List of Archived Posts

2013 Newsgroup Postings (04/13 - 05/03)

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
What Makes a thread about the European debt crisis Bizarre?
What Makes a thread about the European debt crisis Bizarre?
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
'Hacking The Mainframe': What Hollywood Gets Wrong About Its Favorite Tech
Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze
More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Air Superiority: Advantage over enemy skies for 60 years
Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?
What Makes weapons control Bizarre?
What Makes weapons control Bizarre?
I Need A Good Password
What Makes weapons control Bizarre?
What Makes a substance Bizarre?
Linchpin Pro-Austerity Paper Rife with Errors; Recomputed Results Show No Growth Hit from High Government Debt
What Makes a substance Bizarre?
What Makes weapons control Bizarre?
Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
Delay between idea and implementation
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Fed proposes annual assessments for large financial companies
Delay between idea and implementation
Delay between idea and implementation
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
Fed proposes annual assessments for large financial companies
Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?
Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
Happy birthday Mosaic! 20 years of the graphical Web browser
Happy birthday Mosaic! 20 years of the graphical Web browser
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
True LRU With 8-Way Associativity Is Implementable
IBM 7070 Question
What Makes a substance Bizarre?
Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,
Pirate Bay co-founder charged with hacking IBM mainframes, stealing money
How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,
Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?
Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
What Makes a substance Bizarre?
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Alan Shugart and IBM
Polaroid's SX-70, the Greatest Gadget of All Time, Is 41
What Makes a substance Bizarre?
The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
Crypto Facility performance
As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,
The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Linear search vs. Binary search
What Makes sorting so cool?
The End Of 'Orderly And Fair Markets'
Linear search vs. Binary search
The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
How internet can evolve
What Makes self modifying code so cool?
The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
What Makes a substance Bizarre?
What Makes a substance Bizarre?
What Makes a substance Bizarre?
The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
What Makes a substance Bizarre?
The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
What Makes a substance Bizarre?
A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: comp.arch, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 11:24:24 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
Or the Enron debacle.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#90 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

recent discussion in (linkedin) financial fraud group about audit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#94 KPMG quits as Skechers and Herbalife auditor amid insider trading allegations

I periodically mention that claims justifying passage of Sarbanes-Oxley was that the onerous audit (and other) procedures would prevent future Enrons & Worldcoms ... and public company financial filings with incorrect information would result in the executives and auditors doing jail time.

however SOX would require SEC to do something ... and as in this recent post about tech. companies evading taxes by hiding income in offshore tax havens ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#93 What Makes An Archtecture Bizarre?

the jokes were that SOX would just turn out to be full employment program for audit companies (because of the increased audit requirements that didn't actually accomplish anything).

recently seen on the internet:
ENRON was dry run and worked so well that it has become institutionalized

recent posts about husband&wife involved in helping Enron (as well as Mr. is high on time's list for those responsible for the financial mess as well as too-big-to-fail, too-big-to-prosecute, and too-big-to-jail)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#49 Insider Fraud: What to Monitor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#41 Adair Turner: A New Debt-Free Money Advocate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#73 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

recent posts that possibly even GAO didn't believe SEC was doing anything and started doing reports of public company fraudulent financial filings (even showing uptic after Sarbanes-Oxley went into effect) ... as far as I know SEC has yet to send any executives and/or auditors to jail for violations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#0 IBM Is Changing The Terms Of Its Retirement Plan, Which Is Frustrating Some Employees
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#4 HSBC's Settlement Leaves Us In A Scary Place
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#49 Insider Fraud: What to Monitor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#35 Adair Turner: A New Debt-Free Money Advocate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#70 Implementing a Whistle-Blower Program - Detecting and Preventing Fraud at Workplace
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#25 Senator Sherrod Brown Drops a Bombshell in Mary Jo White's Hearing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#64 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#42 More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence

posts in ongoing discussion in (linkedin) financial fraud group about enormous dump of records from off-shore tax havens (groups says that there is enough data for articles through the rest of 2013 and possibly into 2014)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#27 Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#46 Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#95 Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: comp.arch, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 11:51:43 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
the jokes were that SOX would just turn out to be full employment program for audit companies (because of the increased audit requirements that didn't actually accomplish anything).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#0 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

the other explanation for the jokes about SOX was just going to be an audit industry full employment program, were claims that SEC already had powers sufficient to have prevented Enron & Worldcom ... if SEC was already ignoring the powers it had ... adding more powers (w/SOX) wouldn't change the fact that SEC wasn't doing anything (regardless of the powers it had) ... the audit industry wasn't being held accountable ... having more audits would mean more audit industry revenue flow ... but there still wouldn't be accountability for the audit industry.

the behind the curtains explanation for Enron, Worldcom, financial mess, etc ... was that congress and the regulatory agencies are "captured" by wallstreet ... there is lots of Kabuki theater ... even what sounds like enormous fines ... which actually are just "cost of doing business" ... when looking at how small the fines are compared to the amounts involved.

recent posts mentioning congress/agency "catpure" and/or Kabuki theater.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#20 The Big Fail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#57 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#73 More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#9 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#35 Adair Turner: A New Debt-Free Money Advocate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#44 Adair Turner: A New Debt-Free Money Advocate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#50 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#55 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#66 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#8 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#25 Senator Sherrod Brown Drops a Bombshell in Mary Jo White's Hearing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#87 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#89 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#90 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#94 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#20 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#55 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#86 What Makes a thread about the European debt crisis Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#94 KPMG quits as Skechers and Herbalife auditor amid insider trading allegations

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: comp.arch, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 13:21:22 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
the behind the curtains explanation for Enron, Worldcom, financial mess, etc ... was that congress and the regulatory agencies are "captured" by wallstreet ... there is lots of Kabuki theater ... even what sounds like enormous fines ... which actually are just "cost of doing business" ... when looking at how small the fines are compared to the amounts involved.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#0 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#1 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

part of Kabuki theater is congress wants continuing flow of funds (into the future) ... one time graft&corruption for a tax loop-hole or other legislative activity would eventually dry up the funds flowing into congressional pockets.

also part of Kabuki theater is maximizing the size of funds

so two objectives ... maximize the appearance of particism battling over some issue ... and sunset any legislation ... so (apparently fierce) battles have to be repeated on regular basis ... all part of maximizing graft&corruption funds flowing into congressional pockets ... this is not just limited to FRCC (financial regulatory congressional complex) ... but many of other federal related operations ... Eisenhower made it the theme of his goodby speech ... warnings about MICC (military industrial congressional complex).

tax loopholes seem to have an all-time high in congressional graft and corruption since it affects all industries. however there is also exploding industry dealing in tax matters that is now lobbying in the interest of making tax code as complex as possible to maximize their business (not necessarily interested in any specific tax loophole ... but interested in having as many as possible and in constant churn to maintain dealing in tax matters as a growth industry and growing percentage of GDP)

a big player in the financial mess was preventing derivatives from being regulated ... originally done as favor to Enron (by both MR&MRS) ... but also shows up as CDS gambling bets with AIG ... and continuing to this day.

originally head of CFTC wanted to regulate derivatives, the head was quickly replaced by MRS who made sure nothing got done until MR got provision passed that prevented derivative regulation. Then MRS resigns and joins ENRON board and member of the audit committee.

recent posts mentioning derivatives:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#2 Search Google, 1960:s-style
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#36 JPMorgan Chase slammed by regulators for control failings after botched derivatives bet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#77 OT: but hopefully interesting - Million core supercomputer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#64 More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#30 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#28 Senator Sherrod Brown Drops a Bombshell in Mary Jo White's Hearing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#29 Bank Holiday In Cyprus
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#40 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#73 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#81 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#82 What Makes Economic History Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#88 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#2 Too-Big-To-Fail, Too-Big-To-Prosecute, Too-Big-To-Jail, not just a problem in the USA
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#9 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#13 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#22 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#23 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#24 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#25 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#29 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#31 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#40 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#45 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?

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

What Makes a thread about the European debt crisis Bizarre?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes a thread about the European debt crisis Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 09:09:44 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
part of the issue was that congress really savaged the budget last decade in conjunction with wallstreet savaging the economy; the gov. steps in to prop up wallstreet w/o actually correcting problems. there is downward slope on available resources that are available for propping up institutions.

re
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#86 What Makes a thread about the European debt crisis Bizarre?

I've been estimating that wallstreet skimmed only $4T-$5T in enormous fees and commissions on the over $27T in securitized instruments, "The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America", David Stockman (budget director under Reagan), pg26/loc778-81:
Moreover, these pools had also been drained of value time and again by the fee extractions taken at each step along the route to securitization and sale. This sequence of fee scalping included mortgage origination, packaging of these loans into mortgage-backed securities, repackaging of MBSs into CDOs, and even further repackaging of CDOs into CDOs squared.

... snip ...

He has lots of vitriol for the administration and congress for what they did to the budget last decade (lot less polite than the comptroller general's comments from middle of last decade about nobody in congress capable of middle school arithmetic) he also has lots left over for the wallstreet boys brought into the administration and how they handled the economic mess in 2008 on behalf of their pals ... the too-big-to-fail should have been allowed to go under and the country would have much better for it ... there wouldn't have been any '29 catastrophe ... people in the administreation were just trying to save the big bonuses for the CEOs responsible (especially the large institutions that had the deplorable lending practices and originated the liar loans).

recent past posts mentioning wallstreet skimming
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#54 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#44 Adair Turner: A New Debt-Free Money Advocate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#46 Bankers Who Made Millions In Housing Boom Misled Investors: Study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#25 Senator Sherrod Brown Drops a Bombshell in Mary Jo White's Hearing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#67 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#70 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

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

What Makes a thread about the European debt crisis Bizarre?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes a thread about the European debt crisis Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 10:02:34 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
He has lots of vitriol for the administration and congress for what they did to the budget last decade (lot less polite than the comptroller general's comments from middle of last decade about nobody in congress capable of middle school arithmetic) he also has lots left over for the wallstreet boys brought into the administration and how they handled the economic mess in 2008 on behalf of their pals ... the too-big-to-fail should have been allowed to go under and the country would have much better for it ... there wouldn't have been any '29 catastrophe ... people in the administreation were just trying to save the big bonuses for the CEOs responsible (especially the large institutions that had the deplorable lending practices and originated the liar loans).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#86 What Makes a thread about the European debt crisis Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#3 What Makes a thread about the European debt crisis Bizarre?

Stockman mentions three large "bank holding companies" (i.e. non-bank operations that also originated loans) that had especially egregious lending practices ... and had been using their financial operations to fiddle the books of the rest of their companies for years ... possibly decades.

the possibility of administration doing something for wallstreet had been bubbling along as things were crashing ... but he implies what really kicked it off was call from ceo of one of these bank holding companies saying his enormous annual bonus was going to be at risk. they then attempted to get TARP passed through congress ... but it failed because not enough thought it was justified ... then more serious scenarios were fabricated in order to scare congress into passing TARP. the money was then used to make sure that their CEO pals got their big annual bonuses.

as mentioned part of the TARP scenario was it was going to be used to clear the too-big-to-fail inventory of toxic assets ... but with only $700B that wouldn't touch the $5.2T just held by the four largest too-big-to-fail (but was enough to help the bonuses of the CEOs)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program

he also mentions FED stepping into to handle the clearing of the toxic assets ... including
its balance sheet grew by $1.3 trillion in just thirteen weeks compared to $850 billion during its first ninety-four years

misc. past posts mentioning just four largest too-big-to-fail were holding toxic assets with face-value of $5.2T "off-book"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#40 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#74 LPARs: More or Less?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#54 The 2010 Census
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#15 The Revolving Door and S.E.C. Enforcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#22 In the News: SEC storms the 'Castle'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#40 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#29 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#33 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#40 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#17 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#63 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#58 Programmer Charged with thieft (maybe off topic)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#50 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#84 The Imaginot Line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#94 The Curly Factor -- Prologue
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#27 The Zippo Lighter theory of the financial crisis (or, who do we want to blame?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#42 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#45 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#56 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#46 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#23 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#25 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#28 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#36 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#41 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#71 Pressing Obama, House Bars Rise for Debt Ceiling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#7 Home prices may drop another 25%, Shiller predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#24 US Housing Crisis Is Now Worse Than Great Depression
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#29 Obama: "We don't have enough engineers"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#39 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#44 S&P Downgrades USA; Time to Downgrade S&P?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#45 S&P's History of Relentless Political Advocacy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#50 How Many Divisions Does Standard and Poors Have?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#16 Feds Launch Probe Into S&P Mortgage Rates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#25 Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed's Secret Loans
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#56 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
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/2011l.html#67 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#73 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#18 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#38 The Mark to Market Fantasy Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#41 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#57 The Mortgage Crisis---Some Inside Views
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#73 Did You Hear the One About the Bankers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#82 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#4 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#28 Confidence in banking: the EU500 supernote, or, we're all money launderers now
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#37 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#51 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#52 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#74 The Wall Street Pentagon Papers: Biggest Scam In World History Exposed: Are The Federal Reserve's Crimes Too Big To Comprehend?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#76 How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#77 How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#3 The Obama Spending Non-surge
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#70 No One Telling Who Took $586B in Fed Swaps
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#92 Bank Failures Cost $88 Billion
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#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/2012c.html#55 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/2012e.html#40 Who Increased the Debt?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#42 Who Increased the Debt?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#69 Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#75 Fed Report: Mortgage Mess NOT an Inside Job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#6 Adult Supervision
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#20 Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#22 Psychology Of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#28 REPEAL OF GLASS-STEAGALL DID NOT CAUSE THE FINANCIAL CRISIS - WHAT DO YOU THINK?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#70 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#25 US economic update. Everything that follows is a result of what you see here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#26 US economic update. Everything that follows is a result of what you see here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#14 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#29 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#28 Why Asian companies struggle to manage global workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#65 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#75 What's the bigger risk, retiring too soon, or too late?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#64 Singer Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#50 General Mills computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#6 General Mills computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#12 Why Auditors Fail To Detect Frauds?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#73 These Two Charts Show How The Priorities Of US Companies Have Gotten Screwed Up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#18 U.S. Treasury, AIG are poised to sever ties
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#34 How Bankers Help Drug Traffickers and Terrorists
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#44 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#51 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#35 Adair Turner: A New Debt-Free Money Advocate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#38 Adair Turner: A New Debt-Free Money Advocate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#46 Bankers Who Made Millions In Housing Boom Misled Investors: Study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#47 More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#54 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#66 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#64 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#67 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#94 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#9 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#23 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: comp.arch, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 12:31:08 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
Another area somewhat related to the Enron corruption is this "green" movement. Obama awarded millions to companies which are now bankrupt or not producing a single thing. The company which was built here (Mich) is now paying its employees to play cards. It's not owned by someone in the US but S. Korea.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#0 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#1 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#2 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

stockman references the neocons fabricated excuses for unnecessary military spending to the tune of $1.4T in the 80s ... supporting MICC pursuit of quarterly profits at the expense of the country.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#3 What Makes a thread about the European debt crisis Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#4 What Makes a thread about the European debt crisis Bizarre?

that enormous buildup of military then resulted in what Eisenhower warned about in his goodby speech ... that if they had it ... then they would have to use it ... Bush1 with Iraq in the early 90s and then Bush2 with Iraq&Afghanistan last decade.

In fact, re-occurring theme in all these

"Ike's bluff"
https://www.amazon.com/Ikes-Bluff-President-Eisenhowers-ebook/dp/B0076DCPI4/
"Invisible Armies"
https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Armies-History-Guerrilla-ebook/dp/B007P9M034/
"National Insecurity"
https://www.amazon.com/National-Insecurity-American-Militarism-ebook/dp/B00ATLNI04/
"Prophets of War"
https://www.amazon.com/Prophets-War-Lockheed-Military-Industrial-ebook/dp/B0047T86BA/
"The Great Deformation"
https://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Deformation-Corruption-ebook/dp/B00B3M3UK6/

repeat the theme of neocons fabrication of justification for unnecessary trillions of dollars supporting MICC quarterly profits ... although they present it from slightly different viewpoints. For instance Stockman ... also ties it into the other disastrous things (for many trillions more) done to the budget the last decade.

Stockman describes the neocon strategic nuclear threat excuse was the justification for the extra $1.4T for MICC in the 80s ... but only about 2% of that $1.4T went towards countering the nuclear threat ... the other 98% went for an "imperial" army ... including 11 nuclear carrier strike groups ... where each nuclear carrier strike group is larger than nearly every other military on earth (and significant contribution to Bush1/Bush2 both "if you have it, you are going to use it" ... that warning was major theme in Eisenhower's goodby speech).

the tales of ill-considered appropriations of millions in the last couple years is dwarfed several orders of magnitude by previous administration ill-considered trillions; in fact, bringing up millions of ill-spent is frequently obfuscation and misdirection from the ill-spent trillions (by factor of thousands times to millions times greater) .... aka attempting to create impression that it was those millions of ill-considered spending is the root of the $16T or so in federal debt (and not the enormous trillions that went on before).

a similar argument has been used about the hundreds of millions spent for CRA low-income loans was the cause of the financial disaster and not the greater than $27T in securitized liar loans. I've used the analogy of comparison of tsunami wave ... at 1ft/$B ... the CRA loans were less than a six inch tsunami wave ... while the liar loans were more than a 27000ft tsunami wave (more than five miles high). At 1-inch/$B, CRA isn't even a noticeable ripple ... while the rest is still almost half mile high.

a couple past posts mentionin the tsunami wave analogy
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/2013.html#0 IBM Is Changing The Terms Of Its Retirement Plan, Which Is Frustrating Some Employees

past posts mentioning $12T budget gap created last decade ... after fiscal responsibility act expired in 2002, $6T decrease in tax revenues, $6T increase in spending ... its amazing the vitriol that Stockman (Reagan's budget director) has for that administration.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#58 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#59 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#65 TCM's Moguls documentary series
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/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#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/2012e.html#25 We are on the brink of historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#40 Who Increased the Debt?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#58 Word Length
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#31 Rome speaks to us. Their example can inspire us to avoid their fate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#61 Zakaria: by itself, Buffett rule is good
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#68 'Gutting' Our Military
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#81 The Pentagon's New Defense Clandestine Service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#88 Defense acquisitions are broken and no one cares
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#6 Adult Supervision
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#45 Fareed Zakaria
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#5 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#6 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#25 US economic update. Everything that follows is a result of what you see here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#26 US economic update. Everything that follows is a result of what you see here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#27 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#30 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#33 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#50 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#61 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#68 Interesting News Article
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#0 Interesting News Article
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#41 Lawmakers reworked financial portfolios after talks with Fed, Treasury officials
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#81 Should the IBM approach be given a chance to fix the health care system?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#37 If all of the American earned dollars hidden in off shore accounts were uncovered and taxed do you think we would be able to close the deficit gap?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#74 Unthinkable, Predictable Disasters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#79 Romney and Ryan's Phony Deficit-Reduction Plan
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#55 CALCULATORS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#85 Singer Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#97 What a Caveman Can Teach You About Strategy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#33 General Mills computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#1 OT: Tax breaks to Oracle debated
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#16 OT: Tax breaks to Oracle debated
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#73 These Two Charts Show How The Priorities Of US Companies Have Gotten Screwed Up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#30 Search Google, 1960:s-style
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#36 Search Google, 1960:s-style
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#41 Search Google, 1960:s-style
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#94 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#97 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#67 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#70 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#72 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 14:18:05 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
People within Euroope play the same games.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#93 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

there are past references that the world's wealthy corporations and individuals have stashed something like $32T in offshore tax havens.

in 2009, US IRS was in the news about going after some 52,000 wealthy individuals for $400B in unpaid taxes on illegal hidden offshore income (also news about IRS trying to force large swiss banks to divulge records about the 52,000 US wealthy individuals).

2011, subject had all but disappeared ... except note about congress cutting IRS funds for going after illegal unpaid taxes (congress had already cut the amount of legal taxes by $6T after allowing fiscal responsibility act to expire in 2002, so congress cutting the ability to get another $400B in illegal unpaid taxes wasn't that big a deal).

However, recently there is the big news about hundreds of gigabytes in offshare tax haven records ... involving people from all around the world. One of the interesting notes is that they arern't turning the records over to regulatory and law enforcement agencies ... but keeping the records for writing articles authored by investigative journalists in 40 different countries. As seen in various recent events by US regulatory agencies ... turning over such information could just disappear never to be seen again. They also made comment that they have enough material for articles through the rest of 2013 and possibly into 2014.

one of their recent articles from today:

Swiss Bank Pushed Offshore Middleman to Skip Anti-Money Laundering Checks for Wealthy Clients
http://www.icij.org/offshore/swiss-bank-pushed-offshore-middleman-skip-anti-money-laundering-checks-wealthy-clients

goes along with recenty comments about departing head of Justice corporate crime unit effectively saying that while too-big-to-fail financial institutions are participating in criminal activity ... including money laundering for terrorists and drug cartels ... they are too-big-to-prosecute and too-big-to-jail.

other recent posts mentioning ICIJ offshore articles:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#27 Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#28 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#46 Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#95 Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze

past posts mentioning estimates of total amounts hidden in offshore tax havens
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#55 Daylight Savings Time again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#81 GBP13tn: hoard hidden from taxman by global elite
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#45 If all of the American earned dollars hidden in off shore accounts were uncovered and taxed do you think we would be able to close the deficit gap?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#49 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#70 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

past posts mentioning IRS going after 52,000 wealthy individuals for unpaid taxes on income illegally hidden in offshore tax havens:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#37 No Jail In UBS Tax Evasion Case
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#29 Mitt Romney avoids U.S tax by using Offshore bank accounts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#27 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#30 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#39 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#64 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#37 If all of the American earned dollars hidden in off shore accounts were uncovered and taxed do you think we would be able to close the deficit gap?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#20 X86 server
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#27 PDP-10 system calls, was 1132 printer history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#36 Bank Whistleblower Claims Retaliation And Wrongful Termination
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#27 Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#70 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#86 What Makes a thread about the European debt crisis Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#27 Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 14:59:08 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
repeat the theme of neocons fabrication of justification for unnecessary trillions of dollars supporting MICC quarterly profits ... although they present it from slightly different viewpoints. For instance Stockman ... also ties it into the other disastrous things (for many trillions more) done to the budget the last decade.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#5 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

a large part of neocon fabrication in support of MICC quarterly profits was the group referred to as Team B
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_B

neocons and Team B also show up in the "Merchants of Doubt"
https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-of-Doubt-ebook/dp/B003RRXXO8/

which is about public relation organizations that deal in doubtful issues ... starting off with the agenda by the tobacco industry that smoking has no harmful effects ... but they also branch out into other areas ... including the selling of Team B agenda

misc. past posts mentioning "Merchants of Doubt" and/or Team B:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#16 A Matter of Mindset: Iraq, Sequestration and the U.S. Army
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#62 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#5 Lessons Learned from the Iraq War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#20 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#54 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#56 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#76 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: comp.arch, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:38:04 -0400
hancock4 writes:
Years ago banks derrived 90% of their income from interest and only 10% from fees. Back then banks were modest institutions, conservative and reliable as investments, but not high profit. Many savings banks were "mutual"--owned by their depositors, not shareholders.

Today banks get 50% of their income from interest and 50% from fees. Banks are big profit machines. Look at the spread between what they pay out on deposits and earn on credit card balances.


note that you aren't talking about their bottom line staying flat with the change in income ... just the percentage changing ... but that the fees are significantly inflating their bottom line.

2006 there was report that banks in the US get an avg of 39% of their bottom line from "interchange fees" (fees charged merchants in conjunction with the use of credit cards, for larger issuers more like 60%, like many of the too-big-to-fail).

there were various discussions about banks make money off fraud ... the issue is that for decades merchants have been heavily indoctrinated that interchange fees are heavily tiered/prorated based on the amount of fraud associated with specific types of transactions (face-to-face, point-of-sale, attended, unattended, MOTO/mail-order/telephone-order, internet, etc).

this has come up several times in various ways ... including anti-trust and legal actions by merchant associations.

in the early part of this century there were various "safe" internet payment products being pitched to merchants that saw very high approval (large merchants that account for 70-80% of internet transactions) ... part of the acceptance/approval was that the merchants were expecting order-of-magnitude (aka ten times) reduction in their interchange fees (because of the reduction in fraud). Then came the cognitive dissonance when the financial institutions told merchants that instead of order of magnitude reduction in fees, "safe products" would effectively be a surcharge added to the highest fees they were already paying ... and the various efforts just evaporated.

In europe, a different approach was taken to get merchants to accept "safe" credit card products with transaction fees higher than the highest they were already paying for transactions with the highest fraud rates) ... they got regulatory agencies to effectively reverse the burden of proof in disputes. Previously (and in the US), if customer disputed a charge, the bank/merchant had to proove it was the customer making the charge. Reversing the burden of proof, requires the customer to proove it wasn't them. I was contacted by legal respresentative for one such customer in a dispute ... over an ATM cash machine transaction. In the US, the bank would pull up video surveillance and proove it was the customer. Reversing the burden of proof requires the customer to produce the video surveillance to proove it wasn't them (in this particular case, when the customer asked the bank for the video, the bank replied that they couldn't find it).

note also that GLBA (bank modernization act) is better known now for repeal of Glass-Steagall (part of the financial mess, enabling too-big-to-fail, too-big-to-prosecute, too-big-to-jail, etc) ... but rhetoric on the floor of congress at the time was the primary purpose of GLBA was if you already had banking charter, you got to keep it, but if you didn't, you wouldn't be able to get one (effectively eliminating competition). The industry was especially concerned that much more efficient opperations could enter the business ... including being able to offer banking services to the significant percentage of the "unbanked" (those that current institutions don't find profitable) ... and once having the "unbanked" market segment ... they could move up the value stream and take-over the rest of the market. Fortunately the financial industry had congress in their pocket (to the tune of $250M at the time, congress has since gotten a lot more expensive).

past posts mentioning interchange fees and making profit from fraud.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#rhose3 Rubber hose attack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#rhose5 when a fraud is a sale, Re: Rubber hose attack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#rhose7 when a fraud is a sale, Re: Rubber hose attack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#rhose8 when a fraud is a sale, Re: Rubber hose attack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#rhose9 when a fraud is a sale, Re: Rubber hose attack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#rhose10 when a fraud is a sale, Re: Rubber hose attack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#rhose11 when a fraud is a sale, Re: Rubber hose attack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#rhose12 when a fraud is a sale, Re: Rubber hose attack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#rhose13 when a fraud is a sale, Re: Rubber hose attack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#rhose14 when a fraud is a sale, Re: Rubber hose attack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#rhose15 when a fraud is a sale, Re: Rubber hose attack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm8.htm#rhose16 when a fraud is a sale, Re: Rubber hose attack
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm8.htm#rhose17 [Fwd: Re: when a fraud is a sale, Re: Rubber hose attack]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm26.htm#1 Extended Validation - setting the minimum liability, the CA trap, the market in browser governance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm26.htm#25 EV - what was the reason, again?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm26.htm#34 Failure of PKI in messaging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#32 The bank fraud blame game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#33 The bank fraud blame game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#39 a fraud is a sale, Re: The bank fraud blame game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#40 a fraud is a sale, Re: The bank fraud blame game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#43 a fraud is a sale, Re: The bank fraud blame game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#1 2008: The year of hack the vote?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#18 Lack of fraud reporting paths considered harmful
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#77 How safe do you feel when using a debit or credit card?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#81 not crypto, but fraud detection
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#23 Value of an old IBM PS/2 CL57 SX Laptop
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#27 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#56 T.J. Maxx data theft worse than first reported
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#17 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#59 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#35 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#3 Govt demands password to personal computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#7 Payments start-up Noca takes aim at interchange Achilles heel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#60 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#20 IBM forecasts 'new world order' for financial services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#57 LexisNexis says its data was used by fraudsters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#62 Solving password problems one at a time, Re: The password-reset paradox
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#3 Consumer Credit Crunch and Banking Writeoffs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#50 How can we stop Credit card FRAUD?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#39 Network Rivalry Sparks 10-Year Quadrupling of PIN-Debit Pricing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#49 Hacker charges also an indictment on PCI, expert says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#62 August 7, 1944: today is the 65th Anniversary of the Birth of the Computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#68 US retailers face $100bn in ID fraud losses a year - study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#75 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#98 Korean bank Moves back to Mainframes (...no, not back)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#21 Credit card data security: Who's responsible?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#44 Can't PIN be mandated in normal POS machines ? to avoid Losses / Frauds / NPA's ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#21 Should the USA Implement EMV?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#26 In SSL We Trust? Not Lately
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#54 Trust Facade
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#45 Swipe this card; shopping could be cheaper
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#62 blasts from the past -- old predictions come true
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#63 Wal-Mart to support smartcard payments
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#10 Wal-Mart to support smartcard payments
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#7 taking down the machine - z9 series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#59 A mighty fortress is our PKI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#79 Five Theses on Security Protocols
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#82 Five Theses on Security Protocols
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#39 Compressing the OODA-Loop - Removing the D (and maybe even an O)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#52 Payment Card Industry Pursues Profits Over Security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#13 "Compound threats" to appear in 2011 ?
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/2011b.html#11 Credit cards with a proximity wifi chip can be as safe as walking around with your credit card number on a poster
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#48 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#64 Are Americans serious about dealing with money laundering and the drug cartels?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#22 An online bank scam worthy of a spy novel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#23 Fight Fraud with Device ID
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#58 Pipeline and Network Security: Protecting a Series of Tubes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#49 Does outsourcing cause data loss?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#56 Does outsourcing cause data loss?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#38 ISBNs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#39 ISBNs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#15 Wicked Problems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#78 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#96 Infographic: Online payment security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#16 Wonder if they know how Boydian they are?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#82 Fighting Cyber Crime with Transparency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#3 Quitting Top IBM Salespeople Say They Are Leaving In Droves
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#32 Zeus/SpyEye 'Automatic Transfer' Module Masks Online Banking Theft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#47 Yahoo Password Breach: 7 Lessons Learned - Security - Attacks/breaches - Informationweek
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#56 Failing Gracefully
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#10 Does the IBM System z Mainframe rely on Security by Obscurity or is it Secure by Design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#12 Does the IBM System z Mainframe rely on Security by Obscurity or is it Secure by Design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#80 history of Programming language and CPU in relation to each other
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#54 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#10 The Knowledge Economy Two Classes of Workers

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: comp.arch, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:05:10 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#8 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

disclaimer: we have dozens of patents (assigned, retain no rights) in the area of safe transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

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

somewhat as a result, in the mid-90s we were asked to participate in the x9a10 financial standard working group that had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for *ALL* retail payments; the result was x9.59 financial transaction standard. this before the business people realized the downside of significantly improving integrity of retail payments.

