List of Archived Posts

2012 Newsgroup Postings (03/23 - 04/17)

Memory versus processor speed
The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks
Harris HCX Computers
NASA unplugs their last mainframe
Memory versus processor speed
History of UNIX Manpages
Origins of "User-friendly"
Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
America needs a 2-page tax code
History of UNIX Manpages
Memory versus processor speed
Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
A z/OS Redbook Corrected - just about!
Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
Why do people say "the soda loop is often depicted as a simple loop"?
Wonder if they know how Boydian they are?
Data theft: Hacktivists 'steal more than criminals'
Colonel John Boyd Wikipedia Mention
Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
A z/OS Redbook Corrected - just about!
Malicious Software Protection
Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
ExplicitTacit
We are on the brink of historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
Memory versus processor speed versus facts
NASA unplugs their last mainframe
Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
Visa, MasterCard warn of 'massive' security breach
Senators Who Voted Against Ending Big Oil Tax Breaks Received Millions From Big Oil
PC industry is heading for more change
Visa, MasterCard warn of 'massive' security breach
PC industry is heading for more change
The never-ending SCO lawsuit
The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks
The never-ending SCO lawsuit
The $30 billion Social Security hack
A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia
A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia
Who Increased the Debt?
Why Are the Fed and SEC Keeping Wall Street's Secrets?
Who Increased the Debt?
A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia
Word Length
Word Length
A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia
Word Length
Word Length
US payments system failing to meet the needs of the digital economy
Word Length
Word Length
M68k add to memory is not a mistake any more
GOLD STANDARD GOOD OR BAD?
Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer
Typeface (font) and city identity
speculation
Word Length
Word Length
Candid Communications & Tweaking Curiosity, Tools to Consider
"25 Years of IBM's OS/2"
Typeface (font) and city identity
Typeface (font) and city identity
Typeface (font) and city identity
Teachers Don't Like Creative Students
Typeface (font) and city identity
Typeface (font) and city identity
Glory Days of Army Acquisition Were Not So Glorious
speculation
Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem
Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem
Sunday Book Review: Mind of War
Word Length
Time to competency for new software language?
Word Length
Companies struggling to fill mainframe skills gap
Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer
Time to Think ... and to Listen
What's the takeaway on Audit?
Word Length
Indirect Bit
Fighting Cyber Crime with Transparency
Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
Time to competency for new software language?
Slide Show: 10 SQL Injection Tools For Database Pwnage
CISPA legislation seen by many as SOPA 2.0
Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer
Developing a Disruptive Mindset
False Start's sad demise: Google abandons noble attempt to make SSL less painful
Just for a laugh ... How to spot an old IBMer
The Fractal Organization: Creating sustainable organizations with the Viable System Model
Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Indirect Bit
Just for a laugh ... How to spot an old IBMer
Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
Indirect Bit
Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Typeface (font) and city identity
Hard Disk Drive Construction
Time to Think ... and to Listen
Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Hard Disk Drive Construction

Memory versus processor speed

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Memory versus processor speed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2012 12:10:48 -0400
Charlton Wilbur <cwilbur@chromatico.net> writes:
However, there is a lot of profit in the US insurance industry, and there are a lot of people willing to throw a lot of that profit at Senators and Representatives in order to encourage them to keep the system as it is.

Cicero asked 2000 years ago: cui bono? Who benefits? If you want to understand why the US health care system is as broken as it is, ask yourself that question.


CHART OF THE DAY: America's Freakishly Inefficient Healthcare System
http://www.businessinsider.com/americas-healthcare-spending-relative-to-gdp-2012-3

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

The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 23 Mar, 2012
Subject: The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/YjChaKhL2t6

The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks
http://www.businessinsider.com/dallas-fed-calls-for-breakup-of-big-banks-2012-3

about the time GLBA passed (& repeal of Glass-Steagall ... largely contributing to too-big-to-fail), I reviewed an recent edition of financial industry publication ... it gave the avg of the large national banks compared to the avg of 20 or so large regional banks ... for thousands of measures ... bottom line was that the regional banks were slightly more efficient & profitable than the national banks; the primary motivation for too-big-to-fail appeared to be top executive compensation was proportional to institution size ... not operational efficiency and/or profitability.

misc. recent posts mentioning GLBA, Glass-Steagall, and/or Pecura hearings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#0 Revolution Through Banking?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#25 You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#35 Israel vows to hit back after credit cards hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#5 The round wheels industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#56 What's the most interesting thing you do in your non-work life?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#95 Bank of America Fined $1 Billion for Mortgage Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#31 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#37 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#39 Greek knife to Wall Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#52 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#54 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#5 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#32 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#68 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#69 Memory versus processor speed

misc. past posts mentioning industry publication comparing national & regional financial institutions:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#65 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#25 How do group members think the US payments business will evolve over the next 3 years?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#16 Fake debate: The Senate will not vote on big banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#21 Fake debate: The Senate will not vote on big banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#43 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#67 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/2011d.html#28 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#39 Kabuki Theater 1603-1629
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#67 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#14 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#7 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#83 The banking sector grew seven times faster than gross domestic product since the beginning of the financial crisis and Too-Big-to-Fail: Banks Get Bigger After Dodd-Frank
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#25 You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

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

Harris HCX Computers

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Harris HCX Computers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2012 22:44:20 -0400
"dsgrace" <xx@x.net> writes:
But probably many companies (like Harris maybe) took out ads with a Circle Reader Service Card #nnn' to see how large the potential market was before ever committing to an actual product. Find a library that has back issues of 'Unix World' and dig around. About 1983/4 literally everybody was claiming unix.vme.32bit.tcpip.uucp.blahblahblah': IBM (AIX), PerkinElmer, HP (had a custom 32-bit cpu workstation, story was Bill Joy never got his PhD because HP paid him so much to do the Unix port just before SUN got founded & he just never got back across the San Mateo bridge to Cal), Zilog ZEUS (ZilogEnhancedUnixSystem), (ok, not DEC: "one architecture, one OS"); there were a couple of Unix-porting houses, pretty sure SCO was one but can't remember name of the big one, HCR or UniSoft or Interactive maybe . . . too many acronyms muddled together in the old brain.

reference to early 801/risc in this recent post mentioning ACS in ibm-main mailing list
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#74 Execution Velocity

in 80 time-frame there was effort to replace a large variety of internal microprocessors with 801/risc (mostly iliad) ... which all floundered for one reason or another. some old 801/risc email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#801

in the early 80s, with the floundering of these 801/risc conversion efforts ... some number of the people involved left and went to work on risc chip efforts at other companies (i think at least amd 29k and hp snake).

there was another 801/risc, "romp" chip that was going to be used for the follow-on to the displaywriter. when that got canceled, they decided to reposition it to unix workstation market. they got the company that had done port of at&t unix to ibm/pc (pc/ix) to do a port to romp ... announced as pc/rt and aix v2 (i think label on pc/ix box said something like "pc/ix by interactive").

there was a group in palo alto that had been working on bsd "unix" port to mainframe 370 ... but that got redirected to the pc/rt ... coming out as "aos" for pc/rt (alternative to aix v2). palo alto as eventually did port of ucla locus "unix work-alike" to 370 & ibm/pc ... coming out as aix/370 & aix/386 (but totally different from the aix v2 for the pc/rt).

people that were doing sun ... came to ibm about producing sun workstation. there was meeting in palo alto ... included some number of groups around the company ... all of which said they were doing something better than "sun" ... so ibm declined (and the people involved decided to found their own company).

misc. past posts mentioning 801/risc:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

perkin-elmer had bought interdata and was marketing the boxes under their own logo. interdata had been early (1st) non-pdp port of unix.

i had run into interdata/3 as undergraduate in the 60s ... also mentioned in the ibm-main post.

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

NASA unplugs their last mainframe

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 23 Mar, 2012
Subject: NASA unplugs their last mainframe
Blog: MainframeZone
re:
http://lnkd.in/Uz6-ck
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#2 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#6 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#28 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#79 NASA unplugs their last mainframe

continuing the concept of having lots of concurrent executable units for scheduling when one gets stalled ... and being able to switch ... this is post from last march with several pieces of communication about os/360 transition to virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#73 Multiple Virtual Memory

one of the pieces:
Note to Lynn - I have always given zzzzz the credit for turning Bob Evans around. For reasons unknown to me, the TSO group had the flip charts and wallboard zzzzz used. The clincher was the ability to run 16 initiators simultaneously on a 1 megabyte system, taking advantage of the fact that MVT normally used only 25% of the memory in a partition. The resulting throughput gain (compared to real hardware) was substantial enough to convince Bob. It helped that Tom Simpson and Bob Crabtree had hosted an MFT II system TSS-Style and shown similar performance gains. Of course, since CP67 was a pickup group they weren't considered and we had the OS/VS adventure instead.

... snip ...

aka
The clincher was the ability to run 16 initiators simultaneously on a 1 megabyte system, taking advantage of the fact that MVT normally used only 25% of the memory in a partition

There are other pieces in the post discussing early os/360 and os/vs lore.

This is somewhat equivalent of processor supporting out-of-order execution ... instead of treating instruction stream as purely sequentially executed stream ... add hardware to treat all instructions in pipeline as potentially separate execution ... being able to switch to different instruction when current instruction is stalled on a cache-miss. The latest z196 is claiming approx. 50% faster than z10 ... about half of that speedup is because of the introduction of out-of-order execution ... something that has been part of RISC technology for going on 30yrs (but has way to go to catch up ... big part of the difference in performance throughput between e5-2600 and z196).

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

Memory versus processor speed

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Memory versus processor speed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2012 11:09:00 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
there has been some observations that processors&caches have gotten much faster than the latency to memory ... that the current access latency to memory (measured in terms of number of processor cycles) is comparable to old-time access latency to disk (measured in terms of processor cycles of the period). the result is some of the application performance optimization is attempting to minimize cache-misses resulting in significant slow-down waiting for memory access (relative system thruput slowdown on order of old-time access to disk).

a few recent posts mentioning this theme:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#57 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#73 Tape vs DASD - Speed/time/CPU utilization


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#58 Memory versus processor speed

there have been a couple additional (linkedin) discussions about NASA unplug its last mainframe
http://lnkd.in/djmeWv
and
http://lnkd.in/Uz6-ck

that have really gotten long-winded ... but part of it is lots of performance comparisons between e5-2600 and z196 (latest e5-2600 is rated at 527.55BIPS and fully configured 80 processor z196 is rated at 50BIPS (aka one e5-2600 has thruput of over eleven z196s). recent generations "86" chips are all RISC processors with hardware layer that translates "86" instructions into RISC micro-ops ... helping close the performance gap between "86" cics processors and risc processors.

most recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#3 NASA unplugs their last mainframe

continues comparison between multithreaded/multiprogramming from 60s&70s to increase processor throughput with execution overlapped waiting for disk access ... and current hardware support for having large queue of processor executable units that can be switched to when one is stalled with cache-miss and waiting for memory access.

part of comparison is this long-winded post here in a.f.c. from last march ... discussing early os/360 and os/vs ... including the transition of os/360 to os/vs (and virtual memory) ... aka virtual memory os/vs could get 16 partitions on 1mbyte machine ... significantly increasing multiprogramming level:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#73 Multiple Virtual Memory

other post in the "NASA unplugs" discussions:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#2 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#6 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#28 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#35 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#41 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#43 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#50 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#64 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#79 NASA unplugs their last mainframe

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

History of UNIX Manpages

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: History of UNIX Manpages
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2012 15:59:06 -0400
somebody sent me following url today:

History of UNIX Manpages
http://manpages.bsd.lv/history.html

includes mention of Madnick doing port of runoff to cp67/cms in 1967 (named script).

seems a little garbled about madnick doing it while at honeywell ... and not the science center.

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

for other drift, gml was invented at science center in 1969 ... and then gml tag processing was added to script. a decade later, gml morphs into iso standard sgml ... and a decade after that sgml morphs into html. misc. past posts mentioning gml/sgml
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

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

Origins of "User-friendly"

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 25 Mar, 2012
Subject: Origins of "User-friendly"
Blog: Mainframe Experts
re:
http://lnkd.in/5niaWJ

regarding question whether this old email was earliest mentioning "cloud computing"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#email810921
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#11 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?

I'm not aware of any other ... but it is possibly the type of discussion that arises from online computer conferencing. I was blamed for online computer conferencing on the internal network in the late 70s and early 80s ... i.e. from IBM Jargon:
Tandem Memos - n. Something constructive but hard to control; a fresh of breath air (sic). That's another Tandem Memos. A phrase to worry middle management. It refers to the computer-based conference (widely distributed in 1981) in which many technical personnel expressed dissatisfaction with the tools available to them at that time, and also constructively criticized the way products were [are] developed. The memos are required reading for anyone with a serious interest in quality products. If you have not seen the memos, try reading the November 1981 Datamation summary.

... snip ...

folklore is that when the executive committee (chairman, ceo, pres, etc) was informed of online computer conferencing (and the internal network), 5of6 wanted to fire me. old email mentioning corporate internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#vnet

Something similar might have happened on VMSHARE (but I don't actually recollect seeing such a discussion) ... TYMSHARE had made their online computer conferencing available to SHARE for free starting in Aug1976 vmshare archives
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare
sometimes(?) "404" ... but also at wayback machine
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

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

I setup process where I would get a regular tape of all the vmshare files and put them up on various internal corporate systems (as well as some process for making retrieval over the internal network) ... one of the barriers was arguments with executives & lawyers whether employees would be contaminated by exposure to sources of external information.

other past posts in this &/or similar threads:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#12 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#13 From Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#15 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#16 From "Who originated the phrase user-friendly" thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#19 From Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#22 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#27 From "Who originated the phrase user-friendly" thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#31 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#33 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#36 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#38 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#43 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#44 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#51 From Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?

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

Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2012 11:25:05 -0400
I had cross-posted email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#email810921
from this thread/post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#11 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?

and other pieces of the thread to discussion in "Mainframe Experts"
http://lnkd.in/5niaWJ

today somebody asked if the references to "cloud computing" in that email (although not using the exact term) was first reference. my reply
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#6 Origins of "User-friendly"

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

America needs a 2-page tax code

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 25 Mar, 2012
Subject: America needs a 2-page tax code
Blog: Facebook
also Google+
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/VDuVuXgXmvg

America needs a 2-page tax code
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/24/zakaria-america-needs-a-2-page-tax-code/

from article:
You have to understand, complexity equals corruption

... but this morning, he also mentioned that major factor in the enormous congressional corruption was effectively the sale of loopholes (the corrupt loopholes go on year after year and enormous corruption is obfuscated by being hidden in the tax code).

past studies have claimed that dealing with the enormous size&complexity of the tax code is 5%-6% of GDP (in direct and indirect costs) ... now over 70k pages ... which would be regained by eliminating loopholes and simplifying tax code (side-effect helping reduce enormous congressional corruption)

there is which is cause and which is effect? ... corruption may be purposefully creating complexity as part of misdirection and obfuscation ... however, in computer security ... exploits&breaches tend to be proportional to complexity

past posts mentioning tax code and complexity:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#71 Cormpany sponsored insurance
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/2009p.html#39 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/2010d.html#49 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#40 F.B.I. Faces New Setback in Computer Overhaul
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#88 taking down the machine - z9 series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#36 taking down the machine - z9 series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#37 taking down the machine - z9 series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#40 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#59 They always think we don't understand
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#15 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/2011d.html#20 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/2011g.html#9 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
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#73 Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#68 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#80 A Close Look at the Perry Tax Plan
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#4 The men who crashed the world

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

History of UNIX Manpages

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: History of UNIX Manpages
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2012 13:11:07 -0400
"Charles Richmond" <netnews@aquaporin4.com> writes:
IIRC, the original UNIX manuals were just printouts of the man pages. "man pages" === "manual pages"

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#5 History of Unix Manpages

the reference was to document formating ... dating back to saltzer's runoff on ctss

person that sent me the reference ... managed to generate a 3-way email exchange bringing in Stu Madnick ... part of it was clearing up a reference on the webpage
http://manpages.bsd.lv/history.html

about Stu being at Honeywell when he did runoff port to cp67/cms (as "script") ... which seemed implausible. Stu also questioned semantics of the word "port" ... since it was rewrite from scratch that used similar formating control conventions.

then GML was invented at the science center in 1969 ... and GML "tag" support was added to script with script "macros" circa 1971:
https://web.archive.org/web/20231001185033/http://www.sgmlsource.com/history/roots.htm

some of the CTSS people had gone to Multics on the 5th flr
https://www.multicians.org/history.html

... and others went to the science center on the 4th flr ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

there is all sorts of lore about unix birthing after experiences all sorts of issues/problems and particiating with Project Mac Multics (on the 5th flr).
https://www.multicians.org/multics.html

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

Memory versus processor speed

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Memory versus processor speed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2012 09:56:35 -0400
kenney writes:
1980 or so I had taken a a computer course at school but everything had to be sent away to a batch processing site. So when I was made redundant from an electronics company (working in the development lab) I bought a Video Genie with the redundancy money. So hobby computing.

little x-over with this on "user friendly"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#7

reference 81 email foretelling move away from traditional batch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#email810921

and then somebody in replicated discussion on linkedin
http://lnkd.in/5niaWJ

takes it as also foretelling the coming of cloud computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#6

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

Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2012 10:12:55 -0400
Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> writes:
What's the difference between one big network and several or many connected networks, besides POV?

the scenario from the telcos and the 60s & 70s was proprietary networks with little thot for interoperability and interconnect ... gateways tended to be at the application level rather than the network level ... like common email gateways in the early 80s ... old reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#email821022
in this past post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#59

... however, as i've periodically mentioned ... tcp/ip was technology basis for modern internet (i.e. internetworking layer with interoperability between lots of different networks), NSFNET backbone was the operational basis for the modern internet ... and CIX was the business basis for the modern internet.

don't minimize the difficulty of the business processes being able to relatively freely let traffic flow across large number of commercial networks (and resolving who pays for what).

and past email about some of the effort leading up to the NSFNET backbone
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

past posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#10 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#12 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#1 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#17 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#21 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#24 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#27 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#29 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#30 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian

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

Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:12:22 -0400
Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> writes:
The real issue was homogeneous vs heterogeneous networks. Homogeneous networks are much easier to implement in that they all were running the same software.

The ARPA network partly solved the heterogeneous problem by having the same network interface computers that were then connected to a local computer. This allowed a considerable amount of diversity without endangering the integrity of the whole network.

In heterogeneous networks the software in each network component conforms to an agreed upon protocol something that seems straight forward to do now whose infancy was just starting to happen 40 years ago. There were lots of problems that were being looked at. Most were related to reliable communication over a potentially unreliable system. Alternative data routing to tolerate link failures and bad or malicious protocol implementation had to be tolerated. It was good times with lots of interesting problems.

At the time internet protocols were just being developed and represented at the time very large software projects.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#11 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smightsonian

this shows up in major difference between ISO OSI and IETF TCP/IP ... which became standards about the same time.

I has involved in (high-speed protocol) and taking it to US x3s3.3 (iso chartered responsible for level 3&4; network&transport protocol standards). ISO had requirement to only do standards for things that corresponded to OSI ... and HSP was rejected because

1) it supported internetworking protocol ... which doesn't exist in OSI (sort of non-existent layer between 3 & 4)

also

2) it directly from transport to LAN/MAC bypassing 3/4 interface

3) went directly from transport to LAN/MAC which doesn't exist in OSI ... sort of interface layer somewhere in the middle of 3.

Another differentiation between ISO (/OSI) and IETF (/tcpip) was that IETF requires interoperable implementations (aka plural) as part of standards progression ... while ISO has no implementation requirement of any kind for passing as standard (potentially resulting in standards that can't be implemented).

OSI was considered to be much more of a proprietary and telco paradigm from the 70s ... much more analogous to the proprietary ARPANET implementation with its proprietary IMPs and single administrative domain.

past posts mentioning XTP/HSP (and some x3s3.3)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#xtphsp

and old email mentioning some of the activities leading up to the NSFNET backbone
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

when NSFNET Backbone RFP finally came out ... corporate politics prevented us from bidding. The director of NSF wrote the corporation a letter 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO), trying to help (references to what we already had running was at least five years ahead to all of the "other" NSFNET Backbone RFP responses) ... but that just aggravated the internal politics. misc. past posts mentioning NSFNET
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

and for other drift ... misc. past posts mentioning having some stuff in booth at Interop '88 (wasn't our corporation's booth, but in booth of some other corporation)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#interop88

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

A z/OS Redbook Corrected - just about!

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: A z/OS Redbook Corrected - just about!
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 26 Mar 2012 11:24:19 -0700
dickbond711@GMAIL.COM (Dick Bond) writes:
I agree with Chris Mason. IBM should have never started called it USS - how about a simple definitive abbreviation, like "zUnix". IBM adores putting a "z" in front of everything (for some clueless reason) so why should their version of Unix be any different?

back when MVS posix support started ... was in the unix wars period
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars

which also resulted in the formation of OSF
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Software_Foundation

to produce a posix, copyright-free implementation

while we were doing HA/CMP product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

we also did some consulting to the executive that was behind doing the MVS posix implementation ... it was one of the many efforts to try and get around the stranglehold that the communication group had on the datacenter ... attempting to reverse lots of stuff that was fleeing the mainframe to more distributed computing friendly platforms.

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

Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 26 Mar, 2012
Subject: Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
Blog: Boyd Strategy
re:
http://lnkd.in/A3xcY5

There are lots of nature/nurture studies ... are any gender biases result of biology or culture/learning ... similar to differentiate personality types & other characteristics being because of genetic or culture/learning. I've periodically pontificated, personality types/characteristics (regardless of gender) influence uptake/proficiency on things like OODA-loop. So does it turn into secondary influence ... where gender (either biology or culture) influence distribution of personality characteristics.

In addition to OODA-loop, Boyd would emphasize constantly viewing/observing from every possibly facet. Some of the personality studies indicate differences in preference for uptake of new ideas (i.e. like unquestioning acceptance of culture customs or constantly questioning).

and somewhat along the lines of extroverts are energized by group while introverts are drained.

Quiet
https://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-Talking-ebook/dp/B004J4WNL2
pg.55:
Grant told me about a wing commander in the U.S. Air Force -- one rank below general, in command of thousands of people, charged with protecting a high-security missile base -- who was one of the most classically introverted people, as well as one of the finest leaders, Grant had ever met. This man lost focus when he interacted too much with people, so he carved out time for thinking and recharging.

... snip ...

book has something of a Boyd To Be or To Do theme spending some amount of time on the rise of the "cult of personality" in America during the 20th century (at the expense of "character" being a desirable trait, effectively along with ethics and morals). also provides numerous examples of where extrovert isn't to be equated with good leadership ... in fact, frequently just the opposite.

there is also some relation to peaceful/quiet and meditation ... recent paper on meditation promotes increase in brain cognitive structure

Evidence builds that meditation strengthens the brain
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120314170647.htm

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

Why do people say "the soda loop is often depicted as a simple loop"?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 26 Mar, 2012
Subject: Why do people say "the soda loop is often depicted as a simple loop"?
Blog: Boyd Strategy
re:
http://lnkd.in/jjk9y5

the simplified OODA-loop can be viewed by interative step-by-step process ... there is analogy to the holy grail for parallel processing ... the lack of parallel paradigm that is effective for use by majority of programmers. chips have been increasingly been multi-core to increase thruput having hit something of GHZ wall ... but it requires parallel programming ... which isn't a common skill ... nearly everybody oriented towards step-by-step processes. The full OODA-loop is individual operations running continuously and concurrently interacting with the other operations.

I've got a reference somewhere to ceo of intel complaining that the ceo of microsoft didn't understand direction of chip technology heading to multi-core and needing to start understanding parallel programming.

i learned parallel programming writing operating systems for multiprocessor mainframes in the 70s ... and requiring lots of parallel programming.

mispoke it was intels svp pat gelsinger ... post from couple years ago
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#42 Panic in Multicore Land

references:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/01/mundie_mundie/

from above:
During a speech last June, Intel SVP Pat Gelsinger said the following:

"A couple of years ago, I had a discussion with Bill Gates (about the multi-core products). He was just in disbelief. He said, 'We can't write software to keep up with that.'"

Gates ordered the Intel executive to keep pumping out faster product "No, Bill, it's not going to work that way," Gelsinger informed him.


... snip ...

In the late 90s we were on rant about hedge funds being linear ... and then they throw up their hands and want bailout every time a non-linear bump occurs ... and try and obfuscate the issues with references to "black swans" and other misdirection.

Case of juveniles in need of lots of adult supervision. There were a couple stargate episodes involving what appeared to be a primitive race ... and somewhere along the way they make some reference to humans have a lot of growing up to do.

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

Wonder if they know how Boydian they are?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 26 Mar, 2012
Subject: Wonder if they know how Boydian they are?
Blog: Boyd Strategy
re:
http://lnkd.in/bYjdFh

The Anti-Walmart: The Secret Sauce of Wegmans Is People
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/the-anti-walmart-the-secret-sauce-of-wegmans-is-people/254994/

I had my first visit to a Wegmans three weeks ago.

Walmart is famous for ruthlessly cutting out inefficiencies and costs from operation. Its low-prices are also attractive to certain segments of the population, including the 20-30% of the population that are classified as the "unbanked" (in part because the traditional cost of providing financial services is so high). In Walmart customer surveys, providing cost-effective financial services was typically number one for new services.

An example is the "interchange fees" that are charged merchants for electronic transactions. Walmart and other merchants have sued the financial institutions a number of times ... including class-action anti-trust over cost of financial services. One aspect of the "interchange fees" is that they are justified based on the level of fraud rates ... however, there has been a lot written about eliminating the fraud could radically change the payment transaction business ... cutting fees by order of magnitude or more and effectively commoditising the business (also removing barriers to entry for competition). With payment fees running 40% or more of the bottom line for many institutions ... an order of magnitude reduction in fees would be a big hit (cutting fees down close to actual cost of performing transaction). At the time, Walmart accounted for 25-30% of point-of-sale electronic payment transactions. Disclaimer: I traveled to Bentonville a number of times for meetings with the person that was responsible for looking at providing profitable, cost-effective financial services, including to the large "unbanked" segment of the population.

