2004 Newsgroup postings (01/28 - 02/27) Lynn Wheeler

2004 Newsgroup Postings (01/28 - 02/27)

Is DOS unix?
The BASIC Variations
The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
Two subjects: 64-bit OS2/eCs, Innotek Products
Comments wanted on an authentication protocol
small bit of cp/m & cp/67 trivia from alt.folklore.computers n.g. (thread)
Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
Mars Rover Not Responding
A hundred subjects: 64-bit OS2/eCs, Innotek Products,
Mars Rover Not Responding
Is 3DES more secure than 384 bit RSA?
pointless embedded systems
The BASIC Variations
The BASIC Variations
harddisk in space
The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
Seriously long term storage
Seriously long term storage
Worst case scenario?
ARPAnet guest accounts, and longtime email addresses
A hundred subjects: 64-bit OS2/eCs, Innotek Products,
Hardware issues [Re: Floating point required exponent range?]
Health care and lies
The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
Who is the most likely to use PK?
determining memory size
updated merged (security) taxonomy & glossary
Methods of Authentication on a Corporate
The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
A POX on you, Dennis Ritchie!!!
determining memory size
The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
A POX on you, Dennis Ritchie!!!
Next generation processor architecture?
A POX on you, Dennis Ritchie!!!
CHECKSUM CHALLENGE - (US$ 100)
The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
SSL certificates
SSL certificates
SSL certificates
The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
Foiling Replay Attacks
Foiling Replay Attacks
ARPAnet guest accounts, and longtime email addresses
new to mainframe asm
Automating secure transactions
new to mainframe asm
The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
Using Old OS for Security
The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
origin of the UNIX dd command
origin of the UNIX dd command
Oldest running code
Oldest running code
PLO instruction
Oldest running code
A POX on you, Dennis Ritchie!!!
Paging

Is DOS unix?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is DOS unix?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 05:51:10 GMT

Peter Flass writes:
Actually, no one has yet mentioned that CP/M (and so DOS) were inspired more by VM/CMS, the original "personal computer OS" than by Unix. Compare DOS's "drive letters", for example, to CMS's "minidisks". No hierarchical directories in CP/M (adapted from unix by DOS), etc.

extract from recent post to bit.listserv.ibm-main ... the CMS convention appear to be from the cp/40 time-frame circa 1965.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#45 40th anniversary of IBM System/360 on 7 Apr 2004

from pg. 5, GH20-0859, CP-67/CMS User's Guide (this particular manual is only 1969). note that between cp-67/cms and vm370/cms ... "cms" was changed from "cambridge monitor system" to "conversational monitor system" and the primary "personal" disk was changed from the p-disk to the a-disk.


device  virt.   symbolic device
number  addr    name     type
----    ---     ----     -------
1052    009     CON1     console
2540    00C     RDR1     card reader
2540    00D     PUN1     card punch
1403    00E     PRN1     line printer
231x    190     DSK1     s-disk (system files)
231x    191     DSK2     p-disk (user files)
231x    192     DKS3     t-disk (workspace)
231x    ---     DSK4     a-disk (user files)
231x    ---     DSK5     b-disk (user files)
231x    19C     DSK6     c-disk
2400    180     TAP1     tape drive
2400    181     TAP2     tape drive

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The BASIC Variations

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The BASIC Variations
Newsgroups: comp.lang.basic.misc,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 15:29:29 GMT

erewhon@nowhere.com (J French) writes:
... although IBM were slow to maket with the 386 - which gave Compaq its edge

there was one year were the off-shore clone makers had built up a very large inventory of 286 machines betting on the fall xmas buying season ... and the 386sx came out in quantity and basically dropped the bottom out of the 286 prices.

some old PC prices from SJMN (slightly later than the 386sx intro) ... one of the reasons i was regularly posting this was that some of the boca business cases for PS2s that I saw didn't take into the account any reality from what was happening with PC-clone street prices.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#79 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#80 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#81 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#82 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 17:20:13 GMT

jmfbahciv writes:
Before you state this one again, attend some seminars. You'll find that American young are not learning about hard core sciences, math, engineering; these are the areas where the future jobs come from.

Like you, American kids are now expecting pots of money for no productive work.

early 90s there were two articles, one out of the (us) census, something about 50 percent of (us) 18 year olds were functionally illiterate ... the other (possibly appeared in the SJMN) about 50 percent of the technical Phd graduates (at least in cal. schools) were foreign. some recruiting at colleges in the very early 90s ... all of the students with technical 4yr degrees with 4.0 gpa were foreign.

basically the hi-tech boom/bubble wouldn't have had the large explosion of high tech workers w/o all the people from foreign countries. the hi-tech boom/bubble requirements coupled with the y2k remediation effort requirements exceeded resources available in the US ... and a large amount of the y2k remediation was outsourced overseas (wasn't as much a cost issue ... as the resources just weren't otherwise available).

the problem was that with the completion of most of the y2k remediation work and the bursting of the hi-tech bubble ... there was significant reduction in resource requirements ... but at the same time the overseas outsourcing business relationship (forged in large part because of the y2k remediation requirements) didn't just evaporate. note that y2k remediation typically didn't involve any of the glamor stuff in the hi-tech bubble ... it did involve a lot of legacy stuff that is the nuts & bolts of many business operations.

once overseas outsourcing demonstrated expertise/skill in the boring effort of supporting the nuts & bolts of legacy business operation (as part of y2k remediation) ... it wasn't likely those resources were going to be totally discarded/ignored.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Two subjects: 64-bit OS2/eCs, Innotek Products

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Two subjects: 64-bit OS2/eCs, Innotek Products
Newsgroups: alt.os.development,comp.arch,comp.os.os2.misc,comp.os.os2.programmer.misc
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 17:33:12 GMT

Keith R. Williams writes:
TOf course the CalComp suit wasn't a DoJ action. It was a CalComp action. The article I responded to stated that IBM lost a DoJ anti- trust suit in the '70s, which is flat false. They did lose other suits (CalComp, CDC, and likely some others I've forgotten), but not to the DoJ. AT&T lost their antitrust suit (theirs was concurrent with IBM's), but IBM's was dismissed by the DoJ. There was no "loss" here, other than a few hundred million in legal fees.

and little thing like the document retention order. there was one floor of the 705(6?) bldg. in POK that was loosing an office a day ... being filled (floor to ceiling, wall to wall) with paper that no longer could be discarded (at least until they started to approach the floor loading limit of the bldg, at which point they had to start looking for other storage) ... note that this was just for POK plant site.

there was some reference/joke about DoJ order to produce some set of the documents ... and there was some explanation about the very large number of box cars that would have to be scheduled just to transport them to DC.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Comments wanted on an authentication protocol

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Comments wanted on an authentication protocol
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 17:47:42 GMT

Johan Lindh writes:
Sigh. You're right. As soon as there is any kind of known plaintext in the stream, a brute force attack is possible offline.

I guess I'll have to look for some kind of key exchange after all. I'd really hoped to avoid having a lot of number crunching code, prime searching and whatnot.

note that there are other kinds of public key signature algorithms like ecdsa ... which are somewhat less compute intensive.
http://csrc.nist.gov/cryptval/dss.htm

there have also been kerberos pk-init to use public key signature in place of shared-secret/password ... and various kinds of radius implementations that support public key signature for authentication.

ietf draft discussing key lengths and some time/execution:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-orman-public-key-lengths-07.txt

pk-init ... or "public key cryptography for initial authentication in kerberos":
http://www.ietf.cnri.reston.va.us/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-cat-kerberos-pk-init-17.txt

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

small bit of cp/m & cp/67 trivia from alt.folklore.computers n.g. (thread)

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: small bit of cp/m & cp/67 trivia from alt.folklore.computers n.g. (thread)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.vmesa-l
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 00:34:43 -0700

discussion was how much (if any) did DOS inherit from CMS ... by way of CP/M

the following reference was posted indicating that at least the name CP/M came from CP/67:
https://web.archive.org/web/20071011100440/http://www.khet.net/gmc/docs/museum/en_cpmName.html

Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2004 05:18:10 GMT

"Rod Burt" writes:
Sadly, TPF has fewer and fewer (but much bigger) licensees as more and more airlines outsource to the Amadeuses of the world. These are seriously big systems, handling thousands of (non-trivial) transactions per second, most with sub-second response time. Try this on a Unix box.

my wife served a stint as chief architect for Amadeus for a while; until she backed x.25 .... and then there was a push from certain segments to have her replaced with somebody more sympathetic to sna.

misc. past amadeus refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#49 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#50 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#76 Other oddball IBM System 360's ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#67 unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#47 What makes a mainframe a mainframe?

mentioned in the above ... at one time we were asked to look at routes ... typically 2nd biggest app in res-system (after fares). they had a list of ten impossible things that they couldn't do.

one of the issues was that lots of the transactions were quite trivial, had very archaic query syntax and the agent frequently had to string together a whole series of such queries for a typical operation.

part of the work was an outgrowth of the work we had done on ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
and cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13 SSA
slightly related
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#52 loosely-coupled, supercomputers, electronic commerce, etc

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2004 05:40:38 GMT

... out of some box from the basement:

Amadeus Global Distribution System 24 April 1987

215pgs.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Mars Rover Not Responding

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mars Rover Not Responding
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.distributed,comp.lang.java,comp.lang.java.programmer,comp.object,comp.programming,comp.theory,sci.physics
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2004 21:44:36 GMT

"A. G. McDowell" writes:
I would be very interested to hear more about increasing the effectiveness of testing beyond all recognition. I am a professional programmer in an area where we routinely estimate the testing effort as about equal to the programming effort (in terms of staff time, but not necessarily staff cost). Do you have references? As a token of sincerity I will provide references for what we seem to agree is commercial practice (whether it should be or not):

when we were doing the original payment gateway
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn2
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn3

we set up a test matrix ... not for the software ... but for the service. nominal payment infrastructure trouble desk did 5 minute problem first level problem determination ... however that was for an infrastructure that was almost exclusively circuit based.

while it was possible to translate the (payment) message formats from a circuit-based infrastructure to a packet-based infrastructure ... translating the circuit-based service operation to a packet-based infrastructure was less clear cut (merchant/webhost complains that payments aren't working ... expects internet/packet connection to be much less expensive than direct circuit ... but at the same time expects comparable availability).

The claim has been that coding for a service operation is 4-10 times that of a straight application implementation and ten times the effort because of needing to understand all possible failure modes ... regardless of whether they are characteristic of the software or hardware or some totally unrelated environmental characteristic.

in any case, one of the issues was detailed analysis of existing trouble desk circuit-based problem determination procedures and being able to translate that into a packet-based (internet) environment and still attempt to come close to the goal of being able to perform first level problem determination in five minutes. When we started there were cases of trouble ticket being closed NTF (no trouble found) after 3hrs of manual investigation.

of course this was also at a time ... when it was difficult to find any ISP that even knew how to spell service level agreement.

aka ... it is possible for software to perform flawlessly and still be useless.

some of this came from doing ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

A hundred subjects: 64-bit OS2/eCs, Innotek Products,

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A hundred subjects: 64-bit OS2/eCs, Innotek Products, ...
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.programmer.misc,alt.os.development,comp.arch,comp.os.os2.misc
Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2004 07:02:29 GMT

glen herrmannsfeldt writes:
I have heard that description before, but I don't believe it. Ponzi schemes assume exponential growth of the number of contributors, usually with a very short time constant.

ponzi schemes just require that the people receiving the money grow faster than the increase in people paying the money. typical chain letter has ten people paying off one person ... but creates ten new people that expect to get paid someday. If the people expecting to get paid grows by a factor of ten every generation ... then if the population doesn't also increase by a factor of ten ... then you eventually run out of new people to pay off the existing people expecting money.

i believe the original SS circumstance started out with something like 40 people were paying in for each person drawing out (the rates somewhat were set so that money coming in somewhat matched the money going out ... typical pay as you go plan).

with declining birth rate, more people living until 65, more people living longer after 65, more people starting to collect before 65, ... the number of people receiving SS is growing much faster than the growth in the number of people paying in.

