\ 2017 Newsgroup postings (06/12 - 07/28) Lynn Wheeler

List of Archived Posts

2017 Newsgroup Postings (06/12 - 07/28)

OFF TOPIC: 1949 self propelled railway diesel car
RIP Morten Reistad
What the DEC?!? Records of Minicomputer Giant Digital Equipment Corporation Open for Research at CHM
OFF TOPIC: 1949 self propelled railway diesel car
Mapping the decentralized world of tomorrow
RFE? xlc compile option for C integers to be "Intel compat" or Little-Endian
Mapping the decentralized world of tomorrow
Mainframe Networking problems
Mainframe Networking problems
Six Sigma
Mainframe Networking problems
Mainframe Networking problems
Mainframe Networking problems
Why the Pentagon would rather hire bin Laden than Donald Vandergriff
Mainframe Networking problems
HONE Systems
The Microsoft security hole at the heart of Russian election hacking
Wall Street
BMC Software explores merger with CA
Financial, Healthcare, Construction, Education complexity
Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
Financial, Healthcare, Construction, Education complexity
IBM Future Sytem 1975, 1977
Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)
Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
Google Employees Weighed in on What Makes a Highly Effective Manager. Technical Expertise Came in Dead Last
Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)
Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)
Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
Google Employees Weighed in on What Makes a Highly Effective Manager. Technical Expertise Came in Dead Last
Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)
Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)
FCC proposes record fine for robocall scheme
CMSBACK
The most important invention from every state
360/95
The most important invention from every state
Iran/Contra and Email
Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)
The most important invention from every state
F-35
The most important invention from every state
Windows 10 Pro automatic update
The rise and fall of IBM
SS Trust Fund
Shareholders Ahead Of Employees
SS Trust Fund
Stopping the Internet of noise
Boyd's OODA-loop
Dunkirk
Boyd's OODA-loop
Stopping the Internet of noise
What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
Stopping the Internet of noise
Stopping the Internet of noise
Deconstructing the "Warrior Caste:" The Beliefs and Backgrounds of Senior Military Elites
Mannix "computer in a briefcase"
What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
Play the Pentagon-Funded Video Game That Predates Pong
Real World OODA
What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
Is AMD Dooomed? A Silly Suggestion!
Is AMD Dooomed? A Silly Suggestion!
What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
MULTICS & VM370 History
48-year-old Multics Operating System Resurrected
What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
Mannix "computer in a briefcase"
Mannix "computer in a briefcase"
Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again
Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again
TRAX manual set for sale
TRAX manual set for sale
This Afghan War Plan By The Guy Who Founded Blackwater Should Scare The Hell Out Of You
Bad Ideas
Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again
Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again
How can we stop algorithms telling lies?
How can we stop algorithms telling lies?
Mannix "computer in a briefcase"
How can we stop algorithms telling lies?
IBM Train Wreck Continues Ahead of Earnings
IBM z14 High-lights
IBM Mainframe Ushers in New Era of Data Protection
z/VM subcapacity pricing
Stopping the Internet of noise
IBM Mainframe Ushers in New Era of Data Protection
In Silicon Valley, dropping in at the GooglePlex, tech museums and the Jobs garage
The U.S. Military Believes People Have a Sixth Sense
AI Is Inventing Languages Humans Can't Understand. Should We Stop It?
Hard Drives Started Out as Massive Machines That Were Rented by the Month
IBM Another Disappointment
IBM Another Disappointment
modern programming languages?
The Real Reason You Should See Dunkirk: Hitler Lost World War II There
Why CEO pay structures harm companies
SEX
SEX
SEX
SEX
Why IBM Should -- and Shouldn't -- Break Itself Up
Jamie Dimon: You Make Us Embarrassed to be Americans
Why IBM Should -- and Shouldn't -- Break Itself Up
Jamie Dimon: You Make Us Embarrassed to be Americans
Online Terminals

OFF TOPIC: 1949 self propelled railway diesel car

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OFF TOPIC: 1949 self propelled railway diesel car
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2017 22:05:02 -0700
Budd Cars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budd_Rail_Diesel_Car
The largest RDC fleets were in the Northeast United States. The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad (New Haven) acquired 40 RDCs, which it called "Shoreliners", in 1952-53. By 1955 these accounted for 65% of the New Haven's passenger routes.[25] This achievement was eclipsed by the Boston and Maine Railroad, whose fleet grew to 108 by 1958. The B&M's RDCs operated 90% of the company's passenger routes, including its extensive commuter operations around Boston, Massachusetts.[26]
... snip ...

commuted B&M (budd car)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_and_Maine_Railroad

from 70-77 to north station and frequently then walked to 545 tech sq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

across science museum or longfellow bridge.

some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#8 how to set up a computer system
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#12 Home mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#41 TGV in the USA?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#43 Mainframe Emulation Solutions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#7 OT Global warming
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#28 Penn Central RR computer system failure?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#14 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#45 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#73 Cormpany sponsored insurance
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#62 Urban transportation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#69 Urban transportation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013g.html#83 What Makes travel Bizarre?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#42 Future of support for telephone rotary dial ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#1 I Feel Old

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

RIP Morten Reistad

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: RIP Morten Reistad
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2017 08:18:31 -0700
Knut Borge <kborge@saruman.uio.no> writes:
Hello people. I am sad to say that earlier today I heard from a colleague that Morten passed away June 4th. I do not have any more information than this.

found there is process on facebook for people that have passed. also reference on "EUnet and KPNQwest Norway" page
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2358268746/?ref=nf_target&fref=nf

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

What the DEC?!? Records of Minicomputer Giant Digital Equipment Corporation Open for Research at CHM

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: What the DEC?!? Records of Minicomputer Giant Digital Equipment Corporation Open for Research at CHM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2017 11:21:31 -0700
What the DEC?!? Records of Minicomputer Giant Digital Equipment Corporation Open for Research at CHM
http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/what-the-dec-records-of-minicomputer-giant-digital-equipment-corporation-open-for-research-at-chm/

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

OFF TOPIC: 1949 self propelled railway diesel car

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OFF TOPIC: 1949 self propelled railway diesel car
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2017 10:58:53 -0700
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#0 OFF TOPIC: 1949 self propelled railway diesel car

On-line Archives, B&M Railroad Historical Society
http://www.bmrrhs.org/on-lines-archives/

some refs:

Budd Car Diagrams
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53a3b0e7e4b0356e962ad8f4/t/53b955f1e4b09a1fb52b4671/1404655089471/Budd_Car_Diagrams.pdf

How The Boston & Maine Uses BUDD Diesel Cars
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53a3b0e7e4b0356e962ad8f4/t/55947a3fe4b04dc637b861b4/1435793983841/How+the+B%26M+Uses+Budd+Cars+1948.pdf
I looked with great deal of tolerance at the results obtained with Budds on the B&M and my predecessors' results and wondered why they did not do something like this but after all is said and done none of you fellows who are accountants ever solved your problems with an electronic computer until somebody got you an electronic computer. We did not solve our problem with Budd cars until Budd gave us the model.
... snip ...

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

Mapping the decentralized world of tomorrow

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Mapping the decentralized world of tomorrow
Date: 14 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
Mapping the decentralized world of tomorrow
https://medium.com/birds-view/mapping-the-decentralized-world-of-tomorrow-5bf36b973203

A network expert from IBM corporate asked Ed on how the internal network operated. Ed told him about the decentralized design. The expert said that it was proved that to do a decentralized implementation required enormous resources. The expert said he had access to all IBM spending&funding details and there was never that much money spent on networking (so what Ed was telling couldn't be true).

Some parts of IBM had trouble moving to charging for software. For charging, IBM would do low, medium, and high charging and the forecasted number of customers (theoretically lower charge would mean more customers). Gov. regulations required that total revenue (charge*no.customers) had to cover support and maintenance plus original development. JES2 networking couldn't come up charge & forecast that met the rules (even tho much of the source originally had "TUCC" in cols 68-71). Ed's RSCS/VNET easily met the requirements even at a $30/month charge, however POK was busily trying to kill off VM370 (even tho it was basis for the internal network). Finally JES2 cut a deal with Ed that JES2 networking would be announced as combined product with RSCS/VNET at a $600/month charge which finally met the revenue requirement that covered JES2 costs (total JES2+RSCS/VNET forecast times $600/month covered combined JES2+RSCS/VNET costs).

posts mentioning HASP, JES, JES2 networking, etc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#hasp
posts mentioning internal network
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

Edson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edson_Hendricks
Cool to be Clever: Edson Hendricks
http://downloads.zdnet.com/product/31709-75651341/
It's Cool To Be Clever, The story of Edson C. Hendricks
https://www.amazon.com/Its-Cool-Be-Clever-Hendricks/dp/1897435630/

re/BITCOIN "fixed" reference, Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, pg167/loc2610-13:

The gold standard had only worked in the late nineteenth century because new mining discoveries had fortuitously kept pace with economic growth. There was no guarantee that this accident of history would continue. Moreover, while the original rationale for a gold standard--the commitment that paper money could be converted into something unequivocally tangible--might have been necessary to instill confidence at some point in history, this was no longer the case.
... snip ...

misc. past posts mentioning "Lords of Finance":
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#32 PC industry is heading for more change
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#40 Strategy subsumes culture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#53 GOLD STANDARD GOOD OR BAD?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#10 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#82 What Makes Economic History Bizarre?

misc. past posts mentioning "battle of bretton woods":
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#45 The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#51 past of nukes, was Future of support for telephone rotary dial ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#54 past of nukes, was Future of support for telephone rotary dial ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#55 past of nukes, was Future of support for telephone rotary dial ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#70 God No, the U.S. Air Force Doesn't Need Another Curtis LeMay
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#13 Fully Restored WWII Fighter Plane Up for Auction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#53 Western Union envisioned internet functionality
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#31 I Feel Old
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#39 Shout out to Grace Hopper (State of the Union)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#64 Isolationism and War Profiteering
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#74 Qbasic
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#75 Qbasic
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#80 "I used a real computer at home...and so will you" (Popular Science May 1967)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#90 Economist, Harry Dent Hints: Global Banks Facing a Serious Crisis in Months Ahead
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#91 Godwin's Law should force us to remember & fear our shared heritage with Nazi Germany
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#55 Should America Have Entered World War I?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#18 5 Naval Battles That Changed History Forever

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

RFE? xlc compile option for C integers to be "Intel compat" or Little-Endian

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: RFE? xlc compile option for C integers to be "Intel compat" or Little-Endian
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2017 14:55:40 -0700
0000000433f07816-dmarc-request@LISTSERV.UA.EDU (Paul Gilmartin) writes:
Dismayinglly, big-endian may come to be perceived as the same sort of lunatic fringe as EBCDIC, and support will evaporate with the scarcity of testing platforms. But the EBCDIC nightmare can be avoided: Linux runs fine on z hardware.

trivia ... 360 was originally suppose to be ASCII

BCD was supposed to go to 8-bit ASCII ... but (comedy? of) circumstances, it went to EBCDIC instead, "EBCDIC and the P-Bit (The Biggest Computer Goof Ever)"
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM
The IBM 360 was to have been primarily an ASCII-based computer, still handling the ordering of existing BCD files. These files were the only obstacle to ASCII -- there was no way previously-compiled code for any IBM computer would run on the new machine. Confirming evidence is everywhere.
...
Who Goofed?

The culprit was T. Vincent Learson. The only thing for his defense is that he had no idea of what he had done. It was when he was an IBM Vice President, prior to tenure as Chairman of the Board, those lofty positions where you believe that, if you order it done, it actually will be done. I've mentioned this fiasco elsewhere.

... snip ...

other refs:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/ASCII.HTM
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/BACSLASH.HTM
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/FATHEROF.HTM
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/HISTORY.HTM

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

Mapping the decentralized world of tomorrow

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Mapping the decentralized world of tomorrow
Date: 14 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#4 Mapping the decentralized world of tomorrow

trivia: 1999, I was asked to try and help prevent the economic mess. old long-winded post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm

securitized mortgages had been used during the S&L crisis to obfuscate fraudulent mortgages (poster child were office bldgs in dalla area that turned out to be empty lots).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#s&l.crisis

I was told that some of the investment bankers walked away "clean" from S&L crisis, were then running Internet IPO mills and were predicted next to get into securtized mortgages.

I was to improve the integrity of mortgage supporting documents as countermeasure. They then find they can pay rating agencies for triple-A. Triple-A trumps supporting documents and they can start doing no-documentation liar loans, pay for triple-A and sell them off as fast as they can be made (triple-A means they no longer have to care about borrower's qualification or loan quality), largely enabling being able to do over $27T 2001-2008 (including being able to sell to entities restricted to dealing in "safe" investments, including large institution pension funds).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo

SECTREAS convinces congress to appropriate TARP funds for buying off-book toxic assets, But they only do $700B, while just the four largest too big to fail are carrying $5.2T in off-book toxic assets end of 2008, it would hardly make a dent in the problem. The SECTREAS uses TARP for other stuff while the Federal Reserve does the real bailout. The FED fights a long, hard legal battle to prevent disclosing what they are doing (buying trillions in off-book toxic assets at 98cents on the dollar and providing tens of trillions in ZIRP funds). The FED chairman then holds a press conference to say that he expected the TBTF to use ZIRP to help main street, but when the didn't he had no way to force them. However, the chairman was supposedly in part selected for having been student of depression era when FED tried something similar with same results (so there should have been no expectations of something different).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#fed.chairman
and
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#zirp
and
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

Note along the way, the TBTF found they could securitize mortgages desgined to fail, pay for triple-A, sell to their victims, and take out CDS gambling bets that they would fail (creating enormous demand for problem mortgages). The largest holder of CDS gambling bets was AIG and was negotiating to pay off at 50cents on the dollar, when the SECTREAS steps in, had them sign a document that they can't sue those making CDS gambling bets, and take TARP funds to pay off at face value. The largest recipient of TARP funds is AIG, and the largest recipient of face-value payoffs is the firm formally headed by SECTREAS.

Also at some point, some investors had realized that rating agencies were selling ratings and it was possible that no ratings could be trusted and the muni-bond market freezes. Warren Buffett then steps in and starts offering muni-bond insurance to unfreeze the market.

Financial institutions used to compete with interest to attract deposits for money. With tens of trillions in ZIRP funds, they effectively are getting all the money they need.

JAN 2009, I was asked to HTML'ize the Pecora Hearings (30s congressional hearings into the 29 crash, resulted in criminal convictions with jail terms and Glass-Steagall) with lots of internal HREFs and URLs between what happened then and what happened this time (comment that the new congress might have appetite to do something). I work on it for awhile and then get a call that it won't be needed after all (reference to capital hill is buried under enormous mountains of wallstreet cash).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#perpetual.war

VP and former CIA director repeatedly claims no knowledge of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_affair
because he was fulltime administration point person deregulating financial industry ... creating S&L crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis
along with other members of his family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis#Silverado_Savings_and_Loan
and another
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE0D81E3BF937A25753C1A966958260

another family member then presides over the economic mess last decade, 70 times larger than the S&L crisis. S&L crisis had 1000 criminal convictions with jailtime, proportionally the economic mess should have 70,000.

Milton Friedman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman
Friedman promoted an alternative macroeconomic viewpoint known as "monetarism", and argued that a steady, small expansion of the money supply was the preferred policy.[12] His ideas concerning monetary policy, taxation, privatization and deregulation influenced government policies, especially during the 1980s.
... snip ...

Milton Friedman's Cherished Theory Is Laid to Rest
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-12/milton-friedman-s-cherished-theory-is-laid-to-rest
Even now, when economic models have become far more complex than anything in Friedman's time, economists still go back to Friedman's theory as a mental touchstone -- a fundamental intuition that guides the way they make their models. My first macroeconomics professor believed in it deeply and instinctively, and would even bring it up in department seminars.
... snip ...

The Champions of the 401(k) Lament the Revolution They Started
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-champions-of-the-401-k-lament-the-revolution-they-started-1483382348?mod=e2fb
Economists and the Powerful: Convenient Theories, Distorted Facts, Ample Rewards
https://www.amazon.com/Economists-Powerful-Convenient-Distorted-Economics-ebook/dp/B01B4X4KOS/

loc1200-1206:
There are plenty of examples from other countries to copy: the US individual retirement account system is based on the Chilean pension reform of 1980/81 that in turn was based heavily on proposals made in the book Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman. In response to the Chilean system facing a likely collapse in a few decades time, it was substantially overhauled in 2008 to require mandatory participation of all citizens in exchange for universal pension coverage.
... snip ...

"The Undoing Project" goes into some detail how Kahneman and Tversky disproved economists' assumption that people make rational decisions ... loc1155-59:
He had listened to an American economist talk about how so-and-so was stupid and so-and-so was a fool, then said, "All your economic models are premised on people being smart and rational, and yet all the people you know are idiots."
... snip ...

Kahneman (a psychologist) gets Nobel prize in economics, in part for debunking some cherished economic theories

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

Mainframe Networking problems

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Mainframe Networking problems
Date: 15 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
Insider exploits are said to account for 60-80% of incidents and most institutions work very hard to minimize that publicity ... and frequently the focus on Internet-based attacks seems to be obfuscation and distraction away from the major problems.

The original mainframe TCP/IP product was implemented in Pascal and had none of the length related problems that are epidemic in C-language TCP/IP implementation.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#buffer

We were brought in to help wordsmith some cal. stat legislation. They were working on several bills including data breach notification. Some of the parties had done detailed public surveys of privacy issues. The number one issue was fraudulent financial transactions as a result of data breaches. The problem was that little or nothing was being done to address the problem. The issue was that normally an institution takes security measures in self-protection. In the case of these data breaches, it wasn't the institution that was at risk, but the public and their customers. It was hoped that publicity from the data breach notifications would help prompt corrective action.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#signature
and
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#data.breach.notification.notification

XMAS exec was social engineering "insider" exploit. File was sent to user requesting they execute. The execution included resending the file to other email that were known to the user (traffic saturating networks). The reason that it was VM was that was what the corporate sponsored interconnected university networks ran (BITNET in US and EARN in Europe). Trivia: the VM RSCS/VNET was a layered architecture with a very efficient native driver. However to connect to MVS systems, it also provided a simulated JES NJI driver. By the time of the XMAS exec, the company had stopped shipping native drivers (even though the continued to be used on the internal corporate networks because they were much more efficient) and only shipped the JES NJI simulation driver.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

There were other problems with the JES NJI implementation. MVS JES would discard all traffic where the originating node and/or the destination node weren't in local table defintion. Original implementation came from HASP (had "TUCC" in cols 68-71 of the source) that used spare entries in the HASP 255 entry psuedo device table, usely somewhere between 160-190 slots available for node definitions. Internal network was quickly several hundred and both the internal network and BITNET/EARN were well over thousand nodes by the time MVS JES was enhanced to support 999 (Any MVS JES used in those environments would be guaranteed to regularly discard traffic with no indications). On the internal network any MVS JES nodes were carefully regulated to edge nodes because of all the problems.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#hasp
and
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

Less well know is that because JES NJI fields were intermixed with MVS JES job control information, communication between MVS JES systems at different release levels would regularly crash MVS. Another reasons for keeping MVS JES at edge nodes (behind a RSCS/VNET NJI driver), was a large library of RSCS/VNET NJI drivers grew up that would carefully rewrite JES NJI fields to correspond with the release level of the MVS on the other end of that specific link (as countermeasure to MVS system crashes).

There is famous case of MVS system in San Jose causing MVS systems in Hursley to crash ... and it was blamed on VM ... because the Hursley VM people hadn't installed the latest NJI simulated driver .... that would convert from release level of San Jose MVS to release level of Hursley MVS .... i.e. putting up a newer MVS release could crash other MVS systems anywhere in the world (unless you carefully synchronized release level changes for all MVS systems running every where in the world).

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

Mainframe Networking problems

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Mainframe Networking problems
Date: 15 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#7 Mainframe Networking problems

trivia: old email from former coworking that had been transferred to Paris to be responsible for setting up EARN
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#email840320

I had been blamed for online computer conferencing (precursor to modern social media) on the internal network (larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime mid-80s) in the late 70s & early 80s. Folklore is that when corporate executive committee was told about online computer conferencing (and the internal network), 5of6 wanted to fire me. internal network related posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
and online computer conferencing related posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

other BITNET & EARN related posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

other trivia: IBM San Jose Research had the original corporate network gateway into public networks ... related posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm

more trivia: internally, I made available one of the first CMS execs that would convert from internal email formats (including PROFS) to SMTP for email forwarding.

other internet trivia: The communication group was forcefully fighting off distributed computing and client/server ... and tried to prevent release of original (pascal) mainframe TCP/IP product. When they couldn't directly block it, they crippled it in other ways. The shipped product performance had some issues getting about 44kbytes/sec using full 3090 processor. I did the changes to support RFC1044, and in some tuning tests at Cray Research, got sustained channel throughput between 4341 and Cray using only modest amount of 4341 processor; possibly 500 times improvement in bytes moved per instruction executed. some old posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

lots of old email from 70s & 80s
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html

other trivia, decade old ibm system mag article ... although some of the information is slightly garbled
https://web.archive.org/web/20190524015712/http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/stoprun/Stop-Run/Making-History/

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

Six Sigma

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Six Sigma
Date: 15 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
Six Sigma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma#Stifling_creativity_in_research_environments
A BusinessWeek article says that James McNerney's introduction of Six Sigma at 3M had the effect of stifling creativity and reports its removal from the research function. It cites two Wharton School professors who say that Six Sigma leads to incremental innovation at the expense of blue skies research.[43] This phenomenon is further explored in the book Going Lean, which describes a related approach known as lean dynamics and provides data to show that Ford's "6 Sigma" program did little to change its fortunes.[44]
... snip ...

also ISO9000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_9000

I use to sponsor Boyd's briefings at IBM ... more recent reference:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkwilliams/2013/02/19/what-a-fighter-pilot-knows-about-business-the-OODA-loop/#36af88be63eb
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_(military_strategist)

Boyd Posts &/or References
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

Drucker vs. GM: Management Science vs. Management Practice
http://www.elizabethedersheim.com/2012/04/13/drucker-vs-gm-management-science-vs-management-practice/
Meanwhile, Toyota quietly used the Peter Drucker approach, continuously redefining their approach to "what." That includes being part of the local community. Who would have foreseen a Japanese auto running in NASCAR? Toyota entered last year. Also last year, Toyota passed GM last year as the number one automobile company in the world; it's expected to become number one in the US market this year.
... snip ...

Note that in early 80s, there was article in Wash Post calling for 100% unearned profit tax on US auto industry. The issue was that the auto industry were suppose to use the greatly increased profits from the foreign import quota to completely remake themselves ... however they just pocketed the money and continued business as usual.

In 1990, the industry had the C4 task force ... to look at completely remaking themselves and because they were planning on heavily leveraging technology, technology vendors were invited to send participants. During the sessions, US auto industry could accurately describe what competition like Toyota was doing and what the US needed to do to change. As can be seen from the bailouts, even though they exactly knew what they needed to do, they still continued business as usual.

tiriva: offline, I would chide the POK mainframe brethren at the meetings about how could they expect to contribute since they suffered from many of the same exact problems.

auto C4 posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#auto.c4.taskforce

there is large overlap between what Drucker was saying and what Boyd would say in his briefings (that I sponsored at IBM).

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

Mainframe Networking problems

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Mainframe Networking problems
Date: 15 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#7 Mainframe Networking problems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#8 Mainframe Networking problems

more drift. TYMSHARE started offering their CMS-based online computer conferencing system free to SHARE (as VMSHARE) in Aug1976. archives:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare
sometimes(?) "404" ... but also at wayback machine
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

I then setup a process with TYMSHARE to monthly send me a complete copy of all the VMSHARE files so that I could put them up at internal datacenters and on the internal network, including the vm370-based online world-wide sales&marketing support HONE systems. the biggest problem I had was with the IBM lawyers who were afraid customer information would contaiminate IBM employees. some old email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#vmshare

the upthread referenced EARN email was asking for any online tools that I could make available on EARN/BITNET. note that the BITNET/EARN online computer conferencing software was created in Paris on EARN and used extensively by IBM customers
http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv-history.asp

disclaimer: one of my hobbies after joining IBM was creating and supporting enhanced operating systems for internal datacenters and HONE was long-time customer. After multiple failed attempts to migrate HONE from VM370 to MVS in the late 70s and early 80s, they started blaming me for inability to migrate to MVS (because my systems were too advanced, surely if HONE was running a normal VM370 system, it would be possible to migrate to MVS).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

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

Mainframe Networking problems

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Mainframe Networking problems
Date: 15 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#7 Mainframe Networking problems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#8 Mainframe Networking problems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#10 Mainframe Networking problems

as undergraduate, the university hired me fulltime to be responsible fulltime to be responsible for their production IBM systems. I did a lot of work on OS/360 ... and then when CP67 was installed in January 1968, I started rewriting CP67 code. I did a presentation at SHARE on some of the OS/360 and CP67 work later that year (fall 68). Old past with part of that presentation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18

However, in June 1968, the Science Center was having a CP67/CMS class at Beverly Hills Hotel. I arrive on Sunday and am told that the science center people that would teach the CP67 part had given notice on Friday that they were leaving to form NCSS ... and could I teach the CP67 class. About same time, some number of Lincoln Labs and one or two science center people left to form another CP67 service bureau (IDC) out in Waltham. commerecial service bureau posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

Still before I graduate, Boeing hires me fulltime to help form Boeing Computer Services (consolidate all dataprocessing in an independent business unit to better monetize the investment). I thot Renton datacenter was possibly largest in the world ... something like $200M-$300M in 360, 360/65s were arriving faster than they could be installed, constant boxes in hallways around the machine room. When I finally graduate, I get offers from all of them (they all are running cp/67 services). I joined IBM Cambridge Science Center at 4th flr, 545tech sq (MIT project MAC/Multics was on the 5th flr). CSC posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

Later I'm sponsoring Boyd's briefings at IBM ... and he comments that he strongly objected to the electronic sensors on trail in vietnam. Possibly as punishment he is given command of "spook base" about the same time I'm at Boeing. One of Boyd's biographies mention that "spook base" was $2.5B windfall for IBM (ten times more than Renton). Spook base reference gone 404, but lives on at wayback machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030212092342/http://home.att.net/~c.jeppeson/igloo_white.html

boyd posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

Inside IBM they started with several CP67 datacenters for online branch office users around the US. They eventually start installing HONE clones around the world and then upgrade to VM370 with my enhanced CSC/VM system. Middle 70s, the US HONE datacenters are all consolidated in Palo Alto (when FACEBOOK moved to silicon valley it was into new bldg next door to the old US consolidated HONE datacenter). By the end of the 70s, it was running maximum number of large POK 370 multiprocessors in single system image cluster (largest in the world) with load balancing and fall-over recovery across the complex (sort of like modern cloud). In the early 80s, this was extended with replicated datacenter in Dallas and then a 3rd in Boulder (load balancing and fall-over recovery). Something like this finally ships to customers 30yrs later.

hone posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

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

Mainframe Networking problems

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Mainframe Networking problems
Date: 16 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#7 Mainframe Networking problems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#8 Mainframe Networking problems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#10 Mainframe Networking problems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#11 Mainframe Networking problems

BITNET
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET
Bitnet's NJE (Network Job Entry) network protocols, called RSCS, were used for the huge IBM internal network known as VNET. BITNET links originally ran at 9600 baud. The BITNET protocols were eventually ported to non-IBM mainframe operating systems, and became particularly widely implemented under VAX/VMS, in addition to DECnet.
... snip ...

posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

originally RSCS/VNET was released with both native drivers as well as JES NJE simulation drivers. even after IBM stopped shipping the RSCS/VNET native drivers, they continued to be used internally because they were much more efficient than NJE. Part of this was continuing to use bisynch with a "y-connector" for full-duplex with one subchannel address dedicated for outgoing and another subchannel address dedicated for incoming.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

other trivia with regard to the wiki entry, a co-worker at SJR left IBM and did a lot of consulting work for silicon valley VLSI companies. He had ported AT&T C-compiler to CMS, significantly enhanced the performance and was ported UCB VLSI design tools to CMS. At one client, he was working on some LAN support when the local IBM marketing person asked what he was doing. He replied he was writing ethernet support to connect SGI graphics workstations to VM370 3081. The IBM marketing person said that he should instead he should be doing token-ring support ... or otherwise the 3081 maintenance support might not be timely. I almost immediately got a call and had to listen to hour harangue with lots of 4 letter words. The next morning, the customer had press conference to say that they were moving all their IBM mainframe work to pool of SUN servers.

Internally as a response, IBM had taskforce to look at the technical differences between mainframe and sun servers .... but carefully avoided looking at the real problem.

Later there was extensive effort by the communication group to get the internal network converted to SNA, including lots of misinformation. One of the things I was doing was HSDT project that was supporting T1 and faster speed links. We were also working with the director of NSF and were suppose to get $20M to interconnect the NSF supercomputer centers. Congress then cut the budget, some other things happened, and finally NSF releases an RFP (in part based on what we already had running). As regional networks connect into the centers, it evolves into the NSFNET backbone (precursor to modern internet)
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401444/grid-computing/

posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

Standard 37x5 communication controllers had max. of 56kbit links. I was driving multiple T1 full-duplex links and needed RSCS multiple mbyte sustained throughput. Standard RSCS used VM370 spool file with synchronous 4k diagnose operations ... on loaded system could mean a max of 4-8 4k records/sec. I did a lot of enhancements to get hundreds of 4k records/sec, asynchronous operation, contiguous allocation, mult-block transfers, read ahead, write behind ... and was trying to get the internal network backbone to install the enhancements.

Part of the communication group campaign to convert the internal network to SNA was not just misinformation but also started limiting the backbone meetings to managers only
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#email870302
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#email870306

The communication group trying to head off problems with the corporate executive committee with the lack of IBM support for greater than 56kbit support, they prepared a study of 37x5 "fat pipes", customers using support for multiple parallel 56kbit links managed as single logical link. They showed numbers of customers fatpipes with 2link, 3link, ... dropping to zero by 6links. What they didn't know or carefully avoiding presenting was that standard telco tariffs had T1 link about the same as 5 or 6 56kbit links. Quick survey, we found 200 customers with T1 links, but had switched to non-IBM controllers.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

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

Why the Pentagon would rather hire bin Laden than Donald Vandergriff

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Why the Pentagon would rather hire bin Laden than Donald Vandergriff.
Date: 17 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
Why the Pentagon would rather hire bin Laden than Donald Vandergriff.
http://investmentwatchblog.com/why-the-pentagon-would-rather-hire-bin-laden-than-donald-vandergriff/
Vandergriff's reformist ideas threaten the core values of our military-industrial-complex, where fears of war and war produce profits. Winning wars is incidental to doing the important business.
... snip ...

Chickenhawk, No. 13: Vandergriff as Yoda?
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/chickenhawk-no-13-vandergriff-as-yoda/384590/

John Boyd's Art of War; Why our greatest military theorist only made colonel.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/john-boyds-art-of-war/
Here too Boyd had a favorite line. He often said, 'It is not true the Pentagon has no strategy. It has a strategy, and once you understand what that strategy is, everything the Pentagon does makes sense. The strategy is, don't interrupt the money flow, add to it.'
... snip ...

... the for-profit "perpetual war"
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/domestic-roots-of-perpetual-war.html
and rapidly spreading success of failure
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/
paradigm; never finish/complete/win something ... because that would interrupt the flow of money

perpetual war posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#perpetual.war
success of failure posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#success.of.failuree

Boyd posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

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

Mainframe Networking problems

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Mainframe Networking problems
Date: 17 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#7 Mainframe Networking problems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#8 Mainframe Networking problems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#10 Mainframe Networking problems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#11 Mainframe Networking problems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#12 Mainframe Networking problems

Late 80s, as part of IBM's HA/CMP, some old posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
we were doing cluster scale up, both scientific/technical with national labs and commercial with RDBMS vendors (IBM didn't have non-mainfrsme RDBMS). We had meeting with Oracle Jan1992 in Ellison's conference room on commercial HA/CMP scale up
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
but IBM's mainframe RDBMS group complained that if we were allowed to go ahead, it would be a minimum of 5yrs ahead of them. some old cluster scale-up email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

Within a couple weeks of Ellison meeting, cluster scale up was transferred, announced as supercomputer for scientific/technical ONLY, and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than 4 processors (and we leave IBM a few months later)

Later, two of the oracle people in the Ellison meeting have (also) left and are at a small client/server startup responsible for something called "commerce server". We are brought in as consultants because they want to do payment transactions on the server, they had also invented this technology called "SSL" they want to use, the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce".

I have absolute authority on the servers to payment networks gateway side, but can only make recommendations on the client/server side. Almost immediately some number of recommendations were violated, which continue to account for some of the exploits that continue to this day. some old posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

During 1996 MDC at Moscone, Jim Gray also had open house for SanFran research center (at SJR I had worked with Jim on original relational/SQL implementation, before he leaves for Tandem and palms bunch of stuff on me). Also in the 90s, before he passes, the RFC internet standards editor would let me help do part of the periodic STD1. Postel also sponsors my talk at ISI/USC on why the internet isn't business critical dataprocessing. Later, before Jim disappears, he cons me into interviewing for chief security architect in Redmond ... the interview drags on for a few weeks, but we never come to agreement on what needs to be done.

past posts mentioning chief security architect
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#7 Hypervisors May Replace Operating Systems As King Of The Data Center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#5 folklore indeed
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#37 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#80 Making tea
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#60 The 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#18 Top 10 Cybersecurity Threats for 2009, will they cause creation of highly-secure Corporate-wide Intranets?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#28 Computer virus strikes US Marshals, FBI affected
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#22 My Vintage Dream PC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#20 Cyber attackers empty business accounts in minutes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#15 Idiotic programming style edicts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#40 The Great Cyberheist
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#56 Microsoft Wants 'Sick' PCs Banned From The Internet
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#21 Closure in Disappearance of Computer Scientist
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#74 Interesting News Article
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#93 Gordon Crovitz: Who Really Invented the Internet?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#14 The growing openness of an organization's infrastructure has greatly impacted security landscape
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013g.html#24 Old data storage or data base
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#77 Insane Insider Threat Program in Context of Morally and Mentally Bankrupt US Intelligence System
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013o.html#44 the suckage of MS-DOS, was Re: 'Free Unix!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014k.html#72 *uix web security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#35 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#66 Catching Up on the OPM Breach
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#57 PL/I advertising
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#58 PL/I advertising
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016g.html#19 Rogue sysadmins the target of Microsoft's new 'Shielded VM' security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016g.html#91 IBM Jargon and General Computing Dictionary Tenth Edition
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#100 Jean Sammet, Co-Designer of a Pioneering Computer Language, Dies at 89

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

HONE Systems

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: HONE Systems
Date: 20 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
After 23jun1969 unbundling announcement (& charging for software, SE time, etc), they had to come up with new way of training SEs (previously there would be part of large groups onsite at customers, but nobody could come up with way of not charging for new SE time). They started with online branch office access to guest operating systems in virtual machines as HONE.

After I joined IBM, one of my hobbies was producing and supporting enhanced operating systems for internal datacenters and HONE was longtime customer. There was CP67 datacenter at 1133 westchester and another at 3424 wilshire on the west coast. The cambridge science center had also ported APL\360 to CMS for CMS\APL and HONE started offering cms\apl based sales&marketing support applications (and guest operating system use dwindles away). HONE migrates from CP67 to VM370.