In any case, financial institutions heavily lobbied congress for protection ... and the rhetoric on the floor of congress was that the primary purpose of GLBA was to prevent Walmart (and m'soft) from becoming bank (although GLBA is now more widely known for repeal of Glass-Steagall ... which played major role in the economic mess of the last decade; the way GLBA was worded, regulated, "safe", depository institutions could add unregulated, risky, investment banking arms; but couldn't be done the other way; in theory this would have precluded Federal Reserve more recently giving bank charters to major investment banks as part of the role that Federal Reserve played in the bail-outs). If Walmart could provide profitable, cost-effective financial services to the large unbanked population ... that would have given them an enormous competitive advantage over the traditional financial institutions (this wasn't quite get to the level of micro-finance ... but moving significantly closer)

There has been a number of discussions regarding the theme about existing financial infrastructure making such a huge profit off (at least the possibility of) fraud ... would that be disincentive for them to move to a paradigm with enormously reduced fraud.

and for other topic drift ... recent item posted yesterday to facebook

The Real Crime On Wall Street Can Never Be Prosecuted
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-crime-on-wall-street-can-never-be-prosecuted-2012-3

In the articles about the money laundering cases, the phrase was too-big-to-jail ... i.e. with the gov. leaning over backwards already to keep the institutions in business, they weren't going to let a little thing like money laundering to force them to throw the executives in jail and shutdown the institution.

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

Data theft: Hacktivists 'steal more than criminals'

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 26 Mar, 2012
Subject: Data theft: Hacktivists 'steal more than criminals'
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
Data theft: Hacktivists 'steal more than criminals'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17428618

Part of this is what is the risk&threat for each specific kind of data

We had been tangentially involved in the Cal. state data breach notification legislation (since then, several other states have passed similar laws, and there have been a number of federal bills introduced, about evenly divided with similar breach notification requirements, and those that are designed to mostly eliminate notification) ... having been brought in to help wordsmith electronic signature legislature, some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#signature

Several of the participants in the electronic signature legislation were heavily involved in privacy issues and had done, detailed, in-depth public surveys ... and the #1 problem was "identity theft" ... namely fraudulent financial transactions was a result of crooks harvesting account information ... frequently from previous financial transactions.

The underlying issue appeared to be that security measures are normally taken as countermeasure to some risk/exploit ... by the entities at risk. However, in this case, the entities (merchants, financial processors, other institutions) needing to take the security measures weren't at risk ... it was individual members of the public. Since the institutions had little at risk ... there was little motivation for them to take security measures that would prevent the leakage of the information.

In the breach notification legislation, there was apparently some hope that the resulting publicity might motivate institutions to take security countermeasures ... as well as alert individuals to the prospect that there would be fraudulent financial transactions against their accounts.

Besides the institutions not having anything directly "at risk", a related issue is what i call security proportional to risk ... in the current paradigm, the financial transaction case, the value of the transaction information to the merchant is the profit from the transaction (possibly a couple dollars, in the case of a transaction processor, possibly only a few cents). The value of the same information to the crooks is the credit limit &/or account balance ... possibly several hundred to several thousand dollars. As a result, a crook may be able to afford to outspend attacking the system by two orders of magnitude (by 100 times) as the defenders can afford to spend defending (independent of the issue that defenders don't have anything directly at risk).

Another characteristic of the current paradigm is what I call "dual-use" ... the same transaction information that needs to be kept confidential and *NEVER* divulged (to anybody, as countermeasure to account fraud and fraudulent financial transaction) is the same transaction information that is needed to be readily available for dozens of business processes at millions of locations around the world. I've periodically claimed that the diametrically opposing requirements (of the multiple uses) means that even if the planet was buried under miles of information hiding encryption ... it wouldn't prevent information leakage.

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

Colonel John Boyd Wikipedia Mention

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Colonel John Boyd Wikipedia Mention
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2012 17:36:57 -0400
Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> writes:
Dear afc'ers:

Col. John Boyd is mentioned in Wikipedia's "Did you know..." for today.


thanks for the tip ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

from above:
... that Colonel John Boyd's Patterns of Conflict, a presentation on military strategy, became so influential that he was summoned by Dick Cheney to help plan for Desert Storm?

... snip ...

disclamer: i had sponsored Boyd's briefings at IBM in the 80s. some past posts &/or refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

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

Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:11:19 -0400
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Bitnet was a "hetrogeneous network where each system conformed to an agreed-on protocol" - RSCS.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#11 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#12 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian

wiki bitnet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET

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

wiki RSCS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSCS

RSCS was something of chameleon ... with something like gateway in each node ... separate from the drivers. RSCS had native drivers which had better performance than the JES2/NJI drivers ... but RSCS also had NJI drivers to talk to JES2 systems.

JES2 had lots of limitations ... originated from the HASP network system (source code use to have identifer "TUCC" on the source statements). HASP implemented a 255 entry psuedo device table ... originally for psuedo spool devices (printers, readers, punches) ... a typical installation would have 60-80 such definitions. The network support then used the left-over entries to define node entries. By the mid-70s, when RSCS & JES2/NJI was announced, the internal network was well over 256 nodes (pushing 700) ... and typical JES2/NJI node was lucky to be able to define 180-190 of them. misc. past posts mentioning internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

JES2/NJI also had design that it would trash/discard any incoming traffic where either the destination node and/or the originating node was not defined in the local table. As a result, real JES2/NJI nodes had to be restricted to boundary nodes ... couldn't be trusted to have a major position in the internal network. Later NJI increased the maximum nodes to 999, but the internal network was already over 1000 nodes. Still later, NJI increased the maximum nodes to 1999 ... but again the internal network was over 2000 nodes by that time.

The other JES2/NJI characteristic is that they somewhat jumbled up networking fields and JES2 fields ... such that arriving traffic originating from a JES2 system at a different release level could cause the receiving JES2 system to crash (JES2<->JES2 network traffic had to be carefully administrated so that all JES2 systems in a network were always at the same release level).

What happened internally was that a whole family of NJI drivers were created for RSCS ... basically custom NJI driver was started that corresponded to the real JES2 system on the other end of the link ... with the RSCS NJI drivers having additional code that would do the format conversion expected by the JES2 system being talked to. There was an infamous case where files originated in a San Jose MVS/JES2 system started crashing a Hursley MVS (JES2) system. Eventually the blamed it on the local Hursley RSCS system ... because they failed to start the appropriate RSCS NJI driver that would have prevented the Hursley MVS system from crashing. misc. past posts mentioning hasp, hasp networking, jes2, jes2 networking &/or nji
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#hasp

Eventually by the mid-80s, the company had stopped shipping the native RSCS drivers to customers (just the RSCS (simulated JES2) NJI drivers) ... although native RSCS drivers continued to be used internally because of better function and performance.

This didn't need SNA ... however, in the late 80s, the communication group ... possibly concerned that internal network wasn't SNA started a program to convert the internal network SNA ... including campaign of misinformation ... a couple old email:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#email870302
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#email870306

part of the mis-information in the period were also claims that the NSFNET backbone could be run on sna/vtam
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email870109

a very large amount of financing and resources were devoted to converting the internal network to SNA ... at a time when it would have been significantly less expensive, more efficient, and much better performance to have converted the RSCS link protocol to TCP/IP (this would have been analogous to the "BITNET-II" effort).

There was native TCP/IP stack done for vm/370 in vs/pascal ... which may have had some implementation performance issues (taking 3090 processor getting 44kbytes/sec throughput), however I did the changes for RFC1044 support and in some tuning tests at cray research and a 4341, got 1mbyte/sec (4341 channel thruput) using only modest amount of the 4341 processor (possibly 500:1 improvement in bytes moved per instruction executed). past posts mentioning doing 1044 support
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

post with copy of vm/370 tcp/ip releasse announcement letter that included rfc1044 support
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#43 z/OS's basis for TCP/IP

this is recent discussion about doing T1 and faster links
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#41

at a time when communication group was limited to doing 56kbit links. The NSFNET backbone RFP called for T1 links ... I've contended based on the example of the T1 (and faster) links I had running in the internal HSDT effort ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

The communication group even did a study/report claiming customers wouldn't need T1 (1.5mbits/sec) until the mid-90s. However, as mentioned the pressure was increasing to get some sort of T1 ... and they eventually came out with the 3737. This was sort of a kludge box with 68k processors and 100kbytes of code simulating a mini-vtam. The box look somewhat like local host with channel connection ... and the 3737 would present ack back to the local host vtam as soon as the packet was at the 3737 ... and before transmission over the link (in order to spoof the host vtam in continuously sending packets). The 3737 was able to get 2mbits/sec sustained throughput ... for full-duplex T1 ... operating at 1.5mbits/sec in both direction ... only about 2/3rds of the 3mbits/sec aggregate possible (only half of EU T1 that ran 2mbits/sec full-duplex). This was solely limited to VTAM ... because of the simulated vtam<->vtam exchanges between the host vtam and the 3737 spoofed mini-vtam. misc. past posts mentioning 3737:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#75 We list every company in the world that has a mainframe computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#77 Is the magic and romance killed by Windows (and Linux)?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#0 We list every company in the world that has a mainframe computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#2 WHAT WAS THE PROJECT YOU WERE INVOLVED/PARTICIPATED AT IBM THAT YOU WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#54 Did My Brother Invent E-Mail With Tom Van Vleck? (Part One)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#103 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#41 Where are all the old tech workers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#20 Writing article on telework/telecommuting

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

Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 27 Mar, 2012
Subject: Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
Blog: Boyd Strategy
re:
http://lnkd.in/A3xcY5
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#14

related to the "cult of personality" (having replaced character in 20th century america) and leadership

One Of The Biggest Mistakes Leaders Make Is Relying On Their Own Judgment
http://www.businessinsider.com/too-many-leaders-still-rely-on-their-golden-gut-2012-3

I've mentioned before claim of study of silicon valley startups that a common characteristic of those still in business after two years ... was that they had completely changed their business plan during that period (agile and adaptable).

Note in the internet bubble ... there was an investment banker investment IPO strategy ... where it was actually beneficial for company to fail after the IPO ... since it left the field open for the next IPO (aka there can be other factors than quality of leadership related to failure). Later some LEOs even claimed that some of the same investment bankers involved in the internet bubble had previously been involved in the S&L crisis and where then getting into securitized mortgages (aka toxic CDOs designed to fail). I guess I can go ahead and say it ... expanding Success of Failure culture isn't just limited to federal gov and beltway bandits.

recent posts mentioning Boyd's To Be or To Do
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#42 Strategy subsumes culture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#68 Original Thinking Is Hard, Where Good Ideas Come From
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#14 Strategy subsumes culture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#51 How would you succinctly desribe maneuver warfare?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#40 Strategy subsumes culture

recent posts mentioning Success of Failure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#14 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#15 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#39 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#42 Strategy subsumes culture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#76 IBM Doing Some Restructuring?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#80 U.S. Cybersecurity Debate Risks Leaving Critical Infrastructure in the Dark
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#86 Spontaneous conduction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#36 McCain calls for U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#42 China's J-20 Stealth Fighter Is Already Doing A Whole Lot More Than Anyone Expected
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#44 Faster, Better, Cheaper: Why Not Pick All Three?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#57 Study Confirms The Government Produces The Buggiest Software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#60 Memory versus processor speed

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

A z/OS Redbook Corrected - just about!

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From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: A z/OS Redbook Corrected - just about!
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 27 Mar 2012 08:36:14 -0700
mike.a.schwab@GMAIL.COM (Mike Schwab) writes:
Since they have AIX on Power, how about zIX or MIX. One concern I have is an operating system name without z/OS implies a completely independent operating system, not a subsystem of z/OS.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#13 A z/OS Redbook Corrected - just about!

besides the OSF and POSIX support on MVS folklore

recent tale of origin of "AIX"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#2

was done for IBM by the company that had done port of AT&T unix to ibm/pc as "PC/IX" ... i.e. ROMP was originally going to be the follow-on to the Displaywriter ... but when that was canceled, it was redirected to the unix workstation market (as PC/RT with AIX). RS/6000 and Power were then follow-on to PC/RT.

the above also mentioned that the people that had done the initial development for what becomes SUN workstation, had come to IBM about producing the product. There was meeting in Palo Alto that included several organizations around the company ... afterwards several organizations all claimed that they were doing something better .. and IBM declined to come out with SUN workstation.

Palo Alto had been working on port of Berkeley's unix work-alike (BSD) to mainframe ... but later get redirected to port it to the PC/RT ... coming out as "AOS" (as an alternative to AIX).

I had done internal advanced technology conference spring of 1982 ... one of the first since the mid-70s ... when there was lots of corporate retrenching after the failure of Future System effort .. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

Presentations included BSD implementation on vm/370, TSS/370 UNIX PRPQ for AT&T, and CMS running under MVS ... old post regarding the adtech conference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a

Palo Alto was also working with UCLA and its unix work-alike (Locus) ... and ported it to both mainframe and ps2 ... which was released as AIX/370 and AIX/386.

Another unix work-alike was MACH done at CMU ... a derivative can still be found as the Apple operating system.

recent tale of mainframe "C language"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#64 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe

There was joint project between IBM and AT&T for unix on the mainframe ... purely for AT&T internal use ... it involved doing a stripped down TSS/370 (residual limited availability follow-on to TSS/360) kernel with unix higher levels layered on top.

Part of the TSS/370 strategy was to provide an alternative to Amdahl's "UTS" (unix) & Amdahl processors for large number of AT&T installations.

As an aside, person responsible for UTS (code named "GOLD" during development for Au or Amdahl Unix) had done port of unix to ibm mainframe at school. When he was graduating, some of us attempted unsuccessfully to get IBM to make him an offer.

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

Malicious Software Protection

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Malicious Software Protection
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 27 Mar 2012 09:24:15 -0700
scott_j_ford@YAHOO.COM (Scott Ford) writes:
You can't be serious...never never heard of anyone developing a virus for mainframes, I understand the fear, but firewalls, network apps do rat in front of the mainframe

this discussion group, mailing list originated on BITNET ... recent discussion (with wiki references)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#19 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian

really long winded recent post in linkedin MainframeZone group
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#49 Do you know where all your sensitive data is located?

mentions the "xmas" exec nov1987 ... reference from vmshare archive
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=CHRISTMA&ft=PROB

was almost exactly a year before the morris worm on the internet.

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 28 Mar, 2012
Subject: Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
Blog: Boyd Strategy
re:
http://lnkd.in/A3xcY5
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#14
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#20

There are the investment banking houses that handle the IPO ... however, there were a lot of investment bankers that put a few tens of millions venture capital into internet startups ... ran thru a cycle to IPO ... and then expected a two billion dollar return at the IPO. They would be running several of these in parallel and then repeat. It was helpful if some number of the startups they provided the venture capital and lot of the guidance up until the IPO ... would then fail after the IPO. Similar formula was repeated for triple-A rated toxic CDOs that were composed to fail ... and then they would make CDS bets that they would fail.

Big part isn't necessarily faster ... but dark markets ("fog-of-war"). In the late 90s, I was called in to NSCC (before they merged with DTC to become DTCC) to look at improving the integrity of (exchange) trading transactions. After working on it for a few months, I was told that it was suspended ... because a side-effect of the improved integrity would have greatly increased transparency and visibility ... which appears to be antithetical to wallstreet culture.

In the congressional Madoff hearings, the person that had tried unsuccessfully 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 required, much more important was transparency and visibility.

reference to wallstreet traders have nothing to worry about from the SEC:
http://nypost.com/2007/03/20/cramer-reveals-a-bit-too-much/

In the congressional hearings into the role that rating agencies played in the financial mess, there was testimony that both the rating agencies and the CDO sellers knew that the CDOs weren't worth triple-A but they were selling triple-A ratings for a price (during the hearings, one commentator stated that the rating agencies would be able to avoid federal prosecution by being able to blackmail the gov. with threat of rating downgrade).

There has been a lot written about the tortuous calculations that were used to justify the risk being taken ... which turns out to be a lot of obfuscation and misdirection; aka they didn't start at the beginning and work forward to the answer ... they started with the answer, and then fabricated stuff back to the beginning ... an old reference:
https://web.archive.org/web/20071111031315/http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/07/25/subprime-triple-a-ratings-or-how-to-lie-with-statistics/

The triple-A rating was critical in getting the large retirement funds and other institutions that were restricted to only dealing in "safe" triple-A rated investments ... and then they were able to do $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs 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

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

ExplicitTacit

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 28 Mar, 2012
Subject: ExplicitTacit
Blog: Boyd Strategy
re:
http://lnkd.in/fbsCiP

ExplicitTacit
http://www.cognitivedesignsolutions.com/KM/ExplicitTacit.htm

I mentioned this recently in another discussion here ... i.e.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#14 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#20 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#23 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?

Quiet
https://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-Talking-ebook/dp/B004J4WNL2

which has some complimentary discussion about innovation from standpoint of introvert/extrovert qualities (in part debunking group brainstorming and "New Groupthink elevating teamwork about all else").

Slightly more related to Explicit/Implicit ... I've periodically cited institutional knowledge apparently can be lost in a few years (if only one or couple key people move on) and organization able to repeat past mistakes and appear to be starting all over from scratch.

A major example was financial institutions circa 1995 were giving industry presentations why they were moving online (proprietary dialup) consumer banking to the internet ... mostly because of the huge consumer support costs associated with supporting dailup modems (at the time connecting via computer "serial port"). At the same time the commercial/cash-management online (proprietary dialup) banking were saying that they would never move to the internet because of a long list of security vulnerabilities.

Circa 2000, a major financial operation starting including chip in their payment card (along with magstripe) and began distributing "free" chipcard readers to their clients. They unexpectedly found that they were having enormous client support problems ... which eventually resulted in canceling the program and rapidly spreading rumor throughout the industry that smartcards weren't viable in the consumer market place. It turns out that some after-action review was that the support problems weren't with the smartcards ... but with the smartcard readers. This was at a time when USB was starting to come on the scene (in large part motivated by the huge computer configuration problems dealing with serial port devices ... ala what the financial industry was complaining about in 1995) ... and the specific financial institution had apparently got a good deal on (obsolete) serial-port cardreaders for the free giveaway (and all institutional knowledge about enormous support costs had evaporated).

Roll-forward to current time, and even the commercial/cash-management (proprietary dialup) online banking have pretty much all migrated to the internet ... and all online banking (both consumer and commercial forms) now regularly suffers all of the security problems that had been outlined in 1995.

FFIEC and other financial organizations have even made recommendations for commercial businesses (doing online banking) to have a PC that is dedicated to the purpose of online banking and is *NEVER* used for any other purpose ... as partial countermeasure to many internet-based threats (and as means of semi-returning to days of pre-internet online banking).

misc. past posts mentioning pre-internet, proprietary dialup online banking:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#32 sizeof() was: The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#60 Poll: oldest computer thing you still use
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#11 Public Computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#61 German court finds Bank responsible for malwared PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#2 Credit Card Security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#11 Can Smart Cards Reduce Payments Fraud and Identity Theft?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#18 Can Smart Cards Reduce Payments Fraud and Identity Theft?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#31 FC5 Special Workshop CFP: Emerging trends in Online Banking and Electronic Payments
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#65 Barbless
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#7 An interesting take on Verified by Visa Policy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#2 Cyber attackers empty business accounts in minutes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#49 Hacker charges also an indictment on PCI, expert says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#70 Client Certificate UI for Chrome?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#44 Nearly 500 People Fall Victim to ATM Skimming Scam
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#21 security and online banking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#79 Customers risk online banking fraud by reusing bank credentials
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#26 Should the USA Implement EMV?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#27 Should the USA Implement EMV?
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#58 memes in infosec IV - turn off HTTP, a small step towards "only one mode"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#65 How Safe Are Online Financial Transactions?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#47 ZeuS attacks mobiles in bank SMS bypass scam
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#48 Is the magic and romance killed by Windows (and Linux)?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#3 RSA Pawned - Black Queen runs amoc behind US lines of defence
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#38 ISBNs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#52 Banking malware a growing threat, as new variant of Zeus is detected
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#71 Password shortcomings

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

We are on the brink of historic decision [referring to defence cuts]

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 29 Mar, 2012
Subject: We are on the brink of historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
Blog: Boyd Strategy
re:
http://lnkd.in/-UVjin
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#3 We are on the brink of a historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#5 We are on the brink of a historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#6 We are on the brink of a historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#13 We are on the brink of a historic decision [referring to defence cuts]

We Just Boosted Our Global GDP Estimate Because China Is Growing A Lot Faster Than We Thought
http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-stanley-global-gdp-china-2012-3

I've mentioned this before, we visited a son-in-law spring '05, two weeks after return from Iraq ... he was in an Army "deprogramming" program. He had spent months boots-on-the-ground (1st cav. scout) in Fallujah during some of the worst violence. He was hyper-reactive to anything that might be a threat ... and the Army was running him through program to adapt to a less lethal environment. Fortunately most of his surface damage was from masonry/gravel that gets kicked about in firefight (he joked about being in firefights that the Marines ran from)

for more drift ... this is Moyers interview with Chuck Spinney, 1Aug2003
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/bill-moyers-interviews-chuck-spinney.html

that has a comment that we had just "won" the war with Iraq.

This has a significantly more caustic view of Iraq conflict
https://www.amazon.com/EXTREME-PREJUDICE-Terrifying-Patriot-ebook/dp/B004HYHBK2

Quiet uses a metaphor for nature/nurture ... rubberband ... nature positions the rubberband ... which can be stretched in lots of different ways ... but there is a limit to the amount that the rubberband can stretch (so the original position of the rubberband places constraints on the adaptability)
https://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-Talking-ebook/dp/B004J4WNL2

& some Quiet education, pg 182 :
And yet, according to an article called "The New White Flight" that ran in the Wall Street Journal just six months previously, white families are leaving Cupertino in droves, precisely because of kids like Mike. They are fleeing the sky-high test scores and awe-inspiring study habits of many Asian-American students. The article said that white parents feared that their kids couldn't keep up academically

... snip ...

along with several references to Pacific rim Asian country sky-high student performance.

Moyers interview includes comment about Chuck accusing DOD of cooking the books on TV and then able to return to his office.

And back to the early 80s, Boyd would explain that they spent 18months preparing for this article: The Winds of Reform (7Mar1983 Chuck Spinney TIME article, gone behind paywall but lives free at the wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20070320170523/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html
also
https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html

after the article, Boyd tells the story that SECDEF knew he was behind the article, and attempted to have Boyd moved to Alaska and banned from the Pentagon for life. Pentagon also came out with new documentation classification "NO-SPIN" ... unclassified, but not to be given to Spinney.

this has CBO showing last decade $6T cut in tax revenues along with $6T increase in spending for $12T budget gap over baseline (baseline had surpluses retiring all Federal debt by 2010)
https://www.amazon.com/Benefit-Burden-ebook/dp/B005LJEVDM
... much of it kicked off after Congress was freed from the fiscal responsibility act in 2002.

I've referenced upthread article last decade, DoD got extra $2T over baseline (of the $6T increase in spending), $1T for the wars and $1T went where?
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
and Chucks item on continuous conflict & perpetual war
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/domestic-roots-of-perpetual-war.html

from today, estimate that F-35 is now up to $1.45T
http://www.dailytech.com/New+Estimates+Peg+the+Lifetime+Cost+of+Lockheed+F35+Lightning+II+at+145+Trillion/article24339.htm

recent references to "Quiet"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#14 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#24 ExplicitTacit

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

Memory versus processor speed versus facts

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Memory versus processor speed versus facts
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:20:47 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
AARP has a hidden agenda which I have not been able to figure out yet.

there was tv program (60 mins?) that did an expose on AARP ... apparently they hired a new executive that decided he wanted to significantly increase his compensation ... requiring significantly increasing AARP revenue ... started selling the AARP mailing list as well as renting out the AARP brand to various commercial interests ... like insurance companies ... that apparently also put heavy leverage on AARP to lobby in the interests/behalf of the insurance companies.

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

NASA unplugs their last mainframe

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 30 Mar, 2012
Subject: NASA unplugs their last mainframe.
Blog: MainframeZone
re:
http://lnkd.in/Uz6-ck

periodically related tale about I/O capacity. they were letting me play disk engineer in bldgs. 14&15 that included the period that 3880 disk controller as being developed ... and I had to shoot a number of problems that were related to moving from fast horizontal microcode engine in the 3830 to a slow vertical microcode "jib-prime" in the 3880 (for control ops, with separate hardware path for data transfer). use of jib-prime drove up elapsed time to perform operations and significantly increased channel busy time (partially offset by moving from 300kbyte/transfer to 3mbyte/transfer disks). misc past posts getting to play disk engineer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

The 3090 processor folks had anticipated the 3880 w/3380 disks would be as fast as the 3830 ... but with 3mbyte/transfer ... and provided design for number of channels to drive sufficient I/Os for aggregate throughput. However, when they discovered the significantly increased channel busy overhead of 3880 ... they had to significantly increase the number of channels (to compensate for the significantly increased channel busy) ... which required an extra TCM in manufacturing (TCM is significant cost component). There were then semi-joking references that 3090 product would charge the 3880 group for the increased 3090 manufacturing costs for the additional TCM.

This was start of source for much of the folklore about mainframes having significant more I/O throughput (because of the large number of 3090 channels) ... but was really to disguise the fact of the horribly inefficient throughput of the channel infrastructure. Part of this was the inefficiency was the hand-shaking end-to-end half-duplex latency ... which carried forward into ESCON.

In the late 80s, we were involved with LLNL in standards effort to transition their high-speed serial copper implementation in standards group to fiber channel standard. About the same time somebody in the RS/6000 group was involved in taking some fiber-optic work that had been knocking around POK for a long time (evolves into ESCON). The design is tweaked to achieve 220mbits/sec concurrently in both directions ... while ESCON was rated approx. 17mbytes/sec throughput (approx. 170mbits/sec vis-a-vis 440mbits/sec from nearly identical technology). The engineer then wanted to take the serial-link and enhance it to 800mbits/sec ... we spent some amount of time convincing him to instead participate in the (at the time 1gibt/sec) fiber-channel standard.

This is old email reference to "medusa" ... that used fiber-channel standard for both cluster scale-up and i/o device interconnect
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

we were working with both gov. agencies for cluster scale-up in numerical intensive ... but also for commercial and DBMS activity ... reference to medusa for commercial ... a cluster-scale-up meeting in Ellison's conference room early Jan 1992
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
misc. past posts mentioning ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

The last "medusa" email (from medusa email reference) was very end of Jan 1992 ... possibly only hrs before the cluster scale-up was transferred and we were told that we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors. A couple weeks later, it was announced as super-computer for "numerical intensive" market only ... couple old press references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1 17Feb1992
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2 11May1992

Part of the issue was that the mainframe DB2 people had complained if we were allowed to continue, it would be at least five years ahead of where they were.

Some mainframe channel people eventually get involved in fiber-channel standard and I have a bunch of old standards mailing list with their efforts to do horribly unnatural acts to fiber-channel standard ... to try and contort it in for use for mainframe half-duplex I/O (which they eventually call FICON when shipped to customers).

