List of Archived Posts

2011 Newsgroup Postings (08/15 - 09/02)

DG Fountainhead vs IBM Future Systems
Lessons Learned
First Website Launched 20 Years Ago Today
Preparing for Boyd II
Geithner, Bernanke have little in arsenal to fight new crisis
AIG's Bank Of America Suit Puts Trashy Paper On Display
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
History of user model for scrolling
Last card reader?
Was there ever a DOS JCL reference like the Brown book?
Preparing for Boyd II
Was there ever a DOS JCL reference like the Brown book?
Was there ever a DOS JCL reference like the Brown book?
Last card reader?
Last card reader?
Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
Feds Launch Probe Into S&P Mortgage Rates
Last card reader?
What Uncle Warren doesn't mention
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Study shows powerful corporations really do control the world's finances
Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
Slouching toward Weimar
Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed's Secret Loans
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed's Secret Loans
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
CLOCK change problem
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
CLOCK change problem
Regulators seek to plug derivatives data gaps
Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL? (warning: unusually violentthread drift)
Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?
Chase, Bank of America credit cards too hacker-friendly?
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL? (warning: unusually violentthread drift)
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Banks blocking more fraudulent money transfers from hijacked business accounts
Rafael Team with Raytheon to Offer Iron Dome in the U.S
Senator urges DoD: Do better job defending F-35
I don't work for IBM and I don't make promises I can't deliver on
New Scandal at DoJ as Illegal Guitars End Up In Hands of Mexican Drug Lords
HP getting out of computer biz
Sand in Machine Makes a Stable Market
Another computer museum - Wall Street Journal article
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
The real reason IBM didn't want to dump more money into Blue Waters
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?
HP getting out of computer biz
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
Fraudulent Google credential found in the wild
Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
HP getting out of computer biz
Documentary on Ken Olsen
New IBM Redbooks residency experience in Poughkeepsie, NY
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century
Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
FIA shocked and outraged after Senator leaks oil trading data
Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
China's yuan could challenge dollar role in a decade
Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
How Joe and Mary Six Pack Saved Wall Street, London, Frankfurt and Big Corporates in the USA and Europe
'smttter IBMdroids
California blazes trail again with enhanced breach alert law
'smttter IBMdroids
The Grand Message in the Conceptual Spiral
'smttter IBMdroids
'smttter IBMdroids
Justifying application of Boyd to a project manager
The Grand Message in the Conceptual Spiral
New IBM Redbooks residency experience in Poughkeepsie, NY

DG Fountainhead vs IBM Future Systems

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: DG Fountainhead vs IBM Future Systems
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2011 09:36:14 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
The Scientific Method isn't a precise recipe but a guideline. I've been thinking about this for the last day or two. Perhaps the difference between an engineer and a scientist is the scientist is able to construct an experiment which can be falsified and an engineer is able to construct a situation which will always work, for various definiitions of work.

video clip from Boyd about never mentioning doctrine in his works because day-2 doctrine turns into dogma
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heWpHSOMAmY&feature=share

recent (boyd related) post in (linkedin) ibm employee discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#69 Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?

other posts/references to boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

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

Lessons Learned

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 15 Aug, 2011
Subject: Lessons Learned
Blog: Greater IBM
i'm currently reading "Guns, Germs, and Steel" ... part is contrasting unified China with fragmented Europe. Unified China put it way ahead of Europe ... until sometime in the 1400s when Empress tried to cut off all foreign contact ... including destroying ocean going vessels ... as means of freezing status quo and eliminating all disruptive threats to reign. Europe then had 400yrs or so where it adopted and improved on technology (some amount originally invented in China) ... in some cases motivated by competition between different European fragments.

I haven't seen it yet ... but advertisement on TV last night was for program about China having "discovered" americas in 1421 ... and then wiping out all evidence (which possibly goes along with material covered in this book about the empress eliminating all external influences, threats to the court and attempting to freeze the status quo).

Book mentions that Columbus had actually gone to five different courts before he found a monarch that would support his expedition.

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

First Website Launched 20 Years Ago Today

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 15 Aug, 2011
Subject: First Website Launched 20 Years Ago Today
Blog: Old Geek Registry
re:
http://lnkd.in/8VWQc9
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#36 First Website Launched 20 Years Ago Today
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#37 First Website Launched 20 Years Ago Today
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#43 First Website Launched 20 Years Ago Today

this looks at the morph from SGML syntax at cern into HTML syntax
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/

Waterloo had done a clone of IBM's CMS script command ... a lot of IBM mainframe installations ran waterloo's clone in the 80s (including cern).

In the states, SLAC was large vm370 installation and a "sister" installation to CERN (sharing a lot of high-energy physics software applications). SLAC also sponsored the monthly (vm/370 user group) "BAYBUNCH" meetings in the (silicon valley) bay area (after the meetings we would frequently adjourn to the oasis ... just across the line in menlo park ... or one of the other similar locations in the palo alto area)

somewhat unrelated ... in the 90s, I had done a number of applications that generated webpages that had extremely dense HREFs (per bytes in file). I found the major search engine webcrawlers/spiders consistently hitting the pages several hundred times every day ... as if they were using at regression test for their spiders; combination of various merged taxonomies and glossaries as well as rfc index ... reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

there were some (virtual machine based) cp67 online commercial service bureaus launched in the 60s and early 70s (some then moving from cp67 to vm370) One of them (TYMSHARE) started providing their (vm370/cms based) online computer conferencing system "free" to the (ibm user group) SHARE in aug76 ... old archives kept here:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

A couple of these online service bureaus moved fairly quickly moved up the value chain and started offering online financial information (like 100yrs of stock prices). One of them bought the "pricing services" division from a credit rating agency in 1972 (in fall2008 congressional hearing into the rating agencies, the claim was early 70s was when rating agencies changed and "misaligned" their business processes; started opening them up for conflict of interest ... this played major pivotal role in recent financial crisis when they were "selling" triple-A ratings on some estimated $27T in toxic CDO transactions). The online service bureau company still exists providing financial information over the web (was briefly mentioned once or twice for helping value toxic assets when Treasury still thot that TARP funds would be used to purchase toxic assets ... before realizing that the appropriated TARP funds couldn't come close to denting the problem).
Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt

Possibly the largest of the virtual machine based online services was the (IBM) internal HONE system that provided world-wide online sales&marketing support (circa 1980, there were approaching 40k defined HONE userids for just the US).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

Trivia ... in the mid-70s, the US HONE datacenters had been consolidated in Palo Alto ... the bldg (with different occupant now) is right next to the newer bldg. housing FACEBOOK hdqtrs (although FACEBOOK is now in the process of moving into the old SUN campus). This is just a couple miles from both SLAC and TYMSHARE (tymshare no longer exist having been sold to M/D ... and its tymnet subsidiary having been sold to BT).

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

Preparing for Boyd II

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 15 Aug, 2011
Subject: Preparing for Boyd II
Blog: Boyd's Disciples
re:
http://lnkd.in/-5A4-9

two that I periodically reference that were in verbal presentations... but aren't in foils

1) in schwerpunkt, blitzkrieg, and guderian ... Boyd would highlight Guderian's verbal orders only with the objective that the officer on the spot make the best decision possible w/o having to worry about CYA and after-action reviews. This facet is touched on some in pushing decisions to lowest possible level. Boyd would also contrast this with US army WW2 rigid, top-down command&control, prevailing with overwhelming resources ... and it starting to have extremely detrimental effect on US corporate culture (as former army officers move up corporate executive ranks)

2) not only iterating the OODA-loop but continuously looking from/at every possible facet ... this shows up in the youtube doctrine/dogma segment with regard to bringing in every possible doctrine.

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

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

Geithner, Bernanke have little in arsenal to fight new crisis

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 16 Aug, 2011
Subject: Geithner, Bernanke have little in arsenal to fight new crisis
Blog: Facebook
Geithner, Bernanke have little in arsenal to fight new crisis
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/geithner-bernanke-have-little-in-arsenal-to-fight-new-crisis/2011/08/12/gIQAFuFvFJ_story.html

recently watch rerun of "Inside JOB" ... one scene was these guys "bailing" out AIG ... who had been negotiating to pay much less than 100 cents on the dollar (to institutions that had made CDS bets) ... claiming that AIG had to pay 100cents on the dollar and forcing AIG to sign a document giving up rights to sue institutions for fraud (that had been making CDS bets) ... aka the $150B passed thru AIG to these other institutions. recently in business news interview about aid to mainstreet/public, there was claim that FED had printed $15T for wallstreet/banks.

I wasn't facing the TV ... it was playing in the background while I was on my keyboard. This is from last year after something like year of litigation ... mentions $9T (in "loans"):
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/1201/Federal-Reserve-s-astounding-report-We-loaned-banks-trillions
and this just recently mentions $16T (again in loans):
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/21/audit-fed-gave-16-trillion-in-emergency-loans//

... however it does reference that they had been buying up a few trillion in toxic CDOs/assets at 98cent on the dollar (that had been going for 22cents on the dollar)

here have been some number of articles that several gov. buildings in DC act as Goldman "branch office" ... the "Inside Job" doesn't indicate that they were doing AIG much of a favor ... just using AIG as a conduit to funnel money thru to Goldman and others.

so it was WW2 that pulled us out of the crash of '29 ... so there are various conspiracy theories about how much of WW2 was manufactured.

For some years, Buffett has been repeating the line about his effective tax rate (17%) is lower than the workers in his office. Some press responded today with stories about raising the tax rate from 35% to 50%. There seems to be quite a bit of political misdirection regarding tax rate and enormous number of special interest tax loopholes (also resulting in enormous complexity of 65,000 page tax code). The selling of special interest tax loopholes supposedly accounts for majority of congress graft and corruption. Supposedly for the past decade, spending on congress has resulted in the largest corporate ROI (thousands of dollars in return for every dollar spent on congress). On the other side, there were stories at start of recent new congress on which members would get the greatest plum ... membership on financial committee (committee members that receive the largest amounts from the financial industry)

Question is there limit to the complexity of the tax code and the constant flow of new loopholes out of congress (like periodic reports of IRS difficulty in changing software to correspond to latest new loopholes). However, congress is addicted to the flow of money for loopholes from special interests ... as they approach the limit of manageable loopholes, does congress have to substitute Kabuki theater of discord & conflict between parties to maintain the flow of money from special interests (appearance of threats for the removal of specific loopholes) ... congress & Kabuki theater period 1603-1629
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabuki

Another side, two years ago, there were stories how justice was going after swiss banks because 50,000 wealthiest americans were illegally laundering money thru swiss banks so it didn't show up as income. at the same time, there were stories about how large corporations weren't bothering to pay assessed billions in taxes (separate from corporations paying zero taxes because the money was laundered thru offshore subsidiaries). Many were gov. contractors and supposedly gov. could withhold payments and/or block bidding on new contracts. Both efforts seemed to have evaporated (at least from the news). Only small recent related news items about congress cutting funding for such enforcement.

what happened to the 53,000 names? (from 2001-2008)
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/04/03/first-american-client-charged-in-ubs-tax-shelter-probe/
two years later cutting enforcement funding
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/28/irs-budget-cuts-deficit_n_850243.html

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

AIG's Bank Of America Suit Puts Trashy Paper On Display

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 16 Aug, 2011
Subject: AIG's Bank Of America Suit Puts Trashy Paper On Display
Blog: Facebook
AIG's Bank Of America Suit Puts Trashy Paper On Display
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2011/08/15/aigs-bank-of-america-suit-puts-trashy-paper-on-display/

"Inside Job" has FED pre-empting AIG negotiations for paying much less than 100cent on the dollar for CDS bets, and forcing them take $150B and pay CDS bets 100cents on the dollar and also forcing them to sign that they couldn't sue CDS parties for fraud. However this doesn't seem to extend to BofA.

other recent posts mentioning "Inside Job"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#21 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#28 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#39 BofA Breach: 'A Big, Scary Story'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#51 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#52 How Many Divisions Does Standard and Poors Have?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#4 Geithner, Bernanke have little in arsenal to fight new crisis

misc. posts mentioning CFTC & not dealing CDS activity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#52 Are Americans serious about dealing with money laundering and the drug cartels?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#41 Advice from Richard P. Feynman

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:34:27 -0400
Joachim Pense <snob@pense-mainz.eu> writes:
It turned out that PL/1 was well suited to write an operating system in it.

with no buffer overflows ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#42 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#44 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#45 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation

recent thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#32 The Most Expensive One-Byte Mistake

lost of past posts discussing the issue
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#overflow

for other drift, a recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#67
in (linkedin) old geek
http://lnkd.in/CX7Tzf

with this home page reference
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/index.htm

from above
helped create COBOL (as in "Grandfather of" [1]) coined the words COBOL [2] and CODASYL [3] invented the ESCape sequence created the PICTURE clause helped create and standardize the ASCII character set (as in "Father of" [4]) put the backslash into the ASCII set helped create the 8-bit per byte standard

.. snip ...

other posts at the same site:

EBCDIC and the P-Bit (The Biggest Computer Goof Ever)
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM
Bob Bemer and Communication (ASCII)
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/ASCII.HTM
That Troublesome "Father of"
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/FATHEROF.HTM

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

History of user model for scrolling

Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2011 09:05:43 -0400
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: History of user model for scrolling
CMS/3270 full-screen mode when 3270s were first introduced just simulated a page of typing ... but couldn't actually do modifications on the data ... had a command line ... could use old-time up/down cursor positioning commands to move around in the file ... rewriting the screen. could map up/down to different PFKEYS with numeric argument that corresponded to number of displayed lines to simulate a page up/down (up was towards the beginning of the file, down was towards the end of the file).

In the mid-70s, first "full-screen" editor (allowing edit changes on the displayed data on the screen ... rather than just from reserved command line) was edgar (released to customers in 1976). edgar had page up/down ... which could be mapped to PFKEYs ... however for page up/down, edgar reversed the convention where "up" moved towards the bottom of the file and "down" moved towards the beginning of the file. Thus began the full-screen editor wars of the mid to late 70s over up/down convention (besides original edit and edgar, there was redit, vedit, solar, ned, wed, red and some others ... followed by xedit released in 80s, most were internally developed and not released to customers).

The original CMS edit up/down convention was claimed to be human centric with respect to a open scroll ... where the person looks up to the top of the scroll or down to the bottom of the scroll. The edgar page up/down scroll convention was claimed to be program centric ... moving the scroll up resulted in moving the human view towards the bottom of the scroll.

The other (internal) full-screen editors during the rest of the 70s adopted the original cms edit convention (presumably can be traced back to CTSS) and page up/down perspective convention was the same as the line up/down perspective convention (as opposed to edgar's inverting the convention for up/down) aka the person looking up towards the top of the scroll and looking down towards the bottom of the scroll.

note from original wars ... but slightly later
Date: 05/25/81 10:45:54
From: wheeler

oh yes, about editors being religious. A large number of editor interactions occur in the time spans in the reflex time range. That means that commands are drilled into the subconscious and people react purely via reflex. Analogy is similar to learning touch typing. Changing from one type of keyboard to another involves relearning reflex action rather than logical thinking processes. Also because editors operate in the reflex action time span, human factors can become extremely important to the useability of the editors. Just like several studies have shown that different keyboard layouts can greatly improve typing thru-put, I believe the same is true of editor structures. Also problem of making that case is difficult. Most people who don't know how to touch type (& even some that do) understand the difference in keyboard layout and how that it affects productivity. Problem is similar for editors, very few people realize how important quality human engineering plays in something where the interactions are down in the reflex range (the same goes for hardware, like the keyboard lock-out of the 3277 during screen writes). Because people are interacting with their editors via reflex it is difficult for them to verbalize what exactly is going on (leading to the mystical comments).

My complaints with EDGAR up/down question wasn't that it is different from EDIT. Because of the critical question of human factors involved with editors it is important that an editor reflect a human's frame of reference. UP/DOWN frame of reference in EDGAR reflects the program's not a person's. It doesn't necessarily mean that EDGAR is better or worse than EDIT but it does imply that EDGAR design was done from program point of view. Not establishing architecture ground rules from the start & preserving consistency thru-out project can lead to all sorts of pit-falls. --- re: frame of reference for file (especially on 3270). people look up, not down to top of file, commands in EDGAR have opposite orientation. simple example: current line is at top of screen, person wishes to examine current line +5, he either looks DOWN five lines or types DOWN 5 except in Edgar where he either looks DOWN five lines or types UP 5. Computers are suppose to augment human intelligence. display sc reen becomes like a pair of very special binoculars. There are all sorts of human engineering work going on to make the movement of the screen much more responsive and natural (bringing a majority of the operations within the range of purely reflex action -- laser monitoring of pupil movement to automatically adjust information being displayed????).


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

in the original, the next round in the up/down wars with EDGAR was that "page up" and "page down" could be assigned to PFKEYS (like 7 & 8) ... and the person would come to associate the pfkey number with the direction they wanted to move the file ... loosing any (inverted) connotations with up & down

misc. past posts mentioning edit wars:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#44 3270 protocol
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#45 hyperblock drift, was filesystem structure (long warning)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#22 MP cost effectiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#29 MP cost effectiveness

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

Last card reader?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Last card reader?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 17 Aug 2011 06:43:49 -0700
steve.dover@CCBCC.COM (Steve Dover) writes:
Phil, we had one at Allstate Insurance until 1990. 2540 reader/punch. I sure miss the chads, they were great fun in desks and cars. But I do not miss hauling the 50 pound boxes around.

as undergraduate in the 60s ... univ. was using sense-marked cards (no.2 pencil) for class registration ... tables in the gym and students would get card for each class and fill in their information. Then cards were run thru and holes punched (solid manilla color cards)

registration program was moved from 709 to 360 with 2540 reader/punch. all the cards were in large number of trays (about 3000 per ... about box & half) were fed into the 2540 reader. I wrote subroutine to feed into the middle stacker (stacker 3) ... registration program would validate the registration information and if it found a problem, a blank card would be "punched" behind it (middle stacker, stacker 3 was selectable from both the reader and the punch). The punch had been loaded with top-edge red-stripe cards ... so when everything was done ... it was possible to pick out class registration cards with errors ... by the top red-stripe edge card immediately following it in the tray.

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

Was there ever a DOS JCL reference like the Brown book?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Was there ever a DOS JCL reference like the Brown book?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2011 10:42:29 -0400
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
And 3) DOS was the bastard stepson. IBM kept trying to kill it, or at least saying they wanted to. DOS users tended to feel like second-class citizens. Writing the book on DOS wouldn't add much to your resume.

POK/MVS tried to kill everything else. 370 (virtual memory) DOS/VS & VS1 were in endicott and 370 (virtual machine) VM/370 was in burlington.

for following on to 135/145 (i.e. virgul/tully ... 138/148) there was microcode assists for both vs1 and vm370 (ecps) ... and endicott tried to convince the corporation to make vm370 the underlying default on every box they shipped (which was then configured with whatever the customer might want cms, dos/vs, vs1 and/or some combination). this is somewhat akin to what all the mainframes ship today with "LPARS" completely hidden in the hardware.

The corporate hdqtrs overruled, "vm370 as part of every machine" was "non-strategic" (and not in corporations best interest).

disclaimer: endicott had con'ed me into doing a bunch of stutff for ecps for 138/148 and then dragged me into spending some part of the following year running around the world with their business people explaining to business forasters around the world the advantage of the machine (especially compared to any competition). endicott made a big deal that in the US ... regional business forecasters tended to just forecast whatever corporate hdqtrs told them were strategic (in part because mis-forecasts didn't show up against the region ... but against the manufacturing plant). In all the non-US countries, forecasts met country orders to the manufacturing plants ... and forecasted orders were then shipped to the countries ... and mis-forecasts sat on the country books (not manufacturing books). This accountability tended to result in non-US country forecasts being significantly more accurate (US forecasts were more & more toeing the corporate strategic line leading to promotions and raises w/o regard to accuracy; emerging desirable corporate culture characteristic).

Part of the issue ... was that in the wake of the Future System failure ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

there was a mad rush to get products back into the 370 product pipelines (during the FS period, most 370 product efforts were killed off). POK was doing MVS enhancemens along with q&d 303x product line ... in parallel with 370/xa, 3081, and mvs/xa. some reference here:
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm

even tho mvs/xa was nearly 8yrs off, POK management managed to convince the corporate hdqtrs to kill off vm370, shutdown the vm370 development group in burlington mall and move all the people to POK as part of mvs/xa development (or otherwise mvs/xa wouldn't be able to meet its ship schedule). Part of this was given the people in burlington only a couple weeks notice to minimize the number that might find alternatives. Somehow the plan leaked early to burlington ... followed by a witch hunt to find who leaked the information (those last months, burlington was like a morgue between the witch hunt and the pending shutdown). Part of the result was lot of people went to DEC to work on VMS (joke about head of POK being a major contributor to VMS).

Endicott eventually manage to convince the corporation to let them have the vm370 product mission ... but they had to reconstitute a development group from scratch.

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

Preparing for Boyd II

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 17 Aug, 2011
Subject: Preparing for Boyd II
Blog: Boyd's Disciples
re:
http://lnkd.in/-5A4-9
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#3 Preparing for Boyd II

at least in the briefings at IBM ... John would bring in some business perspective.

I had originally tried to do the first briefing through corporate employee education. Originally they agreed to sponsor the briefing (John only wanted his out-of-pocket expenses covered). As I provided them with more information on the content, they changed their mind. They said that the corporation spends a lot of money training managers on how to handle employees and they felt that the briefing could be counterproductive. They suggested that I limit the audience to only senior people from competitive analysis departments. This was in the early 80s, shortly have Spinney's article appeared.

IBM had a major new effort in the early 70s, that absorbed a good part of the company and when it failed in the mid-70s ... there are descriptions that corporate executives were concerned about saving face and it significantly changed corporate culture to one of sycophancy and make no waves.

One of Boyd's biographies mention him doing stint in command of "spook base" ... being a $2.5B windfall from IBM ... I've joked that windfall went part of the way covering what was dumped down the hole with the "future system" project.

Boyd created organic design for command and control between his first briefing at IBM and the next (trying to cram both Patterns of Conflict and "organic design" into single day).

In conjunction with OODA-loop, he would also talk about looking at topic from every facet (analogous to his comment in doctrine/dogma about bringing in every possible doctrine).

OODA-loop as sequential, serial operation is somewhat for the process people that do step-by-step operations ... with the introduction of iterative, repeated sequences. However, in briefings there was much more of a sense that all four parts operated continuously, constantly engaging the other three.

