List of Archived Posts

2009 Newsgroup Postings (11/15 - 12/03)

Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
Arpanet
Arpanet
real-time messages
The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
The new coin of the NSA is also the new coin of the economy
Is Cloud Computing Old Hat?
Intel Allows Release of Full 4004 Chip-Set Details
The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Electric Light Orchestra IBM song, in 1981?
big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers
New postal bar code?
Electric Light Orchestra IBM song, in 1981?
Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?
'cloud computing' and 'SAAS'
toolsrun
email
Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?
Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?
Is Cloud Computing Old Hat?
The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
Old datasearches
Old datasearches
Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch
Supercomputers Are Still Fast, but Less Super
Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch
Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch
The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch
Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?
Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch
Amateur Computing Society
Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
toolsrun
The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?
Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Old datasearches
The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Old datasearches
Is C close to the machine?
Is C close to the machine?
The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
Crypto dongles to secure online transactions ... addenda
Crypto dongles to secure online transactions ... addenda
The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Cyber breaches are a closely kept secret
EU agency runs rule over ID cards for online banking logins
Did anybody ever build a Simon?
What ever happened to storing pics with electron cannons?
Did anybody ever build a Simon?
Did anybody ever build a Simon?
spool file tag data
Did anybody ever build a Simon?
spool file data
Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Trade Secrets and Confidential Information
Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
70 Years of ATM Innovation
Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
UNIX turns 40
70 Years of ATM Innovation
Small Server Mob Advantage
Small Server Mob Advantage

Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:50:54 -0500
"Del Cecchi" <delcecchiofthenorth@gmail.com> writes:
That isn't how I remember it. I think the idea of using CD lasers instead of the LEDs that POK used came from Rochester. The guys that did it worked down the hall from me. I do remember the bizarre contortions for Rochester to sell outside. I don't remember Austin being involved unless it was Austin Research Lab. The group in Rochester got moved to the Semiconductor Div for that very reason. Then they got sold to JDS Uniphase which later shut them down so many are back at IBM in Rochester.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#84 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#85 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?

my epiphony to use cdrom components came on trip (mentioned here) to other side of the pacific ... which was also first time to see consumer electronics manufacturing using surface mount technology ....
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#59 MasPar compiler and simulator

and came back pestering to use cdrom components (I don't know if that predated rochester or not) .... i.e. $300 cdrom player was enormously better technology than the 20times that I was paying for T1 modems in HSDT project.

it predated meetings with LLNL and were pushing moving their (ancor) copper to fiber which evolved into FCS standards. this old post mentions LLNL making claims about projected price/FCS-drop in '88 meetings.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

Part of HSDT involved working with cyclotomics ... later bought by kodak (in part because cyclotomics was responsible for lot of the FEC stuff used in cdrom standard):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#66 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#46 Follow up

as per above reference ... some amount of it was reed-solomon ... and HSDT project had fortune to have engineer that had been reed's graduate student at caltech (and did some of the work on reed-solomon ... but would claim that one of his favorite classes was undergraduate at MIT from Anne's father).

In the early to mid-80s ... HSDT was involved in (telco) fiber links, copper links, microwave links and satellite links. HSDT had dedicated transponder in SBS4 and some of our own TDMA earth stations.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

we had a TDMA earth stations built to our spec by a couple different vendors. Somewhere along the way ... one of the vendors informed us that a large national telco had approached them and asked if they (our vendor) would build them (large national telco), a set of stations to the same (HSDT) specs.

random drift from long ago and far away



Embassy of Japan
2520 Massachusetts Avenue
Washington, D.C.
10
To Whom It May Concern:

This letter is to advise you that the following individuals are
employees of the International Bussiness Machines Corporation,
and will be visiting Japan for one week starting Febuary 18, 1985.
Lynn H. Wheeler
xxxx
yyyy
zzzz

The purpose of this visit is to meet representatives of Matsushita
Electric corporation and to tour their facilities in Osaka, Gifu
Nagoya, and Tokyo.

International Business Machines will be responsible for the payment
of all expenses incurred by the aforementioned while on their visit.

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

... and then

Date: 10/21/85 13:41:57
From: wheeler
To: (ucb marketing rep)

is berkeley still interested in pitch/discussion on satellites? How 'bout late next week or preferably sometime the week following? There are some SBS folks coming out the week after next ... and we have tentative plans on going by Cyclotomics in berkeley ... a company that has some forward error correcting hardware ... i believe there is a berkeley professor invovled in the company, E. Berlekamp.


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

It wasn't my first trip to Japan ... including being there in the early 70s ... one of the places I got to go as part of my hobby supporting HONE ... and HONE starting to spread HONE clones around the world.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

in the mid-70s, Endicott con'ed me in to doing 138/148 market planning trips to various places in EMEA and AFE (including Tokyo).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:42:21 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#84 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#85 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#0 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?

random other fiber ramblings from long ago and far away; I had been doing work with NSC & HYPERchannel off & on back to 1980.

Date: 09/21/84 16:59:19
From: wheeler
To: distribution

re: hsdt0918; fyi - we met with various gpd people, lsg, & nsc to discuss the plans for expanding the use of hyperchannel. We discussed the various alternatives to T1/A710s at the 4000'-8000' ... would extended A220<->A220 coax be adviseable. Based on statements about continuing to expand hyperchannel connectivity in the plant site area ... the NSC people finally said that a T4/backbone/fiber-optic system is being beta-tested & is scheduled for next summer. The backbone system will support a T4/fiber-optic cable to a distance of 50 miles, off of which can be hung Hyperchannel & Hyperbus interfaces.


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

Date: 10/12/84 22:00:50
From: wheeler
To: distribution

re: channel attach interface;

talking to some people in c.s., there is apparently a channel attach card that was developed in Tucson for testing control units. It is capable of data streaming at 3 megabytes, fits on a PC card (in a PC), will cost about $150, and sjr c.s. are suppose to have some by the end of the month. Drawback is that it is limited to transfer operations of no more than 8K-byte data blocks.

Now if we can get a 100-280 mbits fiber optic HSLAN on the back end, we can have host attach packet network ... and also hang DNS off of.


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

little later I was also on XTP technical advisery board (although the communication division non-concurred and claimed that I wasn't allowed).



Date: Sun, 13 Nov 1988 11:10:30 PST
From: wheeler
To: internal distribution

re: xtp;
What is XTP?

- reliable end-to-end messaging

• traditional stream, bulk data, reliable datagram
• internet routing
• rate-based flow control
• selective retransmission
• message check-sums in addition to physical
layer's crc

- context orientation
• packetization
• reassembly
• out-of-order reception

- datagram support
• arbitrary size
• reliable multicast

- xtp routing
• real-time frame relay
• uses external routing protocol (eg. dod/ip)
• internal xtp routing tables set by
external routing protocol
• xtp adapts to router technology
developments

- xtp reconfiguration occurs when
• gateway redirects
• gatew failure detected

- current applications
• mission-critical applications
• "just-in-time" manufacturing
• a navy survivable adaptable fiber optic
embedded network (safenet) standard
• USAF modular simulator architecture
(boeing aircraft)
• NSA "doo-dads"

- well suited for fiber-optic communication
• NSFnet

- coast-to-coast LAN bridging
• "blazing" SMDS transport

- Metropolitan networks (802.6)

- Establisment backbones
• heterogeneous co-residency
• existing protocols (XNS, TCP/IP, OSI, 802.2)
• Existing hosts/IWSs

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

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:38:29 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#84 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#85 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#0 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#1 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?

from long ago and far away

Date: WED, 02/11/87 10:43:26 PST
From: wheeler

re: fiber driver; Somebody in Rochester took some compact disk laser drivers and adopted them for fiber. Austin plans are to use them for electrical isolation interface between backplane and external bus. Claims are that the drivers will handle 300mbits ... and they will essential be compact disk prices ... i.e. @$5-$8 ... instead of a couple hundred that IBM east coast is talking about.


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

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Arpanet

Refed: **, - **, - **
Date: 13 Nov 2009 08:00:30 -0800
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Arpanet
MailingList: computers
CJNTEL was sort of an online network query facility that could be cloned at multiple nodes ... and supported query of information (and in some cases updating over the network specific entries).

This old crypto references includes '81 discussion with PGP-like public key email capability ... and using CJNTEL for public repository of public keys
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#crypto

I had been collecting email addresses for my own personal use in the 70s (i've been blamed for online computer conferencing on the internal network in the late 70s and early 80s).

Jim Gray and I also started doing corporate online telephone books (at the celebration for Jim last year, somebody from Tandem talked about Jim doing online telephone book for them and so I got up and talked about Jim and I doing online telephone books before he left). These were also made available on CJNTEL (for those nodes that didn't put up a local repository).

The online telephone books started with getting copies of local site machine readable (source used for generating paper copies) and converting whatever they had to standard format. When this started ... very few sites also carried email addresses in the beginning. So I did some processing that tried to fit entries in site telephone books with information that I had in my personal email nickname file ... as well as allowing authorized users to update entries remotely over the network (originally via cjntel service).

from long ago and far away ... CJNTEL was originally done by somebody at VM node in the "typewriter" division

Date: 04/08/80 09:29:55
To: wheeler
Hi There,

i added you to that auth file with authorization level 9, so you can invoke any/all of the commands including adding other people to it..
xxxxxx informed me that management decided to take cjntel off of tdcsys4, so i updated your tables to make you the master directory, with no other slave systems.. i'm going to sit tight and see what happens as far as other system.. franklin lakes is installing a 3033 this weekend, and has offered to bring up a cjntel system there..
i made a change to the directory routines to allow the 18 byte phone number you suggested, but i havent had a chance to test it out yet.. (i've been buried with other things around here).. but will do that sometime within the next week or so (will have to reformat the directory you have there first).
take care..


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

---
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Arpanet

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Date: 14 Nov 2009 08:04:13 -0800
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Arpanet
MailingList: computers
first couple paragraphs of email from yesterday didn't make it. i was still at asilomar and had to do fiddling to make my origin ip-address come from somewhere else ... and the process lost first couple paragraphs of the message (also "www.galric.com" is "www.garlic.com")

At time of switch-over to internetworking protocols (1/1/83) there was supposedly something like 100 imps (network nodes) and possibly 255 hosts. at that time, internal network was nearing 1000 nodes (hosts & nodes were the same ... more like internet) which it passed a few months later. Moving to internetworking ... removed a lot of inhibitors to growth (costs of imps, administrative restrictions, etc) ... and by late '85 or early '86, number of internet nodes/hosts passed number of internal network nodes/hosts. Part of this was workstations and PCs were starting to appear as nodes/hosts ... which were restricted to "terminal emulation" on the internal network.

I had put up production CJNTEL on SJR in early 1980 ... a little like a distributed whois/name/dns facility for information (possible to do remote queries over the internet). I "seeded" it with email "nickname" file that i maintained that was several thousand entries. misc. old email mentioning CJNTEL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#cjntel

....

other bits and pieces ... I got blamed for online computer conferencing in the late 70s & early 80s on the internal network (resulting in some corporate level "investigations" and I really got hammered ... another one of those situations being told i had no career at the company). Somewhat as a result, there was "TOOLSRUN" application developed for officially sponsored online computer conferencing. Site could put up toolsrun and operate computer conference. Individuals could "subscribed" to toolsrun ... like modern day mailing lists (i.e. listserv which was later developed on the corporate sponsored educational network, BITNET/EARN). However, other sites could put up TOOLSRUN ... and operate their own computer conferences ... and the distributed TOOLSRUNs could be configured to interact more like usenet.

Along with this there was a distribution list "driver" added to the internal network processing (and also made available to the corporate sponsored BITNET/EARN) ... which world optimize the bits transferred on physical wire where there were multiple destinations. This could be used by any application, mailing list distribution, TOOLSRUN distributed operation, distributing copies of the internal online telephone books, etc. recent reference to *LIST driver
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#12 Timeline: The evolution of online communities

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

misc. past posts mentioning bitnet/earn
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

Remote terminal support wasn't part of the original RSCS ... the support came along with "virtual device" support in cp kernel (i.e. application, like networking support, could create virtual device ... like virtual 3270 terminal ... and handle input/output under program control). The person responsible for the internal "VMSG" email client ... also took advantage of it to create PARASITE & STORY applications .... had support for HLLAPI-like operation (appeared later on PCs doing terminal screen-scraping like operations). It was possible to write "scripts" that would do emulated terminals on the local processor. It was also possible to create emulated terminals that would "connect" to the remote terminal operation (PVM) and execute operations on remote machines (under program control). A couple past posts mentioning parasite&store with some example scripts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#35 Newbie TOPS-10 7.03 question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#36 Newbie TOPS-10 7.03 question

---
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

real-time messages

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Date: 15 Nov 2009 07:44:04 -0800
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: real-time messages
MailingList: computers
CP67 had real-time/instant messages on the same computer ... and early VNET was done on CP67 ... at the cambridge science center. Networking ... like most other stuff in virtual machine environment was done in service virtual machines (something like current virtual appliance stuff). However, as CP67 (and later VM370) became pervasive internal online computing use throughout the company, lots of stuff was done at other sites.

The Pisa Science Center originally did the "special message" enhancements for CP67 ... which included ability for virtual machine to capture "messages" under program control (rather than display on terminal). VNET was then enhanced to support "special message" ... to capture real-time/instant messages sent to it. VNET then had support to look at the message and could treat it as operator VNET commands ... but also supported "forwarding" to other VNET nodes for "instant" messages to users on other hosts.

There was some interesting interaction with the product group regarding releasing the "special message" support in VM370. The product group when thru releasing a series of features ... all some subset of the original "special message" capability.

Some number of applications ... showed up both internally and later on BITNET for chat environment.

Also, the capablity was used by <somebody> to implement multi-user spacewar game ... server supporting spacewar clients (w/3270 display) on the same computer ... but also leveraging VNET instant messaging. One of the problems with this early spacewar was somebody did their own client ... and instead of commands being entered at the 3270 keyboard ... they automated the process ... and started blowing away everybody else.

CP67 was done at cambridge science center ... and most of the original VNET work was also done at the cambridge science center. There were ongoing battles with the "official" networking product group ... in part because VNET wasn't "SNA". There are some stories about VNET being able to do some stuff ... specifically because it wasn't SNA. Later part of the 80s, the internal network was eventually moved to SNA. There is folklore about a presentation by communication division executive to the corporate executive committee that unless the internal network was moved to SNA ... it would all implode (somebody happening to have a meeting with one of the members of the corporate executive committee immediately following that presentation ... and being asked whether it was true or not).

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

for the fun of it ... old post with some node activity from 1983
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#8

including list of sites around the world that had one or more new nodes added in 1983 (Pisa is even listed)

One of the difficulties for the internal network was that links had to be encrypted. In some countries there were all sorts of difficulties with country govs. regarding encryption ... especially when they crossed country borders (even tho the links were between internal corporate sites). In the mid-80s, there was some comment that the internal network had over half of the link encryptors in the world.

---
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:17:46 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
http://www.computerhistory.org/events/index.php?id=1246917465

was last night at computer history museum.

i'd come in to the bay area for the first time in couple years (for conference in santa cruz over last weekend) and stayed around in monterey bay area. considered going last night, but couldn't quite get the motivation up for driving back over the hill last night for the event.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#74 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#76 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#77 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

somebody at the weekend conference (and returned over the hill and made it to the 1401 anniversary gala) ... commented that they were-being/had-been sent copy of cp40 (paper) source listing.

there were some number of people from France that did assignments at the cambridge science center in the 60s. one of them recently found the listing cleaning out their attic.

science center had custom hardware modifications for 360/40 supporting virtual memory and implemented virtual machine cp40 system. later when 360/67 with virtual memory support standard became available ... cp40 morphed into cp67.

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

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The new coin of the NSA is also the new coin of the economy

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The new coin of the NSA is also the new coin of the economy
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:08:04 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#64 The new coin of the NSA is also the new coin of the economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#65 The new coin of the NSA is also the new coin of the economy

Map: Water-Powered Computers
http://www.technologyreview.com/article/413984/water-powered-computers/


Rackforce/IBM            Kelowna, BC
Sabey Yahoo              Wenatchee, WA
Maicrosoft Yahoo Intuit  Quincy, WA
Google                   Dalles, OR
Amazon                   Boardman, OR

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Is Cloud Computing Old Hat?

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 16 Nov, 2009
Subject: Is Cloud Computing Old Hat?
Blog: Greater IBM
Is Cloud Computing Old Hat?
http://www.ciozone.com/index.php/Cloud-Computing/Is-Cloud-Computing-Old-Hatu/2.html

.... somewhat related:

Map: Water-Powered Computers
http://www.technologyreview.com/article/413984/water-powered-computers/


Rackforce/IBM:           Kelowna, BC
Sabey Yahoo:             Wenatchee, WA
Maicrosoft Yahoo Intuit: Quincy, WA
Google:                  Dalles, OR
Amazon:                  Boardman, OR

.....

there were a number of (virtual machine) CP67 commercial time-sharing service bureaus formed in the 60s ... then some more in the 70s with vm370 (and/or old cp67 operations migrating to vm370). ... lots of past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

possibly the largest was the internal HONE system ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

started off after the 23jun69 unbundling announcement ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

to provide "hands-on" for branch system engineers (operating systems running in virtual machines). There also started to be deployed a lot of sales&marketing support apps (mostly APL\CMS) ... which came to dominate all HONE activity (and the virtual operating system "hands-on" disappeared). Eventually mainframe orders couldn't be processed w/o having been run through HONE applications ... and clones of HONE datacenters started to crop up all over the world.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Intel Allows Release of Full 4004 Chip-Set Details

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Intel Allows Release of Full 4004 Chip-Set Details
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:09:52 -0500
Intel Allows Release of Full 4004 Chip-Set Details
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/11/16/2020235/Intel-Allows-Release-of-Full-4004-Chip-Set-Details

from above:
For the 38th anniversary of Intel's groundbreaking 4004 microprocessor, the company is allowing us to release new details of their historic MCS-4 chip family announced on November 15, 1971. For the first time, the complete set of schematics and artwork for the 4001 ROM, 4002 RAM, 4003 I/O Expander, and 4004 Microprocessor is available to teachers, students, historians, and other non-commercial users.