A couple old posts re "From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time" (HA/CMP commercial cluster-scale-up referred to as purescale nearly two decades later):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#43 From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#46 From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#49 big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#54 big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers

A separate issue is that current generation of I/O revolving around disk ... has an extra level of inefficiency with the simulation of CKD ("real" CKD hasn't been manufactured for decades) on top of native FBA disks ... which is more efficiently used by all the infrastructures that are able to directly use native FBA. misc. past posts mentioning CKD, FBA, multi-track search, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dasd

I was more on the west coast, NASA/AMES ... I remember NASA/AMES turning off their last mainframe in the 90s when their last mainframe system support programmer retired. Besides the work with LLNL ... also worked some with both the NCAR (mainframe) people in Boulder and LANL people.

Both NCAR and LANL were in the process of porting their network file systems from mainframe platform and commercializing it. Both NCAR and LANL was using HYPERchannel for their network filesystem. LANL filesysteme was commercialized by General Atomics and marketed as DataTree. NCAR did a spin-off that was called Mesa Archival (also mainframe HYPERchannel based) porting it to non-mainframe and marketing it. Mesa Archival had funding investment from the disk division ... and we were frequently tasked to be the corporate interface helping them where possible.

I had done a HYPERchannel support project for Santa Teresa lab in 1980 ... when they moved 300 people from the IMS database group to offsite building. The people totally rejected having to run with remote 3270 ... so I did the support for being able to use HYPERchannel as channel-extension and put local channel attached 3270s in the remote bldg. Frequently after that ... whenever a customer ever had a question about mainframes and HYPERchannel ... I would be called in (NASA/AMES, NCAR, LANL, misc. other places). misc. last posts mentioning HYPERchannel (& other things)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

I remember being in mainframe staff meeting at LANL when they announced to the group that they were moving off mainframes in circa 1990. The explanation at the time was that they had open unfilled mainframe support positions for 18months ...

... unrelated to the HYPERchannel stuff for the IMS group in 1980 ... that was also when Jim Gray departed for Tandem and was palming bunch of stuff on me ... including providing DBMS consulting to the IMS group ... couple old email:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801006 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801016 ..

i.e. original sql/implementation was being done in bldg. 28 on vm370 145 ... some old posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

were able to do technology transfer to Endicott for SQL/DS ... "under the radar" since the main corporate attention was all focused on EAGLE (as the next new thing after IMS). When EAGLE imploded ... there was request about how fast could a port be done to MVS (eventually being released as mainframe DB2)

recent posts on NASA unplug:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#2 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#6 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#28 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#35 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#41 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#43 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#50 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#64 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#79 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#3 NASA unplugs their last mainframe

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

Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 30 Mar, 2012
Subject: Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
Blog: Boyd Strategy
re:
http://lnkd.in/A3xcY5
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#14 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#20 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#23 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?

I recently posted a related item on SA in historic budget discussion here:
http://lnkd.in/-UVjin

visiting son-in-law in spring 2005 recently back from Iraq and army was reprogramming him for less hostile environment ... he was hyper-reactive to anything that might possible be a threat ... he had spent months in Fallujah during some of the worst violence .. daily patrols and frequent firefights.

SA is observe/sense along with orient. for some topic drift ... information is sometimes referred to as data in context ... orient potentially then is the transition from data to not just information but all the way to knowledge. knowledge possibly is lots of practice and experience ... not just single observe/orient ... but lots of practice. also somewhat drifts to explicit/tacit
http://lnkd.in/fbsCiP

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

Visa, MasterCard warn of 'massive' security breach

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 30 Mar, 2012
Subject: Visa, MasterCard warn of 'massive' security breach
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/No3s5xedxHj

Visa, MasterCard warn of 'massive' security breach
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/visa-mastercard-warn-of-massive-security-breach/11152

MasterCard, VISA Warn of Processor Breach
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/03/mastercard-visa-warn-of-processor-breach/

recent posts on current paradigm and breach notification
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#16
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#17

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

Senators Who Voted Against Ending Big Oil Tax Breaks Received Millions From Big Oil

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 30 Mar, 2012
Subject: Senators Who Voted Against Ending Big Oil Tax Breaks Received Millions From Big Oil
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/bLDDaQxnP1S

Senators Who Voted Against Ending Big Oil Tax Breaks Received Millions From Big Oil
http://www.businessinsider.com/senators-who-voted-against-ending-big-oil-tax-breaks-received-millions-from-big-oil-2012-3

somebody was on business news today talking about whether Sarbanes-Oxley would have stopped Enron, Worldcom and AIG. Which was CFTC brought to you by same people that brought you repeal of Glass-Steagall ... recent long-winded post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#5

... SOX required SEC to do something ... but apparently even GAO didn't think SEC was doing anything and started doing reports of public company fraudulent financial filings ... even after SOX:
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-06-1079sp

... in theory, under SOX everyone of the top executives would have gone to jail.

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

PC industry is heading for more change

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PC industry is heading for more change
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers, comp.os.linux.setup
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:38:52 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
other are Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel"
https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Societies-ebook/dp/B000VDUWMC
and "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed"
https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Succeed-Revised-ebook/dp/B004H0M8EA


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#24 PC industry is heading for more change

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8

has some compare&contrast w/Diamond's "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed"

Diamond references over thousands of years is somewhat more resources per person will increase chances of succeeding. "Why Nations Fail" concentrates more on the past couple hundred years and shows how uptake of innovation can significantly redefine amount of resources per person. This is where type of government and social structure can radically affect innovation uptake, particularly top heavy, rigid social structure attempting to preserve status quo and hold back any innovation.

"Why Nations Fail" discusses Spanish conquest of the new world which was plunder and enslave the local population (and keeping them at subsistance level). It contrasts it with the English attempting to emulate a similar strategy early 1600s for Jamestown in Virginia. Jamestown almost starved the first two years because they originally sent over skills oriented to plundering and enslaving the local population (emulating the Spanish model by the "Virginia Corporation" given the crown charter). Virginia, Maryland and Carolina then changed the strategy to enslaving large numbers of Englishman that had no rights; somewhat feudal, the "leet-men" had no rights, pg27:
The clauses of the Fundamental Constitutions laid out a rigid social structure. At the bottom were the "leet-men," with clause 23 noting, "All the children of leet-men shall be leet-men, and so to all generations."

escaping was punishable by death. Lots of factors resulted in not being able to preserve the elite corporate ownership in North America, and eventually the areas graduate to becoming colonies with evolving citizen rights.

One of the contrasts between Spanish conquered areas and what eventually evolved in North America (even though the English corporations started out attempting to emulate the Spanish model) was comparison of the banking systems in Mexico and the US during the first half of the 1800s. The claim is that the motivations of the bankers in both countries were the same ... however, Mexico with an inherited ruling class, the politicians bribed by the bankers, stayed bribed ... the result was a very few banks that had monopoly power. This is contrasted with the US where there was high turn-over in elected politicians and as result they didn't stayed bribed (although one might claim that recently they've managed to overcome that difficulty) ... so there was large number of different financial institutions competing (pg.35).

This is somewhat akin to the observation that China was far ahead of Europe until about the middle of the 1400s when the Empress wanted to freeze the status quo, cut off contact with the rest of the world, destroyed ocean going vessels, stifled innovation, etc ... discussed by Diamond in "Guns, Germs, and Steel"

recent news item on few large too-big-to-fail monoplistic institutions may be barrier to change

Where's Banks' Incentive to Cut Card Fraud?
http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/where-is-banks-incentive-to-cut-card-fraud-1047977-1.html
The stranglehold of payments networks
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/03/29/the-stranglehold-of-payments-networks/
and past Kansas City Fed paper
http://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedker/y2008iqiiip35-62nv.93no.3.html
which even cites x9.59 standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html

other past posts in this long wondering thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#76 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#81 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#83 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#87 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#88 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#100 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#102 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#2 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#7 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#11 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#14 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#15 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#18 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#20 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#23 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#31 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#33 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#34 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#37 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#38 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#39 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#40 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#63 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#77 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#78 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#81 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#83 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#85 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#89 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#91 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#92 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#97 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#8 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#9 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#46 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#48 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#49 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#52 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#53 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#54 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#55 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#61 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#64 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#5 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#10 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#11 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#13 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#14 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#25 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#32 PC industry is heading for more change

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

Visa, MasterCard warn of 'massive' security breach

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 30 Mar, 2012
Subject: Visa, MasterCard warn of 'massive' security breach
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/No3s5xedxHj
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#29 Visa, MasterCard warn of 'massive' security breach

updates on breach:
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/03/massive-credit-card-breach-reportedly-hits-visa-mastercard.ars
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/visa-mastercard-confirm-credit-card-security-breach/11183
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/033012-payments-data-breach-257828.html
http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2009/01/malware-infestation-responsible-for-credit-card-data-breach.ars
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-visa-mastercard-scramble-massive-breach.html
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9225706/Visa_MasterCard_acknowledge_data_breach
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2012/03/credit-debit-card-processor-hit-by-data-breach.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504527313411294908868.html?mod=e2tw
http://www.businessinsider.com/you-wont-need-to-freak-out-about-that-credit-card-breach-if-you-do-these-4-things-2012-3

and somewhat philosophical discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#31

Where's Banks' Incentive to Cut Card Fraud?
http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/where-is-banks-incentive-to-cut-card-fraud-1047977-1.html
The stranglehold of payments networks
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/03/29/the-stranglehold-of-payments-networks/
and past Kansas City Fed paper
http://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedker/y2008iqiiip35-62nv.93no.3.html
which even cites x9.59 standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html

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

PC industry is heading for more change

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PC industry is heading for more change
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers, comp.os.linux.setup
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 18:07:40 -0400
J G Miller <miller@yoyo.ORG> writes:
Change is inevitable.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#31 PC industry is heading for more change

with respect to whether too-big-to-fail and current payment paradigm has had these kind of exploits for decades (from a few days ago)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#16
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#17

and some payment paradigm exploit from today:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/visa-mastercard-warn-of-massive-security-breach/11152
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/03/mastercard-visa-warn-of-processor-breach/
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/03/massive-credit-card-breach-reportedly-hits-visa-mastercard.ars ,
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/visa-mastercard-confirm-credit-card-security-breach/11183 ,
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/033012-payments-data-breach-257828.html ,
http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2009/01/malware-infestation-responsible-for-credit-card-data-breach.ars ,
http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-visa-mastercard-scramble-massive-breach.html ,
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9225706/Visa_MasterCard_acknowledge_data_breach ,
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2012/03/credit-debit-card-processor-hit-by-data-breach.html ,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504527313411294908868.html?mod=e2tw
http://www.businessinsider.com/you-wont-need-to-freak-out-about-that-credit-card-breach-if-you-do-these-4-things-2012-3

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The never-ending SCO lawsuit

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The never-ending SCO lawsuit
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2012 10:08:45 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
Maybe they're simple executing a tactic which a milk bottler did in Mass. A much smaller competitor was selling milk quite a bit cheaper than the big company. So the big company took the small company to court and dragged the law suit, which it knew it would lose, on and on until the costs for the small company were so great that they had to raise their milk prices.

a little x-over from
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#31 PC industry is heading for more change

protecting status quo (& inhibiting innovation):

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8

was that early on, US patent system was used by individuals for innovation, but similar to the 1800s banking system comparison between Mexico and US ... the US patent system is increasingly being used to stifle & maintain status quo &/or by patent-trolls looking for financial compensation ... but not interested in actually introducing innovation (original claims for the US patent system was to encourage innovation ... but it is now being used for just the opposite, in much the same way that the last two decades, a few mega-banks have come to essentially have near monopolies) pg33:
Between 1820 and 1845, only 19 percent of patentees in the United States had parents who were professionals or were from recognizable major landowning families. During the same period, 40 percent of those who took out patents had only primary schooling or less, just like Edison. Moreover, they often exploited their patent by starting a firm, again like Edison. Just as the United States in the nineteenth century was more democratic politically than almost any other nation in the world at the time, it was also more democratic than others when it came to innovation. This was critical to its path to becoming the most economically innovative nation in the world.

... snip ...

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 31 Mar, 2012
Subject: The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/YjChaKhL2t6
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#1 The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks

recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#31 PC industry is heading for more change
"Why Nations Fail"
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8

title of Fed paper is similar to the theme in the "Why Nations Fail"
The bank has just released its annual report, and the title of the letter is: Choosing the Road to Prosperity Why We Must End Too Big to Fail -- Now

... snip ...

more recent:

Banking Regulator Calls for End of 'Too Big to Fail'
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/03/28/banking-regulator-calls-for-end-of-too-big-to-fail/

related post mentioning news items about too-big-to-fail doing major money laundering for drug cartels ... and since the gov. has been leaning over backwards to keep them in business ... they are also now considered too-big-to-jail (not inclinded to put the executives in jail and shutdown the institutions).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#16

other recent Google+

The Real Crime On Wall Street Can Never Be Prosecuted
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/7PoGkEAeqr2
Push to End Too-Big-To-Fail Goes Mainstream
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/EN6LbJ36Hun

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

The never-ending SCO lawsuit

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The never-ending SCO lawsuit
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2012 12:40:17 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#34 The never-ending SCO lawsuit
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#31 PC industry is heading for change

recent Google+ posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#1 The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#35 The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks

the title of the Dallas Fed paper "Choosing the Road to Prosperity Why We Must End Too Big to Fail -- Now" ... is very similar theme to what is in "Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty" book
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The $30 billion Social Security hack

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 31 Mar, 2012
Subject: The $30 billion Social Security hack
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
The $30 billion Social Security hack
http://www.cringely.com/2012/03/the-30-billion-hack/

Are federal agencies subject to the various data breach notification acts? ... also

Billions Lost in Tax-Refund Scam:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303404704527309854181227634.html

note this talks about possibility that criminal organizations cooperating with terrorists organizatioins:

A new kind of warfare; The U.S. must prepare to combat a fusion of terror and crime
http://armedforcesjournal.com/2012/03/9563760

and this references that with fed leaning over backwards to keep too-big-to-fail operating ... they've also become too-big-to-jail

Banks Financing Mexico Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-29/banks-financing-mexico-s-drug-cartels-admitted-in-wells-fargo-s-u-s-deal.html

other articles from 2010 refer to the too-big-to-fail turning Mexico into Colombia; misc. past posts mentioning too-big-to-jail:
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/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/2011f.html#52 Are Americans serious about dealing with money laundering and the drug cartels?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#49 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#16 Wonder if they know how Boydian they are?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#35 The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 31 Mar, 2012
Subject: A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia
Blog: MainframeZone
A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia
http://lnkd.in/EUvPwk

but later ... at univ , i got a job porting 1401 mpio (tape/unit-record front end for 709) to 360/30 ... part of univ transition replacing 709 with 360/67 (almost always ran as 360/65 ... some weekend time as 360/67 with tss/360 or cp/67). The 360/30 replaced a real 1401 ... and 360/30 had hardware 1401 emulation ... which could run mpio directly ... but i presume the univ. wanted to get experience with 360. i got to design & implemented my own monitor, scheduler, dispatcher, device drivers, interrupt handlers, storage management, etc. later univ. let me have responsibility for os/360 on the 360/65

but recent post in IBM Historical Computing and Old Geeks (about ACS)
http://lnkd.in/MD5bB4

references these details on ACS (61-69)
https://people.computing.clemson.edu/~mark/acs.html .
http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_timeline.html

but this item on end of acs (and acs-360) ... has a some amount of discussion about numbers (and other details) of 360s
http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.html

not 360s, but 4331&4341 were late 70s ... some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx

the 4331 was like short file cabinet, 4341 was like credenza or freezer chest

4331
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PP4331.html
4341
https://web.archive.org/web/20190105032753/https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PP4341.html

the 4361 was follow-on/faster 4331, 4381 was follow-on/faster 4341 ... but in upright

4361
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PP4361.html
4381
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PP4381.html

FE has a service model that includes being able to do bootstrap scoping for failed components for replacement. Starting with the 3081 ... there was TCM sealed module that were no longer scopable. The strategy was then a more primitive processor that was scopable/diagnosable as a service processor ... which had special probes into TCMs where diagnostics would be run from the service processor. (if service process was not working could be diagnosed and replaced). The 3081 service processor software was totally built from scratch.

About 1980, there was start on service processor for 3090 ... and to simplify development, they started with plan to use 4331 running a customized version of vm370 release 6. Later this was upgraded to a pair of redundant 4361s ... with probes into 3090 TCMs ... referred to as 3092. This 3090 reference includes mention that 3092 requires (FBA) 3370s:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230719145910/https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PP3090.html

even though many 3090s were for the corporate "favorite son" operating system which never did provide for FBA support (and still doesn't, still requiring CKD dasd which hasn't been manufactured for decades, all being simulated on real FBA disks).

Some past posts with 3092 references: A couple past emails mentioning 3092
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#email861031 .
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#email861223

above mentions dumprx ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dumprx

early in the 80s in the very early days of REX (still internal, before renamed to REXX and released to customers) ... i wanted to do a demonstration that REX wasn't just another pretty scripting language. The IPCS of the period was written in large amount of assembler with limited functions and performance. I stated that in less than half-time over 3 months, i would re-implement IPCS in REX with ten times the function and ten times the performance (of the assembler implementation). This was just starting to be early hints of OCO ... and i felt that if DUMPRX was released as replacement for IPCS, it would have advantage of being shipped as (REX) source. Even though, dumprx became to be used by nearly every internal datacenter and customer support PSRs, it was never released. I eventually did get approval to give a detailed implementation presentation at SHARE and BAYBUNCH ... and within a few months there were other, similar implementations. In any case, the above email references from the 3092 group wanted to include dumprx as part of 3090 service processor support tools (all of 3092 service processor support was done in vm370/cms).

straying back to 360 ... product profiles (including 360s) in this list of mainframes
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_profiles.html

The early 70s, the Future System was started to completely replace 360/370 (possibly one of the reasons that Amdahl left ... mentioned up thread in the ACS-360 references) ... major motivation was to have such high level integration it would lock out clone controllers. During the FS period, lots of 370 efforts were shutdown (viewed as being in competition). Various past posts mentioning FS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

when FS eventually imploded, there was mad rush to get things back into 370 (hardware & software) product pipelines ... the dearth of 370 products during this period is claimed to being major reason that clone processors were able to get market foothold. As part of the effort ... the 370xa effort (for 3081) was kicked off in parallel with Q&D effort to put out 303x. The 158 engine with integrated channel but w/o 370 microcode was used for the 303x channel director. A 3031 was a 158 engine with 370 microcode (and w/o integrated channel) plus a 2nd 158 engine as 303x channel director. A 3032 was 168 with 158 engine as 303x channel director.

3033 started out being 168 logic mapped to 20% faster chips (that had been originally for FS) ... some discussion of Future System, 3033 chips, and 3081 here
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm

the 3033 chip technology had 10 times the circuits per chip as 168 (4circuits/chip) ... but originally going unused resulting in 3033 being 20% faster than 168. During the 3033 effort there was some activity to rework pieces of the 168 logic to do more things on the same chip ... taking advantage of more circuits per chip ... eventually getting 3033 up to 50% faster than 168-3 (some of this was to try and better compete with the clone processors were starting to take market share).

additional FS discussion here
https://people.computing.clemson.edu/~mark/fs.html
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Future_Systems_project

other discussion about the downside of the FS failure, quotes from Charles Ferguson and Charles Morris, Computer Wars: The Post-IBM World, Times Books, 1993:
Most corrosive of all, the old IBM candor died with F/S. Top management, particularly Opel, reacted defensively as F/S headed toward a debacle. The IBM culture that Watson had built was a harsh one, but it encouraged dissent and open controversy. But because of the heavy investment of face by the top management, F/S took years to kill, although its wrongheadedness was obvious from the very outset. "For the first time, during F/S, outspoken criticism became politically dangerous," recalls a former top executive.

... snip, and
... and perhaps most damaging, the old culture under Watson Snr and Jr of free and vigorous debate was replaced with sycophancy and make no waves under Opel and Akers. It's claimed that thereafter, IBM lived in the shadow of defeat

... snip ...

also, head of POK managed to convince corporate that in order to make the MVS/XA ship schedule the vm370 product had to be killed, the burlington mall vm370 development group shutdown and all the people moved to POK. They were planning on not telling the development group until the last possible minute ... to minimize people being able to find other opportunities. However, somebody leaked the information early ... resulting in big witch hunt to find the source. There is joke about head of POK being one of the major contributors to DEC's vax/vms. Endicott eventually did manage to save the vm370 product mission ... but had to reconstitute a development group from scratch. There is some amount on vmshare during the period about the quality of the product during the period (while endicott was bringing up to speed the people in the new group) ... TYMSHARE had commercial, vm370-based online service burean ... and in Aug1976 made their vm370/cms based computer conferencing service to free to SHARE ... VMSHARE archive here:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

Early '75 ... I was doing highly enhanced vm370 system (csc/vm) and making it available to internal datacenters. During the FS period I had continued working on 370 stuff and periodically ridiculing FS activities (which possibly wasn't best career enhancing activity) ... some old email about porting lots of work from cp67 platform to vm370 and doing internal product release
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750430

Spring '75, Endicott had con'ed me into helping them with 138/148 microcode (precursor to 4331/4341) ... some mentioned here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21

About the same time, another group con'ed me into helping them do design for 5-way 370 SMP. This was eventually was canceled ... but somewhat spawned a follow-on 16-way SMP design. We managed to co-op 3033 processor engineers to work on the design in their spare time (lot more interesting that what their official activity). POK management thought it was really great idea until somebody leaked to the head of POK that it might be decades before the POK "favorite son" operating system had 16-way SMP support. He then invited some people to never visit POK again ... and directed the 3033 processor engineers to concentrate only on 3033.

Now somewhat back to what spawned FS effort. As undergraduate I was doing lots with both os/360 and playing with CP/67 on weekends. I would completely redo os/360 sysgen ... so order of allocation and move/copy in stage-2 sysgen would optimize location on disk. For univ. workload I got approx. 3times increase in throughput with the optimized disk placement (minimize avg arm seek distance). I also rewrote lots of cp67 to significantly increase performance. Piece of fall 1968 SHARE presentation on some of the work ... in this old post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18

Another item was cp67 shipped with 1052 & 2741 terminal support ... but univ. had gotten some number of ascii/tty terminals ... and so I had to do the tty support. Original cp67 played some tricks and did automatic terminal recognition ... resetting port line scanner with terminal controller SAD command. I expanded that for TTY. I wanted to do a single dialup number (hunt group) for all terminals ... but it turns out that IBM had taken a shortcut in terminal controller ... while able to change port line scanner with SAD command ... the line speed was hard-wired for each port. This somewhat prompted the univ. to start a clone controller project (to do both dynamic terminal type and line speed) ... beginning with Interdata/3 minicomputer. Later, there was article attributing (some part of) clone controller business to four of us. Interdata had picked up the implementation and selling it. Later Perkin-Elmer bought Interdata and continued to sell the clone controller under its logo.

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

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

A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 1 Apr, 2012
Subject: A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia
Blog: MainframeZone
A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia
http://lnkd.in/EUvPwk
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#38 A bit of IBM Systeme 360 nostalgia

I don't remember anything from ad/cycle.

Note that there is some folklore about SNA was attempt to meet FS objectives with the tight integration beween pu4/pu5 (3705/vtam) ... aka countermeasure to clone controllers (wasn't networking ... was tight integration for host control of large number of dumb terminals and other devices).

I was with the advanced workstation group in the late 80s ... part of the period in Austin (at the time, not far from the only "whole foods" in the world) and then back to san jose ... doing ha/cmp for workstation group.

When I originally moved to San Jose in the 77, among other things they used to let me play disk engineer in bldgs. 14&15 (there was joke, i would work 4-shift week, first shift in research/bldg 28, 2nd shift in disk engineering bldgs 14&15, 3rd shift down in santa teresa ... and 4th shift/weekends up at HONE in palo alto). past posts mentioning HONE (&/or APL)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

HONE was started after the 23Jun1969 unbundling announcement ... previously new SE gained experience as part of large group at customer site ... sort of apprentice/journeyman ... but with charging for SE services ... couldn't figure how to have uncharged for SEs at customer site. past posts mentioning unbundling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

HONE started out as cp67-based virtual machine for SEs at branch office to practice their operating system skills. HONE then started offering sales&marketing support applications written in cms\apl ... and eventually the "hands-on" activity died off and was only used for delivering sales&marketing support applications ... with (cp67 and later vm370) HONE clones sprouting up all over the world. HONE was one of my long-time customers for significantly enhanced operating systems starting with cp67 and later vm370. About the time I moved to San Jose, HONE consolidated all its US datacenters in Palo Alto (1501 cal. ,,, but has different occupant now, trivia facebook initially moved into newer bldg. next door 1601 cal ... but has recently moved across 101 to the sun campus).

In any case, in the late 80s, a senior disk engineer got a talk scheduled at a communication group, annual, world-wide internal conference ... and opened it with statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The issue was that the communication group had stranglehold on datacenter (strategic ownership for everything crossing the datacenter walls) and were trying to preserve their terminal emulation install base. Disk division was seeing big drop off in disk sales as applications and data were fleeing the datacenter to more distributed computing friendly platforms. The disk division had come up with several products to correct the problem ... but they were constantly being vetoed by the communication group. misc. past posts mentioning terminal emulation &/or stranglehold communication group had on datacenter
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

note last week there was (finally) discussion in ibm-main mailing list about DB2 making statement that SNA is no longer strategic support.

another topic drift ... in the time-frame of the talk that started out with the claim that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division ... senior executives in Armonk were claiming that the revenue would double based on mainframe sales ($60B to $120B) and started massive internal building program to double mainframe manufacturing capacity ... this was at a time when the mainframe business (as pointed out in the communication group presentation by senior disk engineer) was starting to head in the opposite direction ... a few years later, the company goes into the red.

HAMR time: Seagate demos terabit-per-inch hard disk technology
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/03/hamr-time-seagate-demos-terabyte-per-inch-hard-disk-technology.ars

for drift ... old email ... one of the people mentioned that worked on ACS and responsible for 801/risc ... had come up with this idea for 16track disk head. This was back in period when 3880 disk drives had 20 track-wide spacings between each data track. The initial double density 3880 disks was done by doubling the number of tracks by cutting spacing between tracks to 10 track-widths.

https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#email871230 in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#30
also in some post is old email with additional disk technologies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#email871122

however, in the mid-70s, I was starting to pontificate about disk technology not keeping up with other computer technology. In the early 80s, disk division executives took exception with comments about relative speed of disk technology had declined by a factor of ten times over period of years (processors got 50 times faster, disks got less than 5 times faster). Old comparison I did from the period in this old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#31

the executive assigned the division performance group to refute my statements ... but after a number of weeks they came back and effectively said I had slightly understated the problem. The spin on the analysis was changed and turned into a presentation (B874) at SHARE 63 on configuring DASD to help increase thruput

old post with acknowledgment from b874 at share 63:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#68
old post with summary from presentation b874 at share 63:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#18

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Who Increased the Debt?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 1 Apr, 2012
Subject: Who Increased the Debt?
Blog: Facebook
Who Increased the Debt? ... replicated several places:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/speakerpelosi/5684032538/sizes/l/in/photostream/
http://sierravoices.com/2011/05/who-increased-the-debt/
http://www.thepresidentialcandidates.us/who-increased-the-debt/1515/

Benefit&Burden
https://www.amazon.com/Benefit-Burden-ebook/dp/B005LJEVDM

has CBO showing aggregate revenue cut of $6T last decade (compared to baseline) plus aggregate $6T increase in spending (compared to to baseline) for $12T budget gap. much of it kicked off after the fiscal responsibility act allowed to expire in 2002 (baseline had surpluses retiring *ALL* federal debt by 2010).

