List of Archived Posts

2017 Newsgroup Postings (07/28 - 09/09)

Census processing, 1950
OT: book: "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"
Trump is taking the wrong approach to China on tech, says ex-Reagan official who helped beat Soviets
Dunkirk
chip card
IBM System/360
Initialized paged memory without a hard commit
Tandem Memos
Trump is taking the wrong approach to China on tech, says ex-Reagan official who helped beat Soviets
Corporate Profit and Taxes
Pentagon Would Ban Contractors That Don't Protect Data
The original Adventure / Adventureland game?
What is missing?
What the Enron E-mails Say About Us
The original Adventure / Adventureland game?
The complete history of the IBM PC, part two: The DOS empire strikes; The real victor was Microsoft, which built an empire on the back of a shadily acquired MS-DOS
IBM RAS
OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
IBM RAS
OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
Military Contractors
IBM ... the rise and fall
OT: book: "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"
This Is How The US Government Destroys The Lives Of Patriotic Whistleblowers
OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
The complete history of the IBM PC, part two: The DOS empire strikes; The real victor was Microsoft, which built an empire on the back of a shadily acquired MS-DOS
OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
Stop Romanticizing Glass-Steagall
Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'
OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
Disregard post (another screwup)
Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
Disregard post (another screwup)
The Man Who Wrote Those Password Rules Has a New Tip: N3v$r M1^d!
Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
VM/370 45th Birthday
"Subprime Is Contained" (& Other Evidence That "They Really Don't Know What They're Doing")
Disregard post (another screwup)
Aug. 9, 1995: When the Future Looked Bright for Netscape
endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
System/360--detailed engineering description (AFIPS 1964)
System/360--detailed engineering description (AFIPS 1964)
endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
System/360--detailed engineering description (AFIPS 1964)
endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
Pareto efficiency
Pareto efficiency
Feds WIMP
On second thoughts
On second thoughts
RISC and PC/RT ancient history, was Re: On second thoughts
Pareto efficiency
computer component reliability, 1951
computer component reliability, 1951
endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
IBM: A History Of Progress, 1890s to 2001
IBM: A History Of Progress, 1890s to 2001
Pareto efficiency
Feds Debt
the 'Here is' key
Preferred colour scheme?
Preferred colour scheme?
Demolishing the Tile Turtle
On Tactics
On Tactics
Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?
Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?
IBM Mag TAPE Selectric ad 1966
Feds widen hunt for dirty money in Miami real estate
The IBM Appeal - when is a pensions promise not a promise?
the 'Here is' key
The IBM Appeal - when is a pensions promise not a promise?
Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy
Banks Earn Record Profits in Q2, Savers Sacrificed: FDIC
The Lost Lesson of the Financial Crisis
Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?
Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?
z14 and zBX
'X' Marks the Spot Where Inequality Took Root: Dig Here
Trump's cybersecurity advisers resign en masse
'X' Marks the Spot Where Inequality Took Root: Dig Here
PDP-11 question
What is SQL? The language of databases
PDP-11 question
computer component reliability, 1951
Business as Usual: The Long History of Corporate Personhood
endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
Boca Series/1 & CPD
'X' Marks the Spot Where Inequality Took Root: Dig Here
The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins
75 years ago, Hitler invaded Poland. Here's how it happened
Iraq, Longest War
Iraq, Longest War
Iraq, Longest War
Iraq, Longest War
Iraq, Longest War
Iraq, Longest War
Iraq, Longest War
private thread drift--Re: Demolishing the Tile Turtle
In America's Wars, Failure Is the New Success
Jamie Dimon's $13 Billion Secret--Revealed
IBM PS2
EasyLink email ad
When It Comes to the War in the Greater Middle East, Maybe We're the Bad Guys
The Real Reason Wages Have Stagnated: Our Economy Is Optimized For Financialization
Equifax Lobbied To Kill Rule Protecting Victims Of Data Breaches
AOL
AOL
EasyLink email ad

Census processing, 1950

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Census processing, 1950
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2017 20:02:45 -0700
hancock4 writes:
Article in P/S about census punched card processing for 151 million people in 1950. Looks like a mix of IBM and Univac machines based on the photos.

https://books.google.com/books?id=DC0DAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA153&dq=punch%20card&pg=PA152#v=onepage&q=punch%20card&f=false


we worked essentially for free on 2000 census on selection of backend systems ... census was paying a consultant, and we technically worked for the consultant but effectively for free (although when census was audited, I was the one they asked to stand up in front of the room all day answering questions).

their backend systems from late 70s used for 1980 census ... were being moved out March 1997 and new stuff would then be immediately moved in ... to start the testing preparing for 2000 census (all the selection for backend systems had to be done & finished & ordered ... for deliver spring 1997 as soon as moving vans took away the old stuff).

this reference mentions Univac mainframes in Oct1979 for 1980 census operation
https://books.google.com/books?id=6J4qlVG62wkC&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&#v=onepage&q&f=false

misc. past posts mentioning 2000 census
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#16 Why are Mainframe Computers really still in use at all?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#21 Methods of payment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#43 Methods of payment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#63 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#92 Billion-dollar IT failure at Census Bureau
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#21 The 2010 Census
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#56 Handling multicore CPUs; what the competition is thinking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#56 What's the most interesting thing you do in your non-work life?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#87 Cultural attitudes towards failure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#11 What Makes a Tax System Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013n.html#98 ACA (Obamacare) website problems--article
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014k.html#37 OT this guy salary one dollar
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#72 George W. Bush: Still the worst; A new study ranks Bush near the very bottom in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#39 Failure as a Way of Life; The logic of lost wars and military-industrial boondoggles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#107 Qbasic - lies about Medicare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#18 FBI Rewrites Federal Law to Let Hillary Off the Hook
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#12 Why a Single-Payer Health Care System is Inevitable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#40 Misc. Success of Failure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#76 GLBA & Glass-Steagall
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#71 ComputerWorld Says: Cobol plays major role in U.S. government breaches
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#89 The head of the Census Bureau just quit, and the consequences are huge

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

OT: book: "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OT:  book:  "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2017 16:36:05 -0700
hancock4 writes:
This book, by Thomas Piketty, is a detailed economic analysis of today's finances. It includes historical discussions of the concentration of wealth during the industrial revolution, the spread of wealth in the U.S. after WW II, and the concentration of wealth today.

While it is a somewhat of a heavy read, with lots of charts and data, it does provide excellent insights into the problem of the 1% and possible ways to remedy the situation.


shorter flavor ... The Limping Middle Class
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/jobs-will-follow-a-strengthening-of-the-middle-class.html
slouching towards 3rd world country status and return of the robber barons.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html

reply to post here a couple months ago
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#49 [CM] What was your first computer?

this also has reference to 2011 NYT graphic above, updated through 2014

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/
from here
http://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

in this recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#49 Shareholders Ahead Of Employees

also references this

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

other recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html##100 Why CEO pay structures harm companies

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

past posts mentioning Piketty
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#73 These Two Charts Show How The Priorities Of US Companies Have Gotten Screwed Up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#63 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#7 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#14 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#15 Why IBM Is Tumbling: BRIC Sales Plunge, Total Revenue Lowest Since 2009
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014g.html#21 Thomas Piketty Is Right About the Past and Wrong About the Future
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#55 Piketty Shreds Marginal Productivity as Neoclassical Justification for Supersized Pay
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#84 LEO
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#53 Qbasic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#65 A call for revolution

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

Trump is taking the wrong approach to China on tech, says ex-Reagan official who helped beat Soviets

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Trump is taking the wrong approach to China on tech, says ex-Reagan official who helped beat Soviets
Date: 29 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
Trump is taking the wrong approach to China on tech, says ex-Reagan official who helped beat Soviets
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-taking-wrong-approach-china-210000436.html

... 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 shovel ready, infrastructure stimulus funding ... projects were having to hire Chinese companies to get civil engineers.

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 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 as FDC. In the late 90s, FDC as part of merger, acquires ailing Western Union (and has to spin off MoneyGram). However after the start of the century, there is an enormous explosion in the number of illegal workers being brought across the border, and WU revenue also starts exploding. by 2005, the (ailing) WU had become half FDC total bottom line (from the huge influx of new illegal workers 2001-2005). President of Mexico invites the FDC executives to Mexico to be thrown in jail (for how much WU is making off of sending payments home) ... likely contributing to spinning off of WU in 2005. KKR then does the largest (up until that time) private-equity reverse-IPO take-over of FDC (15yrs after being the largest IPO).

more trivia: former president of AMEX leaves IBM to
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/10/barbarians-capitol-private-equity-public-enemy/
Lou Gerstner, former ceo of ibm, now heads the Carlyle Group, a Washington-based global private equity firm whose 2006 revenues of $87 billion were just a few billion below ibm's. Carlyle has boasted George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and former Secretary of State James Baker III on its employee roster
... snip ...

and gets them into the economic mess, when it crashes, he is replaced
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/dec/28/markets-credit-crunch-banking-2008
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Carlyle_Group
Lou Gerstner, former chairman and CEO of IBM and Nabisco, was appointed chairman of Carlyle in January 2003, replacing Frank Carlucci. Gerstner would serve in that position through October 2008.[28][29]
... snip ...

... also had acquired the beltway bandit that will employ Snowden:
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/
helping accelerate the rapidly spreading success of failure culture
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/

disclaimer: 1999 I was asked to try and help prevent the economic mess ... wasn't very successful. Then Jan2009 (ten yrs later), I was asked to HTML'ize Pecora Hearings (senate hearings into '29 crash, resulted in Glass-Seagall and criminal convictions with jail time), with lots of internal HREFs and URLs between what happened then and what happened this time (comments that the new congress might have appetite to do something). I work on it for awhile and then get call that it won't be needed after all (references to capital totally buried under enormous mountains of wallstreet money).

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.

private equity posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
gerstner posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
posts referencing pensions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#pensions
Pecora Hearings and/or Glass-Steagall posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
S&L crisis posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#s&l.crisis
and "economic mess"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess

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

Dunkirk

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Dunkirk
Date: 30 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 the war w/o US having to invade France. A problem was that from 5-6 miles up, strategic bombing had difficult hitting targets. John Foster Dulles was major force behind rebuilding German industry and military in the 20s through the early 40s, supporting Hitler and the Nazis. From the law of unintended consequences, 1943 US strategic bombing program needed location of German industry and military targets, it got the coordinates and plans from wallstreet. Later McNamara was LeMay's staff planning fire bombing German and Japanese cities, it was hard to miss a whole city (even from 5-6 miles up). 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 ...

Germany somewhat had its own Dunkirk with the battle of the bulge. Patton had suggested just let Germans advance to the outskirts of Paris, they would then have outrun their supplies and it would be possible to roll them all up with no problem. Eisenhower said that wouldn't be politically correct/acceptable. Patton was then to attack one side of the base of the bulge while montgomery attacks the other side, cutting them off ... and rolling them up. Montgomery never got into position, so the Germans managed to escape through the gap ... although leaving most of their equipment.

recent mention of Dunkirk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#53 Dunkirk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#99 The Real Reason You Should See Dunkirk: Hitler Lost World War II There

other recent posts mentioning strategic bombing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#63 One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#91 Godwin's Law should force us to remember & fear our shared heritage with Nazi Germany
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#38 Imperial Hubris
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#55 Should America Have Entered World War I?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#22 Ironic old "fortune"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#60 The Illusion Of Victory: America In World War I
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#69 The knives are out for Trump's national security adviser H.R. McMaster
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#18 5 Naval Battles That Changed History Forever
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#41 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#60 [CM] What was your first home computer?

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

chip card

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: chip card
Date: 30 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
The chip card transition in the US has been a disaster
https://qz.com/717876/the-chip-card-transition-in-the-us-has-been-a-disaster/

Very early part of century there was large US pilot, but it was during the "Yes Card" exploit period. They proceeded even when I gave them detailed description of the problems. Afterwards, all evidence of the pilot appeared to disappear w/o a trace and conjecture that it would be a long time before it was tried again in the US (letting other jurisdictions work out the bugs). At the end of this Cartes2002 trip report, there is discussion of "Yes Card" presentation, gone 404, but lives on at the wayback machine (the softcopy of the presentation is labeled "confidential").
https://web.archive.org/web/20030417083810/http://www.smartcard.co.uk/resources/articles/cartes2002.html

At 2003 ATM Integrity Task Force meeting, a Federal LEO gave a details of "Yes Card" exploits ... and somebody in the audience loadly observed that they managed to spend billions of dollars to prove chips are less secure than magstripe.

disclaimer: late 90s, I did chip w/o any of the vulnerabilities, much more secure, and could do a transaction in 1/10th second with contactless RF power (could even be used for transit gate operation). Had booths at 1999 world-wide BAI retail banking show ... old post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#224

trivia: the CEO of one of the security companies in the booths, had previously done stints as head of IBM mainframe POK and IBM PC Boca.

past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard

old reference to article
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#73 The chip card transition in the US has been a disaster
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#74 The chip card transition in the US has been a disaster
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#34 The chip card transition in the US has been a disaster

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

IBM System/360

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM System/360
Date: 30 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
IBM System/360
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360

trivia: 1052-7/console ... paper feed up the bottom back has paper sensor ... when the sensor doesn't detect any paper, all I/O operations are unit check, intervention required. OS/360 stops and just sits there and periodically rings the bell. There can be enough friction that the paper doesn't fall off the top. If you are just sitting at the console, you will have no indication why everything has died and the bell periodically rings. I got so frustrated that I slam my fist into the keyboard ... that jiggles the console and the paper falls off the top. Of course somebody has to be called in to replace the 1052-7. past ref
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#43 Paper tape

After I graduate and join the science center ... I find that the CE keeps a couple spare 1052-7 on site ... because it happens frequently enough.

At the univ, they closed the datacenter on the weekends and let me have it all to myself from 8am monday until 8am monday ... 48hrs w/o sleep made monday morning classes hard

At the IBM science center i would rarely get more than 2weekend shifts. One weekend something was wrong and I needed the backup tapes for restore. The room that had backups was locked and I couldn't find the keys. The doors were thick solid fir and I gave it a little kick. The wood completely split from top to bottom where I kicked. It turns out they had moved backup tapes to another room and moved in personnel records. They moved the door to conference room laid across two 2drawer file cabinets as table ... it was there for years

This was back when IBM rented computers and datacenters would recover money by charging for time used (even internally when it was funny money) at one point I was asked if I could do something because I used more time than whole rest of the organization put together. I said I could work less. The subject was never mentioned again

computer renting trivia: 360s had system clock that ran whenever cpu and/or channels were busy ... that IBM used to base its lease/rental fees. The science center did a lot of work on CP67 for it to be available 7x24 ... but system clock would stop when nothing was going on. The system clock would still keep running for 400ms after everything had stopped running. However, long after IBM had switched to selling computers ... MVS still had a timer task that woke up every 400ms ... making sure that system clock never stopped.

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

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

Initialized paged memory without a hard commit

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Initialized paged memory without a hard commit
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2017 14:49:53 -0700
Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> writes:
My understanding is that some OSes will have a single dedicated page of all zeros which they will map into the application space as a read-only page until the application writes to it, then they will create a dedicated page for that application. This isn't quite what you are asking for, but close. This is done more to save swap space than to try to speed up the program.

Something is going to need to create the real page of memory with the values, and I suspect let that be the OS rather than something automagically in the processor will be more efficient. (If the processor can do this automatically on the write, then the OS is going to need to pre-allocate a real page of memory for it to do so, which may tie up a lot of physical memory, if the write triggers a request for the OS to allocate the page, it is a trivial bit of extra work to fill it with the right value).

The other things is that I can't see real programs being able to utilize this for much of a speed up, as you are unlikely to need to do a lot of reads on memory that you haven't written yet. If it does give you a speedup, you can probably get more by keeping better track of how much you have written and just not processing the uninitialized part.


CP/67 (virtual machine, virtual memory, precursor to vm/370, done at science center) delivered to university Jan1968 ... had a specially formated page of all zeros on disk for unallocated, never before referenced page ... first time referenced the zeros page would be brought in and if changed and needed to be written out, it would go to new location.

I almost immediately changed it to instruction sequence, ten registers all zeroed and STM/BXLE loop (avoiding the page read of the zeros page).

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

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

had gone to the 5th flr of 545 tech sq to do multics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics

others went to the science center on the 4th flr, did virtual machines, cp40, cp67, cms
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/CMS

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

... technology also used for bitnet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET
some posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

and a bunch of online applications, performance optimization and monitoring, capacity planning, etc

also invented GML in 1969 (letters chosen for three inventors initials) ... after decade, morphs into ISO standard SGML, after another decade morphs into HTML at CERN. some posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

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

Tandem Memos

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Tandem Memos
Date: 30 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
Jim Gray, I and some others would sponsor fridays after work at local places around San Jose plant site. After Jim Gray left for tandem, we would get invited to visit Gray on friday afternoon ... when tandem sponsored beer and other things.

After one of the visits to Tandem, I wrote up trip report and distributed it on the internal network ... which kicked off the "Tandem Memos" ... 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.

In the late 70s and early 80s, I got 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 corporate executive committee was told about online computer conferencing (and the internal network), 5of6 wanted to fire me.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

Trivia: 6th started providing funds out of his office for some of the things I was doing.

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

Trump is taking the wrong approach to China on tech, says ex-Reagan official who helped beat Soviets

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Trump is taking the wrong approach to China on tech, says ex-Reagan official who helped beat Soviets
Date: 30 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#2 Trump is taking the wrong approach to China on tech, says ex-Reagan official who helped beat Soviets

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 (reduce competition and) 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 foreign competition was doing better and what US needed to do to respond. However, as recent bailouts have indicated they still continued business as usual.

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, agility/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 further delay.

Offline, I would chide the POK mainframe brethren attending how could they expect to help, since they had similar problems.

Toyota reference
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/how-toyota-turns-workers-into-problem-solvers

C4 taskforce postings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#auto.c4.taskforce

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

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

Corporate Profit and Taxes

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Corporate Profit and Taxes
Date: 30 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
tipping point, productivity diverging from worker compensation, the limping middle class
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/jobs-will-follow-a-strengthening-of-the-middle-class.html
and
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html

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.

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.

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/
"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' assumptions. Kahneman (a psychologist) gets Nobel prize in economics, in part for debunking some cherished economic theories

1992 AMEX spins off much of its mainframe dataprocessing outsourcing business in the largest IPO up until that time as FDC. In the late 90s, FDC as part of merger, acquires ailing Western Union (and has to spin off MoneyGram). However after the start of the century, there is an enormous explosion in the number of illegal workers being brought across the border, and WU revenue also starts exploding. by 2005, the (ailing) WU had become half FDC total bottom line (from the recent huge explosion in the influx of illegal workers). President of Mexico invites the FDC executives to Mexico to be thrown in jail (for the explosion in the money WU is making off of sending payments home) ... likely contributing to spinning off of WU in 2005. KKR then does the largest (up until that time) private-equity reverse-IPO take-over of FDC (15yrs after being the largest IPO).

this is account on some changes in large corporate lobbying that happened around the turn of the century.
https://www.amazon.com/Influence-Machine-Commerce-Corporate-American-ebook/dp/B00NDTUDHA/

note before the turn of the century, congress requested GAO reports on illegal immigrants and workers. sometimes what you don't see is as important as what you see ... I've been unable to find such reports since the turn of the century

inequality posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#inequality
economic mess posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess
Fiscal Responsibility Act posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#fiscal.responsibility.act
regulatory capture posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#regulatory.capture
private equity posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
MICC posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex

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

Pentagon Would Ban Contractors That Don't Protect Data

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Pentagon Would Ban Contractors That Don't Protect Data
Date: 31 July 2017
Blog: Facebook
Pentagon Would Ban Contractors That Don't Protect Data
http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/07/31/pentagon_would_ban_contractors_that_dont_protect_data_111923.html

We were brought in to help word smith some cal. state legislation. They were working on electronic signature, but also data breach notificaiton, and "opt-in" personal information sharing. They had done detailed consumer/public surveys on privacy issues. Number one was fraudulent financial transactions as a result of breaches and there was little or nothing being done. The issue is that normally entities take security measures in self protection. The issue in these cases was that the institution wasn't at risk but other entities, frequently the public. The hope was that the publicity as a result of the notification would prompt corrective action. Note since the (original) cal. state legislation, there has been a dozen or so federal bills introduced (none yet passed), about evenly divided between those similar to the cal. state legislation and those that would effectively eliminate notification requirements. This battle has been going on for 20yrs now.

data breach notification posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#data.breach.notification.notification

trivia: we were brought in as consultants to small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server, they had also invented this technology they called "SSL" they wanted to use, the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce". I had complete authority for the server to gateway to payment networks but could only make recommendations on the server to client side (some of which were almost immediately violated that continue to account for exploits).

payment network gateway posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

the majority of breaches involve attacks on financial infrastructure (for fraudulent transactions) and somewhat from having been involved in electronic commerce ... we then get invited 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 do detailed end-to-end reviews of different retail payments. A couple metaphors;

security proportional to risk: the value of previous financial transaction information to the (defenders) merchant is the profit on the transaction (possibly a couple dollars) and to the transaction processor a couple cents. The value to the (attackers) crooks is the credit limit and/or account balance (hundreds to thousands of dollars). As a result the attackers may be able to outspend the defenders by two orders of magnitude.

security proportional to risk posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#security.proportional.to.risk

dual-use: the information from transactions needs to be readily available for dozens of business processes at millions of locations around the world. at the same time the information from transactions is used for authentication and needs to be kept completely confidential and never divulged. I've periodically claimed that even if the planet was buried by miles of information hiding encryption, it still wouldn't stop information leakage.

as a result, we did a financial standard (still to be deployed) that slightly tweaks the current infrastructure eliminating being able to use information from previous transactions for fraudulent transactions (aka dual use, form of replay attack). Also eliminates major use of SSL hiding financial transaction information.

reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

other trivia: last decade there was enormous uptic in outsourcing to for-profit companies, frequently to private-equity subsidiaries that are under intense pressure to cut corners to generate revenue for their parents any way possible ... 70% of intelligence budget and over half the people
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/

in the wake of Snowden, they found that for-profit subsidiaries doing security clearances were filling out paperwork, but not actually doing background checks. also accelerated the growing success of failure culture ... where they find they make more money from a series of failures:
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/

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

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

in the late 90s, I would semi-facetiously claim that I would take a $500 milspec part, aggressively cost reduce by more than two orders of magnitude, while making it more secure ... including on panel in standing room only ballroom
https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/conference-paper/1998/10/08/proceedings-of-the-21st-nissc-1998

eliminating information hiding encryption appealed to one part of the agency (at ft. meade) ... but the agency was more ambivalent about security that can't be hacked, one part didn't like it ... but it appealed more to the information assurance directorate. I also got into dustup with GSA over the chips used in CAC-card. People would complain about how much security cost and then if I eliminated all cost, they would then complain there was no motivation. Once had a session with former agency director (working for beltway bandit) on super security ... and the meeting ended when they said they couldn't figure out how to make any money from it.

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

The original Adventure / Adventureland game?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The original Adventure / Adventureland game?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2017 12:02:41 -0700
Charles Richmond <numerist@aquaporin4.com> writes:
You are thinking of Zork. Zork was written in a LISP dialect called MDL (alias MUDDLE). Colossal Cave Adventure (once known as Crowther and Woods Adventure) was written in FORTRAN in the beginning. Of course, ports to C followed in a few years.

Zork was translated to FORTRAN by Bob Supnik and his version (which had the same puzzles until almost the last Zork version additions) was called DUNGEON.


i first ran into fortran vm/cms copy at TYMSHARE in the late 70s, TYMSHARE had got fortran copy from Stanford PDP10 ... and ported to vm/cms. I made executable available on the internal network ... and would send source to people that showed that they got all points. Almost immediately PLI versions appearing with more points.

other TYMSHARE trivia ... TYMSHARE had made their CMS-based online computer conferencing system available to (IBM user group) SHARE for free as VMSHARE starting in Aug1976 ... archives here
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare
sometimes(?) "404" ... but also at wayback machine
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

I had deal with TYMSHARE to get monthly tape copy dump of all VMSHARE files for putting up on internal datacenters and internal network ... biggest problem I had was with IBM lawyers who were concerned that IBM employees would be contaminated by customer information.

recent "Adventure" posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#100 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#0 Ironic old "fortune"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#65 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#66 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#34 The head of the Census Bureau just quit, and the consequences are huge
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#67 Explore the groundbreaking Colossal Cave Adventure, 41 years on
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#62 Play the Pentagon-Funded Video Game That Predates Pong

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

What is missing?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What is missing?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2017 08:56:32 -0700
Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> writes:
Except that the "Wordstar diamond" for cursor control was ^S ^D ^E ^X (and other keys radiating out from that center point). The movement keys were on the left side of the keyboard.

My terminal (an ADM31A) needed an aftermarket PROM to make the arrow keys work in Wordstar.


i had 2741 at home mar1970 to summer 1977, which was replaced with 300 baud CDI miniterm 1977-1979, and then was replaced with 1200 baud (early) IBM 3101 (topaz) glass teletype. old email about 3101 (including burning new proms to support "block mode" ... sort of partial 3270)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email791011
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email791011b
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email800301
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email800311
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email800312
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email800314
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email810820

in these posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#0 Why so little parallelism?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#4 Why so little parallelism?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#31 "The Elements of Programming Style"

old picture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/home3101.jpg

home 3101

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

What the Enron E-mails Say About Us

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: What the Enron E-mails Say About Us
Date: 01 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
What the Enron E-mails Say About Us
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/24/what-the-enron-e-mails-say-about-us

enron posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#enron

#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

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

#2 responsible for GLBA and repeal of Glass-Steagall ... but got ranking for law to prevent regulation of CDS (gambling bets, originally billed as favor for ENRON). The head of CFTC proposed regulating CDS gambling bets and was quickly replaced by #2's wife.

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 ...

"Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right" loc2953-55:
The most fateful Mercatus Center hire might have been Wendy Gramm, an economist and director at the giant Texas energy company Enron who was the wife of Senator Phil Gramm, the powerful Texas Republican. In the mid-1990s, she became the head of Mercatus's Regulatory Studies Program.

loc2955-57:
There, she pushed Congress to support what came to be known as the Enron Loophole, exempting the type of energy derivatives from which Enron profited from regulatory oversight. Both Enron and Koch Industries, which also was a major trader of derivatives, lobbied desperately for the loophole.

loc2958-59:
Some experts foresaw danger. In 1998, Brooksley Born, chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, warned that the lucrative but risky derivatives market needed more government oversight.

loc2959-61:
But Senator Gramm, who chaired the Senate Banking Committee, ignored such warnings, crafting a deregulatory bill made to order for Enron and Koch, called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.
... snip ...

regulatory capture posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#regulatory.capture

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

The original Adventure / Adventureland game?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The original Adventure / Adventureland game?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2017 14:11:55 -0700
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#11 The original Adventure / Adventureland game?

from a (updated PLI) data file (with duplicates removed):
You are in a little maze of twisting passages, all different. You are in a little maze of twisty passages, all different. You are in a little twisty maze of passages, all different. You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different. You are in a maze of little twisty passages, all different. You are in a maze of twisting little passages, all different. You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all different. You are in a twisting little maze of passages, all different. You are in a twisting maze of little passages, all different. You are in a twisty little maze of passages, all different. You are in a twisty maze of little passages, all different.

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

The complete history of the IBM PC, part two: The DOS empire strikes; The real victor was Microsoft, which built an empire on the back of a shadily acquired MS-DOS

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The complete history of the IBM PC, part two: The DOS empire strikes; The real victor was Microsoft, which built an empire on the back of a shadily acquired MS-DOS
Date: 01 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
The complete history of the IBM PC, part two: The DOS empire strikes; The real victor was Microsoft, which built an empire on the back of a shadily acquired MS-DOS.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/07/ibm-pc-history-part-2/

...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

posts mentioning CP/M
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#82 The ICL 2900
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#12 Rolander, Tom oral history (DRI, CPM, etc)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#81 GREAT presentation on the history of the mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#0 IBM & SABRE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#39 The Pentagon still uses computer software from 1958 to manage its contracts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#2 NPS, Gary A. Kildall Conference Room Dedication Ceremony, 21April2017
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#82 does linux scatter daemons on multicore CPU?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#88 IBM Story
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#20 Programmers Who Use Spaces Paid More
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#72 Mannix "computer in a briefcase"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#84 Mannix "computer in a briefcase"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#95 Hard Drives Started Out as Massive Machines That Were Rented by the Month

3270 terminal emulation helped with early uptake of IBM/PC ... however later, the communication group was trying to prevent it doing anything else, trying to maintain status quo and blocking any change .... periodically reposted:

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 was 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.

terminal emulation past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal

along with way, 3270 terminal support involved coax cables (for every terminal) running from datacenter all over bldgs ... and the weight of 3270 coax was starting to exceed bldg weight loading limits. This could be considered some of the motivation for Token-Ring (cat-5 and hierarchy of MAUs spread around bldgs). However, communication group attempts to strangle distributed computing and client/server involved crippled the cards. AIX Unix group had done their own PC/RT AT-bus 4mbit token-ring card ... but the group was prohibited from doing their own RS/6000 microchannel cards. The PC/RT 4mbit T/R card, had higher per card throughput than the microchannel 16mbit T/R cards ... i.e. part of trying to preserve the dumb terminal paradigm was 16mbit T/R cards had design point of 300+ stations sharing common bandwidth. New Almaden Research bldg. had been extensively wired with CAT4 for 16mbit T/R. However, they found that $69 10mbit ethernet cards had higher per card throughput than $800 16mbit T/R cards .... and 10mbit ethernet lans had lower latency and higher effective aggregate throughput than 16mbit T/R lans.

801/risc, pc/rt, rs/6000, etc posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

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

IBM RAS

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM RAS
Date: 02 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
When I transferred to san jose they let me wander around, plant site, disk development, stl, dbms development, HONE, numerous customers, etc. Disk development had a number of mainframes, prescheduled 7x24 stand alone, for development testing. They had recently tried MVS ... but it had 15min MTBF in this environment, requiring reboot. I offered to rewrite input/output supervisor so it would be bullet proof and never fail, allowing on-demand, anytime concurrent testing, greatly improving productivity. I write an internal only report on the work and happen to mentiong the MVS 15min MTBF, bringing down the wrath of the MVS group on my head. I get a call from MVS group ... expecting that they wanted help doing something similar for the MVS product ... but it turns out they want to know my managers name. Turns out they were looking to separate me from the IBM company, when that wouldn't work ... they then were looking to make my stay at IBM as unpleasant as possible. past posts geting to play disk engineer in bldgs 14&15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

I slightly get revenge on the MVS group (no intention of helping them), when 3380 disks are ready to ship ... FE has regression test buckets of likely 3380 problems. MVS is still hanging/failing for all cases (requiring re-IPL), and in 2/3rds of the cases, no indication of what caused the failure. Old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801015

I do some work with Jim Gray on original sql/rdbms implementation (system/r) and when he leaves IBM (for tandem), he palms off some number of things on me (including DBMS consulting with the IMS group). At Tandem, Gray studies how systems fail and finds that hardware has increasingly become reliable and majority of system outages have become software, human mistakes, and environmental/disasters. Summary of his findings from 1984:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/grayft84.pdf
also
https://jimgray.azurewebsites.net/papers/TandemTR86.2_FaultToleranceInTandemComputerSystems.pdf

Later we are doing IBM's HA/CMP (high availability, cluster multi-processor) including cluster scale-up and are doing our own detailed studies of how systems fail ... some old posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
old post specifically about Jan1992 meeting in ellison's conference room on cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
and related old email from the period
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

I coin the terms disaster survivabilty and geographic survivability when I'm out marketing HA/CMP to customers. I'm then asked to write a section for the corporate continuous availability strategy document ... however it gets pulled when both Rochester (AS/400) and POK (mainframe) complain that they can't meet the requirements. some posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available

shortly after the Ellison's conference room meeting, the cluster scale-up work is transferred to IBM Kingston, announced as IBM supercomputer and we are told we can't work on anything with more than four processors. We then decide to leave IBM.

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

OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2017 18:22:05 -0700
hancock4 writes:
In contrast, I knew of several prestigous private colleges that knowingly admitted more freshmen then they had room for and had deliberate weeding-out courses. My argument is that, at the time, the incoming students didn't know that and got slammed hard by the tough courses. For instance, there were several schools where, on the first day, the lecturer would say something like, "look at the students next to you. They won't be here at the end of the year."

in mid-90s we worked with some univ. that noted the dumbing down of incoming students ... one of the largest mid-western state univ. noted that they had to dumb down entering freshman courses 2-3 times over period of twenty some years.

past refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#45 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#33 EZPass: Yes, Big Brother IS Watching You!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#125 UC-Berkeley and other 'public Ivies' in fiscal peril
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#75 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards

also state gov was effectively bankrupt (various financial engineering) ... same period the univ. had gone from something like 80+% funding from state legislature to 11% funding from state legistlature.

on the other hand, when we were recruiting from cal. state univ., the only 4.0 graduates we saw were foreign students from the other side of the pacific. some past refs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#2 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#48 Mozilla v Firefox
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#21 Taxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#45 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#51 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#57 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#55 Can outsourcing be stopped?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#20 Five great technological revolutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#18 Great Brian Arthur article on the Second Economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#75 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#18 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#55 copyright protection/Doug Englebart
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#25 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014h.html#32 How Comp-Sci went from passing fad to must have major
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#27 US Education

this has also come up in past a.f.c. discussions about state's postpone high school graduation requiring 7th grade proficiency in math and english ... and US OECD education ranking near the bottom of industrialized countries.