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:41:12 -0500
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
I used to watch the airline people make reservations in the old days. "Terse" is probably an understatement. I have a James Martin book on interactive systems from the 60's (IIRC). It would be interesting to dig it out and re-read what he has to say.

they resembled the os/360 operator commands quite a bit; 00,....,...,... possibly same heritage & vintage.

a decade or so ago, we were asked to come in and redo some pieces ... started with "routes" ... which represented something like 25% of the computing load ... and typically accounted for 3-4 of these computer interactions. they also had 10 impossible things that they wanted to do but couldn't. i came back in 2 months with a rewrite that did all ten impossible things ... and had optional GUI that collapsed the multiple interactions into single operation (that was much more intuitive and carried a lot more information).

the ten impossible things appeared to be mostly an artifact of the implementation trade-offs based on the technology in the 60s ... and perpetrated down thru the years. a fresh look at the paradigm and current technology allowed different trade-offs to be made. sort of littered thru the whole infrastructure were trade-offs made because of limited (60s) computer resources ... and having it done manually instead (literially permeating the whole infrastructure starting with how plane routes were represented and maintained). A fresh look, different trade-offs based on 90s computer resources, allowed eliminating enormous number of manual operations that permeated the whole infrastructure ... and then being able to do the 10 impossible things became a trivial side-effect.

then there was a lot of hand-wringing ... and eventually ignoring that we were even called in. behind the scenes manual operations, accounted for several hundred, very highly paid individuals ... that were no longer required. I had wanted to start on "fares" ... which accounted for about 40% of the processing load (nearly double that of "routes") ... but apparently after their experience with "routes" ... they weren't going to allow me near it.

misc. past posts mentioning the "routes" work:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#136a checks (was S/390 on PowerPC?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#20 Competitors to SABRE?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#69 Block oriented I/O over IP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#2 Computers in Science Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#83 Summary: Robots of Doom
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#6 Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#23 Demo: Things in Hierarchies (w/o RM/SQL)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#85 The TransRelational Model: Performance Concerns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#18 RAMAC 305(?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#22 Bidirectional Binary Self-Joins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#41 US Airways badmouths legacy system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#41 Fast and Safe C Strings: User friendly C macros to Declare and use C Strings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#19 American Airlines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#32 CLIs and GUIs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#41 Automation is still not accepted to streamline the business processes... why organizations are not accepting newer technologies?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Electric Light Orchestra IBM song, in 1981?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Electric Light Orchestra IBM song, in 1981?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 17 Nov 2009 06:58:19 -0800
a little topic drift, i seem to remember share ... mid to late 70s ... denver(?)

one of the share officials had a relative/friend(?) in C&W band that had a song involving lyrics "boney fingers" ... which was adapted for describing JES2 ... decade-old post somewhat to the rescue ... earlier recollection was that it was cousin of one of the JES2 committee members
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#117 OS390 bundling and version numbers -Reply

little search engine use turns up original
http://www.songlyrics.com/hoyt-axton/bony-fingers-1974-lyrics/

... disclaimer: my wife did stint in the JES group (among other things was one of the catchers for ASP ... & morph into JES3, also did detailed document for merge of JES2 & JES3 into single offering) ... before being con'ed into going to POK as head of loosely-coupled architecture.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:32:57 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
same time as doing ha/cmp ... i was on XTP technical advisery board. There were some participants in XTP that had somewhat stringent requirements. An example was using XTP for command&control, integrated weapons systems, etc ... on large warships; assumption was that unless completely destroyed ... things would continue to operate (at some level of proficiency) even with repeated/lots of damage as well as potentially high radiation enviornment (something similar for warplanes). things way beyond single point of failure (supporting whatever level of redundancy available).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#78 big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers

minor drift ... recent post in comp.arch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#1 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?

with some old email with xtp overview
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#email881113

also mentions "safenet" (Survivable Adaptable Fiber-optic Embedded NETwork)

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

New postal bar code?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: New postal bar code?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:27:07 -0500
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
It's hopeless. This is one of the reasons I support religous organizations - as a counterweight to government. Of course, if they became strong enough, they'd become the government, and then we'd be in a worse mess. My theory is that this is why the Renaissance was such an inventive age. Especially in Italy, no single organization was strong enough to exercise any effective control.

PBS connections had show on aftermath of plague in europe & advances ... assertion was that so many people died that there were enormous amounts of resources available to survivors. one claim was big jump in printing was all the linen clothes w/o people to wear them ... then was available for linen paper. all the extra resources significantly improved the standard of living for the survivors ... no longer spent as much time at subsistance living ... freeing up a lot of people with extra time to do other things ("over" population effectively has the inverse effect). net was combination of the extra available resources (smaller proportion spent at subsistance living) contributed significantly to shift in creation, acquisition, distribution of knowlege.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Electric Light Orchestra IBM song, in 1981?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Electric Light Orchestra IBM song, in 1981?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 17 Nov 2009 09:11:42 -0800
BillF@MAINSTAR.COM (Bill Fairchild) writes:
It was Dave Thewliss and Anne Ashley, from Kaiser Permanente Health in California, who did a presentation on early MVS performance at the March, 1975 SHARE in Los Angeles. I'm pretty sure that I heard them also do the song in a presentation on their experience in converting to MVS at the August, 1975 SHARE in New York City. I was at the NYC SHARE but not the one in LA. They had rewritten the lyrics of Hoyt Axton's song "Boney Fingers" to commemorate the difficulties encountered in the conversion. Google for "Boney Fingers" and "Thewliss" to find a few more choice tidbits of info on that memorable song. Barry Merrill to the rescue, sic semper:

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#11 Electric Light Orchestra IBM song, in 1981?

I remember MVS having huge table of tuning values that could be twiddled and all sorts of presentations on huge number of runs with table entry values twiddled to (effectively random) different values ... supposedly looking for some magic combination. presentations usually ended with some statement about various different specific magic combinations appeared, on the average, to perform better for specific avg. workloads (or installations).

I had done a lot of work on dynamic adaptive resource management as undergraduate in the 60s ... which the science center picked up and shipped in cp67. The changes were dropped in the initial morph of cp67 to vm370. Then in the wake of the demise of future system effort ... there was mad rush to get stuff back into 370 product pipeline. Some amount of the stuff I had been doing all during the "future system" period was selected for release in various forms.

one of the things selected was the dynamic adaptive resource manager. Its release got caught up in the decision to migrate to charging for kernel software ... selected for the initial guinea pig ... and I got to spend a lot of time with lawyers and business people about pricing and policies ... i.e. initial unbundling 23jun69 ... started charging for application software (& other stuff) ... but manage to make the case that kernel software should still be free. Later the preoccupation with future system (totally replace all 360/370) allowed 370 product (hardware & software) pipelines to dry up ... and claims that contributed to giving the clone processors a foothold in the market. The rise of clone processors then contributed to decision to start charging for kernel software.

also, some corporate person said that they wouldn't sign off on my (new) resource manager release unless it had tuning knobs ... since that was the most current state-of-the-art (apparently taking a page from the MVS book about the enormous number of tuning table entries). I tried explaining the difference between an enormous number of tuning table entries and dynamic adaptive resource management ... but to no avail.

I finally had to define some number of tuning knobs, document how they worked in formulaes, and publish all the detailed code. However, I included an apparently unrecognized "joke" ... the degrees of freedom given the dynamic adaptive resource management ... was greater than the degrees of freedom given the tuning knobs ... so that the dynamic adaptive resource management could compensate for possible tuning knob twiddling.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:54:55 -0500
Chris_Blaicher@BMC.COM (Blaicher, Chris) writes:
I remember reading about someone putting a very large number of Linux systems on a z using z/VM. Their problem wasn't how many as it was the internet connection being large enough for all the traffic. It was a while ago, and things get fuzzy in the head, so maybe someone else can reference a more concrete source.

old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#62 VM (not VMS or <b>Virtual Machine</b>, the IBM sort)

reproducing part of post to vmesa-l mailing list ... 41,000 ... on small(?) capped/test LPAR.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

'cloud computing' and 'SAAS'

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 'cloud computing' and 'SAAS'
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:28:18 -0500
John.McKown@HEALTHMARKETS.COM (McKown, John) writes:
I think that SaaS is simply SOAP, but you pay. Sounds a bit like the old "Time Sharing" systems that you could dial into.

... borrowed from similar thread subject in (linkedin) greater ibm

Is Cloud Computing Old Hat?
http://www.ciozone.com/index.php/Cloud-Computing/Is-Cloud-Computing-Old-Hatu/2.html

.... somewhat related:

Map: Water-Powered Computers
http://www.technologyreview.com/article/413984/water-powered-computers/


Rackforce/IBM:           Kelowna, BC
Sabey Yahoo:             Wenatchee, WA
Maicrosoft Yahoo Intuit: Quincy, WA
Google:                  Dalles, OR
Amazon:                  Boardman, OR

.....

there were a number of (virtual machine) CP67 commercial time-sharing service bureaus formed in the 60s ... then some more in the 70s with vm370 (and/or old cp67 operations migrating to vm370). ... lots of past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

possibly the largest was the internal HONE system ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

started off after the 23jun69 unbundling announcement ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

to provide "hands-on" for branch system engineers (operating systems running in virtual machines). There also started to be deployed a lot of sales&marketing support apps (mostly APL\CMS) that started to be deployed ... which came to dominate all HONE activity (and the virtual operating system "hands-on" disappeared). Eventually mainframe orders couldn't be processed w/o having been run through HONE applications ... and clones of HONE datacenters started to crop up all over the world.

... snip ...

one of the challenges to cp67 time-sharing being left up 7x24 was lease pricing based on the cpu meter. off-shift use early on was somewhat sporadic ... and if either the cpu &/or I/O was running the cpu meter ran ... which would result in situation that lightly loaded, sporadic timesharing use wasn't sufficient to cover the lease charges. part of the cp67 fiddling was letting channel go idle ... when there wasn't incoming characters from channel ... but allow things to wake up when characters did start coming in. the cp67 fiddling made an enormous difference to the (virtual machine) cp67 commerical timesharing service bureaus being able to offer 7x24, ondemand service.

cpu&channels had to be idle for 400ms before the meter actually came to a halt (and related charges stopped). trivia question: mvs had a fixed timer wakeup, regardless of what was going on in the system. what was that interval?

semi-related recent mvs comment from today:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#14 Electric Light Orchestra IBM song, in 1981?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

toolsrun

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
Date: 16 Nov 2009 05:59:09 -0800
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: toolsrun
MailingList: computers
the taskforces (investigations/witchhunt) into online computer conferencing ... and made various recommendations about stuff.

Date: 01/25/83 20:42:40
From: wheeler

re: datastag; any objections &/or problems with putting up a DATASTAG virtual machine?


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

Date: 01/26/83 01:26:49
To: wheeler

I would like to use TOOLSRUN rather than DATASTAG programs. I am working on some improvements for the process now. Would that interface suit your purposes?


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

I had offices & userids at a number of locations around the bay area. "LSGVMB" was at the Los Gatos VLSI lab. I remember one of the computer conferencing investigations bringing in Hiltz & Turoff as consultants.

Date: 05/05/83 14:43:30
To: wheeler

Hi, Have you moved or is LSGVMB an ID of convenience?

re. Hiltz / Turoff - I'm up to my ears in "modes" and I'm not sure exactly what you are looking for (e.g., Video, audio, f2f OR modes within CC (sync. vs. async. vs. types of structures). I have the foils (in the end of seminar order) from their PASC presentation and also two currently available books with a wealth info: "The Network Nation" Hiltz/Turoff circa 78 - If you don't have and not in your library I'll track down a copy for specific ID. "Computer-Mediated Communication Systems", Kerr / Hiltz, 1982 Academic Press


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

from one such moderator ..

Date: March 6 1984, 1:44pm EST
To: wheeler

Lynn,

Please remove all the executable files you put on IBMVM. The IBMVM disk is not for tool distribution. It is a conferencing disk. You're free to create an ANNOUNCE file but you must handle the distribution yourself. I suggest the REQUEST EXEC as a way of doing this. Also, please don't forget to label your files with an IBM Internal Use Only banner. Thanks.


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

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

email

Date: 16 Nov 2009 07:13:47 -0800
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: email
MailingList: computers
in the wake of 23jun69 unbundling announcement ... a lot of the training opportunities for young customer support engineers was lost (basically apprentice like activity as part of team at customer locations ... which sort of went by the wayside having to charge customer for people onsite at the customer). As a result, the marketing division setup a number of virtual machine cp67 ("HONE") datacenters in the US with the objective of having field support people practice their operating system skills in virtual machines. some number of past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

one of my hobbies after graduating and joining the science center was supporting these HONE datacenters. The science center had also done port of apl\360 to cms for cms\apl (as well as various enhancements ... including reworking storage allocation and garbage collection for large virtual memory environments). Then a large number of sales&marketing support applications were developed and deployed with cms\apl. Eventually, this started to dominate all HONE activity (and the practice with operating systems in virtual machines faded away).

Sales&marketing became more & more dependent on this applications ... and there started to be a requirement to deploy HONE clones all over the world. When EMEA (europe, middle east, & africa) hdqtrs was moved from NY to Paris in the early 70s ... there was also a requirement for HONE clone in Paris. As part of my hobby supporting HONE ... & supplying them with highly modified operating system ... I was asked to go to Paris for the install (eventually did some number of other HONE clones around the world). In the early 70s, there was convoluted set of operations ... to read my email back in the states from Paris.

In the early 80s, the corporation started sponsoring educational networks (using technology similar to that used in the internal entwork). This was "BITNET" in the US ... some old posts mentioning BITNET
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

and EARN in Europe. This is old email from person charged with setting up EARN
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#email840320

this is tale of origins of listserv (starting paris 1985)
http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv-history.asp

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:29:56 -0500
timothy.sipples@US.IBM.COM (Timothy Sipples) writes:
Linux on System z supports Discontinguous Saved Segments (DCSS), a z/VM shared memory feature, and has for quite some time. There is a Linux block device driver for DCSS (dcssblk.c) in the mainline Linux kernel distribution. Features such as shared guest kernel(s), execute-in-place, and certain monitoring functions take advantage of this capability, so it's quite commonly used. Here's one source of information, for example:

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247285.html

DCSS can be read/write (type SN) or read-only (type SR).


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#15 Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?

I had done the original of DCSS as part of generalized paged mapped filesystem for CMS. Only a very small read-only subset of that was shipped in vm370 release 3. Old email discussing migrating the changes from cp67 to vm370 (early release 2).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750430

none of the paged-mapped filesystem support was shipped (some A/B tests with modereate i/o thruput cms applications with optimized normal filesystem on 3380s ... ran avg. 3-times faster with the paged mapped filesystem ... some operations were significantly faster). misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

Part of demise of future system effort and rush to get stuff back into 370 product pipeline helped account for picking up bits & pieces for release. recent thread about other pieces going out as resource manager (another part of rushing things back into product pipeline, mvs/xa effort convinced corp. to kill vm370, shutdown the vm370 development effort, and move the people to POK to support mvs/xa ... in order to make the mvs/xa ship schedule; endicott managed to save the product mission ... but effectively had to reconstitute group from scratch).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#14 Electric Light Orchestra IBM song, in 1981?

a read-write subset (DWSS) was used later as part of original relational/sql implementation ... system/r ... misc. past posts mentioning system/r
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

and was supposed to have been part of tech. transfer of system/r to endicott for SQL/DS ... but DWSS changes were dropped before SQL/DS shipped and implementation had to be reworked to be done w/o it.

for random other trivia ... one of the people mentioned in this jan92 meeting ... claimed to have handled the tech transfer back to STL for (mainframe) DB2
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

some discussed in this recent post in comp.databases.theory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#82 What would be a truly relational operating system ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#83 What would be a truly relational operating system ?

and of course
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#43 From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#46 From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:43:45 -0500
timothy.sipples@US.IBM.COM (Timothy Sipples) writes:
This cuts both ways. Obviously you're not going to support an OSA Express or FICON Express adapter on an X86 server. :-) But yes, if you're doing something like programming directly to an audio adapter in a PCI slot, that's not likely to be a System z-hosted program. (Though you never know as technology marches on.)

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#15 Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#19 Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?

recent posts/thread in comp.arch about early days of fiber-channel standard and battles with mainframe channel engineers trying to layer half-duplex protocol (FICON) on top of underlying full-duplex (actually dual-simplex) infrastructure (i.e. half-duplex resulted in lower thruput than running dual-simplex)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#84 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#85 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#0 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#1 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#2 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?

some of this goes back to days before even ESCON was released.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Is Cloud Computing Old Hat?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 18 Nov, 2009
Subject: Is Cloud Computing Old Hat?
Blog: Greater IBM
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#8 Is Cloud Computing Old Hat?

One of the big issues with 7x24 cp67 commercial timesharing offerings was the 360 cpu meter ... machines were leased and charges were done based on 360 cpu meter. The meter would run whenever the processor &/or channels were busy. Part of making 7x24 on-demand timesharing available ... especially in the early days ... when there wasn't necessarily a lot of offshift usage. ... was cp67 fiddling to make sure the cpu meter stopped when nothing was going on ... but still be able to accept in-coming characters (i.e. early on there might not be enuf off shift timesharing use ... and corresponding revenue ... to cover the cpu meter charges, if it was running all the time).

A characteristic of the cpu meter was that it would continue to run for 400ms after both cpu and channels were idle (i.e. both had to be idle for at least 400ms betore the cpu meter stopped running).

Trivia question: MVS had a fixed timer interval that woke up periodically, regardless of what was happening on the system. What was the interval of that fixed timer wakeup???

some number of the people on CTSS went to 5th flr of 545 tech sq and multics. Others went to the 4th flr of 545 tech sq and the science center. The science center originally did cp40 on a 360/40 with custom modified hardware supporting virtual memory. cp40 morphed into cp67 when standard 360/67 with virtual memory support became available. One of the big differences between ctss & mutlics vis-a-vis cp67 ... was that there were a number of (virtual machine) cp67-based commercial timesharing service bureaus (but none for either ctss or multics).

as in above ... one the things enabling cp67-based commercial timesharing service bureaus was the fiddling in cp67 to let the cpu meter stop when there wasn't anything going on ... but the system(s) was still available "on-demand" (cp67/cms later morphed into vm370/cms ... and the CMS name: "cambridge monitor system" morphed into "conversational monitor system").

In the HONE case for internal use ... the consolidated HONE datacenter in the mid-70s ... evovled into possibly largest single-system-image operation anywere in the late 70s ... and then was replicated in Dallas & Boulder with load-balancing and fall-over in the early 80s (for disaster survivability). This is addition to smaller clones all over the world (communication technology wasn't as pervasive then as it is now).

Cloud and GRID (and cluster scale-up) is somewhat analogous to commercial time-sharing service bureaus and in-house online operations ... many of the pieces & parts may be very similar ... but there was a whole lot of stuff that had to be done for commercial time-sharing service ... that frequently weren't necessarily needed for an in-house operations.

For instance, security & isolation of different parties from each other ... has a much bigger requirement in a public commercial time-sharing service bureau ... vis-a-vis in-house online operations.

while this reference is nominally an "in-house" operation ... it did have many of the requirements for security and isolating different parties from each other.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

Those (security & isolation) differences between commercial time-sharing service bureaus and in-house online operations ... are still applicable to clouds

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

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:09:57 -0500
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
Terse is a lot more efficient than having to make a million finger or hand movements to get to the first form. Sheesh!

