit in the back of my
office for nine months and take notes on how I communicated; they also
went with me to meetings, got copies of all my incoming & outgoing
email as well as logs of all my instant messages. besides a corporate
research report, it was also used for a stanford phd thesis (joint
between language and computer ai), as well as some number of papers
and books. misc. post posts related to computer mediated communication
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:18:22 -0400Patrick Scheible <kkt@zipcon.net> writes:
it is the 10-14(?) million new vehicles that they want to sell each year.
there was some recent comment that the US fascination with a new vehicle every year will possibly be changing and may not return.
it isn't that they would change every year ... it was that they could ... if there was a reason or justification (changing customer preferences, changing market conditions, technology opportunities).
misc. past threads/posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#32 Toyota set to lift crown from GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#80 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#84 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#86 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#55 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#56 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#59 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#75 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#76 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#1 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#5 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#6 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#7 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#8 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#11 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#12 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#13 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#14 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#16 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#17 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#19 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#20 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#21 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#22 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#25 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#44 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#46 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#56 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#63 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#66 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#68 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#69 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#71 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#87 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#89 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#90 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#91 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#0 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#4 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#5 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#7 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#9 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#10 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#11 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#21 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#22 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#26 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
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#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#50 Toyota's Value Innovation: The Art of Tension
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#22 Toyota takes 1Q world sales lead from General Motors
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: My Vintage Dream PC Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.folklore.computers,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.computer Date: Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:43:14 -0400jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
there is reference to comparison that I did in the early 80s, between a
"current" system and a nearly 15yr early system doing essentially the
same type of workload. My comment was that the relative system thruput
of disks had declined by an order of magnitude in the period.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#31 Big I/O or Kicking the Mainframe out the Door
some disk division executives took exception and assigned the performance group to refute the states ... but after a couple week they came back and effectively said that i had slightly understated the problem. the issue was that processor power had increased appox. 50 times ... but disk thruput had increased only by 3-5 times (resulting in net relative system thruput decline of a factor of 10 times).
the performance group turned the study into a SHARE report recommending
disk configuration suggestions to improve system thruput ... references
to presentation B874 at SHARE 63, 8/18/84:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#18
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#3
extract from the abstract for the presentation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#68
a little topic drift recent reference/post getting to play disk
engineer:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#68
As I've mentioned before regarding relational databases ... the amount of real storage started to dramatically increase in the late 70s ... and systems started to leverage the additional real memory for caching and other techniques as method for compensating for disk thruput bottleneck.
in the 70s ... there was a little contention between the '60s database
product group in STL (bldg 90) and the system/r (original
relational/sql) group ... misc. posts mentioning system/r
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr
with the older style database group claiming that the "implicit" index (for locate a record) in rdbms doubled the physical disk storage of typical database and significantly increased the number of disk i/os (as part of reading the index to find a record location). The system/r group pointed at that the physical record pointers that were part of the data significantly increased the manual management of "60s" databases.
going into the 80s ... the disk space significantly increased & price/bit significantly decreased (mitigating rdbms disk space penalty), available real memory significantly increased (allowing rdbms indexes to be cached, significantly reducing the disk i/o penalty), and DBMS people skill became relatively scarce and cost significantly increased. All of this shifted various trade-offs vis-a-vis 60s DBMS and RDBMS.
Note however, there is still quite a bit of use of 60s DBMS technology
... especially in various large financial and/or business critical
operations. a few recent references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#15 Confessions of a Cobol programmer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#20 IBM forecasts 'new world order' for financial services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#1 z/Journal Does it Again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#27 Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys
above also mentions that when Jim left for Tandem, he was handing a lot
of stuff off to me ... including consulting with STL 60s DBMS group and
talking to customers about System/R ... a couple old email references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801006
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801016
note measuring access latency in number of processor cycles ... number of processor cycle latency to access real memory today is comparable to 60s number of processor cycle latency to access disk ... and today's caches are larger than 60s total real memory.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Help wanted: IBM 5424 MFCU - iSeries Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.sys3x.misc,alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:47:00 -0400CRPence <CRPence@vnet.ibm.com> writes:
above includes reference to
IBM goes live with Smart Cube appliance server; The modern day AS/400
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/20/ibm_smartcube_appliances/
from above:
After nearly two years of development and more than six months of a
beta spin in India - where there are some 35 million small and medium
businesses that are looking to computerize their operations - IBM has
finally brought its Smart Cube appliance servers and the related
application software Smart Market to the United States.
... snip ...
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX? Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:00:53 -0400steve@TRAINERSFRIEND.COM (Steve Comstock) writes:
i've repeatedly claimed that the trust issue was significantly affected by the Y2K issue ... there was big spike in demand for resources as part of Y2K remediation ... which happened to occur at the same time as the internet bubble. the result was lots of employers were forced to go overseas for resources for their Y2K remediation efforts (internet bubble having sucked up nearly every spare resource with promises of enormous equity wealth). The "trust" established as part of Y2K remediation greatly accelerated subsequent outsourcing in this decade.
past posts mentioning y2k remediation:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#214 Ask about Certification-less Public Key
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#2 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#39 Who said "The Mainframe is dead"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#66 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#20 I told you ... everybody is going to Dalian,China
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#16 Is a Hurricane about to hit IBM ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#21 Taxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#40 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#7 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#39 India is outsourcing jobs as well
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#26 The new urgency to fix online privacy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#36 Students mostly not ready for math, science college courses
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#19 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#81 Is IT becoming extinct?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#65 How do you manage your value statement?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#27 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#55 Can outsourcing be stopped?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#2 IBM 'pulls out of US'
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:48:12 -0400Patrick Scheible <kkt@zipcon.net> writes:
at the (auto industry) C4 meetings, there were people from both the mainframe organization and the workstation organization. i chided the mainframe people that since (at the time) they were also on 6-8 yr product cycle ... they might have trouble advising the auto industry on how they were to shorten the car model product cycle.
note that both the auto industry and the mainframe group have at various times attempted to mask the long latency for new product by running two parallel efforts offset by 3-4 yrs ... it doesn't actually shorten the latency to be able to react to changing consumer/market/technology ... but it would have more frequent (really) new product introduction (as opposed to incremental &/or cosmetic changes).
We probably ran into some of this ... recent references to transfering
cluster scale-up effort and being told we couldn't work on anything
with more than four processors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#1 z/Journal Does it Again
old email mentioning work on cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa
old post referencing jan92 meeting on related cluster scale-up work
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
one of the things that the (mainframe) DB2 group said when they 1st heard what we were going to be talking about in the above meeting ... was that it be at least five yrs ahead of the (mainframe) DB2 group. that may have contributed to the transferring the work (for a numerical intensive only product) and telling us that we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors.
another possible contributing factor was that we had been asked to write
a section for the corporate continuous availability strategy
document. however, it got pulled after both Rochester and POK complained
that they weren't (yet) able to meet such requirements. in that period I
had coined the terms geographic survivability and disaster
survivability (to differentiate from disaster/recovery) ... some
references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available
agile also brings up Boyd & OODA-loops ... some recent references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#5 mainframe replacement (Z/Journal Does it Again)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#71 My Vintage Dream PC
and OODA-loops with respect to constraints, agile, & lean methodologies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#3 IBM interprets Lean development's Kaizen with new MCIF product
lots of past posts mentioning Boyd &/or OODA-loops
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd
and various URLs from around the web mentioning Boyd
(&/or OODA-loops)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd2
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: IBM interprets Lean development's Kaizen with new MCIF product Date: 3 June, 2009 Blog: Greater IBM Connectionre:
post from today in a.f.c. thread that drifted off into the lean and
agile theme (as well as Boyd's OODA-loops)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#10 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
slightly related theme also in this earlier post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#68 My Vintage Dream PC
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#5 mainframe replacement (Z/Journal Does it Again)
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Latest Pilot Will Put Online PIN Debit to the Test for Credit Unions Date: 3 June, 2009 Blog: Payment Systems NetworkLatest Pilot Will Put Online PIN Debit to the Test for Credit Unions
Reference to report regarding decade old NACHA online "pin-debit"
trial (before a attempted deployment of consumer cardreaders met with
disaster and suspended all such activity ... resulted in rapidly
spreading opinion that smartcards weren't practical in consumer
environment)
https://web.archive.org/web/20070706004855/http://internetcouncil.nacha.org/News/news.html
RFI response for the above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/nacharfi.htm
related information
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:23:01 -0400"Charlie Gibbs" <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
there were side comments that it would probably only take a couple yrs before there were new methods of greed and corruption invented ... and semi-humorous observation that Ireland was strongly lobbying to retain the current (US) tax-code ... since a lot of US buinesses setup operations in Ireland (as means of escaping it).
there is also the whole series of posts that much of the current mess
is because of the Bank Modernization act (from 1999, including repeal
of Glass-Steagall act) and the Commodities Futures Trading
Modernization act (from 2000).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#60 OCR scans of old documents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#38 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#39 'WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#46 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#48 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#53 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#55 Who will give Citigroup the KNOCKOUT blow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#65 is it possible that ALL banks will be nationalized?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#10 Who will Survive AIG or Derivative Counterparty Risk?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#28 I need insight on the Stock Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#42 Bernard Madoff Is Jailed After Pleading Guilty -- are there more "Madoff's" out there?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#61 Quiz: Evaluate your level of Spreadsheet risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#63 Do bonuses foster unethical conduct?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#0 What is swap in the financial market?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#8 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#13 Should we fear and hate derivatives?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#31 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#35 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#59 Tesco to open 30 "bank branches" this year
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#2 CEO pay sinks - Wall Street Journal/Hay Group survey results just released
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#29 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#38 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#46 Who moved my payment?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#5 Do the current Banking Results in the US hide a grim truth?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#7 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#33 Treating the Web As an Archive
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#76 Undoing 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#10 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#17 REGULATOR ROLE IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT FINANCIAL SCANDALS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#19 Does anyone know of merchants who have successfully bypassed interchange costs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#75 A Math Geek's Plan to Save Wall Street's Soul
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Online Banking's Innate Security Flaws Date: 3 June, 2009 Blog: Information Security NetworkOnline Banking's Innate Security Flaws
from above:
According to research firm, Gartner, banks, online payment
organizations and other financial institutions are bearing most of the
financial cost of phishing attacks. (A survey of nearly 4,000 US
consumers revealed a 40% increase in the number of phishing victims in
2008 over the year before to five million.)
... snip ...
We had been asked in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server ... they had also invented something called SSL that they wanted to use; the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce".
Somewhat as a result, in the mid-90s we had been asked to participate in x9a10 financial standard working group that had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments (aka ALL, credit, debit, point-of-sale, ACH, internet, face-to-face, unattended, stored-value, transit turnstyle, aka ALL). As part of that there were a number of end-to-end threat and vulnerability studies of the different environments. Quickly identified was widespread something you know & "static data" authentication paradigm (in many cases as simple as knowing the account number).
As countermeasure, x9a10 defined a very simple with extremely strong
security something you have, "dynamic data" authentication that
could work across a wide range of different environments (common
mechanism for transaction as well as session related
authentication). For ALL retail payments, the standard was x9.59
retail financial transaction standard ... some references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
this eliminated data breaches, skimming, and evesdropping threats & vulnerabilities. Also, since the majority use in the world today for SSL is this early thing we did called "electronic commerce" involving hiding transaction information ... since X9.59 no longer requires the transaction information is hidden ... it also eliminates the major use for SSL in the world today.
The definition was also done in such a way that the very same mechanism could also be used for session authentication for RADIUS (the major authentication mechanism used by ISPs in the world) and KERBEROS (the major local environment authentication in the world). Online banking converts to both 1) session oriented authentication (possibly for just low-value operations) and 2) transaction oriented authentication (especially for higher value operations).
The primary focus of phishing attacks is collecting single-factor static &/or something you know authentication information for the purpose of performing fraudulent operations. Changing from simple single-factor static &/or something you know authentication ... also eliminates majority of threats and vulnerabilities from existing phishing attacks (since it is not possible to divulge the non-static/dynamic information). It was viewed that the success potential would be significantly improved if the user only had to deal with a single mechanism across all possible authentication environments.
Note ... there would still be social engineering attacks ... where crooks attempt to convince the victim to directly perform transactions for the crooks' benefit.
There are (at least) two types of information that involve phishers .... pin/passwords and account numbers.
Simple knowledge of account numbers is frequently sufficient to enable fraudulent transaction. This is a common threat & vulnerability at POS (clerk behind counter), data breaches (external attacks or internal users), skimming, evesdropping, etc ... as well as phishing. Users only have little control over the phishing part. In all the other situations ... the account number needs to be divulged as part of performing a transaction. We've periodically commented that because of the diametrically opposing requirements (authentication, which requires that the account number kept confidential and never divulged to anybody ... at the same time it is required to be readily available in transactions for large number of business processes) ... that even if the planet was buried under miles of information hiding encryption, it couldn't stop information leakage.
The diametrically opposing requirements also complicates user education since users have to be both indoctrinated to 1) never divulge account number and at the same time 2) frequently provide account number (as part of performing transaction).
The other target phishing information is purely pin/password shared-secret (static) something you know authentication information. From kindergarten security 101 ... there is requirement for unique (static) shared-secret for every unique security domain. Forty years ago, the number of such pieces of information was fairly small; with the proliferation of electronic environments ... there frequently now is requirement for an individual to remember large scores of impossible to remember shared-secrets ... which also frequently have to be change/updated ... independent of the problem dealing with forgotten shared-secrets.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: DB2 vs SYBASE or ORACLE Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:09:19 -0400oldtimer@WANADOO.FR (Bruno Sugliani) writes:
and recent related post in comp.database.theory regarding working with
Ingres, Sybase, Informix (long before it was acquired) and Oracle on
some of the cluster scale-up activity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#26 Natural keys vs Aritficial Keys
related post regarding Jan92 meeting in Larry's conference room
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
There was some discussion in the period about these other vendors possibly porting to same platform as (mainframe) DB2 (differentiated from totally different non-mainframe DB2) ... and one of the barriers was feeling that they would have to perform 300 mainframe disk drive configuration regression tests as part of a competitive port (and the incremental business didn't appear to justify such an activity). At the time, they were more than willing to leave that market segment to mainframe DB2.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: looking for IBM's infamous "Lab computer" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:51:48 -0400Al Kossow <aek@spies.com> writes:
later ...