That $12T budget gap last decade, in addition to $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs, economic mess last decade
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

extra 2+T MICC spending the last decade over the baseline, extra $1T for the wars (strategy of perpetual conflict) and the other $1T went ????
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

note that major heavy lifting for wallstreet bailout wasn't TARP but Federal Reserve lending institutions tens of trillions at zero percent (as well as buying significant toxic assets, supposedly the original purpose of TARP funds before they found out it wasn't even enough to remotely address the problem). Bernanke has said he thought that the loaned money would turn around and be loaned to mainstreet ... but intead they were buying treasuries and taking profit on the spread between free Fed money and treasuries interest (some contention that Fed could allow the banks to fail and take on the treasuries directly at zero precent and US debt wouldn't cost anything).

As above, last decade resulted in both the $12T budget gap as well as deregulation and lack of regulation enforcement totally tanking the economy ... with the $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs done during the period (in effect, last decade was nearly an aggregate $40T hit to the economy)

The $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs hasn't been all "lost" ... however, the lack of adult supervision and lots of other things that went on allowed the $27T in triple-A toxic CDOs and was what fueled much of the bubble. Unregulated loan originators were willing to pay for triple-A ratings in order to be able to sell to large institutional investors, large retirement funds, and others ... that are restricted in only dealing in safe investments. From the congressional hearings into the rating agencies ... both the toxic CDO sellers and the rating agencies knew the toxic CDOs weren't worth triple-A ... but they were willing to give them triple-A ratings for the right amount of money. One of the commentators during the hearings observed the rating agencies would probably be able to avoid federal prosecution with the threat of downgrading the US gov. credit rating. Before the bailout started, triple-A rated toxic CDOs were going for 22cents on the dollar. If that was allowed to continue, it would have taken down the four largest too-big-to-fail institutions (that held $5.2T at the end of 2008) and numerous other institutions (large retirement funds, etc) that were holding other trillions.

recent is that US real-estate has lost $7T (from peak) and back to pre-bubble levels ... but will likely to continue to drop some. I was visiting Florida in 2007 and talked to some builders. There was massive building going on ... anticipating baby-boomers retiring, selling their McMansions, and moving to Florida with large wads of cash burning holes in their pockets. Lots of stories about hair dressers and janitors buying up 3 and 4 properties on speculation with no-document, no-down, 1% interest only ARMs (from unregulated loan originators using triple-A rated toxic CDOs to fuel the business) planning on being able to flip before rates adjusted. The over-building, down-turn in economy, enormous speculation, bubble bursting, foreclosures, etc ... lots of economic collateral damage ... continue to take real-estate down past start of bubble.

all sort of loans got securitized as CDOs ... not just home real-estate mortgages ... the $27T is aggregate of all CDOs sold during the bubble ... including the same house being counted multiple times if it had new mortgage being flipped every year or two (since each new mortgage would be packaged as part of new CDO). The constant flipping of houses, mortgages and new CDOs moved mortgage industry from profit off the mortgage payments to fees&commissions on the transactions ... as pieces flowed through the system ... possibly as much as 15%-20% aggregate of the $27T that flowed through system (multiple flipping, speculators, real-estate agents, loan originators, rating agencies, investment bankers, etc). All the players no longer cared about loan quality or buyer's qualifications ... they just cared about how many and how fast could they could turn over the mortgages/CDOs.

it is double counting if considered in terms of aggregate value of the underlying properties ... but it is not double counting in terms of fees&commissions taken on $27T in transactions ... it is similar to stock brokers doing portfolio churn to generate revenue. Potential aggregate 15%-20% in fees&commission on $27T in transactions is still potentially $5.4T that has disappeared someplace.

recent posts mentioning the $12T, the $5.2T, the $7T and/or the $27T
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#21 Zombie Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#32 Wall Street Bonuses May Reach Lowest Level in 3 Years
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#19 "Buffett Tax" and truth in numbers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#65 Why Wall Street Should Stop Whining
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#95 Bank of America Fined $1 Billion for Mortgage Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#30 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#31 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#32 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#36 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#37 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#38 The Death of MERS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#39 Greek knife to Wall Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#45 Fannie, Freddie Charge Taxpayers For Legal Bills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#46 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#48 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#50 They're Trying to Block Military Cuts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#52 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#53 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#54 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#55 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#62 Why Is Finance So Big?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#5 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#10 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#12 Gordon Gekko Says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#13 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#32 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#39 Fannie and Freddie must go - here's how
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#42 China's J-20 Stealth Fighter Is Already Doing A Whole Lot More Than Anyone Expected
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#46 Is Washington So Bad at Strategy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#52 Goldman Exec Quits In A Scathing NYT Op-Ed About How The Firm Abuses Its Clients
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#53 "Scoring" The Romney Tax Plan: Trillions Of Dollars Of Deficits As Far As The Eye Can See
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#60 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#69 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#1 The Dallas Fed Is Calling For The Immediate Breakup Of Large Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#23 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#25 We are on the brink of historic decision [referring to defence cuts]

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Why Are the Fed and SEC Keeping Wall Street's Secrets?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 2 Apr, 2012
Subject: Why Are the Fed and SEC Keeping Wall Street's Secrets?
Blog: Facebook
Why Are the Fed and SEC Keeping Wall Street's Secrets?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-01/why-are-the-fed-and-sec-keeping-wall-street-s-secrets-.html

I periodically comment that on the floor of congress, the rhetoric was that the primary purpose of GLBA was "if you were already a bank, you got to remain a bank, but if you weren't, you didn't get to become a bank" ... specifically calling out walmart & m'soft. Of course, GLBA is now better know for repeal of Glass-Steagall (that played major role in the financial mess). This should have precluded the FED giving Goldman (and a few others) bank charters (giving access to FED services for chartered banks).

There is also all the trade transactions information at DTCC (showing things like illegal naked short sales) and CFTC (showing effect of speculation)

recent posts mentioning DTCC &/or CFTC:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#5 We are on the brink of a historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#87 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#44 What's the most interesting thing you do in your non-work life?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#84 A Conversation with Peter Thiel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#61 Why Republicans Aren't Mentioning the Real Cause of Rising Prices at the Gas Pump
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#69 Memory versus processor speed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#23 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#30 Senators Who Voted Against Ending Big Oil Tax Breaks Received Millions From Big Oil

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

Who Increased the Debt?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 2 Apr, 2012
Subject: Who Increased the Debt?
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#40 Who Increased the Debt?

There was claim that industry tripled in size (as percent of GDP) during the bubble ... which is about the equivalent of $5T (and NY state controller reported that bonuses spiked over 400% during the bubble). The move to mortgages as a transaction fee business (as $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs) totally changed the mortgage market, nobody cares about loan quality or borrower's qualifications ... they just wanted to churn as many transactions through the infrastructure as fast as possible; from real-estate agents, loan originators to all the parties on wallstreet. Fall of 2008, PIMCO bought $50B-$60B of triple-A rated toxic CDOs from CITI for 22cents on the dollar. End of 2008, the four too-big-to-fail were carrying $5.2T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs "off book" (apparently couldn't find enough other suckers ... so they were having their own institution carrying the securities).
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home

note real-estate speculators were only too happy to play their part; no-documentation, no-down, 1% interest-only payments showed 2000% ROI in parts of the country with 20-30% inflation (with speculation further driving inflation) ... aka planning on flipping well before rates adjusted. As mentioned upthread, Florida especially saw lots of this activity ...

The sec. of treasury that started the bail-out funds rolling had recently come from being the CEO of which company that was the largest recipients of AIG being forced to pay CDS bets face value with gov. bailout funds?

$27T triple-A rated toxic CDOs were 8years from 2001-2008 ... when article claimed industry tripled from about 2% to 6% of GDP. At about $13T/year ... and 4% increase, thats about $.5T/year or potentially $4T for the 8yr period ... sort of lower-bound on amount wallstreet skimmed on the $27T in transactions. That doesn't include what was taken in the non-wallstreet portion of real-estate transaction. The triple-A rating on $27T in toxic CDOs was the enabler that makes it approximately equivalent to the Brokers' Loans that were root of '29 stock market bubble&crash.

recent posts mentioning Brokers' Loans:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#52 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#32 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#42 Who Increased the Debt?

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

A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2012 12:11:00 -0400
Linkedin MainframeZone discussion:
http://lnkd.in/EUvPwk

has flickr reference to 360 Announcement Brochure

some number of people weren't around in the 60s ... so they contributed nostalgia about 70s&80s ... and I managed to topic drift with the best of them ... some of my bits & pieces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#38 A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#39 A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia

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

Word Length

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Word Length
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:45:03 -0400
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Once again, PL/I gets it right;-) In "word" tokens (not character strings) case is not significant. SomeWord is equivalent to SOMEWORD, someword, etc.

Denis's death makes me feel bad about all the negative comments I made about C here, but nevertheless I still feel the language is deficient in a lot of ways.


occurred month before an annual conference that he would normally show up at ... the session on who was lost in the past year seems to be getting longer (possibly is going to show bell curve).

i've periodically pontificated about "C" ... especially the string handle paradigm and all the buffer exploits that have happened in nearly every C-language application. In the past, I worked on a tcp/ip stack implemented in vs/pascal ... that had none of the buffer exploits common in C-language implementation. lots of past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#buffer

then there is Multics done in PL/I that also didn't have buffer exploits ... old posts (except it is now 40years):
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

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

Word Length

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Word Length
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:41:56 -0400
Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> writes:
The 1050 is a printing terminal. I they served as consoles right from the beginning of the S/360 era. As I remember they had the standard type ball from the Selectric and did lower case. Could be wrong though.

2740&2741 terminals were somewhat step up from selectric typewriters with computer interface

1050s were somewhat sturdier designed for heavier use ... there were 1050 "terminals" ... and also, 360 used 1052-7 for "operators console"
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IBM_system_360-50_console_-_MfK_Bern.jpg

referencde that 1050 & 2741 terminals being used with CTSS (in addtion to model 35 teletypes):
https://www.multicians.org/thvv/7094.html

more:
https://www.multicians.org/terminals.html

above says 2741 used EBCDIC ... actual line code was tilt-rotate code (for the ball mechanism) ... required translate table from computer representation to line-code

discusses two classes of typeballs (how characters were positioned on typeball) and translate table had to be different because of different tilt/rotate codes (for different character location; aka linecode wasn't a characteristic of the terminal ... but of the character locations on the typeball)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2741

this mentions CPS using 1050 & 2741 terminals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversational_Programming_System

note that some of the CTSS people went to the 5th flr (545 tech sq) and did Multics
https://www.multicians.org/

others went to the science center on the 4th flr and did (virtual machine) cp40, cp67, etc. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

and on the 3rd flr was the (IBM) Boston Programming Center responsible for CPS. The cp67 group eventually split off from the science center and moved to the 3rd flr ... taking over the Boston Programming Center. In the morph from cp67 to vm370, the size of the group increased and outgrew the space on the 3rd flr ... and moved out to the vacant SBC (SBC had been transferred to CDC in legal settlement) bldg in burlington mall. Most of the CPS people moved to working on vm370/cms ... and one of them did a port of CPS functions to CMS.

slight x-over from previous post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#44 Word Length

and security study of PLI Multics not having buffer exploits
https://www.multicians.org/site-afdsc.html

for other drift ... old post in alt.os.multics
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#12 Multics Nostalgia
and email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#email790404

about AFDS looking at getting 20 4341s ... and following fall upgraded to 210 4341s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15 deparmental servers

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

A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 1 Apr, 2012
Subject: A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia
Blog: MainframeZone
A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia
http://lnkd.in/EUvPwk
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#38 A bit of IBM Systeme 360 nostalgia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#39 A bit of IBM Systeme 360 nostalgia

"2pi" was also making similar 370 clones. About half of them were sold under the "2pi" logo and about half sold under the NCSS logo. NCSS was commercial cp67 online timesharing service ... one of the earliest spinoffs of the science center in 1968. Over the years they had made significant enhancements to cp67 as well as porting to 370 (as alternative to vm370). at one point NCSS started also marketing the "2pi" 370 clones running their own brand of cp67/cms.

I knew several people at Amdahl, we would all get together for the monthly BAYBUNCH meetings at SLAC and then go to Oasis afterwards (el camino, Menlo Park ... just north of the Palo Alto line). One time somebody from Amdahl unloaded an internal IBM corporate document describing the ROMAN chipset (full 370 running about MIP rate of 168-3 done by Boeblingen Germany). It had been sent to Amdahl by somebody at Nixdorf ... and they wanted to short circuit any possible legal problems.

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

Word Length

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Word Length
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:10:09 -0400
Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> writes:
Buffer overruns come from poor programming. You can't take un-verified data and just strcpy it where ever the mood takes you. _Qualified_ C programmers know that.

Blaming the language is a poor excuse to cover up carelessness.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#44 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#45 Word Length

the counter argument has been repeated numerous times ... like analogy with auto/highway safety engineering .... something that has lots of accidents gets re-engineered to drastically reduce the "accidents" (and/or the severity of the accidents, even when there are huge numbers of people that manage to avoid traffic accidents).

the analogy is strengthened with other languages (like pli and pascal) that don't have similar high rates of particular "accidents" that continue to plague C language implementations.

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

Word Length

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Word Length
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2012 07:32:15 -0400
Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> writes:
Besides the console, I don't remember any kind of locally attached 1050. You couldn't use the console for lower case output unless you wanted console messages mixed in.

The only other 1050s I remember were described in the BTAM manual so you needed the 270x you mention below. I never saw or heard of anyone doing that.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#44 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#45 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#47 Word Length

depends on what you were running on 360 would dictate input/output on 1052-7 ("console").

original work on virtual machines was they got a 360/40 and developed special address translation hardware for the machine (prior to availability of 360/67 with address translation hardware standard).

in parallel with the development of virtual machine cp40 on the 360/40, it was also used for the development of cms ... before virtual machines were available. OCR of SEAS '82 presentation on early cp40/cms
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/cp40seas1982.txt

cms continued to be able to run on real hardware ... using (console) 1052-7 for input/output until vm370 ... when cms named morphed from "cambridge monitor system" to "conversational monitor system". When run in virtual machine, 2741 and 1050 "remote" terminals were used to simulate 1052-7 console to the virtual machine. And CTSS supported both 1050 & 2741 terminals on 7094 ... predating 360 & 270x boxes.

Early on, one of the cp67/cms users at Union Carbide developed a package for os/360 which implemented a lot of the cms-like syntax for os/360 called online/os, which took over the "1052-7" (operator's console). This could be run with os/360 PCP on the real hardware or in a virtual machine.

really long-wind recent post with reference to cp67/cms installed at univ in Jan1968 having 2741 & 1050 terminal support ... and I had to add tty/ascii terminal support
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#38 A bit of IBM System 360 notalgia

and trying to do something with the 270x box that it couldn't quite do ... which was big part of motivation for the univ. to start clone controller effort with Interdata/3. Later there was writeup blaming four of us for (some part of) clone controller business. Interdata picked up the implementation and was selling it. Later Perkin-Elmer bought Interdata and it was marketed under PE logo. misc. past posts mentioning clone controllers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

Melinda's history goes into lot more detail about relationship to CTSS, cp40 and cp67 at the science center (as later details about vm370):
https://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda#VMHist

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

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

US payments system failing to meet the needs of the digital economy

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 4 Apr, 2012
Subject: US payments system failing to meet the needs of the digital economy
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/YNVUUgYjUmo

US payments system failing to meet the needs of the digital economy The Federal Reserve and US Congress urgently need to plug a public policy vacuum if the national payment infrastructure is to keep up with changes in the digital economy, according to a former senior Fed executive.
http://www.finextra.com/news/Fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=23596

In the 90s, the industry spent billions of dollars on new parallelized implementations that were designed to do straight-through processing using large numbers of "killer micros" to replace the mainframe based overnight batch settlements. These were mostly RYO parallel implementations ... and they all failed for various reasons.

In 2006, I helped somebody take some new technology to finance industry standards groups that changed the paradigm, using process that decomposed high-level business rules into fine-grain SQL statements and leveraged huge investment in efficient parallel RDBMS implementations to achieve extremely high levels of throughput. Initially there was some interest, but then nothing further. The comments were that there are large numbers in the industry that still bore the scars from the failed parallelizing attempts in the 90s

misc. past posts mentioning straight-through processing and/or overnight batch window:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#40 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#10 A way to speed up level 1 caches
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#31 Quote from comp.object
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#15 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#36 Future of System/360 architecture?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#3 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#5 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#19 Distributed Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#21 Distributed Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#37 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#44 Distributed Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#61 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#19 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#27 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#64 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#69 Controlling COBOL DDs named SYSOUT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#72 whats the world going to do when all the baby boomers retire
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#81 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#3 on-demand computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#74 Too much change opens up financial fault lines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#30 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#31 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#73 Price of CPU seconds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#87 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#89 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#55 performance of hardware dynamic scheduling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#50 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#56 Long running Batch programs keep IMS databases offline
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#26 What is the biggest IT myth of all time?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#30 Automation is still not accepted to streamline the business processes... why organizations are not accepting newer technolgies?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#35 Automation is still not accepted to streamline the business processes... why organizations are not accepting newer technolgies?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#7 If you had a massively parallel computing architecture, what unsolved problem would you set out to solve?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#87 Cleaning Up Spaghetti Code vs. Getting Rid of It
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#43 Business process re-engineering
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#14 Legacy clearing threat to OTC derivatives warns State Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#55 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#1 z/Journal Does it Again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#2 z/Journal Does it Again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#21 Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/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#43 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/2009l.html#57 IBM halves mainframe Linux engine prices
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#22 PCI SSC Seeks standard for End to End Encryption?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#81 A Faster Way to the Cloud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#81 big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#67 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#68 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#77 Korean bank Moves back to Mainframes (...no, not back)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#16 How long for IBM System/360 architecture and its descendants?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#19 STEM crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#8 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#78 SLIGHTLY OT - Home Computer of the Future (not IBM)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#37 16:32 far pointers in OpenWatcom C/C++
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#47 COBOL - no longer being taught - is a problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#78 Software that breaks computer hardware( was:IBM 029 service manual )
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#41 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#3 Assembler programs was Re: Delete all members of a PDS that is allocated
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#14 Age
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#13 Is the ATM still the banking industry's single greatest innovation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#37 A Bright Future for Big Iron?
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#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#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/2011k.html#70 New IBM Redbooks residency experience in Poughkeepsie, NY
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#10 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#23 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#9 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#79 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#8 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#12 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?

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

Word Length

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Word Length
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2012 08:54:48 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
Unless one was trying to produce documents about using and maintaining customers' million dollar computers. RUNOFF was all uppercase but the ^ and \ characters would produce upper/lower characters which could be printed on an u/l printer. Those printers were a lot more expensive than the uppercase printers. Our production systems usually had one u/lcase printer, LPT1:, and LPT0: was the uppercase printer. All print requests were sent to LPT0: unless LPT1: was specifically specified. After MPB, one could use an (IIRC) /LOWER switch on the PRINT command to redirect the job to LPT1:.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#44 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#45 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#47 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#48 Word Length

this recent thread discusses some runoff history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#5 History of UNIX Manpages
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#9 History of UNIX Manpages

including this reference:
http://manpages.bsd.lv/history.html

starts with 1964 Saltzer's CTSS RUNOFF implementation ... described here:
http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/ctss/AH.9.01.html

upper/lower provided by both the 1052 and 2741 terminals supported by CTSS.

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

Word Length

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Word Length
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:09:00 -0400
maus grey <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
Is `C' still the fastest language?. Must experiment.

various discussions in comp.arch will have fortran faster than C for lots of numerical intensive computation.

explanation is that in C, some things can be ambiquous that makes it difficult for compiler to optimize ... compared to degree of optimization that can be obtained with fortran.

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

M68k add to memory is not a mistake any more

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: M68k add to memory is not a mistake any more
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:55:24 -0400
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
Thus, on the System/370, the bit that was used in the 360 to make it use a form of ASCII was instead used to select an extended control mode in which the PSW was supplemented by a set of 16 control registers... or something like that, I have to admit my memory is hazy.

360 was originally suppose to be ASCII machine
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/PUBS-ASC.HTM
and history
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/FATHEROF.HTM
... this discusses the biggest computer goof ever:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM

360/67 still had ASCII bit ... so used different bit to switch to "extended" mode. standard 360 had first byte of PSW to mask (enable/disable) individual channel & external interrupts. In extended mode, first byte had flag for virtual/real (address translation) mode, and summary bit for all I/O masking.
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/functional_characteristics/GA27-2719-2_360-67_funcChar.pdf

360/67 extended PSW is described in pg.15 ... and still has bit 12 for controller ASCII mode.

pg.16 has control reg. definition. cr0 is segment table pointer (moves to cr1 for 370), cr1 unassigned, cr2 is translation exception address register, cr3 is unassigned, cr4 is extended i/o channel masks, cr5 is unassigned and cr6 has lots of flag bits ... including bit 8 which is (psw) extended control mode (which moves to psw bit 12, ascii bit in 370).

on 360/67, computer reset/ipl would clear the control registers and revert to basic mode psw. to switch to extended mode, then requires loading cr6 ... which wouldn't be an implemented instruction on other 360 models.

i've done q&d conversion of greencard ios3270 to HTML ... 370 PSWs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html#5

The 360 ASCII psw bit 12 becomes the basic/extended PSW format control (bit 8 in cr6 for 360/67)

and 370 control registers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html#15

cr0 is used for a lot more option/flag bits and segment table pointer moves to cr1.

cr6 was defined when virtual machine assist was added in the mid-70s.

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

GOLD STANDARD GOOD OR BAD?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 4 Apr, 2012
Subject: GOLD STANDARD GOOD OR BAD?
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
GOLD STANDARD GOOD OR BAD? Do you agree with Bernanke's opinions?

Bernanke's Problem With The Gold Standard
http://seekingalpha.com/article/467611-bernanke-s-problem-with-the-gold-standard

I recommend: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World
https://www.amazon.com/Lords-Finance-Bankers-Broke-ebook/dp/B001QIGZEK/

it somewhat discusses end of 1800s up through start of start of WW2 to provide setting for the Great Depression. It references gold standard put a cap on central banks arbitrarily printing money ... and worked well from end of 1800s up through part of WW1 ... because the production of new gold approximately kept pace with the expansion of world economy. However, it pointed out that was somewhat a fortunate coincidence.

US went into WW1 with something like half the gold reserves of England. England lost about half its gold reserves with the spending on WW1 and US came out of WW1 with at least five times the gold reserves (because all European purchases and loans). As a result there was enormous mismatch.

for another recommendation ... for risk
http://www.kamakuraco.com/

a couple recent blog example:
http://www.kamakuraco.com/Blog/tabid/231/EntryId/362/Collusion-and-CDS-Dealer-Volume.aspx
http://www.kamakuraco.com/Blog/tabid/231/EntryId/371/The-Credit-Default-Swap-Market-and-Anti-Trust-Considerations.aspx

a little older:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080221191939/http://www.bobsguide.com/guide/news/2007/Dec/20/Kamakura_Releases_Study:_How_Conventional_CDO_Analytics_Missed_the_Mark.html

disclaimer ... we would visit them when they were still in state sponsored business incubator ... was converted grade school building.

For other drifts ... "conventional CDO analytics" is possibly something of obfuscation and misdirection. Congressional hearings into the role that the rating agencies played in the economic mess had testimony that both the CDO sellers and the rating agencies knew that the CDOs weren't worth triple-A ... but the CDO sellers were specifically paying the rating agencies to give triple-A. At the time of the hearings, some news commentator observed that the rating agencies will probably avoid federal prosecution with threat of downgrading the federal gov. credit rating.

misc. past posts mentioning Kamakura
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#25 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#66 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#70 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#21 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#87 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#64 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#29 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#56 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#69 Another quiet week in finance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#14 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#27 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#42 The human plague
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#43 The human plague
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#40 Bernanke Says Regulators Must Protect Against Systemic Risks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#45 Bernanke Says Regulators Must Protect Against Systemic Risks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#31 OODA-loop obfuscation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#34 Board Visibility Into The Business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#52 Future of Financial Mathematics?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#75 A Math Geek's Plan to Save Wall Street's Soul
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#52 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#87 Scientists use maths to predict 'the end of religion' - Repost
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#81 How Joe and Mary Six Pack Saved Wall Street, London, Frankfurt and Big Corporates in the USA and Europe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#82 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#87 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#82 Mathematics < Integrity = Financial Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#21 Study links ultrafast trading with risk of crash

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

Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 5 Apr, 2012
Subject: Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
Blog: MainframeZone
re:
http://lnkd.in/rYr__C

I was co-keynote (along with Jim Gray) at NASA dependable computing workshop.
https://web.archive.org/web/20011004023230/http://www.hdcc.cs.cmu.edu/may01/index.html

I had worked with Jim back at San Jose Research in the System/R days (original SQL/relational implementation).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

When he left, he was palming a bunch of stuff onto me, including DBMS consulting with the IMS group. I had already done the IMS group a big favor (this was 1980) ... STL was moving 300 of the group to offsite bldg and the group had looked at moving off local vm370/cms channel-attach 3270s to "remote" 3270 and found the human factors horrible. I wrote and deployed some support for NSC's HYPERchannel box for channel extender over T1 link ... with local channel attached 3270s at the remote site back into the STL datacenter. The result was they couldn't tell the difference in responses (and side-effect of getting the 3274 controllers off the real channels, increased overall system throughput by 10-15%). I then tried to let the vendor have the software to ship with their product for other customers ... however, a group that was playing with what would become ESCON a decade later, objected; believing my software would help NSC's position in the marketplace and make it more difficult for them to ship ESCON in another decade. NSC had to do a reimplementation from scratch ... but I was able to verify that they did similar operation. mention HSDT &/or NSC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

In any case, my NASA dependable talk was that for any sort of business critical computing, required lots of measure and report ... I mentioned that the mention business there was an industry service that gathered customer EREP data and generating summary reports ... including differences between different models of mainframe as well as comparison with models from various clone processor vendors. After the 3090 had been out in the market for a year, the 3090 Product Administrator contacted me with a serious problem. The industry service was showing that there were 18 3090 channel check errors (total aggregate for all 3090 customers for the period of the year) ... when the design was to only have a total aggregate of 3-5 3090 channel check errors across all customers for a period of the year. It turned out that if I got a solid error on the HYPERchannel channel extender after serveral retries, I would reflect a channel check error on the simulate channel program to the operating system. These 13 extra channel check errors (that were the total aggregate across all 3090 customers for the first year of operation). were from that HYPERchannel software simulation and it was 3090 product administrator felt the those 13 errors drastically skewed the 3090 error statistics. In any case, after some detailed research, I asked NSC to change the simulated error from channel-check (CC) to interface control check (IFCC) ... which would result in effectively the operating system retry operations.