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

'Hacking The Mainframe': What Hollywood Gets Wrong About Its Favorite Tech

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: 'Hacking The Mainframe': What Hollywood Gets Wrong About Its Favorite Tech
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 15 Apr 2013 07:50:47 -0700
charlesm@MCN.ORG (Charles Mills) writes:
LOL. Thanks. No, I really can't remember. Maybe too many illegal substances in the 1970's.

I remember some of the places I bought time: Bayer in Emeryville, Central Bank Computer Bureau in Oakland, ..., but it was neither of those. (Man, those were different times! Can you imagine a drug company or a bank turning over their entire mainframe hands-on to some kid with long hair, with no one supervising what he did?)

No harm in identifying the participants: they've probably all been promoted to management by now.

(Someone wrote me off-line and asked if I meant "lights-out operations" or "lit-up operations.")


there was a lot of work on cp67 in the 60s to enable 7x24 online access.

one of the issues was that there was still significant shift costs associated with enabling 7x24 access (both local and dial-up remote) ... operators, lease/rental charge.

part of the issue was initially off-shift use was light ... so there was little usage charges to recover fixed operational expenses. in attempt to minimize these there were lots of work done for operator-less operations ... things like automatic ipl/startup ... w/o requiring operator to be present ... allowing for lights-out operation (aka nobody physically present in the room).

another big issue was that machines were rented/leased and charges were based on the "cpu meter" that ran whenever the cpu and/or any channels were operating ... including terminal i/o channel programs waiting for dailup connections and/or people to type at their keyboard. Solution was to use the "prepare" CCW would allow terminal controller to disconnect from the channel (allowing the cpu-meter to stop on otherwise idle system) ... pending incoming connection and/or keystrokes (this is slightly analogous to the disk "SET SECTOR" CCW that shows up later for 3330s&2305s with block-mux channels).

the result was not only was cambridge able to provide for cost effective online 7x24 operation ... but also saw commercial service bureaus in the 60s starting to offer cp67 7x24 online computer access.

One of the things done by at least the mid-70s in the commercial service bureaus ... although not shipped by IBM ... was non-disruptive, loosely-coupled, process migration. they started offering 7x24 online operation around the world ... which by mid-70s also resulted in requirements for 7x24 availability. A big problem then becomes scheduled maintenance. Their solution was to have loosely-coupled, multiple system operation ... and be able to take any system and/or compenent offline ... by non-disruptive (transparent) migration of all computing processes from one system to another (non-ibm source-code system modifications).

recent discussion mentioning source code maintenace:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#66 Sequence Numbrs (was 32760?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#85 Sequence Numbrs (was 32760?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#88 Sequence Numbrs (was 32760?

trivia ... the cpu-meter required 400ms of idle (both cpu and all channels) to coast to a stop. long after most hardware had shifted from lease to purchase, MVS still had a fixed timer interval that would wake the system every 400ms (making sure if the system was running at all, the cpu-meter would never stop).

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

Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze
Date: 15 Apr 2013
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#27 Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#46 Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#95 Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze

captured regulators and big banks find ways to get around money laundering

Swiss Bank Pushed Offshore Middleman to Skip Anti-Money Laundering Checks for Wealthy Clients
http://www.icij.org/offshore/swiss-bank-pushed-offshore-middleman-skip-anti-money-laundering-checks-wealthy-clients

"wealthy clients" is another term for anybody with lots of cash ... as in other recent news about too-big-to-fail involved in lots of criminal activity, including money laundering for terrorists and drug cartels ... too-big-to-prosecute and too-big-to-jail.

today's updated highlights page:
http://www.icij.org/blog/2013/04/highlights-offshore-leaks-so-far

including
Among the 4,000 U.S. individuals listed in the records, at least 30 are American citizens accused in lawsuits or criminal cases of fraud, money laundering or other serious financial misconduct, an analysis by the Washington Post and ICIJ found. Offshore trusts and companies set up in the South Pacific and Caribbean are the common factor in several prominent financial scandals in the U.S.

... snip ...

in 2009, IRS was looking for 52,000 wealthy US individuals illegally avoiding taxes using offshore tax-havens ... then almost all news on the subject seemed to evaporate

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

More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence
Date: 15 Apr 2013
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
recent posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#43 More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#58 More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#77 More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#42 More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence

GAO Report on Foreclosure Reviews Misses How Regulators Conspired with Banks Against Homeowners
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/04/gao-report-on-foreclosure-reviews-misses-how-regulators-conspired-with-banks-against-homeowners.html

from above:
But "failure" assumes that the OCC and the Fed did not achieve their real objective, which was to protect the banks. That hardly appears to be the case. The short story of the reviews is that to dampen down criticism of the many foreclosure horrors revealed in the media and in courtrooms all over the country, borrowers who were foreclosed on or had foreclosure actions underway in 2009 and 2010 were promised an independent review and compensation if they were found to have suffered financial harm. And even though the abrupt termination of the reviews has left the regulators with a lot of egg on their face, the result is that the banks paid a lot less than if the reviews had lived up to their billing.

... snip ...

Launching Improved PC/Android/Printer Friendly Version of Our Free Ebook on the OCC/Fed Foreclosure Review Fiasco
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/04/launching-improved-pcandroidprinter-friendly-version-of-our-free-ebook-on-the-occfed-foreclosure-review-fiasco.html

OCC Releases Embarrassing List of Foreclosure Review Payouts on Eve of Senate Hearings
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/04/occ-releases-embarrassing-list-of-foreclosure-review-payouts-on-eve-of-senate-hearings.html

from above:
borrowers who were foreclosed on or had foreclosure actions underway were given the opportunity to have foreclosures completed or underway in 2009 and 2010 reviewed by "independent" consultants. 510,000 borrowers submitted letters. But the process was shut down, with hardly any reviews completed and the ones that were done highly suspect, given that multiple whistleblowers (and not just ours!) reported the banks and reviewers were colluding to suppress any finding of harm.

... snip ... and

Powerful Firm Becomes Second Home for Financial Regulators
http://www.pogo.org/blog/2013/04/powerful-firm-becomes-second-home-for-financial-regulators.html
Fed Argues that Mortgage Abuses are Trade Secrets, Meaning Institutionalized Fraud
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/04/fed-argues-that-mortgage-abuses-are-trade-secrets-meaning-institutionalized-fraud.html

including:
Two years ago this week, your offices issued a public report announcing that you determined that 14 mortgage servicing companies were engaging in "violations of applicable federal and state law." You found that these abuses have "widespread consequences for the national housing market and borrowers." You also explicitly referenced instances of abuse, including illegal foreclosures against our nation's men and women in uniform who are protected by the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act

... snip ...

Elizabeth Warren On Illegal Foreclosures.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvi7RNr8s4A

"And you're not going to tell the homeowners?" Elizabeth Warren to Fed and OCC, Senate hearing highlights
http://www.correntewire.com/and_youre_not_going_to_tell_the_homeowners_elizabeth_warren_to_fed_and_occ_senate_hearing_highlights

hearing webpage
http://www.banking.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=a52e1199-bc18-4a54-bbd5-159cc53ab44f

their video
http://www.banking.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.LiveStream&Hearing_id=a52e1199-bc18-4a54-bbd5-159cc53ab44f

slightly related (especially the part of needing the gov. ... both in the foreclosure review as well as new mortgages)

Fewer Home Loans Start to Affect Banks
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/fewer-home-loans-start-to-affect-banks/?ref=business

from above:
Since the 2008 financial crisis, the banks' mortgage business had hinged on government intervention rather than fresh demand from consumers. When the Federal Reserve cut interest rates in recent years, it spurred millions of borrowers to refinance their home loans to reduce costs.

... snip ...

note that some of this was smoke&mirrors since it was mortgage churn with re-financing ... not net new mortgages.

Foreclosure Review Hearings Show It's Time to Burn Down the OCC
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/04/foreclosure-review-hearings-show-its-time-to-burn-down-the-occ.html

from above:
Warren also secured the bombshell admission from the consultants that none of them had been involved in preparing the schedule of how many borrowers fell in which category of harm, meaning it was cooked up by the banks and the OCC

... snip ...

The Fed messed with the wrong senator; If foreclosure victims get justice, trace it back to a bad decision to stonewall Elizabeth Warren last week
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/15/fed_messed_with_the_wrong_senator/

from above:
Indeed, despite OCC and the Fed's best efforts to protect banks from harm, they've actually exposed them like never before. If I didn't know better, I'd think there were moles among this gang-that-couldn't-regulate-straight.

... snip ...

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:12:44 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
in 2009, US IRS was in the news about going after some 52,000 wealthy individuals for $400B in unpaid taxes on illegal hidden offshore income (also news about IRS trying to force large swiss banks to divulge records about the 52,000 US wealthy individuals).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#93 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#6 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

in any case ... after 2009 ... most of the news about illegal off-shore involving 52,000 wealthy US individuals seemed to nearly evaporate

recent item in the "Secreccy for Sale" in linkedin financial fraud:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#11 Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze

updated highlights pages:
http://www.icij.org/blog/2013/04/highlights-offshore-leaks-so-far

including:
Among the 4,000 U.S. individuals listed in the records, at least 30 are American citizens accused in lawsuits or criminal cases of fraud, money laundering or other serious financial misconduct, an analysis by the Washington Post and ICIJ found. Offshore trusts and companies set up in the South Pacific and Caribbean are the common factor in several prominent financial scandals in the U.S.

... snip ...

but where are the other 48,000 wealthy US individuals with offshore accounts?

other recent about "the wealthy and the rest":

A Tax System Stacked Against the 99 Percent
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/a-tax-system-stacked-against-the-99-percent/
Joe Stiglitz Blasts Our Wealthy-Coddling Tax System for Increasing the Returns on Rent-Seeking
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/04/joe-stiglitz-blasts-our-wealthy-coddling-tax-system-for-increasing-the-returns-on-rent-seeking.html

from above:
And then the good professor turns to corporate tax breaks, citing poster child GE, which has paid on average less than 2% of its income in taxes since 2002. The picture is likely even worse than these figures suggest since corporations and wealthy individuals can hide income tax havens.

... snip ...

also finds corporations using offshore tax havans to hide income
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#93 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

since I'm currently reading Stockman's "The Great Deformation",
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#3 What Makes a thread about the European debt crisis Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#4 What Makes a thread about the European debt crisis Bizarre?

a couple recent items in the news:

Stockman KO's Krugman in Big Fed Brawl
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-14/fed-is-the-villain-in-krugman-stockman-brawl.html
Krugman vs. Stockman
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/11/krugman-vs-stockman/
Scheer Trumps Krugman in Stockman Debate
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/high_praise_for_robert_scheer_for_defending_stockman_20130411/

turns out one of the large bank holding companies Stockman highlights in "Great Deformation" was GE; pg35/loc961-64:
THE REAL BAILOUT CATALYST: JEFF IMMELT'S THREATENED BONUS; At that particular moment, however, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt was apparently in no mood for a lesson in price discovery. In fact, he was then learning, along with the rest of Wall Street, an even more painful lesson about the folly of lending long and borrowing short.

... snip ...

... aka, he called and wanted gov. to step in.

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: comp.arch, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:35:33 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
tax loopholes seem to have an all-time high in congressional graft and corruption since it affects all industries. however there is also exploding industry dealing in tax matters that is now lobbying in the interest of making tax code as complex as possible to maximize their business (not necessarily interested in any specific tax loophole ... but interested in having as many as possible and in constant churn to maintain dealing in tax matters as a growth industry and growing percentage of GDP)

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#2 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

Untangling the webs of tax lobbying
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/04/15/tax-lobbying/

from above:
To be sure, all this correlation does not necessarily prove causation. But it strongly suggests it. The most comprehensive academic analysis of this question, published in the American Journal of Political science, finds that "Firms that spend more on lobbying in a given year pay lower effective tax rates in the next year. Increasing registered lobbying expenditures by 1 percent appears to lower effective tax rates by somewhere in the range of 0.5 to 1.6 percentage points for the average firm that lobbies."

... snip ...

has complex graph showing tax lobbying the "112th congress (2011-2012) filed by 2,221 organizations from 336 sectors mentioning 1,454 bills"

Cluster 2 is "real estate" and Cluster 8 is "insurance". many accounts of lobbying identify the "FIRE" (financial, insurance, real estate) lobby as one of the consistantly most powerful congressional lobbies.

doesn't list/show MICC. "Prophets of War" references that congressional lobbying by DOD/Pentagon is illegal ... but they have accounts of heavy lobbying that skates around the line.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#5 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

a few past posts mentioning FIRE lobby
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#16 How long for IBM System/360 architecture and its descendants?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#23 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#62 The 2010 Census
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#93 America's Defense Meltdown
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#53 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#19 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#33 General Mills computer

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: comp.arch, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 23:16:46 -0400
Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> writes:
Smoking? The politicians who repealed Glass-Steagall were looking at the fat bribes^Wcampaign contributions they were getting from Wall St, nothing more or less.

Note that Wall St usually funds _both_ sides of an election; they don't care who wins any individual race, as long as they own the winner.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#8 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

folklore was that congress was into wallstreet to the tune of $250M and *owed* them.

originally passed along party lines 54-44 (before current atmosphere where 60 is required to even get to a vote) ... folklore was that president was going to veto, then they go back and add a bunch of stuff the other party wants (not all even related to banking) ... it then passes 90-8 ... effectively making it veto proof (president doesn't bother)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act

some background on acquire/take-over of citi in violation of Glass-Steagall ... Greenspan gives exemption while ceo goes off and lobbies congress for repeal.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#4 Live-Blogging Senate Hearing Tomorrow, When J.P. Morgan Chase Will Be Torn a New One
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#35 Ex-Bailout Watchdog: JPMorgan's Actions "Entirely Consistent With Fraud"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#76 IBM Spent A Million Dollars Renovating And Staffing Its Former CEO's Office
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#19 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#42 More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#79 As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,

some ibm content ... since citi ceo ... previously had been at amex in competition with gerstner to be next ceo of amex, looses and he and protoge Dimon leave ... they make a number of acquisition eventually winding up acquiring citi (violating Glass-Steagall). Dimon leaves and becomes ceo of JPMorgan-Chase (another too-big-to-fail).

KKR had been in competition with AMEX to take-over RJR ... KKR wins and then hires Gerstner away to turn-around RJR. Then IBM board hires Gerstner for house-cleaning, reverse the restructuring (done in preparation for breakup) and resurrect IBM.

note also sec. of treasury that was helping with repeal of Glass-Steagall ... resigns after the initial vote and joins citi ... becoming co-CEO. recent posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#28 Neil Barofsky: Geithner Doctrine Lives on in Libor Scandal
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#73 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#19 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#42 More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: comp.arch, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:38:28 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
Ok. Now think of how that lobbying works. It's not necessarily the Congress critters who are doing the tax-hole making. Lobbyers talk mostly to the staff of the those critters. It's the staff which writes the tax laws, too.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#14 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

cbs 60mins expose on medicare part-d (first major legislation after fiscal responsibility act was allowed to expire in 2002, comptroller general characterized as unfunded mandate coming to be long term $40T totally swamping all other budget items) ... had 18 (from party in power) that snaked the bill through the process (combination of members of congress and their staff) ... they add single sentence that precludes competitive bidding at the last minute just before final vote ... and prevent distribution of CBO analysis (until after vote) of that single sentence change. afterwards, all 18 had resigned on were on drug industry payrolls.

The story is that members of congress set the money harvesting theme ... and leave the details to their staffs. One of the jokes was that members of congress used to listen to the lobbyists explain what they wanted and the associated justification before asking for the money; now first thing they just ask how much ... and tell the lobbyists to discuss the details with their staff; part of earning the label of most corrupt institution on earth.

60mins shows drugs under part-d (with no competitive bidding) that are three times the price of the identical drugs from VA (that has competitive bidding).

in aggregate, CBO had report last decade that baseline budget had all federal debt retired by 2010 ... however (mostly after fiscal responsibility act expired in 2002), tax revenues were cut by $6T (in part because of tax loopholes for special interests ... but also general tax rate reductions ... mostly benefitting super wealthy) and spending increased $6T for a $12T budget gap.

however, comptroller general's observation was just medicare part-d was unfunded mandate and comes to be long term $40T, totally swamping all other budget items (aka the biggest unfunded spending increase ... a gift by 18 critical members of congress & their staffs ... to the drug industry ... apparently recipricated) ... the $1T JSF/F-35 for MICC, pales in comparison.

Its going to be interesting to see if Elizabeth Warren can make a difference ... she has the power to sign spotlight on lot of the unethical/illegal practices going on in financial/regulatory/congress ... but to make major change ... legislation has to be passed ... which requires the rest of congress. Can she create enough of a popular backlash against the status quo to foster change. one of the recent items

The Fed messed with the wrong senator; If foreclosure victims get justice, trace it back to a bad decision to stonewall Elizabeth Warren last week
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/15/fed_messed_with_the_wrong_senator/

from above:
Indeed, despite OCC and the Fed's best efforts to protect banks from harm, they've actually exposed them like never before. If I didn't know better, I'd think there were moles among this gang-that-couldn't-regulate-straight.

... snip ...

from this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#12 More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:57:36 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
Al Jadzera had a news item on TV Sunday night about people buying real estate in Londaon as a tax haven. Something to do with not paying property taxes but I didn't understand it. They interviewed a woman who had a _small_ 2 BR apartement and, since she lives alone, was going to have a property tax increase on the 2nd bedroom. GB has always been strange about what people pay for (compared to the US). another wierd (to USians) is the way they charged for TV receptions.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#13 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

past articles has been some really high-priced property in london was being purchased by offshore corporations ... and investigators were being totally stonewalled on who was actually involved. people have large piles of undeclared income/cash ... and want to put it to work ... so one of the ways is invest in expensive real-estate ... however, they haven't declared all that loot (illegally avoid taxes) ... so being able to trace the purchases back to actual owners would expose the undeclared income.

real-estate as investment tends to contribute to speculation and inflating prices ... which tends to drive up property taxes.

tv crime shows have LEOs&IRS tracking/getting evidence by looking for expensive purchases and then following the money trail ... the deal with super expensive london property purchases ... was that the trail had been deadend with the offshore corporations.

the recent dump of 260 gigabytes from offshare tax-haven is exposing the identities of some the purchasers (of expensive property) ... as well as exposing undeclared income.

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

Air Superiority: Advantage over enemy skies for 60 years

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: Air Superiority: Advantage over enemy skies for 60 years
Date: 17 Apr 2013
Blog: Facebook
also google+
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/NtF9vyRkRb1

Air Superiority: Advantage over enemy skies for 60 years
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2013/04/mil-130415-afns01.htm

but it hasn't been what air force wanted to spend money on, from "air defense meltdown"
Half of America's total World War II budget went to U.S. air power and, of that half, 65 percent went to multi-engine bombers. A major study to quantify the effectiveness of this huge investment was initiated in October 1944 at the direction of President Roosevelt.

and
In conclusion, the RAF and U.S. Army Air Force bomber commands fared rather poorly in their strategic bombardment campaigns. Eight of nine of the strategic bombardment campaigns were failures, contributing little to Allied victory.

... snip ...

then they try it again, in "Ike's bluff"
https://www.amazon.com/Ikes-Bluff-President-Eisenhowers-ebook/dp/B0076DCPI4/

... air force tries to justify large thousands of B52s based on claims that the Soviets had similar large numbers ("Bomber Gap"), Ike knows that it is pure fabrication from U2 photo reconnaissance (major importance of U2 intelligence was exposing pentagon). "Bomber Gap" program would have been 20% increase in DOD budget.

the beginning of the end
http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-beginning-of-end.html

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

Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?
Date: 17 Apr 2013
Blog: Enterprise Systems
re:
http://lnkd.in/Revm3f

Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?
http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/trends/Cloud-Computing/share_cloud/

The big cloud operations provide on-demand elastic computing facilities. Online, on-demand operation can be quite variable sometimes with order of magnitude (or more) difference between peak and off-peak load.

CP67 virtual machine online operation started to see that in the 60s with move to offering 7x24 online service. Back then there was some chicken&egg attempting to promote off-shift/off-peakm 7x24 use required keeping system up non-stop ... but initially off-shift use didn't cover cost of off-shift operation. This led to lots of work to reduce operational costs .... at the time it was eliminating operators, automating lots of previously manual, on-site operation (including machine ipl/boot and bring up) allowing for complete offshift dark-room operation with 7x24 availability. Another big hit was mainframes at the time were rented/leased with fees charge by the cpu-meter which ran anytime the cpu and/or any channel was operating. An early CP67 hack was in terminal i/o channel program to allow controller to disconnect from channel ... allowing channels to go idle when there was no characters actually being transmitted ... allowing cpu-meter to come to a stop (stopping rental/lease fees) when there was no activity (but still had 7x24 availability, anybody could dial in from home). trivia: ... cpu-meter required cpu and all channels to be idle for at least 400ms before it would coast to stop; long after mainframes had moved from rental/lease to sales; MVS still had timer-event that woke up every 400ms.

By the early to mid 70s, the large virtual machine commercial online service bureaus were running into mainframe issues like scheduled maintenance. They modified standard product code to provide non-distributive loosely-coupled migration ... aka when system had to be taken offline for scheduled maintenance ... all the workload could be non-disruptively moved to other machines in loosely-coupled configurations (for various reasons, such capability didn't ship in standard product offering) ... by the mid-70s this capability was being extended for non-disruptive workload migration between different datacenters in geographically different areas.

The current enormous drop in computing costs for big cloud computing operations has shifted to a significant percentage of their costs are now things like power&cooling. While CP67 worked hard to provide dark-room & allowing cpu-meter to stop ... but instant on when there was use ... the cloud operators are behind a lot of the green initiatives ... power/cooling drop to zero when machine isn't being used ... but can instantly come up to full operation "on-demand". They have also been major drivers for innovation in other kinds of mega-datacenter efficiencies.

New data center survey shows mediocre results for energy efficiency
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2034139/new-data-center-survey-shows-mediocre-results-for-energy-efficiency.html

from above:
Big online firms such as Google and Microsoft have boasted of PUEs of close to 1.0, but they're special cases. Many of the data centers they operate are new, and they invest heavily in IT efficiency, since it affects so much of their overall operating costs.

... snip ...

When Jim was leaving IBM for Tandem ... he was palming bunch of stuff on me ... DBMS consulting with the IMS group, interfacing to customers that had installed the original relational/sql implementation, etc. I visited him after he was at Tandem and wrote-up and distributed a trip report ... which is part of why I've been blamed for online computer conferencing on the IBM internal network in the late 70s and early 80s (& the "Tandem Memos"). In the early 80s, Jim did some detailed studies and found that generally hardware reliability had gotten to the point that the majority of system outages had changed to other factors; software, human error, environmental, etc. Old copy (summer 1984) of overhead summary from that study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/grayft84.pdf

Note in this period, Jim was also establishing the basis for what becomes TPC
http://www.tpc.org/
and
http://www.tpc.org/information/who/gray.asp

and formal definition of transaction and ACID properties. At the celebration of his life ... held a couple yrs ago at Berkeley ... his work on transaction is credited with modern financial dataprocessing (given auditors the needed extra confidence in computer records).

late 80s & early 90s ... we had created IBM HA/CMP product and I had invented the terms "disaster/survivability" and "geographic-survivability" (to differentiate from disaster/recovery) when we were out marketing HA/CMP (some of the availability statistics dating back to Jim's early studies). At the time, I was asked to write a section for the corporate continuous availability strategy document ... but it got pulled after both Rochester (AS/400) and POK (mainframe) complained about not being able to meet the objectives.

Jim and I did get into somewhat of disagreement at 1991 ACM SIGOPS conference ... by that time he had moved from Tandem and DEC ... and the argument was whether I could use RS/6000 to provide VAX-cluster type availability. Part of the issue was that IBM non-mainframe RDBMS was just in its infancy and had few features ... so I was forced to work with non-IBM RDBMS who had portable implementations and mostly common source base for both their UNIX-based and VAX-cluster implementation. Those vendors had strong opinions on several of the support features in VAX-clusters ... so with a combination of extensive experience in mainframe loosely-coupled and what was wrong in the VAX-cluster implementation ... I was able to do a new implementation from scratch ... that implemented a VAX-cluster like API (for ease of porting) but avoided the VAX-cluster shortcomings.