Date: 4 April 1984, 00:17:56 PST
To: distribution
FYI:
XENIX announced for the System/9000 machine (which was recently added to
IBM's product line - it's not IBM Instruments anymore)
... snip ... top of post, old email index
search engine for "ibm system/9000" turns up some advertisements pages being offered on ebay ... and a lot of mainframe 9000 references.
search for cs/9000 turns up columbia U page with picture
(but statement that it was announced in june 82):
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/cs9000.html
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: looking for IBM's infamous "Lab computer" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:17:22 -0400Ben Pfaff <blp@cs.stanford.edu> writes:
take a look at the picture at columbia.edu URL, there are lots of lab equipment that just have instrument control panel and no keyboard.
one could imagine somebody having keyboard for developing software ... but then it would be deployed on machines in labs that had no requirement for keyboards.
the reference in '84 ... has it being repositioned as more of a computer than a lab instrument.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: looking for IBM's infamous "Lab computer" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:00:53 -0400CBFalconer <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes:
re:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc25/pc25_intro.html
introduced aug81 ... entry price tag less than $1,600 (cs/9000 first customer ship oct82 & entry price of $5,695)
press release:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc25/pc25_press.html
other historical info:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc25/pc25_birth.html
ibm/pc wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC
mentions that the group had considered using 801(risc) & cpr ... but decided to go with (somewhat) datamaster capatible & intel processor.
system/23 datamaster wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/23
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Unix turns 40: The past, present and future of a revolutionary OS Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:00:02 -0400Unix turns 40: The past, present and future of a revolutionary OS
from above:
In August 1969, Ken Thompson, a programmer at AT&T subsidiary Bell
Laboratories, saw the month-long departure of his wife and young son as
an opportunity to put his ideas for a new operating system into
practice. He wrote the first version of Unix in assembly language for a
wimpy Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) PDP-7 minicomputer, spending one
week each on the operating system, a shell, an editor and an assembler.
... snip ...
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Online Banking's Innate Security Flaws Date: 4 June, 2009 Blog: Information Security Networkre:
some recent news items ... related to breaches and current "static data" paradigm (used for authentication)
Auditor(s) to be held to account? - CardSystems and Savvis
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001167.html
Should Auditors Be Liable for Certifications?
http://slashdot.org/submission/1013127/Should-Auditors-Be-Liable-for-Certifications
Bank sues Savvis over 2005 CardSystems breach
http://www.scmagazineus.com/Bank-sues-Savvis-over-2005-CardSystems-breach/article/137616/
CardSystems Breach Spurs Suit
http://information-security-resources.com/2009/06/01/isr-news-cardsystems-breach-spurs-suit/
In Legal First, Data-Breach Suit Targets Auditor
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/auditor_sued/
in the past we've used a couple metaphors in attempt to characterize weaknesses in the current paradigm
• dual-use vulnerability metaphor
• security proportional to risk metaphor
• naked transaction metaphor
a few recent discussions with reference to the metaphors:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#10 Swedish police warn of tampered credit card terminals
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#66 What's missing in security: business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#13 US credit card payment house breaches by sniffing malware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#15 It's Me, and Here's My Proof: Why Identity and Authentication Must Remain Distinct
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#16 It's Me, and Here's My Proof: Why Identity and Authentication Must Remain Distinct
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#62 Study: Data breaches continue to get more costly for businesses
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#6 Heartland Data Breach Update: Now More Than 150 Institutions Impacted
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#69 PCI Compliance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#72 Why Are CC Numbers Still So Easy To Find?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#36 PCI security rules may require reinforcements
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#57 Data masking/data disguise Primer 1) WHY
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#10 Top 10 Cybersecurity Threats for 2009, will they cause creation of highly-secure Corporate-wide Intranets?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#11 Top 10 Cybersecurity Threats for 2009, will they cause creation of highly-secure Corporate-wide Intranets?
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX? Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:27:43 -0400nitz-ibm@GMX.NET (Barbara Nitz) writes:
the issue was that some number of them got past the pilot stage and into full scale deployment before the scale-up issues appeared on their horizon. it turns out that implementations were doing things that resulted in 100 times bloat in the implementation (compared to the batch cobol) ... totally swamping any anticipated through-put improvements from using large PC farms.
recent posts mentioning straight-through processing &/or
overnight batch windows
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#87 Cleaning Up Spaghetti Code vs. Getting Rid of It
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#43 Business process re-engineering
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#14 Legacy clearing threat to OTC derivatives warns State Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#55 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#1 z/Journal Does it Again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#2 z/Journal Does it Again
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: My Vintage Dream PC Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design,alt.folklore.computers,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.computer Date: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:28:47 -0400jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
some of the current desktop machines had design point for stand-alone
kitchen table operation ... where many of the applications took-over
complete control of the whole machine ... environment lacked any
defenses against hostile operation. some number of these evolved into
multi-machine networked environment ... but again with the orientation
that they were operating in a non-hostile environment. a recent post
on the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#28 Computer virus strikes US Marshals, FBI affected
above also mentions getting badgered into interviewing for position of chief security architect in redmond.
lots of past posts mentioning (virtual machine based) commercial
timesharing service bureaus starting in the 60s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare
one of the largest such operation was the internal HONE system providing
online support for world-wide sales & marketing.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone
not commercial operations ... but still from the 60s requiring
high-level of security and defenses from possible attacks
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml
while I was doing lots of work on the software as undergraduate in the 60s ... and may have even gotten some requests from the vendor for particular kind of changes that could have originated from these particular customers ... i didn't actually learn about them until much later.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX? (Are settlements a good argument for overnight batch COBOL ?). Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:59:18 -0400bjpafriel@HOTMAIL.COM (Brendan Friel) writes:
in the 90s period, the overnight batch window was experiencing severe strain, in part because of business growth was increasing the work that had to be done in the window and some amount of globalization was decreasing the size of the window ... as well as increasing the amount of work.
when we were doing (our/)ibm's ha/cmp product ... some reference
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/availability/aix/index.html
we went into siac several times to talk about their (trading) operation.
we also had this Jan92 meeting on ha/cmp scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
in fact, my choice of product name "ha/cmp" ... reflected all the work
we had been doing for cluster scale-up ... some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa
but then that part of the effort got transferred (and announced as a numerical intensive product) and we were told to not work on anything with more than four processors (however, the ha/cmp seem to stick). shortly after that, we decided to leave.
somewhat related recent post (mentions that long ago and far away my
wife had been con'ed into going to POK to be in charge of mainframe
loosely-coupled architecture)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#1 z/Journal Does it Again
now two of the other people that were also in that Jan92 meeting, moved on to a small client/server startup and we brought in as consultants because they wanted to do payment transactions on their server. The small client/server startup had also invented this technology called "SSL" which they wanted to use ... in any case, that work is now frequently called "electronic commerce".
In the mid-90s, somewhat as a result of the "electronic commerce" work,
we were invited to particate in the x9a10 financial standard working
group which had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of
the financial infrastructure for all retail payments (i.e. ALL as in
ALL, POS, internet, debit, credit, ACH, stored value, unattended,
face-to-face, transit turnstyle, etc, i.e. ALL). We did some
detailed threat and vulnerability studies of the various environments
and eventually came up with x9.59 retail financial standard
transaction protocol ... some references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
somewhat as a result of the electronic commerce and x9.59 work, we were invited into NSCC (since merged with DTC for DTCC) to look at doing something similar for all trading operations. After a short while, the work was suspended ... possibly because a side effort would have been significantly increased transparency and visibility ... which apparently wasn't naturally part of trader culture.
note in the recent congressional hearings into the Madoff Ponzi scheme, a reoccurring theme by the person that had been trying for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff ... was that much more important than new regulations is the requirement for transparency and visibility.
misc. recent posts mentioning Madoff:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#65 What can agencies such as the SEC do to insure us that something like Madoff's Ponzi scheme will never happen again?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#73 What can we learn from the meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#80 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#0 Audit II: Two more scary words: Sarbanes-Oxley
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#20 Decision Making or Instinctive Steering?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#29 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#39 'WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#51 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#0 PNC Financial to pay CEO $3 million stock bonus
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#3 Congress Set to Approve Pay Cap of $500,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#37 NEW SEC (Enforcement) MANUAL, A welcome addition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#42 Bernard Madoff Is Jailed After Pleading Guilty -- are there more "Madoff's" out there?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#47 Bernard Madoff Is Jailed After Pleading Guilty -- are there more "Madoff's" out there?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#61 Quiz: Evaluate your level of Spreadsheet risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#63 Do bonuses foster unethical conduct?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#75 Whistleblowing and reporting fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#0 What is swap in the financial market?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#15 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#36 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#37 How do you see ethics playing a role in your organizations current or past?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#53 Are the "brightest minds in finance" finally onto something?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#2 CEO pay sinks - Wall Street Journal/Hay Group survey results just released
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#29 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#45 Artificial Intelligence to tackle rogue traders
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#51 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#67 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#7 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#29 Transparency and Visibility
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#33 Treating the Web As an Archive
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#17 REGULATOR ROLE IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT FINANCIAL SCANDALS
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:51:03 -0400Patrick Scheible <kkt@zipcon.net> writes:
A giant falls; The collapse of General Motors into bankruptcy is only
the latest chapter in a long story of mismanagement and decline
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13782942&source=hptextfeature
from above:
In some ways, GM's problems can be traced to its origins a century
ago. Between 1908 and 1920, its founder, Billy Durant, bought 39
companies including Cadillac, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Chevrolet and several
parts-makers, but ran them as separate entities.
... snip ...
also from above:
By the early 1980s it had begun to dawn on GM that the Japanese could
not only make better cars but also do so far more efficiently.
... snip ...
but as per earlier references ... while they may have "realized it" ... they seemed unable to take corrective action.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:31:52 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Boyd blog item from yesterday, "Maginot Line Syndrome" drawing
comparison about GM achieving position of dominance and then just
sitting there thinking things would never change:
http://www.chetrichards.com/c2w/2009/06/04/maginot-line-syndrome/
references another economist article from yesterday "Detroitosaurus wrecks"
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13783014
and Boyd blog item from 2002:
Riding the tiger: What you really do with OODA-loops:
http://www.chetrichards.com/modern_business_strategy/richards/riding_the_tiger/tiger.htm
quote from above:
There was a moment when Detroit recognized that Americans were beginning
to buy large numbers of foreign-made cars ... The time for decisions was
then. Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, Europe, January 29, 1993
... snip ...
lots of past posts mentioning boyd:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX? Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: Fri, 05 Jun 2009 10:43:38 -0400agutowsk@FORD.COM (Arthur Gutowski) writes:
An attempt to compensate for that training avenue was setting up some number of (virtual machine) CP67 HONE (Hands-On Network Environment) datacenters to provide online access for branch office people to practice their operating system skills (in virtual machines).
The science center ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
had also ported apl\360 to cms for cms\apl. HONE started deploying
some number of online (APL) applications supporting sales &
marketing. eventually these applications completely crowded out
the virtual machine experience for SEs. Eventually it wasn't
even possible for branch office to submit mainframe order that hadn't
first been processed by HONE application(s). Misc. past posts
mentioning HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone
one could claim that the aging/retiring of the SEs from pre-23jun69 has contributed to change in policy.
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#9 Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#21 Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#23 Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX? (Are settlements a good argument for overnight batch COBOL ?)
previously mentioned, long ago & far away, my wife had been
con'ed into going to POK to be in charge of loosely-coupled
architecture. while there she established peer-coupled shared
data architecture ... some number of past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata
the battles with the communication group contributed to her not staying very long in the position (although there was a temporary truce that she wouldn't have to use SNA for loosely-coupled within the boundaries of the datacenter). the other contributing factor was that there was very little uptake except for IMS hot-standby ... until (parallel) sysplex.
part of the issue was that in the early SNA days ... she had been co-author of peer-to-peer networking architecture (AWP39) ... which the SNA group may have possibly viewed as competitive (in most other environments, networking implicitly implied peer-to-peer ... it was only in an environment when networking was used to apply to communication that it was necessary to use the peer-to-peer qualifier)
It wasn't until APPN (AWP164) that there was some semblance of peer-to-peer network. Even then, the SNA organization non-concurred with the announcment ... and the escalation took several weeks while the APPN announcement letter was carefully rewriting to avoid implying any relationship between APPN and SNA.
--
40+yrs virtualization exerience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: My Vintage Dream PC Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 05 Jun 2009 11:24:56 -0400Kim Enkovaara <kim.enkovaara@iki.fi> writes:
we spent some time talking to telcos about 1-800 "lookup" (i.e. translate 800 to regular/routed phone number) ... which required five-9s.
however, that wasn't "human rated" ... old reference from 80s y2k
discussion thread ... mentioning cost/difficulty of revalidating change
to component in shuttle program
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#email841207
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#24 BA Solves Y2K (Was: Re: Chinese Solve Y2K)
for other shuttle drift, at a shuttle launch ... because HSDT project
would be using a transponder on a bird that was going up on 41-d
... misc. posts mentioning hsdt project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt
misc. past posts mentioning 41-d mission
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#27 Tysons Corner, Virginia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#14 Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#23 Health care and lies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#21 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#11 An Out-of-the-Main Activity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#16 Why I use a Mac, anno 2006
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#31 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#41 Year-end computer bug could ground Shuttle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#61 Damn
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#19 IBM-MAIN longevity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#20 IBM-MAIN longevity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#44 IBM-MAIN longevity
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery? Date: 5 June, 2009 Blog: Greater IBM ConnectionBank Profits From Accounting Rules Masking Looming Loan Losses
from above:
Bogus Profit
Citigroup's $1.6 billion in first-quarter profit would vanish if
accounting were more stringent, says Martin Weiss of Weiss Research
Inc. in Jupiter, Florida. "The big banks' profits were totally
bogus," says Weiss, whose 38-year-old firm rates financial
companies. "The new accounting rules, the stress tests: They're all
part of a major effort to put lipstick on a pig."