At the NASA talked, I asked all the other vendors in the room, if any of them were equivalently serious about business critical operation.

misc. past posts mentioning NASA dependable computing:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#41 Where are IBM z390 SPECint2000 results?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#75 Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#15 HP-UX will not be ported to Alpha (no surprise)exit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#29 Buffer overflow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#58 O'Reilly C Book
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#34 Calculating expected reliability for designed system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#65 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#62 Dealing with complexity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#16 Dealing with complexity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#48 Automating secure transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#0 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#35 TOD clock discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#35 The very first text editor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#38 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#39 Just another example of mainframe costs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#6 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#53 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#7 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#54 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bel?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#10 Hannaford case exposes holes in law, some say
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#65 The 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#3 Hacker charges also an indictment on PCI, expert says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#38 Cybersecurity Today: The Wild, Wild West
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#10 70 Years of ATM Innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#4 Did a mainframe glitch trigger DBS Bank outage?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#36 Great things happened in 1973
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#40 The Great Cyberheist
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#23 zLinux OR Linux on zEnterprise Blade Extension???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#66 IBM100 - Rise of the Internet
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/2011o.html#32 Deja Cloud?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#74 Where are all the old tech workers?

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

Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 6 Apr, 2012
Subject: Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer
Blog: Greater IBM
there was a simulated green/yellow card done in cms ios3270 ... didn't have the correspondence table between hex, ebcdic, bcd, and punch card code ... but I've done a Q&D translation of the ios3270 to html
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html

recent discussion of ascii bit in 360 psw:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#52

and this refers to 360 was originally suppose to be an ASCII machine ... until Learson made the biggest computer goof ever:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM

site with scans of front of a number of different green cards:
http://planetmvs.com/greencard/index.html

and site with large (11mbyte) PDF of whole front & back
http://weblog.ceicher.com/archives/2006/12/ibm_system360_green_card.html

as an aside, I still have a 360/67 "blue card" (i.e. additions that added virtual memory and other stuff to 360/65) ... originally belonged to one of the three people that invented GML at the science center in 1969 (the "M" in GML ... most people think they know what GML stands for ... but it really is the first letter of the last names of the three inventors). As an aside, a decade after invention, GML morphs into ISO international standard SGML ... and then after another decade, SGML morphs into HTML. misc. past posts mentioning gml/sgml
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

from IBM Jargon
PROFS - profs n. Professional Office System. A menu-based system that provides support for office personnel such as White House staff, using IBM mainframes. Acclaimed for its diary mechanisms, and accepted as one way to introduce computers to those who don't know any better. Not acclaimed for its flexibility. PROFS featured in the international news in 1987, and revealed a subtle class distinction within the ranks of the Republican Administration in the USA. It seems that Hall, the secretary interviewed at length during the Iran-Contra hearings, called certain shredded documents PROFS notes as do IBMers who use the system. However, North, MacFarlane, and other professional staff used the term PROF notes. v. To send a piece of electronic mail, using PROFS. PROFS me a one-liner on that. A PROFS one-liner has up to one line of content, and from seven to seventeen lines of boiler plate. VNET

... snip ...

PROFS had borrowed very early version of internal VMSG source for email client. Later when the VMSG author offered the group a much enhanced version, they attempted to get him fired. Things quieted down a bit after it was shown that every PROFS note in the world carried the VMSG author's initials in non-displayed field. After that, the VMSG author restricted VMSG source to me and one other. There were lot of internal jokes about PROFS being designed for the non-computer literate.

from long ago and far away, YKT had done gateway between ITPS and the internal network ... and this discusses VMSG modifications to send&receive ITPS through the gateway
Date: 12/06/79 10:04:22
To: wheeler

Hi --

In reading the latest document from xxxxxx at Research in regards to the ITPS interface, I see that they are requesting that locations other than Yorktown specify CYMYIN in the acknowledgment code.

The latest version of VMSG I have defaults this field to CARD, which is the equivalent of CYMNIY. Since the current bridge cannot return responses from ITPS to VM, Yorktown has requested that all non-Yorktown users use an acknowledgment code of the form CxMxIN.

Since VMSG doesn't yet support specifing an ACKRESP of CxMxIx, I have zapped the module to the default of CYMYIN.


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

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

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

Typeface (font) and city identity

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Typeface (font) and city identity
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2012 09:34:57 -0400
"Joe Morris" <j.c.morris@verizon.net> writes:
Well...the 24-bit address space (16 MB) worked until almost the end of the S/360 era. It wasn't until quite late that IBM fixed the bug in IPLTXT (the bootstrap loader) that discovered the amount of installed memory by zeroing out memory until an "invalid address" trap occurred - and if 16 MB memory was present, that trap could never occur because the address would loop around to absolute low memory, cheerfully zeroing out IPLTXT itself.

I just wish that my shop (a Very Large State University) had been able to buy enough memory for us to run into that problem. IIRC the price was something like $330K per quarter-meg for our 360/65. The sysprog team spent many hours shoehorning MVT into a 768K machine, although we later added first a 1 MB 2861 LCS box, and then replaced it with a 2 MB Ampex box.


I had sort of the opposite problem, i got called into 370/125-2 system in manhatten about running vm370 (which wasn't supported).

vm370 system build process had an MVCL with zero pad for 16mbytes ... before writing the new kernel to disk. 360 instructions always did precheck of storage operands starting and ending addresses (for storage & fetch protection, storage installed, etc) and abort before even starting the instrution.

370 introduced "long" commands that were suppose to execute incrementally, a byte at a time (w/o precheck). 125 microcode had a "bug" that would (still) precheck for all instructions ... including the new "long" instructions ... as a result, vm370 build process would abort with what appeared to be zero storage.

note that there were some MVT systems run in "virtual" 16mbyte address space ... long before there were real 16mbyte machines.

for other drift, old post about case for virtual memory on all 370s ... work showing that mvt only used about 1/4th of application reserved storage (partition) and so virtual memory would allow mvt to get 16 initiators in a real 1mbyte machine.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#73 Multiple Virtual Memory

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

speculation

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 6 Apr, 2012
Subject: speculation
Blog: mailing list
griftopia has chapter on commodity trading use to have a rule that players had to have a significant position because speculators resulted in wild irrational price swings ... and then there were 19 "secret letters" that authorized specific speculators to play ... resulting in wild irrational price swings ... including the oil spike over $100 summer of 2008.

somebody in congress later released the trading transaction details showing the speculation. there was then some uproar in the press about how the person could affect the integrity of the industry ... obfuscation & misdirection, refocusing attention on the person releasing the information and away from the details showing the speculation.

currently speculation profitability is from volatility ... lots of fluctuation which they can influence the direction of the fluctuation and make the appropriate bets ... on both the way up and again on the way down.

but that was followed by congressman releasing the trading details showing that the summer 2008 price spike of oil over $100 was wild, irrational price swings by speculators. what was then in the press was a lot of focus of the congressman's irresponsible behavior for releasing the trading details ... not the assertions that the trading details showing the wild, irrational price swings

lots of obfuscation and misdirection away from the details ... and trying to redirect attention to the personalities/people involved ... including to try and treat each individual as isolated aberration ... as if there no other corroborating information. Just the fact that the press around the congressman's release of the trading details ... almost all focusing on the congressman's irresponsible behavior for releasing the information ... and totally away from the contents of the trading details were significant.

remember big part of this is CFTC we are talking about ... influence of the CFTC has also played major roles in Enron, Worldcom and more recently the financial mess with CDSs.

#3 on times list of those responsible
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877331,00.html

but in congress, #2 on times list of those responsible:
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877330,00.html

somewhat family affair:

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 ...

and an older article: Phil Gramm's Enron Favor
https://web.archive.org/web/20080711114839/http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-01-15/news/phil-gramm-s-enron-favor/

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

... snip ...

and more #3 responsible, 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 ...

Brooksley was fairly quickly replaced by Wendy Gramm as head of Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and then after her husband got the regulation exemption in Congress, Wendy resigns to join Enron's board.

Later accounts that AIG was nearly finished negotiating to pay 50-60 cents on the dollar (for CDSs) when the secretary of the treasury steps in declares it illegal for AIG to pay less than 100 cents on the dollar, forces AIG to take gov. money to pay 100 cents on the dollar and forces AIG to sign a document giving up any rights to sue those they are paying the money to (largest recipient is GS).

Even this focuses on compensation to AIG executives and not the details of the intended recipients of the gov. bailout money (i.e. there would have been no issue of AIG executive compensation if they hadn't been forced to take the bailout money)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Geithner

So recognizing that a can of worms has been opened with allowing speculators to play ... but disinclined to go back to the way it was, there is a lot of dithering about the need to regulate commodity speculation activity (despite evidence congress has from detailed trade information) ... item from Jan2011:

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

whatever comments there may be about the author of Griftopia ... it shouldn't be used to distract from some of the things he has to say.

Besides the CFTC allowing CDSs to go unregulated (the AIG disaster) and relaxing rules on commodity speculators ... and currently dithering on pressure to exercise some control over commodity speculators ... somewhat having worked on what came to be called electronic commerce, we were asked to work on financial transaction standard. One of the people in the financial standard working group was from NSCC and I was asked in to look at improving integrity of (exchange) trading transactions (late 90s, before NSCC merges with DTC). After putting in some amount of work, got called and told effort was suspended ... a side-effect of the improved integrity would have greatly increased transparency and visibility ... which is antithetical to wallstreet culture.

In the congressional Madoff hearings, the person that had tried unsuccessfully for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff, was asked if new regulations were needed. He responded that while new regulation might be needed, much more important than new regulation would be transparency and visibility. This also shows up in the tirade over congressman releasing CFTC oil trading data showing the speculation causing the spike in oil the summer of 2008 (claims like transparency and visibility could compromise the integrity of the trading process).

Item that all traders may regularly play short&long and then push the market in the desired direction ... but they have nothing to fear from SEC:
http://nypost.com/2007/03/20/cramer-reveals-a-bit-too-much/

As previous post, CFTC prevented from handling various derivatives allowed Enron, Worldcom, as well as AIG. In the wake of Enron & Worldcom, Congress passes Sarbanes-Oxley ... theoretically to prevent similar future activities. However, possibly because even GAO doesn't believe SEC was doing anything, it starts doing reports of fraudulent public company financial reports ... showing uptic even after Sarbanes-Oxley
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-06-1079sp

in theory under SOX, all of the top executives should be doing jail time.

Recent editorial about culture at Goldman resulted in lots of press about the person writing the article. However, there was article that in 2010 Goldman payed one of the largest fines ever ... effectively for the way its culture dealt with its clients ... and after supposedly Goldman claimed it was doing new corporate guidance to change that culture (but recent editorial calls into question whether those statements were just for show and nothing has changed). The other point from the article, was while the fine may have been one of the largest ever, considering the total amounts involved ... it could just be considered trivial cost of doing business.

currently reading "Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty", pg:258
The "dual economy" paradigm, originally proposed in 1955 by Sir Arthur Lewis, still shapes the way that most social scientists think about the economic problems of less-developed countries. According to Lewis, many less-developed or underdeveloped economies have a dual structure and are divided into a modern sector and a traditional sector. The modern sector, which corresponds to the more developed part of the economy, is associated with urban life, modern industry, and the use of advanced technologies. The traditional sector is associated with rural life, agriculture, and "backward" institutions and technologies. Backward agricultural institutions include the communal ownership of land, which implies the absence of private property rights on land.

... snip ...

also mentions that in 1979, Lewis received the Nobel Prize for his work on economic development. Much of the book is spent detailing that major cause of "dual economy" was European colonizing policies to reduce natives to subsistence level so they can be used for cheap labor for the benefit of the Europeans (as opposed to some accidental, natural forces).

Models can be used to explain circumstances ... but doesn't necessarily make them true ... like this reference
http://nypost.com/2007/03/20/cramer-reveals-a-bit-too-much/

where manipulation of the market is common and they have nothing to fear from the regulatory bodies (or in rare cases of regulatory action, there are fines that are trivial compared to the amounts involved ... and any "promises" are never enforced). The manipulation is aided by lack of transparency and visibility that is part of the culture.

besides the previous reference where traders manipulate the market with nudges in the direction that they've made their bets ... actual ability to pick winners&loosers:

Thinking, Fast & Slow (Daniel Kahneman, another nobel prize winner in economics)
https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-and-Slow-ebook/dp/B00555X8OA

pg. 212:
Since then, my questions about the stock market have hardened into a larger puzzle: a major industry appears to be built largely on an illusion of skill. Billions of shares are traded every day, with many people buying each stock and others selling it to them

... snip ...

There has been research that wallstreet have a high percentage of amoral people (close association with psychopaths) ... frequent comments about willing to do whatever is necessary. With Kahneman studies that there is no technical skill in wallstreet (and other long term studies about random variations) ... that leaves the people that are willing to bend/break the rules and "do whatever is necessary" (along with references that they have little to fear from the regulatory agencies).

a couple recent blog entries about detailed analysis of CDS trades and collusion (some reminder of freakonomics stories)
http://www.kamakuraco.com/Blog/tabid/231/EntryId/362/Collusion-and-CDS-Dealer-Volume.aspx
http://www.kamakuraco.com/Blog/tabid/231/EntryId/371/The-Credit-Default-Swap-Market-and-Anti-Trust-Considerations.aspx

disclaimer: we had visited these people when they were in state sponsored business incubator housed in converted grade school building.

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

Word Length

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Word Length
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2012 13:00:03 -0400
"Charlie Gibbs" <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> reference:
"Witnessing the Republicans and the Democrats bicker over the U.S. Debt is like watching two drunks argue over a bar bill on the Titanic."

for topic drift ...

somebody's URL posted on facebook:

These Five Guys Bribed Congress And Got $20 Billion Dollars For It
http://front.moveon.org/these-five-guys-bribed-congress-and-got-20-billion-dollars-for-it/

my response

thats almost $100 back for every dollar spent ... there are reports that the financial industry gets closer to $1000 back for every dollar they spend in DC (highest ROI of any investment). contributes to claims that congress is the most corrupt institution on earth ... also periodic references to congress being Kabuki theater (1603-1629):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabuki

one of the things they are starting to learn is to only make the provisions for limited time period ... so that the industries have to continuously come back and pay to have them renewed ... and/or put on big show about having them revoked. Otherwise there would be no money for future generations in congress.

and then there is ...

Benefit&Burden
https://www.amazon.com/Benefit-Burden-ebook/dp/B005LJEVDM

has CBO showing aggregate revenue cut of $6T last decade (compared to baseline) plus aggregate $6T increase in spending (compared to baseline) for $12T budget gap. baseline had surpluses retiring *ALL* federal debt by 2010. The budget gap (both decrease in revenues and increase in spending) was really kicked off after congress allowed fiscal responsibility act to lapse in 2002.

That $12T budget gap last decade, in addition to $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs, economic mess last decade
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

part of extra spending last decade was $2+T MICC , extra $1T for the wars (strategy of perpetual conflict) and the other $1T went ????
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

...

aka cut revenue by couple trillion with special interests tax breaks ... but don't make them permanent ... bill expires after a decade or so ... so the special interests have to pump in a lot of money trying to get them renewed. similar to letting fiscal responsibility act expire in 2002 ... the comptroller general would include references in his speeches to nobody in congress was capable of middle school arithmetic ... given the enormous deficit they were creating with the gap in reduced revenue and increased spending.

past posts referencing comptroller general's comments about congress isn't capable of middle school arithmetic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#41 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#44 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#2 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#61 Health Care
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#20 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#91 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#19 Another "migration" from the mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#74 Horrid thought about Politics, President Bush, and Democrats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#22 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#7 what does xp do when system is copying
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#13 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#15 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#26 2007 Year in Review on Mainframes - Interesting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#57 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#40 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#50 fraying infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#76 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#86 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#66 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#3 America's Prophet of Fiscal Doom
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#98 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#8 Taxcuts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#17 Michigan industry
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#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/2008p.html#8 Global Melt Down
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#64 Is This a Different Kind of Financial Crisis?
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/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#49 US disaster, debts and bad financial management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#59 As bonuses...why breed greed, when others are in dire need?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#36 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/2009n.html#55 Hexadecimal Kid - articles from Computerworld wanted
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#87 IBM driving mainframe systems programmers into the ground
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#36 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#37 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#39 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#60 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#33 The 2010 Census
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#79 Idiotic take on Bush tax cuts expiring
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#59 They always think we don't understand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#66 They always think we don't understand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#69 They always think we don't understand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#70 Compressing the OODA-Loop - Removing the D (and maybe even an O)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#75 origin of 'fields'?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#44 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#18 Congressional Bickering
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#56 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#36 The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#59 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#68 Bernanke Hearings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#57 The Mortgage Crisis---Some Inside Views
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#67 The debt fallout: How Social Security went "cash negative" earlier than expected
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#42 Speed: Re: Soups
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#136 Gingrich urged yes vote on controversial Medicare bill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#50 They're Trying to Block Military Cuts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#53 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#36 McCain calls for U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria

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

Word Length

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Word Length
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:05:32 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
Some of the docs were machine-readable before I started working there in 1971. It was all of my efforts to get all writers to put everything they wrote in machine-readable form, especially the manuals. An updated manual, which reflected the software, would be distributed as much as 2 years after the software/hardware shipped. that's why you see *.DOC, *.BWR, *.HLP, *.MAN files on the distributions tapes. By the 80s, there wasn't any need for *.DOC but I couldn't get the product manager to OK removing them.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#44 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#45 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#47 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#48 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#50 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#51 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#58 Word Length

I've mentioned before that one of the early mainstream corporate publications moved to cms/script was the "archtecture redbook" (for being distributed in red 3-ring binders).

the issue was that one document had all the information and a command line option could produce either the full architecture redbook or the "principles of operation" subset (move predated 370 announcement)
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/370/princOps/

the full architecture redbook had engineering notes, justification, trade-offs, alternatives considered as well as unannounced instructions and features (intertwined with the subject that appears in the principles of operation subset).

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

Candid Communications & Tweaking Curiosity, Tools to Consider

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 6 Apr, 2012
Subject: Candid Communications & Tweaking Curiosity, Tools to Consider
Blog: To Be or To Do
Candid Communications & Tweaking Curiosity, Tools to Consider
http://tobeortodo.com/2012/04/06/candid-communications-tweaking-curiosity-tools-to-consider/

recently finished: "Quiet"
https://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-Talking-ebook/dp/B004J4WNL2

pg.88:
There's only one problem with Osborn's breakthrough idea: group brainstorming doesn't actually work. One of the first studies to demonstrate this was conducted in 1963.

... snip ...

and some "cloud sourcing" pg89;
The one exception to this is online brainstorming. Groups brainstorming electronically, when properly managed, not only do better than individuals, research shows; the larger the group, the better it performs. The same is true of academic research -- professors who work together electronically, from different physical locations, tend to produce research that is more influential than those either working alone or collaborating face-to-face.

... snip ...

focus of "Quiet" is about Introverts:

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
https://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-Talking-ebook/dp/B004J4WNL2

I've referenced in Boyd Strategy:
http://lnkd.in/A3xcY5

it references the rise of the "cult of personality" during the early 20th century in the US at the expense of "character" (coming to dominate the century) to the detriment of the country (very much a To Be or To Do theme).

Other writings on the subject reference some segment of introverts prizing ideas over people. This book has some focus on introverts doing better with ideas and things like invention and innovation.

The part about group brainstorming not working and online brainstorming working fits with issues about introverts doing less well in people interactions.

A book that I'm still reading is "Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty"
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8

the reviews refer to it sometimes going to extremes in support of its fundamental hypothesis and ignoring other factors (which I would agree with). However, a main theme is that highly hierarchical organizations with very few privileged at very top will become stagnate attempting to freeze the status quo and prevent change. It frequently uses the term "creative destruction" that is periodically needed to adapt and some kinds of organizations are much better at it than others.

other recent posts mentioning Quiet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#14 Are mothers naturally better at OODA because they always have the Win in mind?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#24 ExplicitTacit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#25 We are on the brink of historic decision [referring to defence cuts]

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

"25 Years of IBM's OS/2"

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 6 Apr, 2012
Subject: "25 Years of IBM's OS/2"
Blog: IBM Historic Computing
25 Years of IBM's OS/2: The Strange Days and Surprising Afterlife of a Legendary Operating System
http://techland.time.com/2012/04/02/25-years-of-ibms-os2-the-birth-death-and-afterlife-of-a-legendary-operating-system/

late 80s, senior disk engineer got a talk scheduled at internal, world-wide annual communication group conference and opened the talk with comment 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 and the disk division was seeing drop in sales with data fleeing the datacenter to more distributed computing friendly platforms. The communication group had strategic ownership of everything that crosses the datacenter walls; they were protecting the dumb terminal emulation install base; the communication group was vetoing the products that the disk division was coming up to significantly address the problem.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

The ps2 had microchannel bus that was better than the pc/at bus ... but the cards weren't any better. The workstation division had come out with the pc/rt with pc/at bus ... but the follow-on rs/6000 had the microchannel bus (same as ps2). The problem was that corporate directed the workstation division to help their ps2 "brethren" and they had to use all ps2 cards ... and couldn't do their own. There were jokes that being forced to use ps2 cards ... that for nearly everything, the rs/6000 wouldn't be any faster than ps2.

A trivial example of the communication group "terminal emulation" install base was that the ps2 microchannel 16mbit t/r cards were designed for 300+ stations all sharing the same lan bandwidth doing terminal emulation. The comparison was that the workstation group had done their own pc/rt 4mbit token-ring card ... and that 4mbit token-ring pc/at bus card had higher per-card throughput than the ps2 16mbit token-ring microchannel card.

in the mid-80s serior executives were predicting that corporate revenue would double from $60B to $120B mostly on mainframe sales ... and were doing massive internal building program to double mainframe manufacturing ... and few years later, the company goes into the red.

In the 2nd half of the 80s, we had come up with 3-tier architecture and were out pitching to (customer) corporate executives and taking lots of arrows from the communication group (trying to head-off 2tier and preserve terminal emulation install base) and especially the token-ring group. small piece of that 3-tier presentation:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#202
some more comparison
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#40

some 3-tier posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#3tier

part of the issue was that communication group didn't have a network layer in SNA ... so there was no things like routers for multiple LAN segments with dedicated bandwidth ... instead having bridges that had all traffic on all segments.

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

Typeface (font) and city identity

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Typeface (font) and city identity
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2012 09:42:00 -0400
maus grey <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
Arexx was awesome, what was its relationship to Rexx?.

Hey, first time I played with Perl on the Amiga, it took several seconds to produce output.


arexx wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARexx

from above:
ARexx is an implementation of the REXX language for the Amiga, written in 1987 by William S. Hawes, with a number of Amiga-specific features beyond standard REXX facilities

... snip ...

rexx web site:
http://www.rexxla.org/

and rexx wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REXX

item at Computing History Museum ... it has moved somewhere ... but old location still at wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20020506063424/http://computinghistorymuseum.org/ieee/af_forum/read.cfm?forum=10&id=21&thread=7

from above:
By far the most important influence on the development of Rexx was the availability of the IBM electronic network, called VNET. In 1979, more than three hundred of IBM's mainframe computers, mostly running the Virtual Machine/370 (VM) operating system, were linked by VNET

... snip ... and
A side effect of this geographical separation was that nearly all the discussions on the Rexx language took place using electronic mail which was recorded, hence forming an unusual historical record of the development of a programming language. It has therefore been possible to determine the exact chronology of the early history of Rexx.

... snip ...

misc. past posts mentioning internal network ... this was period that internal network was undergoing explosive growth ... reaching 1000 nodes summer of 1983:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

misc. past posts mentioning doing dumprx:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dumprx

early in rex timeframe, I wanted to do demonstration that rex wasn't just another pretty scripting language. I decided to do replacement for IPCS ... which was a large application written in 370 assembler. Objective was in half time over 3 months, do a replacement for IPCS, written in rex that had ten times the function and ten times the performance.

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

Typeface (font) and city identity

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Typeface (font) and city identity
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2012 11:29:27 -0400
Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> writes:
Well, where is it?

I dread the times I have to fire up IPCS.

Someone in our office did some REXX that ran against SYSUDUMPS and tried to print the call stack. It never turned out to be particularly robust.

OTOH we also did a REXX/ISPF routine that invokes superzap to format LE stack/heap/report settings and change them via superzap.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#62
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dumprx

good question ... it was eventually in use by nearly every internal datacenter as well as most of the field support PSRs. I thought it would be a no-brainer to release to customers ... but there were apparently some NIH.

I did eventually get approval to do presentation on how I did the implementation at both SHARE and BAYBUNCH meetings ... and within a few months later there were similar implementations done in customer shops and other vendors. Part of the implementation was growing library that would automate a whole bunch of stuff that was commonly done manually as well as checking for a whole lot of common failure signatures

This is old email about the 3092 service processor people wanting to include it in their distribution:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#email861031
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#email861223

3092 service processor started out being a 4331 running a highly modified version of release 6 vm370/cms ... which was later upgrade to pair of 4361s. misc. recent posts mentioning 3092
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#58 Why can't the track format be changed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#23 M68k add to memory is not a mistake any more
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#38 A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia

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

Typeface (font) and city identity

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Typeface (font) and city identity
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2012 14:33:38 -0400
maus grey <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
Thanks.. IPCS (pending a visit to Wiki*) would be InterProcess[something]?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#62 Typeface (font) and city identity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#63 Typeface (font) and city identity

IPCS ... Interactive Problem Control System ... and/or dump reader
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dumprx

however, for other drift ... author of rex also did a multi-user/distributed spacewar game using SPM ("special message" used for interprocess communication) that was developed internal and never shipped to customers. SPM was originally developed by the Pisa Scientific Center on cp67 ... and then it was ported to vm370. It was a superset of both VMCF (virtual machine control system) and IUCV (inter-user communications vehicle) combined ... which were later shipped in product to customers.

the implementation had server that kept track of everything going on and individual clients that communicated with the server via SPM. The internal VNET had support for SPM. Authorized users could interface to VNET for commands (VNET one of the earliest virtual appliance or service virtual machine) on the same real machine or other nodes in the network ... as well as forwarded SPM messages across the network ... so spacewar clients didn't have to be on the same real machine.

recent posts mentioning mutl-user spacewar, spm, vmcf, &/or iucv:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#24 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#27 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#30 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#38 Invention of Email

iucv sockets
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/sw_upgrades/interlink/r2_0/sysmgmt/smiucv.html
rexx support for iucv
http://www.vm.ibm.com/download/packages/descript.cgi?REXXIUCV

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

Teachers Don't Like Creative Students

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 07 Apr, 2012
Subject: Teachers Don't Like Creative Students
Blog: Boyd Strategy
re:
http://lnkd.in/mukySH

originally from the ip mailing list

Teachers Don't Like Creative Students
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/12/teachers-dont-like-creative-students.html

... then there is this ... both a children's book and ipad app: cool to be clever (about former co-worker at the science center):
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cool-to-be-clever-edson-hendricks/id483020515?mt=8

from above:
One of the most consistent findings in educational studies of creativity has been that teachers dislike personality traits associated with creativity. Research has indicated that teachers prefer traits that seem to run counter to creativity, such as conformity and unquestioning acceptance of authority.