I've heard projected for something like 3 people paying in for each person drawing (i.e. number of people receiving money grew at least 10 times faster than the growth in the number of people paying in).

one discussion relating SS to the savings & loan situation:
http://www.ieg.ee/keith/docs/welfare/pensions.htm

a rather detailed discussion of the savings & loan situation and carrying off-book gov. obligations:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm

don't let the start of the above posting about relationships between risk management and information security throw you off ... it eventually gets into some specifics of the savings & loan off-book fed gov. obligation equivalent to $100k for every person in the country.

the following has some numbers about SS being a pay as you go plan ... aka it isn't "fully funded" pension plan in that the money i'm paying in is not being banked ... it is being used to pay current SS beneficiaries:
http://www.ssab.gov/NEW/Publications/Financing/actionshouldbetaken.pdf

in 2001, 154 million workers paying & covered by SS ... and about 45 million people (one out of every 6 americans) are receiving benefits (almost 3 to 1).

in 2001, there was $604 billion paid into SS and $439 billion was being paid out. SS accounts for 24 percent of total Fed. gov. spending and 23 percent of total Fed. gov. receipts.

by 2030, 20 percent of the population is expected to be age 65 or over (compared to 12 percent in 2001).

chart 5 shows 5.1 workers per SS beneficiary in 1960, dropping to 1.9 workers per beneficiary by 2075 (doesn't show SS starting out with something like 40 workers per beneficiary)

....

about a month or so ago there were some articles about the steel industry and its pay as you go pension plan (not fully funded) ... significantly contributing to bankruptcies (i.e. a significant part of the cost of steel from US companies goes to pay pensions of current beneficiaries).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Mars Rover Not Responding

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Mars Rover Not Responding
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.distributed,comp.lang.java,comp.lang.java.programmer,comp.object,comp.programming,comp.theory,sci.physics
Date: Mon, 02 Feb 2004 19:01:49 GMT

"A. G. McDowell" writes:
I would be very interested to hear more about increasing the effectiveness of testing beyond all recognition. I am a professional programmer in an area where we routinely estimate the testing effort as about equal to the programming effort (in terms of staff time, but not necessarily staff cost). Do you have references? As a token of sincerity I will provide references for what we seem to agree is commercial practice (whether it should be or not):

this might also be considered a characteristic difference between platforms derived from batch oriented systems and platforms derived from interactive oriented systems.

for 40 years or more, batch systems have tended to provide relatively clear diagnostic information for the application owner ... since the application owner wasn't around went their program ran; one specificly clearly diagnosed & reported item for those 40 some year period has been space full condition.

interactive platforms have tended to be much more laissez-faire about providing diagnostics for such things. i've seen payroll application ported from batch platfrom to an interactive oriented platform ... where the sort would fail because of space full condition ... but the error didn't get propagated appropriately thru the rest of the infrastructure. As a result, checks got printed ... but not with exactly the values expected. some post mortem analysis seemed to indicate that assumptions were made about individual applications indicating interactive error message to an human in attendance ... and the human taking the appropriate action.

now some number of the batch platforms for possibly 20 years now ... have had facilities that could take advantage of batch paradigm error infrastructure and for conditions like space full ... take automated prescriped graceful recovery actions (i.e. there is deadline for getting checks out and can't rely on the vagaries of being able to count on some human based mediation).

some fundamental issue about not only trying to turn out perfect code ... but also providing an instrumented infrastructure that recognizes errors will probably happen ... and in the absence of direct human mediation ... other types of facilities need to be provided (frequently a characteristic differentiation between batch-oriented platforms and interactive-oriented platforms).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Is 3DES more secure than 384 bit RSA?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Is 3DES more secure than 384 bit RSA?
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2004 14:42:29 GMT

"JG" writes:
Hello, I'm not sure if you can compare 3DES and RSA key lengths as they are not the same algorithm.

I am wondering which would be more "secure": 3DES at 112 bits or RSA at 384 bits?

I can use either but like the idea that I can distribute RSA Public Keys without all the security hassle associated with distributing symmetric keys.

try internet draft "Determining Strengths For Public Keys Used For Exchanging Symmetric Keys":
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-orman-public-key-lengths-07.txt

from above:


System
requirement  Symmetric  RSA or DH     DSA subgroup
for attack   key size   modulus size  size
resistance   (bits)     (bits)        (bits)
(bits)

70           70          947          129
80           80         1228          148
    90           90         1553          167
100          100         1926          186
   150          150         4575          284
200          200         8719          383
250          250        14596          482

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

pointless embedded systems

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: pointless embedded systems
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 01:18:44 GMT

Keith R. Williams writes:
"Correspondence code" code was the term I was looking for on the 134.5 baud serial link. Though, I don't believe CC and T/R codes were the same. IIRC, CC was a 6-bit code that had a shift/unshift character that translated to a 180 degree rotate. Once in a while, when the host was "thinking" a shift/unshift character would be sent signaling that the link was still active.

CMS blip would send shift/unshift ... when cpu was being consumed

2741 came in standard and PTTC/EBCD

cp67 would attempt to dynamically determine type on initial connection by translating input to EBCDIC using PTTC/EBCD translate table ... assuming input was login command and check for L/l. If wasn't L/l, it would check for Y/y (which was what correspondence L/l translated to) ... and then retranslate with the correspondence translate table.

PTTC/EBCD 2741 top row was:
< ; : % ' > * ( ) _ + 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - &

2nd row had single key between P and the return key which had at-sign as lower case and cent-sign as upper case.

CMS standard editing convention was based on PTTC/EBCD since it had at-sign for character delete and cent-sign (upper case at-sign) as line-delete (i.e. upper and lower case of the key between the P and the return key on the 2nd row).

standard/correspondence 2741 top row was:
X ' # $ % X & * ( ) _ + 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - =

X - upper case 1 was a combined minus/plus character X - upper case 6 was cent-sign

2nd row key between the P and the return was ! (lower-case) and degree-symbol (upper-case)

My first home terminal was "portable" 2741 (two 40lb suitcases) in March of 1970 ... later that year it was replaced with a regular 2741.

past PTTC/EBCD posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#15 IBM Model Numbers (was: First video terminal?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#62 ASR33/35 Controls
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#21 IBM Selectric as printer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#1 cp/67 35th anniversary

some CTSS 2741 refs:
https://www.multicians.org/mga.html#2741
https://www.multicians.org/terminals.html

some of the CTSS people went to Multics on 5th floor of 545 tech sq. and some showed up at the science center on 4th floor of 545 tech sq (where cp-67/cms was done). misc. other 545 tech sq. refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The BASIC Variations

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The BASIC Variations
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 05:12:50 GMT

Brian Inglis writes:
It should be said that we both had loud voices, were given to gesturing, looked at times like fairly wild and woolly monsters, and in retrospect I may have ended up dealing with him on issues that others may have passed on. Guess managers don't actually have to deal with many situations where there might actually have to be one result, both sides disagree what it should be, and they both have to end up agreeing on the resolution.

boyd used to tell a similar story when he ran lightweight fighter plane design at the pentagon (and doing the f16). The one-star that he reported to thought it wasn't appropriate for him to have loud discussions/arguments with lts, cpts, & majs under his command.

Boyd says that it reached a point where finally the one-star called a meeting in the auditorium and publicly fired boyd. however, a four-star shortly there-after called a meeting in the same auditorium (with all the same attendees) and rehired Boyd and told the one-star to never do that again.

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

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The BASIC Variations

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The BASIC Variations
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 18:32:11 GMT

bv@wjv.comREMOVE (Bill Vermillion) writes:
That reminds me of a thing I saw many years ago, and it may have even been on the cover of Byte at one time.

It was a hemisphere with many buttons on it. You chorded the keys, so essentially you had a complete one-handed keyboard input device. I suspect it would take as much time to get to a usable stage as learning to play piano, or chord positions on a guitar. Neat idea though.

in the late 70s, the human factors group in GPD-SJ (I believe possibly in conjunction with Nat Rochester at the cambridge science center) ... had a half hemisphere with finger depressions and rocker switches in the depressions. the claim was that people that got use to it ... could type as fast or faster than qwerty keyboard with two hands (i.e. say 80 wpm) .. did require a bit of fine motor control.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

harddisk in space

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: harddisk in space
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.distributed,comp.programming,comp.theory,sci.physics
Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 19:17:50 GMT

robertwessel2@yahoo.com (Robert Wessel) writes:
I'd check with the manufacturer before running them in zero G, too.

But in any event, almost all HDDs can be mounted vertically, so you could still put them back to back. And in zero G, what would it matter.

in vacuum, there may be a matter of floating heads (not) using air bearing effect between the head and the surface.

misc. minor past refs to air bearing simulation work for floating, thin-film heads being done on the 195 in bldg. 28:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#30 Weird
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#63 Help me find pics of a UNIVAC please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#74 They Got Mail: Not-So-Fond Farewells
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#51 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#52 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#69 Multics Concepts For the Contemporary Computing World
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#20 360 Microde Floating Point Fix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#45 hung/zombie users ... long boring, wandering story
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#21 40th anniversary of IBM System/360 on 7 Apr 2004

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2004 23:33:41 GMT

jmfbahciv writes:
Thanks. I had forgotten about that little detail. This is what caused people, who shouldn't have been in the biz, to get paid ungoldly amounts of money, raising their expectations of salaries they'll never see again.

wired is running article "the new face of the silicon age"
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.02/india.html

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Seriously long term storage

Refed: **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Seriously long term storage
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 06 Feb 2004 17:13:49 GMT

"Nico de Jong" writes:
I think I must disagree with you. When I nowadays show magnetic cards to people, i.e. the ones used by IBM System 6 word processors, they ask "What the f... is that ? Is it a punch card ?". When I then say, that they accommodate 2K = 1 full page of text, they wet their pants

was that the same as the mag-card selectric? little search engine use and found
http://www.ibmcomposer.org/
with a more detailed picture
http://www.ibmcomposer.org/MagCardComposer/description.htm

a number of pictures of selectric w/dates and adds:
http://www.etypewriters.com/history.htm

also there was a mag-tape selectric ... tapes looked something like 3480/3490 cartridge .. i still have one that (i believe still possibly) has some pages I typed up for Atlantic City share presentation, fall 1968 ... (fortunately i also still had paper copy in some files):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18 CP/67 & OS MFT14

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Seriously long term storage

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Seriously long term storage
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 06 Feb 2004 17:27:28 GMT

Pete Verdon writes:
I think that's another "there weren't many of them" effect, as I previously explained. Note that these people *do* know about punch-cards, which are of a similar vintage, because they were so much more common. And CDs now are even more prevalent than any punch-card ever was - the house I'm sitting in probably contains 15-20[1] CD readers (data and music), and God knows how many discs. Compare that with the spread of punch-cards among the general population.

while there may not have been that many from a consumer stand-point ... there were quite a large number from business use standpoint. little google use ... shows at some companies at least selling ribbons and other supplies for mag-card (and mag-tape) selectrics (do search engine on "+mag +selectric")

punch cards were much earlier vintage (1890) ... and were also used for a lot of purposes that general/consumer public would have encounterd ... like sense-mark versions ... that people would fill-in for various kinds of registration. shipping made use of them also ... with punch card enclosed in the package. there were all those don't spindle, fold or mutilate warnings for the general/consumer public ... which has passed into more general cultural use.

some punch card description:
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/cards/

"do not fold, spindle or mutilate", a cultural history of the punch card:
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/slubar/fsm.html

a little more retrospective ... viruses in the '60s (people changing punch holes in their cards):
http://www.melbpc.org.au/pcupdate/9606/9606article8.htm