Of course, that along with the cluster scale-up work, got me in trouble with the rest of the corporation (mainframe DB2 group complaining if I was allowed to proceed, I would be a minimum of five yrs ahead of them).

recent posts mentioning datacenter operation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#7 From build to buy: American Airlines changes modernization course midflight
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#9 Is Microsoft becoming folklore?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#16 From build to buy: American Airlines changes modernization course midflight
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#17 Still think the mainframe is going away soon: Think again. IBM mainframe computer sales are 4% of IBM's revenue; with software, services, and storage it's 25%
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#25 Is Microsoft becoming folklore?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#29 Java Security?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#67 Was MVS/SE designed to confound Amdahl?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#71 New HD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#75 mainframe "selling" points
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#76 mainframe "selling" points
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#7 mainframe "selling" points
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#8 mainframe "selling" points
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#10 FW: mainframe "selling" points -- Start up Costs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#15 A Private life?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#25 Still think the mainframe is going away soon: Think again. IBM mainframe computer sales are 4% of IBM's revenue; with software, services, and storage it's 25%
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#32 Ethernet at 40: Its daddy reveals its turbulent youth
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#37 AT&T Holmdel Computer Center films, 1973 Unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#51 Article for the boss: COBOL will outlive us all
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#55 Dualcase vs monocase. Was: Article for the boss
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#56 Dualcase vs monocase. Was: Article for the boss
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#57 Dualcase vs monocase. Was: Article for the boss
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#60 New HD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#21 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#25 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#27 Ethernet at 40: Its daddy reveals its turbulent youth
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#31 REFRPROT History Question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#35 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#50 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#53 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#62 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#67 relative speeds, was What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#68 relative mainframe speeds, was What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#71 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#74 relative mainframe speeds, was What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#75 Still not convinced about the superiority of mainframe security vs distributed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#77 relative mainframe speeds, was What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#84 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#91 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#11 relative mainframe speeds, was What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#13 Query for Destination z article -- mainframes back to the future
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#14 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#15 Query for Destination z article -- mainframes back to the future
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#45 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#50 Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Internet, 1974
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#57 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#76 IBM Spent A Million Dollars Renovating And Staffing Its Former CEO's Office
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#0 What in your opinion is the one defining IBM product?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#17 The Big, Bad Bit Stuffers of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#35 New HD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#39 As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#61 32760?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#88 Sequence Numbrs (was 32760?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#92 Continuing cloud computing

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

What Makes weapons control Bizarre?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes weapons control Bizarre?
Newsgroups: comp.arch, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:53:02 -0400
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz <spamtrap@library.lspace.org.invalid> writes:
Like Hamilton? The Founding Fathers did not have a common ideology, or anything close to one. When they did form a minimalist government, they quickly found it impractical and scrapped it in favor of the current Constitution.

Triumphant plutocracy; loc2123-28:
This fact is made evident by an examination of the interests of these men who made up the Constitutional Convention of 1787. There were fifty-five delegates present in the Convention. A majority were lawyers; most of them came from towns; there was not one farmer, mechanic or laborer among them; five-sixths had property interests. Of the 55 members, 40 owned revolutionary scrip; 14 were land speculators; 24 were money-lenders; 11 were merchants; 15 were slave holders. Washington, the big man of the Convention, was a slave-holder, land speculator and a large scrip owner. Jefferson was in France!

loc2145-49:
This was the Constitution drawn up while Thomas Jefferson was in France. It was submitted to the states for ratification and the states refused to accept it. In all probability it never would have been ratified had Thomas Jefferson not returned from France and thrown his great influence in favor of the first ten amendments—the Bill of Rights that was added to the Constitution by its business backers, as the necessary price of its adoption by the people.

... snip ...

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

What Makes weapons control Bizarre?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes weapons control Bizarre?
Newsgroups: comp.arch, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 23:30:43 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#20 What Makes weapons control Bizarre?

Triumphant Plutocracy; loc2079-83:
Anyone who wishes to know the facts should examine the Journal of the Constitutional Convention. There the record is as plain as the road at noonday. The Constitution was not drawn up to safeguard liberty. Its framers had property rights in their minds' eye and property deeds in their pockets, and its most enthusiastic supporters were the leading bankers, manufacturers and traders of the Federated States. The Constitution was made to protect the rights of property and not the rights of man.

loc2086-92:
The convention that framed the Constitution of the United States convened at Philadelphia in 1787 behind closed doors. All of the delegates were sworn to secrecy. Madison reported the proceedings of the convention in longhand and his notes were purchased in 1837 by Congress and published by the Government nearly half a century after the convention had finished its work. These notes disclose the forces that dominated the work of the convention and show that the object which the leaders of the convention had in view was not to create a democracy or a government of the people, but to establish a government by the property classes in the interests of the rights of property rather than the rights of man. All through the debates ran one theme: How to secure a government, not by the people and for the people, but by the classes and for the classes, with the lawyers in control.

... snip ...

of course "Triumphant Plutocracy" was written 100 yrs ago and covers the "Robber Baron" period. However, the descriptions are not all that different from Fiske histories from 1880s ... although Fiske attributes "Bill of Rights" to Scottish heritage (somewhat in contrast to the "English" constitution)

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

I Need A Good Password

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: I Need A Good Password
Date: 18 Apr 2013
Blog: IBM Alumni
I Need A Good Password
http://edocumentsciences.com/i-need-a-good-password/

I received a copy of this ("password corporate directive") over the internal network 29years ago from somebody in POK ... it is dated 1April1984 (which was a sunday that year) and shared with several people in San Jose
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#52

over the weekend somebody printed on 6670 loaded with corporate letterhead paper and placed in the corporate bulletin boards in the local area. Monday morning several people read it and believed it to be a valid corporate directive; which eventually led to attempt to find out who the culprit was. In the aftermath, there was directive that all corporate letterhead paper had to always be kept under lock&key. Concluding paragraph:
Because of the complexity of the password selection rules, there is actually only one password which passes all the tests. To make the selection of this password simpler for the user, it will be distributed to all managers. All users are instructed to obtain this password from his or her manager and begin using it immediately.

... snip ...

aka everybody in the corporation would be using the same, identical password.

RSA finally comes clean: SecurID is compromised
http://arstechnica.com/security/2011/06/rsa-finally-comes-clean-securid-is-compromised/

as an aside, we pointed out some of the vulnerabilities in the very early days ... note security dynamics (securid card) buys RSA and changes its name
http://news.cnet.com/Security-Dynamics-to-buy-RSA-Data/2100-1023_3-209535.html

note that the securid card wasn't a public/private key implementation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_%28security_firm%29
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecurID

While SecurID is one-time-password ... it does have effectively a shared-secret ... which effectively requires a unique token for every different institution ... or a centralized authentication services trusted by all operations (corporations, financial institutions, governments, etc).

disclaimer: we have dozen of patents in the area of authentication ... including user-centric paradigm ... i.e. a single token that could be trusted&used for all authentication ... metro-transit, all internet institutions, corporate logon, financial transactions with all institutions, door-badge readers, etc.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

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

What Makes weapons control Bizarre?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes weapons control Bizarre?
Newsgroups: comp.arch, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:20:51 -0400
Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> writes:
Things were different when farmland was free for the asking. Once all the (decent) farmland was "taken" and the banks (and land speculators) got involved, we recreated the same economic problems that caused most of our ancestors to flee Europe in the first place.

"The Great Deformation" has some other aspects about US farming. There was enormous growth in the market&exports during W1 ... europe was devasted so they had to import food ... and wallstreet was making enormous loans to these countries ... to buy US goods (food, weapons, etc) ... with some assurance from the US gov. that they were going to get repaid.

pg179/loc3958-61:
The 1920s return to the pre-war equilibrium, however, was exacerbated by an additive factor—the agricultural mechanization revolution—which came cheek-by-jowl with the loss of bloated wartime export markets. In 1914 there were only about 15,000 tractors and 17,000 work trucks on American farms, but by 1930 it was a totally different world. These figures had increased fifty-fold to nearly one million tractors and a like number of farm trucks.

pg180/loc3965-67:
During the course of twelve years, therefore, the value of American farm exports plunged by 80 percent. The windfall rents and surging rural prosperity that was the result of the Great War became its nightmarish opposite by the early 1930s.

... snip ...

America had enormous extra capacity in numerous areas based on huge exports ... the depression following '29 crash was severely exaserbated by the isolationism which (further) destroyed export market.

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

What Makes a substance Bizarre?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes a substance Bizarre?
Newsgroups: comp.arch, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2013 17:47:15 -0400
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
So burglary should carry a death sentence then. After all if it is appropriate to kill someone who is attempting burglary it must be appropriate to kill them for succeeding. In this part of the world there is no death penalty, nor any justification for killing another human being short of self defence when in fear of your life.

from today (ongoing fraud even after 2008 crash ... and still nobody has gone to jail) ... question is whether it is mostly more Kabuki theater (somewhat like sarbanes-oxley after enron/worldcom):

Independent Foreclosure Review Fiasco: OCC and Fed Decided Not to Find Harm
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/04/independent-foreclosure-review-fiasco-occ-and-fed-decided-not-to-find-harm.html

from above:
Sadly, these hearings look like the regulatory analogue to the Rodney Dangerfield joke: Steal $1000 from the convenience store and you go to jail for ten years. Steal $100 million and you appear before Congress and get called bad names for ten minutes.

... snip ...

Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Housing, Transportation and Community Development Subcommittee Hearing: Helping Homeowners Harmed by Foreclosures: Ensuring Accountability and Transparency in Foreclosure Reviews, Part II
http://www.scribd.com/doc/136654036/Transcript-Senate-Hearing-IFR-Part2-April-17-2013

from yesterday

Helping Homeowners Harmed by Foreclosures: Ensuring Accountability and Transparency in Foreclosure Reviews, Part II
http://www.banking.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=6aac2b90-e6ee-4c5c-b6a0-526ab27c70d2

and on the whistleblower subject ...

'War on Whistleblowers' Shows Heroes Pay Heavy Price
http://www.pogo.org/blog/2013/04/war-on-whistleblowers-shows-heroes-pay-heavy-price.html

It's a paradox of sorts. Because on one hand, President Obama last year signed an executive order that strengthened protections for national security and intelligence whistleblowers but on the other hand has prosecuted more media "leakers" under the Espionage Act than all other administrations combined.

... snip ...

War on Whistleblowers; Free Press and The National Security State
http://www.waronwhistleblowers.com/
'War on Whistleblowers' Film Highlights Dangers of Crackdown
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/war-on-whistleblowers-film-highlights-dangers-of-crackdown-20130417

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

Linchpin Pro-Austerity Paper Rife with Errors; Recomputed Results Show No Growth Hit from High Government Debt

From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: Linchpin Pro-Austerity Paper Rife with Errors; Recomputed Results Show No Growth Hit from High Government Debt
Date: 18 Apr 2013
Blog: Google+
re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/NkCdrbCaxJJ

Linchpin Pro-Austerity Paper Rife with Errors; Recomputed Results Show No Growth Hit from High Government Debt
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/04/linchpin-pro-austerity-paper-rife-with-errors-recomputed-results-show-no-growth-hit-from-high-government-debt.html

and

How To Avoid The Excel Mistake That May Have Ruined The Global Economy
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-avoid-the-excel-mistake-that-may-have-ruined-the-global-economy-2013-4
Further Further Thoughts On Death By Excel
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/further-further-thoughts-on-death-by-excel/
The Crumbling Case for Austerity Economics
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/04/margaret-thatcher-and-the-crumbling-case-for-austerity-economics.html
How not to Excel in economics
http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2013/04/18/How-not-to-Excel-in-economics.aspx
Did a Spreadsheet Error Just Cost You Your Job?; Economic Drones
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/18/economic-drones/
Twisted Tale of Bad Math and Hubris: Global Austerity Based on a Spreadsheet Error
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/04/twisted-tale-of-bad-math-and-hubris-global-austerity-based-on-a-spreadsheet-error.html
How Much Unemployment Was Caused by Reinhart and Rogoff's Arithmetic Mistake?
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-much-unemployment-was-caused-by-reinhart-and-rogoffs-arithmetic-mistake

and from 2010

It Would Be Helpful if Rogoff and Reinhart Made Their Data Available
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/not-following-professional-ethics-matters-also

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

What Makes a substance Bizarre?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes a substance Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:53:30 -0400
hancock4 writes:
The TV show "Burn Notice" used that principle for a scene. A bad guy had a heavy steel door. But the exterior walls were light as you describe. The hero simply shot through the wall, aimed at the floor, and ended up wounding the bad guy in the ankle, as intended.

in the last decade I would periodically refer to some internet security schemes were like installing a 6ft thick bank vault door in an empty field. there were jokes about trying to convince the crooks to attack the door instead of walking around the door to get at the valuables
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#36 VS: On-line signature standards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm20.htm#28 solving the wrong problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm20.htm#42 Another entry in the internet security hall of shame
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#12 IEEE article on intelligence and security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#26 HELP, Vulnerability in Debit PIN Encryption security, possibly
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#10 Cracking SSL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#3 New Method for Authenticated Public Key Exchange without Digital Certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#34 More Phishing scams, still no SSL being used
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#35 X.509 and ssh
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#39 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#69 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#71 Lack of bit field instructions in x86 instruction set because of patents ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#11 Top 10 Cybersecurity Threats for 2009, will they cause creation of highly-secure Corporate-wide Intranets?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#19 A mighty fortress is our PKI, Part III
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#36 Cookies Are Dead in the Fight Against Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#58 Pipeline and Network Security: Protecting a Series of Tubes

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

What Makes weapons control Bizarre?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes weapons control Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers, comp.arch
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 14:05:18 -0400
Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> writes:
The Declaration of Independence says "We hold these truths to be self-evident, ... That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.... it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." The militia was intended to be the means of guaranteeing that possibility.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#20 What Makes weapons control Bizarre?

drafted by jefferson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence

various descriptions of the constitutional convention, were things arranged for jefferson to be out of the country when it was going on. it wasn't until they didn't get constitution ratified, that they had to bring jefferson in (& the bill of rights).

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

Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
Date: 19 Apr 2013
Blog: IBMers
Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2035739/ibm-may-sell-x86-server-business-to-lenovo-reports-say.html

from above:
IBM is in "advanced discussions" with Lenovo over a possible deal for it to purchase IBM's x86 server business, according to two news reports Thursday. Any such deal would reshape the massive x86 server market, which was worth $35.8 billion last year and accounted for two-thirds of all server spending, according to figures from IDC.

... snip ...

IBM reportedly in talks to sell server biz to Lenovo; Summary: Big Blue is seeking up to $6 billion for its x86 server business, and Lenovo is a top candidate as it does not pose a threat to other parts of IBM's business.
http://www.zdnet.com/ibm-reportedly-in-talks-to-sell-server-biz-to-lenovo-7000014244/

IBM-Lenovo deal likely to focus on low-end, commodity servers, analyst says
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2035747/ibmlenovo-deal-likely-to-focus-on-lowend-commodity-servers-analyst-says.html

IBM-Lenovo deal likely to focus on low-end, commodity servers, analyst says; IBM may sell off its low-end x86 systems but will likely keep more profitable hardware, an analyst says
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/051413-data-centers-show-signs-of-269746.html

We once did a executive customer call on the largest 37x5/SNA customer and got a briefing on their future direction ... including moving off 37x5/SNA. The following week we were in Raleigh for a conference and mentioned the briefing we had gotten from their largest customer. They constantly repeated fhat it wasn't true for a period of time, then the higher level management got up and left the room for a period. They then came back in and confirmed it was true ... but it didn't matter since earlier in the year that customer had spent that years budget on Raleigh products (aka focus on quarterly numbers).

IBM's potential x86 server sale to Lenovo highlights oncoming train; Summary: IBM famously unloaded its PC business to Lenovo well before the post PC era hit. Is Big Blue bailing on commodity servers before the floor falls out?
http://www.zdnet.com/ibms-potential-x86-server-sale-to-lenovo-highlights-oncoming-train-7000014273/

several factors ... lots of news about world moving to cloud (both public & private). The big cloud operators have been saying for a decade or more that they build their own servers for 1/3rd the cost of the brand name vendors (Dell, HP, IBM, etc) ... in part because their scale is so large, a single large cloud mega-datacenter will have hundreds of thousands of servers.

The big cloud operators have also started publishing open standards for their server builds as well as their mega-datacenter specs and operation.

In the past year or so, the main server chip manufacturers have stated that they are now selling more chips to the big cloud operators than to the brand name server vendors (the server market has tipped away from the brand name server vendors; sever market share numbers doesn't include the big cloud operators building their own)

There are some companies starting to specialize in assembling servers to the cloud open specifications (smaller cloud operations can now take advantage of the open cloud server specifications w/o requiring an in-house staff doing the assembly).

some other cloud discussion in this linkedin mainframe group
http://lnkd.in/Revm3f
also archived here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#19 Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?

IBM looks to sell its x86 server business to Lenovo as profits crash; Commodity servers just part of IBM's bad news, wider industry trouble.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/ibm-looks-to-sell-its-x86-server-business-to-lenovo-as-profits-crash/

recent cloud news

New data center survey shows mediocre results for energy efficiency
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2034139/new-data-center-survey-shows-mediocre-results-for-energy-efficiency.html

from above:
Big online firms such as Google and Microsoft have boasted of PUEs of close to 1.0, but they're special cases. Many of the data centers they operate are new, and they invest heavily in IT efficiency, since it affects so much of their overall operating costs.

... snip ...

Facebook Provides Near-Real-Time PUE Data for Its Data Centers
http://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/facebook-provides-near-real-time-pue-data-for-its-data-centers/
Google Hacks Power Regulators to Build Greener Grid
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/04/google-lenoir/

aka ... with the dramatic plunge in their computer costs, power&cooling becomes an ever increasing part of cloud computing total cost of operation, as a result cloud operations have been on the forefront of power&cooling efficiency improvements.

IBM's Slump One for the Record Books; IBM suffered its biggest one-day dollar drop since October 18, 2000, and its largest percentage decline since April 15, 2005.
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/04/19/ibms-slump-one-for-the-record-books/

IBM Prepares to Eject Self from World of Internet Servers
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/04/ibm-serve/
What IBM's x86 exit may mean for rivals; Competition in the x86 market will shift
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238537/What_IBM_s_x86_exit_may_mean_for_rivals_
IBM reportedly in advanced discussions to sell part of server business to Lenovo
http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/19/4242776/ibm-in-discussions-to-sell-part-of-server-business-to-lenovo

and cloud

Google wants utility companies to sell it more green power for data centers; Mountain View says power companies should provide new "renewable energy tariff."
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/04/google-wants-utility-companies-to-sell-it-more-green-power-for-data-centers/
Google shakes up US utility with green power tariff; Pays more on electricity to pay less on Greenpeace damage control
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/19/google_green_datacenter_tariff/

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

Delay between idea and implementation

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Delay between idea and implementation
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 11:22:20 -0400
Stephen Fuld <SFuld@alumni.cmu.edu.invalid> writes:
IBM's AS/400 (now called system P?) famously uses a 65 bit word, with one bit for a tag. Since they control the CPU, that part is easy. But do they use commodity DRAM or do they use some special DRAM chip that only IBM produces?

i remember long arguments between the 801/risc group and the as/400 group over the addition of 65th bit during work on first 64bit 801/risc

note circa 1980 there was extensive efforts to converge large variety of internal microprocessors to 801/risc ... including the processors used in low&mid-range 370, the follow-on to s/38 (aka as/400, originally referred to as Fort Knox)), bunch of processors used in controllers, etc. the low&mid-range 370 and as/400 were to use 801/risc Iliad chip. For various reasons all of these efforts floundared ... and efforts returned to conventional cisc chip. as a result, there were some number of 801/risc engineers leaving and going to other vendors to work on risc. misc. past posts mentioning 801/risc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

original as/400 introduced 1988
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/rochester/rochester_4010.html

finally does move to 801/risc in 1995
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System_i

with 64bit power/pc (as opposed to rios/power)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_POWER_microprocessors

Iliad 801/risc was going to be chip design used for 370s & as/400. ROMP was chip that was going to be used displaywriter follow-on. when that was canceled, the group looked around for another market and decided on unix workstation. they hired the group that had done AT&T unix port for pc/ix to do one for ROMP ... becomes PC/RT. Followon is RIOS/POWER chip used in rs/6000.

All the 801/risc have been non-cache coherent ... precluding most multiprocessor design. Somerset/AIM (apple, ibm, motorola) is formed to do single-chip 801/risc ... which becomes power/pc (6xx). Gets cache coherent for multiprocessor support ... somewhat influence from motorola 88000 group (the guy we directly report to, leaves to become head of Somerset).

precursor to as/400 was ibm s/38
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/38

above references that after the failure of future system effort, some number of people retreat to rochester to do s/38. big part of failure of future system was its horrible performance and enormous complexity (contributed to horrible performance as well as questionable whether it would ever be figured out). s/38 was enormous simplification as well as many of the performance problems were critical in s/38 market (snide reference in above).

For instance, an analysis was if FS machine was made of fastest technology then available (370/195), applications would have throughput of 370/145 (about 30 times factor slowdown). misc. past posts mentioning FS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

s/38 one-level-store (characteristic of fs) was also scatter allocation across disk pool. For system of 2-3 disks required system shutdown and all disks backed up as single entity. Any single disk failure required the inverse. This was untenable in typical large 370 operation with 300+ disks. The original RAID patent was at San Jose disk plant ... and initial deployed in product for S/38 ... in part because the impact of single disk failure was so immense.

a couple old email mentioning iliad:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#email810422
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#email830420

total random trivia, topic drift.

I had a project called HSDT ... misc. posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

and was working with several of the institutions that would eventually become NSFNET backbone ... operational precursor to modern internet
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401444/grid-computing/

We were suppose to get $20M to hook all the NSF supercomputers together, congress then cut the budget and a couple other things happened ... finally NSF released RFP ... but internal politics prevented us from bidding. Director of NSF tried to help by writing the company a letter 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO) ... but that just made the internal politics worse (as did references to what HSDT already had running was at least five years ahead of all bid submissions). misc. old email mentioning NSFNET
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

at the same time, I was working on effort to connect a large number of 801/risc chips together (not RP3) ... and meetings were being scheduled sometime as presentations I was suppose to be doing to director of NSF ... old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#email850314
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email850315
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#email870315

a little later this morphs into cluster scale-up for the ha/cmp product we were doing ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

post about early jan1992 meeting in ellison's conference room on cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

some old cluster scale-up email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

I've periodically mentioned that within hrs of the last email in above (end Jan1992) cluster scale-up was transferred and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors. within weeks it was announced as supercomputer for scientific and numeric intensive only ... press item from 17Feb1992
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1

part of the issue was ha/cmp cluster scale-up including working with national labs on scientific and numerical intensive ... as well as large filesystem ... but also working with rdbms vendors on commercial. The commercial scale-up was perceived as having large impact on the company's mainframe market place. It turns out that some of the same executives involved in blocking bidding on NSFNET backbone RFP ... also were involved in transfer of cluster scale-up and announcement as supercomputer (for scientific and numeric intensive only) ... another press item later in spring, 11may1992
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2

where they mentioned that clusters had totally caught them by surprise

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: comp.arch, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:45:43 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
in aggregate, CBO had report last decade that baseline budget had all federal debt retired by 2010 ... however (mostly after fiscal responsibility act expired in 2002), tax revenues were cut by $6T (in part because of tax loopholes for special interests ... but also general tax rate reductions ... mostly benefitting super wealthy) and spending increased $6T for a $12T budget gap.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#16 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

"The Great Deformation" frequently echos much of "Prophets of War" in extended discussions about what the warfare state has done to the budget and economy ... undoing everything Ike ("Ike's Bluff") had done for balanced budget & surplus ("The Great Deformation" differentiates Ike's current year/actual balanced budget compared to later claims about planned balanced budgets at some point in the future). The real budget savaging was done not by democratic administrations and "welfare" programs but by republican administrations and warfare programs (remember this is staunch republican and budget director under reagan).

pg67/loc1609-11
The whole narrative was wrong. Reaching back to the time of Reagan, it can be shown that fiscal discipline was destroyed first by the "neocons" who coddled the warfare state in pursuit of national security illusions; and then by the "tax-cons" who dismantled Uncle Sam's revenue base in the name of supply-side doctrine;

pg219/loc4820-22
Nevertheless, the constant dollar spending growth of $1 trillion (2005$) during the George W. Bush "guns and butter" spree has no peer at all in the record books. It can be fairly said that when it came to defining "Big Government" the Bush era left nothing to the imagination.

pg222/loc4880-83
Indeed, Ike's understanding that the budget choices which count are the ones reflected in current-year expenditures and receipts could not have been more jarringly different than what passes for fiscal conservatism today. The much ballyhooed "Ryan Budget" for fiscal 2012 added $7 trillion to the national debt, for instance, before it would achieve a balanced budget twenty-five years later; that is, in 2037. Eisenhower would have thought such a fiscal plan the scribbling of a madman.

... snip ...

Stockman has a lot to say about long list of things that Federal Reserve has done wrong over the last 30yrs (ever since Volcker was replaced) ... but doesn't quite come up with "bankfare" ... aka bank welfare as here:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke lies under oath again
http://johnhively.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/federal-reserve-chairman-ben-bernanke-lies-under-oath-again/

recent posts mentioning neocons and/or team b
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#59 The Madness of King George Revisited
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#5 Lessons Learned from the Iraq War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#20 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#49 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#54 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#56 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#76 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#5 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#7 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

other recent posts mentioining "Great Deformation", "Prophets of War" &/or "Ike's Bluff"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#54 NBC's website hacked with malware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#38 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#62 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#80 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#93 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#10 The Knowledge Economy Two Classes of Workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#12 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#21 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#32 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#43 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#50 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#51 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#53 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#62 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#67 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#3 What Makes a thread about the European debt crisis Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#13 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#14 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#18 Air Superiority: Advantage over enemy skies for 60 years
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#23 What Makes weapons control Bizarre?

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

Fed proposes annual assessments for large financial companies

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: Fed proposes annual assessments for large financial companies
Date: 20 Apr 2013
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
Fed proposes annual assessments for large financial companies
http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2013-04-16/fed-annual-assessments-large-financials

A small Fed tax will do little to rein in big banks.; Cost of being Too Big to Fail: Now just $28 million
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/04/16/cost-of-too-big-to-fail/

what one hand taketh away, another hand giveth (a thousand-fold); besides the other bailouts ... FED continues to subsidize the too-big-to-fail for $83+B/annum ... $64B just for the top five banks (JPMorgan, BofA, Citi, Wells, & Goldman)

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke lies under oath again
http://johnhively.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/federal-reserve-chairman-ben-bernanke-lies-under-oath-again/

other recent items mentioning the $83+B

Why Should Taxpayers Give Big Banks $83 Billion a Year?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-20/why-should-taxpayers-give-big-banks-83-billion-a-year-.html
Maybe this whale is bigger than too big to fail
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/04/03/delamaide-big-banks-column/2048835/
Elizabeth Warren, Ben Bernanke Clash Over Too Big To Fail
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/26/elizabeth-warren-ben-bernanke_n_2766368.html
Bernanke: We Will Do What It Takes to End Too Big to Fail
http://www.americanbanker.com/magazine/123_4/how-ludqig-s-promontory-became-a-regulatory-braintrust-1057480-1.html

this claims it is even bigger

Big Banks get subsidy of $780bn, equal to entire "stimulus" bill, every year
http://americablog.com/2013/03/big-banks-subsidy-780bn-warren.html
Top Banking Analyst: Subsidies to Giant Banks Exceed $780 Billion Dollars Per YEAR
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/03/top-banking-analyst-subsidies-to-giant-banks-exceed-780-billion-year.html

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

Delay between idea and implementation

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Delay between idea and implementation
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 17:04:35 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
post about early jan1992 meeting in ellison's conference room on cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

some old cluster scale-up email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#29 Delay between idea and implementation

almost 20yrs later ... ha/cmp rdbms cluster scale-up with 100+ systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#43 From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time

rebranded "purescale". finally there is non-mainframe DB2 that scales ... at the time in early 90s, the company just had mainframe relational. recent (long-winded) post mentioning some of the work with non-IBM RDBMS vendors in the early 90s for scaling (before being told we couldn't work with more than four systems)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#19 Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?

other topic drift, posts mentioning original relational/sql implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

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

Delay between idea and implementation

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Delay between idea and implementation
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 19:14:41 -0400
Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> writes:
Former IBM AS/400, former i-series, former system i, now appears to be called IBM i. For 15 or so years they use the same CPUs as system p (Power/AIX and POWER/Linux), and for 5 or so years the same physical boxes. So, although IBM, as a company, controls AS/400 CPUs, system i division itself does not. They the have live with what provided to them by their more important system p co-workers.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#29 Delay between idea and implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#32 Delay between idea and implementation

rs64, cobra released in 1995 for as/400
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_RS64

power/pc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_600

as/400 was converg s/38 and s/36 ... about 2/3rd way down web page, list various power chips starting 1995
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS/400

from above:
The IBM System i, then known as the AS/400, was the continuation of the System/38 database machine architecture (announced by IBM in October 1978 and delivered in August 1979). The AS/400 removed capability-based addressing.[4] The AS/400 added source compatibility with the System/36 combining the two primary computers manufactured by the IBM Rochester plant. The System/36 was IBM's most successful mini-computer but the architecture had reached its limit. The first AS/400 systems (known by the development code names Silverlake and Olympic) were delivered in 1988 under the tag line "Best of Both Worlds" and the product line has been refreshed continually since then. Guy Dehond from Inventive Designers was one of the beta-testers of Silverlake.