... snip ...
past posts in thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#56 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#40 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#46 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
and some x-over in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#10 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#15 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#20 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#21 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#22 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Online Computer Conferencing Date: 5 June, 2009 Blog: Greater IBM ConnectionI had gotten blamed for online computer conferencing on the internal network in the late 70s and early 80s. A reference to this was recently brought up in discussion in computer folklore group
some details about this new kind of communication had leaked out and a
article appeared in Nov81 Datamation. One of the people with copy
... recently typed in part of the article:
page 64
Programming was also the subject of a celebrated VNET memo-this time
from one of IBM'S most loved and respected VM "veterans," Lyn Wheeler,
a systems programmer at IBM'S San Jose center. Wheeler has probably
done as much as anyone to make VM the current runaway success that it
is, say former colleagues. His classic Wheeler Scheduler has become
the natural mode for that operating system, they say. A former
colleague said that Wheeler accepted an invitation to visit Jim Gray
after Gray had joined Tandem, about a year ago. The event was Tandem's
celebrated weekly "beer bash," which has become a regular Friday
afternoon revel-usually around the company's swimming pool.
... snip ...
in my post (url above), I mentioned that we used to have our own "fridays" after-work, near the plant site (that Jim would periodically attend, prior to leaving for Tandem).
Another recent reference to Jim in a post about (ATM) financial
transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#6
Somewhat a result of the above, a researcher was paid to sit in the back
of my office for nine months, taking notes on how I communicated. They
went with me to meetings, got copies of all my incoming and outgoing
email and logs of my instant messages. The material was used for
corporate research report, Stanford phd thesis (joint with language
and computer AI) and some number of papers and books. somewhat related
posts mentioning computer mediated conversation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc
In Aug76, Tymshare corporation (a vm370-based commercial online
time-sharing service bureau) made its computer conferencing facility
"free" to the SHARE organization. Archive here:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/
The discussion flow, layout, and mechanics appear very similar to existing WEB-based implementation (modulo being strictly character based and no fancy graphics or images).
One of my hobbies was supporting the (originally cp67-based but then
moved to vm370) HONE operation (provided online applications for
world-wide sales & marketing, eventually mainframe orders couldn't be
submitted w/o having been processed by HONE). Misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone
This is old email about finally overcoming all the hurdles to get
monthly tape of complete vmshare files and making them available on
internal systems (including world-wide sales & marketing support HONE
sysetms)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#email800318
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#49
Copies of the complete files were eventually hosted on a number of internal systems (besides SJR and HONE). Note that the SJR also hosted something called DATASTAG which provided FTP/anonymous like facility, so anyone on the internal network was able to fetch files from SJR system.
This is (later) old email (from me to Jim) mentioning a VMSHARE entry
speculating about a relational DBMS being made available on VM370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#email800329
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#40
which also includes copy of part of the VMSHARE entry.
For misc. other topic drift, misc. past posts mentioning original
relational/sql implementation done at SJR on vm370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr
and various posts mentioning the internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX? Date: 5 June, 2009 Blog: Mainframe ExpertsA recent discussion on ibm-main (mainframe mailing list that originated on BITNET in the 80s) that is getting quite a bit of activity. misc. past posts mentioning bitnet:
ibm-main mailing list archive:
http://listserv.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
some of my misc. posts in the thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#9 Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#21 Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#23 Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX? (Are settlements a good argument for overnight batch COBOL ?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#26 Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX?
for some topic drift ... some history of LISTSERV ... used for bitnet
mailing list
http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv-history.asp
It was somewhat done in response to demand and knowledge that
something similar had been done earlier on the internal corporate
network ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
and that Tymshare had in Aug76 started providing free use of its
(vm370-based) online computing conferencing capability to (IBM
customer mainframe) SHARE organization ... reference:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/
We had long mainframe background ... see above references and then got into unix workstations & clusters. As a result we got invited in to participate in some of the early discussions looking at justification for USS.
The big issue for UNIX was that it represented hardware independence for customers ... freeing them from traditional proprietary hardware and in theory allowed customers to treat hardware as commodity ... being able to easily move between different hardware platforms.
This was in the time frame of aix/370 ... ucla's locus (unix compatible) productized as aix/370 & aix/386 with transparent distributed computed (sort of the unix "SAA" ... supposedly transparent to the user whether application ran on 386 or 370 ... with some caveats, executing application could transparently migrate between systems; both between same architecture and different architecture).
For a little (DB2) RDBMS topic drift ... recent "Online Computer
Conferencing" post in "Greater IBM" network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#29
refers to the original relational/sql implementation System/R ... some
past posts mentioning System/R (all work done on vm370)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr
Above computer conferencing post also refers to old VMSHARE entry mentioning Relational Software doing port of their Oracle software from PDP to VM370.
Eventually, there was technology transfer from SJR to Endicottt for SQL/DS.
This old post mentions Jan92 meeting on cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
one of the people mentioned in the above meeting claimed to have done most of the SQL/DS technology transfer from Endicott back to STL for DB2.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX? Date: 6 June, 2009 Blog: Mainframe Expertsre:
It wasn't my arguments regarding portability/non-proprietary nature of unix ... it was some of the things looked as part of the original investigation into doing USS. As stated, part of the portability/non-proprietary attribute was trivially moving to the cheapest/commodity hardware.
Some of the older mainframe issues are highlighted in this discussion
about auto industry (x-over from Greater IBM threads)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#2
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#3
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#10
in the early 90s, the auto industry had C4 taskforce looking at leveraging technology to significantly remake how they did business ... and various technology vendors were invited participate (people from both corporate mainframe & corporate workstation groups participated).
One of the things raised in the C4 taskforce was that the industry new model cycle was on the order of 6-8 yrs elapsed time ... compared to foreign competition that had 1st reduce elapsed time to 3yrs and were then working on 18month cycle (possibly currently might be done in under 12months). This offered enormous competitive advantage being significantly more agile and being able to react to changing consumer preferences, market conditions, and/or leverage new technology. At the time, I somewhat chided the mainframe group because they were on similar elapsed time product cycle.
Somewhat related is this (ibm-main) post mentioning somebody from the
disk division making a presentation in the late 80s at the world-wide
annual communication group conference ... and starting out the
presentation with the statement that the head of the communication
group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#1
As you mentioned, in the late 90s/early 00, the mainframe group managed to completely remake their business ... something that the US auto industry has had a much harder time achieving.
As mentioned in the above post ... there was speculation that part of
transferring the cluster scale-up work, announcing it as a numerical
intensive only product, and telling us that we couldn't work on
anything with more than four processors ... is analogous to the long
ago foreign auto import quotas to reduce competition (at the time, the
mainframe DB2 group made some observation that we were at least five
years ahead of where they were) ... also mentioned in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#10
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX? Date: 6 June, 2009 Blog: Mainframe Expertsre:
I had spent some amount of time in '84/'85 time-frame on generalized design for arbitrary 370 processor engine boards and speciality engine boards in the same configuration.
Some of it was based on getting blamed for clone controller work I did
as undergraduate in the 60s. I had tried to get the 2702 to do both 1)
terminal recognition (2741, 1052, tty/ascii) and 2) baud rate
recognition. I was able to do the first but not the second. This
contributed to the univ. starting a clone controller project, reverse
engineering the channel interface, building channel interface board
for Interdata/3 and programming Interdata/3 to emulate 2702 ... but
with added capability supporting baud rate recognition (allowing a
single "rotory" dial-in number for all terminals). misc. past posts
about clone controllers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm
In the 74/75 time-frame I got enticed to do something with the 370
115/125 product. The base product had nine-port memory bus supporting
up to nine engines all the same. Standard product had one engine
loaded with 370 microcode and the rest of the installed engines loaded
with various control unit functions. My task was to design support for
up to five of the engines being loaded with 370 microcode (would look
like 5-way SMP). I put a lot of stuff in the microcode having to do
with dispatching tasks on engines (a little like the later intel 432
design) and some added offload stuff out in the disk controller engine
(for real-time queue management). The problem was that they wanted it
billed as a vm370-only product (little of the flavor of current
logical partition) ... in a period where the corporate kill-vm370 was
at particular high point ... so the effort was terminated before we
ever shipped. misc. posts mentioning the effort
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bounce
After that was killed, got dragged into the "logical machine" effort
(still middle 70s) which was a 16-way smp using 370/158 engines. This
also had very much logical partition flavor ... and was going great
guns until somebody let slip to the head of POK that it would be at
least a decade or two before the favorite son operating system would
ever have 16-way support (some number of us were then invited to never
show up in POK again). Lots of past posts mentiong SMP and/or
invention of the compare&swap instruction:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp
In any case, going into the mid-80s, doing design for arbitrary mix of
processors (370 and specialty engines) was a natural ... a past post
referencing the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#17 mainframe and microprocessor
One of the issues in doing ha/cmp product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
and cluster scale-up ... some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa
was that 801 was dead set against cache consistency and shared memory
operation ... which forced things into cluster solution for
scale-up. I've periodically commented that lots of 801 & risc design
was to go to the opposite extreme of the failed future system project
... misc. past posts mentioning future system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
... which was a project in the early 70s to complete replace all 360/370 ... in much the same way that 360/370 replace the generation of computers that had come before.
lots of past posts mentioning 801, risc, romp, rios, somerset, power,
power/pc, fort knox, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801
and misc. old 801-related email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#801
some overlap between the 16-way smp project and the 801 project ... was that there was an advance technology symposium in POK in 76 time-frame where both projects had presentations (I remember somebody from the 801 project making statements about how difficult it would be for us to build 16-way support).
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Every network should be required to have a minimum level of security before connecting to the Internet. Date: 6 June, 2009 Blog: Information SecurityWe had been called in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server ... and they had also invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted to use. The result is now frequently called "electronic commerce".
One of the fundamental criteria for "SSL" for electronic commerce was that the initial connection to the merchant webserver use "SSL". Almost immediately, internet merchants found that SSL was degrading their thruput by 85-95% ... and they almost immediately dropped back to only using "SSL" for checkout/pay ... which violates basic, implicit assumptions regarding "SSL" use.
We also drew up a whole list of other things for things like use of RDBMS, mandatory FBI background checks for all merchant employees having any access to the webservers ... and some number of other things ... all of which were "ignored".
Part of this "electronic commerce" effort also included something
called a payment gateway .... something that sat on the internet and
provided gateway between merchant webservers and financial network
... some past posts mentioning payment gateway (had requirement for
lot of integrity for connecting of financial infrastructure to the
internet):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway
for the fun of it, we also periodically claim the effort was the original SOA
for other topic drift ... past posts mentioning work on the original
relational/sql implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Data-sniffing trojans burrow into Eastern European ATMs Date: 6 June, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityData-sniffing trojans burrow into Eastern European ATMs
from above:
The malware logs the magnetic-stripe data and personal identification
number of cards used at an infected machine and provides an intuitive
interface for retrieving the information using the ATM's receipt
printer, according to analysts
... snip ...
Related x-over in this news item (from both Information Security and Payment Systems):
Online Banking's Innate Security Flaw
http://information-security-resources.com/2009/06/03/online-bankings-innate-security-flaws/
and some comments archived here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#14
another article
Cybercriminals refine data-sniffing software for ATM fraud; The malware, which steals PINs and card data, works on ATMs running Windows XP
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/060509-atm-malware-spreading-around-the.html
Cybercriminals Refine Data-sniffing Software for ATM Fraud
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/166085/cybercriminals_refine_datasniffing_software_for_atm_fraud.html
update
ATM malware spreading around the world, researcher says
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=security&articleId=9134013&taxonomyId=17&intsrc=kc_top
from above:
SpiderLabs has received information that similar malware has been
found on ATMs now outside of Eastern Europe, Henwood said.
In March, security vendor Sophos found it had captured three ATM
malware samples customized to target machines made by Diebold, around
the same time SpiderLabs saw its first sample.
... snip ...
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler) Subject: Re: SEs & History Lessons Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: 7 Jun 2009 10:29:16 -0700zoswork@GMAIL.COM (P S) writes:
yes, sorry ... i somewhat elided for the part about it originally being for branch office hands-on experience (later turning into onlne world-wide sales & marketing support ... majority of applications implemented in APL)
some amount of old email regarding HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#hone
HONE was one of my hobbies ... originally started out being cp67
clone of the cambridge science center cp67 system ... misc.
past posts mentioning cp67
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
csc/vm (&/or sjr/vm) posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#cscvm
and eventually science center got a 370 and I moved a lot of stuff from
cp67 to vm370 and started doing internal highly-modified vm370
distributions for internal datacenters ... including HONE ... some old
email references
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 continued after transferring to the west cost
... with csc/vm becomming sjr/vm (or sometimes sjj/vm)
... some old email references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#email800501
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#email830705
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#email830709
about the time I transferred to west coast, HONE consolidated the US HONE datacenters in the bay area, so also spent quite a bit more time on-site there.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: SEs & History Lessons Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: Sun, 07 Jun 2009 15:51:26 -0400re:
Early on, the HONE cp67 systems, deployed csc/vm cp67 (large body internal/csc changes) with a subset of the "H" system updates.
Before 370 virtual memory was announced there was a joint distributed development project between Cambridge Science Center and Endicott (leveraging network link) to provide 370 virtual machines under cp67 (running on 360/67). This required a cp67 virtual machine option to specify 370 virtual machine (rather than 360 virtual machine). The full set of "H" updates provided full 370 virtual memory architecture support ... allowing development and test of virtual memory operating systems prior to availabiilty of 370 virtual memory hardware.
A subset of these changes were built for HONE, that only provided the announced 370 features (add-ons to 360, w/o unannounced virtual memory support) ... allowing branch office people to test 370 "versions" of (non-virtual memory) operating systems on HONE.