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

IBM RAS

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM RAS
Date: 02 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#16 IBM RAS

IBM mainframe disk had a long standing problem. Turns out if power failed in the middle of write operation, there was enough residual power for disk&controller to finish write ... but mainframe memory was gone ... so zeros were generated for the completion of the write along with valid error correcting codes. Power restored, read operations would complete with no error (even though zeros were propagated for the remainder of the record). For os/360 flavors it would particularly show up if VTOC was being updated at the power failure.

Original CMS wrote changed filesystem control information always to new location and eventually updated MFD record in single write. Power failure before the MFD write wouldn't reflect the changes ... however if the power failure happened during the MFD write, could corrupt the filesystem. New CMS EDF went to a pair of MFD records where it would alternate writes. After restart it would read both records, and figure out both non-zero and which one is most current.

FBA (but not CKD) went to convention that it wouldn't start write of record, unless the complete record was available to finish write. Now there hasn't been real CKD disks made for decades ... all being emulated on industry standard fixed-block disks ... emulation taking advantage fixed-block characteristics.

posts mentioning CKD, VTOC, multi-track search, FBA, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dasd

2000 was brought into datacenter that had 40+ some of the IBM's largest mainframes ... something like $30M a pop ... none ever older than 18months .... constantly being upgraded ... number needed to finish every day's batch settlement in overnight window ... 450K statement Cobol application. Did some performance analysis and found something that resulted in 14% improvement ... would be $180M savings in IBM mainframes ... I had originally semi-jokingly said I would do it for 5% of savings in lieu of any other payments ... but they didn't remember that afterwards. They had a group of something like 80 people that had been caring and feeding for the application ... but had been primarily myopic focus on low-level hot-spot analysis ... had missed some higher level logic.
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), Aug2017


Trivia: that customer couldn't stand what current generation of PDUs did in the event of power failure. They hired top engineer company and had them redesign the major PDU product ... and give the design to them for free. Within a year, almost every major business critical operation was running with the new PDUs.

misc. posts mentioning PDUs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#82 write rings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#85 Mainframe power failure (somehow morphed from Re: write rings)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#61 Where do the filesystem and RAID system belong?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#44 Calculating a Gigalapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#62 ibm icecube -- return of watercooling?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#6 how to set up a computer system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#64 Transactions for Industrial Strength Programming
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#41 IBM's mini computers--lack thereof
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#41 COTS software on box ? to replace mainframe was Re: Curious(?) way to ZIP a mainframe file
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#4 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#63 Little bit OT IBM & Air NZ outage report to stay Top Secret
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#78 Software that breaks computer hardware( was:IBM 029 service manual )
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#26 EPO's (Emergency Power Off)

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

OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 03 Aug 2017 10:24:28 -0700
rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) writes:
Reminds me of the old joke:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_phases_of_a_big_project
... 1. Enthusiasm, 2. Disillusionment, 3. Panic and hysteria, 4. Hunt for the guilty, 5. Punishment of the innocent, and 6. Reward for the uninvolved.

... and "heads roll uphill" ... a few past refs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#91 Ux's good points.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#22 MS to world: Stop sending money, we have enough - was Re: Most ... can't run Vista
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#26 MS to world: Stop sending money, we have enough - was Re: Most ... can't run Vista
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#41 IBM--disposition of clock business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#15 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#54 How will mainframers retiring be different from Y2K?

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

Military Contractors

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Military Contractors
Date: 03 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
private equity parents have lots of leverage ... both OPM & DynCORP here
https://theintercept.com/2015/06/24/opm-contractor-veritas/
there was huge uptic in outsourcing to for-profit corporations last decade, frequently with private equity parents with lots of political juice ... intelligence 70% of the budget and over half the people (including Snowden's employer)
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/
accelerating the rapidly spreading success of failure culture ... where they make a lot more money off a series of failures
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/

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

son-in-law fallujah 2004-2005 and then back again baqubah 2007-2008 ... worse than fallujah. this account has part of the reason was that iraqi fighters continued to learn between fallujah and baqubah while US rotated in and out.
https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Baqubah-Killing-Our-Way-ebook/dp/B007VBBS9I/
"The author takes the reader into the midst of the conflict in and around Baqubah--Iraq's 'City of Death'--a campaign that lasted most of 2007. The author and his fellow Bonecrushers watched as the city went from sectarian fighting amongst the Shiite and Sunnis, to an all-out jihad against the undermanned and dangerously dispersed US forces within Baqubah and the outlying areas."
... snip ...

GAO $60B airlifted pallets of shrink wrapped $100 bills disappear into iraq ... lots of it as part of surge for bribes and tribute in various areas to reduce conflict (although huge amounts skimmed along the way) ... right out of Roman Empire.

Original justification for Iraq invasion was Iraq supported Al-Queda and it would only cost $50B, it then morphs into WMDs. Cousin of White House Chief of Staff Card was dealing with Iraq in the UN and given proof that the WMDs (tracing back to US in the Iran/Iraq war)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran-Iraq_war
had been decommissioned, shared with cousin Card and others in White House and then locked up in military hospital.
https://www.amazon.com/EXTREME-PREJUDICE-Terrifying-Story-Patriot-ebook/dp/B004HYHBK2/
The decommissioned WMDs were found early in the invasion, but information classified until fall 2014 (four years after book was published).
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html

WMD posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#wmds

Military-industrial-Complex wanted Iraq invasion so badly that corporate reps were telling former eastern block countries that if they voted for the invasion in the UN, they would get membership in NATO and (directed appropriation) USAID (could only be used for purchase of US arms).
https://www.amazon.com/Prophets-War-Lockheed-Military-Industrial-ebook/dp/B0047T86BA/

MICC posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex

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

IBM ... the rise and fall

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM ... the rise and fall
Date: 04 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
1995 ... the rise and fall
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm

there was the communication group fiercely fighting off client/server and distributed computing trying to preserve their dumb terminal paradigm and install base. in late 80s, a senior disk engineer got talk scheduled at annual worldwide internal communication group conference (supposedly on 3174 performance) and started out saying that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division ... the disk division was seeing data fleeing datacenters to more distributed computing friendly platforms with a drop in disk sales The disk division had come up with a number of solutions but were constantly being vetoed by communication group (communication group had corporate strategic responsibility for everything that crossed datacenter walls). A few short years later, IBM has gone into the red.

past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal

my wife had included 3-tier (middle-layer) in response to gov. request for super secure, distributed computing campus environment. we then included that in customer executive presentations ... mainframe, middle-layer, clients ... and were taking arrows in the back and lots of FUD from communication group, SAA people, and token-ring people.

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

In the early 90s (before we left), we would periodically drop by Somers and talk to various people about what needed to be changed in the IBM company; there were lots of people (many with 30+ yrs experience) who could clearly articulate what needed to be done. We would go back a couple months later and nothing had changed. We hypothesized that any major change would devalue life-long IBMers' experience ... and in self-interest, they were hoping to preserve the status quo and delay major changes until after they retired. Somebody that I had done a lot of work with in the 70s, was made head of SAA and got a large, top-floor corner office in Somers. We would also stop by his office and complain about some of what his SAA people were doing.

past posts mentioning Somers:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#5 IBM Somers NY facility?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#66 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#34 IBM Poughkeepsie?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#67 I would like to understand the professional job market in US. Is it shrinking?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#55 Handling multicore CPUs; what the competition is thinking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#29 someone smarter than Dave Cutler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#79 I actually miss working at IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#50 Having left IBM, seem to be reminded that IBM is not the same IBM I had joined
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#64 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#57 How will mainframers retiring be different from Y2K?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#36 CLECs, Barbara, and the Phone Geek
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#41 World Wide Web turns 25 years old
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014l.html#40 Could this be the wrongest prediction of all time?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016g.html#80 IBM Sells Somers Site for $31.75 million
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016g.html#81 IBM Sells Somers Site for $31.75 million

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

OT: book: "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OT:  book:  "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 04 Aug 2017 13:34:42 -0700
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
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/
from here
http://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#1 OT: book: "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"

Mega-Banks Blow 100% of Earnings on Share-Buybacks & Dividends, Crimp Lending, Constrain Economy
http://wolfstreet.com/2017/08/02/share-buybacks-dividends-eat-100-of-bank-earnings-crimp-lending-constrain-economy-fdics-hoenig-to-senate/

this is subject that comes up frequently in IBM employee discussions, since stock-buybacks now permeate most large corporations.

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.

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

stock-buyback posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#stock.buyback
inequality posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#inequality
Too Big To Fail posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

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

This Is How The US Government Destroys The Lives Of Patriotic Whistleblowers

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: This Is How The US Government Destroys The Lives Of Patriotic Whistleblowers
Date: 04 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
This Is How The US Government Destroys The Lives Of Patriotic Whistleblowers
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-23/how-us-government-destroys-lives-patriotic-whistleblowers

Boyd told story that when SECDEF couldn't get Chuck and him thrown in Leavenworth for the rest of their lives (behind paywall, but mostly lives free at wayback machine) ... SECDEF created new security classification, "NOSPIN" (unclassified but not to be given to Chuck)
https://web.archive.org/web/20070320170523/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html
also
https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html

there is a joke in Washington that the highest security classification is "downright embarrassing" (usually nothing to do with national security, but individual careers).

somewhat related, enormous outsourcing to for-profit companies, intelligence 70% of budget and over half the people
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/

We didn't know it at the time, but we were possibly involved on the periphery. In 2002 the agency released IC-ARDA (since renamed IARPA) unclassified BAA that basically said none of the tools that the agency had did the job. Just before closing, we got a call asking us to respond. We quickly got in response and then had a number of meetings showing we could do what was needed ... and then nothing. It wasn't until this series that we had any idea of what might be going on, more profit from a series of failures.
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/

Former CIA Analyst Sues Defense Department to Vindicate NSA Whistleblowers
https://theintercept.com/2017/02/10/former-cia-analyst-sues-defense-department-to-vindicate-nsa-whistleblowers/
"Loomis says he thinks those redactions were more for the sake of Hayden's reputation than protecting real classified information. He eventually documented the saga in a self-published book called 'NSAs Transformation: An Executive Branch Black Eye.'"
...snip ...

Thomas Drake
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/united-states-of-secrets/the-frontline-interview-thomas-drake/
ThinThread
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinThread

Success Of Failure posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#success.of.failuree
whistleblower posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#whistleblower

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

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

OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2017 11:49:28 -0700
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
We also pay low sums of money to the people who educate us, feed us, nurse us and do all the dirty, smelly jobs that nobody really wants to do. There are minimum wage jobs you couldn't pay me enough to do.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#17 OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#19 OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions

claim is that wallstreet financial tripled in size (as percent of GDP) during economic mess for destroying the economy. they did over $27T in toxic CDOs 2001-2008, largely because of the ability to pay for triple-A. the triple-A rating eliminated any reason that lenders had to care about borrower's qualifications and/or loan quality ... since they could sell them off as fast as they could be made (including to operations restricted to dealing in "safe" investments, like large pension funds).

Also wallstreet bonuses quadrupled during economic mess (enormous amounts being skimmed off the transactions; NY state comptroller published aggregate went from $8B/yr to $33B/yr by 2006, 2002:$9.8B, 2003:$15.8B, 2004:$18.6B, 2005:$25.2B, 2006:$33.9B, 2007:$33.2B)

Late 90s, FDC (transaction processor for over half payment cards in the US, for many banks everything totally outsourced to FDC) had acquired the ailing Western Union (in merger with First Financial). After the start of the century, there was enormous explosion in large companies bringing in illegal workers ... and WU saw corresponding explosion in their revenue off illegal workers sending payments home. Just between start of the century and 2005, WU revenue exploded until it was half of FDC bottom line. 2005 FDC spins off WU, possibly in part because president of Mexico had invited FDC executives to Mexico to be thrown in jail (for the huge amounts that WU was making off the illegal workers). Also, explosion in illegal workers brought in the first half of last decade, created significant downward pressure on wages.

Triple-A ratings eliminate any reason that lenders had to care about loans and/or borrowers. Then wallstreet started making securitized mortgages designed to fail, pay for triple-A, sell to their customers, and take out CDS gambling bets that they would fail (creating enormous demand for dodgy mortgages, now they cared about loan quality, but not as one might expect).

The largest holder of these CDS gambling bets was AIG and was negotiating to pay off at 50cents on the dollar when the SECTREAS steps in and has them sign document that they can't sue those making the CDS gambling bets and to 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; possibly the original motivation for TARP funds ... even tho the original claim was to purchase off-book toxic assets ("troubled asset relief program"), however just the four largest TBTF were carrying $5.2T at the end of 2008, and only $700B was appropriated for TARP. The "real" program was done behind the scenes by federal reserve buying trillions in off-book toxic assets at 98cents on the dollar and providing tens of trillions in ZIRP funds.

economic mess posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess
triple-A rated toxic CDO posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo
Too Big To Fail posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
inequality posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#inequality
ZIRP posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#zirp

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

OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 05 Aug 2017 13:50:55 -0700
hancock4 writes:
In his later years, Henry Ford's leadership almost ruined the company. Things got so bad that even his wife voted against him, forcing him to finally retire and allow for changes. Ford was dead set against stopping the Model T even though the competition had developed better cars. He then was dead set against stopping the Model A, again despite the competition.

in the 80s & 90s ... lots of large companies started creating subsidiries to which they shifted profit away from parts of the businesses that employed lots of people. airlines shifted profit to separate (computerized) ticketing subsidiary ... airline operations could show a loss (which could be leveraged against the unions) while ticket subsidiary showed significant profit ... totally offsetting airline operation losses ... so that the parent company still showed significant profit.

autos had shifted much of the profit to loans and other financial operations. there is story that ford's financial arm was making 90% of ford's parent company profit and around turn of the century the CFO sells off the financial arm ... the explanation was that the CFO was about to retire ... and basically got commission on the sale (no longer cares that he is unloading ford's profit making).

also after the run of the century, congress makes it much easier to offshore money. posterchild is large equipment maker that creates its (distributership) profit subsidiary in Luxenbourg.
https://www.icij.org/project/luxembourg-leaks

previously equipment was made, sold and delivered in the US. then equipment is made in the us, sold at cost to the luxembourg "distributership", which sells at profit in the US (and shipped directly from US plant to US customers) ... with all the profit being booked in Luxembourg ... for which there is extremely attractive tax rate.

2002, Congress lets the fiscal responsibility act lapse (spending can't exceed tax revenue, on its way to eliminating all federal debt). 2010, CBO report that 2003-2009, taxes were reduced by $6T and spending increased by $6T for $12T gap compared to fiscal responsibility budget (first time congress cuts taxes to not pay for two wars). Since then taxes not restored and only modest cuts in spending so debt continues to increase. Supposedly confluence of interests, 1) federal reserve and wallstreet wanting huge federal debt, 2) wallstreet and special interests wanting huge tax cuts, and 3) miltiary-industrial complex wanting huge spending increase (and "perpetual war").

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#17 OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#19 OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#24 OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions

Suggested motivation behind huge federal debt by federal reserve and wallstreet, was TBTF were using the tens of trillions in ZIRP funds to buy treasuries ... averaging $300B/year off the spread between ZIRP funds and treasuries (only works if there is enormous federal debt).

tax evasion, avoidance, havens posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#tax.evasion
fiscal responsibility act posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#fiscal.responsibility.act
military-industrial(-congressional) complex posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex
perpetual war posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#perpetual.war
economic mess posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess
ZIRP posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#zirp

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

The complete history of the IBM PC, part two: The DOS empire strikes; The real victor was Microsoft, which built an empire on the back of a shadily acquired MS-DOS

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The complete history of the IBM PC, part two: The DOS empire strikes; The real victor was Microsoft, which built an empire on the back of a shadily acquired MS-DOS
Date: 05 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#15 The complete history of the IBM PC, part two: The DOS empire strikes; The real victor was Microsoft, which built an empire on the back of a shadily acquired MS-DOS

IBM (mid-range) 4331/4341 late 70s dropped below some cost threashold. 4300 competed against DEC VAX in the mid-range market and sold about the same numbers in single unit orders. However, large corporations were also buying 4300s in multiple hundreds at a time, for placing out in departmental areas ... leading edge of the coming distributed computing tsunami. I'm involved in some of the distributed computing support but was also got con'ed into doing benchmarks on engineering 4341 (before product ship) for national lab that was looking at getting 70 of them for compute farm ... low space & environmentals for departmental areas ... but could pack huge number in traditional datacenter. Some old 4300 email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#4341
old post with late 70s national lab benchmarks ... leading edge of cluster supercomputers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#0

4361/4381 were 4331/4341 follow-ons and expected to continue to see explosion in sales ... however by that time, mid-range market was starting to move to workstations and large PCs. This can be seen in this decade of VAX numbers ... sales sliced&diced by year, model, US/non-us
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0
in the late 80s we started doing IBM's HA/CMP product ... past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
and also working on cluster scale-up ... this is old post about Jan1992 meeting in Ellison's conference room on commercial cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
.... but we were also working with national labs on technical/scientific (supercomputer) cluster scale-up ... some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa
within a few weeks of the Ellison meeting, the cluster scale-up was transferred, announced as IBM supercomputer (for technical/scientific *ONLY*) and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors. We then decide to leave.

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

OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2017 11:09:13 -0700
Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> writes:
I found places that separated the analysis and programmer functions toxic.

Once and a while I happened on someone that could do analysis but not programming, but that was pretty rare and I only saw simple stuff done by those analysts.

Always was a programmer/analyst myself and wouldn't have it any other way.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#17 OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#19 OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#24 OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#25 OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions

I've known analysts that were akin to software engineers and viewed programming as hard work and therefor menial.

... from "real programmers" reposted here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#31
Real Programmers never work 9 to 5. If any Real Programmers are around at 9 AM, it's because they were up all night.
... in part because (real) programming can require intense concentration w/o distractions

same post also includes "real software engineers".

somewhat related:

Google got it wrong. The open-office trend is destroying the workplace.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/30/google-got-it-wrong-the-open-office-trend-is-destroying-the-workplace/

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

Stop Romanticizing Glass-Steagall

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Stop Romanticizing Glass-Steagall
Date: 06 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
Stop Romanticizing Glass-Steagall
https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/stop-romanticizing-glass-steagall

Jan2009 I was asked to html'ize the Pecora heargings (30s senate hearings resulting in Glass-Steagall, had been scanned the fall2008 at Boston Public library) with lots of internal cross-links and URLs between what happened then and what happened this time; some anticipation that new congress would have appetite to do something. After working on it for some time, got a call that it wouldn't be needed after all (references to enormous piles of wallstreet money showing up on capital hill). Start of the century (before too-big-to-fail had really permeated), I was asked to evaluate a periodic industry publication that gave numbers for several thousands measures ... avg. of largest regional banks compared to avg of the national banks (on their way to being too-big-to-fail). The regional banks were slightly more profitable than the national ... already indicating that they were too-big-to-be-efficient (major motivation seems top executive compensation proportional to size of organization, not profitability ... one of the reasons they changed the name to "retention bonuses")
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall

They would have to have cooperation of Federal Reserve, FDIC, SEC, etc in calculating risk adjusted capital. Glass-Steagall was to keep regulated "safe" depository institutions separate from investment banks (where nobody cared about their risky behavior and would let them fail). One of the gimmicks was to move the risky stuff off the books just before monthly checks (for a year at Lehman, they had regulators sitting on site watching them do it, aka "regulatory capture")
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#regulatory.capture

Very early in the century, somebody at NYFED had added new "qualitative" section to BASEL2 draft (in addition to traditional quantitative calculation for risk adjusted capital). We were asked in to discuss how to implement qualitative risk adjusted capital. However, before BASEL2 was adopted, the qualitative section essentially disappears.

Also about the same time, I was asked to review a periodic industry publication (before too big to fail had seriously kicked in) that compared the avg. of ten largest regional banks with the avg. ten largest national banks ... for thousands of financial measures. There was no analysis ... just 60 lines per page for things like avg. cost to perform teller transactions, etc. After some study, I was able to show that the national banks were less efficient than the regional banks. Conjecture that possible major motivation for national banks were top executives were paid proportional for size of the institution ... not for how good a job they were doing. This was even before the additional size increases enabled by repeal of Glass-Steagall which made them even less efficient ... besides taking down the economy and having the taxpayers foot the bill (as well as even more extensive "regulatory capture").
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

End of 2008, just the four largest too big to fail were carrying $5.2T (trillion) in off-book toxic assets. If the institutions were forced to bring those assets back on the books, they would have been declared insolvent and FDIC forced to liquidate the institutions (earlier in the fall, they had been going for 22cents on the dollar, they would have to book $4T losses)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo

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

Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'
Date: 06 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral'
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kzbm4a/employees-anti-diversity-manifesto-goes-internally-viral-at-google

I know the feeling. In the late 70s & early 80s, I was blamed for online computer conferencing (precursor to social media) on the internal network (larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime mid-80s). Folklore is when the corporate executive committee was told about online computer conferencing (and the interneal 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 ...

CMC posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

this was even before I started sponsoring John Boyd's briefings.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

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

OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2017 12:46:56 -0700
Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
I'm usually called a software engineer (currently senior principal), what I do is analysis, design and programming.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#27 OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions

as undergraduate, was hired by the univ. to be responsible for mainframe production systems ... I was a "programmer 4".

much of my career I've was able to keep any designation off my business card. when I was forced to have some title, I managed to have "staff member". People in silicon valley would frequently say the only designation worth having was "principal" (or "founder")

there have been couple state cases involving use of "software engineer" ... where term "engineer" has very specific legal meaning.

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

Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2017 16:58:58 -0700
Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
They were originally called "interstate and defense highways." They were claimed to have been built to speed evacuation of cities in the event of atomic attack. Never mind that this was complete nonsense.
... the "defense" was rapidly deploy/move military. Abrams (& A10) were counter to soviet tanks coming into europe. Abrams are so heavy that lots of Germany's infrastructure had to be upgraded to take the Abrams weight.

Note that weight also precludes Abrams being deployed in many areas around the world that don't have infrastructure to support such heavy weight.

Another Abrams problem was not designed to handle IEDs ... they turned out to be so vulnerable that they had to take special precautions when taking them out for a drive in Iraq.

Some of the reason that majority of Abrams are mothballed and the military has been fighting for years to get congress to stop building more (that just go into stockpile)
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/09/army-to-congress-thanks-but-no-tanks/comment-page-4/
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/12/18/congress-again-buys-abrams-tanks-the-army-doesnt-want.html

worlds largest Abrams stockpile/graveyard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAQQ7kdqmlU

industry side of military-industrial complex devotes a lot of money to making sure their money keeps flowing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex

the design of highway system to handle military vehicles then spills over into 18wheel trucking operation. subsidize "defense" highway system by justifying for 18wheel heavy trucking industry (which takes business from more efficient train system).

past posts that highway systems are designed to handle some number of 18wheel heavy truck ton-axle miles (ESALs) ... and that autos & light trucks have no effect ... old thread with references to calstate road design documents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#41 Transportation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#42 Transportation

other past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#70 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#109 Minimum Wage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#76 IMPI (System/38 / AS/400 historical)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#47 Future of support for telephone rotary dial ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#68 Historian predicts the end of 'science superpowers'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#21 Horrid thought about Politics, President Bush, and Democrats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#2 Overweight truckers stopped by tech checks

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

OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2017 18:17:42 -0700
"J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> writes:
That's a bit different from our situation. I'm not going to give you all the boring details, but imagine a financial product that has a lifetime of up 120 years and comes in several thousand variations, leaving aside add- ons. Every year the costs change. Sometimes it's not just the numbers but the whole structure. Every year the payout changes. Every year the code base has be changed to reflect this. It has to be tested and it has to be shown that the result is still in compliance with applicable financial regulations. When new products are created they have to be integrated into the system. The code base goes back to the '60s--much of it was designed to fit on a machine of that era, not to be readable or maintainable. Comments often went in the trash when the code was moved from cards to the tiny little tapes that were available at the time. The people who know the code and the business model are retiring, someone has to take over.

i've previously pontificate about billions being spent in the 90s on straight through processing to be run on large number of parallel killer micros (to eliminate the bottleneck of the overnight batch settlement that had been around since the 60s&70s) ... but they were using some standard parallelization libraries that 100 times the overhead of cobol batch. I (and others) pointed it out to them ... which they ignored until hit the wall in some large scale pilots ... and finally things go up in flames (100 times overhead increase totally swamping anticipated throughput increase by moving from mainframe cobol batch to large numbers of parallel killer micros).

decade later I was involved with group that had done work on high-level business rule specification that generated low-level fine-grain SQL statements. It greatly simplified implementation and tracking regulation changes. Also it got huge throughput by leveraging the significantly parallelization work that had been done by RDBMS vendors (organizings data and generating fine-grain SQL statements ... aligning with the RDBMS cluster scale-up work).

Was able to demonstrate peak (simulated) transaction processing of the largest financial institutions on modest cluster configurations ... with lots of leftover available capacity.

We tood it to major financial organizations ... which initially saw lots of interest ... but then hit break wall. Finally were told that there were lots of financial executives that bore the scars from the failed efforts in the 90s ... and it would be some time before the industry took another run at the problem.

past posts mentioning generating fine-grain SQL statements from high-level business rules:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#68 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#47 COBOL - no longer being taught - is a problem
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#19 zLinux OR Linux on zEnterprise Blade Extension???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#19 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#1 Itanium at ISSCC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#8 Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#49 US payments system failing to meet the needs of the digital economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#0 Burroughs B5000, B5500, B6500 videos
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#31 X86 server
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#35 Why is the mainframe so expensive?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013o.html#80 "Death of the mainframe"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#3 We need to talk about TED
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#90 Why do bank IT systems keep failing ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#69 Is end of mainframe near ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#78 Over in the Mainframe Experts Network LinkedIn group
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#48 Windows 10 forceful update?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#84 The mainframe is dead. Long live the mainframe!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016g.html#23 How to Fix IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#82 The ICL 2900
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#63 The ICL 2900
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#39 The Pentagon still uses computer software from 1958 to manage its contracts

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

Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to  do with computers whatsoever!)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 06 Aug 2017 22:26:59 -0700
Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> writes:
The Massachusetts Turnpike was built at that time, mid-50s. I never knew what financial, regulatory or political details made it possible for that to become a toll road while the rest of the Interstate system was free.

It would be nice to imagine that someone in Boston turned up a crumbling document chartering a Massachusetts Bay Colony Turnpike Company in sixteen-ninety-mumble that was judged still valid and in force. :-)


When I graduated and drove cross-country in the winter to join the science center ... I made observation that mass pike was worse road than mountain county roads in idaho & montana ... that had lots of frost heaves ... made references that they didn't actually prepare the road bed (requires something like 6ft in areas subject to frost heaves). I was told by Mass. residents that way the highway industry got paid to repair it every year. I also made references about water soluable asphalt ... again I was told that way the highway industry got paid to repair it every year. They then pointed out that US Fed. secretary of transportation was from the mass. state highway industry.

later there was work on completing (elevated) I93 that merged with Highway one just before tobin bridge. Multiple lane highway one traffic coming in from the left, crossing tobin bridge and continuing right. Multiple lane I93 traffic coming in from the right, crossing tobin bridge and continuing left .... interstate highway standard have minimum posted speed requirements, however highspeed X-pattern crossing small number of tobin bridge lanes would be constant traffic crashes. It was admitted that somebody made horrible design goof ... but if they terminated the contract, the state would have to pay something like $30M penalty to the contractor. If they allowed the construction to be completed, the federal gov. would pay majority and only cost the state of Mass. $5M. The posted speed had to be drastically be reduced, not meeting interstate standards.

then there is big dig that was suppose to cost $2B and graft & corruption increased it to $22B (with interstate system footing the bill) ... claim by mass politicians was that federal gov. owned it to the state of mass for economic stimulus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig

somewhat akin to some southern politicians saying that federal flood insurance funds repeated payments to the same people year after year was federal economic stimulus funds owed those states
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#41 Where do the filesystem and RAID system belong?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#42 Where do the filesystem and RAID system belong?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#41 August 7, 1944: today is the 65th Anniversary of the Birth of the Computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#18 other days around me
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013n.html#48 'Free Unix!': The world-changing proclamationmade30yearsagotoday
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#27 Federal Subsidies

posts mentioning water soluble asphalt:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#28 trains was: Al Gore and the Internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#27 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#12 OT: Tax breaks to Oracle debated
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#79 [CM] What was your first home computer?

"Big Dig" posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#25 TGV in the USA?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#73 Cormpany sponsored insurance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#41 fraying infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#56 IBM drops Power7 drain in 'Blue Waters'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#0 Urban transportation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#55 TV Big Bang 10/12/09
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#11 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#14 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#15 OT: Tax breaks to Oracle debated
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#18 other days around me
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#68 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013n.html#48 'Free Unix!': The world-changing proclamationmade30yearsagotoday
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#4 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#105 only sometimes From looms to computers to looms
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#27 Federal Subsidies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#72 IMPI (System/38 / AS/400 historical)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#6 The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#57 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#79 [CM] What was your first home computer?

other posts mentioning "frost heaves" on mass pike:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#22 Roads as Runways Was: Re: BA Solves Y2K (Was: Re: Chinese Solve Y2K)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#35 pop density was: trains was: Al Gore and the Internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#36 pop density was: trains was: Al Gore and the Internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#42 Transportation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#68 Killer Hard Drives - Shrapnel?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#11 Idiot drivers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#45 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#24 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#26 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#36 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#72 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#72 IMPI (System/38 / AS/400 historical)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#76 IMPI (System/38 / AS/400 historical)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#79 [CM] What was your first home computer?

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

Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2017 15:30:40 -0700
hancock4 writes:
I read a good bio of McN but don't recall the title. It described how he focused on numbers rather than substantive facts, and the numbers were either wrong, misleading, or even lies--they gave a very distorted view of the reality of the war. They utterly failed to provided the political issues, which were very significant. Vietnam was very different than WW II, but Mc's numbers failed to account for that.

john foster dulles played major role in rebuilding germany's industry and military ... 20s through early 40s, including supporting Hitler and Nazis.

Air program got 2/3rds of total US WW2 budget ... and half of that (1/3rd of total) went to strategic heavy bombers. Heavy strategic bombing started out saying all the money should go to heavy bombers, nothing else was needed ... British tried to tell them that Germany learned the hard way the need for long range fighters ... but the US insisted on relearning it the hard way (also). From the law of unintended consequences, 1943 strategic bomber program needed locations of industrial and military targets in Germany ... and it got the coordinates and plans from wallstreet. Strategic bombing program then was claiming that they could win the war w/o even having to invade france.

Problem was that strategic heavy bombing had difficult time hitting targets from 5-6miles up ... even with norden sightes. 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 ...

Later McNamara was LeMay's staff planning the fire bombing of German and Japanese cities (hard to miss a while city, even from 5-6 miles up). After the war, McNamara leaves for the auto industry, but returns as SECDEF for Vietnam ... where Laos becomes the most bombed country in the world (more bomb tonnage than dropped on Japan and Germany combined). McNamara later said that LeMay had told him that if US had lost WW2, it would have been them on trial for war crimes.

McMaster's book is very critical of the Vietnam war ... basically advisers didn't see US could win (wasn't military issue) ... but it would be worse position in world opinion if it didn't try.
https://www.amazon.com/Dereliction-Duty-Johnson-McNamara-Chiefs-ebook/dp/B004HW7834/

aka showing the world that gov. was willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of American lives ... even knowing that it would be a loosing effort ... and part of military-industrial-complex
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex

then there is Johnson tiring of the war and willing to sign a peace treaty ... and then had proof that Nixon was commiting treason dealing with Vietnam to stall the peace talks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#22 Nixon and the war
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#23 Nixon and the war
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#24 Nixon and the war

Declassified LBJ Tapes Accuse Richard Nixon of Treason
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/03/21/0331256/declassified-lbj-tapes-accuse-richard-nixon-of-treason
The Lyndon Johnson tapes: Richard Nixon's 'treason'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21768668
How Richard Nixon Sabotaged 1968 Vietnam Peace Talks to Get Elected President
http://www.truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/13994-how-richard-nixon-sabotaged-1968-vietnam-peace-talks-to-get-elected-president
Newly Released Secret Tapes Reveal LBJ Knew but Never Spoke Out About Nixon's 'Treason'
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/newly-released-secret-tapes-reveal-lbj-knew-never-spoke-out-about-nixons-treason/317305/
Did Nixon Commit Treason in 1968? What The New LBJ Tapes Reveal.
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/60446
Richard Nixon at 100: not just criminal, but treasonous too
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/10/richard-nixon-100-criminal-traitor
Yes, Nixon Scuttled the Vietnam Peace Talks - John Aloysius Farrell
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/yes-nixon-scuttled-the-vietnam-peace-talks-107623.html
Richard Nixon's long shadow
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-nixons-long-shadow/2014/08/06/fad8c00c-1ccb-11e4-ae54-0cfe1f974f8a_story.html
Nixon's Treason Now Acknowledged
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/08/nixons-treason-now-acknowledged.html
Fleshing Out Nixon's Vietnam 'Treason'
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/09/08/fleshing-out-nixons-vietnam-treason/
Nixon betrayal far worse than GOP Iran letter: Column
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/03/10/senators-letter-doesnt-rise-to-nixons-level/24695093/
George Will Confirms Nixon's Vietnam Treason
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/08/12/george-will-confirms-nixons-vietnam-treason

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

OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2017 15:42:40 -0700
GreyMaus <mausg@mail.com> writes:
"The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton" (supposed to be a quote from the Duke of Wellington) I suppose that there is something about the "Eton Wall Game" on youtube.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#63 Difference between fingerspitzengefuhl and Coup d'oeil?