More productive energy is wasted trying to wrestle with these OSes and their GUI gift wrappings. This time wastage has dripped into the comm biz. I should not have to spend 1/2 hour trying to get one yes/no question answered via the telephone. And I'm being optimistic when I said 1/2 hour. It's usually an hour or two.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#10 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

some of the current web reservation webpages are getting close to the rewrite. the infrastructure had been a PC simulating a dumb terminal ... doing a very structured query ... followed by 2-3 additional queries based on previous responses. demo we did had client/server (could have simulated dumb terminal ... but we were returning significant more information in response). Client was an X-window application with menu for origin, destination, date, time, etc. (again similar to some current).

response was possibly up to best 30-50 possible that somewhat satistifed the query. The client code supported being able to sort the list in several different ways ... and also expand default display to additional information returned about specific flts. it turns out some people have different sorting priorities ... not necessarily shortest travel time ... or departure (or arrival) close to some specific time.

while it had all commercial scheduled flts in the world (from master OAG data source) ... the quicky demo only included some things for US flts. Got a lits of all latitude/longitude for all airports in the world with commercial schedule flts. For the US ... calculated position on graphical map for the (US) airports. Clicking on flts (within the US) ... it would draw approx. route (more impressive for multi-airport flt ... with or w/o connections). Would also click and be able to retrieve most recent weather condition map ... and overlay flt routes over current weather map (only had real meaning for flts that were flying on some day that corresponding weather map was available).

part of all this was also being able to do the server-side lookup about 100 times faster than the production system (involved changing the paradigm and how the problem was viewed).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Crypto dongles to secure online transactions

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:16:34 -0500
MailingList: cryptography
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#65 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#72 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions

we ran into that with doing chip that required no post-fab personalization ... eliminating lots of the costs thruout the whole infrastructure (eliminating personalization actually makes the delivered cost to the user less than the current infrastructure).

we then looked at the current "institutional-centric" paradigm ... where each institution wants to deliver token/card to user ... with having eliminating any personalization requirement ... then we claimed we could moved to a person-centric paradigm ... where a person could use the same token for potentially all their interactions ... having to wade through all the institutional arguments ... and addressing each one that stood in the way of moving from an institutional-centric paradigm to person-centric paradigm.

the smartcard industry was looking at possibly replacing every pin/password with a unique smartcard/dongle.

we claimed we do something like two orders magnitude reduction in fully-loaded costs by going to no personalization (and other things) ... and then another two orders magnitude reduction in number of tokens by transitioning from institutional-centric paradigm to person-centric paradigm (compared to proposed smartcard/dongle replacing every pin/password).

we then came up against that the bank marketing departments have taken advantage of the requirement for institutional personalization ... to put their brand and other stuff on every token. They started out saying they didn't want to do chip because it increased costs ... and when we showed we can come very close to driving costs to zero ... it turns out the marketing departments like the current infrastructure (despite the costs) ... because they feel it is important to have their brand on the token in each person's wallet.

There were various sorts of distractions/obfuscations ... like what happens if the "only" token fails ... there is nothing that prevents a person from having two person-centric tokens (or personally choosing to have a their own unique token per institution). Then it was ... what happens if the only token is stolen. It turns out that the standard threat is the wallet/purse is stolen with all the cards (eliminating any different between there being single token or multiple tokens).

In any case ... with a paradigm that has been in place for this long ... there are quite a large number of people that don't want to change ... some for no other real reason than its different ... for others they have leveraged current paradigm for things that couldn't have been independently justified on its own.

Early on uptake in various standards organization was good ... until some of the change implications started percolating thru the infrastructure. It was analogous to what we did with secure x9.59 financial transaction standard ... and then the implications of eliminating all the associated fraud started to sink in.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Old datasearches

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Old datasearches
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:43:54 -0500
Tim Shoppa <shoppa@trailing-edge.com> writes:
I think you might mean "Dialog":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialog_(online_database)

I used it several times in the 80's and 90's as kinda a funked-up journal and news article search through University libraries that subscribed.

According to Wikipedia, both Dialog and ISI (a different citation index I used) are now owned by Thomson, which also owns a buttload of other fee-for-access databases. I'm guessing that their big cash cow these days is WestLaw.


re:
http://www.dialog.com/

one of the (ibm mainframe) institutions in the bay area with large disk farm ... was part of lockheed way back when (one of the places in the bay area I could easily periodically visit).
http://www.dialog.com/about/keydates/

after lockheed wnt to knight-ridder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Ridder

including sjmn (also in san jose)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose_Mercury_News

another such large mainframe operation was lexis-nexis (but not in bay area)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LexisNexis

misc. past posts mentioning Dialog:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#33 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#46 The Alpha/IA64 Hybrid
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#0 Search for Joseph A. Fisher VLSI Publication (1981)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#61 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#38 blast from the past ... macrocode
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#88 Continous Systems Modelling Package

another such large mainframe operation was lexis-nexis (but not in bay area)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LexisNexis

the former head of aix software development did stint as senior vp of development at lexisnexis for a period ... back when it was still meade data central. it was then sold to reed elsevier.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Old datasearches

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Old datasearches
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:38:45 -0500
greymausg writes:
Rough guess, a precedent lookup thingie?.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#24 Old datasearches

after the head of aix development went to head up lexis/nexis ... we were brought in to talk about such stuff. different states have precendents going back to country common law ... based on the country of origin of the early inhabitants ... and so different states could have common law precedents back to different (european) countries.

misc. old posts mentioning lexis/nexis and precedent:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#50 I hate Compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#30 Younger recruits versus experienced veterans ( was Re: The demise of compa
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#3 Why are Mainframe Computers really still in use at all?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#29 [OT] Faces of terrorism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#31 [OT] Faces of terrorism

about the same time ... we went in to look at NIH's NLM (national library of medicine). in the early 80s ... it had run into online search problem (similar to some of web search engines) ... with boolean logic ... out at 7 or 8 terms ... it results would be bimodel ... returning hundreds of thousands of results or zero results. Holy grail was finding magic search that returned more than zero by less than 100 (and people would frequently get confused and invert the intended "ANDs" & "ORs")

a couple of the people responsible for the implementation in the 60s were still around. they had implemented their own CICS-like online interface ... on top of mainframe BDAM. Indexes were built for terms/strings in something like 80 categories (authors, titles, keywords, etc). The index record was list of the corresponding BDAM record numbers for the article/abstract. ANDs/ORs operation involved "SET" operation (intersection, etc) on the lists of BDAM record numbers.

this was about the time that the univ. I was undergraduate got selected to be one of the initial betatest sites for original CICS (ONR grant to the univ. library for online catalog) ... and I got tasked to support/debug it (also a implementation on BDAM, in any case, I had been thru some of the same things that the original NLM implementation had been thru)

In the early 80s, "Grateful Med" interface appeared on Apple ... which would emulate dumb terminal to NLM ... and instead of getting back the responses ... get back the number of responses. Search strategies were then based on saving term combinations (search) ... looking for number of responses that fell into >0 and typically <100.

misc. past posts mentioning NLM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#26 Misc. more on bidirectional links
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#1 Off-topic everywhere [was: Re: thee and thou
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#51 Author seeks help - net in 1981
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#3 Why are Mainframe Computers really still in use at all?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#0 Search for Joseph A. Fisher VLSI Publication (1981)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#53 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#45 XML, AI, Cyc, psych, and literature
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#50 XML, AI, Cyc, psych, and literature
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#52 Specifying all biz rules in relational data
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#47 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#67 Relational vs network vs hierarchic databases
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#0 Relational vs network vs hierarchic databases
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#23 Network databases
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#41 Oldest active information system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#57 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#45 Where should the type information be?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#47 Where should the type information be?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#34 CJ Date on Missing Information
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#27 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#80 Book: "Everyone Else Must Fail" --Larry Ellison and Oracle ???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#6 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#74 Speculation ONLY
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#44 Lawyers & programming (x-over from a.f.c discussion)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#88 Continous Systems Modelling Package
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#38 U.S. house decommissions its last mainframe, saves $730,000

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:07:06 -0500
lbaaxb@BELLATLANTIC.NET (Alex UMX) writes:
Well, 99.999% reliability means that 1/10000 of the time the thing is not reliable = about 8 hours per year. Not to confuse with z/VM reliability that was 99.999999 if I recall it correctly back in 1991 or so for VM/ESA 1.0.

about that period, we marketed ha/cmp for 1-800 against stratus. at the time stratus took down system for software maintenance (would have outage that precluded even five-nines). ha/cmp could have fall-over between multiple servers as part of maint. strategy ... limiting outage to few seconds. the response was that then stratus could install multiple servers in (software fall-over) HA configuration ... to eliminate maint. outage window. the response was then why spend for the hardware redundancy

as an aside their box was also being relogo'ed and marketed as the S/88.

this recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#85 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland

has some old "marketplace news" abstracts (29Jun92) mentioning remarketing branded stratus box ... the article might have a misstatement ... the total amount ($400m-some) was about what was paid for the program ... not that much was actually sold.

as an aside ... i believe FAA has had some number of Flex-ES installations (running mainframe software on intel platforms) ... old post mentioning Flex-ES also available on stratus boxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#10 Low-end processors (again)

for random other drift ... recent posts about old Jim Gray paper that by early 80s, majority of outages had shifted from hardware faults to other things
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#5 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#39 repeat after me: RAID != backup
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#47 repeat after me: RAID != backu

including scan of old copy of a version of presentation that I had laying around ... and put up on the web:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/grayft84.pdf

I've mentioned before Jim and I had something of dust-up at acm sigops in '91 about whether commodity components could be used for HA operation ... he was still at DEC and their party-line was vax/cluster. later when he moved to m'soft ... he was up on stage for the announcement of m'soft HA fallover product.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Supercomputers Are Still Fast, but Less Super

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Supercomputers Are Still Fast, but Less Super
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:09:45 -0500
Supercomputers Are Still Fast, but Less Super
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/supercomputers-are-still-fast-but-less-super/

from above:
The supercomputing world was long dominated by systems that required specialized chips, memory systems and networking technology. But about 10 years ago, researchers realized they could link thousands of cheaper machines running on mainstream chips and achieve pretty solid performance.

... snip ...

some recent threads on the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#1 z/Journal Does it Again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#37 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#50 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#57 U.S. begins inquiry of IBM in mainframe market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#81 big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#54 big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#55 MasPar compiler and simulator

referencing this old news snippets from '92
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2

oh, and old email leading up to the press items
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:41:41 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
for random other drift ... recent posts about old Jim Gray paper that by early 80s, majority of outages had shifted from hardware faults to other things
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#5 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#39 repeat after me: RAID != backup
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#47 repeat after me: RAID != backu

including scan of old copy of a version of presentation that I had laying around ... and put up on the web:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/grayft84.pdf


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#26 Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch

when I was out marketing ha/cmp,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

I coined the terms disaster survivability and "geographic surviability"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available

and I got asked to write a section in the corporate continuous availability strategy document ... but it got pulled because both rochester & pok objected (because at the time, they couldn't meet the requirements).

after we left, we spent some time with large national financial network. they claimed 100% availability for extended number of years was because of

1) ims hot-standby
2) automated operator

... the ims hot-standby involved machines separated by geographic distances (failures had shifted primarily to human mistakes and local environmental conditions).

some of this was back to when my wife had been con'ed into doing a stint in POK responsible for loosely-coupled architecture ... where she created Peer-Coupled Shared Data architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

... which, except for ims hot-standby ... saw very little uptake until sysplex. that and the battles with the communication group over whether SNA had to be used for loosely-coupled coordination, resulted in her not staying long in the position.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:15:51 -0500
eric-ibmmain@WI.RR.COM (Eric Bielefeld) writes:
This is kind of off the topic, but related. Wasn't there a discussion on IBM-Main a couple years ago about the air traffic control system being run on old IBM 3081s? If I remember right, and my memory isn't as good as it used to be, it was just a few years ago that these old machines used to control some of the air traffic control. Have these been retired yet?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#26 Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#28 Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch

we had project a decade ago with some of the people that had done the 1960s implementation ... and later left to form their own company to do various things.

these were modified 360/50s that ran in triple configuration.

this comes up in the virtual machine folklore. the cambridge science center was trying to get a 360/50 to build their hardware modifications for supporting virtual memory ... but because all the available 360/50s were going to air traffic control ... the science center had to settle for 360/40. the first virtual machine system then was "cp/40" (instead of "cp/50") ... morphing into cp67 (when they got a standard 360/67 that came with hardware virtual memory support) ... which later morphed into vm370. misc. past posts mentioning science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

some of that early 360 FAA software was moved along to various platforms ... including some of it eventually running in Flex-ES virtual machines on intel platforms (possibly even stratus intel ... as mentioned in previous post).

in the late 80s, we started ha/cmp product ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

and part of that effort, we did detailed availability studies of tcp/ip and various tcp/ip environments.

there have also been some number of (failed) FAA "modernization" efforts. About the time we were doing ha/cmp ... there was such an effort using triple-RS6000s as basic component. Because of our work on high availability ... we were periodically asked to participate in some of the discussions/reviews. There were some number of interesting failure-modes that they overlooked ... and it was one of the "modernization" efforts that ran into difficulty.

After we left in the 90s, we were invited in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to payment transactions ... the startup had also invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted to use.

Two of the people that we worked on ha/cmp for parallel Oracle ... referenced in jan92 meeting mentioned in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

were at this startup in charge of something called the "commerce server". As part of doing what is now frequently called "electronic commerce", we deployed something called the "payment gateway" ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

which acts as gateway for payment transactions between webservers on the internet and payment infrastructure. An early prototype of this had a situation where a merchant called up not being able to do transactions. Normally, payment trouble-call desk has 5mins elapsed time to do first level problem determination. In this case, three hours later, the trouble ticket was closed with no-trouble-found.

In order to try and approach the non-internet availability ... we deployed payment gateway on HA/CMP configuration with multiple diverse routes ("telco provisioning") into different parts of the internet. we also had to deploy/invent some number of compensating procedures to compensate for vaguries of the internet ... as well as to compensate for large number of identified security vulnerabilities.

One of the issues ... was that I had planned on also broadcast/advertising the different routes ... but in the period of the deployment; the internet backbone transitioned to hierarchical routing. As a result, the remaining alternate path mechanism had to rely on multiple A-record support in DNS (where the client is provided multiple ip-address records in response to request domain lookup). The client then cycles through each of the addresses until it finds one that makes a successful connection.

In any case, part of that deployment (for "electronic commerce") included compensating for large number of different kinds of failures that might happen anywhere in the internet infrastructure.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:31:11 -0500
Charles Richmond <frizzle@tx.rr.com> writes:
Back around 1981, I used to drive down the freeway past a Frito Lay Grandma's Cookies plant. It smelled like a sewage treatment plant!!!

i periodically got to visit research in switzerland ... i would stay in motel on the other side of the road from the lake ... and next to the Lindt factory ... it definitly didn't have that problem.

however, i lived for nearly 2decades in south santa clara county and most mornings coming out the door ... was hit in the face with the breeze coming north (from the garlic fields ... gilroy ... garlic capital of the world, although there are starting to get a lot of competition from foreign imports).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:39:23 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
there have also been some number of (failed) FAA "modernization" efforts. About the time we were doing ha/cmp ... there was such an effort using triple-RS6000s as basic component. Because of our work on high availability ... we were periodically asked to participate in some of the discussions/reviews. There were some number of interesting failure-modes that they overlooked ... and it was one of the "modernization" efforts that ran into difficulty.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#29 Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch

a little ATC history:
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Government_Role/Air_traffic_control/POL15.htm

from above:
In December 1993, the FAA reviewed its order for the planned AAS. IBM was far behind schedule and had major cost overruns. In 1994 the FAA simplified its needs and picked new contractors. The revised modernization program continued under various project names. Some elements met further delays. In 1999, controllers began their first use of an early version of the Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System, which included new displays and capabilities for approach control facilities. During the following year, FAA completed deployment of the Display System Replacement, providing more efficient workstations for en route controllers.

... snip ...

A little more historical (some of the documents are PDF)
http://www.faa.gov/about/history/
http://www.faa.gov/about/history/photo_album/air_traffic_control/index.cfm?cid=automation

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:45:27 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#19 Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#20 Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?

basic ESCON technology had been knocking around POK for quite some time before being released. One of the Austin engineers adopted it for RS6000 ... making it about 10% faster (220mbits/sec instead of 200/mbits/sec) and actually full-duplex (so it had quite a bit higher throughput) ... and used "Rochester" optic drivers ... which were quite a bit cheaper;
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#email870211

It made the SLA (serial-link-adapters) for the RS6000 quite a bit better than ESCON ... but incompatible. Anybody wanting to do ESCON from RS6000 had to obtain it from completely different source.

In the late 80s, LANL was pushing standardization of the 100mbyte Cray (half-duplex) channel as HIPPI and LLNL was pushing was serial technology they had as 1gbit FCS. We were somewhat involved in both activities ... examp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#email920129

The Austin SLA engineer had started looking at exhancing SLA to 800mbits/sec but we convinced him to switch to working on FCS instead. There started to also be some ESCON participation ... looking to overlay ESCON half-duplex on top of full-duplex FCS. This was somewhat in line with work on "serial" HIPPI (i.e. moving Cray parallel half-duplex "copper" 100mbyte/sec channel to fiber).

This old posts mentions jan92 meeting on doing 128-way RS6000 cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13 SSA

Above also mentions moving Hursley 9333 disk subsystem (ran encapsulated scsi protocols over full-duplex "serial" copper, initially at 80mbits/sec ... full-duplex had several latency and throughput advantages). This turned into IBM's "SSA" technology.
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=505&uid=ssg1S1002348
SSA technology breaks 3000 IO bottlenecks
http://www.3000newswire.com/subscribers/SSAPrimer.html

We had suggested making it instead compatible with FCS protocol ... with an entry at 1/8th FCS over copper ... but allowing it to scale-up to full FCS over fiber (and be able to interoperate in FCS environment).

recent thread/post mentioning some of the above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#0 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#1 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#2 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?

and from long ago and far away (think.com hosted standards mailing list for both FCS and HIPPI):



Date: 24 Oct 90 04:59:59 EDT
To: fc <fiber-channel-ext@Think.COM>
Subject: October Fiber Channel Minutes

TO: FC
October 23, 1990

TO:     X3T9.3 Fiber Channel Working Group Members
      SUBJECT:     FIBER CHANNEL WORKING GROUP MINUTES

Please find attached a draft of the minutes of the ANSI X3T9.3
Fiber Channel Working Group of October 16 thru 18, 1990. Note
that there are also fifteen Attachments to the minutes that
relate to presentations at the meeting.

The next Fiber Channel Working Group meeting will be held on
November 1 and 2 as part of a Working Group week that is being
hosted by Bill Spence of Texas Instruments at the Stouffer Hotel
in Austin, TX. An announcement for this week is included. The
following working group meeting will be held on the Wednesday and
Thursday of the December plenary week (December 5 & 6) that is
being hosted by AMD at the Hyatt on First Street in San Jose, CA.
Note that the Working Group meeting will begin on Tuesday when
the X3T9.3 plenary finishes, and thus will be a three day
meeting. An announcement for the plenary week is attached.

A schedule of X3T9.3 meetings (both plenaries and working groups)
for the remainder of 1990 and the first half of 1991 is attached.
Note that it is also intended to hold a three day Fiber Channel
Working Group during the December plenary week. Hosts are still
required for the August, October and December plenary weeks in
1991 and the November 1991 Working Group week.

Note that ANSI has overruled as unconstitutional any attempt to
limit discussion on a subject to those who have brought
documentation on that subject.

It has been decided to maintain a standalone Document Register
for Fiber Channel, and the maintenance of such a register was
begun at the October meeting. The register will be divided by
subject and the numbering system used will be of the following
format:

FC-*/90-xxxRn
where:

    *    is the level to which it applies - 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, F or G
(If it applies across levels then it is a G for General)
xxx  is the sequential number assigned by the Secretary
n    is the revision level, beginning at base 0

Note that future presenters are strongly requested to have such a
document number and a page number on the top right-hand corner of
each page of their presentation (this requirement is waived for
the FC-0, -1 , -2, -3 and -4 documents themselves). They should
contact myself as indicated below to obtain the specific
sequential number.