Some of the interpretation may reflect as much the viewpoint of the person hearing the message as the message itself.

for a little topic drift

Ready to learn? Brain scans can tell you; Neuroscientists identify brain activity that predicts how well you will remember images.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/ready-to-learn-0819.html

There was some recent comment about Boyd being dogmatic about OODA-loop (and looking at every possible facet &/or constantly bringing in every possible doctrine). One way to characterize transition from doctrine to dogma is ceasing to question. Boyd was dogmatic about never ceasing to question ... so does that result in an impossible logic paradox.

misc. Boyd posts &/or references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

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

Was there ever a DOS JCL reference like the Brown book?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Was there ever a DOS JCL reference like the Brown book?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:02:23 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#9 Was there ever a DOS JCL reference like the Brown book?

360 started out "real storage" (except for the 360/67 that had virtual memory for tss/360 ... but also used by virtual machine cp67) part of the whole "real storage" paradigm was single address space for everything and extensive use of pointer-passing API.

In the initial transition to (370) virtual memory

dos/360 -> dos/vs mft/360 -> vs1 mvt/360 -> vs2/svs and cp67 -> vm370

dos, mft, and mvt transition to virtual memory all used a single virtual address space (that was larger than what they were used to for real storage sizes) and minimum kernel changes to handle infrequent page faults ... but paradigm continued to be pointer-passing API and application program saw minimum difference between the real-storage 360 operation and the (single) virtual address space 370 operation.

vs2/svs then saw transition to vs2/mvs ... where a single virtual address space was given to each application ... but the same mvs kernel was mapped to every virtual address space ... preserving the pointer-passing API paradigm (from application viewpoint vs2/mvs operation was almost as if it was the only running application in vs2/svs environment).

there was a small "gotcha" ... mvt/svs had some number of "subsystems" services that sat outside the kernel ... and applications would make indirect calls ... still using the pointer-passing API (subsystems and applications sharing the same address space). With the change-over to MVS ... all those subsystems now reside in their own unique virtual address space ... complicating the pointer-passing API (being able to reach into the calling application virtual address space).

The ugly "hack" was the "common segment" ... a global part of every address space (analogous to the kernel in each address space). A calling application would reserve some space in the (global) common segment ... stuff the API variables and make the subsystem (indirect) call. The subsystem then had direct addressable access to the API variables (that appeared in the callers virtual address space, the callees virtual address space as well as all other virtual address spaces). This quickly became a constrained resouce on larger systems ... since the size of the common area was proportional to the number of subsystems and the number of concurrently running applications. Prior to 370/xa with 31-bit virtual addressing ... each MVS 16mbyte application space had 8mbytes for the kernel, 4-5 (in some cases growing to 5-6) for the common area ... leaving as little as 2mbytes for application.

FS nearly consumes the whole company and then fails ... and a mad rush to get things back into 370 pipeline.

POK in parallel with 303x ... starts off on xa-architecture ... which besides expanding to 31-bit virtual address (from 24-bit/16mbytes) has a bunch of features targeted at addressing MVS operational issues.

At the same time, Endicott starts on the e-architecture ... coming out with the e-machines in 1979 (4331, 4341, etc). E-machines can run both 370 and e-arrchitecture mode. E-architecture is somewhat analogous to the xa-architecture that POK is tailoring for MVS ... but tailored to VS1 & DOS. E-architecture creates a single hardware virtual address sapce ... the operating system issues an instructions assigns/de-assigns specific virtual address to specific real address (eliminating all the hardware defined translation table stuff that appears in 370, moving it into the underlying microcode/hardware). DOS/VS then becomes DOS/VSE ... i.e. updated to run on e-architecture ... in much the way that mvs becomes mvs/xa to run on xa-architecture.

misc. past email mentioning 43xx/e-machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#4341

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

Was there ever a DOS JCL reference like the Brown book?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Was there ever a DOS JCL reference like the Brown book?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:09:31 -0400
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
From a customer perspective, don't tyhink this wasn't noticed. For quite a while VM maintenance was the cause of many choice words.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#9 Was there ever a DOS JCL reference like the Brown book?

many such choice words (or at least the sense of the words) can be found immortalized in the vmshare archives:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

I do have to be thankful that during the corporate witch hunt, the people in burlington mall never gave up the person that leaked the information about the closing.

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

Last card reader?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Last card reader?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 17 Aug 2011 16:42:15 -0700
ps2os2@YAHOO.COM (Ed Gould) writes:
Wasn't there a card reader as a requirement for 3090 and before so the CE could install the OLTEP program and a rudimentary IOCDS to run his diagnostics?

3092 (3090 service processor) was a pair of 4361s running a special custom vm370 release 6 off of 3370 FBA drives. All that stuff could have come on 3370 FBA disks as part of the service processor. aka at bottom mentions 3092 requires two 3370 FBA devices (one for each 4361 running vm370):
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PP3090.html

above also mentions that 3092 (aka vm370 4361s) requires access to 3420 tape drive.

misc. past posts mentioning 3092:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#22 Evil weather
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#50 Mainframe Hall of Fame: 17 New Members Added
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#32 Need tool to zap core
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#34 Need tool to zap core
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#38 Need tool to zap core
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#71 IBM and the Computer Revolution
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#62 3090 ... announce 12Feb85
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#31 TCP/IP Available on MVS When?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#32 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#42 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#68 IBM Mainframe (1980's) on You tube

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

Last card reader?

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Last card reader?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 18 Aug 2011 04:28:16 -0700
chrismason@BELGACOM.NET (Chris Mason) writes:
The 2540 was an enormously versatile machine in that it not only supported the card reading function but also the card punching function.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/2540.html

Google ad: first hit with search words "IBM 2540 picture".

But, looking at the picture I realize I've forgotten which "feed" was the reader "feed" and which was the punch "feed"!


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#13 Last card reader?

reader ran faster than the punch ... punch had hopper for maybe couple hundred cards (on left) ... reader had sloping tray feed (on the right) could get at least a box of cards (2000)

bitsavers more detailed 2540 (but poorly scanned ... hard to make out details)
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/25xx/A21-9033-1_2540_CompDescr.pdf

1402 was similar ... lot more detail & better scan:
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/140x/231-0002-2_1402_Card_Read-Punch_CE_Manual_1962.pdf

bitsaver is also good for older tab machines:
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/punchedCard/

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

Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 18 Aug, 2011
Subject: Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/is-the-sec-covering-up-wall-street-crimes-20110817

from above:
A whistleblower claims that over the past two decades, the agency has destroyed records of thousands of investigations, whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals.

.... snip ...

Note that last decade, it appeared like even GAO didn't believe that SEC was doing anything; it started doing reports on public company fraudulent financial filings ... showing uptic even after SOX and the much stronger audit requirements

other ref on subject
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/08/17/sec-whistleblower-feds-destroyed-evidence-thousands-wall-streets-worst-crimes-60321/

in the madoff congressional hearings, the person that had tried unsuccessfully for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff said that SEC mostly hired lawyers that were constantly going through revolving door between the SEC and the institutions they were suppose to regulate ... and hired very few with any experience in financial forensics. more recently there have been series of reports about congress cutting drastically back in funding for enforcement ... not only SEC ... but also IRS & Justice (there was big thing about swiss banks and some 53,000 wealthiest Americans illegally laundering money to avoid taxes... and then reports about it appeared to totally disappeared).

When the person testifying in the madoff hearings was asked about whether new regulations were needed ... he replied that much more important would be transparency and visibility (possibly since so little of the existing regulations were being enforced)

misc. past posts mentioning madoff hearings:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#65 What can agencies such as the SEC do to insure us that something like Madoff's Ponzi scheme will never happen again?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#73 What can we learn from the meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#80 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#0 Audit II: Two more scary words: Sarbanes-Oxley
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#20 Decision Making or Instinctive Steering?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#29 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#39 'WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#44 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#51 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#0 PNC Financial to pay CEO $3 million stock bonus
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#3 Congress Set to Approve Pay Cap of $500,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#37 NEW SEC (Enforcement) MANUAL, A welcome addition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#42 Bernard Madoff Is Jailed After Pleading Guilty -- are there more "Madoff's" out there?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#47 Bernard Madoff Is Jailed After Pleading Guilty -- are there more "Madoff's" out there?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#61 Quiz: Evaluate your level of Spreadsheet risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#63 Do bonuses foster unethical conduct?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#75 Whistleblowing and reporting fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#0 What is swap in the financial market?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#15 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#36 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#37 How do you see ethics playing a role in your organizations current or past?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#53 Are the "brightest minds in finance" finally onto something?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#2 CEO pay sinks - Wall Street Journal/Hay Group survey results just released
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#29 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#45 Artificial Intelligence to tackle rogue traders
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#51 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#67 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#7 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#29 Transparency and Visibility
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#33 Treating the Web As an Archive
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#17 REGULATOR ROLE IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT FINANCIAL SCANDALS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#23 Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX? (Are settlements a good argument for overnight batch COBOL ?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#60 In the USA "financial regulator seeks power to curb excess speculation."
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#12 IBM identity manager goes big on role control
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#30 An Amazing Document On Madoff Said To Have Been Sent To SEC In 2005
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#71 "Rat Your Boss" or "Rats to Riches," the New SEC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#57 MasPar compiler and simulator
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009s.html#47 Audits VII: the future of the Audit is in your hands
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#77 Madoff Whistleblower Book
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#33 The 2010 Census
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#46 not even sort of about The 2010 Census
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#56 Handling multicore CPUs; what the competition is thinking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#15 The Revolving Door and S.E.C. Enforcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#31 In the News: SEC storms the 'Castle'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#41 Profiling of fraudsters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#43 COBOL - no longer being taught - is a problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#67 The Python and the Mongoose: it helps if you know the rules of engagement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#69 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#34 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#42 "Fraud & Stupidity Look a Lot Alike"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#47 "Fraud & Stupidity Look a Lot Alike"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#38 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#62 Dodd-Frank Act Makes CEO-Worker Pay Gap Subject to Disclosure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#35 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#37 WHAT, WHY AND HOW - FRAUD, IMPACT OF AUDIT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#71 They always think we don't understand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#76 E-commerce smackdown as PCI standards revised
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#6 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#54 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#21 Ernst & Young called to account -- should Audit firms be investigated for their role in the crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#53 Programmer Charged with thieft (maybe off topic)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#46 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#48 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#21 New-home sales in 2010 fall to lowest in 47 years
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#42 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#23 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#26 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#56 In your opinon, what is the highest risk of financial fraud for a corporation ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#35 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#52 Are Americans serious about dealing with money laundering and the drug cartels?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#62 Mixing Auth and Non-Auth Modules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#82 Bank email archives thrown open in financial crash report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#88 Court OKs Firing of Boeing Computer-Security Whistleblowers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#5 How they failed to catch Madoff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#40 Fight Fraud with Device ID
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#47 Lords: Auditors guilty of 'dereliction of duty'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#52 Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#5 Home prices may drop another 25%, Shiller predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#66 Senate Democrats Ask House to Boost SEC Funding
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#19 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#25 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#67 U.S. can't account for $8.7 billion of Iraq's money: audit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#11 Innovation and iconoclasm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#38 Advice from Richard P. Feynman

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

Feds Launch Probe Into S&P Mortgage Rates

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 18 Aug, 2011
Subject: Feds Launch Probe Into S&P Mortgage Rates
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
Feds Launch Probe Into S&P Mortgage Rates
http://manhattan.ny1.com/content/top_stories/145279/report--feds-launch-probe-into-s-p-mortgage-rates/

in the rating agency congressional hearings there were comments that both the people that were paying for the triple-A ratings and the rating agencies selling the triple-A ratings knew that the toxic CDOs weren't worth triple-A (estimated $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDO transactions done during the bubble; lots of participants playing and benefiting) and end of 2008, just the four largest too-big-to-fail institutions were carrying estimated $5.2T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs off-balance
Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt

past posts mentioning the $27T transactions and/or $5.2T off-balance holdings:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#59 Quiz: Evaluate your level of Spreadsheet risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#8 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#40 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#41 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#49 Is the current downturn cyclic or systemic?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#56 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#65 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#1 Future of Financial Mathematics?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#5 Do the current Banking Results in the US hide a grim truth?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#27 Flawed Credit Ratings Reap Profits as Regulators Fail Investors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#52 Future of Financial Mathematics?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#53 We Can't Subsidize the Banks Forever
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#3 Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#10 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#21 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#25 The Paradox of Economic Recovery
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#29 Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#49 IBM to Build Europe, Asia 'Smart Infrastructure'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#79 The $4 trillion housing headache
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#60 In the USA "financial regulator seeks power to curb excess speculation."
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#77 Financial Regulatory Reform - elimination of loophole allowing special purpose institutions outside Bank Holding Company (BHC) oversigh
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#35 what is mortgage-backed securities?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#69 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#13 UK issues Turning apology (and about time, too)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#21 UK issues Turning apology (and about time, too)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#62 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#4 alphas was: search engine history, was Happy DEC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#5 alphas was: search engine history, was Happy DEC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#8 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#10 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#11 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#26 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#29 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#74 LPARs: More or Less?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#15 LPARs: More or Less?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#33 The 2010 Census
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#54 The 2010 Census
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#69 The 2010 Census
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#76 The 2010 Census
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#15 The Revolving Door and S.E.C. Enforcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#22 In the News: SEC storms the 'Castle'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#34 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#47 "Fraud & Stupidity Look a Lot Alike"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#46 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#38 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#40 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#48 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#53 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#56 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#29 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#33 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#40 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#22 60 Minutes News Report:Unemployed for over 99 weeks!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#24 What Is MERS and What Role Does It Have in the Foreclosure Mess?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#59 They always think we don't understand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#6 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#7 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#17 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#63 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#58 Programmer Charged with thieft (maybe off topic)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#50 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#80 Chinese and Indian Entrepreneurs Are Eating America's Lunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#84 The Imaginot Line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#94 The Curly Factor -- Prologue
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#27 The Zippo Lighter theory of the financial crisis (or, who do we want to blame?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#42 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#43 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#45 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#56 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#46 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#23 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#25 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#28 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#7 I actually miss working at IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#11 Multiple Virtual Memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#36 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#41 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#48 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#60 In your opinon, what is the highest risk of financial fraud for a corporation ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#74 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#43 Massive Fraud, Common Crime, No Prosecutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#66 Bank email archives thrown open in financial crash report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#30 Bank email archives thrown open in financial crash report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#71 Pressing Obama, House Bars Rise for Debt Ceiling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#5 Home prices may drop another 25%, Shiller predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#7 Home prices may drop another 25%, Shiller predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#22 Is BitCoin a triple entry system?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#24 US Housing Crisis Is Now Worse Than Great Depression
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#25 US Housing Crisis Is Now Worse Than Great Depression
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#26 Is the magic and romance killed by Windows (and Linux)?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#29 Obama: "We don't have enough engineers"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#13 'Megalomania, Insanity' Fueled Bubble: Munger
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#16 'Megalomania, Insanity' Fueled Bubble: Munger
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#19 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#33 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#37 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#24 rating agencies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#38 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#39 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#41 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#44 S&P Downgrades USA; Time to Downgrade S&P?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#45 S&P's History of Relentless Political Advocacy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#50 How Many Divisions Does Standard and Poors Have?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#2 First Website Launched 20 Years Ago Today

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

Last card reader?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Last card reader?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 18 Aug 2011 16:25:27 -0700
shmuel+ibm-main@PATRIOT.NET (Shmuel Metz , Seymour J.) writes:
You really mean 709 and not 7090? That's a big jump!

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#8 Last card reader?

univ. supposedly had something like #3 709, thousands of tubes that constantly required maintenance ... something like "20 ton" air conditioning capacity. much of workload was student fortran ibsys running tape-to-tape (second or two elapsed) ... with 1401 front-end for unit record (carried tape between 709 drives and 1401 drives)

there was intermediate step replacing 1401 with 360/30 ... started out with 360/30 running hardware emulation for the MPIO that did the unit-record<->tape. I got student job rewriting MPIO in 360 assembler .... got to design my own stand-alone monitor, interrupt handlers, device drivers, console interface, etc.

then move to os/360 on 360/65 (actually 360/67 spent most of the time running as 360/65, replaced both 709 & 360/30) ... much less heat. student jobs then ran 3step fortran-g, complie, link-edit, & go ... over a minute elapsed time per student jog; hasp got it down to under a minute elapsed time.

I started taking stage-2 sysgens completely apart and put them back together for careful ordering of files and pds members to optimize arm seek ... getting down to a little under 13seconds elapsed time (nearly three times improvement)

it wasn't until univ. installed watfor that student job elapsed time got down to what it had been on 709.

the univ. was supposedly getting 360/67 to run tss/360 ... but tss/360 failed to reach any reasonable operational level. eventually did get (virtual machine) cp67 january 1968 ... and the univ. let me play with it on weekends. I rewrote large sections of cp67 before graduating.

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

What Uncle Warren doesn't mention

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 19 Aug, 2011
Subject: What Uncle Warren doesn't mention
Blog: Facebook
What Uncle Warren doesn't mention
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/18/calling-buffetts-bluff/

Warren has been saying this for a number of years ... drawing attention to huge special interest tax loopholes ... resulting in horribly complex 65,000 page taxcode and enormous graft and corrupt for congress. there is some Kabuki theater aspect to this ... conflict/uproar in the press helps keep the special interest funds flowing which everybody in congress is addicted to (contributing to claims that congress is the most corrupt institution on earth). 1603-1629 period:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabuki .

other ways of looking at the same data:
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/12/06/chart-of-the-day-u-s-taxes/
and
http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2011/08/17/US-taxation.aspx

... but at the root, congress wants enough turmoil on the subject to keep the special interests funds flowing

congess needs turmoil over special interest tax loopholes and/or loopholes with short lifetime, to keep the graft flowing (reoccurring instead one-time payments). somebody made the observation about IBM converting from rental to purchase in the early 70s saw one-time payment giving big bonus boost for the CEO about to retire ... but had big downside impact on revenue going forward (after he had left). the political turmoil can also serve analogy to roman games keeping the citizens distracted.

past posts mentioning tax code
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#87 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#43 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#44 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#53 Are the "brightest minds in finance" finally onto something?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#83 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#20 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#13 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#31 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#48 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#37 taking down the machine - z9 series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#58 History--automated payroll processing by other than a computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#69 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#73 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#14 Rare Apple I computer sells for $216,000 in London
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#74 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#18 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#8 Is the magic and romance killed by Windows (and Linux)?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#20 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#4 Geithner, Bernanke have little in arsenal to fight new crisis

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:17:31 -0400
"Charlie Gibbs" <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
Not to mention those Structured Programming weenies whose myriad function calls would generate a flood of page faults in the executable code. (And you thought overlays were bad...)

and morphing into OO ... not only the page faults, but enormous number of cache-line misses (all over the place)

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

Study shows powerful corporations really do control the world's finances

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 19 Aug, 2011
Subject: Study shows powerful corporations really do control the world's finances
Blog: Facebook
Study shows powerful corporations really do control the world's finances
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-powerful-corporations-world.html

there was wharton business school article in the 2008 time-frame estimating that there was 1000 that were responsible for 80% of the financial mess and it would go a long way to correcting the problem if the gov. could figure out some way to remove them.

I would claim that (at least) one exception was Glass-Steagall that prevented unregulated risky investment banking being part of safety&soundness of regulated depository institutions. In the Madoff hearings, the person that had tried unsuccessfully for a decade to get SEC do something about Madoff, was asked if new regulations were needed. He said that while new regulation may be needed, much more important was transparency and visibility ... all the stuff coming out about SEC inaction, including the latest round, would imply no amount of regulation would have helped ... older example being SOX new regulations about stricter audit requirements (in response to ENRON) & GAO doing reports that there was uptic in public company fraudulent financial filings ... even after SOX.

one of the things in the latest round about SEC is the revolving door between regulators and the regulated:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2011/08/17/sec-destroys-evidence-against-banks-and-hedge-funds-whistleblower-alleges/

... while the hearings resulting in Glass-Steagall had Pecora

In the case of SOX audit requirements and apparent lack of SEC regulation enforcement ... the GAO reports of public company fraudulent financial filings appeared to show that there wasn't even a blip in the illegal activity (even increasing)

past posts mentioning the wharton article:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#28 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#32 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#36 Lehman sees banks, others writing down $400 bln
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#44 Fixing finance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#52 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#66 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#89 Credit Crisis Timeline
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#4 A Merit based system of reward -Does anybody (or any executive) really want to be judged on merit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#67 Do you have other examples of how people evade taking resp. for risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#73 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#77 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#79 The Credit Crunch: Why it happened?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#85 Banks' Demise: Why have the Governments hired the foxes to mend the chicken runs?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#1 Are Both The U.S. & UK on the brink of debt disaster?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#11 Amid Economic Turbulence, Mainframes Counter IT Cost-Cutting Trend
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#18 Barbless
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/2009b.html#36 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#49 US disaster, debts and bad financial management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#53 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#54 In your opinion, which facts caused the global crise situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#11 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#28 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#38 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#39 'WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#3 Congress Set to Approve Pay Cap of $500,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#35 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#20 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#27 US banking Changes- TARP Proposl
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#35 US banking Changes- TARP Proposl
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#38 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#29 Status of Arpanet/Internet in 1976?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#32 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#74 LPARs: More or Less?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#54 The 2010 Census
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#22 In the News: SEC storms the 'Castle'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#34 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#49 "Fraud & Stupidity Look a Lot Alike"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#40 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#65 the Federal Reserve, was Re: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#38 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#55 The 10 Highest-Paid CEOs Who Laid Off The Most Employees
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#40 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#74 The first personal computer (PC)

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

Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2011 16:05:40 -0400
Charles Richmond <frizzle@tx.rr.com> writes:
In the 1970's, I had an IBM type ball with square brackets. It did *not* have "squirrelly braces" though... ({})

APL?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2741
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_%28programming_language%29
not quite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric_typewriter

I still have my APL typeball
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#oldpicts

from 2741 that I had at home from 1970 until 1977 (when it was replaced by 300baud cdi miniterm)

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

Slouching toward Weimar

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 21 Aug, 2011
Subject: Slouching toward Weimar
Blog: Google+
Slouching toward Weimar
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/slouching-toward-weimar-by-david-atkins.html

Nov2008 CSPAN broadcast of congressional hearings into the financial mess raised the issue that several fed. institutions recognized the problems of the 1st decade of this century ... but heavy lobbying by large financial institutions managed to block action. The blocking of regulation enforcement along with elimination of lots of regulation allowed the financial mess ... including laundering drug cartel money thru mortgages (large number of mortgages obtained and payments made using drug money and then selling the property) ... the hearings included comment about prosecuting the too-big-to-fail institutions under RICO.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#12 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#58 Obama, ACORN, subprimes (Re: Spiders)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#66 Blinkenlights

There has been financial industry publication that gives avg. of the largest national institutions compared to the avg. of the largest regional institutions for thousands of measures. From several years ago, the report had the regional institutions more profitable/efficient than the national institutions. The major thing going for the too-big-to-fail national institutions seems to be the size of the top executive compensation.

