List of Archived Posts

2008 Newsgroup Postings (01/15 - 01/24)

on-demand computing
Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tmoorrow?
Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
on-demand computing
folklore indeed
folklore indeed
Science and Engineering Indicators 2008
Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
on-demand computing
folklore indeed
folklore indeed
folklore indeed
Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
Education ranking
on-demand computing
Flash memory arrays
Flash memory arrays
Flash memory arrays
Flash memory arrays
Yahoo's CAPTCHA Security Reportedly Broken
folklore indeed
Financial Analytics in E-Commerce: Starting to Take Shape
folklore indeed
Yahoo's CAPTCHA Security Reportedly Broken
folklore indeed
Flash memory arrays
folklore indeed
Re-hosting IMB-MAIN
No Glory for the PDP-15
MapReduce - a Major Step Backwards?
MapReduce - a Major Step Backwards?
How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
windows time service
windows time service
Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
windows time service
Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
What do YOU call the # sign?
folklore indeed
windows time service
folklore indeed
windows time service
IT managers stymied by limits of x86 virtualization
China's Godson-2 processor takes center stage
windows time service
Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?
How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
windows time service
How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
China's Godson-2 processor takes center stage
folklore indeed
windows time service
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Govt demands password to personal computer
How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
Geekonomics: The Real Cost of Insecure Software
40 yrs of cp67 and cms
How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
Govt demands password to personal computer
How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
Govt demands password to personal computer
Govt demands password to personal computer
How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
Wheeler Postings
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Govt demands password to personal computer
Is The Government Reselling Tapes With Sensitive Data?
Too much change opens up financial fault lines
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?
Move over US -- China to be new driver of world's economy and innovation
Did early Oracle run on the IBM mainframe?
1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Did early Oracle run on the IBM mainframe?
Break the rules of governance and lose 4.9 billion

on-demand computing

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: on-demand computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:06:44
mainframes has been doing something like this for sometime

The Economics of Chips With Many Cores
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/15/0322207&threshold=-1
Core Economics
http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/2013733.html

from above:
In the current model, customers buy systems containing processors that satisfy the average or worst-case computation needs of their applications. This means when the application requirements change, either the user has to live with the pain of a performance mismatch or go through the expense of purchasing new systems (or new chips) to realign system performance with the applications. Sloan and Rakesh argue that as the number of cores increase, matching the performance needs with applications becomes increasingly difficult and the associated cost of buying unused computing power becomes more prohibitive.

... snip ...

somewhat related ... past multiprocessor posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

misc. past multicore posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#60 Will multicore CPUs have identical cores?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#64 Will multicore CPUs have identical cores?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#65 Will multicore CPUs have identical cores?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#66 Will multicore CPUs have identical cores?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#68 Will multicore CPUs have identical cores?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#14 Multicores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#21 Multicores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#22 Multicores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#14 Would multi-core replace SMPs?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#16 Would multi-core replace SMPs?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#22 Would multi-core replace SMPs?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#0 DASD Response Time (on antique 3390?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#19 Very slow booting and running and brain-dead OS's?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#21 Very slow booting and running and brain-dead OS's?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#24 Curiousity: CPU % for COBOL program
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#27 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#31 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#32 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#34 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#36 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#41 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#42 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#43 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#49 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#50 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#0 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#6 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#7 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#8 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#9 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#10 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#21 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#43 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#46 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#2 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#10 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#11 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#12 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#13 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#15 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#16 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#17 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#18 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#19 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#27 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#28 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#31 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#2 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#3 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#5 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#6 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#9 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#17 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#35 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#3 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#57 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#13 Why so little parallelism?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#10 Beyond multicore
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#3 University rank of Computer Architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#78 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#30 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#15 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#19 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#38 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#42 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#60 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#63 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#2 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#8 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#29 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#28 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#55 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#44 complicated address generation unit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#22 Faster Chips Are Leaving Programmers in Their Dust

Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:28:06
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
for some other topic drift

Yes, The Tech Skills Shortage Is Real; The IT skills famine plaguing the United States is only going to get worse.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205900413

from above:

The growth in IT-related positions is driven by new opportunities to leverage technology in the organization, and by businesses recognizing the impact that IT can have on revenue. Another important factor contributing to the growth in demand for IT talent is beginning to appear in news headlines: "By 2010, 40% of the U.S. workforce is set to retire." The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that in 2010, there will be 52% more people in the 55-to-64 age bracket than there were in that age group in 2000. Organizations will face significant knowledge loss because of retirements over the coming decade.

... snip ...


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#73 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

The Looming CIO Shortage
http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1397,2103333,00.asp

from above:
A shortage of qualified chief information officers looms in the next few years. Growing demand for CIOs is not being offset by an increasing supply of talented, well-prepared executives, according to a just-released report, "Grooming the 2010 CIO," written for the Society for Information Management Advance Practices Council.

... snip ...

The New IT Worker Shortage; Supply of talented IT staffers isn't keeping up with demand. And it won't change anytime soon.
http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1540,2248193,00.asp

from above:
A record 3.76 million workers in the U.S. held IT jobs last year, according to a CIO Insight analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That's a whopping 8.5 percent increase from 2006. The rapid growth in employment lowered last year's IT unemployment rate to 2.1 percent, from 2.5 percent in 2006, the lowest level recorded since the government redefined IT occupations in 2000.

... snip ...

Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:59:45
lists@KCATS.ORG (Michael Stack) writes:
This appeared yesterday:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205900413

Nearly 70% of middle school teachers lack education and certification in mathematics, let alone computer and business skills, the National Center for Education finds.


this and other aspects/posts in similar thread in a.f.c
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#44 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#46 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#56 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#57 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#68 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#73 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#87 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#90 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#1 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

on-demand computing

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: on-demand computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 14:40:28
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
The Economics of Chips With Many Cores
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/15/0322207&threshold=-1
Core Economics
http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/2013733.html

from above:
In the current model, customers buy systems containing processors that satisfy the average or worst-case computation needs of their applications. This means when the application requirements change, either the user has to live with the pain of a performance mismatch or go through the expense of purchasing new systems (or new chips) to realign system performance with the applications. Sloan and Rakesh argue that as the number of cores increase, matching the performance needs with applications becomes increasingly difficult and the associated cost of buying unused computing power becomes more prohibitive.


... snip ...

another piece mentioning of multi-core processing (one of the latest buzzwords)

Accelerating Wall Street
http://wallstreetandtech.com/accelerate/

from above:
With data latency now measured at sub second intervals, message volume exploding and more demand than ever for new and innovative trading products, technology organizations are turning to the fastest and newest technologies in order to stay ahead of the markets. Hardware acceleration, multi-core processing, complex event processing, grid computing and virtualization technologies are front and center in Wall Street's battle to lower latency, analyze real-time data and power the latest trading systems.

... snip ...

and somewhat related article mentioning straight-through processing (STP):

Annuities Carriers Cooperate On NAVA STP Initiative To Improve Service Levels
http://www.financetech.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208803123

from above:
Processing time is widely viewed as a major roadblock to success in the annuities business, especially as it relates to the influx of business opportunities presented by the retirment of baby boomers. To overcome the challenge, insurance carriers are collaborating through the National Association for Variable Annuities (NAVA) to develop and implement straight-through processing (STP) standards to improve service levels for distributors and potential investors. The Reston, Va.-based industry group is seeking to eliminate the "artificial administrative barriers" that slow the new-business process for annuities, explains Rob Dearman, assistant VP of broker-dealer and registered investment advisers systems, Jackson National Life ($80 billion in assets).

... snip ...

misc. past posts mentioning straight-through processing:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm19.htm#46 the limits of crypto and authentication
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm20.htm#20 ID "theft" -- so what?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#12 The Worth of Verisign's Brand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#13 The Worth of Verisign's Brand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#17 The Worth of Verisign's Brand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#21 The Worth of Verisign's Brand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#37 More Phishing scams, still no SSL being used
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#40 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#10 A way to speed up level 1 caches
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#15 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#36 Future of System/360 architecture?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#3 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#5 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#19 Distributed Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#44 Distributed Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#61 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#19 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#64 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#81 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers

folklore indeed

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:57:00
cb@mer.df.lth.se (Christian Brunschen) writes:
Precisely. Therefore it doesn't matter whether the system supports the concept of multiple users.

there actually can be an extremely important distinctions having to do with permissions ... which can then lead to how susceptible such an infrastructure is to compromises.

multitasking can be totally orthogonal to authentication, authorization, and permissions. except for the most trivial demo systems, multiple user support infrastructure would imply extremely robust authentication, authorization, and permission infrastructures.

another week ... and its been 40yrs since i started on virtual machine, multiple user, timesharing systems.

while undergraduate, over the next two yrs i had done quite a large amount of kernel changes.

this references some of the kind of institutions making use of the product back then
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

this post makes reference to not being aware of these institutions use until much later
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#8 Dearth of antivirus software imminent

... but getting corporate requests for specific kinds of enhancements ... and years later suspecting where some of the enhancement requests were originating ... and more recently observing that some of the current systems still aren't addressing some of the issues that i was asked to implement nearly 40yrs ago.

recent posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#2 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#4 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#5 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#7 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#8 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#9 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#88 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#89 folklore indeed

folklore indeed

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:41:47
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#4 folklore indeed

for slightly related topic drift in the area of permissions and role of chief security architect:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#7 Hypervisors May Replace Operating Systems As King Of The Data Center

Science and Engineering Indicators 2008

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Science and Engineering Indicators 2008
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 21:46:54
somewhat followup
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#57 Computers Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

released today:

Science and Engineering Indicators 2008
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=110984&org=NSF&from=news

from above:
In addition to SEI'08, the Board, concerned that the data revealed disturbing trends with serious policy implications, published a companion piece, Research and Development: Essential Foundation for U.S. Competitiveness in a Global Economy.

... snip ...

the report
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind08/

the previous report that i've referenced in the past
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind06/

another reference:

More than half of H-1B visas go to India nationals U.S. report notes "slow shift of the epicenter of the world economic growth" to Asia
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9057398

....

recent posts in the previous thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#44 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#46 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#56 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#68 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#73 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#87 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#90 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#1 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#2 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

and other recent posts in related threads:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#39 competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#52 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#55 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#60 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#62 competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#81 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#83 Education ranking

Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 21:57:30
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#2 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

and related new post ... also in a.f.c ... about newly published report announced by nsf today
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#6 Science and Engineering Indicators 2008

on-demand computing

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: on-demand computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:14:36
krw <krw@att.bizzzzz> writes:
In the '90s IBM was at least planning to "meter" MIPS. I'm not sure it ever came about (I left the group before the CMOS processors were built) but the idea was to have a 10-CPU module with all but the CPUs being paid for disabled. If a customer had need for more MIPS he could call the "war room" and pay more to have additional processors turned on for perhaps the next month. It was all managed through the Integrated CRypto Facility.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#0 on-demand computing

some overview of "capacity on demand"
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/scope/hw/topic/ipha2/kickoff.htm

capacity on demand offerings
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/scope/hw/topic/ipha2/codofferings.htm

there are some complaints in the mainframe discussion groups seems to be that various billings (including numerous software applications) are based on (peak) processing capacity for something like month periods (that doesn't address well various periodic computing crunches, i.e. end-of-month, end-of-quarter, end-of year, etc)

On/Off Capacity on Demand for System z
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/swprice/zipla/oocod.html

search engine turns up some amount of references to on-demand management frequently being related to virtualization capabiilties.

one of the 4341 cluster&distributed computing comparisons vis-a-vis pok & 3033 in the early 80s ... was that it was significantly easier for enterprises to justify and deploy incremental 4341s (than 3033s). this theme was also later adopted by (departmental) workstation and pc server businesses. part of "on-demand" scenarios were to address some of the opportunities/barriers related to these customer difficulties

old 43xx related email from the period
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx

folklore indeed

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:31:29
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
an issue is to be able to dynamically adapt the quantity of resources being allocated (per event) to the type of work being performed. misc. past posts mentioning dynamic adaptive resource management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare


and now for something completely different:

Multiprocessing with the Completely Fair Scheduler
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-cfs/?ca=dgr-lnxw03CFC4Linux

from above:
The Completely Fair Scheduler tries to run the task with the "gravest need" for CPU time; this helps to assure that every process gets its fair share of CPU. CFS does not consider a task to be a sleeper if it sleeps for "very" short time -- short sleeper might be entitled to some bonus time, but never more than it would have had it not slept.

... snip ...

now what i was doing as an undergraduate in the 60s (later came to be called fair share scheudler) was dynamic adaptive resource management where the default resource management policy was fair share. it also attempted to dynamically "schedule to" the resource bottleneck (i.e. attempting to dynamically adjust scheduling policy to the system resources representing the primary thruput bottlenecks).

folklore indeed

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 09:08:32
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Timesharing is an idea whose time has come ... and gone. Think back about forty years, to OS/360 MVT. This was a true multitasking system (the "T"), without any timesharing capabilities at all, initially. All access was batch. Later timesharing was added in the form of TSO: one of the tasks the system ran was a terminal monitor program which provided interactive access to the system.

Most timesharing systems originated the other way, starting with interactive and adding batch as an afterthought, if at all. I don't think there's a pure batch system left anywhere today.