However, (cms/apl) APL "AIDS" applications for sales & marketing support
started being deployed on HONE ... eventually crowding out all other
activity. By the time HONE migrated from cp67(H) to vm370 ... all of the
activity with virtual operating systems had evaporated. Extract from
some number of reference cards, including (HONE APL) '73 AIDS Reference
summary card
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#3 HONE, Aid, misc
Now this is reference about some amount of SMP activity ... including a
project for doing (real) 16-way SMP in the 70s ... that was going great
guns until somebody leaked to the head of POK that it would be a decade
or two before the favorite son operating system supported 16-way SMP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#32
There was standard work on vm370 SMP product support ... but HONE with its computational intensive (APL) workload needed to upgrade their 168-3 to multiple processors as soon as possible ... so I did a flavor of my VM370 distribution with SMP support before there was a vm370 product release support. With the consolidation of US HONE datacenters in the bayarea ... they had a large loosely-coupled 168-3 configurations (with custom single-system-image support) ... which were then upgraded to 168APs (aka dasd farm with "8-tail" support ... allowing up to eight 168APs, 16 processors, having single-system image).
as mentioned in the above referenced post about ("real") 16-way SMP ... the POK favorite son operating system managed to convince the corporation to kill vm370 product (because they needed all the vm370 developers to be able to make the mvs/xa delivery scheduled). Endicott eventually managed to save the product mission, but they had to reconstitute a development group essentially from scratch.
The various corporate repeated attempts to kill vm370 also created a lot of problems at HONE. Starting about the time of HONE datacenter consolidation in the bayarea ... there was an approx. two year cycle; 1) somebody from branch office would get promoted to head up the organization that contained HONE, 2) they would eventually get a presentation and realize to their great dismay that HONE was a vm370 system, not the favorite son operating system, 3) they would mandate that HONE be converted to favorite son operating system, 4) everybody would stop what they were doing and diligently work on attempting a conversion, 5) the conversion would eventually fail, 6) things would almost return to normal, 6) but it was almost time to get another new executive and the cycle would be repeated.
By this time, essentially the same vsapl code ran on vm370 and the favorite son operating system ... so in theory it should have been possible ... however there is the old saying about "in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but ..."
In the early 80s, there was Earthquake concern about the bayarea and so a HONE datacenter was replicated first in Dallas and then another in Boulder, with single-system-image, load-balancing, and fall-over (between three sites).
Starting in the late 70s ... in attempt to (again) enable some branch
office "hands-on" ... there were 370/148 (moving to 4341) "DEMO" vm370
systems installed for each of the (US) regions ... some past posts
with details:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#4 HONE, ****, misc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#7 HONE, ****, misc
misc. past posts mentioning cp67-h effort ... along with cp67-i ... cp67 system modified to run with 370 virtual memory architecture instead of 360/67 virtual memory architecture. cp67-i systems ran regularly in cp67-h virtual machines for a year before the first 370 virtual memory hardware became available ... then cp67-i was the main system running on such hardware for quite a period.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#0 HONE was .. Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#31 determining memory size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#27 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#50 IBM 3614 and 3624 ATM's
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#59 intel's Vanderpool and virtualization in general
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#17 DOS/360: Forty years
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#18 Exceptions at basic block boundaries
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#39 Behavior in undefined areas?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#50 virtual 360/67 support in cp67
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#27 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#38 Is VIO mandatory?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#7 About TLB in lower-level caches
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#5 3380-3390 Conversion - DISAPPOINTMENT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#21 Virtual Virtualizers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#26 Mainframe Limericks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#19 Source maintenance was Re: SEQUENCE NUMBERS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#1 Materiel and graft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#45 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#49 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#3 IBM sues maker of Intel-based Mainframe clones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#20 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#12 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#16 when was MMU virtualization first considered practical?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#74 GETMAIN/FREEMAIN and virtual storage backing up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#23 GETMAIN/FREEMAIN and virtual storage backing up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#68 EXCP access methos
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#69 EXCP access methos
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX? Date: 7 June, 2009 Blog: Greater IBM Connectionre:
the internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet from just
about the beginning until possibly late 85 or early 86 ... some past
posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
a little x-over about getting blamed for online computer conferencing
on the internal network in the late 70s and early 80s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#29 Online Conferencing
There was a Nov81 Datamation article mentioning the activity
... somebody found a copy and typed in an extract (included in the
above) which has reference to the "Wheeler Scheduler". I had done a
lot of work on dynamic adaptive scheduling as undergraduate in the 60s
... which was included in cp67. In the morph from cp67 to vm370, a lot
of things were simplified, including dropping the "Wheeler
Scheduler". Some number of customers at SHARE were lobbying for
re-introduction ... which eventually happened as a separate "Resource
Manager" product. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
as referenced, 23Jun69 unbundling announcement started charging for
application software, but a case was made that kernel/supervisor
software should still be free. past posts mentioning unbundling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle
A major motivation for future system effort was countermeasure to
clone controllers (mentioned in above) to achieve such high
integration (and completely replace 360/370) ... quotes/article
reference in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#0
The future system effort allowed 360/370 hardware & software product pipeline to nearly run dry (since future system was going to be completely replace 360/370). In the failure of future system, there was mad rush to get products back into the product pipeline. Part of that was to simultaneous start (overlapped) 370-xa (3081) and 303x. I had somewhat pan'ed "future system" activity (inmates in charge of the institution) and continued work on 370. The mad rush to find stuff, contributed to picking up some of my stuff and incorporating as standard product as well as release of the "resource manager".
The distraction of the "future system" is claimed to have contributed to allowing clone processor vendors to gain foothold in the market. This then apparently motivated the decision to also charging for kernel/supervisor software ... and my "resource manager" was selected as the initial guinea pig for kernel software charging (I had to do spend some amount of time with business people regarding software charging policies)
The POK favorite son operating system also eventually made the case that they needed the people in the vm370 development group in order to make the mvs/xa develivery schedule. The result was killing the vm370 product, closing the vm370 development location in Burlington Mall and moving all the people to POK. Endicott eventually made the case to preserve the vm370 product, but they then had to reconstitute a development group from scratch.
The 16-way SMP project was going great guns until somebody leaked to the head of POK that it would be a decade or two before the favorite son operating system had support. Then some number of people were invited to no longer appear at the POK plant site.
303x was
1) "channel director", 370/158 engine with integrated channel microcode (and no 370 microcode)
2) 3031, 370/158 engine with 370 microcode (and no integrated channel microcode), reconfigured to operate with 303x channel director in separate box (sort of specialized two-processor system)
3) 3032, 370/168 reconfigured to operate with 303x channel director
4) 3033, started out with 168 wiring diagram mapped to 20% faster chip technology. The chips also had ten times more circuits per chip, but they (initially) went unused. During the development there was some redoing of the design to leverage higher circuit density achieving higher throughput with more "on-chip" use; eventually reaching 50% more thruput than 168.
Part of invitation for some people to no longer appear at the POK plant site was having interested some of the processor engineers (working on 3033) in the 16-way SMP project (to participating in their spare time).
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX? Date: 7 June, 2009 Blog: Mainframe Expertsibm-main discussions have been known to wander a little ... archived pieces of mine in the thread
archives (back to 2005) at ua.edu
http://listserv.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
ibm-main mailing list originated on bitnet in the 80s. some number of
bitnet mailing lists were eventually gatewayed as usenet news groups
... google archive of bit.listserv.ibm-main at google (back to 91)
http://groups.google.com/group/bit.listserv.ibm-main/about
i'm barely listed in the top ten posters so far this month
http://groups.google.com/group/bit.listserv.ibm-main/about
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: My Vintage Dream PC Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:01:34 -0400Patrick Scheible <kkt@zipcon.net> writes:
370 TOD clock, 64 bits, high 32bits/word was slightly more than second (1024/1000) resolution, 4billion seconds, a little over 140 yrs. definition was that low word bit 51 was microsecond ... but architecture defined that clock should tic on the order of machine instruction time (slower machines tic'ed less often than faster machine ... as long as they maintain the operation with respect to bit 51 microsecond ... tic'ing slower than once every microsecond ... or tic'ing up to rate of 1/4096 microsecond).
more recently has added extended TOD clock ... that has 103 bits (another 40
bits for finer resolution) ...
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/dz9zr003/4.6.1.4?SHELF=&DT=20040504121320&CASE=
from above:
The TOD clock can be inspected by executing STORE CLOCK, which causes bits 0-63 of the clock to be stored in an eight-byte operand in storage, or by executing STORE CLOCK EXTENDED, which causes bits 0-103 of the clock to be stored in bytes 1-13 of a 16-byte operand in storage. STORE CLOCK EXTENDED stores zeros in the leftmost byte, byte 0, of its storage operand, and it obtains the TOD programmable field from bit positions 16-31 of the TOD programmable register and stores it in byte positions 14 and 15 of the storage operand. The operand stored by STORE CLOCK EXTENDED has the following format: _____ _____________________________ __________ | | |Programm- | |Zeros| TOD Clock |able Field| |_____|_____________________________|__________| 0 8 112 127... snip ...
in theory, the one byte zeros prefix could be used to extend period to 36,000+ yrs.
I've periodically contended that some amount of TCP/IP congestion control algorithms being window-based rather than rate-based ... was because of the terrible timer facilities available on many platforms during the 80s & 90s (needing resolution down around millisecond level). Window-based flow control was left over from point-to-point communication links ... matching up producer and consumer buffers. Rate-based methodology can better take into account a whole lot more conditions ... rather than the more primitive window-based methodology.
In the late 80s, slow-start was an attempt to adapt window-based flow control to complex networks ... however in the same time frame as publication of slow-start ... there were also studies showing that complex, high-speed networks, slow-start can be non-stable (in part because returning ACKs can bunch up, when they arrived, several windows open up, resulting in producer/sender generating several back-to-back transmissions ... overloading intermediate network nodes).
Did some amount of work on rate-based in the 80s ... both with HSDT
project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt
as well as XTP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#xtphsp
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:24:50 -0400greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
but with respect to 30's depresssion ... some amount of blame is placed
on GLBA repeal of Glass-Steagall. As other references ... I have done
some amount of work with the scan'ed copy of the Glass-Steagall (Pecora)
hearings, from pg. 7281 of hearings:
BROKERS' LOANS AND INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION
For the purpose of making it perfectly clear that the present
industrial depression was due to the inflation of credit on brokers'
loans, as obtained from the Bureau of Research of the Federal Reserve
Board, the figures show that the inflation of credit for speculative
purposes on stock exchanges were responsible directly for a rise in
the average of quotations of the stocks from sixty in 1922 to 225 in
1929 to 35 in 1932 and that the change in the value of such Stocks
listed on the New York Stock Exchange went through the same identical
changes in almost identical percentages.
... snip ...
there is a correspondence between the speculation in the real-estate market leveraging (ARM) loans from non-depository institutions (which used securitization as source of funds) and the speculation in the '20s stock market using brokers' loans.
On one-side was the unregulated, non-depository institutions able to leverage securitization as source of funds ... as well as being able to "buy" triple-A ratings for the frequently toxic instruments, significantly increasing the ability to sell them off. Being able to get triple-A ratings and immediately sell-off the loans (no matter how bad), eliminated motivation to pay attention to borrowers' qualification and/or loan quality. Speculators then found no-documentation, no-down, 1% payment-only ARMs quite attractive, since carrying cost was less than real-estate inflation in many parts of the country (in fact, the speculation further fueled the inflation, at least until the bubble burst).
On the other side has been the regulated, depository institutions able to leverage their investment banking arms (courtesy of repeal of Glass-Steagall) to buy up these (triple-A rated) toxic securitized loans and carry them off balance. The circuitous route of the transactions, besides skirting regulations, also generated significant fees, commissions, and bonuses for the individuals involved (especially compared to equivalent traditional regulated loan origination).
The current scenario is requiring enormous correction in the real-estate speculation bubble as well as cleaning up the corresponding enormous toxic assets that are being carried off-balance by major large financial institutions.
misc. past posts mentioning Brokers' loans
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#28 I need insight on the Stock Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#77 Who first mentioned Credit Crunch?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#8 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#40 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#27 US banking Changes- TARP Proposl
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#38 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#49 Is the current downturn cyclic or systemic?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#53 What every taxpayer should know about what caused the current Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#56 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#65 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#5 Do the current Banking Results in the US hide a grim truth?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#22 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#25 The Paradox of Economic Recovery
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#29 Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: 20 Years Ago Today: Birth of the Dot-Com Era Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:42:21 -040020 Years Ago Today: Birth of the Dot-Com Era
from above:
"In those days, the Internet consisted of regional networks, who were
mostly non-profit cooperatives, and the government funded 'NSFNet'
backbone which linked them up," writes Templeton, a friend of many
years' standing.
... snip ...
misc. past posts mentioning NSFNet:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet
and some old NSFNet related email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
for other drift ... SLAC (slac vm370 system) first webserver outside
cern/europe
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml
GML had been invented at the science center in 1969 and then
standardized as SGML in the late 70s ... misc. past posts mentioning
GML, SGML, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml
CMS script command did document formatting using "dot" commands
... somewhat from similar/earlier CTSS command. After, GML was
invented, support for GML tag processing was added to script. Waterloo
had done a clone of the cms command ... webpage tracking evolution
from SGML into HTML at CERN:
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: China dominates NSA-backed coding contest Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:19:19 -0400China dominates NSA-backed coding contest
from above:
But the fact remains: Of 70 finalists, 20 were from China, 10 from
Russia and two from the U.S
... snip ...
some old threads:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#50 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#57 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#61 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#6 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#7 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#34 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#35 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#52 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#68 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#42 Experts: Education key to U.S. competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#13 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#22 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#20 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#21 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#22 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#15 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#18 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#22 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#23 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#32 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#15 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#18 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#31 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#78 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#80 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#82 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#16 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#19 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#20 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#25 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#38 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#39 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#44 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#45 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#51 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#71 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#39 competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#52 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#55 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#57 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#60 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#62 competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#73 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#81 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#83 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#87 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#6 Science and Engineering Indicators 2008
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#13 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#78 Move over US -- China to be new driver of world's economy and innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#22 Study Finds Sharp Math, Science Skills Help Expand Economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#60 China overtakes U.S. as top Web market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#62 China overtakes U.S. as top Web market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#65 China overtakes U.S. as top Web market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#70 Study Finds Sharp Math, Science Skills Help Expand Economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#1 The Workplace War for Age and Talent
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX? (Are settlements a good argument for overnight batch COBOL ?). Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:22:25 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
recent item somewhat related to "electronic commerce" ...