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/

... free kindle book from 1846 ... has lots & lots of minutia ... but: 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 ...

followed by long discussion of lots of great conquerors started in their teens; that Napoleon started as officer in his teens as did many of his generals (and were still quite young) ... most of the opposition was headed by generals in their 60s-80s .... does mention that Wellington was same age as Napoleon and studied at the same military schools in France.

more recent reference: Napoleon: A Life; pg366/loc7648-50:
It was an inspired system, originally the brainchild of Guibert and Marshal de Saxe. 40 Napoleon employed it in almost all his coming victories – most notably at Ulm, Jena, Friedland, Lützen, Bautzen and Dresden – not wishing to relive the perils of Marengo where his forces had been too widely spread.

pg366/loc7650-51:
His defeats – particularly at Aspern-Essling, Leipzig and Waterloo – would come when he failed to employ the corps system properly.
... snip ...

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

Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2017 18:57:36 -0700
"J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> writes:
Profitability is the basis of free-market capitalism. That means that ones goods must fill a need at reasonable cost. Cost-effectiveness leads to such projects as the F-111 and the F-35.

boyd would say that when he was head of lightweight fighter plane design at the pentagon ... he reviewed the early F15 design ... and would ask whether they wanted another F111 ... he then redesigned the F15, cutting its weight in half. An issue was the weight for swing wing pivot more than offset any swing wing benefits. Then he was responsible for the YF16 (which becomes the F16) and YF17 (which becomes the F18).

When he started on the YF16/F16, the forces behind the F15 tried to get him committed to Leavenworth for the rest of his life to stop what they felt was work on F16 which they viewed as competition (despite the fact that Boyd had significantly improved the F15). The story was that Boyd didn't have official approval for F16 and so his use of supercomputer time (as part of designing F16) was theft of tens of millions in gov. property (which would put him in leavensworth for the rest of his life). They unleashed the auditors on him ... fortunately he had anticipated their actions ... and the auditors never found any record of his supercomputer use.

from recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#13 Why the Pentagon would rather hire bin Laden than Donald Vandergriff.

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 ...

part of military-industrial(-congressional) complex
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex
and "perpetual war"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#perpetual.war

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

Even Hugh Laurie (actor on TV House) has some understanding of MIC, he wrote a novel about the military-industrial complex ... he also references Boyd and Boyd's OODA-loop in the novel. Gun Seller, loc4605-11:
The day Alexander Woolf decided to take on the military-industrial complex was the day everything changed. For him, for his family, for his business. Things changed quickly, and they changed for good. Roused from its slumber, the military-industrial complex lifted a great, lazy paw, and swatted him away, as if he were no more than a human being. They canceled his existing contracts and withdrew possible future ones. They bankrupted his suppliers, disrupted his labour force, and investigated him for tax evasion. They bought his company's stock in a few months and sold it in a few hours, and when that didn't do the trick, they accused him of trading in narcotics. They even had him thrown out of the St Regis, for not replacing a fairway divot.
... snip ...

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

Disregard post (another screwup)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disregard post (another screwup)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2017 19:46:26 -0700
Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> writes:
But since the responsibility of a public corporation is to their stockholders rather than to their customers, we can probably make an educated guess.

Why the "Maximizing Shareholder Value" Theory of Corporate Governance is Bogus; One mantra you see regularly in the business and popular press goes something along the lines of "the CEO and board have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value."
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/10/why-the-maximizing-shareholder-value-theory-of-corporate-governance-is-bogus.html

from above:
If you review any of the numerous guides prepared for directors of corporations prepared by law firms and other experts, you won't find a stipulation for them to maximize shareholder value on the list of things they are supposed to do. It's not a legal requirement. And there is a good reason for that.

Directors and officers, broadly speaking, have a duty of care and duty of loyalty to the corporation. From that flow more specific obligations under Federal and state law. But notice: those responsibilities are to the corporation, not to shareholders in particular.

... snip ...

and serving customers and employees can be beneficial to corporation ... regardless of what benefits shareholders.

the issue is top executive bonus plans are increasingly tied to share price ... executives who are only looking at the next couple years ... are increasingly not interested to do anything for the corporate benefit ... especially if it involves stuff long after they will be gone.

related ... stock buybacks (and dividends)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#stock.buyback

some recent refs ... including Stockman's "The Great Deformation"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#3 I Feel Old
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#65 A call for revolution
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#14 Leaked IBM email says cutting 'redundant' jobs is a 'permanent and ongoing' part of its business model
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#91 E.R. Burroughs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#96 IBM Wild Ducks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#54 Why the Pursuit of Shareholder Value Kills Innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#62 Big Shrink to "Hire" 25,000 in the US, as Layoffs Pile Up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#93 An OODA-loop is a far-from-equilibrium, non-linear system with feedback
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#5 IBM's core business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#77 Trump delay of the 'fiduciary rule' will cost retirement savers $3.7 billion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#3 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#24 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#47 The rise and fall of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#97 IBM Another Disappointment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#22 OT: book: "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"

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

Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2017 09:30:15 -0700
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
McMaster's book is very critical of the Vietnam war ... basically advisers didn't see US could win (wasn't military issue) ... but it would be worse position in world opinion if it didn't try.
https://www.amazon.com/Dereliction-Duty-Johnson-McNamara-Chiefs-ebook/dp/B004HW7834/

aka showing the world that gov. was willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of American lives ... even knowing that it would be a loosing effort ... and part of military-industrial-complex
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#34 Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)

more recent military-industrial-complex wanted the invasion of iraq so badly that corporate reps were telling former soviet block countries if they voted for the invasion, they would get NATO membership and (directed appropriation) USAID (that could only be spent on US arms).
https://www.amazon.com/Prophets-War-Lockheed-Military-Industrial-ebook/dp/B0047T86BA/

Original justification for Iraq invasion was Iraq supported Al-Queda and it would only cost $50B, it then morphs into WMDs. Cousin of White House Chief of Staff Card was dealing with Iraq in the UN and given proof that the WMDs ... tracing back to US in the Iran/Iraq war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran-Iraq_war
had been decommissioned, shared with cousin Card and others in White House and then locked up in military hospital.
https://www.amazon.com/EXTREME-PREJUDICE-Terrifying-Story-Patriot-ebook/dp/B004HYHBK2/
The decommissioned WMDs (tracing back to US in the Iran/Iraq war) were found early in the invasion, but information classified until fall 2014 (four years after book was published).
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html

WMD posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#wmds

trivia: there was something like $60B in pallets of shrink-wrapped $100 bills airlifted to Iraq ... lots of went to tributes & bribes to reduce conflict during the surge (right out of the Roman Empire) ... lots of the rest just evaporates.

Part of the fall of the Roman Empire was running out of money. They spent loads of money in bribes and tribute for Barbarian leaders to not fight and other large sums to hire Barbarians as mercenaries to fight other Barbarians.
https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Roman-Empire-Barbarians-ebook/dp/B000SEI0JQ

past refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#22 Death From Above
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#23 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#24 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#37 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012f.html#31 Rome speaks to us. Their example can inspire us to avoid their fate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#66 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#75 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#81 Steve B sees what investors think
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#86 Can America Win Wars?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#7 OT: article on foreign outsourcing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#50 A National Infrastructure Program Is a Smart Idea We Won't Do Because We Are Dysfunctional

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

Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2017 11:24:02 -0700
Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
The Russkies are ramping up tank production. The Armata is all new and, I think I have read, better than anything we have. Their latest war games are right on the border and have Eastern Europeans, particularly in the Baltics, nervous that they're practice for a real invasion.

I miss Morten's thoughts on this right now.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#31 Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)

part of the issue was congress mandating to continue to build (obsolete) abrams when the army doesn't want them and there are already thousands mothballed that could be sent over ... that would be more than enough for any major tank slugfest.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex

boyd is credited with the desert storm land battle plan with the left hook ... in lieu of schwarzkopf's frontal tank slugfest until last tank standing. however, the abram's didn't get into position to cut off the republican guard retreat. there have been lots of excuses why they weren't in place ... but one of them could be that boyd didn't realize how fragile the abrams are ... so tightly tethered to maintenance and supply that they weren't able to move any faster than their support organizations. past posts mentioning boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

note that there were accounts of desert storm major coalition tank battles with coalition forces taking no damage. however, the land battle was only the last 100hrs of 43day desert storm. GAO desert storm air effectiveness study had A10s so easily taking out so many Iraq tanks ... that the crews were walking away from them as sitting ducks. The tank battles with coalition forces taking no damage, don't mention whether the Iraqi tanks had anybody home.

some of the criticism of abrams in Iraq (including easily taken out by IEDs) was responded with abrams were suppose to be deployed to static artillery positions and not expect to move.

the other part is the thread about US going over in the 90s supposedly to teach them democratic capitalism were really over there to loot the country. From "Is Harvard Responsible for Putin"??

Fareed zakaria interview with Kissinger had running ticker at the bottom somewhat paraphrasing Kissnger (because he was somewhat hard to hear?). Fareed was asking Kissinger about Putin, referring to Kissinger having 30 or so meetings with Putin. At one point Fareed said something about clarifying what Kissinger had said (which was reflected in the ticker at the bottom) and Kissinger said not at all ... and explained what he met (which was not reflected in the ticker).

Kissinger somewhat indirectly referred to this theme about "Harvard being 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 ...

i was somewhat on the periphery of this part of discussions how to deploy 5000 brick&morter banks (@$1M) around the country as part of creating a democratic capitalist environment ... but that evaporates when the rest implodes.

Things had started out well (but went down hill after the looting efforts) .... after wall fell there was extraordinary cooperation and program to teach Russia about capitalism, From CSPAN, talks about extraordinary cooperation between US & Russia military in the 90s, 25th Anniversary Implementation of Nunn-Lugar Act
https://www.c-span.org/video/?419918-3/implementation-nunnlugar-ac

topic drift ... this references Summers in part responsible for economic mess
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#83 How can we stop algorithms telling lies?

... but it was Rubin that was secretary of treasury and enlisted by CITI to help with the repeal of Glass-Steagall, when repeal is underway, Rubin resigns to become what was described as co-CEO of CITI ... and it was Rubin's protegee Summers that replaces him as secretary of treasury. The economic mess wasn't until the next administration with a new/different secretary of treasury (although both Rubin and the new secretary of treasury had previously been head of the same wallstreet firm).

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

repeal of Glass-Steagall wasn't directly related to the economic mess ... rating agencies selling triple-A rating (on things they knew that weren't worth triple-A), largely enabling over $27T 2001-2008 ... including being able to sell to operations restricted to only dealing in "safe" investments (like large Pension Funds).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo

repeal of Glass-Steagall did enable Too Big To Fail and excuse for not holding them accountable ... also enabled too big to prosecute and too big to jail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

... not just economic mess, but also manipulating LIBOR, FOREX, commodities, money laundering for drug cartels and terrorists, enabling tax evasion and other criminal activity.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#libor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#money.laundering
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#tax.evasion

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

Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2017 11:39:21 -0700
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#31 Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#39 Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)

there is this comparison

T-14 ARMATA (Russia) VS M1A2 ABRAMS (USA) Tank Compare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ8NwsO-XqE

others

US M1 (M1A2) Abrams vs Russian T-90 S - Main Battle Tank / Military Comparison
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlegqcKpdXs
Dare to Compare --- M1A2 Abrams SEP versus K2 Black Panther!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ue8TkDpKZo
Dare to Compare --- M1A2 Abrams SEP versus Vickers Mk.VII!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFyAoOFUxSU

some more

The REAL M1 Abrams! Chapter 1: Overview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULC0TOiZZzc

The REAL M1 Abrams! Chapter 2: Mobility (Part 1/4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWG6Tp04Nnk
The REAL M1 Abrams! Chapter 2: Mobility (Part 2/4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWgn7O0c4Ag
The REAL M1 Abrams! Chapter 2: Mobility (Part 3/4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6zv8QJClBg
The REAL M1 Abrams! Chapter 2: Mobility (Part 4/4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjhfwkQjyw4

The REAL M1 Abrams! Chapter 3: Firepower (Part 1 of 6)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLQh-hq8XKU
The REAL M1 Abrams! Chapter 3: Firepower (Part 2 of 6)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiceFAZ9dcM

military-industrial(-congressional) complex
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex

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

Disregard post (another screwup)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disregard post (another screwup)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2017 17:26:25 -0700
usenet@only.tnx (Questor) writes:
All this is a distraction from the fact that the U.S. has one of the worst healthcare systems among industrialized nations in terms of coverage, cost, and results.

Private Equity Flouts State Regulations by Buying Medical Practices
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/08/private-equity-flouts-state-regulations-buying-medical-practices.html
Given how state regulators did intervene in the sale of hospitals, their complacency in the face of what in many states is an illegal practice, that of non-MDs owning a medical practice, is surprising.
...
So private equity is doing its part to speed up this sorry trend. While it appears to be too late to harass complicit state regulators with letters asking them to explain why they are refusing to enforce the law, the possibility of single payer represents an even bigger monkey wrench to private equity's exit plans.
... snip ...

... i.e. not just insurance industry threatened by single payer.

some past reference mentioning private equity getting into health, hospital, clinics, dental, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#17 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#48 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#100 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#106 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#107 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#18 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#42 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014l.html#30 HP splits, again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#70 LEO
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#9 LEO
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#65 A call for revolution
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#63 GOP introduces plan to massively cut Social Security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#97 In American Towns, Private Profits From Public Works
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#110 The top 50 hospitals that gouge patients the most
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#99 United Air Lines - an OODA-loop perspective

posts mentioning private-equity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity

past posts mentioning MBA destroying corporations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#77 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013n.html#57 rebuild 1403 printer chain
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#89 Difference between MVS and z / OS systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#15 weird apple trivia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#61 Decimation of the valuation of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#94 Systems thinking--still in short supply
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#89 China builds world's most powerful computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#85 US vs German Armies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#0 Locking our own orientation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#14 Fast OODA-Loops increase Maneuverability
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#44 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#49 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#102 pneumatic cash systems was Re: [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#25 Google Employees Weighed in on What Makes a Highly Effective Manager. Technical Expertise Came in Dead Last
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#59 Deconstructing the "Warrior Caste:" The Beliefs and Backgrounds of Senior Military Elites

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

The Man Who Wrote Those Password Rules Has a New Tip: N3v$r M1^d!

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The Man Who Wrote Those Password Rules Has a New Tip: N3v$r M1^d!
Date: 06 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
The Man Who Wrote Those Password Rules Has a New Tip: N3v$r M1^d!
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-man-who-wrote-those-password-rules-has-a-new-tip-n3v-r-m1-d-1502124118

This was sent to me (on the west coast) from the east coast, Friday afternoon. I then distributed it around the west coast. Somebody printed it on corporate letterhead paper and placed it in number corporate bulletin boards over the weekend. Numerous people coming in on Monday thought was real (even though 1April was on Sunday and corporate directives are never issued on Sunday). Afterwards all corporate letterhead paper was kept locked up.


CORPORATE DIRECTIVE NUMBER 84-570471                    April 1, 1984

In order to increase the security of all IBM computing facilities, and to avoid
the possibility of unauthorized use of these facilities, new rules are being put
into effect concerning the selection of passwords.  All users of IBM computing
facilities  are  instructed to change their passwords to conform to these rules
immediately.

RULES FOR THE SELECTION OF PASSWORDS:

   1. A password must be at least six characters long, and must not contain two
      occurrences of a character in a row, or a sequence of two or more characters
      from the alphabet in forward or reverse order.
      Example:  HGQQXP is an invalid password.
                GFEDCB is an invalid password.

   2. A password may not contain two or more letters in the same position as any
      previous password.
      Example:  If a previous password was GKPWTZ, then NRPWHS would be invalid
                because PW occurs in the same position in both passwords.

   3. A  password may not contain the name of a month or an abbreviation for a
      month.
      Example:  MARCHBC is an invalid password.
                VWMARBC is an invalid password.

   4. A  password  may  not  contain  the  numeric  representation  of  a  month.
      Therefore, a password containing any number except zero is invalid.
      Example:  WKBH3LG is invalid because it contains the numeric representation
                        for the month of March.

   5. A password may not contain any words from any language.  Thus, a password
      may not contain the letters A, or I, or sequences such as AT, ME, or TO
      because these are all words.

   6. A password may not contain sequences of two or more characters which are
      adjacent to each other on a keyboard in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal
      direction.
      Example:  QWERTY is an invalid password.
                GHNLWT is an invalid password because G and H are horizontally
                       adjacent to each other.
                HUKWVM is  an  invalid  password  because H and U are diagonally
                       adjacent to each other.

   7. A password may not contain the name of a person, place or thing.
      Example:  JOHNBOY is an invalid password.

Because of the complexity of the password selection rules, there is actually only
one password which passes all the tests.  To make the selection of this password
simpler  for  the  user,  it will be distributed to all managers.  All users are
instructed  to obtain this password from his or her manager and begin using it
immediately.

... snip ...

other past refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#52 OT Re: A beautiful morning in AFM.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#53 April Fools Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#42 Password Rules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#2 Passwords: silly or serious?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#97 Just for a laugh ... How to spot an old IBMer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014g.html#34 Special characters for Passwords
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#14 The FBI Is Wrongly Telling People To Change Passwords 'Frequently'

I designed a chip (card, but could have other physical form factors) for authentication ... big part of current password scenarios are that not only does it have to be so complex that attackers can't guess it ... it is also so complex that you can't remember it. Also since it is a shared-secret, there has to be a unique one for every security domain. It also had person-centric in mind ... so the same chip could be used for authentication purposes at lots of different environments (and cost almost nothing), super secure gov, building access, and fast enough and low power enough that it could be used at transit turnstyle ... not just the same kind of chip, but I person could elect to use the same exact chip for multiple different purposes. I also authored a financial standard (x9.59) to use it for high & low value financial transactions (point-of-sale, unattended, internet, etc).

It had a pincode/password for use of the card ... but because it was only used between you and your card, it wasn't a shared-secret that needed to be divulged. It went a long way getting rid of having hundreds of different impossible to remember passwords. It could be done as (real) two-factor authentication (something you have as well as something you know) but could also be done as three-factor authentication (also including something you are). Refs to chip, card, financial standard, etc ... also couple dozen (assigned) patents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html
was in a couple booths at BAI, world-wide retail banking show
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#224

trivia: the CEO of one of the security companies involved at the show had previously been head of mainframe POK and later head of IBM/PC Boca.

3-factor paradigm posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#3factor

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

Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2017 19:54:24 -0700
"J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> writes:
???? When did the Germans have better tank engineering than the Russians?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#31 Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#39 Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#40 Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)

From Guderian's book (Panzer Leader), loc2902-3:
Hitler then said: 'If I had known that the figures for Russian tank strength which you gave in your book were in fact the true ones, I would not—I believe—ever have started this war.'

loc2903-6:
He was referring to my book Achtung! Panzer!, published in 1937, in which I had estimated Russian tank strength at that time as 10,000; both the Chief of the Army General Staff, Beck, and the censor had disagreed with this statement. It had cost me a lot of trouble to get that figure printed; but I had been able to show that intelligence reports at the time spoke of 17,000 Russian tanks and that my estimate was therefore, if anything, a very conservative one.

loc2256-58:
The military commission was so insistent on this point that eventually our manufacturers and Ordnance Office officials concluded: 'It seems that the Russians must already possess better and heavier tanks than we do.' It was at the end of July, 1941, that the T34 tank appeared at the front and the riddle of the new Russian model was solved.

loc2262-64:
At this time our yearly tank production scarcely amounted to more than 1,000 of all types. In view of our enemies' production figures this was very small. As far back as 1933 I had visited a single Russian tank factory which was producing 22 tanks per day of the Christie-Russki type.
... snip ...

best tanks
http://www.chuckhawks.com/best_tanks_WWII.htm
http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/tiger1_in_action.htm
The German Tiger Tank was introduced in August 1942 and was at that time the most powerful tank in the world. The success of the Tiger was so profound, that no allied tank dared to engage it in open combat. This psychological fear soon became to be known as "Tigerphobia"
... snip ...

issue was that russia was way out producing germany ... analogous to US Sherman production ... both panther and tiger outclassed Sherman, shermans also referred to as "tommy cookers"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_cooker

past refs 3/4s german military effort was against russia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#10 The Knowledge Economy Two Classes of Workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#60 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013g.html#77 What Makes collecting sales taxes Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#70 OT: "Highway Patrol" back on TV
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#38 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#70 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#34 upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014k.html#12 1950: Northrop's Digital Differential Analyzer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014l.html#62 How Comp-Sci went from passing fad to must have major
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014l.html#63 How Comp-Sci went from passing fad to must have major
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#49 LEO
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#51 LEO
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#28 channel islands, definitely not the location of LEO
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#52 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#119 For those who like to regress to their youth? :-)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#74 Qbasic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#36 "I used a real computer at home...and so will you" (Popular Science May 1967)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#80 "I used a real computer at home...and so will you" (Popular Science May 1967)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#85 US vs German Armies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#89 "I used a real computer at home...and so will you" (Popular Science May 1967)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#90 Economist, Harry Dent Hints: Global Banks Facing a Serious Crisis in Months Ahead
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#22 Ironic old "fortune"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#17 5 Naval Battles That Changed History Forever

past refs Panzer Leader:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#13 Keydriven bit permutations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#16 Keydriven bit permutations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#69 past of nukes, was Future of support for telephone rotary dial ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#119 For those who like to regress to their youth? :-)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#55 Shout out to Grace Hopper (State of the Union)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#80 "I used a real computer at home...and so will you" (Popular Science May 1967)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#3 Dunkirk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#53 Dunkirk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#99 The Real Reason You Should See Dunkirk: Hitler Lost World War II There
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#3 Dunkirk

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

VM/370 45th Birthday

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: VM/370 45th Birthday
Date: 09 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
VM/370 45th Birthday
http://share.confex.com/data/handout/share/129/Session_20898_handout_10438_0.pdf

January 1968, three people came out to the university to install CP/67. I was then included in the virtual machine announcement at the spring 68 SHARE meeting in Houston 49+ yrs ago ... will be 50yrs next spring SHARE meeting.

note, science center repeatedly criticized the 7044 reference because it wasn't a *real* virtual machine ... i.e. there was no operating system that ran on real machine that could run in their virtual machine. ... from melinda's paper:
For the first few weeks, the CSC people referred to their concept as a "pseudo-machine", but soon adopted the term virtual machine after hearing Dave Sayre at IBM Research use it to describe a system he had built for a modified 7044. Sayre's M44 system was similar to CP-40, except for the crucial difference of not providing a control program interface that exactly duplicated a real machine. The CP-40 team credited Sayre with having "implanted the idea that the virtual machine concept is not necessarily less efficient than more conventional approaches."
... snip ...

Melinda's web pages (scroll down)
https://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda#VMHist

I started rewriting large portions of CP/67 spring of 1968, pathlengths, algorithm, device drivers, order-seek queuing, chained page I/Os (increase 2301 throughput from 80/sec to 270/sec), etc. Part of presentation I made at fall '68 SHARE meeting on CP/67 pathlength improvements running OS/360 under CP/67
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18

Morph of CP67 to VM370 dropped and/or simplified a lot of CP/67 features. Then came the Future System effort where lots of 370 activity was cut-back and/or outright killed. I continued to work on 360/370 stuff at the science center, even periodically ridiculing FS. Old email about moving from CP67 to VM370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750430

above references CSC/VM ... one of my hobbies was production systems for internal datacenters (at one time, I had more internal datacenter customers than the total peak number Multics systems, little rivalry between Multics on the 5th flr and science center on the 4th flr).

With the death of FS, there was mad rush to get stuff back into the 370 product pipelines ... which contributed to decision to pick up lots of pieces of CSC/VM for inclusion in VM/370 release 3. Other parts of CSC/VM was selected to be guinea pig for starting to charge for operating system software. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

23jun1969 unbundling announcement started to charge for application software, but manage to make case that system software should still be free; the lack of 370 products during the FS period is credited with giving clone processor makers a market foothold, the death of FS and rise of clone makers is credited with decision to start charging for operating system software. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

CP67 delivered to university had 2741&1052 terminal support with neat hack that did automatigically determining terminal type (using SAD CCW on terminal controller to change type of port/line scanner). The univ. also had some number of ASCII/TTY. I extended the CP67 to support for TTY terminal support, including the automagic terminal type identification. This was almost immediately picked up and shipped in CP67. I then wanted to have a single dial-in number ("hunt group") for all terminals ... which didn't quite work. It turns out that while it was possible for SAD CCW to change the port/line scanner, they had taken short-cut and hardwired line speed, i.e. 134.5 baud terminals (2741&1052) didn't work on 110 baud lines (TTY terminal speed). This somewhat prompted Univ. to start clone controller project (using Interdata/3) that supported both dynamic line speed and terminal type. Then four of us get written up for (some part of) clone controller business. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

In the TTY code, I did some line length calculation one-byte hack. This is old story about one of the MIT people changing max. TTY line length to greater than 256 on the CP67 system at the MIT Urban lab in the bldg across the tech sq quad (to support some ascii device down at harvard).
http://www.multicians.org/thvv/360-67.html

At the univ. I did something like 7044 ... but didn't realize it at the time (virtual machine not necessarily less efficient). A lot of the pathlength work addressed running OS/360 faster, but had less effect on CMS. I observed that CMS didn't do any overlap with I/O ... so I created a psuedo-synchronous disk I/O CCWs ... the SIO would finish with CC=1, CSW stored (also reduced the CCW translation time). I then got strongly admonished by the people at the science center for violating 360 principles of architecture; if something was to be done, it had to be with the 360 DIAGNOSE instruction, which was defined as "model dependent" implementation; using the fiction that virtual machines could be a special kind of 360 model.

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

"Subprime Is Contained" (& Other Evidence That "They Really Don't Know What They're Doing")

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: "Subprime Is Contained" (& Other Evidence That "They Really Don't Know What They're Doing")
Date: 10 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
"Subprime Is Contained" (& Other Evidence That "They Really Don't Know What They're Doing")
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-10/subprime-contained-other-evidence-they-really-dont-know-what-theyre-doing

also

What Went Wrong With The 21st Century?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-10/what-went-wrong-21st-century

The scene brought to light by the latest connecting of dots answers the No. 1 economic question of our time: What went wrong with the 21st century? The simple answer: Economists backed a truck over it.

... snip ...

Why Financialized Corporate Governance Works Poorly
https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2017/08/09/why-financialized-corporate-governance-works-poorly/

Whereas the financial system provides extreme examples of the distortions that such a focus can give rise to when combined with policy failures, similar issues arise in many other settings in which the interaction between governments and corporations produces inefficient outcomes

... snip ...

economic mess posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess
stock buyback posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#stock.buyback

recent posts mentioning shareholder value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#54 Why the Pursuit of Shareholder Value Kills Innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#62 Big Shrink to "Hire" 25,000 in the US, as Layoffs Pile Up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017b.html#1 OT: book: "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#58 The ICL 2900
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#93 An OODA-loop is a far-from-equilibrium, non-linear system with feedback
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#5 IBM's core business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#77 Trump delay of the 'fiduciary rule' will cost retirement savers $3.7 billion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#95 The head of the Census Bureau just quit, and the consequences are huge
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#3 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#24 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#53 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#17 Wall Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#47 The rise and fall of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#49 Shareholders Ahead Of Employees
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#63 Real World OODA
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#83 How can we stop algorithms telling lies?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#97 IBM Another Disappointment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#100 Why CEO pay structures harm companies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#107 Why IBM Should -- and Shouldn't -- Break Itself Up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#1 OT: book: "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#9 Corporate Profit and Taxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#22 OT: book: "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#37 Disregard post (another screwup)

other recent posts mentioning economists
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#17 Destruction of the Middle Class
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#24 Destruction of the Middle Class
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#26 Milton Friedman's Cherished Theory Is Laid to Rest
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#29 Milton Friedman's Cherished Theory Is Laid to Rest
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#31 Milton Friedman's Cherished Theory Is Laid to Rest
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#34 If economists want to be trusted again, they should learn to tell jokes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#92 Trump's Rollback of the Neoliberal Market State
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#93 The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds Kindle Edition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#97 Trump to sign cyber security order
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#101 Trump to sign cyber security order
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#102 Trump to sign cyber security order
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#104 Trump to sign cyber security order
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#0 Locking our own orientation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#65 Paging subsystems in the era of bigass memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#67 Economists are arguing over how their profession messed up during the Great Recession. This is what happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#69 Economists are arguing over how their profession messed up during the Great Recession. This is what happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#74 Trump delay of the 'fiduciary rule' will cost retirement savers $3.7 billion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#87 Dodd-Frank Was Designed to Fail - and Trump Will Make it Worse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#89 Understanding decisions: The power of combining psychology and economics
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#93 United Air Lines - an OODA-loop perspective
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#96 Cognitive Bias Codex, 2016
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#7 Arthur Laffer's Theory on Tax Cuts Comes to Life Once More
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#12 SS Trust Fund
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#44 [CM] cheap money, was What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#96 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#99 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#4 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#8 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#12 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#16 Conservatives and Spending
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#42 MVS vs HASP vs JES (was 2821)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#44 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#45 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#53 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#64 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#73 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#92 pneumatic cash systems was Re: [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#102 pneumatic cash systems was Re: [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#6 Mapping the decentralized world of tomorrow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#19 Financial, Healthcare, Construction, Education complexity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#79 Bad Ideas

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

Disregard post (another screwup)

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Disregard post (another screwup)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 12:23:54 -0700
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Why the "Maximizing Shareholder Value" Theory of Corporate Governance is Bogus; One mantra you see regularly in the business and popular press goes something along the lines of "the CEO and board have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value."
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/10/why-the-maximizing-shareholder-value-theory-of-corporate-governance-is-bogus.html


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#37 Disregard post (another screwup)
also
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#22 OT: book: "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"

from yesterday:

Why Financialized Corporate Governance Works Poorly
https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2017/08/09/why-financialized-corporate-governance-works-poorly/
Whereas the financial system provides extreme examples of the distortions that such a focus can give rise to when combined with policy failures, similar issues arise in many other settings in which the interaction between governments and corporations produces inefficient outcomes.
... snip ...

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

related:

"Subprime Is Contained" (& Other Evidence That "They Really Don't Know What They're Doing")
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-10/subprime-contained-other-evidence-they-really-dont-know-what-theyre-doing

also

What Went Wrong With The 21st Century?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-10/what-went-wrong-21st-century
The scene brought to light by the latest connecting of dots answers the No. 1 economic question of our time: What went wrong with the 21st century? The simple answer: Economists backed a truck over it.
... snip ...

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

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

Aug. 9, 1995: When the Future Looked Bright for Netscape

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Aug. 9, 1995: When the Future Looked Bright for Netscape
Date: 10 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
Aug. 9, 1995: When the Future Looked Bright for Netscape
https://www.wired.com/2011/08/0809netscape-bright-future/

from long ago and far away ... 9Aug1995 netscape email (22yrs ago):
Date: Wed, 9 Aug 1995 14:03:19 -0700
From: lynn
To: xxxxxxxx@netscape.com
Subject: (it works)

you aren't currently running thru both firewalls since we don't have the 2nd dedicated machine up and therefor the plug-board on the 2nd firewall isn't mapped (although in theory, I could actually map both firewall plugboards to the same dedicated server machine).

... btw, 2pm friday looks pretty good. i may be a little late ... possible.

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

I controlled webserver to internet gateway to payment networks ... but could only make recommendations on the browser/webserver side. I gave a talk to the browser kids(?) about DNS multiple A-record support ... they said it was too hard. I showed them sample code from 4.3 reno ... they still said it was too hard. I made some disparaging remark about if there wasn't an example in steven's book, they couldn't do it. It took me a yr to get multiple A-record support into the browser.

payment network gateway posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

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

endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 22:02:39 -0700
Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> writes:
If the issue is infant mortality, I provided (in another post) a way to bypass that (cut to the chase, US lifespan is worse than other industrialized countries no matter what age group you consider).
... US lifespan stopped improving ... lifespan improvement not only wasn't keeping up with other countries ... but the actual lifespan started to decline.

Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions; Life expectancy gains have stalled. The grim silver lining? Lower pension costs
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/americans-are-dying-younger-saving-corporations-billions
In 2015, the American death rate -- the age-adjusted share of Americans dying -- rose slightly for the first time since 1999. And over the last two years, at least 12 large companies, from Verizon to General Motors, have said recent slips in mortality improvement have led them to reduce their estimates for how much they could owe retirees by upward of a combined $9.7 billion, according to a Bloomberg analysis of company filings.
... snip ...