Regards

1990 SCHEDULE OF MEETINGS

DATES              EVENT                         LOCATION
10/29 - 11/02      Working Groups                Austin, TX
12/03 - 12/06      Plenaries and Working Groups  San Jose, CA
01/14 - 01/18      Working Groups                Irvine, CA
02/18 - 02/20      Plenaries and Working Groups  Austin, TX
03/18 - 03/22      Working Groups                Cupertino, CA
04/22 - 04/25      Plenaries and Working Groups  St. Petes, FL
05/20 - 05/24      Working Groups                Wichita, KS
06/17 - 06/20      Plenaries and Working Groups  Minneapolis, MN

The format of the week for months containing only working groups
is as follows:

Monday                   SCSI Common Access Method Group
         Tuesday and Wednesday    SCSI Working Group
HIPPI Working Group
Thursday and Friday      Fiber Channel Working Group

The format of the week for the months containing both plenaries
and working groups is as follows:

Monday                   Separate X3T9.2 (SCSI) and
X3T9.3 plenaries (Monday
portion of X3T9.3 devoted to
                                  IPI and HPPI).

         Tuesday                  Separate X3T9.2 (SCSI) and
X3T9.3 plenaries (Tuesday
portion of X3T9.3 devoted to
Fiber Channel). Fiber Channel
                                  Working Group begins when
X3T9.3 plenary ends (normally
                                  before noon).

Wednesday                Fiber Channel Working Group.

         Thursday                 Fiber Channel Working Group
(December only).

DOCUMENT REGISTER

NUMBER           TITLE
FC-0/90-001R0    FC-0 Revision 1.7
002R0    High performance LW Laser SM
        003R0    Militarized Optoectronic Devi
FC-1/90-001R1.4  FC-1 Revision 1.4
FC-2/90-001R1.6  FC-2 Revision 1.6
002R0    Header Ideas and Proposal 10/
        003R0    Proposed Header Changes 10/2
004R0    FC Header Proposal 10/14
        005R0    Some Thoughts on Headers
006R0    Proposed Header
007R0    An R_RDY Primitive
008R0    Moving the Link/Device bit
        009R0    Time Frames
FC-F/90-001R1    Fabric Requirements Revision
        002R1    Event Log and Diagnostic Func
FC-G/90-001R0    Laser Focus World Article
002R0    Operation Level Proposal Outl
003R0    ESCON Architecture Slides
        004R0    ESCON Converter and Director

... snip ... top of post, old email index --
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:38:11 -0500
BillF@MAINSTAR.COM (Bill Fairchild) writes:
15. The agency accepts delivery of the upgraded equipment and begins training its people in how to use the newer technology. The training is supplied, of course, by the winning vendor. The training instructors are being charged to the government agency at the rate of $350 per hour. Four months later the equipment starts being gradually phased in. In the case of the FAA, there are about 20 places around the country known as Air Route Traffic Control Centers, each with its own computers, disk storage units, radar units, radar-processing computers, etc. The FAA decides to phase in this new equipment one ARTCC at a time, and allows 2 months to go by before attempting to begin using the new equipment at each different ARTCC. 2 months multiplied by 20 ARTCCs equals 40 months.

certain (federal) division of the company was well known for some of those tactics. in the late 80s when I was doing high-speed datatransport project ... the division claimed they had to be briefed on the project. misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

I scheduled an all day presentation ... and something like 20-30 of their people showup. A few weeks later, I get a bill ... they wanted to charge at the going rate for listening to my presentation. I wouldn't pay ... may counter-offer was I would bill them for the presentation (that they had requested).

In the early 90s ... doing ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

we would periodically drop into the division president's office ... who we were acquainted ... but also knew his technical assistant reasonably well ... old email reference about division decided to make ha/cmp cluster scale-up their strategic direction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email911119

... of course this was before the cluster scale-up effort was transferred and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors. This time they didn't charge me for their time (in the above referenced meeting).

In anycase, at the time, the president's technical assistant was spending almost all their time trying to spearhead getting the FAA effort back on track. related history note
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#31 Check out Computer glitch to cause flight delays across U.S. - MarketWatch

as to the cluster scale-up ... some old newsclipping from '92
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2

other old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Amateur Computing Society

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Amateur Computing Society
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:53:57 -0500
Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> writes:
When he went missing, I thought I recognized the name, and thought it explained who the Gray was that I remembered suddenly taking over the computer column in Popular Electronics years ago. I honestly did think they were the same person, even though they aren't.

a couple posts on event celebrating jim last year:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#40 A Tribute to Jim Gray: Sometimes Nice Guys Do Finish First
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#50 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#51 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#27 Father Of Financial Dataprocessing

older thread on him going missing:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#4 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#6 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#8 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#17 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#33 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#28 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#68 A tribute to Jim Gray

and then
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#25 Remembering The Search For Jim Gray, A Year Later

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:37:24 -0500
"Andy \"Krazy\" Glew" <ag-news@patten-glew.net> writes:
Are any comp.arch folk going to SC09 in Portland?

I am obviously going to be there on Sunday, the workshop day - assuming that my wife agrees.

I am currently wondering about spending any other days there.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#84 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#85 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#0 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#1 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#2 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?

I'm using coaster from a booth at some long ago supercomputer '93; also held in Portland. Its from an institution that had only relatively recently come out of the closet. There were people that wouldn't walk down that isle ... being conflicted ... apparently leftover from when the institution was still in the closet.

Kahaner was also in attendance ... back in the days ... when his reports were freely available ... from long ago and far away ...


Dr. David K. Kahaner
US Office of Naval Research Asia
(From outside US):  23-17, 7-chome, Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106 Japan
(From within  US):  Unit 45002, APO AP 96337-0007
Tel: +81 3 3401-8924, Fax: +81 3 3403-9670
Email: kahaner@cs.titech.ac.jp
Re: Supercomuting 1993
11/13/93 (MM/DD/YY)
This file is named "sc.93"

ABSTRACT. Supercomputing'93 in Portland OR, 11/93

I will be at Supercomputing 1993 in Portland OR, 15-19 Nov 1993. Prof
A. Malony and I invite you to join us at our mini Symposium,
"Supercomputing Around the World" which is being held as part of SC'93
on Friday 19 Nov at 8:30AM in Room 204. We are expecting five very
interesting overview talks.

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

toolsrun

Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:01:03 -0500
Date: 16 Nov 2009 05:59:09 -0800
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: toolsrun
MailingList: computers
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#17 toolsrun

the toolsrun smackdown email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#email840306

was about a large (3 thousand statement) REX exec I had done a couple yrs earlier I couple yrs earlier. This was in early days of REX and I wanted to show that REX wasn't just another pretty EXEC language (which was some of the claims at the time). I called it DUMPRX ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dumprx

There was an couple tens of thousand statement assembler application that was part of vm370 product for doing problem determination. I wanted to demonstrate that I could re-implement the application in few weeks times in 1/10th the REX statements and had ten times the function and ran ten times faster (a little slight of programming).

I was also hoping that it would be shipped in lieu of the existing product (which never happened). The company had already gone thru the period of starting to charge for software ... but was then at the start of the "OCO" (object-code-only, aka no-source) wars. Since REX wasn't compiled, the source would have had to be shipped. Even tho virtually every internal datacenter had started using DUMPRX and every customer problem service rep was using DUMPRX ... it never shipped to customers. Finally I got somebody to authorize a public presentation of DUMPRX ... and a spent a couple hrs explaining how anybody could implement one. Within a couple weeks there were some other implementations.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:08:37 -0500
Charles Richmond <frizzle@tx.rr.com> writes:
;-) Yes, compared to something really bad, it's *not* so hard to look really good. Here is what H.L. Mencken had to say about the U.S.:

"Here the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on a bald head, and is thrown willy-nilly into a meager and exclusive aristocracy."

I like that quote...


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

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


... snip ...

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

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:29:15 -0500
Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> writes:
And remember Billy Mitchell and his pleas for air power.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#37 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

Boyd wasn't so much about air power
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell

as he was about strategy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_%28military_strategist%29

I had sponsored boyd's briefings at IBM.

One of biographies talks about "40 sec Boyd" from his days as instructor at Nellis ... he had a bet and would take on all comers in dog fight ... starting out giving them position of advantage and within 40 secs reverse the status.

More recently that are references to him being responsible for battle plan for desert storm and that big problem with the current conflicts are that boyd had died in '97. There was a US News & Report (6May1991) article titled "The fight to change how america fights" ... a couple days into desert storms ... about Boyd's efforts ... even making reference to new generation of majors and cols. as boyd's "Jedi knights".

Boyd told stories about being in dog fight with five migs in korea ... and a point in time when all pilots realized that he was about to shoot down all five migs. I've tried looking up other references ... and there are just rumors and references to such things may have happened ... but since they violated the rules of engagement ... they weren't officially reported.

Biographies also talk about him doing a yrs tour in 1970 running "spook base" ... which was supposedly a "$2.5B windfall" for IBM.

He also did a stint at the pentagon as head of lightweight fighter. He redid the F15 & F18 design (cutting the weight of F15 nearly in half). He also did the F16 ... which he took a lot of grief. He told story of the head of company making F15 hearing rumors that he was working on F16 ... and went to the secretary of the air force demanding that boyd be thrown in Leavenworth. They put air force investigators on it. The theory was that he needed tens of millions of dollars of supercomputer time supporting his F16 design efforts ... since that wasn't authorized, he was "stealing" from the gov. If they could find the proof, he would be thrown in leavenworth for the rest of his life. Fortunately, he had anticipated the possibility ... and they were never able to find any records of the large amounts of supercomputer use (slightly more than "kick in the stomach").

Boyd's OODA-loop stuff is starting to be taught in some MBA programs

The air force pretty much disowned boyd ... but the marines adopted him ... all of his stuff is now at quantico ... and the marines were there at the ceremony in arlington.

misc. past posts mentioning boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd1
misc. URLs from around the web mentioning boyd (&/or his OODA-loops).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd2

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:34:29 -0500
edjaffe@PHOENIXSOFTWARE.COM (Edward Jaffe) writes:
In his System z keynote address at SHARE in Austin, Karl Freund described a hypothetical future machine in which non-z processor "blades", mounted within the System z frame, would be available as "accelerators" to applications running on the traditional System z processors.

I have several papers that I wrote on the proposal from early 1985 ... long-winded old post with reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#17 mainframe and microprocessor

other posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#15 Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#19 Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#20 Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#32 Mainframe running 1,500 Linux servers?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Crypto dongles to secure online transactions

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:00:31 -0500
MailingList: cryptography
On 11/21/2009 04:56 PM, wrote:
>we claimed we do something like two orders magnitude reduction in >fully-loaded costs by going to no personalization (and other things)

...

My concern with that would be that if everyone uses the same signature scheme and token, the security of the entire industry becomes dependent on the least competent bank in the country not leaking the verification secret.

For something like a chip+pin system it is my understanding that the signature algorithm is in the chip and different chips can use different secrets and different algorithms, so a breach at one bank need not compromise all the others.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#65 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#72 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#23 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions

there is no shared-secret ... there is unique chip private/public key generated at power-on/test and the public key was included/transmitted with the test result data as part of the initial power-on/test cycle (this is process that occurs while the chips are still in wafer ... before being sliced & diced). the silicon is designed to never (volunteerly) divulge the private key (modulo some extremely heavy duty physical attacks).

the patent stuff was all done for employer as assigned patents quite awhile ago (we've been gone for several yrs and the patent stuff keeps going on).

initially there was a large number of claims and had gotten to packaged as over 60 patents and looked to be 100 before we were done. about that point, the employer looks at filing costs in the US and international ... and directs that all the claims be packaged as nine patents. Later, the patent office comes back and makes some comment about getting tired of huge patents where the filing fee doesn't even cover the cost of reading all the claims ... and directed that the claims be packaged as larger number of claims.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadssummary.htm

while there are claims related to unique devices with unique digital signatures in other applications ... there was a patent application (in our name ... years after we are gone) this year
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220090158029%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20090158029&RS=DN/20090158029

USPTO has moved/changed its webpage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadssummary.htm

all the initial chips were ec/dsa (each chip with its own unique public/private key) ... all done in fab that had security certified by US, EU & other gov. institutions and also financial institutions (no compromised chips substituted for real ones) ... I even got to walk the fab in bunny suit doing my own certification.

if you want different algorithms (or key lengths) ... you have to cut a new mask and make different wafer runs. if the number of wafers in wafer runs are too small ... you would start to drive the cost/chip above a few cents. There is no single-point-of-compromise. Compromising a single chip is equivalent to skimming a single magstripe ... can do fraudulent transactions against the accounts for that chip/token (and chip compromise significantly more difficult than magstripe skimming).

In theory there might be weakness found in specific chip or specific algorithm ... but design allows for a large number of different chips and algorithms to interoperate in the same environment. For the initial chips ... I got a EAL4+ common criteria certification (by accredited lab in germany). I wanted a higher certification ... but had a problem that EC/DSA verification suite had been withdrawn. There were some higher certifications on similar chips by others ...but their design involved loading the crypto after the certification (they got certification done on chip before any software loaded). My chip had everything in silicon (all feature/functions) ... and so the certification was done on everything that would be in actual use.

in the person-centric scenario ... each chip's private key becomes somewhat akin to fingerprint or iris pattern ... a unique something you have ... as opposed to unique something you are (and much easier to replace/change if there is a specific compromise).

some of the patents cover not only recording public key for each account the corresponding token is authorized for (and multiple different tokens might be authorized for same account) ... but also knowledge about the assurance level of the related chip. Real-time updates are then available about chip assurance level ... and real-time authorizations can not only take into account whether the transaction is within the account balance ... but potentially is the assurance level of the chip is high enough for authorizing the transaction.

X9.59 financial standard transaction protocol also allows for the environment that the transaction is performed in to also sign the transaction (in addition to the person's chip). Real-time authorization then may take into account both the assurance level (potentially updated in real-time) of the user's chips as well as the assurance level of the transaction environment (in determining if there is sufficient assurance for the transaction in question). Some of the people responsible for the V3 extensions for X.509 overlooked the issue of assurance characteristics ... when they were originally defining the V3 extensions (of course the whole x.509 is based on static information ... and disappears in a real-time environment).

there are different issues with other chip implementations. there was rather large pilot deployment of such a chip in the US for point-of-sale early part of this decade ... it had a YES CARD problem ... the last paragraph of this cartes 2002 trip report ... includes mention of presentation on it being trivial to make a counterfeit YES CARD (chip)
https://web.archive.org/web/20030417083810/http://www.smartcard.co.uk/resources/articles/cartes2002.html

... in any case, all evidence of that pilot appeared to subsequently evaporate (we had considered/documented such problem several yrs earlier). Current status in the US is possibly somewhat consequence of that (YES CARD) pilot (a presentation at the time ... noted that YES CARD vulnerability actually made fraud worse than exists with magstripe; somebody in the audience asking how billions of dollars could be spent to prove that chips are less secure than magstripe) ... not so much the cost of a single deployment ... but there might turn out to be the cost of several deployments. misc. past posts mentioning the YES CARD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Crypto dongles to secure online transactions

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:06:59 -0500
MailingList: cryptography
On 11/21/2009 05:56 PM, wrote:
> ... we could moved to a person-centric paradigm ... where a person > could use the same token for potentially all their interactions ... > we claimed we do something like two orders magnitude reduction in > fully-loaded costs by going to no personalization (and other things) > ... and then another two orders magnitude reduction in number of > tokens by transitioning from institutional-centric paradigm to > person-centric paradigm (compared to proposed smartcard/dongle > replacing every pin/password). > > we then came up against that the bank marketing departments have taken > advantage of the requirement for institutional personalization ... to > put their brand and other stuff on every token....

It goes deeper than that. Oh, sure, marketing loves having a presence - but their desire fits into corporate cultural biases.

When I go to work, I have to carry two key cards - one for the building, one for my employer. They use the same technology - if you use the wrong one, the reader beeps in recognition but of course won't unlock the door. In fact, they interfere with each other - you have to make sure to keep the "wrong" one a couple of inches away from the reader or it will usually be confused. It's a pain, actually.

Now, it's certainly possible that there's something proprietary on one card or the other - though as we've discussed here before, that's only true on badly designed systems: It's no big deal to read these cards, and from many times the inch or so that the standard readers require. So all that should be on the cards is an essentially random number which acts as a key into the lock systems database. It's just that the owners of each system insist on assigning that random number themselves. Does it give them any additional security? Hardly. If you think through the scenarios, you confirm that quickly - a direct consequence of the lack of any inherent value in the card or its contained number in and of themselves: The real value is in the database entry, and both institutions retain control of their own databases.

What's needed is some simple cooperation and agreement on how to assign unique numbers to each card. There already has to be cooperation on the issuance and invalidation of building cards. But institutions insist on their sense of control and independence, even when it has no real payoffs for them (and, in fact, raises their costs).


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#65 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#72 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#23 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions

We went thru all the scenarios with the objections on why they wanted institutional-centric paradigm ... part of the scenario was putting the assurance level of the chip on level with assurance level of your fingerprint or iris pattern ... and asking when institutions were going to start issuing individual, institutional-specific fingers for people to use.

there is various person-centric claims here and there (assigned and still having activity after we've been gone for yrs)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadssummary.htm

there is specific granted patent here:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&S1=6978369.PN.&OS=PN/6978369&RS=PN/6978369

USPTO has moved/changed its webpage, more information here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadssummary.htm

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:27:06 -0500
jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
that's very true. DEC's approach was to use the title consultant for the hard/software types who chose not to be a manager. There were two career tracks in place. Eventually, the consultant track became muddied with people who couldn't do the technical work but were skilled enough at politics to get promoted.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#37 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#38 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

the "two track" was also supposedly something that suffered as result of failure of future system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

noted from comments in fergus&morris book ... somebody's quotes from long ago and far away ... some recent reference to the quotes:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#44 Future System
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#66 Future System
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#0 Windowed Interfaces 1981-2009
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#70 An inComplete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#31 Justice Department probing allegations of abuse by IBM in mainframe computer market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#34 big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers

that i got out of an older thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#33 Architectural Diversity

and there were claims that by the early 80s ... the top technical positions had been totally politicized (somebody's footnote from the time was that the top technical position was nowhere in my future).

semi-related recent thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#57 U.S. begins inquiry of IBM in mainframe market

for other topic drift:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#43 From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#46 From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time

mentions internal politics getting in the way of doing the NSFNET backbone and the director of NSF writing a letter to the company trying to help ... which just aggravated the internal politics. Yesterday I was going through some boxes in storage and ran across the letter, dated 3Apr1986 (it was actually from the director of NSF to both the corporate chief scientist and the president of research, copying the CEO and some others).

misc old email related to the NSFNET activity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:25:23 -0500
"Charlie Gibbs" <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
That's been the corporate folklore since the early days of MS-DOS: make something that works most of the time, and to hell with the people who use the edge cases. Make your definition of "edge case" liberal enough (e.g. include things like zero-length files) and you save yourself a lot of work, especially in quality assurance.