In the mid-70s they consolidate the US HONE datacenters in silicon valley (across the back parking lot from the palo alto science center). The HONE VM370 was enhanced to support cluster SMP and supported the largest single-system-image cluster in the world with load-balancing and failure fall-over. Then in the early 80s, US HONE was expanded with replicated datacenter in Dallas and then a 3rd in Boulder with distributed cluster support across the three complexes (although never released to customers). trivia: when FACEBOOK moved to silicon valley it was into a new bldg built next door to the old HONE datacenter (although they have since moved to the old SUN campus).

All of this was being done while there were periodic directives to move HONE to MVS ... which all failed. Finally in the 80s, they started blaming me for the failures to move HONE to MVS (if they were running a standard VM370 system, it would be much easier to move to MVS).

3424 wilshire
https://www.google.com/maps/place/3424+Wilshire+Blvd,+Los+Angeles,+CA+90010/@34.0616487,-118.296838,130a,35y,259.37h,45t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x80c2c77db1bade07:0xa184b4f8a4c580f0!8m2!3d34.0612905!4d-118.298506

1501 california
https://www.google.com/maps/place/1501+California+Ave,+Palo+Alto,+CA+94304/@37.4162608,-122.1517228,643m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x808fbaea7aff668f:0x57e52646ba5505a5!8m2!3d37.4169699!4d-122.1513629

1133 westchester
https://www.google.com/maps/place/1133+Westchester+Ave,+White+Plains,+NY+10605/@41.0112214,-73.7263877,1231m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x89c296beff2b733f:0xc535dd9c60ac1fc3!8m2!3d41.0106835!4d-73.726734

one of the first HONE clones that I was asked to install overseas was when EMEA hdqtrs moved to Paris and HONE datacenter was going into the new La Defense bldg (it was still brown dirt all around the bldg).
https://www.google.com/maps/place/La+D%C3%A9fense,+France/@48.8886786,2.2402627,305m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x47e66505aaadd1dd:0xf187c86ce82c7889!8m2!3d48.8897359!4d2.2418428

HONE posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone
unbundling posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle
cambridge science cnter posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
SMP posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

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

The Microsoft security hole at the heart of Russian election hacking

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The Microsoft security hole at the heart of Russian election hacking
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2017 14:28:42 -0700
The Microsoft security hole at the heart of Russian election hacking; We're reliving the Visual Basic-spawned bad times of 1999
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3202189/security/the-microsoft-security-hole-at-the-heart-of-russian-election-hacking.html

1996 Moscone MDC; all the banners said "INTERNET", but the constant refrain in all the sessions was preserve/protect your investment.

This grew up in the era of small, local, safe, disconnected LANs with snippet code embedded in application data files that was automagically executed. The paradigm was being enabled for the wild anarchy of the Internet w/o any additional safeguards.

past posts referencing preserve/protect your investment:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#45 Computer programming was all about:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#32 Frontiernet insists on being my firewall
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#51 Specifying all biz rules in relational data
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#50 DOS C prompt in "Vista"?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#87 CompUSA to Close after Jan. 1st 2008
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#63 who pioneered the WEB
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#66 What is the protocal for GMT offset in SMTP (e-mail) header
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#37 (slightly OT - Linux) Did IBM bet on the wrong OS?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#36 Favourite computer history books?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#9 The IETF is probably the single element in the global equation of technology competition than has resulted in the INTERNET
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#40 The Great Cyberheist
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#18 John R. Opel, RIP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#59 The lost art of real programming
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#141 With cloud computing back to old problems as DDos attacks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#93 Where are all the old tech workers?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#2 What are the implication of the ongoing cyber attacks on critical infrastructure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#18 Zeus/SpyEye 'Automatic Transfer' Module Masks Online Banking Theft
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#32 Zeus/SpyEye 'Automatic Transfer' Module Masks Online Banking Theft
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#37 Simulated PDP-11 Blinkenlight front panel for SimH
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#93 Gordon Crovitz: Who Really Invented the Internet?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#14 The growing openness of an organization's infrastructure has greatly impacted security landscape
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#45 New HD
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#68 Steve B sees what investors think
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#10 It's all K&R's fault
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#87 On a lighter note, even the Holograms are demonstrating
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#45 Western Union envisioned internet functionality
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#35 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#90 These hackers warned the Internet would become a security disaster. Nobody listened
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#35 [Poll] Computing favorities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#39 [Poll] Computing favorities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#106 Computers anyone?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#20 Computer theft 1971
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#69 Open DoD's Doors To Cyber Talent, Carter Asks Congress
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#79 Is it a lost cause?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#19 Is it a lost cause?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#38 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#92 Old hardware
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#90 Ransomware on Mainframe application ?

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

Wall Street

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Wall Street
Date: 20 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
1998, NSCC ... before they merged with DTC to form
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Trust_%26_Clearing_Corporation

asked me to improve the integrity of electronic trading floor transactions. I worked on it for awhile and then I get a call saying it was being suspended. Turns out that a side-effect of the integrity work would have greatly improved transparency and visibility ... anathema to wallstreet culture.

Later in an interview, Cramer says that illegal activity goes on all the time, but they don't have to worry about anything from the SEC.
http://nypost.com/2007/03/20/cramer-reveals-a-bit-too-much/

Cramer's reference to illegal activity was couple months before the DTCC illegal short selling issue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Trust_%26_Clearing_Corporation#Controversy_over_naked_short_selling
In July 2007, Senator Bob Bennett, Republican of Utah, suggested on the U.S. Senate floor that the allegations involving DTCC and naked short selling are "serious enough" to warrant a hearing. The committee's Chairman, Senator Christopher Dodd, indicated he was willing to hold such a hearing.[29] To date, no such hearing was ever held, and no further action on naked short selling is anticipated.
... snip ...

As an aside, in the congressional Madoff hearings they had the person that had tried unsuccessfully for a decade to get the SEC to do something about Madoff (SEC hands were forced when he turned himself in, speculation was that he was looking for gov. protection from some possibly unsavory characters that he may have defrauded). Congress asked him if new regulations were needed. He replied that while new regulations might be needed (even tho existing ones weren't being enforced), but much more important would be transparency and visibility. Madoff posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#madoff
regulatory capture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#regulatory.capture

Stockman's (80s Republican budget director) reference to IBM stock (buybacks)
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.
...
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 ...

stock buyback posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#stock.buyback

past posts mentioning NSCC &/or DTC/DTCC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#35 The recently revealed excesses of John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, while the firm was receiving $25 Billion in TARP funds makes me sick
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#65 What can agencies such as the SEC do to insure us that something like Madoff's Ponzi scheme will never happen again?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#80 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#1 Audit II: Two more scary words: Sarbanes-Oxley
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#36 Architectural Diversity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#53 Are the "brightest minds in finance" finally onto something?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#45 Artificial Intelligence to tackle rogue traders
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#67 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#29 Transparency and Visibility
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#23 Why are z/OS people reluctant to use z/OS UNIX? (Are settlements a good argument for overnight batch COBOL ?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#60 In the USA "financial regulator seeks power to curb excess speculation."
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#57 MasPar compiler and simulator
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009s.html#47 Audits VII: the future of the Audit is in your hands
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#33 Happy DEC-10 Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#56 Handling multicore CPUs; what the competition is thinking
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#54 Trust Facade
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#69 Idiotic programming style edicts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#48 WikiLeaks' Wall Street Bombshell
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#44 Programmer Charged with thieft (maybe off topic)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#39 Back to architecture: Analyzing NYSE data
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#5 Home prices may drop another 25%, Shiller predicts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#11 Innovation and iconoclasm
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#38 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#37 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#21 HOLLOW STATES and a CRISIS OF CAPITALISM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#24 AMERICA IS BROKEN, WHAT NOW?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#30 Have you ever wondered why some people seem to get rich easily
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#49 The men who crashed the world
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#80 How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#12 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#29 21st Century Management approach?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#5 We are on the brink of a historic decision [referring to defence cuts]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#87 The PC industry is heading for collapse
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#6 Adult Supervision
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#13 Is there a connection between your strategic and tactical assertions?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#39 History--punched card transmission over telegraph lines
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#29 Royal Pardon for credit unions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#72 Three Expensive Milliseconds
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014l.html#84 Uncovering insider trading with big data
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#17 Cromnibus cartoon
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#58 IBM Data Processing Center and Pi
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#31 Bernie Sanders Proposes A Bill To Break Up The 'Too Big To Exist' Banks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#47 Do we REALLY NEED all this regulatory oversight?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#16 Federal Deficits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#65 Michael Hudson's New Book: Wall Street Parasites Have Devoured Their Hosts -- Your Retirement Plan and the U.S. Economy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#70 AIG freezes defined-benefit pension plan
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#29 Ernst & Young Confronts Madoff's Specter in Trial Over Audits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#11 Qbasic
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#40 Misc. Success of Failure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#43 when to get out???

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

BMC Software explores merger with CA

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: BMC Software explores merger with CA
Date: 21 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
BMC Software explores merger with CA
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ca-m-a-bmcsoftware-idUSKBN19C036

Private Equity leveraged buyouts don't have the best history. Sometimes it is equated to house flipping .... except the loan stays on the books of the flipped company. It is possibly to even sell for less than was paid and still walk away with boat load of money. Over half the corporate defaults have been companies either in or previously in the leveraged buyout mill. old article
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmons.html?_r=0

I've posted a whole lot on private equity problems over the years. Note the industry had gotten such a bad reputation during the S&L crisis they changed the industry name to private equity. For instance, AMEX and KKR were in competition for private equity LBO take-over of RJR and KKR wins. KKR runs into trouble and hires away the president of AMEX to turn it around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate:_The_Fall_of_RJR_Nabisco

IBM has gone into the red and was being reorganized into the 13 "baby blues" in preparation for breaking up the company (gone behind paywall, partially lives free at wayback machine).
http://web.archive.org/web/20101120231857/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977353,00.html

The board then hires away the former president of AMEX, who reverses the breakup and resurrect the company ... using some of the same techniques used at RJR
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml

The former president of AMEX then leaves to become head of another very large private-equity company .... that will acquire the beltway bandit that will employ Snowden. Private-equity subsidiaries typically are under intense pressure to generate profit for their parents. Security clearances had been outsourced to some and they were found to be filling out the paper work ... but not actually doing the background checks (generating additional profits for their owners).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
posts referencing pensions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#pensions

trivia: beltway bandits can't use gov. contract money to lobby congress .... but if acquired by private-equity company ... their parent can lobby on their behalf. As a result there was huge uptic in gov. outsourcing last decade to "for-profit" companies .... which contributes to the rapidly spreading success of failure culture:
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/
some posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#success.of.failuree

The OPM exploit in the news was also operation that had been outsourced to private equity subsidiary
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/24/opm-contractor-veritas/

Other trivia: about the time IBM went into the red, AMEX spins off a lot of its mainframe outsourcing dataprocessing business in what was the largest IPO up until that time. 15 years later, KKR (same company AMEX was in competition with for RJR) does private-equity LBO of that company in what was the largest LBO up until that time ... and the company's debt went from something like $2B to $30B (i.e. the loan to buy the company was put on the company's books). Servicing such huge debt is one of the things that take companies in the private equity mill down (even while the private equity parent walks away with enormous amount of money).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity

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

Financial, Healthcare, Construction, Education complexity

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Financial, Healthcare, Construction, Education complexity
Date: 21 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
financial has been a lot of obfuscation and misdirection

Bad Ideas; Reknowned economist James K. Galbraith, one of our expert panelists, pulls no punches in talking about the damage wrought by financial innovation
https://www.gfmag.com/magazine/june-2017/bad-ideas

1998, NSCC ... before they merged with DTC to form
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Trust_%26_Clearing_Corporation

asked me to improve the integrity of electronic trading floor transactions. I worked on it for awhile and then I get a call saying it was being suspended. Turns out that a side-effect of the integrity work would have greatly improved transparency and visibility ... anathema to wallstreet culture.

In spring 2007 interview, Cramer says that illegal activity goes on all the time, but they don't have to worry about anything from the SEC.
http://nypost.com/2007/03/20/cramer-reveals-a-bit-too-much/

couple months later
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Trust_%26_Clearing_Corporation#Controversy_over_naked_short_selling

In the congressional Madoff hearings they had the person that had tried unsuccessfully for a decade to get the SEC to do something about Madoff (SEC hands were forced when Madoff turned himself in). Congress asked him if new regulations were needed. He replied that while new regulations might be needed (even tho existing ones weren't being enforced), but much more important would be transparency and visibility.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#madoff
regulatory capture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#regulatory.capture

JAN 1999, I was asked to try and help prevent the economic mess. securitized mortgages had been used during the S&L crisis to obfuscate fraudulent mortgages (poster child were office bldgs in dalla area that turned out to be empty lots). I was told that some of the investment bankers walk away "clean" from S&L crisis, were then running Internet IPO mills and were predicted next to get into securtized mortgages.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#s&l.crisis

I was to improve the integrity of mortgage supporting documents as countermeasure. They then find they can pay rating agencies for triple-A (when both the sellers and rating agencies know they aren't worth triple-A, from Oct2008 congressional testimony). Triple-A trumps supporting documents and they can start doing no-documentation liar loans, pay for triple-A and sell them off as fast as they can be made (triple-A means they no longer have to care about borrower's qualification or loan quality), largely enabling being able to do over $27T 2001-2008 (including being able to sell to entities restricted to only dealing in "safe" investments, including large institution pension funds).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo

SECTREAS convinces congress to appropriate TARP funds for buying off-book toxic assets, But they only do $700B, while just the four largest too big to fail are carrying $5.2T in off-book toxic assets end of 2008 (it would hardly make a dent in that problem). The SECTREAS uses TARP for other stuff while the Federal Reserve does the real bailout. The FED fights a long, hard legal battle to prevent disclosing what they are doing (buying trillions in off-book toxic assets at 98cents on the dollar and providing tens of trillions in ZIRP funds). The FED chairman then holds a press conference to say that he expected the TBTF to use ZIRP to help main street, but when they didn't he had no way to force them. However, the chairman was supposedly in part selected for having been student of depression era when FED tried something similar with same results (so there should have been no expectations of something different).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#fed.chairman
and
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#zirp

Note along the way, the TBTF found they could securitize mortgages desgined to fail, pay for triple-A, sell to their victims, and take out CDS gambling bets that they would fail (creating enormous demand for problem mortgages). The largest holder of CDS gambling bets was AIG and was negotiating to pay off at 50cents on the dollar, when the SECTREAS steps in, had them sign a document that they can't sue those making CDS gambling bets, and take TARP funds to pay off at face value. The largest recipient of TARP funds is AIG, and the largest recipient of face-value payoffs is the firm formally headed by SECTREAS.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

JAN 2009, I was asked to HTML'ize the Pecora Hearings (30s congressional hearings into the 29 crash, resulted in criminal convictions with jail terms and Glass-Steagall) with lots of internal HREFs and URLs between what happened then and what happened this time (comment that the new congress might have appetite to do something). I work on it for awhile and then get a call that it won't be needed after all (reference to capital hill is buried under enormous mountains of wallstreet cash).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
and
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess

Milton Friedman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman
Friedman promoted an alternative macroeconomic viewpoint known as "monetarism", and argued that a steady, small expansion of the money supply was the preferred policy.[12] His ideas concerning monetary policy, taxation, privatization and deregulation influenced government policies, especially during the 1980s.
... snip ...

VP and former CIA director repeatedly claims no knowledge of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_affair
because he was fulltime administration point person deregulating financial industry ... creating S&L crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis
along with other members of his family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis#Silverado_Savings_and_Loan
and another
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE0D81E3BF937A25753C1A966958260

another family member then presides over the economic mess 70 times larger than the S&L crisis. S&L crisis had 1000 criminal convictions with jailtime, proportionally the economic mess should have 70,000.

Milton Friedman's Cherished Theory Is Laid to Rest
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-12/milton-friedman-s-cherished-theory-is-laid-to-rest
Even now, when economic models have become far more complex than anything in Friedman's time, economists still go back to Friedman's theory as a mental touchstone -- a fundamental intuition that guides the way they make their models. My first macroeconomics professor believed in it deeply and instinctively, and would even bring it up in department seminars.
... snip ...

The Champions of the 401(k) Lament the Revolution They Started
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-champions-of-the-401-k-lament-the-revolution-they-started-1483382348?mod=e2fb
Economists and the Powerful: Convenient Theories, Distorted Facts, Ample Rewards
https://www.amazon.com/Economists-Powerful-Convenient-Distorted-Economics-ebook/dp/B01B4X4KOS/

loc1200-1206:
There are plenty of examples from other countries to copy: the US individual retirement account system is based on the Chilean pension reform of 1980/81 that in turn was based heavily on proposals made in the book Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman. In response to the Chilean system facing a likely collapse in a few decades time, it was substantially overhauled in 2008 to require mandatory participation of all citizens in exchange for universal pension coverage.

loc72-74:
"Only through having been caught so blatantly with their noses in the troughs (e.g. the 2011 Academy Award -- winning documentary Inside Job) has the American Economic Association finally been forced to adopt an ethical code, and that code is weak and incomplete compared with other disciplines."
... snip ...

"Inside Job" references how leading economists were "captured" similar to the capture of the regulatory agencies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Job_(2010_film)

"The Undoing Project" goes into some detail how Kahneman and Tversky disproved economists' assumption that people make rational decisions ... loc1155-59:
He had listened to an American economist talk about how so-and-so was stupid and so-and-so was a fool, then said, "All your economic models are premised on people being smart and rational, and yet all the people you know are idiots."
... snip ...

Kahneman (a psychologist) gets Nobel prize in economics, in part for debunking some cherished economic theories

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

Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2017 09:03:13 -0700
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
This was hardly unique to DEC. Burroughs, IBM, Wang, Data General, GE, Honeywell, Sperry, CDC, Cray, NCR et alia all developed their operating software (Monitor/Kernel/MCP/Operating System, call it what you will) to meet the hardware schedule. And several of them had as many (or more) product lines as DEC.

univ had 709 ibsys tape->tape with 1401 front-end handling tape<->unit.record (physically moving tapes between 709 & 1401 tape drives). As part of transition replacing 709/1401 to 360/67, the 1401 was replaced with 360/30 ... and they initially used 1401 emulation mode to run MPIO (handling tape<->unit.record). My first student programming job was re-implementing MPIO on native 360 assembler, I got to design & implement my own monitor, device drivers, error handlers, interrupt handler, storage management, scheduling/dispatching, etc.

at cambridge, some of the CTSS people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System

went to project mac on 5th flr, 545 tech sq to do multics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics

others went to the ibm science center on the 4th flr
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

and did virtual machines, internal network, online applications, lots of performance monitoring, simulation and modeling, invented GML, etc.

initially they did virtual machine CP/40 on 360/40 with hardware modifications to support virtual memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/cp40seas1982.txt

which morphs into CP/67 when 360/67 with standard virtual memory becomes available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP-67
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_CP/CMS

three people came out from the science center last week of Jan1968 to install cp/67 at the univ. (third installation after CSC and lincoln labs). I was then at spring SHARE meeting in Houston for the CP67/CMS "announcement".

June 1968, the Science Center was having a CP67/CMS class at Beverly Hills Hotel. I arrive on Sunday and am told that the science center people that would teach the CP67 part had given notice on Friday that they were leaving to form NCSS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_CP/CMS#1968.E2.80.9386.3F:_VP.2FCSS
... and could I help teach the CP67 class.

About same time, some number of Lincoln Labs and one or two science center people left to form another CP67 service bureau (IDC) out in Waltham.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_CP/CMS#1964.3F.E2.80.9372.3F:_IDC.27s_use_of_CP.2FCMS

commerecial service bureau posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

other trivia ... before ms/dos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS
there was seattle computer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Computer_Products
before seattle computer there was cp/m,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M
before doing cp/m, kildall worked with cp/67 (precursor to vm370) at npg school
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Postgraduate_School

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

Financial, Healthcare, Construction, Education complexity

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Financial, Healthcare, Construction, Education complexity
Date: 22 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#19 Financial, Healthcare, Construction, Education complexity

Rhetoric on the floor of congress was that Sarbanes-Oxley would prevent future ENRONs and guarantee that executives and auditors did jail time, however it required SEC do something. Possibly because even GAO didn't believe SEC was doing anything, it started doing reports of public company fraudulent financial filings, even showing uptic after SOX goes into effect (and nobody doing jailtime).

postings
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#enron
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#sarbanes-oxley
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#financial.reporting.fraud.fraud
regulatory capture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#regulatory.capture

Less well known is that SOX also required SEC do something about the rating agencies, however they did about as much about the rating agencies as they did about fraudulent financial filings.

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

IBM Future Sytem 1975, 1977

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM Future Sytem 1975, 1977
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2017 17:11:54 -0700
hancock4 writes:
ComputerWorld June 1977 quotes Gene Amdahl and mentions IBM dropping Future System.

https://books.google.com/books?id=qaS3FuQJfjcC&lpg=PA6&dq=ibm%20%22future%20system%22&pg=PA6#v=onepage&q=ibm%20%22future%20system%22&f=false


there was much more recent interview with Amdahl where he says that he left IBM before Future System started and during FS he wasn't aware of its existance
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

however, early in FS period, he had seminar at packed MIT auditorium and talked about formation of his Amdahl computer company. During the seminar he was asked about being front for foreign computer company. He was also asked how he convinced the VC investment people to provide money for his company. He replies that customers had invested billions of dollars in 360 software and even if IBM was to completely walk away from 360 (which might be considered a reference to FS), that software base could keep him in business through the end of the century.

note a major justification for FS was supposedly to significantly increase the complexity of integration of systems and controllers as countermeasure to clone controllers ... some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

however, the lack of 360/370 products during the FS period is credited with giving clone processors a market foothold.

some Amdahl seminar past posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#3 A Dark Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#20 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#55 Security via hardware?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#49 MVCIN instruction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#18 Change in computers as a hobbiest
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#2 IBM sues maker of Intel-based Mainframe clones
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#34 Top versus bottom posting was Re: IBM sues maker of Intel-based Mainframe clones
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#48 time spent/day on a computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#26 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#77 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#57 IBM to the PCM market(the sky is falling!!!the sky is falling!!)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#15 Patents, Copyrights, Profits, Flex and Hercules
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#34 IBM 8000 ???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#68 T3 Sues IBM To Break its Mainframe Monopoly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#1 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#17 IBM PC competitors
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#44 Future System
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#82 What would be a truly relational operating system ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009s.html#60 360 programs on a z/10
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#22 Idiotic programming style edicts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#82 Percentage of code executed that is user written was Re: Delete all members of a PDS that is allocated
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#83 Hashing for DISTINCT or GROUP BY in SQL
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#32 IBM Future System
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#52 speculation: z/OS "enhancments"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#12 Clone Processors
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#16 Running z/OS On Your Laptop
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#63 Before the PC: IBM invents virtualisation (Cambridge skunkworks)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#74 Execution Velocity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#105 Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#78 What are you experiences with Amdahl Computers and Plug-Compatibles?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#13 Can anybody give me a clear idea about Cloud Computing in MAINFRAME ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#27 PDP-10 system calls, was 1132 printer history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#73 One reason for monocase was Re: Dualcase vs monocase. Was: Article for the boss
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#19 Query for Destination z article -- mainframes back to the future
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#65 Are you tired of the negative comments about IBM in this community?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#68 Over in the Mainframe Experts Network LinkedIn group
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#66 PL/I advertising
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#85 The ICL 2900

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

Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 22 Jun 2017 17:48:37 -0700
cfmpublic@NS.SYMPATICO.CA (Clark Morris) writes:
If the goal was to eliminate the need for highly technical people who understand the platform and the tradeoffs, that is a futile goal for any operating system. If the goal is to eliminate the need for assembler coded exits, this is more doable but customization will always be with us. While there can be plenty of obscurity in assembler, how well documented are the SYS1.PARMLIB members and JES initialization decks that control how the systems operate? These are just weird programming interfaces that can be every bit as cryptic.

As someone who did his last systems programming in the 1990s, I would hope that systems maintenance and upgrade has become a lot easier (and if IBM made the Knowledge Center and Shopz 24/365.24 available) and that less custom code is required because of all the new concerns that I didn't have to deal with. The environment has become more complex for all of the operating systems so anything that can be eliminated is to the good. There is enough to do so that automation of some of the grunt work is a good thing.


23Jun1969 unbundling announcement started to charge for (application) software, SE services, etc ... however IBM managed to make the case that kernel software should still be free
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

in the 1st part of 70s, they launch the (failed) Future System effort, completely different from 360/370 and was going to complete 360/370 ... supposedly major motivation was to significantly increase the complexity of processor/controller interface as countermeasure to clone controllers.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

however, the lack of IBM 370 offerings during the FS period is credited with giving clone processors a market foothold. the rise of clone processors then initiates the transition to charging for kernel software ... and my resource manager is selected as guinea pig ... I get to spend a lot of time with lawyers and business people on charging for kernel software
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

eventually transition to charging for all kernel software happens in the early 80s .... starting the OCO-wars ... transition to "object code only" ... some of this shows up in the VMSHARE archives
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

part of the motivation was source code availability contributed to customers making source code modifications ... which contributes to customers needing their own system programmers and also slows down keeping up with the latest system releases (cutting into budget that could be spent with IBM).

this period in the first part of the 80s also saw many customers buying 4300s (in some cases ordering hundreds at a time) for placing out in departmental areas (sort of leading wave of distributed computing tsunami). Initially MVS was locked out of this market. The mid-range disks were all FBA that could be deployed out in non-datacenter environments. Eventually 3375 CKD emulation on 3370 FBA came out ... but that didn't significantly help. Turns out these large departmental deployments were looking at large tens of systems per staff member ... while MVS systems were frequently measured in tens of staff members per MVS system (if MVS was going to play in that market, it had to significantly lower skill requirements)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dasd

trivia: some old 4300 email from the period
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx

other trivia: TYMSHARE started offering is CMS-based online computer conferencing free to SHARE as VMSHARE in AUG1976.

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

Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2017 09:09:35 -0700
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
How long did it take you to have a bootable monitor?

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#20 Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More

i just had taken 2hr introduction to fortran class (but I found it so fascinating, I was making up my own programs) ... so it took me a couple weeks reading assembler manual and figuring out what machine language was about and then a couple weeks to start having some runnable code. the datacenter shutdown at 8am saturday until 8am monday ... so i could have the 360/30 all to myself for 48hrs straight over weekends that summer. by the end of the summer it was little over 2000 cards and I could do concurrent card->tape and tape->printer/punch.

it included assembler option to either assemble for stand-alone operation or macros that ran under os/360. The stand-alone version took about 30 mins elapsed time to assemble ... however the os/360 version took an hour elapsed time to assemble ... 5-6mins for each DCB macro.

because it was taking so long to re-assemble ... i started doing TXT card patching. I would fan the assembler output "TXT" deck to find the right card, and then run card thru 026 keypunch "duplication" until the right location and multi-punch hex fix into dup card.

past posts mentioning format of 12-2-9 (x'02') TXT card:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#60 Text (was: Review of Steve McConnell's AFTER THE GOLD RUSH)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#17 Google loves "e"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#69 IBM System/3 & 3277-1
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#70 IBM System/3 & 3277-1

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

Google Employees Weighed in on What Makes a Highly Effective Manager. Technical Expertise Came in Dead Last

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Google Employees Weighed in on What Makes a Highly Effective Manager. Technical Expertise Came in Dead Last
Date: 23 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
Google Employees Weighed in on What Makes a Highly Effective Manager. Technical Expertise Came in Dead Last
https://www.inc.com/michael-schneider/google-did-an-internal-study-that-will-forever-change-how-they-hire-and-promote-.html

The first time I sponsored Boyd's briefings I tried to do it through employee education. They initially agreed, but as I provided more information, they changed their mind. They said that the company spends a great deal of money educating managers on how to handle employees. They said that exposing general employees to Boyd (Patterns of Conflict) would be counter productive. They suggested that I restrict the audience to senior members of competitive analysis departments.

Boyd would include in briefings that former military officers steeped in rigid, top-down command&control were starting to contaminate corporate culture (only those at the very top know what they are doing) ... the first time he did his briefing it was just Patterns of Conflict ... but then he started adding the new, evolving Organic Design For Command and Control.

As an aside, about that time there were also starting to appear articles that MBAs were beginning to destroy US businesses (not just former military officers).

also around this time, some technical organization espoused dual career tracks .... people management and technical direction ... however there was huge amount of tension between helping your people and rigid, top-down, command & control.

One of the articles from this era was about technical groups where best performers could have 5-10 times the productivity of the lowest performers. "Leaders" (as opposed to commanders) tended to spend the majority of their time helping the lowest performers. However, if they spent the majority of their time helping the best performers (removing road blocks, etc) they could double the group's overall productivity.

boyd posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

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

Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2017 11:09:00 -0700
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
By 2030, 32-bit systems will be relegated to the dustbin of history :-)

(64-bit time_t has a ways to go before it overflows).


360 timer was 32bit and lowest bit was 13+ microseconds although some 360s only 3+ some millisecond bit. Part of the issue was that timer was in storage and required memory update. When we were doing clone controller hung off multiplexor channel ... one of the first bugs was the controller "held" the memory bus for too longer contiguous period .... preventing the 360/67 from updating the timer ... and the machine red lights.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

after graduating and joining IBM ... one of the early efforts that I got dragged on was the implementation of the 370 64bit TOD clock specification.

It called for the base epoch was the first day of the century ... so was that 1jan1900 or 1jan1901. Except for cp67 fiddled to run on 370 ... most earlier 370 software implementations set it to 1jan1970.

The other problem taking huge amount of discussion was how to handle leap seconds.

Note that 370 TOD clock was separate register requiring special instruction to access ... to eliminate the memory bus use.

clock 0-63 , bit 12 was defined as microsecond and there was no machines that implemented less than microsecond at the time. lots of code did store clock, load multiple (two registers), and then SRDL (shift right double logical) to put microseconds into low order bit position.

bit 32 was sligtly more than second. some applications would just load the high word, multiple by 1000 and SRDL to divide by 1024 to get exact number of seconds. some more discussion in old "green card"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html#tod

TOD clock has since been extended to 128bit ... with bits in front and behind "old" TOD value. The 64bit version gave it period of approx 143yrs (to 2043). New version has 8 leading bits giving 256*143yrs. old post with more detailed discussion and references
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#9 Architectural Diversity

other past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#2 Computer of the century
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#4 Computer of the century
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#53 any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#52 Microcode?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#2 Computers in Science Fiction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#44 Help me find pics of a UNIVAC please
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#21 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#23 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#8 z VM 4.3
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#9 What is timesharing, anyway?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#48 IBM Manuals from the 1940's and 1950's
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#50 Call-gate-like mechanism
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#52 Call-gate-like mechanism
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#47 IBM 360 memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#36 Multi-processor timing issue
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#43 Multi-processor timing issue
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#15 Best practice for TOD clock
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#20 Military Time?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#23 Military Time?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#18 TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#22 TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#23 TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#30 TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#31 TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#33 TOD Clock the same as the BIOS clock in PCs?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#34 TOD clock discussion
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#35 TOD clock discussion
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#22 "The Elements of Programming Style"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#4 The history of Structure capabilities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#26 Date arithmetic and Zune bug
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#24 Can TOD (STCKE) be compressed into 12 bytes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#25 Can TOD (STCKE) be compressed into 12 bytes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#39 My Vintage Dream PC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#7 big iron mainframe vs. x86 servers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#18 "Portable" data centers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#49 "Portable" data centers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#53 SWTL and 522
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#9 Idiotic programming style edicts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#27 CLOCK change problem
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#123 Will The Earth End be in 2012?❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#0 Leap seconds

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

Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2017 11:41:53 -0700
Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
Why not use REP cards ... oh, loader didn't support them?

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#20 Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#24 Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#26 Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More

I've posted before about finding out about "REP" cards a few months later, but by that time, I was very proficient at reading hex punch holes ... scan deck of TXT cards to find card with the address range, as if it was printed on the top of the card. I started out reading assembler and principles of operation .... but didn't get around to reading any loader documents (just using them).

Past posts mentioning (discovering) "REP" cards:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#17 unit record & other controllers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#4 1401 overlap instructions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#14 IBM Model Numbers (was: First video terminal?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#27 HELP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#13 High Level Language Systems was Re: computer books/authors (Re: FA:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#28 Is anybody out there still writting BAL 370.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#31 Is anybody out there still writting BAL 370.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#0 Handling variable page sizes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#37 command line switches [Re: [REALLY OT!] Overuse of symbolic
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#54 12-2-9 REP & 47F0
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#52 Software for IBM 360/30
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#17 IBM 610 workstation computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#43 Binder REP Cards (Was: What's the linkage editor really wants?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#44 Binder REP Cards (Was: What's the linkage editor really wants?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#58 REP cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#12 Binder REP Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#20 Binder REP Cards (Was: What's the linkage editor really wants?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#21 Binder REP Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#44 virtual memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#64 Large Computer Rescue
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#51 IBM S/360 series operating systems history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#1 IBM S/360 series operating systems history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#39 IBM 029 service manual
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#156 Is true that a real programmer would not stoop to wasting machine capacity to do the assembly?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#15 What were the complaints of binary code programmers that not accept Assembly?

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

Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 23 Jun 2017 12:12:30 -0700
essteam@JUNO.COM (essteam@juno.com) writes:
"supplying the entire OS on a chip"

I heard a similar statement delivered by the Late Great Bob Yelevich in the early 1990s. He suggested that CICS would be delivered on a Board, or possibly a component/domain would be delivered on a board. . . As a contractor I have experienced the neglect in Installations, when Qualified Systems Programmers are not employed. I was in one installation where I inherited well over one hundred outstanding issues, Abends, Storage Violations, back level maintenance.


re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#23 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)

early 1975, I got sucked into helping get system enhancements out ... as failing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

one was ECPS microcode assist for new 138/148 .... low & mid-range machines implemented with vertical microcode (somewhat like Hercules mainframe emulator) ... with a avg ratio of 10:1 native instructions per 370 instruction. was to select 6kbytes of most frequently executed operating system code for moving into native ... for a 10:1 speedup. (which turned out to be 79.55% of supervisor execution) old post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21 370 ECPS VM microcode assist

I also got sucked into designing 5-way SMP for 370/125. 115/125 had nine position memory bus for microprocessors. 115 had all microprocessors the same just with different microcode loads for 370 processor, controllers, etc. 125 was identical except the 370 processor was 50% faster than the other processors.

I dropped multiprocessor dispatching/scheduling for problem state and supervisor state into microcode ... with queued interface that put tasks on the queue and pulled stuff off the queue. Lots of multiprocessor operation was transparent to the actual software (all hidden in microcode). I also did queued microcode interface for all I/O ... putting stuff on the queue and pulling stuff off the queue.