OTOH, although all systems today have timesharing-like capabilities, the normal mode of operation is for each person to have his/her own computer. Multiple logins to a single shared computer is less common.


one of the other differences was that a lot of multitasking implementations have been cooperative ... where when a task gives up control for some reason (like waiting for i/o), the system runs some other task.

a lot of timesharing has been preemptive scheduling ... where a task may be interrupted while running ... and the system switches to some other task (even tho the running task didn't voluntarily give up control). timesharing has also implied interactive computing ... where preemptive scheduling was used to provide good response to trivial interactive operations.

many systems implemented preemptive scheduling poorly and/or inefficiently ... as a result, lots of interactive timesharing systems had recommendations of operating at much lower than full resource utilization ... frequently fifty percent or less ... providing lots of headroom for handling asynchronous interactive requests. this also affected being able to handle lots of resource intensive batch operations concurrently with interactive workload.

by contrast ... i had gotten very efficient preemptive scheduling for my resource manager
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

... and as a result, systems (with my resource manager) frequently ran at one hundred percent processor utilization w/o degrading responsiveness for trivial interactive operations.

misc. recent posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#4 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#5 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#7 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#8 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#9 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#88 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#89 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#3 on-demand computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#4 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#5 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#8 on-demand computing

folklore indeed

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 09:56:43
Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
Timesharing is an idea whose time has come ... and gone. Think back about forty years, to OS/360 MVT. This was a true multitasking system (the "T"), without any timesharing capabilities at all, initially. All access was batch. Later timesharing was added in the form of TSO: one of the tasks the system ran was a terminal monitor program which provided interactive access to the system.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#10 folklore indeed

TSO crafted ontop of MVT was basically subsystem approach ala CICS with somewhat different command set. Some amount of TSO work was "edit" preparation of batch jobstream ... which would then be submitted (from TSO) for standard batch processing (sort of simulated card deck preparation).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#89 folklore indeed

a large subset of virtual machine capability has been pushed down into machine hardware as "LPARS" ... including timesharing the separate virtual machines ... and the LPARS operate independently whether or not there is any separate software virtual machine system running in the complex. A vast majority of traditional mainframe batch system now operate in these LPAR virtual machines (along with the necessary timesharing going on in the underlying hardware). a couple recent posts mentioning LPARs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#42 Inaccurate CPU% reported by RMF and TMON
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#49 IBM LCS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#50 IT managers stymied by limits of x86 virtualization

for other topic drift ... past hardware multitasking with real-time capability were mainframes implementing "integrated channels" (and sometimes "integrated controllers"). the native processor engine would be microcode with 360/370 instruction set. the native processor engine would also have "integrated channel" microcode "multitasking" on the same hardware (which frequently had real-time execution constraints). Some configurations even included "integrated device controllers" ... i.e. instead of customer buying an independent disk controller box ... the function would be implemented as multitasking feature of the processor engine that was also executing standard mainframe instructions.

an example was the 370/158 which had feature supporting six "integrated channels". i've posted before that after cancellation of the future system effort
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

there was mad rush attempting to get stuff into the 370 product pipeline (both hardware and software). part of that was the 303x processors (3031, 3032, 3033).

The 3031 was two repackaged 370/158 processors ... one of the processors was the 3031 mainframe processor (w/o the intergrated channel microcode) and the other processor was a "channel director" (with the integrated channel microcode but w/o the mainframe instruction set microcode).

The 3032 was repackage 370/168 with up to three "channel directors".

The 3033 started out as 370/168 wiring ... remapped to newer (faster) chip technology ... along with up to three "channel directors"

Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 20:43:19
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
on one of the tv business news shows just asked why hasn't there been better "risk management 101" (and is the current problem, leadership, technology, and/or understanding).

recent posts with references to risk management technology:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#66 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#70 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#71 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#78 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#90 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

article from today:

CDO Correlation: Reversal of Fortune; New Kamakura Study Proves Common CDO Assumptions Can Lead to Serious Valuation Errors
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=811168

from above:
"The former Chief Executive Officers of Citigroup and Merrill Lynch certainly understand now that an increase in correlated defaults is bad for the equity holders," said Warren Sherman, Kamakura President and Chief Operating Officer, "but CDO market participants have long held the opposite view when it comes to the equity tranche of the 'mini-bank' called a CDO. This new study shows that an increase in correlated defaults can be either good or bad for the equity tranche. It is absolutely critical from a corporate governance and risk management point of view that the true risk of the CDO tranche owner is measured correctly. In the current environment, modeling techniques that restrict the user to a set of unrealistic assumptions pose a serious danger to both the institutions who own the CDO and to the analysts that employ them, as job losses all over Wall Street in recent weeks have proven."

... snip ...

repeat from earlier post:

How Conventional CDO Analytics Missed the Mark
http://www.bobsguide.com/guide/news/2007/Dec/20/Kamakura_Releases_Study:_How_Conventional_CDO_Analytics_Missed_the_Mark.html

again from above:
"Two years ago the Wall Street Journal in a page 1 story pointed out the dangers in relying on the copula approach for CDO valuation, but investors were slow to realize the magnitude of their model risk"

... snip ...

for other topic drift on the current situation ... something other than risk modeling (software):

Regulation game, Would Glass-Steagall save the day from credit woes?
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/would-glass-steagall-save-day-credit/story.aspx?guid={3AA33D85-AD38-41B4-B300-033235B5734A}

from above:
Sept 7, 2007

Time was when banks and brokerages were separate entities, banned from uniting for fear of conflicts of interest, a financial meltdown, a monopoly on the markets, all of these things.

In 1999, the law banning brokerages and banks from marrying one another -- the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 -- was lifted, and voila, the financial supermarket has grown to be the places we know as Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, et al.


... snip ...

now the following is from the 1st half of 2007 ... before the current crisis really started to come to the forefront.

Safety, Soundness, and the Evolution of the U.S. Banking Industry
http://www.frbatlanta.org/invoke.cfm?objectid=1052D9AD-5056-9F12-12F259CCE0B2A5D4&method=display_body

from above:
Although the banking system appears to be safer and sounder today than it was two decades ago, new risk challenges have arisen that could not have been anticipated in the 1980s. This article outlines the fundamental structural changes in the U.S. commercial banking industry since then.

... snip ...

Education ranking

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Education ranking
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 22:05:41
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
If Dresden is like most of the former GDR, probably the centre is rebuilt, with the rest depressing utilitarian workers highrises. Looking at roadworks in Germany, with rubble from the bombing filling in, makes one get a severe dislike of war.

i was in dresden a few years ago ... part of walk thru of a brand new fab on the outskirts of town ... somewhat related to aads chip strawman and eal4+ evaluation issues
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

walkthru included bunny suit ... old refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#32 What is microcode?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#57 DEC's Hudson fab
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#59 ANN: Microsoft goes Open Source
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#75 Poll: oldest computer thing you still use

a couple weeks later they had a "100-year flood" ... a reference here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_European_floods

wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden

stayed a couple blocks from the river and the bridge. across the street there was large lot ... with pieces of cathedral all around the lot ... appeared to be large restoration project.

I have some recollection near the bridge was part of wall from old roman garrison.

on-demand computing

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: on-demand computing
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 01:47:12
krw <krw@att.bizzzzz> writes:
In the '90s IBM was at least planning to "meter" MIPS. I'm not sure it ever came about (I left the group before the CMOS processors were built) but the idea was to have a 10-CPU module with all but the CPUs being paid for disabled. If a customer had need for more MIPS he could call the "war room" and pay more to have additional processors turned on for perhaps the next month. It was all managed through the Integrated CRypto Facility.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#0 on-demand computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#3 on-demand computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#8 on-demand computing

dating back as far ... similar kinds of approaches have been directed to related form of on-demand digital content ... i.e. anti-piracy and/or DRM (digital rights management) for software, music, video, etc.

misc. past posts mentioning (software) "on-demand" (aka anti-piracy and/or DRM)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm The Thread Between Risk Management and Information Security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay10.htm#18 FC: European Commission considers mandatory digital rights management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay12.htm#28 Carnegie Mellon to host first US-based intl'l conference on electronic commerce
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#63 Intertrust, Can Victor Shear Bring Down Microsoft?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#24 Microsoft Ties Security to Verisign
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#66 2007: year in review
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#55 Beware, Intel to embed digital certificates in Banias
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#8 On smartcards and card readers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#51 Security via hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#59 Peter Gutmann Rips Windows Vista Content Protection
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#30 Apple files patent for WGA-style anti-piracy tech
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#37 Apple files patent for WGA-style anti-piracy tech
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#61 Apple files patent for WGA-style anti-piracy tech

and as mentioned in previous posts, there is some cross-over between anti-piracy/DRM, risk management, and information security ... for additional topic drift, recent posts mentioning risk management:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#66 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#70 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#71 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#78 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#90 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

Flash memory arrays

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Flash memory arrays
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 02:00:42
edgould1948@COMCAST.NET (Ed Gould) writes:
You have hit it the head. We had a unit that emulated a 2305 (don't remember which model) it worked well ..... except when we had a power failure. Then at power up *EVERYTHING* was gone. We had to analyze it and put a vtoc back and then redefine PLPA and then IPL again to get the system to use it. I think my hair started to go gray because of the blasted machine. It was gone within a month.

Oh, yes we had an application that *NEEDED* (well at least they thought they did) the 2305. In the month that it was going out, we got the applications people to use VIO. They were extremely happy and that was the end of the beast. If the machine survives through a power blink then I would reconsider it but it would take a lot to do so.


there were STC solid state ... and for internal datacenters there was something referred to as a "1655" (several hundred) from a vendor that was using memory chips that had failed normal acceptance tests ... but could still be used in this manner. they were most commingly used as paging devices and so not surviving power failure wasn't an issue.

they were surplanted by 3090 expanded storage (and later really large real memory) and disk controller electronic caches (initially 3880-11 and 3880-13).

old email discussing 2305, 1655, and stc electronic disk comparison:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#email820805

old posts mentioning 1655, 3880-11, and/or 3880-13:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#13 4341 was "Is a VAX a mainframe?"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#18 Disk caching and file systems. Disk history...people forget
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#17 database (or b-tree) page sizes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001d.html#68 I/O contention
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#53 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#54 mainframe question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#63 MVS History (all parts)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#31 index searching
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#55 Storage Virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#17 AS/400 and MVS - clarification please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#40 Do any architectures use instruction count instead of timer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#3 PLX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#52 ''Detrimental'' Disk Allocation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#7 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#15 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#17 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#55 HASP assembly: What the heck is an MVT ABEND 422?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003f.html#5 Alpha performance, why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#39 S/360 undocumented instructions?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#73 DASD Architecture of the future
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#3 Expanded Storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#13 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#17 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#18 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#20 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#29 FW: Looking for Disk Calc program/Exec
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#5 He Who Thought He Knew Something About DASD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#28 IBM's mini computers--lack thereof
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005m.html#30 Massive i/o
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#51 winscape?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#50 non ECC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#38 Is VIO mandatory?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#1 Multiple address spaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#8 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#46 Hercules 3.04 announcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#45 using 3390 mod-9s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#46 using 3390 mod-9s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#41 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#11 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#14 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#57 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#36 REAL memory column in SDSF
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#30 Why magnetic drums was/are worse than disks ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#32 Why magnetic drums was/are worse than disks ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#31 MB to Cyl Conversion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#35 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#0 old discussion of disk controller chache
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#12 Special characters in passwords was Re: RACF - Password rules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#23 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#2 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#38 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#42 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#59 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#60 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#26 Tom's Hdw review of SSDs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#9 Poster of computer hardware events?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#4 Remembering the CDC 6600

Flash memory arrays

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Flash memory arrays
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:24:13
cfmpublic@NS.SYMPATICO.CA (Clark Morris) writes:
Au contraire. My USB key is FBA formatted in 512 byte sectors (I think it is one of the FAT formats available to Win 98 or earlier). FBA is oriented to both disk and even more so, solid state. There are a number of limitations in CKD that will be painful to eliminate and even if they are we are still left with a KLUDGE for which the phase out should have started 25 years ago.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#15 Flash memory arrays

i offered well over 25 yrs ago (i.e. 3370 fba). The response i got back from the data management group was that (at the time) it would still cost $26m for training, education, documentation, etc ... even if i provided fully integrated and tested implementation. the claim was that i wouldn't be able to show the necessary ROI for the $26m since customers would just buy the equivalent in fba that they would have ben spent on ckd (no incremental revenue ... and therefor no ROI). the issues about life-cycle costs with regard to maintaining ckd (and life-cycle savings converting to fba) were discounted.

other posts mentioning ckd, fba, multi-track search, etc.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dasd

one of the first "costs" was trying to get some of the eckd kludge to work for various things ... like speed-matching buffer (aka 3880 supporting attaching 3380 3mbyte datastreaming, to 168/3033 1.5mbyte channels). a couple recent posts on the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#40 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#54 mainframe performance, was Is a RISC chip more expensive?

including this old email reference, mentioning problems getting eckd for speed-matching buffer working
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#email820907b

Flash memory arrays

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Flash memory arrays
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:15:50
John.Mckown@HEALTHMARKETS.COM (McKown, John) writes:
Only z/OS is stuck on ECKD formatted DASD. z/VM and z/VSE can both run on FBA. z/LINUX can run on FBA and/or on SAN/SCSI DASD. I think that the latest z/VM can also run on SAN/SCSI connected DASD as well. z/OS remains the hold out. For whatever reason that may be.

there have enormous problems with ckd (and/or trying to get eckd kludge to compensate for the problems).

part of it is configuration support ... i.e. device geometry configuration issues are essentially non-existent in platforms supporting fba ... especially vis-a-vis all the stuff that is periodically seen here just on various 3390 model & associated geometry problems.

another have been speed-matching ... mentioned in previous post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#16 Flash memory arrays

and/or latency issues.

in the same time-frame i originally offered FBA support ... i had also done a channel-extender project for the IMS group in STL. STL was bursting at the seams ... and they needed to move 300 from the IMS group to remote off-site location. The problem was that they deemed that the remote 3270 CMS interactive response was (totally) unacceptable compared to what they were getting from local 3270 CMS within the STL bldg. The solution was to get CMS local 3270 terminals (for the IMS group) at the remote site (with local CMS 3270 response) back to the vm370 machines in the stl bldg. This was accomplished with channel extender (from network systems corporation) running over T1 (1.5mbit) link.

An unexpected side-effect of this effort ... was not only did the IMS group continue to get local 3270 CMS interactive response ... but the channel extender actually improved overall system thruput and performance. The issue was that these were 168/3033 16 channel systems ... where the 3270 control units and disk controllers were spread out over common channel pool. The problem was that the 3270 control units had extremely high channel busy time for the operations they were performing ... which was interferring with disk thruput activity. The local 3270 control units were moved to remote site and replaced on local channel interface with the channel extended boxes ... which had significantly lower channel busy overhead (for the same operations). The resulting reduced channel busy overhead (getting 3270 control units off local channels), improved overall system performance by 10-15percent.

Basically, I could pretty trivially support almost any kind of direct channel controller at the remote site ... except for count-key-dasd ... even tho the associated "speed-matching" mismatch for the channel extender was much larger than the factor of two times that later was being dealt with trying to attach 3mbyte 3380s on 370 1.5mbyte channels ... aka channel-extender local 1mbyte devices running over 1.5mbit T1 connection ... nearly a factor of ten speed-match difference compared to the factor of two speed-match difference for 3880 speed-match implementation. ... again, past posts mentioning fba, ckd, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dasd

getting local 3270 cms terminal thruput for the IMS group was one of the early efforts in the hsdt effort
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

Flash memory arrays

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Flash memory arrays
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:35:56
cfmpublic@NS.SYMPATICO.CA (Clark Morris) writes:
There obviously would have to be a co-existence period where both architectures are supported. VSAM is already FBA as are all of the newer data architectures. The challenges will be spool, providing GDG like capability to the VSAM ESDS, moving PDSE read access to the Nucleus and deciding how to provide the current SYS1.NUCLEUS capability. Maybe the MVS people should humble themselves and talk to the VM and VSE people to find out how they solved the problem.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#15 Flash memory arrays
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#16 Flash memory arrays
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#17 Flash memory arrays

next week is 40yrs since i started on virtual machines ... i.e. three people had come out from the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

to install (virtual machine) cp67 at the university (i had already been doing optimization work on os/360 for a couple yrs).