In the 80s, Stockman takes credit for accelerating increases in SS contributions that take care of baby boomers (and following generations) having increasing lifespans. That no longer is happening, US lifespan increases have stopped and actually started to decline

Life expectancy to rise more in many industrialized nations than in US
http://www.standard.net/National/2017/02/22/Life-expectancy-to-rise-more-in-many-industrialized-nations-than-in-US

Why do Americans have shorter life expectancy and worse health than people in other high-income countries?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4112220/
U.S. life expectancy declines for the first time since 1993
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/us-life-expectancy-declines-for-the-first-time-since-1993/2016/12/07/7dcdc7b4-bc93-11e6-91ee-1adddfe36cbe_story.html
Life Expectancy In U.S. Drops For First Time In Decades, Report Finds
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/12/08/504667607/life-expectancy-in-u-s-drops-for-first-time-in-decades-report-finds
Dying younger: U.S. life expectancy 'a real problem'
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/12/08/has-us-life-expectancy-maxed-out-first-decline-since-1993/95134818/
US life expectancy declines for first time in 20 years
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38247385

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

System/360--detailed engineering description (AFIPS 1964)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: System/360--detailed engineering description (AFIPS 1964)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 10:13:30 -0700
Jon Elson <elson@pico-systems.com> writes:
Washington University made a big mistake. They went from a 7094 (not sure which variant) to a 360/50 with LCS. I wasn't there during the 7094 days, so didn't realize what a huge downgrade it was until reading through this stuff. Anyway, they eventually realized their mistake, and went from the ghastly 360/50 dragging the anchor (slow LCS memory) to a 360/65 with a pair of internal memories with interleave, and it was almost 40 X faster.

univ had 709 running tape->tape ibsys with 1401 "front-end" for tape<->unit-record ... as part of transition to 360/67 ... the 1401 was replaced with 360/30 ... initially mostly running 1401 emulation. I was given job of re-implementing 1401 MPIO (tape<->unit-record application) in 360. I got to design my own monitor, storage management, scheduling, device drivers, interrupt handler, error recovery, etc. Eventually I had box of 2000 cards with assembler option that either generated stand-alone version (boot with BPS loader) or os/360 that did i/o with DCB macros and get/put. The stand-alone version assembled in around 30 mins (360/30, os/360 release 6), the OS/360 version assembled in about an hour (5 DCB macros taking 5-6 minutes each to assemble).

the 709 ibsys ran student fortran jobs in around a second each (tape->tape). initial transition to 360/67 (running as 360/65) with os/360 release 9.5 took over a minute. adding hasp cut time about in half, got it down to over 30 seconds (card reading & print spooling overlapped with job execution).

os/360 student fortran ran three step fortran G, compile, link-edit and execution. Almost all of that was job scheduler & file open/close ... hundreds of random access disk I/Os taking 12-15 seconds per job step (compared to ibsys monitor running sequential tape->tape).

I then did a very careful constructed OS/360 sysgen ... taking the stage2 sysgen completely apart and reordering things to carefully place order of files and PDS library members on disk to optimize arm seek and rational access ... cutting per fortran student job to 12.9seconds (approx 3 times speedup just from optimize disk motion) ... but still taking 15-20 times longer than 709.

this is old post with part of fall 68 share presentation ... that talks primarily about rewriting major parts of cp67 spring&summer of 68 to improve running of os/360 in virtual machine, but also has some discussion of careful os/360 sysgen.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18 CP/67 & OS MFT14

360/65 didn't get faster than 709 (for fortran student jobs) until waterloo watfor was installed. watfor was its own (ibsys-like) monitor loaded&started once ... and then processing multiple fortran jobs in single execution streaming in/out with HASP spool (rather tape->tape). With my sysgen optimization, the single step job scheduler and file open/close was about four seconds ... and then watfor ran about 20,000 "cards" (statements) per min on 360/65. Normal student fortran jobs were around 30-60 cards, operations would typically collect a card tray (3000 cards) of student jobs (50-100 jobs) and run them in single watfor step ... @20,000/min around 9seconds plus 4seconds start/load for around 13seconds elapsed or around between tenth to quarter of second per job ... finally faster than 709.

other old posts mentioning WATFOR:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#9 cics
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#22 Pre S/360 IBM Operating Systems?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/97.html#28 IA64 Self Virtualizable?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#21 Reviving the OS/360 thread (Questions about OS/360)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#93 MVS vs HASP vs JES (was 2821)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#175 amusing source code comments (was Re: Testing job applicants)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#55 OS/360 JCL: The DD statement and DCBs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#45 Charging for time-share CPU time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#46 Charging for time-share CPU time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#52 Review of Steve McConnell's AFTER THE GOLD RUSH
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#20 Golden Era of Compilers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#22 Golden Era of Compilers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#12 checking some myths.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#33 Waterloo Interpreters (was Re: RAX (was RE: IBM OS Timeline?))
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#53 WATFOR's Silver Anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#54 WATFOR's Silver Anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#1 WATFOR's Silver Anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#3 The problem with installable operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#29 Collating on the S/360-2540 card reader?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#31 Collating on the S/360-2540 card reader?

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

System/360--detailed engineering description (AFIPS 1964)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: System/360--detailed engineering description (AFIPS 1964)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 10:48:09 -0700
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
Basically, commercial computing was IBM's core business, and so eventually IBM abandoned the thought that anyone would buy one of their mainframes for a primarily scientific workload.

That wasn't back then: they made a vector add-on for the 3090 and others with a Cray I-like architecture, but by 1984 it was definitely starting to happen.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#49 System/360--detailed engineering description (AFIPS 1964)

note: one of co-workers at the ibm science center,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

his father, was somehow involved in the gov. legal action with IBM. he said that the "BUNCH"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BUNCH
had people that testified that by late 50s, every vendor realized that the single most important (differentiating) factor to be successful in the computer industry was to have a compatible line across whole product line (possibly simplifying the move to increasingly powerful computers during period of rapidly increasing use of computers). Their claim was that IBM executives were the most successful in enforcing that objective with the 360.
... snip ...

the 3090 processor engineers complained about the vector feature addon. They claimed major reason for vector was that floating point processing ran so slow compared to memory speed ... that memory could keep a whole load of floating point units feed. However, for 3090, they had so speeded up floating point processing that scalar floating point ran as fast as memory ... that having multiple (vector) floating point units wasn't going to run a whole lot faster than 3090 was running scalar ... aka that vector was purely marketing.

3090 with vector addon was being pushed to universities and get them classified as NSF supercomputer centers.

we saw some of this ... I had HSDT project (T1 and faster links), some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

was working with the director of NSF, and was suppose to get $20M to interconnect the NSF supercomputer centers ... then congress cuts the budget, some other things happen, and finally an RFP was released (in part based on what we already had running). As regional networks connect in to the centers, it morphs into NSFNET backbone, the precursor to modern internet. MIT article
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401444/grid-computing/

past email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

note that quite of few of the 3090+vector "NSF supercomputer centers", also tended to have a several (sometimes boat loads) FPS boxes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_Point_Systems
These processors were widely used as attached processors for scientific applications in reflection seismology, physical chemistry, NSA cryptology and other disciplines requiring large numbers of computations. Attached array processors were usually used in facilities where larger supercomputers were either not needed or not affordable. Hundreds if not thousands of FPS boxes were delivered and highly regarded. FPS's primary competition up to this time was IBM (3838) and CSPI.

Cornell University led by physicist Kenneth G. Wilson made a supercomputer proposal to NSF with IBM to produce a processor array of FPS boxes attached to an IBM mainframe with the name lCAP

... snip ...

HSDT also had high-speed satellite network ... I had part of wing at the IBM Los Gatos lab ... and a 4.5M TDMA satellite dish. For awhile one of the other links was with Clementi's E&S lab in kingston that had 3090 and a bunch of FPS boxes.

some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#61 TF-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#71 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#74 Vector processors on the 3090
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#4 IBM Plans Big Spending for the Cloud ($1.2B)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#5 IBM Plans Big Spending for the Cloud ($1.2B)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#63 11 Years to Catch Up with Seymour
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#35 curly brace languages source code style quides

one of the other 3090 "problems" is that it just had normal IBM channels that ran 3mbytes/sec. FPS boxes supported HiPPI disk arrays running 40mbytes/sec. In order for 3090 to support HIPPI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIPPI
some mention of fibre channel standard in above
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#ficon

they came up with a hack ... by cutting into the side of the 3090 extended store memory bus and using reserved addresses to run "peek/poke" convention to claim that they could do HIPPI I/O. some past posts mentioning 3090 HIPPI support
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#25 ESCON Data Transfer Rate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#63 Re : OT: One for the historians - 360/91
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#2 Fix the shuttle or fly it unmanned
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#41 comp.arch classic: the 10-bit byte
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#46 comp.arch classic: the 10-bit byte
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#2 Expanded Storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#4 Expanded Storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#10 RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#13 Today's mainframe--anything to new?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#14 Expanded Storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#1 Multiple address spaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#16 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#7 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#11 what does xp do when system is copying
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#57 Mainframe Hall of Fame: 17 New Members Added
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#86 locate mode, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#69 LPARs: More or Less?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#35 Why does Intel favor thin rectangular CPUs?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#13 What was the historical price of a P/390?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#42 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#45 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#69 how to get a command result without writing it to a file
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#39 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#28 390 vector instruction set reuse, was 8-bit bytes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013g.html#41 A History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#24 What was a 3314?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#80 Languages

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

endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 13:05:36 -0700
John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> writes:
I've heard it's more like 15-20%, but our overpriced medical non-system has plenty of problems beyond the insurance overhead.

big-pharma

Americans Pay More For Prescription Drugs Because Our Politicians Take Bribes From Pharmaceutical Companies
https://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2017/08/americans-pay-more-for-prescription.html

2002 congress lets fiscal responsibility act expire (spending can't exceed tax revenue). 2010 CBO report that just 2003-2009, taxes reduced $6T and spending increased for $6T, $12T gap compared to fiscal responsibility act
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#fiscal.responsibility.act

then first major bill after allowing fiscal responsibilty act to expire was medicare part-d. cbs 60mins does expose on what happened. 18 republicans responsible for getting it passed, insert one line just before final vote (prohibits competitive bidding and prevent CBO from distributing report on the effect). Within six months after bill passes, all 18 have resigned and are on big-pharma payroll. 60mins show drugs from VA (that allows competitive bidding) that are 1/3rd price of identical drugs under part-d.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#medicare.part-d

US comptroller general starts including in speeches that part-d comes to be a long term $40T item, totally swamping all other budget items. By 2005, US comptroller general is also including in speeches that there is nobody in congress that is capable of middle school arithmetic for how badly they are savaging the budget
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#comptroller.general

... also include private-equity moving into health ... recent reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#41 Disregard post (another screwup)

private-equity posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity

private-equity getting into gov. contractors were significant factor in the huge uptic in outsourcing last decade (revolving door, hiring top-level politicians, military, gov. employees, former presidents, cabinet members, etc). ... slight ibm content ... former CEO of IBM leaves to headup major private-equity company that included both former president and previously current president on its rolls ... and buys beltway bandit that will employee snowden
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner

intelligence 70% of budget and over half the budget
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/

private-equity owners of for-profit companies ... significantly accelerating the rapidly growing success of failure culture
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/

past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#success.of.failuree

this is account of private equity similar to house flipping, except the "mortgage" that goes on the bought company's books, then they extract everything they can from the company ... including huge fees, and then they flip it ... can even sell for much less than they paid and still walk away with boat loads of money ... in part because the original loan/mortgage isn't paid off ... but goes with the flipped company. also over half corporate defaults are companies either currently or previously in private equity mill
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmons.html?_r=0

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

System/360--detailed engineering description (AFIPS 1964)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: System/360--detailed engineering description (AFIPS 1964)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 13:22:49 -0700
Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
Could have sped it up using the Loader instead of the Linkage Editoe.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#49 System/360--detailed engineering description (AFIPS 1964)

this reference
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/websphere/awdtools/hlasm/s8169a.pdf

has loader appearing later with release 17 (my 360/65 os/360 work was mostly release 9.5 through release 15/16) ... and would only reduce from three steps to two steps (combined link-edit and go).
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/zosbasics/com.ibm.zos.zappldev/zappldev_127.htm

With my optimized sysgen ... that would have reduced the 3step from 12.9secs to 8.6secs per student fortran job (optimized sysgen reduced 3step from nearly 40secs to 12.9secs ... already cutting 25secs).

watfor amortized the onestep load of 4.3secs across all the jobs that ran at 20,000 card/statements per minute ... to get to avg. time of tenth of second/job. In effect watfor was doing something equivalent to loader ... but combining compile, load, & go into single step (not just load&go) ... and also proceeding to next job ... w/o having to return to standard os/360 step managment between jobs.

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

endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2017 11:09:42 -0700
scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
It would have significantly reduced medicaid funding, to the point where 22 million who are currently covered would be left in the cold (or more likely broke in the E.R.).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#41 Disregard post (another screwup)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#45 "Subprime Is Contained" (& Other Evidence That "They Really Don't Know What They're Doing")
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#48 endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#51 endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)

there was also various proposals to turn over more responsibility to states to decide how things are run.

old posts about medicaid fraud possibly 20-30% & I had been asked to look at the issue in one of the states. CMS had offer to increase fed. gov. share of state's medicaid from 50% to 60% (20% reduction in state's costs, 50% to 40%), if the state would implement several "best practices" anti-fraud provisions (net savings for the feds since the increase from 50% to 60% is more than offset by the smaller total with the reduction in fraud).

Numerous state legislatures failed to pass the necessary legislation because they were heavily lobbied by medicaid providers ... members of legislature didn't get anything personally from the CMS providing the state additional funding ... but they did get something from the special interest lobbying.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#12 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#28 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#29 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#31 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#37 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012h.html#69 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#81 Should the IBM approach be given a chance to fix the health care system?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#86 Should the IBM approach be given a chance to fix the health care system?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#66 General Mills computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#89 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#64 OT: NYT article--the rich get richer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#38 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#48 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#108 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#49 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#59 Qbasic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#65 A call for revolution

GAO report on some of federal issues of state funding
https://www.gao.gov/modules/ereport/handler.php?1=1&path=/ereport/GAO-15-404SP/data_center_savings/Health/20._State_Medicaid_Sources_of_Funds
in this report
https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-404SP

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

Pareto efficiency

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Pareto efficiency
Date: 12 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
Pareto efficiency
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency

As undergraduate in the 60s, I rewrote lots of IBM software, including resource scheduling algorithm ... and trying to get into multi-factor resource optimization. Later at the IBM science center in the early 70s, there was lots of work on measuring resource usage and characterizing resource optimization. One was multi-axis scatter plot showing all observations. The outer edge of observed values represented envelope
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-objective_optimization

Later when sponsoring Boyd's briefings, he showed similar envelopes to characterize fighter plane operation. Boyd would reference that in training pilots, the objective was to operate in the region where your performance was better than the adversary's. He would say that later he used the E-M analysis for trade-offs in designing fighters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy-maneuverability_theory
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_envelope

However, another factor in the YF16 was unstable airframe,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaxed_stability
Modern military aircraft, particularly low observable ("stealth") designs, often exhibit instability as a result of their shape. The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, for instance, employs a highly non-traditional fuselage and wing shape in order to reduce its radar cross section and enable it to penetrate air defenses with relative impunity. However, the flat facets of the design reduce its stability to the point where a computerized fly-by-wire system was required to allow safe operation.
... snip ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly-by-wire
In more sophisticated versions, analog computers replaced the electronic controller. The canceled 1950s Canadian supersonic interceptor, the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow, employed this type of system. Analog computers also allowed some customization of flight control characteristics, including relaxed stability. This was exploited by the early versions of F-16, giving it impressive maneuverability.
... snip ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_Falcon

Part of Boyd story about redesign of F-15 was he started by asking them if they wanted another F-111 ... and he showed that the structural weight of the mechanism for wing pivot "cost" more in capability/performance than any benefit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle#Smaller.2C_lighter
... although this credits "flight control technology"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable-sweep_wing

however (trivia: I was working at Boeing during part of this period, just before graduating and joining IBM):
A variable-sweep wing was also selected as the winning design used by Boeing's entry in the FAA's study for a supersonic transport, the 2707. However it evolved through several configurations during the design stage, finally adding a canard, and it eventually became clear that the design would be so heavy that it would be lacking sufficient payload for the fuel needed. The design was later abandoned in favor of a more conventional tailed delta wing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_2707

Boyd postings & URLs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

back to pareto efficiency (original URL, this time economics), "Moral Hazard" ... which has also been used to explain/justify Too Big To Fail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard
Economist Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics described moral hazard as a root cause of the subprime mortgage crisis. He wrote that "the risks inherent in mortgage lending became so widely dispersed that no one was forced to worry about the quality of any single loan. As shaky mortgages were combined, diluting any problems into a larger pool, the incentive for responsibility was undermined." He also wrote, "Finance companies weren't subject to the same regulatory oversight as banks. Taxpayers weren't on the hook if they went belly up [pre-crisis], only their shareholders and other creditors were. Finance companies thus had little to discourage them from growing as aggressively as possible, even if that meant lowering or winking at traditional lending standards."[11]
... snip ...

too big to fail, too big to prosecute, too big to jail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

... however the Oct2008 congressional hearings into the pivotal role that the rating agencies played 1) rating agencies were selling triple-A rating on things they knew weren't worth triple-A, 2) triple-A rating allowed them to sell off everything as soon as they were made, so they no longer had to care about borrower's qualifications and/or loan quality (including selling to entities restricted to only dealing in "safe" investment ... like large pension funds), 3) largely accounting for being able to do over $27T 2001-2008, 4) rating agencies' business model became misaligned when they switched from buyers to sellers paying for the ratings.

(triple-A rated) toxic CDOs posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo

In 1999, I was asked to help try to prevent the coming economic mess. Securitized mortgages had been used during the S&L crisis to obscure fraudulent mortgages (poster child were commercial buildings in Dallas area that turned out to be empty lots). I was to improve the integrity of the supporting documents in securitized mortgages. However, triple-A ratings trumps "supporting documents" and they could start doing no-documentation, liar loans. From the law of unintended consequences, the largest fines so far on the Too Big To Fail have been for the robo-signing mills fabricating the missing documents.

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

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

Pareto efficiency

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Pareto efficiency
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 09:43:49 -0700
Pareto efficiency (or Pareto optimality)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency

As undergraduate in the 60s, I rewrote lots of IBM software, including resource scheduling algorithm ... and trying to get into multi-factor resource optimization. Later at the IBM science center in the early 70s, there was lots of work on measuring resource usage and characterizing resource optimization. One was multi-axis scatter plot showing all observations. The outer edge of observed values represented envelope

Multi-objective optimization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-objective_optimization
Multi-objective optimization (also known as multi-objective programming, vector optimization, multicriteria optimization, multiattribute optimization or Pareto optimization) is an area of multiple criteria decision making, that is concerned with mathematical optimization problems involving more than one objective function to be optimized simultaneously. Multi-objective optimization has been applied in many fields of science, including engineering, economics and logistics where optimal decisions need to be taken in the presence of trade-offs between two or more conflicting objectives.
... snip ...

Later when sponsoring Boyd's briefings, he showed similar envelopes to characterize fighter plane operation. Boyd would reference that in training pilots, the objective was to operate in the region where your performance was better than the adversary's. He would say that later he used the E-M analysis for trade-offs in designing fighters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy-maneuverability_theory
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_envelope

However, another factor in the YF16 was unstable airframe,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaxed_stability
Modern military aircraft, particularly low observable ("stealth") designs, often exhibit instability as a result of their shape. The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, for instance, employs a highly non-traditional fuselage and wing shape in order to reduce its radar cross section and enable it to penetrate air defenses with relative impunity. However, the flat facets of the design reduce its stability to the point where a computerized fly-by-wire system was required to allow safe operation.
... snip ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly-by-wire
In more sophisticated versions, analog computers replaced the electronic controller. The canceled 1950s Canadian supersonic interceptor, the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow, employed this type of system. Analog computers also allowed some customization of flight control characteristics, including relaxed stability. This was exploited by the early versions of F-16, giving it impressive maneuverability.
... snip ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_Falcon

Part of Boyd story about redesign of F-15 was he started by asking them if they wanted another F-111 ... and he showed that the structural weight of the mechanism for wing pivot "cost" more in capability/performance than any benefit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle#Smaller.2C_lighter ... although this credits "flight control technology"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable-sweep_wing

however (trivia: I was working at Boeing during part of this period, just before graduating and joining IBM, I had been brought in to help form Boeing Computer Services, consolidate all dataprocessing into independent business unit to better monetize the investment):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_2707
A variable-sweep wing was also selected as the winning design used by Boeing's entry in the FAA's study for a supersonic transport, the 2707. However it evolved through several configurations during the design stage, finally adding a canard, and it eventually became clear that the design would be so heavy that it would be lacking sufficient payload for the fuel needed. The design was later abandoned in favor of a more conventional tailed delta wing.
... snip ...

Boyd postings & URLs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

back to pareto efficiency (original URL, this time economics), "Moral Hazard" ... which has also been used to explain/justify Too Big To Fail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency#Constrained_Pareto-efficiency
The most commonly proffered example is of a setting where individuals have private information (for example, a labor market where the worker's own productivity is known to the worker but not to a potential employer, or a used-car market where the quality of a car is known to the seller but not to the buyer) which results in moral hazard or an adverse selection and a sub-optimal outcome
... snip ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard
Economist Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics described moral hazard as a root cause of the subprime mortgage crisis. He wrote that "the risks inherent in mortgage lending became so widely dispersed that no one was forced to worry about the quality of any single loan. As shaky mortgages were combined, diluting any problems into a larger pool, the incentive for responsibility was undermined." He also wrote, "Finance companies weren't subject to the same regulatory oversight as banks. Taxpayers weren't on the hook if they went belly up [pre-crisis], only their shareholders and other creditors were. Finance companies thus had little to discourage them from growing as aggressively as possible, even if that meant lowering or winking at traditional lending standards."[11]
... snip ...

too big to fail, too big to prosecute, too big to jail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

... however the Oct2008 congressional hearings into the pivotal role that the rating agencies played 1) rating agencies were selling triple-A rating on things they knew weren't worth triple-A, 2) triple-A rating allowed them to sell off everything as soon as they were made, so they no longer had to care about borrower's qualifications and/or loan quality (including selling to entities restricted to only dealing in "safe" investment ... like large pension funds) 3) largely accounting for being able to do over $27T 2001-2008, 4) rating agencies' business model became misaligned when they switched from buyers to sellers paying for the ratings.

(triple-A rated) toxic CDOs posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo

In 1999, I was asked to help try to prevent the coming economic mess. Securitized mortgages had been used during the S&L crisis to obscure fraudulent mortgages (poster child were commercial buildings in Dallas area that turned out to be empty lots). I was to improve the integrity of the supporting documents in securitized mortgages. However, triple-A ratings trumps "supporting documents" and they could start doing no-documentation, liar loans. From the law of unintended consequences, the largest fines so far on the Too Big To Fail have been for the robo-signing mills fabricating the missing documents.

S&L crisis post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#s&l.crisis
economic mess posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess

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

Feds WIMP

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Feds WIMP
Date: 13 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
Why federal prosecutors often wimp out in going after financial malfeasance
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-federal-prosecutors-often-wimp-out-in-going-after-financial-malfeasance/2017/08/10/6e6421ee-6182-11e7-8adc-fea80e32bf47_story.html

recent related
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#54 Pareto efficiency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#55 Pareto efficiency

First there was too big to fail ... but then started seeing too big to prosecute and too big to jail with failure to prosecute TBTF for money laundering for drug cartels and terrorists. It is then compounded failures to hold TBTF accountable for manipulating LIBOR, FOREX, commodity markets, aided offshore tax evasion, other criminal activity.

posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#libor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#money.laundering
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#tax.evasion

They have used deferred prosecution and fines as demonstration that they are doing something. However "deferred prosecution" requires that they are prosecuted if they repeat the crimes ... they have repeatedly committed the same crimes and continue to get deferred prosecution. There is an estimate that they have paid $300B in fines since the economic mess (but it includes all fines for criminal activity, not just the economic mess). However, the estimate is that they have been making $300B/yr off the ZIRP funds that are part of ongoing bailout. There is the observation that the fines are so small compared to the total amounts involved, that it is just viewed as part of cost of running criminal enterprise.

ZIRP posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#zirp

It is not just Justice ... but the regulatory agencies. 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).

Madoff posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#madoff

The rhetoric on the floor of congress about Sarbanes-Oxley was that it would guarantee that executives and auditors did jailtime, however it required SEC to do something. Possibly because even GAO didn't believe SEC wasn't doing anything, it started doing reports of public company fraudulent financial filings, even showing increase after SOX goes into effect (and nobody doing jailtime). Less well known is that SOX also required SEC to do something about the rating agencies (playing major role in the economic mess) ... and they did about as much about the rating agencies as the fraudulent financial filings.

more posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#enron
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#sarbanes-oxley
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#financial.reporting.fraud.fraud

They have used the excuse that juries would have difficulty understanding the complex financial transactions in the economic mess (as opposed to be a "captured" gov institution). However somewhat like getting the mob on tax evasion, those economic mess transactions includes having to fiddle their financial filings, which is made much simpler to prosecute under SOX.

"captured" agency posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#regulatory.capture

posts mentioning deferred prosecution
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014i.html#10 Instead of focusing on big fines, law enforcement should seek long prison terms for the responsible executives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#80 Greedy Banks Nailed With $5 BILLION+ Fine For Fraud And Corruption
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#23 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#44 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#47 Do we REALLY NEED all this regulatory oversight?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#36 Eric Holder, Wall Street Double Agent, Comes in From the Cold
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#37 LIBOR: History's Largest Financial Crime that the WSJ and NYT Would Like You to Forget
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#57 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#61 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#31 Talk of Criminally Prosecuting Corporations Up, Actual Prosecutions Down
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#44 rationality
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#47 rationality
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#65 Economic Mess
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#10 25 Years: How the Web began
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#0 Thanks Obama
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#73 Qbasic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#29 Qbasic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#41 Qbasic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#99 Why Is the Obama Administration Trying to Keep 11,000 Documents Sealed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#109 Why Aren't Any Bankers in Prison for Causing the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#45 Western Union Admits Anti-Money Laundering and Consumer Fraud Violations, Forfeits $586 Million in Settlement with Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission

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

On second thoughts

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: On second thoughts ...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 17:04:40 -0700
John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> writes:
FYI, the Berkeley and Stanford people knew each other but the IBM group was on the other side of the country and didn't publish anything until later. The different skill sets of the two groups made the designs somewhat different. Most importantly, Berkeley was using the existing Unix C compiler, while the 801 group wrote their own very sophisticated PL.8 compiler. So Berkeley invented register windows to deal with Unix compiler's mediocre register management, while IBM didn't since the PL.8 compiler handled register spills about as well as they could be.

I've periodically claimed that John did 801 in reaction to the enormous complexity of Future System. At 1977 presentation on 801, they claimed that lots of 801 hardware simplification could be compensated by the compiler (cp.r & pl.8).

801 didn't have any (hardware) protection domain. they claimed that pl.8 compiler would only generate correct programs and cp.r would only load correct (pl.8) programs. it was 32bit addressing with 16 segment registers ... with references to it being 40bit addressing. It was inverted virtual memory tables with segment register containue 12bit value ... and the claim was that inline code could change (virtual memory) segment register value as easily as it a index/general register value could be change ... easily allowing for (& claim) 12+28=40bit addressing.

801/ROMP was going to be for displaywriter follow-on ... but when that got canceled, they decided to retarget to unix workstation market. they got the company that had done pc/ix for ibm/pc to do implementation for 801/ROMP ... and had to add hardware protection domain for unix+C paradigm. they were stuck with virtual memory with only 16 256mbyte segments, and couldn't do inline changes (they did try and do packed shared segments, where lots of different stuff was packed into the same 256mbyte shared segment). They also had to find something for all the pl.8 programmers to do.

some past 801, iliad, romp, rios, pc/rt, rs/6000, power/pc, etc posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

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

On second thoughts

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: On second thoughts ...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 17:54:35 -0700
Al Kossow <aek@bitsavers.org> writes:
I have heard that 801 team and the folks out here in CA were in communication so it wasn't an independent invention. Lynn may know more about that.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#57 On second thoughts ...

Let's start at the very beginning... 801, ROMP, RT/PC, AIX versions
https://notes.technologists.com/notes/2017/03/08/lets-start-at-the-very-beginning-801-romp-rtpc-aix-versions/
The ROMP/PL.8 project was initiated by the IBM Office Products Division (OPD) in 1977 in Austin, starting with the 801 architecture and PL.8 language and compiler. This effort became known as the Research -- OPD -- MicroProcessor and was given the acronym ROMP.
... snip ...

Sort of part of effort to replace a wide variety of internal different microprocessors, all with 801. ILIAD was going to be used for replacing a variety of microprocessors used in low-end & mid-range 370 mainframes. IBM Endicott even built a brand new building for the project. However, for various reasons those early efforts failed, and found some of the engineers eventually leaving for risc projects at other vendors.

Berkeley RISC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_RISC
Berkeley RISC is one of two seminal research projects into RISC-based microprocessor design taking place under ARPA's VL SI project. RISC was led by David Patterson (who coined the term RISC) at the University of California, Berkeley between 1980 and 1984.[1]
... snip ...

IBM 801
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_801
The 801 was an experimental minicomputer designed by IBM. The resulting architecture was used in various roles in IBM until the 1980s. The 801 was started as a pure research project led by John Cocke in October 1975 at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center
... snip ...

IBM Los Gatos lab had project doing "Blue Iliad" ... first 32bit 801. It was big (& hot) chip ... and never got much beyond initial samples. One of the people involved then leaves and goes to HP ... and is involved in Snake and later Itanium.

this old post has a few "801" emails from 78 & 79 (including item from summer 1979, the MIT LISP machine people asking for 801 hardware, and being offered 8100 systems instead
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#9

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

posts mentioning 801, risc, romp, iliad, rios, pc/rt, rs/6000, power/pc, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

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

RISC and PC/RT ancient history, was Re: On second thoughts

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: RISC and PC/RT ancient history, was Re: On second thoughts ...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 18:14:19 -0700
John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> writes:
Right, that would have been me. The IBM people did a virtual machine underneath called the VRM, and our Unix sat on top of it. It was a clever enough idea to keep us from having to deal with the low level hardware details of the ROMP but it had awful performance implications. I sketched out a way to do segment switches on the fly from applications on top of the VRM but they never implemented it.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#57 On second thoughts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#58 On second thoughts

some claim that the VRM (implemented in PL.8) objective was to give all the OPD PL.8 programmers something to do.

there were claims that the VRM + UNIX faster and less resources than have the outside vendor learn low level 801 and implement directly to the hardware.

this was later proved false when the Palo Alto group implemented BSD unix directly to the low level 801 hardware in less resources and faster than either the VRM or the UNIX->VRM implementations. The VRM paradigm also had the downside that for new devices, device drivers had to be implemented both in pl.8 for VRM and in C for UNIX.

posts mentioning 801, risc, romp, iliad, rios, pc/rt, rs/6000, power/pc, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

for other drift, from recent thread about cp/67 & vm/370 (vm/370 45th b'day) mentioning something about whether a virtual machine microkernel can be as efficient or more efficient than traditional kernel implementation.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#44 VM/370 45th Birthday

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

Pareto efficiency

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Pareto efficiency
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 10:58:12 -0700
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
... however the Oct2008 congressional hearings into the pivotal role that the rating agencies played 1) rating agencies were selling triple-A rating on things they knew weren't worth triple-A, 2) triple-A rating allowed them to sell off everything as soon as they were made, so they no longer had to care about borrower's qualifications and/or loan quality (including selling to entities restricted to only dealing in "safe" investment ... like large pension funds) largely accounting for being able to do over $27T 2001-2008, 4) rating agencies' business model became misaligned when they switched from buyers to sellers paying for the ratings.

(triple-A rated) toxic CDOs posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#55 Pareto efficiency

some of the early virtual machine based cp67 commerical online service bureaus had fairly early moved up value stream to offering financial information to wallstreet and financial operations. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#online

one of the original cp67 commercial online service bureau spinoffs had even acuired the pricing services division from one of the major rating agencies (resulting in facetious comments that when the business model became misaligned, they no longer needed to know what something was worth in order to rate it).

then in jan2009 when there was still some facade that TARP funds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program

would be used for buying offbook toxic assets, there was brief mention that the cp67 online service bureau company would be involved in valuing these offbook assets for purchase. Then there started to be comments that it was very difficult to actually value the complex securitized mortgage products for purchase, More importantly there was no comments about w/o documentation (supporting borrower's qualification and loan quality) it was almost impossible to rate something. And from the law of unintended consequences, the largest TBTF fines so far are for the robo-signing mills fabricating the missing documents.

Other factors were

1) just the four largest TBTF were still holding $5.2T in offbook toxic assets the end of 2008 ... and there was only $700B appropriated for TARP wouldn't hardly dent the problem

2) summer/fall 2008, several tens of billions of the offbook toxic assets had gone for 22cents on the dollar. If the rest of the offbook toxic assets had been bought at that price, the four largest TBTF would book $4T loss, declared insolvent and forced to be liquidated.