The 370/125 multiprocessor was never announced or shipped (in part becuase the 138/148 people complained it was overlapping their market, I was in some escalation meetings where I had to argue both sides).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bounce

Early 80s, I was at bi-annual ACM SIGOPS meetings where the intel i432 people gave a talk on what they were doing ... which included a lot of higher level function ... like I had done for 125 (lot of multiprocessor and I/O operation was queued interface and transparent to "software"). They found out that their major problem was that all these advanced functions was manufactured into the chip silicon ... and any fixes required spinning new silicon and replacing all the chips.

as an aside ... other stuff going into i432 was similar stuff to some stuff that went into IBM S/38 ... which has been characterized as after FS failure, some of the people retreated to Rochester and did a much simplified FS flavor as S/38 (but again in microcode, not the raw silicon). I've periodically pointed out that in the S/38 market the trade-off between simplified operation and lack of sclability ... came down on the side of simplified operation (in the high-end market, one of the things that put the nails in FS coffin was showing 370/195 applications redone for FS, running on fastest possible FS hardware, would have throughput of 370/145, about 30times slowdown).

past posts mentioning I432
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#6 Ridiculous
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#48 Famous Machines and Software that didn't
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#36 What was object oriented in iAPX432?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#27 iAPX432 today?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#19 Computer Architectures
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#5 Anyone here ever use the iAPX432 ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#54 Reviving Multics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#23 Intel iAPX 432
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#24 Intel iAPX 432
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#47 Intel 860 and 960, was iAPX 432
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#52 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#60 Will multicore CPUs have identical cores?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#64 Will multicore CPUs have identical cores?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#73 Athlon cache question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#64 Misuse of word "microcode"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#46 Performance and Capacity Planning
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#31 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#47 IBM 610 workstation computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#42 Why is zSeries so CPU poor?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#44 Any resources on VLIW?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#7 32 or even 64 registers for x86-64?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#36 Oracle Introduces Oracle VM As It Leaps Into Virtualization
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#54 Throwaway cores
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#32 CPU time differences for the same job
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#22 CLIs and GUIs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#52 Lack of bit field instructions in x86 instruction set because of patents ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#18 Microprocessors with Definable MIcrocode
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#46 U.S. begins inquiry of IBM in mainframe market
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#74 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#1 IA64
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#45 IA64
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#8 Far and near pointers on the 80286 and later
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#40 Faster image rotation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#22 Personal use z/OS machines was Re: Multiprise 3k for personal Use?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#7 RISCversus CISC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#91 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#79 Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#15 Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#42 i432 on Bitsavers?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#14 International Business Marionette
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#57 1132 printer history
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#40 history of Programming language and CPU in relation to each other
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#33 Delay between idea and implementation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014k.html#23 1950: Northrop's Digital Differential Analyzer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#107 IBM 360/85 vs. 370/165
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#62 PL/I advertising
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#63 PL/I advertising
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#115 IBM History
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#38 British socialism / anti-trust
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#61 Typesetting

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

Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 23 Jun 2017 12:35:21 -0700
john.archie.mckown@GMAIL.COM (John McKown) writes:
​I remember from my first jobs, about 1979, DP (the name back then) was looking at some mini-computer for the police department (City of Ft. Worth, TX). The sales person showed us the equipment. And said that all software maintenance was done by the hardware C.E. type person. He would put a tape in the integrated drive and "press a button". That was it. Everything else was just application level programming. The closest that I know of today is the IBMi (nee AS/400) which supposedly only needs a "administrator" who supposedly doesn't need to know much more than how to read a manual. Of course, the OS being more or less "hard wired" into the hardware means that there are basically NO internals documented.​

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#23 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#28 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)

"no internals documented" ... including hardware operation & instructions

AS/400 was targeted at being migration path for s/36 and s/38 ... and lower-level "FS" features (from s/38) were eliminated ... but because of the very high-level ease of operation ... it was relatively straight-forward to migrate both s/36 and s/38 to as/400.

starting late 70s, the was IBM program to migrate the multitude of internal microprocessors to RISC (801 iliad chips) .... low & mid range 370s, controllers, as/400, etc. For various reasons these programs aborted (with risc engineers leaving for risc programs at other vendors) ... and things reverted to doing traditional CISC chips ... including crash CISC chip design program for as/400. However, the as/400 interface is so high .... that decade later, as/400 finally did migrate to 801 risc (power/pc).

past posts mentioning 801, risc, iliad, romp, rios, power, power/pc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

note about the same time apple macs went from motorola 68k to power/pc .... and since has moved to intel (latest change is claimed because IBM wasn't doing power efficient power/pc chips for laptop market).

other triva: my brother was regional apple market rep (largest physical region conus). I would get invited to business dinners and sometimes got to argue mac design with the mac developers (before mac was announced). He worked out how to get on online access to the hdqtrs system to track manufacturing and delivery schedules ... which was an IBM S/38.

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

Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2017 13:32:56 -0700
Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
And with all that, you never did create a "bootable monitor".

Not to downplay the difficultly of writing to the bare metal on S/360.


re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#20 Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#24 Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#26 Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#27 Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More

the stand-alone version (assembled in 30minutes) booted with the BPS loader an clean machines ... the OS/360 version (assembled in 60minutes because of the os/360 DCB macro assemble time).

had console interface to indicate what it was suppose to do, tope->printer/punch and/or card reader->tape.

BPS loader was self-loading text deck that you put in front of standard TXT deck ... would load and pass control to the loaded application. I eventually found a BPS application that generated purely self-loading ... it processed TXT cards into simpler form that required less processing for loading ... aka ESD and RLD records, etc.

The BPS application to generate a self-loading application was used for the BPS loader application that turned it into a self-loading application (which then could be used to load regular "TXT" decks). 360 boot process was that BPD loader process would also work from tape ... with card desk image written to tape.

BPS loader was also used for CP/67 and VM/370 ... all the assembled system decks were put behind the BPS loader (originally on bare machine ... but also worked in virtual machine) and IPL'ed ... the intial load sequence would then write the loaded image to disk and quit. The disk IPL then would do the inverse of the disk write and then turn control over to the system.

It wasn't as sophisticated as Lincoln Labs "LLMPS" which had a lot more functions ... like tape->tape copying and bunch of other stuff something like DEBE. "LLMPS" was made available on SHARE program library ... and MTS "folklore" was that Univ. of Michigan used it as original core for MTS.

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

Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2017 08:54:32 -0700
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
How did you learn about directing hardware devices? Was there technical documentation easily available at the center? I'm assuming that the existing device software didn't use all the opcodes, bits, flags, etc.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#20 Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#24 Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#26 Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#27 Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#30 Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More

starting with assembler manual and principles of operation and green card ... and lots of dedicated time, 48hrs straight ... the whole machine room all to myself from 8am sat. until 8am monday.

principles of operation gave all the instructions and description of how they worked as well as general i/o operations.
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/360/princOps/
also functional characteristics
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/ibm/360/functional_characteristics/

partial rendition of green card
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html
reader/punch
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html#23
tape
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html#25
pringer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html#24

one of the important things I learned somewhat trial and error was first thing to do when I came in on saturday morning was clean all the tape drives and take the 2540 reader/punch apart and clean it. also if the 1403 box of paper was getting low, stage a new box of paper. less frequent was replacing ribbon on 1403 printer.

also, sometimes when I came in sat. morning, 3rd shift will have finished early and had completely powered everything off and the room was completely dark. I would have to hit the processor front panel power on. Sometimes the power sequence wouldn't complete. I would then have to power off, go around to each of the controllers, put them in "CE mode", power them on individually, and go back to the processor front panel and power it on and then go back and switch each of the controllers back to normal mode.

there was a lot more to running a machine room that just the software programming part ... had to learn all this other stuff somewhat trial and error.

duplicating cards on 026 keypunch & multi-punching hex codes was also somewhat trial & error.

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

Google Employees Weighed in on What Makes a Highly Effective Manager. Technical Expertise Came in Dead Last

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Google Employees Weighed in on What Makes a Highly Effective Manager. Technical Expertise Came in Dead Last
Date: 24 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#25 Google Employees Weighed in on What Makes a Highly Effective Manager. Technical Expertise Came in Dead Last

In briefings Boyd would emphasize constantly "observing" from every possible facet as countermeasure to orientation (and/or confirmation) bias).

Boyd also in presentations talks about cultivating independent sources for information ... he references this in Organic Design for Command and Control, pg.28 "My use of 'legal eagle' and comptroller at NKP" ... sort of a version of trust but verify. NKP reference gone 404, but lives on at wayback machine
http://web.archive.org/web/20030212092342/http://home.att.net/~c.jeppeson/igloo_white.html

Claims that heterogeneous groups being more productive than homogeneous groups might be considered another flavor of this.
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/diverse-backgrounds-personalities-can-strengthen-groups

Boyd posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

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

Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)
Date: 23 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#23 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#28 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#29 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#32 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)

I was blamed for online computer conferencing (precursor to modern social media) in the late 70s and early 80s on the internal network (larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime mid-80s). Folklore is that when the corporate executive committee was informed of online computer conferencing (and the internal network), 5of6 wanted to fire me.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
and
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

One of the threads was corporate bureacracy was approaching black hole precluding anything productive from happening. Had a problem with the analogy until ran across paper about black holes evaporating.

from ibmjargon:
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 ...

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

But it actually started from a trip report that I distributed after periodic visit to see Jim at Tandem.

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

Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2017 10:04:58 -0700
Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
I had fun playing with this when I updated a toy OS from Madnick and Donovan (keyed in by hand from the listing in the book over many lunch hours). I assembled it to get the text deck and wrote my own 3-card loader, unknowingly duplicating something I could have downloaded from somewhere. I assembled the loader and then either stripped out the machine code or rekeyed it in ISPF (forget which now) to crete the bootable loader deck. Then I "punched" the loader followed by the OS deck to my reader on VM and IPLd it. It was a fun project.

aka XEDIT ... not ISPF

trivia: mid-60s, Madnick did the rewrite of ctss runoff to CMS for script .... i.e. it was the "dot" documenting formating.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

then in 1969, GML was invented at the science center ... and tag documenting formating support was added to CMS script
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

I've mentioned before about parts of IBM having trouble adapting to software charging after the 23june1969 unbundling announcement
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

JES2 ran into this with NJI networking Monthly price charged times number of forecasts had to cover development costs plus ongoing maintenance ... there was no price*forecast that satisfied the criteria (even tho the original source from HASP had "TUCC" in cols 68-71).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#hasp

By comparison VM370 RSCS/VNET easily met the criteria with a $30/month ... however this was in the period when POK was convincing corporate hdqtrs to kill VM370 product (and transfer all the people to work on MVS/XA, or otherwise MVS/XA wouldn't ship on time). Eventually the JES2 group cut a deal with VM370 to announce a combined JES2+VNET product at $600/month (the combined NJI+VNET forecast times $600/month covered the NJI costs).

Later they finagled the rules so the products just had to be in the same organization. The VM370 performance products earned as much as ISPF ... but ISPF had profit issues with something like 200 people. They combined ISPF and VM370 performance products in the same organization and cut the VM370 performance products to three people ... so the VM370 performance products revenue cut underwrite the ISPF costs.

other triva: there were several internal fullscreen editors that were much more mature and had more function than the brand new XEDIT ... but Endicott had some NIH. One of the most advanced was RED ... and I tried to convince Endicott that it should release RED than XEDIT.

Eventually Endicott responded that it was the RED author's fault that RED was so much more advanced than XEDIT ... and it should be the RED author's responsibility to bring XEDIT up to level comparable to RED.

some past RED/XEDIT posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#22 When did full-screen come to VM/370?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#39 20th anniversary of the internet (fwd)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#55 The very first text editor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#26 Assembler question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#5 Call for XEDIT freaks, submit ISPF requirements
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#43 handling the SPAM on this group
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#54 THE runs in DOS box?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#36 Idiotic programming style edicts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#11 Information on obscure text editors wanted
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#95 VM IS DEAD
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#44 CMS load module format
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#102 Typeface (font) and city identity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#89 Real Programmers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014g.html#23 Three Reasons the Mainframe is in Trouble
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#107 CMS Editors was TSO Test does not support 65-bit debugging?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#84 Hottest Editors

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

Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)
Date: 24 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#23 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#28 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#29 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#32 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#33 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)

IBM required that all links leaving premise have link encryptors. Mid-80s there was claim that IBM internal network had more than half of all link encryptors in the world. IBM TP controller only supported up to 56kbit links ... communication group even produced report for the corporate executive committee why customers wouldn't want T1 (1.5mbit) until the 90s (even tho there were already hundreds of customers with T1s).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

Starting early 80s, I had HSDT project with T1 and faster speed links ... was having equipment built on the other side of the pacific. Friday before overseas visit to see progress, communication group set out notice for new online discussion group on "high-speed" with following definitions: low-speed: 9.6kbits, medium-speed: 19.2kbits, high-speed: 56kbits, very high-speed: 1.5mbits. Monday on wall of conference room wall on the other side of the pacific: low-speed: <20mbits, medium-speed: 100mbits, high-speed: 200-300mbits, very high-speed >600mbits.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

I really hated what I had to pay for T1 link encryptors and link encryptors for faster speed was almost impossible to find. I got involved in doing our own ... with objective of supporting multi megabyte (not bit) and cost less than $100. The corporate crypto group first said that it significantly reduced crypto strength. It took me 3months to figure out how to explain to them that it significantly increased crypto strength. It was hollow victory ... I was told I could make as many as I liked but there is only one organization in the world that could use them. It was when I realized that there were three kinds of crypto: 1) the kind they don't care about, 2) the kind you can't do, and 3) the kind you can only do for them.

trivia: various old crypto email from the period ... including proposal for doing a PGP-like implementation (a decade before PGP)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#crypto

another decade and we have left IBM. Some people we had worked with at Oracle are now at a small client/server startup responsible for something they called "commerce server". I'm brought in as a consultant because they want to do payment transactions on the server. The startup has also invented this technology they call "SSL" they want to use, the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce". I have absolute authority over the server to payment network gateway ... but can only make recommendations on the client/server side ... some of which were almost immediately violated that continue to account for some of the exploits that continue to this day.

the communication group report to corporate executive committee showed number of customers using "fat pipes" (37x5 treating multiple parallel 56kbit links as single logical links) with 2, 3, 4, etc 56kbit links ... dropping to zero by 6 (as why customers weren't interested in full T1). What they fuzzed for the report was that telco tariff for T1 was about the same as five or six 56kbit links ... and customers just moved to full T1 with non-IBM controller.

communication group finally got caught and produced the 3737. Problem was that T1 ran faster than VTAM implementation ... i.e. numbers of bits outstanding exceeded its limit (even with relatively short terrestrial links) ... so it would let the link drain and wait until the other end responds. 3737 tried to fake out mainframe VTAM by simulating a local CTCA link ... immediately telling local VTAM that bits had already arrived at remote end. It had lots of 68k processors and boatload of memory for pulling off the spoof. Even at that it was limited to about 2mbits/sec aggregate ... full-duplex T1 is 1.5mbits/sec in each direction, 3mbits/sec aggregate. EU T1 is 2mbits or 4mbits/sec aggregate.

old email mentioning 3737
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#email880130
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#email880606
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#email881005

past posts mentioning 3737
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#75 We list every company in the world that has a mainframe computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#77 Is the magic and romance killed by Windows (and Linux)?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#0 We list every company in the world that has a mainframe computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#2 WHAT WAS THE PROJECT YOU WERE INVOLVED/PARTICIPATED AT IBM THAT YOU WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#54 Did My Brother Invent E-Mail With Tom Van Vleck? (Part One)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#103 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#41 Where are all the old tech workers?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#20 Writing article on telework/telecommuting
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#19 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#92 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#23 VM Workshop 2012
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#57 VM Workshop 2012
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#4 A joke seen in an online discussion about moving a box of tape backups
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#87 Gordon Crovitz: Who Really Invented the Internet?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#89 Gordon Crovitz: Who Really Invented the Internet?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#24 Does the IBM System z Mainframe rely on Security by Obscurity or is it Secure by Design
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#47 PC/mainframe browser(s) was Re: 360/20, was 1132 printerhistory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#66 OSI: The Internet That Wasn't
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013n.html#16 z/OS is antique WAS: Aging Sysprogs = Aging Farmers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#46 Resistance to Java
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#7 Last Gasp for Hard Disk Drives
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#66 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#47 Western Union envisioned internet functionality
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#2 Western Union envisioned internet functionality
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#31 Western Union envisioned internet functionality
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#42 20 Things Incoming College Freshmen Will Never Understand
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#82 Qbasic - lies about Medicare
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#57 TV Show "Hill Street Blues"

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

FCC proposes record fine for robocall scheme

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: FCC proposes record fine for robocall scheme
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2017 19:50:57 -0700
danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> writes:
Could we also have the "ring current" redirected to his anatomy...

early 80s, IBM did vulnerability study of offsite remote access and found things like hotel PBX were especially a problem. They then did 2400 baud encrypting modem for home, road warrior, and other access.

folklore is senior VP & former EE got early version and as part of installing it, he check for current by touching contacts to his tongue just as phone rang. he then directed that all phone jacks had to be recessed so babies (and IBM senior executives) couldn't touch them with their tongue

past posts mentioning encrypting modem:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#11 Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#62 Wireless security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#57 high speed network, cross-over from sci.crypt
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#35 Metroliner telephone article
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#5 Are there more stupid people in IT than there used to be?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#30 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#66 Memory Mapped Vs I/O Mapped Vs others
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#16 should I encrypt over a private network?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#30 I need magic incantation for a power conditioner
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#60 Cybercrime Checks Into The Hotel Industry
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#25 Fear the Internet, was Cool Things You Can Do in z/OS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#19 disclosing "business" information on the internet
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#35 Chase, Bank of America credit cards too hacker-friendly?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#20 Writing article on telework/telecommuting
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#31 IBM bans Siri: Privacy risk, or corporate paranoia at its best?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#23 Teletypewriter Model 33
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#38 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#86 On a lighter note, even the Holograms are demonstrating
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#100 On a lighter note, even the Holograms are demonstrating
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#18 TV show Mannix observations

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

CMSBACK

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: CMSBACK
Date: 24 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
adstar distributed storage manager ADSM ... becomes TSM ... Tivoli Storage Manager

before that ADSM was WSDF ... workstation datasave facility ... before that it was CMSBACK ... i had originally done in the late 70s for internal datacenters and went through a few internal releases ... before being enhanced for WDSF and release to customers. Some old CMSBACK email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#cmsback

past posts mentioning backup/archive, cmsback, wdsf, adsm, tsm, etc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#backup

TSM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Tivoli_Storage_Manager
TSM history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Tivoli_Storage_Manager#History
TSM descended from a project done at IBM's Almaden Research Center around 1988 to back up VM/CMS systems. The first product that emerged was Workstation Data Save Facility (WDSF). WDSF's original purpose was to back up PC/DOS, OS/2, and AIX workstation data onto a VM/CMS (and later MVS) server. WDSF morphed into ADSTAR Distributed Storage Manager (ADSM) and was re-branded Tivoli Storage Manager in 1999.
... snip ...

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

The most important invention from every state

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The most important invention from every state
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2017 09:32:16 -0700
The most important invention from every state
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-important-invention-from-every-state-2017-6

????
MA: World Wide Web

Made accessing online data easier for the general public

• technology • MIT professor, Tim Berners-Lee • 1990


????

first web server in US (outside Europe) on SLAC VM370/CMS system (california)
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml
and
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/firstpages.shtml

now virtual machines, internal network, lots of online and performance work was done at IBM cambridge science center (MA) ... past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

... and GML was invented at the science center in 1969 ... which morphs into ISO standard SGML a decade later ... past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

and then SGML morphs into HTML at CERN after another decade:
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early

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

360/95

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: 360/95
Date: 25 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
number of 360/95s
http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/ca/technology/s360_195/p001.htm
The 360/91 was IBM's answer to the CDC 6600 and its main development was started in 1963. It used 750 nanosecond memory that was retained in the 360/195. It was a deeply pipelined system with no cache. the pipeline had 20 stages that meant that number of instructions could be in execution at the same time as long as the pipeline was kept full. Interleaved memory helped to achieve this as did a speculative execution a la the STRETCH. About 20 360/91s were made. A newer model 360/95 with faster memory was developed but only two made. Then came the 360/195.
... snip ...

I got dragged into effort to do 370/195 hyperthreading. 195 had pipeline but no branch prediction, so conditional branches drained pipelined. optimized code ran around 10MIPs but normal code tended to only get 5MIPS (because of conditional branches. They wanted to do two instruction streams; two PSW, two sets of registers. Never announced or shipped. see "Sidebar: Multithreading" in this discussion of end of ACS/360 (also has 95 press release)
https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.html

engineers told me that the major change from 360/195 to 370/195 (besides the few non-virtual memory instructions) was addition of hardware instruction retry. the statement was that the 195 had so many circuits and ran so fast, that there was some high probability of having soft hardware failure.

Note Amdahl's account of ACS/360 end was that IBM executives thought that it would advance the state of the art too fast and they would loose control of the market. Also has ACS/360 features that show up in ES/9000 more than 20yrs later

recent posts mentiong ACS/360 end and/or 370/195 hyperthreading:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#3 Is multiprocessing better then multithreading?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#81 The ICL 2900
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#84 The ICL 2900
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#85 The ICL 2900
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#90 The ICL 2900
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#26 Multitasking, together with OS operations
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#80 Great mainframe history(?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#81 GREAT presentation on the history of the mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#84 Great mainframe history(?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#35 Mainframe Family tree and chronology 2

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

The most important invention from every state

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The most important invention from every state
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2017 14:13:50 -0700
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#38 The most important invention from every state

more mass inventions, #2 here posted this to me
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2015/08/20/thank-new-england-for-these-20-inventions

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

Iran/Contra and Email

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Iran/Contra and Email
Date: 25 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
VP and former CIA director repeatedly claims no knowledge of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_affair
because he was fulltime administration point person deregulating financial industry ... creating S&L crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis
along with other members of his family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis#Silverado_Savings_and_Loan
and another
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE0D81E3BF937A25753C1A966958260

another family member then presides over the economic mess last decade, 70 times larger than the S&L crisis. S&L crisis had 1000 criminal convictions with jailtime, proportionally the economic mess should have 70,000.

economic mess posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess

note both SECDEF (Weinberger) and SECSTATE (Schultz) were Bechtel executives when appointed
https://www.amazon.com/Profiteers-Bechtel-Men-Built-World-ebook/dp/B010MHAHV2/

loc2752-54:
Pollard had accidentally "busted the most secret White House operation of modern times," as one account put it. "Neither Pollard nor the government of Israel was aware that they had smashed George Bush's first shipment of arms to Iran."

loc2764-65:
Despite his best efforts to silence Pollard, Weinberger would not escape his own entanglement in the Iran-Contra conspiracy, for which he would ultimately face criminal charges
... snip ...

Then Bush Pardons 6 in Iran Affair, Aborting a Weinberger Trial; Prosecutor Assails 'Cover-Up'
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/29/reviews/iran-pardon.html
https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/prosecutions.php

PROFS was used for several gov. emails ... and all email was backed up so simple delete didn't make it go away. Congress subpoenas email and guy running executive branch IT had to plow through backups requiring every possible security clearance. Then there is increasing battles between administrations disappearing email and gov. operations trying to prevent email disappearing.

100,000 lost in the 90s, because backup was "misconfigured"
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2008/01/clinton-white-house-lost-emails-too/
Hillary's email scandal -- of the 1990s! Exclusive: Larry Klayman tells of 1 million messages 'lost' from White House server
http://www.wnd.com/2016/06/hillarys-email-scandal-of-the-1990s/
The Other Clinton Email Scandal You May Not Know About
http://ijr.com/2016/06/624529-this-isnt-the-first-clinton-email-scandal/
Politicos squabble over 'missing' White House e-mails
https://www.cnet.com/news/politicos-squabble-over-missing-white-house-e-mails/

then

The George W. Bush White House 'Lost' 22 Million Emails
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/23/george-w-bush-white-house-lost-22-million-emails-497373.html
Special Report: G.W. Bush's 103.6 million missing email messages and the IT archiving challenge
http://www.zdnet.com/article/special-report-g-w-bushs-103-6-million-missing-email-messages-and-the-it-archiving-challenge/
Bush White House email controversy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy
Missing White House Emails
http://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/web-video/missing-white-house-emails
Disappearing White House Emails Timeline
https://www.emptywheel.net/2008/01/17/disappearing-white-house-emails-timeline/
Group Sues White House to Restore Missing Emails; National Security Archive says White House must reactivate its email archiving system
http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/group-sues-white-house-to-restore-missing-emails/d/d-id/1128976

As gov. workers got more & more sophisticated preventing administrations from disappearing email ... the administrations had to start moving to non-gov servers.

some past Pollard refs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#18 The Winds of Reform
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#21 "I used a real computer at home...and so will you" (Popular Science May 1967)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#59 Breaking: Entire Nation Experiencing Collective Amnesia About Iraq War
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#99 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#45 [CM] What was your first home computer?

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

Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)
Date: 26 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#23 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#28 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#29 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#32 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#33 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#35 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)

from long ago and far away

Date: 04/01/87 14:07:21 PST
From: wheeler

re: wideband; last time I knew, there was something in bldg. 26 (on the plant site) that would wide-band off-shift (taking over tie-line circuits). I'm not sure that it will get to Hursley in one hop and/or if Hursley has capability to the states.

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

for a time, parts of IBM tieline ran over SBS C-band T3 satellite network (10m dishes). SBS was satellite company setup by IBM jointly owned by COMSAT and Aetna. Problem was that communication group didn't have any products that efficiently supported satellite and the associated signal latency ... which was part of what forced SBS into phone business. If I remember correctly, wideband would setup special dedicated link that somewhat treated as tape drive.

VTAM had two problems 1) maximum number of bits it was waiting for a response from the other end and 2) maximum time-out without any communication. STL to Hurseley was two hop operation. 22k miles to satellite from west coast, 22k miles down to east coast, 22k miles up to satellite from east coast and 22k mildes down to Hursley. Double hop round-trip latency was on the order of second, which exceeded VTAM time-out ... so link never worked.

Part of VTAM protocol was window protocol ... that set max. number of bits being waited for, it would transmit in a burst before stopping and waiting for response. In HSDT ... some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

we did dynamic rate-based pacing ... delay between transmissions as part of congestion avoidance and overruns. Efficient handling met than delay could be zero. Rate-based pacing is independent of propagation delay/latency or outstanding #bits. I was also on the (non-IBM) XTP technical advisery board ... some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#xtphsp
and did a rate-based pacing writeup for the protocol
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/xtprate.html

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

The most important invention from every state

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The most important invention from every state
Date: 26 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#38 The most important invention from every state
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#40 The most important invention from every state

other trivia: after having left IBM ... two people had worked with at Oracle are at small client/server startup responsible for something called "commerce server". I'm brought in as consultant because they want to do payment transactions on the server, the startup had also invented this technology they called "SSL" they want to use, the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce".

From the law of unintended consequences, IBM/PCs evolve into client/server and distributed computing. Late 80s, communication group is fiercely fighting off client/server and distributed computing trying to preserve their dumb (emulated) terminal paradigm and install base. Senior disk engineer gets talk scheduled at internal, annual, world-wide communication group conference supposedly on 3174 performance, but opens the talk with the statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The disk division was seeing data fleeing the datacenter to more distributed computing friendly platforms with drop in disk sales. The disk division had some up with several solution to the problem ... but the communication group with (their stranglehold) corporate strategic responsibility for everything that crosses the datacenter walls ... and constantly vetoes them. Note that it isn't just disk division, a couple years later the company goes into the red ... and there are articles about how customers are fleeing to killer micros.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal

Magstripe done by IBM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_stripe_card#History

and magstripe standards were run out of IBM Los Gatos lab for many years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_stripe_card#Further_developments_and_encoding_standards

somewhat from having worked on "electronic commerce" after IBM ... I was asked to participate in X9 financial standards organizations and author some number of financial standards ... X9 is ISO financial standards permanent secretary.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

one of the people from Los Gatos
http://www.nemecfamily.net/fan/career.html

For a time, I had wing of offices and labs at Los Gatos. After I had left IBM, I got contract job ported one of the VLSI tools to SUN. After the troubles of the early 90s, IBM was unloading all sorts of stuff. One was lots of internal tools. There was a deal with Cadence to pickup a lot of IBM VLSI design tools. IBM Los Gatos had used Metaware to develop some number of languages including the original mainframe Pascal (which eventually is released to customers and also ported to RS/6000). Biggest Cadence customer base ran on SUN workstations ... and so the IBM (VS/Pascal) VLSI tools had to be ported to SUN. I had this contract for 50,000 statement VS/Pascal "layout" tool ... to move to SUN. SUN pascal didn't look like it had ever been used for anything else than introduction education classes ... further complicating things was that SUN had outsourced Pascal support to an organization 12 time zones away.

past posts mentioning porting VLSI app to SUN pascal
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#34 August 23, 1957
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#14 something like a CTC on a PC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#77 CLIs and GUIs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#54 PL/I vs. Pascal
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#27 "Best" versus "worst" programming language you've used?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#21 The simplest High Level Language
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#53 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?

past posts mentioning metaware:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#20 Is Al Gore The Father of the Internet?^
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#66 Mainframe Spreadsheets - 1980's History
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#19 Beyond 8+3
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#52 Question about Unix "heritage"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#71 What terminology reflects the "first" computer language ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#42 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#30 First single chip 32-bit microprocessor
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#35 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#38 CAS and LL/SC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#39 CAS and LL/SC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#61 will there every be another commerically signficant new ISA?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#14 something like a CTC on a PC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#0 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#1 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#33 Power5 and Cell, new issue of IBM Journal of R&D
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#8 Free to good home: IBM RT UNIX
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#14 Newbie question on table design
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#77 CLIs and GUIs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#11 Lack of bit field instructions in x86 instruction set because of ?patents ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#36 Old-school programming techniques you probably don't miss
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#11 Microprocessors with Definable MIcrocode
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#29 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#28 someone smarter than Dave Cutler
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#54 PL/I vs. Pascal
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#69 Making Z/OS easier - Effectively replacing JCL with Unix like commands
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#32 computer bootlaces
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#20 Mainframes Warming Up to the Cloud
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#89 Can anybody give me a clear idea about Cloud Computing in MAINFRAME ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#21 The simplest High Level Language
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#59 Teletypewriter Model 33
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#36 Quote on Slashdot.org
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#51 [Poll] Computing favorities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#52 [Poll] Computing favorities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#62 Which Books Can You Recommend For Learning Computer Programming?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#24 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#94 Jean Sammet, Co-Designer of a Pioneering Computer Language, Dies at 89

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

F-35

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: F-35
Date: 26 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
f-35 was original bomb truck with cost-reduced power & stealth assuming F-22 was flying cover to handle real threats
http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-2009-01.html
some f-22, f-16, f-18c, f-35, f-18f comparison, other f-22, f15, f-35
http://www.ausairpower.net/jsf.html

Spring 2015, DOD put export control on latest computer chips. Fall 2015 at supercomputer conference, china demonstrates they are making their own chips ... used in supercomputers (they have top two, more powerful than the next eight combined), signal processing for radar, guidance systems, autonomous vehicles, etc. claim is that the advanced signal processing can reduce the number of transmit/receive pairs in apg-81 by nearly two orders of magnitudes with no loss in capability.

recent refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#20 DEC and The Americans
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#55 How to Kill the F-35 Stealth Fighter; It all comes down to radar ... and a big enough missile
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#89 Computers anyone?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#89 China builds world's most powerful computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#22 Iran Can Now Detect U.S. Stealth Jets at Long Range
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#46 China takes the lead in supercomputing while America sleeps
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#40 The F-22 Raptor Is the World's Best Fighter (And It Has a Secret Weapon That Is Out in the Open)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#73 Note on dis-orientation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#77 Test Pilot Admits the F-35 Can't Dogfight
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#51 F-35 Replacement: F-45 Mustang II Fighter -- Simple & Lightweight

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

The most important invention from every state

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The most important invention from every state
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2017 10:03:15 -0700
"Kerr Mudd-John" <admin@127.0.0.1> writes:
"What have the Romans ever done for us?"

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#38 The most important invention from every state
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#40 The most important invention from every state
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#43 The most important invention from every state

concrete that lasts 2000 yrs. A couple years ago, navy academy was having to replace 40yr old concrete seawall ... about the same time berkely lab paper about finally figuring out how romans made congrete that lasted 2000 yrs. They also found that it takes less energy and causes less evironmental damage to produce.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#78 IBM commitment to academia

Ancient Roman Concrete Is About to Revolutionize Modern Architecture
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-14/ancient-roman-concrete-is-about-to-revolutionize-modern-architecture
Roman Seawater Concrete Holds the Secret to Cutting Carbon Emissions
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2013/06/04/roman-concrete/

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

Windows 10 Pro automatic update

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Windows 10 Pro automatic update
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 27 Jun 2017 11:28:17 -0700
0000000433f07816-dmarc-request@LISTSERV.UA.EDU (Paul Gilmartin) writes:
I see the history differently. This is conjectural, but I believe that UNIX had at least the user/group/others file protection facility at a time when OS/360 had only the primitive data set passwords. I recall, perhaps at MVS 3.8, systems programmers still relying on passwords to control access to the master catalog or the resident volume. (Where I was, the res pack password was the system ID spelled backwards.) MVS bypassed the concept of resource ownership and went directly to the ACL-like RACF.

I was working on IBM's HA/CMP cluster scale-up both technical/scientific (with national labs) and commercial (with RDBMS vendors) ... reference to JAN1992 meeting in Ellison's conference room
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

within a couple weeks, cluster scale-up is transferred, announced as IBM supercomputer (for technical & scientific only) and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors. some old email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

later, two of the oracle people in the ellison meeting have left and are at a small client/server startup responsible for something called the "commerce server". I'm brought in as consultant because they want to do payment transactions on the server. The startup had also invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted to use, the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce".

I have complete authority over the webservers to payment networks gateway (but could only make recommendations on the client/server side, some of which were almost immediately violated, which continue to account for some number of exploits to this day). I have to do a whole lot of process documentation and compensating procedures for availability, dark room operation, and diagnostic processses (payment network call centers were use to doing 5min 1st level problem determination; 1st pilot electronic commerce service call was closed after 3hrs of effort with "no trouble found").
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

Part of the issue is lots of UNIX is oriented towards interacting with human ... with frequent implication that any problem is resolved by the responsible human. I contrasted this (for darkroom operation) that mainframe has long history of software where there is assumption that responsible person isn't present and therefor lots of processes grew up over decades to handle issues automagically.

Disclaimer: while out marketing for IBM's HA/CMP, I coined the term disaster survivability and geographic survivability (to differentiate from disaster/recovery). I was then asked to write a section for the corporate continuous availability strategy document. However, the section got removed when both Rochester (as/400) and POK (mainframe) complained they couldn't meet the requirements.

past availability posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available

Later at the 1996 Moscone MDC, all the banners said "Internet" but the constant refrain in all the sessions was "preserve your investment". The issue was that they had single user dedicated systems that had history of business applications with executable scripts embedded in application data, that were automagically executed ... in purely stand-alone environment or small, safe, isolated business LANs. This was being extended to the wide anarchy of the internet with no additional security measures.

trivia: I had worked with Jim Gray at IBM san jose research on various things including the original SQL/RDBMS, System/R. some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

When he left IBM, he palms off some number of things on me, including consulting for the IMS group. During 1996 Moscone MDC, he is head of the new SanFran research center and has open house. Then last decade, before he disappears, he cons me into interviewing for chief security architect in redmond. The interview drags on for a couple weeks, but we could never agree on what needed to be done.