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Worst case scenario?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Worst case scenario?
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Fri, 06 Feb 2004 17:31:22 GMT

"Del Cecchi" writes:
That's a little harsh. Do you recall a company run by Steve Chen called SSI? Stood for something like Scientific Supercomputers Inc and was located in a little town in Wisconsin (Eau Claire). Just down the road from the Big Eddie Spring, the Leinenkugel Brewery, and Chippawa Falls.

kingston dumped a lot of money into ssi. my wife and i had some differences of opinion with the people in kingston on some of the stuff going on at the time .... random unrelated reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

we actually did some consulting for Steve when he showed up as the CTO of another company 6-7 years ago.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

ARPAnet guest accounts, and longtime email addresses

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: ARPAnet guest accounts, and longtime email addresses
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 06 Feb 2004 21:52:46 GMT

Yeechang Lee writes:
And speaking of MIT, what about people with longtime email addresses? Philip Greenspun is well known for having had the same email address since 1976 (presumably barring the shift over from bang paths). Compared to that, my @columbia.edu (Sep 1994) and @pobox (1996) addresses are still very much youngsters, even if older than perhaps 97% of today's net. Other candidates, besides Greenspun, for the longevity title?

obviously i don't still have it ... but the internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet up thru possibly 1985. However, I may have the distinction of being one of the earlier people with email address on their business card ... circa 1978 (i still have about half box of them).

i had email at csc (4th floor of 545 tech. sq .... mit multics was on the 5th floor) ... and got a home terminal in march of 1970 ... and pretty much have had home online access continuously since then.

recent home terminal reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#12

various past postings on internal network, arpanet, internet:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internet

i did have lynn@netcom.com (shell account) starting in 1993 .... but that was expired when earthlink.net bought netcom.com (or maybe it was after earthlink.net had bought mindspring which had previously bought netcom.com but not discontinued the shell accounts).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

A hundred subjects: 64-bit OS2/eCs, Innotek Products,

Refed: **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A hundred subjects: 64-bit OS2/eCs, Innotek Products, ...
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.programmer.misc,alt.os.development,comp.arch,comp.os.os2.misc
Date: Sat, 07 Feb 2004 00:34:02 GMT

"Stephen Fuld" writes:
Yes, but the point is that when you retire, you are going to get more than $20K per year, and those who are retiring now and are getting the $20K/yer put in, far less than the $10K per year for most of their careers.

simple litmus test:

401k (deductions) tends to come out of before-tax income (i.e. it is tax deductable) ... and then later when you take the proceeds it is part of gross income for tax purposes.

SS deductions aren't tax deductable at the time they are paid and the benefits aren't tax deductable at the time they are received. based on that, one could claim that the SS deductions and the SS benefits aren't directly related (they tax it when they take from you and they tax again when they give it back?). SS deductions are just part of federal taxes ... but under different name ... and SS benefits just happen to use similar name.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Hardware issues [Re: Floating point required exponent range?]

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hardware issues [Re: Floating point required exponent range?]
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2004 14:54:36 GMT

Andi Kleen writes:
VIA apparently thought it was worth including. The latest C3 has a random generator instruction. Given the C3's focus on being die space efficient (as far as that's possible for an x86) it probably wasn't all that costly.

Intel seems to be moving in the other direction. Their latest chipsets seem to have dropped the hardware random generator.

one of the issues is bootstraping integrity based on strong authentication. using either DSA or EC/DSA (FIPS186-2) digital signature requires high quality random number as part of the digital signature process (or the private key could be compromised)

intel had gone thru various rounds of including strong authentication in the chip itself. current round has much of it moved out into separate chip on the motherboard. recent article on the subject:
http://www.securitypipeline.com/17602019;jsessionid=IYLU5NK2LDPEGQSNDBCCKHQ

this isn't how much is it used ... but is the integrity of the infastructure based on it.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Health care and lies

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Health care and lies
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2004 15:21:31 GMT

"J. Clarke" writes:
I am? NASA promised $500/lb to orbit with the Shuttle. It worked out closer to $5000 per pound. Of that, contrary to popular belief $20/lb is the cost of fuel and the remainder is maintenance and infrastructure. If a second generation shuttle can be constructed that operates with about the same amount of maintenance as a conventional aircraft then you've cut the cost to orbit by more than 2 orders of magnitude right there. And the numbers for a lunar base looked pretty good at 500.

this quotes has it as much as $10k/lb
http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/space_the_final_financial_frontier.shtml

i've been at a number of rotan presentations .... searching for references on the web ... turned of this discussion of propulsion technology
http://www.avg-aerospace.com/html/access_to_space.html
another referenced turned up by search engine
http://www.hobbyspace.com/AAdmin/archive/RLV/1999/RLVNews1999-04-08.html

in hsdt ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt
we had a transponder on bird going up on 41-d ... so got to go to launch party and sit in vip stands for 41-d launch (one of the guys that had been on the moon was a couple seats over):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#27 Tysons Corner, Virginia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#29 IBM 3725 Comms. controller - Worth saving?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#14 Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2004 22:35:49 GMT

Bernd Felsche writes:
The Soviets had one resource of which the Germans had rapisly-diminishing quantities: tank crews to BBQ.

boyd made some assertion about the US position with production quantity vis-a-vis quality for shermans ... and the availability of crews. a couple past tiger/sherman posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#85 V-Man's Patton Quote (LONG) (Pronafity)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#30 Review of Steve McConnell's AFTER THE GOLD RUSH
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#3 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#10 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#11 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#16 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#27 Controversial paper - Good response article on ZDNet

collection of boyd refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Who is the most likely to use PK?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Who is the most likely to use PK?
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2004 15:37:18 GMT

dsr writes:
As with all public key systems, web browsers use a static key. The cert does not get updated as you visit all those "secure" web sites. You are stuck with that cert till you replace the browser in many cases. Any secure site you visit including possibly a site you are redirected to can get a copy of your cert. Now armed with your cert a hacker could go on a shopping spree.

You may argue that a hacker would be less likely to have matching credit card numbers in an identity threat such as that. Unfortunately computer criminals know credit card algorithms and IP cloaking methods. If you are unlucky enough to tangle with one of these hackers just visiting their site could make you a suspect.

an AADS-oriented paradigm doesn't require a certificate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

just that the transaction/message is digitally signed with private key. the corresponding public key can be registered with the financial institution ... in much the same way that PINs or *mother's maiden name* is registered.

to some extent, there was transition from x.509 identity certificates to relying-party-only certificates in the mid-90s because of the privacy information leakage problem. however, even these certificates contained at minimum an account number and could still allow the privacy information leakage described.

the design point for PKI certificates was to handle offline-email (from the early '80s, dialup, exchange email, hangup) between parties that previously had no communication. W/o being online and having no previous communication ... there was requirement for offline authentication.

one issue with account number is that there are possibly dozens of business processes that require the account number. some discussions of problems with protecting account numbers by hiding:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#61
and completely blanketing the earth in mile deep encryption won't address all the problems.

the requirement given the x9a10 working group was to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all electronic retail payments:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

which changed the paradigm from hiding the number (which was recognized to be effectively impossible) to requiring that account numbers in x9.59 transactions could not be used in non-authenticated transactions (i.e. even with total public disclosier of the account number, it could not be used in fraudulent, non-authenticated transactions).

one of the issues was that the payment card industry started to make the transaction from offline, physical authentication to online, electronic authentication in the 70s ... and totally bypassed the intermediate step (reprsented by certificates) of offline, and electronic. I gave a presentation in the mid-90s that the use of certificates in online payment transactions represented a fall-back in state-of-the-art of nearly 30 years to pre-70s.

misc. past threads regarding relying-party-only certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#rpo

which, in part evolved, in order to address serious privacy information leakage problem (with traditional x.509 identity certificates)... along with assertion that in any form of online environmeht with relying-party-only certificates, the certificates are redundant and superfluous.

The redudnant and superfluous issue is, in part, becuase the certificates represent stale, static, copy of some information in a database. in an online transaction of any value ... not only would there be desire to reference stale, static type of data (including data that might not be included in a certificate because of privacy leakage issues) ... but also aggregated and timely information (like credit balance). If the online database can register lots of information, then it can also register an account's public key.

If other than no-value transation is involved and recourse to online database is required ... then that online database not only contains a superset of stale, static information (of the kind that might be found in a certificate, including stale, static information not found in a certificate because of privacy concerns) but also aggregated and timely information (credit balance, pattern of previous transactions, etc). Given recourse to online database containing a superset of any information in that might be contained in a stale, static certificate, then the stale, static certificate becomes redundant and superfluous.

misc. other refs on risks, fraud, exploits:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#fraud
and assurance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#assurance

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

determining memory size

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: determining memory size
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.vmesa-l
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2004 09:05:06 -0700

At 9:43:26, 8 feb 2004, richgr@panix.com wrote:
Back in the dark ages of VM/370, VM discovered the size of main storage by starting at the top of the nucleus and cleared storage until it got a program check, then it knew wher main stor ended.

Guess what happened the first time it was IPL'd on a processor with 16m of main?

I got called in to look at getting vm/370 up and running on 256k byte 370/125. I had originally done pageable kernel implementation on cp/67 (as an undergraduate) to conserve real memory. While some of the other stuff that I had done while an undergraduate shipped in various cp/67 release ... the pageable kernel support didn't ship until vm/370. In any case, this involved looking at how much more could be removed from the fixed portion of the vm/370 kernel .... in order to free-up more space for paging (trying to get the vm/370 fixed kernel down under 80k-90k bytes).

However, before getting very far, it turned out there was a microcode bug on the 370/125. The early vm/370 boot procedure had been changed to use 370 MVCL to both clear memory and test for memory size. The problem was a change between 360/370 for standard instructions and the new 370 long instructions. The standard 360/370 would take the address, add the length and abort the instruction if (all four of) the origin and destination starting and ending addresses weren't available. The new long instructions would specified to incrementally execute a byte at a time w/o testing the ending address. The 370/125 had a bug in the MVCL since it added the length to the starting address and pre-tested the ending address. The VM/370 boot MVCL had starting address just after the boot routine for a length of 16mbytes and expected the boot MVCL to fail at end-of-storage (w/o wrapping storage). VM/370 was expecting the registers after the addressing interrupting on the boot MVCL to indicate end of storage, but the 370/125 microcode bug resulted in it not executing at all.

Note that this was different problem than having full 16mbytes of real storage and having the MVCL wrap w/o taking an addressing interrupt.

updated merged (security) taxonomy & glossary

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: updated merged (security) taxonomy & glossary
Newsgroups: comp.security.misc
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2004 21:16:11 GMT

in the past month or so i've updated the merged security taxonomy and glossary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/secure.htm
with terms from FFIEC Examination handbook, vulnerability testing glossary, and NIST 800-61. for more information see:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/index.html#glosnote

I've also updated the merged privacy taxonomy and glossary with terms from the EU data privacy directive
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/privacy.htm
and the merged taxonomy taxonomy and glossary with terms from the UN drugs and crime money laundering glossary:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/financial.htm

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Methods of Authentication on a Corporate

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Methods of Authentication on a Corporate
Newsgroups: comp.security.misc
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2004 21:43:41 GMT

nickowen@yahoo.com (Nick Owen) writes:
I would be careful with biometrics. If you digitize someone's fingerprint and lose it to hackers, you may well have some problems with various privacy laws. I would stay away from anything that requires readers as the cost of maintenance alone will kill your ROI.

the issue of biometrics is whether or not they are treated as shared-secrets ... aka if the templates are stored in a some database and readers have to transmit the readings to the central facility for matching. Basically this is analogous to PINs/password as shared-secrets ... except that if a PIN/password is compromised, then it is possible to issue a replacement PIN/password ... while it is somewhat more difficult to issue replacement fingers. x9.84 biometric standard goes to quite a length about security needed around shared-secret based biometrics.

match on card biometrics come in a number of forms ....