If something absolutely has to be fixed, remember that meme which is running all through our society: two wrongs make a right. So paper over your glitches with kludges that make things even worse - and guarantee a demand for as many "upgrades" as you can sell.


there was possibly a decade where organizations ordered the latest PC technology for some product dev. &/or other technical reasons ... but then large percentage would be retasked to sit on managers' desks with the (terminal emulation) PROFS menu being burned into the screen day after day (while the managers' secretary actually read the managers' email).

recent posts in this part of the thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#37 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#38 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#41 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#42 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

note that the '96 m'soft developers conference at moscone had some wringing their hands about what was going to be done for revenue ... that '96 sort of was the dividing line when new releases were coming out with new features that people actually wanted/used ... but about then, 99% of the features used by 99% of the people 99% of the time ... had already shipped ... and after '96 ... had to shift to the "new car every year" consumer marketing (somewhat from the 60s).

misc recent posts happening to mention PROFS:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#8 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#16 Mainframe hacking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#41 another item related to ASCII vs. EBCDIC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#34 IBM Poughkeepsie?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#33 U.S. house decommissions its last mainframe, saves $730,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#38 U.S. house decommissions its last mainframe, saves $730,000

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Old datasearches

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Old datasearches
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:48:59 -0500
Mike Causer <m.r.causer@goglemail.com> writes:
I remember Dialog Corp about 1981/2. Tbey had a satelite office next to us in Cambridge, Mass. and used to invite us round to eat up the remainder of their generous lunches when they ran training courses for real customers. We could also use their system at any time we needed, but unfortunately our trade, high-end CAD-CAM, didn't benefit much from it. Was interesting to play with though, and might have helped when we wrote our own database system to integrate with the CAD-CAM a few years later.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#24 Old datasearchces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#25 Old datasearchces

Following refers to getting an unsolicated call to interview for technical assitance to the president of NAS. "xxxxx" was somebody I had known for a long time and then doing some work as consultant at DIALOG (at the time he lived in s. cal, & peridically visited n. ca). He happened to call head of DIALOG while we were there and so he handed the phone over to me for a chat. DIALOG had recently gotten a AS9000 (370 clone) from long ago and far away ...
Date: 04/22/81 09:51:27
From: wheeler

re: Tandem, DIALOG, etc.;

before the BAYBUNCH meeting last night, we went up and did a customer call on DIALOG (& got to see the AS9000). While we were there xxxxx called & I talked to him for a while. I happened to mention the NAS headhunter call & the details -- coincidence it was the day before I was to call on DIALOG & see the AS 9000. He said that DIALOG would offer a much better deal. DIALOG is currently part of a Lockheed division. DIALOG has around 120 people, the whole division has around 20,000 people, but last year DIALOG accounted for 40% of the division profits. Right now DIALOG is in the process of breaking off & becoming a subsidiary. They will be offering substantial profit sharing deals.


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

to not get involved in silicon valley rush hr traffic ... go up valley early and could make customer calls on both tymshare & dialog before monthly baybunch meetings at slac.

sometimes car pooled with other people from research to baybunch ... but if going alone ... I could go by HONE and do some work there before the baybunch meeting.

Just recently I had added 3 short items to facebook:
HONE historical trivia How many have noticed facebooks mailing address? The US HONE datacenters were consolidated in Cal. in the mid-70s. How close is the facebook address to the address of that consolidated US HONE datacenter?

... and then
HONE had started in the US after the 23Jun69 unbundling announcement. By the mid-70s, mainframe orders couldn't be submitted w/o first having been processed by HONE applications and cloned HONE datacenters were popping up all over the world.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=1601+S.+California+Ave.,+Palo+Alto,+CA+94304.&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=65.645551,49.21875&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=1601+S+California+Ave,+Palo+Alto,+Santa+Clara,+California+94304&ll=37.41648,-122.151414&spn=0.003996,0.003004&t=h&z=18


... and finally
building next to facebooks was where US HONE operations were consolidated in the middle 70s. Interior was mostly one large computer room (bldg. has different occupant now).

... snip ...

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

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:35:40 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#30 The 50th Anniversary of the Legencary IBM 1401

in early 90s ... moved further south to morgan hill (closer to gilroy) ... which had quite a few

Smells Like the End
http://www.metroactive.com/metro/07.02.08/news-0827.html

there are three major roads heading south out of san jose down valley, the "new" 101, the "old" 101, and Santa Teresa blvd.

North end of the coyote valley (just over range of hills from south san jose), santa teresa lab (since renamed silicon valley lab) was built ... it was originally suppose to be called coyote lab (coyote valley, closest post office is coyote ... but the week before opening ceremonies, a working ladies organization called coyote demo'ed on the steps of the capital in DC).

one of the large mushroom farms is couple miles south of santa teresa lab ... has facilities and bldgs on both sides of santa teresa blvd ... so you are sure to get the smell anytime driving santa teresa blvd (although it is called both hale & santa teresa at that point)
http://www.montereymushrooms.com/

google map sooms a little confused ... address is listed at 642 Hale Ave (also santa teresa blvd) ... but google satellite maps shows that several hundred ft north of the mushroom farm (but google satellite maps has "label" "monterey mushooms" ... several hundred ft south of the farm. this should have it about right:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=642+Hale+Ave+Morgan+Hill,+CA&sll=37.166524,-121.704719&sspn=0.016039,0.012059&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=642+Hale+Ave,+Morgan+Hill,+Santa+Clara,+California+95037&ll=37.164916,-121.705052&spn=0.008242,0.00603&t=h&z=17

zoom out a bit and this should show monterey mushrooms in lower right hand corner and santa teresa lab (off bailey ave) in left center.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=642+Hale+Ave+Morgan+Hill,+CA&sll=37.166524,-121.704719&sspn=0.016039,0.012059&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=642+Hale+Ave,+Morgan+Hill,+Santa+Clara,+California+95037&ll=37.19116,-121.726885&spn=0.065913,0.048237&t=h&z=14

and this shows almaden research (650 harry rd) sort of upper left center and santa teresa lab ... sort of lower right center
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=650+Harry+rd,+san+jose&sll=37.21208,-121.805763&sspn=0.016474,0.012059&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=650+Harry+Rd,+San+Jose,+Santa+Clara,+California+95120&ll=37.205996,-121.778984&spn=0.131801,0.096474&t=h&z=13

and this shows the old disk division plant site (now hitachi global storage tech) .. large numbers of the bldgs. have been bulldozed (including old san jose research bldg 28, that was in the lower left corner of cottle rd & 85)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=5600+cottle+rd,+san+jose&sll=37.253492,-121.803296&sspn=0.016465,0.012059&g=550+cottle+rd,+san+jose&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=5600+Cottle+Rd,+San+Jose,+Santa+Clara,+California+95123&ll=37.247411,-121.799326&spn=0.016466,0.012059&t=h&z=16

this has old plant site in upper left, below it is almaden research, sort of mid-center is santa teresa lab ... and depending on size of screen, monterey mushroom is lower right.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=5600+cottle+rd,+san+jose&sll=37.253492,-121.803296&sspn=0.016465,0.012059&g=550+cottle+rd,+san+jose&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=5600+Cottle+Rd,+San+Jose,+Santa+Clara,+California+95123&ll=37.199023,-121.765423&spn=0.131813,0.096474&t=h&z=13

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Old datasearches

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Old datasearches
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:11:37 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#24 Old datasearchces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#25 Old datasearchces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#44 Old datasearchces

dialog.com history site:
http://www.dialog.com/about/history/

some of references from above:

Reflections on the Beginnings of Dialog: The Birth of Online Information Access
http://support.dialog.com/publications/chronolog/200206/1020628.shtml

and

Online Before the Internet: Early Pioneers Tell Their Stories Part 1: In the Beginning;
https://web.archive.org/web/20120907090605/http://www.dialog.com/about/history/pioneers1.pdf

Online Before the Internet: Early Pioneers Tell Their Stories Part 2: Growth of the Online Industry;
https://web.archive.org/web/20120911120037/http://www.dialog.com/about/history/pioneers2.pdf

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Is C close to the machine?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is C close to the machine?
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:05:45 -0500
Mayan Moudgill <mayan@bestweb.net> writes:
IIRC, VM/370 was deployed commercially in 1972. There may have been other virtualization efforts inside IBM prior to that as well.

[Here is the appropriate time for the Wheelers to jump in.]


some number of the ctss people went to multics on 5th flr of 545 tech sq ... some other ctss people went to multics on 4th flr of 545 tech sq. misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

science center started off trying to get a 360/50 for virtual memory hardware modifications ... but so many 360/50s were going to the FAA ATC program ... they had to settle for 360/40 ... and so the first was called cp/40 (instead of cp/50). When the standard 360 product with virtual memory came out, 360/67 ... cp/40 morphed into cp/67.

cp/67 found its way into a large number of different places including gov. agencies ...
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

note with regard to the above ... as part of evolving to support vm370 ... the cp/67 group split off and became distinct from the science center. As it grew, it absorbed the "boston programming center" that was on the 3rd flr of 545 tech sq and moved into the 3rd flr. the 3rd flr was shared with another occupant listed on the bldg. roster as some law firm. however, the 3rd flr telco closet was on the boston programming center side of the 3rd flr ... and the telco labled the law firm's telco box as a fed gov. three letter agency.

i was doing a lot of work with cp67 as undergraduate at the univ. and would sometimes get various requests from the vendor for enhancements. I didn't know about the customers (mentioned above) ... but in retrospect, some of the enhancements requests might reasonably be construed as having originated from them (i've recently joked that there may be some security issues that current generation of security experts don't even realize are security issues ... they are so preoccupied with more fundamental problems).

for random other reference ... from my rfc index
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

rfc from lincoln labs:

rfc 109
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcidx0.htm#109

rfc 198
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcidx0.htm#198

from rfc 198:

We have exercised Lincoln Labs Network software as follows: NCP, ICP, ASCII Telnet (user and server), login procedure, access to CMS, and operator and console communication. All behave according to current specifications.

Multiple message responses, such as listing users, were very smooth under moderate to heavy load of the /67.

... snip ...

as part of the morph from cp67 to vm370, CMS was renamed from the "cambridge monitor system" to the "conversational monitor system".

there were a couple cp67-based commercial online time-sharing service bureaus that spun-off in the 60s ... and two of them appeared to move fairly quickly upstream into financial services.

in the congressional hearings last fall into credit rating agencies blamed for major spoke in the current financial mess ... recent ref:

Ohio Sues Credit Rating Agencies
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2009/11/oh_credit_agencies.html

there was comments that the seeds of the problem was from the early 70s when the rating agencies switched from the buyers paying for the ratings to the sellers paying for the ratings (creating the opening for conflict of interest with the sellers being able to pay for specific rating). Website for one of those early cp67 online timesharing service bureaus mentioned the bought the "pricing services" division from one of the rating agencies in 1972 (speculation that if the rating agencies were just giving the ratings requested by the sellers ... they may no longer need to do detailed evaluations). There was some brief item early jan ... that the company was helping "price" the toxic assets (original appropriation of TARP funds was to be used to buy the toxic assets being carried off-balance by the too-big-to-fail financial institutions).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Is C close to the machine?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is C close to the machine?
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:25:25 -0500
Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@gmail.com> writes:
creating a market that supports huge volume. IBM never really learned how to create and serve mass markets and it has never been all that interested, anyway. It would rather defend mainframes, where virtualization still plays a key role.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#47 Is C close to the machine?

I would contend that virtualization saw an "enormous" mass market uptake ... modulo limits of the hardware price/performance in the period.

there were frequent discussions at user group meetings that the uptake frequently was "in spite" of mainstream corporate activity (lots of customer installs were viral ... results of existing customers talking about the wonders & benefits of the technology).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:22:11 -0500
Charlton Wilbur <cwilbur@chromatico.net> writes:
And this is why smarter companies evaluate the actual job requirements and get the employee the model of computer that is best suited to them.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#43 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

before PCs there was even trouble getting 3270 terminals for people to do their job .. somewhat in the "mip envy" period and required VP-level signoff ... some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801006
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801016

i did a business case that 3yr amortized capital depreciation, a 3270 terminal was about the same as a business phone ... business phone was done as matter of course w/o executive approval.

at some point when 3270 terminal allocation were part of the annual budget (requiring VP-level sign-off for each terminal justification) ... there was rumor that spread thru the corporation like wildfire about a couple of the top executives were doing email ... and all of a sudden, it became stylish for management to have terminals on their desks ... and significant percentage of that year's 3270 terminal allocation was retasked to managers/executives desks (again sitting idle all day with PROFs menu being burned into the screen).

In this case, the most appropriate would be those ersatz screens deployed in furniture stores on "computer desks". Situation didn't change a lot with transition to PCs doing 3270 terminal emulation.

some of it might be attributed to change in culture after the failure of future system ... recent reference here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#34 big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#42 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

older reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#33 Architectural Diversity

a 20sep80 version of "mip envy"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email800920

a 24sep80 version of "mip envy"
https://web.archive.org/web/20081115000000*/http://research.microsoft.com/~gray//papers/CritiqueOfIBM%27sCSResearch.doc

misc. past posts mentioning "mip envy"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#7 New IBM history book out
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#39 Vnet : Unbelievable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#73 They Got Mail: Not-So-Fond Farewells
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#74 They Got Mail: Not-So-Fond Farewells
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#75 They Got Mail: Not-So-Fond Farewells
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#15 If there had been no MS-DOS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#28 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#31 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#50 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#41 Mainframe Applications and Records Keeping?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#26 sorting was: The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#50 When Does Folklore Begin???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#1 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#13 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#17 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#45 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#63 Cycles per ASM instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#50 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#13 Why is switch to DSL so traumatic?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#70 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#41 another item related to ASCII vs. EBCDIC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#8 WSJ.com - IBM Puts Executive on Leave

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:56:30 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#43 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#49 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

capital depreciation over 3yrs was full list against monthly business phone ... internal cost was actually less. turns out that lots of 3270s eventually had more like 6yr or longer lifetime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depreciation
http://taxguide.completetax.com/text/Q14_2900.asp

one might claim that a 3270 that sat on executive desk and not actually be used for anything would be less expensive ... because there was no corresponding mainframe use. the possible counter is "lost opportunity" where there might be something productive performed using those otherwise idle 3270s.

the initial issue was since a business phone on every desk didn't require special VP-level authorization for every phone ... 3270 business cost was essentially the same (actually less) ... why was VP-level authorization required for every 3270. the next issue was how to maximize ROI. Sitting idle on manager desks lacked any realistic ROI ... but possibly represents aspect of corporate culture following demise of future system effort
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#33 Architectural Diversity

one of the changes from 3277/3272 to 3278/3274 was that lot of electronics were moved out of the terminal back into shared controller; significantly reduced the cost per terminal (although it also affected response and some of the custom things done to the 3277 head for human factors ... which were no longer possible with most of the electronics no longer in terminal).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:53:46 -0500
Charles Richmond <frizzle@tx.rr.com> writes:
Heh, heh... If you failed to *connect* the 3270 on the executive's desk, I wonder how long it would take for him to figure out that it was *not* connected???

I think Dilbert was right... Give the PHB an etch-a-sketch and tell him it's a laptop computer.


a large number had the PROFs menu burned into the screen (no window saver and never actually used) ... however some number had the vm370 logon menu burned into the screen (bothered to power-on, but didn't bother to even logon).

there is the scenario about the change in corporate culture after the demise of future system effort ... accounts for some of this. a few recent references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#31 Justice Department probing allegations of abuse by IBM in mainframe computer market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#37 Young Developers Get Old Mainframers' Jobs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#8 WSJ.com - IBM Puts Executive on Leave
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#34 big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#57 MasPar compiler and simulator
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#42 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#49 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#50 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

there is also Boyd's statements quote at dedication of Boyd Hall at Air Force Weapons School ... a few recent references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#25 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/2009h.html#5 mainframe replacement (Z/Journal Does it Again)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#71 My Vintage Dream PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#47 U.S. begins inquiry of IBM in mainframe market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#34 big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#60 MasPar compiler and simulator
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#37 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

however another facet that accounts for some of this, boyd would throw into his briefings; the coming of age of young army officers from ww2 starting permeate upper management and executive ranks. scenario goes that at entry to ww2, the US had to deploy huge number of forces with little or no training; to leverage the few available skilled resources ... they created a top-heavy, rigid, top-down, command&control structure (size of officer corp was something like five times larger than the force they were up against). Some of the implications were growing sense that the people at the bottom didn't really matter and success of the organization was only because of the organization structure ... resulting in sense of entitlement among the management ranks. Other characteristics was rigid infrastructure that was poorly equipped for agile and adaptable response to changing circumstances. some recent posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#50 Greed Is
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#3 Congress Set to Approve Pay Cap of $500,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#73 Most 'leaders' do not 'lead' and the majority of 'managers' do not 'manage'. Why is this?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#34 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#34 Mission Control & Air Cooperation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#37 Young Developers Get Old Mainframers' Jobs

misc. past posts mentioning boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd1
misc. 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

The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:54:50 -0500
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Some 3270s have "programmed symbols", which is pretty much the same. You define any pattern you want within the character matrix, so you can define line-drawing characters or pretty much anything else. I know the 3290 has this feature.

there was 3277ga ... which was a large tektronix tube that plugged into the side of 3277 ... sort of a less expensive 2250 vector graphics tube. lots of cad/cam & vlsi design applications.

3279 also had color support ... there was quirky feature of the 3279 that the screen would have wierd flashes as fonts were being downloaded. I remember a demo image ... quicky search engine turns up several places seems to be the image (at least from fading memory):
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/introcs/31datatype/baboon.jpg

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:11:48 -0500
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
On the 4341's used for processing of secret documents by NATO there was some third party hardware for blanking disks, and attaching 3270 terminals with a whole channel per terminal. The whole system was _installed_, IPLed and run from tape for every visit to the faraday's cage. These 3270 termials were the most blazingly fast terminals I have seen on any mainframe style machine. They did a cics page down in the blanking interval of the video. We just could not make that screen block.

The 4341+single, channel attached 3270 terminal was a pretty decent personal computer. It was fully capable of doing video games. Conway's "life" was too fast to be useful; it flickered to interfere with the video blanking.

So, 3270s _can_ be fast. They just need to lose the VTAM/BTAM/SNA networks between the terminal and the channel.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#49 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#50 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#51 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#52 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

the channel/controller (640kbytes/sec) & controller/terminal coax speeds were about the same ... but when they moved the electronics out of 3278/9 back into the 3274 ... operation elapsed/overhead time went up vis-a-vis 3277/3272.

past post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19 3270 protocol

from above and also long ago and far away:


Using the 3272 and 3274 hardware service numbers and adding them to
typical system service times for the end-user perceived response.

hardware     TSO 1sec.    CMS .25sec.     CMS .11sec.
3272/3277        .086        1.086         .336            .196
3274/3278        .530        1.530         .78             .64

And then if you are talking about SNA attached controllers the
hardware service time will start to dwarf even TSO service times.

... snip ...

aka it was impossible to deliver sub .2second response at the terminal with 3274/3278 combination.

of course the huge 3274 channel busy overhead wouldn't be as much of an issue if there was only single thing on the channel. The project i did for the STL IMS group moved the 3274s off of local channel and remoted them on the end of hyperchannel link (and the over thruput of the 168s went up 10-15% w/o any apparent degradation in 327x terminal response). STL was starting to burst at the seams and they were moving 300 people of the IMS group to offsite bldg (about halfway between STL and main plant site). They were used to local (CMS) 3270 direct channel response ... and the group had done some tests with "remote" 3270 controller which they found totally unacceptable.

however, the extra 3274 coax overhead met than terminal emulation data download speed was only a fraction of 3272 controller.

misc. other IMS reference ... old email reference jim palming off consulting for the ims database group (when he was leaving for tandem)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801016
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#1 "The Elements of Programming Style"

misc. old posts mentioning working with hyperchannel &/or my hsdt effort
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Crypto dongles to secure online transactions

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:16:42 -0500
Subject: Re: Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
MailingList: cryptography
On 11/21/2009 06:31 PM, wrote:
Well, my building card is plain white. If anyone duplicated it, there'd be nothing stopping them from going in. But then the actual security offered by those cards - and the building controls - is more for show (and I suppose to keep the "riffraff" out - than anything else.