... snip ...

as previously mentioned as/400 was originally suppose to use 801/risc Iliad chip ... but when that effort floundered (as well as other 801/risc activities), Rochester quickly came up with CISC chip.

old post about capability-based ... FS, i432, S/38 ... and GNOSIS (from tymshare), spun off as KeyKOS (when M/D bought tymshare) ... I was brought in to audit GNOSIS as part of the spinoff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#57

GNOSIS/KeyKOS somewhat spawns eros, capros, coyotos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOSIS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KeyKOS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EROS_%28microkernel%29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CapROS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyotos

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 23:53:48 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
a big player in the financial mess was preventing derivatives from being regulated ... originally done as favor to Enron (by both MR&MRS) ... but also shows up as CDS gambling bets with AIG ... and continuing to this day.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#2 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

With respect to constitution, bill of rights, states rights and CDS, hedging, speculating, etc. being nearly purely gambling/betting; The Great Deformation; pg311/loc6752-54
In the midst of quoting Milton Friedman on the virtues of free market trading pits and the right of traders to agree to settle their contracts with cash, a right they already had, the CFTC ratified the futures industry plan. So doing, they accomplished nothing less than an abridgement of the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution and the long settled right of states to regulate gambling.

pg312/loc6755-58:
ULTIMATE REGULATORY CAPTURE: WHEN THE CFTC WENT INTO THE FRANCHISED GAMBLING BUSINESS

... snip ...

10th amendment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

some of this is also discussed in The Great American Bubble Machine
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405
and Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That is Breaking America
https://www.amazon.com/Griftopia-Machines-Vampire-Breaking-ebook/dp/B003F3FJS2

misc. recent posts mentioning constitution and/or bill of rights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#96 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#20 What Makes weapons control Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#21 What Makes weapons control Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#27 What Makes weapons control Bizarre?

misc. recent posts mentioning CFTC/CDS being betting/gambling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#2 Search Google, 1960:s-style
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#21 AIG may join bailout lawsuit against U.S. government
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#36 JPMorgan Chase slammed by regulators for control failings after botched derivatives bet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#49 Insider Fraud: What to Monitor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#60 Choice of Mary Jo White to Head SEC Puts Fox In Charge of Hen House
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#62 Taleb On "Skin In The Game" And His Disdain For Public Intellectuals
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#66 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#77 OT: but hopefully interesting - Million core supercomputer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#41 Adair Turner: A New Debt-Free Money Advocate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#42 COBOL will outlive us all
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#46 Bankers Who Made Millions In Housing Boom Misled Investors: Study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#65 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#66 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#4 Live-Blogging Senate Hearing Tomorrow, When J.P. Morgan Chase Will Be Torn a New One
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#25 Senator Sherrod Brown Drops a Bombshell in Mary Jo White's Hearing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#28 Senator Sherrod Brown Drops a Bombshell in Mary Jo White's Hearing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#29 Bank Holiday In Cyprus
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#35 Ex-Bailout Watchdog: JPMorgan's Actions "Entirely Consistent With Fraud"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#40 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#72 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#73 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#76 IBM Spent A Million Dollars Renovating And Staffing Its Former CEO's Office
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#81 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#82 What Makes Economic History Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#88 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#2 Too-Big-To-Fail, Too-Big-To-Prosecute, Too-Big-To-Jail, not just a problem in the USA
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#9 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#13 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#19 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#22 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#23 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#24 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#25 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#29 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#31 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#40 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#42 More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#45 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#79 As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,

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

Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
Date: 21 Apr 2013
Blog: IBMers
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#28 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo

recent posts in comp.arch "Delay between idea and implementation" thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#29 .
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#32 .
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#33 .

references older post "From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#43 .

there has been lots written about E5-2600 blades, IBM has base list price of $1815 and processing rating of 527BIPS ... for $3.44/BIPS; the large cloud vendors are claiming assembling for 1/3rd the cost of the brand name vendors ... or possibly close to $1/BIPS ... part of the explanation that with the dramatic drop in processing costs, cloud operators turning their attention to power&cooling as increasing factor in TCO (and also increasing factor in world turning to cloud operations).

By comparison fully configured z196 is $560,000/BIPS and factoring in software, services, and storage comes out to closer to $3.5M/BIPS (IBM financials from last year, mainframe processors are 4% of revenue but total mainframe is 25% of revenue and 40% of profits; aka total mainframe costs that customers are paying to IBM avgs 6.25 times base processor cost).

One of the issues is that risc processors have had significant performance advantage over x86 going back decades ... however, for the past several generations of x86 chips, they've gone to risc cores with hardware layer that translates x86 instructions into risc micro-ops ... which largely eliminates x86/risc performance differentiation. Note that even z196 mainframe talks about much of the performance improvement over z10 is incorporating features that have been in risc processors for decades (as well as further improvements from z196 to ec12)

this x86/risc comparison is purely the server market and ignores the fact that direct x86 sales to cloud operators is now claimed to be larger than the x86+risc server market combined.
http://h30565.www3.hp.com/t5/Feature-Articles/What-Does-x86-Need-to-Compete-With-RISC/ba-p/1222

It makes passing reference to cloud opeqrators and implying that a megadatacenter with hundreds of thousands of systems can handle individual system outage with cluster fall-over.

This comparison is also mostly server market ... again ignoring that server component sales to the cloud market is now larger than the server market
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/migratetoibm/compare.html

On-demand server deployment from a cloud operator claims to be done with credit-card without requiring any direct human interaction. Even on-demand supercomputer (ranking well within top 100) from cloud operator is claimed to be done with credit card and no direct human interaction (with rapid spin-up of all the instances).

It isn't just competition between the brand name vendors in the commodity server market ... but increasing amount of all processing is moving to (both public and private) clouds ... which isn't showing up as part of the server market.

recent posts mentioning e5-2600:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#10 From build to buy: American Airlines changes modernization course midflight
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#16 From build to buy: American Airlines changes modernization course midflight
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#17 Still think the mainframe is going away soon: Think again. IBM mainframe computer sales are 4% of IBM's revenue; with software, services, and storage it's 25%
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#5 mainframe "selling" points
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#6 mainframe "selling" points
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#7 mainframe "selling" points
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#8 mainframe "selling" points
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#10 FW: mainframe "selling" points -- Start up Costs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#15 A Private life?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#59 Why Intel can't retire X86
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#60 Why Intel can't retire X86
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#63 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#68 relative mainframe speeds, was What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#84 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#88 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#5 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#16 relative mainframe speeds, was What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#4 Oracle To IBM: Your 'Customers Are Being Wildly Overcharged'

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

Fed proposes annual assessments for large financial companies

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: Fed proposes annual assessments for large financial companies
Date: 21 Apr 2013
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#31 Fed proposes annual assessments for large financial companies

CBS 60mins had segment on Lehman, situation was so bad that Ersnt&Young, SEC, and FRB all had people living on site for six months before the failure
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-case-against-lehman-brothers/

but after the failure, it was three monkeys time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_wise_monkeys

Stockman in "The Great Deformantion" talks about egregous behavior of the FRB ... even encouraging the worst of the behavior ... but he doesn't leave out the CFTC: "ULTIMATE REGULATORY CAPTURE: WHEN THE CFTC WENT INTO THE FRANCHISED GAMBLING BUSINESS"

Periodic in the news, there are references to Congress being Kabuki theater
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabuki

but there is a lot of theater around the captured regulatory agencies.

Note Stockman's book has detailed analysis of whole series of events over the past 30 years where a captured Federal Reserve is acting in the best interests of wallstreet & too-big-to-fail to the detriment of the rest of the country. In fact, he asserts that several were bailouts of one sort or another that effectively established the principle of too-big-to-fail and moral hazard even before Glass-Steagall was repealed. pg334/loc7235-38:
If this was Greenspan's reason for easing, then Wall Street had already passed the point of too big to fail. A financial system that couldn't absorb the collapse of the Moscow stock market -- a backwater den where thieves gathered to fence their stolen property -- or the liquidation of a modest-sized betting pool like LTCM, in fact, was implicitly too dangerous to exist.

... snip ...

recent posts mentioned captured agencies:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#20 The Big Fail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#57 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#73 More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#9 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#44 Adair Turner: A New Debt-Free Money Advocate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#50 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#55 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#8 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#14 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#25 Senator Sherrod Brown Drops a Bombshell in Mary Jo White's Hearing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#89 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#90 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#94 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#20 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#55 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#86 What Makes a thread about the European debt crisis Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#94 KPMG quits as Skechers and Herbalife auditor amid insider trading allegations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#1 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#2 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#11 Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze

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

Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?
Date: 21 Apr 2013
Blog: Enterprise Systems
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#19 Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?
and
http://lnkd.in/Revm3f

Note that fully configured z196 processor is rated at 50BIPS and at $28m goes for $560,000/BIPS. Last year IBM financials had 4% of revenue coming from mainframe processors but overall mainframe revenue was 25% of total (and 40% of profits) ... or customers were paying ibm avg of 6.25 times base mainframe processor cost ... then z196 comes out to $3.5M/BIPS.

Common cloud megacenter will have several hundred thousand e5-2600 blades ... which have 527BIPS. IBM has base price of $1815 for e5-2600 blades or $3.44/BIPS. However, large cloud operators for a decade or more been claiming that they build their own blades for 1/3rd the cost of brand name blades (DELL, HIP, IBM, etc) ... which comes closer to $1/BIPS. Any one of the large number of megadatacenters will have more processing power than the aggregate of all mainframes in the world today. As a result of the dramatic drop in computer costs, power&cooling are increasing percentage of total cost of ownership/operation (TCO) ... and motivates the large cloud operations to be on the forefront of efficient datacenter operation.

Recent news is that x86 vendors are shipping more server chips directly to cloud operations than to brand name server vendors ... (i.e. x86+risc server market numbers don't even take into account cloud operations are now larger than the brand name sever market). The combination possibly also accounts for the recent rumors that IBM will be selling off its x86 business ... recent thread over in (closed linkedin) IBMers group ... my pieces also archived here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#28 .
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#35 .

... oh and total mainframe processor revenue for the past several years ... is equivalent to approx. 180 fully configured z196 systems per year (@$28M) ... which is less processing power than a rack of e5-2600 blades ... aka z196@50BIPS, a full years sale of 180 fully configured z196 is 9TIPS, which is approx. equivalent processing of 17 e5-2600 blades. Racks are running 36 to 64 blades per rack.

other recent posts mentioning e5-2600 blades
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#10 From build to buy: American Airlines changes modernization course midflight
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#16 From build to buy: American Airlines changes modernization course midflight
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#17 Still think the mainframe is going away soon: Think again. IBM mainframe computer sales are 4% of IBM's revenue; with software, services, and storage it's 25%
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#5 mainframe "selling" points
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#6 mainframe "selling" points
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#7 mainframe "selling" points
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#8 mainframe "selling" points
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#10 FW: mainframe "selling" points -- Start up Costs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#15 A Private life?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#59 Why Intel can't retire X86
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#60 Why Intel can't retire X86
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#63 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#68 relative mainframe speeds, was What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#84 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#88 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#5 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#16 relative mainframe speeds, was What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#4 Oracle To IBM: Your 'Customers Are Being Wildly Overcharged'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#35 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo

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

Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
Date: 22 Apr 2013
Blog: IBMers
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#28 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#35 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo

There have already been articles that Google builds more x86 server systems than any brand name vendor. The other comment is that the big cloud operations have published open specs for not only their server builds but their green power&cooling and their efficient datacenter designs. Their are now vendors that build to the open specs for some of the smaller cloud operations ... so they don't need in-house staff.

This is comparison posted last year in mainframe discussion of power blade compared to e5-2600 blade
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#34

ibm has base list price of $1815 for the e5-2600 blade versus $16,544 for the power blade.

the e5-2600 blade benchmarks faster than power ... so even ibm's brand name x86 blade is nearly 1/10th the price of its power blade ... and is faster ... so the price/performance is more than order of magnitude better (and cloud operators are claiming they build servers for 1/3rd the price of the brand name vendors)

The post also references some of the open specs being published by the big cloud operators.

From a business stand-point ... the big cloud operators are looking at computing as cost of doing business ... so they mostly are driven to reduce that to as small as possible ... while the brand name server vendors are looking at computing for profit. As big cloud operators are driving computing cost to zero, then other costs of operating and managing a large datacenter start to dominate ... so they have invested huge amounts in driving those costs down as far as possible also (people, administration, operations, management, power, cooling, maintenance, repair, replacement, etc), i.e. total lifetime costs and total cost of operation. The big cloud operations with on-demand operations that have possibly order-of-magnitude (or more) variability in their computing requirements ... have also been big driver in getting x86 chip manufactures to build chips that drop power&cooling requirements to near zero when chips are idle ... but are able to come up to full operation at an instant.

As previously referenced, most of the brand name server vendors are doing all of their comparisons against other brand name server vendors .... even though that server market is now smaller than the cloud operation server market (i.e. more x86 processors chips are shipping directly to cloud operations than to the brand name server vendors). With articles about the world moving to the cloud will only tend to increase the difference. The efforts by the big cloud operators to drive server computing costs to zero ... has also started to leak out into general market (including operations building to cloud "open specs" for smaller customers).

Computing's low-cost, Cloud-centric future is not Science Fiction; Summary: The future of personal computing is one that is cloud-centric, and utilizes inexpensive, power-efficient and disposable mobile, desktop and set-top devices.
http://www.zdnet.com/computings-low-cost-cloud-centric-future-is-not-science-fiction-7000006094/

Mysterious "Project Catapult" Grows Bigger
http://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/mysterious-project-catapult-grows-bigger/

I had a project called HSDT ... misc. posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

and was working with several of the institutions that would eventually become NSFNET backbone ... operational precursor to modern internet
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401444/grid-computing/

from above:
Back in the 1980s, the National Science Foundation created the NSFnet: a communications network intended to give scientific researchers easy access to its new supercomputer centers. Very quickly, one smaller network after another linked in-and the result was the Internet as we now know it. The scientists whose needs the NSFnet originally served are barely remembered by the online masses.

... snip ...

which morphed into GRID computing and later CLOUD computing

We were suppose to get $20M to hook all the NSF supercomputers together, congress then cut the budget and a couple other things happened ... finally NSF released RFP ... but internal politics prevented us from bidding. Director of NSF tried to help by writing the company a letter 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO) ... but that just made the internal politics worse (as did references to what HSDT already had running was at least five years ahead of all bid submissions). misc. old email mentioning NSFNET
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

at the same time, I was working on effort to connect a large number of 801/risc chips together (not RP3) ... and meetings were being scheduled at same time as presentations I was suppose to be doing to director of NSF ... old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#email850314
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email850315
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#email870315

a little later this morphs into cluster scale-up for the ha/cmp product we were doing ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

post about early jan1992 meeting in ellison's conference room on cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

some old cluster scale-up email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

I've periodically mentioned that within hrs of the last email in above (end Jan1992) cluster scale-up was transferred and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors. within weeks it was announced as supercomputer for scientific and numeric intensive only ... press item from 17Feb1992
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1

part of the issue was ha/cmp cluster scale-up including working with national labs on scientific and numerical intensive ... as well as large filesystem ... but also working with rdbms vendors on commercial. The commercial scale-up was perceived as having large impact on the company's mainframe market place. It turns out that some of the same executives involved in blocking bidding on NSFNET backbone RFP ... also were involved in transfer of cluster scale-up and announcement as supercomputer (for scientific and numeric intensive only) ... another press item later in spring, 11may1992
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2

where they mentioned that clusters had totally caught them by surprise

I had been working with national labs off&on for some time, in 1979 was looking at large cluster of 4341 machines ... and I did a benchmark for them on early engineering 4341 (production 4341s weren't yet available at the time).

In 1988, I was asked if I could help LLNL standardize some serial technology they had ... this eventually morphs into fibre channel standard (also mentioned in above reference meeting with Ellison as well as medusa scale-up).

Later some mainframe channel engineers get involved and defined a heavy-weight mainframe channel oriented layer on top of fibre channel standard that significantly cuts the native throughput of FCS ... this morphs into FICON.

Recently there was peak I/O throughput benchmark done for z196 with 104 FICON "channels" (with 104 FCS underneath). that got 2M IOPS. The article also mentions that (max. number) 14 z196 SAPs peak at 100% busy with 2.2M SSCH/sec ... but recommendations are to keep SAPs at 70% busy or less (i.e. 1.5M SSCH/sec). By comparison there was recently announced a single FCS for e5-2600 capable of over 1M IOPS ... two such FCS would beat the peak z196 I/O benchmark with 104 FICON (104 FCS with heavy-weight FICON layer on top that drastically cuts the throughput of the underlying FCS).

Note that with virtualization ... there is big decoupling between the software & the hardware ... virtualized operations running on large pool of available hardware ... compute blades become cheap enough that they are nearly disposable. If it isn't public cloud ... there are now operations that will build to open-specs (significantly below brand name price ... there are even some rumors that there are brand name vendors that have gotten into that business) . Large cloud operators release the open-specs to increase the total component volume ... further driving down their costs (they've done detailed surveys/studies of component reliability and select for overall total lifetime cost, being included in open specs rewards those component manufacturers).

note over in recent "Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?" discussion
http://lnkd.in/Revm3

I describe large virtual-machine based online service providers in the late 60s & early 70s enhancing the IBM product (and leveraging virtualization) to help provide 7x24 availability ... including dealing with required system outages for scheduled maintenance ... they implemented non-disruptive process migration between systems in order to transparently take systems offline (although the enhancements didn't appear in the standard product); effectively the cloud-equivalent providers of the period. The large cloud operators now provide similar capability to mask outages.

posts also archived here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#19
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#37

Evolve or die? How today's hardware giants are steering a course to irrelevancy
http://www.zdnet.com/evolve-or-die-how-todays-hardware-giants-are-steering-a-course-to-irrelevancy-7000014340/
Lenovo tipped to buy IBM X86 business
http://www.tgdaily.com/hardware-brief/71120-lenovo-tipped-to-buy-ibm-x86-business

and cloud

Big Data, Analytics, and Cloud Drive Enterprise Software Growth, According to IDC
http://www.fiercecio.com/press-releases/big-data-analytics-and-cloud-drive-enterprise-software-growth-according-idc
Amazon: "Infrastructure Is Not A Differentiator (Except For Us)"
http://readwrite.com/2013/04/22/amazon-infrastructure-is-not-a-differentiator-except-for-us
Facebook To Build A $1 Billion Data Center In Iowa
http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/22/facebook-to-build-a-1-5-billion-data-center-in-iowa/
Facebook Catapults $1.5 Billion Data Center Into Iowa
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/04/facebook-iowa-data-center/ --
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Happy birthday Mosaic! 20 years of the graphical Web browser

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Happy birthday Mosaic! 20 years of the graphical Web browser
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:20:58 -0400
Happy birthday Mosaic! 20 years of the graphical Web browser
http://www.zdnet.com/happy-birthday-mosaic-20-years-of-the-graphical-web-browser-7000014349/

semi-related article that I've recently quoted
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401444/grid-computing/

from above:
Back in the 1980s, the National Science Foundation created the NSFnet: a communications network intended to give scientific researchers easy access to its new supercomputer centers. Very quickly, one smaller network after another linked in-and the result was the Internet as we now know it. The scientists whose needs the NSFnet originally served are barely remembered by the online masses.

... snip ...

recent references to above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#18 Grid Computing (from 1May2002)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#24 "JP MORGAN SAW ITSELF AS ABOVE THE REGULATORS" Do you agree?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#52 Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Internet, 1974
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#83 IBM Spent A Million Dollars Renovating And Staffing Its Former CEO's Office
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#0 What in your opinion is the one defining IBM product?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#29 Delay between idea and implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#38 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo

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

Happy birthday Mosaic! 20 years of the graphical Web browser

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Happy birthday Mosaic! 20 years of the graphical Web browser
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:57:14 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Happy birthday Mosaic! 20 years of the graphical Web browser
http://www.zdnet.com/happy-birthday-mosaic-20-years-of-the-graphical-web-browser-7000014349/

semi-related article that I've recently quoted
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401444/grid-computing/

from above:

Back in the 1980s, the National Science Foundation created the NSFnet: a communications network intended to give scientific researchers easy access to its new supercomputer centers. Very quickly, one smaller network after another linked in-and the result was the Internet as we now know it. The scientists whose needs the NSFnet originally served are barely remembered by the online masses.

... snip ...


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#39 Happy birthday Mosaic! 20 years of the graphical Web browser

remember that Mosaic was brought to you by NSF Supercomputer Program

National Center for Supercomputing Applications
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercomputing_Applications

above has image of plaque commemorating the creation of Mosaic web browser.

other history here:
http://www.livinginternet.com/w/wi_mosaic.htm

trivia ... Complaints that new company to produce browser product was called Mosaic and they changed their name to Netscape. Who had the rights to the name and provided it to the new company to use????

other triva ... first web server in the states ... on SLAC's virtual machine system:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml

from above (Feb1993):
February: A new X browser called Mosaic is released by The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). It has many of the features of MidasWWW and the support of a large organization. With the availability and widespread adoption of Mosaic, Web use starts to gain momentum.

... snip ...

old email leading up to NSFNET backbone
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

past posts mentioning NSFNET backbone
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 19:01:39 -0400
Patrick Scheible <kkt@zipcon.net> writes:
In a typical ER, the triage nurse is only sorting between "can wait" and "can't wait." It would take a major disaster to get so overwhelmed that the triage nurse is making the call on which are untreatable.

some years ago, I got stuck between two paramedics on flt from La Guardia to Miami ... they were heading to some disaster in the Caribbean (i forget what it was now). they gave story about doing triage in disasters ... they had pile of tags where they do the initial assessment ... they gave me one as souvenir

something like this ... but no color, no bar codes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triage

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

True LRU With 8-Way Associativity Is Implementable

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: True LRU With 8-Way Associativity Is Implementable
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:07:50 -0400
"Paul A. Clayton" <paaronclayton@gmail.com> writes:
While not the same as a cache, the Itanium 2 TLBs use LRU replacement. The L1 TLBs (32 entries) are documented as using "true LRU". It is somewhat less clear if the L2 TLBs (128 entries with up to 64 locked) are also truly LRU, though I suspect such is the case.

360/67 had "true" LRU 8-entry associative array (TLB)

for other drift ... while undergraduate in the 60s ... i changed cp67 (on 360/67) to have (clock-like) "global" (approximate) LRU for page replacement ... this was about the same time there was ACM article about "local" LRU for replacement.

at dec81 ACM SIGOPS, Jim Gray has me if I could help a co-worker with his Stanford PHD ... on global LRU and clock page replacement. The awarding of his PHD was strongly being opposed by the "local" LRU forces. It turns out that in the early 70s, the Grenoble Scientific Center had modified cp67 to implement the "local" LRU description ... so we had cp67 systems running on similar hardware with similar workloads for comparison of "local" and "global". The Cambridge Scientific Center 360/67 was 768kbyte (104 pageable pages after fixed storage requirements) and would support 70-80 users with subsecond response (with global). The Grenoble Scientific Center 360/67 was 1mbyte (156 pageable pages after fixed storage requirements) would support 35 users with similar workload, response and throughput (with "local", half the users with 50% more real storage).

It also turns out that I had done some other work on global clock variations in the early 70s at the Cambridge Scientific Center ... and in paging simulator (from full instruction traces) ... there was a clock variation that could beat "TRUE LRU". The issue was that "TRUE LRU" would get into pathelogical situations and degenerates to FIFO. The global clock variation had a peculiar slight-of-hand that would degenerate to RANDOM instead (in the situations where TRUE LRU degenerated to FIFO).

I wrote a response ... but it took nearly a year to get permission to send it ... some of it here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email821019
in this past post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#46

I hoped that rather than research management taking sides in the academic dispute over (local versus global) paging replacement algorithms ... their blocking my sending a reply was punishment for some perceived transgressions (about this time I was being blamed for computer conferencing on the internal network).

misc. past posts mentioning page replacement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

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

IBM 7070 Question

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM 7070 Question
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:34:56 -0400
Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> writes:
What we need is an unbiased history. Of course history is written by humans, so lots of luck.

As far as 1401 upgrades, there were 1460s, 1440s, and 1410s. None of them was a real architecture break.

The 1440 eliminated the need to use fixed low storage locations for card/printer/punch I/O so it was a step toward running multiple jobs at once, but didn't really get there. I read about shops supporting terminals by jumping out of batch processing and polling the terminal. Not really a workable solution.


slightly analogous ... as things get more complex ... limited resources can mean that more time is spent fighting resource brickwalls than doing new stuff (although more complex infrastructure starting point bumps up initial resources required).

3705/3725 had enormously slow processor and NCP was very small kernel with implementors constantly having to write everything from scratch adding new features to NCP.

this describes baby bell implementing NCP on series/1 providing ten times the function and performance at a much lower cost.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#67
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#70

at the time i got involved (looking at putting it out as product) they were bumping the 512kbyte storage limit on series/1 ... and were spending more time compensating for limit on series/1 resources ... than actually doing new features (by comparison the 3705/3725 NCP developers had it orders of magnitude worse anytime trying to add anything). my proposal was immediately ship the series/1 implementation but immediately start on port to 801/risc RIOS chip (used in rs/6000) ... with enormously larger processing power and real storage ... and more sophisticated infrastructure support.

the other part was the base 3705/3725 NCP paradigm was dumb terminal control by host w/o any real networking and limited capability outboard. the series/1 was fundementally real peer-to-peer sophisticated networking with simulated NCP API added ontop. The underlying real networking enabled lots of stuff that wasn't possible in a straight SNA dumb terminal paradigm.

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

What Makes a substance Bizarre?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes a substance Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:44:52 -0400
Patrick Scheible <kkt@zipcon.net> writes:
Yes, they could kill silently with their knives. A history professor of mine telling of his experiences in WW II told about how one night at camp in the field he woke to feel a Ghurka's knife at his throat while the Ghurka felt his collar for the appropriate insignia. They were going through all the camps checking for German infiltrators. (Why the Germans couldn't have worn allied uniforms and insignia when they went infiltrating I really couldn't say...)

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#60 What Makes an Architecture Bizaare?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#69 What Makes an Architecture Bizaare?

My wife's father took the family with him when he was posted to Nanking (as adviser to Generalissimo) after WW2.

The english provided school bus for kids in Nanking and a Ghurka guard rode the bus.