From the original implementation in the mid-60s, both cp67 and cms had been logical fba ... even when using ckd dasd ... which effectively hasn't changed .. and subsequently made it trivial to support real fba (3310 & 3370) devices.

Yahoo's CAPTCHA Security Reportedly Broken

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Yahoo's CAPTCHA Security Reportedly Broken
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:21:29
latest in the CAPTCHA saga, this post from 12/17:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#2 folklore indeed

Yahoo's CAPTCHA Security Reportedly Broken
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205917108

from above:
Yahoo may soon see a surge in spam coming from Yahoo Mail accounts.

"John Wane," who identifies himself as a Russian security researcher, has posted software that he claims can defeat the CAPTCHA system Yahoo uses to prevent automated registration of free Yahoo Mail accounts.


... snip ...

other posts mentioning captcha
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#20 Dumb anti-MITM hacks / CAPTCHA application
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#3 Request for comments - anti-phishing approach
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#66 folklore indeed

folklore indeed

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:22:26
Walter Bushell <proto@oanix.com> writes:
You would allow the designation of the Macintosh OS(e)X as multiuser and multitasking because while basically one person at a time uses the machine, it allows several people with different access rights to exist.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#4 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#9 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#10 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#11 folklore indeed

current mac os is derived from mach ... a lot of which had come out of work at cmu. it was originally used in next ... before coming to apple.

part of the issue is that most of the kernels that originated from personal computer genre didn't have the ingrained concept of multiple users and protection domains ... from the very foundation. i've frequently claimed that to get this correct ... it has to be assumed as a fundamental principle in the basic/original design ... and it is very difficult (and frequently will have holes and deficiencies) to craft it on afterwards. from a security and integrity standpoint ... the results will typically be much better by going with a platform that starts out as inherently multiuser and adapting it for personal computing ... than attempting the reverse.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#7 Hypervisors May Replace Operating Systems As King Of The Data Center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#5 folklore indeed

i've mentioned before that both ibm and dec had equally funded project athena at mit ... one of the things out of athena was kerberos
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#kerberos

but ibm also funded andrew activities at cmu (equivalent to the combined ibm and dec funding of athena at mit). i've joked before that they may have payed for camelot/transarc three times (once in the original cmu funding, once with the investment in the spin-off, and once buying it outright).

a mach history ... with some early beginnings:
http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/microkernel/mach/history/

from above:
Now enters the UNIX war.

UNIX was owned by AT&T which controlled the market almost completely. Industry giants such as IBM, DEC and H got together and formed the Open Software Foundation, OSF. In an effort to conquer market share, OSF took the Mach 2.5 release and made it the OSF/1 system. By that time Mach contained a lot of BSD and AT&T code but the OSF hoped that it would be able to take control of the rudder with OSF/1. What happens after that is a story better told by someone else ...


... snip ...

http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/display/4-5-apple.htm

from above:
1988: Next unveils its innovative workstation computer which is the first computer using erasable optical disks as the primary mass storage device. The operating system is based on the CMU Mach version of UNIX, but has pleasant graphical interface. Quality output is produced by using postscript as the presentation format. 1988: IBM licenses Next's graphics user interface.

... snip ...

also from above:
1996: Steve Jobs rejoins Apple as interim CEO. 1996: Apple buys what is left of NeXT for $400M. 2001: OS X announced, based on UNIX and the NeXT software.

... snip ...

http://ezine.daemonnews.org/200104/bsd_family.html

from above:
After leaving Apple Computer in the 1980s, Steve Jobs founded a new computer company, with a new mind set: NeXT[1]. NeXT's operating system, NeXTStep, was an object-oriented operating system based on Carnegie-Mellon's Mach microkernel architecture, which was in turn based on the 4.2BSD release from the University of California. On top of Mach, NeXT implemented a Unix-like operating system called NeXTStep and replaced MIT's X Windows System with a new graphical interface called Display Postscript. Display Postscript allowed for very fine control of the desktop and graphical environment, however it never caught on outside of NeXT systems.

... snip ...

and ...
MacOS X is a new operating system which has used code from many sources. The base is an updated version of Mach from CMU. On top of it is a microkernel-based BSD system similar to the one used in NeXTStep. All around, features from previous versions of MacOS have been incorporated to maintain compatibility with legacy applications. The Unix-land user utilities were derived from FreeBSD and NetBSD. Additionally, new interfaces, such as Aqua allow a new generation of programs to be created on this operating system.

... snip ...

Financial Analytics in E-Commerce: Starting to Take Shape

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Financial Analytics in E-Commerce: Starting to Take Shape
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:47:34
for other (computer) analytics drift:

Financial Analytics in E-Commerce: Starting to Take Shape
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/emarketing/61239.html?welcome=1200613179

from above:
"The new analytics products work with new information formats, such as items found on blogs, as well as traditional data sources, such as information stored in databases," said David Schehr, research director at Gartner. E-commerce companies may find they could correlate information, such as Web customer reviews, to product sales.

... snip ...

a few recent posts mentioning (computer) analytics:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#66 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#70 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#71 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

old posts about what has since frequently come to be called e-commerce
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

folklore indeed

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:06:36
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:

http://ezine.daemonnews.org/200104/bsd_family.html

from above:

After leaving Apple Computer in the 1980s, Steve Jobs founded a new computer company, with a new mind set: NeXT[1]. NeXT's operating system, NeXTStep, was an object-oriented operating system based on Carnegie-Mellon's Mach microkernel architecture, which was in turn based on the 4.2BSD release from the University of California. On top of Mach, NeXT implemented a Unix-like operating system called NeXTStep and replaced MIT's X Windows System with a new graphical interface called Display Postscript. Display Postscript allowed for very fine control of the desktop and graphical environment, however it never caught on outside of NeXT systems.

... snip ...


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#20 folklore indeed

somewhat overlapping the NeXT activity, apple had started a new project to build a new object-oriented operating system from the ground up ... called "pink". this was somewhat the rage at the time ... since sun was also doing one called "spring".

"pink" never made it ... but some of it showed up in the taligent object-oriented gui environment.

there are some issues regarding integrity and business critical dataprocessing that can be considered independent of multitasking and multiuser. multiuser can frequently be considered to included permissions and protection ... but the robustness of the implementation can vary quite a bit (as well as the level of integrity actually provided).

lots of past posts about integrity and security related to use of C programming language
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#overflow

we had to do a lot of integrity and security work as well as industrial strength and business critical dataprocessing related to what has since come to be called e-commerce
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

some of the work never actually deployed ... so there is sort of list of known vulnerabilities ... but others did; recent post mentioning "compensating procedures" for industrial strength dataprocessing:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#37 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

in any case, we had a one week JAD with taligent ... focusing on how much work would have to be done on the taligent base to add support for industrial strength dataprocessing (aka approx. 1/3rd new code specific for industrial strength dataprocessing features and approx. hit to 1/3rd of all existing code).

recent post discussing some of this:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#46 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

Yahoo's CAPTCHA Security Reportedly Broken

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Yahoo's CAPTCHA Security Reportedly Broken
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:29:02
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#19 Yahoo's CAPTCHA Security Reportedly Broken

so are the CAPTCHA problems in anyway related to the following news item:

Yahoo! lends weight to single digital identity drive
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single10052
Yahoo! OpenID
http://openid.yahoo.com/
Standards: Yahoo Adds Its Muscle to OpenID Single Sign-On Standard
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/61258.html?welcome=1200619106
Yahoo throws its weight behind OpenID single sign-on
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080117-yahoo-throws-its-weight-behind-openid-single-sign-on.html
Yahoo Embraces OpenID 2.0 Spec
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20080117/tc_nf/57866
Yahoo Announces Support For Open ID 2.0
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205900620
Yahoo to support OpenID single sign-on
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/01/17/Yahoo-to-support-OpenID-single-sign-on_1.html
Yahoo to Support OpenID Single Sign-On
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141463-c,yahoo/article.html
Yahoo to support OpenID single sign-on
http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20080117/tc_infoworld/94668
Yahoo to support OpenID single sign-on
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/013108-cut-cable-disrupts-internet-in.html
Yahoo joins OpenID standard group
http://www.vnunet.com/itweek/news/2207611/yahoo-joins-openid-standard
Yahoo backs OpenID
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/157563/yahoo-backs-openid.html

... for other topic drift ... past posts mentioning confusing identification and authentication (identification tends to be significantly more privacy invasive than authentication):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay7.htm#3dsecure 3D Secure Vulnerabilities? Photo ID's and Payment Infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#66 Confusing Authentication and Identiification?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#72 Account Numbers. Was: Confusing Authentication and Identiification? (addenda)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#73 Account Numbers. Was: Confusing Authentication and Identiification? (addenda)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay12.htm#0 Four Corner model. Was: Confusing Authentication and Identification? (addenda)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay12.htm#1 Confusing business process, payment, authentication and identification
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay12.htm#2 Confusing business process, payment, authentication and identification
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay12.htm#3 Confusing business process, payment, authentication and identification
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay12.htm#4 Confusing business process, payment, authentication and identification
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#40 The real problem that https has conspicuously failed to fix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#41 certificates & the alternative view
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm17.htm#13 A combined EMV and ID card
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#31 EMV cards as identity cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm19.htm#14 To live in interesting times - open Identity systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm20.htm#0 the limits of crypto and authentication
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm20.htm#11 the limits of crypto and authentication
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm20.htm#42 Another entry in the internet security hall of shame
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#2 Another entry in the internet security hall of shame
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#13 Contactless payments and the security challenges
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#17 continuity of identity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm21.htm#35 [Clips] Banks Seek Better Online-Security Tools
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#23 Identity resurges as a debate topic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#47 The Tao Of Backup: End of postings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#64 More on garbage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#13 IPSEC with non-domain Server
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#23 Logon with Digital Siganture (PKI/OCES - or what else they're called)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#9 phishing web sites using self-signed certs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#32 RSA SecurID product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#0 PGP Lame question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#19 Identity and Access Management (IAM)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#46 Windows Monitor or CUSP?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#63 Poll: oldest computer thing you still use
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#54 The new urgency to fix online privacy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#51 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?

folklore indeed

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 11:33:23
cb@mer.df.lth.se (Christian Brunschen) writes:
So to summarise, there are four fundamental cases, depending on how many of these differentiators there are for the system to tell resource requests apart:

Single-user, Single-tasking system (e.g., CP/M 2): - a request only contains 'I would like X, please'

Single-user, multi-tasking system (e.g., BeOS): - a request contains 'this is process FOO, and i would like X, please'

Multi-user, single-tasking system (rare): - a request contains 'I am user BAR and would like X, please'

Multi-user, multi-tasking system (Unix, Windows NT/XP/Vista): - a request contains 'I am process FOO owned by user BAR and would like X, please'.


capability based systems have tended to further extended permissions with regard to tasks, files, and other resources ... and tend to provide much higher degree of integraty with finer degrees of separation.

recent posts in thread on integrity, industrial strength, and business critical dataprocessing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#22 folklore indeed

some number of commercial timesharing systems used virtual machine platforms (cp67 and vm370) for there offerings ... providing additional layer of user separation and isolation.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

one of these, Tymshare ... recent reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#75 Rotary phones

started development of a new (mainframe, multiuser, 370) capability-based system called gnosis. when tymshare was bought by m/d, i was brought to evaluate gnosis was part of its keykos spinoff. at the time, a significant part of gnosis "overhead" wasn't so much in its "permissions" (crossing capability boundaries), but the related accounting. one of the scenarios is that a user could have specific authorized access to an analytical tool, a database application, and a specific database ... all provided by 3rd parties. there were specifically granted permissions to specific user to use/access the different resources ... as well as independent accounting of the different resources. the user will get billed for their resource access ... but part of those payments would be apportioned out to the 3rd party product owners ... based on the use of their products (applications, files, databases, etc).

in the transition from gnosis to keykos ... much of the "accounting" overhead was eliminated (not necessary to support revenue redistribution to 3rd party application developers) and repositioned as an high-integrity, high-performance mainframe/370 transaction processing system ... with some claims of transaction rates exceeding cics as well as tpf. tpf is the mainframe transaction processing operating system that evolved from ACP (airline control program); it was somewhat renamed when they found some number of financial institutions using it for high performance financial transaction processing.

there have been subsequent high integrity, capability-based systems that trace their linage back to gnosis ... recent post/discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#63 Oddly good news week: Google announces a Caps library for Javascript

other posts mentioning gnosis and/or keykos:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#69 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#22 No more innovation? Get serious
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#73 7090 vs. 7094 etc.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#33 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#35 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#10 TSS/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#59 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#0 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#4 markup vs wysiwyg (was: Re: learning how to use a computer)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#43 IBM doing anything for 50th Anniv?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#63 Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#75 30th b'day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#18 Multiple layers of virtual address translation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#41 Segments, capabilities, buffer overrun attacks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#15 two pi, four phase, 370 clone
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#20 A Dark Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#50 Slashdot: O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#19 Secure OS Thoughts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#22 Secure OS Thoughts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#26 Secure OS Thoughts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#24 Intel iAPX 432
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#54 Thoughts on Utility Computing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#4 OS Partitioning and security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#27 NSF interest in Multics security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#29 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#49 EAL5
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#41 Multi-processor timing issue
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#33 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#7 How do you say "gnus"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#6 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#7 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#12 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#67 intel's Vanderpool and virtualization in general
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#43 Secure design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#50 Secure design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#13 Today's mainframe--anything to new?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#30 Public disclosure of discovered vulnerabilities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#12 Flat Query
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#37 PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#34 PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#13 What part of z/OS is the OS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#7 Very slow booting and running and brain-dead OS's?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#42 vmshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#11 Multiple mappings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#16 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#26 user level TCP implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#25 LAX IT failure: leaps of faith don't work
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#17 Oddly good news week: Google announces a Caps library for Javascript