20 Years Ago Today: Birth of the Dot-Com Era
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/166302/20_years_ago_today_birth_of_the_dotcom_era.html
from above:
"In those days, the Internet consisted of regional networks, who were
mostly non-profit cooperatives, and the government funded 'NSFNet'
backbone which linked them up," writes Templeton, a friend of many
years' standing.
... snip ...
i.e. tcp/ip was the technology basis for the modern internet, NSFNet backbone was the operational basis for the modern internet (inter-networking networks), and CIX was the business basis for the modern internet.
misc. past posts mentioning NSFNet:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet
and some old NSFNet related email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
for other drift ... SLAC (slac vm370 system) first webserver outside
cern/europe (some mainframe content):
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml
GML had been invented at the science center in 1969 and then
standardized as SGML in the 70s ... misc. past posts mentioning GML,
SGML, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml
CMS script command did document formating using "dot" commands
... somewhat from similar/earlier CTSS command. After, GML was invented,
support for GML tag processing was added to script. Waterloo had done a
clone of the cms command ... webpage tracking evolution from GML/SGML
into HTML at CERN:
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/
above includes references to Waterloo SCRIPT GML User's Guide.
science center also responsible for virtual machines ... 1st cp40 on
specially modified 360/40 with virtual memory hardware and then morphed
into cp67 for 360/67.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
science center also responsible for technology used for the internal
network (which was larger than arpanet/internet from just about the
beginning until possibly late-85/early-86)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:29:30 -0400greymausg writes:
their possible explanation, 1/2 of the production project specialists reach
retirement age in period 2007-2010 ... so limit/cut-back on projects that
take 7-8yrs elapsed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#42 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#63 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#43 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
yesterday there was repeat of periodic comment that US has 4% of the population but consumes 25% of world energy production. to bring rest of just the existing world population up to US levels would require nearly order of magnitude increase in total world energy production.
the dooms day starvation scenarios from the 60s was supposedly averted by "green revolution" ... significant increase in food production brought about by heavy leveraging artificial fertilizers (heavily dependent on petroleum production).
maybe see a larger scale version of law of unintended consequences with heavy fed. subsidy of corn-based ethenol ... driving up food prices (competition for corn) ... although corn-based ethenol production costs are significantly higher than other kinds of ethenol.
i guess there is powerful corn farm lobby ... can't imagine as powerful
as the financial institution lobbying that resulted in legislation
action a decade ago that is significant behind for current financial
mess ($250m in contributions in session that repealed Glass-Steagall,
$2B in contributions in session that passed TARP ... total of $5B in
contributions in the period) ... recent rant:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#40 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: dynamic allocation Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:16:33 -0400frank.swarbrick@EFIRSTBANK.COM (Frank Swarbrick) writes:
misc. past posts mentioning unbundling (motivated by gov. litigation),
although company made case it should only application software
... system/kernel software should still be free.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle
nearly decade later also decided that kernel/system software
was no longer free ... happened about the time I was going to
release "resource manager" ... and got tapped to be the guinea
pig ... and had to spend some time with business people about
policies for kernel/system software charging.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
then came the OCO battles ... about no longer shipping source.
in the middle of the OCO-battles ... I did a large application all in rexx (except 120 lines of assembler) ... in part, just so source would have to be shipped.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:44:49 -0400Bernd Felsche <berfel@innovative.iinet.net.au> writes:
signature debit & credit cards have similar fees for merchant and similar fraud rates. signature debit has about 15 times the fraud rate as pin-debit ... but some more recent technology has started to have significant attacks on pin-debit.
in theory, pin-debit is multi-factor authentication ... from 3-factor
authentication model
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#3factor
• something you have
• something you know
• something you are
where pin-debit is both something you have (magstripe card) and something you know (PIN). Typically multi-factor authentication being considered more secure has assumption that the different factors have independent compromises. there are attacks on ATM-machines that allow the magstripe and the PIN to be skimmed/copied at the same time (invalidating the assumption about independent compromises).
note that some number of pin-debit cards are also enabled for signature debit ... i.e. an attacker copies just the magstripe of a pin-debit card ... that has never been used w/o the PIN ... but the attacker then uses the copied magstripe information to create a counterfeit card and uses it for signature debit.
possibly because of the fees associated with signature debit ... it takes some effort to get a financial institution to issue a pin-debit only card. walmart and other merchant institutions won class-action legal action earlier this decade regarding some of the issues.
lots of past posts mentioning fraud, exploits, vulnerabilities, threats,
risks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#fraud
some recent posts about technology attacks (possibly buffer overflow)
on monitors (in some number of ATM-machines) that installs software
that captures both the magstripe & PINs ... and making the information
available to crooks:
Windows XP cash machines can steal your PIN
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/25484/53/
ATM Malware Spreading Around the World
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20090605/tc_pcworld/atmmalwarespreadingaroundtheworld
ATM malware spreading around the world, researcher says
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=security&articleId=9134013&taxonomyId=17
ATM Malware Spreading Around the World
http://www.cio.com/article/494341/ATM_Malware_Spreading_Around_the_World
ATM malware spreading around the world
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/062309-germany-saudi-arabia-muscle-into.html
ATM Malware Spreading Around the World
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/166189/atm_malware_spreading_around_the_world.html
ATM malware spreading around the world, researcher says
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9134013
IT Story Cybercriminals Refine ATM Data-Sniffing Software
http://it.slashdot.org/story/09/06/04/1424210/Cybercriminals-Refine-ATM-Data-Sniffing-Software?from=rss
Malware steals atm accounts and pin codes
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1184568/malware-steals-atm-accounts-pin-codes
Hacked ATMs let criminals steal cash, PINs
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39660339,00.htm
ATM security leaves customers vulnerable to hackers
http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry2097.html
Global ATMs affected by malware claims researcher
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsID=117060&pagtype=samechan
Global ATMs hit by malware claims researcher
http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/security/cybercrime/news/index.cfm?RSS&newsid=15111
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Cyber crime 'more profitable than drugs' Date: 11 June, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityCyber crime 'more profitable than drugs'
from above:
Keynote speakers at the opening day of the Australian High Tech Crime
Conference in Sydney said cyber crime now generated over $US100
billion ($A126.53 billion) globally a year, making it more profitable
than the illegal drug trade.
.. snip ...
a few articles on the subject from nov2005
Cybercrime Profits Outpace Drug Trafficking
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/47559.html
Expert: Cyber-crime Yields More Cash than Drugs
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1893592,00.asp
Expert: Cyber-crime Yields More Cash than Drugs
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1893916,00.asp
Cybercrime now outstrips drug trafficking
http://www.cw360asp.com/Articles/2005/11/29/213190/Cybercrimenowoutstripsdrugtrafficking.htm
Cybercrime 'more lucrative' than drugs
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/29/cybercrime/
Cybercrime profits exceed those of drugs, expert says
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20051129/RTICKERB29-2/TPTechnology/
Cybercrime more profitable than drugs
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?NewsID=4881
Cybercrime pays off more than drug trafficking, security expert says
http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,106574,00.html
Cybercrime yields more cash than drugs
http://news.com.com/Cybercrime+yields+more+cash+than+drugs/2100-7348_3-5973918.html
Cybercrime 'more lucrative' than drugs
http://www.theregister.com/2005/11/29/cybercrime/
Cybercrime 'more lucrative' than drugs
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/11/29/cybercrime/
Cybercrime more profitable than illicit drug sales?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051129-5648.html
There was some data on lexis/nexis several years ago on cybercrime ... drug crime data is lot more available
lots of cybercrime involves financial institutions and they are very publicity adverse about such details (frequently insiders are involved which further reduces motivation for publicity regarding such incidents) ... during the financial sector critical infrastructure protection meetings a decade ago ... none of the financial institutions wanted to divulge information for (non-public) information sharing (even after getting assurances that none of the information would be subject to FOIA)
The "expert" in the above references was giving a talk to a large audience in the middle east ... and reuters picked up their comment and it spread around the world.
It is extremely difficult to come up with open/public data supporting the statement.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: See the 1.4 second journey of a card payment Date: 11 June, 2009 Blog: Payment Systems NetworkSee the 1.4 second journey of a card payment
from above:
See the 1.4 second journey of a card payment slowed to two minutes. If
you don't think technology touches all of our lives every day then
watch this video.
... snip ...
We had been called in to consult with small client/server startup that
wanted to do payment transactions on their server ... and they had invented
this technology called SSL they wanted to use. We had to "beef" up SSL
a little with mutual authentication as part of the webserver to
something called a payment gateway ... misc. past posts mentioning the
payment gateway.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway
the gateway could be thought of as a large store controller/concentrator with lots of check-out lanes (all the webservers on the internet). The avg. round-trip time at the gateway was frequently on the order of 300 milliseconds. The elapsed roundtrip time at the webserver tended to depend on the internet path between the webserver and the gateway.
The small client/server startup had a webstore with fast link into internet near backbone and only a couple hops away from the payment gateway.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery? Date: 12 June, 2009 Blog: Greater IBM Connectionsort of law of unintended consequences
Bond-market rout lifts mortgage cost
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ALL-BUSINESS-Bondmarket-rout-apf-15457158.html
from above:
The Federal Reserve announced a $1.2 trillion plan three months ago
designed to push down mortgage rates and breathe life into the housing
market. But this and other big government spending programs are
turning out to have the opposite effect.
... snip ...
more recent articles about replacing dollar as world reserve currency
Brazil joins Russia, China in eyeing IMF bonds
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/06/10/ap6528981.html
IMF Says New Bonds Not Likely to Be Sold on Secondary Market
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=agVhrizacgk8
China, Russia Line Up To Buy IMF's First Bonds
http://www.rferl.org/content/China_Russia_Line_Up_To_Buy_IMFs_First_Bonds/1750297.html
Russia May Swap Some U.S. Treasuries for IMF Debt
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=ap2Aq3GZySvE
and
Dollar's Reserve Status May Deteriorate, Roubini Says
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aRMZbES7DNFc
from above:
The dollar's status as the world economy's sole reserve currency may
deteriorate, said Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economics
professor who predicted the financial crisis.
... snip ...
A lot of the loans were by unregulated, non-depository loan-origination institutions using securitization as a source of funds. Being able to securitize and immediately sell off the loans eliminated most motivation to pay any attention to borrower qualification and/or loan quality. Being able to pay the rating companies for triple-A ratings on toxic securities, enormously increased the market for those toxic securities (and the amount of money they had available for lending).
Speculators found no-documentation, no-down-payment, 1% payment only ARMs quite attractive since the carrying costs were significantly less than real-estate inflation in many parts of the country (planning on flipping before the loan reset; the speculation was also further fueling the inflation and the anticipated profits ... at least until the bubble bursts)
The (unregulated) investment banking arms of regulated, depository, commercial banks (courtesy of repeal of Glass-Steagall) were providing much of the funds for the unregulated, non-depository loan-origination institutions ... by purchasing the triple-A rated toxic securities and carrying them off-balance. This circuitous funding route, besides skirting much of the regulation, also provided significant increase in the fees, commissions, and bonuses to the individuals involved (compared to more direct, traditional, legacy loan origination).
past posts in thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#56 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#40 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#46 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#28 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:08:09 -0400re:
besides the (direct) consumer charges, "interchange fees" charged merchants are significant ... credit card and signature-debit fees are especially high ... for some merchants, it is their single largest expense.
recent related article on the subject:
Rising Fees Could Be Culprit As Fewer Doctors Accept Credit Cards
http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=2236
recent posts mentioning "interchange fees":
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#7 Payments start-up Noca takes aim at interchange Achilles heel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#59 Tesco to open 30 "bank branches" this year
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#60 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#20 IBM forecasts 'new world order' for financial services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#57 LexisNexis says its data was used by fraudsters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#62 Solving password problems one at a time, Re: The password-reset paradox
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#3 Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#19 Does anyone know of merchants who have successfully bypassed interchange costs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#78 Kansas City Fed Chief Espouses ACH for Debit Card Processing
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:24:16 -0400re:
in the early part of this decade/century there were a number attempts to introduce products that had much higher security for internet payments ... which never reached deployment stage, in large part because of cognitive dissonance between the financial institutions and the merchants.
merchants have been conditioned that "interchange fees" are pegged to risk ... as the risk goes up, the associated "interchange fees" increase significantly. "Card-present", "cardholder-present" interchange fees are lower than "card-not-present", "cardholder-not-present" (MOTO, i.e. mail-order/telephone-order; also applied to internet transactions).
however, for these "much more secure" internet payments products, the financial institutions wanted to increase "interchange fees" above traditional MOTO/CNP ... which merchants wouldn't agree with (they had been conditioned that "much more secure" would result in less risk and lower "interchange fees"; not higher).
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Credit cards Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 09:45:37 -0400Charles Richmond <frizzle@tx.rr.com> writes:
a couple yrs ago, there was an article that said payment transactions represented less than 10% of EU financial institutions' bottom line, but almost 40% for US financial institutions (for some more like 60%).
There has been some look at better uptake for more efficient and more secure payment operations in the EU ... since associated fee reductions have less impact on the institutions' bottom line.
On the other side, there have been some observations that in the UK, financial infrastructure managed to have the "burden of proof" placed on the consumer in payment transactions disputes ... which significantly lowers expense ... compared to the US where "burden of proof" is on the financial institution (bottom line is gross revenue minus overhead/expense).
the following posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#23 Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#25 The Paradox of Economic Recovery
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#36 Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis
happend to reference this article ... which uses the term
Accounting Changes Not Factored into the Stress Tests
http://seekingalpha.com/article/139173-accounting-changes-not-factored-into-the-stress-tests
from above:
The new FASB accounting changes will force banksters to move roughly
$1 trillion in "off balance sheet assets" onto their balance
sheets. These "assets" have been hidden off-balance sheet precisely
to allow the bankers to avoid write-downs on them, avoid having to
increase bank reserves to meet statutory requirement -- and avoid
putting aside additional loan-loss reserves.