1) standard cards that are inserted into readers where the readers contain the fingerprint reader. For 7816 contact cards in high traffic areas ... the reader can subject to wear & tear on both the contacts as well as the fingerprint sensor.

2) sensor on the card ... but the conversion of the fingerprint to digital template form is done by a chip in the reader and then the result is sent back to the card for matching against the template. some possibility that these could be 14443/contactless if there is enuf bandwidth. sensor on the card and contactless eliminates many of the failure points in distributed stations/readers.

3) sensor on the card ... and the conversion of the fingerprint to digital template form is done by chip in the card (and the match is performed based on template on the card). this is less likely to be contactless because of the power requirements to reduce fingerprint to digital form.

Note when the biometric sensor and chip is part of PDA with its own power source ... there is less of a issue about where the power for the operation needs to come from ... and interface to station can be wireless ... also eliminating lots of distributed station/reader failure modes.

basically the authentication taxonomy
• something you have
• something you know
• something you are

you can have one-factor, two-factor, and/or three-factor authentication. something you know and something you are both can either be

• shared-secret based (where the information is recorded in some database) or • non-shared-secret based ... where it is possible to proove that the information has been validated w/o having to transmit that information)

there is further issue with biometrics .... quite a few of the biometric infrastructures have fixed scoring values. bioemtrics tend to be a fuzzy reading (possibly several readings) of some biometric value which is digitized and recorded as a template. Some time later a new reading of the biometric is taken and a fuzzy match is made against a recorded template. A scoring threshold may be set whether the match is accepted or not. For some situations, the scoring threshhold might be on the order of 10-15 percent match. Various fixed scoring threshholds can lead to false positives (i.e. accepting incorrect matches) and false negatives (rejecting correct matches).

Another issue is that some biometrics can be more subject to environmental conditions ... like fingerprints can work better in a white collar office environment than, say, in a car repair/maint. garage.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2004 21:59:14 GMT

Charles Richmond writes:
"Entirely" has an atomic weight of 3.58 humungous weight units... A humungous weight unit is equal to 93 million times the weight of the earth...

from long ago and far away:
AUSMINIUM FOUND IN HEAVY RED-TAPE DISCOVERY

Administratium experts from around the company, while searching piles of red-tape in and around Austin, recently uncovered great quantities of Heavy Red-Tape. While there have been prior findings of Heavy Red-Tape at other red-tape sites, it only occurred in minute quantities. The quantities of Heavy Red-Tape, in and around Austin have allowed Administratium experts to isolate what they believe to be a new element that they are tentatively calling AUSMINIUM.

At this time, plant officials are preparing an official press release declaring that there is no cause for alarm and absolutely NO truth to the rumors that because of the great concentration of Heavy Red-Tape in the area, that there is imminent danger of achieving critical mass and the whole area collapsing into a black hole. Plant officials are stating that there is no evidence that large quantities of Heavy Red-Tape can lead to the spontaneous formation of a black-hole. They point to the lack of any scientific studies unequivocally showing that there are any existing black-holes composed of Heavy Red-Tape.

The exact properties of Heavy Red-Tape and ausminium are still under study.

SCIENTIST DISCOVERS NEW ELEMENT - ADMINISTRATIUM

The heaviest element known to science was recently discovered by University physicists. The element, tentatively named Administratium (AD), has no protons or electrons, which means that its atomic number is 0. However, it does have 1 neutron, 125 assistants to the neutron, 75 vice-neutrons and 111 assistants to the vice-neutrons. This gives it an atomic mass number of 312. The 312 particles are held together in the nucleus by a force that involves the continuous exchange of meson-like particles called memos.

Since it has no electrons, Administratium is inert. However, it can be detected chemically because it seems to impede every reaction in which it is present. According to one of the discoverers of the element, a very small amount of Administratium made one reaction that normally takes less than a second take over four days.

Administratium has a half-life of approximately 3 years, at which time it does not actually decay. Instead, it undergoes a reorganization in which assistants to the neutron, vice-neutrons, and assistants to the vice-neutrons exchange place. Some studies have indicated that the atomic mass number actually increases after each reorganization.

Administratium was discovered by accident when a researcher angrily resigned from the chairmanship of the physics department and dumped all of his papers in the intake hatch of the University's particle accelerator. "Apparently, the interaction of all of those reports, grant forms, etc. with the particles in the accelerator created the new element." an unnamed source explained.

Research at other laboratories seems to indicate that Administratium might occur naturally in the atmosphere. According to one scientist, Administratium is most likely to be found on college and university campuses, and in large corporation and government centers, near the best-appointed and best-maintained building.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

A POX on you, Dennis Ritchie!!!

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A POX on you, Dennis Ritchie!!!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 02:58:29 GMT

Torfinn Ingolfsen writes:
I guess you are a slkw learner then, since you haven't changed to another language. :) Perhaps a more modern one, with features that doesn't create confusions so easy? Like Ruby (http://www.ruby-lang.org/), Modula-3 (http://www.m3.org/), Python (http://www.python.org/), or even Rexx?

great computer language shootout
http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/index2.shtml
some feature list
http://tabini.topcities.com/langmain.html

misc. haskel refs:
http://www.haskell.org/
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/hudak94haskell.html
http://www.galoisconnections.com/HCSPage1.htm
http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/franka/lang ... compilers & interpreters
http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~jl/
http://www.xoltar.org/2003/aug/04/haskellConcise.html
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/spr/2001-03/msg0031792.html
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2002-January/079394.html
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/mail-www/haskell/msg00743.html
http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~mpj/pubs/springschool.html

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

determining memory size

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: determining memory size
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.vmesa-l
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 09:57:56 -0700

On 9 Feb 2004 11:23:54, Gerard Schildberger wrote:
why wasn't that bug found out when VM/370 was IPLed 2nd level?

I'm sure somebody must have gave a VM/370 guest 16 Megabytes to see how well it performed 2nd level with lots of "real memory". Did VM/370 intercept the address check and fudge-up what was expected ?

I know, in later years, VM/370 took notice that it was running under VM, and used other interfaces to detect/handle thingys. __________Gerard S.

the fix went in fairly early. the first 370s with virtual memory support were 370/145 with 512k bytes of memory.

one of the original links in the internal network was between cambridge and endicott. this was a project to modify CP/67 in two stages:

modified CP/67 to provide 370 virtual machines instead of 360 virtual machines (mostly in the area of virtual memory support since the architecture was somewhat different)
modified cp/67 that ran on on machine with 370 virtual memory architecture

the typical operation at cambridge was then:

real 360/67
running (relatively) standard cp/67-l
in 360/67 virtual machine, ran cp/67-h (modifications to provide 370 virtual machines)
in 370 virtual machine, ran cp/67-i (modified to run on 370 architecture)
cms

CP/67-h could have run on the bare iron ... except there was a security issue with a number of MIT and, BU students and other non-IBM employees having access to the cambridge machine.

This setup was running a year before endicott had the first 370/145 engineering model with virtual memory operational. CP/67-i was used as the initial boot test on this machine (which had a knife switch as an ipl button). It initially crashed and wouldn't boot. It turns out that the engineers had gotton the implementation of two of the new "B2" opcodes backwards. CP/67-I was patched to reversed the "B2" opcode use (to correspond to the implementation mistake) and it then ran successfully.

In any case, this was somewhat the environment that early vm/370 work went on. While CMS was relatively unmodified in the CP/67 to VM/370 transition (other than the name change from cambridge monitor system to conversational monitor system), the CP kernel was significantly rewritten.

In any case, all the early vm/370 development was either under cp/67-h on a real 360/67 or eventually on a 370/145 under cp/67-i.

The issue is say you have vm/370 running in a 4mbyte virtual machine on a 512kbyte real machine (with other work going on).... if vm/370 boot/ipl was actually clearing 4mbytes of virtual memory, boot can take a very, very long time.

The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!

Refed: **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 00:15:49 GMT

cstacy@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) writes:
Concerning our discussion where I predicted the eventual demise of "brick and mortar" stores for purchasing music: the largest chain that was in that business, Tower Records, has gone under and filed today for bankruptcy. The explanation given is that they just can't compete with either on-line stores like Amazon, nor with the new online music download services.

i renenber tower in the '70s on s. bascom across from the pruneyard ... there were three sections to the store ... about half was records, about 1/4 was various tapes, and about 1/4 was black light posters and certain kind of paraphernalia.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

A POX on you, Dennis Ritchie!!!

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A POX on you, Dennis Ritchie!!!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 00:19:49 GMT

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Next generation processor architecture?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Next generation processor architecture?
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 15:50:11 GMT

"Andy Glew" <glew2public-news@sbcglobal.net> writes:
It's probably not surprising that you haven't encountered multifile Word documents. "Master documents" and subdocuments did not start working well until Word 2000; they were broken in the original and SP1 versions of Word XP / 2002, but got fixed again by Word 2003.

i was at m'soft developers conference in '96 at moscone and remember somebody (offline) commenting that 100 percent of the office features that 99 percent of people use ... had already been shipped and there was concern about why would people buy the next version (new car every year syndome). that year every presentation had the phase protecting your investment ... code phrase for m'soft promising to not obsolete visual basic skills of the audience.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

A POX on you, Dennis Ritchie!!!

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A POX on you, Dennis Ritchie!!!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 19:42:18 GMT

Alexandre Peshansky <alex*@*mail.rockefeller.edu> writes:
Real programmers can make dumb C errors in any language ;-)

some references to various *real*
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#31 High Level Language Systems was Re: computer books/authors (Re: FA:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#39 Why Use *-* ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#69 So I tried this //vm.marist.edu stuff on a slow Sat. night,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#72 So I tried this //vm.marist.edu stuff on a slow Sat. night,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#58 When/why did "programming" become "software development?"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#43 An a.f.c bibliography?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

CHECKSUM CHALLENGE - (US$ 100)

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CHECKSUM CHALLENGE - (US$ 100)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.programming,comp.dcom.modems,sci.crypt,comp.arch.embedded
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 21:16:11 GMT

"Max Firmware" writes:
And tossing in a bunch off FF's that aren't part of the packet doesn't help either!!!!

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

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

ancient ref (nearly 20 years old)
detail
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/read.cgi?fn=CRC-FAIL&ft=PROB&line=1
description
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/read.cgi?fn=CRC-FAIL&ft=PROB&line=474

discussion of crc polynomial issues:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/read.cgi?fn=CRC-FAIL&ft=PROB&line=660
from a co-worker (at the time) ... purely random coincidence but he happen to send me some email a couple weeks ago (after over ten years lapse). in any case, in the above, he references an article on the subject he worte for april 1985 PC tech journal titled "high performance crc generation".

above fragments as single article:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=CRC-FAIL&ft=PROB#660

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!