Last year there were new instances of drug cartel drug money laundering by too-big-to-fail institutions. past references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#24 Little-Noted, Prepaid Rules Would Cover Non-Banks As Wells As Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#48 A New U.S. Treasury Rule Would Add Millions to Prepaid Ranks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#68 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#58 Programmer Charged with thieft (maybe off topic)

more recent references to too-big-to-fail money laundering:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#50 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#84 The Imaginot Line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#42 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#52 Are Americans serious about dealing with money laundering and the drug cartels?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#55 Are Americans serious about dealing with money laundering and the drug cartels?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#64 Are Americans serious about dealing with money laundering and the drug cartels?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#5 How they failed to catch Madoff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#52 Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#25 US Housing Crisis Is Now Worse Than Great Depression
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#29 Obama: "We don't have enough engineers"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#41 Delinquent Homeowners to Get Mortgage Aid from Government
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#55 CISO's Guide to Breach Notification
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#8 'Megalomania, Insanity' Fueled Bubble: Munger
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#25 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#45 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#67 U.S. can't account for $8.7 billion of Iraq's money: audit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#68 Why the US needs a data privacy law -- and why it might finally get one
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#2 House panel approves data breach notification bill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#38 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#41 Advice from Richard P. Feynman

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

Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed's Secret Loans

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 21 Aug, 2011
Subject: Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed's Secret Loans
Blog: Google+
Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed's Secret Loans
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristocracy-got-1-2-trillion-in-fed-s-secret-loans.html

last year $9T:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/1201/Federal-Reserve-s-astounding-report-We-loaned-banks-trillions
more recently $16T:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/21/audit-fed-gave-16-trillion-in-emergency-loans//

past posts mentioning above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#17 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#23 They always think we don't understand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#46 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#58 Programmer Charged with thieft (maybe off topic)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#66 Ernst & Young sued for fraud over Lehman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#48 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#45 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#3 Greed, Excess and America's Gaping Class Divide
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#11 Innovation and iconoclasm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#39 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#4 Geithner, Bernanke have little in arsenal to fight new crisis

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2011 09:30:19 -0400
John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> writes:
According to William Langewiesche's interesting book on the US Airways plane that landed in the Hudson, Airbus planes don't have mechanical backups because there's no reason to think they'd add anything beyond what the computers do. Computers can be impressively reliable when they need to be and are built programmed with suitable care, and mechanical systems aren't completely immune to failure, either.

reliably/repeatedly doing the same thing time after time w/o making mistake ... where human's sometimes will periodically make mistake. the trade-off is the human being able to figure out something that the computer hasn't been programmed to do.

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

Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed's Secret Loans

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 22 Aug, 2011
Subject: Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed's Secret Loans
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/djjnbWUFH8V
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#23 Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed's Secret Loans

one of the scenarios from 2010 was that they take the borrowed "free money" from the FED and buy treasuries ... then the fed gets the money back and the institutions gets to keep the spread (between free money from the fed and what treasuries are paying). it was an obfuscated mechanism for treasury giving the institutions more than what was appropriated in TARP.

another item from last year's analysis was that in addition to the trillions in loans ... the FED also bought trillions in triple-A rated toxic CDOs (just the four largest too-big-to-fail were carrying $5.2T off-balance) for 98cents on the dollar (when they had been going for 22cents on the dollar)

past posts mentioning 22cents on the dollar
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#44 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#67 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#70 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#26 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#95 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#24 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#11 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#29 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#65 is it possible that ALL banks will be nationalized?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#67 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#50 TARP Bailout to Cost Less Than Once Anticipated
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#17 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#63 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#58 Programmer Charged with thieft (maybe off topic)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#50 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#84 The Imaginot Line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#27 The Zippo Lighter theory of the financial crisis (or, who do we want to blame?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#42 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#45 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#56 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#41 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#71 Pressing Obama, House Bars Rise for Debt Ceiling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#29 Obama: "We don't have enough engineers"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#39 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#45 S&P's History of Relentless Political Advocacy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#50 How Many Divisions Does Standard and Poors Have?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#4 Geithner, Bernanke have little in arsenal to fight new crisis

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2011 10:52:04 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
People put on gloves even for the twine when haying.

not quite everybody ... past AFC posts mentioning 4th july as kid (bucking bales) ... lightweight were 40-60lbs (straw bales could be 40lbs) ... heavier were 60-80lbs (some greener alfalfa) .... adjustment in the baler making shorter or longer bales ... some control of weight
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#25 Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#79 Working while young
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#57 Govt demands password to personal computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#65 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#68 School traditions

couple past posts about moving irrigation pipe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#39 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#18 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography

older ... working construction ... not even using gloves for handling re-bar
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#54 Security via hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#79 Working while young

i still have scar on back of my hand where re-bar slip got me (no callouses like the palms)

mentions small rectangular baler & typically 45-60lbs bales
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baler

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

CLOCK change problem

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: CLOCK change problem
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 23 Aug 2011 08:17:48 -0700
BHerring@TXFB-INS.COM (Herring, Bobby) writes:
TOD Clock switch AFAIK came in with the 370. I remember it specifically on the 168 my memory is iffy on the 155/158 but I think it was there, no experience on the 14X .

If it was there on the 360s I never heard/saw anything about it.


TOD was introduced with 370 (interval timer & clock comparator) ... relaxing location 80 timer.

i remember getting caught up for a couple months discussing things like whether the TOD baseline of first day of the century was 1900 or 1901.

lower-end 360s would update location 80 appox. every 3mills ... higher end 360 could have (high resolution) location 80 update approx every 13mics ... including 360/67.

cp/67 used location 80 for everything ... it would save old value and load new value into 84, doing overloaping 8byte move from "80" to "76" (moved old value from 80 into 76 and new value from 84 into 80). It would then update the various clocks and timer values by the difference in current value saved to 76 and the value that had been originally loaded into 80 (aka virtual machine microseconds used, kernel supervisor microseconds used, current clock value).

when cp/67 was originally installed at the univ. in jan68 ... it had support for 1050 & 2741 terminals ... along with "automatic terminal identification". The univ. had some number of ascii/tty terminals ... so I had to add TTY terminal support. I extended the original logic for automatic terminal identification to include TTY. It worked fine for leased lines ... but had a glitch trying to do a single dailin phone number with "hunt group" (pool of lines). It was possible to change line-scanner associated with each port (terminal type) ... but that didn't actually change the line-speed for each port (1050 & 2741 were the same ... but ascii/tty was different).

This somewhat prompted the univ. to do a clone controller effort ... reverse engineer channel interface and building channel interface board for Interdata/3 ... and programming Interdata/3 so it could do both line-speed and terminal type. This got four of us written up as responsible for (some part of) clone controller business ... since vendor picked up the implementation and sold it commercially.

One of the first bugs testing on channel interface was 360/67 "red-light". The timer-tic hardware attempts to update location 80 on every tic ... if the processor or channel is holding the memory bus interface, it will delay ... but if delays so long that the timer tics again ... it will stop the processor with hardware failure. Turns out the initial clone controller implementation wasn't making sure that it told the channel interface to release the memory bus at least once every loc. 80 timer tic.

The location 80 timer updates put expensive load on memory bus ... one of the reasons for starting to eliminate its use ... starting with tod, interval timer, and clock comparator in 370.

misc. past posts mentioning clone controller
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2011 11:34:46 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
not quite everybody ... past AFC posts mentioning 4th july as kid (bucking bales) ... lightweight were 40-60lbs (straw bales could be 40lbs)

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#26 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

i never thot about the term bucking bales ... but you are holding bale across the front of your upper thighs and you help start the lift/throw of the bale with upward knee thrust (especially heavier bales and/or the pile of bales is getting higher and the throw is further).

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

CLOCK change problem

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: CLOCK change problem
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 23 Aug 2011 18:08:34 -0700
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#27 CLOCK change problem

32bit value with 15hr duration ... different models decrement bits depending on timer resolution of the model.

re:
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/functional_characteristics/GA24-3231-7_360-30_funcChar.pdf

pg. 29, Interval Timer
The Model 30 Interval Timer (special feature) operates at a fixed cycle rate of 16.7 milliseconds (60-cycle system power-supply input) or 20 milliseconds (50-cycle power). The microprogram controls decrementing the timer

The interval-timer microprogram requires 7.5 to 13.5 microseconds (10 to 18 microseconds in a CPU with 2-microsecond RW cycle) per count depending upon whether there is a carry in the count. The cycle occurs asynchronously with respect to the stored program and I/O operation.

Backup-up register is provided with the timer feature to accumulate automatically a count of up to 16 intervals of time, if main storage cannot be accessed because of prolonged I/O or direct control operations.

The feature permits a delay of up to 277 milliseconds between timer counter references without loss of the count.


... snip ...

keeping 16 intervals ... implies that update has to happen before the end of 17th interval ... aka total 277ms divided by 17 intervals is approx. 16ms ... corresponds to the 16.7 milliseconds for 60-cycle power.

re:
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/functional_characteristics/GA27-2719-2_360-67_funcChar.pdf

pg. 19 High-Resolution Interval Timer
An interval timer with a high degree of resolution is used in 2067. Operation of this timer is fully compatible with that described in the IBM System/360 Principles of Operation manual.

The high-resolution timer provides approximately 13-usec resolution. This is accomplished with an 8-bit hardware register which contains the low-order byte of the timer. Each time the low-order byte counts to zero, the timer value at location 80-82 is decremented at the end of the instruction currently being executed.

An operand fetch from location 80 will retrieve the three high-order bytes from location 80 plus the low-order bytes from the hardware register. If the low-order byte has stepped through zero during the instruction, then before a fetch from location 80, zeros are inserted into the low-order byte instead of the contents of the hardware register. Any instruction that stores into location 80 also stores the low-order byte into the hardware register, as well as a full word into location 80. If the timer value at location 80 changes from positive to negative, an external interrution is requested.


... snip ...

approx. 15hr interval ... makes bit23 (i.e. bits 0-23) approx. 3mills. ... 360/67 timer required access to location 80 approx. every 3mills or machine would redlight. (bit31) 13microseconds *256 (bit23) is 3.328 milliseconds. 3.328 milliseconds times 2**24 is 15.51 hrs (for 32bits)

bit23 at 3.328ms, bit22 at 6.656ms, bit21 at 13.312ms, bit20 at 26.624ms bit19 at 53.248ms, bit18 at 106.496ms, bit17 at 212.992ms

misc. past posts mentioning doing clone controller
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

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

Regulators seek to plug derivatives data gaps

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 24 Aug, 2011
Subject: Regulators seek to plug derivatives data gaps
Blog: Google+
Regulators seek to plug derivatives data gaps; Global regulators have set out plans for reducing the "data gaps" in OTC derivatives trading that are hitting efforts to assess systemic risk in the market.
http://www.finextra.com/news/Fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=22890

related items:

25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877330,00.html
Gramm and the 'Enron Loophole'
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/business/17grammside.html
Greenspan Slept as Off-Books Debt Escaped Scrutiny
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&refer=home&sid=aYJZOB_gZi0I
Phil Gramm's Enron Favor
http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-01-15/news/phil-gramm-s-enron-favor/
The Warning
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/

misc past preferences:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#9 I actually miss working at IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#36 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#38 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#40 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#52 Are Americans serious about dealing with money laundering and the drug cartels?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#25 US Housing Crisis Is Now Worse Than Great Depression
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#29 Obama: "We don't have enough engineers"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#8 'Megalomania, Insanity' Fueled Bubble: Munger
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#18 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#19 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#41 Advice from Richard P. Feynman

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

Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 09:12:43 -0400
"capek@ieee.org <Peter Capek>" <peter.capek@gmail.com> writes:
Finally... the 2741 terminal has been mentioned here, but not the fact that there were two versions of it, and they used incompatible type elements. The Correspondence 2741 used the same elements as the Selectric typewriter, but the other kind (BCD?) used elements made specifically for it. There was, of course, a much wider selection of fonts for the Correspondence version, but not every system supported it. I believe the reason for there being two versions had to do with some funny historical accident involving the 1050 and compatibility. I'll try to reconstruct it, or perhaps someone else can help.

from:
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/cp67/GH20-0859-0_CP67_Version_3_Users_Guide_Oct70.pdf

pg. 17; 2741 Characteristics
The IBM 2741 Communication Terminal consists of an IBM Selectric typewriter mounted on a typewriter stand. The stand includes the electronic controls needed for communications, a cabinet for mounting a data-phone. a rack for mounting a roll of paper, and a working surface. For use with the CP/CMS system, the 2741 should be equipped with the Transmit Interrupt and the Receive Interrupt features.

The 2741 has two modes of operation: communicate mode and local mode. The mode of the terminal is controlled by the terminal mode switch. which is located on the left side of the typewriter stand. When in local mode. the terminal is disconnected from the computer. It then functions as a typewriter only, and no information is transmitted or received. When in communicate mode. the terminal may be connected to the communications line to the computer. The power switch on the right side of the keyboard must be set to ON before the terminal can operate in either communicate or local mode. The procedure for establishing connections with the computer and the terminal switch settings which should be used are discussed below under "2741 Initiation Procedures".

Either of two 2741 keyboard configurations may be used in accessing the CP/CMS system. These are the PTTC/EBCD configurations (shown in Figure 1) and the standard Selectric configuration (shown in Figure 2). On either keyboard. the alphameric and special character keys, the space bar, power switch,. the SHIFT. LOCK, TAB, tab CLR SET. and MAR REL keys all operate in the same way as standard Selectric typewriter keys.


... snip ...

the two different keyboard layouts are on pg. 22

recent post in ibm-main about cp67 doing automatic terminal recognition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#27 CLOCK change problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#29 CLOCK change problem

cp67 had to use translated characters to recognize the type of terminal. It would assume standard selectric translate and if the first letter was a "y" instead of "l" ... it would retranslate with pttc/ebcd translate table ... aka the first/initial input from terminal would be for login ... and if it was a pttc/ebcd terminal the "l" would be translated as a "y". some would initially type "y" on standard selectric just to have a bunch of garbage.

As mentioned in the above post, cp67 delivered jan68 to univ, only had 1052 & 2741 support ... and I did the tty/ascii support at the univ (pg. 24)

pg. 28 displays initial online message ... for 2741 it was repeated twice ... one for standard selectric translation and 2nd one for pttc/ebcd translation (before cp67 could tell which type it was).

van vleck story about cp67 crashing 27 times in single day
http://www.multicians.org/thvv/360-67.html

In the tty/ascii support I did a hack with using one byte for length calculations. Tom had (I think) ascii plotter device down at harvard and changed the max. length (for tty/ascii) to something like 1200. Then the one byte calculation hack resulted in bad length calculations with buffer overrun that crashed system.

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 19:03:34 -0400
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
Couple of months ago , a friend asked me to `change an article/book that he had written, so it would be accepted to be published on Kindle' , well, that can't be that hard, so I accepted the job. Kindle, as far as I can see, uses a subset of HTML. ( I do a good bit of writing for local groups, as in residents associations, etc, which is why he asked me) anyway, I rewrote his stuff into latex, and so on. Nightmare. Looking at a Kindle, seems that a5 would do, but not so.

I had taken Melinda's VM history that was multi-file postscript ... converted to single PDF file ... and then ran it through Amazon's PDF->AWZ convertor ... and it came out quite well. I tried some of the other files and several came out pretty bad. PDF->AWZ works quite well if it is straight flowed text ... but anything that involves fixed-format (tables, text/line drawings) gets really mangled.

past reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#13 Rare Apple I computer sells for $216,000 in London

melinda's pages (moved from pucc/princeton):
http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda#VMHist

the PDF file:
http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda/neuvm.pdf
the kindle format:
http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda/neuvm.azw

I have no experience with any of their publication formating stuff
https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000234621

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL? (warning: unusually violentthread drift)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL? (warning: unusually violentthread drift)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 23:05:54 -0400
"Joe Morris" <j.c.morris@verizon.net> writes:
...or, as I see all too often in material coming out of the Puzzle Palace, you are instructed to enter your PIN number to allow access to the PKI certificates on your CAC card. (And yes, once or twice I've overheard references to "PKI infrastructure.")

argh ... bunch of references (& patents) about doing public key authentication w/o digital certificates:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

as well as financial transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

i guess i was tilting at windmills ... back in the 90s got into something of dustup with GSA (and other places) over being able to do CAC card more secure and w/o digital certificates.

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

Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 25 Aug, 2011
Subject: Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?
Blog: Greater IBM
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#60 Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#65 Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#69 Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?

sort of the opposite ... besides Learson's decision about ASCII before he became CEO ... there is folklore claiming that the conversion from rental to purchase gave the company a one-time revenue spike that significantly boosted his bonus just before retirement. Somebody has been compiling lists of such CEO activities ... one-time or short-term activity that significantly benefits a senior executive that is leaving shortly.

TV business news interview just now in real-time, with two "experts" .... interviewer made statement about emulate "IBM". Then one of the interviewees said that IBM is exactly wrong company to emulate ... that while IBM does technology engineering ... look at its financials, it does more "financial" engineering ... yes, Gerstner turned the company around.

CP67 (virtual machine) was done at science center as sort of follow-on to CTSS ... they had been anticipating to have the official corporate charter for online time-sharing ... but it was given to brand new group called TSS/360. past reference science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

TSS/360 had enormous problems and a lot of customers that had originally bought 360/67s for TSS/360 found themselves running CP/67 instead. At the univ. I learned a lot seeing all the problems with TSS/360 and lots of detailed analysis between TSS/360 and CP67. Later a lot of TSS/360 ideas were folded into FS. One of the reasons that I would ridicule FS was based on what I had learned doing CP67 and TSS/360 comparison (I would claim that I had stuff running & deployed that was better than what was being blue-skied about in the FS organizations). misc. past posts mentioning FS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

Melinda's history goes into some of this in gory detail ... recent reference here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#32

I've frequently commented that large percentage of software products were originally developed at some datacenter (either customer or internal) and only later turned into shipped product ("development" group was something of name inflation since they tended to get responsibility long after original development was over)

Catcher in Endicott for System/R tech transfer for SQL/DS, later transferred to SJR. Much later when he was retiring, I contributed log of email from the period on the tech. transfer. Transcript of the System/R reunion has bit about being able to get out SQL/DS because the DBMS honchos were pre-occupied with getting out the grand & glorious EAGLE ... it wasn't until EAGLE crash & burn that there was request about how fast could System/R be shipped on MVS (as DB2) ... and then positioned as decision/support (not transaction)
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/

There was lots of old discussion that adtech disappeared after the failure of FS ... resources being thrown into development in mad rush to get products back into 370 hardware and software product pipelines. there was an adtech conference in POK where 801 group presented 801/risc technology and we presented 370 16-way SMP (got lots of support and resources until somebody told head of POK that it might be decades before the favorite son operating system had 16-way support ... and then some people were invited not to visit POK again).

The next adtech conference was possibly the one I did spring '82 which had a new "microkernel" theme. Afterwards the idea got totally out of hand, declared strategic and had several hundred people writing specs & documentation ... sort of turning into mini-FS and met similar fate. Old post with call-for-papers and part of agenda
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a

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

Chase, Bank of America credit cards too hacker-friendly?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 25 Aug, 2011
Subject: Chase, Bank of America credit cards too hacker-friendly?
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
Chase, Bank of America credit cards too hacker-friendly?
http://www.komonews.com/news/consumer/128288593.html

In the early 80s, there was some detailed vulnerability studies for the home/travel/hotel terminal program. One of the major vulnerabilities was hotel PBX systems ... another was hacking neighborhood phone connections. This result in the corporation doing a special encrypting modem with special authentication. There is folklore about one of the early installs for senior corporate executive who happened to be an old-time EE. He was testing the contacts with his tonque when the phone rang. There then was edict that all company manufactured modems had to have the jack contacts recessed so that babies and senior executives couldn't touch them with their tonque.

The corporation also had requirement that all internal network connections have link encryptors (the corporate internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until possibly late '85 or early '86). The was claim that in the mid-80s that the internal network had more than half of all link encryptors in the world. Of course back then, one of the really big headaches was gov opposition to encryption ... especially when links crossed national boundaries. misc past posts mentioning corporate network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

Typically the number and scope of exploits requiring some significant physical action by the attacker for each & every compromise is limited. There is also a fraud ROI issue ... per exploit/compromise ... aka, unless the victim is carefully targeted, the attacker's effort (investment) may exceed likely return. Physical attacks also are more likely to leave a trail ...increasing possibility of catching the attacker. It may be possible to compromise hundreds (or possibly thousands) of accounts with attacks on automated phone system ... in the time it would take an attacker to perform an attack requiring physical visits to your home.

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL? (warning: unusually violentthread drift)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL? (warning: unusually violentthread drift)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 10:47:55 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#33 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL? (warning: unusually violentthread drift)

'98 security conference
https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/conference-paper/1998/10/08/proceedings-of-the-21st-nissc-1998

... I was on panel discussion with CTOs from the major digital certificate vendors ... raised podium in the ballroom, room completely full, with lots of people standing in the back.

I was later told that there was significant body language on the podium ... appeared that the other members of the panel were attempting to move to the far end of the table ... as far away from me as possible (possible fear of being contaminated by my anti-certificate position)

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:54:29 -0400
greenaum@yahoo.co.uk (greenaum) writes:
Though as with most things involving large amounts of money, the real reason is to do with the confidence some computer in Thailand somewhere has that some other computer in Zurich is going to make a certain trade in the next 15 nanoseconds. Finance hasn't been rational for centuries, and nearly all share trading now is done by machine. We have chaos theory, writ large, all around the world, and for some reason it's in charge of the world's economy. We all live and die and eat and starve according to their unimaginable mathematical weather. We are the same, now, as the pixels in Conway's Game Of Life. We have built the gods, and they gibber nonsense and don't even know we're here.

a little recent x-over with x9.59 standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#33 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL? (warning: unusually violentthread drift)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#36 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL? (warning: unusually violentthread drift)

there was some participation by NSCC in x9a10 (financial standard working group ... had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for *ALL* retail payments) ... and somewhat as result, in the late 90s was asked to look at doing something similar for exchange trades ... before NSCC merged with DTC to form DTCC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Trust_%26_Clearing_Corporation

After putting some amount of work into the integrity of trades, the work was suspended with the comment that a side-effect of the trade integrity work would be to significantly improve transparency and visibility (which apparently is antithetical to trader culture).