MVS trivia: in the 60s, there was lots of work on CP67 for 7x24 dark room operation. This was in period when IBM rented machines and charges were based on system meter that ran whenever the processor and/or any channel was active (everything had to be idle for at least 400ms before meter stopped). Initial deployments had little offshift & weekend use, but to encourage use, the systems had to be always available, even when totally idle. Part of minimize costs there was lots of work on channel programs that would allow channel to go idle (and system meter stop), but be immediately available for arriving characters. Long after IBM was selling machines, MVS still had a 400ms timer event that guaranteed the system meter would never stop.

also CP67 from that period ... gone 404, but lives on at wayback machine.
http://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

authentication trivia: Former head of POK and later head of Boca was CEO at a Kerberos software company that we were doing some joint projects. At the time, they also had contract to do the intitial Kerberos implementation for m'soft (what becomes active directory)
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb742424.aspx

unix folklore: note that some of the CTSS people had gone to 5th flr to do Multics and others went to the science center on the 4th flr and did cp/40, cp/67, internal network, bunch of online stuff, lots of performance monitoring and modeling, also invented GML in 1969 (morphs into ISO standard SGML a decade later and after another decade morphs into HTML). Folklore is that some of the Multics Bell Lab people, returned home and did UNIX (as simplified Multics). past posts mentioning 545 tech sq.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
posts mentioning internal network
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
posts mentioning gml, sgml, html, webservers, etc
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

When I was undergraduate and cp67 was installed at the univ., I completely rewrote a lot of the code. Something like 15-20yrs later, I found some code in unix that was similar to cp67 code I had completely replaced, conjecture was it traced common heritage back to CTSS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics#Unix

original thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#23 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#28 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#29 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor bil ling by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#33 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#35 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#42 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)

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

The rise and fall of IBM

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The rise and fall of IBM
Date: 29 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
The rise and fall of IBM
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm
After 40 years of unrivalled success, IBM is now in serious trouble. What has happened? Jean-Jacques Duby explains how the company's values and the cogs and wheels of its internal management system doomed IBM to failure, in the light of long developments in the technical, economic and commercial environment. But why there should have been such a sudden shock remains a mystery. Perhaps IBM's mighty power had delayed its downfall, making this all the more brutal as a result, like the earthquake which follows the sudden encounter of two continental plates
... snip ...

I use to sponsor's Boyd's briefings at IBM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop

... and still attend Boyd conferences ... including series that have run at Marine Corp University, Quantico, circa 1990, Commandant Gray had leveraged Boyd for make-over of the corp. it is too bad that there wasn't somebody circa 1990 that could have leveraged Boyd for make-over of IBM.

earlier version from 1846, Elements of Military Art and Science Or, Course Of Instruction In Strategy, Fortification, Tactics Of Battles, &C.; Embracing The Duties Of Staff, Infantry (Henry Wager Halleck)
https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Military-Instruction-Fortification-Embracing-ebook/dp/B004TPMN16/

loc5019-20:
A rapid coup d'oeil prompt decision, active movements, are as indispensable as sound judgment; for the general must see, and decide, and act, all in the same instant.
... snip ...

somewhat related recent post (I 1st met Donald some time ago at Boyd conference):
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#13 Why the Pentagon would rather hire bin Laden than Donald Vandergriff

when he was instructor at USAF weapons school, he was considered possibly the best fighter pilot in the world. Then when he was head of lightweight fighter plane at Pentagon, responsible for redesign of F15 and then the YF16 & YF17 (that turn into F16 & F18). However by the time he passed, he was pretty much disowned by the USAF and it was the Marines at Arlington and all his effects went to Quantico. A surprise for USAF to have Boyd Hall after he passed:

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

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

Boyd posts & refs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

late 80s, a senior disk engineer gets a talk scheduled at internal annual world-wide communication group conference supposedly on 3174 performance ... but opens the talk with the statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The issue was that the communication group had stranglehold on datacenters with strategic responsibility for everything that crossed the datacenter walls and were fiercely fighting off client/server and distributed computing, trying to preserve their (emulated) dumb terminal paradigm and install base. The disk division was seeing data fleeing the data center to more distributed computing friendly platforms with drop in disk sales. The disk division had come up with several solutions to address the problem but they were constantly being vetoed by the communication group. A few short years later the company has gone into the red.

past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

mid-80s, senior executives were predicting that IBM revenue was going to double, mostly based on mainframe business and had huge bldg program to double mainframe manufacturing capacity ... even when things were starting to head in the opposite direction. There was also a lot of fast-track MBAs being rotated quickly through lots of the middle management positions (anticipating big business increase, even when things were starting to head in opposite direction, a big part the stranglehold that communication group had on datacenters).

AMEX was in competition with KKR for private equity take-over of RJR and KKR wins. KKR runs into trouble and hires away the president of AMEX to turn it around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate:_The_Fall_of_RJR_Nabisco

IBM has gone into the red and was being reorganized into the 13 "baby blues" in preparation for breaking up the company. The board then hires away the former president of AMEX that reverses the breakup and resurrects the company ... using some of the same techniques used at RJR (employees are no longer resources but costs to manipulate)
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml

past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
posts referencing pensions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#pensions

running the company becomes all about financial engineering

from Stockman's "The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America" ... 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 ...

stock buyback posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#stock.buyback

Somewhat similar to years of not funding and/or diverting infrastructure funding (leaving it a problem for future administrations) ... and from the laws of unintended consequences ... Volcker talking to civil engineering professor about money has been diverted from infrastructure spending for so long ... there aren't civil engineering jobs, lack of jobs, students stop taking classes, w/o students, univ. start shutting down programs and dropping professors ... Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President
https://www.amazon.com/Confidence-Men-Washington-Education-ebook/dp/B0089LOKKS/

pg290:
Well, I said, 'The trouble with the United States recently is we spent several decades not producing many civil engineers and producing a huge number of financial engineers. And the result is s**tty bridges and a s**tty financial system!'
... snip ...

A few years ago with the stimulus funding ... projects were having to hire Chinese companies to get civil engineers.

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

SS Trust Fund

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: SS Trust Fund
Date: 29 June 2017
Blog: Facebook
"baby boomer" generation is four times larger than previous generation and twice as large as following generation. during the "baby boomer" prime earning years, contributions were building up principle in SS Trust Fund for their retirement benefits (more money being paid in each year than being paid out). Stockman, 1980s budget director, claims credit for 1) accelerating contribution increases that cover increasing lifetimes of baby boomers (life expectancy which has recently slightly dropped compared to the 1980s), and 2) starting to tax SS benefits (double taxed; taxes when contributions made and taxed again when benefits paid out; standard retirement fund is either tax deferred and taxed when paid out or taxed when invested, but not taxed again when paid out; SS is double taxed) ... he wanted the additional funds available for military spending

As baby boomers move into retirement, the situation flips ... more benefits being paid out of SS Trust Fund each year than being paid in. The only way to restore the borrowed SS Trust Funds (to pay baby boomer benefits) is to increase taxes on the following generations .... as well as to increase taxes further to cover what the borrowed SS Trust Funds were being used for ... people on capital hill would joke that there is a desk drawer somewhere in West Virginia where all the SS Trust Fund IOUs are kept ... sort of implying implying that future legislation may go past double taxation as way of reducing benefits that actually have to be paid out.

when the situation starts to flip ... benefits exceed contributions as more baby boomers move into retirement, carefully manipulation of the books can take advantage of SS double taxation (both contributions and benefits being taxed) ... the taxation on benefits can be used to offset the shortfall in contributions requiring gov. to start "paying back" borrowed SS Trust funds (but it can be done with double taxation on contributions and benefits).

2002, congress lets fiscal responsibility act lapse (spending can't exceed revenue, on its way to eliminating all federal debt). 2010 CBO report that 2003-2009, tax revenue cut $6T and spending increased $6T for $12T gap compared to fiscal responsibility act (also 1st time taxes cut to not pay for two wars). Of DOD spending increases they found over trillion with nothing to show for, accounted for or explanation ... even tho they had explanation for things like $60B in pallets of shrink wrapped $100 bills airlifted to Iraq for bribes, tributes, graft and corruption.). since then some cut in the spending but no restoration of taxes so debt continued to increase. the republican congress responsible for the fiscal responsible act is completely different from the republican congress that went on tax cut and spending spree. By 2005, the US Comptroller General was including in speeches that nobody in congress was capable of middle school arithmetic for how badly there were savaging the budget.

Fiscal Responsibility Act posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#fiscal.responsibility.act
US Comptroller General posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#comptroller.general
MICC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex

VP and former CIA director repeatedly claims no knowledge of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_affair
because he was fulltime administration point person deregulating financial industry ... creating S&L crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis
along with other members of his family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis#Silverado_Savings_and_Loan
and another
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE0D81E3BF937A25753C1A966958260

another family member then presides over the economic mess last decade, 70 times larger than the S&L crisis. S&L crisis had 1000 criminal convictions with jailtime, proportionally the economic mess should have 70,000.

S&L crisis posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#s&l.crisis

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

Shareholders Ahead Of Employees

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Shareholders Ahead Of Employees
Date: 03 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
How GE, GM, Coca-Cola And Kodak Put Shareholders Ahead Of Employees
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2017/06/29/how-ge-gm-coca-cola-kodak-put-shareholders-ahead-of-employees/

earlier:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html?ref=sunday
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/jobs-will-follow-a-strengthening-of-the-middle-class.html

related:

Bad Ideas; Reknowned economist James K. Galbraith, one of our expert panelists, pulls no punches in talking about the damage wrought by financial innovation
https://www.gfmag.com/magazine/june-2017/bad-ideas
GF: Which innovations have been most harmful?

Galbraith: Fraudulent instruments for asset-backed securities, like liars' loans, NINJA loans, and CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), should top anybody's list. They institutionalized the criminal takeover of the mortgage business, beginning with liars' loans and the fraudulent representation of the borrowers and carrying on through fraudulent representation of the risks in the securities. CDOs take the toxic waste of some mortgage-backed securities and combine it with the toxic waste of other mortgage-backed securities and call the results diversified. The whole chain was certain not only to collapse, but to bring down the affected institutions.

... snip ...

Milton Friedman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman
Friedman promoted an alternative macroeconomic viewpoint known as "monetarism", and argued that a steady, small expansion of the money supply was the preferred policy.[12] His ideas concerning monetary policy, taxation, privatization and deregulation influenced government policies, especially during the 1980s.
... snip ...

Milton Friedman's Cherished Theory Is Laid to Rest
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-12/milton-friedman-s-cherished-theory-is-laid-to-rest
Even now, when economic models have become far more complex than anything in Friedman's time, economists still go back to Friedman's theory as a mental touchstone -- a fundamental intuition that guides the way they make their models. My first macroeconomics professor believed in it deeply and instinctively, and would even bring it up in department seminars.
... snip ...

The Champions of the 401(k) Lament the Revolution They Started
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-champions-of-the-401-k-lament-the-revolution-they-started-1483382348?mod=e2fb
Economists and the Powerful: Convenient Theories, Distorted Facts, Ample Rewards
https://www.amazon.com/Economists-Powerful-Convenient-Distorted-Economics-ebook/dp/B01B4X4KOS/

loc1200-1206:
There are plenty of examples from other countries to copy: the US individual retirement account system is based on the Chilean pension reform of 1980/81 that in turn was based heavily on proposals made in the book Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman. In response to the Chilean system facing a likely collapse in a few decades time, it was substantially overhauled in 2008 to require mandatory participation of all citizens in exchange for universal pension coverage.

loc72-74:
"Only through having been caught so blatantly with their noses in the troughs (e.g. the 2011 Academy Award -- winning documentary Inside Job) has the American Economic Association finally been forced to adopt an ethical code, and that code is weak and incomplete compared with other disciplines."
... snip ...

"Inside Job" references how leading economists were captured similar to the capture of the regulatory agencies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Job_(2010_film)

"The Undoing Project" goes into some detail how Kahneman and Tversky disproved economists' assumption that people make rational decisions ... loc1155-59:
He had listened to an American economist talk about how so-and-so was stupid and so-and-so was a fool, then said, "All your economic models are premised on people being smart and rational, and yet all the people you know are idiots."
... snip ...

Kahneman (a psychologist) gets Nobel prize in economics, in part for debunking some cherished economic theories

inequality posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#inequality

other

Too Big To Fail
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
toxic CDOs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo

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

SS Trust Fund

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: SS Trust Fund
Date: 03 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#48

First major act after allowing fiscal responsibility act lapse is Medicare Part-D 2003. CBS 60mins does expose on the process. Just before the final vote, a one line sentence is added (preventing competitive bidding) and CBO is prevented distributing an analysis of the change. 60mins then show drugs bought by the VA (which is allowed competitive bidding) that are 1/3rd the price of identical drugs under part-D. 60mins also finds that within 6months after part-d passes, the 18 republicans responsible for getting part-d passed have resigned and are on drug industry payroll. US Comptroller General starts including in speeches that part-d comes to be a long term $40T item that swamps all other budget items (he is also including in speeches that nobody in congress is capable of middle school arithmetic for how badly they are savaging the budget).

medicare part-d
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#medicare.part-d
US comptroller general
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#comptroller.general

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

Stopping the Internet of noise

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Stopping the Internet of noise
Newsgroups: comp.misc, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 04 Jul 2017 16:38:36 -0700
RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> writes:
The internet is getting noisy. Too noisy. Having grown up in the nineties, with 56k dial-up, I sometimes struggle to understand how little I'm accomplishing today with all the bandwidth I can leverage.

claim is that porn provided most of the funding for the video tape industry as well as early internet. early 90s, claims that almost all usenet bandwidth was becoming porn.

around the turn of the century, a large e-commerce hosting company observed that they were hosting five porn websites that all had more hits/month than the top websites in the monthly traffic reports (i.e. porn didn't feel necessary to particpate in the traffic sweepstakes for most monthly web hits).

1993 I did pagesat modem drivers for a couple different platforms and co-authored article in boardwatch magazine ... in return for getting free pagesat full usenet feed. picture with dish in backyard
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/pagesat.jpg

pagesat dish

not long later, they doubled link speed (from 9600 to 19.2k), in large part because of the enormous increases from porn traffic.

trivia: Late 70s & early 80s, I was blamed for online computer conferencing (precursor to modern social media) on the internal network (larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime mid-80s). Folklore is that when the corporate executive committee was told about online computer conferencing (and the internal network), 5of6 wanted to fire me. Turns out the sixth, then provided funding out of his office to do stuff. I was then working with NSF director and was suppose to get $20M for interconnecting the NSF supercomputer centers. Then congress cuts the budget, some other things happened, and finally NSF releases an RFP (in part based on what we already had running). Then as the regional networks connect into the centers it grows into the NSFNET backbone (precursor to the modern internet).
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401444/grid-computing/

old NSF related email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
past posts mentioning NSF
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet
old internal network related email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#vnet
past posts mentioning internal network
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

from IBMJARGON:
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 ...

past posts mentioning online computer conferencing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

Possible saving grace was one of my hobbies was design, develop, test, package, distribute and support enhanced operating systems for internal datacenters. Lots of places ran my enhanced operating systems, including the world-wide online sales&marketing support HONE systems.

... other NSF trivia: NSF gave UC $1200M for UC Berkeley supercomputer center. However, UC Regents "master plan" called for UC San Diego to get the next bldg ... so the supercomputer center was done in San Diego instead (and General Atomics was contracted to run the center). Also going on at UCB there was work on "Berkeley 10M" ... which was going to include transition from film to digital and remote viewing. Was doing some pilot stuff at Lick Observatory with 200x200 CCDs (40kpel, there was rumor that Spielburg was funding work on 4kx4k, 4megapel CCD). They didn't want to take NSF money because NSF would then have control of viewing schedule. They eventually got grant from the Keck Foundation and it became Keck 10M and the Keck Observatory. We figured they would need (initially) around 800kbit/sec connection for remote viewing from the mainland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._M._Keck_Observatory

past posts mentioning pagesat and/or boardwatch
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#38 Vanishing Posts...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#39 I'll Be! Al Gore DID Invent the Internet After All ! NOT
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#66 UUCP email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#16 Newsgroups (Was Another OS/390 to z/OS 1.4 migration
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#20 Newsgroups (Was Another OS/390 to z/OS 1.4 migration
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#11 An Out-of-the-Main Activity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#77 Memory Mapped Vs I/O Mapped Vs others
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#17 What if phone company had developed Internet?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#16 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#19 IBM-MAIN longevity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#19 Another one bites the dust
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#21 Disksize history question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#84 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#74 bulletin board
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#75 Posts missing from ibm-main on google groups
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#70 What is the protocal for GMT offset in SMTP (e-mail) header
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#82 [OT] What is the protocal for GMT offset in SMTP (e-mail) header time-stamp?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#92 The PC industry is heading for collapse
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#26 Anyone here run UUCP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#67 Royal Pardon For Turing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#38 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#57 email security re: hotmail.com
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#109 25 Years: How the Web began
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016g.html#59 The Forgotten World of BBS Door Games - Slideshow from PCMag.com
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#21 Pre-internet email and usenet (was Re: How to choose the best news server for this newsgroup in 40tude Dialog?)

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

Boyd's OODA-loop

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Boyd's OODA-loop
Date: 03 July 2017
Blog: LinkedIn
observing is data ... sensing, seeing, hearing, feeling, etc. it then is turned into information and hopefully wisdom/understanding in orientation.

One of things mentioned at some recent Boyd conferences is Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow" ... which is somewhat related to implicit/explicit. Boyd would frequently mention fingerspitzengefuhl ... aka "finger feel", an intuition touch metaphor. There is also Coup d'oeil, an intuition observe metaphor. ... free kindle book from 1846 ... has lots & lots of minutia ... as well as almost OODA, see/decide/act. Elements of Military Art and Science Or, Course Of Instruction In Strategy, Fortification, Tactics Of Battles, &C.; Embracing The Duties Of Staff, Infantry (Henry Wager Halleck)
https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Military-Instruction-Fortification-Embracing-ebook/dp/B004TPMN16/

loc5019-20:
A rapid coup d'oeil prompt decision, active movements, are as indispensable as sound judgment; for the general must see, and decide, and act, all in the same instant.
... snip ...

most hierarchical paradigm/scenarios I'm aware of are (raw) data, information, knowledge, wisdom/understanding.

One of Boyd's example was original F16 heads-up displays that was just scrolling digital numbers. He claimed that it took enormous pilot effort to turn the scrolling digital numbers (data) into useful information and distracting from flying/fighting (not helping).

past posts mentioning Boyd and/or OODA-loop
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

Kodak trivia ... one of the organizations we were working with in the early/mid 80s ... was Cyclotomics (Reed-Solomon forward error correcting company) up in Berkeley (one of the founders was Berlekamp). Cyclotomics was also involved in the digital coding standard for CDROMs ... and while we were working with them, were bought by Kodak (part of its effort trying to transition to digital). We also had engineer on the project that had been Reed's graduate student at CalTech and had done a lot of the work on Reed-Solomon. past posts mentioning Cyclotomics:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#27 Data communications over telegraph circuits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#29 Just another example of mainframe costs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#82 folklore indeed
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#19 IBM-MAIN longevity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#61 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#0 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#58 DASD, Tape and other peripherals attached to a Mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#55 Western Union envisioned internet functionality
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#57 Oldest computer in the US government

Note that just because they might know what to do, that doesn't mean they can. In the early 80s, there was article (Wash. Post?) calling for 100% unearned profit on the US auto industry. The scenario was supposedly the foreign auto import quota was to give the domestic makers enormous profits that they would use to completely remake themselves. However, they just pocketed the money and continued business as usual.

In 1990, the US auto industry had the C4 task force to work on completely remaking themselves and because they were planning on heavily leveraging technology, they invited representatives from technology companies to send participants. In the meetings they could accurately describe what the competition was doing better and what they needed to do to respond. However, as recent bailouts have indicated they still continued business as usual. some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#auto.c4.taskforce

One of the issues was auto industry took 7-8yrs from start to rolling off the line, running two efforts concurrently offset 3-4yrs so there was something new more often with cosmetic changes in between. By the mid-80s, the foreign competition had cut that elapsed time in half to turn out completely new product and by 1990 were in the process of cutting it in half again ... aka, OODA-loop running at least four times faster. This is totally separate from things like Toyota quality. GM had major example with Corvette with especially tight tolerances under the "skin" ... delay between original design and ready to manufacture, suppliers frequently had changed their products so they no longer would fit the design ... which required expensive redesign and delay.

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

Dunkirk

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Dunkirk
Date: 03 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
Panzer Leader (Heinz Guderian) loc1783-85:
On this day (the 24th) the Supreme Command intervened in the operations in progress, with results which were to have a most disastrous influence on the whole future course of the war. Hitler ordered the left wing to stop on the Aa. It was forbidden to cross that stream. We were not informed of the reasons for this. The order contained the words: 'Dunkirk is to be left to the Luftwaffe.

loc1856-61:
Churchill's guess that Rundstedt may have himself decided to hold up the armor is also wide of the mark. As the commander on the spot I am able, more-over, definitely to state that the heroic defense of Calais, although worthy of the highest praise, yet had no influence on the development of events outside Dunkirk. Churchill assumes, quite correctly, that Hitler, and above all Goering, believed German air supremacy to be strong enough to prevent the evacuation of the British forces by sea. This belief was a mistake pregnant with consequence, for only the capture of the British Expeditionary Force could have influenced the English towards making peace with Hitler or could have created the conditions necessary for a successful German invasion of Great Britain.
... snip ...

somewhat similar to US Army Air Corp claims that strategic bombing would win WW2 w/o US having to invade France.

high altitude strategic bombing had trouble hitting any target (modulo a whole city as target with fire bombing). A problem was that from 5-6 miles up, strategic bombing had difficult hitting targets, even with detailed coordinates from wallstreet. European Campaign: Its Origins and Conduct
https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/2011/pubs/the-european-campaign-its-origins-and-conduct/

loc2582-85:
The bomber preparation of Omaha Beach was a total failure, and German defenses on Omaha Beach were intact as American troops came ashore. At Utah Beach, the bombers were a little more effective because the IXth Bomber Command was using B-26 medium bombers. Wisely, in preparation for supporting the invasion, maintenance crews removed Norden bombsights from the bombers and installed the more effective low-level altitude sights.
... snip ...

som past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#52 IBM Data Processing Center and Pi
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#70 past of nukes, was Future of support for telephone rotary dial ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#13 Fully Restored WWII Fighter Plane Up for Auction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#33 "I used a real computer at home...and so will you" (Popular Science May 1967)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#34 "I used a real computer at home...and so will you" (Popular Science May 1967)

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

Boyd's OODA-loop

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Boyd's OODA-loop
Date: 05 July 2017
Blog: LinkedIn
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#52 Boyd's OODA-loop

Lots of stuff is teaching what ... Boyd would spend lots of time comparing/contrasting different why and context ... w/o knowing why & context, people are just repeating rote actions, never understanding if it is applicable and/or appropriate. Anderson spends a lot of time on context and model-free
https://artificial-understanding.com/two-dirty-words-6703aee8e323

Quite a bit of Boyd discussions goes on here
http://missioncommand5ws.com/

Boyd posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

C4 trivia: the analysis was foreign makers found that at the quota limit ... they could sell that many high priced cars ... rather than the low-priced car models they had been selling. This motivated changing development cycle to come out rapidly with totally different models (cutting development time in half). Combined quota limit and competition moving from low-end to high-end market allows US makers to nearly double the price of their products. Consumers weren't richer so US industry had to move from 36m loans to 60-72m loans. The longer loans forced them into extending warranties to lifetime of the loan. Since US continued business as usual and just pocketed the money, the combination of poor quality and extended warranties later started to hit them in pocket book. Part of C4 was development elapsed time, but part of C4 was also quality (motivated by warranty costs). Foreign makers then also started setting up plants in the US as way around quotas.

auto C4 posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#auto.c4.taskforce

Foreign makers were use to having workers with at least high school education. When they started setting up plants in the US, they said they had to require a junior college degree in order to be assured of getting workers with high school education

some background: NUMMI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI
and: How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/how-toyota-turns-workers-into-problem-solvers

from above (a little bit out of Anderson as well as "mission command"):
To paraphrase one of our contacts, he said, "It's not that we don't want to tell you what TPS is, it's that we can't. We don't have adequate words for it. But, we can show you what TPS is."

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

Stopping the Internet of noise

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Stopping the Internet of noise
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2017 22:44:13 -0700
hancock4 writes:
Correct, you do NOT tell people to "go away". Well, you shouldn't. But in the Internet world, the rules are different than traditional polite society. If a user gets the "your browser is too old, fix it!" message, it's the user's fault for being behind, not the site. This bugs me.

The computer world has always been about moving FORWARD*.

Heck, back when I worked for a System/360 site, people who worked on S/370 sites would blatantly look down on me and my employer**. People who had IBM's latest hardware would brag about it. They really gave it to us when they heard we still ran 1401 Autocoder. (As it turns out, there were a lot of S/360 sites and a lot of Autocder out there.)

When the PC 386 came out, anyone with a 8088 or 286 was behind the times and needed to "get with it!". Indeed, a distinction was made between the 386 DX and SX (I forgot which was which, but you were supposed to have the later one.) It made no difference if your PC, which you probably paid $2,000 in 1985 dollars, served you just fine, if you didn't have the latest chip, you were deficient.

• Remember "Patton"? "I don't want to get any messages that we're 'holding on to our position'. Let the enemy do that. WE ARE CONSTANTLY MOVING FORWARD!..."

**That employer finally moved to a 4300 box.


re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#51 Stopping the Internet of noise

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

The part about Tandem Memos is incorrect ... it started from a trip report that I distributed after a visit to Jim at Tandem.
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 ...

Another recent reference:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#81 The ICL 2900 Buying a computer in the 1960s

Jim did write "MIP envy" as part of leaving for Tandem .... copy here
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email800920
same copy here
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gray/papers/MIPEnvy.pdf
which now redirects to
http://jimgray.azurewebsites.net/papers/mipenvy.pdf
and Jim's page now redirects to here
http://jimgray.azurewebsites.net/
... however there use to be a 24Sept1980 version there, still at the wayback machine
http://web.archive.org/web/20081101000000*/http://research.microsoft.com/~gray//papers/CritiqueOfIBM'sCSResearch.doc

after Tandem Memos, and part of the task forces to investigate online computer conferences ... past posts with some of the information gathered from visits to other locations
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#61
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#56

old internal network related email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#vnet
past posts mentioning internal network
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
past posts mentioning online computer conferencing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

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

What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
Date: 06 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-epic-computer-glitch-you-have-ever-seen/answer/Robert-Garrett-36

past posts about cooling
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#4
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#88

the large 370s, 308x, 3090, etc used closed (distilled) water inner loop heat exchange to external chilled water cooler.

there was thermal sensor on the inner loop ... however at one customer they lost flow on the external water side ... and by the time the (internal) thermal sensor was tripped ... but by then it was too late ... the capacity of the inner loop couldn't handle the heat in the system and fried a bunch of circuits. after that they put flow sensors on the external water side.

....

FE had bootstrap diagnostic/service process starting with scoping components. With 3081 TCM, it was no longer able to scope components. As a result, service processor was introduced with probes into TCM (for diagnostics). The service processor could be scoped/serviced ... and then used to diagnose TCMs. 3081 service processor was UC with everything RYO. The 3090 service processor started out 4331 running customized version of VM370 release 6 (service "panels" were done in CMS IOS3270). This was upgraded to a pair (replicated) 4361s for "3092". 3092 also required a pair of FBA 3370s (even for MVS installations which has never had FBA support, CKD disks are emulated on industry standard fixed-block disks, decades after last real CKD disk was manufactured). some past posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#13
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#80
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#42
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#38
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#86
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#88

After Future System project imploded (was totally different from 370 and was going to completely replace 370, during FS period 370 efforts were being shutdown, the lack of 370 products during the 370 period is credited with giving clone processor makers market foothold), 3033 & 3081 Q&D efforts were kicked off in parallel. 3033 started out being 168-3 logic mapped to 20% faster chips (some optimization got 3033 up to 50% faster than 168-3). 3081 was some warmed over FS stuff. Some more info
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm

other FS posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

1976, we had project to do 16-way SMP which everybody thot was great and got the 3033 processor engineers to work on it in their spare time (lot more interesting remapping 168-3 logic). Then somebody told the head of POK that it could be decades before the POK favorite son operating system had effective 16-way support. Then some of us were told to never visit POK again ... and the 3033 processor engineers were instructed to stop being distracted. z900 w/16-way finally shows up in 2000.

as soon as 3033 was out the door, the 3033 processor engineers start on "trout" (aka 3090).

I was blamed for online computer conferencing (precursor to modern social media) in the late 70s and early 80s on the internal network (larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime mid-80s). Folklore is that when the corporate executive committee was informed of online computer conferencing (and the internal network), 5of6 wanted to fire me.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

Some of the 3090 processor engineers participated ... and the guy doing the 3092 service processor was very active. from ibmjargon:
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 ...

One of possible motivations for TCMs is floor space. Cluster of 4341s had higher aggregate MIP rate than 3033, much smaller floor space, much less environmentals, etc. Late 70s, internal datacenters were bursting at seams happening when there was big uptic in demand for computing power (but it was very expensive to add more datacenter space). This was big factor contributing to putting hundreds of distributed 4341s out in departmental areas (supply rooms or taking over departmental conference rooms, inside IBM conference rooms became scarce commodity).

3081 had channels at bottom of box and two processors in the middle and top of the box. 3081 originally was going to be multiprocessor only. However ACP/TPF operating system didn't have multiprocessor support and there was danger that market would move to clone makers that were offering newer, faster single processor. This prompted introduction of 3083 single processor. Started out leaving processor0 and removing processor1 in the middle of the box ... but that left it dangerously top heavy. They

this also talks about motivations for FS ... including trying to lock out clone controllers but from law of unintended consequences, it led to the rise of clone processors
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm

there is also discussion here
http://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/fs.html
and more discussion here
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/

One of the "nails" in FS coffin was performance analysis by IBM Houston Science Center ... that if 370/195 applications were moved to the fastest available FS, it would have throughput of 370/145 (about factor of 30 times slowdown) .... which turns out wasn't an issue in the low-end S/38 market.

Note AS/400 was to be followon to both S/36 and S/38 ... and some of the S/38 FS stuff was dropped for AS/400.

All during the FS period I continued to work on 360/370 stuff and even periodically ridiculed FS (which wasn't exactly career enhancing activity). The "single-level store" was in large part picked up from TSS/360. During FS, I did a page-mapped filesystem and claimed I learned what not to do from observing what TSS/360 did (the FS people never got to the point to even understand that).

some page-mapped filesystem posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

trivia: I was asked why 370 moved to all virtual memory. I then sent out requests to several IBMers. This is old post with part of that discussion (the respondent has since passed) ... including VS2 being "glide path" to FS's VS2 release 3. The original motivation was that MVT storage management was so bad that it required regions four times larger than what was used. A typical 1mbyte 370/165 MVT ran with only four regions, mobing to 16mbyte virtual memoy could increase this by factor of four times with little or no paging.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#73

FB trivia: in the mid-70s, the US HONE (world-wide online sales&marketing support) datacenters were consolidated at 1501 Cal. (across the back parking lot from IBM Palo Alto science center). When FB 1st moved to silicon valley it was to new bldg 1601 Cal. built next door to the old HONE datacenter (FB has since moved into the old SUN campus).

some HONE posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

FS trivia, There had been a Pentagon papers type event when 370 virtual memory document had showed up at industry publication (before virtual memory was announced). As a result, they did a special secured VM370 systems with soft copy FS documentation that could only be read from special locally attached 3270s . FS was divided into 12 (13?) sections. My wife reported to head of one the FS sections ... and her observation was most of the sections were purely paper bullet descriptions with nobody having any idea of how they might be implemented.

... and there is communication controller CRC glitch

from old post:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#36

references vmshare archive (TYMSHARE started providing their cms-based online computer conferencing "free" to SHARE starting AUG1976). Trivia: I had made deal with TYMSHARE to provide me a monthly tape of all VMSHARE files that I would put up on internal machines and internal network, biggest problem I had was with the corporate lawyers who were concerned that customer information would contaminate IBM employees:

i.e. possibly to maintain one bit density for various transmission/sync'ing requirements.

there is the ancient (in)famous case at cornell university that tried out new (RF) wireless technology for campus communication between various mainframe operations. the mainframe communication controller (37x5) used standard crc for detecting transmission errors. however, the wireless modem used similar polynomial for permuting transmission bits (maintain one-bits transmission density?). the result was that transmission errors tended to be permuted in such a way that they weren't caught by the (37x5) CRC.

detail
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/read.cgi?fn=CRC-FAIL&ft=PROB&line=1
description
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/read.cgi?fn=CRC-FAIL&ft=PROB&line=474
discussion of crc polynomial issues:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/read.cgi?fn=CRC-FAIL&ft=PROB&line=660

from a co-worker (at the time) ... purely random coincidence but he happen to send me some email a couple weeks ago (after over ten years lapse). in any case, in the above, he references an article on the subject he worte for april 1985 PC tech journal titled "high performance crc generation".

above fragments as single article:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=CRC-FAIL&ft=PROB

past vmshare email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#vmshare --
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Stopping the Internet of noise

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Stopping the Internet of noise
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2017 14:50:18 -0700
Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
Actually, not Obamacare, as far as I know, it was the Stimulus Package.

Quite a bit has been spent on computerization. I've actually noticed a steady increase in computerization at the various places I go. We can't have what we want, because FREEDOM:


re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#51 Stopping the Internet of noise
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#55 Stopping the Internet of noise

Kaiser has had several articles about improvements in health care after doing EHR

Can Computers Cure Health Care? Kaiser Permanente, the nation's largest HMO, is betting $1 billion that information technology can help doctors practice better medicine (1998)
http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1998/03/30/240116/index.htm
Kaiser Permanente Completes Electronic Health Record Implementation (2010)
https://share.kaiserpermanente.org/article/kaiser-permanente-completes-electronic-health-record-implementation/
Use of Health Information Technology Leads to Improved Care Quality (2010)
https://share.kaiserpermanente.org/article/use-of-health-information-technology-leads-to-improved-care-quality/
It Takes More than an Electronic Health Record to be Most Wired (2014)
https://share.kaiserpermanente.org/article/it-takes-more-than-an-electronic-health-record-to-be-most-wired/

note at one time, my doctor was on Kaiser's EHR implementation committee.