Refed: **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 17:32:30 GMT

earlier post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#2

greenspan's testimony (live, in real time) is highlighting US education ssytem; at up to about 4th grade it is about average but by 12th grade it isn't competitive at all; many of the people that should be going thru grad. school aren't even making it thru highschool; in the future, all the high paying jobs will be conceptual based; the community college system is doing about the best job of retraining current workers for the new necessary skills.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 17:52:00 GMT

oh yes, slightly convoluted thread .. in:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#2

there was reference to:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#45

which in turn referenced ... "scope of the literacy need" which had some 1992 stats (general literacy, not technical):
https://web.archive.org/web/20100413134230/http://www.nifl.gov/nifl/facts/facts_overview.html

also from above ... 94-98 international literacy survey:
• The average composite literacy score of native-born adults in the U.S. was 284 (Level 3); the U.S. ranked 10th out of 17 high-income countries; • The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with primary or no education, ranked 14th out of 18 high-income countries; • The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with some high school, but no diploma or GED, ranked 19th out of 19 high-income countries; • The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with a high school diploma or GED (but no college), ranked 18th (tie) out of 19 countries; • The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with 1-3 years of college, ranked 15th out of 19 countries;

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

SSL certificates

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: SSL certificates
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.networking.tcp-ip,sci.crypt,microsoft.public.windowsnt.protocol.tcpip,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 16:13:42 GMT

Mailman writes:
After all, robbing a bank is nothing when compared to _opening_ a bank!

or attacks on the owner of the website.

lots of past comments about SSL merchant server "comfort" certificates:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcert

ssl was to address perceived weakness involving perceived domain name hijacking weaknesses in the domain name infrastructure; merchants would get a ssl server certificate from a TTP (trusted third party) certification authority with their domain name, client browsers would compare the domain name in the certificate with the URL they typed ... and have some comfort that the server they were talking to was the one they expected to talk to from the URL. there was also the issue that it supported an encrypted session, hiding the credit card number while in transit.

a couple issues:

1) The TTP-CAs aren't the authoritative agency as to who owns the domain name ... the domain name infrastructure is the authoritative agency as to who owns the domain name. As part of the TTP-CA issuing the ceritifcate to the merchant ... they had to contact the domain name infrastructure to see if the entity requesting the certificate is the same entity that owns the domain name ... however this is the domain name infrastructure that has the integrity issues that gave rise to desire for needing certificates. So somewhat from the TTP-CA industry there has been some proposals to improve the integrity of the domain name infrastructure ... so that the TTP-CA industry can trust them as part of issuing certificates. However, the net is that various of the proposals to improve the integrity of the domain name infrastructure (so that it can be trusted by the TTP-CA industry as part of issuing certificates) also improves the domain name infrastructure integrity so it can be trusted by everybody ... going a long ways to eliminating the original requirement for needing the merchant comfort certificates in the first place.

2) the major vulnerability to credit card numbers have been havesting of the transaction files from the merchant location. this is what shows up in all the press ... various references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#fraud
where the crook gets a hundred thousand numbers in one operation ... as compared to the theoritical evesdropping attack trying to catch a credit card number in flight ... a vulnerability for which there have been no known published actually occurances (as far as i know) ... the ROI fraud is so much higher harvesting the transaction file compared to try and get something out of evesdropping. a discussion of security proportional to risk/fraud ... and the threat model associated with the merchant transaction file:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#61

so the two threat models address by SSL merchant server certificates:

a) vulnerability in domain name infrastructure with domain name hijacking .... except to some degree certificates are cosmetic coating since the vulnerabilities are still there and somebody just hijacks the domain name and then applies for the certificate (and in fact the CA industry has motivated solutions to the domain name infrastructure vulnerabilities but the solutions would also eliminate justification for needing certificates).

b) vulnerability in credit card number transmission ... for which there have been no published exploits ... since it is so much more productive to harvest the merchant transaction file.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

SSL certificates

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: SSL certificates
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.networking.tcp-ip,sci.crypt,microsoft.public.windowsnt.protocol.tcpip,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 17:48:14 GMT

"Pete Davis" writes:
No, not really. My thinking was, I question the point of developing session keys after the initial contact using the certificate keys. I'm sure there's a good reason, but it seems to me that if the certificate key isn't secure enough for the entire conversation, then the entire conversation is no more secure than the initial certificate key. If the certificate key were compromised, then the negotiated session keys would also be compromised, would they not?

use of the certificate (asymmetric) key has significantly more computational overhead than a symmetric key ... the certificate key is used for a little bit of data to address the key-exhange requirement ... then use a symmetric key for the volumes of data (because the processing overhead is so much less). the key switch isn't particularly a security theory issue ... it is a practical implementation issue.

slightly related ... previous post regarding key sizes and attack resistance:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#11 Is 3DES more secure than 384 bit RSA?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

SSL certificates

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: SSL certificates
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.networking.tcp-ip,sci.crypt,microsoft.public.windowsnt.protocol.tcpip,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 17:57:58 GMT

Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> writes:
What kind of compromise do you have in mind? The public key is, well, public. Nothing bad happens if the attacker learns what it is. If you're afraid the attacker might substitute his own public key for the server's, that means you're catching on. The public key is wrapped in a certificate which is signed by an issuer (the "certificate authority" or CA) that the client has to be preconfigured to trust (the CA public key is preinstalled in the client). If the CA private key gets loose, the system's security is shot. But fortunately, the CA private key is used only at the time the server certificate itself is created. That can be done completely offline using (say) a laptop computer that spends all its time locked in a safe when not in use.

a real attack against the SSL domain name certificate infrastructure can have nothing at all to do with the CA private key. The certificate is supposedly used to certify some information (the server's domain name) that otherwise has integrity issues (because of perceived integrity problems with the domain name infrastructure). as a result, the integrity of the certificate is checked by the client (using a CA public key), then the domain name in the certificate is checked against the original URL ... and then the validity of the communication with the server is check using the server's public key from the certificate.

note however there is supposedly a "chain of trust" ... however the chain of trust goes all the way back to the authoritative agency that the CA checks with for validating the information that goes into their signed certificate. In the case of SSL domain name certificates, the authoritative agency for who owns a domain name is the domain name infrastructure; so the trust root ... isn't with the CA ... but is with the authoritative agency that the CA uses for validating the information as part of the certification. Trust propagation goes from the domain name infrastructure to the CA to the client (i.e. the CA is the trust root for the certificate ... but not for the actual validatity of the information being certified contained in the certificate).

However, the catch-22 is that the original justification for these certificates were trust and integrity issues with the domain name infrastructure .... which continues to be the trust root .... even with SSL domain name server certificates. So there are some proposals to improve the integrity of the domain name infrastructure ... somewhat prompted by the CA industry. However, many of the integrity improvements for the domain name infrastructure also go a long way to eliminating the original justifications for the certificates.

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 20:22:09 GMT

Anne & Lynn Wheeler writes:
earlier post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#2

the other thing from the us census article in the early '90s ... besides half of the 18 year olds being functionally illiterate was that (at the time) over half of the (us) manufacturing jobs were in some way subsidized ... aka the claim that over half of the employees in manufacturing jobs were receiving total benefits (salary, retirement, insurance, medical, etc) in excess of the value of the work they performed (the difference in the value they provided and the benefits they received had to be made up in some way). recent posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#37 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#38 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!

a related thread ran recently in comp.arch regarding social security beneifts not being fully funded (and future generations will have to make up the difference):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#9 A hundred subjects: 64-bit OS2/eCs, Innoteck Products
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#21 A hundred subjects: 64-bit OS2/eCs, Innoteck Products

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!

Refed: **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 21:20:35 GMT

Brian Inglis writes:
Looked at online grocery shopping offered here a few years ago, first via fax, now via web, and the per-item pick charges and delivery charges are high enough that it pays me to do it myself.

i remember seeing somebody buying one of the bankrupt online grocery companies .... not for the grocery business ... but they had developed this wiz-bang optimized packing, scheduling, and routing application (optimized scheduling/routing can make substantial difference in operational costs).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Foiling Replay Attacks

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Foiling Replay Attacks
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 17:10:58 GMT

Mark Shelor writes:
The only two mechanisms I'm familiar with for guarding against replay are sequence numbers and timestamps. Are there other techniques (e.g. server-generated nonces) mentioned in the literature?

depends on whether or not it is an atomic operation/message or can involve real-time protocol chatter.

payment system uses a log and looks for duplicate transactions (which include the full details of the transaction) ... but it is a atomic operation with single round-trip scenario w/o protocol chatter. because of infrastructure issues the times are a little fuzzy. there have been instances where a person used credit card to make to succesive identical purchases at a merchant and have the 2nd one rejected as duplicate.

the depth of the log can be abbreviated based on how synchronized the clocks are (and therefor the timestamps) ... or just recording the previously sequentially used number.

for non-single round trip allowing protocol chatter ... there are instances like RADIUS login scenario where the client contacts the server, the server responds with a random number/challenge, the client combines the server random number/challenge with client random number ... digitally signs the combined value and returns the message and digital signature.

the real-time protocol chatter, in effect, substitutes for having a log of (one or more) previous interactions. w/o the real-time protocol chatter, some sort of log is used. the depth of the log may be one deep if the environment is sufficiently controlled. In a less controlled environment, the log may have to consist of interactions spanning hours or even days.

random previous replay attack threads:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#20 What is PKI?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#6 NEWS: 3D-Secure and Passport
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#27 How effective is open source crypto?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#28 How effective is open source crypto? (addenda)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#29 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm13.htm#31 How effective is open source crypto? (bad form)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#30 Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm16.htm#13 The PAIN mnemonic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm16.htm#22 Ousourced Trust (was Re: Difference between TCPA-Hardware and a smart card and something else before
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm17.htm#2 Difference between TCPA-Hardware and a smart card (was: example: secure computing kernel needed)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#14 fingerprint authentication
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#70 Simple resource protection with public keys
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#25 Idea for secure login
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#50 public key vs passwd authentication?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#6 Does OTP need authentication?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Foiling Replay Attacks

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Foiling Replay Attacks
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 17:33:23 GMT

"Tom St Denis" writes:
Though a related method of preventing replays would be S/KEY I guess. It's a protocol for password logins that is based on proving you know the input for a given output. E.g. you compute

H[0] = password H[i] = hash(H[i-1]), for i = 1...n

Then you create the account with H[n]. To login you give them H[n-1] which they verify hash(H[n-1]) = H[n]. If it does the login is accepted and server stores H[n-1]. Repeat until you hit H[1] in which case you have to make a new array of hashes.

An attacker trying to replay an old stream will not have the required hash since the server will be expecting a different one and the attacker only knows the previous ones.

The client has a unique password that it remembers and a hone-way hash function. The RFC allows that as part of registration ... that the server provide the client a unique server-specific value (this allows the client to use the same password with different servers). The client then does the hash of the combination of the password and the server specific value and iterates the hashing N-times. The server then records N and the result from the interactive hash.

When the client goes to login, the server presents N-1 and the server-specific value. The client then repeats the original operation but only performs the hash N-1 times ... and returns the value. The server then performs the hash one additional time and checks it with the recorded value for N-times. If they match, the session is successful and the server updates the iteration value to N-1 and the recently presented hash value.

The stated purpose is that 1) this foils evesdropping attacks listening to cleartext password transmission, 2) client only has to remember the password/passphrase (everything else is remembered by the server) and 3) the same password can be used with a large number of different servers (addressing the huge human factors problem with having to deal with scores of unique passwords).

The MITM attack is that the attacker evesdrops on the communication (as assumed under the basic justification for the whole design) and and substitutes a count of "1" in the transmission to the client (in place of N-1). The attacker now has the first hash ... and can repeat the rest of the hashes and transmit to the server (and then gets out of the way of the rest of the session). Later the attacker can impersonate the client for any hash value larger than one (w/o knowing the actual password).

minor past ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#50 public key vs passwd authentication

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

ARPAnet guest accounts, and longtime email addresses

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: ARPAnet guest accounts, and longtime email addresses
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2004 21:14:28 GMT

... from long ago and far away ...