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

Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
Date: 23 Apr 2013
Blog: IBMers
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#28 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#35 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#38 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo

similar post in (linkedin) Old Geeks:
http://lnkd.in/mGd4j5

and cloud mainframe thread:
http://lnkd.in/Revm3f
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#19 Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#37 Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?

and a.f.c. thread on Mosaic 20yrs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#39 Happy birthday Mosaic! 20 years of the graphical Web browser
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#40 Happy birthday Mosaic! 20 years of the graphical Web browser
and similar thread on Google+
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/gnKbwSxpr1P

The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/the-cloud-killing-traditional-hardware-and-software-216963
Amazon's Vogels: Big Data Belongs In The Cloud
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2006/03/if_you_cant_tru.html
Amazon's AWS Turns On Redshift Data Warehousing And EC2 High Storage In Europe
http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/23/amazon-expands-redshift-data-warehousing-and-ec2-high-storage-to-europe/
No, Microsoft, open source software really is cheaper, insists Munich
http://www.zdnet.com/no-microsoft-open-source-software-really-is-cheaper-insists-munich-7000010918/
Cloud Business Intelligence: Topping 50 Percent Adoption by 2014
http://www.datamation.com/cloud-computing/cloud-business-intelligence-topping-50-percent-adoption-by-2014.html

other history related to the cloud

Happy birthday Mosaic! 20 years of the graphical Web browser
http://www.zdnet.com/happy-birthday-mosaic-20-years-of-the-graphical-web-browser-7000014349/

semi-related article that I've recently quoted
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401444/grid-computing/

remember that Mosaic was brought to you by NSF Supercomputer Program

National Center for Supercomputing Applications
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercomputing_Applications

above has image of plaque commemorating the creation of Mosaic web browser.

other history here:
http://www.livinginternet.com/w/wi_mosaic.htm

trivia ... Complaints that new company (to produce browser product) was called Mosaic and they changed their name to Netscape. Who had the rights to the Netscape name and provided it to the new company to use????

other triva ... first web server in the states ... on SLAC's virtual machine system:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml

old email leading up to NSFNET backbone
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
past posts mentioning NSFNET backbone
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

now two of the people in this referenced cluster scale-up meeting early Jan1992, in Ellison's conference room ... previously mentioned upthread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

leave and join this new small client/server (browser) startup and are responsible for something called the commerce server. significantly motivated by being told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors ... we also decide to leave. we are then brought in as consultants into the small client/server startup because they wanted to do payment transactions on their commerce server; the startup had also invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted to use; the result is now frequently called e-commerce. Part of what we had to do was map the use of the "SSL" technology to the payment process ... as well as doing audits/walk-thrus of several of the business entities associated with the "SSL" infrastructure. some related posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcert

going back some time ... GML was invented in 1969 ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

at the science center (4th flr, 545 tech sq) ... some past posts (note that the science center also did virtual machines, the internal network, and several other things)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

GML is chosen because "G", "M", and "L" are the first letters of the last name of the three inventors. a decade later, GML morphs into international ISO standard SGML. After another decade, SGML morphs into HTML at CERN
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/

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

As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,
Date: 23 Apr 2013
Blog: IBMers
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#39 As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#58 As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#79 As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,

Turning the Marine Corps into arm of the Army has been going on for some time. One of the scenarios was Marine's getting M1 main battle tanks. It turned out that Army requirements was less than the builders volume discount. Congress then directed the Marines to buy M1s sufficient to reach the volume discount. M1s are 65-70 tons ... 95% of Marine mission profiles involve areas with 35ton load limit. Just having M1s divert lots of resources from Marine's primary mission profile and about the only place the Marines can use M1 is conflicts assisting the Army.

That is separate from the whole issue of M1s were to fight tank slug fest with the Soviets on the fields of Europe. One of the things seen during the early days of M1 was whole European infrastructures had to be upgraded as part of supporting the M1 weight. It is 20yrs past when that was considered a major scenario ... and it is still impossible to get MICC to turn off M1 production line.

This website mostly blogs about how horrible the F35/JSF is ... but also periodically gets into how nearly criminal the Stryker is.
http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com/

this recently compares Stryker with BRDM-2
http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com/2013/04/dare-to-compare-m1127-stryker-rv-versus.html

and then follows up with

Some surprising vehicles that would give the USMC great, affordable power
http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com/2013/04/some-surprising-vehicles-that-would.html
and
http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com/2013/04/vacancy.html

Also, the claim could be made that after IBMs downturn in the early 90s and its reorganization into the "baby blues" in preparation for break up ... what Gerstner "resurrected" was nothing like the old company just had the same name and the same stock ... but only marginally related (I wouldn't quite go so far as saying Frankenstein ... but it wasn't the same)

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

Pirate Bay co-founder charged with hacking IBM mainframes, stealing money

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: Pirate Bay co-founder charged with hacking IBM mainframes, stealing money
Date: 24 Apr 2013
Blog: IBMers
Pirate Bay co-founder charged with hacking IBM mainframes, stealing money
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/041913-ibm-lenovo-deal-likely-to-focus-268899.html

There are long threads in various mainframe related venues ... like the ibm-main mailing list (originated on bitnet in the 80s) and various open (linkedin) mainframe groups ... that mainframes aren't hackable. So it is more like claims that Fords never have accidents ... and then two have accidents in the same week.

we were called into consult with small client server/startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server; they had also invented this technology they called "SSL" they wanted to use; the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce". Part of the effort involved establishing use and deployment requirements for various parts of "SSL". Almost immediately, various of the requirements were violated, resulting in a number of different kinds of exploits that continue to this day.

somewhat as a result in the mid-90s we were asked to participate in the x9a10 financial standard working group which had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for *ALL* retail payments (point-of-sale, face-to-face, unattended, credit, debit, stored-value, gift card, internet, etc; aka *ALL*). the result was the x9.59 financial transaction standard. part of the effort involved detailed, end-to-end, thread & vulnerability studies of the various payment methods. For various reasons x9.59 hasn't been deployed. some x9.59 references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

From the studies, we've come up with some number of characterizations of the current paradigm

security proportional to risk ... in the current paradigm the value of the transaction information to the merchant is the profit from the transaction, possibly a couple dollars (to the transaction processor possibly a couple cents). However, to the attackers, the transaction information is worth the credit limit &/or account balance, possibly thousands of dollars. As a result, the attacking crooks can frequently out-spend the defenders by a factor of 100 times (what the defenders can afford to spend; typical military rule-of-thumb is attackers needs three times the resources of the defenders).

dual-use ... the transaction information is needed in dozens of business processes at millions of locations around the world and therefor needs to be generally available. At the same time, the transaction information can be used by crooks for fraudulent financial transactions and as a result, it has to be kept completely confidential and never divulged. The conflicting requirements have the result that even if the planet was buried under miles of information hiding encryption, it still wouldn't stop transaction information leakage.

Now, the major data breaches in the world today are for financial transaction information ... because of the motivation to crooks for the financial gain. X9.59 didn't do anything about preventing data breaches. X9.59 stightly tweaked the current paradigm to eliminate the dual-use aspect of the transaction information, crooks could no longer use the information for fraudulent transactions. While x9.59 didn't do anything about preventing data breaches ... it eliminated the motivation for crooks related to the majority of the breaches in the world today ... as well as the financial risk that resulted from the breaches. Now the major use of "SSL" in the world today is this earlier stuff that we had done for "electronic commerce" ... which hides transaction information while being transmitted over the internet. X9.59 eliminates the risk related to exposing the transaction information and therefor eliminates the major use of SSL in the world today.

When we were doing "electronic commerce", one of the things that we noted that security tended to be inversely proportional to complexity. The more complex a commerce server was, the more likely there would be a security failure or exploit. For instance, flat-file e-commerce servers tended to have much fewer breaches & exploits than RDBMS-based e-commerce servers. Security through obscurity tended to not last very long. The only relative here was low-hanging fruit theory ... operations tended to have safe period if the crooks had easier target rich environment elsewhere. Note that part of "ecommerce" was something called a payment gateway ... that interfaced between the "ecommerce servers" on the internet and the payment networks. A primary principle for the payment gateway was KISS ... and it has never been known to have an exploit (we also periodically refer to it as the original SOA) ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

For other drift; we had been brought in to help wordsmith the cal. state electronic signature legislation. Many of the players were also heavily involved in privacy issues and had done intensive public surveys on the issue. The number one issue was identity theft, primarily fraudulent financial transactions as a result of data breaches. At the time there was little or nothing be done about the issue. The problem is entities typically take security measures to protect themselves ... but in this case, it was their customers that were at risk ... not the entities having the breaches. It was hoped that the publicity from the data breach notification would help motivate these entities to take countermeasures. It also alerted the account holders to take countermeasures ... like closing the account and invaliding the associated account number.

Note in the years since the cal state data breach notification was passed (original), several other states have passed similar legislation. Also, there have been a number of breach notification bills introduced at the federal level ... about evenly divided between those that have similar requirements to the cal. law ... and bills that would effectively eliminate any requirement for notification (there is lots being written about the power of the financial industry lobby on capital hill and the enormous piles of influence peddling money that is spread around there)

There is also some written about how financial industry profits from fraud. In the early part of the century there was a number of "safe" payment products that there being pitched to internet merchants (account for 70-90% of transactions) that had great deal of acceptance, the merchants were expecting an order-of-magnitude reduction in the "interchange fee" for safe internet payment products. They have been indoctrinated for decades that there is a heavy "fraud" surcharge in the "interchange free" ... proportional to the related fraud rate; the "safe" products could drastically reduce the fraud rate almost totally eliminating the fraud surcharge. Then came the cognitive dissonance and the whole thing implodes. The financial institutions told them that rather than reduction in interchange fee, there would be a surcharge on top of the highest fee they were already paying (inverting what they've been indoctrinated about for decades regarding interchange fee being proportional to fraud).

and for other drift ... historical stuff about the client side of the operation ... over in Old Geek Registry
http://lnkd.in/mGd4j5
also archived references here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#39 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#40 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#45 ..

I had sign-off on everything done at the ecommerce server talking to the payment gateway ... but could only recommend and cajole regarding other aspects, including giving class to the browser implementers. At one point as a countermeasure to the insider threat ... I semi-facetiously included a requirement that everybody that in anyway was connected to a ecommerce server had to have FBI background checks (not just implementers, but customers deploying and maintaining ecommerce servers)

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

How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
Date: 24 Apr 2013
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
Bernie Sanders Writes Law to Break Them Up: 10 Largest Banks Bigger Now Than Before Taxpayer Bailout
http://johnhively.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/bernie-sanders-writes-law-to-break-them-up-10-largest-banks-bigger-now-than-before-taxpayer-bailout/

Bernie Sanders
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/

JPMorgan Analysts Say Big Investment Banks Are "Uninvestable"
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-11/lenders-may-have-to-split-securities-businesses-jpmorgan-says.html

The Economic Argument Is Over -- Paul Krugman Has Won
http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-is-right-2013-4

Austerity/non-austerity is whether you can spend your way out of down turn. Stockman's recent book makes a distinction ... that you have to spend on mainstreet to reverse the downturn ... and that hasn't been happening in the US, the money is being pumped into wallstreet and most of it is disappearing some where and isn't making it to mainstreet

a couple years ago, bernanke had a release where he claimed that the free trillions for the too-big-to-fail would show up on mainstreet ... and when it didn't he had no way to force wallstreet to pump the trillions into mainstreet (they were buying treasuries with the free trillions and taking the interest as profits). the clunker is if he actually believed that, he could have turned off the spigot on the free trillions.

the scenario for the fed is that it is part of the enormous transfer of wealth from the 99% to 1% ... there is no point in having savings (including retirements) and savings are at historical low ... money is being forced into equities where P/E is at historical highs (and wallstreet has the game rigged to skim as much as possible), also setting the stage for another bubble burst.

stockman goes on for hundreds of pages on what fed has done wrong ... not just limited with respect to the fed& too-big-to-fail. he mentions that too-big-to-fail had already started well before repeal of glass-steagall ... fed allowing M&A mania. Over a period of time when economy grew by 29%, ten entities had come to be worth 300% more than their constituate components and become too-big-to-manage. This corresponds to industry publication that I had reviewed start of the century that had thousands of measures avg'ed for the largest regional institutions against the largest national institutions ... and the regional institutions were more efficient than the national. stockman references that there is no economy of scale for depository institutions over approx. $50B ... and contrary claims by the too-big-to-fail were blatantly false.

Two Senators Just Introduced A Bill That Could Neuter Wall Street
http://www.businessinsider.com/vitter-brown-too-big-to-fail-bill-2013-4

as aside ... my biggest quibble with stockman is that he glosses over the rating agencies selling triple-A ratings on toxic CDOs (when they knew they weren't worth triple-A, from congressional Oct2008 hearings). Those triple-A ratings significantly enabled the over $27T done during the bubble ... and that $27T significantly dwarfs many of the other issues he cites. reference to over $27T
Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt

The Treasury's Mistaken View on Too Big to Fail
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/the-treasurys-mistaken-view-on-too-big-to-fail/

At this point, no one will stick up for too-big-to-fail financial institutions. Even Tim Pawlenty, the newly appointed head of the Financial Services Roundtable, a group that represents big banks, contends that we must end the phenomenon of too big to fail. No financial institution should be so big -- or so systemically important for any reason -- that its failure would jeopardize the macroeconomy.

... snip ...

past posts in the thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#44 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#50 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#51 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#54 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#57 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#66 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#0 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#9 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#12 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#48 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#50 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#54 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#65 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#74 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#3 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#5 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#12 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#26 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#42 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#55 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#61 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#66 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#40 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#78 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#1 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#7 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#8 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#40 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size

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

As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,
Date: 24 Apr 2013
Blog: IBMers
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#39 As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#58 As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#79 As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#46 As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,

Stockman in "The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America" ... talks about stock buybacks are a mini-form of LBO, with the executives reaping huge rewards, pg457/loc9844-46:
The leader was ExxonMobil, which repurchased $160 billion of its own shares during 2004-2011. It was followed by Microsoft at $100 billion, IBM at $75 billion, and Hewlett-Packard, Proctor & Gamble, and Cisco with $50 billion each. Even the floundering shipwreck of merger mania known as Time Warner Inc. bought back $25 billion.

... snip ...

remember Gerstner was at AMEX being groomed to be the next CEO. AMEX and KKR were in competition for LBO of RJR ... and KKR won. There were problems with the RJR LBO and KKR hires away Gerstner to turn it around. Then IBM's board hires Gerstner to bring IBM back to life. After Gerstner leaves IBM, he goes on to be chairman of another large KKR-like LBO company. As an aside, about the same time IBM is heading into the red, AMEX spins off a lot of dataprocessing as "First Data" ... in what was described as the largest IPO up until that time. 15yrs later KKR does an LBO of "First Data" in what was described as the largest LBO up until that time.

disclaimer: last decade I do a stint as chief scientist at First Data. slightly garbled description here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190524015712/http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/stoprun/Stop-Run/Making-History/

a little more from stockman, just a little on IBM last decade or so, pg464/loc9995-10000:
IBM was not the born-again growth machine trumpeted by the mob of Wall Street momo traders. It was actually a stock buyback contraption on steroids. During the five years ending in fiscal 2011, the company spent a staggering $67 billion repurchasing its own shares, a figure that was equal to 100 percent of its net income.

pg465/10014-17:
Total shareholder distributions, including dividends, amounted to $82 billion, or 122 percent, of net income over this five-year period. Likewise, during the last five years IBM spent less on capital investment than its depreciation and amortization charges, and also shrank its constant dollar spending for research and development by nearly 2 percent annually.

... snip ...

my biggest quibble with stockman is that he glosses over the rating agencies selling triple-A ratings on toxic CDOs (when they knew they weren't worth triple-A, from congressional Oct2008 hearings). Those triple-A ratings significantly enabled the over $27T done during the bubble ... and that $27T significantly dwarfs many of the other issues he cites. reference to over $27T
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

Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?

From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?
Date: 24 Apr 2013
Blog: IBMers
re:
http://lnkd.in/Revm3f
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#19 Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#37 Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?

x-over from (linkedin) "Old Geek" discussion
http://lnkd.in/mGd4j5

The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/the-cloud-killing-traditional-hardware-and-software-216963

from above:
Says Baird: "We estimate that for every dollar spent on [Amazon Web Services], there is at least $3 to $4 not spent on traditional IT, and this ratio will likely expand further. In other words, AWS reaching $10 billion in revenues by 2016 translates into at least $30 to $40 billion lost from the traditional IT market."

... snip ...

This is somewhat in line with the comments from the large cloud operators that they build their own blades for 1/3rd the cost from the brand name vendors.

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

Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
Date: 25 Apr 2013
Blog: IBMers
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#28 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#35 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#38 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#45 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo

from the above referenced cloud article: The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software; New numbers show the cloud reducing IT costs, with traditional software and hardware vendors paying the price
http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/the-cloud-killing-traditional-hardware-and-software-216963

But will these traditional providers hold enough of the cloud market by the time the shift accelerates to remain leaders? If Baird's estimates hold true, for every dollar they make selling public cloud services, they will lose $3 to $4 in traditional hardware and software. In other words, they will be cannibalizing their market, which may redefine what they do and how strongly they can lead. I'm not sure they have much choice.

... snip ...

Since the markup on mainframe hardware&software is so enormously large ... any cannabalizing by IBM would be significantly larger

and repeat above, x-over in mainframe discussion
http://lnkd.in/Revm3f
and old geeks
http://lnkd.in/mGd4j5

The cloud article is about the IT in the world (regardless of the platform currently used) moving to the cloud.

read the rest of the article ... it has the traditional large cloud vendors charging $1 (TCO) for every 3-4 dollars customers are currently spending on "traditional IT". The referenced paragraph is the choice facing the traditional IT vendors regarding cannibalizing their traditional products. However the 3-4 ratio is basically cloud x86 products compared to standard IT x86 products. The mainframe markup is enormously higher so the ratio would be significantly larger. For instance from
http://lnkd.in/Revm3f

total mainframe processor revenue for the past several years ... is equivalent to approx. 180 fully configured z196 systems per year (@$28M) ... which is less processing power than a rack of e5-2600 blades ... aka z196@50BIPS, a full years sale of 180 fully configured z196 is 9TIPS, which is approx. equivalent processing of 17 e5-2600 blades. Racks are running 36 to 64 blades per rack.

....

The ibm base list price for e5-2600 blades is $1815 ($30,855 for 17); and cloud operators are claiming they are doing blades for 1/3rd the price of brand name blades ... say mabye $10K ... compare to $5B for 180 z196 (@$28M)

Some other comments in the referenced discussions is about other kinds of impacts on traditional IT of the world moving to the cloud. One of the things that has been rumored is that some of the traditional brand name x86 vendors may already be doing assembly for the big cloud operators ... at 1/3rd of the price of their brand name products ... in effect already cannibalizing their market.

Note also the recent articles about the big cloud megadatacenters are that they are achieving enormous scaling efficiency (not just in hardware assembly but TCO ... across the whole spectrum of datacenter operation)... compared to traditional datacenters ... and passing along the savings to their cloud customers

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

What Makes a substance Bizarre?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes a substance Bizarre?
Newsgroups: comp.arch, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:44:57 -0400
Andrew Swallow <am.swallow@btinternet.com> writes:
Britain appears to be stripping the knighthoods of its bank chairmen.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22045930

Are there any 'Man of the year' awards that the USA can take away from its bank chiefs?


previously mentioned
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#24 What Makes a substance Bizarre?

Independent Foreclosure Review Fiasco: OCC and Fed Decided Not to Find Harm
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/04/independent-foreclosure-review-fiasco-occ-and-fed-decided-not-to-find-harm.html

from above:
Sadly, these hearings look like the regulatory analogue to the Rodney Dangerfield joke: Steal $1000 from the convenience store and you go to jail for ten years. Steal $100 million and you appear before Congress and get called bad names for ten minutes.

... snip ...

some of the sentencing makes the comparison even more extreme

Inside the Three Strikes Project: An Inmate's Letter
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/inside-the-three-strikes-project-an-inmates-letter-20130328
Cruel and Unusual Punishment: The Shame of Three Strikes Laws; While Wall Street crooks walk, thousands sit in California prisons for life over crimes as trivial as stealing socks
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/cruel-and-unusual-punishment-the-shame-of-three-strikes-laws-20130327

which goes along with earlier prison-industrial-complex references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#37 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#38 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#42 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#43 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:30:29 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
above has picture of Rumsfeld meeting with Saddam to discuss military aid ... lot more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran-Iraq_war

from above:

The full extent of these covert transfers is not yet known. Teicher's files on the subject are held securely at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and many other Reagan Era documents that could help shine new light on the subject remain classified. Teicher declined to discuss details of the affidavit with the Washington Post shortly before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

... snip ...


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#78 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

President who Eviscerated Presidential Records Act Relying on His Presidential Library to Boost Legacy.
http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/president-who-eviscerated-presidential-records-act-relying-on-his-presidential-library-to-boost-his-legacy/

from above:
Executive Order 13,233 was signed by President Bush on November 1, 2001, so that his White House Counsel -- not the National Archives -- could review 68,000 pages of records from the Reagan Presidential Library, and decide if the public had the right to read them. These documents included a six-page 8 December 1986 memo to the President and Director of Public Affairs entitled, "Talking Points on Iran/Contra Affairs"; a series of memos dated 22 November and 1 December 1988 for the President entitled, "Pardon for Oliver North, John Poindexter, and Joseph Fernandez"; and a two-page memo for the President from the Attorney General, "Appeal of the Decision Denying the Enforcement of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987."

... snip ...

HISTORIANS, PUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS SUE TO STOP BUSH ORDER; Say New Restrictions on White House Files Violate Presidential Records Act; "Bush Order Attempts to Overturn the Law, Take the Power Back"
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20011128/

Court Rules Delay in Release of Presidential Papers is Illegal; Fails to Address Authority of Former Vice Presidents to Hold Up Disclosure of Papers
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20071001/

from above:
The Presidential Records Act of 1978 (PRA) emerged from the scandals of the Nixon presidency to require former presidents to release their records no later than 12 years after they leave office. Under the PRA, as amended, the U.S. government asserts complete "ownership, possession, and control" of all Presidential and Vice-Presidential records.

... snip ...

and earlier period (this reference is to Bush1 when Ford appointed him to head CIA, replacing Colby):

National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism (Melvin A. Goodman) pg247/3512-16:
Colby would not allow a clearly polemical group, led by Harvard professor Richard Pipes and referred to as Team B, to hijack the production of intelligence estimates. Bush had no qualms about doing so. Ford removed Colby, and Pipes -- with the help of Cheney and Rumsfeld -- named a team of right-wing academics and former government officials to draft their own intelligence estimates on Soviet military power. It is noteworthy that neither Cheney nor Rumsfeld mention the Team B chicanery in their recently published memoirs.

... snip ...

recent posts mentioning Team B:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#5 Lessons Learned from the Iraq War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#20 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#54 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#56 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#76 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#7 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#30 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

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

Alan Shugart and IBM

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Alan Shugart and IBM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:24:01 -0400
hancock4 writes:
The IBM S/360 history has a number of pages devoted to Alan Shugart who contributed a great deal to storage development. He left IBM to start his own business. The IBM history is generally uncritical, but wasn't too complimentary about Shugart's boss and seemed to support Shugart's decision to leave.

I had transferred from science center to san jose research in the '77. One of my hobbies was wondering around the plant site. At the time, bldg 14 (disk enginneering) and bldg. 15 (disk product test) were running "stand alone" testing scheduled 7x24 around the clock ... lots of various kinds of IBM mainframes for testing.

At one point they had tried running MVS for being able to do concurrent testing, but found that in their environment, MVS had 15mins MTBF (requiring manual reboot/re-ipl). I offered to rewrite I/O supervisor to be bullet-proof and never fail ... greatly increasing their productivity ... allowing anytime, on-demand, concurrent testing. This got me sucked into diagnosing various problems ... since there was inclination to first place blame on my software.

I also got sucked into sitting on conference calls with POK channel engineers. I asked why didn't they have their own people. The explanation was that most of the senior disk engineers that understood mainframe channel interface had been hired away to startups.

misc. past posts mentioning getting to play disk engineer in bldgs 14&15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

the disk division has long been sold off.

san jose research bldg. 28 is long gone as well as several other bldgs. on the san jose plant site. web satellite phots show bldgs. 14&15 still standing.

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

Polaroid's SX-70, the Greatest Gadget of All Time, Is 41

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Polaroid's SX-70, the Greatest Gadget of All Time, Is 41
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 11:12:26 -0400
cross-over from Google+
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/E5vFg4zhxBb
and (linkedin) "Old Geeks"
http://lnkd.in/mGd4j5

Polaroid's SX-70, the Greatest Gadget of All Time, Is 41
http://techland.time.com/2013/04/25/polaroids-sx-70-the-greatest-gadget-of-all-time-is-41/

Land's office was on 2nd flr of two story on the street side in middle of tech sq. scientific center offices on the 4th flr of 545 tech sq overlooked his balcony. One day he was demonstrating the unannounced sx-70 taking pictures of a model out on his balcony

Tech square buildings have been completely redone and renumbered.

More tech square
http://www.multicians.org/tech-square.html
Before the CIA office on the third floor had its typewriters stolen one night, the MAC building was open all the time, like a university building.

... snip ...

The IBM Science Center was on the 4th floor with machine room on the 2nd floor. The IBM Boston Programming Center was on the 3rd floor (3rd floor shared with CIA). One day some activist group called in a bomb threat in the "CIA" bldg to the FBI in Boston; they had observers all over the area looking to see which bldg. would be evacuated. The (virtual machine) CP67 group split off from the Science Center and took over the Boston Programing center (on the 3rd). The 3rd floor telco closet was on the IBM side, and the telephone company had correctly labeled the bldg occupants (although at the time, the bldg directory should the other occupant of the 3rd floor as a law firm). The CP67 group is morphing into VM370 and outgrows the 3rd floor space and moves out into the vacant SBC bldg. in Burlington Mall (SBC having gone to CDC in legal settlement). past posts mentioning science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

MIT leaves behind a rich history in Tech Square
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/techsquare-0317.html
Research topics also evolved, starting with the grand challenge of time-sharing and moving on to new problems as computer science began to mature. Tech Square served as the East Coast hub of the ARPANET (it was the original Network 18, known today as mit.edu); on the fifth floor, Dave Clark's group worked on the infrastructure for what would become the Internet, notably the TCP/Internet Protocols. Ron Rivest and the LCS Theory Group did pioneering work in encryption. In 1994, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, set up the World Wide Web Consortium's global headquarters on the third floor of Tech Square.

... snip ...

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

What Makes a substance Bizarre?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes a substance Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:58:07 -0400
hancock4 writes:
I used to lose my slide rules. Sometimes, but not always, I'd get them back. They were relatively cheap for simple ones, but I think about $30 in today's dollars for a plastic students' model.

I bought slide-rule from sears roebuck catalog when I was in middle school (out of my own money I earned cleaning rabbit pens at neighbors, he had some 200-300). it was $3.?? something ... equivalent of over $30 now.

past reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#37 Keeping old hardware alive?

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

The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
Date: 26 Apr 2013
Blog: Old Geek
re:
http://lnkd.in/mGd4j5
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#45 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#47 Pirate Bay co-founder charged with hacking IBM mainframes, stealing money
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#50 Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#51 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#55 Polaroid's SX-70, the Greatest Gadget of All Time, Is 41

a co-worker at the science center, some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

was responsible for the corporate internal network ... which was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until late '85 or early '86. At the time that arpanet was converting to tcp/ip internetworking protocol on 1JAN1983 ... it had about 100 IMP network nodes and 255 connected hosts ... at the same time the internal network was well on its way to 1000 nodes (which it reached later in the year). misc. past posts about the internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

The communication group was strongly fighting off client/server, tcp/ip, internetworking, distributed computing ... anything that didn't correspond to its dumb terminal paradigm (trying to preserve its dumb terminal emulation install base). This was a major factor in the company sliding into the red in the early 90s. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

In the late 80s, a senior disk engineer got a talk scheduled at the annual, world-wide, internal communication group conference and open his talk with the comment that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The issue was the disk division was seeing the effects of the communication group activity (and its stranglehold on datacenters) with data fleeing the datacenter (to more distributed computing friendly platforms), with drop in disk sales. The disk division had come up with a number of products to address the problem but they were constantly being veto'ed by the communication group (with its corporate "strategic ownership" of everything that crosses the datacenter walls).