My work card has my photo and name on it, but there's nothing to correlate name with underlying ID in normal operation. Snap a photo of the card while you clone it, make up a reasonable simulacrum with your own picture and name, and walk right in.

Not really more or less secure than the old days when you flashed you (easily copied) badge to a card who probably only noticed that it was about the right size and had roughly the right color. But it's higher tech, so an improvement. :-)

Physical security for most institutions has never been very good, and fortunately has never


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#65 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#72 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#23 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#40 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#41 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions

Simplest card/token is basically (single-factor) something you have authentication

the "cheapest" RFID proximity card is just some static data ... that can be trivially copied and reproduced ... think of it somewhat akin to a wireless magstripe. thats also the YES CARD point-of-sale "contact" card vulnerability. Compromised POS terminal that recorded the "static data" from card transaction and trivially used to produce a counterfeit card (little or no difference from compromised POS terminal that records magstripe data). What made it worse than magstripe was that POS terminals were programmed to ask a validated chip three questions: 1) was the entered PIN correct, 2) should the transaction be done offline, and 3) is the transaction within the account credit limit. A counterfeit YES CARD would answer YES to all three questions (it wasn't necessary to even know the correct pin with counterfeit YES CARD ... and deactivating the account ... as in magstripe ... wasn't sufficient to stop the fraud). A counterfeit YES CARD was also immune to some other countermeasures that had been built into the infrastructure:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030417083810/http://www.smartcard.co.uk/resources/articles/cartes2002.html

a little more secure is two-factor token that requires both the token and possibly something you know. However, two-factor authentication is assumed more secure (than single factor authentication) is based on the different factors having independent compromises. In the case of the YES CARD (supposedly two-factor) ... it was only necessary to compromise the token's static data ... and it wasn't even necessary to know the correct PIN. In the case of pin-debit cards ... skimming compromises of ATMs or point-of-sale terminals can collect both the PIN and the magstripe data at the same time (invalidating assumption about independent compromises).

we had somewhat been asked in the mid-90s to participate in the x9a10 financial standard group (which had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments) because of having worked on this stuff now frequently called "electronic commerce". This was ALL as in debit, credit, ACH, internet, point-of-sale, low-value, high-value, face-to-face, unattended, and/or transit. Transit-turnstyle has similar requirements to building access ... although the contactless power limitations and contactless elapsed time requirements can be more stringent than building access.

Somewhat as a result ... the related work on the AADS chip strawman, had all sorts of requirements ... form factor agnostic, very-very fast, very-very low-power, contactless capable ... but for high-value ... had to have *NO* "static data" and very difficult to counterfeit ... but at the same time ... for low-value ... had to have as close to zero cost as possible.

Most of the alternatives from the period ... tended to only consider a very small subset of those requirements ... and therefor created a solution that had a single, specific operation and were ill-suited for a general purpose use. A simple issue was having the same token that was multi-factor authentication agile ... operate with single-factor (something you have) at a transit turnstyle (no time to enter PIN) ... but works the same way at a high-security building access turnstyle that requires multi-factor authentication (something you have token in conjunction with PIN something you know or palm "finger length" something-you-are). The same token then also works the same way at point-of-sale ... where low-value may just be single-factor authentication ... but increasing value transaction may have increasingly complex authentication.

Many of the above issues were also part of the prerequisite for being able to move from an institutional-centric paradigm (that also tended to only meet a small subset of possible authentication requirements) and a generalized person-centric paradigm.

The requirements to address ALL retail-payments in the mid-90s (in the x9a10 financial standard group) ... then were large factor in driving the AADS chip strawman by the late-90s ... that had the features necessary for satisfying a person-centric paradigm.

- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Crypto dongles to secure online transactions ... addenda

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:26:01 -0500
Subject: Re: Crypto dongles to secure online transactions ... addenda
MailingList: cryptography
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#65 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#72 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#23 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#40 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#41 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#54 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions

in the early part of this decade there was both the YES CARD disaster and the "serial-port card acceptor device" disaster ... which led to rapidly spreading opinions in the financial industry (in this country) about possibly chipcards weren't ready for primetime ... and nearly all such efforts evaporated/disappeared.

shortly after that there were a few non-chipcard "tokens" ... that were billed as providing unique physical signature ... but "work" with existing infrastructure. I got pulled in to look at some of them. I pointed out that they bore lots of similarity to biometrics ... effectively "static value" that might be recorded in various ways and then "replayed". Without tight physical security around the certified devices used for sensing the physical characteristics ... it would be possible to compromise with replays.

One had demo that their physical artifact could be used in internet cafe ... with very little chance of compromise ... and even if the characteristics were to be recorded ... the attackers wouldn't be able to (later) reproduce the value in believable way. At the time, with 35 yrs of virtualization experience ... I pointed out a crook could install the recording in nearly any virtualized environment and replay the characteristics through a virtual device driver ... from a purely virtualized device (based on the recording) ... something that has been common place in virtualized environments back to the 60s.

That resulted quite a bit of uproar ... since apparently some number of people had invested money in the operation. The fire&heat generated by my comments apparently went on for several months ... with lots of people in denial (and sporadic claims that I couldn't possibly have any idea what I was talking about).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Crypto dongles to secure online transactions ... addenda

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:38:41 -0500
Subject: Re: Crypto dongles to secure online transactions ... addenda
MailingList: cryptography
On 11/25/2009 12:19 PM, wrote:
The notion of virtualization - that it's "all bits" - is very, very difficult for most people to grasp. Nothing in our day to day experience works like that. Artifacts in the real world are each unique, no matter how hard we work at making them interchangeable. A classic example: On Star Trek The Next Generation, we had holodeck computer simulations of people. It was made quite clear that these were programs running on computer. But ... there was something special about "those bits". You could transmit them, but there was only one copy. Somehow you lost the bits on your computer when you copied them to another.

The whole DRM enterprise is built on denial that bits are ... just bits, and follow rules that don't match anything in the ordinary world.

The only suggestion I've seen for a physical device that could, in principle, work for authentication was some kind of crystal that could be read from a huge variety of angles. So you could "challenge" it by asking for some values at a particular angle, and even knowing the results at some large number of angles wouldn't permit you to compute the result from a different challenge angle.

Creating such a thing is easy, and having each of them unique is also easy. The tricky part is how you create the model that allows you to predict what you'll get at different angles. I think they had some method for doing that (which I don't recall), but apparently getting the whole *system* working in a way that made economic sense proved impractical.

(Simplified versions of this kind of thing for specialized applications do exist. One pretty one is apparently used to detect tampering with nuclear devices. You draw an optical fiber out of many smaller fibers, using a technology that mixes up the fibers randomly. Then you light some subset of the smaller fibers and record where the light comes out at the other end. If the macro fiber is cut, there's no way to repair it while maintaining the small fiber connections; and there's no known way to produce a fiber with a particular set of connections.)


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#65 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#72 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#23 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#40 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#41 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#54 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#55 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions

the issue in internet type scenario ... the bits/telepresense is the standard experience. the issue then becomes did the bits come from a real physical source ... or by replaying bits from some earlier recorded event (or other manipulation of bits). virtualization just simplifies being able to replay recording.

if the bits are coming electronically from remote source ... and the relying party has little or no control of the originating environment ... then what level of assurance do they have, that the bits aren't purely a replay of a fingerprint sensor (as opposed to a real fingerprint sensor).

long ago and far away, I did a spoof on the startrek transporter about what guarantees that the originals dissolve and/or that more than one copy can't be made.

a lot of the biometrics and other mechanisms that sense some (presumably) unique physical characteristic are dependent on high level of assurance and physical control of the sensors (as well as transmission path between the sensors and the relying party).

a little digression ... the YES CARD scenario was understood not long after the specs were published in the mid-90s and before any deployments in the 90s and/or this decade. the serial-port card acceptor device customer support problems were well understood from the late 80s & early 90s from the "dial-up" online banking efforts (and corresponding customer support problems with serial-port modems) ... it was major motivation for migrating online banking to the internet in the mid-90s (offloading all those customer support problems on the ISPs) as well as motivation for USB.

one might be tempted to claim that the lack of understanding is because there are so few true professionals in the business.

from long ago and far away ...
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:17:15 -0500
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
Thus, neither Univac's own 9400 nor the later machines based on the RCA Spectra 70 could have run an IBM operating system even had that been desired.

so when the company (litigation and gov. pressure) was forced into 23jun69 unbundling announcement ... and starting to charge for application software and other stuff ... it bothered to make the case that kernel software should still be free. misc. post posts mentioning unbundling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

later ... the distraction of future system effort (to completely replace 360/370) and subsequent failure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

is claimed to allow "real" clones to gain foothold in the marketplace (like Amdahl, nas, etc) ... misc email mentioning some clones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#email810318
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#email810421
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#email810422

for topic drift, totally unrelated email (801/risc) from 22apr81
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#email810422

distraction of future system ... allowed 370 (hardware & software) product pipeline to go dry ... and subsequent failure ... also prompted mad rush to get stuff back into product pipeline. I had continued to work 370 during the future system period (and periodically ridicule future system effort as having little grounding in reality) ... and so bits & pieces of my stuff ... could easily be picked up for deployment. some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750430

some of the picked-up pieces were packaged for deployment as a separate add-on "resource manager" product ... which was then selected to be the guinea pig for starting to charge for kernel software (and I got to play with the business people and lawyers on policies/practices for charging for kernel software).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Cyber breaches are a closely kept secret

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 25 Nov, 2009
Subject: Cyber breaches are a closely kept secret
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
Cyber breaches are a closely kept secret
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/11/24/businesspro-us-cybersecurity-fbi-intervi-idUSTRE5AN4YH20091124

from above:
"Of the thousands of cases that we've investigated, the public knows about a handful," said Shawn Henry, assistant director for the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Division. "There are million-dollar cases that nobody knows about."

... snip ...

and then there is this ...

The Year Of The Mega Data Breach
http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/24/security-hackers-data-technology-cio-network-breaches.html

some comment ... We were tangentially involved in the cal. state data breach legislation. we had been brought in to help word smith the electronic signature legislation and several of the parties were heavily involved in privacy issues. They had done in-depth consumer surveys and came up with the NO#1 issue was "identity theft", most frequently, account fraud form ... fraudulent transactions as the result of some data breach. It appeared that the parties felt that the publicity from the notification would result in corrective action (since it seemed little was being done at the time). misc. past posts mentioning electronic signature legislation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#signature

misc. past posts mentioning fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#fraud

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

EU agency runs rule over ID cards for online banking logins

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 26 Nov, 2009
Subject: EU agency runs rule over ID cards for online banking logins
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
EU agency runs rule over ID cards for online banking logins
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/26/id_card_ebanking/

from above:
These problem include flaws in smart card design, weak or flawed cryptography protocols, keylogging Trojans or other malware on PCs used for internet banking, and card theft.

... snip ...

it isn't like this hasn't been looked at before for the past 15 yrs or so (or maybe they just took problem lists from past mistakes). in the mid-90s there were a number of presentations about moving the oldstyle consumer dialup online banking to the internet (and the motivations, big motivation was consumer support costs associated with the serial-port modems). There tended to be similar presentations by the commercial dialup online banking operations that they would never move to the internet ... presenting a long list of threats and vulnerabilities.

we've actually had a recent, related (long-running) thread ("Crypto dongles to secure online transactions") in the cypto mailing list ... some of the posts from that thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#65 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#72 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#23 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#40 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#41 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#54 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#55 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions ... addenda
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#56 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions ... addenda

one of the periodic ongoing battles with the AADS chip strawman ... were people from some specific background or another that wanted to add some special purpose custom feature ... which would tend to compromise the use for every other environment (they didn't understand KISS and/or have backgrounds from multiple environments).

it reminded me of the cp67 & vm370 battles from the 70s ... effectively supposedly it was a specific purpose microkernel. people from other kinds of programming backgrounds found that the simplicity made it trivial to add features ... but after a year or two of such care ... it would start turning into spaghetti code and look like every other implementation (loosing the KISS and microkernel benefits).

it would also increase complexity and drastically increase the difficulty in demonstrating assurance.

it is frequently hard/impossible to get people out of their myopic blinders and consider general issues and the benefits of KISS.

from someplace long ago and far away:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Did anybody ever build a Simon?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Did anybody ever build a Simon?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:51:40 -0500
D.J. <jollycamper72@cableone.net> writes:
Shrug. Allegedly, family oral history, some of my ancestors were pilgrims. I don't think much of their 'ideals'. Of course, some of the things claimed for them actually came from the US version of the Victorians.

one of my wife's uncles supposedly had a story about getting a solicitation from salem mass. for some kind of memorial commemorating the salem witch trials. he apparently wrote back saying that he felt that his family had contributed enough, having provided members for the main entertainment at the original trials.

past reference to old history books about if it hadn't been for the "scottish" states ... as counter-balance to the "english" states ... the current form of gov. here would have been significantly different (part of the implication wasn't that the pilgrims didn't believe in religious persecution ... they just wanted to be the ones doing the persecuting).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#30 Empires and Imperialism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#47 Mickey and friends
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#51 EZPass: Yes, Big Brother IS Watching You!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#10 Horrid thought about Politics, President Bush, and Democrats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#53 August 7, 1944: today is the 65th Anniversary of the Birth of the Computer

they were history lectures from the 1880s about the founding of the country ... made into set of books that were awarded to my wife's father for some sort of distinction at west point.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

What ever happened to storing pics with electron cannons?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: What ever happened to storing pics with electron cannons?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:02:01 -0500
What ever happened to storing pics with electron cannons?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/27/tob_ibm_1360/

from above:
Normally, storage is a bit of bore to yours truly - yet this column can't help but make an exception to the terrific IBM 1360 Photo-Digital Storage System for two simple reasons: 1) It has an electron cannon; and importantly 2) Sorry, stepped away for a cup of coffee. Does the system still have an electron cannon? Yes? Fantastic.

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Did anybody ever build a Simon?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Did anybody ever build a Simon?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:12:45 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#37 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#38 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#51 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401

one of boyd's other stories involved airforce air-to-air missile before it went into production.

they came to brief him ... with piles of manuals on specs and movies of it during testing. they go through the whole briefing claiming the missile had close to 100% kill (hit the target nearly every time it fired). They come to the end ... and boyd tells them that it would have close to 10% hit ratio. They splutter and say that in the movie, every time the missile was fired it hit the target. So boyd has them rewind the film and roll it again. just before it the missile is about to hit a flare on a drone (the target used in all the test) ... he asks them to stop the film. He asks them what kind of guidence does it have? They tell him heat-seeking. He asks what kind of heat-sinking? They confer and eventually tell him pin-point heat seeking. He then asks them what is the hottest part of a jet plane. They reply the jet. He tells them they are wrong and that is why it is only going to hit possibly 10% of the time.

He continues with the story ... rolling forward to vietnam. the airforce is loosing lots of planes ... finally the general in vietnam grounds the planes while they are retrofitted with navy sidewinders. Things improve significantly (sidewinders had maybe 150% better hit rate than the airforce missiles). Roll forward another three months and the general is can'ed and recalled to the pentagon. The general had commuted one of the worst violation possible ... he was causing the airforce to loose budget share to the navy (success rate in dog fights went up significantly, so the number of planes and pilots being lost had declined significantly ... but even worse ... navy sidewinders were being used ... increasing the navy's budget share). The bottom line was that pecking order in the pentagon was based on budget share (or so some in the airforce believed, in some corners, the airforce academy has been described as institution that turns out accountants).

misc. past posts mentioning boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd1
misc. urls from around the web mentioning boyd (&/or OODA-loop)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd2

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Did anybody ever build a Simon?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Did anybody ever build a Simon?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2009 10:12:47 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#62 Did anybody ever build a Simon?

Boyd had served stint as head of lightweight fighter at pentagon ... significantly change/improved F15 & F18 and did the F16. In his briefings, he would touch on the world really needed a fighter that was almost as good as the F16 but cost significantly less; larger number of planes for the same amount of money (more like fleet of Prius rather than a single Lamborghini), simpler, cost less to maintain, lower skill level to maintain, and much higher ratio of flying hrs to maintenance hrs. The F20/Tigershark seemed to meet many of this requirements.

About a decade ago we visited some people that had recently moved into a new, fancy National Archives bldg. There were just some people ... but the rest of the bldg appeared empty ... and we asked why. They commented that congress had earmarked agency funds (no new appropriations, just how existing appropriations were to be spent) for the new construction (redirected a lot of the operating budget for subsidy to construction companies in the area), which resulted in them not having money left over to save records rotting in damp warehouses.

The Atlantic did an article that seemed to explain why there wasn't uptake of the F20; the F16 lobby got congress to earmark portion of US foreign aid for purchase of F16s. A large number of countries where the F20 would be better suited ... got F16s when the choice was spending their own money (for F20s) or effectively getting the F16s for free (funded by the US taxpayer).

misc. past posts mentioning F20/Tigershark:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#8 scheduling & dynamic adaptive ... long posting warning
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#14 OS Workloads : Interactive etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#1 OS Workloads : Interactive etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#45 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#13 News Release
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#3 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#4 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#6 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#7 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#8 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#10 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#40 EZPass: Yes, Big Brother IS Watching You!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#4 Expanding U.S. Tactical Aviation's "Approved Belief"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#16 comp.arch has made itself a sitting duck for spam

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

spool file tag data

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: spool file tag data
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2009 10:01:07 -0500
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.vmesa-l
On 11/29/2009 01:00 AM, wrote:
TAG data is just some arbitrary meta-data associated with a spool file.

Although a spool file "TAG" data may indicate a final destination node when spooled to an RSCS virtual machine, this meta-data may have any semantics depending on the interpretation of the recipient of the spool file.


The PROFs group had picked up a very early, prerelease source of VMSG (an internal email client) for use for handling email in PROFS. Later the VMSG author suggested that PROFs group upgrade their source to a much later & more capable release. The PROFs group denied that they were using VMSG. The VMSG author then pointed out that all PROFs email has other information (besides RSCS control info) in the TAG data ... including the initials of the VMSG author. The PROFs group then tried repeatedly to get the VMSG author fired. After that, the VMSG author only made the VMSG source available to two other people.

About that time, I was also visiting Tymshare periodically and they showed me a copy of Adventure that they had gotten from machine at stanford and ported to vm/cms. I asked if I could get a copy. I was still negotiating for a process where Tymshare would dump me a copy of all VMSHARE files once a month so I could make them available on internal systems (if that had been in place, they could have just appended the Adventure source to the VMSHARE tape). The VMSG author had another round about path that involved a univ. in the UK ... which get it via another way. I finally got a copy of (vm/cms) Adventure from the VMSG author via the path thru UK ... and I was able to make Adventure available internal. Originally, I would only internally distribute the executable ... but if somebody demonstrated that they collected all points ... I would send them the source.