Date:         Tue, 16 Jul 91 12:24:28 IST
From: Hank Nussbacher <HANK%VM.BIU.AC.IL@TAUNIVM.TAU.AC.IL>
Subject:      Network maps v2
To: tcp-ip@nic.ddn.mil

This document is meant to catalog all known network maps in postscript
format that are available via the Internet.  One purpose is so that people
can review other network maps for ideas and formats.  The main purpose
is for the newly forming RIPE mapping WG to determine what icons people
use in their network maps and to create an RFC that standardizes the
icons as well as the format that people will create for their network
maps.  Please send all corrections and additions to this list to:
hank@vm.tau.ac.il

CAVAET:

Some Postscript maps won't print correctly on many laser printers.
This is due to the files being in Apple Postscript rather than in
standard postscript.  Most maps reported here will print properly.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
aarnet.edu.au   139.130.204.4

2) cd __________
   pub/maps

3) get ___________.ps
aarn-backbone.ps

4) What is included in your map?
   Backbone of AARNet network, link speeds, comment on topology

5) How often is it updated?
Whenever something significant changes! Say, every three months,

6) Contact?
   P.Elford@aarnet.edu.au
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
ftp.cc.berkeley.edu        128.32.136.9

2) cd __________
   pub

3) get ___________.ps
ucb.map.ps

4) What is included in your map?
   The UCB IP routers

5) How often is it updated?
Whenever I feel like it (actually I just created it recently).

6) Contact?
   cliff@garnet.berkeley.edu
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
Arizona.EDU  128.196.128.233

2) cd __________
   networks.maps

3) get ___________.ps
uanet-prepped.ps

4) What is included in your map?
   Subnets of the University of Arizona's network (128.196.0.0).

5) How often is it updated?
Once every couple of months or so.

6) Contact?
   Leonard@Arizona.EDU
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
NIS.NSF.NET    35.1.1.48

2) cd __________
   maps

3) get ___________.ps
ASIANET  PS       V        128        276          8  1/17/89  1:30:13
BACKBONE NEW-PS   V        117       6765         50 10/01/90 14:41:43
BACKBONE OLD-PS   V         94       2437         25  2/24/89 15:40:22
BACKBONE OLD2-PS  V         94       2445         25  2/24/89 15:39:57
BACKBONE T1-PS    V        106       6375         46  4/18/91 12:36:39
BACKBONE T1T3-PS  V        108       7088         51  4/23/91  9:39:58
BACKBONE T3-PS    V        117       6515         46  4/18/91 15:05:57
BARRNET  PS       V        124       1222         10  5/30/90 11:39:03
BITNET   PS       V        130       2870         85  1/17/89  1:30:20
BITNET4  PS       V        130       3389        101  1/17/89  1:30:28
CERFNET  PS       V        876       3594         24 11/30/90 11:03:39
CICNET   PS       V         28      23597         68  2/11/91 18:16:12
CORNELL  PS       V        112        110          2  2/17/89  1:53:49
DC       PS       V         99        421          5  3/23/89 11:01:45
EARNET   PS       V        129       1447         43  1/17/89  1:30:33
ESNET    PS       V         94       2462         25  5/05/89 14:10:25
HARVARD  MAP      V         78         59          1  2/17/89  1:57:53
LOSNETTO PS       V        106       1309          9 11/27/90 17:26:12
MERIT-MI PS       V         88       6449         19  6/01/90 11:50:09
MIDNET   PS       V        132        730          6  2/17/89  1:52:58
NA_NETS  PS       V         94       2802         26  5/17/89  9:56:55
NCAR     PS       V        255       1602         11  2/17/89  1:52:46
NETMAP   DOC      V         78       1140         13  2/24/89 16:05:27
NETNORTH PS       V        129        511         16  1/17/89  1:30:36
NYSERNET PS       V         53       2475          9  2/17/89  1:56:40
PREPNET  PS       V         80       1856          9  2/22/89  9:59:39
PSC_IP   PS       V         80       3479         18  2/22/89  9:59:48
RICENET  PS-LW    V         57       2079          8  3/07/89 16:31:24
SCINET   PS       V         94       2536         26  4/28/89 14:23:35
SCINETDC PS       V        100        280          3  4/28/89 16:40:31
SESQUINE PS-LW    V         53        610          3  3/07/89 16:31:11
SURANET  PS       V         87       1158         13  3/23/89 11:01:40
SURAN289 PS       V         96        468          4  3/07/89 16:29:10
TEXASIP  PS       V         96        405          4  3/07/89 16:28:32
UIUC     PS       V         93        904          5 12/28/88 14:10:34
UIUC-MAP PS       V         72       3892         14 12/28/88 14:10:45
UMNET    PS       V        124       1343          9  5/30/90 10:14:22
UNETS-A  PS       V         94       3824         29  5/14/90 14:29:51
USENIX   PS       V         79       4916         17  2/10/89  9:29:59
USNETS   PS       V         94       3824         29  5/14/90 14:26:37

4) What is included in your map?

5) How often is it updated?

6) Contact?
userhelp@nis.nsf.net
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
   mcsun.eu.net       192.16.202.1

2) cd __________
ripe/maps

3) get ___________.ps
   Jun  4 10:25 europe.ps
Feb  2  1990 map01-netnums.ps.Z
   Feb  2  1990 map01-speeds.ps.Z
Jun 15  1990 map02-netnums.ps.Z
Jun 20  1990 map02-speeds.ps.Z
Jul  9  1990 map03-legend.ps.Z
   Jul  9  1990 map03-netnums.ps.Z
Jul  9  1990 map03-speeds.ps.Z
   Aug 28  1990 map04-legend.ps.Z
Aug 28  1990 map04-netnums-1p.ps.Z
Aug 28  1990 map04-netnums-2p.ps.Z
Aug 28  1990 map04-speeds-1p.ps.Z
   Aug 28  1990 map04-speeds-2p.ps.Z
Nov  9  1990 map05-legend.ps.Z
   Nov  9  1990 map05-netnums-1p.ps.Z
Nov  9  1990 map05-netnums-2p.ps.Z
Nov  9  1990 map05-speeds-1p.ps.Z
Nov  9  1990 map05-speeds-2p.ps.Z
   Feb 27 14:16 map06-legend.ps.Z
Feb 27 13:55 map06-netnums.ps.Z
   Feb 27 13:54 map06-speeds.ps.Z
Jun  4 10:25 us-europe.ps

4) What is included in your map?

5) How often is it updated?

6) Contact?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
   nic.nordu.net    192.36.148.17

2) cd __________
maps

3) get ___________.ps
   Nov  9  1990 ch-map-netnums.ps
Nov  9  1990 ch-map-speeds.ps
   May 26 20:35 europe.ps
Mar  2  1990 fi-map.ps
Mar  2  1990 fr-map.ps
Nov  9  1990 map05-legend.ps
   Nov  9  1990 map05-netnums-1p.ps
Nov  9  1990 map05-netnums-2p.ps
   Nov  9  1990 map05-speeds-1p.ps
Nov  9  1990 map05-speeds-2p.ps
Mar 14  1990 nl-map.ps
Mar  2  1990 no-map.ps
   Nov  9  1990 nordunet.ps
May 26 20:36 us-europe.ps

4) What is included in your map?

5) How often is it updated?

6) Contact?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
ftp.pitt.edu    130.49.253.1

2) cd __________
/prepnet/maps

3) get ___________.ps
member_map_mmddyy.ps
connectivity_map_mmddyy.ps

4) What is included in your map?
   member map is the geographical locations of our members and shows
the backbone circuits; connectivity map shows how the routers are
connected and the speed of the connections

5) How often is it updated?
member map is updated each time we have a new member; connectivity
   map is updated each time a member is connected or a member changes
some configuration

6) Contact?
   kf1b+@andrew.cmu.edu
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
spot.colorado.edu   128.138.129.2

2) cd __________
   westnet

3) get ___________.ps
map.ps

4) What is included in your map?
   A logical map of Westnet, the Rocky Mountain states Internet
regional network.



5) How often is it updated?

6) Contact?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
   nisc.sesqui.net         128.241.0.84

2) cd __________
pub

3) get ___________.ps
   texas.ps

4) what is included in your map?
The combined IP topology of Sesquinet and THEnet implemented as
   a single autonomous system of Cisco routers.  No detail at the
campus level is included.

5) how often is it updated?
Whenever this topology changes.

6) Contact?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
vm.tau.ac.il            132.66.32.4

2) cd __________
   hank.400

3) get ___________.ps
ilanmap.ps

4) what is included in your map?
   The cisco router backbone in Israel, line speeds, router interfaces and
subnet addresses.  Certain headers and legends are in Hebrew.

5) how often is it updated?
Whenever this topology changes.

6) Contact?
ccyilan@technion.technion.ac.il
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
ftp.lcs.mit.edu   18.26.0.36

2) cd __________
nets

3) get ___________.ps
get {LCS,AI,MIT,NEAR}.PS

4) what is included in your map?
LCS: The lab where I work
   AI: Another lab closely connected in the same building
MIT: MIT overall (slightly out-of-date, does not have new FDDI yet)
NEAR: NEARnet, the New England Academic and Research network
(an NSFnet regional)

5) how often is it updated?

6) Contact?
map@lcs.mit.edu
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
cs.ucl.ac.uk     128.16.5.31

2) cd __________
bbn

3) get ___________.ps
icb_twb_map.ps

4) what is included in your map?
A topology map of the Terrestrial Wideband Net (twbnet) and the
International Cooperation Board Net (icbnet).

5) how often is it updated?

6) Contact?
J.Crowcroft@cs.ucl.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
nic.near.net     192.52.71.4

2) cd __________
maps

3) get ___________.ps
nearnet-topology.PS

4) what is included in your map?

5) how often is it updated?
   Weekly

6) Contact?
jcurran@nic.near.net
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
   nisc.jvnc.net   128.121.50.7

2) cd __________
nicol/MAPS

3) get ___________.ps
   JvNCnet.PS

4) What is included in your map?
Sites connected, backbone topologies, and speed of links.

5) How often is it updated?
   Monthly, at least.

6) Contact?
nisc@jvnc.net
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
   ns.nic.yorku.ca         130.63.7.3

2) cd __________
pub/york/maps

3) get ___________.ps
   ip-backbone-v3.2.ps

4) what is included in your map?

5) how often is it updated?

6) Contact?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
noc.sura.net        192.80.214.100

2) cd __________
   maps

3) get ___________.ps
noc.map.ps
directions.map.ps
geo.map.ps
   sites.map.ps

4) what is included in your map?

5) how often is it updated?

6) Contact?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
ftphost.nwnet.net       128.95.112.1

2) cd __________
   local/nwnet

3) get ___________.ps
nwnet-map.ps

4) what is included in your map?

5) how often is it updated?

6) Contact?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
   nic.es.net         128.55.32.3

2) cd __________
maps

3) get ___________.ps
   ESNET-BACKBONE-MAP.PS

4) what is included in your map?

5) how often is it updated?

6) Contact?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1) anonymous ftp name and number
nic.barrnet.net       36.56.0.151

2) cd __________
   barrnet

3) get ___________.ps
barrnet.geog.ps
barrnet.ps

4) what is included in your map?

5) how often is it updated?

6) Contact?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

new to mainframe asm

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: new to mainframe asm
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370
Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2004 14:50:09 GMT

peterh5322@aol.comminch (Peter H.) writes:
Most systems programmers can master at most one or two components (these being Task Management, I/O Supervisor, Job Management, Data Management, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera) of the S/360 OS or its successors.