TBTF posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

posts mentioning offbook toxic assets going for 22cents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#44 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#67 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#70 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#26 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#95 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#24 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#11 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#65 is it possible that ALL banks will be nationalized?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#67 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#50 TARP Bailout to Cost Less Than Once Anticipated
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#63 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#27 The Zippo Lighter theory of the financial crisis (or, who do we want to blame?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#42 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#45 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#56 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#41 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#71 Pressing Obama, House Bars Rise for Debt Ceiling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#29 Obama: "We don't have enough engineers"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#39 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#45 S&P's History of Relentless Political Advocacy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#50 How Many Divisions Does Standard and Poors Have?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#4 Geithner, Bernanke have little in arsenal to fight new crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#25 Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed's Secret Loans
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#59 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#67 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#38 The Mark to Market Fantasy Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#41 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#57 The Mortgage Crisis---Some Inside Views
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#82 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#37 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#52 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#74 The Wall Street Pentagon Papers: Biggest Scam In World History Exposed: Are The Federal Reserve's Crimes Too Big To Comprehend?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#77 How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#70 No One Telling Who Took $586B in Fed Swaps
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#32 US real-estate has lost $7T in value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#45 Fannie, Freddie Charge Taxpayers For Legal Bills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012c.html#46 PC industry is heading for more change
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#40 Who Increased the Debt?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#42 Who Increased the Debt?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#28 REPEAL OF GLASS-STEAGALL DID NOT CAUSE THE FINANCIAL CRISIS - WHAT DO YOU THINK?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#14 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#28 Why Asian companies struggle to manage global workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012j.html#65 Monopoly/ Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#75 What's the bigger risk, retiring too soon, or too late?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#64 Singer Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#6 General Mills computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#12 Why Auditors Fail To Detect Frauds?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#73 These Two Charts Show How The Priorities Of US Companies Have Gotten Screwed Up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#51 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#38 Adair Turner: A New Debt-Free Money Advocate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#46 Bankers Who Made Millions In Housing Boom Misled Investors: Study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#47 More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#54 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#66 How to Cut Megabanks Down to Size
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#64 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#67 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#23 What Makes bank regulation and insurance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#3 Lending is still lagging according to Reuters. Why do you think that is?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013n.html#87 Logics of Transformation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013o.html#48 Citigroup is the Real Reason We Need the Volcker Rule
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#98 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#0 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#22 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#24 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#0 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#60 GAO and Wall Street Journal Whitewash Huge Criminal Bank Frauds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014i.html#14 Instead of focusing on big fines, law enforcement should seek long prison terms for the responsible executives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014k.html#66 LA Times commentary: roll out "smart" credit cards to deter fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#8 weird apple trivia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#11 weird apple trivia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#126 Wall Street's Revenge
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#131 Memo To WSJ: The CRomnibus Abomination Was Not "A Rare Bipartisan Success"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#17 Cromnibus cartoon
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015b.html#31 What were the complaints of binary code programmers that not accept Assembly?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#28 Bernie Sanders Proposes A Bill To Break Up The 'Too Big To Exist' Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#69 Western Union envisioned internet functionality
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#76 Greedy Banks Nailed With $5 BILLION+ Fine For Fraud And Corruption
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#93 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#16 Interactive Data Corp taps banks for sale or IPO -sources
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#20 After 6 Years Of QE, And A $4.5 Trillion Balance Sheet, St. Louis Fed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#25 After 6 Years Of QE, And A $4.5 Trillion Balance Sheet, St. Louis Fed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#49 seveneves
https://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
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#70 AIG freezes defined-benefit pension plan
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#25 Hillary Clinton's Glass-Steagall
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#95 Thanks Obama
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#28 Qbasic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#42 Nobody saw the economic mess coming last decade
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#58 Wall Street strikes back against Bernie Sanders
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#86 Wells Fargo "Admits Deceiving" U.S. Government, Pays Record $1.2 Billion Settlement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#0 Why Is the Obama Administration Trying to Keep 11,000 Documents Sealed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#19 Banking; The Book That Will Save Banking From Itself
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#98 Trust in Government Is Collapsing Around the World
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#89 E.R. Burroughs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#0 IBM is Absolutely Down For The Count
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#8 Too big to fail was Malicious Cyber Activity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#31 Milton Friedman's Cherished Theory Is Laid to Rest
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#33 Moody's Agrees to Settle Financial Crisis-Era Claims for $864 Million
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#92 Trump's Rollback of the Neoliberal Market State
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#96 Trump, Wall Street and the "banking caucus" ready to rip apart Dodd-Frank
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#90 Economist, Harry Dent Hints: Global Banks Facing a Serious Crisis in Months Ahead
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#38 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#8 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#27 MVS vs HASP vs JES (was 2821)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#28 Stop Romanticizing Glass-Steagall

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

computer component reliability, 1951

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: computer component reliability, 1951
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 19:36:07 -0700
hancock4 writes:
Heck our S/360-40 was upgraded to 192k in the late 1970s. I don't think the box, by that pont, cost too much.

In that era, I went to s site with a 370-158 that had six meg, and a battery of dual-density (200 meg) 3330's.

Geez, now you get a home PC with 8 gig or even more. (The sad part is that you need all of it for today's bloatware.)

I don't know even know what comes with a Z mainframe these days, I think it's in the terrabytes. Feels a bit of letdown when your COBOL program needs all of 75k to execute. But I noticed the file cache is big and amazing; if I process a file more than once, the subsequent runs are extremely quick. (Also, the one box replaced five 30xx boxes, which in itself is pretty amazing.)

I'm gonna go play with my punch cards, now. 80 characters.


big change going from 155&165 to 158&168 was from 2mic memory to approx 400ns higher density memory.

decision to go to all virtual memory for 370 was based on os/360 MVT storage management ... regions typically needed to be four times larger than used ... 370/165 with 1mbyte typically only supported four regions. going to 16mbyte virtual memoy could increase number regions by factor of four times with little or no paging. some detailed discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#73 Multiple Virtual Memory

This points out that if it hadn't been for FS project killing off 370 efforts the follow-ons to 370/168 would have been much cheaper and significantly less expensive to manufacture.
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm

i.e. 3033 & 3081 were kicked off in parallel. 3033 started out being 168-3 logic remapped to 20% faster chips. Some logic redesign taking advantage of extra circuits on each chip ... eventually got 3033 throughput to 1.5 times 168-3.

note an issue was that systems were getting faster than disks were getting faster ... that met programs were spending relatively more time waiting for disk i/o ... to keep processors utilized required increasing number of concurrent tasks/regions. I was starting to highlight this in the 70s and by the early 80s was claiming that disks relative system throughput had declined by factor of ten times since the late 60s (i.e. disks got 3-5 times faster, systems had got 40-50 times faster). old post with early 80s comparison
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#43 Bloat, elegance, simplicity and other irrelevant concepts

some disk division executive took exception and assigned the division performance group to refute the claims. after a few weeks, they came back and said that I had slightly understated the problem. This was then respun into SHARE presentations that provided recommendations about disk optimization to improve system throughput. posts with small piece
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#3 using 3390 mod-9s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#68 DASD Response Time (on antique 3390?)

this century Z machine tends to be approx. a single rack, max configured going for been around $30m
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, 150 BIPS, (862MIPS/proc), Aug2017


industry standard MIP benchmark is based on number of iterations compared to iterations on 370/158 (or vax) 1mip processor. 2000 to 2017, per processor have increased from 156MIPS (156 370/158) to 862MIPS (862 370/158) ... about 5.5 times ... but the number of processors have increased by factor of ten times .... so aggregate almost 60 times increase (for max. configured Z).

note that one of the issues is that current cache miss access to memory latency ... when measured in count of processor cycles is comparable to 60s disk i/o latency, when measured in count of 1960s processor cycles ... aka main memory is the new disk. This tends to justify things like out-of-order execution, speculative execution, hyperthreading, etc ... sort of hardware multitasking, trying to have processor do something when it would otherwise be waiting on cache miss memory access.

Also mainframe comparison, z196 era e5-2600v1 blade had 400-530 BIPS rating (depending on model) and could get 50-60 in single rack ... say 25TIPS. Current e5-2600v4 blade is 3-4 times, maybe 100TIPS per rack ... a rack of e5-2600 blades approaching 1000 times the processing of z mainframe "rack" ... for a few hundred thousand rather than $30M (cloud mega-datacenters assemble their own e5-2600 blades for under $1/BIPS compared to "Z" at couple hundred thousand/BIPS).

IBM financials has been publishing mainframe sales as precentage of previous sales ... so it takes a bit of sluething to decode what it means. 2014 EC12 numbers sort of worked out to the equivalent of 50-60 max configured EC12/yr (down from possibly a couple hundred/yr last decade). However, IBM is still been making money off mainframe software ... mainframe hardware has dropped to a couple precent of total revenue but mainframe division was something like 25% of total revenue and 40% of profit.

recent posts mentioning e5-2600 blades:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#6 How do BIG WEBSITES work?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#17 The Pentagon still uses computer software from 1958 to manage its contracts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#25 ARM Cortex A53 64 bit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#57 What are mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#58 Paging subsystems in the era of bigass memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#88 Paging subsystems in the era of bigass memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#10 WD ships 'world's largest' 12TB HGST Ultrastar He12 Helium 7200 RPM Enterprise HDDs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#75 11May1992 (25 years ago) press on cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#94 Migration off Mainframe to other platform
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#9 The Mainframe vs. the Server Farm: A Comparison
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#103 SEX

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

computer component reliability, 1951

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: computer component reliability, 1951
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2017 21:04:45 -0700
hancock4 writes:
If memory serves, the 158 (attached processors) with 6 meg served about 500 terminals. Response time was slow and the machine was at capacity.

The programmers used ROSCOE instead of TSO because that was more machine efficient. On unusually busy days the programmers were told to work at night.

I don't remember what specific models succeded the 158. But as soon as they bought new hardware, they added a new major application to it, so the machine remained at capacity. Down the road they split off development from production onto another machine which helped. The 3330s were replaced with faster disks.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#61 computer component reliability, 1951

370/158 had (six) integrated channels .... "attached processors" was supposedly cheaper two processor configuration ... but only one processor had channels. this was part of trying to come out with something when the future system had shutdown most new 370 activity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

however, it somewhat met something for 168 attached processor ... since 168 had external channels ... while 158 attached processor just didn't have cables connected.

23jun1969 unbundling announcement led to HONE ... initially branch office online access to virtual machine cp67 systems for practicing operating system experience.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

they also started offering cms\apl based sales & marketing support applications ... which eventually came to dominate all HONE usage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

in the mid-70s, the US HONE datacenters were consolidated in palo alto (trivia: when facebook moved to silicon valley, it was into new bldg. next door to old HONE datacenter). Eventually became clusters of 168 attached processors ... 3830 controller with four channel switch and string switch (two 3830 controllers per 3330 string) gave each 3330 drive connectivity for eight channels (to eight systems). Traditional SMPs simulated symmetric multiprocessor with each processor (in two processor configuration) having channel connections to the same devices. However, HONE wanted all disks connected to 16processors. 3330 disk farm only provided for eight channel connectins, so eight 2-processor, "attached" processor systems. some multiprocessor posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

HONE APL workload was CPU intensive ... so having only one processor in 2-processor configuration wasn't a particular hardship. By the late 70s, it was likely the largest single system operation in the world ... with load balancing and fail-over across the systems in the configuration. Something like it was eventually released to customers some 30yrs later,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#43 From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#46 From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time

In the early 80s, the US HONE datacenter was replicated first in Dallas and then in Boulder ... for triple-replicated geographic/disaster survivability.

Later when I was out doing marketing for our IBM HA/CMP product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

I coined the terms geographic survivability and disaster survivability to differentiate form disaster recovery.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available

at that time, I got asked to write a section for the corporate continuous availability strategy document ... but it then got pulled because both rochester (as/400) and POK (mainframe) complained that they couldn't (then) meet the requirements.

trivia: 76/77 we had 370 16-way multiprocessor project ... which lots of people was really great ... and we had con'ed some of the 3033 processor engineers to work on it in their spare time. then somebody told the head of POK that it could be decades before the POK favorite son operating system (MVS) had effective 16-way support. Then the head of POK invited some of us to never visit POK again (and the 3033 get back to their full time job and stop being distracted). It is DEC2000 before mainframe finally announces 16-way support (z900, see previous post).

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

endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2017 12:24:36 -0700
hancock4 writes:
I wish I saved the article: in the business section, an airline reported record profits. In a separate article, that airline was in court seeking to abrogate its pension obligations.

periodically mentioned that starting in 80s, corporations with large number of workers were reorganizing into separate subsidiaries with profit booked in subsidiary with few workers. airlines in the 90s had profit being booked in selling tickets while the airline operations were break-even or loss. 90s saw airlines operations with substantial loses while tickets had significant profit ... with the parent company showing substantial overall profit.

parent company could then declare bankruptcy in the airline operations subsidiary and dump the pension plans on the government.

after turn of the century, corporations would (also) move the profit subsidiary to offshore tax haven (even when all the operations actually occurred in the US)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#tax.evasion

this sort of also shows up in whether corporations are people ... the city of london now has 30k some corporate "human" voters and 9k human "human" voters. The question is how much does it cost to create additional corporations in order to stuff the ballot box?

I referenced some profit/lost/bankruptcy news URLs in past posts mentioning airline operations.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#92 Innovation and iconoclasm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#1 IBM Is Changing The Terms Of Its Retirement Plan, Which Is Frustrating Some Employees
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#7 From build to buy: American Airlines changes modernization course midflight
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#33 Management Secrets From Inside GE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014g.html#54 Has the last fighter pilot been born?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014k.html#69 LA Times commentary: roll out "smart" credit cards to deter fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#59 IBM Data Processing Center and Pi
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#63 Western Union envisioned internet functionality
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#81 prices, was Western Union envisioned internet functionality
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#83 Qbasic - lies about Medicare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#17 Globalization Worker Negotiation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#93 Delta Outage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#98 E.R. Burroughs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#45 OT: DuPont seeks to screw workers of their pensions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#109 Airlines Reservation Systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#93 United Air Lines - an OODA-loop perspective
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#4 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#25 OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions

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

endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2017 11:38:43 -0700
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#63 endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)

"City of London" is big player here: Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens
https://www.amazon.com/Treasure-Islands-Uncovering-Offshore-Banking-ebook/dp/B004OA6420/

pg71/loc1477-79:
The City's nine thousand-odd human residents have one vote each in municipal elections here. But businesses in the City vote too, as if they were human, with thirty-two thousand corporate votes. 25 In effect, Goldman Sachs, the Bank of China, Moscow Narodny Bank, and KPMG can vote in a hugely important British election.

pg87/loc1816-20:
As I've noted, when Britain's formal empire collapsed, it did not entirely disappear. Fourteen small island states decided not to become independent and became instead Britain's Overseas Territories, with Britain's Queen as their head of state. It is a status that has been preserved until today. Exactly half of them--Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos Islands--are tax havens, actively supported and managed from Britain and intimately linked with the City of London.
... snip ...

tax evasion, tax avoidance, tax havens
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#tax.evasion

past refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#54 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#65 The Real Snowden Question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#81 What Makes a Tax System Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#3 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#26 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#2 IBM Relevancy in the IT World
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#57 The agency problem and how to create a criminogenic environment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#60 spacewar
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#1 What Makes a Tax System Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#60 Retirement Heist
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#66 NSA Revelations Kill IBM Hardware Sales In China
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#56 past of nukes, was Future of support for telephone rotary dial ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#94 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#92 Thanks Obama
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#35 Deutsche Bank and a $10Bn Money Laundering Nightmare: More Context Than You Can Shake a Stick at
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#103 Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street's Great Foreclosure Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#35 Hammond threatens EU with aggressive tax changes after Brexit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#52 TV Show "Hill Street Blues"

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

endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 10:32:58 -0700
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#63 endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#64 endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)

reference from this past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014l.html#93 Brand-name companies' secret Luxembourg tax deals revealed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#2 weird apple trivia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#8 LEO

Luxembourg Takes the Heat, but the World's Worst Tax Haven - the City of London - Remains Unscathed
http://wolfstreet.com/2014/11/08/as-luxembourg-takes-the-heat-the-worlds-worst-tax-haven-the-city-of-london-remains-hidden-in-plain-sight/

The City Within the City
When it comes to financial secrecy, no European jurisdiction - not even Switzerland or Luxembourg - can hold a candle to the wholly autonomous City of London, which for centuries has existed as an ancient, semi-alien entity lodged inside the British nation state; a "prehistoric monster which had mysteriously survived into the modern world", as a 19th-century would-be City reformer put it
... snip ...

The tax haven in the heart of Britain
http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/02/london-corporation-city
The bill concerned the City of London Corporation, the local-government authority for the 1.2-square-mile slab of prime real estate in central London that is the City of London. The corporation is an ancient, semi-alien entity lodged inside the British nation state; a "prehistoric monster which had mysteriously survived into the modern world", as a 19th-century would-be City reformer put it. The words remain apt today. Few people care that London has a mayor and a lord mayor - but they should: the corporation is an offshore island inside Britain, a tax haven in its own right.
... snip ...

and recent Luxembourg references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#18 IBM Pension
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#93 United Air Lines - an OODA-loop perspective
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#6 [CM] What was your first home computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#25 OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions

Luxembourg Leaks: Global Companies' Secrets Exposed
https://www.icij.org/project/luxembourg-leaks

several times mentioned that starting in 80s, started to see corporations with large numbers of human workers, reorganizing with most of workers in one subsidiary, but majority of profits booked in another subsidiary. They then even have declared bankruptcy on the subsidiary with the workers ... even dumping workers pension plans on the government.

After start of the century, many started moving subsidiaries (where the profits are booked), to offshore tax havens. This was not only being used by corporations with large numbers of workers (separating subsidiary with large number of workers from subsidiary where profits were booked) ... but has also been heavily leaveraged by many silicon valley technology companies. There have been lots of articles about Apple doing this with Ireland ... where the Ireland Apple corporation consists of a shoe box in an empty office, most recent reference from two days ago: "Ireland refuses to collect commission's 13 billion tax bill from Apple"
http://www.euronews.com/2017/08/16/ireland-refuses-to-collect-commissions-13-billion-tax-bill-from-apple

past posts mentioning Apple booking its profit in Ireland subsidiary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013g.html#81 Ireland feels the heat from Apple tax row
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013g.html#91 'Big four' accountants 'use knowledge of Treasury to help rich avoid tax'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#25 'Big four' accountants 'use knowledge of Treasury to help rich avoid tax'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#79 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#0 What Makes a Tax System Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#30 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#33 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#31 Apple's long IRS-Irish history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014l.html#95 weird apple trivia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#13 1970--protesters seize computer center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#32 I Feel Old
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#37 New phone scams

similar to shoebox, google reference: "$16bn-a-year in Google postbox: Inside giant's secret Bermuda haven"
http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/16bnayear-in-google-postbox-inside-giants-secret-bermuda-haven/news-story/3c4f68e876ea5e1a64eefb7270342006
There are no employees, no office and no signage to be found there.

Its only presence is the tiny metal box bearing the number of the beast, 666, and housed at a post office building in the capital Hamilton.

... snip ...

tax evasion, tax avoidance, tax haven posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#tax.evasion

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

IBM: A History Of Progress, 1890s to 2001

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM: A History Of Progress, 1890s to 2001
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 17:54:06 -0700
IBM: A History Of Progress, 1890s to 2001
https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/interactive/ibm_history.pdf
pg.65:
1988

National Science Foundation Network

IBM collaborates with MCI Communications and the University of Michigan to form the National Science Foundation Network, a computer network that provides the infrastructure and lays the groundwork for the explosive growth of the Internet in the 1990s

... snip ...

1st part of the 80s, we were working with the director of NSF and were suppose to get $20M interconnect the NSF supercomuter centers. Then congress cuts the budget, some other things happen and then NSF releases an RFP (in part based on what we already had running, including calling for T1 links). Internal politics block us from bidding. The director of NSF tries to help, writing the company a letter 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO) with support from other agencies, but that just makes the internal politics worse. Then as regaional networks connect into the centers, it morphs into the NSF backbone ... precursor to the modern internet. ref:
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401444/grid-computing/

some old EMAIL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

instead of installing T1 links, they install some rube golberge 440kbit links and then to somewhat look like that they were meeting what was called for in the RFP, they install telco multiplexors that run multiple 440kbit links over T1 trunks (we facetiously ridicule them saying that some of the T1 trunks are in turn multiplexed over T3 and/or T5 trunks, so why aren't they claiming T5 networks).

NSFNET2 then calls for upgrade to T3. Possibly thinking to shutdown my criticism, I'm selected to be the red team, and a dozen or so people from half dozen labs around the world are the blue team. At the final review, I present first and then the blue team. Five minutes into the blue team presentation, the executive running the review, pounds on the table and says that he would lay down in front of a garbage truck before he let anything but the blue team proposal go ahead (since it was already obvious that red team proposal was significant better than the blue team proposal).

some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

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

IBM: A History Of Progress, 1890s to 2001

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM: A History Of Progress, 1890s to 2001
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2017 22:26:48 -0700
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#66 IBM: A History Of Progress, 1890s to 2001

Note early uptic in IBMPC were corporations that were ordering tens of thousands at time. They could get a IBM/PC with 3270 terminal emulation for about the same price as already justified 3270 dumb terminal and get some local computing with 3270 terminal in single desktop footprint. By the late 80s, the situation had inverted with increased PC computing power. A senior disk engineer got a talked scheduled at annual, worldwide, internal communication group conference supposedly on 3174 performance but started out with statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The issue was the communication group had stranglehold with corporate responsibility for everything that crossed the datacenter walls and was fiercely fighting off client/server and distributed computing trying to preserve their dumb terminal paradigm and install base. The disk division was seeing data fleeing the datacenter to more distributed computing friendly platforms with drop in disk sales. The disk division had come up with a number of solutions but they were constantly vetoed by the communication group. It turns out to affect the whole mainframe datacenter business and few short years later, IBM goes into the red. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal gerstner posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner

pg. 73, The Birth of e-business
Entering the 1990s, IBM confronts its most significant strategic challenges since the Depression and successfully undertakes one of the great turnarounds in business history. It moves into major new growth businesses, principally services and software, and embraces open standards for computing. The company also fundamentally reshapes its culture to refocus on clients and to be more agile, responsive and collaborative. This transformation coincides with the advent of the Internet, and IBM is a pioneer in helping clients capitalize on the new possibilities of global networked computing and business--what it dubs "e-business." As the 20th century comes to a close, IBM stands, once again, at the forefront of global technology and business.
... snip ...

we are working on cluster scale-up for our ha/cmp product, some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
for both technical/scientific with national labs and commercial with RDBMS vendors. Reference to Jan1992 meeting in Ellison conference room on cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

Within a few weeks of the Jan1992 Ellison meeting, cluster scale-up is transferred, announced as supercomputer (for technical/scientific *ONLY*), and we are told we can't work on anything with more than four processors. We then decide to leave. Later, two of the Oracle people that we had worked with, also at the Ellison meeting, have left and are now at the startup responsible for something called the commerce server. We are brought in as consultants because they want to do payment transactions on the server, the startup have also invented this technology they call "SSL"; the result is now frequently called e-commerce.

Also end of 1992 IBM has gone into the red and had been reorganized into the 13 "baby blues" in preparation for breaking up the company. We got a call from somebody deep in the bowels of Armonk asking us to help with the breakup (we were already gone some 6months). Lots of business units used MOUs to rely on supplier contracts with other business units. All those MOUs had to be cataloged and turn into their own contracts for the breakup of the company. Before we get started, a new CEO is brought in that will reverse the breakup and resurrect the company. Dec 1992 "How IBM Was Left Behind", article behind paywall but some lives free at wayback machine
https://web.archive.org/web/20101120231857/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977353,00.html

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

Pareto efficiency

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Pareto efficiency
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2017 09:01:17 -0700
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#54 Pareto efficiency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#55 Pareto efficiency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#60 Pareto efficiency

This was also posted to facebook, google+ and linkedin. There was discussion in google+ that in economics examples, some starting points can result in non-desirable "maxima".

When I was doing CP/67 dynamic resource management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
at the scientific center in the 70s,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech csc/vm (&/or sjr/vm) posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#cscvm
I developed automatic benchmarking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#benchmark

we also had cp67 performance monitor that ran on most internal datacenters, taking snapshot of workload and resource use every 5mins and accumulated several years of data for tens of systems. From the data, developed synthetic workload that could be parameterised to simulate the observed workloads. It was also used to specify workload well outside observed operations as stress tests.

there was also work on a cms\apl analytical system model. A version of the analytical system model was made available on the (virtual machine based) world-wide sales and marketing online system HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone
as performance predictor. IBM SEs would enter customer configuration and workload profile information about what happens when additional hardware is added and/or workload is changed. This also led to things like capacity planning.

In the morph of CP67 to VM370, a lot of CP67 features were dropped and/or simplified, including the dynamic adaptive resource manager. Later I started porting all the CP67 work to VM370 for my internally distributed CSC/VM system. some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750430

During early porting work, the automatic benchmarking stress tests would always crash vm370. It wasn't until the CP67 serialization infrations was ported to VM370 that the stress tests stopped crashing ... and also eliminated all known cases of zombie/hung users ... some refs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dumprx

During the "Future System" period
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
internal politics were suspending and/or killing 370 activities. Then when FS imploded, there was mad rush to get things back into 370 product pipelines. This contributed to decision to picking up lots of CSC/VM for inclusion in standard VM370 product. Some amount (like integrity serialization changes and a lot of shared segment work) was picked up and included in VM370 release 3. Other pieces were selected for VM370 resource manager add-on, guinea pig to starting to charge for operating system products.

As part of the "resource manager" product, several years of accumulated performance data on hundreds of internal VM370 was analyzed, resulting in finding maximum values. This was used to represent the edge/envelope of an N-dimensional space. Around 900 uniformly distributed points in the space were used to define specification of benchmarks. Then another 100 points were selected around the outside of envelope for another 100 tests ... for 1000 automated benchmarking tests. A modified version of the performance predictor was used to predict the operation of each benchmark and then compared with the actual result. Disparities was examined to see whether there was problem in the performance predictor and/or in the "resource manager" operation. After the first 1000 benchmark, the performance predictor was programmed to select benchmarks and configuration based on all benchmark data to date, basically "hillclimbing" algorithm, looking for local maxima for another 1000 benchmarks. This was 2000 benchmarks total in preparing for releasing the "resource manager" that took three months elapsed time to run.

Having 1000 starting points distributed across the possible space helped find (& eliminate) less desirable local maximas.

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

Feds Debt

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Feds Debt
Date: 20 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
2002, congress lets the fiscal responsibility act lapse (spending can't exceed tax revenue, on its way to eliminating all federal debt, the republican congress that lets it lapse is totally different than the republican congress that passed it in the first place). 2010, CBO report that 2003-2009, taxes were reduced by $6T and spending increased by $6T for $12T gap compared to fiscal responsibility budget (first time congress cuts taxes to not pay for two wars). Since then taxes not restored and only modest cuts in spending so debt continues to increase. Supposedly confluence of interest, 1) federal reserve and wallstreet wanting huge federal debt, 2) wallstreet and special interests wanting huge tax cuts, and 3) miltiary-industrial complex wanting huge spending increase (and "perpetual war"). By 2005, the US comptroller general was including in speeches that nobody in congress was capable of middle school arithmetic for how badly they were savaging the budget.

Fiscal Responsibility Act posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#fiscal.responsibility.act
economic mess posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess
MICC posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex
perpetual war posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#perpetual.war

the first major bill after fiscal responsibility act lapse is medicare part-d in 2003. CBS 60mins does program on the legislation. 18 republicans are responsible for getting it passed, just before final vote, they add one line that prevents competitive bidding and prevents CBO from distributing report on the change. after it passes, CBS finds that all 18 have resigned and are on big pharma payroll. 60mins shows drugs under VA (that allows competitive bidding) that are 1/3rd the price of identical drugs under part-d. US comptroller general says that part-d will be a long term $40T item that comes to swamp all other budget items.

Medicare part-d posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#medicare.part-d

1999, I'm asked to try and help prevent the coming economic mess. Securitized mortgages had been used during the S&L crisis ... posterchild was office bldgs in dallas area that turned out to be empty lots. I was to improve the integrity of supporting documents as a countermeausre. Then they find that they can pay for triple-A ratings (when they and the rating agencies know they aren't worth triple-A, from Oct2008 congressional hearings into the pivotal role the rating agencies played). Triple-A trumps supporting documents and they can start doing no-documentation liar loans, securitized, paying for triple-A and selling off as fast as they can be made, largely enabling over $27T 2001-2008 (including selling to operations restricted to only dealing in "safe" investments, like large pension funds).

S&L crisis mess posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#s&l.crisis
(triple-A rated) toxic CDOs posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo

Decade later Jan2009, I'm asked to HTML'ize Pecora Hearings (senate hearings into '29 crash, resulted in criminal convictions with jail time and Glass-Steagall) with lots of internal HREFs and URLs related what happened this time and what happened then (comment that the new congress might have an appetite to do something). I work on it for awhile and then get a call that it won't be needed after all (comments that capital hill is totally buried under enormous mountains of wallstreet cash).

Pecora Hearings and/or Glass-Steagall posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall

TARP was originally passed to buy these offbook triple-A rated toxic assets. YE2008, just the four largest too big to fail were carrying $5.2T offbook, TARP with only $700B couldn't make a dent in the problem. Instead TARP was used for other purposes and the Federal Reserve was doing the real bailout behind the scenes. FedRes fought long legal battle to prevent disclosing what it was doing. When they lost, the chairman had press conference saying that he thought the TBTF would use the tens of trillions in ZIRP funds to help mainstreet, but when they didn't, he couldn't do anything about it (but that didn't stop ZIRP). The chairman supposedly been partially chosen for depression scholar ... but FEDS had done something similar then with the same results, so there shouldn't be any expectation of different results. TBTF are using ZIRP to buy treasuries and clearing something like $300B/annum ... the process doesn't work w/o enormous federal debt. "Moral hazard" is when TBTF are not held accountable and tax payers have to foot the bill, huge fed. debt and ZIRP is part of the obfuscation.

Too Big To Fail posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
ZIRP posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#zirp

Originally paying for triple-A eliminated any reason to care about borrowers' qualifications and/or loan quality. They then discover that they can design securitized mortgages to fail, pay for triple-A, sell off to their customers, and take out CDS gambling bets that they will fail (now they cared about loan quality, creating enormous demand for bad mortgages). AIG was largest holder of CDS gambling bets and was negotiating to pay off at 50cents on the dollar when the SECTREAS steps in and has them sign a document that they can't sue those making CDS gambling bets and to 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.

Rhetoric on floor of congress was that Sarbanes-Oxley would prevent future ENRONs and guarantee that executives and auditors did jailtime, but it required SEC to do something. Possibly because even GAO didn't believe SEC was doing anything, GAO started doing reports of public company fraudulent financial filings, even showing increase after SOX goes into effect (and nobody doing jailtime). Less well known is SOX required SEC to do something about the rating agencies, but SEC did about as much about the rating agencies as the fraudulent financial filings.

Sarbanes-Oxley posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#sarbanes-oxley
enron posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#enron
Financial Reporting Fraud posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#financial.reporting.fraud.fraud
regulatory capture posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#regulatory.capture

Congressional hearings into Madoff had the person that tried unsuccessfully for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff (SEC's hands were force when Madoff turned himself in). He was asked if new regulations were required. He replied while new regulations might be required, more important was transparency and visibility (possibly since SEC wasn't enforcing existing regulations).

Madoff posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#madoff

recent long-winded post also mentions "moral hazard"
https://www.facebook.com/lynn.wheeler/posts/10212986059061816

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

the 'Here is' key

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: the 'Here is' key
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 08:47:38 -0700
Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> writes:
As mentioned, I came to telex pretty late in its lifetime, in the 90's our customers were mainly oil/gas companies, banking and shipping, where fax hadn't caught on.

By the early 2000's the PTTs were closing down their dedicated networks, though commercial services emerged which emulated telex lines over VPNs.


internet pretty much obsoleted the VANs (value added networks) that had grown up in the 60s&70s. Somebody that I had worked with since 1980 introduced VPN in the gateway committee (router) IETF (internet standards) meeting at san jose in the early 90s. There was lots of push back from the IPSEC people ... until they started referring to it as "light-weight IPSEC". The other router venders started all sort of delaying and obfuscation (since the processors in their routers didn't have the power to do the encryption/decryption). A couple months after the IETF meeting, At least one of the other router vendors announced a VPN "product" which was their standard router with external link encryptors ... which had nothing to do with tunneling encrypted VPN sessions through standard internet (but there was a lot of obfuscation and hand waving).

misc. past posts mentioning "light-weight ipsec"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#29 IPSEC wireless router ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#46 Channel Distances
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#70 Should a national regulatory authority stimulate deployment of IPv6?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#33 Trouble in PKI land
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#15 Need new 3270 emulator: SSH, inexpensive, reliable

the payment network card associations VANs were something else. The card associations were originally non-profit associations with bank members ... but then they went public and became separate profit organizations. They had also tied their interchange fees to transactions running over the card associations VANs ... with the internet obsoleting VANs ... they were faced with big hit to their bottom line. There have been quite a few monopoly legal actions against the card associations, including issues related to forced usage of their VANs and/or VAN interchange fees even when their VAN isn't used.

A series of these happened with the introduction of "signture" debit cards ... where retail merchant associations sued card associations for setting up point-of-sale terminals to force debit cards to "signature debit" (and transactions travel over card association VANs with their much higher interchange fees)

misc. past posts mentioning internet obsoleting value added networks:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#41 Certificate Authority of a secured P2P network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#18 Can Smart Cards Reduce Payments Fraud and Identity Theft?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#72 Alternative credit card network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#75 Alternative credit card network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#78 Kansas City Fed Chief Espouses ACH for Debit Card Processing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#7 Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014j.html#63 No Internet. No Microsoft Windows. No iPods. This Is What Tech Was Like In 1984
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#30 Western Union envisioned internet functionality
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#11 Credit card fraud solution coming to America...finally
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#17 Cybercrime

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

Preferred colour scheme?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Preferred colour scheme?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 09:17:18 -0700
rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) writes:
Endianness *does* have something to do with networking, just not *exclusively* with networking. Endianness pops up whenever big hunks of data [e.g., memory "words" or full-sized registers] get chopped up into smaller units [often "bytes", or sometimes "bits"] for I/O or transmission, and conversely when the smaller units are reassembled back into the bigger units. So it applies to *all* I/O [including networking] which is narrower than some "natural" unit of data.

science center came out to west coast in jan1968 to install cp/67 at the univ. the univ. had 2741 and tty terminals ... but cp/67 only had 1052 & 2741 support ... so I added tty/ascii terminal support. the base cp/67 support did automatic terminal type identification using the terminal controller SAD command to switch line/port scanner type (between 1052 and 2741). I extended that to inlude doing automatic terminal type for tty/ascii.