HL7 for medical records goes back much further ... 31st annual meeting
http://www.hl7.org/
past HL7 ref
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#55 Google ventures into health records biz

we were brought into NIH NLM UMLS over 20yrs ago
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/sourcereleasedocs/current/HL7V30/

some other EHR history
https://www.slideshare.net/cuteus/history-of-electronic-health-records-ppt

WIKI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_health_record

part of motivation for EHR was transition to digitized images away from film. we were brought into some efforts 20yrs ago looking at breast cancer image recognition.

this is making news again

Google's AI is now detecting cancer with Deep Learning
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/technology/in-other-news/040317/googles-ai-is-now-detecting-cancer-with-deep-learning.html
Google's artificial intelligence can diagnose cancer faster than human doctors
http://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/googles-artificial-intelligence-can-diagnose-9975987
Using AI to Detect Cancer, Not Just Cats
https://www.wired.com/2017/05/using-ai-detect-cancer-not-just-cats/

past posts mentioning UMLS:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#26 Misc. more on bidirectional links
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#27 History of Microsoft Word (and wordprocessing in general)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#1 Off-topic everywhere [was: Re: thee and thou
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#45 XML, AI, Cyc, psych, and literature
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#50 XML, AI, Cyc, psych, and literature
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#53 c.d.theory glossary (repost)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#7 The Network Data Model, foundation for Relational Model
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#52 Specifying all biz rules in relational data
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#67 Relational vs network vs hierarchic databases
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#0 Relational vs network vs hierarchic databases
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#57 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#45 Where should the type information be?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#47 Where should the type information be?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#74 Speculation ONLY
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#10 Boyd & Beyond 2010, review at Zenpundit
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#39 Compressing the OODA-Loop - Removing the D (and maybe even an O)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013g.html#87 Old data storage or data base
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#77 Bloat
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#55 Difference between MVS and z / OS systems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#36 The Network Nation, Revised Edition
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#14 Fast OODA-Loops increase Maneuverability
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#34 The head of the Census Bureau just quit, and the consequences are huge

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

Stopping the Internet of noise

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Stopping the Internet of noise
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2017 19:04:36 -0700
"J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> writes:
It wasn't a matter of "the later one". The SX was a 386 on a 286 frame-- 24-bit external addressing and 16 bit external data. The SX was actually "later" than the full-32-bit version.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#51 Stopping the Internet of noise
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#55 Stopping the Internet of noise
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#57 Stopping the Internet of noise

The 80386SX variant (1988, original 386 1985)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80386#The_80386SX_variant
In 1988, Intel introduced the 80386SX, most often referred to as the 386SX, a cut-down version of the 80386 with a 16-bit data bus mainly intended for lower cost PCs aimed at the home, educational, and small business markets while the 386DX would remain the high end variant used in workstations, servers, and other demanding tasks. The CPU remained fully 32-bit internally, but the 16-bit bus was intended to simplify circuit board layout and reduce total cost.[13] The 16-bit bus simplified designs but hampered performance. Only 24 pins were connected to the address bus, therefore limiting addressing to 16 MB,[14] but this was not a critical constraint at the time. Performance differences were due not only to differing data bus-widths, but also due to performance-enhancing cache memories often employed on boards using the original chip.
... snip ...

recent post
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#110 IBM downfall

mentions that far east clone makers were building up huge inventory of 286 machines for fall holiday sales when 386sx was introduced ... much faster than 286, integrated functions on chip that reduced number of chips (and cost) for building systems ... resulting in fire sales of 286 systems.

... also:
The original 80386 was subsequently renamed 80386DX to avoid confusion. However, Intel subsequently used the 'DX' suffix to refer to the floating-point capability of the 80486DX. The 80387SX was an 80387 part that was compatible with the 386SX (i.e. with a 16-bit databus). The 386SX was packaged in a surface-mount QFP, and sometimes offered in a socket to allow for an upgrade.
... snip ...

Note mid-80s ... in HSDT project
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

and was having some hardware built on the other side of the pacific. On visits they liked to demonstrate all the neat stuff they were doing ... including surface mount chips. At the time, all the surface mount chips in the US were just regular chips with contacts clipped off flush with the bottom of the chip. recent posts mentioning having equipment built on the other side of the pacific:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#9 Some IBM History
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#69 ComputerWorld Says: Cobol plays major role in U.S. government breaches
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#82 Great mainframe history(?)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#26 ARM Cortex A53 64 bit
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#35 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)

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

Deconstructing the "Warrior Caste:" The Beliefs and Backgrounds of Senior Military Elites

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Deconstructing the "Warrior Caste:" The Beliefs and Backgrounds of Senior Military Elites
Date: 06 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
Deconstructing the "Warrior Caste:" Beliefs and Backgrounds of Senior Military Elites
https://stratblog.sites.usa.gov/deconstructing-the-warrior-caste-the-beliefs-and-backgrounds-of-senior-military-elites/

Japanese "mission command": How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/how-toyota-turns-workers-into-problem-solvers
To paraphrase one of our contacts, he said, "It's not that we don't want to tell you what TPS is, it's that we can't. We don't have adequate words for it. But, we can show you what TPS is."
... and
We've observed that Toyota, its best suppliers, and other companies that have learned well from Toyota can confidently distribute a tremendous amount of responsibility to the people who actually do the work, from the most senior, experienced member of the organization to the most junior. This is accomplished because of the tremendous emphasis on teaching everyone how to be a skillful problem solver.
... snip ...

Boyd would include in briefings that former military officers (steeped in rigid, top-down, command&control, effectively only those at the very top know what they are doing) were starting to contaminate US corporate culture. However, about the same time articles started appearing that MBAs were starting to destroy US corporations.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

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

Mannix "computer in a briefcase"

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mannix "computer in a briefcase"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2017 09:03:12 -0700
hancock4 writes:
Yes, some advanced prosperous industries had fancy electronics (someone mentioned Boeing's designers with fancy machines). But I still submit that was a rare exception.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#18 TV show Mannix observations

as undergraduate, univ. hired me fulltime to support ibm mainframe production systems. then Boeing hired me fulltime to help with the formation of Boeing Computer Services (consolidate all dataprocessing in an independent business unit to better monetize the investment), i was one of first half dozen BCS employees.

I though renton datacenter was possibly largest in the world ... and growing ($200M-$300M in ibm mainframes). Summer of 1969, 360/65s were arriving faster than they could be installed ... boxes constantly staged in the halls around the machine room. There was also plans to replicated Renton datacenter up at the new 747 plant in Everett. Disaster scenario where Mt. Rainier heats up and the resulting mud slide takes out Renton datacenter ... analysis that Boeing being w/o the renton datacenter would cost more than the cost of the renton datacenter.

Summer of 1969, 747#3 was flying skies of Seattle getting FAA flt certification. Also tour of 747 passenger mockup claimed that 747 would never be served with fewer than four jetways (because the number of people on board).

Later at IBM, I would sponsor Boyd's briefings at IBM. He would comment about being vocal about opposition to electronic sensor program across trails in SE Asia ... possibly as punishment he was made commander of "spook base" (he would say it had the largest air conditioned bldg in that part of the world) about the same time I was at Boeing. One of Boyd's biographies says that "spook base" was $2.5B windfall for IBM (ten times Renton, both late 60s dollars, nearly ten times that in current dollars). spook base reference gone 404, but lives on at wayback machine
http://web.archive.org/web/20030212092342/http://home.att.net/~c.jeppeson/igloo_white.html

posts & URLs referencing Boyd and/or OODA-loops
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

ACS-END includes some computer data from 1968
https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.html

Of the 26,000 IBM computer systems in use, 16,000 were S/360 models (that is, over 60%). [Fig. 1.311.2]

Of the general-purpose systems having the largest fraction of total installed value, the IBM S/360 Model 30 was ranked first with 12% (rising to 17% in 1969). The S/360 Model 40 was ranked second with 11% (rising to almost 15% in 1970). [Figs. 2.10.4 and 2.10.5]

Of the number of operations per second in use, the IBM S/360 Model 65 ranked first with 23%. The Univac 1108 ranked second with slightly over 14%, and the CDC 6600 ranked third with 10%. [Figs. 2.10.6 and 2.10.7]

.... snip ...

recent posts mentioning Boeing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#21 History of Mainframe Cloud
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#28 {wtf} Tymshare SuperBasic Source Code
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#46 Hidden Figures and the IBM 7090 computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#87 The ICL 2900
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#14 Check out Massive Amazon cloud service outage disrupts sites
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#14 Perry Mason TV show--bugs with micro-electronics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#75 Mainframe operating systems?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#90 Old hardware
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#19 MVT doesn't boot in 16mbytes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#58 A flaw in the design; The Internet's founders saw its promise but didn't foresee users attacking one another
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#51 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#95 Early use of word "computer", 1944
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#11 Mainframe Networking problems

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

What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
Date: 07 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#56 What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?

When I transferred to San Jose Research in the 70s, I continued my habit of design, implementation, test, distribution and support of enhanced production systems for internal datacenters. They also let me wander around silicon valley, STL & DBMS groups, disk engineering & product test, consolidated US (online sales&marketing support) HONE datacenters in Palo Alto, customers, monthly SLAC BAYBUNCH meetings, etc. There was joke that I worked four shifts/week; 1st shift in research, 2nd shift over at disk engineering, 3rd shift in STL, and weeks at HONE.

Across the street at disk engineering, they had bunch of mainframes, pre-scheduled 7x24, for stand-alone development testing. They had once tried MVS for some concurrent testing, but in that environment MVS had 15min MTBF (requiring manual re-ipl). I offered to rewrite input/output to be bullet proof and never fail allowing any amount of on-demand concurrent testing greatly improving development productivity.

I did an internal-only document on everything that I needed to do. I then got a call from MVS group and was expecting them to ask about what was needed to be done, but instead they were asking who my manager was. It turns out that in the document, I happened to mention MVS 15min MTBF and they were trying to get me fired (when they found out the couldn't, they then tried to take revenge in any other way possible, including blocking any awards for the work).

A couple years later ... with the pending introduction of 3380s, the FE had several dozen (57) hardware error regression tests ... all of which resulted in MVS hang/failure and needing to reboot; in 2/3rds of the cases, there wasn't even any record of what had caused the hang/reboot. old email reference:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801015

After my earlier experience with the MVS group, I wasn't about to help them. Past posts getting to play disk engineer in bldgs 14&15
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

Because all development was going on under my software, the engineers started blaming my software when something wasn't working right and I had to go over and diagnose their hardware problems. One of the hardest problems ... not so much to diagnose, but convince them to correct it was they started presenting unsolicited unit check (that would crash normal systems since it violated channel architecture). Problem was that 3830 controller had fast horizontal microcode processor. Move to 3880 controller they did fast hardware path for 3mbyte/sec transfer but switched to slow JIB-prime veritical microcode processor for everything else. This drove up elapsed time for starting channel program, chaining from CCW to CCW, and cleaning up after channel program ended. 3330 connected to 3880 took longer elapsed time and had increased channel busy (compared to 3830). Attempting to partially mask the slow-down, they tried signalling channel-end early before everything was complete. Then if they found something during cleanup, they tried signalling unsolicited unit check. I finally was involved in conference calls with POK channel engineers to get the 3880 engineers to fix it. There "fix" was to save the unit check to the next SIO, and signal CC=1, CSW-stored w/o actually starting the next operation.

The next problem was that 3090 developers had configured number of channels assuming 3880 operated like 3830 but with 3mbyte/sec transfer. However, it didn't, 3880 had much higher channel busy ... eventually resulting in 3090 had to ship with many more channels (to offset the 3880 increased channel busy overhead). Increasing number of channels required an additional TCM ... and joke was that 3090 group was going to charge the 3880 for the extra manufacturing costs. Marketing then would spin the increased number of channels as significant increase in I/O throughput ... when it actually was to offset the significant increased channel busy with 3880.

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

Play the Pentagon-Funded Video Game That Predates Pong

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Play the Pentagon-Funded Video Game That Predates Pong
Date: 07 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
Play the Pentagon-Funded Video Game That Predates Pong
http://warisboring.com/play-the-pentagon-funded-video-game-that-predates-pong-2/

post from last year
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#4 Play the Pentagon-Funded Video Game That Predates 'Pong'

Some of the ctss
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System
people went to the 5th flr and did multics
http://multicians.org/history.html

Others went to the science center on the 4th flr
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

and did virtual machine, bunch of online stuff, invented GML in 1969 (morphs into ISO SGML a decade later, and after another decade morphs into HTML), and the internal network (technology also used for the corporate sponsored univ BITNET
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET
and past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

spacewars was also ported to 2250-4 (1130 + 2250). sometimes on weekend I would bring my kids into work and set them up to play spacewars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_2250

much later I would sponsor Boyd's briefings. He would say he was very vocal against the electronic sensors across the trails in SE Asia. Possibly as punishment, they gave him command of "spook base". "spook base" reference gone 404, but lives on at wayback machine.
http://web.archive.org/web/20030212092342/http://home.att.net/~c.jeppeson/igloo_white.html

Before Pac Man, Pong, or Space Invaders, there was Igloo White - the original computer video game - where the loser paid in real blood, so that the winner did not have to.
... snip ...

above mentions 2250s ... but pictures are of other graphic displays.

posts & URLs referencing Boyd
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

Late 70s, somebody implemented mainframe multi-user spacewars that ran on 3270 terminals ... users could be either on the same mainframe and/or on other mainframes connected over the internal network. Almost immediately people started implementing automated bot players that were beating real humans. Somewhat to put humans and bots on level playing field, the game was changed so that energy consumption increased non-linear as interval between commands decreased below a "human" threshold.

past posts mentioning 3270 multi-user spacewar
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#26 Help needed on conversion from VM to OS390
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#72 OT: One for the historians - 360/91
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#20 Whatever happened to IBM's VM PC software?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#12 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#4 Fast action games on System/360+?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#22 Was CMS multi-tasking?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#5 real-time messages
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#74 Adventure - Or Colossal Cave Adventure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#0 What is the protocal for GMT offset in SMTP (e-mail) header time-stamp?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#33 Was VM ever used as an exokernel?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#5 Is email dead? What do you think?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#45 My first mainframe experience
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#49 My first mainframe experience
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#56 VAXen on the Internet
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#66 Wasn't instant messaging on IBM's VM/CMS in the early 1980s
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#24 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#27 Inventor of e-mail honored by Smithsonian
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#38 Invention of Email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#64 Typeface (font) and city identity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#7 Operating System, what is it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#68 Should you support or abandon the 3270 as a User Interface?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#27 RBS Mainframe Meltdown: A year on, the fallout is still coming
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#38 1969 networked word processor "Astrotype"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#1 Application development paradigms [was: RE: Learning Rexx]
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#48 Before the Internet: The golden age of online service
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#9 PROFS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#17 IBM Destination z - What the Heck Is JCL and Why Does It Look So Funny?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#1 You count as an old-timer if (was Re: Origin of the phrase "XYZZY")

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

Real World OODA

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Real World OODA
Date: 07 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
Note in briefings Boyd would stress observing from every possible facet (in part, as countermeasure to orientation bias) .... implication attempting to being able to observe everything in the real world (ideally observe is outside the perimeter of the real world being able to sense everything in the real world).

He would also talk about doing reviews of periodic large scale war games, he characterized admirals and generals playing golf all year while their staffs practiced. When it came time for the war game, the flag officers had to "finger feel" for the information flows in the war rooms. This then gets respun as "information overload".

Boyd would periodically refer to fingerspitzengefuhl (finger feel), familiarity/experience that has "fast" intuition about the situation ... a touch sensory metaphor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerspitzengef%C3%BChl

the visual metaphor is Coup d'oeil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C5%93il

which shows up with Clauswitz in "On War". I've previously posted 1846 (Elements of Military Art and Science) reference that is Coup d'oeil that is very close to OODA (see/decide/act), loc5019-20:

A rapid coup d'oeil prompt decision, active movements, are as indispensable as sound judgment; for the general must see, and decide, and act, all in the same instant.
... snip ...

posts & URL referencing Boyd and/or OODA-loop
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

I've also referred to these "fast", intuition akin to Kahneman's "fast" from his "Thinking Fast and Slow"

recent posts mentioning Kahneman:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#24 Destruction of the Middle Class
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#26 Milton Friedman's Cherished Theory Is Laid to Rest
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#66 Deep learning algorithm does as well as dermatologists in identifying skin cancer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#92 Trump's Rollback of the Neoliberal Market State
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#93 The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds Kindle Edition
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#97 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#11 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#17 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#24 Disorder
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#26 Virtualization's Past Helps Explain Its Current Importance
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#43 when to get out???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#0 Locking our own orientation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#67 Economists are arguing over how their profession messed up during the Great Recession. This is what happened
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#89 Understanding decisions: The power of combining psychology and economics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#93 United Air Lines - an OODA-loop perspective
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#96 Cognitive Bias Codex, 2016
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#7 Arthur Laffer's Theory on Tax Cuts Comes to Life Once More
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#44 [CM] cheap money, was What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#96 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#14 Fast OODA-Loops increase Maneuverability
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#16 Conservatives and Spending
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#44 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#6 Mapping the decentralized world of tomorrow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#19 Financial, Healthcare, Construction, Education complexity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#49 Shareholders Ahead Of Employees
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#52 Boyd's OODA-loop

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

What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
Date: 08 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#56 What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#61 What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?

After the unsolicited unit check problem but still six months before 3880 first customer ship, one Monday morning I got blamed for preformance in product test, bldg15 all going down the tubes. I got call asking what I had done to their system over the weekend. Product test got early engineering processor models (usual #3 or #4) for disk testing. Bldg. 15 had got very early engineering 3033 (#3 or #4) and were running my systems ... disk testing used almost no CPU time, even with several going on simultaneously. They attached 16 3330 drives with 3830 controller to the 3033 for general online use.

In any case, I said I had done nothing, and asked them what they had done. They said nothing, but eventually trace it to they had replaced the 3830 controller with 3880 controller over the weekend. The game with signaling channel program done and leaving 3880 busy had other unintended consequences (not just the game with unsolicited unit check interrupts). As part of IOS rewrite for bullet proof and never fail, I also made I/O redrive superfast. The 3880 game was that software (like MVS) has enormous pathlength processing interrupt and redriving device with any queued I/O. They figured the 3880 could really finish the operation in parallel with the operating system processing. However, my I/O redrive pathlength was significantly faster than 3880 after I/O cleanup processing. As a result my I/O redrive hit the 3880 controller before it had really finished processing (after the interrupt trying to fake that it had finished before it actually did). The redrive would then give CC=1, CSW stored to the SIOF with SM+BUSY (controller busy). The software had to requeue the attempted new operation and wait for CUE interrupt indicating controller was really available. Under load with queued, pending operations, it met that not only the additional delay for every I/O (compared to 3830) but for every I/O, it started having to do double queue/dequeue and double SIOFs and double I/O interrupt processing. This showed up as significant reduction in throughput (compared to what they were use to).

posts referencing getting to play disk engineer in bldgs. 14&15
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

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

Is AMD Dooomed? A Silly Suggestion!

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is AMD Dooomed? A Silly Suggestion!
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2017 10:51:30 -0700
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
However, June 6, 2005 (the date on which Steve Jobs announced that Macintosh computers would switch to Intel processors from the PowerPC) is later than April, 2003, when the first Opterons with AMD's 64 bit extensions were released (let alone 1999, when AMD announced their plan for a 64-bit alternative).

note that the folklore at the time was that IBM/power was focused more on the server markets and weren't coming out with more power efficient chips for laptop/battery market .... forcing Apple to go with vendor that was more laptap friendly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Intel_processors#Reasons

In particular, he cited the performance per watt projections in the roadmap provided by Intel.[12] This is an especially important consideration in laptop design, which affects the hours of use per battery charge.
...
Further, the heat produced by the chip proved an obstacle to deploying it in a laptop computer, which had become the fastest growing segment of the personal computer industry.
... snip ...

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

Is AMD Dooomed? A Silly Suggestion!

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is AMD Dooomed? A Silly Suggestion!
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sat, 08 Jul 2017 11:29:08 -0700
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
The S/38 descendants are like mainframes in the distinction above (I would probably count them as minis rather than mainframes, though). That they migrated to one of the IBM hardware lines rather than Xeons is due to being an IBM product. If they were from a separate company, they probably would have migrated to Xeons by now.

folklore is that after failure of Future System project ... some of the people retreated to Rochester and did S/38. One of the features is single-level store ... FS had somewhat taken from TSS/360. However in the early 70s, I had done a page-mapped filesystem and would say that I learned what not to do based on what I saw in TSS/360. The lack of performance and asynchronous/overlapped would have been a major performance problem in the mainframe market ... if they had gotten far enough along to know what they were doing.

The S/38 implementation for the low-end market didn't have the same performance issues that would have been major problem for mainframe market.

Another S/38 was that they treated all disks as single filesystem with scatter allocation. The result was whole system was shutdown for backups as single operation ... and any single disk failure required restoring everything as single filesystem (could take 24hrs elapsed time with just a few disks). This would never had worked for mainframe environment with hundreds of disks.

Trivia: original "RAID" work/patent was in 70s at san jose disk division ... and S/38 was eventually original use ... since single disk failure had such a disastrous impact.

AS/400 was combined follow-on for S/34, S/36, & S/38 (with some number of S/38 features being dropped).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System_i

trivia: late 70s, there was program to move the myriad internal microprocessors to 801/risc Iliad chips ... this included followon to low/mid range 4331/4341 mainframe, as/400, controllers, etc. For various reasons all these efforts floundered and things reverted to business as usual with custom cisc chips ... including as/400 (and found some number of 801/risc engineers going to other vendors). Note that as/400 finally did move to 801/risc power/pc a decade ltaer.

trivia: long ago and far awy, my brother was regional apple marketing rep (largest physical region conus). one of the things he did was work out how to dialin to the corporate s/38 that had all the manufacturing & delivery/shipping information to track his orders.

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

What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
Date: 09 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#56 What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#61 What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#64 What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?

re: network glitch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_Tree_EXEC
on bitnet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET
almost exactly year before morris worm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm

re: CCDN 70s networked 3270s; modulo PVM (pass-through-virtual machine). Which simulated 3270 terminals (akin to CCDN) remotely on internal VM370 network and VM370 systems.

The VMSG author also did Parasite/Story ... it did IBM/PC HLLAPI-like implementation (well before IBM/PC), that leverage the psuedo-device interface in VM. It could create psuedo 3270s on the same machine, or interface to PVM to login into networked machines. PVM had also done CCDN gateway, so from PVM it was also possible to connect to any CCDN machine. This has some old Parasite/Story examples ... including PUT bucket retain from RETAIN (create virtual 3270, connect to PVM, connect to CCDN, connect to RETAIN)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#35
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#36

VMSG trivia: PROFS group had collected some number of internal applications for use with their MENU interface, including a very early verrsion of VMSG as email client. When the VMSG author tried to author them a much enhanced version, they tried to get him fired (having taken credit for everything in PROFS). The whole thing quieted down when the VMSG author demonstrated that his initials were in every PROFS email (in non-displayed filed). After that the VMSG author only distributed source to me and one other person.

HONE/CCDN trivia: when US HONE datacenters were consolidated in silicon valley in the mid-70s, started work on fall-over, load-balancing cluster leverage CCDN front-end. By late 70s, US HONE had maximum data farm cluster configuration with high-end POK multiprocessors. (8 3830 processor configurations with 16 processors). Load and availability of the cluster was monitored and CCDN HONE logins were routed to appropriate CEC in the complex (possibly largest single-system-image complex in the world). It was something like another three decades before this support shipped to customers. In the early 80s, this was extended to replicated images in Dallas and then 3rd in Boulder (for disaster survivability).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

re: other IBM History

At SJR we had a bunch of demo programs. When there was corporate audit of SJR computer systems, the auditors tried to mandate that all "demo" programs had to be removed. While most internal datacenters had "For Business Use Only" on the VM370 logo/logon screen, SJR had "For Management Approved Use Only".

Late 70s and early 80s, I was blamed for online computer conferencing (precursor to modern social media) on the internal network (larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until something mid-80s). Folklore is that when the corporate executive committee was informed of online computer conferencing (and the internal network), 5of6 wanted to fire me. From IBMJARGON:

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 ...

Before Jim left IBM (and before PROFS), we would sit around Friday nights after work talking about how to get middle management and executives motivated to use online computer systems (to give them modicum of computer literacy). We came up with online telephone books ... and had objective that the implementation took no more than a week of our time to write the software and collect/format/distribute the books ... and that the implementation had to be faster than lookup in paper book sitting on their desk (the initial implementation did radix-partition search ... faster than binary search since we had frequency distribution). One of the most difficult problems was dealing with the IBM lawyers who insisted that having phone books online was security violation.

It did have downside. At the time, 3270 terminals were part of fall budget plan and required VP signoff. There was massive uptic in middle management and executives wanting 3270 terminals on their desks (because others had them, even if they never actually use them, more for show as new status system) and were preempting 3270s being shipped for development efforts.

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

MULTICS & VM370 History

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: MULTICS & VM370 History
Date: 09 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
48-year-old Multics Operating System Resurrected
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/07/09/0414245/48-year-old-multics-operating-system-resurrected

Some of the ctss
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System
people went to the 5th flr and did multics
http://multicians.org/history.html

Others went to the science center on the 4th flr and did virtual machine,
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

bunch of online stuff, invented GML in 1969 (morphs into ISO SGML a decade later, and after another decade morphs into HTML),
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

and the internal network (later than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime mid-80s)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

technology also used for the corporate sponsored univ BITNET (also for a time larger than arpanet/internet)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET

so there was some rivalry between the 5th flr and 4th flr. It wasn't really fair to compare the number of multics systems with the number of VM customers, or even the number of internal VM systems, but one of my hobbies was design, implement, test, deploy and support enhanced systems for internal datacenters ... at one time was slightly more than the total number of Multics systems

trivia: during FS period, I continued to work on 360/370 stuff and would even periodically ridicule FS activties. The initial morph of CP67 to VM370 dropped and simplified a bunch of stuff. Old email about moving from CP67 to VM370
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750430

with the failure of FS and the mad rush to get stuff back into the 370 product pipelines, decision was made to release bits&pieces of the above.

During FS, 370 efforts were being shutdown, the lack of 370 products during the FS period is credited with giving clone makers market foothold. When FS imploded there was mad rush to get products back into the 370 pipeline.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

Also head of POK convinced corporate to kill vm370, and transfer all the people to work on MVS/XA (or it wouldn't ship on time). Endicott managed to save product mission, but had to reconstitute development group from scratch. Also lots of adtech people were thrown into the product development breach (killing off much of adtech). I sponsored first adtech conference after this period, week before 1982 spring SHARE.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a
also here
http://vm.marist.edu/~piper/party/jph-12.html#wheeler

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

48-year-old Multics Operating System Resurrected

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: 48-year-old Multics Operating System Resurrected
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2017 19:20:38 -0700
48-year-old Multics Operating System Resurrected
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/07/09/0414245/48-year-old-multics-operating-system-resurrected

Some of the ctss
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System
people went to the 5th flr and did multics
http://multicians.org/history.html

Others went to the science center on the 4th flr
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

and did virtual machine, bunch of online stuff, invented GML in 1969 (morphs into ISO SGML a decade later, and after another decade morphs into HTML),
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

and the internal network (later than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime mid-80s) technology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

also used for the corporate sponsored univ BITNET (also for a time larger than arpanet/internet)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET
and
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

so there was some rivalry between the 5th flr and 4th flr. It wasn't really fair to compare the number of multics systems with the number of VM customers, or even the number of internal VM systems, but one of my hobbies was design, implement, test, deploy and support enhanced systems for internal datacenters ... at one time was slightly more than the total number of Multics systems

During FS, 370 efforts were being shutdown, the lack of 370 products during the FS period is credited with giving clone makers market foothold. When FS imploded there was mad rush to get products back into the 370 pipeline.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

Also head of POK convinced corporate to kill vm370, and transfer all the people to work on MVS/XA (or it wouldn't ship on time). Endicott managed to save product mission, but had to reconstitute development group from scratch. Also lots of adtech people were thrown into the product development breach (killing off much of adtech). I sponsored first adtech conference after this period, week before 1982 spring SHARE
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a
also here
http://vm.marist.edu/~piper/party/jph-12.html#wheeler

trivia: during FS period, I continued to work on 360/370 stuff and would even periodically ridicule FS activties. The initial morph of CP67 to VM370 dropped and simplified a bunch of stuff. Old email about moving from CP67 to VM370
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750430

with the failure of FS and the mad rush to get stuff back into the 370 product pipelines, decision was made to release bits&pieces of the above.

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

What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
Date: 09 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#56 What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#61 What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#64 What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#67 What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?

trivia: Charlie invented compare-and-swap when he was working on fine-grain SMP locking for CP67 at science center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

("compare-and-swap" chosen because "CAS" are Charlie's initials). When we initially tried to get it added to 370, the POK favorite son operating system people claimed that test&set was more than adequate (aka they were doing single spin-lock for operating system privilege mode). The 370 architecture owners said that to get compare&swap added to 370, had to come up with uses other than kernsl SMP serialization. Thus were born the multiprogramming application uses ... examples that still appear in principles of operation.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

About the same time Charlie was doing some other optimization. Standard process had been to reload 360/67 control register zero (page table pointer) first thing in the interrupt handler ... change was to eliminate reload when it was known that it had same value as previously loaded. It turns out that 360/67 had a hardware bug that after interrupt it zero'ed the associative array (hardware table of recently used page table translation values) w/o setting the invalid flags ... so all values appear to point to real page zero. This bug was masked by convention of always reloading CRO ... which also set invalid bits for every associative array entry. It was eventually decided that since this was late in 360/67 life cycle ... they weren't going to fix the hardware bug ... "fix" was to always reload CR0 in interrupt handler.

other C&S trivia: big uptake for compare&swap was the large DBMS multiprogramming systems (like IMS, regardless of whether running on simplex or multiprocessor machines). Then in the 80s, you start seeing compare&swap (or instructions with similar semantics) starting to show up on other vendors hardware platforms that supported large DBMS commercial environments.

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

What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
Date: 10 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#56 What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#61 What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#64 What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#67 What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#70 What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?

1980, STL was bursting at the seams and they were moving 300 people from the IMS group to offsite bldg with dataprocessing access back to the STL datacenter. They had tried "remote" 3270s but found the human factors totally unacceptabile. I got con'ed into doing channel-extender support ... put channel attached 3270 controllers at the offsite bldg ... with channel extender back to STL datacenter. Then the vendor tried to get IBM to allow shipping the support for customers. However, there was group in POK playing with some serial stuff and they objected (concerned that if it was in the market, it would detract from being able to release their stuff).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#channel.extender

Then in 1988, I got asked to help LLNL standardize some serial stuff they were playing with which quickly becomes fibre channel standard (including some stuff that I had done with I/O programs for channel extender). This started out full-duplex 1gbit (2gbit aggregate, concurrent transmission in both direction along with protocol enhancements to compensate for propagation delays). Then the POK people get their stuff released in 1990 with ES/9000 when it was already obsolete (200mbit/sec, half-duplex, around 17mbyte/sec effective).

Later some POK engineers become involved with fibre channel standard and define a heavy weight protocol that drastically cuts the native throughput ... that is eventually released as FICON. The latest peak I/O numbers I've seen is z196 with 104 FICONs getting 2M IOPS. About the same time there was native fibre channel announced for E5-2600 blade claiming over million IOPS (two such fibre-channel having higher throughput than 104 FICONs running over 104 fibre channels).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#ficon

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

Mannix "computer in a briefcase"

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mannix "computer in a briefcase"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2017 21:58:54 -0700
Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> writes:
Let's also remember that IBM PCs were rather late to the game. There were already an abundance of Commodores, Ataris, Amigas, Radio Shacks, TIs, and a host of CP/M machines like Osbornes, Kaypros, etc. Most of these cost much less than an IBM, and some of them came with large suites of software. IBM's success was because "nobody ever got fired for buying an IBM", so they had a heavy impact on the corporate world, where cost wasn't a concern.

large corporations were buying tens of thousands of 3270 terminals. It was much simpler marketing to go and convince incremental purchase of IBM/PCs with terminal emulation (in place of already justified 3270 terminals) ... getting a little local processing along with the 3270 emulation all in single desktop footprint. various terminal emulation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

some commodore
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#68 The Rise and Fall of Commodore

from several at above post

Total share: 30 years of personal computer market share figures
https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/

the IBM/PC profit margin and market size created attractive opportunity for clone makers ... increasing market size, attracting more developers, apps helping with growing snowball effect.

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

Mannix "computer in a briefcase"

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mannix "computer in a briefcase"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2017 07:14:50 -0700
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
from several at above post

Total share: 30 years of personal computer market share figures
https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/

the IBM/PC profit margin and market size created attractive opportunity for clone makers ... increasing market size, attracting more developers, apps helping with growing snowball effect.


re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#72 Mannix "computer in a briefcase"

major motivation for 16mbit t/r cards & cat5 (for terminal emulation) was that the weight of all those 3270 terminal coax cables snaking their way through bldgs were starting to exceed bldg loading limits ... and just the 16mbit t/r cards were around $900.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

note however, even $900 16mbit t/r cards were cost reduced ... design point was 300+ stations sharing same LAN bandwidth doing low speed terminal emulation.

AIX PC/RT had done their own AT-bus 4mbit t/r cards (for workstation). Then for rs/6000 microchannel they were told they could design their own cards but had to use the PS2 microchannel cards. The PS2 microchannel 16mbit t/r cards had lower per card throughput than the PC/RT AT-bus 4mbit t/r cards.

The new Almaden research building, provided with lots of CAT5 (supposedly for 16mbit t/r) found than using CAT5 instead for 10mbit ethernet, 10mbit ethernet had lower LAN transmission latency, and higher aggregate LAN throughput (than 16/mbit t/r) ... and $69 10mbit ethernet cards had higher per card throughput than $900 16mbit t/r cards.

my wife had written 3-tier, middle layer into response to gov. request for large, super secure campus LAN environment. 300 station 16mbit T/R (@$900) with bridges was more expensive and trivial avg. bandwidth/station ... compared t0 300 station 10mbit ethernet (@69) with mainframe channel attached high-speed router dividing config into 16 separate LAN segments (160mbit aggregate, <20stations/LAN). we were then out making 3-tier, middle-layer cutomer executive presentations.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#3tier

this was when the communication group was fighting off client/server and distributed computing trying to preserve their dumb terminal paradigm and install base. We were taking lots of arrows from the SNA forces, the T/R forces and the SAA forces.

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

Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 12 Jul 2017 19:05:43 -0700
charlesm@MCN.ORG (Charles Mills) writes:
Frankly, in the beginnings of computing, including in DOS and OS/360, there was often an assumption that all users -- at least all "real" (TSO and development, as opposed to CICS or application) users -- were trusted. There was a lot of your gun, your bullet, your foot. The assumption was that the threat of dismissal was a sufficient limit on misbehavior.

well there is this ... going back around 50yrs
http://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

cambridge science center ...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

was running its cp/67 service, allowing both other IBM locations to use it as well as non-employees (students, professors, etc) from universities (mit, harvard, bu) in cambridge area.

science center had also ported apl\360 to cp67/cms for cms\apl ... expanding workspace size (from typical 16kbytes) to virtual memory size (required redoing apl storage management for virtual memory demand paged environment) and adding APIs to system facilities (like file read/write) ... significantly enabling real-world applications.

One of the remote internal users was business planners at Armonk hdqtrs who loaded the most valuable corporate assets on the cambridge system for doing business modeling in cms\apl (and it was expected that all such information was protected from non-authorized users ... including students around the boston/cambridge area using the system.

note before 370 virtual memory was announced ... a document somehow leaked to an industry publication ... which resulted in something like a "pentagon papers" event for the corporation. For the Future System project, they attempted a countermeasure with a significantly enhanced vm370 system where all FS documents were softcopy and could only be read from specially connected 3270 terminals (no file copy, printing, etc, before ibm/pc and things like screen scraping). some FS refs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

For the initial morph of CP67 to VM370, they simplified and/or dropped a bunch of features. During the FS period I continued to work on 360/370 stuff (even when 370 efforts were being shutdown) and would even periodically ridicule the FS efforts. Some old email about eventually getting around to migrating from CP67 to VM370
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750430

I had some weekend test time at datacenter with one of these FS "secure" vm370 systems. I was in Friday afternoon to make sure everything was setup for my use. They couldn't resist claiming that their system was so secure that even if I was left alone in the machine room all weekend, I wouldn't be able to do anything. So one of the few times I took the bait. I asked them to disable all access from outside the machine room, and then from the front panel I changed one byte in storage ... which disabled all security measures. I suggested if they were serious, they had to secure/protect all machine facilities (including front panel).

trivia: during the FS period, 370 efforts were being shutdown (lack of 370 offerings during the FS period is credited with giving clone processor makers market foothold). Then when FS finally implodes, there is mad rush to get products back into the 370 pipeline ... including kicking of quick&dirty efforts for 3033 and 3081. some refs:
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm

this also contributes to decision for picking up various bits&pieces (from CSC/VM mentioned in above email) for release to customers.