The company slides into the red a few years later, then all the comments about the "killer micros" ... and the prediction about the demise of the disk division has come to pass.

In the 90s, a lot of the big financial institutions spent billions on software to move off mainframes to large numbers of "killer micros". The issue was that combination of growing business and globalization was putting enormous stress on overnight batch settlement (60s financial software had been front-ended with online & real-time, but still relied on batch settlement; globalization was cutting hrs for duration of overnight batch, and increasing business needed more work to be done). They were going to leverage large numbers of killer micros and parallelization software to convert to straight-through processing (real-time operation runs to completion). However, they were using parallelization technology that introduced a factor of 100 times overhead (compared to mainframe cobol batch) ... and they didn't do any speeds&feeds until deployment ... where they found that the increased overhead totally swamped any throughput increase they were looking for. The whole thing crashed (I did early back of the envelop estimates on some of the efforts but my warnings that it wasn't going to work were discredited; there is some line about they will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right).

I was involved more recently in attempts to revive the activity and was met with lots of opposition from executives that bore the scars from the 90s effort (even though all the shortcomings and problems of the earlier efforts had been more than addressed).

The public cloud ... can be considered another form of outsourcing ... the public cloud operators have enormously commoditized computing and datacenter operation ... issues are whether the enormous cost reductions and the technology advances more than compensate for issues associated with outsourcing.

There is complimentary thread over in (linkedin, closed) IBMers group about IBM selling its x86 server business to Lenovo (nearly a decade ago, it had sold the client/personal x86 business to Lenovo). my posts archived here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#28
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#35
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#38
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#45
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#51

part of the issue is cloud has contributed to commoditizing x86 business, cloud operators have been saying for a decade or so that they assemble their own blade servers for 1/3rd the price of brand name (dell, hp, ibm, etc) blades. Recently the x86 server chip vendors have said they are now shipping more x86 server chips directly to cloud operators than they are shipping to brand name server vendors (aka cloud operators are now over half the x86 server business). One of the issues is the cloud volumes don't show up in the standard x86 server market numbers

IBM has a base list price of $1815 for e5-2600 blade. e5-2600 blades have benchmarks of 527BIPS or about $3.44/BIPS. possibly getting close to $1/BIPS for cloud operators. By comparison an IBM max configured mainframe Z196 goes for $28M and has rating of 50BIPS or $560,000/BIPS. Furthermore, recent IBM financials has mainframe processor representing 4% of revenue. but total mainframe revenue (including services, software, and storage) is 25% of revenue (and 40% of profit). or mainframe customers are paying total 6.25 times their base processor cost. which puts total bill for z196 around $3.5M/BIPS.

In 1988, I was asked if I could help LLNL standardize some serial technology they had. this eventually morphs into fibre channel standard. it is also referenced in this early jan1992 cluster scale-up meeting in Ellison's conference room
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

Later some IBM mainframe channel engineers get involved and define a heavyweight layer for mainframe channel operations that enormously restricts the underlying FCS throughput, this eventually becomes the current mainframe FICON. A recent z196 peak I/O benchmark got 2M IOPS using 104 FICON (layered on top of 104 FCS). By comparison, there was a recent FCS announced for e5-2600 claiming over one million IOPS for a single FCS (two such FCS could get more than peak z196 I/O benchmark with 104 FICON).

Mainframe processor revenue the past several years has been approx. the equivalent of 180 fully configured z196 (@$28M) and at 50BIPS that is 9TIPS. 9TIPS is about the equivalent processing power of 17 e5-2600 blades, racks are being built with 36-64 blades per rack ... so annual mainframe processing sales works out to be less than half a rack of e5-2600 blades. The numerous cloud megadatacenters around the world, each typically have several hundred thousand blades.

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

The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
Date: 27 Apr 2013
Blog: Old Geek
re:
http://lnkd.in/mGd4j5
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#57 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

In the 60s, lots of the cp67 operations (including the science center and the cp67-based commercial online service bureaus that were appearing) wanted to start leaving system up and available 7x24.

For instance, 360s used to be leased/rented and time was charged based on "cpu meter" reading which ran whenever the processor and/or any I/O channel was busy. Active I/O channel programs were required to accept dialin connections and/or keystroke input ... which would keep the channel busy and the "cpu meter" running. Datacenters tended to offset the cost of the machine &/or other datacenter costs with use charges. Initially, leaving the system available for use 7x24 didn't have enough use to offset the base operational run rate of a datacenter, but it was necessary to leave the system up 7x24 in order to encourage off-shift use. So part of the work was automating lots of the computer manual operations that had required a human operation ... allowing lights out operation. Another was a terminal I/O channel program hack that would allow the channel to go idle when there were no incoming our outgoing characters (if the system was otherwise idle, it would allow the cpu meter to come to a stop, which curtails the lease/rental charges). Trivia: the cpu meter needed everything to be completely idle for at least 400ms before it would coast to a stop. Long after the market had converted from lease/rent to sales, the batch/MVS operating system still had a timer event that went off every 400ms (making sure that if system was up, cpu meter never stopped)

This is analogous to current day cloud operation where they've been significant motivation for server chips drop power (& cooling) to near zero when idle ... but can come up to full operation nearly instantaneously.

There was significant drop in mid-range computer prices in the late 70s ... for both dec vax/vms and ibm's 4300s. These machines competing against each other in the mid-range market ... with vm/370 4300 having slightly better hardware price/performance and vax/vms having slightly better human operational costs. In small unit orders, vax/vms and 4300s sold approx. the same number ... old post with a decade of vax/vms sales sliced-&-diced by model, year, us/non-us:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0

the big difference between vm/4300 and vax/vms sales were in the big corporate vm/4300 orders of several hundred at a time. internally inside IBM the huge influx of vm/4300 machines were significant factor in the internal network passing 1000 in 1983 i.e. internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until late '85 or early '86. At the time of the arpanet conversion to tcp/ip internetworking on 1Jan1983, there were approx. 100 IMP network nodes and 255 connected hosts ... while the internal network was well on its way to 1000. vm/4300s were being installed in departmental supply rooms and conference rooms (it contributed to conference rooms becoming a scarce corporate resource in the 80s). For IBM, it was the leading edge of the coming distributed computing tsunami ... before the big upswing in PCs. some old vm/4300 related email from the period
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx

Before Jim Gray left Research for Tandem ... there were some number of customer installs of the original relational/sql implementation (system/r) ... with large number of vm/4300s ... and Jim was haranguing me to invent automated operational procedures for the distributed machines. Then when Jim left for Tandem ... he palmed off bunch of stuff on me ... including interface for those customers as well as stuff like DBMS consulting with the IMS group.

With the science center on the 4th flr and multics on the 5th flr ... there was some rivalry between the two groups ... including number of installs. With the huge number of IBM customers, it wasn't fair to directly compare total customer numbers ... over even total internal IBM installations against total Multics customers. However, one of my hobbies was production systems for internal installations ... first CP67 ... then CSC/VM and later SJR/VM ... so I had about the same number of internal production systems as the total number of Multics installations. One of Multics leading customers was Air Force Data Systems ... this is old/email post reference with AFDS coming out to visit me ... looking to decide on 20 vm/4341s ... which morphs into 210 vm/4341 order
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#email790404b
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15

In the late 70s and early 80s, I'm also being blamed for computer conferencing on the internal network (folklore is that when the executive committee were told about computer conferencing and the internal network, 5of6 wanted to fire me). One episode I had visited Jim at Tandem and distributed a trip report about the visit ... this morphs into something called the "Tandem Memos" ... supposedly at one point 27,000 employees are folllowing. 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 ...

Other trivia ... old post with list of corporate locations that had new/added network nodes during 1983:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#8

and old posts about original relational/sql RDBMS implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

I was also doing benchmarks for national lab on engineering 4341 (before production machines were available) ... they were looking at compute farm of 70 machines. Not only were 4341s faster than 158s & 3031s ... but cluster of 4341s had higher aggregate throughput than 3033, much less expensive, much smaller environmental footprint, etc. The advent of mid-range compute farms rolling over the high-end mainframe machines was giving POK heart burn. At one point the head of POK convinced corporate to cut in half the allocation of critical 4341 manufacturing part as a way of reducing competition. This same person at one point also gave a talk at a large conference claiming that 11,000 VAX/VMS sales should have instead been 4341s ... because of better hardware price/performance (it was ok to take sales from dec/vax ... but it wasn't ok to take sales from 3033) ... referenced in this previously referenced post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15

upthread about senior disk engineer giving talk at communication group conference and claiming communication group would be responsible for the demise of the disk division (as it turned out nearly the whole company). Issue was communication group was fighting off client/server, tcp/ip, internetworking, distributed computing, etc ... attempting to preserve their dumb terminal paradigm (and their dumb terminal emulation install base). The communication group had corporate strategic responsibility for everything that crossed the datacenter walls (disk division was seeing the drop in disk sales as data was fleeing datacenters for more distributed computing friendly platforms).

Since communication group had strategic control over everything (that crosses datacenter walls), they took control of the channel control box (that interfaced to networks) used by the original mainframe tcp/ip product. As a result it has extremely poor throughput and really bad price/performance ... getting approx. 44kbytes/sec throughput using 3090 processor. I did the product software enhancements to support RFC1044 and in some tests at Cray Research got sustained channel throughput speeds between 4341 and Cray, using only modest amount of 4341 (apporx. 500 times improvement in bytes moved per instruction executed). misc. past posts mentioning 1044 support
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

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

Crypto Facility performance

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Crypto Facility performance.
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 27 Apr 2013 11:07:28 -0700
PaulGBoulder@AIM.COM (Paul Gilmartin) writes:
This is similar to credit card skimmers in ATMs. It's *theoretically* possible but entirely implausible that some such person replace the entire z with a counterfeit look-alike ...

early in the century there was a large pilot deployment of EMV chip credit cards in the US ... with an enormous fatal flaw ... even tho somebody had pointed out the fatal flaw before the deployment ... they apparently didn't understand and went ahead with the deployment anyway. When it finally did sink in, all evidence of the pilot evaporated ... and contributes to ongoing resistance to repeating another deployment in the states. this is somebody's old trip report to cartes2002 ... gone 404 but lives on at the wayback machine ... about presentation mentioning EMV design flaws (last paragraph)
https://web.archive.org/web/20030417083810/http://www.smartcard.co.uk/resources/articles/cartes2002.html

after detailed description at an "ATM Integrity Task Force" meeting, somebody made a reference to billions of dollars having been spent to prove chips are less secure than magstripe.

There was myopic attention to countermeasures for lost/stolen card and not exposing PIN (authentication information). ATM machines & POS terminals would ask the card if the person had entered the correct PIN. The problem was that it was trivial to create counterfeit chip-cards that were programmed to always answer "YES" (they became known as YES CARDS) ... it was no longer necessary to skim the PIN information ... since a counterfeit card would claim everything was correct PIN ... regardless of what was entered. misc. past posts mentioning YES CARDS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard

part of the design flaw was the card was also asked whether the transaction should be done offline; Counterfeit YES CARDS always answered "YES" ... so even if the account was deactivated at the financial institution, it had no effect on stopping the transactions.

during the Future System period in the early 70s ... the vm370 development group was side-tracked into working on FS ... one of the things was a super-security enhanced vm370 so that all super secret Future System documents would only be available in softcopy and only viewed on specially permitted 3270 screens (the development group had outgrown the 3rd flr of 545 tech sq and moved out to the old SBC bldg at burlington mall). misc. past posts mentioning science center at 545 tech sq https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

part of this was slightly earlier, paper copy of document describing 370 virtual memory (available for all 370s) showed up at an industry publication (before virtual memory for 370 was announced). investigation was sort of mini-"Pentagon Papers" ... afterwards ... all corporate copying machines were retrofitted with serial number that would appear on all copies made.

one weekend I had some test time on another machine in the same room. I went by on friday afternoon to get things prepared. they had to show off their new super secure machine ... and just had to say that even I couldn't break the security ... even if I was left along in the machine room over the weekend. so one of the few times I rose to the bait, I said it would take only five minutes ... most of the time was spent disabling/turning-off all external access to the machine ... and then i used the front panel to alter a byte of storage in main memory ... which effectively disabled all the system security processes.

I pointed out that they would need access authentication for use of machine front panel functions ... and could also use encryption for all data (this was even before DES, coppersmith was still down at harvard)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Coppersmith

for other topic drift ... some old public key email ... even discussion of PGP-like email operation a decade before PGP:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#publickey

MIT leaves behind a rich history in Tech Square
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/techsquare-0317.html

Research topics also evolved, starting with the grand challenge of time-sharing and moving on to new problems as computer science began to mature. Tech Square served as the East Coast hub of the ARPANET (it was the original Network 18, known today as mit.edu); on the fifth floor, Dave Clark's group worked on the infrastructure for what would become the Internet, notably the TCP/Internet Protocols. Ron Rivest and the LCS Theory Group did pioneering work in encryption. In 1994, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, set up the World Wide Web Consortium's global headquarters on the third floor of Tech Square.

... snip ...

for other total trivia; note that GML had been invented in 1969 at science center on the 4th flr; a decade later it morphs into ISO standard SGML; and another decade later it morphs into HTML at CERN
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/

so it comes full circle with WWW returning to 3rd flr in 1994. lot more in this recent linkedin "Old Geek" discussion, "The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software"
http://lnkd.in/mGd4j5

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

As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,

From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,
Date: 27 Apr 2013
Blog: IBMers
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#39 As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#58 As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#79 As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#46 As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#46 As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#49 As an IBM'er just like the Marines only a few good men and women make the cut,

a little drift: 3 hard questions for the Marines to chew
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/04/26/3_hard_questions_for_the_marines_to_chew

it mentions/refers to this:

"Small Wars Manual"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Wars_Manual

note that "Small Wars Manual" and "War Is A Racket" were written about the same time about the same events (by two time medal of honor Marine Corp general)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

"War Is A Racket" references Perpetual War which is one of the themes of the Boyd acolytes (before and after Commandant Gray leveraged Boyd for a make-over of the Marine Corp)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_war

Also recent by one of Boyd's closest acolyte
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2013/04/wanna-know-why-there-wont-be-peace.html

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

The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
Date: 28 Apr 2013
Blog: Old Geek
re:
http://lnkd.in/mGd4j5
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#57 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#58 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

Original webservers tended to be at single server or clusters of servers in single place. Big public cloud operators will have replicated servers deployed all over the world and their megadatacenters are also interconnected with private network (becoming more like cloud raindrops everywhere ... instead of original with a single physical location somewhere in the network)

When we started on this things that has came to be called "electronic commerce" ... it required a payment gateway (handles payment transactions between webservers on the internet and the payment networks). We did a ha/cmp cluster at single physical location with multiple attachments into different parts of the internet backbone. When I started, was planning on using routed to advertise routes to different connections. During the process of deploying payment gateway, the internet backbone transitioned to hierarchical routing (in part because the scale had outgrown what could be handled with routed). As a result had to fall back to multiple-A records in DNS (i.e. a single URL mapped to a list of ip-addresses). I was final authority on everything between webserver and payment gateway ... but could only make recommendations about other aspects. misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

Also had to recommend it to emerging big webservers ... the problem was that initially the browser side of the house wasn't going to support multiple-A records (they would just try to connect to the first ip-address and if that doesn't work, they give up). I gave classes and seminars ... they said it was too complex. I showed them example client code from 4.3 tahoe&reno ... they still say it was too complex. I make snide remarks if it wasn't in college text they couldn't do it. It takes another year, before they would do multiple-A record support.

One of the early large commerce servers was big national sports equipment retailer that advertised on sunday football ... and were expecting lots of half-time traffic. they had multiple connections into different parts of the internet backbone ... and this was in the period that ISPs still did rolling outages of routers at different locations for maintenance on Sunday during the day (aka periodic outages where some webserver backbone router would be down for maintenance ... but it would physical still be possible to get to the webserver by a different ip-address on the A-record list ... but browser was still stuck at trying only the first address).

The first payment gateway was at a single physical location (in palo alto ... near page mill and el camino) and its different links to the backbone turns out ran through a single physical conduit which crossed the railroad tracks heading towards 101. One weekend they were doing maintenance work on the tracks and cut that conduit. Now there are payment gateways at multiple physical locations all over the world.

Google started out with single physical server ... and then went to multiple servers at single physical location with lots of IP-addresses into different part of backbone ... and multiple A-record lists. They then tried rotating A-records to try and load-balance (not everybody getting static list with same, first ip-address) ... however ISPs tended to cache DNS response for hours ... which defeated the rotating A-record. Then the Google internet-facing routers were modified to communicate with each other and track load on (& availability of) backend servers ... regardless of the incoming server ip-address ... they would dynamically route to balance backend server load. Things have gotten a lot more complex with multiple megadatacenters around the world and each megadatacenters with hundreds of thousands of servers.

For a long time, there was talk about telco provisioning .... physical diverse routing, colocation with 48v power ... save as battery backup, etc.

When we were doing IBM's hacmp product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

... we worked with some datacenters that had telco feeds to different central offices physically coming into the building from four different sides, power feed from different substations, water being fed from different water mains. I coined the terms disaster survivability and geographic survivability to differentiate from disaster/recovery. I was then asked to write a section for the company's continuous availability strategy document ... but the section was pulled when both rochester (as/400) and POK (mainframe) complained they couldn't meet the objectives.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available

Distributed computing, telco provisioning, high availability, five-nines availability, etc ... have been around in the commercial market for some time. Part of "cloud" is marketing ... moving out of strictly business/commercial into public press.

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

I was doing lots of enhancements to cp67 as undergraduate in the 60s ... and the vendor would periodically suggest things I might do. I didn't know abut these guys until much later ... but in retrospect some of the suggested changes may have originated there.

With regard to previous comments about early cp67 being the cloud of the 60s&70s ... in the early 70s, the science center ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

did port of APL\360 to CMS ... getting rid of the os/360 tasking monitor, opening up workspace to virtual address size (mbytes instead of typical apl\360 of 16kbytes), providing API to access system services (like doing file i/o). A combination of large workspace size and doing things like file I/O, allowed for doing some real-world applications. Other internal corporate locations started using the cambridge system ... including the business planners in Armonk ... who loaded the most valuable corporate resources on the system ... detailed customer information ... to do business modeling in APL.

There were lots of security issues ... since science center also provided online access for staff & students at various educational institutions in the boston/cambridge area.

for other security topic drift ... recent post in ibm-main mailing list
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#59 Crypto Facility performance

The above referenced development group statements might have also been because I had been asked to help out the recently hired corporate CSO (had come from gov. agency and oriented towards physical security, including at one time head of POTUS detail) ... so computer security was somewhat new thing.

Similarly, some of the early cp67-based online service bureaus .... were moving up value stream starting to provide online financial information ... and attracting big customer market from financial institutions on wallstreet. There were some number of security/confidential issues to isolate work being done by people at wallstreet competitors (i.e. online cp67 operations wwere having to deal with very similar issues dating back to the 60s).

Gerstner was at AMEX being groomed to be the next CEO. AMEX and KKR were in competition for LBO of RJR ... and KKR won. There were problems with the RJR LBO and KKR hires away Gerstner to turn it around. Then IBM's board hires Gerstner to bring IBM back to life. After Gerstner leaves IBM, he goes on to be chairman of another large KKR-like LBO company. As an aside, about the same time IBM is heading into the red, AMEX spins off a lot of dataprocessing as "First Data" ... in what was described as the largest IPO up until that time. 15yrs later KKR does an LBO of "First Data" in what was described as the largest LBO up until that time.

disclaimer: last decade I do a stint as chief scientist at First Data. slightly garbled description here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190524015712/http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/stoprun/Stop-Run/Making-History/

First Data outsourced dataprocessing for much of the financial industry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Data

there have been some ups&downs but at one time handled something like 500 million accounts in the US. One project worked on was small pilot of 60million accounts looking at buying habits ... was regularly monitored by 16 different consumer privacy organizations

Later in the 90s, we got brought in to the first gift/merchant magstripe card operation ... they had a HA backend server configuration from another vendor (we had departed from IBM and doing consulting ... including at the original ecommerce operation) ... basically it used the point-of-sale magstripe credit-card infrastructure to do stored-value cards ... the transactions were just routed through the payment networks to different set of backend servers. We were to do forensics on a multiple-point-of-failure that went undetected for several weeks ... during which time they lost record of all purchases debited from the stored value balances ... and as part of recovery had to restore all account balances to their peak value. Start of the postmortem audit the senior executive (in charge of the vendor HA hardware) came in and gave their analysis. The first half-hour he started with HA sales pitch ... almost word-for-word of something I had written a couple years earlier.

Note as referenced upthread ... this meeting on cluster scale-up in Ellison's conference room early Jan1992 ... wasn't mainframe either
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
other old email about that cluster scale-up activity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

last email in above was possibly only hrs before the scale-up was transferred and we were told that we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors (it was then announced a couple weeks later as IBM supercomputer for scientific and numercial intensive *ONLY*). Possibly an internal politics contributor was the mainframe DB2 group complaining that if I was allowed to go ahead, I would be at least five years ahead of where they were at (actually maybe closer to 20). This was major motivation behind the decision to leave.

Note that in some of our reviews of tampa during the 80s ... there was big push to put in satellite communication dishes ... it turned out that nothern half of florida was served by single fiber-optic telco run out of Atlanta (subject to the backhoe failure mode).

total topic drift ... later doing financial we were periodically involved with Tandem ... directly because of their heavy use in financial debit networks and partially because they had bought a hardware crypto company that was used in debit operations. This is long-winded old post about mini-conference that Tandem (aka Compaq, after Tandem had been bought by Compaq but before Compaq had been bought by HP) hosted for us in Jan1999
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm

It touches on some of the subjects that would be at the root of the financial mess. We had been asked to look at improving the integrity of the supporting documents in securitized mortgages. One of the problems was that the people bundling securitized mortgages discovered they could pay the rating agencies for triple-A (even when the rating agencies knew they weren't worth triple-A) ... at which point they also realized they no longer needed supporting documents (and therefore there was no longer need for integrity) ... in fact, supporting documents might just confuse buyers who were relying on the triple-A rating. Being able to pay for triple-A rating on everything they did ... regardless of actual quality ... was significant factor in being able to do over $27T during the bubble
Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt

the triple-A rating was significant factor in being able to unload trillions of toxic CDOs on institutions restricted to only dealing in *safe* investments (like large retirement funds ... something the press seldom talks about).

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2013 17:52:54 -0400
hancock4 writes:
With databases and spreadsheets there is less need for a standalone sort program as in the mainframe world.

spreadsheet historic trivia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc

from above:
VisiCalc was, in part, inspired by earlier "row and column" spreadsheet programs in widespread use on systems of several national timesharing companies. Notable among these products were Business Planning Language (BPL) from International Timesharing Corporation (ITS) and Foresight, from Foresight Systems. Dan Bricklin writes, "[W]ith the years of experience we had at the time we created VisiCalc, we were familiar with many row/column financial programs. In fact, Bob had worked since the 1960s at Interactive Data Corporation, a major timesharing utility that was used for some of them and I was exposed to some at Harvard Business School in one of the classes." However, these earlier timesharing spreadsheet programs were not completely interactive, nor did they run on personal computers.

... snip ...

Bob was at one of the first virtual machine cp67-based online service bureaus ... something a little more recent

The Lunacy of Our Internet Access, and How Google Fiber Could Provide Needed Shock Therapy
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/04/26/the-lunacy-of-our-internet-access-and-how-google-fiber-could-provide-needed-shock-therapy/

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

The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
Date: 28 Apr 2013
Blog: Old Geek
re:
http://lnkd.in/mGd4j5
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#57 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#58 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#61 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

spreadsheet historic trivia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc

from above:
VisiCalc was, in part, inspired by earlier "row and column" spreadsheet programs in widespread use on systems of several national timesharing companies. Notable among these products were Business Planning Language (BPL) from International Timesharing Corporation (ITS) and Foresight, from Foresight Systems. Dan Bricklin writes, "[W]ith the years of experience we had at the time we created VisiCalc, we were familiar with many row/column financial programs. In fact, Bob had worked since the 1960s at Interactive Data Corporation, a major timesharing utility that was used for some of them and I was exposed to some at Harvard Business School in one of the classes." However, these earlier timesharing spreadsheet programs were not completely interactive, nor did they run on personal computers.

... snip ...

i.e. Bob was at one of the first virtual machine cp67-based online service bureaus ... something a little more recent

The Lunacy of Our Internet Access, and How Google Fiber Could Provide Needed Shock Therapy
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/04/26/the-lunacy-of-our-internet-access-and-how-google-fiber-could-provide-needed-shock-therapy/

i.e. a lot of the online service bureaus were basically providing some form of personal computing ... which got obsoleted with the appearance of personal computers.

Early 4th generation language at (another) one of the first cp67 online service bureaus

http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/accession/102658182 ....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOCUS ..
NCSS decided to work on its own product, later called NOMAD. All three products flourished during the 1970s and early 1980s, but Mathematica's time ran out in the mid-80s, and NCSS also failed, a victim of the personal computing revolution which obviated commercial timesharing (although it has since been revived in the form of ASPs and shared web servers)

... snip ...

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

other trivia, the first relational/sql implementation was on vm/cms 370/145 in bldg. 28. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

another cp67/tech-sq story:
http://www.multicians.org/thvv/360-67.html

MIT Urban Systems Lab CP67 was in another tech sq bldg across the tech sq courtyard.

When cp67 was installed at the univ. in jan1968, it had terminal support for 2741 and 1052. The univ. had some number of TTY/ASCII terminals ... so I added TTY/ASCII terminal support (but did a hack in line-length calculations using one-byte values, while the max. line length field was two-bytes) which was distributed as part of standard product. USL had somebody down at Harvard that got some sort of ASCII plotter(?) device and Tom changed the max line-length to 1200 chars to support the device. As mentioned, this resulted in CP67 crashing 27 times in single day.

another online virtual-machine based service bureau was tymshare out on the west coast. In aug1976, tymshare made their online computer conferencing system available for free to members of (IBM user group) SHARE ... archives here
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare
sometimes(?) "404" ... but also at wayback machine
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

tymshare was also involved in the 4th generation language effort involving ramis, nomad and focus

Claim is that when Gerstner took over IBM, his epiphany was to resurrect IBM as a service organization ... and they also shifted heavily into outsourcing ... both at IBM run datacenters and also taking over the running of client datacenters (including hiring all the people).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Global_Services
http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/en/it-services/data-center-outsourcing.html

as an aside, one of the web references mention ibm ranking #1 in cybersecurity consulting.

part of the issue is that the large cloud operators have significantly commoditized the business, putting downward pressure on IBM's profit margin. Recent numbers is that 83% of total IBM revenue comes from software&services ... with everything else accounting for only 17% (including all hardware sales). That is dramatic change from the 70s & 80s.

the downside in outsourcing datacenter is that operation tends to be explicitly specified in detailed contracts. then it becomes difficult for a company to adapt if some new technology change comes along that is dependent on changing/new datacenter services. Part of the issue has been that the mainframe datacenters have tended to be relatively static and slow to adapt anyway ... so further limitations imposed by outsourcing contract might not make that much difference in mainframe agility & ability to adapt (companies forced to look elsewhere for dataprocessing innovation anyway).

more tymshare archive trivia:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/
above references this as example of computer conferencing
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/read.cgi?fn=AARDVARK&ft=MEMO&line=313
bemoaning the fact that CICS had no online computer conferencing.

big part of the credit collapse was when it started to dawn on investors that the rating agencies were selling triple-A ratings on stuff that wasn't triple-A (futhermore the rating agencies knew they weren't worth triple-A). At one point the muni-bond market totally froze over investor fear that none of the ratings could be trusted ... at that point Buffett stepped in and started offering muni-bond insurance (to unfreeze the market).