In the congressional hearings into Madoff, the person that had unsuccessfully tried for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff, was asked if new regulations were required. He replied that while new regulations might be needed, much more important would be transparency and visibility.

misc. post mentioning above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#46 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#48 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#21 New-home sales in 2010 fall to lowest in 47 years
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#42 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#23 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#26 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#56 In your opinon, what is the highest risk of financial fraud for a corporation ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#35 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#52 Are Americans serious about dealing with money laundering and the drug cartels?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#62 Mixing Auth and Non-Auth Modules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#82 Bank email archives thrown open in financial crash report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#88 Court OKs Firing of Boeing Computer-Security Whistleblowers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#5 How they failed to catch Madoff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#40 Fight Fraud with Device ID
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#47 Lords: Auditors guilty of 'dereliction of duty'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#52 Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#5 Home prices may drop another 25%, Shiller predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#66 Senate Democrats Ask House to Boost SEC Funding
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#19 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#25 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#67 U.S. can't account for $8.7 billion of Iraq's money: audit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#11 Innovation and iconoclasm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#38 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#15 Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#20 Study shows powerful corporations really do control the world's finances

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 14:07:44 -0400
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
Nothing i have seems to read .azw So I can't comment yet. Small point, what wrote the pdf?. I thought it was difficult to reformat pdf, I suppose acrobat will?.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#32 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

it originally was multi-file postscript (still on melinda's site) ... which i ran thru "ps2pdf" ... wrapper for ghostscript
http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/442405-creating-pdf-files-with-ps2pdf

You then can email to amazon and they will do the pdf->awz (they support some other formats also).

amazon's standard conversion reflows all words ... so if there is something like a table with fixed displacement/spaces ... it gets munged. it does seem to handle bitimages ... so one approach for anything you don't want reflowed ... is to included it as some sort of image. I did notice that pure "words" tends to result in smaller awz file than original pdf file ... however Melinda's history file was 4+mbytes as PDF ... but contained a lot of images and resulted in 9+mbytes as AWZ.

I haven't gotten any further into it (including the referenced ebook publishing tools).

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:01:44 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#32 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#38 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

for really munged conversion ... the tutorial.pdf file on Melinda's site
http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda/tutorial.pdf

has a bunch of "character" & fixed-spaced diagrams that get horrible munged with the reflow of the pdf->awz conversion.

kindle does have a PDF viewer and can display PDF files. tutorial.pdf just as straight-formated page on kindle preserves the original character/fixed-spaced diagrams. However, displaying full page from original pdf results in extremely small characters and almost impossible to read (with default sized-to-fit screen). Using "original size" ... displays less than 1/4 of the page (about 1/2 the width of original page and 1/3rd the length of the original page, need to scroll both left&right as well as up/down).

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

Banks blocking more fraudulent money transfers from hijacked business accounts

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 25 Aug, 2011
Subject: Banks blocking more fraudulent money transfers from hijacked business accounts
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
Banks blocking more fraudulent money transfers from hijacked business accounts
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/090711-dutch-government-struggles-to-deal-250575.html

There has been lots of past litigation regarding liability (between banks and businesses). I've periodically mentioned that in mid-90s financial conferences there would be presentations by consumer online dial-up operations about their reasons for migrating to the Internet ... however, the presentations by commercial/cash-management business online dial-up operations was that they would NEVER migrated to the Internet (because of the excessive number of vulnerabilities ... many of which are still seen today). More recently, there have been periodic recommendations for businesses to have a dedicated PC, only used for online banking (and NEVER used for anything else) ... which somewhat approximates the earlier, online, dial-up banking.

misc. past refs to online, dial-up banking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#11 Public Computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#18 Can Smart Cards Reduce Payments Fraud and Identity Theft?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#20 IBM forecasts 'new world order' for financial services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#2 Cyber attackers empty business accounts in minutes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#61 Hacker charges also an indictment on PCI, expert says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#9 Cyber crooks increasingly target small business accounts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#68 Definition of a computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#73 Definition of a computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#56 Crypto dongles to secure online transactions ... addenda
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#21 security and online banking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#72 Users still make hacking easy with weak passwords
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#79 Customers risk online banking fraud by reusing bank credentials
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#86 NY Town's Bank Account Hacked; Poughkeepsie Loses $378K in Fraudulent Transfers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#6 Online Banking & Password Theft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#41 Monet, was Re: A "portable" hard disk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#38 U.K. bank hit by massive fraud from ZeuS-based botnet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#53 Is the ATM still the banking industry's single greatest innovation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#58 memes in infosec IV - turn off HTTP, a small step towards "only one mode"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#47 ZeuS attacks mobiles in bank SMS bypass scam
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#65 US Business Banking Cybercrime Wave: Is 'Commercially Reasonable' Reasonable?

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

Rafael Team with Raytheon to Offer Iron Dome in the U.S

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 25 Aug, 2011
Subject: Rafael Team with Raytheon to Offer Iron Dome in the U.S.
Blog: Google+
Rafael Team with Raytheon to Offer Iron Dome in the U.S.
http://defense-update.com/wp/20110819_rafael-team-with-raytheon-to-offer-iron-dome-in-the-u-s.html

wiki reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome

some related anti-missile
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/world/18missile.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Postol

The NYT articles makes it sound similar to John Boyd's analysis of the airforce air-to-air missile before going into Vietnam (10% hit, if ever) ... more Success Of Failure culture.
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?filepath=/dailyfed/0407/040407mm.htm
and
http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20080220_1637.php

misc. posts &/or web references referring to Boyd:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

misc. past Success Of Failure references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#0 America's Defense Meltdown
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#45 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#32 Congratulations, where was my invite?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#34 Congratulations, where was my invite?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#72 77,000 federal workers paid more than governors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#36 Having left IBM, seem to be reminded that IBM is not the same IBM I had joined
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#79 Innovation and iconoclasm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#33 China Builds Fleet of Small Warships While U.S. Drifts

Senator urges DoD: Do better job defending F-35

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 26 Aug, 2011
Subject: Senator urges DoD: Do better job defending F-35
Blog: Google+
Senator urges DoD: Do better job defending F-35
http://www.dodbuzz.com/2011/08/25/senator-urges-dod-do-better-job-defending-f-35/

one of the responses in above article refers to powerpoint plane ... other refs:

Coming up short; America should cut back orders for its late and expensive new fighter -- and spend the cash on more useful kit
http://www.economist.com/node/18958367
Navy questions need for F-35
http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com/2011/08/navy-questions-need-for-f-35.html
F-35-Obsolete for the Pacific Rim (one of the responses mentions F35 will totally dominate airspace in the Caribbean and DC)
http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com/2011/08/f-35-obsolete-for-pacific-rim.html

and

Eisenhower's MIC & Spinney's MICC
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/pentagon-labyrinth.html
somewhat related, missing $1T
http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?documentid=4623

note cdi.org has moved to
http://www.pogo.org/straus/
... missing $1T is now
http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/defense-budget/2010/what-did-the-rumsfeld-gates-pentagon-do-with-1-trillion.html

misc. past reference to pentagon labyrinth:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#83 End of an era
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#18 End of an era
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#33 The real cost of outsourcing (and offshoring)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#61 End of an era
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#65 End of an era
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#28 US military spending has increased 81% since 2001
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#43 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!

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

I don't work for IBM and I don't make promises I can't deliver on

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: I don't work for IBM and I don't make promises I can't deliver on
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:19:52 -0400
Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@gmail.com> writes:
Matthew 6:24 No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve science and greedy vicious bastards. (New Revised Standard Version, slightly edited).

a couple days ago on tv business news ... inbetween segments on the FED "secret activities" (both FOIA litigation and dodd-frank forcing release of tens of thousands of pages) ... there was interview with two experts on technology companies ... somewhere along the way the interviewer made statement about emulating "IBM". One of the interviewees said that IBM is exactly wrong company to emulate ... that while IBM does technology engineering ... look at its financials, it does much more "financial" engineering.

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

New Scandal at DoJ as Illegal Guitars End Up In Hands of Mexican Drug Lords

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 27 Aug, 2011
Subject: New Scandal at DoJ as Illegal Guitars End Up In Hands of Mexican Drug Lords
Blog: Google+
New Scandal at DoJ as Illegal Guitars End Up In Hands of Mexican Drug Lords
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/08/new-scandal-at-doj-as-illegal-guitars-end-up-in-hands-of-mexican-drug-lords.html

Is this for real ... or a parody of the incident where gov was supplying guns to the drug cartels. If one wanted to do parody, tie the gov. supplying guns to the drug cartels with the stories from last summer about how the gov. hands were tied in dealing with the too-big-to-fail financial institutions caught laundering money for the drug cartels (since the gov. was doing everything possible to keep them in business, they couldn't let a little thing like money laundering force them into throwing the executives in jail and shutting down the institutions). During the congressional hearings into the economic collapse there were also references to prosecuting the institutions under the RICO act, since apparently a large number of the no-documentation, no-down mortgages involved money laundering.

guns for drug cartels
http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/08/06/3272749/how-atf-delivered-guns-to-drug.html

recent reference to prosecution under RICO'ing too-big-to-fail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#22 Sluching toward Weimar

older references to RICO'ing too-big-to-fail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#12 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#58 Obama, ACORN, subprimes (Re: Spiders)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#66 Blinkenlights

Last year references to news articles about too-big-to-fail money laundering for drug cartels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#24 Little-Noted, Prepaid Rules Would Cover Non-Banks As Wells As Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#48 A New U.S. Treasury Rule Would Add Millions to Prepaid Ranks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#68 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#58 Programmer Charged with thieft (maybe off topic)

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

HP getting out of computer biz

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: HP getting out of computer biz.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 10:56:49 -0400
Louis Krupp <lkrupp@nospam.indra.com.invalid> writes:
HP will take the money they'll save by not marketing PCs and invest in OpenVMS. They'll raise the bar on server operating systems and software in general. Microsoft will take a long look at their office suite in terms of consistency and orthogonality. Unisys will apply the capability architecture of their legacy MCP systems to a box with 32/64-bit words (instead of 48/96), IEEE floating point and ASCII instead of EBCDIC so they don't scare away everyone under 40. IBM will appreciate their salaried professionals and stop forcing them to go hourly.

article about Learson making the biggest computer goof ever

EBCDIC and the P-Bit (The Biggest Computer Goof Ever)
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM

recent post in (linkedin) "Old Geek Registry" with above and other Bob Bemer refs
http://lnkd.in/CX7Tzf
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#67
slightly later post here in afc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#6

later in the early 70s Learson was CEO. There is folklore that Learson made the decision to convert products from lease to purchase ... which resulted in large one time revenue boost for the corporation ... which gave him large final bonus just before retirement.

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

Sand in Machine Makes a Stable Market

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 27 Aug, 2011
Subject: Sand in Machine Makes a Stable Market
Blog: Google+
Sand in Machine Makes a Stable Market
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-25/sand-in-the-machine-the-key-to-stable-markets-mark-buchanan.html

Warren Buffett famously labeled derivatives financial weapons of mass destruction in the Berkshire Hathaway 2002 annual report ... from "13 Bankers".

Griftopia had item about commodities had rule about participants having significant interests because speculators result in wild, irrational price swings. Then the gov. issued 19 "secret letters" allowing specific speculators to play ... precipitating the wild, irrational price swings of the last couple years.

now we get items like: CFTC Limits on Commodity Speculation May Wait Until Early 2012:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-18/cftc-limits-on-commodity-speculation-may-wait-until-early-2012.html

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

The types of people attracted to the money&power of congress are probably little different to those attracted to money&power of investment banking (large amounts of greed & corruption). The founders saw fit to create significant checks&balances with the 3-branches of government. Many of these articles are related to elimination and/or ignoring equivalent checks&balances over the past decade in the financial sphere.

misc. past posts mentioning Griftopia &/or "13 bankers"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#59 They always think we don't understand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#6 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#7 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#53 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#55 America's Defense Meltdown
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#59 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#45 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#21 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#83 End of an era
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#90 CFTC Limits on Commodity Speculation May Wait Until Early 2012
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#17 Hey all you Old Geeks (and younger ones too), with gas heading towards $6.00/gal, remote support, satellite offices and home office will become more cost effective
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#40 Advice from Richard P. Feynman

misc. past posts mentioning "The Crash of 2008" article:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#58 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#64 Is This a Different Kind of Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#67 What is securitization and why are people wary of it ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#5 Greed - If greed was the cause of the global meltdown then why does the biz community appoint those who so easily succumb to its temptations?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#9 Blind-sided, again. Why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#18 What next? from where would the Banks be hit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#20 Five great technological revolutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#23 Garbage in, garbage out trampled by Moore's law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#35 Is American capitalism and greed to blame for our financial troubles in the US?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#15 What are the challenges in risk analytics post financial crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#52 The Credit Crunch: Why it happened?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#37 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#53 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#54 In your opinion, which facts caused the global crise situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#80 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#39 'WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#42 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#40 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#40 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#17 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#53 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#81 Greed, Excess and America's Gaping Class Divide

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

Another computer museum - Wall Street Journal article

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Another computer museum - Wall Street Journal article
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 13:04:07 -0400
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
Well, because Paul Allen is quite rich, everything he does is news. Call it the Paris Hilton effect if you will.

from friday:

Paul Allen's island for sale for $13.5 million
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/realestate/2015993690_realbrownbox28.html
pictures
http://www.kgw.com/news/slideshows/Photos-Paul-Allens-13M-private-island-for-sale-128334958.html

old article about another Allen purchase:
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19960820&slug=2345084

there were Seattle articles that the most money was made by real-estate speculators/developers when they bought up large portions around the redmond area (when the company first moved in); money being made off housing sold to the ever increasing number of employees (there was parody about company was really just a fabrication of the real-estate speculator/developers to sell housing to employees).

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 13:33:52 -0400
despen writes:
I live here and there are a lot of decent people. But the country has taken a turn for the worse.

What would you expect? Our educational institutions have been taken over by football heroes and basketball stars.


People are biased against creative ideas, studies find
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-people-biased-creative-ideas.html

for the fun of it, search engine on creativity and status quo ... and one of the many results:

Maintaining Organizational Status Quo Often Kills Creativity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4scAPcWJ7s

slightly different flavor:

Poll: Just 39% believe in evolution
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2009/02/12/4427408-poll-just-39-believe-in-evolution
The correlation between national wealth and belief in evolution
http://twentytwowords.com/2011/07/22/the-correlation-between-national-wealth-and-belief-in-evolution/

couple recent posts mentioning Success of Failure culture has emarged (as well as preserving "status quo"):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#79 Innovation and iconoclasm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#33 China Builds Fleet of Small Warships While U.S. Drifts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#41 Rafael Team with Raytheon to Offer Iron Dome in the U.S

a.f.c. has had lots of past threads touching on the long decline of the eduction systems ... I've periodically referenced study in wake of 1990 census claiming half the 18yr olds were "functionally illiterate" (and the eduction systems have continued their downward slide):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#45 How will current AI/robot stories play when AIs are real?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#28 Offshore IT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#45 Offshore IT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#55 Offshore IT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#33 [IBM-MAIN] NY Times editorial on white collar jobs going
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#42 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#18 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#18 Low Bar for High School Students Threatens Tech Sector
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#48 Mozilla v Firefox
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#43 Academic priorities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#20 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#63 DEC's Hudson fab
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#7 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#24 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#79 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#31 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#51 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#80 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#85 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#10 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#30 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#34 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#42 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#68 Poll: oldest computer thing you still use
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#21 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#22 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#29 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#39 competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#5 Republican accomplishments and Hoover
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#55 Can outsourcing be stopped?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#20 Five great technological revolutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009s.html#43 Larrabee delayed: anyone know what's happening?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#38 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#66 They always think we don't understand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#80 Chinese and Indian Entrepreneurs Are Eating America's Lunch

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 14:18:34 -0400
Joachim Pense <snob@pense-mainz.eu> writes:
Wasn't it Nixon who cut the Apollo program and lowered the development budget of the Shuttle significantly, so it became an economical and technical failure?

one of the scifi magazines had a parody of the shuttle problem with o-rings ... involving somebody in the court convincing the queen that columbus' ships should be built in the Pyrenees where the trees grow, then cut in three sections for transport to the harbor, and then sections tar'ed back together for sail across the ocean (attributing the o-rings to congressional pressure to parceling out bits&pieces of the program to different states ... and the booster award had to be physically performed in state that had no direct transportation to launch pad). a couple past threads mentioning the parody
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#61 Compressing the OODA-Loop - Removing the D (and maybe even an O)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#79 NASA proves once again that, for it, the impossible is not even difficult
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#62 End of an era

there are increasing articles about congressional greed&corruption has become so pervasive that major/dominant portion of any large project is how to divide them into small piece-meal parts so they can be spread out across a large number of different congressional districts (significantly increasing complexity and probability of failures).

a couple recent posts mentioning MICC/PRCC/FRCC (revolving door between regulatory agencies & industry with enormous congressional influence thrown in):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#40 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#59 Why did the OODA-loop tactic grow into a strategy?
as well as
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#15 Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#16 Feds Launch Probe Into S&P Mortgage Rates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#22 Slouching toward Weimar

and recent related reference regarding F-35:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#42 Senator userges DoD: Do better job defending F-35

pieces from above

Senator urges DoD: Do better job defending F-35
http://www.dodbuzz.com/2011/08/25/senator-urges-dod-do-better-job-defending-f-35/

Coming up short; America should cut back orders for its late and expensive new fighter -- and spend the cash on more useful kit
http://www.economist.com/node/18958367
Navy questions need for F-35
http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com/2011/08/navy-questions-need-for-f-35.html
F-35-Obsolete for the Pacific Rim (one of the responses mentions F35 will still be able to totally dominate airspace in the Caribbean and DC)
http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com/2011/08/f-35-obsolete-for-pacific-rim.html

and

Eisenhower's MIC & Spinney's MICC (Spinney expanding MIC to military/industrial/congressional complex):
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/pentagon-labyrinth.html
somewhat related, missing $1T
http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?documentid=4623

note cdi.org has moved to
http://www.pogo.org/straus/
... missing $1T is now
http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/defense-budget/2010/what-did-the-rumsfeld-gates-pentagon-do-with-1-trillion.html

The types of people attracted to the money&power of congress are probably little different to those attracted to money&power of investment banking (large amounts of greed & corruption). The founders saw fit to create significant checks&balances with the 3-branches of government. Many of these articles are related to elimination and/or ignoring equivalent checks&balances over the past decade in the financial sphere.

misc. past reference to pentagon labyrinth:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#83 End of an era
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#18 End of an era
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#33 The real cost of outsourcing (and offshoring)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#61 End of an era
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#65 End of an era
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#28 US military spending has increased 81% since 2001
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#43 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!

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

The real reason IBM didn't want to dump more money into Blue Waters

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The real reason IBM didn't want to dump more money into Blue Waters
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 14:51:51 -0400
Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@gmail.com> writes:
Intel has been making the processors that go into the really cool clusters that should have been a bridge between first generation supercomputers and something like Blue Waters. Instead, Beowulf clusters have become "supercomputers."

It's true that Intel made a couple of calculated and probably pretty cynical decisions that misfired to no one's advantage, but Intel has a long way to go before it's in the same class as IBM and Goldman Sachs.


we had been working with both the major RDBMS vendors ... example post about jan92 meeting in ellison's conference room
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

as well as LANL and LLNL on cluster scale-up ... old email of the period
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

then over a period of a couple weeks, the effort is transferred, we are told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors and it was announced as supercomputer (for numerical intensive only) ... 17feb92 press reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1 02/17/92
and couple months later
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2 05/11/92

very quickly we decide to leave. A couple years later, we get asked by one of the sparcstation10 engineers ... who was working on a slimmed down and speeded up SCI chip ... if we would consider taking on commercializing & shipping Sun's SPRING/DOE (object operating system, somewhat akin to Apple's Pink) as well as a 10,000 processor implementation (interconnect with his SCI chip).

I asked him why they couldn't get Hennessy ... and he said that gov. had Hennessy occupied bailing out an Intel supercomputer ... possibly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Paragon
and then
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/18/business/intel-to-abandon-paragon-line-of-supercomputers.html

then

Hennessy: Supercomputers will disapear: 11/97 John Hennessy: Today's microprocessor chipping away at supercomputer market
http://news.stanford.edu/news/1997/november19/supercomp1119.html

misc. past posts mentioning sun's spring/doe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#32 Whom Do Programmers Admire Now???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#60 The next big things that weren't
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#51 A Speculative question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#69 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#46 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#22 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#17 Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#32 comp.arch has made itself a sitting duck for spam
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#44 Larrabee delayed: anyone know what's happening?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#80 Senior Java Developer vs. MVS Systems Programmer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#47 Nonlinear systems and nonlocal supercomputing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#9 Far and near pointers on the 80286 and later
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#53 Far and near pointers on the 80286 and later
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#95 VM IS DEAD

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:18:12 -0400
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Most of us manage to stay out of prison, and have no trouble with the police. Many of us aren't religious, and get along fine with people who are. You probably should visit sometime, just to correct the twisted view you seem to have gotten somewhere. Ypu'd find we have many interesting cultures, and lots of them are fun.

this is article on legislative lobbying and prison labor
http://www.thenation.com/article/162478/hidden-history-alec-and-prison-labor

i was searching for references to breaches and document dumps (ala wikileaks) and came across reference to a large ALEC document dump ... which apparently is the basis for numerous articles on variety of subjects (and spawned large amount of web references).

a few references from quick (specific) search for ALEC document dump
http://www.blueoregon.com/2011/04/do-blue-oregon-readers-want-help-expose-what-chamber-commerce-has-been/
http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:33:04 -0400
latest risk digest just showed up:
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/26.54.html

with Air France 447: Smart planes still vulnerable to human error (Matthew Kruk) Air France 447, the A330 EFCS, and extreme nose-up (Heather McNeil)

includes reference to:
http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/2011/08/18/myths_of_automation

this is past reference to airforce remotely piloted UAVs crashing more than army UAVs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#16 USAF officers slammed for pranging Predators on manual
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#50 Itanium at ISSCC

referencing this article

USAF officers slammed for pranging Predators on manual; 'Xbox flyer' sergeants + autopilots do better
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/29/young_usaf_predator_pilot_officer_slam/

one of the things here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#49

is that it is projected to cost the US $1T for a few hundred F-35s ... and shortly it may be for the cost of a F-35, they may be able to get a hundred UAVs (each performing nearly mission of F-35).