... snip ...
another aspect of the above, article referenced in this post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#28 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
Bank Profits From Accounting Rules Masking Looming Loan Losses
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=alC3LxSjomZ8
from above:
Bogus Profit
Citigroup's $1.6 billion in first-quarter profit would vanish if
accounting were more stringent, says Martin Weiss of Weiss Research
Inc. in Jupiter, Florida. "The big banks' profits were totally
bogus," says Weiss, whose 38-year-old firm rates financial
companies. "The new accounting rules, the stress tests: They're all
part of a major effort to put lipstick on a pig."
... snip ...
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Merchant Groups Ask for Broad Changes in Letter to PCI's Overseer Date: 12 June, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityMerchant Groups Ask for Broad Changes in Letter to PCI's Overseer
from above:
They're mad as hell, but whether they're going to take it any more
isn't quite as clear. That's the essence of a letter seven merchant
trade groups sent Tuesday to the PCI Security Standards Council and
the five general-purpose payment card networks.
... snip ...
We had been called in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server, they had also invented this technology called SSL they wanted to use. The result is now frequently called "electronic commerce".
Somewhat as a result, 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 (ALL, i.e. debit,
credit, stored-value, ACH, point-of-sale, internet, unattended,
transit turnstyle, face-to-face, high-value, low-value, aka
ALL). As part of the activity, there was detailed
end-to-end threat and vulnerability studies of the different
environments. One of the areas identified was the extreme ease the
information from previous transactions (skimming, evesdropping,
data breaches, or even insiders) can be used for fraudulent
transactions. The result was the x9.59 financial transaction standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
One of the things done in X9.59 standard, was rather than trying to hide the information ... it slightly tweaked the paradigm to make the information useless to crooks for performing fraudulent transactions. It didn't do anything to prevent skimming, evesdropping and data breach attacks ... it just eliminated those activities as a threat or vulnerability (since the information could no longer be used by crooks for performing fraudulent transactions).
Now, the largest use of SSL in the world today is this earlier "electronic commerce" activity that uses encryption to hide transaction information ... but is no longer necessary for x9.59 transactions.
There have been a number of metaphors to characterize the current situation/paradigm:
• security proportional to risk; in the current paradigm, the value of the information to the merchant is the profit on the transaction (possibly a couple dollars) and the value of the information to the processor can be a few cents per transaction ... while the value of the information to the crooks can be the credit limit and/or account balance (the crooks attacking the infrastructure may be able to outspend the merchant & processor defenders by a factor of one hundred times)
• dual-use vulnerability; in the current paradigm, the knowledge of the account number may be sufficient to perform a fraudulent transaction (effectively authentication, as such it needs to be kept confidential and never divulged anywhere) ... while at the same time the account number needs to be readily available for a large number of business processes. The conflicting requirements (never divulged and at the same time readily available) has led to comments that even if the planet was buried under miles of information hiding encryption, it still couldn't prevent information leakage.
A dual-use account paradigm analogy would be a userid/password scheme ... where there is no password and the userid must be made to do double duty ... used for lots & lots of processes (requiring it to be readily available) and at the same time used for authentication (requiring it to be kept confidential and never divulged).
An example would be requiring the userid to be publicly available for email purposes (i.e. email wouldn't be able to work w/o knowledge of the userid) ... but at the same time, knowledge of the userid would allow anybody to take over your account and impersonate you.
So all email headers (containing a userid) have to be kept encrypted and completely hidden so that it is never divulged ... but at the same time ... people needing to send you email have to know your userid.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:42:29 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#17 REGULATOR ROLE IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT FINANCIAL SCANDALS
references this article
25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis; Phil Gramm
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877330,00.html
from above:
He played a leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the
1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated
commercial banks from Wall Street. He also inserted a key provision
into the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that exempted
over-the-counter derivatives like credit-default swaps from regulation
by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Credit-default swaps took
down AIG, which has cost the U.S. $150 billion thus far.
... snip ...
the repeal of Glass-Steagall (GLBA or Bank Modernization Act) contributed significant to both the real-estate bubble as well as the current banking & lending mess ... and both Enron & AIG are laid at the door of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.
Number one on the time list of 25 people to blame for the financial
crisis:
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877339,00.html
more recent news item:
SEC charging ex-Countrywide CEO Mozilo with fraud
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090604/ap_on_bi_ge/us_sec_mozilo
misc. past posts mentioning the time list
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#38 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#39 'WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#49 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#53 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#55 Who will give Citigroup the KNOCKOUT blow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#65 is it possible that ALL banks will be nationalized?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#10 Who will Survive AIG or Derivative Counterparty Risk?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#28 I need insight on the Stock Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#61 Quiz: Evaluate your level of Spreadsheet risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#63 Do bonuses foster unethical conduct?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#0 What is swap in the financial market?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#8 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#13 Should we fear and hate derivatives?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#35 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#29 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#38 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#51 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#53 What every taxpayer should know about what caused the current Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#5 Do the current Banking Results in the US hide a grim truth?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#7 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#33 Treating the Web As an Archive
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#76 Undoing 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act
misc. past posts referencing PBS program (much of the detail are on the
web pages) looking at people and events leading to repeal of
Glass-Steagall:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#58 HONEY I LOVE YOU, but please cut the cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#84 what was the idea behind Citigroup's splitting up into two different divisions? what does this do for citigroup?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#36 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#48 The blame game is on : A blow to the Audit/Accounting Industry or a lesson learned ???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#49 US disaster, debts and bad financial management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#52 What has the Global Financial Crisis taught the Nations, it's Governments and Decision Makers, and how should they apply that knowledge to manage risks differently in the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#53 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#54 In your opinion, which facts caused the global crise situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#60 OCR scans of old documents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#73 What can we learn from the meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#80 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#0 Audit II: Two more scary words: Sarbanes-Oxley
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#10 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#20 Decision Making or Instinctive Steering?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#29 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#36 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#38 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#42 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#44 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#55 Who will give Citigroup the KNOCKOUT blow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#65 is it possible that ALL banks will be nationalized?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#10 Who will Survive AIG or Derivative Counterparty Risk?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#59 Quiz: Evaluate your level of Spreadsheet risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#63 Do bonuses foster unethical conduct?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#77 Who first mentioned Credit Crunch?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#8 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#27 US banking Changes- TARP Proposl
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#31 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#38 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#43 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#49 Is the current downturn cyclic or systemic?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#53 What every taxpayer should know about what caused the current Financial Crisis
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Publisher of Geek's Atlas to help save Bletchley Park Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:51:37 -0400Publisher of Geek's Atlas to help save Bletchley Park
from above:
O'Reilly Media, publishers of The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science
& Technology Come Alive will be donating the money to efforts underway
by the Bletchley Park Trust Fund to save the site where the Enigma code
was broken during World War II
... snip ...
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Credit cards Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:20:24 -0400greymausg writes:
article about UK handling of credit & debit disputes
http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2008/01/23/financial-ombudsman-losing-it/
there have also been articles about UK consumers are now suppose to report
card fraud to their financial institutions ... not to the police. It is
up to the financial institution to decide whether it is fraud and
whether to contact the police ... article on the subject:
http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2009/03/19/national-fraud-strategy/
semi-related thread about whether or not cybercrime (in large part involves
financial institutions ... aka the line about asking bank robbers why
they rob banks ... and the answer is that is where the money is) is
more profitable than drugs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#47 Cyber crime 'more profitable than drugs'
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: In the USA "financial regulator seeks power to curb excess speculation." Date: 12 June, 2009 Blog: Government Policyre:
I've been doing some amount with the scan of the early 30s
Glass-Steagall (Pecora) hearings, from pg. 7281:
BROKERS' LOANS AND INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION
For the purpose of making it perfectly clear that the present
industrial depression was due to the inflation of credit on brokers'
loans, as obtained from the Bureau of Research of the Federal Reserve
Board, the figures show that the inflation of credit for speculative
purposes on stock exchanges were responsible directly for a rise in
the average of quotations of the stocks from sixty in 1922 to 225 in
1929 to 35 in 1932 and that the change in the value of such Stocks
listed on the New York Stock Exchange went through the same identical
changes in almost identical percentages.
... snip ...
there is a correspondence between the speculation in the real-estate market leveraging (ARM) loans from unregulated, non-depository loan-origination institutions (which used securitization as source of funds) and the speculation in the '20s stock market using brokers' loans.
One one-side was the unregulated, non-depository loan origination institutions able to leverage securitization as source of funds ... as well as being able to "buy" triple-A ratings for the frequently toxic securities, significantly increasing the ability to sell them off. Being able to get triple-A ratings and immediately sell-off the loans (no matter how bad), eliminated motivation to pay attention to borrowers' qualification and/or loan quality. Speculators then found no-documentation, no-down, 1% payment-only ARMs quite attractive, since carrying cost was less than real-estate inflation in many parts of the country (planning on flipping before the rates adjusted; in fact, the speculation further fueled the inflation, at least until the bubble burst).
On the other side was unregulated investment banking arms (courtesy of GLBA and repeal of Glass-Steagall) of regulated depository institutions, buying the (triple-A rated, toxic) securities and carrying them off-balance. The circuitous route of the transactions, besides skirting regulations, also generated significant fees, commissions, and bonuses for the individuals involved (especially when compared to traditional, legacy loan-origination).
The collapse of the real-estate speculation bubble is still going on (analogous to the '29 stock market collapse). However, on the other side, there are the large financial institutions still holding trillions of dollars in these toxic securities ... which also have to adjust.
Also, part of the current scenario is what happened in the credit market when the market realized that it was possible to "buy" triple-A ratings ... for securities that weren't necessarily triple-A.
Barney Frank Backs Off
http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/04/barney-frank-defers-opinions-contributors-regulation.html
from above
The crisis did not begin when Lehman failed; it began in the summer of
2007 with the markets' sudden realization that the triple-A ratings on
asset-backed securities were not accurate. The resulting loss of
confidence in ratings was a powerful external shock to the market,
causing a collapse in trading of all asset-backed securities. That
market is still frozen, and the Fed's efforts to revive it through
TALF have not borne fruit.
... snip ...
In the congressional hearings into the rating agencies last fall, several times it was said that both the issuers/sellers and the rating agencies knew that the securities weren't worth the triple-A ratings ... but it was possible to "buy" such ratings anyway. The triple-A ratings enormously increased the amount of such toxic securities that could be sold and therefor the amount of money available to unregulated, non-depository loan-origination institutions (coupled with the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the unregulated investment banking arms of regulated depository institutions buying them up).
misc. recent posts mentioning the credit market freezing up:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#52 Future of Financial Mathematics?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#3 Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#10 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#36 Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#49 IBM to Build Europe, Asia 'Smart Infrastructure'
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Credit cards Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2009 08:02:43 -0400sidd <sidd@situ.com> writes:
... well the ongoing refrain is that the majority of fraud has always involved insiders.
slight drift
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#47 Cyber crime 'more profitable than drugs'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#79 The $4 trillion housing headache
besides loss of value ... real-estate, stocks, 401Ks, retirement funds, there is
The $4 trillion housing headache; House prices have returned to 2002
levels, but mortgage debt hasn't deflated from its bubbly highs.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/27/news/mortgage.overhang.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009052716
from above:
To get the mortgage debt-to-GDP ratio down to a more normal level such
as the 46% average of the 1990s, Americans would have to cut their
mortgage debt to $6.6 trillion from $10.5 trillion at the end of
2008. The last time the national mortgage debt count was below $7
trillion was 2003, according to Federal Reserve data.
... snip ...
and periodic refrain in this response/discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#57 In the USA "financial regulator seeks power to curb excess speculation."
and then the "other side", large financial institutions holding large amounts of the toxic asset-backed securities off-balance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#28 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
Bank Profits From Accounting Rules Masking Looming Loan Losses
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=alC3LxSjomZ8
from above:
Bogus Profit
Citigroup's $1.6 billion in first-quarter profit would vanish if
accounting were more stringent, says Martin Weiss of Weiss Research
Inc. in Jupiter, Florida. "The big banks' profits were totally
bogus," says Weiss, whose 38-year-old firm rates financial
companies. "The new accounting rules, the stress tests: They're all
part of a major effort to put lipstick on a pig."
... snip ...
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Credit cards Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2009 08:13:15 -0400re:
oh, & past reference to comments after S&L crisis, about executives in
heavily regulated environment would have difficult time finding
employment anywhere else (since they are just required to go thru the
motions dictated by regulations) ... when reserves were cut in half and
the executives had to decide what to do with all that money ... they had
no experience on which to base decisions.
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 Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: In the USA "financial regulator seeks power to curb excess speculation." Date: 12 June, 2009 Blog: Government Policyre:
recent article on the real-estate speculation side of the subject:
The $4 trillion housing headache; House prices have returned to 2002
levels, but mortgage debt hasn't deflated from its bubbly highs.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/27/news/mortgage.overhang.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009052716
from above:
To get the mortgage debt-to-GDP ratio down to a more normal level such
as the 46% average of the 1990s, Americans would have to cut their
mortgage debt to $6.6 trillion from $10.5 trillion at the end of
2008. The last time the national mortgage debt count was below $7
trillion was 2003, according to Federal Reserve data.
... snip ...
and the large (regulated, depository) financial institution side with all those off-balance toxic assets (courtesy of the repeal of Glass-Steagall and their unregulated investment banking arms)
Bank Profits From Accounting Rules Masking Looming Loan Losses
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=alC3LxSjomZ8
from above:
Bogus Profit
Citigroup's $1.6 billion in first-quarter profit would vanish if
accounting were more stringent, says Martin Weiss of Weiss Research
Inc. in Jupiter, Florida. "The big banks' profits were totally bogus,"
says Weiss, whose 38-year-old firm rates financial companies. "The new
accounting rules, the stress tests: They're all part of a major effort
to put lipstick on a pig."
... snip ...
The Man Who Beat The Shorts
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1117/114.html
from above:
Watsa's only sin was in being a little too early with his prediction
that the era of credit expansion would end badly. This is what he said
in Fairfax's 2003 annual report: "It seems to us that securitization
eliminates the incentive for the originator of [a] loan to be credit
sensitive. Prior to securitization, the dealer would be very concerned
about who was given credit to buy an automobile. With securitization,
the dealer (almost) does not care."