... snip ...

related (cool to be clever) news article:
http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Tech+savvy+storytelling/5848952/story.html

note the $40k/$200k quotes for production. this is on par with what USNI quoted when I asked them about doing a Boyd DVD (which they wanted up front).

cloud sourcing
http://cloudsourcing.com/

or crowd sourcing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing

recent post here to reference that group brainstorming doesn't work ... except in distributed network
http://tobeortodo.com/2012/04/06/candid-communications-tweaking-curiosity-tools-to-consider/
also archived here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#60

Reference to early flavor from 1979:
https://web.archive.org/web/20020506063424/http://computinghistorymuseum.org/ieee/af_forum/read.cfm?forum=10&id=21&thread=7

from above:
By far the most important influence on the development of Rexx was the availability of the IBM electronic network, called VNET. In 1979, more than three hundred of IBM's mainframe computers, mostly running the Virtual Machine/370 (VM) operating system, were linked by VNET

... snip ...

I reference in this recent post about rexx
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#62

Subject of the "cool to be clever" was person responsible for the internal network (larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime late '85 or early '86). misc. past posts mentioning internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

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

Typeface (font) and city identity

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Typeface (font) and city identity
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2012 22:18:37 -0400
"Joe Morris" <j.c.morris@verizon.net> writes:
That comment made me think that I had seen a note that Mike had retired from IBM; a check of his home page

http://speleotrove.com/mfc/

confirmed that he bailed in March 2010. The page shows an interesting variety of interests he's following now; those here who knew (or only knew of) him should find it interesting.

Also - and arguably a bit back OT for this newsgroup - his page has a link that I somehow hadn't previously noticed: the current (tenth) edition of the IBM Jargon Dictionary \\www.comlay.net/ibmjarg.pdf . A worthy companion to The New Hacker's Dictionary, even though many of the entries are specific to Big Blue.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#56 Typeface (font) and city identity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#62 Typeface (font) and city identity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#63 Typeface (font) and city identity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#64 Typeface (font) and city identity

his home page & wiki page references lot of work he did on decimal floating point
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Cowlishaw
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_floating_point

also mentions he did stint at OED where he did LEXX
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEXX_%28text_editor%29

some more:
https://www.mainframezone.com/article/the-man-behind-rexx-z-journal-visits-ibm-fellow-mike-cowlishaw

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

Typeface (font) and city identity

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Typeface (font) and city identity
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 08 Apr 2012 10:27:45 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#56 Typeface (font) and city identity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#62 Typeface (font) and city identity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#63 Typeface (font) and city identity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#64 Typeface (font) and city identity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#66 Typeface (font) and city identity

I recently made reference to consultants & analysts also being considered part of mushroom factory (kept in the dark and fed sh**) with product respun by bureaucracy to meet preconceived strategy ... in blog related to this
http://www.phibetaiota.net/2012/04/yoda-when-intelligence-loses-its-integrity-it-is-not-intelligence/

old reference to "mushroom factory" from "tandem memos" about a programming lab.
Date: 08/28/81 10:17:49
To: wheeler

... lots snipped ...

Many people at the 'Mushroom Factory', especially those in development and test, put in far more than a 40 hour week. In fact, my replacement put in a 96 hour week last week! There are lots of subtle, irritating, and obviously disrespectful of the individual techniques used to make people feel guilty if they do not put in about a fifty hour week.
... lots snipped ...

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

one of the items in IBM jargon is Tandem Memos
http://www.comlay.net/ibmjarg.pdf
Tandem Memos - n. Something constructive but hard to control; a fresh of breath air (sic). That's another Tandem Memos. A phrase to worry middle management. It refers to the computer-based conference (widely distributed in 1981) in which many technical personnel expressed dissatisfaction with the tools available to them at that time, and also constructively criticized the way products were [are] developed. The memos are required reading for anyone with a serious interest in quality products. If you have not seen the memos, try reading the November 1981 Datamation summary.

... snip ...

Newer versions have the last sentence removed (Nov1981 Datamation being somewhat hard to come by). I was blamed for online computer conferencing on the internal network in the late 70s and early 80s (folkore is that when the executive committee was told about online computer conferencing ... and the internal network, 5of6 wanted to fire me). misc. past posts mentioning internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

some references are that Tandem Memos was result of Jim Gray's MIP ENVY tome as he was leaving for Tandem; however it was really kicked off when I distributed a trip report about visiting Jim at Tandem ... after he had left.

A couple old emails about Jim leaving for Tandem (and palming stuff off onto me)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801006
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801016

a version of "MIP ENVY" ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email800920
in this post ... also reference to other version
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#17

also from IBM Jargon
MIP envy - n. The term, coined by Jim Gray in 1980, that began the Tandem Memos (q.v.). MIP envy is the coveting of other's facilities - not just the CPU power available to them, but also the languages, editors, debuggers, mail systems and networks. MIP envy is a term every programmer will understand, being another expression of the proverb The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

... snip ...

at celebration for Jim ... reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#32 A Tribute to Jim Gray: Sometimes Nice Guys Do Finish First

A reporter talked to me about planned article on Jim and his early days at IBM ... and I talked about the whole MIP ENVY thing and he said that he would follow up .. but nothing ever came of it (possibly sponsored by IBM and MIP ENVY wasn't quite what they had in mind ... and/or the whole Tandem Memos thing).

recent posts mentioning Tandem Memos and/or MIP ENVY
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#31 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#88 Original Thinking Is Hard, Where Good Ideas Come From
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#90 IBM Doing Some Restructuring?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#93 Original Thinking Is Hard, Where Good Ideas Come From
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#17 5 Byte Device Addresses?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#16 IBM cuts more than 1,000 U.S. Workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#6 Origins of "User-friendly"

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Glory Days of Army Acquisition Were Not So Glorious

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 8 Apr, 2012
Subject: Glory Days of Army Acquisition Were Not So Glorious
Blog: Facebook
Glory Days of Army Acquisition Were Not So Glorious
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=739

Spinney's article from early 80s on spending by MICC:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070320170523/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html
also
https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html
... more recent over $2T spending above baseline last decade, $1T for the war and $1t for ???:
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

and more recent item from Spinney:
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2012/04/goodbye-occupy-political-engineering.html

recent posts mentioning Spinney:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#13 We are on the brink of a historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#15 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#75 The Winds of Reform
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#14 Strategy subsumes culture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#36 McCain calls for U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#25 We are on the brink of historic decision [referring to defence cuts]

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

speculation

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 8 Apr, 2012
Subject: speculation
Blog: mailing list
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#57

Over-Paying At The Pump? Boost Speculator Margin Requirements
http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2012/04/08/over-paying-at-the-pump-boost-speculator-margin-requirements/

from above:
But once that regulation was changed, there was virtually no limit to how many futures contracts the speculators could trade --- especially given their ability to borrow money to boost the returns that they could make on their bets. Speculators are estimated to account for 81% of all oil futures trades.

... snip ...

reference from last summer about Senator releasing oil speculation transaction data pinning nearly $150/barrel spike summer 2008

U.S. oil speculative data released by Senator, sparking ire
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/19/us-cftc-dataleak-idUSTRE77I4NR20110819

some more detailed discussion

Why The Huge Spike in Oil Prices? "Peak Oil" or Wall Street Speculation?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29803

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 9 Apr, 2012
Subject: Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem
Blog: Facebook
Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem | Small Wars Journal
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/disruptive-thinkers-defining-the-problem

besides earlier references to MBAs being part of the problem ... not the solution ... there is also the issue that quick in&out "win" doesn't meet the objective of "perpetual war" ... my recent x-over comment ... which compliments the pervasive Success Of Failure culture.
http://zenpundit.com/?p=7448#comment-47751

from above:
with regard to US activities for several decades, there is always "perpetual war", latest from Spinney
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2012/04/goodbye-occupy-political-engineering.html
above references "Profits Without Production" which somewhat also:
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2011/10/journal-why-the-us-middle-class-is-broken.html
earlier "perpetual war"
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/domestic-roots-of-perpetual-war.html
for much more caustic view "Extreme Prejudice":
https://www.amazon.com/EXTREME-PREJUDICE-Terrifying-Patriot-ebook/dp/B004HYHBK2
a somewhat different view (send in the jackels when other approaches fail)
https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-Man-ebook/dp/B001AFF266
Spinney's article from 1983 -- behind paywall but lives free at wayback machine
https://web.archive.org/web/20070320170523/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html
also
https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html

Boyd would tell story that they spent 18months preparing for article and then afterwards SECDEF blamed Boyd for the article, tried to have him transferred to Alaska and banned from the Pentagon for life.


... snip ...

there is also the re-occurring theme of "creative destruction" in "Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty"
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8

talking about exclusive institutions degenerating to stagnation and protecting the status quo of the few ... as well as the rise of the "culture of personality" at the expense of character early last century, both resonate with Boyd's DESTRUCTION AND CREATION and To Be or To Do

A line that I started using early in my career was that there are no "hard" technical problems ... all the "hard" problems involve politics and people motivation.

I have a story about being brought into largest airline res system ... they had ten impossible problems they couldn't do. Two months later, I came back with an implementation that did all ten impossible things ... and then the hand-wringing started. They eventually said that they hadn't intended for me to solve the problems ... they just wanted to be able to tell the parent board that I was working on it. The real problem was that they had nearly 1000 people (avg around quarter mil each ... around $250M aggregate) doing "manual" tasks ... and the top executive compensation was proportional to organization budget. The "solution" eliminated/automated all he "manual" tasks ... which then made the ten impossible problems trivial. They just wanted solution buried and forgotten. "Why Nations Fail" has examples of Roman emperors destroying new inventions and killing those with any knowledge.

Why Nations Fail, an example, pg171:
"During the reign of the emperor Tiberius, a man invented unbreakable glass and went to the emperor anticipating that he would get a great reward. He demonstrated his invention, and Tiberius asked him if he had told anyone else about it. When the man replied no, Tiberius had the man dragged away and killed, 'lest gold be reduced to the value of mud.' There are two interesting things about this story. First, the man went to Tiberius in the first place for a reward, rather than setting himself up in business and making a profit by selling the glass. This shows the role of the Roman government in controlling technology. Second, Tiberius was happy to destroy the innovation because of the adverse economic effects it would have had. This is the fear of the economic effects of creative destruction."

... snip ...

preservation of "status quo" has quite a bit of overlap with Steele's
http://www.phibetaiota.net/2012/04/yoda-when-intelligence-loses-its-integrity-it-is-not-intelligence/

... which I make a reference to those at the bottom being treated as "mushroom factory" ... long reference to "mushroom factory" here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#67

past posts mentioning airline res system & ten impossible things:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#20 Competitors to SABRE?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#83 Summary: Robots of Doom
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#6 Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#85 The TransRelational Model: Performance Concerns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#6 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#18 RAMAC 305(?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#53 time spent/day on a computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#54 time spent/day on a computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#22 Bidirectional Binary Self-Joins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#28 Even worse than UNIX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#8 nouns and adjectives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#35 American Airlines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#32 CLIs and GUIs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#39 Automation is still not accepted to streamline the business processes... why organizations are not accepting newer technologies?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#25 another item related to ASCII vs. EBCDIC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#54 another item related to ASCII vs. EBCDIC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#55 IBM halves mainframe Linux engine prices
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#42 Outsourcing your Computer Center to IBM ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#10 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#16 Sabre Talk Information?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#81 Hashing for DISTINCT or GROUP BY in SQL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#92 Innovation and iconoclasm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#27 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?

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

Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 9 Apr, 2012
Subject: Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#70 Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem

"When Nations Fail" notes that it is extremely hard to change from an exclusive to inclusive organization ... besides organizations ... it has lots of examples of revolution that just replaces those at the top with new individuals. Large bureaucracies have lots of ways of marginalizing those at the bottom (giving rise to the "mushroom factory" reference) ... and when that fails ... they then co-op the revolution. Current status quo is corporations co-opting MICC to keeping & maximizing the revenue flowing ... which includes things like the Success Of Failure culture ... along with lots of FUD about not being able to afford changing things in the off-chance it doesn't work ("perpetual war" scenario requires lots of fear mongering). In the 70s/80s, Boyd was in part able to survive because congress hadn't yet been thoroughly co-opted (he had strong congressional support in battles with Pentagon, the congressional hearing that led up to the '83 Time article had been carefully staged and scripted). There is little of that left now ... contributing to Spinney insisting on MICC ... not just MIC.

warning Boyd story: DOD forces get hearing moved to late Friday (after most people have left for the weekend) and smaller room (had been used in watergate hearings). Sat. morning SECDEF holds damage assessment meeting and there is nothing about the hearing in the news. Then the Time magazine hits the stands. How did Time managed to do a cover, 18pg article over the weekend? SECDEF goes after Spinney ... but everything in the article was covered in unclassified hearing, and they had spent 18months getting written authorization for everything in the hearing. Then SECDEF tries to have Boyd transferred to Alaska and barred from the Pentagon for life. The following week (with a little congressional pressure), Boyd is asked what kind of Pentagon office would he like and how would he like it furnished.

other recent posts mentioning time article:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#75 The Winds of Reform
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#93 Original Thinking Is Hard, Where Good Ideas Come From
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#51 How would you succinctly desribe maneuver warfare?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#36 McCain calls for U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#25 We are on the brink of historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#68 Glory Days of Army Acquisition Were Not So Glorious

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

Sunday Book Review: Mind of War

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 9 Apr, 2012
Subject: Sunday Book Review: Mind of War
Blog: Boyd Strategy
re:
http://lnkd.in/JJyW-a

Sunday Book Review: Mind of War
http://www.informationdissemination.net/2012/04/sunday-book-review-mind-of-war.html

with regard to f22/f35 reference; I've claimed Boyd had a hand in F20/tigershark ... claims for F20/tigershark met all his criteria for being cheaper, simpler, more flt-hrs/maint.-hrs ... etc. The politics were similar to some of the recent stutff about non-nuclear submarine ... do it for export. Turns out that by the last decade of the century, MIC was really transforming into MICC. Directed appropriations (earmarks) is something they do not only in US budget ... but they also do in US AID (aka F20 candidates got US AID earmarks that could only be used for F16 purchases; foreign countries then were faced with buying lots of inexpensive, easy to maintain F20 or getting F16s essentially for "free").

Recently posted Boyd story to Facebook with regard to "fighter mafia"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#71
about Spinney article from 1983
https://web.archive.org/web/20070320170523/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html
also
https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html

as an aside ... Warden started doing consulting and lectures ... for a fee. I had previously sponsored Boyd's briefings at IBM. I contacted Warden about doing his talk ... I got the impression that he didn't like my references to Boyd ... he wanted to make sure I realized he was different from Boyd. Warden sent me a sample video tape ... but I never did get around to scheduling his talk.

With regard to career comments in the article ... this old post with (To Be or To Do) quote from Chet's old site (since gone 404):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#35

warning Boyd story: When Boyd ran light-weight fighter plane in the Pentagon, his one-star came in one day to find him having lengthy, heated technical argument with some in his "command". The one-star called a meeting in large Pentagon auditorium with lots of people in attendance and "fired" Boyd for not running an appropriate military operation. Saving him was a four-star called a meeting a week later in the same place with the same people in attendance and re-hired Boyd ... and told the one-star to never do that again.

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

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

Word Length

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Word Length
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2012 16:37:06 -0400
jgk@panix.com (Joe keane) writes:
There's a good argument for that [explicit size], and often that is what you use. I think Ritchie made a conscious choice to put just one string format *in* the language; it certainly doesn't prevent you from doing something different; after all you've got 'struct'.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#44 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#45 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#47 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#48 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#50 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#51 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#58 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#59 Word Length

I had exchange with him on this ... one of the issues was storage efficiency on systems with really small memory ... null-terminated was single byte ... while two byte int for current length and two byte int for maximum length was four bytes. trade-off between programmer had to manually keep track of every (effectively inplicit) string & buffer length ... against (typically) three extra bytes.

for really simple programming tasks on machines that measured real storage in kilobytes or maybe tens of kilobytes it possibly was justified trade-off.

misc. past posts on the subject
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#overflow

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Time to competency for new software language?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 9 Apr, 2012
Subject: Time to competency for new software language?
Blog: Mainframe Experts
re:
http://lnkd.in/Nfu3wc

I was blamed for online computer conferencing on the internal network in the late 70s and early 80s ... the internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until late '85 or early '86 ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

folklore is that when the executive committee (chairman, ceo, pres, etc) was told about online computer conferencing (and the internal network), 5of6 wanted to fire me.

somewhat as a result, a researcher was paid to sit in the back of my office for nine months and take notes on how I communicated (face-to-face, telephone, etc) as well as going with me to meetings. They also got copies of all my incoming and outgoing email as well as logs of all instant messages. Besides research report, the material was used for papers and books as well as Stanford phd thesis (joint between language and computer ai) ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

there was some amount of discussion about a few with programming language proficiency comparable to natural language proficiency (aka being able to "think" and "dream" in the programming language ... w/o requiring translation with some natural language).

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

Word Length

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Word Length
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2012 20:28:00 -0400
Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> writes:
System 360/370 dropped the alignment requirement. Probably in the 360->370 transition or somewhere around there.

360 was byte addressable ... however numerous full-word instructions required word-aligned addresses ... but lots of instructions allowed non-word-aligned instructions ... for instance: mvc, clc, tm, cli, mvi, tr, etc ...

mvc is storage to storage move ... with length field up to 255 bytes. an example to zero field would be

mvi loc,0 mvc loc(255),loc+1

mvi moves zero in byte at location "loc"

mvc does "overlapping" from loc to loc+1, and then for loc+1 to loc+2, etc, for 255 bytes ... with the first zero byte being propagated throught the rest.

370 relaxed the word aligned requirement for word oriented instructions.

past posts in thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#44 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#45 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#47 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#48 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#50 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#51 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#58 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#59 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#73 Word Length

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

Companies struggling to fill mainframe skills gap

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 10 Apr, 2012
Subject: Companies struggling to fill mainframe skills gap
Blog: Mainframe Experts
re:
http://lnkd.in/v8buNg

recent long post related to entries in IBM Jargon with regard to online computer conferencing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#67

in a long running thread ... most recently about the author of the REXX language and also person responsible for IBM Jargon:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#66

Early in the inception of REXX ... when it was still named REX and before released to customers ... I wanted to do a demonstration that REX wasn't just a pretty scripting language and decided to demonstrate by doing a replacement for IPCS (mainframe debugging program) in REX .. half-time over 3month elapsed with 10 times the function and running 10 times faster (IPCS at the time was written in assembler and I was going to replacing it with "interpreted" REX implementation that was significantly faster)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#62 .
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#63 .
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#64

thread mentions that for whatever reason DUMPRX was never released to customers, it was eventually in use by nearly every internal datacenter as well as most customer support PSRs. Part of DUMPRX was growing library of automated routines that did various "sanity checks" of the dump looking for numerous different kinds of "failure" signatures. misc. past posts mentioning dumprx
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dumprx

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

Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 6 Apr, 2012
Subject: Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer
Blog: Greater IBM
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#55 Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer

Business cards used to have both external phone number and (internal) tieline. There were a couple of us that got our internal VNET email on cards (in the 70s, predating PROFS ... see post upthread). A ruling came out that business cards were for customers only and so "internal" contact information wasn't allowed (requiring both VNET and tieline to be removed from business cards). We then put up the original email gateway to the arpanet/internet (actually before arpanet's conversion to internet) ... and they had a hard time preventing our arpanet email on business cards (initial attempt to block arpanet/internet email on business cards was because there were few customers with email access). The other battle I had was business cards with no title. misc. old posts mentioning internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

Before virtual memory was announced for 370, some (virtual memory) internal document leaked to some industry publication. There was then a "Pentagon Papers" like investigation to find who leaked the document. After that all copying machines in the corporation was retrofitted with a serial number under the glass ... which would appear on all copies (identifying the copy machine). "IBM-SJ-086" can be seen in this old copy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/grayft84.pdf

note in following "6670" was essentially ibm copier 3 with computer interface. Sherpa (aka apa6670) was a modified 6670 that supported "all points addressable" ... in addition to computer fonts ... was possible to do images. "foildoc" from long ago and far away:


:frontm.
:titlep.
:title.GML for Foils
:date.August 24, 1984
:author. <redacted to protect the guilty>
:address.
:aline.T.J. Watson Research Center
:aline.P.O. Box 218
:aline.Yorktown Heights, New York
:aline.&rbl.
:aline.San Jose Research Lab
:aline.5600 Cottle Road
:aline.San Jose, California
:eaddress.
:etitlep.
:logo.
:preface.
:p.This manual describes a method of producing foils automatically using
DCF Release 3 or SCRIPT3I.
The foil package will run with the following GML implementations:
:ul.
:li.ISIL 3.0
:li.GML Starter Set, Release 3
:eul.
:note.This package is an :q.export:eq. version of the foil support
available at Yorktown and San Jose Research as part of our floor GML.
Yorktown users should contact xxxxxx for local documentation.
Documentation for San Jose users is available in the document
stockroom.
.*
:p.Any editor can be used to create the foils.
Preliminary proofing can be done at the terminal with final
output to one of the
printers supported by the various implementations:
:ul compact.
:li.APS-5
:li.4250
:li.Sherpa
:li.Phoenix
:li.6670
:li.3800
:li.1403
:eul.



... snip ...

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

Time to Think ... and to Listen

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 10 Apr, 2012
Subject: Time to Think ... and to Listen
Blog: Boyd Strategy
re:
http://lnkd.in/PPe3NQ

Time to Think ... and to Listen
http://blog.usni.org/2012/04/09/guest-post-by-lcdr-benjamin-bj-armstrong-time-to-think-and-to-listen/

my post in the blog entry:

Spinney's article on Boyd, business and other things -- USNI Proceedings July 1997
https://web.archive.org/web/20010412225142/http://www.defense-and-society.org/FCS_Folder/comments/c199.htm

Big issue is that MBAs are firmly planted in the middle of the MICC which is considered major part of the problem -- not the solution. More recent is Chuck's comments on MICC strategy of perpetual war:
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/domestic-roots-of-perpetual-war.html

as means of keeping the funds flowing.

This started out with item about disruptive thinkers and implication it might help the military to send their people to Harvard Business School.
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-military-needs-more-disruptive-thinkers
some posts in thread (from Facebook) archived here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#70 .
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#71

last night Colbert Report had vice-chairman of GMC on pushing a new book about "car guys vs bean counters"
http://www.autoblog.com/2012/04/10/bob-lutz-wins-push-up-contest-on-the-colbert-report/

of course, some of the auto industry may be obfuscation ... I've pontificated periodically about call for 100% unearned profit tax on the auto industry (from the early 80s) and the C4 task force circa 1990 ... recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#54

and from long ago and far away, part of thread dis'ing "MBAs" from "Tandem Memos":

Date: 05/11/81 18:33:02
To: wheeler

In reference to the short term outlook taken by today's MBAs:

One only need to look at the American steel industry to see the results of decades of short term outlook. At one time the United States was the technological world leader in the manufacture of steel, but the industry, in looking for more and more profits, never upgraded its equipment. In World War II, they did upgrade, but only with massive influx of money from the U. S. goverment. This money was forthcoming only because big steel cried that it couldn't produce the needed war materiel with its antiquated plants. Yet, since WW II, no real major investment has been made by the U. S. steel industry in modernizing their plants.

Contrast this to the Japanese, who seem to be constantly upgrading their steel making facilities. Now who is the leading supplier of quality steel products in the world?


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

I was blamed for online computer conferencing (& "Tandem Memos") on the internal network in the late 70s and early 80s. Recent post with more detail:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#67

quote from the website about this item: "An overblown bit of disruptive thinking on Small Wars Journal prepares the way for a bit of hagiography for a bureaucratic Pentagon warrior. Both fail to make a persuasive case for reform"
http://www.lineofdeparture.com/2012/04/09/general-discontent/

and doesn't like there has been a lot of change this century, from Chet's blog from last century (gone 404 but lives on at the wayback machine):
https://web.archive.org/web/20020217191358/http://belisarius.com/modern_business_strategy/moore/mie_33.htm

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

What's the takeaway on Audit?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 11 Apr, 2012
Subject: What's the takeaway on Audit?
Blog: Financial Cryptography
What's the takeaway on Audit?
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001372.html

last century we were tangentially involved in the cal. state data breach notification legislation. we had been brought in to help word-smith the cal. state electronic signature legislation and several of the other participants were heavily into privacy issues. They had done detailed, in-depth citizen surveys and the no.1 issue was "identity theft" ... primarily the form of "account fraud" with fraudulent financial transactions as a result of crooks harvesting transaction details from skimming, data breaches, etc. misc. past "signature posts"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#signature

The standard issue with "security" it is normally motivated for an entity to protect their own assets. The issue with "account fraud" and data breaches were the institutions experiencing the breaches had little or nothing at "risk" (it was individuals and their transactions, that were at risk) and as a result little or nothing appeared to being done. It was hoped that the publicity from data breach notifications would result in corrective actions by the institutions (as well as giving individuals opportunity to take their own countermeasures)

PCI effort seem to start not long after the cal. data breach notification legislation was passed ... and seemed to go along with industry calls to repeal breach notifications (because of industry efforts like PCI). There have been numerous federal "notifications" bills introduced since then ... about evenly divided between requiring similar requirements to the cal. notification legislation and "federal preemption" notification bills that would eliminate most notification requirements

other recent breach notifcation posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#0 Revolution Through Banking?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#35 Israel vows to hit back after credit cards hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#3 zSeries Manpower Sizing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#6 The 15 Worst Data Security Breaches of the 21st Century
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#49 Do you know where all your sensitive data is located?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#63 Fans of Threat Modelling reach for their guns ... but can they afford the bullets?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#17 Data theft: Hacktivists 'steal more than criminals'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#29 Visa, MasterCard warn of 'massive' security breach
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#37 The $30 billion Social Security hack

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

Word Length

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Word Length
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 09:54:52 -0400
Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> writes:
Hmmm.... when I was learning these terms, byte-addressable was a synonym for addressable bytes. Alignment restrictions (as in being byte-addressable but needing to be on a word boundary) were a separate issue.

i.e. 360&370 do byte addressable. 360 had alignment restrictions. full-word ops that required full-word alignment (last two address bits zero), half-word ops that required half-word alignent (last address bit zero).

there is "specification" exception if: "A data, instruction, or control-word address does not specify an integral boundary for the unit of information" ... if there was only word addressing ... then it wouldn't be possibly to generate an non-word aligned address ... that would result in specification exception.