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 11:54:22 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
That law was repealed during Clinton's administration.

GLBA (Bank Modernization Act) repealed Glass-Steagall. The rhetoric on the floor of congress was that the primary purpose of GLBA was that those that were already banks got to remain banks but those that weren't already banks didn't get to become banks (specifically calling out WalMart and Microsoft) ... aka supposedly modernization was to preserve status quo. 25 people to blame for the financial crisis
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877330,00.html

The folklore at the time was that the president was going to veto the bill ... but with some congressional maneuvering and additional special interest provisions ... the final version passed 90-8-2 ... making it "veto-proof" (vote on earlier version was 54-44-2 which wasn't enuf to override a veto; the additional effort making it evident to the president that it was "veto-proof").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act

I was tangentially involved with the Cal. data breach notification legislation (the first such legislation), having been brought in to help wordsmith the electronic signature act. Several of the players were heavily involved in privacy and had done detailed privacy surveys. The #1 issue was "identity theft", primary the form involving "account fraud" as a result of breaches. The issue was that threat & fraudulent financial transactions were against consumers, not the institutions having the breaches (w/o any direct downside to breaches, the institutions had little motivation to correct the situation). The participants apparently were hoping that the publicity from the breach notifications would provide motivation to take corrective measures.

The players were then in the process of passing "opt-in" privacy legislation (i.e. consumers had to provide approval for every sharing), when "opt-out" (federal "pre-emption") privacy sharing was added to GLBA (opt-out allows personal information sharing, unless the individual objects).

In the past decade, there was an annual national privacy conference in DC and had a panel discussion with the FTC commissioners. During the panel discussion, somebody in the audience got up and said he was involved in call centers for majority of financial institutions and he said that the 1-800 "opt-out" call processing failed to record any information about callers (no evidence/record regarding "opt-out"). He wanted to know if the FTC was going to investigate and/or take any action ("opt-in" would have required institutions to have evidence on file permitting each sharing, "opt-out" allows unlimited sharing unless institution has something on file requesting no sharing).

The issue here was not only the significant number of regulations that were repealed during the past couple of decades ... but also the first decade of this century there was little supervison and/or enforcement of the remaining regulations (FTC, SEC, Justice, and many other agencies).

An example, during the fall 2008 congressional hearings into the financial crash ... part of the testimony was that significant number of (no-down, no-documentation) home mortgages were being used to launder money by the drug cartels (just one aspect of failure to provide any enforcement and supervision) and suggested that the too-big-to-fail institutions should be prosecuted under RICO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act

this came up again last summer with another instance of too-big-to-fail instituions involved in money laundering for the drug cartels ("how big banks are turning mexico into colombia") ... post from last year with several news article URLs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#24

part of the comments was that with the gov. doing everything possible to keep those institutions from going under ... they weren't going to let a little thing like money laundering to force them into jailing the executives and shutting down the instituions.

There have also been a number of articles about the litigation and legislation forcing the Federal Reserve to divulge what it had been doing to support these institutions (tens of thousands of pages). One of the issues was giving bank charters to some investment banks so they could have access to free money from the federal reserve (in theory the GLBA provisions against additional bank charters should have precluded FEDs giving out those charters).

A few posts (with referenes) to the FEDs "secret" activity:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#48 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#45 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#3 Greed, Excess and America's Gaping Class Divide
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#11 Innovation and iconoclasm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#39 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#4 Geithner, Bernanke have little in arsenal to fight new crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#23 Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed's Secret Loans

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 12:10:10 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
25 people to blame for the financial crisis
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877330,00.html


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#53

The time magazine article references both bank modernization act (repeal of Glass-Steagall and several other things) as well as commodity trading modernization act (precluding oversight of derivatives) ... implicated in both Enron as well as AIG. Both legislation played significant role in the economic collapse (as well as numerous agenices doing the past decade doing little regarding remaining regulations).

Phil Gramm's Enron Favor
http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-01-15/news/phil-gramm-s-enron-favor/

from above:
A few days after she got the ball rolling on the exemption, Wendy Gramm resigned from the commission. Enron soon appointed her to its board of directors, where she served on the audit committee, which oversees the inner financial workings of the corporation. For this, the company paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in stocks and dividends, as much as $50,000 in annual salary, and $176,000 in attendance fees,

... snip ...

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 ...

Greenspan Slept as Off-Books Debt Escaped Scrutiny
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=home&sid=aYJZOB_gZi0I

from above:
That same year Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt opposed an attempt by Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to study regulating over-the-counter derivatives. In 2000, Congress passed a law keeping them unregulated.

... snip ...

Born must have been fairly quickly replaced by Gramm's wife, before she then left to join Enron (and the Enron audit committee) Gramm's wife apparently was put in as Born's replacement as a temporary stop-gap until Gramm got law passed that exempted regulation. and recent quote seen on the web: Enron was a dry run and it worked so well it has become institutionalized.

recent posts mentioning revolving door between gov, agencies, and institutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#41 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#15 Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#20 Study shows powerful corporations really do control the world's finances
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#49 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 12:20:58 -0400
despen writes:
Representative government was supposed to protect us from that but it's not working very well.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#51 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#52 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#53 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#54 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

The types of people attracted to the money&power of congress are probably little different to those attracted to money&power of investment banking (large amounts of greed & corruption). The founders saw fit to create significant checks&balances with the 3-branches of government. There are lots of references related to elimination and/or ignoring equivalent checks&balances over the past decade in the financial sphere (as well as enormous amounts of money from special interests corrupting nearly all aspects of politics).

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 15:23:49 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#51 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#52 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#53 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#54 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#55 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

from
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#46 Sand in Machine Makes a Stable Market

Warren Buffett famously labeled derivatives financial weapons of mass destruction in the Berkshire Hathaway 2002 annual report ... from "13 Bankers".

Sand in Machine Makes a Stable Market
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-25/sand-in-the-machine-the-key-to-stable-markets-mark-buchanan.html

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

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

... snip ...

lots of individuals were looking to make BIG killings on the transactions (bonuses, commissions, fees, etc) ... the personal financial motivations were so enormous that it totally overwhelmed any regard they might have had about what it would do to their institutions, economy, and/or country (they didn't have to "care"). Enormous amounts were spent on congress to eliminate regulations along with using congressional pressure on agencies to not take any action regarding the remaining regulations.

There were various excuses made after the crash ... including lots of references to nobody understood because it was too complicated. However, risk managers in numerous institutions said that they were forced by business managers to fiddle the inputs until the risk models produced the desired results.

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

This is separate from the testimony in fall 2008 congressional hearings into the rating agencies that both the toxic CDO originators (paying for the triple-A ratings) and the rating agencies (selling triple-A ratings) knew that the toxic CDOs weren't worth triple-A rating.

There was estimated $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs transactions done during the bubble ... with possibly 1/5th ($5.4T) of that disappearing in the form of fees, bonuses, and commissions. This also accounts for report by NY state comptroller that wallstreet bonuses spiked over 400% during the bubble.
Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt

The Fed's Too Easy on Wall Street
http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/mar2008/pi20080318_697440.htm?chan=

During the bubble, there were jokes on wallstreet with regard to bubble being musical chairs analogy ... who would be left holding the bags (of toxic assets) when the music stopped ... the four largest too-big-to-fail financial institutions were estimated to still be holding $5.2T of the triple-A toxic CDOs "off-balance" at the end of 2008.

Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home

from above:
So investors betting for quick solutions to the financial crisis could be disappointed. The tangled web that banks wove over the years will take a long time to undo.

At the end of 2008, for example, off-balance-sheet assets at just the four biggest U.S. banks -- Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase Co. and Wells Fargo Co. -- were about $5.2 trillion, according to their 2008 annual filings.


... snip ...

In the fall of 2008, there were some number of triple-A rated toxic CDOs transactions involving tens of billions that had gone for 22cents on the dollar; if the institutions had to bring the triple-A rated toxic CDOs back on balance at the valuation, they would have been declared insolvent and had to be liquidated ... aka:

Greenspan Slept as Off-Books Debt Escaped Scrutiny
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&refer=home&sid=aYJZOB_gZi0I

There has been claim that financial sector tripled in size (as percent of GDP) during the bubble on their take from the $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs transactions.

misc. past posts mentioning how wall street lied to its computers and/or wallstreet bonuses spiked over 400percent during the bubble
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#76 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#52 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#66 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#42 The Return of Ada
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#4 A Merit based system of reward -Does anybody (or any executive) really want to be judged on merit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#49 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#52 Technology and the current crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#53 Your thoughts on the following comprehensive bailout plan please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#56 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#65 Whether, in our financial crisis, the prize for being the biggest liar is
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#69 Another quiet week in finance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#72 Why was Sarbanes-Oxley not good enough to sent alarms to the regulators about the situation arising today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#78 Isn't it the Federal Reserve role to oversee the banking system??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#80 Why did Sox not prevent this financal crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#82 Fraud in financial institution
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#15 Financial Crisis - the result of uncontrolled Innovation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#18 Once the dust settles, do you think Milton Friedman's economic theories will be laid to rest
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#19 What's your view of current global financial / economical situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#26 SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act), is this really followed and worthful considering current Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#28 Does anyone get the idea that those responsible for containing this finanical crisis are doing too much?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#31 The human plague
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#32 How much is 700 Billion Dollars??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#34 The human plague
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#75 In light of the recent financial crisis, did Sarbanes-Oxley fail to work?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#82 Greenspan testimony and securization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#83 Chip-and-pin card reader supply-chain subversion 'has netted millions from British shoppers'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#8 Global Melt Down
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#70 Is there any technology that we are severely lacking in the Financial industry?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#49 Have not the following principles been practically disproven, once and for all, by the current global financial meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#50 Obama, ACORN, subprimes (Re: Spiders)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#68 Obama, ACORN, subprimes (Re: Spiders)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#69 if you are an powerful financial regulator , how would you have stopped the credit crunch?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#36 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#58 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#61 The vanishing CEO bonus
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#64 Is This a Different Kind of Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#67 What is securitization and why are people wary of it ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#8 Top financial firms of US are eyeing on bailout. It implies to me that their "Risk Management Department's" assessment was way below expectations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#9 Blind-sided, again. Why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#18 What next? from where would the Banks be hit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#20 Five great technological revolutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#23 Garbage in, garbage out trampled by Moore's law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#29 Let IT run the company!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#32 How Should The Government Spend The $700 Billion?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#33 Garbage in, garbage out trampled by Moore's law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#35 Is American capitalism and greed to blame for our financial troubles in the US?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#41 Executive pay: time for a trim?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#55 Is this the story behind the crunchy credit stuff?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#62 Garbage in, garbage out trampled by Moore's law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#14 What are the challenges in risk analytics post financial crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#42 Lets play Blame Game...?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#52 The Credit Crunch: Why it happened?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#63 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#73 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#80 Are reckless risks a natural fallout of "excessive" executive compensation ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#1 Are Both The U.S. & UK on the brink of debt disaster?
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/2009b.html#36 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#37 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#41 The subject is authoritarian tendencies in corporate management, and how they are related to political culture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#45 The recently revealed excesses of John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, while the firm was receiving $25 Billion in TARP funds makes me sick
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#49 US disaster, debts and bad financial management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#52 What has the Global Financial Crisis taught the Nations, it's Governments and Decision Makers, and how should they apply that knowledge to manage risks differently in the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#53 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#54 In your opinion, which facts caused the global crise situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#57 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#59 As bonuses...why breed greed, when others are in dire need?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#65 What can agencies such as the SEC do to insure us that something like Madoff's Ponzi scheme will never happen again?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#73 What can we learn from the meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#78 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#4 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#28 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#39 'WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#61 Accounting for the "greed factor"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#65 is it possible that ALL banks will be nationalized?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#0 PNC Financial to pay CEO $3 million stock bonus
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#3 Congress Set to Approve Pay Cap of $500,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#16 The Formula That Killed Wall Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#18 HSBC is expected to announce a profit, which is good, what did they do differently?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#30 I need insight on the Stock Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#36 Bernanke Says Regulators Must Protect Against Systemic Risks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#37 NEW SEC (Enforcement) MANUAL, A welcome addition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#40 Bernanke Says Regulators Must Protect Against Systemic Risks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#59 Quiz: Evaluate your level of Spreadsheet risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#77 Who first mentioned Credit Crunch?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#8 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#17 Why is everyone talking about AIG bonuses of millions and keeping their mouth shut on billions sent to foreign banks?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#36 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#31 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#38 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#49 Is the current downturn cyclic or systemic?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#53 What every taxpayer should know about what caused the current Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#1 Future of Financial Mathematics?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#27 Flawed Credit Ratings Reap Profits as Regulators Fail Investors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#31 OODA-loop obfuscation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#25 The Paradox of Economic Recovery
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#29 Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#49 IBM to Build Europe, Asia 'Smart Infrastructure'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#60 In the USA "financial regulator seeks power to curb excess speculation."
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#35 what is mortgage-backed securities?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#36 Average Comp This Year At Top Firm Estimated At $700,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#38 what is mortgage-backed securities?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#49 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#21 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#34 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#48 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#87 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#11 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#19 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#26 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#58 S.E.C. Moves to Tighten Rules on Bonds Backed by Consumer Loans
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#67 The Python and the Mongoose: it helps if you know the rules of engagement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#47 "Fraud & Stupidity Look a Lot Alike"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#38 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#40 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#48 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#33 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#17 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#43 WikiLeaks' Wall Street Bombshell
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#66 No command, and control
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#53 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#75 America's Defense Meltdown
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#42 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#59 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#26 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#28 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#36 On Protectionism

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

Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 25 Aug, 2011
Subject: Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?
Blog: Greater IBM
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#60 Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#65 Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#69 Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#34 Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?

In May91 (20yrs ago) there were John Aker's comments at the AMS Roundtable in Armonk posted to a number of internal forums. All copies were eventually removed from the internal forums, but a discussion about the contents was allowed to continue. A lot of the discussion comments were with regard to it didn't appears as if the CEO was adapting to changing market (attempting to preserve the status quo). It might be useful if it was possible to resurrect that forum and republish it since many of the things discussed are very similar to issues raised here 20yrs later.

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

HP getting out of computer biz

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: HP getting out of computer biz.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 21:26:32 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
later in the early 70s Learson was CEO. There is folklore that Learson made the decision to convert products from lease to purchase ... which resulted in large one time revenue boost for the corporation ... which gave him large final bonus just before retirement.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#45 HP getting out of computer biz.

in similar comment in (linkedin) Greater IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#34 Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?

there was response mentioning whether they knew that they had liquidated the company w/o realizing it (conversion from lease to purchase) ... and that in talks with folks that were in the meetings, they claimed to have voiced the opinion loud and clear to the executive team.

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 22:46:07 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
In the fall of 2008, there were some number of triple-A rated toxic CDOs transactions involving tens of billions that had gone for 22cents on the dollar (if the institutions had to bring the triple-A rated toxic CDOs back on balance at the valuation, they would have been declared insolvent and had to be liquidated) ...

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#56 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

in past reports about some of the tens of thousands of pages that the FED was forced to release ... mentioned FED had been buying trillions of (off-balance) toxic assets at 98cents on the dollar (instead of 22cents) from too-big-to-fail institutions

from today:

Paul: Bernanke Is Out of Options to Save Economy
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/28/paul-bernanke-is-out-options-to-save-economy/

from above:
Paul argued that Bernanke's plan to buy bank assets and drop more than $2 trillion into the economy did not yield the results the chairman hoped, a conclusion that Paul says Bernanke implicitly acknowledged during a speech last week in which he offered no new bailout programs from the Fed.

... snip ...

this is separate from the (secret) "free" money that the FED had been lending to the banks (with the banks re-investing the mondey and keeping the profit; some articles claiming that the institutions should have been paying 15-20% interest given the potential risk in the loans ... but that would have defeated objective of propping up the institutions).

other recent posts about FED paying 98cents on the dollar for toxic assets that had been going for 22cents on the dollar.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#4 Geithner, Bernanke have little in arsenal to fight new crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#25 Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed's Secret Loans

implication is that the too-big-to-fail institutions are still holding trillions off-balance in (formally) triple-A rated toxic CDOs.

similar headline from jan2008 (however, there were actually quite a few new options)

Fed Chairman Bernanke Running Out of Options
http://seekingalpha.com/article/60401-fed-chairman-bernanke-running-out-of-options

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 15:45:35 -0400
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
The property bubble started to grow big in 2001, as the interest rates were kept low, financial markets discovered the mortgage DCOs in volume, and everyone were looking for a placement of cheap money.

I started warning about the state of us property market in 2004, but I didn't expect anything near the scale of what actually happened.


fraudulent mortgages were used in CDOs during the S&L failure ... but w/o triple-A ratings, they didn't see large market.

there was lots of people with vested interest to see that Glass-Steagall was repealed ... and a bunch of other people found it in their interest to go along; it was convenient for them to use the excuse that since they hadn't experienced the stock-market crash of '29 ... they were too incompetent/incapable of predicting something similar of happening ... futhermore the fraudulent toxic CDOs from the S&L crisis had little impact.

the people responsible both fired all the fire-fighters as well as disabled all the fire alarms ... lots of people who raised alarms were told they didn't know what they were talking about ... as a result lots of localized hotspots of greed and corruption were allowed to combine into an economic financial firestorm. The removal of restrictions enabled the financial firestorm ... and disabling of nearly all monitoring allowed the firestorm to increase until even the totally financial incompetent recognized it was happening (the voices of warning were constantly being told they were mistaken).

Besides the repeal of Glass-Steagall ... the heavy lobbying to prevent SEC from even performing normal monitoring activities, allowed the financial firestorm to reach the magnitude it did. The firestorm created something like a $10T hole in the economy ... so far, possibly $5T has been filled ... but it has still has much to go. The tens of thousands of pages that the FEDs was forced to release ... effectively show that the majority of the assistance has gone to the predators that had created the situation ... with very little assistance going to victims of the economic firestorm (it would seem natural that those responsible, once having been made whole ... would be the strongest voices for terminating further assistance activity).

An example of the extent of eliminating monitoring ... was testimony in the fall 2008 congressional hearings into the economic failure which stated a major use of the no-down, no-documentation mortgages was by drug cartels for laundering money ... also suggesting that the extent of the laundering activity should result in the financial institutions being prosecuted under RICO ... recent reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#22 Slouching toward Weimar
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#44 New Scandal at DoJ as Illegal Guitars End Up In Hands of Mexican Drug Lords
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act

We had been asked in 2000 time-frame to look at improving the integrity of mortgage documentation as countermeasure to the fraudulent mortgages that were securitized during the S&L failure. However, with the ability for loan originators to buy triple-A ratings for their toxic CDOs ... and with effective removal of all oversight, they were able to do no-down, no-documentation loans (eliminating supporting documentation). With eliminating supporting documentation ... there was no longer anything to provide integrity for. Being able to pay for triple-A ratings and elimination of oversight and monitoring allowed the relative small scale activity during S&L failure to explode to $27 trillion in triple-A rated toxic CDO transactions.

The lack of supporting documentation was recently a subject of 60min segment ... where an operation was setup to provide counterfeit supporting documentations for the too-big-to-fail financial institutions. recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#44 S&P Downgrades USA; Time to Downgrade S&P?

with people in counterfeit document mills doing 4000 forged documents/day and being paid $10/hr
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-20087011-10391709.html

the issue about nearly all agencies abdicating not only their regulatory responsibility (in part because of the elimination of many regulations), but also their oversight and monitoring responsibility and shows up repeatedly; at least FED, OTC, CFTC, FTC, and SEC (with the head of the FED heavily influencing the other agencies).

In the Madoff congressional hearings, this shows up in the testimony by the person that tried unsuccessfully for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff. Apparently GAO also thought that SEC wasn't doing anything and they started doing reports of public company fraudulent financial filings ... showing uptic, even after Sarbanes-Oxley ... which had new, stringent audit procedures which theoretically should have eliminated all frauduldent financial reporting

The first decade of the century, with elimination of nearly all oversight and monitoring, there was enormous uptic in greed&corruption ... wasn't just loan origination and triple-A rated toxic CDOs, but things like continuation of the ENRON-like public company fraudulent financial filings.

Another example is this slip about illegal naked short-selling being pervasive among traders on wallstreet but there was little risk because SEC wasn't going to do anything:
http://nypost.com/2007/03/20/cramer-reveals-a-bit-too-much/

first decade of this century, in more ways than one, the country was returned to the financial wildwest predating crash of '29

past posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#51 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#52 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#53 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#54 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#55 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#56 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#59 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

misc. past posts mentioning GAO reports on public company fraudulent financial filings:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#96 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#25 IBM's 2Q2008 Earnings
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/2009b.html#36 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#48 The blame game is on : A blow to the Audit/Accounting Industry or a lesson learned ???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#49 US disaster, debts and bad financial management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#52 What has the Global Financial Crisis taught the Nations, it's Governments and Decision Makers, and how should they apply that knowledge to manage risks differently in the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#53 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#54 In your opinion, which facts caused the global crise situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#73 What can we learn from the meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#80 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#0 Audit II: Two more scary words: Sarbanes-Oxley
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#20 Decision Making or Instinctive Steering?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#29 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#0 PNC Financial to pay CEO $3 million stock bonus
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#3 Congress Set to Approve Pay Cap of $500,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#37 NEW SEC (Enforcement) MANUAL, A welcome addition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#42 Bernard Madoff Is Jailed After Pleading Guilty -- are there more "Madoff's" out there?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#61 Quiz: Evaluate your level of Spreadsheet risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#63 Do bonuses foster unethical conduct?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#36 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#37 How do you see ethics playing a role in your organizations current or past?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#2 CEO pay sinks - Wall Street Journal/Hay Group survey results just released
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#29 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#51 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#7 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#33 Treating the Web As an Archive
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#17 REGULATOR ROLE IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT FINANCIAL SCANDALS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#60 In the USA "financial regulator seeks power to curb excess speculation."
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#12 IBM identity manager goes big on role control
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#30 An Amazing Document On Madoff Said To Have Been Sent To SEC In 2005
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#15 The Revolving Door and S.E.C. Enforcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#16 The Revolving Door and S.E.C. Enforcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#67 The Python and the Mongoose: it helps if you know the rules of engagement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#84 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#46 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#38 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#35 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#7 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#68 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#31 Ernst & Young sued for fraud over Lehman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#42 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#36 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#35 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear

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

Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 20:42:41 -0400
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
As operating systems go multi-processor they go through stages. The easiest is to allow multiple processors to execute code, but only have one execute kernel code. This is not SMP. The next advancement is to allow all to enter kernel mode, but have one great lock around the kernel. Then subsystems get their own locks, and heavily used subsystems get finer grained locking.

cp67 multiprocessor support (360/67) was fairly fine-grain locking ... while the other mainframe operating system support (360/65) was global kernel lock.