I then wanted to do single dial-in phone number ("hunt group") for all terminals ... which didn't quite work. It turns out while the "SAD" command switch the terminal type line/port scanner ... the line speed baud was hard-wired. Somewhat as a result university started clone controller project, started out with interdata/3 emulated 360 terminal controller ... but the port/line scanner would sample signal raise/drop to determine terminal speed. Interdata (later perkin/elmer) started marketing this as product ... and four of us get written up for (some part of) clone controller business (later this was upgraded with a interdata/4 handling the mainframe channel interface and cluster of interdata/3s handling port/line interfaces).

one of the first "bugs" that we had overlooked was when all the data showed up as garbage in mainframe (after having been run through standard translate table). Turns out that the standard mainframe terminal controller port/line scanner placed the leading bit in low-order bit position in byte ... so bytes arrived at mainframe with bit reversed bytes. IBM terminals didn't use bcd/ebcdic ... but things like tilt/rotate codes (for selectric mechanism) ... processing had to be run through translate table. For tty/ascii, the standard translate table was between bit-reversed ascii and ebcdic.

later on, ascii over LAN interfaces ran through controllers that didn't do bit-reversed convention ... so there was effectively two different kind of translate tables, one for bit-reversed (terminal) ascii and one for non-bit-reverssed (LAN) ascii.

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

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

Preferred colour scheme?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Preferred colour scheme?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 16:58:35 -0700
hancock4 writes:
If memory serves, the T1 was a local channel, not long distance.

In early 80s, I had "clear-channel" T1 links for HSDT in the San Jose area
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

then in mid-80s, pacbell said that all T1s had to go to encoding ... every 193rd bit had to guarantee synchronization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Signal_1#DS1_frame_synchronization

Frame synchronization is necessary to identify the timeslots within each 24-channel frame. Synchronization takes place by allocating a framing, or 193rd, bit. This results in 8 kbit/s of framing data, for each DS1. Because this 8-kbit/s channel is used by the transmitting equipment as overhead, only 1.536 Mbit/s is actually passed on to the user. Two types of framing schemes are superframe (SF) and extended superframe (ESF). A superframe consists of twelve consecutive 193-bit frames, whereas an extended superframe consists of twenty-four consecutive 193-bit frames of data. Due to the unique bit sequences exchanged, the framing schemes are not compatible with each other. These two types of framing (SF, and ESF) use their 8 kbit/s framing channel in different ways.

... snip ...

some more discussion.
http://www.infocellar.com/networks/Telecom101/T1-Line-Coding.htm

recent posts mentioning we were suppose to get $20M to hook together the NSF supercomputer centers (with T1 links)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#12 Mainframe Networking problems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#51 Stopping the Internet of noise
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#50 System/360--detailed engineering description (AFIPS 1964)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#66 IBM: A History Of Progress, 1890s to 2001

before some number of other things happened (and internal politics prevented us from bidding, even tho director of NSF wrote company a letter). Then what they initially installed was rube-goldberg 440kbit links with telco multiplexor with T1 trunks (to sort of make it look like they were meeting RFP calling for T1 links) running multiple 440kbit links on T1 trunk.

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

past posts mentioning clear-channel &/or 193rd bit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#27 Tysons Corner, Virginia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#13 COMTEN- IBM networking boxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#59 unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#5 Xah Lee's Unixism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#57 high speed network, cross-over from sci.crypt
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#1 Self restarting property of RTOS-How it works?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#36 Code density and performance?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#55 5963 (computer grade dual triode) production dates?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#21 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#33 IBM S/360 series operating systems history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#16 IBM-MAIN longevity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#17 IBM-MAIN longevity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#51 August 7, 1944: today is the 65th Anniversary of the Birth of the Computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#47 T-carrier
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#13 The IBM Strategy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#3 PROFS & GML

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

Demolishing the Tile Turtle

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Demolishing the Tile Turtle
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2017 17:41:12 -0700
Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
[1] Yes, *that* Ralph Gorin.

a minor Gorin reference; email copying couple dozen people, including IBM Stanford/SLAC marketing rep
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 91 17:45:09 EST From: lynn Subject: schedule

between now and the 23rd ... when we plan on leaving on the tour to save the world for ibm (heading west to the far east ... and then keep on traveling west until we get back sometime towards the end of sept. ... with presentations everyday ... the tokyo stuff sounds like several that are in the top ten in the world) ... we have pending discussions with DHL, SLAC, Nasa/Ames, BART, Intel account team, possibly Intel, Discos/Unitree, Oracle and Informix. At the moment none of these are scheduled ... and in theory the calender is open except for the SSPD meetings all day tomorrow.

open days are:

8 9 12 13 14 15 16 19 20 21 22

I count at least 9 possible meetings and 11 working days.

We may get one day off ... there is some possibility we are in Munich on the saturday that is the start of Oktoberfest.

+++++ Lynn Wheeler IBM AWD Eng.

IBM Jargon: do it right first time - n. A popular Quality slogan. Potentially synonymous with the slogan, Let the user do the debugging. Correctly deciding what to do next is perhaps even more important. creationism

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

then one of the replies
Date: Fri, 09 Aug 91 16:46:24 EDT From: IBM Stanford/SLAC marketing rep To: lynn

SLAC would like to have you over any of the afternoons 8/21 - 8/23. Which is best for you? PLEASE CALL - DON'T RESPOND VIA PROFS. I won't be able to check PROFS Monday or Tuesday. Thanks.

Also, have you been in touch with Ralph Gorin wrt the meeting that you and he were going to have this summer? His number is 415-723-8250 if you'd like to call him.

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

We were working on cluster scale-up for HA/CMP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

... both for technical/scientific as well as commercial with RDBMS vendors ... this is reference to Jan1992 meeting on RDBMS cluster scale-up in Ellison's conference room JAN1992.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

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

17Feb1992 press, announce for scientific and technical *ONLY*
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1
11May1992 National Lab interest in cluster scale-up caught IBM by *surprise*
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2

even tho I had been working with national labs on cluster scale-up going all the way back to 1979 when I got con'ed into doing benchmarks for national lab looking to get seventy 4341s for compute farm.

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

On Tactics

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: On Tactics
Date: 22 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
On Tactics
https://www.amazon.com/Tactics-B-Friedman-ebook/dp/B06X3Y9HQN/

loc766-69:
Another example of a force that had the advantage of mass but could not capitalize on it is the British column of 16,000 (although only 4,500 were soldiers) that left Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1847 in an attempt to reach British India. It had the advantage of discipline and mass over the small groups of Afghan tribesmen that harried it with swarming tactics. Only one British soldier, who was wounded four times, survived.
... snip ...

Several Boyd refs including, loc283-85:
One exception to that trend is Col. John Boyd, United States Air Force. Boyd is better known for other ideas, but a central part of his conception of strategy is the use of Fuller's physical, mental, and moral spheres. Boyd believed that one must attack the enemy on all three of these planes simultaneously.

then loc849-50:
Perhaps most importantly, mass is never about pure numbers. The quality of those numbers matters greatly. The numbers of the entire Iraqi army were to little avail in 1991 and in 2003 against far superior troops.
... snip ...

Desert Storm was 41 days, only the last 100hrs were land war. GAO Desert Storm Air Effectiveness study had US with air superiority and taking out Iraqi tanks (and other forces) so easily, that Iraqi crews were walking away from their tanks. The later land war description of fierce tank battles with the coalition forces taking little or no damage, doesn't mention whether the Iraqi tanks had anybody home.

Boyd is credited with the (land war/battle plan) "left hook" that failed when the Abrams didn't show up ... possible miscalculation was not taking into account how tightly tethered the Abrams are to their supply and maintenance.

The claim is that for 2003, Iraq had learned to drastically minimize targets for US air power.

trivia: Original US justification for 2003 was support of Al Qaeda and would only cost $50B. That then changed to WMDs. US rep to UN dealing with Iraqis was given proof that the WMDs (dating back to US in the Iran/Iraq war) had been decommissioned. The US UN rep provided the information to White House and was then locked up in military hospital. Those decommissioned WMDs were found early in the invasion, but the information was kept classified until fall of 2014.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html

2003 Invasion, the US rep to UN dealing with Iraq was cousin of white house chief of staff Card. An account was published in 2010, including about the decommissioned WMDs (tracing back to the US), four years before the information was declassified.
https://www.amazon.com/EXTREME-PREJUDICE-Terrifying-Story-Patriot-ebook/dp/B004HYHBK2/
account of some of the US support of Iraq in the 80s ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran-Iraq_war
including
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran-Iraq_war#Dual-use_exports
the 2003 SECDEF was person dealing with Saddam in the 80s
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Shakinghands_high.ogv

and military-industrial-complex wanted Iraq2 invasion so badly that corporate reps were telling former eastern block countries that if they voted for IRAQ2 invasion in the UN, they would get membership in NATO and (directed appropriation) USAID (can *ONLY* be used for purchase of US arms).
https://www.amazon.com/Prophets-War-Lockheed-Military-Industrial-ebook/dp/B0047T86BA/

More Desert Storm, sat. photo recon analyst told white house that saddam was marshaling forces to invade Kuwait. White house said that saddam would do no such thing and proceeded to discredit the analyst. Later the analyst informed the white house that saddam was marshaling forces to invade Saudi Arabia, now the white house has to choose between saddam and the Saudis.
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Strange-Journey-Intelligence-ebook/dp/B004NNV5H2/

Former CIA director and then VP repeatedly claimed that he knew nothing about
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_affair
because he was fulltime administration point person deregulating financial industry ... creating S&L crisis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis
along with other members of his family
http://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 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.

note both 80s SECSTATE and SECDEF had been Bechtel executives ... helping their (former) employer do business in the middle east. "The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World"
https://www.amazon.com/Profiteers-Bechtel-Men-Built-World-ebook/dp/B010MHAHV2/

VP has become president and Iran/Contra prosecutors are working with former SECDEF on evidence ... including against the sitting president. The president then "pardons" the former SECDEF. 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 a bunch of evidence is turned over (that the president had "forgotten" about) showing he was heavily involved in Iran/Contra

military-industrial complex
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex
perpetual war posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#perpetual.war
S&L crisis mess
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#s&l.crisis
economic mess posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess

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

On Tactics

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: On Tactics
Date: 23 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#74 On Tactics

Why Trump's plan for Afghanistan will fail
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2017/08/23/why-we-lose-in-afghanistan/
Why the Pentagon would rather hire a jihadist like bin Laden than reformer Donald Vandergriff.
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2015/01/19/history-4gw-military-reform-donald-vandergriff-76737/

military-industrial complex posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex
perpetual war posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#perpetual.war

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

Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2017 10:27:57 -0700
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
His papers were listed in the what-the-dec-records archive. Some day I'm going to find him and ask him one question.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#72 Preferred colour scheme?

part of the time we were working with director of NSF about linking the NSF supercomputer centers, Gorden was at NSF and sat in on some of the meetings.

some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet

I had worked with Jim Gray at IBM Research (including on original sql/relational System/R). He then left and went to tandem ... palming some number of things on to me. He then left Tandem and went to work for DEC Database group. We were working with Oracle (and other vendors) on cluster scale-up for our ha/cmp product. At '91 ACM SIGOPS (SOSP13, Oct 13-16) conference, I got into dustup with Jim about reliability of COTS equipment in clusters ... up against DEC VAX clusters. recent '91 HA/CMP reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#73 Demolishing the Tile Turtle

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

DEC is then being sold off ... including selling off DEC DBMS group to Oracle ... and Jim goes on sabbatical.

At 96 MDC Moscone conference, Jim is head of Microsoft San Francisco Research and has open house. recent reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#14 Mainframe Networking problems

Then Jim and I are keynote speakers at NASA Dependable Computer conference ... reference gone 404, but lives on at wayback machine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20011004023230/http://www.hdcc.cs.cmu.edu/may01/index.html

after that Jim tries to recruit me for Microsoft. He says I can't work for him at Microsoft research because he already has Gorden working for him. Instead, he cons me into interviewing for chief security architect in redmond ... the interview drags on for a couple weeks, but we can't come to agreement. recent reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016g.html#91 IBM Jargon and General Computing Dictionary Tenth Edition

Now m'soft SanFran Research is Silicon Valley Research, Gorden ref
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/gbell/
Jim reference
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/gray/

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

Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2017 09:21:58 -0700
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
Gordon did best when he was in research.

Were you ever sorry you didn't do that security work?


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#76 Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?

In 1999, I had been asked to help & try stop/prevent the coming economic mess ... I was still in the middle of that, believing that could make a difference (by improving the integrity of supporting documents in securitized loans) ... obviously failed, but still believe I needed to try.

some recent refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#2 Trump is taking the wrong approach to China on tech, says ex-Reagan official who helped beat Soviets
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#54 Pareto efficiency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#55 Pareto efficiency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#69 Feds Debt

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

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

IBM Mag TAPE Selectric ad 1966

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IBM Mag TAPE Selectric ad 1966
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2017 11:14:10 -0700
Bob Eager <news0006@eager.cx> writes:
I was already running FreeBSD 'on the side' and moved to that (having first used BSD in about 1977). And I managed a VAXcluster for some years, and did a lot of programming on it (mainly in Macro-32).

trivia ... decade of VAX sales slice&diced by year, model, US/non-US ... also some vax-cluster summary.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0

4300s sold about same numbers as VAX into mid-range market (in small unit orders) ... biggest difference were large corporations with orders of hundreds at a time for putting out into departmental areas ... sort of leading edge of distributed computing tsunami. In the later 80s, the VAX numbers show that mid-range (including 4300) were moving to workstations and large PCs.

when we were doing commercial HA/CMP with RDBMS vendors ... an oracle reference from Jan1992
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

... they had common source base for VAX and Unix. As aid in moving to HA/CMP I did an API emulation of vax/cluster support. However, some of the vax/cluster RDBMS vendors had strong feelings of how some of the vax/cluster implementation could be done better/faster. I had the advantage of lots of mainframe loosely-coupled (cluster) experience, the RDBMS vendor cluster input, and being able to start from scratch with clean slate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

as well as having been involved in the original SQL/relational implementation, System/R
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

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

Feds widen hunt for dirty money in Miami real estate

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Feds widen hunt for dirty money in Miami real estate
Date: 24 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
Feds widen hunt for dirty money in Miami real estate
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/real-estate-news/article168915302.html

Several too big to fail have been repeatedly caught money laundering for drug cartels and terrorists, each time getting "deferred prosecution" (promising never to do it again) and paying fines (some claims that fines are so small compared to amounts involved that it is just being treated as cost of running a criminal enterprise).

Too Big To Fail posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
money laundering for drug cartels and terrorists
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#money.laundering
tax evasion, avoidance, havens posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#tax.evasion

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

The IBM Appeal - when is a pensions promise not a promise?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The IBM Appeal - when is a pensions promise not a promise?
Date: 25 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
The IBM Appeal - when is a pensions promise not a promise?
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/ibm-appeal-when-pensions-promise-not-promise

AMEX was in competition with KKR for private-equity LBO take-over of RJR and RJR wins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate:_The_Fall_of_RJR_Nabisco
KKR runs into some problems and hires away AMEX president to help with RJR. IBM has gone into the red and was being reorganized into the 13 "Baby Bells" in preparation for breaking up the company. Dec 1992 "How IBM Was Left Behind", article behind paywall but some lives free at wayback machine
https://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 at RJR
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml

In the 80s, several large employee intensive companies reorganized into different subsidiaries, with the majority of employees in one subsidiary and the majority of the profit is booked in a different subsidiary. This could be seen in the airline industry where airline operations could be operating at a loss while the profit was booked in reservation and ticketing and the parent company booking substantial profit. It was even possible to declare bankruptcy for airline operations and dump the pension plans on PBGC (where benefits were substantially cut) while the profit in airline reservation/ticketing subsidiary was much larger than the loss in airline operations.

After the turn of the century this is expanded where the subsidiary booking majority of the profit was moved to offshore tax haven. Poster child is large US equipment manufacturing company that sells & delivers in the US to US customers. They created a "distributorship" in Luxembourg, equipment is booked to the distributorship at cost, which sells to US customers and equipment is still made, sold, and delivered in US, but all the profit is booked in Luxembourg
https://www.icij.org/project/luxembourg-leaks

The increased dumping pension plans on PBGC is putting intense stress on the operation, even with significantly reduced benefits.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-22/massive-pbgc-rate-hikes-force-corporate-debt-binge-companies-try-pay-down-pension-de

Gerstner posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
posts referencing pensions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#pensions
private equity posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
tax evasion, avoidance, havens posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#tax.evasion

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

the 'Here is' key

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: the 'Here is' key
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2017 12:03:46 -0700
Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> writes:
"Hunt group" was another term. Apparently there is some technical difference, but from the user's POV they are pretty much the same.

wiki ref:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_hunting

In telephony, line hunting (or hunt group) is the method of distributing phone calls from a single telephone number to a group of several phone lines. Specifically, it refers to the process or algorithm used to select which line will receive the call.

... snip ...

refers to "multi-line", "linear", "circular", "most-idle".

mentions "most-idle" is frequently used in call centers ... to load balance across the available humans.

couple recent refs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#104 SEX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#109 Online Terminals
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#44 VM/370 45th Birthday
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#71 Preferred colour scheme?

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

The IBM Appeal - when is a pensions promise not a promise?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The IBM Appeal - when is a pensions promise not a promise?
Date: 25 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#80 The IBM Appeal - when is a pensions promise not a promise?

other trivia, after leaving IBM, the former AMEX president goes to head up another large private-equity company. In 90s it was hiring a large number of prominent gov. figures, including former president and his son that would be future president. Last decade there was lots of buying beltway bandits and intensive lobbying to outsource gov. ... including buying the beltway bandit that will employee Snowden ... just intelligence, 70% of the budget and over half the people;
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/

companies in private-equity mill are under intense pressure to cut-corners and generate money every way possible for their owners; they also account for over 50% of corporate defaults
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmons.html?_r=0

private-equity subsidiaries that were doing gov. security clearances were found to be doing the paperwork, but not actually doing the background checks. the big uptic last decade in gov. outsourcing also accelerates the rapid spreading success of failure culture; for-profit companies making more off a series of failures:
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/

more recently KKR hires a fired CIA director
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/k-k-r-hires-petraeus/

other random info
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/finding-petraeusism-in-naglandia

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

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

Bureaucracy

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Bureaucracy
Date: 25 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
Bureaucracy 1) preserve the status quo & self-preservation, 2) expand to consume all available resources. Bureaucracy can achieve black hole status when there is little or no feedback/accountability. I wrote some amount about the analogy in the 70s ... which bothered me until I ran across an article about black hole evaporation. Bureaucracy is typically most threatened in times of changing conditions but it could take decades.

Boyd in briefings would talk about former military officers starting to contaminate US corporate culture with rigid, top-down, command&control infrastructures (implication that only those at the very top know what they are doing). However, about the same time there started to appearing articles that MBAs were destroying US corporatings with their myopic focus on quarterly numbers and focus on things like patents protecting monopolistic practices & status quo (claims are constitution purpose of the patent office was to encourage change and protect individual inventors against companies trying to protect status quo; current situation is large corporations are leveraging the patent office to protect their status quo and inhibit innovation.) The MBAs are doing the inverse of what Boyd was talking about, MBAs spreading into military (and education) bureaucracies.

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

In the 90s, we were doing some work with somebody from a very large mid-western state university. He said that in the 60s, the state funded over 80% of the university but by the 90s, it had flipped, state was only funding something like 11%.

The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future (Joseph E. Stiglitz) pg35/loc1169-73:
In business school we teach students how to recognize, and create, barriers to competition -- including barriers to entry -- that help ensure that profits won't be eroded. Indeed, as we shall shortly see, some of the most important innovations in business in the last three decades have centered not on making the economy more efficient but on how better to ensure monopoly power or how better to circumvent government regulations intended to align social returns and private rewards.

Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy (Joseph E. Stiglitz) pg271/loc5101-4:
Standard economic theory (the neoclassical model discussed earlier in this chapter) has had little to say about innovation, even though most of the increases in U.S. standards of living in the past hundred years have come from technical progress.56 As I noted earlier, just as "information" was outside the old models, so too was innovation
... snip ...

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

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

Bureaucracy

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Bureaucracy
Date: 25 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#83 Bureaucracy

there is "Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Forces, 1901-1940, and the Consequences for World War II" highlights difference between US and Germany ... US focused on turning out conformity and stamping out creativity
https://www.amazon.com/Command-Culture-Education-1901-1940-Consequences-ebook/dp/B009K7VYLI/

book about former co-worker at science center
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cool-to-be-clever-edson-hendricks/id483020515?mt=8
bullying part of US education (public and military) for stamping out creativity and enforcing conformity
https://www.amazon.com/Its-Cool-Be-Clever-Hendricks/dp/1897435630/
another reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edson_Hendricks

US education system in general focused on stamping out creativity and enforcing conformity. Teachers Don't Like Creative Students
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/12/teachers-dont-like-creative-students.html

past posts mentioning former co-worker:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#12 Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#15 Any candidates for best acronyms?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#17 What is IBM culture?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#29 It's Cool To Be Clever
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#35 How old is the oldest email in your current email inbox?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#98 VNET 1983 IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#66 1973--TI 8 digit electric calculator--$99.95
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#80 Term "Open Systems" (as Sometimes Currently Used) is Dead -- Who's with Me?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015g.html#99 PROFS & GML
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#66 IMPI (System/38 / AS/400 historical)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#73 Miniskirts and mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#96 Systems thinking--still in short supply
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#103 Median Age of US Managers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#108 25 Years: How the Web began
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016.html#101 Internal Network, NSFNET, Internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016e.html#53 E.R. Burroughs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016f.html#13 Bullying
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016g.html#6 INTERNET
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#5 "I used a real computer at home...and so will you" (Popular Science May 1967)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#43 Formed by Megafloods, This Place Fooled Scientists for Decades
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017c.html#62 Most people are secretly threatened by creativity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#62 People don't actually like creativity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#11 The Geniuses that Anticipated the Idea of the Internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#14 The Geniuses that Anticipated the Idea of the Internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#20 cultural stereotypes, was Ironic old "fortune"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#105 The IBM 7094 and CTSS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#4 Mapping the decentralized world of tomorrow

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

Banks Earn Record Profits in Q2, Savers Sacrificed: FDIC

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Banks Earn Record Profits in Q2, Savers Sacrificed: FDIC
Date: 25 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
Banks Earn Record Profits in Q2, Savers Sacrificed: FDIC
https://wolfstreet.com/2017/08/22/banks-earn-record-profits-in-q2-savers-sacrificed-fdic/

Negative Interest Rates Have Come To America
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-25/negative-interest-rates-have-come-america

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#22 OT: book: "Capital in the Twenty-First Century"

Too Big To Fail posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

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

The Lost Lesson of the Financial Crisis

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The Lost Lesson of the Financial Crisis
Date: 26 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
The Lost Lesson of the Financial Crisis
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/lost-lessons-of-the-financial-crisis-by-mohamed-a--el-erian-2017-08
Yet the massive economic and financial dislocations that would come to a boil in late 2008 and continue through early 2009 - which brought the world to the brink of a devastating multi-year depression - took policymakers in advanced economies completely by surprise. They had clearly not paid enough attention to the lessons of crisis in the emerging world.
... snip ...

1999, I'm asked to try and help prevent the coming economic mess. Securitized mortgages had been used during the S&L crisis ... posterchild was office bldgs in dallas area that turned out to be empty lots. I was to improve the integrity of supporting documents as a countermeausre. Then they find that they can pay for triple-A ratings (when they and the rating agencies know they aren't worth triple-A, from Oct2008 congressional hearings into the pivotal role the rating agencies played). Triple-A trumps supporting documents and they can start doing no-documentation liar loans, securitized, paying for triple-A and selling off as fast as they can be made, largely enabling over $27T 2001-2008 (including selling to operations restricted to only dealing in "safe" investments, like large pension funds).

Central Bankers Know Nothing About Modern Money
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2017/08/25/central_bankers_know_nothing_about_modern_money_102838.html

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

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

Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2017 10:06:26 -0700
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
In 1999, I had been asked to help & try stop/prevent the coming economic mess ... I was still in the middle of that, believing that could make a difference (by improving the integrity of supporting documents in securitized loans) ... obviously failed, but still believe I needed to try.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#76 Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#77 Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?

couple recent articles implying nobody knew what was coming ... either "captured" and/or
see no, hear no, speak no

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

Central Bankers Know Nothing About Modern Money
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2017/08/25/central_bankers_know_nothing_about_modern_money_102838.html
The Lost Lesson of the Financial Crisis
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/lost-lessons-of-the-financial-crisis-by-mohamed-a--el-erian-2017-08
Yet the massive economic and financial dislocations that would come to a boil in late 2008 and continue through early 2009 - which brought the world to the brink of a devastating multi-year depression - took policymakers in advanced economies completely by surprise. They had clearly not paid enough attention to the lessons of crisis in the emerging world.
... snip ...

"economic mess" posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess
regulatory capture posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#regulatory.capture

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

Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2017 11:40:39 -0700
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Central Bankers Know Nothing About Modern Money
http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2017/08/25/central_bankers_know_nothing_about_modern_money_102838.html
The Lost Lesson of the Financial Crisis
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/lost-lessons-of-the-financial-crisis-by-mohamed-a--el-erian-2017-08


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#76 Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#77 Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#87 Any definitive reference for why the PDP-11 was little-endian?

triva: late summer, early fall 2008, the author of the "Lost Lesson" article was at a company that bought up $60B (billion) in off-book toxic assets at 22cents on the dollar. However, ye2008, just the four largest too big to fail were still holding $5.2T (trillion) in off-book toxic assets. They should have been required to bring them back on the books and "mark to market" ... but then they would have to book $4+T (trillion) in losses, declared insolvent and forced to be liquidated. TARP funds original justified to buy these toxic assets, but with only $700B (billion) appropriated, it wouldn't have bought all that $5.2T (trillion) even at 22cents on the dollar (but again, still would have been declared insolvent and liquidated).

"economic mess"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess
regulatory capture posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#regulatory.capture
Too Big To Fail posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
triple-A rated toxic CDO posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo

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

z14 and zBX

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: z14 and zBX
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 27 Aug 2017 09:50:22 -0700
edjaffe@PHOENIXSOFTWARE.COM (Ed Jaffe) writes:
On 8/22/2017 4:27 AM, R.S. wrote:

>The above is some simplification, however I heard A LOT OF zBX, saw
>a lot of presentations, and  IBMers never ever convinced me the zBX
>is something more than LAN-attached rack.

zBX was a mistake. Every company makes them.


for at least past ten years, large public cloud operators have been claiming that they assemble their own systems at 1/3rd the price of brand name server vendors. their large megadatacenters having hundreds of thousands of these system blades. Within past couple years, system processor chip makers have been saying that they ship over half their chips to these large megadatacenters ... significantly changing large datacenter model (and possibly contributing to IBM selling off its server business). Each one of these blades having upwards of ten times the processing power of max. configured z14 ... and a single megadatacenter will have several hundred thousand of these blades, and there are large scores of these megadatacenters around the world.

more than 30 years ago

early 1979, I got con'ed into doing 4341 benchmarks (on engineering 4341, they hadn't started shipping yet) for national lab that was looking at getting 70 4341s for compute farm (sort of leading edge of cluster supercomputers).

starting in the early 80s, we were working with director of NSF on inter-connecting the NSF supercomputer centerrs. We were suppose to get $20M ... but then congress cuts the budget and things drag on for sometime while we continue to work with the director. I had also done a proposal to do racks of processor chips ... racks with arbitrary mix of cards with arbitrary mix of 370 & 801/risc CMOS chips. This is old email having scheduled meeting with director of NSF but also a week of meetings at research on racks full of arbitrary mix 370 & 801/risc chips (I had to get somebody to fill in for me at the NSF meetings)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email850315

I had project I called HSDT that had T1 and faster speed links ... including connectivity to IBM mainframes using non-IBM controllers. some HSDT email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#hsdt

Old email about doing CP (vm370) internals class and meetings with NSF about connecting NSF supercomputer centers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#email850930
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#email851114
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#email851116

some more HSDT & NSF
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#email860505
more NSF related email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

eventually NSF releases a RFP (in part based on what we already have running in HSDT), but internal politics prevents us from bidding, director of NSF tries to help by writing letter to the company 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO), with support from other agencies ... but that just makes the internal politics worse. 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/

more HSDT email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#hsdt

during this period, the communication group is spreading misinformation internally, even claiming that SNA/VTAM can be used ... even tho SNA/VTAM doesn't support TCP/IP and 37x5 boxes doesn't support more than 56kbits/sec links. Somebody collects much of the mis-information email and sends us a copy ... significantly clipped and redacted to protect the guilty
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email870109

there is not a lot of interest within IBM about including 370 chips in cluster racks ... so eventually it is only 801/risc power chips. We are working with national labs and supercomputer centers on cluster scale-up for scientific/technical as well as RDBMS vendors on commercial cluster scale-up. past reference JAN1992 meeting in Oracle CEO's office about commercial cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

within a couple weeks of the Oracle meeting, cluster scale-up was transferred, announced as supercomputer, and we were told that we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors. 17Feb1992 press about scientific/technical *ONLY*
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1
later in the spring 11May1992 press, IBM surprised in national lab interest in cluster supercomputers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2

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

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

'X' Marks the Spot Where Inequality Took Root: Dig Here

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: 'X' Marks the Spot Where Inequality Took Root: Dig Here
Date: 27 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
'X' Marks the Spot Where Inequality Took Root: Dig Here
http://www.eoionline.org/blog/x-marks-the-spot-where-inequality-took-root-dig-here/

slightly different tipping point whether calculate wages or total compensation

79-80
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/jobs-will-follow-a-strengthening-of-the-middle-class.html

this also has reference to 2011 NYT graphic above, updated through 2014

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/
from here now updated through 2016
http://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

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

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

Trump's cybersecurity advisers resign en masse

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Trump's cybersecurity advisers resign en masse
Date: 27 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
Trump's cybersecurity advisers resign en masse
https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/26/trump-cybersecurity-advisers-resign/

Last decade there was enormous uptic in gov. outsourcing to for-profit companies. This was especially true of beltway bandits bought up by private-equity companies and were under significant pressure to cut corners to generate revenue by their owners. The private-equity owners hired prominent politicians as part of heavily lobbying for the outsourcing.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/10/barbarians-capitol-private-equity-public-enemy/
Lou Gerstner, former ceo of ibm, now heads the Carlyle Group, a Washington-based global private equity firm whose 2006 revenues of $87 billion were just a few billion below ibm's. Carlyle has boasted George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and former Secretary of State James Baker III on its employee roster
... snip ...

also would acquire the beltway bandit that would employ Snowden. In the case of the intelligence (& cyber operation) branches, 70% of the budget and over half the employees being outsourced.
http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us/
which significantly accelerated the rapidly spreading success of failure culture (more money made from a series of failures ... especially related to cyber)
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/

the private-equity owned beltway bandits where security clearances were outsourced, were found to be filling out the paperwork, but not actually doing background checks. It also includes massive debt in order to forward money to their owners, over half of corporate defaults are companies currently or formally in private-equity mill
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmons.html?_r=0

Trivia: AMEX was in competition with KKR for private-equity LBO take-over of RJR and KKR wins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate:_The_Fall_of_RJR_Nabisco
KKR runs into some problems and hires away AMEX president to help with RJR. Then IBM has gone into the red and was being reorganized into the 13 "Baby Bells" in preparation for breaking up the company. Dec 1992 "How IBM Was Left Behind", article behind paywall but some lives free at wayback machine
https://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 at RJR
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml

private-equity posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
gerstner posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
posts referencing pensions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#pensions
success of failure posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#success.of.failuree

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

'X' Marks the Spot Where Inequality Took Root: Dig Here

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: 'X' Marks the Spot Where Inequality Took Root: Dig Here
Date: 27 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#90 'X' Marks the Spot Where Inequality Took Root: Dig Here

Lots of "Why Nations Fail" is about inclusive, exclusive, inequality, preserving the status quo or innovation.
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8/

Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy (Joseph E. Stiglitz)
https://www.amazon.com/Freefall-America-Markets-Sinking-Economy-ebook/dp/B0035YDM9E/

pg271/loc5101-4:
Standard economic theory (the neoclassical model discussed earlier in this chapter) has had little to say about innovation, even though most of the increases in U.S. standards of living in the past hundred years have come from technical progress.56 As I noted earlier, just as "information" was outside the old models, so too was innovation

The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future (Joseph E. Stiglitz)
https://www.amazon.com/Price-Inequality-Divided-Society-Endangers-ebook/dp/B007MKCQ30/

pg35/loc1169-73:
In business school we teach students how to recognize, and create, barriers to competition -- including barriers to entry -- that help ensure that profits won't be eroded. Indeed, as we shall shortly see, some of the most important innovations in business in the last three decades have centered not on making the economy more efficient but on how better to ensure monopoly power or how better to circumvent government regulations intended to align social returns and private rewards.
... snip ...

published 2012, "three decades" from above quote, 1982, started writing sometime before 2012, so referring to sometime before 1982.

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

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

PDP-11 question

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PDP-11 question
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2017 16:57:02 -0700
Charles Richmond <numerist@aquaporin4.com> writes:
IBM support was so good for their copier, just like the computer FE support. I've been told that if you call in a problem with you IBM copier, a tech will be out to fix it within the hour.

there is case study involving IBM TV commercial ... where IBM showed how easy it was to clear IBM copier3 paperjam. The commercial backfired because people didn't like being reminded that copier3 had many more paperjams than competition. past refs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#14 Poor people's OS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#54 1403 printers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#20 Seeking Info on XDS Sigma 7 APL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#18 What was the historical price of a P/390?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#82 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company

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

What is SQL? The language of databases

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: What is SQL? The language of databases
Date: 28 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
What is SQL? The language of databases; SQL is neither the fastest nor the most elegant way to talk to databases, but it is the best way we have; here's why
https://www.infoworld.com/article/3219795/sql/what-is-sql-the-language-of-databases.html

Codd is responsible for relational 1970. Original sql/relational implementation was System/R on VM370/145 in bldg. 28. I was involved in some of the work. The IMS DBMS group in STL would criticize System/R for requiring twice the disk space (for key indexes) and 4-5 the disk I/Os (processing index, IMS exposed record pointers as part data, which minimize disk I/O). System/R criticized IMS that it required significant human SYSADM overhead and computer resources to periodically reorganize all the data (because of the exposed record pointers as part of data).