A couple years ago, Bernanke said that he had been pumping trillions of dollars into the too-big-to-fail behind the scenes expecting them to turn around a lend to mainstreet. However, he found that they weren't doing it and he lamented he had no way to force them to lend to mainstreet (they were buying treasuries instead and booking the interest on the spreed between the treasuries and the free federal reserve money as profit). If he actually felt strongly about this ... he could have just told them he was putting a stop to the free money. Current estimates are the largess from the federal reserves accounts for all the profit that the too-big-to-fail industry has booked since the bubble burst.

Stockman's recent book "The Great Deformation" .... is hundreds of pages of details ... but possibly because he is life-long Republican and Reagan's budget director ... he especially eviscerates the Republicans role since the turn of the century. After tearing into Bain capital, its former CEO and that whole industry ... he launches into the auto bailouts ... and enormous detail about how it was coverup on festering boil w/o fixing anything. One of my biggest quibbles with Stockman is he glosses over the triple-A ratings enabling over $27T in securitization done during the bubble ... which significantly dwarfs some of the other things he dwells on.

Little over 30yrs ago there was article calling for 100% unearned profit tax on the US auto industry. The scenario was the foreign auto import quotas were to significantly cut competition giving US auto industry enormous increase in profits, which they would use to completely remake themselves ... but instead they were pocketing the money and continuing business as usual. Circa 1990, the industry had C4 task force to look at completely remaking themselves. Since they were planning on heavily leveraging technology, representatives from major technology vendors were invited. During the sessions they could accurately describe all of their problems, their competitions' advantages and what the industry needed to do. However, as publicly seen going into the recent financial crisis they still weren't able to do it ... and apparently according to Stockman ... things have continued to get worse (now more than 30yrs later).

Offline from the C4 meetings, I would chide the mainframe representatives attending from POK ... that many of the problems described for the US auto industry ... they were also subject to ... and therefor how could they expect to help with such problems (when they couldn't fix their own). At the time, the whole company is in the process of going into the red ... being restructured into the "baby blues" in preparation for break up ... before Gerstner is finally brought in to resurrect the company.

Note that GM bought EDS (1984) and then later spun it off (1996, with long term guaranteed contracts to enhance the spin-off value; before it was later bought by HP) ... GM had a very extensive IT organization (and owned EDS for much of the period). The executives cut deals with the unions ... so enormous amounts would go into the executive pockets ... the stuff about the workers is somewhat obfuscation and misdirection

There is story about the owner/builder of the factory complex having long history of corruption and bribery ... there were supposedly extensive regulations prevented building on the land where he developed the factory complex ... which required enormous bribery to get around

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

What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:47:55 -0400
Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> writes:
Actually the comparison is about 15 lines for SORT JCL vs 4 additional lines in the COBOL program.

2 steps in JCL vs 1.

Additional considerations for step restart vs no considerations.

The power of IBM mainframes argument doesn't convince me. On any non-trivial file the difference is easily measurable.


the computer/manual costs trade-off have significantly shifted from being totally dominated by computer ... to increasing percentage of cost involving people.

however, fully configured z196 with 80 processors still goes for $28M and is rated at 50BIPS ... or $560,000/BIPS. IBM financials from last year, mainframe processors are 4% of revenue but total mainframe is 25% of revenue (and 40% of profits); aka total ibm mainframe costs to customers avg 6.25 times the processor costs qor $3.5M/BIPS.

by comparison e5-2600 blades have ratings of 527BIPS and IBM has base list price of $1815 or $3.44/BIPS ... and big cloud operators are claiming they build their own blades for 1/3rd cost of brand name blades (Dell, HP, IBM, etc) ... getting close to $1/BIPS.

one year of programmer @$100K to save 10% of $3.5M/BIPS mainframe is valid trade-off. one year of programmer @$100K to save 10% of $1/BIPS blade doesn't work out as well (unless it involves hundreds of thousands of such blades).

other recent comments in (closed linkedin) IBMers discussion about IBM selling off its x86 server business (it had already sold off its x86 pc business a decade ago).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#28 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#35 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#38 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#45 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#51 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo

for other trivia topic drift ... a decade or so ago, I got involved in some performance analysis of 450+K statement Cobol program that ran every night on 40+ max configured mainframes (@$30M, over $1B total computer hardware ... the configurations were sized to allow program to complete in the batch overnight window) ... and was able to get 14% improvement.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#24 Curiousity: CPU % for COBOL program
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#5 Why do IBMers think disks are 'Direct Access'?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#76 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#55 Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#20 IBM forecasts 'new world order' for financial services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009s.html#9 Union Pacific Railroad ditches its mainframe for SOA
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#77 Korean bank Moves back to Mainframes (...no, not back)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#41 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#81 Percentage of code executed that is user written was Re: Delete all members of a PDS that is allocated
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#35 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#41 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
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/2011p.html#60 Spontaneous conduction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#50 Can any one tell about what is APL language
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#51 From Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#25 Can anybody give me a clear idea about Cloud Computing in MAINFRAME ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#18 System/360--50 years--the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#24 System/360--50 years--the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#56 Under what circumstances would it be a mistake to migrate applications/workload off the mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#45 Article for the boss: COBOL will outlive us all

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

Linear search vs. Binary search

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From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Linear search vs. Binary search
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 29 Apr 2013 09:18:37 -0700
john.archie.mckown@GMAIL.COM (John McKown) writes:
There is no architectural restriction about not modifying instructions "on the fly". The z does not have the concept of "data" versus "instruction" storage. But, IMO, it is an abomination. There are two major reasons and one minor one. First, it causes a flush of the I (and D?) cache. This impacts performance quite a bit. Second, it makes the code not reentrant. And a minor point, due to not being reentrant, is that the code cannot be placed in read-only memory. Rather than modifying an instruction on the fly, I either use an EX of the instruction, when possible; or I move a the template of the instruction into a data area and EX that. <reflection>

the claim has been made that 1/3rd of processor cycles for 370 instruction emulation went to checking for whether instruction already fetched/decoded in the pipeline has been modified.

this applies to avg. number of x86 instructions for 370 instruction emulation as well as the older ibm 370 microcoded machines.

long ago and far away, I was asked to look at 10 impossible things in large (TPF) airline reservation system. I recoded an application that was the one of the biggest processor users ... in C and retargeted for rs/6000 (as well as changing the implementation architecture and paradigm). I initially got 20 times improvement over TPF ... however lot of the processing was looking at data structures that were small enough to fit multiple per cache line. I re-organized the layout and the instructions ... so processed multiple structures sequentially in the same cache line (as opposed to random taking cache miss for every data structure access) ... and got another five times improvement (for overall 100 times improvement over TPF). I then added a whole lot for automated processing ... which reduced things back down to only ten times TPF (but also reduced the number of human interactions by a factor of three times). At the end, all processing for every scheduled flight in the world (not just for that airline) could be handled by ten high-end rs/6000.

A decade later, this much processing was available on a smartphone.

even longer ago ... Jim Gray and I used to sit around friday nights trying to come up with ways that might attract IBM middle management and executives to using computers ... who at the time were almost all totally computer illiterate. One of the things we came up with was online telephone directory ... however the baseline was that it had to be faster than somebody reaching for a paper phonebook ... and the implementation would have to take less than one week of each of our times. Given that the approx. letter frequency was known for names, Jim did a radix partition search which avg. out to much less I/O of binary search (and the improvement got better as the size of the file increased) ... aka 16,000 names is about 14 probes for binary ... but with 50 names per record, radix partition search using first two letter frequency ... could frequently get to the physical record in one or two disk I/Os.

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

What Makes sorting so cool?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes sorting so cool?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:38:11 -0400
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Interesting statement. These days everyone is taught that self-modifying code = evil, while JIT = good. I never really connected the dots to see that they're the same thing.

post today on self-modifying code in ibm-main mailing list:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#65 Linear search vs Binary search

it is expensive to be constantly checking if some instruction that has been already fetched/decoded in the pipeline, has been modified.

architectures with separate i-cache and store-into d-cache ... have special instructions for loaders that may tweak program instructions ... to force data from d-cache back to memory ... invalidating corresponding cache lines that may appear in the i&d caches (so the i-cache will load the modified image from memory) JIT basically uses the same function. This makes it a relatively infrequent, explicitly recognized operation ... as opposed to the continuous checking that has to go on to support self-modifying code.

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

The End Of 'Orderly And Fair Markets'

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: The End Of 'Orderly And Fair Markets'
Date: 29 Apr 2013
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security
The End Of 'Orderly And Fair Markets'
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-29/end-orderly-and-fair-markets

past references:

HFT Reality: 70% Of Price Moves Are Disconnected From Fundamental Reality
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-21/hft-reality-70-price-moves-are-disconnected-fundamental-reality
Destructive Destruction? An Ecological Study of High Frequency Trading
http://www.thetradingmesh.com/pg/blog/bogodin/read/71032/destructive-destruction-an-ecological-study-of-high-frequency-trading
Dear SEC, This Is HFT "Cheating" At Its Most Obvious. Regards, Everyone Else
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-04/dear-sec-hft-cheating-its-most-obvious-regards-everyone-else
The HFT-Induced Extinction Of Retail Investors
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-06/guest-post-hft-induced-extinction-retail-investors
High-frequency stock trading of little value to investors, public
http://news.illinois.edu/news/13/0110highfrequencytrading_MaoYe.html

from past posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#2 Search Google, 1960:s-style
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#29 Destructive Destruction? An Ecological Study of High Frequency Trading
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#41 Computer Simulations Reveal Benefits of Random Investment Strategies Over Traditional Ones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#54 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

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

Linear search vs. Binary search

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Linear search vs. Binary search
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 30 Apr 2013 10:09:32 -0700
shmuel+gen@PATRIOT.NET (Shmuel Metz , Seymour J.) writes:
It may be true for simulation of the S/370 on Intel, but a real 370/168 handled it in the I-unit.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#65 Linear search vs. Binary search

high-end machines were horizontal microcode with lots of extra hardware ... potentially overlapping multiple operations at once. As a result it was measured in avg. machine cycles per instruction; 370/165 was 2.1/instruction, improvements for 168 got it down to 1.6/instruction. even tho 3033 started out remapping 168 to 20% faster chips ... some further optimization got 3033 to 50% faster than 168 and avg. cycle/instruction to avg. of 1cycle/instruction. It also made it hard to see any performance improvements from microcode assists on the 3033 ... in some cases, actually running slower than straight 370 (some claims that various 3033 microcode assists were both slower and purely existed to make it more difficult for clone processors).

the low & mid-range 370s were vertical microcode, implementation looking much more like what is found in the x86 370 simulators ... with avg. 10 instructions per 370 instruction. early microcode assist on 370/148 got 10:1 performance improvement because 370 kernel instructions mapped to native instructions on 1-for-1 basis. Criteria for 370/148 ECPS was that there was 6k bytes of available microcode space ... and the highest used kernel pathlengths were redone in native instructions. Old post with study that measured all kernel pathlengths, sorted by percent of kernel time. Highest used 6kbytes of kernel instructions accounted for 79.55% of total time spent in the kernel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21

dropping into microcode at 10:1 improvement resulted in reduction of approx. 72% of processor time spent in the kernel.

I gave a number of presentations on the above at the local BAYBUNCH user group meetings in the period that Amdahl was starting work on their hypervisor (large part of virtual machine dropped into the machine) and they had lots of questions and some comments about their implementation details (eventually 3090 had to respond with PR/SM which eventually morphs into LPAR).

One of the comments from the Amdahl group was that they had created "macrocode" mode ... basically special case of 370 instructions for implementation of lots of "hardware" features. One claim for "macrocode" mode was that it was enormously easier to program than the underlying machine horizontal microcode ... and was originally done to make it trivial to respond to the array of microcode assists coming out of IBM. The other comment was that "macrocode" mode didn't allow self-modifying instructions ... and as a result ran faster than standard 370 instructions.

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

The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
Date: 30 Apr 2013
Blog: Old Geek
re:
http://lnkd.in/mGd4j5
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#57 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#58 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#61 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#63 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

they have gotten 260gbyte wikileaks-like dump from offshore operation ... estimating that there will be articles through the rest of the year and possibly into 2014 (its not all from US).
http://www.icij.org/offshore

in 2009, IRS was saying that they were looking for 52,000 wealthy americans and trillions in hidden income offshore (estimates like $400B in unpaid taxes) ... this is separate from the lobbying that has bought "legal" offshore tax avoidance.loopholes. more recent news is that they've granted amnesty to 32,000 wealthy americans and got $5B.

tax loophole lobbying significantly contributes to claims that congress is the most corrupt institution on earth (amount of dollars involved dwarfs the rest of the world)

There have been several analysis about benefits of move to flat-tax ... unrelated to flat-tax paradigm ... but because it reduces tax code from over 72,000 pages to 400 pages ... and the selling of tax loopholes is one of the largest money makers for congress (a major factor in congressional corruption). Claim is that the increasing complexity of the tax code costs the country something like 6% of GDP ... and cutting the tax code back to 400 pages (eliminating all the complexity & loopholes) would add 6% to GDP (which would happen with flat-tax ... unrelated to advantages/disadvantages of the flat-tax paradigm ... furthermore claim is any of the possible disadvantages of move to flat-tax paradigm is more than offset by 6% increase in GDP and elimination of huge amount of congressional corruption related to selling loopholes).

At the start of the 2011 congress, the speaker of the house had interview where he was talking about the mechanics of congress and the new crop of members that ran on all sorts of principles. He said he was rewarding several of the new members with seats on the tax committee because those seats were one of the most financial rewarding positions in congress. He didn't seem to see any discrepancy in what he was talking about.

little congressional topic drift ... Jan2009 I was asked to HTML'ize the Pecora Hearings (30's senate hearings into the '29 crash, had been scanned the fall before at boston public library), addiing huge number of internal hrefs/x-links and lots of URLs between what happened this time and what happened then (some anticipation that the new congress would have appetite to do something). After working on it for some time, I got a call saying it wouldn't be needed after all (references to enormous piles of wallstreet money being spread around capital hill).

Totally unrelated to anything else ... per Iran ... there is some amount of discussion over in Boyd groups. I had gotten to know him in early 80s and sponsored his briefings at IBM. He was the core of the military reform movement ... and although he has passed, his acolytes still pontificate quite a bit on the evils of the MICC (it was the primary theme of Eisenhower's goodby speech, although he shortened it to MIC for the speech).

There is lots of stuff in the Reagan library about the dealings with Iraq during the 80s (as part of the Iraq/Iran war) that were going to be released in 2001 under the presidential records act ... however the incoming president signed special executive order keeping those records from being released. Recent reference here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#53

and related to the Iran/Contra affair ... the executive branch was using vm370/PROFS email system ... and even though people thought that the emails had been deleted ... it turned out that they were still on the system backup tapes when the congressional subpoenas came over.

Other aside, it was Cheney that brought Boyd in to do the battle plan that was used for Desert Storm ... as an alternative to the Army tank slug fest... and there have been references to one of the biggest problems with the conflicts in the last decade was that Boyd had died in the interim. Misc. past posts & URLs from around the web mentioning Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

from the annals of more than you ever want to know

PROFS started out being menu front-end to a lot of VM370/CMS applications. The email client was a very early pre-version 1, internal VMSG. Later when the VMSG author attempted to offer them a much enhanced version ... they tried to get him fired, group having already taken credit for everything in PROFS. The whole thing quieted down after the VMSG author showed that every PROFS email in the world had his initials in a non-displayed field. After that, the VMSG author would only share the source with me and one other person. profs/officevision wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_OfficeVision

I've frequently claimed that John came up with 801/risc as an alternative to the horrible complex design of the Future System effort (was going to completely replace 370, however it was so horribly complex and even tho billions were spent on it ... it was canceled before even being announced). some posts & references to Future System
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

In 1980 era ... 801/risc was going to replace large myriad of internal microprocessors ... the engines used in low-end & mid-range 370, lots of controller processors, what was suppose to be used in the original as/400, etc (for one reason or another those efforts floundered, and you found some number of the engineers leaving and showing up on risc chip efforts at other vendors). some past posts referencing 801/risc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801
and old email mentioning 801/risc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#801

801/risc ROMP chip was going to be used for the follow-on to the displaywriter. When that got canceled, the group looked around and decided to retarget to the unix workstation market. They got the company that had done the AT&T UNIX port for pc/ix, to do a port for ROMP ... and it came out as PC/RT and AIX "V2". The follow-on to romp chip and PC/RT was RIOS chipset (aka power) and RS/6000. Also, Wang signed up to OEM RS/6000s as their next generation hardware platform.

one of the things that happened in the last decade ... is that x86 chips went to risc cores with a hardware layer that translate x86 instructions into risc micro-ops. that has gone towards significantly eliminating any risc performance advantage that has existed for the past several decades. that has also at least partial responsible for the improvement in cloud cost structure ... at the same time the large cloud operations has put a lot of pressure on x86 chip vendors for a lot of power&cooling efficiencies (especially since on-demand operation can represent more than an order-of-magnitude variation in workload, power&cooling being able to drop to near zero when there is no activity and then instantaneously come up to full operation). with more x86 server chips now going directly to cloud operations (than to the brand name server vendors) it has contributed to commoditization of server market ... and likely is major motivation in IBM trying to sell-off its server business.

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

How internet can evolve

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: How internet can evolve
Date: 30 Apr 2013
Blog: IBMers
some history I had project I called HSDT and was working with some of the entities that would become part of the NSFNET backbone ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

history related to the cloud
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401444/grid-computing/

from above:
Back in the 1980s, the National Science Foundation created the NSFnet: a communications network intended to give scientific researchers easy access to its new supercomputer centers. Very quickly, one smaller network after another linked in-and the result was the Internet as we now know it. The scientists whose needs the NSFnet originally served are barely remembered by the online masses.

... snip ...

aka morphing into GRID as well as CLOUD

We were suppose to get $20M to hook all the NSF supercomputers together, congress then cut the budget and a couple other things happened ... finally NSF released RFP ... but internal politics prevented us from bidding. Director of NSF tried to help by writing the company a letter 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO) ... but that just made the internal politics worse (as did references to what HSDT already had running was at least five years ahead of all bid submissions). misc. old email mentioning NSFNET
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

Happy birthday Mosaic! 20 years of the graphical Web browser
http://www.zdnet.com/happy-birthday-mosaic-20-years-of-the-graphical-web-browser-7000014349/

remember that Mosaic was brought to you by NSF Supercomputer Program

National Center for Supercomputing Applications
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercomputing_Applications

above has image of plaque commemorating the creation of Mosaic web browser.

other history here:
http://www.livinginternet.com/w/wi_mosaic.htm

trivia ... Complaints that new company (to produce browser product) was called Mosaic and they changed their name to Netscape. Who had the rights to the Netscape name and provided it to the new company to use????

other triva ... first web server in the states ... on SLAC's virtual machine system:
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml

now two of the people in this early Jan1992 meeting cluster scale-up meeting in Ellison's conference room
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

leave and join this new small client/server (browser) startup and are responsible for something called the commerce server.

some old email about cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

possibly within hrs after the last email in above (late jan1992), cluster scale-up is transferred and we are told we can't work on anything with more than four processors (and announced as supercomputer within weeks for scientific and numeric intensive *ONLY*)

significantly motivated by being told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors ... we also decide to leave. we are then brought as consultants into the small client/server startup because they wanted to do payment transactions on their commerce server; the startup had also invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted to use; the result is now frequently called e-commerce. Part of what we had to do was map the use of the "SSL" technology to the payment process ... as well as doing audits/walk-thrus of several of the business entities associated with the "SSL" infracture.

going back some time ... GML was invented in 1969 ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

at the science center (4th flr, 545 tech sq) ... some past posts (note that the science center also did virtual machines, the internal network, and several other things)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

a decade later, GML morphs into ISO standard SGML, another decade, SGML morphs into HTML at CERN
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/

Polaroid's SX-70, the Greatest Gadget of All Time, Is 41
http://techland.time.com/2013/04/25/polaroids-sx-70-the-greatest-gadget-of-all-time-is-41/

Land's office was on 2nd flr of two story on the street side in middle of tech sq. scientific center offices on the 4th flr of 545 tech sq overlooked his balcony. One day he was demonstrating the unannounced sx-70 taking pictures of a model out on his balcony

Tech square buildings have been completely redone and renumbered.

More tech square
http://www.multicians.org/tech-square.html

The IBM Science Center was on the 4th floor with machine room on the 2nd floor. The IBM Boston Programming Center was on the 3rd floor (3rd floor shared with CIA). The (virtual machine) CP67 group split off from the Science Center and took over the Boston Programing center (on the 3rd). The CP67 group is morphing into VM370 and outgrows the 3rd floor space and moves out into the vacant SBC bldg. in Burlington Mall (SBC having gone to CDC in legal settlement). past posts mentioning science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

MIT leaves behind a rich history in Tech Square
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/techsquare-0317.html

from above:
Research topics also evolved, starting with the grand challenge of time-sharing and moving on to new problems as computer science began to mature. Tech Square served as the East Coast hub of the ARPANET (it was the original Network 18, known today as mit.edu); on the fifth floor, Dave Clark's group worked on the infrastructure for what would become the Internet, notably the TCP/Internet Protocols. Ron Rivest and the LCS Theory Group did pioneering work in encryption. In 1994, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, set up the World Wide Web Consortium's global headquarters on the third floor of Tech Square.

... snip ...

WWW moving to 3rd flr in 1994 is almost like coming home

co-worker at science center:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edson_Hendricks

from above:
In 1976, MIT Professor Jerry Saltzer accompanied Hendricks to DARPA, where Henricks described his innovations to the principal scientist, Dr. Vinton G. Cerf. Cerf had come to ARPA from Stanford to run the Internet research program.

... snip ...

as an aside, Postel (RFC editor until he died) use to let me do part of STD1.

Your article mentions how TCP/IP and internet came to be ... there is a lot more history ... and even at IBM ... over the constant strong opposition by the communication group.

the co-worker at the science center was responsible for the corporate internal network ... which was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until late '85 or early '86. At the time that arpanet was converting to tcp/ip internetworking protocol on 1JAN1983 ... it had about 100 IMP network nodes and 255 connected hosts ... at the same time the internal network was well on its way to 1000 nodes (which it reached later in the year). misc. past posts about the internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

The communication group was strongly fighting off client/server, tcp/ip, internetworking, distributed computing ... anything that didn't correspond to its dumb terminal paradigm (trying to preserve its dumb terminal emulation install base). This was a major factor in the company sliding into the red in the early 90s.

In the late 80s, a senior disk engineer got a talk scheduled at the annual, world-wide, internal communication group conference and open his talk with the comment that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The issue was that the disk division was seeing the effects of the communication group activity with data fleeing the datacenter (to more distributed computing friendly platforms), with drop in disk sales The disk division had come up with a number of products to address the problem but they were constantly veto'ed by the communication group (with its corporate "strategic ownership" of everything that crosses the datacenter walls).

As referenced the activity of the communication group was major factor of the company sliding into the red a couple years later ... and yes, the prediction about the demise of the disk division came to pass.

Note the internal network was never SNA/VTAM ... at least not until the late 80s (about the time of the talk by the disk division). By that time, it would have been much more efficient and cost effective to have converted the internal network to TCP/IP (rather than SNA/VTAM). This is something that BITNET (educational network supported by IBM using internal network technology) did in converting to TCP/IP for BITNET-II
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

Note the above reference to director of NSF trying to get IBM to allow us to do the NSFNET backbone (the precursor to modern internet) ... wasn't just that in HSDT had already implemented stuff that was at least five years ahead of all RFP responses ... I had actually done some stuff that is now being worked on for Internet-2 (close to 30yrs later rather than 5)

oh ... for ibm's original mainframe tcp/ip product ... because the communication group had strategic ownership of everything that crossed the datacenter walls ... took over the channel attach network interface box ... somewhat as a result ... it was extremely inefficient and not cost/effective (got about 44kbytes/sec using a 3090 processor). I did the RFC1044 enhancements for the product and in some throughput tests at Cray Research got sustained channel speed throughput using only a modest amount of a 4341 processor (about 500 times improvement in number of bytes moved per mainframe instruction executed). some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

There are some long winded cloud and ibm selling x86 server business ... part of the issue is public cloud financials are that for every dollar that customer spend in public cloud ... they are not spending $3-$4 for traditional IT. This has enormous downside for traditional IT vendors (like IBM) ... does it jump in and cannabolize its own market or does it just sit and watch a lot of tradtional IT wither away

part of the issue is cloud has contributed to commoditizing x86 business, cloud operators have been saying for a decade or so that they assemble their own blade servers for 1/3rd the price of brand name (dell, hp, ibm, etc) blades. Recently the x86 server chip vendors have said they are now shipping more x86 server chips directly to cloud operators than they are shipping to brand name server vendors (aka cloud operators are now over half the x86 server business). One of the issue is the cloud volumes don't show up in the standard x86 server market numbers

IBM has a base list price of $1815 for e5-2600 blade ... e5-2600 blades have benchmarks of 527BIPS ... or about $3.44/BIPS ... possibly getting close to $1/BIPS for cloud operators. By comparison an IBM max configured mainframe Z196 goes for $28M and has rating of 50BIPS or $560,000/BIPS. Furthermore, recent IBM financials has mainframe processor representing 4% of revenue ... but total mainframe revenue (including services, software, and storage) is 25% of revenue (and 40% of profit) ... or mainframe customers are paying total 6.25 times their base processor cost ... which puts total bill for z196 around $3.5M/BIPS.

In 1988, I was asked if I could help LLNL standardize some serial technology they had ... this eventually morphs into fiber channel standard ... it is also referenced in this early jan1992 cluster scale-up meeting in Ellison's conference room
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

Later some IBM mainframe channel engineers get involved and define a heavyweight layer for mainframe channel operations that enormously restricts the underlying FCS throughput, this eventually becomes the current mainframe FICON. A recent z196 peak I/O benchmark got 2M IOPS using 104 FICON (layered on top of 104 FCS). By comparison, there was a recent FCS announced for e5-2600 claiming over one million IOPS for a single FCS (two such FCS could get more than peak z196 I/O benchmark with 104 FICON).

Mainframe processor revenue the past several years has been approx. the equivalent of 180 fully configured z196 (@$28M) and at 50BIPS that is 9TIPS. 9TIPS is about the equivalent processing power of 17 e5-2600 blades, racks are being built with 36-64 blades per rack ... so annual mainframe processing sales works out to be less than half a rack of e5-2600 blades. The numerous cloud megadatacenters around the world, each typically have several hundred thousand blades.

a little more on internet

The Lunacy of Our Internet Access, and How Google Fiber Could Provide Needed Shock Therapy
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/04/26/the-lunacy-of-our-internet-access-and-how-google-fiber-could-provide-needed-shock-therapy/

I've known Bob a long time, he was at one of the first (virtual machine) CP67 online service bureaus ... before doing visicalc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc

Now you are on one of my hot-buttons that I've been fighting for decades. In the early 90s, dap/x.500 standard and related identification certificate standard (x.509) was setting itself up to be global identification databases. At early 90s annual ACM SIGMOD (database) conference held in san jose ... at large session in the ballroom, somebody in the audience asked the panel (up on the stage) what was all this stuff about x.5xx stuff ... and somebody on the stage said it was a bunch of networking engineers trying to re-invent 1960s database technology.