Flash memory arrays

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Flash memory arrays
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 13:59:29
DASDBill2@AOL.COM (, IBM Mainframe Discussion List) writes:
Around mid-1999 EMC signed a multi-$billion contract to buy a HUGE number of little disks from IBM over a period of several years. So IBM was making disks then. And I think that contract expired about half a decade ago.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#15 Flash memory arrays
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#16 Flash memory arrays
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#17 Flash memory arrays
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#18 Flash memory arrays

san jose plant site (disk unit) now belongs to hitachi. most recent, hitachi talking about selling off the unit.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#33 Hitachi, Silver Lake in talks about hard drives, sources say

a few other references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#9 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#25 TGV in the USA?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#39 DASD history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#21 IBM up for grabs?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#18 RAMAC 305(?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#14 50th Anniversary of invention of disk drives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#15 50th Anniversary of invention of disk drives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#20 50th Anniversary of invention of disk drives

folklore indeed

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 14:44:05
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
capability based systems have tended to further extended permissions with regard to tasks, files, and other resources ... and tend to provide much higher degree of integraty with finer degrees of separation.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#24 folklore indeed

also:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#20 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#22 folklore indeed

back in the early 80s, the (integrity/security) state-of-the-art was starting to work on things like collusion countermeasures. the issue of insiders (being primary source of fraud) was being addressed by things like separation of duties, privileges, and permissions. the insider fraud scenarios were then starting to combat separation of duties/etc with collusion (involving multiple participants/insiders).

going on the same time were the strictly stand-alone personal computers ... which gave no thought to countermeasures against threats and vulnerabilities (privileges and permissions). some of them were strictly stand-alone ... being able to provide terminal emulation ... but then they would rely on the integrity and security measures of the systems they were connecting to. even when these stand-alone personal computers started to be networked in closed, small departmental networks ... there was still little concern for countermeasures addressing threats and vulnerabilities (security and integrity, industrial strength dataprocessing, ... not limited to fraud ... but also issues like availability and denial-of-service attacks).

misc. past posts on the subject of fraud, threats, risks, vulnerabilities and/or exploits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#fraud

things somewhat started to fall apart when a combination of the internet started to become wide-spread (w/o its own infrastructure for dealing with threats, vulnerabilities, integrity, security, availability, aka industrial strength data processing) along with the network attachments of the personal computer descendants (also w/o provisions for dealing with threats, vulnerabilities, integrity, security, availability, etc).

misc. past posts mentioning assurance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#assurance

another theme that threads thru some of this is role-based-access-control (RBAC). part of the problem with fine-grain permissions is that an organization may have several hundred (thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions) of individuals and comparable number of different permissions. a security officer then is tasked with deciding which of the possibly hundreds of thousands of permissions go to each of the hundreds of thousands of individuals.

so one of the solutions is define a role metaphor ... which consists of very specific set of permissions to do very defined set of activity. now one of the objectives in this exercise (at least in theory dating back to the early 80s) was to partition the roles/permissions in such a way to address the collusion countermeasure opportunities. the problem is that usually by the time things get to actual deployments in the real world ... all the implicit assumptions about permissions, roles, and collusion countermeasures has been lost ... and some administrator assigns multiple roles to the same individual ... in order to achieve some organizational objective (which frequently will subvert any careful work designing the roles/permissions for collusion countermeasures).

now even into the current internet era ... studies still show that up to 70percent of fraud (things like data/security breaches leading to various kinds of account and/or identity fraud) still involves insiders (consist with long-term statistics). in many of the current internet situations ... the lack of integrity features so obfuscate the insider/outsider issues ... that insiders can leavage the ambiguity.

so one of the issues is when the integrity/security state-of-the-art gets back to where things were 25yrs ago in the early 80s ... and start to see attention being focused again on collusion countermeasures (as opposed to current situation where it is extremely difficult to just sort out the insider/outsider issues).

misc. past posts mentioning insiders/outsiders and/or collusion countermeasures:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm3.htm#kiss10 KISS for PKIX. (authentication/authorization seperation)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm5.htm#asrn4 assurance, X9.59, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm6.htm#pcards The end of P-Cards?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#auth Who or what to authenticate?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm9.htm#pkcs12d A PKI Question: PKCS11-> PKCS12
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay11.htm#37 Who's afraid of Mallory Wolf?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#10 Federated Identity Management: Sorting out the possibilities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#33 two questions about spki
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#44 Identity Theft More Often an Inside Job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#58 Time to ID Identity-Theft Solutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#1 Who's afraid of Mallory Wolf?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#12 Tackling security threats from within
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#28 Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm17.htm#38 Study: ID theft usually an inside job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm17.htm#39 The future of security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm17.htm#47 authentication and authorization ... addenda
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm17.htm#50 authentication and authorization (was: Question on the state of the security industry)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm17.htm#60 Using crypto against Phishing, Spoofing and Spamming
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#6 dual-use digital signature vulnerability
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#17 should you trust CAs? (Re: dual-use digital signature vulnerability)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#29 EMV cards as identity cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm18.htm#49 one more time now, Leading Cause of Data Security breaches Are Due to Insiders, Not Outsiders
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm19.htm#17 What happened with the session fixation bug?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm19.htm#19 "SSL stops credit card sniffing" is a correlation/causality myth
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm22.htm#2 GP4.3 - Growth and Fraud - Case #3 - Phishing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm22.htm#3 GP4.3 - Growth and Fraud - Case #3 - Phishing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm22.htm#27 Meccano Trojans coming to a desktop near you
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm22.htm#33 Meccano Trojans coming to a desktop near you
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm22.htm#36 Unforgeable Blinded Credentials
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm23.htm#0 Separation of Roles - an example
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm23.htm#9 PGP "master keys"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm23.htm#10 PGP "master keys"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm23.htm#44 ThreatWatch - markets in loss, Visa's take, 419 "chairmen"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#5 New ISO standard aims to ensure the security of financial transactions on the Internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#7 Naked Payments IV - let's all go naked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#10 Naked Payments IV - let's all go naked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#36 Interesting bit of a quote
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#40 Interesting bit of a quote
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#48 more on FBI plans new Net-tapping push
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#13 Sarbanes-Oxley is what you get when you don't do FC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#41 Why security training is really important (and it ain't anything to do with security!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm26.htm#7 Citibank e-mail looks phishy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#31 The bank fraud blame game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#52 more on firing your MBA-less CSO
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#53 Doom and Gloom spreads, security revisionism suggests "H6.5: Be an adept!"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#60 Retailers try to push data responsibilities back to banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001c.html#45 PKI and Non-repudiation practicalities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#38 distributed authentication
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#54 Does "Strong Security" Mean Anything?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#12 A terminology question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#14 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#35 Security and e-commerce
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#14 Symmetric-Key Credit Card Protocol on Web Site
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004i.html#5 New Method for Authenticated Public Key Exchange without Digital Certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004i.html#16 New Method for Authenticated Public Key Exchange without Digital Ceritificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#15 US fiscal policy (Was: Bob Bemer, Computer Pioneer,Father of ASCII,Invento
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004j.html#37 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#33 Good passwords and security priorities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#37 MVS secure configuration standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#38 MVS secure configuration standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#1 Brit banks introduce delays on interbank xfers due to phishing boom
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#11 Revoking the Root
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#52 Banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#1 More on garbage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#55 Encryption Everywhere? (Was: Re: Ho boy! Another big one!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#29 Importing CA certificate to smartcard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#35 More Phishing scams, still no SSL being used
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#2 X509 digital certificate for offline solution
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005v.html#2 ABN Tape - Found
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#35 X.509 and ssh
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#26 Caller ID "spoofing"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#28 Caller ID "spoofing"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#30 Caller ID "spoofing"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#26 Debit Cards HACKED now
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#44 Does the Data Protection Act of 2005 Make Sense
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#15 Security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#26 Security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#4 Passwords for bank sites - change or not?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#16 Value of an old IBM PS/2 CL57 SX Laptop
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#23 Value of an old IBM PS/2 CL57 SX Laptop
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#33 Password Complexity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#32 The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#9 New airline security measures in Europe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#40 New attacks on the financial PIN processing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#43 New attacks on the financial PIN processing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#2 New attacks on the financial PIN processing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#42 On sci.crypt: New attacks on the financial PIN processing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#49 Patent buster for a method that increases password security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#14 IBM ATM machines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#42 The logic of privacy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#13 special characters in passwords
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#20 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#33 security engineering versus information security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#60 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#10 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#11 Decoding the encryption puzzle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#32 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#35 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#43 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#39 Silly beginner questions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#75 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#28 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#65 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#35 My Dream PC -- Chip-Based
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#85 PCI Compliance - Encryption of all non-console administrative access
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#94 PCI Compliance - Encryption of all non-console administrative access
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#0 The Unexpected Fact about the First Computer Programmer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#11 what does xp do when system is copying
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#72 Value of SSL client certificates?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#74 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#94 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#4 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#5 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#9 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#36 1970s credit cards, was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

Re-hosting IMB-MAIN

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Re-hosting IMB-MAIN
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:16:59
Thomas.Kern@HQ.DOE.GOV (Thomas Kern) writes:
You could save some money by running SLES10 and the linux version of LSoft's LISTSERV product.

No z/OS or z/VM necessary.


recent posts mentioning listserv history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#75 Rotary phones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#76 Rotary phones

on (vm-based) bitnet/earn:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

including the following reference:
1991

The international BITNET network reached its peak, connecting some 1,400 organizations in 49 countries for the electronic, non-commercial exchange of information in support of research and education. Thanks largely to the volunteer efforts of Eric Thomas, BITNET provided thousands of electronic mailing lists based on LISTSERV.

Eric Thomas did not want his software to disappear with the mainframes. Therefore, he started looking for ways to port LISTSERV to other environments, such as VMS and Unix.


... snip ...

from this site:
http://www.lsoft.com/corporate/history_listserv.asp

predating listserv on bitnet was the internal corporate vm-based online conferencing facility that had options that would run in LISTSERV-like mode as well as a USENET-like mode.

and predating all of them was the online computer conference that Tymshare provided to share starting aug76 ... archives:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

on their vm-based commercial timesharing platform
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

some old email with vmshare references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#vmshare

one of my hobbies was providing custom, highly modified vm systems to internal locations ... including the HONE infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

which had sort of started out after the 23jun69 unbundling announcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

to provide operating system "hands-on" experience for people in branch offices (running in virtual machines ... starting out with number of deployed cp67 systems). HONE also evolved some number of cms/apl based sales & marketing applications which came to dominate all HONE activity. Eventually HONE "clones" were deployed all over the world ... and it wasn't even possible to submit a customer order that hadn't first been processed by a HONE application.

part of what i was doing with vmshare ... was setting up a process where I replicate all the vmshare files (from tymshare) on the various HONE systems.

No Glory for the PDP-15

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: No Glory for the PDP-15
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.sys.pdp10
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:15:30
Johnny Billquist <bqt@update.uu.se> writes:
Same in Europe, believe me. The funny thing is that people think this is good. They call it "agile". Don't think, just code. And don't plan ahead, be flexible instead. :-)

The fact that you can be more flexible if you plan good is not something they believe in...

And I suspect the russians are getting there as well.


one of the ultimate in agility was boyd & OODA-loops
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd

... he claimed that at one point some agency showed him a translated 300pg russian fighter pilot training manual ... which turned out to be almost word-for-word the manual he had written ... with minor changes like kph for mph.

for other topic drift ... recent post with a "space command" uniform patch:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#48 cold war again

MapReduce - a Major Step Backwards?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: MapReduce - a Major Step Backwards?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:48:59
MapReduce - a Major Step Backwards?
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/18/1813248&threshold=-1
MapReduce: A major step backwards

http://www.databasecolumn.com/2008/01/mapreduce-a-major-step-back.html

from above:
As both educators and researchers, we are amazed at the hype that the MapReduce proponents have spread about how it represents a paradigm shift in the development of scalable, data-intensive applications. MapReduce may be a good idea for writing certain types of general-purpose computations, but to the database community, it is:

1. A giant step backward in the programming paradigm for large-scale data intensive applications

2. A sub-optimal implementation, in that it uses brute force instead of indexing

3. Not novel at all -- it represents a specific implementation of well known techniques developed nearly 25 years ago

4. Missing most of the features that are routinely included in current DBMS

5. Incompatible with all of the tools DBMS users have come to depend on


... snip ...

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

and some recent posts about a different aspect of indexing ... the discussion/contention that went on between the system/r group and people in stl working on "60s databases" ... aka abstracting away the "direct record pointer" paradigm with implicit indexes.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#68 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

mapreduce wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapReduce

MapReduce - a Major Step Backwards?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: MapReduce - a Major Step Backwards?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:56:21
cb@mer.df.lth.se (Christian Brunschen) writes:
And here's a rebuttal:


http://typicalprogrammer.com/programming/mapreduce/


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#29 MapReduce — a Major Step Backwards?

part of the argument was that brute force was less efficient than using indexes. but as referenced in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#68 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

the (relational) building of indexes was much less efficient than the earlier DBMS that had direct record pointers (w/o indexes).

other recent posts mentioning the same argument
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#46 using 3390 mod-9s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#32 Old Hashing Routine
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#22 Cache-Size vs Performance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#27 Generalised approach to storing address details
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#14 Cycles per ASM instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#66 IBM System z9
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#54 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#86 IBM mainframe history, was Floating-point myths

How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 20:38:15
lindy.mayfield@SSF.SAS.COM (Lindy Mayfield) writes:
What doesn't is that Cannatello's book has a page and a half on doing POST, with one example of how to change the ECB without using the POST macro.

He even has the child checking the ECB to see if a WAIT had been issued.


A.6.3.1 Bypass Post Routine
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/A.6.3.1?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320&CASE=

from above:
The following routine allows the SVC "POST" as used in MVS/ESA to be bypassed whenever the corresponding WAIT has not yet been executed, provided that the supervisor WAIT and POST routines use COMPARE AND SWAP to manipulate event control blocks (ECBs).

... snip ...

i.e. charlie had been working on fine grain multiprocessor locking for cp67 at the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

when he invented the compare&swap instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

note compare&swap was chosen because CAS are charlie's initials.

trying to get the instruction into the 370 architecture was initially rebuffed since the pok favorite son operating system claimed that test&set ... carried forward from 360 multiprocessor days, was all that was necessary. the statement was made that in order to get compare&swap into 370 architecture required coming up with uses that weren't multiprocessor specific. came up with the multitasking/multithreaded examples ... which were included in the compare&swap programming examples.

A.6 Multiprogramming and Multiprocessing Examples
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/A.6?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320

more recently the perform locked operation instruction was defined ... and added to the above description.