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

charlie was doing lots of fine-grain multiprocessor kernel locking work on cp67 when he invented compare&swap instruction (CAS mnemonic was chosen because it is charlie's initials)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

the effort to get compare&swap included in 370 architecture was initially rebuffed with the reference that the POK favorite son operating system (with single global kernel lock, 360/65) felt that (360) test&set instruction was more than sufficient for multiprocessor support.

the challenge was to come up use for compare&swap instruction that wasn't (necessarily) multiprocessor specific. Thus was born the multi-threaded use descriptions ... multi-threaded applications (that were enabled for interrupts) that needed atomic operation (whether or not they were running on multiprocessor) ... frequently seen in large-scale DBMS implementations (among others). recent version (5/4/04) of the descriptions used to justify compare&swap for 370 architecture:
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/A.6?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=2004050412132
earlier version (6/13/97):
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9AR004/A.6?SHELF=EZ2HW125&DT=19970613131822&CASE=

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

Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 21:31:56 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#61 Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

360/65 two processor smp had global shared memory for the two processors but shared i/o was accomplished with having dedicated (processor specific) i/o channels connected to "twin-tailed" i/o controllers (i.e. device controllers were connected to two different channel ... one for each processor).

360/67 simplex was very similar to 360/65 single processor with the addition virtual memory hardware.

360/67 multiprocessor was different design ... originally for up to four processors (although i don't know of 4-way that were built and only a few 3-way). 360/67 multiprocessor included "channel controller" feature ... that allowed all processors to access all channesl. A lot more information in 360/67 functional characteristics.
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/functional_characteristics/GA27-2719-2_360-67_funcChar.pdf

360/67 describes control registers on multiprocessors reflecting the values of the "channel controller" switch settings. At least one 3-way 360/67 smp was built ... where changing control register values resulted in changing channel controller configuration (under software control).

both 360/65 and 360/67 multiprocessor allowed the configuration to be divided individual single processors (360/67 channel director allowed channels to be dedicated to specific "single" processor).

all 370 multiprocessors were "2-way" with 360 channel configuration convention ... individual channels dedicated to specific processors with "shared" i/o simulated by having twin-tailed i/o controllers connected to two different channels, one on each processor.

as i've periodically mentioned, lots of 370 activity was shutdown during FS period (strategy was that FS would completely replace all 370). when FS was finally killed, there was mad rush to get things back into the 370 hardware and software product pipelines. Part of the activity was pulling resources into 370 development (including most advance technology efforts that hadn't already been pulled into 370).

recent post in (linkedin) greater ibm, mentioning adtech being shutdown as part of being thrown into 370 development mad rush
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#34 Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?

possibly the last adtech conference in the period ... the 801 group was presented 801/risc ... and we were presenting 16-way smp. Things were going great, with lots of support ... until somebody happen to mention to the head of POK, that it might be decades before the POK favorite son operating system had 16-way support. The effort was then shutdown and some number of people were invited to never visit POK again ... reminded me Boyd's story about the SECDEF banning him from the pentagon, for life ... recent post (in linkedin boyd discussion)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#79 Innovation and iconoclasm

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

Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2011 22:12:00 -0400
"Andy \"Krazy\" Glew" <andy@SPAM.comp-arch.net> writes:
I find it interesting that DNS does not have a mechanism to ensure that domains and IP addresses are consistent. E.g. a digital signature/hash including both, made with a private key corresponding to a public key posted in whois.

one of the domain name infrastrucutre vulnerabilities is domain name hijacking,

part of DNSSEC was registering a public key at the some time the domain name registration was done. then all future communication between the domain name owner and the domain name infrastructure is digitally signed and verified with the on-file pubic key ... several instances of domain name hijacking where impersonator fraudulent convinces the domain name infrastructure to update the domain name inframation.

Then the fraudulent domain name owner can apply to the SSL domain name issuer for a valid SSL digital certification ... providing valid information that corresponds with the information on file at the domain name infrastructure.

To some extent the SSL domain name vendors were supporting such DNSSEC operation with pre-registered, onfile public key. Part of the issue is that they currently use an error-prone, expensive, and time-consuming identification process that attempts to match the information supplied on the SSL domain name digital certificate application with the information on-file at the domain name infrastructure.

With on-file, registered public keys at the domain name infrastructure, the SSL domain name infrastructure can start reguiring that SSL domain name certificate application be digitally signed. Then the SSL digital certificate vendor can retrieve the on-file public key from the domain name infrastructure to verify the signature on the SSL domain name certificate application. note that this creates something of catch-22 for the SSL digital certificate vendors since if they could do real-time retrieval of on-file public keys from the domain name infrastructure, then could the rest of the world (obsoleting need for SSL digital certificates for distribution of public keys) ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#catch22

I've suggested a much more efficient and revised SSL handshake where onfile public key could be piggy-backed in standard DNS response ... and then used to encrypt the generated session secret key which is sent during initial connection.

for other drift ... from today, fraudulent digital certificate:

Fraudulent Google credential found in the wild
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/29/fraudulent_google_ssl_certificate/
Hackers acquire Google certificate, could hijack Gmail accounts
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219569/Hackers_acquire_Google_certificate_could_hijack_Gmail_accounts

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

Fraudulent Google credential found in the wild

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 29 Aug, 2011
Subject: Fraudulent Google credential found in the wild
Blog: Information Security
Fraudulent Google credential found in the wild
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/29/fraudulent_google_ssl_certificate/

from above:
The forged certificate was issued on July 10 to digitally sign Google pages protected by SSL, or secure sockets layer. It was issued by Diginotar, a certificate authority located in the Netherlands. The forged certificate is valid for *.google.com, giving its unknown holders the means to mount transparent attacks on a wide range of Google users who access pages on networks controlled by the counterfeiters.

... snip ...

We had been brought into a small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server; the startup had also invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted to use; the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce". Not long after, I coined the term comfort certificates trying to differentiate "real" from the appearance of security.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcerts

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

Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 09:38:15 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
for other drift ... from today, fraudulent digital certificate:

Fraudulent Google credential found in the wild
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/29/fraudulent_google_ssl_certificate/
Hackers acquire Google certificate, could hijack Gmail accounts
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219569/Hackers_acquire_Google_certificate_could_hijack_Gmail_accounts


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#63 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked

supercomputer & SSL trivia ... from:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#50 The real reason IBM didn't want to dump more money into Blue Waters

in this referenced cluster scale-up jan92 meeting in ellison's conference room
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

two of the (other) people (mentioned in the meeting) later leave and join a small client/server startup responsible for something called commerce server. As mentioned in the above (supercomputer reference) ... we also leave ... later we are brought in to consult at the small client/server startup because they want to do payment transactions on the server; the small client/server startup had invented this technology called "SSL" they want to use ... the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce". Not long afterwards, I coin the term "comfort certificates" to differentiate between (comfort from the) appearance of security and real security. misc. past posts about ssl digital certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcerts

other RDBMS trivia ... one of the other people in the Jan92 meeting would claim that they handled most of the (RDBMS) technology transfer from Endicott (SQL/DS) back to STL for DB2. Previously I had done some amount of the System/R tech transfer from SJR to Endicott for SQL/DS. misc. past posts mentioning system/r
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 09:59:15 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
I didn't get that connection. All one had to do was remember what happened when the S&L legislation happened during Carter's admin. and then remember how long it took for the crookedness to implode that market.

a couple recent posts referencing the S&L regulator who was asked to resign because he wouldn't do what his president asked (Reagon, to eliminate most S&L regulations and cut the reserve requirements in half)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#21 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#7 Innovation and iconoclasm

"two trillion meltdown"
https://www.amazon.com/Two-Trillion-Dollar-Meltdown-Rollers-ebook/dp/B0097DE7DM/

is primarily about most recent economic crash ... but also goes into some of the earlier financial event history. The book names the replacement S&L regulator ... who did do what his president asked and the results (disclaimer: in the past decade, I've met and talked to both men).

One of the examples cited was that with the removal of regulations, individual could come in and "buy" a S&L and use the S&L deposits for loans to themselves (or shell companies; conflict of interest) to fund high-rolling lifestyle (and then default on the loans).

There is also some discussion about regulator/industry "revolving door" (that after the ball was rolling on the S&L changes, the regulator leaves and takes a top, high-paying job at major wallstreet firm).

some recent posts about regulator/industry "revolving door" (although most are about articles involving SEC/industry "revolving door":
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#79 NASA proves once again that, for it, the impossible is not even difficult
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#23 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#47 Lords: Auditors guilty of 'dereliction of duty'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#71 Pressing Obama, House Bars Rise for Debt Ceiling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#7 Home prices may drop another 25%, Shiller predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#22 Is BitCoin a triple entry system?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#66 Senate Democrats Ask House to Boost SEC Funding
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#13 'Megalomania, Insanity' Fueled Bubble: Munger
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#19 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#25 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#24 rating agencies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#40 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#41 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#15 Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#16 Feds Launch Probe Into S&P Mortgage Rates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#20 Study shows powerful corporations really do control the world's finances
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#49 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#54 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#60 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

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

Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 10:23:45 -0400
"Andy \"Krazy\" Glew" <andy@SPAM.comp-arch.net> writes:
OK, I'm stupid.

So my next questions are:

1) why wasn't security designed in from the start?

2) why isn't this everywhere?

Oh, yeah, the answer is probably "The original designers of the Internet didn't pay attention to security".

Which is part of the reason why I stopped paying attention to network protocols years ago - in frustration because of thtche lousy security.

(The first US company worked at, The Little Software House on the Prairie, (a) was where I learned a lot about hardware and OS, (b) had been the Illiac networking group, (c) was a pioneer in secure OSes and secure networking. They made part of the living adding security as an afterthought to networking. It always annoyed me that security had not been designed in from scratch.)


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#63 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#65 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked

other trivia ... the person that originally created DNS in the early 80s, had done work at the science center a decade earlier
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

most of the internet was done with little or no thought about attacks and countermeasures ... or sevice level quality. I've made numerous references to work on "electronic commerce" ... that it took nearly ten times the original effort ... to take well designed, well coded, and well tested code and turn it into "service" quality ... being able to handle large category of failures, including those resulting from attacks (in general I've found it takes 4-10 times the effort to take well crafted "application" code and make it "service" quality). Part of the issue was that I had final sign-off on the implementation between the webserver and something called the "payment gateway" (sat between the internet and payment networks) ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

but didn't have similar authority regarding the client/server side (even relative trivial stuff was claimed to be "too complicated")

another problem was the whole issue of any sort of encryption technology during most of the period (both patent and heavy licensing barrier as well as gov. opposition) ... in the 80s, I was so vociferous on the subject, that some guy from 3-letter gov agency dropped by my office to discuss my concerns.

I've frequently mention that the internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until possibly late '85 or early '86 ... and the company required link encryptors on all links
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

There was claim that in the mid-80s, the internal network had over half of all the link encryptors in the world. Even tho these were commerical-off-the-shelf hardware, there was frequently still gov. opposition when links crossed national boundaries. It is in this period, that i claim I learned that there was three kinds of encryption: 1) the kind they don't care about, 2) the kind you can't do, and 3) the kind you can only do for them.

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

HP getting out of computer biz

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: HP getting out of computer biz.
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:17:13 -0400
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
Place original in the reader of your ASR33, turn on the punch, start copying, pause when it gets close to the bit you want to change, single step it until you are right at the point of change, type the new version, turn off the punch, single step until you are past the unwanted bits on the original, repeat from "turn on the punch".

wiki asr33
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASR-33_Teletype

image with tape reel ... also has TYMSHARE logo
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/ASR-33_2.jpg

The univ. had some number of teletypes and the original cp67 delivered to the univ. in jan1968 didn't have teletype support ... so that is one of the things I had to add. This eventually led to the univ. doing a clone control effort ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

i've also mentioned that there were a number of virtual-machine based commerical online service bureaus (including TYMSHARE) ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

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

Documentary on Ken Olsen

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Documentary on Ken Olsen
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:54:18 -0400
DECconnection
http://www.decconnection.org/

there is recent item on linkedin that PDS working documentary on Ken Olsen that is scheduled for preview on 22oct.
http://www.decconnection.org/aboutKO.htm

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

New IBM Redbooks residency experience in Poughkeepsie, NY

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 30 Aug, 2011
Subject: New IBM Redbooks residency experience in Poughkeepsie, NY
Blog: z/VM
re:
http://lnkd.in/UU6DkN

In the late 80s, a senior disk engineer got a talk scheduled at annual, internal, world-wide communication group conference and open the talk with the statement that the communication group would be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The issue was that the communication group had stranglehold on the datacenter. The disk division was starting to see the leading edge of the results of the stranglehold with near double digit drop in sales with customers moving data to more distributed computing platforms (the communication had strategic responsibility for everything that crossed the datacenter walls and were able to veto products by the disk division to correct the situation; communication group attempting to preserve their legacy install base).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal

In the 90s, the financial industry spent billions on re-engineering their financial infrastructure (mainstay of mainframe install base), primarily their overnight batch settlement ... which was hitting brick wall (with increase in workload and decrease in overnight batch window duration ... both coming with increase in globalization). The new implementation would be straight-through processing (each transaction going to completion, eliminating the overnight batch) with massive parrallelism on large numbers of "killer micros". Unfortunately they were primarily leveraging technology for the parrallelism and distribution that had been used in toy demos ... but never benchmarked for production scale-up until deployments. It turned out that the technology had 100 times the overhead compared to batch cobol .... totally swamping any anticipated throughput improvements from the massive parrallelism.

Even a couple years ago, presenting (new) production quality massive paralllelism technology (that eliminated the enormous overhead) to financial industry bodies ... there was enormous resistance because of the lingering scars from the debacle in the 90s (common references that the efforts in 90s proved that it couldn't be done).

I've recently conjectured that possibly any one of the several massive mega datacenters .... each one having hundreds of thousands to millions of processors ... might have more aggregate MIP rate than for the total installed mainframes.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#16 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#17 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#19 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#32 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#32 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#9 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#75 Check out June 2011 | TOP500 Supercomputing Sites
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#23 Cloud computing - is it a financial con trick?

misc. past posts mentioning re-engineering overnight batch window for straight through processing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#19 zLinux OR Linux on zEnterprise Blade Extension???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#42 Looking for a real Fortran-66 compatible PC compiler (CP/M or DOSor Windows
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#35 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#45 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#15 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#19 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#91 Mainframe Fresher
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#93 Itanium at ISSCC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#1 Itanium at ISSCC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#32 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#5 Home prices may drop another 25%, Shiller predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#8 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#25 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#52 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#46 Suffix of 64 bit instructions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#15 Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:44:44 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
the people responsible both fired all the fire-fighters as well as disabled all the fire alarms ... lots of people who raised alarms were told they didn't know what they were talked about ... as a result lots of localized hotspots of greed and corruption were allowed to combine into an economic financial firestorm. The removal of restrictions enabled the financial firestorm ... and disabling of nearly all monitoring allowed the firestorm to increase until even the totally financial incompetent recognized it was happening (the voices of warning were constantly being told they were mistaken).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#60 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

13 bankers
https://www.amazon.com/13-Bankers-Takeover-Financial-ebook/dp/B0036S4EIW

has a bit that one of the federal reserve governors ... who wouldn't disagree with the chairman of the federal reserve in public ... wrote (after he retired) that it was analogous to community with statutes against murder ... but then laid off all of the police force.

misc. past posts mentioning 13 bankers:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#53 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#55 America's Defense Meltdown
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#59 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#45 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#83 End of an era
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#40 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#46 Sand in Machine Makes a Stable Market

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

50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 16:50:56 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#60 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#71 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

besides Gramlich's comment (former federal reserve governor) about not having police force to deal with crime (analogy that the responsible agencies might as well not existed)

"13 bankers" also cites Georgia's 2002 fair lending act introduced requirments on lenders and S&P then stated it wouldn't rate any securities that included loans from Georgia. In 2003, OCC ruled that federal authority pre-empted georgia ... and things went back to no oversight at all (claim was that if Georgia's standards were nation-wide that much of the current financial problems would have been averted).

more recent example from today that the responsible parties weren't doing anything

One More Reason to Shut the SEC and Start Over
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-30/one-more-reason-to-shut-sec-and-start-over-commentary-by-william-d-cohan.html

from above:
This case alone is reason enough to shut the SEC and design a new agency worthy of its budget of more than $1 billion. But, of course, there are many more instances of the ineptitude that makes the SEC so infuriating and ineffectual. Top among them is the agency's abject failure during the leadership of former Representative Christopher Cox to hold Wall Street the slightest bit accountable for its actions.

... snip ...

earlier reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#15 Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?

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

Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 30 Aug, 2011
Subject: Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century
Blog: Greater IBM
note ... for several years, Warren Buffett has been complaining about the tax code (including that he has lower effective tax rate than the workers in his office) ... that the special interest lobbying has resulted in an extremely complex 65,000 page tax code (and the lobbying money contributing to claims that congress is the most corrupt institution on earth) ... resulting in as much as 6 percent of GDP being lost ... between resources wasted on dealing with the complexity as well as non-optimal business decisions.

and recent item regarding off-shoring

Corporations pushing for job-creation tax breaks shield U.S.-vs.-abroad hiring data
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/corporations-pushing-for-job-creation-tax-breaks-shield-us-vs-abroad-hiring-data/2011/08/12/gIQAZwhqUJ_story.html

from above:
So secretive are these companies that they hand the figure over to government statisticians on the condition that officials will release only an aggregate number. The latest data show that multinationals cut 2.9 million jobs in the United States and added 2.4 million overseas between 2000 and 2009.

... snip ...

past posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#60 Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#65 Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#69 Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#34 Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#57 Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?

past posts mentioning extremely complex tax code:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#87 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#43 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#44 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#53 Are the "brightest minds in finance" finally onto something?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#83 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#20 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#13 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#31 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#48 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#37 taking down the machine - z9 series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#58 History--automated payroll processing by other than a computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#69 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#73 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#10 Boyd & Beyond 2010, review at Zenpundit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#14 Rare Apple I computer sells for $216,000 in London
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#74 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#46 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#18 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#8 Is the magic and romance killed by Windows (and Linux)?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#20 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#4 Geithner, Bernanke have little in arsenal to fight new crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#18 What Uncle Warren doesn't mention

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

Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:01:49 -0400
Terje Mathisen <"terje.mathisen at tmsw.no"> writes:
The real question is this:

Given Secure DNS, there is absolutely no real reason for having a a totally separate mechanism, with 200+ CAs all getting a _lot_ of money for issuing SSL certificates:

Each and every DNS domain name registered with a Secure DNS certificate could/should also be _the_ CA for all servers in that domain.

The main problem with this approach is probably that it would remove a huge source of income for the CAs: Back in 2009 Netcraft reported that the number of such certificates passed 1 million.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#63 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#65 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#67 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked

Domain name CA industry is somewhat caught in catch-22, they need part of DNSSEC where domain name owner registers public key as countermeasure to domain name hijacking (and all future communication is authenticated with the on-file public key) ... since critical part of their business is matching information on certificate application with the information on file at domain name infrastructure (as regard true domain name owner). But once those keys are on-file and online available ... they can be used in lieu of digital certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#catch22

the certification authority business tries to imply digital certificates have some sort of mystical properties. their original design point was electronic version of letters of credit/introduction (from the sailing ship & earlier periods where relying parties would have no other alternatives regarding first time interaction with complete stranger) for the offline email of the early 80s (dial-up local postoffice, exchange email, hangup, and have first-time email from complete stranger that needs some sort of authentication).

for higher-value interactions, relying party has either local information and/or access to online authority to obtain the information (especially with ubiquitous internet connectivity).

typical non-CA operation, is relying party has trusted local store where they retrieve on-file public key for authenticating digitally signed information.

for typical CA operation, relying party has trusted local store of CA public keys (purely artifect side-effect stored in certificate format) that is retrieved to verify the digital signature on an appended digital certificate, then the public key is extracted from the appended digital certificate to verify the digital signature on the actual message.

the root trust authority for relying parties is trusted local store of public keys (wither it is the non-CA model or the CA model). In the DNS case, each user has list of root domain name servers ip-addresses in local store of trusted domain name servers. This local trusted store of root domain name server ip-addresses is straight-forward extended to have public keys in combination with the corresponding ip-addresses (which would be required regardless of whether a non-CA or CA model was used). lots of past posts of certificate-less public key discussions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#certless

in the mid-90s, the major certification authorities were circulating business plans on wallstreet that every person in the country would have an annually renewed digital certificate @$100/annum (minimum $20B/annum industry revenue). The claim was that it would be justified by the financial industry requiring a certificate appended to every financial transaction. The problem was that even abbreviated digital certificates had payload size that was 100 times larger than existing payment transaction payload ... and the processing MIPs for digital certificate was 100 times larger than existing payment transaction processing ... which was redundant and superfluous.

The design point for digital certificates was first time interaction between complete stranger. Since consumers already had to have a business relationship with their financial institution (that would be processing the financial transaction) ... that having a 100 times payload and processing bloat was redundant and superfluous ... all the financial institution needed was to have their customer register a public key as part of their account information.

In fact, for other reasons, the financial institutions (before realizing the enormous bloat overhead) had already required that transactions have appended digital certificates that were "relying-party only" ... i.e. specific to institution ... that included the customers account number. There was just an artificial distinction that the bank customer registered their account number and public key with a different operation than opened the account. Showing that collapsing both the account number and public key registration into single business operation ... make it clear that appending digital certificates (on every payment transaction) was redundant and superfluous (as well as eliminated the 100* time payload and processing bloat) ... which shot the $20B/annum industry business case. some past posts discussing the enormous bloat
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#bloat

The certification authority interests attempted to come back in financial standards body with work item for "compressed" relying-party-only digital certificates ... where information was eliminated that was either 1) already in possession of the financial institution or 2) was common to all relying-party-only digital certificates. This was anticipated to possibly getting the payload bloat down to only ten times existing payload transaction size. Instead of showing that appended digital certificates were redundant and superfluous, I showed that such digital certificates could be compressed to zero bytes ... and that there could be mandatory append of zero byte digital certificates on every financial transaction.