360&370 had 32bit words but 24bit addresses (and common convention that high-order byte of address word could be used for flags and other things). 24bit addresses limited 360/370 to only addressing 16mbytes of storage ... both real & virtual ... aka 2**24 = 16mbytes (using byte addressable). An example was the BAL/BALR instructions (branc&link) ... for subroutine calls. The current 24bit address from the PSW (program status word) would be saved in specified register along with a byte of status flags (from the PSW) in the register high-order byte ... before branching to the specific location.

modulo 360/67 with virtual memory ... had option that could switch between 24bit virtual addressing (16mbyte) and 32bit virtual addressing (4gbyte). the virtual memory tables only had field that was able to translate virtual address into 16mbyte real addresses ... the page table entry was 16bits ... 12bit (4kbyte) page number (12bit page number + 12bit page ... 24bit real address) ... the other four bits not used for real address.

much later 370xa/3081 introduced 24bit/31bit virtual address option ... one less bit than 360/67.

there was a hack late in the 370 time-frame (before 370xa) for the 3033 which was pushing real storage constraints ... which it allowed to have 64mbyte real storage configuration. Instructions (both real&virtual) were limited to 24bit addresses ... however the there were two unused bits in the 16bit page table entry. This two bits were scavenged to prepend to a real page number ... to allow generation of 14bit page number ... along with 4kbytes ... allowing for real address generation of 26bits or 64mbytes (even though instructions were limited to only generating 24bit addresses).

3033 also had constraint with 24bit/16mbit virtual addresses. In the initial migration from MVT->VS2 (aka real addressing to virtual addressing), it basically continued to simulate a MVT environment but as if it was running in 16mbyte real machine (single 16mbyte virtual address space, minimal changes to handle page faults). In the transition from VS2/SVS->VS2/MVS (single virtual addres space to multiple virtual address space ... one per application), the pervasive use of pointer passing API but heavy constraints. Part of the implementation was to put an 8mbyte image of the MVS kernel as part of every application 16mbyte virtual address space (allowing legacy MVT kernel code to easily/directly address application data pointed to by API pointer).

The problem was that there were lots of "subsytem" functions ... things that were outside the MVT kernel ... but applications would call with pointer API ... which were now in separate address space. The solution was a "common segment" (or common system area) that also appeared in every virtual address space ... starting out as 1mbyte (reducing application area to 7mbytes of 16mbytes). Application would reserve space in "common segment" for placing parameters and then do a kernel call to invoke the subsystem ... passing parameter pointer to the common segment area. For larger systems, late in MVS period, there were lots of subsystems ... with the common segment needing to be proportional to number of concurrent applications and number of subsystems ... typically being 4-5mbytes and threatening to grow to 5-6mbytes for many customers (potentially leaving only 2mbytes for application use).

An extreme example was a large internal fortran chip-design application that was constantly threatening to exceed 7mbytes ... and which required a large number of 168-3 & 3033 systems all running specially constructed MVS systems limited to only a 1mbyte common segment. They were heavily biased towards the corporate favorite-son operating system (MVS) but were coming under increasing pressure to move to vm370/cms ... which would give their application almost a whole 16mbyte virtual address space.

past posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#44 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#45 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#47 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#48 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#50 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#51 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#58 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#59 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#73 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#75 Word Length

lots of past posts mentioning the MVS common segment (now called CSA)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#57 Handling variable page sizes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#0 Handling variable page sizes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#13 Page Table - per OS/Process
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#26 PCIe as a chip-to-chip interconnect
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#54 CKD Disks?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#18 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#53 The mid-seventies SHARE survey
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#57 Moving assembler programs above the line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#18 address space
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#48 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#25 Multiple address spaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#28 Multiple address spaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#32 Multiple address spaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#33 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#38 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#44 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#10 What part of z/OS is the OS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#32 MIPS architecture question - Supervisor mode & who is using it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#42 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#23 threads versus task
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#23 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#16 "The Elements of Programming Style"
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/2007k.html#27 user level TCP implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#10 IBM 8000 series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#26 Does software life begin at 40? IBM updates IMS database
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#68 Direction of Stack Growth
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#56 CSA 'above the bar'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#69 CSA 'above the bar'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#16 segmentation or lack thereof
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#75 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#35 New Opcodes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#69 Regarding the virtual machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#14 Kernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#33 IBM Preview of z/OS V1.10
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#60 Different Implementations of VLIW
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#29 DB2 & z/OS Dissertation Research
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#53 Old XDS Sigma stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#40 Opsystems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#32 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#55 Graphics on a Text-Only Display
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#59 Why do IBMers think disks are 'Direct Access'?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#33 My Vintage Dream PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#52 Hercules; more information requested
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#61 Evolution of Floating Point
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#74 Best IEFACTRT (off topic)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#41 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#81 LPARs: More or Less?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#75 LPARs: More or Less?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#76 LPARs: More or Less?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#36 16:32 far pointers in OpenWatcom C/C++
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#83 Far and near pointers on the 80286 and later
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#16 Region Size - Step or Jobcard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#21 Dataspaces or 64 bit storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#79 Speed of Old Hard Disks - adcons
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#20 A brief history of CMS/XA, part 1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#72 Multiple Virtual Memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#17 New job for mainframes: Cloud platform
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#11 History of byte addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#11 Was there ever a DOS JCL reference like the Brown book?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#45 segments and sharing, was 68000 assembly language programming
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#66 M68k add to memory is not a mistake any more
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#100 5 Byte Device Addresses?

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

Indirect Bit

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Indirect Bit
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 10:35:10 -0400
360/67 had optional search-list instruction feature courtesy of lincoln labs ... and many machines had it installed.

cp67 was changed to use search-list for storage management. blocks of available storage were ordered on chain by real storage address ... allocation searching possibly avg. of several hundred elements for allocation (best fit). search-list instruction possibly cut processing by 2/3rds ... eliminating instruction fetch loop ... but was still possibly starting to run 20% of processing (under large loads).

cp67 then changed storage management to "subpools" for most common sizes ... push/pop; 14 instructions in&out ... and total processing percentage in the negligible range ... and everybody forgot about search-list.

original 64bit power/pc did have big argument with rochester that wanted to move their as/400 cisc to power/risc. They argument was over having 65th bit as part of addresses ... which was used for totally different purpose in as/400.

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

Fighting Cyber Crime with Transparency

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 11 Apr, 2012
Subject: Fighting Cyber Crime with Transparency
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/E64KRDiPFmA

Fighting Cyber Crime with Transparency
http://ctovision.com/2012/04/fighting-cyber-crime-with-transparency/

I pontificate a bit about breach notification here:
http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001372.html

also archived here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#79

and more in this earlier post about "Data Theft"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#17
and this earlier post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#8
about doing industry standard in the mid-90s that eliminate most of the current problems.

aka it goes much further if you eliminate leakage of the information as a threat ... eliminating the ability of crooks to use leaked information for fraudulent financial transactions

a big problem is that the possibility of fraud justifies significant surcharge that merchants pay in interchange fees ... which has a significant built-in profit component. Slightly tweaking the paradigm eliminates that fraud, commoditizing the infrastructure and lowers the barrier to entry for competition. It also eliminates it as the current low-handing fruit ... which results in the crooks moving to the next levels ... which doesn't have the equivalent opportunity for heavy profit-related fees placed on merchants.

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

Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 11 Apr, 2012
Subject: Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
Blog: MainframeZone
re:
http://lnkd.in/rYr__C
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#54

Clouds are doing it all the time with intel platforms ... it is sort of the processor version of RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks). RAID is the common platform for most mainframe DASD ... emulating CKD on RAID FBA disks ... "real" CKD DASD hasn't been manufactured for decades.

When the internal online vm370-based sales&marketing support HONE system consolidated US datacenters at 1501 cal. in the mid-70s, vm370 was enhanced to support single system image ... it possibly was largest single-system-image (loosely-coupled) in the world at the time (multiple large two-cpu multi-processors all sharing same DASD pool) ... with fail-over and load-balancing across the complex. misc. past posts mentioning HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

Later in the early 80s, 1501 was replicated in Dallas and then Boulder with load-balancing and fail-over across the three sites (this was separate from large number of HONE clones cropping up in large number of places around the world). Recent reference to Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#43 .
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#46 .

I've periodically mentioned that the virtual machine based (ibm mainframe) online service bureaus formed in the 60s were the original cloud. at least one such operation modified their vm370 system in the mid-70s to not only provide single system image (predating, but similar to HONE modifications) in addition at the same time, they implemented non-disruptive, "live" process migration (this was *not* done at HONE) ... i.e. active online virtual machines could migrate between loosely-coupled real processors in the complex ... even between datacenters on the east and west coasts (nearly 40yrs ago now). some past posts mentioning virtual-machine based online commercial services (starting in the 60s, over 40yrs ago)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

Today, a lot of the intel-processor-based clouds are leveraging virtual machine technology to emulate similar 40yr old implementations.

Disclaimer ... long ago and far away my wife was in the JES group (was co-author of JESUS ... JES Unified System ... all the features in JES2 & JES3 that customers couldn't do w/o ... combined in one system ... various factions resulted in it never coming to pass) ... and was then con'ed into going to POK to be responsible for loosely-coupled architecture. While there she did Peer-Coupled Shared Data architecture ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

which saw little uptake except for IMS hot-standby ... until sysplex (and parallel sysplex). The lack of uptake and ongoing battles with the communication group (trying to force her into using SNA/VTAM for loosely-coupled coordination) ... contributed to her not remaining long in the position.

Later we did HA/CMP using power & RS/6000 ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

Out marketing HA/CMP I coined the terms disaster survivability and geographic survivability ... and also was asked to write a section for the corporate continuous availability strategy document ... however it got pulled when both Rochester and POK complained (that at the time, they were unable to meet the objectives). misc. past availability posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available

The dasd engineering and product test labs were running "stand-alone" development and test basically pre-scheduled time around the clock 7x24 on their mainframes. They had once tried MVS (potential of multiple concurrent testing) ... but MVS had 15min MTBF in that environment running a single testcell. I offered to rewrite input/output supervisor to make it bullet-proof allowing multiple concurrent testing ... enabling on-demand, anytime testing ... drastically improving productivity.

I wrote up a couple internal-only papers on the work ... and happen to make passing reference to the MVS 15min MTBF ... which brought down the wrath of the MVS group on my head ... which took many forms. At one point, disk division attempted to have a corporate award for my work ... but the MVS group made it known that they would strongly oppose any such corporate award. Somewhat as consolation prize ... my management got the HONE organization to give me an informal award for over decade of my support for the HONE organization dating back to original cp67 days. misc. past posts mentioning getting to play disk engineer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

One of the things done early on for CP67 was automated IPLs ... including failures that took dump and automatically come back up. It was instrumental in going to 7x24 online and dark-room operation. Part of the issue was mainframes were leased back then (even internal datacenters had budgets involving paying for internal leases). 3rd&4th shift lease rates were lower than 1st shift (i.e. rates drop for hours over the first 40/week). Early on, even with significantly reduced off-shift lease rates, the online activity was difficult to justify leaving the machine up all the time for on-demand use ... however it was necessary to encourage the use of the machine 7x24. Part of the strategy of reducing costs of off-shift operation was making the system available w/o requiring an onsite operator.

The other significant change to CP67 was using the "prepare" command for terminal I/O. Lease charges were based on a system "meter" that ran whenever the processor was running and/or the channels were running. An "active" channel I/O waiting for any kind of terminal I/O would keep the system "meter" running. Inserting a "prepare" CCW in terminal channel program would suspend the channel and allow the system "meter" to coast to stop (effectively resulting in zero lease charges when there was no activity).

Part of the system "meter" design was that it would continue to "coast" for 400milliseconds after the last activity (aka if there was at least some activity every 400millsecs, the system meter would continue to run continuously). One of the indications that at least part of the MVS design had come from before the lease->sales conversion was that the MVS SRM had a fixed wakeup timer interval of 400milliseconds (guaranteeing that if MVS was up and running and otherwise not doing anything, at least the SRM would keep the meter running continuously).

similar past threads:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#23 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#79 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#5 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#6 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#8 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#12 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#27 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?

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

Time to competency for new software language?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 11 Apr, 2012
Subject: Time to competency for new software language?
Blog: Mainframe Experts
re:
http://lnkd.in/Nfu3wc
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#74 Time to competency for new software language?

post in "Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?" thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#60

referencing 4th generation that were developed on various virtual machine platforms ... Ramis, Nomad, & Focus. Somewhat as an aside ... later relational/sql was also developed on virtual machine platform (145 vm370 system at san jose research). Above also mentions SQL/Relational technology transfer to Endicott and release as SQL/DS was done under the corporate radar as the official effort was "EAGLE". It was after "EAGLE" imploded that request about how fast could a port be made to MVS (which later becomes DB2).

SQL gained a major position and not a lot has come by to displace it.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

besides the URLs in the mentioned post ... this goes into some of the conflict between NCSS (modified virtual machine cp67 they ported to 370 and called vp/css) and TYMSHARE (vm370). NCSS offered RAMIS and then the follow-on work FOCUS shows up on TYMSHARE ... apparently prompting NCSS to do NOMAD
http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/Oral_History/102658228.05.01.acc.pdf

for other drift, TYMSHARE also had done a vm370/cms based online computer conferencing offering to their commercial online service. They also started offering it for free to SHARE as VMSHARE in August 1976 ... archives here:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare
sometimes(?) "404" ... but also at wayback machine
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

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

Slide Show: 10 SQL Injection Tools For Database Pwnage

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 12 Apr, 2012
Subject: Slide Show: 10 SQL Injection Tools For Database Pwnage
Blog: Information Security
Slide Show: 10 SQL Injection Tools For Database Pwnage
http://www.darkreading.com/galleries/security/news/232900180/slide-show-10-sql-injection-tools-for-database-pwnage.html

We were called in as consultants to a small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server, they had also invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted to use; the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce". The RDBMS based ecommerce servers were found to have much higher number of exploits than non-RDBMS eservers (somewhat general rule about exploits/insecurity proportional to complexity).

disclaimer: long ago and far away I was involved in the original relational/SQL implementation at San Jose Research ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

CISPA legislation seen by many as SOPA 2.0

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 12 Apr, 2012
Subject: CISPA legislation seen by many as SOPA 2.0
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/f4e3bNLHgfr

CISPA legislation seen by many as SOPA 2.0
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-cispa-legislation-seen-by-many-as-sopa-20-20120409,0,259413.story

previous here on google ... Dodd in both SOPA and too-big-to-fail:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/bSMHJ2tuBB7
also
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#72 Chris Dodd's SOPA Crusading

... there was recent news about effect of Volcker Rule in Dodd-Frank ... but as referenced ... Dodd had already "gutted" most of the Volcker Rule (pale shadow of the original)

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

Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 12 Apr, 2012
Subject: Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer
Blog: Greater IBM
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#55 Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#77 Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer

Don't get me started on that ... there was big battle with both the TSO group and the 3274 controller group over the concept of "sub-second response" ... both organizations in denial (as well as "user-friendly"). This recent post (includes definition of "bad response" from IBM Jargon)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#12
with old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#email820826

about cms system with 1sec response would be considered "bad system" while tso system with 1sec response would be considered "good system". It also has reference to this old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19

with early 80s comparison of 3272 controller and 3274 controller. 3272 controller introduced only .086 sec delay making it possible to have .2sec response (as seen by human when coupled with .11 sec system response). 3274 controller would increase that controller delay to .53 sec ... making it impossible to have .2second response (TSO users never noticed the 3272->3274 change since their system response tended to be so horrible already).

and "user friendly" thread continues with several other posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#11 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#13 From Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#15 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#16 From "Who originated the phrase user-friendly" thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#19 From Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#22 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#27 From "Who originated the phrase user-friendly" thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#31 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#33 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#36 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#38 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#43 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#44 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#51 From Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#6 Origins of "User-friendly"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#7 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?

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

Developing a Disruptive Mindset

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 12 Apr, 2012
Subject: Developing a Disruptive Mindset
Blog: Facebook
Developing a Disruptive Mindset
http://rrugezbulues.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/developing-a-disruptive-mindset/

One of Boyd's examples about US Military developed rigid, top-down command&control system for WW2 ... he would cite German military with 3% officers compared to 14% for US growing to over 20%. One might conclude that all this talk about "disruptive" is because of an excessively rigid top-down hierarchical structure ... it wouldn't be disruptive, just normal in a agile, fluid, adaptable operation.

There has been some written about Boyd evolving OODA-loop from his experience as fighter pilot ... having to quickly operate in a highly changing environment. However Boyd would also emphasis constantly viewing from every possible facet ... which can also be taken as experience as fighter pilot getting lots of different perspectives from the air (his emphasis also included investigating lots of different sources with different view points).

One can conjecture that the reference to avoiding political topics is people have become so vested in their political views that discussions then degenerate into only being about very small number of points. There is some conjecture that the current political environment encourages such positions as distraction of what is really going on ... periodically there are references by Washington pundits to congress as Kabuki Theater (1603-1629)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabuki

some recent posts ion the disruptive theme:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#70 Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#71 Disruptive Thinkers: Defining the Problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#78 Time to Think ... and to Listen

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

False Start's sad demise: Google abandons noble attempt to make SSL less painful

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 12 Apr, 2012
Subject: False Start's sad demise: Google abandons noble attempt to make SSL less painful
Blog: IETF - The Internet Engineering Task Force
re:
http://lnkd.in/FCwpMR

a little drift (from last month) ... my "catch22" theme about having some public key as part of domain name lookup

Google now the largest public DNS provider in the world
http://www.fiercecio.com/techwatch/story/google-now-largest-public-dns-provider-world/2012-02-16

I had lots of gripes about PKI after doing whats now frequently called electronic commerce with SSL (getting close to 20yrs ago) ... and after one particular session with a few people ... they appeared to kickoff OCSP to try and address some of the issues ... which carefully avoided actually eliminating the certificate part.

I worked on XTP back in the 80s ... was looking at real-time flow ... for things like video on demand ... but also reliable transaction with minimum of 3packet exchange (compared to 7packet minimum exchange for tcp/ip). HTTP was supposedly datagram/atomic ... but implemented on top of TCP for reliable. One of the consequences was TCP had been long-term session ... and handle inefficient mechanism for FINWAIT processing (session shutdown) assuming few on the list. There was period in the 90s as webservers scaled up and found that they were spending 90+% of total CPU time in FINWAIT processing. past posts mentioning xtp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#xtphsp

related to latency ... not simply real-time

How One Second Could Cost Amazon $1.6 Billion In Sales
http://www.fastcompany.com/1825005/impatient-america-needs-faster-intertubes

The other opportunity is replacing PKI stale/static digital certificate processing with real-time information ... part of this shows up in this item about little security progress in almost 20yrs
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001368.html

False Start's sad demise: Google abandons noble attempt to make SSL less painful
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/google-abandons-noble-experiment-to-make-ssl-less-painful.ars

reference to above ... also "too expensive" ... one of the things potentially part of SPDY.

Note part of the original "SSL" as part of e-commerce ... there was criteria that "SSL" be used for the initial connection and used for the whole session with the website. Fairly early, websites found that "SSL" cut their throughput by 90-95% and so they dropped back to just using "SSL" for checkout/paying ... which violated a fundamental "SSL" security criteria.

"SSL" security/integrity requires that user understands the relationship between the website they think they are talking to and the corresponding URL that they've entered into the browser. Then the browser "SSL" establishes the relationship between the entered URL and the webserver actually being talked to.

*BOTH* are required to establish the integrity that the webserver that the user thinks they are talking to is actually the webserver they are talking to. Dropping back to user clicking on pay/checkout buttom violates fundamental "SSL" requirement ... since an unvalidated webserver is providing the URL (not the user) for the SSL session ... potentially degrading to simply the webserver is whatever webserver that the webserver claims to be.

past posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#98 Google works on Internet standards with TCP proposals, SPDY standardization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#99 Google works on Internet standards with TCP proposals, SPDY standardization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#103 Google works on Internet standards with TCP proposals, SPDY standardization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#105 Google works on Internet standards with TCP proposals, SPDY standardization

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

Just for a laugh ... How to spot an old IBMer

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 13 Apr, 2012
Subject: Just for a laugh ... How to spot an old IBMer
Blog: Greater IBM
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#55 Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#77 Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#87 Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer

I have discussion over in the IETF group (internet standards)
http://lnkd.in/FCwpMR
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#89 Google takes on Internet standards with TCP proposals, SPDY

that covers several of the issues with latency and response. I touched on several of the issues through the discussion. HTTP on top of TCP is minimum of 7 packet exchange ... in the late 80s, I worked on reliable transaction done in minimum of 3 packet exchange ... and I've proposed a version of secure, encrypted, public key transaction also in minimum of 3 packet exchange (as opposed to current SSL on top of TCP).

In the mean time, for nearly a decade ... I've leveraged browser background tabs to fire off a hundred or three URLs in the background ... so when I get around to looking at them ... they are already local ... and can have instantaneous response.

I had worked with both the authors of the referenced study:
http://www.vm.ibm.com/devpages/jelliott/evrrt.html

one of the .3sec response system were claiming to be the best in the company (aka they were using system-based measurements not as directly seen by end user). However, I had done several systems with nearly identical hardware configuration and workload that had .11 sec response (coupled with .086sec 3272 latency resulted in .2sec seen by the user).

misc. past posts mentioning background tabs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#54 Is there a way to configure your web browser to use multiple
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#48 Mozilla v Firefox
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#50 Mozilla v Firefox
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#55 Mozilla v Firefox
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#66 Mozilla v Firefox
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#41 Moz 1.8 performance dramatically improved
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#51 Intel abandons USEnet news
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#85 Which of the latest browsers do you prefer and why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#29 How were you using the internet 10 years ago and how does that differ from how you use it today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#54 Windowed Interfaces 1981-2009
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#72 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#22 OT: PC clock failure--CMOS battery?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#39 Unix systems and Serialization mechanism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#61 Agents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#19 Writing article on telework/telecommuting

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

The Fractal Organization: Creating sustainable organizations with the Viable System Model

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 13 Apr, 2012
Subject: The Fractal Organization: Creating sustainable organizations with the Viable System Model
Blog: Facebook
The Fractal Organization: Creating sustainable organizations with the Viable System Model
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470060565/

The Boyd (and other) line was push decisions as low in the organization as possible. Counter to rigid, top-down, command&control infrastructure ... maximizing the importance of those at the top. With lots of excess resources, the inefficiencies of those at the top can be masked (counter to the paradigm for rigid, centralized control is necessary to optimize few/scarce resources). This corresponds to report that ratio of executive to worker compensation has exploded to 400:1 (Age of Greed claims spiked over 500:1) after have been 20:1 for a long time and 10:1 in most of the rest of the world

the jaundice view is much of this is the search for the perfect control structure ... but harkening back to Boyd's Organic Design for Command and Control ... the problem doesn't start with the structure part ... but the control part. organic design for command and control reference here:
http://tobeortodo.com/all-things-john-boyd/

The Samurai Strategy
https://www.amazon.com/The-Samurai-Strategy-ebook/dp/B0042X9A52

loc4766-69:
In the mid-eighties, American corporations were spending two and three times more on mergers and acquisitions than on research and development. Most industrialists here no longer cared to try making anything as old-fashioned as competitive products; they preferred to make deals and sell imports. The net result was that America, the world's major economic locomotive, was veering off the track and seriously in danger of taking everybody else in the world along with it.
loc4806-8:
What all those entrenched CEOs didn't realize, in their wildest paranoia, was that seven-figure salaries and cushy executive perks were about to go the way of Cadillac tail fins. World competition, not executive compensation, would be the new game.
... e-book now only 99cents ... and of course it was 1988, now its 8, 9, 9+ figure salaries.

much more current: Age of Greed
https://www.amazon.com/Age-Greed-Triumph-Finance-ebook/dp/B004DEPF6I/

... comment is one of the 1st things LBOs do is cut whatever remaining R&D budget for shortterm payback

recent posts mentioning compensation ratio:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#25 You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#26 What's your favorite quote on "accountability"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#12 Sun Tzu, Boyd, strategy and extensions of same
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#19 "Buffett Tax" and truth in numbers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#26 Strategy subsumes culture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#31 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#43 Where are all the old tech workers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#44 What's the most interesting thing you do in your non-work life?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#90 IBM Doing Some Restructuring?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#16 IBM cuts more than 1,000 U.S. Workers

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

Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Newsgroups: comp.sys.unisys, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2012 14:46:50 -0400
David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b@dd-b.net> writes:
The 1403 I worked with did not have this feature. I've heard about it, though; so I think it came along in later models.

1403N1 ... 1100 lpm ... story goes that it ran faster, made more noise, needed more sound proofing, made the cover heavier, needed power assist to lift.

recent post (chain versus train)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#53

URLs from above
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1403
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/attic3/attic3_024.html
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/chain.html
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/endicott/endicott_chronology1970.html

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

Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Newsgroups: comp.sys.unisys, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2012 17:17:09 -0400
Lawrence Greenwald <lawrence.greenwald@sbcglobal.net> writes:
How did the 1403N1 compare to its successor, the 3211?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#92 Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos

3211 was 2000 lpm and programmable loadable "forms control" ... rather than control tape.
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/38xx/3811/GA24-3543-0_3211_Printer_3811_Control_Unit_Component_Description_Jun70.pdf

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

Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 13 Apr, 2012
Subject: Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
Blog: MainframeZone
re:
http://lnkd.in/hg3T_d

Max'ing out at 70% is what use to be claimed for mainframe batch systems. As an undergraduate in the 60s, I redid scheduling & dispatching that was then shipped in IBM (virtual machine) products that regularly ran 100% cpu with small subsecond response ... archived pieces from recent discussion in Greater IBM on the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#87 .
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#90

It now comes down to hardware balance provisioning and the software driving the platform. Part of the issue is that many cases the processor chips have become commodity items and less expensive than I/O and memory .... so it may be cost effective to provision individual systems with less I/O and memory with a larger number of systems.