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

Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 12 Jul 2017 20:15:39 -0700
0000000433f07816-dmarc-request@LISTSERV.UA.EDU (Paul Gilmartin) writes:
8x11mm Minox camera? I suppose physical security can interdict that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minox#Technical_details_of_Minox_8.C3.9711_cameras


re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#74 Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again

also in the wake of the company's "pentagon papers" type event, they retrofitted all company copier machines with serial number identifier on the underside of the glass, that would show up on all pages copied. example from this copied document over a decade later
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/grayft84.pdf

trivia: not long after I graduated and joined the science center, the company got a new CSO ... as common in that era, had previously been at government agency & familiar with physical security (at one time head of presidential detail). I got tagged to run around with him for a time ... to talk about computer security.

more trivia: I found my wifes father's WW2 status reports (from europe) at National Archives. They had been declassified but never "marked". The NA "reading room" required that cameras had to be registered (including serial number) and given permit and I had to have declassification tag that appeared in every image that I took.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/dectag.jpg

nara declassification

part of one of his reports
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#82

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

TRAX manual set for sale

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: TRAX manual set for sale
Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp11, alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2017 12:48:21 -0700
Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon@gmail.com> writes:
I don't know what they used but up until the late 80's the children's magazine Highlights company was a PDP-11 shop. I know the business was run on it. I always assumed the typesetting was, too.

That was the source of my first PDP-11's. An 11/24 with RA Disks and RL02's. And an 11/23 with RL02's. Great machines, especially the 11/24. I really miss it.


there was ATEX
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atex_(software)
history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atex_(software)#1970s

By 1977, Atex had successfully connected reporters and editors via a paper-free system that allowed working on-screen instead of on typewriters. The system had a terminal-and-server paradigm, using modified DEC PDP-11 minicomputer hardware running a custom Atex multi-user operating system. Terminals were little more than keyboards, with the servers directly generating video signals for each terminal. The memory-mapped screen images were monochrome and not high resolution, but they could scroll quickly and fluidly without the constraints imposed by conventional serial data connections, which at the time were not very fast. The servers were paired for redundancy; each story saved to disk was written to two separate systems.
... snip ...

porting ATEX to RS/6000 was one of the things that kicked off our HA/CMP product in the late 80s .... some 91/92 ATEX press (had been bought by Kodak) including RS/6000 reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#22 DOS history question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#23 DOS history question

HA/CMP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_High_Availability_Cluster_Multiprocessing

... other past HA/CMP posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

i've periodically referencing also doing cluster scale-up ... both commercial with RDBMS vendors ... oracle Jan1992 meeting in ellison's conference room
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
and technical/scientific with national labs ... some old email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

within a couple weeks of the Ellison meeting, scale-up was transferred, announced as IBM supercomputer (for scientific/technical *ONLY*) and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors. 17Feb1992 press
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1

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

TRAX manual set for sale

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: TRAX manual set for sale
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2017 19:23:43 -0700
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
You've obviously never had a bunch of angry employees lined up at the payroll office door...

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#76 TRAX manual set for sale

payroll check may not have time sensitive for each check operation ... but frequently they have deadlines to finish all of payroll.

realtime tends to have very short deadline but for each operation at very short period in the future ... while frequently payroll has specific deadline at short time in future.

a payroll deadline can be all physical checks distributed to each deparment ... or for electronic funds transfer, ACH closing deadline that night.

outsourced EFTPS (something like 95-99% of all tax revenue).
https://www.eftps.gov/eftps/

had next day morning reporting deadline for all funds collected the day before ... that was equivalent to twice a day's interest on that amount.

I did a secure chip in the 90s that had none of the vulnerabilities that chip&pin had at the time ... resulting in the "Yes card" exploits, cartes 2002 trip report (gone 404 but lives on at wayback machine), at the bottom discusses "yes card" counterfeit is almost as easy as magstripe card.
http://web.archive.org/web/20030417083810/http://www.smartcard.co.uk/resources/articles/cartes2002.html

later "yes card" presentation at ATM Integrity Task Force meeting where somebody made the observation that they spent billions of dollars to prove chips are less secure than magstipe. past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard

the chip&pin not only had all these vulnerabilities ... but transaction time was like 8secs (with direct contact power source) ... still is.

the transit industry had asked me while I was doing the chip that was significantly more secure than chip&pin ... but could I do a secure transaction within the transit turnstyle transaction time limit (100milliseconds) using only contactless (RF) power (w/o reducing integrity).

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

This Afghan War Plan By The Guy Who Founded Blackwater Should Scare The Hell Out Of You

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: This Afghan War Plan By The Guy Who Founded Blackwater Should Scare The Hell Out Of You
Date: 14 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
This Afghan War Plan By The Guy Who Founded Blackwater Should Scare The Hell Out Of You
http://taskandpurpose.com/afghan-war-plan-erik-prince-blackwater-dyncorp/
Erik D. Prince, a founder of the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide, and Stephen A. Feinberg, a billionaire financier who owns the giant military contractor DynCorp International, have developed proposals to rely on contractors instead of American troops in Afghanistan at the behest of Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump's chief strategist, and Jared Kushner, his senior adviser and son-in-law, according to people briefed on the conversations.
... snip ...

part of enormous uptic in outsourcing last decade

OPM Contractor's Parent Firm Has a Troubled History
https://theintercept.com/2015/06/24/opm-contractor-veritas/

Founded in 1992 by the late investment banker Robert McKeon, Veritas Capital grew quickly by buying up government contractors and forming close ties with former senior government officials. Of the many defense-related investments made by the company, the most famous has been the 2005 purchase of DynCorp International, a scandal-plagued company that played a pivotal role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
... snip ...

another: Blackwater's Troubles Deepening
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/09/blackwaters-troubles-deepening/
and Blackwater's Founder Is Under Investigation for Money Laundering, Ties to Chinese Intel, and Brokering Mercenary Services
https://theintercept.com/2016/03/24/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-under-federal-investigation/

and intelligence, 70% of budget and over half the people
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/
outsourcing to for-profit (private-equity subsidiaries) contributed to rapidly spreading success of failure culture
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/

success of failure posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#success.of.failuree
private equity posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity

and cyberdumb

Chinese Hackers Stole Boeing, Lockheed Military Plane Secrets: Feds
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/chinese-hackers-stole-boeing-lockheed-military-plane-secrets-feds-n153951
Report: China gained U.S. weapons secrets using cyberespionage
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/28/world/asia/china-cyberespionage/
Confidential report lists U.S. weapons system designs compromised by Chinese cyberspies
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/confidential-report-lists-us-weapons-system-designs-compromised-by-chinese-cyberspies/2013/05/27/a42c3e1c-c2dd-11e2-8c3b-0b5e9247e8ca_story.html
REPORT: Chinese Hackers Stole Plans For Dozens Of Critical US Weapons Systems
http://www.businessinsider.com/china-hacked-us-military-weapons-systems-2013-5
A list of the U.S. weapons designs and technologies compromised by hackers
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-list-of-the-us-weapons-designs-and-technologies-compromised-by-hackers/2013/05/27/a95b2b12-c483-11e2-9fe2-6ee52d0eb7c1_story.html

past cyberdumb posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#21 Credit card fraud solution coming to America...finally
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#4 Cyberdumb
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#8 Cyberdumb
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#19 Does Cybercrime Really Cost $1 Trillion?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#20 DEC and The Americans
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#91 Computers anyone?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#95 Computers anyone?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#104 How to Win the Cyberwar Against Russia
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#0 Snowden
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#28 China's spies gain valuable US defense technology: report
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#67 "I used a real computer at home...and so will you" (Popular Science May 1967)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#15 China's claim it has 'quantum' radar may leave $17 billion F-35 naked
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#34 CBS News: WikiLeaks claims to release thousands of CIA documents of computer activity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#47 WikiLeaks CIA Dump: Washington's Data Security Is a Mess
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#50 A flaw in the design; The Internet's founders saw its promise but didn't foresee users attacking one another
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#73 More Cyberdumb
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#77 Time to sack the chief of computing in the NHS?

Blackwater founder held secret Seychelles meeting to establish Trump-Putin back channel
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/blackwater-founder-held-secret-seychelles-meeting-to-establish-trump-putin-back-channel/2017/04/03/95908a08-1648-11e7-ada0-1489b735b3a3_story.html
But his ties to Trump advisers, experience with clandestine work and relationship with the royal leaders of the Emirates -- where he moved in 2010 amid mounting legal problems for his American business -- would have positioned him as an ideal go-between.
... snip ...

Blackwater Founder Said to Have Advised Trump Team
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-18/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-said-to-have-advised-trump-team
Prince was a generous financial backer of the Trump campaign, along with his sister, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Prince contributed at least $100,000 through a political action committee run by billionaire hedge-fund manager Robert Mercer. That PAC also funneled contributions from Thiel, the billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has acted as an informal liaison to the high-tech world for the White House.
... snip ...

How much do we know about Blackwater founder Erik Prince -- and his secretive role in shaping Trump's foreign policy?
http://www.salon.com/2017/04/19/how-much-do-we-know-about-blackwater-founder-erik-prince-and-his-secretive-role-in-shaping-trumps-foreign-policy/
Prince and his family have had a long association with Vice President Mike Pence, however, through mutual religious and political affiliations based on a militant theocratic worldview. Prince and his sister Betsy DeVos, now the secretary of education, were big donors to Trump's campaign. Considering that Trump's knowledge of world affairs can barely fill a shot glass, seeing Prince among his inner circle of advisers is unnerving to say the least.
... snip ...

The DeVos Dynasty: A Family of Extremists
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/news/2017/01/23/296947/the-devos-dynasty-a-family-of-extremists/

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

Bad Ideas

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Bad Ideas
Date: 14 July 2017
Blog: LinkedIn
"Bad Ideas"
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bad-ideas-lynn-wheeler

Bad Ideas; Reknowned economist James K. Galbraith, one of our expert panelists, pulls no punches in talking about the damage wrought by financial innovation
https://www.gfmag.com/magazine/june-2017/bad-ideas
GF: Which innovations have been most harmful?

Galbraith: Fraudulent instruments for asset-backed securities, like liars' loans, NINJA loans, and CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), should top anybody's list. They institutionalized the criminal takeover of the mortgage business, beginning with liars' loans and the fraudulent representation of the borrowers and carrying on through fraudulent representation of the risks in the securities. CDOs take the toxic waste of some mortgage-backed securities and combine it with the toxic waste of other mortgage-backed securities and call the results diversified. The whole chain was certain not only to collapse, but to bring down the affected institutions.

... snip ...

JAN 1999, I was asked to try and help prevent the economic mess. securitized mortgages had been used during the S&L crisis to obfuscate fraudulent mortgages (poster child were office bldgs in Dallas area that turned out to be empty lots). I was told that some of the investment bankers walk away "clean" from S&L crisis, were then running Internet IPO mills and were predicted next to get into securitized mortgages. S&L crisis posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#s&l.crisis

I was to improve the integrity of mortgage supporting documents as countermeasure. They then find they can pay rating agencies for triple-A (when both the sellers and rating agencies know they aren't worth triple-A, from Oct2008 congressional testimony). Triple-A trumps supporting documents and they can start doing no-documentation liar loans, pay for triple-A and sell them off as fast as they can be made (triple-A means they no longer have to care about borrower's qualification or loan quality), largely enabling being able to do over $27T 2001-2008 (including being able to sell to entities restricted to only dealing in "safe" investments, including large institution pension funds). (triple-A) toxic CDOs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo

In spring 2007 interview, Cramer says that illegal activity goes on all the time, but they don't have to worry about anything from the SEC.
http://nypost.com/2007/03/20/cramer-reveals-a-bit-too-much/

couple months later
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Trust_%26_Clearing_Corporation#Controversy_over_naked_short_selling

In the congressional Madoff hearings they had the person that had tried unsuccessfully for a decade to get the SEC to do something about Madoff (SEC hands were forced when Madoff turned himself in). Congress asked him if new regulations were needed. He replied that while new regulations might be needed (even tho existing ones weren't being enforced), but much more important would be transparency and visibility. Madoff posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#madoff
regulatory capture posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#regulatory.capture

SECTREAS convinces congress to appropriate TARP funds for buying off-book toxic assets, But they only do $700B, while just the four largest too big to fail are carrying $5.2T in off-book toxic assets end of 2008 (it would hardly make a dent in that problem). The SECTREAS uses TARP for other stuff while the Federal Reserve does the real bailout. The FED fights a long, hard legal battle to prevent disclosing what they are doing (buying trillions in off-book toxic assets at 98cents on the dollar and providing tens of trillions in ZIRP funds). The FED chairman then holds a press conference to say that he expected the TBTF to use ZIRP to help main street, but when they didn't he had no way to force them. However, the chairman was supposedly in part selected for having been student of depression era when FED tried something similar with same results (so there should have been no expectations of something different).

federal chairman
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#fed.chairman
and ZIRP funds
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#zirp
and too big to fail
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

Note along the way, the TBTF found they could securitize mortgages desgined to fail, pay for triple-A, sell to their victims, and take out CDS gambling bets that they would fail (creating enormous demand for problem mortgages). The largest holder of CDS gambling bets was AIG and was negotiating to pay off at 50cents on the dollar, when the SECTREAS steps in, had them sign a document that they can't sue those making CDS gambling bets, and take TARP funds to pay off at face value. The largest recipient of TARP funds is AIG, and the largest recipient of face-value payoffs is the firm formally headed by SECTREAS.

JAN 2009, I was asked to HTML'ize the Pecora Hearings (30s congressional hearings into the 29 crash, resulted in criminal convictions with jail terms and Glass-Steagall) with lots of internal HREFs and URLs between what happened then and what happened this time (comment that the new congress might have appetite to do something). I work on it for awhile and then get a call that it won't be needed after all (reference to capital hill is buried under enormous mountains of wallstreet cash).

Pecora Hearings and/or Glass-Steagall
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
and "economic mess"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess

VP and former CIA director repeatedly claims no knowledge of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_affair
because he was fulltime administration point person deregulating financial industry ... creating S&L crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis
along with other members of his family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis#Silverado_Savings_and_Loan
and another
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE0D81E3BF937A25753C1A966958260

another family member then presides over the economic mess last decade, 70 times larger than the S&L crisis. S&L crisis had 1000 criminal convictions with jailtime, proportionally the economic mess should have 70,000.

Milton Friedman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman

Friedman promoted an alternative macroeconomic viewpoint known as "monetarism", and argued that a steady, small expansion of the money supply was the preferred policy.[12] His ideas concerning monetary policy, taxation, privatization and deregulation influenced government policies, especially during the 1980s.

Milton Friedman's Cherished Theory Is Laid to Rest
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-12/milton-friedman-s-cherished-theory-is-laid-to-rest

Even now, when economic models have become far more complex than anything in Friedman's time, economists still go back to Friedman's theory as a mental touchstone -- a fundamental intuition that guides the way they make their models. My first macroeconomics professor believed in it deeply and instinctively, and would even bring it up in department seminars.

The Champions of the 401(k) Lament the Revolution They Started
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-champions-of-the-401-k-lament-the-revolution-they-started-1483382348?mod=e2fb
Economists and the Powerful: Convenient Theories, Distorted Facts, Ample Rewards
https://www.amazon.com/Economists-Powerful-Convenient-Distorted-Economics-ebook/dp/B01B4X4KOS/

loc1200-1206:
There are plenty of examples from other countries to copy: the US individual retirement account system is based on the Chilean pension reform of 1980/81 that in turn was based heavily on proposals made in the book Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman. In response to the Chilean system facing a likely collapse in a few decades time, it was substantially overhauled in 2008 to require mandatory participation of all citizens in exchange for universal pension coverage.

loc72-74:
"Only through having been caught so blatantly with their noses in the troughs (e.g. the 2011 Academy Award -- winning documentary Inside Job) has the American Economic Association finally been forced to adopt an ethical code, and that code is weak and incomplete compared with other disciplines."
... snip ...

"Inside Job" references how leading economists were captured similar to the capture of the regulatory agencies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Job_(2010_film)

"The Undoing Project" goes into some detail how Kahneman and Tversky disproved economists' assumption that people make rational decisions ... loc1155-59:
He had listened to an American economist talk about how so-and-so was stupid and so-and-so was a fool, then said, "All your economic models are premised on people being smart and rational, and yet all the people you know are idiots."
...snip ...

Kahneman (a psychologist) gets Nobel prize in economics, in part for debunking some cherished economic theories

Rhetoric on the floor of congress was that Sarbanes-Oxley would prevent future ENRONs and guarantee that executives and auditors did jail time, however it required SEC do something. Possibly because even GAO didn't believe SEC was doing anything, it started doing reports of public company fraudulent financial filings, even showing uptic after SOX goes into effect (and nobody doing jailtime).

Less well known is that SOX also required SEC do something about the rating agencies, however they did about as much about the rating agencies as they did about fraudulent financial filings.

2002, congress lets fiscal responsibility act lapse (spending can't exceed revenue, on its way to eliminating all federal debt). 2010 CBO report that 2003-2009, tax revenue cut $6T and spending increased $6T for $12T gap compared to fiscal responsibility act (also couldn't account for $1+TRILLION of the DOD increase and first time taxes cut to not pay for two wars). Sort of confluence of 1) Federal Reserve and wallstreet wanted huge federal debt, 2) wallstreet and special interests wanted huge tax cut, 3) military-industrial(-congressional) complex wanted huge spending increase.

Fiscal Responsibility Act posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#fiscal.responsibility.act
US Comptroller General posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#comptroller.general
MICC
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex

First major act after allowing fiscal responsibility act lapse is Medicare Part-D. CBS 60mins does expose on the process. Just before the final vote, a one line sentence is added (preventing competitive bidding) and CBO is prevented distributing an analysis of the change. 60mins then show drugs bought by the VA (which is allowed competitive bidding) that are 1/3rd the price of identical drugs under part-D. 60mins also finds that within 6months after part-d passes, the 18 republicans responsible for getting part-d passed have resigned and are on drug industry payroll. US Comptroller General starts including in speeches that part-d comes to be a long term $40T item that swamps all other budget items (he is also including in speeches that nobody in congress is capable of middle school arithmetic for how badly they are savaging the budget).

medicare part-d posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#medicare.part-d

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

Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 15 Jul 2017 10:14:25 -0700
idflist1@GMAIL.COM (scott Ford) writes:
As a vendor i have been receiving questions about DoS attacks on z/OS .. I understand the idea / concept of perimeter defense , i was a Network Engineer in a pass life. But from a application point of view, if the application is using AT/TLS and there are Pagent protection policies for PORTS/IP addresses and the application is using encryption, where's the risk ???

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#74 Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#75 Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again

We had worked with some number of Oracle people supporting cluster scale-up for our HA/CMP IBM product. We then left IBM and two of the Oracle people from this Jan1992 Ellison meeting
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

left Oracle and were at small client/server startup responsible for "commerce server". We were brought in as consultants because they wanted to do payment transactions on their server; the startup had also invented this technology they called "SSL" they wanted to use; the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce". I had absolute authority over server to payment network gateway but could only make recommendations about the browser to server, some of which were almost immediately violated, which continue to account for some number of vulnerabilities that continue to this day. Several of the attacks have to do with faking certificates and not recognizing the problem (enabling things like MITM-attacks). I use to pontificate about how vulnerable spoofing certificates were (do trust certificates from other entities)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcerts

payment network gateway posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

Don't know how much control that installations use for AT/TLS certificates.

One of the early "electronic commerce" vulnerabilities was increasing number of commerce servers moving from flat files to RDBMS based implementations. RDBMS maintenance was much more difficult and time-consuming. For maintenance, servers would be taken offline, some security relaxed, maintenance performed ... and then because RDBMS maintenance more often overran window, there was mad rush to get back online and not all of the security were turned back on.

Then apparently for having done "electronic commerce", we get pulled into X9 financial standards meetings to help write some number of financial standards. I did a financial standard and secure chip. This was in the same era as chip&pin started ... which had lots of vulnerabilities and took on the order of 8seconds with direct connect power. I did chip w/o any of the vulnerabilities. Then the transit industry asked me if the chip could also do transaction in the transit turnstyle time limits (100milliseconds) using only contactless (RF) power (w/o compromise any integrity). There was a large pilot of chip&pin in the US around the turn of the century during its "Yes Card" period ... old cartes 2002 trip report (gone 404 but lives on at the wayback machine) ... at the end of report, it is almost as easy to counterfeit chip as magstripe.
http://web.archive.org/web/20030417083810/http://www.smartcard.co.uk/resources/articles/cartes2002.html

At 2003 ATM Integrity Task Force meeting, Federal LEO gave "Yes Card" presentation prompting somebody in the audience to exclaim that they managed to spend billions of dollars to prove that chips were as vulnerable as magstripe. In the wake of the "Yes Card" problems, all evidence of the large US pilot appeared to evaporate and it was speculated that it would be a long time before it was tried in the US again. "yes card" posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard

some more discussion in this recent (facebook) IBM Retirees post
https://www.facebook.com/groups/62822320855/permalink/10155349644130856/

trivia: CEO of one of the cyber companies that participated in the booth at annual, world-wide retail banking BAI show, had previously been head of POK mainframe and then Boca PC:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#217
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#224

Also did pilot code for both RADIUS and KERBEROS authentication ... some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#radius
and
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#kerberos

bunch of security patents
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

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

Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 15 Jul 2017 13:36:36 -0700
charlesm@MCN.ORG (Charles Mills) writes:
DoS of course = denial of service, which is a large basket. I think it sometimes means any sort of "bring the system down or make it ineffective" attack, but usually I think it refers to repeatedly starting a TCP session and not completing it so as to tie up resources and make real connections impossible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack


re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#74 Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#75 Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#80 Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again

June 17th 1995, the internet facing servers for the largest online service provider started crashing. they brought in lots of experts to look at the problem ... and finally one of their people flew out to silicon valley and bought me a hamburger after work. I ate the burger while he described the problem ... and then I gave him a Q&D fix that stopped the crashing (that he installed that night). I then tried to get vendors to address the problem but found no interest. Almost exactly a year later there was lots of publicity about service provider in Manhatten started crashing ... and all of a sudden vendors started bragging on fast they reacted.

One of the issues was that there appeared to be two different groups ... those writing the code and those writing the specs ... some particular DOS were because small gaps between what some of the code did and what some of the specs said ... and didn't have people that did detailed study/understanding of both.

Until he passed, the internet standards editor would let me help with the periodic STD1 ... he also sponsored my talk at ISI/USC why internet wasn't (yet) business critical dataprocessing

some past refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm26.htm#17 Changing the Mantra -- RFC 4732 on rethinking DOS
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#aadsrel1 AADS related information
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#67 Mainframe Spreadsheets - 1980's History
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#51 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#11 Caller ID "spoofing"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#21 recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#35 Builders V. Breakers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#11 Top 10 Cybersecurity Threats for 2009, will they cause creation of highly-secure Corporate-wide Intranets?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#60 Core characteristics of resilience
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#104 On a lighter note, even the Holograms are demonstrating
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#25 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#79 Is it a lost cause?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#15 The Geniuses that Anticipated the Idea of the Internet

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

How can we stop algorithms telling lies?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: How can we stop algorithms telling lies?
Date: 16 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
How can we stop algorithms telling lies?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/16/how-can-we-stop-algorithms-telling-lies
Algorithms can dictate whether you get a mortgage or how much you pay for insurance. But sometimes they're wrong - and sometimes they are designed to deceive
... snip ...

One of the excuses for the economic mess was that the computer models were wrong. However, stories started appearing that risk managers were being told to fiddle the inputs until the business people got the results they desired (garbage-in, garbage-out)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess

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

In the above, mentions realization that the toxic CDOs wouldn't have a market w/o the triple-A rating. In the Oct2008 congressional hearings into the role that the rating agencies played, they had testimony that the rating agencies were selling triple-A ratings for things they knew weren't worth triple-A (largely enabling over $27T done 2001-2008)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo

The triple-A rating met they no longer needed to care about borrowers qualifications and/or loan quality, since they could sell off everything as fast as they could be packaged ... included to investors restricted to only dealing in "safe" investments, like large pension funds.

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

How can we stop algorithms telling lies?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: How can we stop algorithms telling lies?
Date: 16 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#82 How can we stop algorithms telling lies?

How Economists Contributed to the Financial Crisis
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2012/02/06/economics-crisis/
Alan Greenspan (5,061 votes): As Chairman of the Federal Reserve System from 1987 to 2006, Alan Greenspan both led the over expansion of money and credit that created the bubble that burst and aggressively promoted the view that financial markets are naturally efficient and in no need of regulation.

Milton Friedman (3,349 votes): Friedman propagated the delusion, through his misunderstanding of the scientific method, that an economy can be accurately modeled using counterfactual propositions about its nature. This, together with his simplistic model of money, encouraged the development of fantasy-based theories of economics and finance that facilitated the Global Financial Collapse.

Larry Summers (3,023 votes): As US Secretary of the Treasury (formerly an economist at Harvard and the World Bank), Summers worked successfully for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which since the Great Crash of 1929 had kept deposit banking separate from casino banking. He also helped Greenspan and Wall Street torpedo efforts to regulate derivatives.

... snip ...

posts mentioning Greenspan &/or other Fed Chairman
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#fed.chairman

Note: Glass-Steagall enabled too big to fail ... also leading to too big to prosecute and too big to jail, resulted in not holding accountable those responsible. It was the "capture" of regulatory agencies and their failure to enforce regulation.

pecora &/or glass-steagall posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
too big to fail posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
regulatory capture posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#regulatory.capture

President of AMEX was in competition to be next CEO and wins. The looser leaves, taking their protegee to Baltimore where they acquire what as described as loan sharking business. They make some number of other acquisitions, eventually acquiring CITI in violation of Glass-Steagall. Greenspan gives them an exemption while they lobby congress to get repeal of Glass-Steagall (enabling too big to fail). They enlist several in DC, including the SECTREAS. After they get the ball rolling, the SECTREAS resigns to become what was described at the time as co-CEO of CITI. The protegee then leaves and becomes head of another too big to fail (JPMorgan Chase).

After SECTREAS resigns (to join CITI), he is replaced by their protegee, Larry Summers. Then "Is Harvard responsible for the Rise of Putin?" (i.e. Russia needed strongman to oppose the westerners that seemed intent on looting the country). John Helmer: Convicted Fraudster Jonathan Hay, Harvard's Man Who Wrecked Russia, Resurfaces in Ukraine
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/02/convicted-fraudster-jonathan-hay-harvards-man-who-wrecked-russia-resurfaces-in-ukraine.html
If you are unfamiliar with this fiasco, which was also the true proximate cause of Larry Summers' ouster from Harvard, you must read an extraordinary expose, How Harvard Lost Russia, from Institutional Investor. I am told copies of this article were stuffed in every Harvard faculty member's inbox the day Summers got a vote of no confidence and resigned shortly thereafter.
... snip ...

How Harvard lost Russia; The best and brightest of America's premier university came to Moscow in the 1990s to teach Russians how to be capitalists. This is the inside story of how their efforts led to scandal and disgrace.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160325154522/http://www.institutionalinvestor.com:80/Article/1020662/How-Harvard-lost-Russia.html
Mostly, they hurt Russia and its hopes of establishing a lasting framework for a stable Western-style capitalism, as Summers himself acknowledged when he testified under oath in the U.S. lawsuit in Cambridge in 2002. "The project was of enormous value," said Summers, who by then had been installed as the president of Harvard. "Its cessation was damaging to Russian economic reform and to the U.S.-Russian relationship."
... snip ...

recent posts mentioning Milton Friedman
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#17 Destruction of the Middle Class
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#24 Destruction of the Middle Class
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#26 Milton Friedman's Cherished Theory Is Laid to Rest
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#29 Milton Friedman's Cherished Theory Is Laid to Rest
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#31 Milton Friedman's Cherished Theory Is Laid to Rest
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#34 If economists want to be trusted again, they should learn to tell jokes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#92 Trump's Rollback of the Neoliberal Market State
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#93 The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds Kindle Edition
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#97 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#102 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#104 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#11 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#17 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#43 when to get out???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#67 Economists are arguing over how their profession messed up during the Great Recession. This is what happened
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#77 Trump delay of the 'fiduciary rule' will cost retirement savers $3.7 billion
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#93 United Air Lines - an OODA-loop perspective
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#7 Arthur Laffer's Theory on Tax Cuts Comes to Life Once More
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#44 [CM] cheap money, was What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#96 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#8 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#16 Conservatives and Spending
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#44 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#45 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#53 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#6 Mapping the decentralized world of tomorrow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#19 Financial, Healthcare, Construction, Education complexity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#49 Shareholders Ahead Of Employees
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#63 Real World OODA
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#79 Bad Ideas

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

Mannix "computer in a briefcase"

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mannix "computer in a briefcase"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2017 14:31:06 -0700
Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> writes:
Yes. That's why I find it amazing the IBM employee already bitched about Microsoft and MS-DOS in early 1987. Could be possible something was going on already in 1987 which did not make it to the public.

march 1996 mdc at moscone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Developers_Conference

... all the banners said "internet" ... but the constant refrain in the sessions was "preserve your investment".
https://news.microsoft.com/1996/02/19/microsoft-to-host-largest-internet-developers-conference/
https://everystevejobsvideo.com/steve-jobs-presents-webobjects-at-mspdc-1996-2/

some internal m'soft people commented that up until then people had always been buying the latest release of software to get new feature/function they wanted. however 1996 start to represent a turning point, that the majority of all people had all the features that they needed. it now changed to marketing campaign to get people to want new things ... but not necessarily because they needed them (like getting new car every year).

note late 80s, senior disk engineer got talk scheduled at the annual world-wide communication group conference supposedly on 3174 performance but started the talk with statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The communication group had corporate strategic ownership of everything that crossed the datacenter walls and was fiercely fighting off client/server and distributed computing trying to preserve its dumb terminal paradigm and install base. The disk division was seeing data fleeing the datacenter to more distributed computing friendly platforms with a drop in disk sales. This datacenter stranglehold turns out to affect all mainframe business and a few years later the company has gone into the red. some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal

Before IBM/PC had been announced, we had a group in silicon valley that thought it was doing software for the IBM/PC ... every month or so, we would re-affirm that Boca wasn't interested in doing software for the IBM/PC and we could. Then Boca changes its mind and says if you want to do software for the IBM/PC, you had to move to Boca ... and the whole thing collapses ... and Boca announces MS/DOS. There were some comments about corporate politics and Boca felt it was in better internal political position if it outsourced software to external groups than doing it themselves.

trivia, before ms/dos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS
there was seattle computer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Computer_Products
before seattle computer there was cp/m,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M
before doing cp/m, kildall worked with cp/67 (precursor to vm370)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/CMS
at npg school
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Postgraduate_School

... cp/67 from cambridge science center, past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

past posts mentioning Moscone MDC:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#49 Virus propagation risks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#45 Computer programming was all about:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#22 Why did TCP become popular ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#62 The Incredible Shrinking Legacy Workforces
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#32 who invented the "popup" ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#34 Next generation processor architecture?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#31 [OT] Faces of terrorism
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#32 Frontiernet insists on being my firewall
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#51 Specifying all biz rules in relational data
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#14 Expanded Storage
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#50 DOS C prompt in "Vista"?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#18 Oddly good news week: Google announces a Caps library for Javascript
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#87 CompUSA to Close after Jan. 1st 2008
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#26 realtors (and GM, too!)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#43 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#63 who pioneered the WEB
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#66 What is the protocal for GMT offset in SMTP (e-mail) header
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#37 (slightly OT - Linux) Did IBM bet on the wrong OS?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#36 Favourite computer history books?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#9 The IETF is probably the single element in the global equation of technology competition than has resulted in the INTERNET
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#40 The Great Cyberheist
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#49 Abhor, Retch, Ignite?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#50 IBM and the Computer Revolution
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#58 IBM and the Computer Revolution
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#15 Identifying Latest zOS Fixes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#57 Are Tablets a Passing Fad?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#14 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#15 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#18 John R. Opel, RIP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#59 The lost art of real programming
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#141 With cloud computing back to old problems as DDos attacks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#81 The PC industry is heading for collapse
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#93 Where are all the old tech workers?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#2 What are the implication of the ongoing cyber attacks on critical infrastructure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#18 Zeus/SpyEye 'Automatic Transfer' Module Masks Online Banking Theft
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#32 Zeus/SpyEye 'Automatic Transfer' Module Masks Online Banking Theft
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#37 Simulated PDP-11 Blinkenlight front panel for SimH
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#93 Gordon Crovitz: Who Really Invented the Internet?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#97 Gordon Crovitz: Who Really Invented the Internet?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#14 The growing openness of an organization's infrastructure has greatly impacted security landscape
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#45 New HD
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#68 Steve B sees what investors think
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#30 Zeus malware found with valid digital certificate
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#10 It's all K&R's fault
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#11 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#23 weird trivia
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#87 On a lighter note, even the Holograms are demonstrating
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#45 Western Union envisioned internet functionality
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#35 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#90 These hackers warned the Internet would become a security disaster. Nobody listened
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#35 [Poll] Computing favorities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#39 [Poll] Computing favorities
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#106 Computers anyone?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#69 Open DoD's Doors To Cyber Talent, Carter Asks Congress
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#79 Is it a lost cause?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#19 Is it a lost cause?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#35 How the internet was invented
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#38 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#92 Old hardware
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#8 Ironic old "fortune"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#90 Ransomware on Mainframe application ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#100 Jean Sammet, Co-Designer of a Pioneering Computer Language, Dies at 89
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#14 Mainframe Networking problems
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#16 The Microsoft security hole at the heart of Russian election hacking
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#46 Windows 10 Pro automatic update

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

How can we stop algorithms telling lies?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: How can we stop algorithms telling lies?
Date: 16 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#82 How can we stop algorithms telling lies?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#83 How can we stop algorithms telling lies?

Regulatory Capture
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
regulatory capture posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#regulatory.capture

#1 on time's list of those responsible for economic mess
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877339,00.html
with his friends (including one of people responsible for Dodd-Frank)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124588865553750813

economic mess posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess

#2 on time's list of those responsible for economic mess
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877330,00.html

#2 responsible for GLBA and repeal of Glass-Steagall ... Pecora Hearings and/or Glass-Steagall
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall

but got ranking behind law to prevent regulation of CDS (gambling bets, originally billed as favor for ENRON). The head of CFTC was quickly replaced by #2's wife when they proposed regulating CDS.

Gramm and the 'Enron Loophole'
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/business/17grammside.html
Enron was a major contributor to Mr. Gramm's political campaigns, and Mr. Gramm's wife, Wendy, served on the Enron board, which she joined after stepping down as chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
... snip ...

Phil Gramm's Enron Favor .. gone 404 but lives on at wayback machine
https://web.archive.org/web/20080711114839/http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-01-15/news/phil-gramm-s-enron-favor/
A few days after she got the ball rolling on the exemption, Wendy Gramm resigned from the commission. Enron soon appointed her to its board of directors, where she served on the audit committee, which oversees the inner financial workings of the corporation. For this, the company paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in stocks and dividends, as much as $50,000 in annual salary, and $176,000 in attendance fees
... snip ...