Tap and faucet and spellcheckers

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 03:14:27
Charlton Wilbur <cwilbur@chromatico.net> writes:
I have printed a complex PDF while transcoding a video, and I have rendered a LaTeX document while displaying a video, and the computer remained responsive in both situations; is that sufficient to refute your allegations?

old posts about having several hundred tabs opened in browser and browser getting quite sluggish
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#8 big endian vs. little endian, why?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#41 Moz 1.8 performance dramatically improved
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#13 RFC 2616 change proposal to increase speed

but more recently performance started to pick up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#51 Intel abandons USEnet news

and got even better when i automated the initial set of tabs (instead of a bookmark folder) with wget and then passed URLs to the browser of only new stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#8 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

windows time service

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: windows time service
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 03:39:20
kkt <kkt@zipcon.net> writes:
Thanks for the explanation.

How do you upgrade the OS? Even if you don't care about new features, if they're exposed to the net don't you need to install security fixes at least once or twice a year?


when we were doing our ha/cmp product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

one of the groups we talked to the 1-800 lookup people ... they had 5-nines availability requirement and were using a system that had hardware redundant circuits for availability. however, even limiting to once annual scheduled downtime for software maintenance ... blew something like a century of outage budget.

the ha/cmp solution would roll the updates thru the replicated systems ... since availability was from system replication rather than hardware circuit redundancy (and the interface between the phone company switch and the 1-800 lookup system would redrive requests that weren't answered ... masking any ha/cmp fall-over transition).

the replicated system solution met the 5-nines requirement and cost less than the redundant circuit system. the counter was that the redundant circuit system could also install replicated systems ... but that effectively blew the justification of having the cost & expensive of a hardware redundant circuit system.

note that part of this also harkens back to study that jim did in early 80s about the shift from hardware to software being primary source of failures.

also with the reduction in system costs and communication costs, geographic redundant systems were starting to become economically feasable for more applications ... and with improvement in the availability of other components, various kinds of infrastructure failures were becoming more of a factor.

when we doing ha/cmp marketing, we also coined the terms disaster survivability and geographic survivability (attempting to differentiate from disaster/recovery).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available

we also got asked to write a section in the corporate continuous availability strategy document ... but it got pulled when both rochester (i.e. as/400) and pok (mainframes) complained that it couldn't (yet) be met by their products.

past posts mentioning 5-nines availability:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#50 Egghead cracked, MS IIS again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#10 HP-UX will not be ported to Alpha (no surprise)exit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#47 five-nines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#28 Buffer overflow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#67 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#54 Newbie: Two quesions about mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#50 Filesystems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#24 Relational Model and Search Engines?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#6 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#7 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#23 More on garbage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#18 Data communications over telegraph circuits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#18 winscape?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#22 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#42 The very first text editor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#56 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#44 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#64 folklore indeed

windows time service

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: windows time service
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 03:56:43
kkt <kkt@zipcon.net> writes:
Thanks for the explanation.

How do you upgrade the OS? Even if you don't care about new features, if they're exposed to the net don't you need to install security fixes at least once or twice a year?


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#33 windows time service

later, after we left and were out consulting ... i've mentioned that we got called in to consult with a small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their servers ... and they had this technology they had invented called SSL, that they wanted to use.

as somewhat might be expected, the initial (internet) payment gateway
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

we deployed, used an ha/cmp fall-over platform that had redundant/diverse connections into different places in the internet backbone.

there were also some amount of compensating procedures that we had to invent
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#37 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#22 folklore indeed

for other topic drift, when we had started ha/cmp project ... one of the first things was a detailed threat and vulnerability analysis of tcp/ip protocol ... which came up with a number of deficiencies ... especially from the standpoint of industrial strength dataprocessing.

i've mentioned before that about the same time we were consulting on this thing that came to be called electronic commerce ... the largest online service provider started having crashes in its internet interface boxes. this apparently went on for a period of three months while they brought in all the experts from around the world. finally one day, somebody flew out and bought me a hamburger after work ... and explained the symptoms while i ate the hamburger. i commented that it was one of the things that we had identified in the original ha/cmp detailed threat and vulnerability analysis and gave him a q&d patch that he applied later that night. ... misc. past posts mentioning the event:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004g.html#11 Infiniband - practicalities for small clusters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#51 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#6 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#8 Special characters in passwords was Re: RACF - Password rules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#40 what does xp do when system is copying

Tap and faucet and spellcheckers

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 09:51:29
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
Hey, thats fairly hairy stuff!.. how much memory have you, and which browser?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#32 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers

browser is currently firefox ... wget and process is driven by shell script. if firefox is already running and it is invoked again with url as argument ... it eventually finds the currently running instance and passes the URL for loading in new tab. i cut a little more overhead by copying part of the firefox invokation shell and then directly invoking the firefox binary ...


while read http ; do
firefox-bin -nosplash -new-tab "$http" >/dev/null 2>/dev/null
  sleep 1
done <$filename

there is issue with some webservers ... if the same (client) ip-address hits the webserver with too many closely spaced requests ... it starts rejecting them (i.e. the "sleep 1" spacing in the loop).

there is some preprocessing that splits URL list into separate files ... with URLs for same webserver in the same file. it then uses "gmake -j" parameter to control how many instances of the above shell is being run concurrently (from separate files). past post mentioning use in URL concurrent loading
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#10 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

the wget processing saves each previous (starting) webserver page and does a diff ... to just get out the "new" URLs. It then uses sqlite to coax out the current browser URL history and further discards URLs already seen. previous reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#30 tab browsing

reference from original post mentioning hardware configuration
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#8 big endian vs. little endian, why?

and things getting extremely slow. however multi-tab performance has gotten significantly better with transition to firefox and its evolution.

processor is intel 3.4mhz with multithreaded enabled (aka emulated two processor, not multicore) with 4gbyte of memory. even at its worse with close to thousand tabs ... browser would barely crack a gigabyte ... and newer versions have gotten significantly more memory efficient.

windows time service

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: windows time service
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 10:13:49
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
I have seen the exact same thing. The acid test is; "can you lose a building witout your customers noticing?". (Stated by NYSE in the late eighties).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#33 windows time service

we compiled quite a bit of these as part of product positioning, feature/function requirements and marketing ... as well as spent quite a bit of time with SIAC ... at the time was it was in one of the bldgs that is no longer there. .... siac is no longer independent website/company (get redirected here using www.siac.com):
http://www.nyse.com/productservices/techservices/1163761403398.html

there was a different datacenter on the west coast in a large skyscraper that did currency trading. the claim was that the earnings in 24hrs was more than the annual lease on the whole bldg. plus the annual earnings of everybody that worked in that bldg.

an earlier one that we worked with was boeing which had replicated the renton datacenter in everett. the analysis was required geographic separation (for majority of disasters) was 40miles (modulo ignoring common failure modes). their justification was that business cost to company of one week outage of the renton datacenter was more than the cost of the renton datacenter.

much, much earlier as undergraduate ... i was brought in to help getting BCS going (boeing moving majority of its datacenter operations into independent subsidiary ... sort of changing it from a "cost" center to ... at least, on paper, a "profit" center) ... and thot renton was the largest datacenter in the period.

of course later, i found out from boyd ... that he had run a larger datacenter in the period in the far east at "Spook Base" (a $2.5b "windfall" for ibm)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#1 Dangerous Hardware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#2 Dangerous Hardware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#5 Dangerous Hardware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#51 Where can you get a Minor in Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#13 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#4 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#69 Lean and Mean: 150,000 U.S. layoffs for IBM?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#60 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#53 Damn

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

Tap and faucet and spellcheckers

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 12:42:22
Oleg Lego <rat@atatatat.com> writes:
Interesting. I moved here from Vancouver, where the temperature seldom gets as low as -10, and where -<anything> happens only for a short time. Climate was about fourth on my list, finding distinct seasons and lower humidity much preferable to Vancouver's seasons consisting of small variations in the temperature and the amount of rain.

one of the chief security architect issues
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#7 Hypervisors May Replace Operating Systems As King Of The Data Center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#5 folklore indeed

was with short overcast/gray drissly days in the winter. we had done a several month temporary assignment previously in the area ... and my wife suffered greatly with the seasonal disorder thing.

it didn't particularly bother me ... and i had some earlier experience in the area ... recent reference to having been brought in to help get bcs going:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#36 windows time service

What do YOU call the # sign?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What do YOU call the # sign?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 13:51:52
jmfbahciv writes:
A part of the business to make high quality products should be to have long-term plans when the manufacturing demand slows down.

Sigh! This is called thinking long-term.


this has shown up in failing to have fully funded retirement plans ... where some corporations making claims that the majority of their costs had become retirement payments ... retirement income was being paid out of current operating revenue and they had accumulated a large retirement age population (from earlier periods) and now with lower production levels were having to support a much larger retirement population with a much lower production base.

in earlier, higher production days, many of these operations had a much smaller retirement population ... making retirement payments purely out of current operating profits (rather than having a fully funded retirement plan) created the impression of significantly higher operating margins and profits (however they were actually incurring extremely significant unfunded liabilities). in some cases, it was purposefully done ... take out everything you can now and sometimes appearing to be the golden boy on wall street ... and leaving it to somebody else to deal with the resulting mess

misc. posts mentioning unfunded liabilities, non-fully funded retirement plans, (gov) pension benefit guaranty corp, ... and when the problems eventually came home to roost ... declaring bankruptcy to get out from under the liabilities (handing them off to the gov).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#37 I am an ageing techy, expert on everything. Let me explain
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#27 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#61 Health Care
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#20 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#22 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#91 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#26 2007 Year in Review on Mainframes - Interesting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#39 competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#65 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales

folklore indeed

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 16:50:11
Kelli Halliburton <kelli217@gmail.corn.invalid> writes:
And what do they get for their attempts at perfecting the OS instead of just improving it? Slow sales. Bad market reputation. People downgrading to XP. Petitions on the internet to ask Microsoft to keep selling XP past 30 June 2008.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#20 folklore indeed

there have been discussion along the lines that the stand-alone personal computer (gaming and other applications) have diametrically opposing (security and integrity) requirements from the internet appliance. trying to satisfy both market segments with single solution was going to make lots of people unhappy. related posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#7 Hypervisors May Replace Operating Systems As King Of The Data Center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#5 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#37 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers

with the business desktop having yet again somewhat different set of (security and integrity) requirements.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#2 Death of antivirus software imminent
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#3 Why Security Modelling doesn't work -- the OODA-loop of today's battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#4 Death of antivirus software imminent
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#6 Death of antivirus software imminent
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#7 Why Security Modelling doesn't work -- the OODA-loop of today's battle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#8 Death of antivirus software imminent
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#9 Death of antivirus software imminent
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#11 Death of antivirus software imminent
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#8 Virtualization still hot, death of antivirus software imminent

part of this particular thread:

Virtualization still hot, death of antivirus software imminent, VC says
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/121707-how-the-feds-are-dropping-the-ball-side-2.html

from above:
Another trend Maeder predicts for 2008 is, at long last, the death of antivirus software and other security products that allow employees to install and download any programs they'd like onto their PCs, and then attempt to weed out the malicious code. Instead, products that protect endpoints by only allowing IT-approved code to be installed will become the norm.

... snip ...

aka ... the business desktop having different security and integrity requirements than the home, personal, personal computer ... and the internet appliance.

in the past i've been tempted to use transportation analogies like trying to make a 'vette also serve as a 2.5ton truck and an 8-passenger suburban soccer-mom kid hauler.

part of the virtual appliance scenarios have been even further partitioning and isolating different modes of operation. a few recent posts about virtual appliance (and server virtual machines)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#46 To RISC or not to RISC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#25 To RISC or not to RISC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#6 Multics on Vmware ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#8 vmshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#36 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#26 user level TCP implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#48 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#67 Operating systems are old and busted
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#70 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#3 Hypervisors May Replace Operating Systems As King Of The Data Center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#25 VMware: New King Of The Data Center?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#4 Why do we think virtualization is new?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#26 Oracle Introduces Oracle VM As It Leaps Into Virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#35 Oracle Introduces Oracle VM As It Leaps Into Virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#39 New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#41 New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#81 IBM mainframe history, was Floating-point myths
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#75 virtual appliance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#80 software preservation volunteers ( was Re: LINC-8 Front Panel Questions)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#59 old internal network references

windows time service

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: windows time service
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 00:12:51
CBFalconer <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes:
About 30 years ago (maybe 25) I had one embedded system, built around the 8080, that ran for over 3 years. No UPS. Then the power line failed. It was an order of magnitude more reliable than the mainframe it was connected to. Restart involved pushing one button.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#33 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#34 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#36 windows time service

a few years ago we were dealing with the large financial settlement system ... which at the time, had one hundred percent availability for nearly a decade. they attributed the 100percent availability to:
1) ims hot-standby
2) automated operator


the ims hot-standby system was triple redundant at two geographically separated locations.

long ago and far away, my wife had been con'ed into going to pok to be in charge of (mainframe) loosely-coupled (mainframe for cluster) architecture. while there she created Peer-Coupled Shared Data architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

however, it didn't get a lot of uptake until the much more recent sysplex stuff ... except for the ims group doing hot-standby (the lack of uptake contributed to her not staying long in the position).

the large financial settlement scenario was that hardware and even software had gotten extremely reliable ... triple redundant systems at geographically separated locations handled the normal disaster scenario.

the other issue was that as hardware and software errors became less & less of an issue ... human mistakes were starting to become a major failure mode. automated operator went a long way towards eliminating lots of human mistake poossibilities.

for other topic drift ... recent mention helping the ims group with some of their provisioning issues
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#17 Flash memory arrays

and old email regarding jim leaving for tandem and palming off various things onto me (including consulting with the ims database group)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801006
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801016

in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#1 "The Elements of Programming Style"

folklore indeed

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 08:34:57
Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> writes:
I thought that was IBM (DASD and the like). What I have heard is that "computer" meant heavy budgetary approval was needed by many customers, but that a "data processor" was much easier to buy.

this is the large datacenter, glass house operation. however, both 43xx and vax machines sold into same market with somewhat the same justification. part of it was not just cost, but the lead time, planning and provisioning that was needed for the large systems. while 43xx and vax both sold into that market as one or few at a time ... 43xx also sold into commercial market where several hundred or more at a time (so would have larger overall aggregate sales ... vis-a-vis vax).

recent post mentioning 43xx vis-a-vis 3033 ... referencing some of the current "on-demand" computing was (at least partially) to address the long lead time for traditional glasshouse dataprocessing upgrades:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#8 on-demand computing

old email referencing large gov. customer start out looking at getting 20 4341s and then moving to a couple hundred
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#email790404b

in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15 departmental servers

other old 43xx email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx

past posts listing decade of vax sales, sliced & diced by US, non-us, model, year, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0 Computers in Science Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#31 PDP-1

it shows by the mid-80s, that mid-range market was starting to move away from traditional vax (and 43xx) machines (and shift to workstations and large PC).

for a little other topic drift ... recent mention
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#75 Rotary phones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#27 Re-hosting IMB-MAIN

of the size of the internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

and similar technology being used for bitnet/earn
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

... that the number of nodes on (just) the internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime mid-85.