It is quite rare to find someone, such as myself, who has successfully mastered all components.

from presentation i gave at Atlantic City share meeting while undergradudate:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18 CP/67 & OS MFT14

besides the pathlength stuff mentioned in the above ... one of the changes was the genesis of fair share scheduling .... which was shipped in standard cp/67 release, dropped in the initial conversion to vm/370 and then re-introduced with the resource manager:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

another undergraduate activity was the original global/clock replacement algorithm. at the time, the working set paper had just been published in ACM ... but this work differed significantly ... including the use of global replacement instead of local replacement.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

over ten years later when somebody had done their phd thesis work at stanford on clock ... there was big issue made about whether global replacement was better than local replacement (and whether or not the person should even get their phd). part of the resolution was early '70s comparison on same hardware & software base of both local and global replacement implementations (with global replacement having upwards of 300 percent better thruput compared to local replacement).

various postings about getting blamed for helping create ibm PCM controller market ... when I was undergraduate, I added tty/ascii support to the cp/67 kernel and was trying to play games with 2702 to do automatic terminal type recognition. it turns out while you could change the line-scanner with the SAD commands, they had took shortcut in 2702 and hardwired the oscillator ... so in testing, I sort of got TTYs to work on "2741" baud line. as a result, a project was started at the university that reverse engineered the ibm channel interface and built a channel board for an Interdata3 minicomputer. the interdata3 was then programmed to simulate 2702 functions ... but line baud rate was software programmable (instead of hardwired oscillator).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

Automating secure transactions

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Automating secure transactions
Newsgroups: comp.security.misc
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 03:46:44 GMT

kj writes:
I've read a fair bit about security, mostly in the areas of encryption and SSL. I have not been able to find anything specifically addressing the problem of securely writing code that must (a) run without any human supervision, and (b) must know about highly sensitive information.

first thing about writing secure code ... assume not C or any of the C derivatives ... lots of vulnerability references (including buffer exploits)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#fraud

here is recent ref might find interesting: Passwords to guard entry aren't enough to protect complex data:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-02/su-ptg021304.php

run w/o human supervision ... is frequently along the lines of various kinds of service deliverables ... where as much as possible is automated ... since people make mistakes ... including but not limited to security mistakes. I've contended that effort to take a straight line application and turn it into a service application (human free) can take ten times the (original) effort and may typically need 4-10 times as much code.

for the most part ... for a security application to understand highly sensitive information ... the information needs security labels ... and then prescribed rules relating to the various security levles ... so try search engine with things like "security label", "mandatory access control", "mandatory security policy", etc.

another source is some of NIST documents:
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/drafts.html
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/index.htm
http://csrc.nist.gov/rbac/

minor discussion of security proportional to risk:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#61

also of possibly some interest:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#42 thirty years later, lessons from the multics security evaluation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#44 thirty years later, lessons from the multics security evaluation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#45 thirty years later, lessons from the multics security evaluation

misc. refs to predominate use of SSL in the world today:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcert

security also mean things like availability in addition to confidentiality ... as well as assurance; misc. random postings on assurance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#assurance

highly dependable computing ... security, assurance, integrity, etc taken as a whole, not just intrusions or leakage of confidential information:
http://www.hdcc.cs.cmu.edu/index.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20011004023230/http://www.hdcc.cs.cmu.edu/may01/index.html

a couple notes specifically with respect to the original internet payment gateway:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn2
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn3

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

new to mainframe asm

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: new to mainframe asm
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 04:08:00 GMT

peterh5322@aol.comminch (Peter H.) writes:
Yeah ... I was employed for nearly 20 years by Amdahl Corporation.

Provided MVS software support and technical support of sales for the 470 and 580 series.

Team leader for Amdahl's first PCM introduction, the very successful 4705 series of 3705 replacements.

the PCM referenced project was started late '68 developed while undergraduate (on 360 computers):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

PCM stuff as one of the motivating factors behind FS in the early '70s (FS project was possibly also one reason Amdahl may have left and formed Amdahl); random FS threads:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
a little more overview:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#16 FS - IBM Future System

later in the '80s periodically got into difficulties with raleigh because of various HSDT activities ... random refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

and possibly a later generation 37xx replacement .. part of a presentation that I gave at an SNA ARB (architecture review board) meeting in raleigh in the 80s:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#67 System/1 ?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 14:31:48 GMT

rogblake10@iname10.com (Roger Blake) writes:
"Identity theft" is a made-up crime. When your credit card was stolen and misused it used to be called "credit card fraud." If someone went illegally into your bank account it was called "bank fraud." Now all of a sudden when this happens it's "identity theft."

there is taking information about you and doing things like opening (new) accounts in your name. that is generally considered identity theft. harvesting other kinds of information about you for fraud and misuse associated with financial accounts has generally been called account fraud (not stealing a physical credit card, but stealing information that allows a fraudulent credit transaction to be performed) ... but has also gotten lumped into identity theft ... because of the harvesting characterstic.

part of the lumping into identity theft hasn't been so much because the kinds of misuse are similar ... but because the harvesting of information is similar ... and there are efforts underway to increase the difficulty of being able to harvest such information ... generally associated with various privacy initiatives.

there are also some numbers that the non-account-fraud types of identity theft have much greater personal financial impact than does straight account fraud.

some more specific references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay12.htm#24 More on the ID theft saga

some information related to privacy initiatives ... see the notes on privacy glossary in the section:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/index.html#glosnote

more general fraud and vulnerability references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#fraud

a little topic drift regarding account information havesting and fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#61 security proportional to risk

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Using Old OS for Security

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Using Old OS for Security
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.networking,comp.security.firewalls,comp.security.misc
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 16:48:55 GMT

does this qualify:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#42 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#43 another 30 year thing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#44 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#45 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 15:36:32 GMT

jsavard@ecn.aSBLOKb.caNADA.invalid (John Savard) writes:
The international rules that prevent countries from having tariffs force them to take the second alternative to avoid a seriously negative trade balance. This is bad; it is better to have as many people working as possible, since that increases total production, and eliminates poverty.

in the early '70s ... when they were in the midst of shutting down various mills, shoe manufacturing, etc stuff in new england ... boston globe ran an article about economic planning in the early 50s in some scandanavian countries. basically the gov(s) set a standard of living goal ... and evaluated a lot of different industries and jobs as to the value of work provided. Except for some industries identified as strategic, they set out to eliminate industries and jobs where the value of the work performed was less than what was necessary to provide the target standard of living (and replace them with industries where the value of the work performed would support the target standard of living). For low-value, strategic jobs, there was specific budget set aside to supsidize people performing the low-value ... but strategic jobs (in the national interest).

The issue was work by itself, wouldn't eliminate poverty ... because there were jobs where the value of work performed was less than what was necessary to live above the poverty line. If everybody was performing such jobs ... then it would be impossible to have anybody living above the proverty line (there wouldn't be anybody performing the higher value jobs that could be taxed in order to subsidize the lower value jobs). For those performing the lower value jobs, there needs to be sufficient people performing the higher value jobs and generate enuf taxes such that the low value work can be subsidized to raise those people above the proverty line.

The issue in the boston globe article (30 years ago now) was that the US government wasn't doing explicit economic planning and setting national objectives ... like long term planning to relocate/retrain workers from lower-value jobs into higher-value jobs and for long term economic health it would be better to spend any available funds on retraining rather than trying to maintain existing status quo .. aka tariffs were delaying the industries going out of business ... but the funds from the tariffs weren't being applied to retraining the workers for new jobs.

Possibly 7-8 years later there was a somewhat complimentary article in the washington post about the japanese auto import quotas ... which called for an 100% unearned profit tax on the us automobile industry. Supposedly the import quotas removed price pressure on US autos and provided for a large increase in US automaker profitability. Supposedly that huge increase in profitability was supposed to be plowed back into totally revamping the US auto industry. The claim was instead that the profits went into salary increases and dividends (and since the industry wasn't using the unearned profits for the desired purpose, the gov. should go ahead and collect them).

In the mean time, the japanese auto industry supposedly looked at the quotas and figured out at that limit ... they could sell all high-priced cars ... rather than the low-priced cars they had been selling. This motivated them to totally revamp their industry ... and among other things cut the elapsed time to produce a new model from 7yrs to 3yrs. The japanese moving into the high priced market niche ... initially also futher reduced any downward price pressure on US cars (combination of quota and the japanese move from the low-end market to the high-end market). In some sense this was the inverse of the original purpose of the quotas ... instead of motivating a complete revamp of the US industry to make it more competitive ... it allowed them to maintain status quo and prompted foreign competition to do a complete revamp making them even more competitive.

In the abstract ... it is obvious that some job is better than no job aka the amount of subsidy needed to make up the difference between a low value jobs and the proverty line would be less than subsidy needed to bring somebody with no job to the proverty line. However, a policy of only/just having indefinite subsidies for low/no-value jobs could eventually run out of sources of funds for providing those subsidies.

As an aside, one of the japanese auto makers recently took over no. two position from Ford. part of past thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#43 Reason Japanese cars are assembled in the US (was Re: American bigotry)
part of a more recent thread on foreign competition:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#28 Offshore IT

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

origin of the UNIX dd command

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: origin of the UNIX dd command
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 14:43:35 GMT

Andrew McLaren <amclar@optusnet.n0$pam.com.au> writes:
On IBM mainframes, programs are started by "submitting" them in JCL ("Job Control language") to JES, the Job Entry System.

One of the most important statements in JCL is the DD statement. DD stands for "Data Definition". It is used to define the data (duh ;-) that is used when the job is run - input files, output files etc.

JCL has a "unique" flavour; it is utterly unlike normal programming languages and is archane, cryptic, obscure, complex and rude. It is also ugly and stupid. However there is so much JCL in the world that, hell, we still have to live with it - even after thirty years of Unix ;-).

The Unix dd command copies data from one place to another, rather like a typical DD card in a JCL stack.

JES2 was renamed from HASP ... for the Houston Asynchronous Spooling System (developed by IBM'ers on NASA/Houston account).

The "problem" was that standard unit record (card reader/printer) input/ouput to/from the job scheduler was spending all its time (synchronously) waiting for the unit record I/O. Pre-360s, with 709x/etc, a 1401 was used to perform unit record to/from tape and the tapes were moved back and forth between the 1401 and the 709x for actual execution. The university I was at ... with IBSYS monitor on 709 (all tubes) running student fortran jobs tape to tape ... could do student jobs on the order of second. Moving to early OS/360 on 360/65 ... it was taking on the order of 100 times longer for each student fortran job.

Installation of HASP cut that to on the order of 30 seconds (hasp handling the unit record i/o asynchronously to dasd/disk ... and the job scheduler doing its input/output to/from disk rather than unit record directly).

The following describes simple student fortran job stream ... with approximately 90 percent of the processing in the job scheduler ... and only minor time spent actually doing fortran compile and execution (i.e. 11.7 seconds out of 12.9 seconds total per job):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18 CP/67 and OS MFT14

Standard OS/360 system build resulted in elapsed time of approximately 30seconds per job. By extremely careful build of the system so that data on dasd/disk was very carefully ordered for optimal dasd/disk arm seek, i got the elasped time per job down from a little over 30 seconds to 12.9 seconds (over 200 percent improvement). However, this was still about 12-15 times slower than 709.

It wasn't until the university started using WATFOR monitor for student fortran jobs that elapsed time per job got to the point where it faster than what it had been on the 709. WATFOR basically was a subtasking monitor, fortran compile and execution environment. It would be started (using standard JCL and the job scheduler) and then typically be feed a whole card tray of student jobs, typically 30-100, in a single batch run. The WATFOR monitor would handle the transition between different student jobs w/o having to resort to the job scheduler, jcl processing, etc.

The reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18 CP/67 and OS MFT14

was from a presentation that I made at the fall '68, Atlantic City share meeting while an undergraduate. While it mentions the work I had done for extremely controlled OS/360 system builds for optimal placement of data on dasd/disk ... the primary focus of the presentation was on some early work I had done rewriting major portions of the CP/67 kernel to get a 80 percent cpu pathlength reduction. I had earlier done other presentations at share and guide about the "in-queue" and "careful re-ordering" os/360 sysgen builds.

In the 370 time-frame ... some number of the Houston HASP people were moved to gaithesburg to form the JES2 development group. HASP was renamed to JES2 ... but to this day there are still HASP tagged messages. The other spooling system from that time frame was ASP ... with two independent processors sharing some of the same DASD/disk. One of the processors would somewhat be dedicated to unit record I/O ... somewhat akin to the 709x/1401 condigurations but using shared dasd/disks instead of tape ... while the other processor ... typically a much faster 360 model ... would actually be performing job execution. Responsibility for ASP was eventually also transferred to the g'burg group and renamed JES3. At the time, my wife was one of the "catchers" for ASP in the g'burg group with responsibility for helping turn ASP into JES3 (this was before they con'ed her into going to POK with responsibility for loosely-coupled architecture).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

origin of the UNIX dd command

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: origin of the UNIX dd command
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 11:54:38 GMT

Charles Shannon Hendrix writes:
Some optimizations are not done now because they are impossible or no longer necessary.