... snip ...
Bernanke Says Crisis Damage Likely to Be Long-Lasting
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=arpJXeelvfY4&refer=home
from above (something of an understatement):
Bernanke said the packaging and sale of mortgages into securities
"appears to have been one source of the decline in underwriting
standards" because originators have less stake in the risk of a loan.
... snip ...
Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt
from above:
The bundling of consumer loans and home mortgages into packages of
securities -- a process known as securitization -- was the biggest
U.S. export business of the 21st century. More than $27 trillion of
these securities have been sold since 2001, according to the
Securities Industry Financial Markets Association, an industry trade
group. That's almost twice last year's U.S. gross domestic product of
$13.8 trillion.
... snip ...
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home
from above:
So investors betting for quick solutions to the financial crisis could
be disappointed. The tangled web that banks wove over the years will
take a long time to undo.
At the end of 2008, for example, off-balance-sheet assets at just the
four biggest U.S. banks -- Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc.,
JPMorgan Chase Co. and Wells Fargo Co. -- were about $5.2 trillion,
according to their 2008 annual filings.
... snip ...
if these had been traditionally originated loans by the regulated depository institutions carried "on the books", there would have been lots more due diligence; however (courtesy of repeal of Glass-Steagall), they could have their unregulated investment banking arms buy up triple-A rated toxic asset-backed securities ... packaged and sold by unregulated non-depository loan-origination institutions.
25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis; Phil Gramm
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877330,00.html
from above:
He played a leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the
1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated
commercial banks from Wall Street. He also inserted a key provision
into the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that exempted
over-the-counter derivatives like credit-default swaps from regulation
by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Credit-default swaps took
down AIG, which has cost the U.S. $150 billion thus far.
... snip ...
If You Think the Worst Is Behind Banks, Read This
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/05/12/if-you-think-the-worst-is-behind-banks-read-this.aspx
from above:
Don't confuse what that's saying: In terms of losses and writedowns,
the next 18 months are expected to be worse than the preceding 18
months.
... snip ...
Gramm and the 'Enron Loophole'
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/business/17grammside.html
from above:
Enron was a major contributor to Mr. Gramm's political campaigns, and
Mr. Gramm's wife, Wendy, served on the Enron board, which she joined
after stepping down as chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading
Commission.
... snip ...
Phil Gramm's Enron Favor
https://web.archive.org/web/20080711114839/http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-01-15/news/phil-gramm-s-enron-favor/
from above:
A few days after she got the ball rolling on the exemption, Wendy
Gramm resigned from the commission. Enron soon appointed her to its
board of directors, where she served on the audit committee, which
oversees the inner financial workings of the corporation. For this,
the company paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in stocks and
dividends, as much as $50,000 in annual salary, and $176,000 in
attendance fees,
... snip ...
Greenspan Slept as Off-Books Debt Escaped Scrutiny
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=home&sid=aYJZOB_gZi0I
from above:
That same year Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and SEC
Chairman Arthur Levitt opposed an attempt by Brooksley Born, head of
the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to study regulating
over-the-counter derivatives. In 2000, Congress passed a law keeping
them unregulated.
... snip ...
Born must have been fairly quickly replaced by Gramm's wife, before she left to join Enron.
In the wake of Enron, Congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley ... placing much of the responsibility on SEC ... but didn't do anything about the underlying problem (which then resulted in AIG).
Possibly because GAO, also didn't think that SEC was doing much
... they started a database of financial filings with problems (which
supposedly should have been prosecuted by SEC ... at least under SOX)
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-06-1079sp
from above:
The database consists of two files: (1) a file that lists 1,390
restatement announcements that we identified as having been made
because of financial reporting fraud and/or accounting errors between
July 1, 2002, and September 30, 2005, and (2) a file that lists 396
restatement announcements that we identified as having been made
because of financial reporting fraud and/or accounting errors between
October 1, 2005, and June 30, 2006.
... snip ...
Sarbanes-Oxley supposedly also had SEC doing something about the rating agencies (found to be "selling" triple-A ratings for toxic asset-backed securities) ... but there didn't appear to be anything except this report:
Report on the Role and Function of Credit Rating Agencies in the
Operation of the Securities Markets; As Required by Section 702(b) of
the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
http://www.sec.gov/news/studies/credratingreport0103.pdf
In the recent congressional hearings into Madoff Ponzi scheme, there was testimony by somebody that had been trying unsuccessfully for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff. Their repeated refrain was that while there was requirement for additional requlation, much more important was the need for visibility and transparency (fraud flourishes where there is lack of transparency) . They also mentioned that statistics show that "tips" expose 13 times more fraud than audits and that SEC has no "tips" hotline ... but SEC does have a hotline for corporations to complain about too vigorous audits/investigations.
we had been called in to consult with a small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server ... and they had invented this technology called SSL they wanted to use. The result is now frequently referred to as "electronic commerce".
Somewhat as a result, in the mid-90s, we were asked to participate in
the x9a10 financial standard working group that had been given the
requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure
for all retail payments (ALL as in debit, credit, stored value,
point-of-sale, attended, unattended, internet, low-value, high-value,
transit turnstyle, aka ALL). The result was the x9.59 financial
transaction standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
Somewhat as a result, we were asked in to NSCC (since merged with DTC to be DTCC) to look at doing something similar for all trader operations. Fairly early that was suspended apparently because a side-effect would have significantly increased transparency and visibility in trader operations ... and that apparently isn't part of their culture.
misc. recent posts mentioning NSCC/DTCC:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#35 The recently revealed excesses of John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, while the firm was receiving $25 Billion in TARP funds makes me sick
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#65 What can agencies such as the SEC do to insure us that something like Madoff's Ponzi scheme will never happen again?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#80 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#1 Audit II: Two more scary words: Sarbanes-Oxley
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#36 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#53 Are the "brightest minds in finance" finally onto something?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#45 Artificial Intelligence to tackle rogue traders
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#67 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#29 Transparency and Visibility
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#23 Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX? (Are settlements a good argument for overnight batch COBOL ?)
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: 30 years of the spreadsheet Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:47:03 -040030 years of the spreadsheet
from above:
The early name for the programme was actually 'Calcu'edger' but that was
dismissed for its associations with traditional bookkeeping and
accounting. Despite VisiCalc now sounding somewhat dated, the name does
the job of emphasising the visual nature of the program.
... snip ...
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Urban transportation Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2009 09:29:05 -0400Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
the old timers on the B&M lamented about the days when top speed was 65mph on the route ... but track maintenance hadn't been done in decades and speed limit in some places was 5mph and you could stick your finger through the railroad ties
washington seems to be having an increasing number of outages/interruptions.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2009 12:11:37 -0400Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
there was article about light rail in south san jose ... study pegged break-even ridership to elapsed commute time ... then in cost savings mechanism they cut several off-grade crossings ... now there are traffic intersection between trolliess and autos ... which results in exceeding elapsed commute time necessary for (break-even) original justification.
there was community group in coyote valley that successfully lobbied that the 6-lane 101 hiway project from san jose to gilroy ... should be reduced to 4-lanes thru coyote valley. the result was enormous traffic jams in the morning going north where it reduced from 6->4 lanes at Cochran and in the evening going south (about at hiway 85 intersection) at corresponding reduction from 6->4 lanes. There was some estimate that added possibly 20 minutes commute per day for tens of thousands of commuters. Some suggestion that an annual bill for all that "lost" time be sent to the coyote valley community group (say ten thousand person-hrs/day at $10/hr ... maybe $100k/day, $500k/week)
recent item:
Mathematicians Take Aim At 'Phantom' Traffic Jams: New Model Could Help
Design Better Roads
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090608151550.htm
some past posts/threads on items mentioned in the above article:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#17 If there had been no MS-DOS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#46 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#29 Penn Central RR computer system failure?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#36 Penn Central RR computer system failure?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#12 sorting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#34 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#18 Traffic Jam Mystery Solved By Mathematicians
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#5 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#20 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#64 Shockwave traffic jam recreated for first time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#68 Historian predicts the end of 'science superpowers'
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Weak security enables credit card hacks Date: 12 June, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityWeak security enables credit card hacks
from above:
And while you may take steps to protect yourself against identity
theft, an Associated Press investigation has found the banks and other
companies that handle your information are not being nearly as
cautious as they could.
... snip ...
somewhat related to the metaphors in the PCI news item discussion:
"Merchant Groups Ask for Broad Changes in Letter to PCI's Overseer"
... part of which is archived here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#53
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Was there ever a 10in floppy? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:58:40 -0400ArarghMail906NOSPAM writes:
inventors.about.com page
http://inventors.about.com/od/computersandinternet/a/FloppyDisk.htm
wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_floppy_disk
old post about research project for low-cost, high-capacity disk storage
using 200 floppies all spinning on common drive and read/write head arm
that moved to selected floppy (a little like a lathe).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#25 Computer Artifacts
old email getting a floppy drive in 3880 controller (follow-on to
3830) that could both read & write floppies (used for microcode
development & test) ... one of my hobbies was getting to play
disk engineer over in bldg. 14&15:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email791010c
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#17 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
couple other past posts also mentioning floppy:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#7 What is microcode?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#42 Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#27 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#1 Has anyone ever used self-modifying microcode? Would it even be useful?
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Was there ever a 10in floppy? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:05:35 -0400for other topic drift ... recent news item:
DataSlide reinvents hard drive; 64 parallel read-write heads
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/15/dataslide_berkeleydb/
from above:
Instead an ultra-thin, 2-dimensional array of 64 read-write heads,
operating in parallel, is positioned above an piezo-electric-driven
oscillating rectangular recording surface, and delivers 160,000 random
IOPS with a 500MB/sec transfer rate.
... snip ...
old email mentioning design for 16+2 head that read/write 16 tracks in
parallel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#email871230
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#30 Why magnetic drums was/are worse than disks ?
and other old email in the above post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#email871122
other old posts mentioning 16+2 head that read/write 16 tracks in
parallel:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#21 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#38 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#52 Drums: Memory or Peripheral?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#23 Bulkiest removable storage media?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#64 Toshiba Boosts Hard Drive Density By 50%
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: 30 years of the spreadsheet Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:41:40 -0400RyanMcCoskrie <ryan.mccoskrie@NOSPAMgmail.com> writes:
in that sense, there was quite a large amount of APL use for various kinds of business modeling (& other) applications that later moved to spreadsheets
misc. past posts mentioning APL and lots of its use migrated to
spreadsheet when it became available:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#49 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#45 IBM's Workplace OS (Was: .. Pink)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#27 Could CDR-coding be on the way back?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#2 Z/90, S/390, 370/ESA (slightly off topic)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#44 Withdrawal Announcement 901-218 - No More 'small machines'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#0 HONE was .. Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#66 Mainframe Spreadsheets - 1980's History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#4 Mainframe Spreadsheets - 1980's History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#8 The IBM 5100 and John Titor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#7 IBM operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#25 Wars against bad things
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#53 history books on the development of capacity planning (SMF and RMF)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#59 intel's Vanderpool and virtualization in general
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#63 Moving assembler programs above the line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#11 Moving assembler programs above the line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#1 Single System Image questions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#15 Exceptions at basic block boundaries
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#30 auto reIPL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#34 Not enough parallelism in programming
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#20 address space
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#23 Seeking Info on XDS Sigma 7 APL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#28 Why these original FORTRAN quirks?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#32 IBMLink 2000 Finding ESO levels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#53 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#54 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#64 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#31 Wylbur and Paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#20 Does anyone know of a documented case of VM being penetrated by hackers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#77 Sizing CPU
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#17 Newbie question on table design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#19 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#65 Non-Standard Mainframe Language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#23 GETMAIN/FREEMAIN and virtual storage backing up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#36 IBM THINK original equipment sign
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#42 APL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#0 How did the monitor work under TOPS?
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Weak security enables credit card hacks Date: 15 June, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Securityre:
the referenced metaphor comments includes drawing analogy between current infrastructure and a userid/password paradigm w/o any passwords ... so the userid has to do double duty as both necessary for lots of processes (like knowing your userid is necessary for sending you email) as well as (something you know) authentication (requiring the userid to be kept completely confidential and never divulged to anybody).
more news items:
Credit Card Processors Fail To Ensure Security For Consumers
http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1705445/credit_card_processors_fail_to_ensure_security_for_consumers/index.html
Weak security opens door to credit card hacks
http://www.technologyreview.com/wire/22845/
misc. other recent posts mentioning various metaphors regarding current
payment paradigm:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#76 Blinkenlights
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#59 Can Smart Cards Reduce Payments Fraud and Identity Theft?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#53 21 million German bank account details on black market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#10 Data leakage - practical measures to improve Information Governance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#60 The 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#13 US credit card payment house breaches by sniffing malware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#15 It's Me, and Here's My Proof: Why Identity and Authentication Must Remain Distinct
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#62 Study: Data breaches continue to get more costly for businesses
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#69 PCI Compliance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#36 PCI security rules may require reinforcements
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#57 Data masking/data disguise Primer 1) WHY
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#10 Top 10 Cybersecurity Threats for 2009, will they cause creation of highly-secure Corporate-wide Intranets?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#11 Top 10 Cybersecurity Threats for 2009, will they cause creation of highly-secure Corporate-wide Intranets?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#20 Online Banking's Innate Security Flaws
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Urban transportation Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:39:50 -0400Michael Wojcik <mwojcik@newsguy.com> writes:
heavy snow bothered me more than cold wind ... longfellow bridge, snow plows kicking the snow up on the sidewalk; picking your way thru blocks of compacted snow ... elevated about 2-3ft above the sidewalk; so on one side ... it slopes down into traffic and on the other side ... center of gravity is well above barrier keeping you from going into the charles.
22mins walk (between 545tech sq & north station) was keeping track of when the next train departed from north station ... get involved in working and check the train schedule for next departing train ... sometimes get distracted and miss the last train ... so continue thru the night and catch one of the morning trains home (the other end was only about 20 min walk).
effectively nearly identical whether longfellow bridge or science museum bridge. back then lechmere was large paved field (parking lot) with warehouse bldg. in the middle.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: A Guide for Full Field Background Checks Date: 17 June, 2009 Blog: Payment Systems NetworkA Guide for Full Field Background Checks
We had been called in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server ... and had invented this technology called SSL they wanted to use, the result is now frequently referred to as "electronic commerce".