ENRON posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#enron

Triple-A ratings original eliminated any reason to care about borrowers' qualification. Then they started packaging securitized mortgages designed to fail, pay for triple-A, sell to their customers, and take out CDS gambling bets they would fail (creating huge demand for dodgy mortgages). AIG was the largest holder of the CDS gambling bets and was negotiating to pay off at 50cents on the dollar, when SECTREAS steps in, has them sign document that they can't sue those making the bets and take TARP funds to pay off at face-value. The largest recipient of TARP funds was AIG, and the largest recipient of face-value payoffs was firm formally headed by SECTREAS.

toxic CDO
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo

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

IBM Train Wreck Continues Ahead of Earnings

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM Train Wreck Continues Ahead of Earnings
Date: 17 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
IBM Train Wreck Continues Ahead of Earnings
http://247wallst.com/investing/2017/07/16/ibm-train-wreck-continues-ahead-of-earnings/

From the law of unintended consequences, IBM/PCs evolve into client/server and distributed computing. Late 80s, communication group is fiercely fighting off client/server and distributed computing trying to preserve their dumb (emulated) terminal paradigm and install base. Senior disk engineer gets talk scheduled at internal, annual, world-wide communication group conference supposedly on 3174 performance, but opens the talk with the statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The disk division was seeing data fleeing the datacenter to more distributed computing friendly platforms with drop in disk sales. The disk division had some up with several solution to the problem ... but the communication group with corporate strategic responsibility for everything that crosses the datacenter walls ... and constantly vetoes them. Note that it isn't disk division ... but all mainframe products, a couple years later the company goes into the red. some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal

Also, the government has come out with direction to eliminate tcp/ip and the internet and move to OSI (GOSIP) ... and the head of the communication group puts out statement about supporting OSI and not TCP/IP and the internet. Despite communication group objections, I'm on the technical advisery board for XTP. We take XTP to ISO/ANSI X3S3.3 standards group (responsible for level 3&4 in OSI) as HSP (high-speed protocol). It gets rejected because ISO has guidelines that no making standards that don't conform to OSI. XTP/HSP violates OSI: 1) supports internetworking ... a non-existent layer between OSI level 3&4. 2) goes directly from level 4 to MAC/LAN interface ... bypassing interface between level 3 & level. 3) goes directly to MAC/LAN interface ... non-existent interface somewhere in the middle of level 3.

we make jokes that IETF requires at least two interoperable implementation before progressing to standard. ISO doesn't even require that a standard can be implementable. some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#xtphsp

2014 analysis, mainframe hardware had dropped below 4% of revenue and declining ... but the whole mainframe group was 25% of revenue and 40% of profit (software&services) ... milking static/captured base.

old post from 3yrs ago, IBM Is The 'Poster Child' For What's Wrong With Corporate Behavior Today
http://www.businessinsider.com/stan-druckenmiller-on-ibm-2014-7

for more than decade, large cloud operations have been saying that they assemble their own servers for 1/3rd the price of brand name vendors (they view dataprocessing as costs) and have aggressively pressured their suppliers for minimal margins. There are claims now that major server chip vendors now ship over half their volumes directly to large cloud operations .... and are even doing special versions of their chips for that market. This possibly was major motivation for IBM unloading its server product business.

The dataprocessing costs have so dramatically been reduced that 1) large mega datacenters have huge over-capacity of idle systems that can be immediately been brought online for on-demand computing .... also the major costs are increasingly environmental & power (as their system/hardware costs have dramatically dropped) ... and 2) cloud operations have increasingly pressured chip makers to optimize operational costs (electricity & cooling). During part of this period, there was lots of work on using laptop chips (optimized for battery low power usage) ... but the traditional server chip makers are coming back with significantly improved power use.

a large cloud megadatacenter will have hundreds of thousands of systems with millions of processor that operate with staff of 80-120 people.

I got con'ed into working with a baby bell in the early 80s and bringing their work (that did much of that) out as a type-1 product. The communication group was well known for corporate dirty politics ... so we did a whole lot of stuff to insulate from what they could do. We even got the largest 37x5 customer to agree to completely fund the effort (they claimed that they would completely recover the cost within 9months if they had it as type1 product). What the communication group did next can only be described as truth is stranger than fiction.

large cloud operators .... commoditizing everything dataprocessing
http://www.opencompute.org/
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Compute_Project
and
https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/building-efficient-data-centers-with-the-open-compute-project/10150144039563920/

past posts mentioning 25% of revenue and 40% of profit
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#67 How do you feel about the fact that today India has more IBM employees than any of the other countries in the world including the USA.?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#13 System/360--50 years--the future?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#4 Oracle To IBM: Your 'Customers Are Being Wildly Overcharged'
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#35 Reports: IBM may sell x86 server business to Lenovo
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#37 Where Does the Cloud Cover the Mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013n.html#61 Bet Cloud Computing to Win
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#80 IBM Sales Fall Again, Pressuring Rometty's Profit Goal
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#84 Is end of mainframe near ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#71 Decimation of the valuation of IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#155 IBM Continues To Crumble
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#30 Why on Earth Is IBM Still Making Mainframes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#85 a bit of hope? What was old is new again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#19 Linux Foundation Launches Open Mainframe Project
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#52 MVS Posix
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#62 Big Shrink to "Hire" 25,000 in the US, as Layoffs Pile Up
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#23 IBM "Breakup"

recent posts mentioning megadatacenter
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#23 Scary Sysprogs and educating those 'kids'
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#94 Santa has a Mainframe!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#97 Santa has a Mainframe!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#4 IBM Plans Big Spending for the Cloud ($1.2B)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#27 IBM sells x86 server business to Levono
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#72 How many EBCDIC machines are still around?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#22 US Federal Reserve pushes ahead with Faster Payments planning
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#108 The IBM Strategy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#4 Can the mainframe remain relevant in the cloud and mobile era?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#8 The IBM Strategy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#12 The IBM Strategy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#53 IBM hopes new chip can turn the tables on Intel
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#69 Is end of mainframe near ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#80 IBM Sales Fall Again, Pressuring Rometty's Profit Goal
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#84 Is end of mainframe near ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#86 Is end of mainframe near ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014g.html#4 Is end of mainframe near ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014g.html#14 Is end of mainframe near ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014g.html#20 Is end of mainframe near ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014g.html#65 Is end of mainframe near ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#5 Demonstrating Moore's law
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#24 IBM Opens New SoftLayer Data Center In Hong Kong
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#33 Can Ginni really lead the company to the next great product line?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#46 Demonstrating Moore's law
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#57 [CM] Mainframe tech is here to stay: just add innovation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#68 Over in the Mainframe Experts Network LinkedIn group
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014i.html#5 "F[R]eebie" software
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#20 Blinkenlights
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#87 Demonstrating Moore's law
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014k.html#2 Flat (VSAM or other) files still in use?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014l.html#0 HP splits, again
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014l.html#56 This Chart From IBM Explains Why Cloud Computing Is Such A Game-Changer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014l.html#90 What's the difference between doing performance in a mainframe environment versus doing in others
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#113 How Much Bandwidth do we have?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#129 Is there an Inventory of the Installed Mainframe Systems Worldwide and or for Europe alone?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#144 LEO
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#145 IBM Continues To Crumble
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#155 IBM Continues To Crumble
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#166 Slushware
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#170 IBM Continues To Crumble
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#35 [CM] IBM releases Z13 Mainframe - looks like Batman
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#46 Why on Earth Is IBM Still Making Mainframes?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#78 Is there an Inventory of the Inalled Mainframe Systems Worldwide
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#82 Is there an Inventory of the Installed Mainframe Systems Worldwide
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#57 Economics of Mainframe Technology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#30 IBM Z13
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#50 Western Union envisioned internet functionality
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#69 Cambridge's HPC-as-a-service for boffins, big and small
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#0 What are some of your thoughts on future of mainframe in terms of Big Data?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#5 Can you have a robust IT system that needs experts to run it?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#35 Moving to the Cloud
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#83 Miniskirts and mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#93 Miniskirts and mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#18 Miniskirts and mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#19 Linux Foundation Launches Open Mainframe Project
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#83 Term "Open Systems" (as Sometimes Currently Used) is Dead -- Who's with Me?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#93 HP being sued, not by IBM.....yet!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#57 Introducing the New z13s: Tim's Hardware Highlights
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#93 Google joins Facebook's game-changing project that's eating the $140 billion hardware market
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#104 You count as an old-timer if (was Re: Origin of the phrase "XYZZY")
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#24 CeBIT and mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#61 Can commodity hardware actually emulate the power of a mainframe?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#50 China takes the lead in supercomputing while America sleeps
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#90 Google and Facebook put their fierce rivalry aside to save money in this key area
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#62 remote system support (i.e. the data center is 2 states away from you)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#77 Why the cloud is bad news for Cisco, Dell, and HP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#89 Why the cloud is bad news for Cisco, Dell, and HP
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016g.html#45 "I used a real computer at home...and so will you" (Popular Science May 1967)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016g.html#61 "I used a real computer at home...and so will you" (Popular Science May 1967)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#47 Why Can't You Buy z Mainframe Services from Amazon Cloud Services?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#48 Why Can't You Buy z Mainframe Services from Amazon Cloud Services?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#55 Why Can't You Buy z Mainframe Services from Amazon Cloud Services?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#57 Why Can't You Buy z Mainframe Services from Amazon Cloud Services?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#60 Why Can't You Buy z Mainframe Services from Amazon Cloud Services?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#21 History of Mainframe Cloud
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#6 How do BIG WEBSITES work?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#6 ComputerWorld Says: Cobol plays major role in U.S. government breaches
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#40 What are mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#48 360 announce day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#57 What are mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#94 Migration off Mainframe to other platform
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#9 The Mainframe vs. the Server Farm: A Comparison

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

IBM z14 High-lights

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: IBM z14 High-lights
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 17 Jul 2017 11:47:14 -0700
parwez_hamid@HOTMAIL.COM (Parwez Hamid) writes:
z14 Key H/W high-lights:

Up to 170 Customer PUs @ 5.2 GHz each on a 14 nm 10 core chip
Up to 32 TB Memory
Uni = 1832 'mips', 170-way = 146462 'mips'


history

z900, 16 processors, 2.5BIPS (156MIPS/proc), Dec2000
z990, 32 processors, 9BIPS, (281MIPS/proc), 2003
z9, 54 processors, 18BIPS (333MIPS/proc), July2005
z10, 64 processors, 30BIPS (469MIPS/proc), Feb2008
z196, 80 processors, 50BIPS (625MIPS/proc), Jul2010
EC12, 101 processors, 75BIPS (743MIPS/proc), Aug2012
z13, 141 processors, 100BIPS (710MIPS/proc), Jan2015
...
z14, 170 processor, 146.5 BIPS, (862MIPS/proc - half uni), Aug2017


z196 documentation claims that half the per processor performance improvement (compared to z10), is the introduction of out-of-order execution (compared to being used for decades in other processors) ... i.e. half of 156MIPS increase from 469MIPS to 625MIPS. out-of-order helps to mask huge latency in memory access ... potentially allowing execution of other instructions while waiting on cache miss.

added to out-of-order execution are branch prediction and speculative execution ... 360/195 had just out-of-order execution ... but conditional branches drained the pipeline ... most codes ran at only half the 195 rated mip-rate (5mips rather than 10mips).

Current latency to memory, when measured in number of processor cycles ... is comparable to 60s disk access latency, when measured in number of 60s processor cycles.

almost 18yrs, the number of processors increase by factor of ten times, while per processor performance increase by 5.5 times ... overall increase 58.6 times.

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

IBM Mainframe Ushers in New Era of Data Protection

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM Mainframe Ushers in New Era of Data Protection
Date: 17 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
IBM Mainframe Ushers in New Era of Data Protection
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibm-mainframe-ushers-in-new-era-of-data-protection-300488819.html

We brought in to help word smith some cal. state legislation. They were working on electronic signature, data breach notification and opt-in personal information sharing.

Some of the participants were heavily involved in privacy issues and had done in-depth public surveys. The number one issue was fraudulent financial transactions frequently as a result of breaches. Organizations normally take security measures in self-protection. In these breach cases, the organizations weren't at risk, it was the public and little or nothing was being done. It was hoped that the publicity from the notification might result in corrective action. past data breach notification posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#data.breach.notification.notification

Sometime later PCI appeared, which seemed to correspond with some proposed federal breach notification bills that justified eliminating notification because there was an industry security specification. The joke was that the effect of early PCI was that if an organization had a breach, their certification would be revoked.

We were also writing financial standards (as opposed to industry specifications); somewhat as a result from having done "electronic commerce" we had been asked to participate in X9A10 financial standard working group which had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments. We did end-to-end vulnerability studies of several payment methods. Major issue was dual-use, financial transactions effectively had information that was 1) used for authentication and as such needed to be kept completely confidential and never divulged and 2) needed to be ready available because it was used in dozen of business processes at millions locations around the planet. We frequently commented that even if the planet was buried under miles of information hiding encryption, it still wouldn't stop the information leakage. some other refs:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#security.proportional.to.risk

As a result, we wrote a financial standard that slightly tweaked the current infrastructure and eliminated the dual-use characteristics and the ability for attackers to use information from previous transactions for performing fraudulent transactions (and also eliminated the need to encrypt the transaction, both in transmission and at rest). Now the major use of "SSL" (TLS) has been to hide electronic commerce information during transmission ... this standard also eliminated the need to use "SSL" for that purpose. some reference
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#privacy

Head TD for the information assurance directorate had panel discussion in the trusted computing track at Intel Developer's forum asked me to do talk on security chip that I designed as part of supporting standard, gone 404, but lives on at wayback machine
http://web.archive.org/web/20011109072807/http://www.intel94.com/idf/spr2001/sessiondescription.asp?id=stp%2bs13
other past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#trusted.computing
reference to chip and associated patents
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

... oh, and ....
z900, 16 processors, 2.5BIPS (156MIPS/proc), Dec2000
z990, 32 processors, 9BIPS, (281MIPS/proc), 2003
z9, 54 processors, 18BIPS (333MIPS/proc), July2005
z10, 64 processors, 30BIPS (469MIPS/proc), Feb2008
z196, 80 processors, 50BIPS (625MIPS/proc), Jul2010
EC12, 101 processors, 75BIPS (743MIPS/proc), Aug2012
z13, 141 processors, 100BIPS (710MIPS/proc), Jan2015
...
z14, 170 processor, 146.5 BIPS, (862MIPS/proc - half uni), Aug2017


z196 documentation claims that half the per processor performance improvement (compared to z10), is the introduction of out-of-order execution (compared to being used for decades in other processors) ... i.e. half of 156MIPS increase from 469MIPS to 625MIPS. out-of-order helps to mask huge latency in memory access ... potentially allowing execution of other instructions while waiting on cache miss.

added to out-of-order execution are branch prediction and speculative execution ... 360/195 had just out-of-order execution ... but conditional branches drained the pipeline ... most codes ran at only half the 195 rated mip-rate (5mips rather than 10mips).

Current latency to memory, when measured in number of processor cycles ... is comparable to 60s disk access latency, when measured in number of 60s processor cycles.

almost 18yrs, the number of processors increase by factor of ten times, while per processor performance increase by 5.5 times ... overall increase 58.6 times.

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

z/VM subcapacity pricing

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: z/VM subcapacity pricing
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 17 Jul 2017 14:19:09 -0700
gibney@WSU.EDU (Gibney, Dave) writes:
As an aside, I spent several years with a uni-processor (z800). There are significant benefits to having at least 2 processors. The benefits of fewer/faster processors go hockey stick when fewer becomes 1.

I remember in the 90s when they complained NT would regularly do that ... and "fix" was at least 2 processors. I felt really smug that my vm mainframe resource manager/scheduler would never do that ... dating back to when I first wrote it as undergraduate in the 60s for cp67. ... some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

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

Stopping the Internet of noise

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Stopping the Internet of noise
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2017 16:50:15 -0700
Richard Thiebaud <thiebauddick2@aol.com> writes:
Back in my olden days, CICS and DB2 did not yet exist.

CICS and IMS from 60s.

IMS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Information_Management_System
history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Information_Management_System#History
IBM designed the IMS with Rockwell and Caterpillar starting in 1966 for the Apollo program, where it was used to inventory the very large bill of materials (BOM) for the Saturn V moon rocket and Apollo space vehicle.
... snip ...

IMS development was moved to STL which opened in 1977 south of the san jose plant site.

1980, STL was bursting at the seams and 300 people were being moved to offsite bldg (just south of san jose plant site) with dataprocessing back to STL machine room. They tried "remote 3270" but found the human factors totally unacceptable. I got conned into development channel-extender support ... so they could have channel attached controllers at the remote bldg. some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#channel.extender

CICS was developed at customer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CICS
early history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CICS#History

univ. library got ONR grant to do online catalog and used part of the money to get 2321 datacell. The effort was also selected to be betatest for the original CICS program product (1969, I got tagged to help debug/support CICS).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CICS#Early_evolution
some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#cics

part of tight efficient implementation was purely single-threaded and didn't scale well as machines got larger (including lack of multiprocessor operation). circa 2000, there were large mainframes that ran over 120 concurrent CICS instances in order to use the machine resources. some more cics reference ... gone 404, but lives on at wayback machine

The Evolution of CICS: CICS and Multiprocessor Exploitation (2004)
http://web.archive.org/web/20041023110006/http://www.yelavich.com/history/ev200402.htm
and
http://web.archive.org/web/20050409124902/www.yelavich.com/cicshist.htm

SJR was doing original sql/relational "system/r" implementation on vm370 370/145, ... some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

although Multics shipped the first relational product in 1976
http://multicians.org/mgm.html#MRDS
history
http://multicians.org/history.html

I was doing some of the work on system/r ... then when Gray leaves for Tandem, he offloads some number of things on me, some of the system/r work and also DBMS consulting with the IMS group (unrelated to the channel extender work I had done for them). some old email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801016
recent reference to Jim, System/R, Jim's disappearance, and celebration of his life:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#37 MVS vs HASP vs JES (was 2821)

Early 80s, STL was working on the latest, greatest DBMS follow-on ... code named EAGLE. While EAGLE was going on, it was possible to do tech. transfer "under the radar" to Endicott for SQL/DS. Later, after EAGLE implodes, there is request how fast can it be ported to MVS ... which is eventually released as DB2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_DB2
and some history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_DB2#History

trivia: in the HA/CMP cluster scale-up meeting in Ellison's conference room, one of the oracle people in the meeting would claimed he was responsible for the SQL/DS tech transfer from Endicott to STL as part of DB2 work.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
HA/CMP posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
some old cluster scale-up email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

other triva: one of reason why we were working with non-IBM RDBMS as part of HA/CMP ... was IBM had just started work on a "C language", non-mainframe RDBMS implementation ... originally for OS/2 ... which didn't match feature, function, performance of other non-mainframe implementations.

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

IBM Mainframe Ushers in New Era of Data Protection

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM Mainframe Ushers in New Era of Data Protection
Date: 17 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#88 IBM Mainframe Ushers in New Era of Data Protection

early 80s, had HSDT project with T1 (and faster speed) links. IBM required that all links leaving physical premise required encryption (mid-80s, link encryptor company claimed that the ibm internal network had more than half of all link encryptors in the world). I didn't like what I had to pay for T1 link encryptors and faster link encryptors were really hard to find.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

At that time, straight software DES was really expensive. I did some number of tests and a dedicated 3081K processor could keep up with 1.5mbits/sec and both processors would be dedicated to handle DES encrypt/decrypt full-duplex T1, old email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#email841115
other old crypto email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#crypto

I then get involved in doing crypto hardware costing less than $100 to build and being able to handle several mbytes/sec (not mbits). The corporate crypto group first claimed that it significantly weakened DES encryption. It took me three months to figure out how to explain what was going on. However it was hollow victory, I was told I could make as many as I wanted but there was only one organization in the world that could use them. It was when I first realized that there were 3kinds of crypto 1) the kind they don't care about, 2) the kind you can't do, 3) the kind you can only do for them.

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

In Silicon Valley, dropping in at the GooglePlex, tech museums and the Jobs garage

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: In Silicon Valley, dropping in at the GooglePlex, tech museums and the Jobs garage
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 18 Jul 2017 09:49:14 -0700
gabe@GABEGOLD.COM (Gabe Goldberg) writes:
So when Southwest Airlines started offering daily nonstops from Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport to San Jose, I booked a trip with my husband, Eric. After an affordable transcontinental flight, we landed at Mineta San Jose International Airport, in the heart of Silicon Valley.

really conflicted about (almost) doing the reverse (on Alaska). One of the Boyd "people" is back from Afghanastan for a couple weeks and will be holding Boyd "beer" night in the basement of Ft. Myers O-club this week (Boyd would regularly hold court there)... I use to sponsor Boyd briefings at IBM. Boyd posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

I also used to sponsor (IBM) "Friday after work" in San Jose, frequently (half priced pictures of anchor steam) at Eric's on Cottle across from the main plant site. Eric's is still there ... but much of the plant site has been plowed under and the rest is no longer IBM. I'm no longer in San Jose ... but I try and stop by Eric's every year when I go back for "Hacker's" (silicon valley invitation only tech conference, for a time I was the only IBMer, early conferences, people could bring unannounced products for others to play with; culture has significantly changed since early days, been a long time since Apple developers show up with unannounced products for competitors to play with).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hackers_Conference

Old post mentioning Boyd (posted to IBM-MAIN)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#25
includes several old emails mentioning Boyd ... including a "Friday's" email notice mentioning that I have hardcopies handouts of Boyd's presentation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#email830513

1998 sat. photo of old plant site, 85 running horizontal across lower half of the picture and cottle rd running vertical across left side of picture, railroad running diagnally across upper right, "IBM" plant site still mostly intact in the middle. Bldg. 28 (triangle shape, old san jose research) in the upper right intersection of cottle & 85, with the homestead (and lake) next to it.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/ibm5600-1998.jpg

San Jose Plan Site

current area, lots of plant site gone, now condos, apartments, stores
https://www.google.com/maps/place/5705+Cottle+Rd,+San+Jose,+CA+95123/@37.2475123,-121.7992293,17z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x808e2e2206d7d93f:0xf9653a5d907afd29!8m2!3d37.2491008!4d-121.8046366

last year, both bldg 14&15 (where I played disk engineer) still existed, current sat. view, bldg 15 is plowed under ... bldg. 14 still exists and cars in the parking lot. posts getting to play disk engineer in bldg 14&15
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

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

The U.S. Military Believes People Have a Sixth Sense

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The U.S. Military Believes People Have a Sixth Sense
Date: 18 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
The U.S. Military Believes People Have a Sixth Sense
http://time.com/4721715/phenomena-annie-jacobsen/

Somewhat different view is that people learn/know stuff for which there aren't words (Chet has written how TPS related to Boyd & OODA-loop)

Japanese "mission command": How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/how-toyota-turns-workers-into-problem-solvers
To paraphrase one of our contacts, he said, "It's not that we don't want to tell you what TPS is, it's that we can't. We don't have adequate words for it. But, we can show you what TPS is."
... and
We've observed that Toyota, its best suppliers, and other companies that have learned well from Toyota can confidently distribute a tremendous amount of responsibility to the people who actually do the work, from the most senior, experienced member of the organization to the most junior. This is accomplished because of the tremendous emphasis on teaching everyone how to be a skillful problem solver.
...

In briefings Boyd would also stress pushing decisions to the people closest/directly involved in the problems

posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

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

AI Is Inventing Languages Humans Can't Understand. Should We Stop It?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: AI Is Inventing Languages Humans Can't Understand. Should We Stop It?
Date: 18 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
AI Is Inventing Languages Humans Can't Understand. Should We Stop It?; Researchers at Facebook realized their bots were chattering in a new language. Then they stopped it.
https://www.fastcodesign.com/90132632/ai-is-inventing-its-own-perfect-languages-should-we-let-it

somewhat related to language ... part of recent Boyd related thread:
http://time.com/4721715/phenomena-annie-jacobsen/

some related to language ... part of recent Boyd related thread
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#93 The U.S. Military Believes People Have a Sixth Sense

trivia: Late 70s and early 80s, I was blamed for online computer conferencing (precursor to modern social media) on the internal network (larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until something mid-80s). Folklore is that when the corporate executive committee was informed of online computer conferencing (and the internal network), 5of6 wanted to fire me. From IBMJARGON:

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 ...

Somewhat as a result, a researcher was paid to sit in the back of my office for nine months taking notes on how I communicated, face-to-face, telephone, went with me to meetings; they also got logs of instant messages and copies of all incoming and outgoing email (some analysis that I had email exchanges with an avg. of 270 people/week). The results were papers, books, and Stanford PHD (joint with language and computer AI, Winograd was adviser on AI side). The researcher had been a ESL (english as second language) teacher in prior life and commented that my use of english was characteristic of non-native speaker, although I have no other natural language (implication that I was thinking outside natural language and translating to English).

posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
and
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc
and
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

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

Hard Drives Started Out as Massive Machines That Were Rented by the Month

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Hard Drives Started Out as Massive Machines That Were Rented by the Month
Date: 18 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
Hard Drives Started Out as Massive Machines That Were Rented by the Month
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mba58x/hard-drives-started-out-as-massive-machines-that-were-rented-by-the-month?utm_source=mbfb

flying heads closer to surface allowed more data/area (higher data recording and reduced spacing between tracks). I had rewrote input/output supervisor so they could operating the mainframes (used for testing) with operating system ... doing multiple things concurrently (anytime, on-demand testing ... instead of prescheduled stand-alone 7x24, around the clock) as well as using the mainframes for other things. Guy doing air-bearing simulation for the latest generation of low-flying heads ... was only getting a week or two turn-around on the research 370/195 in bldg. 28. bldg. 15 got an early engineering 3033 and there was only 1 or 2 percent CPU used for disk testing. We set air-bearing simulation up on the 3033 (3033 had got less than half the MIP rate of 195, but he could still get multiple turn-arounds per day, rather than a turn around every couple weeks).

Original 3380 had twenty-track spacings between every data track. Double density 3380, doubled the number of tracks per surface by cutting the space in half (to ten-track spacings). Triple density 3380 cut the spacing in half again.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#email871122

This is old email ... the father of 801/risc was con'ing me into helping him with wide-head design ... format was (adjacent) sixteen data tracks between two servo-tracks. The wide-head would simultaneously follow the two servo tracks while read/write the sixteen data tracks. Problem was that at (3380) 3mbytes/sec ... that resulted in 48mbytes/sec data rate. IBM mainframe channel data-rate was just 3mbytes/sec. Even ESCON announced in 1990 was only 17mbytes/sec ... IBM had no product that such a disk could be attached to.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#email871230

350
http://chmhdd.wikifoundry.com/page/IBM+350+Disk+Storage+%28RAMAC+disk+drive%29
original being done by computer history museuam
http://chmhdd.wikifoundry.com/

late 80s, a senior disk engineer gets a talk scheduled at internal annual world-wide communication group conference supposedly on 3174 performance ... but opens the talk with the statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The issue was that the communication group had stranglehold on datacenters with strategic responsibility for everything that crossed the datacenter walls and were fiercely fighting off client/server and distributed computing, trying to preserve their (emulated) dumb terminal paradigm and install base. The disk division was seeing data fleeing the data center to more distributed computing friendly platforms with drop in disk sales. The disk division had come up with several solutions to address the problem but they were constantly being vetoed by the communication group. A few short years later the company has gone into the red.

posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal

lots of history had existed at the IBM San Jose website ... but that has all gone 404 .. although some can still be found at the wayback machine
http://web.archive.org/web/20010809021812/www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/firsts/index.htm

past posts mentioning wide-head:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#30 Why magnetic drums was/are worse than disks ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#66 Was there ever a 10in floppy?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#75 Disksize history question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#52 Basic question about CPU instructions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#39 A bit of IBM System 360 nostalgia
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#103 Hard Disk Drive Construction
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#3 The Big, Bad Bit Stuffers of IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#9 Demonstrating Moore's law
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#2 IBM DASD RAS discussion
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#54 GREAT presentation on the history of the mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#60 Optimizing the Hard Disk Directly
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#71 Software as a Replacement of Hardware
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#88 Paging subsystems in the era of bigass memory

past posts mentioning air-bearing simulation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#39 195 was: Computer Typesetting Was: Movies with source code
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#30 Weird
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#63 Help me find pics of a UNIVAC please
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#74 They Got Mail: Not-So-Fond Farewells
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#51 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#52 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#69 Multics Concepts For the Contemporary Computing World
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#20 360 Microde Floating Point Fix
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#45 hung/zombie users ... long boring, wandering story
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#21 40th anniversary of IBM System/360 on 7 Apr 2004
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#15 harddisk in space
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#15 360 longevity, was RISCs too close to hardware?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#25 CKD Disks?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#8 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#4 System/360; Hardwired vs. Microcoded
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#5 System/360; Hardwired vs. Microcoded
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#44 Intel engineer discusses their dual-core design
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#29 IBM microwave application--early data communications
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#6 IBM 610 workstation computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#0 IBM 610 workstation computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#13 IBM 610 workstation computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#14 IBM 610 workstation computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#6 Google Architecture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#18 virtual memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#42 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#41 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#18 Why so little parallelism?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#27 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#31 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#43 FBA rant
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#44 Is computer history taught now?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#46 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#83 Disc Drives
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#13 Interrupts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#64 Disc Drives
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#52 Drums: Memory or Peripheral?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#77 Disk drive improvements
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#60 recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#9 Assembler Question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#49 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#75 Disksize history question
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#51 "Portable" data centers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#16 Looking for a real Fortran-66 compatible PC compiler (CP/M or DOS or Windows, doesn't matter)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#36 CKD DASD
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#57 Speed of Old Hard Disks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#60 Speed of Old Hard Disks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#26 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#63 The first personal computer (PC)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#87 Gee... I wonder if I qualify for "old geek"?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#36 Last Word on Dennis Ritchie
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#26 Deja Cloud?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#134 Start Interpretive Execution
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#59 ISO documentation of IBM 3375, 3380 and 3390 track format
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#70 bubble memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013g.html#23 Old data storage or data base
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014l.html#78 Could this be the wrongest prediction of all time?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#61 ou sont les VAXen d'antan, was Variable-Length Instructions that aren't
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#3 You count as an old-timer if (was Re: Origin of the phrase "XYZZY")
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#39 what is 3380 E?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#71 Software as a Replacement of Hardware

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

IBM Another Disappointment

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM Another Disappointment
Date: 19 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
IBM Another Disappointment
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4088527-ibm-another-disappointment

Watson AI panned, 5.25 years of sales decline ... Does IBM now stand for Inferior Biz Model?
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/19/ibm_q2fy2017_results/

one of the things from Tandem Memos explaining starting to buy other companies .... internal R&D spending is carried as expense ... while buying other companies is carried as an asset (even if the ROI is lower) ... starting to blame MBAs and the myopic focus on short term numbers.

from ibmjargon:
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.

Late 70s and early 80s, I was blamed for online computer conferencing (precursor to social media) on the internal network (larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime mid-80s). Folklore is that when the corporate executive committee was told about online computer conferencing (and the internal network), 5of6 wanetd to fire me. Trivia: HSDT project was funded out of the office of the sixth ... archive posts referencing HSDT
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

"puts on IBM", but doesn't represents any net added value ... it is just skimming money from somebody else.

there has been articles about rise of HFT ... including front running ... inserting transaction millisecond ahead that skims money. there was some prediction that it eventually drives investors from the market leaving just the HFT computers slugging it out.

this is from 2007, before HFT really kicks in ... all the illegal activity has nothing to fear from the SEC:
http://nypost.com/2007/03/20/cramer-reveals-a-bit-too-much/

before NSCC merge with DTC to form DTCC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Trust_%26_Clearing_Corporation

I had worked on X9 financial standards with somebody from NSCC and they invited me in to do some work on improving the integrity of trading floor transactions. I work on it for awhile and then get a call saying it is being suspended. An unanticipated side-effect of the integrity work would greatly improve transparency and visibility ... something that is an anathema to wallstreet culture.

trivia: in the congressional Madoff hearings they had testimony from the person that had tried unsuccessfully for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff (SEC hands were forced when Madoff turned himself in, apparently looking for gov. protection from some of the people he had defrauded). Congress asked the person if new regulations were needed. He said that while new regulations might be needed, but much more important would be transparency and visibility (possibly because SEC wasn't enforcing existing regulation).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#madoff

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

IBM Another Disappointment

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM Another Disappointment
Date: 19 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#96 IBM Another Disappointment

Stockman's "The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism"
https://www.amazon.com/Great-Deformation-Corruption-Capitalism-America-ebook/dp/B00B3M3UK6/

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 ...

... aka top executives bonus plan tied to stock market.

stock-buyback posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#stock.buyback

IBM: Financial Engineering 101 Says This Is Bad
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2608915-ibm-financial-engineering-101-says-this-is-bad
Why the "Maximizing Shareholder Value" Theory of Corporate Governance is Bogus
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/10/why-the-maximizing-shareholder-value-theory-of-corporate-governance-is-bogus.html

past refs to "maximizing shareholder value" is bogus
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#9 The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#84 3Q earnings are becoming the norm at IBM. What is IBM management overlooking?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013n.html#1 IBM board OK repurchase of another $15B of stock
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013o.html#15 IBM Shrinks - Analysts Hate It
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#34 IBM sells x86 server business to Lenovo (was Levono)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#93 Maximizing shareholder value: The Goal that changed corporate America
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#101 Defense Department Needs to Act Like IBM to Save Itself
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#55 Maximizing shareholder value: The goal that changed corporate America
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#65 Decimation of the valuation of IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#145 IBM Continues To Crumble
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#36 IBM CEO Rometty gets bonus despite company's woes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#54 Why the Pursuit of Shareholder Value Kills Innovation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#5 IBM's core business

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

modern programming languages?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: modern programming languages?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2017 13:57:20 -0700
hancock4 writes:
A while ago a school held a 'hackathon' for young programmers. They talked about coding, but didn't mention the language (see link below). What languages would they have used?

Universities finally realize that Java is a bad introductory programming language
https://thenextweb.com/dd/2017/04/24/universities-finally-realize-java-bad-introductory-programming-language/

a little drift, in the mid-90s, Becky held a mini-conference at our house of cal. univ. security people on computer security graduate programs. the observation was major problem was that the people in the programs were spending majority of their time trying to hack into systems ... for which they got points from their peers. It was nearly impossible to get them interested in designing and building secure systems.