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

Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:26:31 -0400
kenney writes:
While bowing to your experience I though that the internet originated in ARPA net. As that was a closed system concern was with physical attacks not software attacks and that attitude seems to have carried over.

Security could be handled by the various file servers used for ftp and later usenet. The WWW originated as an application at Cern and nobody seems to have paid much attention to the fact that when it spread beyond Cern there were no built in security features.


however, the big switch-over was on 1jan1983 from closed system with IMPs to "internetworking" protocol ... that was specifically designed to internet lots of different networks ... which was implicitly open (although lots of people may have continued to think locally and were unprepared for wildwest anarchy of open environment).

In the early 80s, there was OSI ... and the government in the late 80s attempted to eliminate internet, mandating GOSIP.

We ran afaul of OSI attempting to take HSP to ANSI x3s3.3 (ISO charted standards body for network/transport level related standards). However at the time, ISO has mandate that protocols that violated OSI model couldn't be approved. HSP included internetworking support ... which didn't exist in OSI ... and HSP was rejected (it had a couple other features which also didn't conform to OSI). misc. past posts mentioning HSP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#xtphsp

for other topic drif ... HTML morphing from SGML
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/

GML had been invented at the science center in 1969
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

and morphed into SGML a decade later ... before morphing into HTML after another decade. As previously mentioned, person originally responsible for DNS in the early 80s, worked at the science center a decade earlier ... misc. past posts mentioning science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

The first webserver outside europe/cern was at SLAC (sister institution to CERN) on their virtual-machine based (vm370) system (also originated at the science center):
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml

the technology basis for modern internet was tcp/ip, the operational basis for modern internet was the nsfnet backbone, and the business basis for modern internet was cix.

misc. past email working with director of NSF on what was to become NSFNET backbone
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

when the NSFNET backone RFP was released ... internal politics prevented us from bidding. Director of NSF attempted to help by writing a letter to the company (with support of various other agency heads), copying the CEO ... with references to what we already had running was at least five years ahead of all RFP responses. That just made the internal politics worse. As an aside, some of the same executives involved in blocking being able to bid on NSFNET ... also were later involved in transferring cluster scale-up ... mentioned in this recent comp.arch post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#50 The real reason IBM didn't want to dump more money into Blue Waters

past posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#63 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#65 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#67 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#74 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked

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

FIA shocked and outraged after Senator leaks oil trading data

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 31 Aug, 2011
Subject: FIA shocked and outraged after Senator leaks oil trading data
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/W8U9VYDQCnb

FIA "shocked and outraged after Senator leaks oil trading data"
http://www.finextra.com/news/Fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=22911

from above:

Explaining his decision to leak, Sanders says: "This report clearly shows that in the summer of 2008 when gas prices spiked to more than $4 a gallon, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and other speculators on Wall Street dominated the crude oil futures market causing tremendous damage to the entire economy. The CFTC has kept this information hidden from the American public for nearly three years. That is an outrage"

... snip ...

Griftopia has a chapter on this
https://www.amazon.com/Griftopia-Machines-Vampire-Breaking-America/dp/0385529953

related to commodities trading had a rule that players had to have substantial interest because speculators resulted in wild, irrational price swings. It cites that there were then 19 "secret letters" issued allowing speculators to play (resulting in wild, irrational price swings, including oil jumping over $100/barrel and then falling back)

So much for transparency and visibility. The person that tried unsuccessfully for decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff (and then Madoff had to turn himself in before SEC did anything), was asked in the Madoff congressional hearings if new regulations were required. He replied that transparency and visibility is much more important.

allowing speculators in to cause wild, irrational price swings ... then CFTC is asked to limit the damage they can do:

CFTC Limits on Commodity Speculation May Wait Until Early 2012
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-18/cftc-limits-on-commodity-speculation-may-wait-until-early-2012.html

past posts mentioning above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#90 CFTC Limits on Commodity Speculation May Wait Until Early 2012
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#1 CFTC Limits on Commodity Speculation May Wait Until Early 2012
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#3 CFTC Limits on Commodity Speculation May Wait Until Early 2012

misc. other posts mentioning CFTC:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#49 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#42 Bernard Madoff Is Jailed After Pleading Guilty -- are there more "Madoff's" out there?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#0 What is swap in the financial market?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#13 Should we fear and hate derivatives?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#13 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#74 Administration calls for financial system overhaul
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#25 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#61 70 Years of ATM Innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#6 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#57 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#59 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#9 I actually miss working at IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#36 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#17 Hey all you Old Geeks (and younger ones too), with gas heading towards $6.00/gal, remote support, satellite offices and home office will become more cost effective
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#43 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#19 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#40 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#5 AIG's Bank Of America Suit Puts Trashy Paper On Display
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#46 Sand in Machine Makes a Stable Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#60 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

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

Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:15:47 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
in the mid-90s, the major certification authorities were circulating business plans on wallstreet that every person in the country would have an annually renewed digital certificate @$100/annum (minimum $20B/annum industry revenue). The claim was that it would be justified by the financial industry requiring a certificate appended to every financial transaction. The problem was that even abbreviated digital certificates had payload size that was 100 times larger than existing payment transaction payload ... and the processing MIPs for digital certificate was 100 times larger than existing payment transaction processing ... which was redundant and superfluous.

circa 2000, there was a large financial house with 20m accounts that were convinced by a major certification authority that they could move to certificate-based infrastructure for online/internet operations.

a group did a $30m pilot ... and then they told the board that they had to get each account to register a public key (which was then stored in the account record), then a copy of each account record would be sent to the certification authority ... who would re-arrange the account record bits into a digital certificate and return them (for forwarding to the account owner) and would only charge $100/account.

The board asked why they should pay $2B to the certification authority for re-arranging bits in the account record ... the account owner could digitally sign everything ... and rather than validating the digital signature from the public key in an appended digital certificate ... why couldn't they validate the digital signature with the public key on-file in the account record. I believe the board allowed everybody involved in the $30m pilot to look for employment elsewhere.

past posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#63 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#65 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#67 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#74 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#75 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked

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

China's yuan could challenge dollar role in a decade

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 31 Aug, 2011
Subject: China's yuan could challenge dollar role in a decade
Blog: Facebook
China's yuan could challenge dollar role in a decade
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/30/us-economy-global-eclipse-idUSTRE77T2GX20110830

China is projected to pass US as world's largest economy ... their economy is expanding and has some likelihood of becoming the world's largest trading partner ... so it is somewhat natural they might want to have all of their trades yuan denominated ... which could then have secondary effects on various supply-chains.

China seems to have come through the economic debacle of the last decade caused by the US financial industry ... which dug possibly a $10T hole in our economy. Federal Reserve has printed trillions in filling possibly half the hole (nearly all going to the financial industry that created the problem). It may take mainstreet and the real-estate industry another decade to dig the rest of the way out of the hole. In the mean time, all that money printed is devaluing the dollar and if it takes a decade to recover that means the economy will be even less of a world trading partner.

Shiller
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-09/shiller-says-u-s-home-price-declines-of-10-to-25-wouldn-t-surprise-me-.html

in interview yesterday, said inflation adjusted home values have been flat for the 100yrs of the 20th century ... so (except for random fluctuations), home ownership provides no wealth creation (besides pure inflation hedge). Long-time silicon valley startup founders have periodically mentioned that the real winners in silicon valley were the real-estate speculators ... similar theme has been voiced about the area around redmond in the northwest (One parody article claimed Microsoft was purely a fabrication of real-estate speculators to bring in large number of employees/home-buyers into the northwest).

So all other things being equal about how governments manipulate their currency, there would still be strong pressure to increase percentage of yuan-denominated trades

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

Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2011 21:18:34 -0400
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
Fine grained locking generally refers to the exercise of reducing the "footprint" of a lock known as the critical region. In general, the larger the critical region, the higher the chances of contention for the lock which protects it.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#61 Selectric Typerwriter--50th Anniversary

one of the things that charlie realized when he was doing cp67 fine-grain kernel locking on 360/67 ... was that a lot of the locks effectively involved atomic updates ... which resulted in the invention of the compare&swap instruction ... directly implementing atomic updates ... w/o requiring separate locking; this also gave rise to examples for (multithreaded) application code use of compare&swap atomic updates.

lots of kernel code can disable for interrupts ... so locking and lock contention can simply involve lock "spins" ... keeping things relatively serialized. application code is nominally enabled for (asynchronously) interrupts which can result in locked critical sections taking interrupt and being suspended while lots of other operations are spinning attempting to enter/lock the critical section.

high-thruput multi-threaded applications (like large DBMS) ... in order to avoid the problem of interrupt suspension while in a locked critical section ... use to resort to expensive kernel lock calls. Compare&swap provids low-overhead atomic updates that accomplished many of the things that previously required (much more) expensive lock/unlock of (fine-grain) critical sections.

misc. past posts mentioning smp and/or compare&swap
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

many times, multi-thread (whether multiprocessor or not) being reworked for fine-grain parallelism ... went further so that things could be done as atomic updates (aka compare&swap) ... drastically minimizing the requirements for locked critical sections.

as Future system was failing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

... there were a number of new efforts to try and re-vitalize/re-energize 370 which i got sucked into. Spring '75, i got sucked into ecps microcode assist for virgil/tully (which was to become 138/148 ... follow-on to 135/145 that were the originally announced 370s).

Same time, i also got sucked into 370 5-way smp project. the machine had a lot of microcode capability ... so i designed new functions that ran as part of the machine ... one was hardware executable units ... i could put things on the queue, and the hardware would pull things off and parcel out to the different processors ... when done, the hardware would place on finish queue for further kernel processing. Something quite similar showed up in i432 some years later. i also did something similar for queued i/o requests ... kernel pushed things onto the queue for hardware i/o processing ... and when finished it would place it completion queue. A slightly similar thing showed up in 370xa quite a bit later. All of this queue management used compare&swap semantics for adding/removing things from queue. For whatever reason, the 5-way SMP got canceled w/o being announced ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bounce

A bunch of internal kernel software that i had been doing for 370 eventually got selected for release as product. I had some amount of kernel re-org as part of the 5-way effort ... even for vanilla 370 single processor. In conjunction with mad rush to get stuff back into 370 product pipelines (after FS failure) it was also decided to start charging for kernel software ... and package of my software was selected as guinee pig for kernel charging.

During much of the 70s, there was tendency to minimize virtual machine vm370 deliverables (as well as outright attempts to kill the product). However, after FS failure and release of my (charged-for) software package, it was finally decided to release vm370 multiprocessor support. The problem was it was going to be my design for 5-way smp ... but purely in software ... and needed a lot of the kernel rework that i had already shipped in charge for product. During the kernel charging transition period, the policy was kernel software needed for direct hardware support had to be free ... and couldn't have pre-requisite charged-for software. This created enormous dilemma since huge amount of code needed for kernel multiprocessor support was in my charged for product. The eventually solution was move nearly 90% of the code out of my charged-for software into the free/base kernel (eventually in the 80s, the company moved to all kernel software being charged for).

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

Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2011 21:41:53 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
high-thruput multi-threaded applications (like large DBMS) ... in order to avoid the problem of interrupt suspension while in a locked critical section ... use to resort to expensive kernel lock calls. Compare&swap provids low-overhead atomic updates that accomplished many of the things that previously required (much more) expensive lock/unlock of (fine-grain) critical sections.

misc. past posts mentioning smp and/or compare&swap
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#61 Selectric Typerwriter--50th Anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#79 Selectric Typerwriter--50th Anniversary

example of DBMS implementation that used compare&swap was original relational/sql implementation, System/R (done on vm370) ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

technology transfer to endicott was released as sql/ds.

later when the grand&glorious EAGLE DBMS project failed ... they asked how fast it would take to get system/r released on MVS ... as DB2

at the systemr/sql reunion
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/
there was speculation that possibly compare&swap had been invented by one of the main architects of Future System ...
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-Shoot-ou.html

as opposed to charlie having invented compare&swap (chosen because CAS mnemonic are charlie's initials, they changed it for 370 to CS and CDS).

later when we were trying to get lots of the "open system" RDBMS vendors to port to aix and rs/6000 ... there was big problem because rs/6000 had no compare&swap (and/or any kind of atomic instructions). This put rs/6000 at severe performance disadvantage when compared to same DBMS running on other platforms (since DBMS had to drop back to kernel lock calls around critical sections). Eventually, rs/6000 came out with a compare&swap simulation with a supervisor interrupt ... that had fastpath compare&swap emulation in the interrupt routine with immediate return.

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

How Joe and Mary Six Pack Saved Wall Street, London, Frankfurt and Big Corporates in the USA and Europe

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 31 Aug, 2011
Subject: How Joe and Mary Six Pack Saved Wall Street, London, Frankfurt and Big Corporates in the USA and Europe
Blog: Facebook
How Joe and Mary Six Pack Saved Wall Street, London, Frankfurt and Big Corporates in the USA and Europe
http://www.kamakuraco.com/Blog/tabid/231/EntryId/326/How-Joe-and-Mary-Six-Pack-Saved-Wall-Street-London-Frankfurt-and-Big-Corporates-in-the-USA-and-Europe.aspx

"13 bankers" goes into more verbiage of the bailout including various roles that Federal Reserve played.
https://www.amazon.com/13-Bankers-Takeover-Financial-ebook/dp/B0036S4EIW

In addition to the mostly short-term loans ... that tended to keep rolling over for two years ... Federal Reserve also bought trillions in (formally) triple-A rated toxic CDOs at 98cents on the dollar from the too-big-to-fail (four largest too-big-to-fail were reported to hold $5.2T at the end of 2008 and had been going for 22cents on the door). If it wanted to help 401k and various retirement plans, the federal reserve could have bought the triple-A rated toxic CDOs that they were holding.

"13 bankers" points out that Federal Reserve objective had been that all the money pumped into too-big-to-fail was to unfreeze lending so they would start lending to mainstreet again; however, it didn't work out that way ... instead they mostly used it to buy treasuries ... which pretty much left the rest of the economy frozen (too-big-to-fail declared profit from the treasuries to pay executive bonuses).

misc. past posts mentioning four too-big-to-fail holding $5.2T in (formally) triple-A rated toxic CDOs at end of 2008
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#40 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#79 The $4 trillion housing headache
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#60 In the USA "financial regulator seeks power to curb excess speculation."
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#77 Financial Regulatory Reform - elimination of loophole allowing special purpose institutions outside Bank Holding Company (BHC) oversigh
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#35 what is mortgage-backed securities?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#69 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#62 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#74 LPARs: More or Less?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#54 The 2010 Census
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#15 The Revolving Door and S.E.C. Enforcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#22 In the News: SEC storms the 'Castle'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#40 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#29 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#33 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#40 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#17 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#63 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#58 Programmer Charged with thieft (maybe off topic)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#50 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#84 The Imaginot Line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#94 The Curly Factor -- Prologue
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#27 The Zippo Lighter theory of the financial crisis (or, who do we want to blame?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#42 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#45 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#56 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#46 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#23 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#25 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#28 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#36 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#41 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#71 Pressing Obama, House Bars Rise for Debt Ceiling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#7 Home prices may drop another 25%, Shiller predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#24 US Housing Crisis Is Now Worse Than Great Depression
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#29 Obama: "We don't have enough engineers"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#39 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#44 S&P Downgrades USA; Time to Downgrade S&P?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#45 S&P's History of Relentless Political Advocacy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#50 How Many Divisions Does Standard and Poors Have?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#16 Feds Launch Probe Into S&P Mortgage Rates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#25 Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed's Secret Loans
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#56 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?

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

'smttter IBMdroids

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 'smttter IBMdroids
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2011 15:42:28 -0400
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
When IBM invented SMP, they called it parallel sysplex, Codd and Date worked for IBM, the 305 RAMAC, STRETCH, the 360/85... although I certainly wasn't involved, IBM did invent a *few* things... SMP, relational databases, hard disks, aggressive pipelining, cache. And they invented the vacuum column as well...

On the other hand, there's the Atlas - they didn't invent Virtual Memory. The SDS 920/930/940 indicate that IBM didn't invent the idea of having a family of compatible machines, even if the 360 did take it further.


in the 70s ... ibm called things "tightly-coupled" (smp, shared memory) and "loosely-coupled" (cluster, non-shared memory, shared disks) ... then they had this thing called "closely-coupled" ... basically "loosely-coupled" ... with special locking facility that implemented memory access semantics for cluster coordination.

my wife got con'ed into going to POK (large mainframe land) to be in charge of loosely-coupled architecture ... where she created Peer-Coupled Shared Data architecture ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

she didn't remain long ... mostly becase of a combination of frequent battles with the communication group over using SNA for cluster coordination and little uptake of the architecture ... except for IMS hotstandby in the 80s, and eventually sysplex much later in the 90s.

as i mentioned in the recent a.f.c. smp thread ... charlie invented compare&swap instruction at the science center, while doing multiprocessor fine-grain (virtual machine) cp67 kernel locking support (compare&swap chosen because CAS are charlie's initials).

parallel sysplex (april 1994)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Parallel_Sysplex

in the 60s, 360/65 had two-way shared memory multiprocessor ... but shared I/O was simulated by having processor specific dedicated i/o channels ... with "twin-tailed" device i/o controllers connected to two different channels, one going to each processor.

while the uniprocessor 360/67 was nearly identical to 360/65 with the addition of virtual memory hardware ... the multiprocessor 360/67 was designed for up to four processors and added a "channel controller" allowing all processors to access all channels (all processors accessing all channels didn't reappear until 3081 in the 80s). os/360 multiprocessor support for 360/65 had global "spin-wait" kernel lock (only one processor executing in the kernel at a time).

recent folklore in linkedin science center group ... science center only had a single processor 360/67 ... however, lincoln labs had a two-processor SMP 360/67 ... that mostly ran "partitioned" as two single processor 360/67 (each processor getting half the partitioned resources).. Lincoln labs than notified ibm it was returning the hardware. The head of the science center called the moving company (that was scheduled to return the hardware to Kingston, NY) and had them deliver it instead to the science center (upgrade of the science center machine to a two-processor 360/67 SMP). This is the machine that Charlie was working on when he invented the compare&swap instruction.

initial attempts to get compare&swap included in 370 were rebuffed with statement that the POK favorite son operating system considered (360) test&set instruction sufficient for multiprocessor operation. the challenge was then to find uses for compare&swap that weren't multiprocessor specific ... in order to justify for 370 inclusion. Thus were born the examples (still in modern mainframe principles of operation) about using compare&swap in multi-threaded applications (like large DBMS implementations).

misc. past posts mentioning original relational/sql implementation, system/r
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

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

had original done virtual machine cp40 on a custom modified 360/40 that had virtual memory hardware added. cp40 morphed into cp67 when the science center got a 360/67 (standard product that came with virtual memory hardware).

a.f.c. (multiprocessor/compare&swap) thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#61 Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#79 Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#80 Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary

comp.arch thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#63 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#65 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#67 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#74 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#75 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#77 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked

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

California blazes trail again with enhanced breach alert law

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 01 Sep, 2011
Subject: California blazes trail again with enhanced breach alert law
Blog: Facebook
California blazes trail again with enhanced breach alert law
http://www.scmagazineus.com/california-blazes-trail-again-with-enhanced-breach-alert-law/article/211005/

from above:
After being vetoed twice by the prior administration, a bill that updates Californias pioneering data breach notification law was signed into law Wednesday by Gov. Jerry Brown.

... snip ...

we were tangentially involved in the original data breach notification legislation. we were brought in to help word-smith the cal. electronic signature act ... misc past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#signature

... and many of the parties were heavily involved with privacy issues. They had done detailed privacy surveys and #1 was identify theft, primarily "account fraud" (fraudulent financial transactions) from various kinds of data breaches. There was little being done, since the institutions with the breaches weren't at risk, it was primarily the consumer public with the accounts. It apparently was hoped that the publicity from the breach notifications would motivate institution countermeasures (as well as allowing individuals to take their own countermeasures)

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

'smttter IBMdroids

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 'smttter IBMdroids
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2011 20:57:54 -0400
Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> writes:
IBM didn't call it SMP, but multi-processor systems date back to the S/360, although they were somewhat special order then. The S/370 line included a couple of machines (370/158, 370/168, IIRC), which had what IBM called Attached Processor ("AP") and Multiprocessor ("MP") configurations. These were SMP in every sense of the word, the main difference was that an AP machines could not do I/O from the second CPU (IOW, they couldn't issue any of the half dozen I/O instructions, or take I/O interrupts), whereas the MP machines could.

Starting with the 3080 series, IBM supported four processors. IBM called the two CPU 3081s "dyadic", and had some other term (which escapes me at the moment) for the four CPU 3084, but the 3084 could be physically partitioned into two 3081 equivalents.

Parallel Sysplex is a much later term, and refers to the IBM clustering technology for zOS.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#82 'smttter IBMdroids

all 370 multiprocessors were two processor (except for a special 5-way and a 16-way that i got to work on ... but were never announced or shipped) and like 360/65 simulated shared i/o with processor dedicated i/o channels ... and twin-tailed controller ... with two channel interfaces, one for each processor dedicated channels.

all 360 & 370 two processor multiprocessors were partionable into two independent single processor configurations.

when 3081 (two processor smp) was initially introduced, it was referred to as dyadic to differentiate from 360&370 multiprocessors ... because it couldn't be partitioned into two independent single processor operations (however, as previously referenced, 3081 did have shared channels, each processor could access all channels ... like earlier 360/67 multiprocessor) eventually 3084 support came out ... which combined two 3081s into a 4-way smp (and could be partitioned into two 3081 2-way smps).

370 "attached processor" was less expensive 2-way multiprocessor where one processor didn't have its own dedicated channels. "less expensive" for 370/168AP made a little sense, since 168 had external channels. It was something of fabrication for 370/158AP ... since 370/158 had "integrated channels" ... i.e. the 370/158 microprocessor engine was shared executing the 370 instruction microcode and the integrated channel microcode.

with the failure of Future System effort
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

there was mad rush to get stuff back into the 370 product pipelines, this included the 303x in parallel with 3081. the 303x external channel director (used for all 303x processors) was 370/158 engine with the integrated channel microcode and w/o 370 instruction microcode. A 3031 was a 370/158 engine with just the 370 instruction microcode and a 2nd 370/158 engine with just the integrated microcode. A 3031 multiprocessor was actually four 370/158 engines (two with 370 instruction microcode and two with integrated channel microcode).