I've told story back in the days when 3090 processor was most expensive part of the system ... it was cost-effective to over-configure memory and channels in attempt to try and achieve 100% processor utilization. The initial design point for number of 3090 channels was assuming 3380 disks operating a 3mbytes/sec transfer and 3880 controller that had channel overhead equivalent to 3830. Problem was that 3880 had much slower processor (than 3830) for control operations ... which significantly increase channel busy (compared to 3830). In order to achieve aggregate i/o operations/sec ... the number of 3090 channels had to be significantly increased (to compensate for the significant increase in channel busy resulting from much slower 3880 processor) ... which then required additional TCM (expensive item). There were semi-humorous references to the 3090 product charging the 3880 product for the increase 3090 manufacturing costs (extra TCM).

One of the issues is that E5-2600 is claiming 527BIPs and IBM is advertising base price for E5-2600 "blade" at $1815. By comparison fully configured 80processor Z196 is claiming 50BIPs has been quoted at $29M. In theory ... to take the Z196 workload moved to E5-2600 and keep 11times the processor power operating at 100% could require 11 times the memory and 11 times the I/O capacity.

misc. recent posts mentioning e5-2600:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#41 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#50 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#64 Layer 8: NASA unplugs last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#3 NASA unplugs their last mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#4 Memory versus processor speed

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

Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Newsgroups: comp.sys.unisys, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2012 19:43:01 -0400
Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> writes:
Looks like the same technology as the 1403, just faster. Knowing IBM I'm guessing they managed to keep the print quality just as good.

During that era, I started working at Bell Labs. Their high speed mainframe printers were Xerox 9700s, printing a page at a time with multiple fonts and 300DPI. We got book quality print. I remember creating some pretty high quality customer documentation on those things.

I worked in one shop with 1403N1s but instead of IBM Power for DOS, they were using something called EDOS. It used the simple trick of not printing a page until all the lines were in memory then using command chaining to print the whole page with 1 I/O operation.

You could tell from the sound that EDOS was driving the printer faster than IBM software ever did.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#92 Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#93 Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos

hasp & cp67 used similar command chaining to improve printing throughput (and follow-on jes2 and vm370).

in the 3211 time-frame ... ibm also had 3800 laser page printer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3800

announce 15apr1975 and first shipped july1976 ... mentions 9700 didn't ship until 1977.

ibm also took its copier3 and added computer interface as 6670 for departmental printer. san jose research then modifications as sherpa or apa6670 (all points addressable).

6670/sherpa was put all over san jose research bldg, nearly every department got one.

6670/sherpa had dual paper trays (from copier3) and it was possible to put different colored paper in the 2nd tray. the device driver was change to do a output "separator" page from the 2nd tray with person's name & other details. Since that left the majority of the separator page blank ... the device driver was enhanced to randomly choose from a quotations file to also print on the separator page.

we were having a corporate security audit and in a battle over "demo programs" (aka "games") on the system. We had gotten the guidelines rewritten so the logon 3270 screen no longer said
for business use only

changed to for management approved uses only (which included demo programs). In show down, demo programs were upheld.

the audit also included after-hour sweeps for classified documents being left out, unlocked, on desks and/or printed and not secured. at one of the 6670s, an auditor found unclassifed output left out ontop ... but with the following (random selection) on the separator page:
[Business Maxims:] Signs, real and imagined, which belong on the walls of the nation's offices:
1) Never Try to Teach a Pig to Sing; It Wastes Your Time and It Annoys the Pig.
2) Sometimes the Crowd IS Right.
3) Auditors Are the People Who Go in After the War Is Lost and Bayonet the Wounded.
4) To Err Is Human -- To Forgive Is Not Company Policy.


... snip ...

and they complained to management that we were purposefully trying to ridicule them.

another scenario was blank corporate letterhead paper use to be left unsecured. one weekend somebody printed the following password rules on corporate letterhead and placed one in every building bulletin board.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#52

Monday morning, several people arriving at work ... took it as an official corporate document (they failed to notice it was dated April 1st ... which was Sunday ... and no official documents carry a Sunday date). Afterwards there was directive that all official corporate letterhead paper had to be kept secured under lock&key. Although I had received the contents in email the previous Friday and redistributed it to several people in the building ... it wasn't me that placed it in the building bulletin boards.

past posts mentioning 3800, 6670, sherpa, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#42 Enter fonts (was Re: Unix case-sensitivity: how did it originate?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#43 Enter fonts (was Re: Unix case-sensitivity: how did it originate?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#52 Enter fonts (was Re: Unix case-sensitivity: how did it originate?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#29 20th March 2000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#81 Coloured IBM DASD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#1 What good and old text formatter are there ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#50 IBM 705 computer manual
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#5 New IBM history book out
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#31 Hercules etc. IBM not just missing a great opportunity...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#8 Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#52 Spotting BAH Claims to Fame
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#7 disk write caching (was: ibm icecube -- return of
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#42 MVS 3.8J and NJE via CTC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#50 Microsoft's innovations [was:the rtf format]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#52 Microsoft's innovations [was:the rtf format]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#24 IBM Selectric as printer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#29 6670
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#43 Early attempts at console humor?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#45 text character based diagrams in technical documentation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#52 dissassembled code
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#1 Oldest running code
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#13 JSX 328x printing (portrait)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#17 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#18 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#48 Xah Lee's Unixism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#61 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#25 360POO
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#34 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#48 1403 printers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#51 1403 printers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#52 1403 printers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#54 1403 printers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#58 Book on computer architecture for beginners
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#0 Book on computer architecture for beginners
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#29 Job seperators
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#20 Seeking Info on XDS Sigma 7 APL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#0 The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#4 The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#44 Materiel and graft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#49 Materiel and graft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#1 Materiel and graft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#36 Special characters in passwords was Re: RACF - Password rules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#27 The Complete April Fools' Day RFCs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#72 Parse/Template Function
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#51 It has been a long time since Ihave seen a printer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#8a Using Military Philosophy to Drive High Value Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#15 Code Page 1047 vs 037 - Green card confusion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#79 Book: "Everyone Else Must Fail" --Larry Ellison and Oracle ???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#68 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#69 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#42 Password Rules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#71 Password Rules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#6 Timeline: The evolution of online communities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#0 Cyber attackers empty business accounts in minutes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#19 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#1 Does this count as 'computer' folklore?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#24 Processes' memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#69 Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#74 Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#85 Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#2 Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#23 Apple iPad -- this merges with folklore
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#60 LPARs: More or Less?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#68 Adventure - Or Colossal Cave Adventure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#43 Boyd's Briefings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#57 IBM 029 service manual
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#59 IBM 029 service manual
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#49 GML
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#61 Mainframe Slang terms
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#18 Rare Apple I computer sells for $216,000 in London
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#60 Daisywheel Question: 192-character Printwheel Types
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#1 Is email dead? What do you think?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#89 Make the mainframe work environment fun and intuitive
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#82 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#84 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#24 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#55 junking CKD; was "Social Security Confronts IT Obsolescence"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#10 History of APL -- Software Preservation Group
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#21 WHAT WAS THE PROJECT YOU WERE INVOLVED/PARTICIPATED AT IBM THAT YOU WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#62 Mixing Auth and Non-Auth Modules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#19 program coding pads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#21 program coding pads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#26 program coding pads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#53 Virginia M. Rometty elected IBM president
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#77 Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer

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

Indirect Bit

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Indirect Bit
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:07:00 -0400
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
We know from IBM's disappointing results with the STRETCH and the 360/91, and its unexpected bonus of performance from the 360/85, that caches not only work, but they work well. On most normal computational tasks, they make RAM look almost like it is as fast as the more expensive and more power-consuming memory used in the cache.

So caches are anything but a waste in most computers. On the one hand, some supercomputers, though, are sometimes used for problems with poor locality. On the other hand, the 360/195, for example, got by very nicely with 32 Kbytes of cache, and so it might legitimately be asked if something like 2 Mbytes of cache as often found on current microprocessors is really needed.

But performance results do show that the larger caches do pay off - and part of the problem is how current operating systems work; another part is shorter cycle times that make the cache miss penalty higher.


this mentions that documents included stuff about Harvest, have been declassified and available:
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2011/06/nsa060811.html

a couple recent posts mentioning ACS, and other machines:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#38 A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#39 A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia

references several webpages on ACS by Smotherman ... including this which has lots of supercomputer & 360 minutia
http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.html

the above includes reference to red/blue dual i-stream (aka hyperthread) design for ACS-360. Later in the mid-70s, 370/195 group sucked me into looking at software support for possibly similar (dual i-stream) implementation (but never came to pass).

in the 370/195 case, peak processing was 10mips ... but conditional branch instructions drained the pipeline ... so most codes ran at 5mips. thought was two-threads would keep machine running at peak.

other ACS parts including lots of other history thrown in:
https://people.computing.clemson.edu/~mark/acs.html
http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_timeline.html

I've got some old email from somebody relating discussions with people that had worked for Amdahl in the ACS-360 group ... with references to "casualties of Amdahl/Bertram and innumerable other ego"

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

Just for a laugh ... How to spot an old IBMer

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 14 Apr, 2012
Subject: Just for a laugh ... How to spot an old IBMer
Blog: Greater IBM
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#55 Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#77 Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#87 Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#90 Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer

somebody familiar with the april 1st password corporate directive 84-570471 ... i've reproduced a number of times in the past ... from old posting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#52

recently discussed in this long-winded post (about 1401n1, 6670, 3211, 3800)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#95

for other drift, the internet has a long established april 1st tradition ... A discussion I started over in IETF (internet standards) group
http://lnkd.in/aGQ8m4

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

Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Newsgroups: comp.sys.unisys, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2012 09:29:50 -0400
hancock4 writes:
Our S/360-40 originally did not have any spooling, a legacy of the 1401 days. Then a new manager brought in spooling and that improved machine throughput tremendously. There was just those 2415 tape drives that were horrendously slow. When I changed jobs I was amazed at how fast 'normal' 2400 tape drives ran.

What amazed me was how easy it was to install spooling on the S/360-40 (DOS Rel 26). I didn't think it would be compatible with our Autocoder Emulation jobs, but it was. There was very little tweaking involved.


univ. had 709 with a 1401 "front-end" ... ran MPIO unit record front-end for 709, i.e. card reader->tape & tape->printer/punch. tapes had to be manually moved between 709 and 1401 tape drives

as part of transition from 709/1401 (ibsys) to tss/360 on 360/67, the 1401 was initially replaced with 360/30. The 360/30 could run MPIO in 1401 hardware emulation mode ... but they gave me a student job to rewrite MPIO in 360 assembler to run natively on 360/30 (I guess as part of getting acquainted with 360).

They would let me have the datacenter on the weekends (8am sat until 8am mon ... 48hrs w/o sleep made monday classes interesting). I got to design my own monitor, dispatcher, interrupt handlers, device drivers, storage management, error recovery, etc. Eventually had 2000 (box) cards with assembler switch for generating "stand-alone" version and a os/360 version with system services i/o macros and "DCBs". The stand-alone version took about 25 minutes elapsed time to assemble (circa os/360 pcp release 6) and the os/360 version took approx. an hour to assemble (light pattern on 360/30 front panel seem to indicate that each DCB macro took approx. 5 minutes elapsed time to assemble).

Later 360/67 came in to replace 709-360/30 combo ... tss/360 never quite made it to production level use ... so the machine ran in 360/65 mode majority of time. Now student fortran jobs were taking under second elapsed time under ibsys tape->tape on 709. Initial throughput on os/360 they were taking well over a minute elapsed time. About this time, the univ. let me have support responsibility for os/360 ... and eventually I got HASP spooling ... which brought elapsed time down to almost 30seconds. I then did lots of optimization of os/360 sysgen ... to carefully order where things were placed on disk (reducing avg. arm seek distance) ... getting elapsed time down to under 13 seconds (almost another factor of 3times improvement).

Old post with part of presenetation that I gave at fall '68 SHARE meeting on the os/360 work ... also I got to play with cp67 on the weekends and had rewritten lots of cp67 kernel code ... some test summary also appears in the presentation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18

However, it wasn't until we got WATFOR at the univ. that student fortran job elapsed time drop below the sub-second that they ran on ibsys 709.

misc. recent posts mentioning WATFOR:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#61 Source code for s/360 [PUBLIC]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#54 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#28 floating point, was history of RPG, Fortran
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#61 Mainframe Slang terms
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#66 PL/1 as first language
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#44 My first mainframe experience
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#50 My first mainframe experience
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#17 Is the magic and romance killed by Windows (and Linux)?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#13 program coding pads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#17 Last card reader?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#34 Data Areas?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#5 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#36 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#43 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#7 PCP - memory lane

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

Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 14 Apr, 2012
Subject: Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
Blog: MainframeZone
re:
http://lnkd.in/hg3T_d
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#94 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?

aka base IBM price for e5-2600 blade is $3.15/BIP and $580,000/BIP for Z196

x-over from Mainframe experts NASA unplugs last mainframe:
http://lnkd.in/djmeWv
post also archived here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#50

mentions Amazon cloud pricing for "CC2" (e5-2690) at $2.40/hr for "on-demand" but can get better bulk rates.

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

Indirect Bit

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Indirect Bit
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2012 20:58:50 -0400
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
There certainly were machines that implemented higher-level languages more directly, though. There were stack machines, like the Burroughs machines and the KDF9. There was an experimental 360/40 or 360/30 that was used to run APL directly with custom microcode.

there was 360/50 that had specialized micrcode for CPS ... conversational programing system for pli and basic. CPS was done by IBM Boston Programming Center on 3rd flr of 545 tech sq (IBM science center was on 4th flr, and multics was on 5th flr) ... some amount subcontracted to allen-babcock:
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/allen-babcock/cps/CPS_Progress_Report_may66.pdf

IBM cambridge science center did port of apl\360 to cp67/cms for cms\apl. IBM palo alto science center then did apl\cms for vm370/cms ... as well as the corresponding apl microcode assist for the 370/145.

some amount of 360 emulation was done for PALM (earlier had been SCAMP) ... used to run apl\360 for the 5100 ... done at the IBM palo alto science center.
http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/retrocomputing/ibm/5100/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5100
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/ibm5100/index.htm

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

Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Newsgroups: comp.sys.unisys, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2012 09:26:28 -0400
hancock4 writes:
I remember watching a job run on our non-spooled S/360-40. The 1,000 card per minute reader was flying away along with the1,000 line/minute printer. A card would be read, a variety of calculations performed, and the output printed. Watching this run was just amazing. And-- jobs like this without spooling were actually wasteful--they didn't even use much CPU! (On S/360 we had a CPU/wait status lamp we could watch, it was dark when work was being done.)

recent post about "system meter" ... 360s being leased and there was base 1st shift (8hrs/work-day) charge per month ... up to running constantly ... based on the system meter. the system meter ran whenever the processor and/or channels were active.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#83 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes

one of the challenges for cp67 providing 7x24 online access was leaving the system up ... but allowing the system meter to come to stop ... even with channels "preped" for incoming terminal input. objective was to try and cover costs of operation by use charges ... but early non-1st shift use very limited. very chicken&egg ... needed offshift use to justify leaving machine up 7x24 ... but couldn't have large lease charges when system wasn't being used.

used "PREPARE" channel command word ... which would allow channel to go idle ... but the controller was still be waiting for terminal input and then signal channel to start transferring data. this allowed the system to be up&running and available for work ... but the system meter not running when there wasn't actual activity.

one of the issues was that the system meter could "coast" for 400millis before actual coming to stop ... so both processor and channels (I/O) had to be idle for more than 400millis.

misc. past posts about virtual machine based online time-sharing ... including some of the issues being able to provide 7x24
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

i've previously mentioned that patterns of (roller) lights on 360/30 ... could recognize when it was handling DCB macro ... very solid that was different than more varied/random pattern when it was doing other stutff.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#98 Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos

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

Typeface (font) and city identity

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Typeface (font) and city identity
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:54:26 -0400
Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> writes:
For a while I was confused; then I realized there was an IBM editor named Xedit.

Xedit to me is the feature-poor editor which came with the X Window system, like Notepad for Windows. (Although bizarrely its Wikipedia article seems to say it has a LISP interpreter these days).


recent posts in thread mentioning rexx
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#62 Typeface (font) and city identity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#63 Typeface (font) and city identity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#64 Typeface (font) and city identity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#66 Typeface (font) and city identity

past posts with old email about getting in the middle of RED/XEDIT argument. RED was internally developed fullscreen editor that had seen extensive use internally and had lots of features. XEDIT was brand new development effort for a product to release to customers. I got in the middle of it asking why didn't they start from RED base ... rather than starting from scratch. The response was somewhat that it was the RED author's "fault" that RED was so much better than XEDIT and had so much more function ... and therefor it should be the RED author's responsibility to enhance XEDIT with similar capability (as opposed to having started with RED from start).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#39 20th anniversary of the internet (fwd)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#55 The very first text editor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#26 Assembler question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#95 VM IS DEAD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#44 CMS load module format
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#112 SPF in 1978

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

Hard Disk Drive Construction

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hard Disk Drive Construction
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:07:44 -0400
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
MTBF == X / number of actuators. There are also space considerations.

Memorex 3680 and 3682 drives did have multiple actuators (two) so that two systems could be seeking simultaneously. The 3682 sealed HDA's required a fork lift to move around.


ibm 3380 with two (independent) actuators (appeared as two different devices)
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3380c.html
and
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3380d.html

partially disassembled 3380
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IBM3380DiskDriveModule.agr.jpg

original 3380 had 20 track spacing gap between tracks.

"double-density" 3380s doubled the number of tracks by reducing gap between tracks to 10 track spacings. old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#email871122

then old email (in same post)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#email871230

referencing "father of risc" wanted me to play with wide head that read/write 16 closely packed tracks. old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#30

the gap was part how close the precision of the servo positioning to following exactly the track. the proposal was 16+2 heads ... 16 read/write tracks plus a servo positioning track ... the 16+2 track head would read/write the 16 data tracks plus the two servo tracks on either side. basically read/write all 16tracks in parallel for 16times the data rate.

this is similar but different to the 2303 & 2301 fixed head drums. the 2303 read/write one head(track) at a time. the 2301 was essentially the same ... except it read/wrote 4 tracks in parallel ... 1/4th as many tracks, each track was four times as large, and four times the data transfer rate.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/drum.html
and
http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/roger.broughton/museum/DASD/200430.htm

cp67 used the 2301 as a paging device and used the tss/360 2301 page format ... 9 4k pages on a pair of 2301 tracks ... the fifth 4k page spanned the end of the first of the track pair and remainder was on the start of the 2nd track of the pair.

when cp67 was first installed at the univ. ... it had FIFO single page transfer i/o ... on 2301, 2314, 2311, etc. cp67 was able to get about 80 4k page transfers/sec from 2301.

some of the modifications I made was changed 2311&2314 to ordered arm seek queueing (from FIFO) and ordered "chained" requests of page operations for the same arm position (aka track) ... in the case of 2301 ... that could be all requests in the queue (up to make limit) ordered so that transfers were ordered in record number sequence (i.e. 1-9 and then repeat). This increased the peak 4k page transfer rate of 2301 to approx. 270/sec (from 80/sec).

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

Time to Think ... and to Listen

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From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 17 Apr, 2012
Subject: Time to Think ... and to Listen
Blog: Boyd Strategy
re:
http://lnkd.in/PPe3NQ
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#78 Time to Think ... and to Listen

Small Wars disruptive thinkers ... that started off with item mentioning harvard business school (implying MBAs)
http://smallwarsjournal.com/topics/disruptive%20thinkers

and x-over from Chet ... he mentions that the old webpages were abandoned because compromise in 2009 ... so only wayback machine snapshots prior to 2008 should be used (although some types of compromises may be eliminated by archive.org when they take snapshots).

MBAs are a lot like passwords

Weak passwords still the downfall of enterprise security
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9226152/Weak_passwords_still_the_downfall_of_enterprise_security_
Weak passwords still the downfall of enterprise security
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/061212-noam-chomsky-disputes-email-260109.html

it turns out that it isn't the kind of passwords ... it the paradigm itself. I blog&pontificate quite a bit on the subject. 40yrs ago things weren't so bad ... however passwords are something you know shared-secrets. They were so successful that everybody latched on to them. A fundamental characteristic is there has to be unique password for every security domain ... and they have to be "strong" (i.e. impossible to guess). The result is everybody now needs large scores to hundreds ... each impossible to guess ... which also means they are impossible to remember.

The problem is that the paradigm is flawed ... each individual institution acting as if individuals only needs to deal with that specific institution's password (when in fact there may be hundreds). misc. past posts pontificating about shared-secret, something you know authentication paradigm.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#secrets

other past posts pontificating about 3-factor authentication paradigm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#3factor
AMEX, Private Equity, IBM related Gerstner posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner

The "Tandem Memo" online discussion scenario (from late 70s & early 80s) was that w/o serious competition there was little or nothing to differentiate real skills and competency; the results were rewards and promotions tended to degenerate to be for following the (in this case) corporate line ... frequently coming down to being Boyd's To Be or To Do in this previously referenced URL (Chet's old site at the wayback machine from the last century):
https://web.archive.org/web/20020217191358/http://belisarius.com/modern_business_strategy/moore/mie_33.htm

I have a much longer take on the corporate side in this online discussion comments
http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2012/02/10/review-of-who-says-elephants-cant-dance-by-louis-gerstner.html

Spinney's "Perpetual War" theme is that there has to be some level of conflict to justify enormous appropriations ... but not serious enough conflict to result in differentiation based on competency ... but sufficient to justify the budgets. And as I periodic rant, the spreading Success of Failure culture also contributes to increased spending (unfortunately attempts are made to obfuscate purposeful, organized failures with the only way to preclude failures is eliminate trying new stuff ... i.e. innovation will always have some failures).

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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2012 09:40:45 -0400
Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> writes:
Sales and *customer* support. The dwarfs could give you computational power cheaper, but when the payroll must go out, who you gonna call?

somebody told me 2nd had tale of testimony in the gov. anti-trust trial. an executive from one of the dwarfs testify that by the end of the 50s ... everybody in the computer industry testimony that the single most important criteria in the computer business had become a compatible product line (corporate america was expanding as was the uptake of computers, totally rewriting all applications every time it was necessary to upgrade to larger processor was becoming unacceptable). his claim was that Watson was the only computer industry executive that was able to force all the different plant managers & product executives to toe the compatibility line. every other computer corporation never quite was able to achieve the same consistency.

the implication was with ibm the only corporation achieving the single, most important customer requirement ... it could get several of the other characteristics wrong and still dominate the industry (like eliminate lots of the enormous customer software conversion costs, have higher priced hardware becomes less of a barrier).

Amdahl gave a talk at MIT in the early 70s about starting his new clone processor computer company (large auditorium with lots of students, we walked over from the science center). Somebody in the audience asked him what arguments need he use with the money people to convince them to invest. He replied that customers had already invested really enormous amounts in software development, that even if IBM were to totally walk away from 360, that software application base would keep him in business through the end of the century. I've commented in the past this possibly could have been a vieled referience to Future System effort (which had objective to do just exactly that). misc. past posts mentioning FS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
AMEX, Private Equity, IBM related Gerstner posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner

these recent post mention ACS (& ACS-360) with some reference to dustup between Amdahl & Bertram
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#96 Indirect Bit

for other drift, recent discussion in linkedin mainframe discussion about mainframes for the cloud (compared to e5-2600)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#94 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#99 Can Mainframes Be Part Of Cloud Computing?

there was review of Gerstner's book here ... where I have a couple of comments
http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2012/02/10/review-of-who-says-elephants-cant-dance-by-louis-gerstner.html

misc. past posts mentioning single most important criteria:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#44 bloat
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#20 1401 series emulation still running?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#231 Why couldn't others compete against IBM?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#33 Big black helicopters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#38 Big black helicopters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#39 Big black helicopters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#85 The demise of compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#0 Did Intel Bite Off More Than It Can Chew?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#71 Card Columns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#43 Computer folklore - forecasting Sputnik's orbit with
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#0 IBM/Watson autobiography--thoughts on?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#4 IBM/Watson autobiography--thoughts on?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#60 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#77 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#42 1960s: IBM mgmt mistrust of SLT for ICs?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#34 IBM 8000 ???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#8 what does xp do when system is copying
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#63 Remembering the CDC 6600
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#45 360 programs on a z/10
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#14 360 programs on a z/10
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#21 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#57 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
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/2011l.html#12 Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary

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

Hard Disk Drive Construction

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hard Disk Drive Construction
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2012 09:53:31 -0400
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
The IBM 2302 had two actuators too, but each covered half the tracks. I think IBM had a disk with some fixed and some moveable heads.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#103 Hard Disk Drive Construction

3350 offered a fixed-head feature ... a few cylinders that didn't require moving arm.
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3350.html
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM_magnetic_disk_drives#IBM_3350

2305 fixed-head disk introduced "multiple exposures" ... simulated different device address to start channel programs ... allowing multiple concurrent different channel programs involving different parts of the drive. I mentioned doing "slot-sorting" in single channel program for the 2301 drum. with multiple exposures ... single page requests could be started on each address ... and the device would order the requests to achieve maximum transfer per revolution.

The issue with 3350, it only had single exposure/address ... which resulted if there was an active i/o involved moving the arm, there was no way to concurrently do data transfer from the fixed head area (while the disk arm was moving) ... since a 3350 with any allocation in the non-fixed head area and any activity at all ... would be nearly continuously be moving the arm ... which results in any data-transfer request for fixed-head area would have to be delayed until existing arm motion operation completed. I tried to get authorization to offer a multiple exposure feature in conjunction with the 3350 fixed-head feature ... but was shot down in some corporate politics.

past posts mentioning 3350 fixed-head feature:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#104 Fixed Head Drive (Was: Re:Power distribution (Was: Re: A primeval C compiler)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#53 IBM 650 (was: Re: IBM--old computer manuals)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#45 4M pages are a bad idea (was Re: AMD 64bit Hammer CPU and VM)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#3 PLX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#73 DASD Architecture of the future
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#3 Expanded Storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#38 Is VIO mandatory?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#45 Why magnetic drums was/are worse than disks ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#59 Why magnetic drums was/are worse than disks ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#18 Why magnetic drums was/are worse than disks ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#39 Wylbur and Paging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#61 Z/VM support for FBA devices was Re: z/OS support of HMC's 3270 emulation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#75 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#11 Secret Service plans IT reboot
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#11 Mainframe Executive article on the death of tape
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#30 Mainframe Executive article on the death of tape
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#55 Mainframe Executive article on the death of tape

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




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