... the installation of the above referenced gov. order of couple hundred 43xx machines with its own network ... would have also been larger than the size of the arpanet/internet at the time.

windows time service

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: windows time service
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 09:08:58
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
Isn't strategy documents the other way around? To decide what needs to be done with the existing stuff, not to let the stuff decide what needs to be done ?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#33 windows time service

of course, but there was lots of intra-corporate politics going on at all times. have a statement in corporate continuous availability strategy document that is met by some products ... would always have complaints from the products that couldn't meet it. misc. posts mentioning availability
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available

these intra-corporate politics went on all the time.

i've posted before about the communication group non-concurring with the announcement of APPN. This was originally specified in "AWP164" ... and at the time APPN was to be announced ... the person responsible for APPN and I both reported to the same executive. The objection by the communication group not announcing APPN was eventually escalated and after several weeks, the announcement letter was carefully rewritten to not imply there was any conceivable connection between APPN and SNA.

I've also posted before about having noted that MVS had 15min MTBF attempting to run in the disk engineering lab.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

I had taken to completely rewrite i/o supervisor (so there would never be a system failure) allowing the disk engineering and product test labs could do "testcell" (devices under development) concurrent (on-demand) testing in operating system environment (compared to having to schedule dedicated, stand-alone time one testcell at a time). There was a purely internal document describing the work and also happening to mention the 15min MTBF for MVS. This resulted in huge number of objections from the MVS RAS organization (including folklore that the MVS RAS group managed to shoot down a corporate award for the work ... even tho the work significantly improved the productivity of the disk development activity). misc. past posts mentioning MVS RAS (reliability, availability, service):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#14 Page Table - per OS/Process
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#15 360 longevity, was RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#49 Moving assembler programs above the line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#28 What is "command reject" trying to tell me?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#42 Keep VM 24X7 365 days
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#33 IBM S/360 series operating systems history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#48 time spent/day on a computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#58 3350 failures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#25 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#27 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers

past posts mentioning AWP164 (APPN):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#52 Need Help defining an AS400 with an IP address to the mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#21 Sending CONSOLE/SYSLOG To Off-Mainframe Server
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#45 Mainframe Linux Mythbusting (Was: Using Java in batch on z/OS?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#48 6400 impact printer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#49 6400 impact printer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#55 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#39 sizeof() was: The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#62 Friday musings on the future of 3270 applications
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#72 FICON tape drive?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#46 Are there tasks that don't play by WLM's rules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#10 IBM System/3 & 3277-1

IT managers stymied by limits of x86 virtualization

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: IT managers stymied by limits of x86 virtualization
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 09:18:52
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
Instead, though, I *would* see Intel intentionally limiting the hardware virtualization capabilities, so that virtual machines wouldn't be 100% indistinguishable, to prevent them used for various forms of hacking and software piracy. After all, it needs to protect its core business.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#50 IT managers symied by limits of x86 virtualization

and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#41 IT managers symied by limits of x86 virtualization

recent article looking at some barriers to uptake:

Is Vendor Stubbornness Stalling Virtualization?
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/61280.html

from above:
Another possible roadblock that has started to loom larger is the dearth of formal support for virtualization by application vendors. That can result in "a lot of finger-pointing" if the virtualization, operating system and application vendors aren't willing to step up and fix problems, said Forrester Research analyst Christopher Voce.

... snip ...

China's Godson-2 processor takes center stage

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: China's Godson-2 processor takes center stage
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 09:20:46
China's Godson-2 processor takes center stage
http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;2132122591;fp;4194304;fpid;1

from above:
Will a Chinese-made chip one day threaten Intel's dominance of the global microprocessor market?

That was one of the questions raised by recent media coverage of an In-Stat report that detailed the features of China's Godson-2 processor and highlighted similarities with MIPS Technologies's MIPS instruction set and the architecture of an earlier chip, MIPS Technologies' R10000.


... snip ...

windows time service

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: windows time service
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 12:24:25
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
attempting to run in the disk engineering lab.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

I had taken to completely rewrite i/o supervisor (so there would never be a system failure) allowing the disk engineering and product test labs could do "testcell" (devices under development) concurrent (on-demand) testing in operating system environment (compared to having to schedule dedicated, stand-alone time one testcell at a time).


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#42 windows time service
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#33 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#34 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#36 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#40 windows time service

for other drift, one of the side-effects of providing operating system for the disk engineering and product test labs.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

was frequently when there was a problem ... i might get blameed and be asked to come in and "fix" the software problem (i.e. system no longer crashed when hardware didn't perform to specification, but would complain). as a result, i would have to get involved in diagnosing numerous hardware problems ... and in some more severe cases have to identify that the hardware implementation had deviated from the design specifications.

as to the issues with internal corporate polictics ... they are somewhat typical of many large bureaucracies

in this thread from last year
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#0 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#3 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#4 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#5 IBM Unionization

I noted that on meeting boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd

I felt some amount of kinship ... example is this boyd quote at the dedication of boyd hall at nellis afb:
http://www.belisarius.com/modern_business_strategy/moore/mie_33.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20020217191358/http://belisarius.com/modern_business_strategy/moore/mie_33.htm

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

... snip ...

another example was in our hsdt (high-speed data transport) project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

where we were demonstrating high-speed backbone at T1 and higher speeds ... when most everybody else was doing 56kbytes (or slower) ... slightly related recent reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#45 Are there tasks that don't play by WLM's rules

we had also been working outside the corporation with NSF on the same topic and felt we contributed to NSFNET backbone rfp actually calling for T1 implementation (again when most everybody else was doing 56kbit or slower speed stuff). various old email mentioning some of the work with educational institutions and NSF
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

and then we weren't allowed to bid. the director of NSF ... possibly in hopes of helping ... wrote a letter to the appropriate vice-president, copying the CEO ... that included mention that the backbone that we already had running internally was at least five years ahead of all nsfnet bid submissions (to build something new). the letter actually made the internal politics worse (rather than helping).

example of some of the stuff that went on was one of the emails mentioned above
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email870109

in this post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#21 SNA/VTAM for NSFNET

attempting to create the impression internally, that SNA/VTAM could be used for NSFNET. One of the people involved in that series of events was also involved later in transferring our ha/cmp scale-up work (and having us informed that we weren't to work on anything involving more than four processors).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#15

we had been doing a lot of availability
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available
in the ha/cmp project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

but also as noted, a lot of (commercial dataprocessing) scale-up; some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

while the section in corporate continuous availability strategy document might have offended some of the other product houses ... purely based on being able to do geographically distributed availability
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#33 windows time service

... the commercial dataprocessing scale-up was possibly even more threatening. in any case, the effort got transferred and within two months announced as a supercomputer product ... with purely numerical intensive application focus ... and we were informed that we weren't to work on anything with more than four processors.

Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 13:17:36
Who Cares <lon.stowell@comcast.net> writes:
The info on a card required knowing about zone punches to interpret alpha characters.

Not that all cards used that same code, were 80 column, used Hollerith, or even used square holes. 96 column, binary punch code, etc. were all used on cards. Paper tape to my knowledge only used 5 level and 8 level code.


old posts mentioning format of 12-2-9 "TXT" card:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#4 1401 overlap instructions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#60 Text (was: Review of Steve McConnell's AFTER THE GOLD RUSH)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004h.html#17 Google loves "e"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#24 Systems software versus applications software definitions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#54 12-2-9 REP & 47F0
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#17 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#69 IBM System/3 & 3277-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#70 IBM System/3 & 3277-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#32 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

and other old posts ... not only being able to recognize punch patterns for alpha characters but whole ebcdic (256) punch pattern ... used it when "patching" (compiler output) binary decks ... by faning the cards to find the card for the appropriate hex address ... dup'ing the (old) card columns and "multi-punching" the patch into the necessary columns.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/93.html#17 unit record & other controllers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#44 20th March 2000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#75 Florida is in a 30 year flashback!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#26 HELP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#27 HELP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#27 Is anybody out there still writting BAL 370.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#28 Is anybody out there still writting BAL 370.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#63 OT (sort-of) - Does it take math skills to do data processing ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#43 Binder REP Cards (Was: What's the linkage editor really wants?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#58 REP cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#64 Large Computer Rescue
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#51 IBM S/360 series operating systems history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#78 What happened to the Teletype Corporation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#8 Anybody remember Keypunch cards?

part of the issue was that i had dedicated weekend time (48hr shift) on 360/30 developing an application ... which could take 30-60 minutes to re-assemble producing a new executable TXT deck ... while, in the case of simple patch ... could dup/patch a single replacement card in a minute or two.

How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 13:31:54
gilmap@UNIX.STORTEK.COM (Paul Gilmartin) writes:
This is the Principles of Operation; it is not the Assembler Services manual. Note carefully the "provided that" clause. It's important. Is there any explicit guarantee in the Assembler Services manual that "the supervisor WAIT and POST routines use COMPARE AND SWAP to manipulate [ECBs]", and that the ECBs are updated only after all collateral operations are completed? If not, the programmer who engages in such shenanigans is using unsupported interfaces.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#31 How does ATTACH pass address of ECP to child?

you have to remember that this was being written over 35yrs ago ... after the favorite son operating system people in pok claimed that the compare&swap instruction wasn't necessary (for multiprocessor operation); that test&set (carried forward from 360 multiprocessor) was more than satisfactory.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

the challenge then to the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

... in order to get compare&swap justification for inclusion in 370 architecture ... was to come up with other uses ... that weren't multiprocessing specific. the result was some number of examples of its use in multiprogramming/multithreaded operation (that wasn't necessarily multiprocessing).

in any case, since then there have been several generations, allowing compare&swap instruction use to widely permeate through the infrastructure.

How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 13:57:26
loga3870@COMCAST.NET (David Logan) writes:
Test and set works just fine too. They are both atomic.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#31 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#47 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

the issue with atomic test&set was that it was a purely binary value ... locked or not locked. charlie was working on fine-grain cp67 multiprocessing locking at the science center (virtual machine operating system running on 360/67)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

when he invented compare&swap (as previously noted, CAS was chosen because they are charlie's initials).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

compare&swap ... allowed for full word binary value ... as opposed to simple set/notset (or locked/notlocked) ... and compare-double&swap allowed for double word value atomic update.

in the multithreaded/multiprogramming scenario ... compare&swap allowed for atomic updating of a wide variety of values.

the test&set scenario allowed for "locking" a section of code, non-atomic update of value within the locked code section ... and then unlocking the code section. independent executing paths would arrive at the locked code section and "spin" until the other executable path had released the lock. the problem in the multiprogramming/multithreaded sequence ... is that the executable thread could be interrupted while doing the non-atomic update (but still holding the lock) ... with execution then passing to another thread which went into unending "spin-loop" (waiting for the suspended thread to release the lock).

as noted in the section added to the principles of operation were examples of atomic updates of more complex values (other than simple set/not-set) ... which could be used even in interruptable code. prior to compare&swap ... such multiprogramming/multithreaded operation had always required the overhead of supervisor call (for performing non-atomic updates in non-interruptable code ... and avoiding possible application spin loops).

from long ago and far away

A.6 Multiprogramming and Multiprocessing Examples
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/A.6?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320

for other topic drift ... it has now been 40yrs since three people from the science center came out and installed cp67 at the university.

windows time service

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: windows time service
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 14:13:34
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
in this post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#21 SNA/VTAM for NSFNET

attempting to create the impression internally, that SNA/VTAM could be used for NSFNET. One of the people involved in that series of events was also involved later in transferring our ha/cmp scale-up work (and having us informed that we weren't to work on anything involving more than four processors).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#15


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#45 windows time service

and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#33 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#34 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#36 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#40 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#42 windows time service

for other foklore topic drift ... two of the people mentioned in the meeting referenced in
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

later show up at a small client/server startup responsible for something called a commerce server and we were called in to consult about doing payments transaction on the server ... misc. posts about payment gateway supporting server payment transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

this work has subsequently frequently came to be referred to as electronic commerce.

How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:08:34
loga3870@COMCAST.NET (David Logan) writes:
While all of that is interesting, and useful in its own right, none of that matters when a you want to perform a simple atomic "test and set" of a the posted bit in an ECB. Both instructions are atomic for this purpose.

You're not going to have any threading problems when using either instruction to check/set the bit in an ECB. The only reason to stay away from TS when posting is if you also want to update the completion code.

And the atomic nature only matters when setting the posted bit. For the task preparing to wait, since it's only a check of the posted bit, you perform a TM and then call WAIT if the posted bit hasn't been set by the time of the TM.


the original post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#31 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child

was about quote from the principles of operation with regard to the example of post routine bypass:

A.6.3.1 Bypass Post Routine
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/A.6.3.1?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320&CASE=

from above:
The following routine allows the SVC "POST" as used in MVS/ESA to be bypassed whenever the corresponding WAIT has not yet been executed, provided that the supervisor WAIT and POST routines use COMPARE AND SWAP to manipulate event control blocks (ECBs).

... snip ...

somebody then noted the caveate about supervisor WAIT & POST routines using COMPARE AND SWAP ... and I replied that the original writeup was over 35 yrs ago ... back to when the pok favorite son operating system assumed that test&set was more than adequate for all purposes.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#47 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child

(atomic) test&set
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/7.5.139?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320

from above:
The leftmost bit (bit position 0) of the byte located at the second-operand address is used to set the condition code, and then the byte is set to all ones.

... snip ...

has always been defined to test a single bit and if it is zero ... sets the whole byte to ones (x"ff") as well as the corresponding condition code.

so the post routine bypass needs to do atomic replace of the whole word (or simulated atomic replace by executing in disabled kernel with code function locking).

for topic drift, quick search engine turns up this reference to ECB field, wait, post (and other os simulation services):
https://web.archive.org/web/20061018155006/http://www.agorics.com/Library/KeyKos/Gnosis/190.html

from above:
SVC 2 - POST

POST is fully supported. Bit 0 of the ECB is set to 0, bit 1 is set to 1, and bits 8-31 are set to the specified completion code.