The next major DBMS product was code named EAGLE. The preoccupation of the corporation with EAGLE allowed us to do System/R technology transfer to Endicott for release as SQL/DS. Later when EAGLE imploded there was request about how quickly System/R could be ported to MVS ... eventually released as DB2 (originally for decision support only).

In the 80s, there was significant reduction in disk cost per bit ... offsetting the doubling of disk space for RDBMS index and significant increase in processor memory sizes that allowed for index caching reducing number of real disk I/Os. At the same time, there was significant reduction in overall system costs, resulting in explosion in systems and demand for DBMS. There wasn't a corresponding explosion in number of human SYSADMs that would have been needed for IMS ... so RDBMS stepped in to fill the void (needed much lower human care and maintenance).

At same time as System/R, I also got con'ed into working on different kind of relational. I've commented that System/R (standard RDBMS) optimized for tables with uniform record definition, single key and all (uniform) fields needed in same record to do ATM (and other) financial transactions. This other kind of relational was somewhat based on Sowa's work (at the time was at IBM). All fields were independently indexed based on field value (not needing separate key). It could require 5-10 times the disk space (as RDBMS) for uniform data ... but got significantly more efficient for non-uniform information. It also handled nulls/unknowns significantly better than SQL. I did some work with NLM on UMLS with a version of this other kind of relational. They had hired a major RDBMS company to work loading UMLS into RDBMS. They had worked on it for 18months and still majority was unnormalized tables ... and it was taking an additional 18months for 9months of new medical knowledge. Starting from scratch, I spent 2months to completely load and organize all fo UMLS (working alone part time). It was flexible enough to easily do table, uniform, non-uniform, hierarchical, and mesh information structures.

my view is this account somewhat muddles description of what went on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_F._Codd#Work

System/R posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

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

PDP-11 question

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PDP-11 question
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2017 12:19:43 -0700
Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
I don't know _what_ IBM is selling these days. Services and mainframes, I guess. The PC business went to Lenovo (don't know if they finally got the servers or not) Inkjet (and laser?) printers went to Lexmark. I don't think they make printers or terminals any more. They got rid of their chip foundries and, I think, ket the design biz and contracted the manufacturing to GlobalFoundries.They make z boxes and POWER AIX stuff.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#93 PDP-11 question

IBM (consumer) PCs went to Lenovo some time ago, the server business went to Lenovo not long after processor server chip vendors said that over half their server chips go directly to large cloud megadatcenters ... where they've been claiming for some time that they assemble their own servers for 1/3rd the price of brand name servers (i.e. cloud operators view it as cost rather than profit).

for the last decade or more, max configured mainframe processor have continued to be around $30m (getting a little more for same amount of money)
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, 150 BIPS, (862MIPS/proc), Aug2017


recent mainframe refs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#17 The Pentagon still uses computer software from 1958 to manage its contracts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#57 What are mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#94 Migration off Mainframe to other platform
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#87 IBM z14 High-lights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#88 IBM Mainframe Ushers in New Era of Data Protection
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#18 IBM RAS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#61 computer component reliability, 1951
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#62 computer component reliability, 1951

claims that half z196 performance over z10 was introduction of things that have been in other platforms for years or decades ... memory latency compensation, out-of-order execution, branch prediction, speculative execution, etc. It possibly could imply that low level internals of the chip is sharing some with the power chips.

in the z196 time-frame, e5-2500v1 blades had MIPS benchmark in the 400-530 BIPS range ... and cloud assembly around $1/BIPS ... by comparison max. configured z196 ran around $600K/BIPS (just processor) now down around $200k/BIPS with max configured z14. However, IBM financials has mainframe hardware about 4% of revenue but total mainframe is 25% of revenue (and 40% or profit) ... i.e. nearly all of it is being made off mainframe software (milking mainframe software cash cow as hardware sales decline).

In the past, i made estimated that processor chips for several years of EC12 sales could be made in single minimum sized wafer chip manufacturing run (six wafers) ... aka total EC12 processor annual revenue divided by $30M times 120 chips divided by chips per wafer. refs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014m.html#129 Is there an Inventory of the Installed Mainframe Systems Worldwide and or for Europe alone?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015.html#82 Is there an Inventory of the Installed Mainframe Systems Worldwide
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#83 Miniskirts and mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#24 CeBIT and mainframes

One of the issues for IBM unloading chip wafer fabs was that typical fab operations are measured in tens of thousand to hundred thousand chip wafers made per month. IBM couldn't justify its own dedicated fabs, needing only, at most, a few hundred wafers per year.

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

computer component reliability, 1951

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: computer component reliability, 1951
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2017 19:12:27 -0700
Cory Heisterkamp <coryheisterkamp@gmail.com> writes:
In "IBM's Early Computers" (MIT Press) it talks about the problem of finding a tube supplier that could produce the needed quantity of high quality computer tubes for IBM's machines. Contamination and failures that might be acceptable in even military applications wouldn't cut it in a machine using thousands of tubes, especially in novel ways. For a while there was talk of IBM producing their own, but eventually they were able to teach RCA the ins-and-outs and once they were on board, GE and others followed suit and production only got better as time went on. -C

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#61 computer component reliability, 1951
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#62 computer component reliability, 1951

I got sucked into project to multithread 370/195 ... help with "multiprocessor" support ... patents referenced here ("Sidebar: Multithreading") near bottom of page
https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.html
In summer 1968, Ed Sussenguth investigated making the ACS/360 into a multithreaded design by adding a second instruction counter and a second set of registers to the simulator. Instructions were tagged with an additional "red/blue" bit to designate the instruction stream and register set; and, as was expected, the utilization of the functional units increased since more independent instructions were available.

IBM patents and disclosures on multithreading include:

US Patent 3,728,692, J.W. Fennel, Jr., "Instruction selection in a two-program counter instruction unit," filed August 1971, and issued April 1973.

US Patent 3,771,138, J.O. Celtruda, et al., "Apparatus and method for serializing instructions from two independent instruction streams," filed August 1971, and issued November 1973. [Note that John Earle is one of the inventors listed on the '138.]

"Multiple instruction stream uniprocessor," IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, January 1976, 2pp. [for S/370]

... snip ...

they said major difference between 360/195 and 370/195 was the addition of hardware instruction retry (195 had so many circuits that it significantly increased probabilty of some soft error ... and hardware retry significantly improved "reliability").

as I've referenced before peak 195 was 10mips ... but most codes ran around 5mips because of conditional branches ... while 195 had out-of-order execution, it didn't have branch prediction and speculative execution ... so conditional branches drained the pipeline. running two instruction streams at 5mips ... then had chance of keeping processor busy (10mips aggregate).

some recent posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#3 Is multiprocessing better then multithreading?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#85 The ICL 2900
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#90 The ICL 2900

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

Business as Usual: The Long History of Corporate Personhood

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Business as Usual: The Long History of Corporate Personhood
Date: 29 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
Business as Usual: The Long History of Corporate Personhood
https://bostonreview.net/politics/lawrence-b-glickman-business-usual-long-history-corporate-personhood

John Foster Dulles was major force rebuilding Germany's industry and military, supporting Hitler and Nazis in the 20s through the early 40s. From the law of unintended consequences, the 1943 US Strategic Bombing Program needed location of German industrial and military targets, they got the target coordinates from wallstreet.
https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Foster-Dulles-Allen-Secret-ebook/dp/B00BY5QX1K/

loc865-68:
In mid-1931 a consortium of American banks, eager to safeguard their investments in Germany, persuaded the German government to accept a loan of nearly $500 million to prevent default. Foster was their agent. His ties to the German government tightened after Hitler took power at the beginning of 1933 and appointed Foster's old friend Hjalmar Schacht as minister of economics.

loc905-7:
Foster was stunned by his brother's suggestion that Sullivan & Cromwell quit Germany. Many of his clients with interests there, including not just banks but corporations like Standard Oil and General Electric, wished Sullivan & Cromwell to remain active regardless of political conditions.

loc938-40:
At least one other senior partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, Eustace Seligman, was equally disturbed. In October 1939, six weeks after the Nazi invasion of Poland, he took the extraordinary step of sending Foster a formal memorandum disavowing what his old friend was saying about Nazism
... snip ...

not just Dulles, 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
https://www.amazon.com/Man-Called-Intrepid-Incredible-Narrative-ebook/dp/B00V9QVE5O/

Later 5000 industrialists from across the US had conference at NYC Waldorf-Astoria and in part because they had gotten such bad reputation for the depression and supporting Nazi Germany, they approved a major propaganda campaign to equate capitalism with Christianity
https://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-God-Corporate-ebook/dp/B00PWX7R56/

Results in the 50s include adding "Under God" to the pledge of allegiance and "In God We Trust" to currency

In the 80s, several large employee intensive companies reorganized into different subsidiaries, with the majority of employees in one subsidiary and the majority of the profit is booked in a different subsidiary. This could be seen in the airline industry where airline operations could be operating at a loss while the profit was booked in reservation and ticketing and the parent company booking substantial profit. It was even possible to declare bankruptcy for airline operations and dump the pension plans on PBGC (where benefits were substantially cut) while the profit in airline reservation/ticketing subsidiary was much larger than the loss in airline operations.

After the turn of the century this is expanded where the subsidiary booking majority of the profit was moved to offshore tax haven. Poster child is large US equipment manufacturing company that sells & delivers in the US to US customers. They created a "distributorship" in Luxembourg, equipment is booked to the distributorship at cost, which sells to US customers and equipment is still made, sold, and delivered in US, but all the profit is booked in Luxembourg
https://www.icij.org/project/luxembourg-leaks

The increased dumping pension plans on PBGC is putting intense stress on the operation, even with significantly reduced benefits.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-22/massive-pbgc-rate-hikes-force-corporate-debt-binge-companies-try-pay-down-pension-de

inequality posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#inequality
military industrial complex posting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex
tax fraud, tax avoidance, tax havens posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#tax.evasion

recent posts that corporations have the vote in the "City of London" just like humans.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017.html#35 Hammond threatens EU with aggressive tax changes after Brexit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#63 endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#64 endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#65 endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)

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

endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2017 12:09:51 -0700
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Luxembourg Takes the Heat, but the World's Worst Tax Haven - the City of London - Remains Unscathed
http://wolfstreet.com/2014/11/08/as-luxembourg-takes-the-heat-the-worlds-worst-tax-haven-the-city-of-london-remains-hidden-in-plain-sight/

The City Within the City

When it comes to financial secrecy, no European jurisdiction - not even Switzerland or Luxembourg - can hold a candle to the wholly autonomous City of London, which for centuries has existed as an ancient, semi-alien entity lodged inside the British nation state; a "prehistoric monster which had mysteriously survived into the modern world", as a 19th-century would-be City reformer put it

... snip ...

The tax haven in the heart of Britain
http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/02/london-corporation-city

The bill concerned the City of London Corporation, the local-government authority for the 1.2-square-mile slab of prime real estate in central London that is the City of London. The corporation is an ancient, semi-alien entity lodged inside the British nation state; a "prehistoric monster which had mysteriously survived into the modern world", as a 19th-century would-be City reformer put it. The words remain apt today. Few people care that London has a mayor and a lord mayor - but they should: the corporation is an offshore island inside Britain, a tax haven in its own right.

... snip ...


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#63 endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#64 endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#65 endless medical arguments, Disregard post (another screwup)

Business as Usual: The Long History of Corporate Personhood
https://bostonreview.net/politics/lawrence-b-glickman-business-usual-long-history-corporate-personhood

John Foster Dulles was major force rebuilding Germany's industry and military, supporting Hitler and Nazis in the 20s through the early 40s. From the law of unintended consequences, the 1943 US Strategic Bombing Program needed location of German industrial and military targets, they got the target coordinates from wallstreet.
https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Foster-Dulles-Allen-Secret-ebook/dp/B00BY5QX1K/

loc865-68:
In mid-1931 a consortium of American banks, eager to safeguard their investments in Germany, persuaded the German government to accept a loan of nearly $500 million to prevent default. Foster was their agent. His ties to the German government tightened after Hitler took power at the beginning of 1933 and appointed Foster's old friend Hjalmar Schacht as minister of economics.

loc905-7:
Foster was stunned by his brother's suggestion that Sullivan & Cromwell quit Germany. Many of his clients with interests there, including not just banks but corporations like Standard Oil and General Electric, wished Sullivan & Cromwell to remain active regardless of political conditions.

loc938-40:
At least one other senior partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, Eustace Seligman, was equally disturbed. In October 1939, six weeks after the Nazi invasion of Poland, he took the extraordinary step of sending Foster a formal memorandum disavowing what his old friend was saying about Nazism
... snip ...

not just Dulles, 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
https://www.amazon.com/Man-Called-Intrepid-Incredible-Narrative-ebook/dp/B00V9QVE5O/

Later 5000 industrialists from across the US had conference at NYC Waldorf-Astoria and in part because they had gotten such bad reputation for the depression and supporting Nazi Germany, they approved a major propaganda campaign to equate capitalism with Christianity
https://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-God-Corporate-ebook/dp/B00PWX7R56/

Results in the 50s include adding "Under God" to the pledge of allegiance and "In God We Trust" to currency

In the 80s, several large employee intensive companies reorganized into different subsidiaries, with the majority of employees in one subsidiary and the majority of the profit is booked in a different subsidiary. This could be seen in the airline industry where airline operations could be operating at a loss while the profit was booked in reservation and ticketing and the parent company booking substantial profit. It was even possible to declare bankruptcy for airline operations and dump the pension plans on PBGC (where benefits were substantially cut) while the profit in airline reservation/ticketing subsidiary was much larger than the loss in airline operations.

After the turn of the century this is expanded where the subsidiary booking majority of the profit was moved to offshore tax haven. Poster child is large US equipment manufacturing company that sells & delivers in the US to US customers. They created a "distributorship" in Luxembourg, equipment is booked to the distributorship at cost, which sells to US customers and equipment is still made, sold, and delivered in US, but all the profit is booked in Luxembourg
https://www.icij.org/project/luxembourg-leaks

The increased dumping pension plans on PBGC is putting intense stress on the operation, even with significantly reduced benefits.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-22/massive-pbgc-rate-hikes-force-corporate-debt-binge-companies-try-pay-down-pension-de

inequality posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#inequality
military industrial complex posting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex

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

Boca Series/1 & CPD

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Boca Series/1 & CPD
Date: 30 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
In the 70s, the science center tried to convince the communication group to use the series/1 peachtree processor for the 3705 rather than UC processor.

Later when I was doing HSDT, I was using non-IBM mainframe controllers to handle T1 and faster links. Then part of condition to continue funding was to find & use some IBM box. The only thing was Series/1 with mainframe channel card and ZIRPEL T1 card FSD RPQ). However, IBM had recently bought ROLM which used Data General ... but then ordered a bunch of Series/1, creating over a year delivery backlog for anybody else. I did know the ROLM datacenter manager (from prior life at IBM) and in some horse trading got some Series/1 from ROLM.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

Then got sucked into doing some work with a baby bell that had implemented VTAM/NCP simulation on Series/1 with significant greater function and performance. We cut a deal that I would turn it out as type1 IBM product and got preorders from major 37x5 customers. What the communication group did next to block the effort can only be described as truth is stranger than fiction.

The ROLM datacenter manager I worked with had been at STL ... before leaving IBM and going to ROLM (well before IBM bought ROLM). This is part of Series/1 with VTAM/NCP emulator presentation that I gave fall 1986 in Raleigh at SNA ARB meeting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#67

all the technical people loved it, all the management hated it. After the presentation, the top executive asked me who approved me giving presentation (I think he wanted to fire the person). Part of the issue was that the "baby bell" group was less than 1/10th the size of the Raleigh group and providing ten times the function/performance. Later several CPD people attacked the numbers. However, I took the VTAM/NCP numbers directly from the HONE CPD configurator. Then a whole lot of other FUD, obfuscation and misdirection. Part of presentation that one of baby bell people gave at COMMON user group meeting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#70
HONE posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

My wife had written part of response to a gov large, super secure campus distributed computing network environment where she included what would come to be called 3-tier networking (and/or middle layer). We were then out giving customer executive presentations on 3-tier, distributing computing etc. ... and taking lots of arrows in the back from the CPD, token-ring, and SAA people; lots more FUD, obfuscation and misdirection. Past 3tier posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#3tier

Trivia: later after leaving IBM ... we were working on project with Siemens (which had bought ROLM from IBM) and had meetings in the old ROLM campus. Then chip part of Siemens split off as Infineon and had sparkling new bldg down near where 1st street intersects 101.

Original mainframe TCP/IP product was done in VS/Pascal and had none of the buffer length exploits that have been epidemic in all the C language implementations. CPD fought hard to prevent it from being announced. When they lost, they then demanded that it was networking and belonged to them. What was released would get about 44kbytes/sec maximum using whole 3090 processor. Then I did the changes to support RFC1044 and in some tuning tests at Cray research between 4341 and Cray got sustained channel speed throughput using only modest amount of 4341 processor (possibly 500 times improvement in bytes moved per instruction executed). past RFC1044 posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

Later, CPD hired a contractor to implement TCP/IP support in VTAM. When he initially demo'ed it, TCP/IP ran much faster than LU6.2 ... and was told that everybody knows that LU6.2 runs much faster than a proper TCP/IP implementation and CPD would be only paying for a "proper" TCP/IP implementation.

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

'X' Marks the Spot Where Inequality Took Root: Dig Here

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: 'X' Marks the Spot Where Inequality Took Root: Dig Here
Date: 30 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#90 'X' Marks the Spot Where Inequality Took Root: Dig Here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#92 'X' Marks the Spot Where Inequality Took Root: Dig Here

In the 80s, several large employee intensive companies reorganized into different subsidiaries, with the majority of employees in one subsidiary and the majority of the profit is booked in a different subsidiary. This could be seen in the airline industry where airline operations could be operating at a loss while the profit was booked in reservation and ticketing and the parent company booking substantial profit. It was even possible to declare bankruptcy for airline operations and dump the pension plans on PBGC (where benefits were substantially cut) while the profit in airline reservation/ticketing subsidiary was much larger than the loss in airline operations.

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

After the turn of the century this is expanded where the subsidiary booking majority of the profit was moved to offshore tax haven. Poster child is large US equipment manufacturing company that sells & delivers in the US to US customers. They created a "distributorship" in Luxembourg, equipment is booked to the distributorship at cost, which sells to US customers and equipment is still made, sold, and delivered in US, but all the profit is booked in Luxembourg
https://www.icij.org/project/luxembourg-leaks

tax evasion, avoidance, havens posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#tax.evasion

The increased dumping pension plans on PBGC is putting intense stress on the operation, even with significantly reduced benefits.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-22/massive-pbgc-rate-hikes-force-corporate-debt-binge-companies-try-pay-down-pension-de

One of the major US auto makers had shifted to financial (auto loans and other stuff), eventually where parent company was making 90% bottom line. Around the turn of the century, their CFO was about to retire and cut a deal to sell much of the financial operations ... since he effectively got a cut of the sale (and had no long term incentive in the company).

Cheap foreign auto imports help keep lid on auto prices. Then there was import quota removing that pressure and giving them US bigger market share, congress had intended that they use the greatly increased profits to remake themselves. Removing the price lid also allowed them to nearly double the prices but since public salaries didn't double, they had to increase loans from 36month to 60month & 72month. To meet requirements of loan, then they also had to increase warranties 5-6yrs ... and because US quality wasn't that good, they had to somewhat revamp quality to keep from loosing a boatload of money in warranties.

In the early 80s, because US industry just pocketed most of the money (and hadn't done anything significant to revamp themselves), there was proposal to levy a "100% unearned profit tax" on the US auto industry.

1990, the US industry had C4 task force to look at (finally) completely remake themselves and because they were planning on heavily leverage technology, representatives from technology vendors were included. During the meetings, they could describe what foreign companies were doing and what US needed to do in order to respond. One of the issues was industry took 7-8yrs from start to rolling off the line, with two efforts going in parallel offset 3-4yrs (so something new could come off more often with cosmetic changes inbetween). Foreign competition had cut that time in half and were about to cut in half again (18-24 months), making them much more agile responding to changing marketing and technology. Offline, I chided some mainframe brethren how did they expect to help, since they had some of the same problems. Part of the foreign motivation was that they with the import quotas, they could sell that many high-end cars (as low-end) so they had lots of reason to quickly come out with totally different cars. In any case, given the recent TARP bailouts, the C4 effort still wasn't able to fight the industry vested interests and status quo. C4 auto taskforce posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#auto.c4.taskforce

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

The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins
Date: 31 August 2017
Blog: Facebook
facebook "memory" from Aug2012

The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008Y4TY92/

Recent from the democratic side in congress ... implies that efforts stretched out for much longer that they actually seemed to. loc860-65:
At the December 2009 hearing, the three witnesses--Breuer, Khuzami, and Perkins--said all the right things. Don't worry. We're on the case. These are complex financial frauds committed by sophisticated actors. It takes time and patience to develop these cases. We're reviewing the facts and the evidence. We'll bring criminal or civil actions where the facts take us. Stay tuned. At the time, we believed them. Unraveling sophisticated financial fraud is an enormously complicated and resource-intensive undertaking, because of the nature of both the conduct and the perpetrators.
... snip ...

Note: Jan. 2009 I was asked to HTML'ize the Pecora hearings (30s senate hearings into '29 crash, had been scanned at boston public library fall of 2008) with lots of internal xrefs and lots URLs between what happened this time and what happened then (some anticipation that new congress would have appitite to do something). I worked on it for some time, but well before summer of 2009, I got a call that it wouldn't be needed after all (references to enormous piles of wallstreet money being spread around capital hill).

And similar recent work from the republican side: The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted
https://www.amazon.com/The-Party-Over-Republicans-ebook/dp/B007V65OLG/

and earlier work: Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President
https://www.amazon.com/Confidence-Men-Washington-Education-ebook/dp/B0089LOKKS/

characterizes that it was actually over before it ever started, that the economic A-team helped get the president elected but they were going to choose the "swedish" solution (over the lingering "japan" solution) and hold those responsible on wallstreet accountable. Instead the president appoints the B-team, people that were involved in creating the economic mess and not likely to hold anybody accountable.

a rolling stone reference complimenting above:

How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform; It's bad enough that the banks strangled the Dodd-Frank law. Even worse is the way they did it - with a big assist from Congress and the White House.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-wall-street-killed-financial-reform-20120510

more holding nobody accountable (some claims they became viewed as just "very small" cost of doing business ... aka as percent of total amounts involved): Revisiting Statements Around the Mortgage Settlement
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/08/revisiting-statements-around-the-mortgage-settlement.html

...

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

posts from 2012:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#48 The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#53 CALCULATORS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#60 Singer Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#62 Singer Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#85 Singer Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#40 General Mills computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#6 General Mills computer

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

75 years ago, Hitler invaded Poland. Here's how it happened

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: 75 years ago, Hitler invaded Poland. Here's how it happened.
Date: 01 Sept 2017
Blog: Facebook
75 years ago, Hitler invaded Poland. Here's how it happened.
https://www.vox.com/2014/9/1/6084029/hitlers-invasion-of-poland-explained

John Foster Dulles was major force rebuilding Germany's industry and military, supporting Hitler and Nazis in the 20s through the early 40s. From the law of unintended consequences, the 1943 US Strategic Bombing Program needed location of German industrial and military targets, they got the target coordinates from wallstreet.
https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Foster-Dulles-Allen-Secret-ebook/dp/B00BY5QX1K/

loc865-68:
In mid-1931 a consortium of American banks, eager to safeguard their investments in Germany, persuaded the German government to accept a loan of nearly $500 million to prevent default. Foster was their agent. His ties to the German government tightened after Hitler took power at the beginning of 1933 and appointed Foster's old friend Hjalmar Schacht as minister of economics.

loc905-7:
Foster was stunned by his brother's suggestion that Sullivan & Cromwell quit Germany. Many of his clients with interests there, including not just banks but corporations like Standard Oil and General Electric, wished Sullivan & Cromwell to remain active regardless of political conditions.

loc938-40:
At least one other senior partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, Eustace Seligman, was equally disturbed. In October 1939, six weeks after the Nazi invasion of Poland, he took the extraordinary step of sending Foster a formal memorandum disavowing what his old friend was saying about Nazism
... snip ...

not just Dulles, 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
https://www.amazon.com/Man-Called-Intrepid-Incredible-Narrative-ebook/dp/B00V9QVE5O/

Later 5000 industrialists from across the US had conference at NYC Waldorf-Astoria and in part because they had gotten such bad reputation for the depression and supporting Nazi Germany, they approved a major propaganda campaign to equate capitalism with Christianity
https://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-God-Corporate-ebook/dp/B00PWX7R56/

Results in the 50s include adding "Under God" to the pledge of allegiance and "In God We Trust" to currency

MICC posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex

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

Iraq, Longest War

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Iraq, Longest War
Date: 01 Sept 2017
Blog: Facebook
CIA director refuses to approve "Team B" (including Wolfowitz, later claimed to be primary architect of Iraq policy in the new century) analysis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_B

white house chief of staff Rumsfeld then replaces CIA director with somebody that will agree (Bush1), Rumsfeld then becomes SECDEF and his assistant Cheney becomes chief of staff.

"Team B" posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#team.b

Later Bush1 is VP and he and Rumsfeld are helping support Iraq (including WMDs):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran-Iraq_war
including
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran-Iraq_war#Dual-use_exports
and 2003 SECDEF
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Shakinghands_high.ogv

later sat. photo recon analyst notifies white house (bush1 now president & Cheney SECDEF) that Saddam is marshaling forces to invade Kuwait. White House says that Saddam has told them that he would do no such thing (and proceeds to discredit the analyst). Then the analyst notifies the white house that Saddam is marshaling forces to invade Saudi Arabia, now the white house has to choose between Saddam and Saudis.
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Strange-Journey-Intelligence-ebook/dp/B004NNV5H2/

start of century, white house chief of staff Card's cousin is dealing with Iraq in the UN and given proof that the WMDs have been decommissioned, which is supplied to the white house. The cousin is then locked up in military hospital. Finally gets out and publishes book in 2010, including decommissioned WMDs.
https://www.amazon.com/EXTREME-PREJUDICE-Terrifying-Story-Patriot-ebook/dp/B004HYHBK2/

White house initially justifies Iraq invasion based on claimed support for Al-Queda and that it would only cost $50B (there was going to be that much in shrink wrapped $100s). later they switch the justification to WMDs. The decommissioned WMDs tracing back to the US were found early in the invasion, but the information was classified until the fall of 2014 (4yrs after Card's cousin book was published).
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html

WMD posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#wmds

Oil rig company is transferred into one of largest defense contractors after former SECDEF and future VP becomes CEO ... in Iraq2 invasion, company gets tens of billions in no-bid contracts
http://www.thenation.com/article/how-private-contractors-have-created-shadow-nsa/

the military-industrial-complex wanted Iraq2 invasion so badly that corporate reps were telling former eastern block countries that if they voted for IRAQ2 invasion in the UN, they would get membership in NATO and (directed appropriation) USAID (can *ONLY* be used for purchase of US arms). From the law of unintended consequences, invaders were told to bypass ammo dumps looking for WMDs, when they get around to going back over million metric tons have evaporated. Later large artillery shells start showing up in IEDs, even taken out Abram M1s.
https://www.amazon.com/Prophets-War-Lockheed-Military-Industrial-ebook/dp/B0047T86BA/

Later during the surge, something like $60B in pallets of shrink-wrapped $100 bills are air lifted to Iraq ... some of it just simply disappears, other is used as bribes&tributes to tribes for reducing conflict (right out of Roman Empire).

son-in-law fallujah 2004-2005 and then (during surge) back again baqubah 2007-2008 ... worse than fallujah (claim is that things are better, so doesn't get coverage of Fallujah). Abram M1s are so vulnerable they take to running routes before taking M1s out; Battle for Baqubah, Killing Our Way Out
https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Baqubah-Killing-Our-Way-ebook/dp/B007VBBS9I/

... describes very sophisticated nation that frequently was more capable than the spanish they were dealing with and later played off the spanish, French, and Americans. First they fell victim to diseases killing off large percentage of their population. In the later part of 1800s the US Army decided that they were no match for the warriors ... instead attacking villages, slaughtering non-combatants (women, children, old men)
https://www.amazon.com/Comanche-Empire-Lamar-Western-History-ebook/dp/B001HZZ05C/

Despite the mixed results of his approach to cavalry and the moral ambiguity (in the Indian Wars verging on genocide) of his policy of waging war on civilians, it cannot be denied that Sheridan was a superb leader of troops, a fine tactician, and an aggressive fighter, who was especially effective in forcing Lee to surrender his Army of Northern Virginia in the closing weeks of the Civil War. While "March to Sea" was destroying food and infrastructure, Sherman directed that women and children were not to be harmed.
https://www.amazon.com/Generals-South-North-Commanders-Reconsidered-ebook/dp/B012A1WML6/

military-industrial(-congressional) complex posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex
perpetual war posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#perpetual.war

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

Iraq, Longest War

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Iraq, Longest War
Date: 03 Sept 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#103

more background, The World Crisis, Vol. 1, Churchill explains the mess in middle east started with move from 13.5in to 15in guns (which requires moving from coal to oil) loc2012-14:
From the beginning there appeared a ship carrying ten 15-inch guns, and therefore at least 600 feet long with room inside her for engines which would drive her 21 knots and capacity to carry armour which on the armoured belt, the turrets and the conning tower would reach the thickness unprecedented in the British Service of 13 inches.

loc2087-89:
To build any large additional number of oil-burning ships meant basing our naval supremacy upon oil. But oil was not found in appreciable quantities in our islands. If we required it, we must carry it by sea in peace or war from distant countries.

loc2151-56:
This led to enormous expense and to tremendous opposition on the Naval Estimates. Yet it was absolutely impossible to turn back. We could only fight our way forward, and finally we found our way to the Anglo-Persian Oil agreement and contract, which for an initial investment of two millions of public money (subsequently increased to five millions) has not only secured to the Navy a very substantial proportion of its oil supply, but has led to the acquisition by the Government of a controlling share in oil properties and interests which are at present valued at scores of millions sterling, and also to very considerable economies, which are still continuing, in the purchase price of Admiralty oil.
... snip ...

Iran elected leader was going to review the Anglo-Persian contracts ... CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/
including
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Roosevelt,_Jr.
in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

and to help keep the shah in power, US (including Norman Schwarzkopf senior) trained
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVAK

military-industrial(-congressional) complex posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex
perpetual war posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#perpetual.war

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

Iraq, Longest War

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Iraq, Longest War
Date: 04 Sept 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#103 Iraq, Longest War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#104 Iraq, Longest War

The Battle of Bretton Woods:
https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Bretton-Woods-Relations-University-ebook/dp/B00B5ZQ72Y/

Another part of Bretton Woods is the primary US person, asst SECTREAS White ... was also working on behalf of Stalin. Stalin was dealing with nearly all of German military on one front and was afraid Japan would come in on his other front (already 2/3rds of Japan military was devoted to China). Stalin sent White a draft of demands for US to present to Japan, that Stalin felt would prompt Japan to attack US (which would preclude Japan attacking Soviets)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dexter_White#Venona_project
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_note#Interpretations

How OSS and factions of the army gave China to the communists
https://www.amazon.com/different-kind-war-little-known-guerrilla/dp/B0007IYOFW/
and
https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Different_Kind_of_War.html?id=U4pBAAAAIAAJ

Lots in chapter "Wedemeyer Takes Over" pgs433-455

and SACO Deadend Kids Take The Coast, pg492-521

OSS and Army factions can't wrest control of interface w/Nationalists from the Navy, so they setup with the communists (which they can claim sole credit) and do whatever they can to undermine the Navy

One of the points from Miles is that most of the Army "old china ands" looked down on the chinese ... somewhat like the coolies/slave-labor that were brought in to work on railroads ... just to be ordered around. Miles navy were required to live and work with the natives.

Note: Miles book (A different kind of war) characterizes Navy and State department on one side with SACO against OSS and the Army (with Marshall on the Army's side). After WW2, Marshall is SECSTATE and aligns with OSS and Army. Another SACO reference:
https://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/2009/11/marines-china

The China White Paper 1949: The official State Department report on why the Chinese Nationalists were losing to Mao, that tried to absolve the State Department of blame.
https://archive.org/details/VanSlykeLymanTheChinaWhitePaper1949

Above is the 1967 republished version (year before Miles book) with a new 1967 introduction. The 1967 introduction points out that the scope of the paper was limited to the period just leading up to 1949 where they could blame the Nationalists, it doesn't go back further where they had already given China to the Communists.

Wedemeyer now appears to realize what was done wrong, but it is too late to correct the problem, time article now behind paywall, but lives on at
https://web.archive.org/web/20090813223215/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,804381,00.html

"Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff"
https://www.amazon.com/Dereliction-Duty-Johnson-McNamara-Chiefs-ebook/dp/B004HW7834/

McMaster's book portrays the advisers didn't believe South Vietnam could be won ... in part because there wasn't a gov. supported by the people (i.e. it wasn't particularly a military issue). However, the advisers believed that for world opinion, it was better to fight and loose.

Boyd had a different vietnam story. Before vietnam, he was asked to review the newest USAF air-to-air missile. He watched the presentation claiming it would hit the target every time it was fired and said it would hit less than 10%. They said how can you say that, we just showed you hitting every time (flares on drone). He asked what kind of guidance did it have. They said heat-seeking, He asked what kind of heat-seeking and eventually got "pin-point" He then asks whats the hottest part of jet fighter. They said the jet engine. He says wrong, it is in the plume 30yrds behind the jet ... the only time you will hit is if you are shooting straight up the tail pipe. The gather everything up and leaves and he doesn't hear from them again.