As part of that we specified a number of additional things that we
felt should be required for doing electronic commerce webserver ... as
well as some additional things regarding how SSL was used between
webservers and something called the "payment gateway" (we periodically
refer to as the original SOA) ... misc. past posts referring to the
"payment gateway" work
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway
Because of the large percentage of financial fraud & identity theft involving insiders ... we proposed that every person having any kind of access to webservers (and/or participation in webserver software) should have full FBI background check. Obviously that would have drastically driven up the cost of being able to deploy ecommerce webservers.
In any case, somewhat because of the "electronic commerce" work, 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 (i.e. ALL, like debit, credit, stored-value, ACH,
point-of-sale, attended, unattended, transit turnstyle, internet,
high-value, low-value, i.e. ALL). Part of that effort involved
detailed, end-to-end threat and vulnerability studies of the various
environments. A major identified exploit was the ease in which
information from previous transactions could be leveraged by crooks
(including insiders) for fraudulent transactions. So (in part having
rejected the proposal that everybody involved in "electronic commerce"
in anyway what so ever be required to have full FBI background check)
... a slight tweak was made to the current paradigm to eliminate the
usefulness of that information to crooks for the purpose of fraudulent
transactions. Misc. references to the resulting X9.59 financial
standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
Some archived discussions regarding recent news items on the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#14 Online Banking's Innate Security Flaws
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#20 Online Banking's Innate Security Flaws
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#53 Merchant Groups Ask for Broad Changes in Letter to PCI's Overseer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#64 Weak security enables credit card hacks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#68 Weak security enables credit card hacks
some past posts mentioning wanting FBI background checks for everybody
related to "electronic commerce":
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#20 Some thoughts on high-assurance certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#34 X.509 / PKI, PGP, and IBE Secure Email Technologies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005v.html#4 ABN Tape - Found
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#28 Caller ID "spoofing"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#8 Special characters in passwords was Re: RACF - Password rules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#6 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#9 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#19 Can Smart Cards Reduce Payments Fraud and Identity Theft?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#33 Every network should be required to have a minimum level of security before connecting to the Internet
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Barclays ATMs hit by computer fault Date: 17 June, 2009 Blog: Payment Systems NetworkBarclays ATMs hit by computer fault
from above:
Hardware problem stops customers from withdrawing cash or logging on
to online services
... snip ...
Barclays hardware failure brings down ATMs and online banking
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/06/16/236469/barclays-hardware-failure-brings-down-atms-and-online.htm
HDS drive array failure suspected in bank giant's ATM outage; Red
faces all round after service goes titsup
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/17/barclays_gloucester_outage/
from above:
Yesterday, to its great embarrassment, Barclays' ATM network in the
south of England crashed at 1pm, together with a lot of its online
banking facilities. Functions were not restored until 4.30pm or later,
and thousands of people were caused great inconvenience through not
being able to get cash or manage their bank accounts online.
... snip ...
Disc array fault blamed for Barclays online breakdown
http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=20148
....
HDS acquired (IBM's) San Jose disk drive facility this decade ... for
some topic drift ... long ago and far away, being allowed to play disk
engineer in bldgs. 14 & 15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk
at the same they let me play technology over in bldg. 29 (los gatos
lab) where magnetic stripe standard had been managed in the 60s & 70s
... wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_stripe
bldg. 29 was also where a lot of ATM product work was done:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3624
that was beside various work in SJR/bldg. 28 ... including various
things on original relational/SQL ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr
some related discussion on work to formalize transactions to make it
acceptable to auditors for financial operations:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#27 Father Of Financial Dataprocessing
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Linux versioning file system Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:38:56 -0400"Sarr J. Blumson" <sarr@umich.edu> writes:
clear was used for os360 lineage ... although some number of those products did majority of their stuff (using cms tools) and then were forced to morph them into prescribed tools (JES was major example for a long time).
this became less of a concern to customers after OCO-wars in the early 80s, where company stopped shipping source.
an old folklore from the period was a sensitive gov. agency asked the corporation for the "exact" source corresponding to running MVS product. supposedly there was a $5m investigation that eventually concluded that it wasn't feasible or practical (this was when virtual machine customers were still getting source and building their running systems from the shipped source).
past posts mentioning cms-based source management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#57 line length (was Re: Babble from "JD" <dyson@jdyson.com>)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#58 Card Columns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#47 Slashdot: O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#36 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#30 Status of Software Reuse?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#45 HASP/ASP JES/JES2/JES3
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#5 3380-3390 Conversion - DISAPPOINTMENT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#38 Over my head in a JES exit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#45 sorting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#14 SEQUENCE NUMBERS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#19 Source maintenance was Re: SEQUENCE NUMBERS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#21 Source maintenance was Re: SEQUENCE NUMBERS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#34 Source maintenance was Re: SEQUENCE NUMBERS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#26 Assembler question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#42 vmshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#12 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#11 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#15 Patents, Copyrights, Profits, Flex and Hercules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#3 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#32 What I miss in my OS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#52 TOPS-10
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#48 Book on Poughkeepsie
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#36 SEs & History Lessons
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: A Guide for Full Field Background Checks Date: 17 June, 2009 Blog: Payment Systems Networkre:
Not quite encyclopedia ... some amount is "been there, done that".
not quite including FBI background checks on the software developers ... but
Developers Often Overlooked In Security Training Budgets
http://www.darkreading.com/blog/archives/2009/06/developers_ofte.html
from above:
A good friend was telling me recently about a risk assessment they
were involved in where they had found some vulnerabilities in the web
application. When they asked the developer about them, the response
was, "what is cross site scripting?" Wow! How is it that in this day
and age that someone, who probably considers themselves to be a
competent web developer, does not know what XSS? Ask them about SQL
injection and the response would probably be the same.
... snip ...
for a little topic drift ... lots of past posts mentioning original
relational/SQL effort:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr
and reference to work to formalize transactions to make it acceptable
to auditors for financial operations:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#27 Father Of Financial Dataprocessing
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Administration calls for financial system overhaul Date: 17 June, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityAdministration calls for financial system overhaul
its seems more & more like it will reverse Phil Gramm's legacy:
25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis; Phil Gramm
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877330,00.html
from above:
He played a leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the
1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated
commercial banks from Wall Street. He also inserted a key provision
into the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that exempted
over-the-counter derivatives like credit-default swaps from regulation
by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Credit-default swaps took
down AIG, which has cost the U.S. $150 billion thus far.
... snip ...
The comments this afternoon pointed out that reform has side-stepped merging CFTC with some of the other financial regulatory bodies (consolidation/merger objective of eliminating fragmented oversight that allow fraud activity to slip thru the cracks ... also better able to deal with various kinds of systemic risks).
The (consolidation/merger) problem pointed out is that CFTC comes under a different senate committee than the (other) financial regulatory agencies/bodies and any consolidation/merger would likely offend powerful senate interests.
more detailed discussion (most comments from last week, although there
were references to many of the subjects mentioned today):
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/government-non-profit/government-policy/GOV_GPO/493161-8828223
also archived here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#57
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#60
misc. other
Obama Unveils Financial Regulation Overhaul, Calls for New 'Rules of
the Road'
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/17/obama-administration-unveils-financial-regulation-overhaul/
Obama calls for new 'rules of road' for finance
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090617/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_financial_overhaul
Obama calls for new 'rules of road' for finance
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/06/17/ap6555877.html
Obama spells out major financial rules overhaul
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090617/ap_on_bi_ge/us_financial_overhaul
Obama urges biggest financial reforms since 1930s
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090617/bs_nm/us_financial_regulation
Obama Lays Out 'Sweeping Overhaul' of Financial Rules
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=agyxHDgVXuD4
Obama details broad reform of financial regulation
http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/17/news/economy/regulatory_reform/index.htm?postversion=2009061712
Obama Lays Out 'Sweeping Overhaul' of Financial Rules
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aTkRLjsOkji0
Is Obama's Financial-Reform Plan Bold Enough?
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1905314,00.html
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: IBM's 96 column punch card Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:45:03 -0400hancock4 writes:
for additional drift .. magstripe being invented by ibm and industry
standards managed at the Los Gatos lab;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_stripe
recent posts referencing the above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#6 ATMs At Risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#51 Mainframe Hall of Fame: 17 New Members Added
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#39 PIN Crackers Nab Holy Grail of Bank Card Security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#25 New standard for encrypting card data in the works; backers include Heartland
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#44 Book on Poughkeepsie
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#55 Book on Poughkeepsie
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#71 Barclays ATMs hit by computer fault
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Tiny-traffic DoS attack spotlights Apache flaw Date: 20 June, 2009 Blog: Information Security NetworkTiny-traffic DoS attack spotlights Apache flaw
from above:
Rather than bombarding a site with traffic, Slowloris manages to hold
a webserver's available connections open by sending partial http
requests.
... snip ...
in the early days of webservers nearly 15yrs ago ... there were attacks involving half-open tcp sessions killing servers.
About the same time, increasing webserver activity exposed a problem with most tcp/ip implementations. TCP sessions were assumed to be long-lived ... HTTP (mis-)using TCP sessions for transactions like activity was creating enormous number of FINWAIT entries ... which were being linearly scanned, consuming 95+% of processor time.
for other historical ... 1st webserver outside cern/europe was the
SLAC (virtual machine) system:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml
and story of HTML evolving from GML
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/
GML was invented at the science center in 1969 ... and decade later
standardized as SGML.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml
Science center was also responsible for virtual machine system
... lots of past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
past posts mentioning half-open tcp sessions:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#48 Language based exception handling. (Was: Did Intel pay UGS to kill Alpha port? Or Compaq simply doesn't care?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#49 Language based exception handling. (Was: Did Intel pay UGS to kill Alpha port? Or Compaq simply doesn't care?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#42 TCP channel half closed
past posts mentioning FINWAIT:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#1 Early tcp development?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#164 Uptime (was Re: Q: S/390 on PowerPC?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#52 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#3 The demise of compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#14 index searching
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#39 CDC6600 - just how powerful a machine was it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#45 M$ SMP and old time IBM's LCMP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#12 Possible to have 5,000 sockets open concurrently?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#33 A Speculative question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#50 Question about Unix "heritage"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#46 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#70 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#42 TCP channel half closed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#13 RFC 2616 change proposal to increase speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#21 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#36 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#33 X.509 and ssh
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#2 Hey! Keep Your Hands Out Of My Abstraction Layer!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#37 Curiosity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#11 What part of z/OS is the OS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#38 Problem with TCP connection close
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#28 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#36 Making tea
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#7 IBM in Talks to Buy Sun
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Financial Regulatory Reform - elimination of loophole allowing special purpose institutions outside Bank Holding Company (BHC) oversigh Date: 20 June, 2009 Blog: Payment Systems Network25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis; Phil Gramm
from above:
He played a leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the
1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated
commercial banks from Wall Street. He also inserted a key provision
into the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that exempted
over-the-counter derivatives like credit-default swaps from regulation
by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Credit-default swaps took
down AIG, which has cost the U.S. $150 billion thus far.
... snip ...
The lobbying and speeches in congress was that a primary purpose of the bank modernization act was to prevent Walmart and M'soft from getting into financial services (although it also repealed Glass-Steagall, which has been a major factor to the current financial mess; some of the regulated financial institutions with unregulated investment banks, courtesy of repeal of Glass-Steagall, have also been reported to have several hundred offshore financial entities ... a significantly larger loophole).
ILCs really came under pressure when Walmart announced that they were going to buy an ILC in order to be their own "acquirer" (i.e. resulting in significant savings in acquiring interchange fees). There was lots of press talking about Walmart also using ILC to become an issuer (even tho Walmart said it had no intention of becoming an issuer).
With reports that Walmart representing 25-30% of total retail store transactions ... becoming their own acquirer ... represents a significant savings on acquiring interchange fees.
With something like 100 million customers, if they were also to become an issuer (despite their claims to the contrary), that would also represent a significant savings on issuing interchange fees .... and for people using such a walmart card in walmart stores ... they would be both the issuer and acquirer ... resulting in "on-us" transactions ... representing a significant savings on association interchange fees.
old ILC news item:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wal-mart-ends-attempt-to-start-bank
above lists large retailers and large auto manufacturers ...in addition to walmart, involved in ILCs.
another article from the period (also references a 2005 GAO report on
ILCs):
http://www.aei.org/outlook/23515
Above gives some comparison between the risks raised by GLBA repeal of Glass-Steagall (regulated depository institutions having unregulated arms) and the risks raised by allowing unregulated commercial entities purchasing regulated ILCs.
Repeal of Glass-Steagall allowed unregulated arms of regulated depository institutions to get into all sorts of risky behavior
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home
from above:
So investors betting for quick solutions to the financial crisis could
be disappointed. The tangled web that banks wove over the years will
take a long time to undo.
At the end of 2008, for example, off-balance-sheet assets at just the
four biggest U.S. banks -- Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc.,
JPMorgan Chase Co. and Wells Fargo Co. -- were about $5.2 trillion,
according to their 2008 annual filings.
... snip ...
GAO ILC report:
Industrial Loan Corporations: Recent Asset Growth and Commercial
Interest Highlight Differences in Regulatory Authority
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-05-621
misc. past posts mentioning walmart
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#12 difference between itanium and alpha
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#34 YKYBHTLW
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#16 AMD to leave x86 behind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#16 Value of an old IBM PS/2 CL57 SX Laptop
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#49 Value of an old IBM PS/2 CL57 SX Laptop
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#1 Greatest Software Ever Written?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#17 Greatest Software Ever Written?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#68 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#10 Record Credit card heist...TJM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#17 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#42 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#47 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#51 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#59 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#68 Poll: oldest computer thing you still use
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#37 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#39 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#0 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#37 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#62 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#77 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#85 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#86 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#7 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#11 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#12 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#59 Tesco to open 30 "bank branches" this year
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#46 Who moved my payment?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#19 Does anyone know of merchants who have successfully bypassed interchange costs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#46 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970