3032 was 370/168 reworked to work with 303x channel director.

3033 started out with 370/168 logic remapped to 20% faster chips. Before ship, some of the logic was reworked to take advantage of higher circuit density in the faster chips ... eventually shipped 50% faster than 370/168.

besides 360/65 smp tightly-coupled multiprocessor ... there was 360 loosely-coupled (twin-tailed disk controllers hooked to different processor specific channels going to independent single processor systems ... rather than emulated shared i/o for tightly coupled multiprocessor). ASP spooling supported loosely-coupled ... also airline control program (ACP) had loosely-coupled support (for both scale-up and availability).

shared disk loosely-coupled access was managed with device "reserve/release" i/o .... i.e. reserve disk for specific processor access and release when done (basically processor/device exclusive lock)

3830 disk controller (for 3330 and later 3350 disks) could have four-tailed channel connections. In the late 70s, there was a 3830 controller "airline control program" feature for fine-grain locking ... basically able to do i/o operation that "named" a lock managed by the 3830 controller ... which could be obtained and released. discussed in this old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#email800325
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#39 American Airlines

3330s also had a feature called "string-switch" where a string of 3330 disks could be connected to two 3830 controllers (theorically each connected to four channels to four different processors ... providing for up to eight system sharing).

One of the largest virtual-machine based online services in the 70s was the internal online HONE system providing world-wide sales&marketing support. The US HONE datacenters were consolidated at 1501 cal in the mid-70s (more recently a newer bldg. was built at 1601 cal and occupied by FACEBOOK, 1501 has a different occupant now). Majority of HONE applications were implemented in APL making the load quite compute intensive. 1501 was putting in multiple multi-processor 370/168AP (it needed processor capacity ... not so much i/o capacity) ... and was heading for eight such two-processor complexes ... all sharing large 3330 disk farm. HONE developed a special compare&swap channel program sequence involving customer CKD "search-id" channel programs (it required extra revolutions ... but was more efficient than device reserve/release). misc. past posts mentioning hone
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

3081 was suppose to be multi-processor smp only ... no uniprocessor was going to be offered. There were two problems 1) TPF (renamed airline control program) didn't have tightly-coupled, shared-memory support (just loosely-coupled support) and 2) 370 clone processor vendors were offering newer, faster single-processor machine. This eventually forced the release of single-processor 3081, called 3083. It was something of a problem ... basically a processor unit had to be removed from the 3081 cabinet. The cabinet was wired for processor0 at the top of the cabinet; simply removing processor1 left the cabinet (dangerously) top-heavy.

The four-way 3084 (two 3081s tied together) resulted in stressing vm370 and mvs multiprocessor support ... not so much lock contention ... but cache-line trashing. There was special cache-line sensitivity project for both vm370 and mvs ... that went through kernel code making storage cache-aligned ... so two different storage areas (potentially concurrently being used by different processors) didn't occupy the same cache line. This effort supposedly improved overall system throughput by something like 5percent.

misc. past posts mentioning smp and/or compare&swap
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

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

The Grand Message in the Conceptual Spiral

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 02 Sep, 2011
Subject: The Grand Message in the Conceptual Spiral
Blog: Boyd's Disciples
re:
http://lnkd.in/8cRNxn

When I met Boyd, I viewed his OODA-loop as representation of a dynamic-adaptive paradigm.

I have a joke/story about static system ... at some specific point in time compared to some other static system at another specific point in time ... vis-a-vis a dynamic adaptive paradigm.

As undergraduate in the 60s, I did a lot of work on dynamic adaptive (computer) resource management (predictive/trend, with constant feed-back corrections) ... which was picked up and shipped in vendor product. Several years later the vendor went through hardware transition and the related software was significantly simplified eliminating all my dynamic adaptive work. Lots of customers then starting lobbying the vendor to have my dynamic adaptive computer resource management put back into the products. Eventually nearly decade after my original work, adding my dynamic adaptive resource management back into the product was approved.

As part of the product release there was review by somebody at corporate hdqtrs that came in and said that he wouldn't sign-off on release of the "resource management" because it lacked manual tuning knobs and that the current state of the art in all other resource managers were manual tuning knobs. I tried to explain that a decade earlier I had done all this work on dynamic adaptive ... in part to specifically eliminate manual tuning knobs. So I put in manual tuning knobs, documented the whole thing (process, algorithms, etc) and all the source code is shipped along with the product.

Nearly 20 years go by and I'm at a customer call at financial institution (in Hong Kong) and during small chit-chat, somebody (young person) in the room asked if I'm the same person responsible for the dynamic adaptive resource manager ... because he had studied my work in computer science class at college. I said yes and did he realize the JOKE?

The formulas in the documentation are static representation on paper ... including all the manual tuning static parameters as well as all the dynamic adaptive opeation ... the documentation clearly described the dynamic adaptive operation. The supplied code clearly shows "degrees of freedom" for the various parameters. The "JOKE" was that the "degrees of freedom" for the dynamic adaptive was greater than the "degrees of freedom" for the manual set static parameters ... aka anything that might be manual set would be compensated for by the dynamically changing.

It appeared that after decades of study in computer science ... people never made the jump between the static representation of the formula on paper and how it actually worked dynamically ... even though there was exhaustive explanation about it dynamically changing & adapting.

At various times I've tried to explain it by people becoming conditioned into thinking about things in static terms ... with very explicit changes from one state to another ... but not dealing well with things potentially having multiple states (somewhat like quantum physics). Boyd would touch on this in advocating looking at something from every possible aspect ... because how it appeared could be different based on the way it was viewed ... or using every possible doctrine ... different doctrines could bring out different characteristics (and something would be the totality of all the possible, individual static views).

past Boyd posts & URL references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

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

'smttter IBMdroids

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 'smttter IBMdroids
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Fri, 02 Sep 2011 08:48:00 -0400
Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> writes:
It somewhat depends on your definition of "properly symmetric." I/O on the pre-XA MP systems was partitioned amongst the various CPUs (a MP 3033 might, for example, have 24 channels, 12 on each CPU, and each set of 12 could only be driven from the appropriate CPU*). Other than that, the CPUs in all of the S/370 and later AP and MP features were fully symmetrical.

With XA I/O was further abstracted, and all CPUs could drive all channels (although they largely stopped actually referring to channels at that point, rather the OS drove an I/O to a device, and the hardware would find a free channel connected to that device to use).

*Ignoring the channel set switching feature. *Bleech* Which, somewhat to my amazement, has made something of a comeback with logical channel sets...


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#82 'smttter IBMdroids
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#84 'smttter IBMdroids

as previously mentioned, 360/67 multiprocessor support had "channel director" which allowed all processors direct access to all channels. discussed in some detail in 360/67 functional characteristics
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/functional_characteristics/GA27-2719-2_360-67_funcChar.pdf

by comparison 360/65MP and all 370 MPs had processor specific channels ... and "symmetric" multiprocessor I/O was simulated by having pairs of processor specifical channels connected to same "twin-tailed" device controller.

as mention in previous posts all 303x channels were actually the 370/158 engine running integrated channel microcode ... it was called a "channel director" ... but totally different from 360/67 multiprocessor channel director. The 370/158 integrated channel microcode supported six channels. So a 12 channel 3033 required two 370/158 engines (channel directors). A 16 channel 3033 required three 370/158 engines (with two channel unused). A 24 channel 3033mp required four 370/158 engines ... two attached/dedicated to each processor (for 12 channels each).

a big part of XA I/O was horribly long I/O path in the MVS supervisor. High-performace disk I/O was starting to hit brickwall in MVS systems because of long device I/O redrive latency. I/O queues were managed in the software ... and there was long (and increasing) synchronous latency delay between the time that a device I/O completed and the time MVS could get the next I/O started. A big part of XA I/O was to mask this synchronous delay latency that was becoming a larger & larger throughput bottleneck ... by moving the queue in the hardware ... allowing the hardware to immediately redrive the device.

I mention in this post having designed something similar during 1975 for 5-way 370 SMP effort in conjunction with some POK engineers ... well before work started on XA:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#79 Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary

other past posts mentioning 370 5-way 370 (canceled before announced or shipped)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bounce

After transferring to san jose research ... they let me wander around disk engineering on san jose plant site and play disk engineer. bldgs. 14&15 had computer rooms for testing development devices. The processors were being scheduled "stand-alone" dedicated time, 7x24 around the clock for each individual device testing. At one point they attempted to bring the processors with MVS so that on-demand, concurrent testing could go on ... but found that MVS had 15min MTBF (between hangs and/or failures requiring reboot), even with only single device testing. I offered to do rewrite of the I/Os subsystem so that it was bullet proof and never hanged or failed ... providing engineering development with significantly increased productivity ... on-demand, concurrent testing of any number of devices. misc. past posts getting to play disk engineer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

As definition of XA I/O was maturing ... one of the demo things I tried to do with the I/O subsystem rewrite was to see how close I could come to XA I/O redrive throughput with simple 370 programming (highly optimized pathlength for interrupt handling indicating the end of previous i/o and being able to redrive the device with the next queued i/o).

Another thing that XA I/O tried to move into hardware was "dynamic pathing" ... for configurations where same system would have multiple channels connected to the same controller (for parallel I/O activity) ... and allowing the hardware to choose the first available channel path to get to device.

Up until then most systems had implemented (software) primary and alternate channel pathing (to same set of devices). I did I/O subsystem software rewrite to do load-balancing use of multiple channel paths ... and it failed miserably. It turns out that the new generation of high-performance disk controllers 3880 ... for new generation of 3380 disks ... actually had very slow processor for handling commands (with separate hardware path for data transfer) ... especially compared to its predecessor 3830. The 3880 controller had enormous additional internal processing overhead and latency if it got two succesive I/O requests from different channel connections (especially compared to two successive I/O requests from the same channel connection) ... measured in milliseconds. It turns out that I could get better throughput with a primary w/alternate implementation ... compared to a load-balancing implementation (with the reduction in 3880 disk controller overhead by minimizing the number of different channels that 3880 had to deal with concurrently).

Note, dynamic pathing also added a bunch of complexity in the (3380) disk controller ... as if it wasn't already slow enough and didn't already have enough to do. I provided them with a much more efficient alternative implementation for dynamic pathing ... but they said I was too late ... that their existing implementation had already been cast in concrete. misc. past posts methioning dynamic pathing:
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
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#79 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture

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

'smttter IBMdroids

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 'smttter IBMdroids
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Fri, 02 Sep 2011 09:29:30 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#82 'smttter IBMdroids
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#84 'smttter IBMdroids
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#86 'smttter IBMdroids

3033 being a q&d effort ... get out something in the 370 market place after the failure of Future System
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

because the killing off of 370 efforts during Future System is credited with giving the clone processor vendors a market foothold. This was going on in parallel with the 370xa & 3081 effort ... which was also something of a Q&D hurry up effort ... but taking much longer ... discussed in some detail in this reference:
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm

3033 was starting to see lots of competition from endicott's mid-range 4341 ... old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#4341

clusters (loosely-coupled multiprocessing) of 4341s were cheaper, had higher aggregate throughput, had more aggregate I/O, had more aggregate memory, and required significantly less physical resources than 3033. At one point the mid-range 4341 competition so bothered POK (responsible for high-end 3033) that the head of POK slipped through manufacturing allocation that cut the corporate allocation to Endicott of a critical component for 4341 manufacturing in half.

some large customers were starting to have orders of 4341s in multiples of hundreds and placing them out in departmental supply & conference rooms (didn't require all the datacenter physical planning required for 3033) ... sort of the leading edge of the distributed computing wave. Internally, the proliferation of distributed 4341s into departmental areas was starting to make corporate conference rooms a scarce resource.

By the time of the 3033, MVS was becoming increasingly bloated in lots of different ways. The maximum amount of 370 real memory that could be addressed was 16mbytes. Even in a 3033MP configuration the maximum amount of 370 real memory was still limited to 16mbytes.

The MVS real-storage footprint bloat was becoming a throughput bottleneck (pushing the 16mbyte limitation wall) for single 3033 processor ... and even much more so in a 3033MP two-processor configuration (which was also still limited to 16mbyte).

In a real hack to get around the restriction ... a 3033 design was created that allowed for 26 bit address lines (64mbyts) even though real and virtual addressing was still limited to 24bits. The 370 page table entry was 16bits, with 12bit real (4kbyte) page number, two defined function bits and two undefined bits. The hack involved prepending the two undefined bits to the 12bit real page number for 14bit real 4k page number (or 64mbyte addressing). Lots of MVS addressing and operation was limited to below the 16mbyte line ... but application virtual pages could reside above the 16mbyte line ... each application virtual address space was still limited to 16mbytes ... but with lots of different virtual address spaces ... some amount of the virtual pages could reside above the 16mbyte (real) address line (and with the magic of the hacked page table entry, 24bit virtual addresses could be turned into 26bit real addresses). This 3033 >16mbyte hack somewhat alleviated the bloated MVS real-storage bottleneck ... there continued to be a "below the (16mbyte) line" real storage constraint for many MVS things.

Even after 370/xa, mvs/xa and the introduction of 31bit addressing on 3081 ... MVS design point still had a "below the (16mbyte) line" storage constaint (things that had to reside <16mbyte real storage). Even today with hundreds of gigabytes of real storage, 64bit addressing ... there are still reverences to MVS having a "below the (16mbyte) line" constaint.

Normal 360 & 370 I/O operations (also) only allow for 24bit real addressing. However, there was an extra feature added to 370 channel I/O program that allowed for a storage address to be specified in 32bit full word. This was taken advantage of in the 3033 >16mbyte hack to allow specifying 26bit real storage operation for doing data transfers (like paging virtual pages between real storage and disk).

Part of the "below the (16mbyte) line" constraint was some operations on virtual pages required it to be below the 16mbyte line. If virtual page was above the line, then it had to be brought "below the line". Their original design was to use the I/O system to write the virtual page to disk (from its "above the line" location) and read it back in "below the line"). I provided them with a simple hack of fiddling pagetable entry values and then do a MVCL 4k copy from one virtual address to another ... which happened to be from a real storage location above the line to a real storage location below the line.

Misc. past posts mentioning above/below the line hacks:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#82 "all-out" vs less aggressive designs (was: Re: 36 to 32 bit transition)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#41 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#38 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#44 Wars against bad things
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#34 increasing addressable memory via paged memory?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#19 address space
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#30 HASP/ASP JES/JES2/JES3
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#44 POWER6 on zSeries?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#13 VM maclib reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#2 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#27 Old Hashing Routine
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#23 Multiple mappings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#34 Just another example of mainframe costs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#59 IBM to the PCM market(the sky is falling!!!the sky is falling!!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#56 CSA 'above the bar'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#12 Fantasy-Land_Hierarchal_NUMA_Memory-Model_on_Vertical
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#71 308x Processors - was "Mainframe articles"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#74 308x Processors - was "Mainframe articles"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#67 ACP, One of the Oldest Open Source Apps
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#84 locate mode, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#86 locate mode, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#87 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#74 Adventure - Or Colossal Cave Adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#36 16:32 far pointers in OpenWatcom C/C++
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#6 Z/OS 31bit or 64bit

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

Justifying application of Boyd to a project manager

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 02 Sep, 2011
Subject: Justifying application of Boyd to a project manager
Blog: Boyd's Disciples
re:
http://lnkd.in/GhT2tJ

I've been biting my tongue about mentioning that "bureaucrat" and "caring" being antithetical concepts. Radio news today saying that DoD misspent $1m/day during the last decade on contracts ... however that may be off by almost 3 decimal points ... 10yrs at $1m/day is $365m/yr for 10yrs, less than $4B ... while this article implies that it may be more like $1T (nearly 1000 times more)
http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?documentid=4623

note cdi.org has moved to
http://www.pogo.org/straus/
... missing $1T is now
http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/defense-budget/2010/what-did-the-rumsfeld-gates-pentagon-do-with-1-trillion.html

this delves into some of the issues of DoD acquisition
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/pentagon-labyrinth.html

In any case, the bit about $1m/day may turn out to be obfuscation and misdirection ... to distract from the other issues.

mention $31B
http://fcw.com/articles/2011/09/01/reaction-defense-department-wartime-contracting-commission.aspx

maybe as much as $60B
http://www.dodbuzz.com/2011/09/01/having-wasted-31b-dod-vows-to-improve-contracting/

I was once told by a high-ranking member of the FBI that the role of the federal government is to defend the status quo (freeze things in stasis and try to prevent change). This can frequently be conflict with Boyd's To Be or To Do ... this is quote that I lifted from Chet's (belisarius) site back in 2000 (and posted to alt.folklore.military):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#35 War Chaos & Business

"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


....

One connotation of "Orient" is what is the meaning within context ... i.e. orienting the information in context ... separate from updating/orienting the person's position based on new observations.

Various personality studies claim that majority of people make most of their decisions based on personal experience (even when they may be able to rationally discuss theoretically alternatives).

"Guns, Germs, and Steel" makes a point that invention of alphabet was major step forward. Previous writing was major step forward ... it provided people with "experience" about how things can happen without them actually having to experience it (making "informed" decisions where they never personally, perviously experienced the situation). However, early writing tending to involve representations of physical world. Claim is that alphabet allowed a break between the written word and the physical world that they represented ... enabled creation of abstract written words that didn't have corresponding physical instantiation.

Even with the millenium of abstraction and written words, personality studies still claim that the majority of people still have their decision process quite tightly tied to previous personal experience. Brain studies seem to imply that it requires lots of practice to form different kinds of neural pathways that would result in decisions based both on personal experience as well as "book learning".

The corollary is that without such practice, new observations that might have context based on "book learning" ... that for most people, it still won't have meaining (and be able to affect their decision process) until they personally have the whole experience (potentially several times).

The caveat here is that there is some amount of "rote" book learning ... given a specific input they perform specific response; the whole orient/decide is skipped (no attempt to understand the information in context and make their own decision).

The top computing people at Federal Reserve (FEDWIRE) and IRS ... both have claimed that the looming baby boomer retirements represent a systemic risk ... because the baby boomers are the last people that know why something is being done. The newer generation replacements are only learning what is done ... but not why it is being done ... so they lack the context to deal with change.

misc. past Boyd posts & URLs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

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

The Grand Message in the Conceptual Spiral

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 02 Sep, 2011
Subject: The Grand Message in the Conceptual Spiral
Blog: Boyd's Disciples
re:
http://lnkd.in/8cRNxn
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#85 The Grand Message in the Conceptual Spiral

steele was pushing "sleeping with the devil, how washington sold our soul for saudi crude" ... it provides a totally different type of detail about our international relationships (especially with regard to the middle east) ... but not inconsistent with Scheuer books.

one of the things Boyd would talk about was that when he was in charge of "spook base" ... he had several independent information channels throughout the operation ... because the information pushed up the standard organization channels couldn't be trusted to be totally accurate (can also be seen in DTRA's trust but verify). Missing &/or mis-information can result in incorrect decisions, it can also result in creating a false context for interpreting other information (this is complimentary to his statements about bringing in all possible doctrines & viewing things from every possible facet). As an aside, Coram's biography mentions "spook base" was a $2.5B windfall for IBM.

Boyd's information channels shows up in some business tomes about "management by walking around" ... executives that are periodically walking around & visiting all aspects of their business (because the formal channels frequently leave out significant detail).

make an analogy between systems and tactical along with supersystems and strategic. tactical is the things you touch and feel, possibly every day. strategic can be the context that tactical operates in ... and may not be possible to directly observe. a secret is making the trade-off between the strategic (and possibly not seen) with the tactical (that can be directly touched and felt).

"sleeping with the devil" spends lot of time on the cozy relationship with saudi, washington, and various financial, business interests, lobbyists and revolving door. One line was Carlyle group facilitating 1991 large saudi investment in citibank. this is long-winded discussion from jan1999 regarding financial integrity and risk management (some background for the bubble&collapse that was about to happen)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm

part of the old post is about citibank being the largest player in the home ARM-mortgage business in the late 80s, but early 90s, risk analysis showed that their ARM mortgage portfolio could easily take down the institution ... as a result in 1991, they sold off their ARM mortgage portfolio, got out of the mortgage business and needed a private bailout to stay in business (the 1991 saudi investment brokered by carlyle group referenced in "sleeping with the devil").

Roll forward to late 90s, citibank is taken over and has executive and risk management turn over. In the last decade, citibank becomes one of the largest players in the securitized mortgage business (mostly all ARMs) ... apparently all the institutional knowledge from early 90s about risk of ARM mortgages having evaporated (eliminated in various ways). With the bubble burst, citibank is the too-big-to-fail institution that is in the greatest need of bailout (because of the enormous holdings they have in ARM mortgage portfolio ... the mortgages have been obfuscated in all sorts of ways ... but after all the layers are peeled away is still ARM mortgages) ... however, this time it is the gov. that steps in with the bailout (which also makes the earlier saudi stake "whole").

"Griftopia" has somewhat made the point that each new generation insists on not learning from history and must make the same mistakes all over again.

misc. past Boyd posts & URLs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

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

New IBM Redbooks residency experience in Poughkeepsie, NY

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 02 Sep, 2011
Subject: New IBM Redbooks residency experience in Poughkeepsie, NY
Blog: z/VM
re:
http://lnkd.in/UU6DkN
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#70 New IBM Redbooks residency experience in Poughkeepsie, NY

Note that mid-70s when Endicott was doing the follow-on for 135/145 ... the 138/148 with VM microcode assists .. it attempted to make VM370 part of every machine it shipped (somewhat like LPAR is today) ... and Endicott severely got its hands slapped by corporate (this was in the period when lots of the corporation thought they could kill vm370). Endicott still got to ship the VM microcode enhancements on 138/148 ... but it wasn't allowed to ship every machine with vm370 pre-installed.

A few months later POK did manage to make the case to corporate to kill vm370, shutdown the vm370 development group, and move all the people to POK ... the excuse was that w/o the people from the vm370 development group, they wouldn't be able to make the MVS/XA ship date (which was still 6-8yrs away).

Eventually Endicott managed to save the VM370 product mission, but it had to reconstitute a development group from scratch. This can somewhat be seen in the VMSHARE archives with lots of customer comments about poor VM370 quality during the period ... there being a steep learning curve for all the new people in the new vm370 development group recreated from scratch.

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


previous, next, index - home