The small client/server start mentioned upthread had also invented this technology called "SSL" which they wanted to use. We had to spend large amount of time with the technology mapping it to payment transactions ... and it involved a form of x.509 identity digital certifications (which was dependent on global identity registration).

By the time we were done, we were saying that for nearly all purposes ... people were confusing identification with authentication ... that certificates were redundant and superfluous ... and we could show that for all internet purposes, that it was sufficient to provide authentication (which helped preserve privacy) ... w/o requiring identification.

I also have large number of posts about how many of the "SSL" related exploits can be eliminated by significantly improving the integrity of the process. This is a catch-22 for the "SSL" digital certificate industry since improving the integrity eliminates the need for proving identification ... just simple authentication ... which then also results in eliminating the requirement for "SSL" digital certificates (and their business).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#catch22

disclaimer: we have dozens of (assigned) patents related to authentication (& privacy) in lieu of identification.

for other drift: 20 years on, world's first Web page to be reborn
http://phys.org/news/2013-04-years-world-web-page-reborn.html --
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

What Makes self modifying code so cool?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes self modifying code so cool?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 01 May 2013 10:00:43 -0400
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
It's not really disreputable but it's a bitch to debug. In addtion, on the PDP-10s, if a bit was changed by the code, it could no longer be a sharable highseg. (There was a one-word exception but I'm not going to get into that.)

In addition, the way dirty programming crooks got into other sites' systems was to masquerade their back door or password workaround by modifying innocuous code.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#66 What Makes sorting so cool?

references this post on same subject over in ibm-main
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#65 Linear search vs Binary search
and followup
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#68 Linear search vs Binary search

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

The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
Date: 1 May 2013
Blog: Old Geek
re:
http://lnkd.in/mGd4j5
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#57 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#58 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#61 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#63 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#69 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

In effect IBM mainframes are niche business ... but running at $560,000/BIPS for processor hardware and $3.5M/BIPS total ... compared to $3.44/BIPS (and possibly only $1/BIPS from large cloud operators) ... how long will customers continue to pay 1million (to over 3million) times for processing power.

The current issue is that some companies have hundreds of billion dollar operation based on mainframe legacy applications ... and a decade ago some number spent several billion dollars in unsuccessful attempt to move those applications to commodity platforms (when the cost difference was only factor of several thousand times instead of million times). The absolute value of those legacy applications (and the associated mainframe hardware) is significantly less than the customers still using the machines. However, software technology has significantly advancing, the business world is changing requiring redoing old applications and the cost difference and power of commodity hardware has significantly changed.

A max configured mainframe hardware two decades ago had significant more hardware power than commodity platforms. Current day max. configured z196 is only 50BIPS (at $28M ... or $175M with all software, or $3.5M/BIPS). A off-the-shelf e5-2600 blade is 527BIPS (over ten times more powerful) and $1815 (from IBM) or $3.44/BIPS (and cloud operators are building their own for possibly 1/3rd that).

It is a real threat if the current operations stuck on legacy mainframes and legacy applications ... successfully redo those applications (in part because the world is changing and they may have to redo them for new business requirements) ... the business dwindles to point where it is not economical to continue to produce new machines.

IBM had allowed mainframe emulators on commodity platforms to effectively take-over the low & mid-range mainframe business ... but as the commodity platforms got more powerful ... they became a threat to the high-end mainframe business (aka theoretically a 527BIPS $1815 e5-2600 blade could provide 53BIPS of emulating mainframe, more than new $28M z196). IBM has shutdown that commodity emulation business threat with copyright and other legal protection ... otherwise most of the current install base could move off real mainframe hardware now (w/o having to rewrite applications).

As technology advances, what is considered fast&slow changes. There is usually a cost premium with the faster, most advance chips. Big cloud operators tend to select for optimal price/performance and total cost of ownership ... in fact costs are shifting to included green features like watts/BIP ... even TPC benchmarks are starting to include watts/transaction in addition to $$/transaction (where $$ is system cost, not including power&cooling operation)

I suspect one of the reasons why you don't see any published mainframe TPC benchmarks is that the $$/transaction (& watts/transaction) would be totally off the charts.

The other issues is newer/faster has been reducing circuit size ... which also reduces power. However they require new fabs ... which are currently several billion. New chips with new designs using new technology has large billion upfront investment (and increasing) before the first chip is ever produced. Incremental costs for volume chips can be few dollars ... but there has to be huge number produced and sold to recoup the upfront investment.

Part of the cost structure is the cost per wafer is approx. constant ... so the other thing that is happening is going to larger wafer size ... getting more chips/wafer (reducing the cost/chip). A minimum fab run tends to be a dozen or so wafers (instead of hundreds of thouusands) ... and depending on chip, you get large hundreds to tens of thousand chips per wafer (aka minimum number of chips in a run is several thousand to several hundred thousands). A fab won't be doing minimum runs unless it is part of development chip process or it otherwise has idle time.

In any case, with significant volumes ... it is possible to have the most sophisticated and most powerful chip on the planet ... that is commodity priced (aka it is able to amortize the significant upfront costs across a much larger base).

Any niche/specialty chips now have to significantly leverage commodity chip technologies to exist. It is radically different world from when a computer was put together from discreet components.

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

The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
Date: 1 May 2013
Blog: Old Geek
re:
http://lnkd.in/mGd4j5
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#57 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#58 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#61 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#63 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#69 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#72 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

PCs have always been cheaper ... but until last decade, x86 processors haven't also been more powerful than most powerful mainframe. Not just price/BIPS and aggregate BIPS. max z196 is 80 processors at 50BIPS or 625MIPS/processor. e5-2600 blade is 16 processors at 527BIPS or 33BIPS/processor (with 36 to 64 blades in single rack).

Most mainframe still think they are using CKD DASD ... but real CKD DASD haven't been manufactured for decades, they are all simulated on industry standard commodity disks. Native I/O to those disks is more efficient than the CKD DASD emulation.

Current mainframe channels are also simulated as a heavy-weight layer on top of fibre-channel standard, drastically reducing throughput compared to native FCS throughput. Recent mainframe DASD peak I/O benchmark with 104 (simulated on 104 FCS) FICON is 2M IOPS. Recent native FCS announcement for e5-2600 claims over 1M IOPS (for single FCS, two such e5-2600 FCS then would have higher throughput than peak 104 FICON FCS).

Cloud megadatacenters with large hundreds of thousands of systems and 7x24 operation are being run with staffs under 100 people. Constant ongoing theme, cloud operations have been extremely aggressive in every aspect of total cost of ownership.

Codd develops relational model in bldg. 28. System/R is started there to do the first relational/sql implementation ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

Stonebraker is at UCB
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Stonebraker
and starts INGRES relational project. One of the graduate students on INGRES is Bob Epstein. Stonebraker does startup company called INGRES.

One of the san jose disk engineers (had worked on number of projects, including 2321 data cell) leaves and with another person (who had been at Memorex) forms Britton Lee ... they hire away Bob Epstein to be CTO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britton_Lee,_Inc

Not mentioned in above, Bob is hired away to be part of Teradata. Britton and Lee are then interviewing people from bldg. 28 at a restaurant across Cottle Rd to backfill Bob. One of the people I've been working with tries to talk me into going ... he leaves, I don't. Bob's time at Teradata is not mentioned (possibly because there is some legal action involved, gap between time he left BLI and 1984 founding of Sybase)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teradata

Bob leaves to form Sybase.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybase

Late 80s when we start HA/CMP, we are spending lots of time with Ingres, Sybase, Informix and Oracle on fall-over and concurrent cluster-mode operation. Part of it is simplifying things for their existing VAX-cluster support for porting to HA/CMP platform.

A major platform for Informix is Sequent. IBM eventually buys both Informix and Sequent. We have left and do a lot of consulting at a number of places including for Steve Chen who is CTO at Sequent (before bought by IBM). Sequent was also major platform for commercial 370 mainframe emulator product. For a time after Sequent is bought by IBM this continues ... until it is cut-off.

Steve Chen had done Cray X-MP and Y-MP and then leaves to start his own supercomputer company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Chen_%28computer_engineer%29

At the time we are doing HA/CMP cluster scale-up (for scientific/numeric intensive, commercial, DBMS, general dataprocessing, lots of things), IBM is providing Chen with a lots of funding for his startup.

Then the end-of Jan1992, cluster scale-up is transferred and we are told we can't work on anything with more than four processors. Within a couple weeks, it is announced as IBM Supercomputer ... press from 17Feb1992 (scientific, numeric intensive ONLY)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1
later from 11May1992 ... interest in cluster supposedly caught IBM by complete surprise
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2

I had been working on&off with national lab going back to late 70s, I did benchmarks for them on engineering model 4341 when they were looking at 70 4341s for compute farm.

Mid-80s, we were working with NSF to connect together all the NSF supercomputer centers (eventually morphs into NSFNET backbone, precursor to modern Internet) ... but also working on building huge dataprocessing farms with enormous number of processor chips in large number of racks (precursor to HA/CMP). Old email about being caught between making presentations to head of NSF (on interconnecting NSF supercomputer centers) and attending cluster meetings. some old email:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email850315 ..
earlier
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#email850312 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#email850313 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#email850314 ..

I've actually lost much more data in Almaden mainframe datacenter. I had a bunch of stuff archived from when I was undergraduate in the 60s as well as stuff from my days at the science center ... replicated on three different tapes all in the Almaden mainframe tape library.

Melinda Varian contacted me about original source maintenance & update procedure developed at the science center on cms ... part of her history of virtual machines
http://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda#VMHist

fortunately it was a few weeks before all tapes & copies were destroyed; discussed in this past post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#42
including
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email850906
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email850908

other trivia ... the inventor of DNS (internet domain name system) a little more than decade before inventing DNS had been at MIT and did some work at the science center on the cms multi-level update procedures.

Note that the big financial transaction processing (mainframe) datacenters have been located at major rail junctions. The issue was that major fiber-optic communication was being run on railroad right-of-ways. The big cloud megadatacenters are being located based on year-round cooling costs along with reliable and abundant sources of power & water (you see some number being done in pacific northwest around the columbia river and the multitude of hydroelectric dams) ... aka their size of operation easily pays for multiple diverse routed, new fiber-optic installations

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

The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
Date: 2 May 2013
Blog: Old Geek
re:
http://lnkd.in/mGd4j5
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#57 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#58 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#61 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#63 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#69 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#72 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#73 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

Summer of 1969 I was brought in to Boeing Seattle to help with what was going to become Boeing Computer Services ... they would be consolidating most Boeing dataprocessing into independent business unit ... in part, to better monetize all those computers, including being able to offer dataprocessing to non-Boeing entities. I was one of the first half-dozen or so members of what would become BCS. One of my duties was setting up and deploying a large online CP67 operation. (an early private cloud-type operation)

That summer 747 #3 was flying FAA certification sites over the skys of Seattle and the Renton datacenter (which I thought was possibly the largest in the world) had a constant flow of 360/65s into the bldg (there was constant pieces of 360/65 being staged in the building in the halls outside the machine room.

There was estimate that Renton datacenter was several hundred million dollars and if it was offline for a week, it would cost the Boeing company more than the value of the datacenter. There was a vulnerability where Mt. Rainier heats up and results in a massive mud slide that takes out the Renton datacenter (doesn't even require an eruption) ... so it was being replicated up at the new 747 plant in Everett. Communities closer to Mt. Rainier have mud slide warning sirens and periodic evacuation practice.

I've mentioned that I use to sponsor Boyd's briefings at IBM. In one of Boyd's biographies it mentions Boyd doing 69/70 stint in command of Spook Base ... also it was a $.2.5B windfall for IBM (in '69 dollars, apporx. ten times what was in the Renton datacenter). Boyd would mention that it was the largest air conditioned building in that part of the country. Spook base reference; gone 404 but lives on at the wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030212092342/http://home.att.net/~c.jeppeson/igloo_white.html

When we were doing ha/cmp in late 80s and early 90s ... we spent a lot of time studying how things fail ... and ever increasing percentage were environmentally related ... and we did physical separation ... when I was out marketing HA/CMP, I invented disaster/survivability and geographic/survivability to differentiate from disaster/recovery.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

I was then asked to write a section for the corporate strategic continuous availability document ... but it got pulled when both Rochester (as/400) and POK (mainframe) complained that they couldn't meet the objectives.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available

In the 60s, new SEs got a lot of their training as part of large team at customer shop. After the 23Jun69 unbundling announcement that came to a stop because SE services were then charged for ... and nobody could figure out how trainee SEs could be onsite w/o being charged for.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundling

The solution was to deploy a number of virtual machine cp67 datacenters for branch office SEs could dial-in and practice with various operating systems in virtual machine environment. The science center had also ported apl360 to cms for cmsapl ... and the HONE operation started deploying a number of CMSAPL-based online sales&marketing support applications. Eventually those applications came to dominate all HONE operation and the SE "Hands-On Network Environment" (aka HONE) withered away. One of my hobbies after joining science center was producing highly enhanced operating systems for internal datacenters and HONE become one of my long term customers into the mid-80s. Eventually sales&marketing came to require HONE applications for all mainframe proposals, orders, validation, etc. As HONE clones were being deployed around the world ... I was periodically called on for doing part of the deployment (when EMEA hdqtrs moved from US to Paris, I was called on to do a HONE install for them).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

About the time, I transferred to San Jose Research in the 70s, HONE consolidated all the US HONE datacenters up the road in Palo Alto (the first Facebook hdqtrs building, before they took-over the Sun campus, was built next door to the old HONE datacenter). As part of that consolidation, vm370 was enhanced to do loosely-coupled fall-over and load-balancing across all the SMP mainframes in the datacenter. In the late 70s, there were claims that the Palo Alto HONE mainframe cluster was the largest single-image operation in the world (none of this capability shipped to customers). Then in the early 80s, HONE replicated the Palo Alto HONE datacenter ... first in Dallas and then a 3rd in Boulder with fall-over and load-balancing between the three datacenters (added to fall-over and load-balancing within datacenter between SMP machines within loosely-coupled cluster complex, again none of this was ever shipped to customers). Old reference From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#43

There use to be a joke that I would work 4shift weeks, 1st shift in bldg. 28, 2nd shift in bldgs. 14&15 (disk engineering), 3rd shift in STL (work with ims group and others) and 4th shift (weekend) at HONE in palo alto.

Disclaimer: long ago & far away, my wife was con'ed into going to POK to be in charge of (mainframe cluster) loosely-coupled architecture. While there she did Peer-Coupled Shared Data architecture ... but it had little uptake except for IMS hot-standby ... until sysplex and parallel sysplex. She was also in constant battles with the communication group which was trying to force her to use SNA/VTAM for mainframe loosely-coupled operation; there would be temporary truces where she could use anything she wanted to within the walls of datacenter ... but then the communication group would revert to their attacks. A combination of little uptake (at the time) and the running skirmishes with the communication group resulted in her not staying long in the position.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

Any one of the large number of cloud megadatacenter with hundreds of thousands of systems & 7x24 operation, has more processing than the aggregate of all mainframes in the world today. What is the corresponding aggregate number of total mainframe support people in the world today? I could see a single mainframe datacenter having several tens of support people ... but multiplied across all the mainframe datacenters ... the aggregate could be several tens of thousands.

I would still expect AWS disk storage to be competitively priced against equivalent amount of mainframe storage. Also, AWS makes a point of saying that their pricing with long term commitments is significantly less than their on-demand pricing. There are several reports of using a credit card to spin-up an on-demand supercomputer from public cloud (small subset of available cloud processing, but the "supercomputer" processing still greater than the aggregate of all mainframes in the world today ... and processor ranking well within the top 100 supercomputer list) ... all done automatically w/o any human interaction with cloud operator

Mentioned before, ibm financials indicate approx. equivalent of 180 max configuration z196 are selling per year (@28M) .... at 50BIPS, those 180 max configured z196 are approximate processing power of 17 e5-2600 (@ 527BIPS) ... or less than a half rack equivalent of 180 max. configured z196. e5-2600 blade has become standard commodity part of public cloud operators ... single blade (aka "system") having more processing power than nearly dozen max. configured modern mainframes ... and 4-5 racks having more processing power than the aggregate mainframe sales for the past decade. Even if you assume every mainframe in the world today had been upgraded to modern max. configured mainframe (not supported by aggregate annual sales), the processing power in anyone of the many worldwide megadatacenters dwarfs the aggregate worldwide mainframe processing power. Its even possible to spin-up an on-demand computer system using just a credit card (with no human cloud operator interaction) that has more processing power than the aggregate processing of all mainframes in the world today. Recent post giving mainframe models since 2000 and corresponding max processing power
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#59

One of the issues is that the increase in x86 processing power since 2000 has been significantly greater than the increase in mainframe processing power (2000, highend x86 processing power and max configured mainframe processing power were significantly closer). Some big part of the x86 performance improvement is the move to chips with "risc" cores and hardware layer that translates x86 instructions to risc micro-ops. Along with lower starting price, it helps account for approx. millions times difference in price/performance

other recent posts mentioning megadatacenter
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#16 From build to buy: American Airlines changes modernization course midflight
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#17 Still think the mainframe is going away soon: Think again. IBM mainframe computer sales are 4% of IBM's revenue; with software, services, and storage it's 25%
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#7 mainframe "selling" points
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#8 mainframe "selling" points
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#10 FW: mainframe "selling" points -- Start up Costs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#15 A Private life?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#25 Still think the mainframe is going away soon: Think again. IBM mainframe computer sales are 4% of IBM's revenue; with software, services, and storage it's 25%
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#84 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#91 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#19 Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#28 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#35 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#37 Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#51 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#70 How internet can evolve

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

What Makes a substance Bizarre?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes a substance Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 02 May 2013 16:36:45 -0400
Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> writes:
Lots of money to be made is surveillance systems.

lot more detail here both before and after quotes ... including long discussion about enormous fed funds appropriated for NYC that were not being spent and lots of political pressure to sign contracts with favorite vendors.

Against Security: How We Go Wrong at Airports, Subways, and Other Sites of Ambiguous Danger (Harvey Molotch) pg52/loc1063-66
Indeed, New York subway stations are particularly inhospitable to even ordinary surveillance photography, given the unevenness of lighting, plethora of nooks and crannies, and vulnerability to vandalism. But authorities were under great pressure to spend, and the new cameras provided a means to do it. Some MTA officials were particularly skeptical, both of contractors' motives as well as capacities.

and pg53/1069-74:
The contracts went forward with the sad outcome of, in the words of a state comptroller's office press release, the program falling into "disarray." Lockheed sued to withdraw from the project after the city complained of performance failures. The MTA countersued Lockheed arguing "that Lockheed had provided faulty technology that did not pass basic operational tests." As a transit official testified to the City Council about the legal and financial morass, "The technology does not work in our subway system." She continued, "We piloted the technology in a subway tunnel–like environment."

... snip ...

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

What Makes a substance Bizarre?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes a substance Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 02 May 2013 19:58:22 -0400
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
The contracts went forward with the sad outcome of, in the words of a state comptroller's office press release, the program falling into "disarray." Lockheed sued to withdraw from the project after the city complained of performance failures. The MTA countersued Lockheed arguing "that Lockheed had provided faulty technology that did not pass basic operational tests." As a transit official testified to the City Council about the legal and financial morass, "The technology does not work in our subway system." She continued, "We piloted the technology in a subway tunnel–like environment."

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#75 What Makes a substance Bizarre?

note this wasn't trivial amounts ... started out at $212M and eventually hit $453M ... and it still wasn't working ... just for subway surveillance

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

What Makes a substance Bizarre?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes a substance Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 02 May 2013 20:06:58 -0400
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#75 What Makes a substance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#76 What Makes a substance Bizarre?

and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_City_Subway_stations

Out of the system's 468 stations, about 280 are underground and about 150 are elevated, the rest are in open cuts, at-grade and on embankments.

... snip ...

was pushing $1M/station ... assuming they were doing all. if just manhatten, there are 147 stations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_City_Subway_stations_in_Manhattan

which means it was already over $3M/station.

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

The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

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From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
Date: 2 May 2013
Blog: Old Geek
re:
http://lnkd.in/mGd4j5
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#57 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#58 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#61 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#63 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#69 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#72 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#73 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#74 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

AWS (free) Amazon Simple Storage Services, 5gbyte
http://aws.amazon.com/s3/

note that while some of the AWS price structure is high ... it can be cheaper than building your own highly redundant, replicated datacenters on 3-4 different continents that provide frontend high capacity automated routing to the available servers with lowest latency.

I've had sessions going to very high-end, well known financial institution webservers ... hiccup and the SSL digital certificate of their public cloud hosting operation bleeds through ... instead of the financial institution's SSL digital certificate.

CiRBA - data centers are like hotels not apartments; Summary: CiRBA's Hillier believes that data centers supporting virtual workloads function more like hotels than apartments. Workloads come in, stay a while, and then others take their place. Why do performance and configuration management tools assume they're like apartments?
http://www.zdnet.com/cirba-data-centers-are-like-hotels-not-apartments-7000014872/

my analogy is while undergraduate in the 60s, I did dynamic adaptive resource management for cp67 and it was picked up and included in the product. Later in the morph from cp67 to vm370, the development group did lots of simplification and drop a lot of the stuff I had done as undergraduate. Part of the motivation for dynamic adaptive resource management was the dynamic, changing nature of on-demand workload ... something else the virtual machine based online services shares with today's cloud computing.

Then during the FS period (FS was completely different from 370 and was going to completely replace it), a lot of 370 activity was killed off and/or suspended (the lack of 370 products during this period is credited with giving the clone processors a market foothold). I continued working on 370 stuff during this period and even would periodically ridicule the FS activity. When FS finally imploded, there was a mad rush to get hardware&software products back into the 370 product pipeline ... which contributed to decisions to pick up a lot of stuff I was doing and release in product. misc. past posts mentioning FS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

Some old email about migrating bunch of stuff from cp67 to vm370 and making my csc/vm system available for production use at internal datacenters:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750430 ..

Some of the stuff went into the standard product. However as a result of the rise of clone processors, the decision was made to start charging for kernel software. In the 23Jun69 unbundling announcement ... prompted by various gov. & other litigation) it included starting to charge for application software (however the company had made the case that kernel software should still be free). My dynamic adaptive resource management was selected to be the guinea pig for separate charged for kernel component (I had to spend a lot of time with business people & lawyers on kernel pricing policies). misc. past posts mentioning unbundling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundling

Somebody from corporate hdqtrs (had come out of POK favorite-son batch operating system) said he wouldn't sign-off on product release if it didn't have a lot of static, manually changed turning parameters (claimed modern operating system state-of-the-art was lots of manual tuning parameters), I tried to explain what dynamic adaptive met ... but he apparently couldn't understand. I put in some manual tuning parameters ... detailed formulas described in product documentation and all the source code available ... but there is a joke which nobody caught. In operations research, there is something about degrees of freedom ... it turns out that the manual tuning parameters had less degrees of freedom than the dynamic adaptive ... anything that somebody might do manually could be offset by the dynamic adaptive capability.

some resource management posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

note: ridiculing FS activity probably wasn't the best career enhancing activity. from "Computer Wars: The Post-IBM World" Ferguson & Morris:

... 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

... and:

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 ...

a lot of top executives were deeply vested in the FS activity. Somebody once told me that they could forgive you for being wrong, but they were never going to forgive you for being right.

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

What Makes a substance Bizarre?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes a substance Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 03 May 2013 10:28:34 -0400
Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> writes:
They already are. It's called a "license plate". Many locations (including some police cars) have cameras that scan and look up all the passing traffic, in real time. Recent fuss around here, because the data was classified as public, meaning that anyone could request a list of the sighting locations for a given license number. I believe they've changed that rule now, and instituted a purge date (90 days?).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#75 What Makes a substance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#76 What Makes a substance Bizarre?

local gov. paid $6k for one installed in parking enforcement car ... parking meters are max. 2hrs, but certain parts of town are max parking is 2hrs *and* no "meter feeding" (clearly stated on meters), aka can't keep feeding meter for aggregate more than 2hrs. system checks for same license plate in that part of town for more than 2hrs.

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

The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@garlic.com
Subject: The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
Date: 2 May 2013
Blog: Old Geek
re:
http://lnkd.in/mGd4j5
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#57 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#58 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#61 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#63 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#69 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#72 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#73 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#74 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#74 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#78 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software

think "Dhrystone" MIPS or BIPS or TIPS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second

the benchmark is number of iterations per second prorated by number done by 370/158 ... assumed to be 1MIP processor ... aka it isn't actually number of instructions ... but the throughput multiplier of 370/158 as standard base.

Original "RAID" patent in the 70s was to somebody (that I actually worked with) at IBM San Jose disk plant site. 3380 was already a form of fixed-block device with CKD emulated on top ... but rather small fixed-block cells. It was the high-end CKD DASD. FBA was mid-range 3370 and low-end 3310. In the late 70s, the leading edge of distributed computing tsunami started with the 4300s being bought by corporations in multiple hundreds at a time and being deployed out in non-datacenter, departmental areas. The 3370 mid-range FBA went along with them. MVS couldn't play in this market because it didn't have FBA support and there was no mid-range CKD DASD. In order to at least give MVS the opportunity to play in this market they came out with the mid-range CKD 3375 ... which was 3370 FBA disk with CKD emulation on top. For decades now there haven't been any real CKD DASD ... it has been all some form of industry standard fixed-block disk with CKD DASD emulation built on top. However the real killer for MVS in this market was the enormous per system manual support requirements .... which failed to scale to hundreds of systems.

Long ago and far away, I was told that even if I provided MVS with fully integrated and tested FBA disk support, I still needed a $26M business case to cover education and documentation ... which could only be profit on $200M-$300M in incremental new storage sales ... I couldn't use any other business case or justification for providing MVS with FBA support. Misc. past posts about CKD DASD and/or FBA support
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dasd

for a little topic drift, this old email discusses original single density 3380 had 20-track width spacing between each track. double density 3380 was done by doubling the number of tracks by reducing inter-track spacing to 10-track widths.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#email871122

the guy responsible for inventing 801/risc, wanted me to help him with this idea for a disk head that read/wrote 16 tightly-spaced data tracks concurrently
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#email871230

misc. past posts getting to play disk engineer in the disk engineering and product test labs (bldg 14&15) ... purely another hobby since my "real" job was across the street in bldg. 28
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

Note that STC had "iceberg" back then ... and internal IBM was working on competition that was internally called SeaStar. I was asked to come in and look at it a couple times ... but at the time I was busy doing ha/cmp (and then left after cluster scale-up got transferred and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors). SeaStar never got very far and eventually IBM would logo/sell STC's iceberg.

We started having lots of dealings with RSA when we were brought in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server; the startup had also invented this technology called SSL that they wanted to use ... and had to be mapped to payment business process. SSL used RSA public key and RSA's "bsafe" public key library ... so there had to also be dealings with RSA. Somewhere along the way, security dynamics (maker of secureid doesn't use public key technology) bought RSA and renamed themselves RSA ... then EMC bought RSA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecurID

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

What Makes a substance Bizarre?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What Makes a substance Bizarre?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 03 May 2013 19:48:24 -0400
"sdrat" <sdrat@gfr.com> writes:
But that's useless for telling them that its in your garage at home at the moment.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#79 What Makes a substance Bizarre?

the parking ticket officer gives a ticket for parked car that the system says has been there for more than two hrs (based on license plate system having "seen" it on previous passes) ... even if the parking meter as time remaining (i.e. meter "feeding").

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

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 03 May 2013 19:51:02 -0400
reposted from ibm-main h/t phsiii

A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
http://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/508-mainframe-computer-history.html

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



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