Our biggest crime now is in very, very poor code quality, and tremendous resource waste.

I don't give a damn how fast the machines are, waste is waste. Also, it affects things more than people will admit even today.

in the late '70s, i started asserting that the relative system performance of disk/dasd was decreasing. this upset the disk division people and they eventually assigned the division's performance group to refute the claim. misc. ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#31 Big I/O or Kicking the Mainframe out the Door
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#6 3330 disk drives

the eventual report was that I had actually understated the decline in performance. they eventually turned the investigation into a report on guidelines about optimizing disk allocation and usage. some summary/extracts from the paper (delivered at share '84 meeting):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#46 MVS History (all parts)
other references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#40 MVS History (all parts)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#18 AS/400 and MVS - clarification please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#22 360/370 disk drives

note that the relative system performance of disk/dasd has continued to decline. basically

1) memory is being used to cache stuff to minimize disk accesses ... making careful layout of data with respect to disk geometry less of an issue.

2) accesses have had more relative performance decline than transfer rate so there is some movement to making larger and larger block tranfers (per access)

... note that larger block transfers also increases memory usage as compensating factor for declining relative system disk/dasd performance (basically expanded usage of various electronic memory for caching is being used increasingly as latency compensation technique at all levels of system design).

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Oldest running code

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Oldest running code
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 03:23:32 GMT

IBM-MAIN@ibm-main.isham-research.com (Phil Payne) writes:
I was speaking with someone at IBM earlier today about marking the 40th anniversary of the mainframe's announcement.

The idea arose to make some sort of award for the oldest piece of code that's still running.

I wrote one programme in around 1973 which I know survived into the 1990s in production - used hundreds and possibly thousands of times a day in a major datacentre.

I know there are many lurkers out there who don't like to post in public, and many more that don't post because of the Usenet gateway placing their email addresses out where the spammers can harvest them, so I'm happy to take private emails as well. SHARE participants might want to discuss this among themselves, too.

recently somewhat related posting on HASP in another n.g. from some work on hasp ... but possibly don't survive that long:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#53 origin of the UNIX dd command
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#54 origin of the UNIX dd command

does GML count as a programming language? ... possibly have some stuff from 71 or 72 ... but probably doesn't still run w/o doing some simple conversion to html

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Oldest running code

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Oldest running code
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 05:32:15 GMT

here is (CP67) CMS program written in late 60s to wait for reader interrupt ... which (hopefully) should still run. basically could be called by EXEC to wait on something arriving in the reader.


&CONTROL OFF
CP SP C CL Y
-READ DISK LOAD
&IF &RETCODE EQ 0 &SKIP 1
WAIT RDR1RDR1 
-DSKLOAD DISK LOAD
CP SP C CL A

the above CMS exec was when i found out that with a little bit of slight of hand, you could invoke CMS system calls directly from exec w/o having to write assembler routine (substituting the direct wait system call where I previously invoked my own assembler routine ... aka CMS system calls were SVC202 with list of 8byte tokens, including the name of the kernel function being invoked, in fact command lookup formed consistent search order of exec files, command files, and then kernel call). misc. past refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#2 S/360 Engineering Changes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#4 S/360 Engineering Changes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#25 Microsoft Internet Patch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#32 who invented the "popup"?


TITLE 'WAIT FOR RDR INTERUPT - CMS - '
         SPACE 2
WAITRDR  START
         SAVE  (14,12),,*
SPACE
USING WAITRDR,R11
LR    R11,R15  LOAD BASE
         LR    R6,R1          PRESERVE POINTER TO P-LIST
LA    R6,8(R6)     BUMP PAST MOD NAME
         ST    R14,R14SAVE   SAVE RETURN ADDRESS
*
HNDINT SET,(RDR1,RDRINT,00C,WAIT)
*
         WAITD RDR1
HNDINT CLR,RDR1
************************************
**  WERE DONE    RETURN            *
************************************
RETURN   DS    0H
         LA    R15,0
L     R14,R14SAVE
         BR    R14            RETURN

************************************
**  HANDLE READER INTERUPT         *
************************************
USING *,R12
RDRINT   DS    0H
LA    R15,0    SET RETURN CODE ( TELL CMS WE'RE DONE )
BR    R14   RETURN
EJECT
************************************
**  CONSTANTS                      *
************************************
R14SAVE  DC    F'0'    R14 SAVE AREA  ( RETURN ADDRESS )
FLAGS    DC    X'00'       FLAGS
REGEQU
         END   WAITRDR

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/

PLO instruction

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: PLO instruction
Newsgroups: comp.lang.asm370,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 03:42:28 GMT

"xarax" writes:
PLO: Perform Locked Operation

This instruction has absolutely nothing to do with {MVS, OS/390, z/OS} software locks (which seems to cause confusion about how PLO works).

PLO is the follow-on/enhancement to compare&swap.

charlie had come up with concept at the science center working on fine-grain smp locking. two issues then were

1) come up with instruction mnemonic that were charlie's initials (CAS) (i.e. compare&swap) and

2) the owners of the pop/architecture "redbook" (this is different than publiished redbooks, it was ox-blood red 3-ring binder that the architecture manual was published in ... sourced from CMS script file with conditionals ... the full manual was the architecture book, the principles of operation was printed from a subset of the architecture book ... parden digression, back to your regularly scheduled programming) insisted that non-SMP use was needed to provide sufficient justification to get it into 370 architecture (aka smp only wasn't sufficient justification for new instruction in 370 architecture) ... and as a result the non-smp, multi-threaded description/examples were invented and were originally part of the programming notes printed as part of the instruction description. these programming notes were then later moved to the appendix.

more detailed past discussion of the subject (including several URLs to OS390 pop pages):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#58 atomic memory-operation question

other past postings mentioning plo
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#36 What is MVS/ESA?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#16 Minimalist design (was Re: Parity - why even or odd)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#74 Everything you wanted to know about z900 from IBM

general past postings on smp &/or compare&swap:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

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

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Oldest running code

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Oldest running code
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2004 22:43:12 GMT

"Roger Bolan" writes:
IBM's Document Composition Facility is still around and supported, if you mean "Starter Set GML" or BookMaster.

i was at science center ... had part of 4th floor, 545 tech sq. with about 35 people ... three of the people were "G", "M", and "L" ... their initials gave rise to GML ... which later begat SGML, HTML, XML, FSML, SDML, and all the other markup languages. couple sgml 'history refs':
https://web.archive.org/web/20231001185033/http://www.sgmlsource.com/history/roots.htm
http://www.sil.org/sgml/sgmlhist0.html

science center also responsible for the internal network (larger than arpanet/internet until approx. mid-85) ... some random refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm
and cp67/cms (cms was originally cambridge monitor system which was changed to conversational monitor system when cp67 morphed into vm/370 ... which begate things like pr/sm, lpars, etc) ... misc cp/67, vm/370:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock
and some microcode specific references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#mcode

misc. other 4th floor, 545 tech sq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

the fine-grain locking work by charlie (also at science center) led to 370 compare&swap (cas are charlie's initials) ... recent compare&swap posting:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#57 PLO instruction

science center also did the port of apl\360 to cms for cms\apl ... and help build the hone system ... which was the world-wide support infrastructure for all the marketing, sales and field people. in 70s, when emea hdqtrs moved from ny to paris ... i hand carried system for installation at new hdqtrs location at la defense (first three bldgs had gone up, only one had been finished and landscaping was still in progress, however was able to get RER from downtown) . when japan wanted clone of the afe hdqtrs system, i hand carried installation to tokyo. misc. past apl & hone postings:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

A POX on you, Dennis Ritchie!!!

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: A POX on you, Dennis Ritchie!!!
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 17:01:22 GMT

CBFalconer writes:
Under 72 allows me to add line numbers, as in an xref listing, and still have things fit. I actually aim for 65, which avoids any line wraps in usenet postings.

a convention in days of card decks was sequence numbers in cols. 72-80, and if you ever dropped a card deck and had everything completely shuffled ... it was possible to run the shuffled cards thru a card sorter and regain the original order.

CMS shipped with an "update" command that could take a delta deck, merge the delta deck with the original source and produce a temporary file that was actually assembled/compiled.

The "update" command had control cards/records of the form:
./ i nnnnn

insert following cards/records after sequence nnnnn
./ r nnnnn <yyyyy>

replace card(s)/records(s) with sequence nnnn (through yyyyy) with following cards/records
./ d nnnnn <yyyy>

delete card(s)/record(s) with sequence nnnn (through yyyy)

i was doing so many source changes to CP kernel .. minor recent ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#47 new to mainframe asm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#53 origin of UNIX dd command

that i was getting tired of typing in the sequence numbers for the new source cards/records so I created a pre-processing utility that added the "$" which would automatically add sequence numbers to new cards ... i.e.
./ i nnnn $ <aaaa <bbb>>
./ r nnnn <yyyy> $ <aaaa <bbb>>

automatically add sequence numbers to inserted cards/records. if no number is given use default convention

the output of the sequence number utility would then be fed to the update command.

later the support for "$" convention was merged into standard cms update command.

somewhere during the period of doing the l, h, i cp/67 systems (as part of supporting 370 virtual machines on 360 hardware) minor recent ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#31 determining memory size

a set of cms execs were developed that supported cascading updates (and later released as vm/370 source update system). basically there was a CNTRL (control) file that defined the rules for finding (and order of applying) multiple update files. the original exec adopted a convention of filetype of UPDGnnnn (instead of UPDATE) ... where "nnnn" was determined by specific rules. The preprocssor then handled any "$" fields and generated a UPDTnnnn file. Each UPDTnnnn file was then run thru the UPDATE command to combine with the original source. The first such update file was applied to the original source creating a temporary file, subsequent update files were applied to the temporary file until all such update files were applied.

I had archived the whold set of exec/procedure files from CP/67 days .... replicated on three different tapes. unfortuantely all three tapes were stored in the same datacenter tape library and some glitch resulted in all three copies being scratched. minor reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#43 Historically important UNIX or computer things.....
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#44 Historically important UNIX or computer things.....
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#12 Tweaking old computers?

fortunately at some point prior to the tapes being scratched, i was asked to provide a copy of the multilevel update procedures to Melinda Varian "history" effort ... a previous thread on the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#66 History of project maintenance tools -- what and when?

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

Paging

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Paging
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2004 17:39:01 GMT

Rick.Fochtman@ibm-main.clearingcorp.com (Rick Fochtman) writes:
Our brief discussion of paging reminded me of something I pick up once upon a time. Enjoy!

i remember getting contacted about somebody from POK around 1980 on some significant enhancement that they had made to MVS paging and had gotten an enormous award for ... and they were wondering if it would be possible to make a similar enhancement to vm/370. my comment was that when I originally wrote the code in the late '60s as an undergraduate ... and i had never, not done it that way ... and so it was never necessary to correct it to make it operate in that manner. I had discussed this with the original SVS/AOS performance people in the early '70s ... but they were confident that it wasn't necessary to have such an implementation (that got me to thinking about possibility of giving negative awards with negative financial bonuses).

random past paging refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

a little drift from old vmshare posting
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=HUMOR94&ft=MEMO#1

oh and a little from original paging game distribution:


.hy off;.ju off
:h3.The Paging Game
:p.Jeff Berryman, University of British Columbia
:h4.Rules

--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | lynn@garlic.com - https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia, 20th anniv: https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

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