Roll forward to vietnam and Boyd is proved correct. Eventually the one star in vietnam grounds all the fighers and replaces the air-to-air missiles with sidewinders (that have better than twice the hit rate). The one star last 3 months and he is called on the carpet in pentagon. He had violated fundamental rule of the pentagon ... budget. Using sidewinders, he was being more effective and cutting replacement costs and USAF budget ... but worst of all he was using sidewinders and increasing NAVY budget (In pentagon, vietnam wasn't about winning or loosing ... it was all about service budget).

disclaimer: I used to sponsor Boyd's briefings ... in the 50s as instructor at USAF weapons school he was considered possibly best fighter pilot in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_(military_strategist)

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

George Will Confirms Nixon's Vietnam Treason
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/08/12/george-will-confirms-nixons-vietnam-treason
Nixon betrayal far worse than GOP Iran letter; Republican nominee sabotaged Vietnam peace talks before he was elected president.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/03/10/senators-letter-doesnt-rise-to-nixons-level/24695093/
The Lyndon Johnson tapes: Richard Nixon's 'treason'
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21768668
How Richard Nixon Sabotaged 1968 Vietnam Peace Talks to Get Elected President
http://www.truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/13994-how-richard-nixon-sabotaged-1968-vietnam-peace-talks-to-get-elected-president

military-industrial(-congressional) complex posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex
perpetual war posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#perpetual.war

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

Iraq, Longest War

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Iraq, Longest War
Date: 05 Sept 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#103 Iraq, Longest War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#104 Iraq, Longest War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#105 Iraq, Longest War

Between ww1 & ww2, British traitor help Japan with carriers
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/churchill-protected-scottish-peer-suspected-of-spying-for-japan-1173730.html
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Arts/article1042403.ece

The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949 loc3988-97:
Unknown to the Japanese, the United States had broken their diplomatic and naval codes and so knew the itineraries of the ships converging on Midway, where it sank four, or one-third, of Japan's twelve difficult-to-replace aircraft carriers.102 In doing so, it overturned vague German and Japanese plans to join up in India and precluded further Japanese expansion in the Pacific. Midway was Japan's first major defeat since the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Henceforth the Japanese would have to defend what they had. For many months the Imperial Japanese Navy concealed its aircraft carrier losses from both the army and the civilian leadership.103 It did inform Emperor Hirohito, who kept the bad news to himself as if it would go away.104 So, no one examined how the United States, with inferior naval assets, had miraculously managed to converge them at just the right spot in the expansive Pacific theater to sink one Japanese carrier after another and the army maintained its war plans on the assumption that Japan still had twelve carriers.
... snip ...

and is it time for their passing
http://nation.time.com/2013/03/12/not-the-navys-favorite-artist-rendering/

from above:
"The aircraft carrier is in danger of becoming like the battleships it was originally designed to support: big, expensive, vulnerable -- and surprisingly irrelevant to the conflicts of the time," Hendrix writes. "This outcome has become more likely as the Navy continues to emphasize manned carrier aircraft at the expense of unmanned missiles and aircraft."
... snip ...

other refs
http://thediplomat.com/the-naval-diplomat/2013/03/13/surface-combat-fleets-obsolete/
http://www.informationdissemination.net/2015/01/is-carrier-as-obsolete-as-battleship.html

2002, congress lets the fiscal responsibility act lapse (spending can't exceed tax revenue, on its way to eliminating all federal debt, the republican congress that lets it lapse is totally different than the republican congress that passed it in the first place). 2010, CBO report that 2003-2009, taxes were reduced by $6T and spending increased by $6T for $12T gap compared to fiscal responsibility budget (first time congress cuts taxes to not pay for two wars). It also includes that of the increase for DOD, something over $1+T (trillion) appears to evaporate as it crosses the potomic from the treasury heading for the Pentagon.

Since then taxes not restored and only modest cuts in spending so debt continues to increase. Supposedly confluence of interest, 1) federal reserve and wallstreet wanting huge federal debt, 2) wallstreet and special interests wanting huge tax cuts, and 3) miltiary-industrial complex wanting huge spending increase (and "perpetual war"). By 2005, the US comptroller general was including in speeches that nobody in congress was capable of middle school arithmetic for how badly they were savaging the budget.

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

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

Iraq, Longest War

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Iraq, Longest War
Date: 05 Sept 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#103 Iraq, Longest War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#104 Iraq, Longest War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#105 Iraq, Longest War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#106 Iraq, Longest War

other trivia, besides "Team B" above
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#team.b

Former CIA director and then VP repeatedly claimed that he knew nothing about
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_affair
because he was fulltime administration point person deregulating financial industry ... creating S&L crisis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis
along with other members of his family
http://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 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.

note both 80s SECSTATE and SECDEF had been Bechtel executives ... helping their (former) employer do business in the middle east. "The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World"
https://www.amazon.com/Profiteers-Bechtel-Men-Built-World-ebook/dp/B010MHAHV2/

VP has become president and Iran/Contra prosecutors are working with former SECDEF on evidence ... including against the sitting president. The president then "pardons" the former SECDEF. 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 a bunch of evidence is turned over (that the president had "forgotten" about) showing he was heavily involved in Iran/Contra

Pecora Hearings and/or Glass-Steagall posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
S&L crisis posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#s&l.crisis
"economic mess" posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess

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

Iraq, Longest War

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Iraq, Longest War
Date: 05 Sept 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#103 Iraq, Longest War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#104 Iraq, Longest War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#105 Iraq, Longest War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#106 Iraq, Longest War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#107 Iraq, Longest War

1999, I'm asked to try and help prevent the coming economic mess. Securitized mortgages had been used during the S&L crisis ... posterchild was office bldgs in dallas area that turned out to be empty lots. I was to improve the integrity of supporting documents as a countermeausre. Then they find that they can pay for triple-A ratings (when they and the rating agencies know they aren't worth triple-A, from Oct2008 congressional hearings into the pivotal role the rating agencies played). Triple-A trumps supporting documents and they can start doing no-documentation liar loans, securitized, paying for triple-A and selling off as fast as they can be made, largely enabling over $27T 2001-2008 (including selling to operations restricted to only dealing in "safe" investments, like large pension funds).

The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins
https://www.amazon.com/Payoff-Wall-Street-Always-ebook/dp/B008Y4TY92
... from the democratic side in congress ... implies that efforts stretched out for much longer that they actually seemed to. loc860-65:
At the December 2009 hearing, the three witnesses--Breuer, Khuzami, and Perkins--said all the right things. Don't worry. We're on the case. These are complex financial frauds committed by sophisticated actors. It takes time and patience to develop these cases. We're reviewing the facts and the evidence. We'll bring criminal or civil actions where the facts take us. Stay tuned. At the time, we believed them. Unraveling sophisticated financial fraud is an enormously complicated and resource-intensive undertaking, because of the nature of both the conduct and the perpetrators.
... snip ...

it isn't actually that complex, it is actually quite straight forward and above is obfuscation and misdirection.

Note: Jan. 2009 I was asked to HTML'ize the Pecora hearings (30s senate hearings into '29 crash, had been scanned at boston public library fall of 2008) with lots of internal xrefs and lots URLs between what happened this time and what happened then (some anticipation that new congress would have appitite to do something). I worked on it for some time, but well before summer of 2009, I got a call that it wouldn't be needed after all (references to enormous mountains of wallstreet money totally burying WashDC, also there is possibly only 2-3 honest members of congress left)

And similar work from the republican side: The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted
https://www.amazon.com/The-Party-Over-Republicans-ebook/dp/B007V65OLG/

and earlier work: Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President
https://www.amazon.com/Confidence-Men-Washington-Education-ebook/dp/B0089LOKKS/

characterizes that it was actually over before it ever started, that the economic A-team helped get the president elected but they were going to choose the "swedish" solution (over the lingering "japan" solution) and hold those responsible on wallstreet accountable. Instead the president appoints the B-team, people that were involved in creating the economic mess and not likely to hold anybody accountable.

a rolling stone reference complimenting above:

How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform; It's bad enough that the banks strangled the Dodd-Frank law. Even worse is the way they did it - with a big assist from Congress and the White House.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-wall-street-killed-financial-reform-20120510

more holding nobody accountable (some claims they became viewed as just "very small" cost of doing business ... aka as percent of total amounts involved): Revisiting Statements Around the Mortgage Settlement
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/08/revisiting-statements-around-the-mortgage-settlement.html

Local WashDC news will periodically refer to WashDC politics as "Kabuki Theater" ... what you see has very little to do with what is really going on, apparent conflict is just to distract the public ... somewhat like Roman Circus.

triple-A rated toxic CDO posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo
Pecora Hearings and/or Glass-Steagall posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
S&L crisis posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#s&l.crisis
"economic mess" posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess
Kabuki Theater posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#kabuki.threater

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

Iraq, Longest War

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Iraq, Longest War
Date: 06 Sept 2017
Blog: Facebook
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#103 Iraq, Longest War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#104 Iraq, Longest War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#105 Iraq, Longest War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#106 Iraq, Longest War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#107 Iraq, Longest War
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#108 Iraq, Longest War

from 6Sept2011 post

The Pentagon Refuses to be Audited
https://downsizedc.org/the-pentagon-refuses-to-be-audited/

besides Stiglitz "$3T war" in Irag duing 1st decade of century (and if public company operated like pentagon, it would be brought up on SEC charges)

Eisenhower's MIC & Spinney's MICC (Spinney expanding MIC to military/industrial/congressional complex):
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/pentagon-labyrinth.html
and "missing" $1T at pentagon during 1st decade of century -- http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?docu

....

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

note 20yrs ago, act was passed requiring all federal agencies pass financial audit but DOD never has. 2015 there was projection that DOD would pass an audit this year, but that has since been pushed off

MICC posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex
perpetual war posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#perpetual.war

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

private thread drift--Re: Demolishing the Tile Turtle

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: private thread drift--Re: Demolishing the Tile Turtle
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 06 Sep 2017 18:08:18 -0700
Andreas Kohlbach <ank@spamfence.net> writes:
What ever happened to satellite? I recall there was a hype in the mid/late 90s about possible satellite links for fast internet use. The problem was the link *to* the internet (to the satellite) still had to be established via dial-up modem. "Buuuuut that will change soon with new satellites which also serve that direction...". Never happened, right?

early 90s, I got free full usenet feed from pagesat for writing a couple modem drivers and article in boardwatch magazine ... initially was 9.6 and then was upgraded to 19.2 ... as more graphics (porno ... and then had to start filtering porno).

mid 80s, my HSDT effort ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

got transponder on SBS-4 ... was at the launch on 41-d
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/archives/sts-41D.html

had three TDMA earth stations, one at Los Gatos VLSI lab, one at YKT research and one at Austin. Then SBS-4 was sold to Hughes and used for some TV broadcast
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirecTV

internet satellite (with some mention of HughesNet)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Internet_access

past posts mentioning pagesat:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#38 Vanishing Posts...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#39 I'll Be! Al Gore DID Invent the Internet After All ! NOT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#66 UUCP email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#16 Newsgroups (Was Another OS/390 to z/OS 1.4 migration
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#20 Newsgroups (Was Another OS/390 to z/OS 1.4 migration
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#11 An Out-of-the-Main Activity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#77 Memory Mapped Vs I/O Mapped Vs others
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#17 What if phone company had developed Internet?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#16 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#19 IBM-MAIN longevity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#19 Another one bites the dust
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#21 Disksize history question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#84 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#74 bulletin board
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#75 Posts missing from ibm-main on google groups
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#70 What is the protocal for GMT offset in SMTP (e-mail) header
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#82 [OT] What is the protocal for GMT offset in SMTP (e-mail) header time-stamp?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#92 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#26 Anyone here run UUCP?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#67 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#38 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#57 email security re: hotmail.com
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015h.html#109 25 Years: How the Web began
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016g.html#59 The Forgotten World of BBS Door Games - Slideshow from PCMag.com
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#51 Stopping the Internet of noise

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

In America's Wars, Failure Is the New Success

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: In America's Wars, Failure Is the New Success
Date: 07 Sept 2017
Blog: Facebook
In America's Wars, Failure Is the New Success
https://warisboring.com/in-americas-wars-failure-is-the-new-success/

part of the rapidly spreading success of failure culture in the federal government
http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/
this in support of perpetual war
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/domestic-roots-of-perpetual-war.html

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.'

related repost yesterday from 2011
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#109 Iraq, Longest War

recent past posts with Boyd's favorite line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016b.html#67 Qbasic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#11 Smedley Butler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016h.html#21 "I used a real computer at home...and so will you" (Popular Science May 1967)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#13 Why the Pentagon would rather hire bin Laden than Donald Vandergriff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#36 Disregard post (another screwup; absolutely nothing to do with computers whatsoever!)

boyd posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html
perpetual war posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#perpetual.war
MICC posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex

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

Jamie Dimon's $13 Billion Secret--Revealed

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Jamie Dimon's $13 Billion Secret--Revealed
Date: 07 Sept 2017
Blog: Facebook
Jamie Dimon's $13 Billion Secret--Revealed
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/09/jamie-dimon-billion-dollar-secret-jp-morgan?mbid=social_twitter
Four years ago, JPMorgan Chase reached a then-record settlement with the Department of Justice after, among other things, the bank received a copy of a U.S. attorney's draft complaint documenting its alleged role in underwriting fraudulent securities in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. Following the bank's $13 billion financial agreement, the draft complaint was never filed. Then the bank paid another settlement to prevent a separate legal case from potentially unearthing it. The contents of the draft complaint have long been a financial-crisis mystery, a Great White Whale of a document. At least until now.
... snip ...

economic mess posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess
triple-A rated toxic CDO posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo
Too Big To Fail posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail

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

IBM PS2

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: IBM PS2
Date: 07 Sept 2017
Blog: Facebook
Early 90s, Boca was projecting PC prices was more than 3-4 times the quantity one clone prices that were being advertised in Sunday SJMN (which I was regularly posting in online forums). Then Boca contracted with Dataquest (since bought by Gartner) to do detailed study of future of PCs, including several hour video taped round table of silicon valley experts. I knew the Dataquest person running the study and they asked me to be one of the silicon valley experts. I cleared it with my immediate IBM management ... and Dataquest agreed to garble my identification (so boca wouldn't recognize it was IBM employee). There was joke in 90s that Boca was loosing $5 on every PS2 made, but they were planning on making up for it with volume.

Initially, IBM/PCs got big boost with large corporations buying tens of thousands at a time in place of already justificed 3270 terminals, getting IBM/PC for about same price of 3270 terminal with terminal emulation and some local computing in single desktop footprint. I got to go to dinners with Apple MAC developers (before original MAC was announced) and have long arguments with them about the MAC needed mainframe terminal emulation.

By the late 80s, PCs had became much more powerful and the communication group was fiercely fighting off client/server and distributed computing. A senior disk engineer got a talked scheduled at annual, worldwide, internal communication group conference supposedly on 3174 performance but started out with statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The issue was the communication group had stranglehold on datacenters with corporate responsibility for everything that crossed the datacenter walls and trying to preserve their dumb terminal paradigm and install base. The disk division was seeing data fleeing the datacenter to more distributed computing friendly platforms with drop in disk sales. The disk division had come up with a number of solutions but they were constantly vetoed by the communication group. It turns out to affect the whole mainframe datacenter business and few short years later, IBM goes into the red.

terminal emulation posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal

Communication group was controlling the PS2 microchannel cards to fit their terminal emulation paradigm. AWD had done their own 4mbit T/R card for the PC/RT ... but for RS/6000 microchannel, AWD was forced to only use PS2 micrchannel cards. The PC/RT 4mbit T/R card had higher throughput than the PS2 microchannel 16mbit T/R card (i.e. designed for 300+ stations doing dumb terminal emulation sharing common 16mbit network, aka PC/RT server w/4mbit AT-bus card would have higher throughput than RS/6000 server w/16mbit PS2 microchannel card). The joke was that RS/6000 wouldn't have any better throughput than those PS2 when forced to use only PS2 cards. AWD partially got around the corporate mandate by doing a model 730 with VMEbus (rather than microchannel).

801/risc, pc/rt, rs/6000, etc posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

past posts mentioning Dataquest
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#55 Moore law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#34 Two subjects: 64-bit OS2/eCs, Innotek Products
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#21 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#81 IBM to the PCM market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#0 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#60 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#5 Houses
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#6 Houses
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#69 Intel's Future is integrated
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#62 How long before Microsoft goes the way of DEC (and in part, IBM)?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#10 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#78 SLIGHTLY OT - Home Computer of the Future (not IBM)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#47 First 5.25in 1GB drive?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#44 Slackware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#4 IBM commitment to academia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#20 9th Feb 2014
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#24 IBM sells Intel server business, company is doomed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#26 upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014l.html#46 Could this be the wrongest prediction of all time?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016g.html#94 What would Klinger look like in business attire?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#26 ARM Cortex A53 64 bit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017d.html#33 ARM Cortex A53 64 bit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017f.html#110 IBM downfall

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

EasyLink email ad

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: EasyLink email ad
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2017 20:21:15 -0700
hancock4 writes:
In Nov 1984, Western Union ran an ad for its Easylink pioneer email service.

https://books.google.com/books?id=N09JwLeo7s4C&lpg=PA256&dq=pc%20magazine%20easylink&pg=PA256#v=onepage&q&f=false

Western Union invested a ton of money into Easylink. It would seem to be a logical outgrowth of their telegraph business. Unfortunately, W.U. lost a ton of money on it and this was a contributor to their ultimate bankruptcy.

I'm trying to recall the state of email service in 1984. I think Wired Magazine was out by then, and all the contributors in it had "@" email addresses, which were still quite rare for the everyday person. At work, we may have had PROFS for internal use, not external. (I think we got PROFS circa 1987; it ran off of the VM machine.)

Judging by magazine ads, I think the _public's_ use of the Internet (web browsing and email) took off around roughly 1998. Before that, it was rare to see a URL in an ad, afterwards, it became very common.


Office vision
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_OfficeVision

original PROFS made available in 1981
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_OfficeVision#Earlier_PROFS.2C_DISOSS_and_Office.2F36

group gathered some number of internal applications and wrapped menu interface around it. For the email client, they had very early version of VMSG. Then when the VMSG author offered them a much enhanced version, they tried to get him fired (since they had already claimed 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 field. After that, VMSG author only shared source with me and one other person.

In the mid-90s, FDC (1992 IPO mainframe financial outsourcing dataprocessing from AMEX) and First Financial were in competition to acquire Western Union. FDC drops out in part because WU financials were so poor. Later in the 90s, FDC and First Financial merge (FDC has to divest MoneyGram as part of merger). Start of the century, there was enormous explosion in illegal workers coming across the border ... and sending their paychecks home via WU. In five year period, WU revenue exploded so that by 2005, WU was half of FDC bottom line ... and is spun off in IPO (possibly in part because the president of Mexico invited FDC executives to Mexico to be thrown in jail ... for the enormous amounts WU was making off illegal workers' paychecks being sent home).

SJR had first IBM arpanet/internet gateway in 1982, old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#email821022
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm#0 Internet and/or ARPANET
also
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#59 Ok Computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#37a Internet and/or ARPANET?

...

aka, internal network was larger than ARPANET/Internet from just about the beginning until sometime mid-80s. old posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

Some of uptake outside IBM was on the corporate sponsored university network (also larger than arpanet/internet for a time) ... some old posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

called EARN in Europe, old email from responsible for getting EARN going
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#email840320

bitnet & earn wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Academic_Research_Network

"listserv" email distribution based discussion groups done in Paris on EARN/bitnet in the mid-80s
http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv-history.asp
http://www.lsoft.com/corporate/history-listserv.asp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISTSERV

other trivia, first webserver in the US was on the SLAC VM370 system
https://ahro.slac.stanford.edu/wwwslac-exhibit
https://ahro.slac.stanford.edu/wwwslac-exhibit/early-web-chronology-and-documents-1991-1994

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

When It Comes to the War in the Greater Middle East, Maybe We're the Bad Guys

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: When It Comes to the War in the Greater Middle East, Maybe We're the Bad Guys
Date: 08 Sept 2017
Blog: Facebook
When It Comes to the War in the Greater Middle East, Maybe We're the Bad Guys
https://warisboring.com/when-it-comes-to-the-war-in-the-greater-middle-east-maybe-were-the-bad-guys/

The World Crisis, Vol. 1, Churchill explains the mess in middle east started before WW1 with move from 13.5in to 15in guns (which requires moving from coal to oil)

loc2012-14:
From the beginning there appeared a ship carrying ten 15-inch guns, and therefore at least 600 feet long with room inside her for engines which would drive her 21 knots and capacity to carry armour which on the armoured belt, the turrets and the conning tower would reach the thickness unprecedented in the British Service of 13 inches.

loc2087-89:
To build any large additional number of oil-burning ships meant basing our naval supremacy upon oil. But oil was not found in appreciable quantities in our islands. If we required it, we must carry it by sea in peace or war from distant countries.

loc2151-56:
This led to enormous expense and to tremendous opposition on the Naval Estimates. Yet it was absolutely impossible to turn back. We could only fight our way forward, and finally we found our way to the Anglo-Persian Oil agreement and contract, which for an initial investment of two millions of public money (subsequently increased to five millions) has not only secured to the Navy a very substantial proportion of its oil supply, but has led to the acquisition by the Government of a controlling share in oil properties and interests which are at present valued at scores of millions sterling, and also to very considerable economies, which are still continuing, in the purchase price of Admiralty oil.
... snip ...

Iran elected leader was going to review the Anglo-Persian contracts ... CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/
including
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Roosevelt,_Jr.
in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
and to help keep the shah in power, US (including Norman Schwarzkopf senior) trained
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVAK

Original US justification for 2003 Iraq invasion was support of Al Qaeda and would only cost $50B. That then changed to WMDs. US rep to UN dealing with Iraqis was given proof that the WMDs (dating back to US in the Iran/Iraq war) had been decommissioned. The US UN rep provided the information to White House and was then locked up in military hospital. Those decommissioned WMDs were found early in the invasion, but the information was kept classified until fall of 2014.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html

2003 Invasion, the US rep to UN dealing with Iraq was cousin of white house chief of staff Card. An account was published in 2010, including about the decommissioned WMDs (tracing back to the US), four years before the information was declassified.
https://www.amazon.com/EXTREME-PREJUDICE-Terrifying-Story-Patriot-ebook/dp/B004HYHBK2/

and military-industrial-complex wanted Iraq2 invasion so badly that corporate reps were telling former eastern block countries that if they voted for IRAQ2 invasion in the UN, they would get membership in NATO and (directed appropriation) USAID (can *ONLY* be used for purchase of US arms).
https://www.amazon.com/Prophets-War-Lockheed-Military-Industrial-ebook/dp/B0047T86BA/

More Desert Storm, sat. photo recon analyst told white house that saddam was marshaling forces to invade Kuwait. White house said that saddam would do no such thing and proceeded to discredit the analyst. Later the analyst informed the white house that saddam was marshaling forces to invade Saudi Arabia, now the white house has to choose between saddam and the Saudis.
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Strange-Journey-Intelligence-ebook/dp/B004NNV5H2/
account of some of the US support of Iraq in the 80s ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran-Iraq_war
including WMDs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran-Iraq_war#Dual-use_exports
the 2003 SECDEF was person dealing with Saddam in the 80s
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Shakinghands_high.ogv

Former CIA director and then VP repeatedly claimed that he knew nothing about
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_affair
because he was fulltime administration point person deregulating financial industry ... creating S&L crisis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis
along with other members of his family
http://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 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.

note both 80s SECSTATE and SECDEF had been Bechtel executives ... helping their (former) employer do business in the middle east. "The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World"
https://www.amazon.com/Profiteers-Bechtel-Men-Built-World-ebook/dp/B010MHAHV2/

VP has become president and Iran/Contra prosecutors are working with former SECDEF on evidence ... including against the sitting president. The president then "pardons" the former SECDEF.

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 a bunch of evidence is turned over (that the president had "forgotten" about) showing he was heavily involved in Iran/Contra

note my son-in-law was Fallujah 2004-2005 and then Baqubah 2007-2008 (described as worse than Fallujah, but because administration was saying things were better, it didn't get the same coverage)
https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Baqubah-Killing-Our-Way-ebook/dp/B007VBBS9I/

during the "surge" there was something like $60B (more than the total original claimed cost of the Iraq invasion) in pallets of shrink-wrapped $100 bills airlifted to Iraq, some of it then simply disappears ... although some of it was used for bribes&tribute to tribes to reduce conflict ... right out of the Roman Empire.

military-industrial(-congressional) complex posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex
perpetual war posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#perpetual.war
WMD posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#wmds
S&L crisis posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#s&l.crisis
and "economic mess"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#economic.mess

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

The Real Reason Wages Have Stagnated: Our Economy Is Optimized For Financialization

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The Real Reason Wages Have Stagnated: Our Economy Is Optimized For Financialization
Date: 08 Sept 2017
Blog: Facebook
The Real Reason Wages Have Stagnated: Our Economy Is Optimized For Financialization
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-08/real-reason-wages-have-stagnated-our-economy-optimized-financialization

The Limping Middle Class
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/jobs-will-follow-a-strengthening-of-the-middle-class.html
slouching towards 3rd world country status and return of the robber barons.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html

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/
from here
http://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

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

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

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

Equifax Lobbied To Kill Rule Protecting Victims Of Data Breaches

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Equifax Lobbied To Kill Rule Protecting Victims Of Data Breaches
Date: 08 Sept 2017
Blog: Facebook
Equifax Lobbied To Kill Rule Protecting Victims Of Data Breaches
http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/equifax-lobbied-kill-rule-protecting-victims-data-breaches-2587929

We were tangentially involved in the Cal. state data breach notification act (first in the country). We had been brought in to help wordsmith the electronic signature act. Many of the participants were also heavily involved in privacy issues and had done detailed public surveys. The #1 problem was fraudulent financial transactions frequently as the result of data breaches where there was little or nothing being done. The issue is that normally institutions take security measures in self-protection. The problem with breaches was that the institution wasn't at risk, it was the public. There was hope that the publicity from the breach notifications might prompt corrective action. Note that since then there have been a dozen or so federal bills (none yet passed), about evenly divided between those similar to the cal. state act and those that effectively eliminate notifications (sometimes cleverly disguised as mandating notification but only if long list of criteria were met, that would almost never happen).

data breach notification posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#data.breach.notification.notification
electronic signature act posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#signature

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

AOL

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: AOL
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2017 22:13:20 -0700
steve.thompson.m writes:
As one who never used AOL, it is mildly shocking to think that they are somehow unsung heroes of the computer revolution.

online discussion groups used to get big hit every september as new entering college freshman discussed online. Then AOL was big factor in Eternal September
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
Eternal September or the September that never ended[1] is Usenet slang for a period beginning in September 1993,[2] the month that Internet service provider America Online began offering Usenet access to its many users, overwhelming the existing culture for online forums. The influx in Usenet users was also indirectly caused by the aggressive direct mailing campaign by AOL Chief Marketing Officer Jan Brandt in order to beat out CompuServe and Prodigy, which most notably involved distributing millions of floppy disks and CD-ROMs with free trials of AOL.[3]

Before then, Usenet was largely restricted to colleges and universities. Every September, a large number of incoming freshmen would acquire access to Usenet for the first time, taking time to become accustomed to Usenet's standards of conduct and "netiquette". After a month or so, these new users would either learn to comply with the networks' social norms or tire of using the service.

... snip ...

eternal-september.org now major usenet service

recent post about getting full usenet (satellite) feed 1993
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#110 private thread drift--Re: Demolishing the Tile Turtle

sat. dish in back yard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/pagesat.jpg

pagesat dish

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

AOL

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: AOL
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 09 Sep 2017 10:21:58 -0700
steve.thompson.m writes:
You can blame me for it too. Circa 1995 I set up a terminal concentrator and a couple of servers for Barrie Internet and later the same for a few "mom & pop" hopefuls in Toronto. No one then knew anything about anything, and Linux was just becoming useful enough to make it technically viable -- with a lot of patching and midnight server reboots. Youth and inexperience. Who needs it?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#118 AOL

AOL first setup as non-internet ... and then started adding internet-facing servers.

June 17th 1995, the largest online service provider started experiencing internet-facing servers crashing. Over the next two months they brought in lots of industry experts to look at the problem. On Aug 17th, one of their people flew out to the west coast and bought me a hamburger after work ... and explained the problem while I ate the hamburger. I then gave him a Q&D fix ... which he went out and installed.

I then approached some number of internet technology vendors about shipping fixes, none of them were interested (in part none of this ever met the news). The following august, 1996, an ISP in manhatten started experiencing nearly identical problem ... which makes the news ... all of a sudden all those internet technology vendors were bragging about how quickly they responded to the problem

posts mentioning internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internet

specific posts mentioning larges online service provider and/or june 17th, 1995:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#67 Mainframe Spreadsheets - 1980's History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#51 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#11 Caller ID "spoofing"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#21 recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#35 Builders V. Breakers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#11 Top 10 Cybersecurity Threats for 2009, will they cause creation of highly-secure Corporate-wide Intranets?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#60 Core characteristics of resilience
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015c.html#104 On a lighter note, even the Holograms are demonstrating
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015e.html#25 The real story of how the Internet became so vulnerable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016d.html#79 Is it a lost cause?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017e.html#15 The Geniuses that Anticipated the Idea of the Internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017g.html#81 Running unsupported is dangerous was Re: AW: Re: LE strikes again

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

EasyLink email ad

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: EasyLink email ad
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 09 Sep 2017 10:24:44 -0700
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
I spent some time on that trip thinking about being able to access small businesses via networking rather than a phone call. It would be extremely cheaper (a European phone calls could be $100) and USians would have access to European products which would have never been on US shelves. Postage would still be high.

late 80s saw rise in europe of chip-based, stored-value, "offline" point-of-sale cards ... the chip-card would do offline transfer from the card to the merchant point-of-sale system (w/o requiring online connectivity). The merchant could at some time take his card to the bank and "deposit" the merchant value to bank account.

In the middle 90s, First Financial ... mentioned in this recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#24 OFF TOPIC: University of California, Irvine, revokes 500 admissions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2017h.html#114 EasyLink email ad

had developed the first US "stored-value" online, magstripe card. It ran on large SUN server configured into something like HA/CMP that we had done in late 80s & early 90s before leaving IBM ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

These were "merchant" branded cards and early customers included large national gas station merchant and several others (since spread to almost everywhere included some of the other transaction processors offering stored-value, magstripe, online merchant/gift cads).

The SUN configuration somewhat emulated our HA/CMP, no single point of failure ... but early on, it suffered a multiple point of failure problem and we were brought in as consultants to do detailed end-to-end audit and validate future ongoing operation (we had left IBM a few years earlier).

A SUN executive responsible for their HA product ... kicked off a review with an HA SUN pitch which was also identical to one I had written several years earlier for HA/CMP. Then an analysis of what happened. This was standard two complete systems with replicated transactions to replicated disks with fall-over. At one point disk controller failed and was replaced. Then some months later a disk (on the non-failed/replaced) failed. It turned out the whole account database was garbled. The problem was that the replaced controller was not correctly activated ... so was not being used ... and replicated transactions to that disk controller was not being flagged because the controller wasn't correctly entered. So a couple months of transactions were lost (since the original controller failure). They had to restore the database to last good backup and then credit all accounts to maximum valid value.

The economic trade-off supposedly was very expensive chip cards in Europe doing offline transactions ... saved the very expensive phone calls for each transaction ... while in the US ... the real-time phone transactions costs were lost in the noise ... the actual real-time authorization transaction total cost was around a few cents (phone-call, total computer costs, etc).

I was then asked to design (and cost) backend systems for deployment of one of the major European offline stored-value chipcard systems. As part of the effort, I concluded that the major motivation behind the system was the "float" (interest on the unspent value) almost all accrued to the international brand organization (by that time, a combination of opening up European phone systems and starting to deploy internet connectivity had drastically reduced call charges).

A couple months later, the EU central banks issued statement that the the stored-value brands could continue to keep the float as part of covering startup costs, but after that would have to start paying interest (to consumers) on the unspent value. That started down the path of almost totally eliminating motivation for these chip-based financial products ... which in turn drove some of the chipcard operations into bankruptcy. trivia ... one of the chipcard operations that had moved to US, I was asked to come in and value assets and patent portfolio as part of the disolution

some past posts mentioning EU central bank directive about starting to have to pay interest on unspent value
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm20.htm#42 Another entry in the internet security hall of shame
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#1 Is there any future for smartcards?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#31 On-card displays
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#41 The bank fraud blame game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#42 The bank fraud blame game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#26 Fixing SSL (was Re: Dutch Transport Card Broken)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#49 Price point
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#1 New Method for Authenticated Public Key Exchange without Digital Certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#10 Revoking the Root
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#53 Digital cash is the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#34 How do group members think the US payments business will evolve over the next 3 years?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#67 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#26 Return of the Smart Card?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#13 UK issues Turning apology (and about time, too)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#29 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#79 Question: Why Has Debit Grown So Quickly?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#82 CARD AUTHENTICATION TECHNOLOGY - Embedded keypad on Card - Is this the future
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#33 Cartons of Punch Cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#20 Steve B sees what investors think
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#69 Why is the US a decade behind Europe on 'chip and pin' cards?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014k.html#45 LA Times commentary: roll out "smart" credit cards to deter fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015f.html#7 Credit card fraud solution coming to America...finally
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2016c.html#78 Qbasic

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






previous, next, index - home