Becky Bace's passing hits cybersecurity community hard
https://www.scmagazine.com/becky-baces-passing-hits-cybersecurity-community-hard/article/644432/
Remembering cybersecurity pioneer Becky Bace
https://www.the-parallax.com/2017/03/20/remembering-cybersecurity-pioneer-becky-bace/
Goodbye Mama Bear, the cybersecurity community will miss you
http://www.csoonline.com/article/3183459/security/goodbye-becky-bace-the-cybersecurity-community-will-miss-you.html
Rebecca Bace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Bace

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

The Real Reason You Should See Dunkirk: Hitler Lost World War II There

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The Real Reason You Should See Dunkirk: Hitler Lost World War II There
Date: 20 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
The Real Reason You Should See Dunkirk: Hitler Lost World War II There
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-real-reason-you-should-see-dunkirk-hitler-lost-world-war-21601

Panzer Leader (Heinz Guderian), loc1783-85:
On this day (the 24th) the Supreme Command intervened in the operations in progress, with results which were to have a most disastrous influence on the whole future course of the war. Hitler ordered the left wing to stop on the Aa. It was forbidden to cross that stream. We were not informed of the reasons for this. The order contained the words: 'Dunkirk is to be left to the Luftwaffe'.

loc1809-11:
On this day we attempted once again to attack towards Dunkirk and to close the ring about that sea fortress. But renewed orders to halt arrived. We were stopped within sight of Dunkirk! We watched the Luftwaffe attack. We also saw the armada of great and little ships by means of which the British were evacuating their forces.

loc1831-33:
The operation would have been completed very much more quickly if Supreme Headquarters had not kept ordering XIX Army Corps to stop and thus hindered its rapid and successful advance. What the future course of the war would have been if we had succeeded at that time in taking the British Ex¬peditionary Force prisoner at Dunkirk, it is now impossible to guess.
...snip ...

there have been refs that Goering talked Hitler into letting Luftwaffe handle Dunkirk

somewhat similar to US Army Air Corp claims that strategic bombing would win WW2 w/o US having to invade France. Then "European Campaign: Its Origins and Conduct":
https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/2011/pubs/the-european-campaign-its-origins-and-conduct/

loc2582-85:
The bomber preparation of Omaha Beach was a total failure, and German defenses on Omaha Beach were intact as American troops came ashore. At Utah Beach, the bombers were a little more effective because the IXth Bomber Command was using B-26 medium bombers. Wisely, in preparation for supporting the invasion, maintenance crews removed Norden bombsights from the bombers and installed the more effective low-level altitude sights.
... snip ...

A German equivalent was battle of the bulge. I've seen references that Patton told Eisenhower to let the Germans to advance to the outskirts of Paris ... they will then have out run their supplies and be able to roll them all up with little or no opposition. Eisenhower tells him that wouldn't be politically correct/acceptable. Then Patton and Montgomery are suppose to simultaneously attack each side of the base of the bulge. Montgomery failed to get into position, and most of the Germans managed to escape (but they left behind a lot of material).

John Foster Dulles played a major role in rebuilding German industry and military from the 20s until the early 40s. Later Dulles would say that he was building up Germany as counter to Soviet Russia
https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Foster-Dulles-Allen-Secret-ebook/dp/B00BY5QX1K/

Lots of US industry support for Germany, June1940, Germany had a victory celebration at the NYC Waldorf-Astoria with major industrialists. Lots of them were there to hear how to do business with the Nazis (and circumvent the neutrality laws)
https://www.amazon.com/Man-Called-Intrepid-Incredible-Narrative-ebook/dp/B00V9QVE5O/

From the law of unintended consequences, when the 1943 US Strategic Bombing program needed industry and military locations in Germany, they got detailed plans and coordinates from wallstreet. Later possibly because they had trouble justifying that strategic four engine heavy bomber program represented 1/3rd of US military spending for WW2, McNamara was LeMay's staff planning fire bombing German and Japanese cities (hard to miss a whole city).

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

Why CEO pay structures harm companies

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Why CEO pay structures harm companies
Date: 20 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
Why CEO pay structures harm companies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9rT9gUM7TM

I use to sponsor Boyd's briefings at IBM. In the briefings he would say that former military officers, steeped in rigid, top-down command&control were starting to contaminate corporate culture ... implying that only those at the very top know what they are doing. This appears to have helped justify explosion in ratio of top executive to avg. employee compensation to 400:1 after having been 20:1 for a long time and 10:1 in much of the rest of the world.

Boyd postings
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

Some amount has been written about how Toyota TPS relates to Boyd and OODA-loops: How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/how-toyota-turns-workers-into-problem-solvers
To paraphrase one of our contacts, he said, "It's not that we don't want to tell you what TPS is, it's that we can't. We don't have adequate words for it. But, we can show you what TPS is."
... snip ...

1) is the CEO (&/or a few top executives) directly doing everything that happens in the corporation?

2) look at it another way, avg worker compensation went flat around 1980, while productivity continued on its significant increase ... the increasing difference being pocketed by a very few at the top.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html?ref=sunday
and
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#49 Shareholders Ahead of Employees references

How GE, GM, Coca-Cola And Kodak Put Shareholders Ahead Of Employees
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2017/06/29/how-ge-gm-coca-cola-kodak-put-shareholders-ahead-of-employees/

has updated version of the 2011 NYT graphic ... from here
http://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

trivia: during the economic mess, there is claim that wallstreet financial services tripled in size as percent of GDP ... for nearly destroying the country's economy ... and are still fighting hard to maintain their position.

other recent facebook posts about IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#86 IBM Train Wreck Continues Ahead of Earnings
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#96 IBM Another Disappointment
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#97 IBM Another Disappointment

inequality posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#inequality

past 400:1 ratio posts:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#73 Should The CEO Have the Lowest Pay In Senior Management?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#24 To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#76 lack of information accuracy
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#71 Cormpany sponsored insurance
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#25 Taxes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#33 Taxes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#53 Are family businesses unfair competition?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#93 What do you think are the top characteristics of a good/effective leader in an organization? Do you feel these characteristics are learned or innate to an individual?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#2 Blinkylights
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#58 Traditional Approach Won't Take Businesses Far Places
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#14 realtors (and GM, too!)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#17 realtors (and GM, too!)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#61 The vanishing CEO bonus
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#5 Greed - If greed was the cause of the global meltdown then why does the biz community appoint those who so easily succumb to its temptations?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#41 Executive pay: time for a trim?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#44 Executive pay: time for a trim?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#50 Greed Is
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#80 Are reckless risks a natural fallout of "excessive" executive compensation ?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#25 The recently revealed excesses of John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, while the firm was receiving $25 Billion in TARP funds makes me sick
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#41 The subject is authoritarian tendencies in corporate management, and how they are related to political culture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#3 Congress Set to Approve Pay Cap of $500,000
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#73 Most 'leaders' do not 'lead' and the majority of 'managers' do not 'manage'. Why is this?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#2 CEO pay sinks - Wall Street Journal/Hay Group survey results just released
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#44 What TARP means for the future of executive pay
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#37 Young Developers Get Old Mainframers' Jobs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#48 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#8 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#39 Agile Workforce
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#33 The 2010 Census
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#62 Dodd-Frank Act Makes CEO-Worker Pay Gap Subject to Disclosure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#67 Idiotic programming style edicts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#22 60 Minutes News Report:Unemployed for over 99 weeks!
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#59 They always think we don't understand
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#66 They always think we don't understand
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#71 They always think we don't understand
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#10 OODA in highly stochastic environments
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#80 Chinese and Indian Entrepreneurs Are Eating America's Lunch
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#53 Productivity And Bubbles
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#13 The Seven Habits of Pointy-Haired Bosses
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#69 Who was the Greatest IBM President and CEO of the last century?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#28 computer bootlaces
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#147 The Myth of Work-Life Balance
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#25 You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#26 What's your favorite quote on "accountability"?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#12 Sun Tzu, Boyd, strategy and extensions of same
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#19 "Buffett Tax" and truth in numbers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#26 Strategy subsumes culture
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#31 PC industry is heading for more change
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#43 Where are all the old tech workers?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#44 What's the most interesting thing you do in your non-work life?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#90 IBM Doing Some Restructuring?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#16 IBM cuts more than 1,000 U.S. Workers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#91 The Fractal Organization: Creating sustainable organizations with the Viable System Model
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#77 Vampire Squid
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#73 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#81 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#84 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#3 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#31 How do you feel about the fact that today India has more IBM employees than US?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#32 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#41 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#36 Race Against the Machine
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#40 Core characteristics of resilience
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#87 Cultural attitudes towards failure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#65 General Mills computer
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#64 IBM Is Changing The Terms Of Its Retirement Plan, Which Is Frustrating Some Employees
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#33 IBM Spent A Million Dollars Renovating And Staffing Its Former CEO's Office
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#10 The Knowledge Economy Two Classes of Workers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#28 Flag bloat
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#50 IBM Furloughs U.S. Hardware Employees to Reduce Costs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#51 What Makes a Tax System Bizarre?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#91 IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe cuts as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#14 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#15 Why IBM Is Tumbling: BRIC Sales Plunge, Total Revenue Lowest Since 2009
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#29 upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#81 The Tragedy of Rapid Evolution?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014k.html#33 Power grid groans, blackouts roll through L.A. area as heat wave nears peak
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014l.html#61 How Comp-Sci went from passing fad to must have major
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#61 Decimation of the valuation of IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#80 Here's how a retired submarine captain would save IBM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#23 What were the complaints of binary code programmers that not accept Assembly?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#17 There's No Such Thing as Corporate DNA
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#14 Paying CEOs fat bonuses for stock performance doesn't work
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#50 rationality
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016g.html#13 Rogue sysadmins the target of Microsoft's new 'Shielded VM' security
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#49 [CM] What was your first home computer?

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

SEX

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: SEX
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2017 18:00:58 -0700
"J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> writes:
You can run your very own Z machine if you want to--Hercules emulates a fairly recent release of the Z architecture. Runs Z/OS just fine. The problem isn't the hardware, it's the operating system, which is covered by every kind of intellectual property protection that IBM's lawyers can dream up. IBM didn't copyright their eary system software--it was effectively open-source. Around the time that MVS was getting popular Gene Amdahl left IBM and started his own company that made credible plug-compatibles--at that point IBM tightened up the software licensing.

all software use to be free ... the 23june1969 unbundling announcement started charging for (application) software, se services, etc. ... however IBM was able to make the case that operating system (kernel) software should still be free. ... unbundling posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundling

Amdhal was working on ACS-360 ... IBM executives shut that down, in part because they were concerned that it would advance the state of the art so fast, that they would loose control of the market. discussion of the end of ACS-360
https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.html

Amdhal then leaves and start his own company.

IBM decides to more all 370 to virtual memory ... based on needing to significant improve multiprogramming level to keep processors busy .... disks were getting faster, but processors were getting much faster than disks were getting faster ... as a result the latency for disk i/o when measured in count of processor cycles was significsantly increasing. The analysis was that 370/165 with typical 1mbyte memory only supported concurrent tasks ... because MVT storage management was so bad that storage allocated for region/task was four times larger than typically used. Moving MVT to virtual memory met that could increase number of concurrent regions/tasks by factor of four times with little or no paging (aka 16mbyte virtual memory running on 1mbyte real memory). old post with discussing MVT->VS2/SVS (and then later VS2/MVS development was supposedly on glide path to future system ).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#73 Multiple Virtual Memory

IBM also start Future System project ... completely different than 360/370 and was going to completely replace 360/370. A major motivation/consideration for FS was countermeasure to clone controllers, i.e. the processor->controller interfaces would be so complex, it would make it very difficult for clone makers to make compatible products. some past posts mentioning 360 clone compatible controllers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

During FS period, 370 efforts were aso being shutdown (anticipating total different products) ... and from the law of unintended consequences, the lack of 370 products during the FS period is credited with giving clone processors market foothold. some FS posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
other FS reference
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm

Not long after Amdahl created his new company (but before shipping any machines), he gave a talk at large MIT auditorium ... and several of us from the science center attended ... misc. past science center posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

In the talk he was grilled about selling out to foreign competition, funding, manufacturing, etc by foreign company. During the talk, Amdahl was also asked about how he convinced the investment/money people to back his company. He said that customers had invested hundreds of billions in 360 software and even if IBM were to totally walk away from 360, that software base would be enough to keep him in business through the end of the century.

I've commented that could be construed of being aware of FS completely replacing 370 ... however Amdahl has repeatedly been asked about that and claims he was not aware of FS (started after he left IBM).

During FS, I continued to work on 360 & 370 ... even periodically ridiculing FS activities. Old email about migrating a bunch of CP/67 stuff to VM/370 base for CSC/VM (one of my hobbies was packaing, distributing, & supporting enhanced operating systems for internal datacenters)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750430

Then with the implosion of the FS effort, there was mad rush to get stuff back in the 370 product pipelines ... which contributes to decision to pick up bits&pieces of csc/vm to release in product.

Then with the rise of clone processor makers, the design was made to (also) start charging for kernel software ... and other bits&pieces of CSC/VM was selected as guinea pig for separately charged for kernel software ... including my dynamic adaptive resource manager
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
and virtual memory & paging infrastructure
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

the initial transition (on the way to replacing all previously free kernel software to all kernel software being charged for) had business "rules" that 1) free software couldn't have dependency on priced kernel software and 2) direct hardware support would be "free". From the law of unintended consequences, I had included the CP67 (SMP) kernel structure as part of the charged for VM370 project. Then when they made the decision to release VM370 SMP support, it 1) had to be "free" (multiprocessor hardware support), but 2) was dependent on the kernel structure rewrite in my charged-for "resource manager".

By the early 80s, the transition was made to start charging for all kernel software ... then comes the OCO-wars ... customers complaining about "object code only" ... change to no longer shipping source (and no longer shipping source maintenance). recent posts mentioning OCO-wars
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#59 The ICL 2900
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#18 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#23 Eliminating the systems programmer was Re: IBM cuts contractor billing by 15 percent (our else)

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

SEX

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: SEX
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2017 18:47:49 -0700
rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) writes:
Also in the mid-80s, while consulting for AMD's internal Engineering Support group, I ported the 4.3BSD networking code into Amdahl's UTS-5 v1.1 (a fairly stock AT&T System-V.2 Unix), running on an IBM 3081 [and an IBM 4341], under IBM's VM/SP, supporting both the Spartacus/Fibronics and the Auscom bus/tag channel controllers for Ethernet. The Ethernet driver was written in C, including building the channel command (CCW) lists, issuing StartIOs, and handling completion interrupts.

[I posted a considerably longer description in "comp.protocols.tcp-ip" circa 1989-01-20, in response to a query by John DeTreville at DEC, "Subject: Re: Time to port Berkeley TCP/IP?", but Google Groups doesn't seem to have it in its archive. (*sigh*) Let me know if you want me to say more...]

Amdahl's UTS-5 provided some very useful hooks from Unix to the underlying VM/SP, including mounts/unmounts of VM/CMS "mini-disks" as Unix raw disk devices. I wrote a C library that read *AND WROTE* such mini-disks [including block allocation/deallocation], enabling a "copycms" program that could copy VM/CMS files to Unix and vice-versa.


re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#101 SEX

there was an effort to get IBM to hire somebody that would be shortly graduating ... that had done UNIX port to 370. IBM declines and Amdahl hires him .... starting Au, aka Amdahl Unix, code named "GOLD", eventually released as UTS.

One of the people responsible for IBM's HASP (that morphs into JES2), some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#hasp

rather than joining the gburg JES group, he goes to Harrison and does the RASP project ... basically an MFT-based virtual memory system ... that included support for paged mapped filesystem ... w/o the performance problems that was in TSS/360 and Future System single-level-store ... akin to the page mapped filesystem that I had done for CMS ... some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mmap

as mentioned in this reference, the MVT->VS2/SVS prototype doesn't use any of the RASP stuff
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#73 Multiple Virtual Memory

and the person responsible eventually leaves IBM and joins Amdahl ... where he starts a "clean room" reimplementation of RASP as Aspen. IBM sues (even tho it isn't using any RASP technology) and court appointed code-review only finds a few trivial code fragments that are similar.

In the 90s there is some competition between GOLD and ASPEN for Amdahl resources. For whatever reason some Amdahl people try to drag me into the disagreement (we would get together at local watering holes after the monthly BAYBUNCH meetings at SLAC). You've got to remember that silicon valley was different culture then ... at the invitation only annual hacker's conference people might bring unannounced products to let competition and others play with.

My only contribution/suggestion would see if they could do the TSS/360 SSUP thing that IBM was doing for AT&T .... a stripped down TSS/360 kernel with just bare bones hardware support with AT&T unix layered on top (aka a merger of Aspen lower levels and UTS upper levels).

The issue was that FE wouldn't support hardware that didn't have full blown error handling, recovery, recording, RAS, EREP, etc. IBM was coming out with UCLA's LOCUS unix-work-alike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOCUS_(operating_system)

as AIX/370 (later AIX/ESA), but running under VM/370. Adding full-blown mainframe hardware RAS/EREP to these portable systems was several times larger than the straight-forward port ... so they would leverage the VM/370 RAS/EREP for systems running in virtual machine.

trivia: the VM/370 TCP/IP product was implemented in VS/Pascal ... but had a number of issues by the time it shipped. At first the communication group objecting to it shipping, when they couldn't completely block it ... they then claimed that all communication products were the responsibility of communication group ... and they took it over. When it shipped, it took nearly a whole 3090 processor to get 44kbytes/sec throughput.

I did the enhancements to support RFC1044 and in some tuning tests at cray research got sustained channel speed throughput between 4341 and cray machine ... only using modest amount of 4341 cpu ... possibly 500 times improvement in bytes moved per cpu instruction executed. some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

other trivia: my wife had written 3-tier, middle-layer into response to GOV. request for super-secure, campus, distributed environment. We merged the 3-tier, speedup and some other stuff into customer executive presentations .... which resulted in lots of attacks from the communication group, the SAA people, the token-ring people, etc. some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#3tier

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

SEX

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: SEX
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2017 20:01:19 -0700
"J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> writes:
I suspect anybody who wants to can clone the Z machines, but if you don't have an operating system for them what good are they? A Z with Z/OS is formidable, a Z without it doesnt' have much to offer over a similarly priced server farm.

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#101 SEX
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#102 SEX

Haven't seen the latest price for z14 ... a little of recent ibm-main discussion, max configurated z14 is 146BIPS. This also mentions that 2000-2017 ... mainframe processor performance has increased by factor of 5.5times ... max configured system has increased over by 55 times by increasing number of processors by ten times
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#87 IBM z14 High-lights

.... but max configured z196, ec12 and z13 were around $30M, aka (z196) $30M/50=$600K/BIPS, (ec12) $30M/75=$400K/BIPS, (z13) $30M/100=$300K/BIPS, and possibly z14 $30M/150=$200K/BIPS

from earlier financials, it looked like IBM was selling the equivalent of less than 60 max. configured ec12 systems per year.

the thing that was keeping this all going was software & services. IBM mainframe hardware sales accounted for 4% of revenue, but total mainframe division (including software & services) accounted for 25% of revenue and 40% of profit ... enormous milking of mainframe software & services cash cow. There has even been rumors that IBM has been in discussions about selling off the last vestiges of hardware (like it has done for chips, disks, etc).

z196 time-frame e5-2600V1 blade was 400-530BIPS (depending on model) ... and IBM had a base list price of $1815 or a little over $3/BIPS (compared to $600K/BIPS for z196 hardware and possible 3-4 times that for the software). However major cloud vendors were claiming they assemble systems for 1/3rd the price of brand name systems ... possibly $1/BIPS ... likely contributing to IBM selling off its server business.

z196 has gone from $600K/BIPS to possibly $200K/BIPS for latest z14 (and software possibly 3-4 times that, maybe hits $1M/BIPS). E5-2600V3 is about 2.5times E5-2500V1 ... which can make it TIPS+ (aka 1000+BIPS) ... and below $1/BIPS

e5-2600v5 (xeon being rebranded gold & platinum) will be in z14 time-frame
http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-e5-2699-v5-32-core-geekbench-score-leaked/

for similarly priced server farm at $30M may be more processing power than all mainframes in the world today.

recent posts mentioning e5-2600
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#19 follow up to dense code definition
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#73 The ICL 2900
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#6 How do BIG WEBSITES work?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#16 System z: I/O Interoperability Evolution - From Bus & Tag to FICON
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#1 GREAT presentation on the history of the mainframe
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#17 The Pentagon still uses computer software from 1958 to manage its contracts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#25 ARM Cortex A53 64 bit
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#57 What are mainframes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#58 Paging subsystems in the era of bigass memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#88 Paging subsystems in the era of bigass memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#10 WD ships 'world's largest' 12TB HGST Ultrastar He12 Helium 7200 RPM Enterprise HDDs
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#75 11May1992 (25 years ago) press on cluster scale-up
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#94 Migration off Mainframe to other platform
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#9 The Mainframe vs. the Server Farm: A Comparison
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#71 What is the most epic computer glitch you have ever seen?

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

SEX

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: SEX
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2017 10:15:22 -0700
Gareth's Downstairs Computer <headstone255.but.not.these.five.words@yahoo.com> writes:
AIUI, the interdata 8/32 (later Perkin Elmer) was based on the IBM instruction set.

trivia: when I was adding TTY/ascii terminal support to CP67, I tried to get the 2702 to do something it couldn't quiet do. CP67 had automatic terminal type identification, using SAD command switching between the 1052 line/port scanner and the 2741 line/port scanner. I extended the support for TTY/ascii ... being able to identify the terminal on the line/port switching between three types of port/line scanner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_270x

I then wanted to have a single dial-in number for common "hunt" group of number for all lines. While it was possible to use SAD ccw to switch type of line/port scanner ... they had taken a short-cut and while it was possible to associated any type of port/line scanner with any port/line ... and hard-wired the bit/baud rate for each line ... couldn't have 2741/1052 134.4 baud working on line/ports hardwired for TTY 110 baud (and vice-a-versa). hunt group reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_hunting

Somewhat as a result, the univ. started a clone controller project ... build channel interface card for interdata/3 programmed to emulate 2702 ... not only supporting SAD ccw to switch port/line scanner for each port/line ... but also doing dynamic line speed determination. interdata ref
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdata

This then gets enhanced to interdata/4 handling the 360 channel interface and cluster of interdata/3s handling the line/ports ... and Interdata is marketing it commercially ... resulting in article about four of us responsible for (some part of) clone controller business. It is rebranded when Perkin Elmer buys Interdata. some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

Late 80s, run into somebody claiming he made lots of money selling the clone controller box, primarily into federal gov. market ... also the channel interface board was the original university design from 20yrs earlier.

Late 90s, am in a large datacenter and run across one of the boxes handling majority of dialup point-of-sale terminals on the east coast. The datacenter was not located in any large metropolis ... but explained that it was near a major east coast railroad junction ... and as a result was also a major telco junction.

triva ... earlier in thread,
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#101 SEX
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#102 SEX
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#103 SEX

major motivation for the IBM Future System project was countermeasure to clone controllers ... but from the law of unintended consequences, the FS project shutting down 370 efforts and the lack of 370 offerings during the FS period is credited with giving clone processor makers market foothold. some past FS posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

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

Why IBM Should -- and Shouldn't -- Break Itself Up

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Why IBM Should -- and Shouldn't -- Break Itself Up
Date: 25 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
Why IBM Should -- and Shouldn't -- Break Itself Up
https://www.thestreet.com/story/14240362/1/why-ibm-should-and-shouldn-t-break-itself-up.html

AMEX was in competition with KKR for private equity take-over of RJR and KKR wins. KKR runs into trouble and hires away the president of AMEX to turn it around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate:_The_Fall_of_RJR_Nabisco

IBM has gone into the red and was being reorganized into the 13 "baby blues" in preparation for breaking up the company. Old time article, gone behind paywall, but partially lives free at wayback machine
http://web.archive.org/web/20101120231857/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977353,00.html

The board then hires away the former president of AMEX who reverses the breakup and resurrects the company ... using some of the same techniques used at RJR
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml

trivia: about same time that IBM has gone into the red, AMEX spins off much of its mainframe dataprocessing outsourcing business in the largest IPO up until that time. Then 15 years after being the largest IPO, KKR does the largest private-equity LBO of that spin-off

more trivia: former president of AMEX leaves IBM to head up another of the largest private equity operations .... which among other things will acquire the beltway bandit that will employ Snowden:
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/
wbich has heavy political influence
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/31/september11.usa4
and
http://www.economist.com/node/1875084

past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
posts referencing pensions
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#pensions
private equity posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity

even more trivia: After we had left IBM, but before Gerstner was brought in, we get a call from the bowels of Armonk asking if we can help with the breakup. The issue is that lots of business units were using MOUs to leverage supplier contracts in other business units. With breakup, those business units could now be in different companies. All of those MOUs would have to be found and cataloged and turned into their own contracts as part of the breakup.

other triva: after we had left, we heard complaints that top executives were no longer paying attention to the business but were spending all their time shifting expenses from the following year into the current year. We ask our contact in the bowels of Armonk about it. The company had gone into the red and the executives wouldn't be getting any bonus. They were shifting expenses from the following year into the current years because the way the bonus plan was written, even if the following year was only trivially moved to the black, they would get a bonus more than twice as large as any bonus previously paid (in effect getting reward for taking the company into the red).

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

Jamie Dimon: You Make Us Embarrassed to be Americans

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Jamie Dimon: You Make Us Embarrassed to be Americans
Date: 25 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
Jamie Dimon: You Make Us Embarrassed to be Americans
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2017/07/jamie-dimon-make-us-embarrassed-americans.html
J.P. Morgan's Dimon launches into expletive-tinged rant, saying 'almost an embarrassment to be American'
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dimon-says-bad-policies-are-hurting-the-average-american-2017-07-14

President of AMEX was in competition to be next CEO and wins. The looser leaves, taking their protegee to Baltimore where they acquire what as described as loan sharking business. They make some number of other acquisitions, eventually acquiring CITI in violation of Glass-Steagall. Greenspan gives them an exemption while they lobby congress to get repeal of Glass-Steagall (enabling too big to fail). They enlist several in DC, including the SECTREAS. After they get the ball rolling, the SECTREAS resigns to become what was described at the time as co-CEO of CITI. The protegee then leaves and becomes head of another too big to fail (JPMorgan Chase).

recent related thread:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#82 How can we stop algorithms telling lies?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#83 How can we stop algorithms telling lies?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#85 How can we stop algorithms telling lies?

JPMorgan
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2013/09/jpmorgan-found-to-have-violated-both-banking-and-securities-laws-in-920-million-settlement/

references include: The House that Jamie Built Looks Much like the House that Sandy Built
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2013/03/jpmorgan-the-house-that-jamie-built-looks-much-like-the-house-that-sandy-built/
"Jamie Dimon, learned at the knee of the mastermind of too-big-to-fail - former Citigroup Chairman and CEO, Sandy Weill. From 1982 to 1998, Dimon was Weill's first lieutenant, rising to the rank of President of Citigroup."
... snip ...

#1 on times list of those responsible for the economic mess
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877339,00.html
One of the most vocal complaints is about Dodd-Frank ... Dodd was a "Friends of #1"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelo_Mozilo#Friends_of_Angelo_.28FOA.29_VIP_program

"Confidence Men" pg430:

But they were fighting on too many fronts. Carl Levin of Michigan and Jeff Merkley of Oregon had discovered that Dodd had discreetly gutted the Volcker Rule, and the two set to work trying to counteract Dodd's efforts. The Merkley-Levin Amendment articulated Volcker's idea fully -- and wrote it as law. No regulatory backsliding, once everything settled down.
... snip ...

aka, wallstreet realized that they couldn't block economic reform legislation, so they became part of the effort with the objective of making it horribly complex and impossible to implement. Along the way, wallstreet lobbyists were caught providing draft sections, which would get leaked to the press, and then wallstreet would violently complain about the proposed regulations ... all part of discrediting the process.

economic mess posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess
Too Big To Fail posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
Pecora Hearings and/or Glass-Steagall posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall

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

Why IBM Should -- and Shouldn't -- Break Itself Up

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Why IBM Should -- and Shouldn't -- Break Itself Up
Date: 26 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#105 Why IBM Should -- and Shouldn't -- Break Itself Up

possibly this from 40yrs ago ... killed acs-360 because it might advance the state of the art too fast and loose control of the market ... increasing influence business school & MBAs .... their focus on monopolizing markets & maximizing profits. details also get into features from acs-360 that eventually show up in es/9000 more than 20yrs later.
https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.html

Harvard Business School and the Propagation of Immoral Profit Strategies
http://www.newsweek.com/2017/04/14/harvard-business-school-financial-crisis-economics-578378.html
In 1970, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman published an essay in The New York Times Magazine titled "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits."
... snip ...

recent posts mentioning "immoral profits"
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#90 Old hardware
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#93 United Air Lines - an OODA-loop perspective
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#97 IBM revenue has fallen for 20 quarters -- but it used to run its business very differently

note more recently, Kahneman (a psychologist) gets Nobel prize in economics, in part for debunking many of the economists' cherished beliefs

recent posts mentioning Friedman:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#17 Destruction of the Middle Class
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#24 Destruction of the Middle Class
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#26 Milton Friedman's Cherished Theory Is Laid to Rest
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#29 Milton Friedman's Cherished Theory Is Laid to Rest
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#31 Milton Friedman's Cherished Theory Is Laid to Rest
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#34 If economists want to be trusted again, they should learn to tell jokes
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#92 Trump's Rollback of the Neoliberal Market State
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#93 The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds Kindle Edition
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#97 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#101 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#102 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#104 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#11 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#16 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#17 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#24 Disorder
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#25 Trump to sign cyber security order
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#26 Virtualization's Past Helps Explain Its Current Importance
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#43 when to get out???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#0 Locking our own orientation
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#65 Paging subsystems in the era of bigass memory
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#67 Economists are arguing over how their profession messed up during the Great Recession. This is what happened
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#77 Trump delay of the 'fiduciary rule' will cost retirement savers $3.7 billion
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#89 Understanding decisions: The power of combining psychology and economics
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#93 United Air Lines - an OODA-loop perspective
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#96 Cognitive Bias Codex, 2016
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#7 Arthur Laffer's Theory on Tax Cuts Comes to Life Once More
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#44 [CM] cheap money, was What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#96 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#99 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#8 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#16 Conservatives and Spending
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#42 MVS vs HASP vs JES (was 2821)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#44 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#45 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#53 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#73 [CM] What was your first home computer?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#6 Mapping the decentralized world of tomorrow
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#19 Financial, Healthcare, Construction, Education complexity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#49 Shareholders Ahead Of Employees
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#63 Real World OODA
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#79 Bad Ideas
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#83 How can we stop algorithms telling lies?

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

Jamie Dimon: You Make Us Embarrassed to be Americans

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Jamie Dimon: You Make Us Embarrassed to be Americans
Date: 26 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
Jamie Dimon: You Make Us Embarrassed to be Americans
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2017/07/jamie-dimon-make-us-embarrassed-americans.html

trivia: Black was on trail of Keating ... when Keating wrote memo to Keating Five to "kill Black"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_K._Black#Savings_and_loan_scandal

Dimon blasts financial press: 'Who cares about fixed income trading in the last two weeks of June?
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/14/dimon-blasts-press-for-missing-the-big-picture.html

President of AMEX was in competition to be next CEO and wins. The looser leaves, taking their protegee to Baltimore where they acquire what as described as loan sharking business. They make some number of other acquisitions, eventually acquiring CITI in violation of Glass-Steagall. Greenspan gives them an exemption while they lobby congress to get repeal of Glass-Steagall (enabling too big to fail). They enlist several in DC, including the SECTREAS. After they get the ball rolling, the SECTREAS resigns to become what was described at the time as co-CEO of CITI. The protegee then leaves and becomes head of another too big to fail (JPMorgan Chase).

JPMorgan
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2013/09/jpmorgan-found-to-have-violated-both-banking-and-securities-laws-in-920-million-settlement/
references include: The House that Jamie Built Looks Much like the House that Sandy Built
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2013/03/jpmorgan-the-house-that-jamie-built-looks-much-like-the-house-that-sandy-built/
"Jamie Dimon, learned at the knee of the mastermind of too-big-to-fail - former Citigroup Chairman and CEO, Sandy Weill. From 1982 to 1998, Dimon was Weill's first lieutenant, rising to the rank of President of Citigroup."
... snip ...

#1 on times list of those responsible for the economic mess
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877339,00.html
One of the most vocal complaints is about Dodd-Frank ... Dodd was a "Friends of #1"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelo_Mozilo#Friends_of_Angelo_.28FOA.29_VIP_program

"Confidence Men" pg430:
But they were fighting on too many fronts. Carl Levin of Michigan and Jeff Merkley of Oregon had discovered that Dodd had discreetly gutted the Volcker Rule, and the two set to work trying to counteract Dodd's efforts. The Merkley-Levin Amendment articulated Volcker's idea fully -- and wrote it as law. No regulatory backsliding, once everything settled down.
... snip ...

aka, wallstreet realized that they couldn't block economic reform legislation, so they became part of the effort with the objective of making it horribly complex and impossible to implement. Along the way, wallstreet lobbyists were caught providing draft sections, which would get leaked to the press, and then wallstreet would violently complain about the proposed regulations ... all part of discrediting the process.

They orchestrated a lot of the complex bureaucracy so the can turn around and ridicule it ... lots of obfuscation and misdirection. DC news will periodically refer to what goes on around DC as Kabuki Theater ... what you see publicly has little to do with what really is going on ... lots of it is like Roman circus to keep public distracted

The financial disclosure thing that recently caught Bannon on mortgage because so many regulators and in congress were getting sweetheart mortgage deals from #1 responsible for economic mess

CEO of JPMorgan: 'It's almost embarrassing being an American citizen'
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/07/14/ceo-of-jpmorgan-its-almost-embarrassing-being-an-american-citizen/

VP and former CIA director repeatedly claims no knowledge of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_affair
because he was fulltime administration point person deregulating financial industry ... creating S&L crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis
along with other members of his family
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis#Silverado_Savings_and_Loan
and another
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE0D81E3BF937A25753C1A966958260

another family member then presides over the economic mess last decade, 70 times larger than the S&L crisis. S&L crisis had 1000 criminal convictions with jailtime, proportionally the economic mess should have 70,000.

S&L crisis posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#s&l.crisis
Too Big To Fail posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
Pecora Hearings and/or Glass-Steagall posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
"economic mess" posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess

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

Online Terminals

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Online Terminals
Date: 27 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
Univ had 2741 and TTY terminals when CSC came out and installed CP/67 Jan1968 (precursor VM370). CP/67 had 1052 and 2741 terminal support and automatic terminal type recognition (using 2702 SAD command to switch type of port/line scanner). I added TTY terminal support including automatic terminal recognition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_270x

I then wanted single dial-in number "hunt group" for all terminals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_hunting

However, they had taken shortcut, while it was possible to switch terminal type scanner for each port/line, they had hardwired the line-speed for each port/line. Somewhat as a result the univ. started clone controller project that built channel interface board for Interdata/3 programmed to emulate 2702 ... but added ability to determine dynamic terminal baud rate. Four of us get written up responsible for (some part of) clone controller business. Later it was upgraded to Interdata/4 for the channel interface with a cluster of Interdata/3s for the port/line scanner functions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdata

one of the first "bugs" was that 2702 "line scanner" convention was to put leading (transmission) bit in byte low-order bit position ... as a result bytes transferred to mainframe memory were in bit-reversed order. Mainframe terminal translate tables than handle the reversed bit order (from terminal code to ebcdic). First clone test had bits in non-reversed order. Note later all conventions changed to byte non-reversed bit order (like all other mainframe controllers).
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

Other trivia: IBM 360s mainframes were originally intended to be ASCII ... biggest computer "goof" ever:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM

The claim is that major motivation for IBM's future system effort in the early 70s was countermeasure to clone controllers (significantly increasing complexity). From the law of unintended consequences, FS was going to completely replace 370 and was completely different from 370, and during FS period, 370 efforts were being shutdown; the lack of 370 products during the FS period is then credited with giving clone processor makers a market foothold.

Online at home since Mar1970 at home (2741 from Mar1970 until June1977, when it was replaced with a 300baud CDI Miniterm).

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







previous, next, index - home