I eventually did get early procedure in place to get a monthly tape of all VMSHARE files ... and one of the places I made them available was the internal (vm370-based) HONE system ... the US HONE datacenters had been consolidated in northern cal. ... and I could drop by both Tymshare and HONE (and some number of other places) on days that I would also be attending the monthly VM370 baybunch meetings at SLAC.

some old email mentioning VMSHARE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#vmshare

and for other drift ... VMSAHRE archives
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

HONE had originated in the wake of the 23jun69 unbundling announcement to provide "hands-on" experience to SEs in the branch office (after unbundling, SE time at customer accounts was charge for ... but lots of SE experience came as sort of apprentice activity as part of large SE teams at customer accounts ... and charging for couldn't be justified ... but would have been required).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

Several HONE datacenters were created in the US for this purpose ... branch office SEs running operating systems in ... originally cp67 virtual machines. After initial 370 announcements ... the HONE cp67 systems were enhanced to simulate the new 370 instructions part of the announcement (so could run systems built for new 370 systems). For the 70s and part of the 80s ... I provided highly customized cp67 and vm370 systems for HONE.

some old email mentioning HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#hone

use web online sat. map and lookup the address of facebook. the bldg. next to facebook was the consolidated US hone datacenter from the mid-70s.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Did anybody ever build a Simon?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Did anybody ever build a Simon?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2009 17:17:05 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#62 Did anybody ever build a Simon?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#63 Did anybody ever build a Simon?

i had sponsored boyd's briefings at ibm ... and some of this bears some similarity to boyd's briefings and some of his stories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_%28military_strategist%29

it has some references to boyd being at the center of the defense reform movement in the 70s & 80s.

it doesn't mention an 18pg newsweek article in the early 80s that went into some detail regarding various issues from the defense reform movement ... it carried somebody else's picture related to the information. boyd's stories about strategy behind that article ... since it had (unclassified but embarrassing) facts. there was an year and half period getting written permission to present facts at congressional hearing ... and then newsweek getting the article out over the weekend between the friday congressional hearing and newsweek hitting the stands. he then tells that SECDEF was sure boyd was behind it and gave orders that boyd was banned from the pentagon (which lasted a week or two before the order was rescinded)

another story was about 300 page manual he had written for fighter pilot training. he was later contacted by a certain 3-letter agency with a translation of russian fighter pilot training manual ... which was nearly word-for-word the same except for the conversion of ft&miles to meters&kilometers.

misc. past posts mentioning boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd1
misc. URLs from around the web mentioning boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd2

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

spool file data

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: spool file data
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:50:36 -0500
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.vmesa-l
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#64 spool file tag data

Another application by the VMSG author was parasite/story. It used the PVM logical device/3270 facility and had a HLLAPI type scripting language (before the advent of ibm/pc) ... it was "after" REX was available internally. Another remarkable thing was that the executable was small enough to fit in the CMS "transient" area.

some old storys ... including automatic logging into RETAIN and retrieving PUT buckets:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#35 Newbie TOPS-10 7.03 question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#36 Newbie TOPS-10 7.03 question

for other topic drift ... in the early 80s I did a re-implementation of the spool file system written in vs/pascal running in virtual machine. a problem was that HSDT project was putting in multiple T1 (and higher speed links) ... with aggregate thruput requirements of megabyte/sec or more. This was effectively impossible with RSCS and the existing spool file system. The spool file interface was synchronous transfer of 4k block at a time. On a system with competing transfers, a RSCS transfer might be stuffed in queue with 3-4 other operations ... giving RSCS possibly 4-5 4kbyte transfers/sec; I needed possibly 200-300 4kbyte transfers/sec for RSCS.

I had my page-mapped filesystem for CMS with things like contiguous allocation, efficient multiple block transfers and while CMS might view the interface as synchronous ... but playing games with page table entries allowed for asynchronous transfers (a CMS application with moderate filesystem use had something like three times the thruput using page-mapped filesystem compared to normal CMS filesystem running on exact same hardware), i could leverage that interface for the virtual machine spool file implementation ... but I was taking spool file assembler kernel implementation, redo it in virtual machine pascal implementation and get at least 100 times increased thruput.

The additional challenge was that since RSCS transferred the whole 4k spool file block ... all of the high-thruput changes & modifications had to be done so that they were transparent and interoperated with RSCS running on unmodified vm370 systems.

old posts on the subject in this mailing list
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#43 Migrating pages from a paging device (was Re: removal of paging device)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#63 SPXTAPE status from REXX

other posts on the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#22 CP spooling & programming technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#29 CP spooling & programming technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#33 dasd full cylinder transfer (long post warning)

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

misc. past page mapped cms filesystem posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 13:48:42 -0500
scott@AITRUS.ORG (Scott) writes:
With a cheaper job market, now is the time to hire hands to go through your massive libraries of copy-and-paste COBOL and begin some initial design/development of Java libraries.

in the 70s & 80s ... there was addition of "real-time" transactions to a lot of the financial infrastructures ... but they frequently were only front-end that started the transaction for after hrs "batch settlement" window. slightly related past post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#27 Father Of Financial Dataprocessing

i.e. commit paradigms providing auditors the level of trust in computerized implementations ... vis-a-vis paper.

in the 90s, there were billions spent on development of straight through processing efforts (eliminating overnight batch settlement by taking every transaction straight through to completion) ... leveraging large number of parallel "killer micros" and object-orieinted parallelization technology. the issue was that with increasing business and globalization ... the amount of work that needed to be done in the overnight batch window was increasing while globalization was decreasing the size of the window.

most of the projects were eventually declared a success and disappeared ... it was very late into several of the efforts when they got around to do any speeds&feeds and found that the parallelization technology was increasing overhead by a factor of 100 times (compared to the batch cobol implementations) ... totally swamping any of the anticipated throughput improvements from the parallel killer macros.

we saw some proposals for re-engineering activities in the middle part of this decade ... that were scuttled because the decision makers still hadn't recovered from the failed efforts in the 90s.

a few recent posts in threads on such re-engineering efforts:
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
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#21 Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#57 IBM halves mainframe Linux engine prices
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#81 A Faster Way to the Cloud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#81 big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:18:17 -0500
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#67 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

semi-advertisement warning ... in the past couple yrs, i've done some work with a company that does business rule specification ... which then generates relatively fine-grain, parallel friendly SQL.

The magic is being able to translate the business rule specifications into small enough units of work (characterized by parallel-friendly SQL statements) and then rely on modern generation of RDBMS implementations to achieve the parallelization. They've done some end-to-end bank business process implementations that have significantly more reporting and audit control than typical operation ... with a lot being a side-effect of it being done at the business rule specification level ... and some of it being real-time straight-through processing ... resulting in real-time status/reports at all points in time.

They've been able to demonstrate extremely high DBMS transaction rates (in part because of making the operations finer grain) ... but also very high financial transaction rates & thruput (a lot of RDBMS implementations are starting to demonstrate parallelization efficiencies ... better than the parallelization programming tools that were in use in the 90s).

the business rule level specification makes for rapid development and extremely agile change cycles. fine-grain SQL units of work are generated from the business rule specifications ... and relies on modern generation of parallel RDBMS to achieve high throuhput.

slightly related thread on some "modern" high-performance parallel RDBMS work
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#43 From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#46 From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:41:35 -0500
ibm-main@FROZEN.ECLIPSE.CO.UK (Roy Hewitt) writes:
applications and systems strung together over 30 or 40 years. The z10s are probably one of the most hi-tech bits of kit you'll have in your machine room, and z/OS is pretty good too ;-).. But what gives the mainframe such a bad name is usually the pile of 40 year apps stuck together running on top of it and our resistance to change.. (oh, and our morbid fascination with 3270!!) And why did we get this way?.. well it's what I call the pair of "IBM's double-edged swords".

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#67 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#68 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

we had been called in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to payment transactions on their server; the startup also had this technology called "SSL" that they wanted to use. the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce".

part of the deployment was something called a "payment gateway" ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

... which acts as intermediary between electronic commerce webservers on the internet and the payment infrastructure. The original "payment gateway" ... was an ha/cmp setup.

at the time, although we had left ... we were still involved in various aspects of the ha/cmp product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

... in fact, two people at the startup, responsible for the "commerce server" ... we had worked with earlier during our ha/cmp days ... this old post mentions a meeting in ellison's conference room that they were at
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

In any case, both for ha/cmp product ... some aspects of the payment gateway deployment ... and various of the large electronic commerce webserver farms ... that we were brought in to review ... we would comment that there had to be compensating procedures ... some of which would have been already there as part of a mainframe infrastructure.

the description that we used was that many of the platforms in use had evolved up out of interactive environment and tended to default to presenting an error message to the user whenever anything went wrong ... and relied on the user to take corrective action. the platforms with a "batch" heritage ... tended to have a higher upfront learning curve and less user friendly ... but it was part of a paradigm ... that assumed that the person responsible for the program wasn't there ... and that there were a lot of heuristics which evolved over a 40yr period to automagically try and handle all possible things that might go wrong.

there is a marine bumper sticker that is a take-off on "if it has to be positively, absolutely, delivered overnight" ... but "if it has to be positively, absolutely, destroyed overnight" ... this is things like large payrolls and other things ... "if it has to be positively, absolutely, run overnight" (and repeatedly, time-after-time).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:50:34 -0500
PaulGBoulder@AIM.COM (Paul Gilmartin) writes:
Less than two decades ago, I had to work overtime and save money to afford a 200 MB external SCSI drive, and I had to ride my bicycle two miles, uphill both ways, to CompUSA to buy it. You should be grateful that your management allows you to use 150 times that storage capacity, even temporarily.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#67 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#68 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#69 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

early days of 3380 ... there was a study that showed if full/active 3350s were moved to same amount of space on 3380s ... it would degrade system thruput. the issue was that 3380 space increased by a factor larger than the increase in 3380 arm performance.

there was a suggestion floated around SHARE to have a special "fast" 3380 that sold at higher price ... which only had half as much disk space (reducing the amount of space under an arm). it was actually a standard full-sized 3380 with special microcode load that limited access to only half the cylinders. the share claim was this was solution targeted at the bureaucrats that didn't have the discipline to do it on their own (and if they weren't required to pay more ... they wouldn't appreciate it as much).

internally we had an application that would take activity profile of existing installation (3330, 3350, etc) and produce a migration strategy that would load-balance the data across pool of 3380s. for 3350 installation ... it was fairly consistent that the 3380s were only loaded to about 80% full ... in order to have the same thruput as the 3350 environment. there was then a bunch of work about doing such activity collection all the time as part of real-time load-balancing allocation & re-organization.

my brother recently needed to mail me a large amount of data ... and went out and got a USB terabyte external drive for under $100. I just did quick online check and there are external USB 1.5terabyte drives on sale for $99.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Trade Secrets and Confidential Information

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 1 Dec, 2009
Subject: Trade Secrets and Confidential Information
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
Trade Secrets and Confidential Information
http://information-security-resources.com/2009/11/30/trade-secrets-and-confidential-information/

from above:
According to recent reports, a Chinese company just agreed to a $200 million settlement of a trade secret case in California. Associated Press has reported that a former Home Depot manager has been criminally accused of passing trade secret information.

... snip ...

Survey: 25 percent of office workers would steal data
http://www.fiercecio.com/story/survey-25-percent-office-workers-would-steal-data/2009-11-30

circa 1980 there was (cal) trade-secret theft case claiming >$1B. The judge basically said that it was akin to "swimming pool" attractive nuisance ... that had to demonstrate security procedures in place proportional to the value of the trade secret ... otherwise people would (of course) walk off with valuables as part of their basic nature.

this has been part of identity theft (& "account fraud") and long term claims that "insiders" are involved in possibly up to 80% of the incidents.

one of the things done in the x9.59 financial transaction standard ... some past references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

was eliminating knowledge of the account number (and therefor the associated fraudulent transactions and account fraud) as a vulnerability ... it part because of detailed end-to-end studies that account numbers are required in large numbers of standard financial transaction business processes all over the world (x9.59 didn't try and restrict access to the account number &/or other transaction data ... it just eliminated being able to use such information for most common fraudulent transactions)

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:03:03 -0500
howard.brazee writes:
And if there is a problem with this upgrade, I can run Safari or Opera. My work isn't dependent upon Firefox (nor its plug-ins) working correctly.

I have had troubles upgrading Opera though on my Mac, and I have had Windows machines at work where I did not have sufficient upgrade privilege.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#67 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#68 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#69 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#70 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

I'm not so much tied to Firefox ... but do have procedure that has knowledge of Firefox files and uses sqlite to process them. I don't particularly like system/network latencies.

way back when, I was one of the people that did hardware mods to 3277. while 3270x were "fast" ... they were still half-duplex (and could have other processing issues). In "real" interactive paradigm ... it was possible to be typing concurrently with the screen being written; if you happen to hit a key while the 3270 screen was being written, the keyboard would lockup and have to be reset (there was FIFO box that could be inserted between the keyboard cable and where it plugged into the 3270 head, that was workaround to keyboard lockup). it was also possible to do some soldering inside keyboard case to adjust repeat delay and repeat rate (it was possible to adjust the repeat rate ... like for moving the cursor around the screen ... so it was faster than the screen refresh rate ... i.e. the cursor could continue moving after stopped pressing key ... took a little practice to get use to).

and then there was big performance hit moving from (local channel attached) 3272 to (local channel attached) 3274s; old post with 30yr old data:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19 3270 protocol


Using the 3272 and 3274 hardware service numbers and adding them to
typical system service times for the end-user perceived response.

hardware     TSO 1sec.    CMS .25sec.     CMS .11sec.
3272/3277        .086        1.086         .336            .196
3274/3278        .530        1.530         .78             .64

... snip ...

there was somebody in the company claiming that they had the best internal vm/cms service with quarter second response ... I pointed out to them that I had service with .11sec response and still under quarter second when taking into account 3272/3277 processing (they were most unhappy).

in any case, i have line-mode process that uses wget to retrieve pages from 70-80 news websites ... it then does diff on the previous retrieval and current retrieval and extracts any remaining URLs. It then double checks the URLs against the firefox SQLite file to see if the URL has been retrieved before. Previously unretrieved URLs are sent to firefox for retrieval in background tabs (there are some heuristics about time-delays between URLs for the same webserver). I then can browse thru 400-500 tabs w/o annoyance of network latency ... much more akin to turning pages in a newspaper. I've been doing this from just about the time of original tab introduction ... back when everything was flat files ... but had to adjust when move was made to SQLite.

Note that firefox has significantly improved its efficiency of using storage ... but I still have to be careful about going over 100 tabs on a 1gbyte laptop.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:23:50 -0500
John.McKown@HEALTHMARKETS.COM (McKown, John) writes:
What! You don't fondly remember the joys of running a Stage 1 / Stage 2 sysgen? How you could be productive for HOURS by just sitting and monitoring their execution? Or doing an EDT gen by "throwing away" jobs and steps from the Stage 2? HCD makes that "so easy a caveman can do it" (sm). That was when "men were men" and grrls weren't allowed into the sanctified areas of DP. <GRIN> (please don't kill me, ladies! It was a joke, honest.)

undergraduate in the 60s ... i worked out being able to do sysgen in production jobstream ... it required some stand alone fiddling and some other stuff. I took the output of stage1 sysgen and reworked the steps into individual jobs (and other stuff). I also re-arranged the steps and frequently move/copy statements within steps ... in order to optimally place datasets & members within PDS ... for optimized arm motion. for typical student academic workload ... I was able to increase thruput by a factor of three times (in large part because of reduced arm motion). problem was that typical system maintenance over period of six months or so ... "replacing" (critical) PDS members (and messing up careful ordering) ... would reduce increased thruput to less than two times ... sometimes eventually motivating a careful rebuild.

the problem was that univ. student workload had run tape-to-tape on 709 ibsys monitor. moving to 360/65 (actually 360/67 but running non-relocate) under os/360 ... went from subsecond per student job to over minute per student job (unit record & multiple step job scheduler). installing hasp got it down to something over 30 seconds (effectively multiple step job scheduling ... extremely disk i/o intensive). eventually when 360 watfor became available ... the issue was significantly improved.

part of old presentation at '68 Atlantic City share:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18 CP/67 & OS MFT14

(virtual machine) cp/67 had been installed at the univ. jan68. I got to play with it on weekends ... but the univ. continued to run "bare machine" os/360 production during the week. between jan68 and the Atlantic City share meeting ... i was able to rewrite large portions of cp/67 during my weekend play periods (although that was also when I had to do some amount of support & maint for the production os/360 system).

the above presentation mentions thruput improvement of os/360 under cp/67 (mostly because of cp67 pathlength reductions part of my cp/67 rewrites) ... but also mentions some of the stuff I was doing for os/360. other stuff done for cp/67 was things like ordered arm seek and lots of algorithm work (it made little difference for os/360 batch process ... but contributed to handling multiple cms workload).

misc. other posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#67 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#68 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#69 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#70 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#72 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:19:42 -0500
rfochtman@YNC.NET (Rick Fochtman) writes:
I wouldn't mind looking back at the "good old days", but only for hysterical purposes. SIO/TIO/HIO are NOT areas I would care to revisit for any productive purpose. :-)

part of the redo of sio/tio/hio for xa (aka "811") was the enormous pathlengths in mvs ... being able to redrive queued i/o after completion of previous i/o.

this showed up when i redid i/o supervisor for disk engineering labs. the disk engineering labs had tried doing development work under mvs ... but found that it was a 15min mean-time-to-failure ... even with single testcell. i redid i/o supervisor to never fail ... so that multiple testcells (disk development) could be exercised concurrently ... happen to mention the MVS 15min mtbf in purely internal report which brought down the wrath of the mvs organization on me (when I 1st took the call, i thot it was going to be about helping fix all the problems, but it was one of those calls getting told that I wasn't allowed to even mention such things in purely internal discussions).

in any case, i got a call one monday morning asking what did i do to the 3033 system in the disk product test lab (bldg. 15) over the weekend ... that their performance went all to pieces. turns out i did nothing ... but they had replaced a 3830 controller (for 16 3330 drives) with brandnew 3880 controller over the weekend. diagnosing the problem turns out that the increased pathlength in the 3880 was so long ... that the 3880 (in order to meet performance specs) was presenting operation finished interrupt slightly early (before everything was completely clean up). My redrive pathlength was then so short ... that I was hitting the 3880 controller with the next queued request ... while it was still busy finishing cleaning up the previous operation. it was then forced to present CC=1, SM+BUSY (controller busy) to the SIO ... and then later present CUE interrupt (and the system had to requeue the operation and wait for the CUE). This drove up system overhead and reduced overall system thruput (by enormous amount ... compared to 3830 which I was running at very high rate).

all of this was because I had been able to move the (stand-alone) disk testing in bldgs. 14 & 15 ... into operating system environment ... and since the testing only accounted for 1-2% cpu utilization ... they then started also using the machines for lots of other stuff. misc. past posts getting to play disk engineer in bldgs. 14&15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

the 3880 had already passed its performance/thruput acceptance tests when this occurred ... but fortunately it was still 6months before first-customer-ship ... so there was time to do additional fiddling in the 3880 controller.

the other issue with the SIO/TIO/HIO and asynchronous interrupt paradigm ... besides wanting to quickly being able to do device redrive as quickly as possible (after completion of previous operation) was the havoc that asynchronous interrupts had on cache hit ratios (high interrupt rates could cut some cache hit rates significantly ... swithing back and forth between interrupt processing and application programming). I was also providing highly specialized systems for HONE (internal vm370 online system provided world-wide sales & marketing support). Large percentage of the applications were implemented in (cms) APL and as result were fairly processor hungry (in addition to doing lots of I/O). At one point they had opportunity to upgrade their loosely-coupled (single-system image) 370 operation to APs (multiprocessor configuration with 2nd processor that didn't have any channels). Normal 370 multiprocessor slowed the processor cycle by 10% for part of the (multiprocessor) cross-cache interactions. So a two-processor 370 ... started out as 1.8 times that of a single processor (multiprocessor software overhead could cut actual thruput to 1.3-1.5 times that of single processor). misc. past posts mentioning multiprocessor support
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

For the AP multiprocessor support, I did some slight of hand ... and was getting better than twice the thruput of single processor ... because of significantly improved cache hit ratio of the processor w/o channels ... which way more than compensated for reduction of cache hit ratio of the other processor attempting to do twice as much I/O on single set of channels. misc. past posts mentioning online world-wide marketing & sales support
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

Jan75 ... company was starting to deal with future system being failure ... and 370 wasn't going to be killed off
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

I had continued to do 360/370 stuff all during the future system period ... I was caustic of their ability to pull stuff off and didn't get drawn into their fantasy land ... and then was being asked if I could help quickly get stuff back into the 370 product pipeline. Anyway, jan75, I got asked if I could do something with 5-way 370-based multiprocessor that had significant microprogramming stuff. I defined a queued interface for i/o (a little like the later xa-stuff) ... as well as a queued interface for multiprocessing task dispatching (a little like the later intel i432). the 5-way got terminated before even being announced ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bounce

the other way of looking at it was that it evolved into a 16-way 370 effort in its place ... which was even getting even better uptake around the company ... until somebody let slip to the head of POK that it would probably be decades before the favorite son operating system was able to support 16-way (then people got invited not to appear in POK again).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:54:28 -0500
Pierre Fichaud <prf51@videotron.ca> writes:
Most banks have SLAs with acquiring institutions like FirstData,etc as far as transaction turnaround times are concerned. The acquirer gets the VISA transaction and hands it off to VisaNet. VisaNet routes it to your bank. Your bank processes the transaction and returns a yea or a nay to VisaNet. VisaNet gets it to the acquirer and the acquirer eventually returns the transaction to your terminal. There are SLAs covering all aspects of this itinerary. Most banks are NOT going to switch from mainframes to mid-range machines. The banks must meet their SLAs. Otherwise, penalties are involved.

I can't see the largest banks in the world switching. They are processing thousands of transactions per minute.

Inherent in all of this processing and communications is cryptography. every is supposed to be sent securely. So each participant that touches the transaction is required to do crytpographic processing. This adds to the path length substantially.


the card associates put in "value-added-networks" in the early days of plastic magstripe payment cards ... to interconnect a huge assortment of processors (with lots of non "on-us" transactions between merchant acquirers and consumer issuers).

by the early part of this decade, there was some comment that 90% of the transactions (in the US) were being done in six datacenters (combination of bank consolidations and outsourcing) ... which had their own direct interconnects. this resulted in some legal action between the parties and card associations ... which had somewhat moved from being a brand to using their "value-added-networks" as profit making operation. part of the merchant interchange fee is for use of the association networks to interconnect institutions when it isn't an "on-us" transactions ... even when the acquiring institution processing has been outsourced and is running on the same exact computer as the "outsourced" issuing institution processing ... and never even remotely touches an association network).

old reference (just the first data part of the overall issue):
http://www.paymentsnews.com/2006/08/visa_usa_first_.html
another reference:
http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=1009

as referenced in previous post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#69 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

we had been brought in to help do what has come to be 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 as in credit, debit, ACH, stored-value, giftcard, point-of-sale, internet, face-to-face, unattended, low-value, high-value, transit turnstyle, aka ALL). as part of that we did some detailed end-to-end threat & vulnerability studies of the various environments ... as part of coming up with the x9.59 standard ... some refs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

one of the things observed in the x9a10 detailed studies was that account numbers and transaction details are required in possibly dozens of business processes that go on at tens of millions of locations around the world ... and any approach to "hide" such information can never be completely successful. So x9.59 transaction standard slight tweaked the paradigm and eliminated (crooks) being able to use account number and/or information from previous transactions, for fraudulent transactions (x9.59 does nothing to encrypt or hide the information ... it just eliminates the requirement to encrypt or hide the information).

misc. other posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#67 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#68 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#70 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#72 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#73 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#74 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:45:19 -0500
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
we had been called in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to payment transactions on their server; the startup also had this technology called "SSL" that they wanted to use. the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce".

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#68 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#75 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

for the fun of it ... from someplace long ago and far away ....
Version: 00 Serial Number: 02:3E Issuer: C=US, OU=Test CA, O=Netscape Communications Corp. Subject: C=US, ST=California: 94043, L=501 Middlefield Road, Mountain View, O=Netscape Communications Corporation, OU=IAPPS Consulting, CN=IAPPS - Test Cert for 60days

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:14:56 -0500
howard.brazee writes:
If Accenture was Anderson Consulting and Anderson Consulting was Arthur Anderson, then Accenture was Arthur Anderson.

re:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accenture

above says that it was a bermuda corporation up until 1sep2009 when it moved to ireland. also mentions that both arthur andersen and andersen consulting were locally-owned independent partnerships with contractual agreement with andersen worldwide. above article also mentions GAO highlighting Accenture's incorporation in a "tax haven" country.

re:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andersen_Worldwide

re:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen

above mentions splitting from the accountancy side in '87 ... and renamed themselves after splitting from andersen worldwide in 2000. above also mentions arthur andersen had surrended its licenses to practice as CPAs after being convicted of criminal charges related to Enron. for some topic drift related to the above

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 ...

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, according to a report by Public Citizen

... 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 ...

Gramm's wife appeared to fairly quickly replace Born ... until passage of 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act "exemption" ... and then she stepped down to join Enron's board.

past posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#67 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#68 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#69 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#70 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#72 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#73 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#74 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#75 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#76 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

70 Years of ATM Innovation

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 2 Dec, 2009
Subject: 70 Years of ATM Innovation
Blog: Payment Systems Network
Blogging Innovation: 70 Years of ATM Innovation - Latest innovation articles, videos, and insights
http://www.business-strategy-innovation.com/2009/12/70-years-of-atm-innovation.html

some other historic information (involving los gatos lab)

magnetic stripe card
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_stripe_card

ibm 3624
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3624

above wiki even references one of my posts ... i had several offices and labs in the los gatos lab. i was nominally part of research in bldg. 28 (later almaden when new facility was built) ... but other places in the san jose area would let me have facilities ... and los gatos lab was a particularly nice location.

semi-related post (one of many) in recent long-running thread in the ibm mainframe mailing list
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#75 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

.. from not so long ago ... piece of old email

Date: 08/27/2003 02:25:11 PM
From: wheeler
Subject: Re: Magneprint Technology

this was reviewed by ATM Integrity task force last year


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

the ATM Integrity Task Force reports have been confidential.

but other references:


https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay10.htm#41
and
http://www.mail-archive.com/internet-payments@ls.fstc.org/msg00214.html

about ...
ATM Scams - Whose Liability Is It, Anyway?, American Banker, Tuesday, August 13, 2002

from the article ...
On July 23 the Electronic Funds Transfer Association organized a meeting of nearly every interested party to work on collective solutions, specifically to the growing problem of skimming. This type of fraud involves stealing PIN numbers and other card data, often through devices attached to the machines, and using the data either to manufacture fraudulent cards or to loot bank accounts.

Because many of the entities represented at the meeting had conflicting interests, Mr. Polmer and others expressed concern that the ATM Integrity Task Force that was set up at the meeting might not be able to sustain a united front.


... snip ...

... another email snippet

Date: 08/05/2003 07:11 PM
From: <somebody at magtek>
Subject: Magneprint Technology

I have attached a brochure, which describes the technology. You can also go to www.magneprint.com. Currently, this site redirects you to the MagTek site. The Magneprint site is being updated but should be available by Monday, August 8th.


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

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:01:06 -0500
ivan@VMFACILITY.FR (Ivan Warren) writes:
Hmphhh..

In the dept of "other possible ways by the hardware to damage performance when preventing I/O queue processing" - in the line of the 3380 presenting early CE...

That's probably what drove the 4381 folks (or maybe it was you !) to do this SIOFQ (Start I/O Fast Queuing) thingy (dunno if any other model had it - but I know I had it on my 4381 back then).

All in all, not a bad idea. When the channel encounters a CU or Channel Busy condition - by a SIOF issued Op - either because the CU isn't ready to accept the request just yet or the channel is performing some burst operation - (but not a Device Busy or CC=2 which doesn't even go to the channel anyway) - The channel hardware would queue the I/O request - thus freeing the CPU from going into a dequeue/SIOF frenzy (remember also that because it's a SIOF, you (may) get an extra interrupt to present you with a deferred CC)

Nice.. Unless if you had a 2-channel-switch on a 3880 with 2 Storage Directors. Because then, the supervisor would never attempt to start the I/O on the other side (since a SIOF with SIOFQ enabled would never make the CPU aware of the situation). Thus, I/O would almost always be queued on the 1st path - and almost never presented on the 2nd path.

On my installation, where I was running VM/SP5 with HPO, disabling SIOFQ led to a *significant* increase in I/O throughput (with no significant CPU overhead.. processing an I/O interrupt, dequeuing and re-starting an I/O in CP has quite a short path length.. maybe 200 or 300 instructions overall - at least for an I/O for which the hypervisor has complete responsibility (paging, mdisk, spool)).

Of course, XA made all this go away since the Channel Subsystem is then made responsible for initiating the I/O on an available CHPID - if more than 1 path is available and the initial path is found to be unavailable to perform the requested operation.

OTOH, this makes me dreamy about all the "multipathing" enhancements available on today's "distributed" systems - like - Ohhh ! Shiny ! (with Jazz Hands) - when this is something that has been available probably since the mid 70's (program controlled) and since the early 80's (hardware controlled) on mainframes.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#74 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

sio was synchronous all the way out to the device and back ... as the processors got faster ... the round-trip latency was starting to represent large number of processor instructions. so (370) siof didn't wait ... just continued on ... and various conditions that might have shown as SIO condition code ... then had to be persented as deferred interrupt.

when i redid the i/o supervisor for the disk engineering lab ... to make it bullet proof and never fail ... i simplified a lot of spegetti code that had evolved over a number of years. one of the things was the gorp that purported to be multi-path operation. I could do the original primary with alternates ... but could also do load balancing (cleaning up the code resulted in much less code, much shorter pathlengths, and perform more function)

the 3830 to 3880 went from a fast horizontal microcode engine to special data transfer hardware path and a slow vertical microcode engine (jib-prime). the described problem with presenting early termination with ongoing completion (attempting to mask slowness of processing) ... another problem was it was really, really slow if the 3880 ever had to switch channel paths (i mean, really, really slow involving all sorts of extra 3880 computation; couldn't do much about this if multipath for loosely-coupled operation); the net was that it was almost never beneficial to use an alternate path to a 3880 if the primary was busy (and stuff like dynamic path load balancing was an especially bad idea).

related past posts mentioning various dynamic pathing stuff:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#3 Hercules 3.04 announcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#15 Hercules 3.04 announcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#9 21st Century ISA goals?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#33 Internal DASD Pathing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#52 Throwaway cores

there was joke about the slowness of 3880 operations significantly increasing channel busy ... to the point that 3090 had to up the standard number of channels in configurations ... and the processor division then wanted to bill the 3880 group for the manufacturing costs for the extra channels.

circa 1980 there was start of program to replace the large number of different internal microprocessors with common 801/risc processors; the s/38 follow-on, as/400 was going to use 801, the 4341 follow-on was going to use 801 ... bunch of other microprocessor efforts around the company was going to converge to 801. The various 801 "Iliad" processors ran into some issues ... so as/400 had crash program to do custom CISC instead. Note that a decade later, as/400 did go with 801/risc (or a flavor of 801/risc descendant, power/pc).

I helped with position paper that 4341 follow-on (4381) should be custom CISC ... i.e. chip technology was getting to point where it was becomming possible to do much of 370 in circuits ... instead of microcode on top of some other processor architecture ... but i didn't have a whole lot else to do with 4381. bits of that paper reproduced here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#27 A Day For Surprises (Astounding Itanium Tricks)

misc. old email related to 801/risc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#801

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

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

UNIX turns 40

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: UNIX turns 40
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:23:01 -0500
news article distribution from this morning

UNIX turns 40
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/aix/library/au-unix40/

picked up here:

Unix turns 40 -- the patience of Sun Tzu
http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001213.html

and I had my own comments

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

70 Years of ATM Innovation

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: 70 Years of ATM Innovation
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:25:50 -0500
Blogging Innovation: 70 Years of ATM Innovation - Latest innovation articles, videos, and insights
http://www.business-strategy-innovation.com/2009/12/70-years-of-atm-innovation.html

and I added my comments in linkedin discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#78 70 Years of ATM Innovation

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Small Server Mob Advantage

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Small Server Mob Advantage
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:20:13 -0500
machw@RESA.NET (Warner Mach) writes:
I believe that I have identified an interesting phenomenon in the ongoing mainframe vs distributed servers debate. I call this the 'small server mob advantage.'

there are numerous situations (not just servers) were there can be smaller upfront/initial costs ... but scale less well.

an earlier version of this was huge proliferation in 4341s (actually mid-range, dec/vax experienced something similar in the same market).

cluster of six 4341s were cheaper than 3033, had more aggregate mips, more aggregate storage, and more aggregate channels and more aggregate i/o capacity. some of the big customers would order 4341s in multiples of a hundred at a time (something that dec/vax didn't really see).

misc. old 4341 related email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#4341

going into mid-80s ... there was some anticipation that 4381s would see similar success ... however, by that time, the mid-range market was starting to shift to workstations & large PCs.

SHARE had some statements that 4341s would have seen even larger penetration (at expense of dec/vax) ... but dec/vax had lower entry care&feeding costs (i.e. less effort and lower skill level).

At the time, some internal locations were bursting at the seams in terms of raised floor and 4341s were solution to installing additional computing power ... out in department areas (at some locations, conference rooms became a very scarce resource ... because so many were being taken over for 4341s).

The other big (distributed 4341) innovation was much easier/faster to roll-out new feature/function ... compared to datacenter.

Moving more of the virtual machine function into the hardware ... for LPARs ... was partially response to Amdahl's hypervisor .... but it also provided some capability to helping testing new feature/function in (single) large consolidated mainframe resource environment (that had enormous barriers to change/adapting).

A relatively "funny" joke from the period ... was that JES2 networking tables effectively was part of large system change control. The internal network had significantly more nodes than could be defined in JES2 ... and so most MVS systems were restricted to edge nodes. Internal users that actually tried to do things from MVS systems were constantly attempting to deal with those network nodes that were currently defined in that particular system (and just getting change to the JES2 network table frequently would take a month or two ... as part of the next MVS system load/test) ... this was aggravated by JES2 tossing traffic if it didn't have the destination node defined (in case the traffic might have to go someplace else) ... but also would toss traffic if it didn't have the originating node defined.

This was in an environment when not only were there much large number of network nodes ... than could be defined in JES2 ... and one or more new network nodes might also be coming online everyday (someplace in the world) ... old reference to list of internal locations that had one or more new networking nodes in 1983 (internal network had more nodes than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until possibly late '85 or early '86)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#8

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

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970

Small Server Mob Advantage

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Small Server Mob Advantage
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:39:21 -0500
PaulGBoulder@AIM.COM (Paul Gilmartin) writes:
I often wonder whether a reason TCP/IP triumphed over SNA was that SNA didn't provide a facility with the scalability of DNS.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#82

in some ways ... SNA is even less general than the arpanet implementation prior to the cut-over to internetworking on 1/1/83 ... which DNS is one part of.

misc. trivia ... the person responsible for DNS had earlier spent some time at the science center ... some science center posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

when the person was student at mit.

tcp/ip was the technology basis for the modern internet ... nsfnet backbone was the operational basis for the modern internet and cix was the business basis for the modern internet. misc. old email related to nsfnet backbone:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

one of the things that the internal networking technology did was a kind of gateway facility in every node ... somethat that was also was a feature of internetworking. misc. past posts mentioning internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

JES2 had other significant issues ... having muddled what was job control and what was networking. as a result ... JES2 systems at different levels and with incompatible headers ... could crash each other ... and bring down the whole system (there was infamous case of some internal jes2 systems in san jose which were bringing down hursley mvs systems).

the major internal networking technology was able to have "native" drivers ... but also install "jes2" drivers for communicating with jes2 systems (and allow jes2/mvs systems to participate in the internal network). this feature evolved into these (non-native) jes2 drives adding features to try and rewrite jes2 headers so that they were always compatible with the direclty connected jes2/mvs systems (as countermeasure to have high frequency of jes2/mvs crashing all over the world). the internal technology got blameed for not preventing the hursley mvs systems from crashing (since the internal network technology hadn't been upgraded to filter some of the new san jose jes2 fields ... from reaching the hursley jes2 systems). misc. past posts mentioning hasp, jes2, and/or jes2 networking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#hasp

dislcaimer: my wife did a stint in the jes group (among other things acted as one of the catchers for asp->jes3 ... and did a design document for merged jes2/jes3 product) ... before getting con'ed into going to pok to be in charge of loosely-coupled architecture.

my wife was also co-author of internal architecture document (AWP39) in the early days of SNA called peer-to-peer networking (which SNA group possible viewed as competition to their master/terminal-control architecture). she also had numerous battles in POK with the SNA organization over not using SNA for her Peer-Coupled Shared Data architecture (which, except for ims hot-standby, saw very little uptake until sysplex) ... some past references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

there were temporary truces with the SNA organization over her not having to use SNA within the walls/boundaries of the datacenter ... but SNA had to be used if something involved crossing the datacenter walls.

later i would needle the person responsible for APPN (AWP164) to stop trying to prop up SNA (they weren't going to appreciate it) and come work on real networking ... if fact, the SNA organization non-concurred with announcing APPN ... and it was held up for several weeks while the announcement letter was careful rewritten to not even imply that there was any connection between APPN and SNA.

misc. past posts mentioning AWP39, AWP164 &/or AAPN
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#38 RS/6000 in Sysplex Environment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#31 IBM 3705 and UC.5
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#8 EBCDIC to 6-bit and back
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#15 DUMP Datasets and SMS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#17 DUMP Datasets and SMS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#27 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#23 Channel Distances
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#52 Need Help defining an AS400 with an IP address to the mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#31 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#9 Arpa address
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#21 Sending CONSOLE/SYSLOG To Off-Mainframe Server
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#4 Google Architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#45 Mainframe Linux Mythbusting (Was: Using Java in batch on z/OS?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#62 Greatest Software, System R
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#4 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#9 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#36 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#28 Assembler question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#55 What's a mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#9 Mainframe vs. "Server" (Was Just another example of mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#48 6400 impact printer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#49 6400 impact printer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#55 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#35 sizeof() was: The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#39 sizeof() was: The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#62 Friday musings on the future of 3270 applications
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#72 FICON tape drive?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#12 JES2 or JES3, Which one is older?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#23 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#46 Are there tasks that don't play by WLM's rules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#10 IBM System/3 & 3277-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#53 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#42 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#71 Interesting ibm about the myths of the Mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#73 Convergent Technologies vs Sun
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#97 We're losing the battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#56 When did "client server" become part of the language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#26 Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#3 VTAM security issue
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#7 VTAM security issue

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970


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