... snip ...

recent post referencing gnosis and keykos
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#24 folklore indeed

but then a little more searching turns up this reference

Synchronizing Tasks (WAIT, POST, and EVENTS Macros)
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/zos/v1r9/topic/com.ibm.zos.r9.ieaa600/tasks.htm

from above:


Figure 42. Event Control Block (ECB)

0   1   2
+---+---+-----------------------------------------------+
| W | P |   completion code                             |
+---+---+-----------------------------------------------+

When an ECB is originally created, bits 0 (wait bit) and 1 (post bit) must be set to zero. If an ECB is reused, bits 0 and 1 must be set to zero before a WAIT, EVENTS ECB= or POST macro can be specified. If, however, the bits are set to zero before the ECB has been posted, any task waiting for that ECB to be posted will remain in the wait state. When a WAIT macro is issued, bit 0 of the associated ECB is set to 1. When a POST macro is issued, bit 1 of the associated ECB is set to 1 and bit 0 is set to 0. For an EVENTS type ECB, POST also puts the completed ECB address in the EVENTS table.

... snip ...

i.e.

initially both bits zero and one are zero.

wait specifies that bit zero is set to one.

post specifies that bit 0 is set to zero, bit one is set to one, and the rest of the word is filled in with complettion code.

test&set checks bit zero for being set to zero and then sets the whole byte to one.

... so discussing the post routine bypass scenario (from the orignal post) ... of a multithreaded operation performing a post operation ... when the "WAIT hasn't yet been executed" (i.e. both bits zero and one are still zero), an atomic replace occurs setting bit 0 to zero, bit 1 to one and the rest of the word to the completion code (as long both bits zero and one are still zero).

this is further dependent on the wait routine only doing an atomic setting of bit zero to one ... as long as both bits zero and one are still zero. unfortunately, test&set only tests bit zero for zero ... before setting the whole byte to one. that means that atomic test&set doesn't correctly perform the wait operation if the ECB has already been posted (since test&set is only checking bit zero for zero ... and not both bit zero and bit one).

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

and other posts mentioning multiprocessing support and/or compare&swap instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:50:09
loga3870@COMCAST.NET (David Logan) writes:
While all of that is interesting, and useful in its own right, none of that matters when a you want to perform a simple atomic "test and set" of a the posted bit in an ECB. Both instructions are atomic for this purpose.

You're not going to have any threading problems when using either instruction to check/set the bit in an ECB. The only reason to stay away from TS when posting is if you also want to update the completion code.

And the atomic nature only matters when setting the posted bit. For the task preparing to wait, since it's only a check of the posted bit, you perform a TM and then call WAIT if the posted bit hasn't been set by the time of the TM.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#50 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#50 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

aka ... the ECB is defined as "testing" both bits zero and one ... where atomic test&set instruction only tests bit zero.

wait semantics defines that it tests that ECB isn't already being waited on (bit zero set to zero) and also tests that the ECB isn't already posted (bit one set to zero).

using test&set instruction will correctly handle an ECB that isn't already being waited on ... but will incorrectly handle an ECB that has already been posted (since test&set instruction *ONLY* tests bit zero before replacing the whole byte with ones).

the original operating system convention would always call the supervisor ... so it was non-interruptable when the ECB field was being updated ... and used test&set in multiprocessing configuration to serialize execution on the different processors.

moving to multiprogramming/multithreaded code w/o code serialization locks and code enabled for interrupts ... required atomic updates of the field ... based on update semantics following the rules for both bits 0 (wait) and one (post) ... not just a single bit ... aka wait processing honors ECB that is already being waited on ... bit 0, and/or has already been posted ... bit 1. test&set can only recognize an ECB that is already being waited on ... but won't recognize an ECB that has already been posted ... before it obliterates all the bits in the byte setting them all to one.

China's Godson-2 processor takes center stage

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: China's Godson-2 processor takes center stage
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 18:52:32
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
I had thought, though, that those similarities with MIPS meant they would not be able to export it outside China.

In any case, the availability of software is the primary criterion for the value of a computer system. So I would suspect that even without this intellectual property issue, the Godson-2 would be doomed to be as much of a non-threat to the x86 architecture as, say, the PowerPC, despite the resources of IBM behind it, is.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#44 China's Godson-2 processor takes center stage

except if you have a whole country behind it ... that has just surpassed the US in number of internet users ... and possibly there is significant software development required in any case ... possibly because of things like language and cultural issues ... then it may actually have more of a chance ... especially with lots of things in flux ... like light-weight clients, virtual appliances, etc. which may have lots less legacy dependencies.

part of the issue isn't so much the software anymore ... but do you have a large enuf install base to fund the ongoing rounds of new chip development. some gov. economic policy might be able to legislate jump starting such critical mass.

there have been other articles on things like new operating system
http://www.newsfinder.org/site/more/chinese_develop_a_new_operating_system/

for other mips related folklore ... recent post about one of the two people responsible for (mainframe) pascal at los gatos vlsi lab ... went on to be vp of software development at mips (before moving on to sun after sgi bought mips)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#46 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

and for other drift, later the executive that we reported to when we were doing ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

first moved over to head up somerset ... the joint operation turning out power/pc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

and then got hired by sgi to be president of mips (aug93) ... and was there for the period turning out the r10000 (announced oct94).
http://www.cpushack.net/CIC/announce/1994/R10000announcement.html

we had already left previous activity the summer of 92 ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#45 windows time service

and would periodically drop by mips during that r10000 period.

remember that ibm went into the red in '92 ... and has somewhat been reinventing itself ever since ... with more stress on services than hardware products.

folklore indeed

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: folklore indeed
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 20:17:56
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#20 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#22 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#24 folklore indeed

and for the fun of part of wiki darpa article:

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

from above:
In the area of information processing, DARPA made great strides, initially through its support of the development of time-sharing (all modern operating systems rely on concepts invented for the Multics system, developed by a cooperation between Bell Labs, General Electric and MIT, which DARPA supported by funding Project MAC at MIT with an initial two-million-dollar grant), and later through the evolution of the ARPANET (the first wide-area packet switching network), Packet Radio Network, Packet Satellite Network and ultimately, the Internet and research in the artificial intelligence (AI) fields of speech recognition and signal processing. DARPA also funded the development of the Douglas Engelbart's NLS computer system and the Aspen Movie Map, which was probably the first hypermedia system and an important precursor of virtual reality.

... snip ...

having had some association with the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

starting 40yrs ago ... aka 3 people came out from the science center to install cp67 at the univ. the last week jan68 ... and then being at the science center for much of the 70s ... i saw a little of the influence of ctss on cp67 and the resulting evoluation of cp67 timesharing that went on the 4th flr (as well as the vm370 evolution) .. very independent of the work going on with multics on the 5th flr of the same bldg.

as a result i've jaundice view of the statement that *all modern operating systems rely on concepts invented for the Multics system*

the paragraph following the above:
The controversial Mansfield Amendment of 1973 expressly limited appropriations for defense research (through ARPA/DARPA) to projects with direct military application. Some contend that the amendment devastated American science, since ARPA/DARPA was a major funding source for basic science projects at the time;

... snip ...

windows time service

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: windows time service
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:10:12
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
another example was in our hsdt (high-speed data transport) project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

where we were demonstrating high-speed backbone at T1 and higher speeds ... when most everybody else was doing 56kbytes (or slower) ... slightly related recent reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#45 Are there tasks that don't play by WLM's rules

we had also been working outside the corporation with NSF on the same topic and felt we contributed to NSFNET backbone rfp actually calling for T1 implementation (again when most everybody else was doing 56kbit or slower speed stuff). various old email mentioning some of the work with educational institutions and NSF
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

and then we weren't allowed to bid. the director of NSF ... possibly in hopes of helping ... wrote a letter to the appropriate vice-president, copying the CEO ... that included mention that the backbone that we already had running internally was at least five years ahead of all nsfnet bid submissions (to build something new). the letter actually made the internal politics worse (rather than helping).


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#45 windows time service

for other topic drift ... while we believe we contributed significantly to seeing that NSFNET backbone rfp specified T1 ... the winning bid didn't actually implement and deploy T1 computer interfaces. The winning bid only implementated and deployed 440kbit computer interfaces ... and I guess to meet the letter of the RFP, then used a telco box to multiplex three 440kbit links over a T1 circuit.

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

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:17:31
jmfbahciv writes:
You snipped context. I was talking about the fact that diesel is more expensive than gasoline. It means that food prices will be (rough estimate) doubling over the next 5 years.

i've tried to find some references for how the price of food breaks out.

this has one set of statistics (for 2004)
http://www.financetech.com/featured/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=51O3U4P5UN4M0QSNDLOSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=209900669

it claims transportation is 4cents of every food dollar ... but doesn't specificly say whether some of that is fuel costs or not. it has a separate break-out for "energy" (3.5cents of every food dollar) ... which might mean just fuel costs(?) ... possibly both for things like tractors during food production as well as trucks during transportation. wild assumption that "energy" might translate to fuel costs ... then doubling fuel costs (say from $2 to $4) could translate into a 3.5percent increase in food costs?

however, the break-out of 19.5cents (of every dollar) is "farm value" ... possibly means the cost of food at the farm property line (which would then include fuel and labor for food production). all the other values are subcategory of "marketing" (aka all costs after the food leaves the farm?).

this executive summary talks about some of the factors to be considered ... but doesn't actually break out individual components in detail:
http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/ppp/summary.htm

however, it does mention looking how the avg. food transportation distance has increased over a couple decades ... and what are the possible effects on environment and costs (along with mentioning looking at local, regional and national food sources).

there has been past threads that majority of the highway and road infrastructure system costs are heavy truck related ... but are amortized over all road users ... which implies significant subsidy to trucking operation. this would also imply that true costs of heavy trucking operation are significantly under estimated ... aka if there were any national economic policy comparing various infrastructure alternatives ... to be accurate, it would have to look at the actual, fully-loaded costs.

posts posts mentioning road life-time and design costs are proportional to heavy truck axle-loads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#41 Transportation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#21 Spam Bomb
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#57 TGV in the USA?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#20 Parallel programming again (Re: Intel announces "CT" aka
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#7 OT Global warming
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#44 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#2 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#5 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#6 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#7 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#10 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#12 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#15 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#19 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#24 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#26 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#32 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#35 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#46 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#48 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#49 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#50 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#51 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#52 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#53 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#54 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#56 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#57 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#59 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#60 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#61 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#62 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#0 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#1 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#2 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#3 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#5 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#6 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#11 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#23 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#97 Loads Weighing Heavily on Roads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#21 Horrid thought about Politics, President Bush, and Democrats

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 10:28:14
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
there has been past threads that majority of the highway and road infrastructure system costs are heavy truck related ... but are amortized over all road users ... which implies significant subsidy to trucking operation. this would also imply that true costs of heavy trucking operation are significantly under estimated ... aka if there were any national economic policy comparing various infrastructure alternatives ... to be accurate, it would have to look at the actual, fully-loaded costs.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#55 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

from previous posts, one scenario for actual, fully-loaded costs would be that gas road-use taxes for non-heavy trucks be dropped to a penny or two/gal (to accurate represent the effect their usage have on roads and highways) and shift nearly all of it (road use taxes) to heavy trucks ... which would then possibly be $300/gal(?) ... which would totally swamp the current petroleum specific charges.

accurately reflecting fully loaded costs might then change the ratio of local food production vis-a-vis national distribution.

Govt demands password to personal computer

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Govt demands password to personal computer
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:41:51
jmfbahciv writes:
Oh, that was so boring. My reading level was at least high school level when I was in first and second grades. I had to set there and read "Run. Spot. Run." at the rate of one word per 5 seconds. I had whole book read in about 10 minutes during one class and was punished for reading "ahead".

what high school level?

there was news item last night that for some part of michigan, high school graduation rates have dropped to 25percent ...

even with all the past discussions about discord in the states over whether or not high school graduation proficiency tests require even 7th grade level achievement(?)

i've posted before about being upset over a math problem on 5th grade achievement test (that i had never been exposed to before) ... afterwards, when i asked, was told that it was something called algebra. over the course of that summer I manage to check out (and finish) all the math books from the county bookmobile ... only had up thru high school senior texts; turns out it had absolutely no effect on the local, fairly rural school system ... went thru the remaining public math education purely by standard rote. my grades did get docked for reading science fiction books during math classes.

misc. posts about otherwise not being idle during the summer ... including 4th of july, laying firecracker on plam of hand and lighting it ... kids, don't try this at home ... it is matter of calluses on the hand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#18 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#79 Working while young

however my language skills are considered much less well developed.

i had been doing a lot of online computer stuff ... including some early stuff starting in the late 70s that were sort of semi-automated discussion lists. i then got blamed for something referred to as "tandem memos" ... including 300pg paper copies (from the online/electronic communication) that were packaged in tandem 3ring binders and sent to all the members of the executive committee (ceo, pres, senior vps).

in the wake of that event, there was quite of few "studies" of the phenomena. one of the results were "official" internal online communication tools, recent reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#75 Rotary phones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#27 Re-hosting IMB-MAIN

another was a researcher was payed to study how i communicated. they sat in the back of my office for 9months, went to meetings with me, took notes on how i communicated face-to-face, phone, and online. they had copies of all my incoming and outgoing email as well as complete logs of all instant messaging. the material was also used for a stanford phd thesis (joint between computer ai and language) ... as well as other papers and books. misc. past posts mentioning computer mediated communication
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

however, the reseacher had been a esl (english as second language) teacher in prior life ... and made the observation that my english skills are much more characteristic of a non-native speaker (even tho it is supposedly my native language).

random other tidbits from the phd thesis mentions that i communicated with an average of 275 different people per week (during the nine month study period) ... by comparison, my current communication volume is considered significantly mellowed (nearly 30yrs later).

misc. past posts with mention of tandem memos
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#5 New IBM history book out
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#6 New IBM history book out
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#7 New IBM history book out
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#31 Title Inflation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#39 Vnet : Unbelievable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#73 They Got Mail: Not-So-Fond Farewells
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#16 cost of crossing kernel/user boundary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002q.html#38 ibm time machine in new york times?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#66 Question About VM List
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#50 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#37 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#5 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#9 It's official: "nuke" infected Windows PCs instead of fixing them
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#24 Google Architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#51 the new math: old battle of the sexes was: PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#11 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#35 Top versus bottom posting was Re: IBM sues maker of Intel-based Mainframe clones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#17 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#48 time spent/day on a computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#34 Internal DASD Pathing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#30 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers

How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:00:33
gilmap@UNIX.STORTEK.COM (Paul Gilmartin) writes:
I have believed, and other updates to this thread appear to concur, that WAIT/POST are older than CS. At some time, then, WAIT/POST code must have used some other locking mechanism. So, after CS first became available there may have been some interval before it was reliable to use CS to bypass POST. When did that interim conclude, making it safe to bypass POST in that fashion? And might there be open-source archival MVS (3.8 or earlier) that could execute on emulated hardware supporting CS, but for which POST requires the actual SVC?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#31 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#47 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#48 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#50 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#51 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

wait/post was svc into the kernel running disabled for interrupts ... and therefor would be "serialized" from the standpoint of other events.

the state of the multiprocessing art when charlie was working on fine-grain multiprocessor locking for cp67 (and invented compare&swap instruction) ... was single supervisor/kernel "spin-lock" ... i.e. a single kernel variable that all first level interrupts handlers would perform a "test&set" on initial entry.

if the test&set was successful, execution would continue thru the first level interrupt handler and into the rest of the kernel. if test&set was unsuccessful, the code would continue to branch back to the test&set instruction until successful. on leaving the kernel (for application/problem execution), the global kernel spin-lock would be cleared to zeros (allowing other processors to execute in the kernel).

implicit was that all wait/post operations were correctly serialized ... along with effectively all other kernel functions ... by combination of the kernel running disabled for interrupts ... and, on real multiprocessor, test&set serialization on the global kernel spin-lock.

as noted, with other organizations believing that test&set was adequate for all multiprocessor functions ... the challenge given the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

was to come up with compare&swap uses that weren't multiprocessor specific. the result was the stuff that appears in the appendex of the principles of opertion ... previous reference
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/dz9zr003/A.6?DT=20040504121320

where it was possible to implement correct, concurrent shared operations w/o requiring the overhead of kernel/supervisor calls (which achieved correctly serialized operation, in part by running disabled for asynchronous interrupts).

other past posts mentioning various multiprocessor and/or compare&swap instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:59:43
Walter Bushell <proto@oanix.com> writes:
Perhaps, increased transportation costs could raise food prices, but it would also a more rational food production system. The price system cannot do it's job when major costs are subsidized.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#55 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#56 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

i would claim that lesson learned from doing extensive work on dynamic adaptive resource management ... is that a fundamental principle/requirement is accurate metrics.

once accurate metrics were available then it would be possible to make rational policy decisions about resources.

early on, my resource management product was frequently referred to as "fair share" ... because it had a default resource allocation policy of "fair share" ... something that hadn't even been practical in other implementations (that lacked accurate resource metrics). it was actually capable of a variety of resource policies ... even attempting to rationalize multiple independent different concurrent policies.

however, none of it was possible until accurate metrics had been implemented.

misc. (mostly) computer-specific dynamic adaptive resource management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare

How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 14:49:54
John.Mckown@HEALTHMARKETS.COM (McKown, John) writes:
"Atomic" is used quite a bit in computer science. Like the original Greek, it means "indivisible". That is, when an atomic operation occurs, any other process will either see the data in the original form, or in the updated form. But it will never seen an intermediate form. It is especially used in relational databases. This is usually done so that, for instance, if you transfer money from checking to savings, you never see the amount in both places. You either see the amount in checking or in savings. This despite the fact that a lot of stuff is going on to do the move.

compare and swap simply means that. It compares field1 against field2. If field1 equals field2, then the contents of field3 is placed in field2. What is "atomic" is that there is a "lock" that occurs so that at the instant before field1 is compared against field2, no other process is allowed to modify or even look at field2 until after the instruction finishes. This ensures that once the operation starts that no other process can make any updates or decisions based on the contents of field2.


there are ACID properties with regard to transactions ... frequently things like financial.

A .. atomicity C .. consistency I .. isolation D .. durability

a wiki ref
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACID

simpler example is two concurrent transactions, one a debit and one a credit ... attempting to update the *same* value.

say you have $5000 in savings account. there is a transaction that fetches the current value ... in order to subtract a $200 ATM debit. At the same time there is another transaction that is attempting to perform (add) an EFT $1000 deposit.

W/o the transaction serialization semantics, the EFT $1000 deposit concurrently fetches the current ($5000) value, adds $1000 and starts a store operation of the $6000 value ... concurrently while the ATM debit is performing the store of the $4800 value.

correct transaction atomic serialization, should result in correct $5800 when everything is done. w/o transaction atomic serialization, the $6000 "store" might be done followed by the $4800 "store" ... or the "4800" store might be done followed by the $6000 "store" (resulting in either $4800 or $6000, neither correct)

for the compare&swap scenario. The $4800 "store" only completes if the value being replaced is $5000 ... otherwise things start all over ... similarly, the $6000 "store" only completes if the value being replaced is $5000 ... otherwise things starts all over again.

in transaction systems, this is sometimes referred to as "optimistic" ... as opposed to purely serialized locking systems ... which only allow one single transaction at a time to fetch a value ... and no other transaction is allowed to fetch a value (or otherwise proceed) until the active transaction has completed ... this is somewhat analogous to the kernel spin-lock mentioned in previous description:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#58 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

the transaction properties for consistently updating two different values ... is somewhat more complicated ... than simple compare&swap. Doing a transfer from one account to another requires that two values (not just one) be correctly updated as a single, synchronized, serialized operation (w/o allowing other simultaneous transactions to corrupt the values).

in a few, carefully controlled situation it can be done by compare-double&swap. a savings account value and the debit account value are stored in contiguous storage locations. For a "transfer" operation, both values are fetched, and the appropriate changes (a subtraction from one and an addition to the other) are made to both values. then compare-double&swap is executed ... only succeeding with the replace of both values IFF (if & only if) neither value has changed since the original fetch operation. If either or both values have changed since the initial fetch (because other operations are concurrently attempting to change the same fields) ... then the store operations fail ... and the process starts all over again.

the other alternative ... for concurrent updates of multiple different values is to resort to something like the spin-lock scenario ... only allowing one processing to performing operations at a single time. As pointed out ... to avoid getting into trouble ... the active running transaction can't be interrupted while it is performing the "locked" operation.

compare&swap semantics tends to provide much higher level of concurrent operations with much lower overhead for providing correct serialized operation.

Geekonomics: The Real Cost of Insecure Software

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Geekonomics: The Real Cost of Insecure Software
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 05:07:00
Geekonomics: The Real Cost of Insecure Software
http://books.slashdot.org/books/08/01/21/1513226.shtml

from above:
Geekonomics attempts to stop them and can be deemed the software equivalent of Unsafe at Any Speed. That tome warned us against driving unsafe automobiles; Geekonomics does the same for insecure software.

... snip ...

i would claim that it is also related to my comment about the principle of accurate metrics ... and the ability to efficiently manage resources
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#59 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

also

The Real Cost of Insecure Software: The Foundation of Civilization
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1144083&rll=1

Geekonomics is also selected by:

CMP's Dr. Dobb's Announces Finalists for the 18th Annual Jolt Product Excellence
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS120469+07-Jan-2008+PRN20080107

from above:
For the past 17 years, the Dr. Dobb's Jolt Product Excellence Awards have been presented annually to showcase products that have "jolted" the industry with their significance and made the task of creating software faster, easier, and more efficient. Jolt Cola, the fabled soft drink quaffed by software developers for sustenance during project development marathons, sponsors the awards presentation.

... snip ...

for other topic drift ... long ago and far away, i was at a small weekend conference that had been selected to be betatest for jolt ... and they had large truck come in with cases of the product.

it was different world back then ... i think there were still things like people bringing unannounced vendor products for us to play with.

40 yrs of cp67 and cms

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: 40 yrs of cp67 and cms
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.vmesa-l,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 05:19:28
40 yrs of cp67 and cms ... not quite for the announce, since that happened at the spring '68 share meeting in houston. however, three people had come out from the cambridge science center the last week of jan68 to install cp67 at the univ.

How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 09:17:30
relson@US.IBM.COM (Peter Relson) writes:
You can be certain that POST will always support the CS quick-post protocol and the LOCAL LOCK.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#50 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

as stated in the above post ... the principles of operation wording is from over 35yrs ago ... charlie had invented the compare&swap instruction at the science center while doing fine-grain lock for cp67 ... and the pok favorite son operating system people had rejected it ... i.e. the test&set was more than adequate for the global kernel spin-lock multiprocessor support from 360 ... mention of global spin-lock
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#58 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

the challenge given the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

was come up with example uses for compare&swap instruction ... other than (multiprocessor) locking operation ... some discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#58 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

i.e. the compare&swap instruction can be used for atomic updates for whole class of operations w/o requiring "locking" operation (which would typically also require supervisor call into the kernel to have uninterruptable operation ... as a means of simulating atomic update). as mentioned in the above analogy with dbms financial transaction and optimistic operation ... that avoids lock ... if certain original conditions continue to hold when the transaction changes are actually made permanent.

so the wording in the principles of operation was from the stand-point that the pok favorite son operating system people still had to understand the implications of how compare&swap instruction could be used ... and then actually have the changes permeate their implementation.

my familiarity with cp67 dates back to when 3 people from the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
came out to install cp67 at the univ the last week of jan68 (40yrs ago this week)

one might claim that maybe that its time to update that 35+yr old perspective in the principles of operation compare&swap writeup.

A.6 Multiprogramming and Multiprocessing Examples
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/A.6?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320

other posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#31 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#47 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#48 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#51 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#60 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

for some topic drift ... related to dbms operation ... misc. posts about the original relational/sql project
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

and transcriptions of '95 SQL reunion
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/index.html

there is mention of compare&swap in the discussion about use for "locking"
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-Shoot-ou.html#Index311
in this session:
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/sqlr95-Shoot-ou.html

however, the speculation about the origin of compare&swap instruction was wrong (i.e. compare&swap was chosen because CAS are charlie's initials).

Govt demands password to personal computer

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Govt demands password to personal computer
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 09:24:06
jmfbahciv writes:
That's one reason why you found a "shortcut" and the language skills that somebody told you were "less developed" were actually so developed that they became extremely efficient. Did the PhD ever consider that hypothesis?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#57 Govt demands password to personal computer

with regard to ESL ... there was observation that my writing frequently has both english usage and spelling errors. i remember having discussions about possibly reasons for the characteristics ... but i don't remember if they showed up in the thesis or any of the other papers and books based on the research.

misc. collected posts mentioning computer mediated communication
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:40:37
loga3870@COMCAST.NET (David Logan) writes:
Sorry for the slightly off-topic question, but how come this persons posts are always so complicated to work through with all of the pieces and URL links? Is it the function of how they are posting (i.e. perhaps online with certain options), or is this a manual effort?

I'm hoping to not spark a long debate. I'm hoping it's just a "one or the other" answer.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#63 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

some of it overlaps
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#27 Re-hosting IMB-MAIN

and some of it explained in these recent postings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#57
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#64

starting in the late 70s, i had been doing semi-automated discussion groups and mailing lists on the internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

which was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until approx the summer of '85.

then somebody packaged up about 300pgs of hardcopy of the discussions, put them in 3ring tandem binders and sent them to everybody on the executive committee (ceo, pres, senior vps). there was also a article in datamation. i got blamed for all of it.

the result was a whole lot of corporate churn and investigations into this new phenonoma. part of results were internal tools deployed to "officially" support electronic online discussion. major tool could operate both in usenet kind of mode as well in mailing list kind of mode simultaneously (end user could select the option).

as noted this was on the internal network and distinct from both bitnet/earn
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

... although the subsequent listserv on bitnet had some similarities the internal tool.

for other topic drift ... old email from the person setting up earn (in europe) looking for computer conferencing tools:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#email840320

as previously referenced listserv history not started until '86 in europe/earn:
http://www.lsoft.com/corporate/history_listserv.asp

i have this old joke about in the early 70s, going over to paris to set up a HONE clone (i.e. internal online computing system) ... misc. past posts mentioning HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

as part of the corporate EMEA hdqtrs move from ny to paris ... and having some difficulty reading my email back in the states.

one of the other outcomes was that there was a researcher paid to study how i communicate ... they sat in the back of my office for nine months, went with me to meetings, took notes on face-to-face, phone, and electronic communication. they also had softcopy of all my incoming and outgoing email as well as logs of all instant messages. the resulting research was also used as a stanford phd thesis (joint with computer ai and language) as well as subsequent papers and books. misc. past posts related to computer mediated conversation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#cmc

lots of past posts over the last dozen years or so discussing compare&swap instruction and/or multiprocessor implementations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

for slightly related drift as to references, URLs and posting technology ... again go back to early days at the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

not only did the compare&swap instruction originate at the science center, but also virtual machine systems, a lot of interactive computing facilities as well as the internal network technology. one of the other things that were invented at the science center was gml (letters chosen for the first letter of the last names of the three people ... although most people are more familiar with generalized markup language) in 1969. gml has subsequently morphed into sgml, html, xml, etc.

reference to work at cern morphing sgml into html
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/

and reference to first webserver outside europe on the slac vm system (cern sister location)
https://ahro.slac.stanford.edu/wwwslac-exhibit

for another reference there was this article in ibm systems mag. 3 years ago .... although some of the details are slightly garbled:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190524015712/http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/stoprun/Stop-Run/Making-History/

there is also old joke at share circa 1974 ... when cern presented a paper about the results of a cms/tso bakeoff. the company couldn't restrict customer copies of the report ... but internal copies were marked confidential/restricted ... i.e. available on a need-to-know only (wouldn't want to contaminate employees with detailed TSO vis-a-vis CMS comparison).

in any case, i've been doing online for almost as long as i've been using cp67 ... 40yrs this week when three people came out the last week jan68 from the science center to install cp67 at the univ ... and a lot of what i use/do predate many of the current facilities that didn't show up until decades later.

How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:07:00
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
for another reference there was this article in ibm systems mag. 3 years ago .... although some of the details are slightly garbled:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190524015712/http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/stoprun/Stop-Run/Making-History/


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#63 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#65 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

i.e. the ibm systems mag article talks about my postings and the archived (URL) references

the paper copy of the mag even included a picture of me sitting at home at a keyboard.

Govt demands password to personal computer

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Govt demands password to personal computer
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:53:07
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
In referecnce to something else, our local edition of the UK sunday times had this story, written by an financial reporter 'Jill Kirby'.. She had an account, with some direct debits, and an assosiated debit card, which she never used, just left in a drawer. Now, according to this account, she got a phone call from the bank, because of some unusual activity on this card. The Bank's theory was that the number was generated randomly, and matched to bank ID codes.. Could that happen?..

possibly more than you want to know ... but it may be the result of a funny intersection between pin-debit and the introduction of signature debit.

way back when ... when there was only pin-debit ... and credit card magstripes were first introduced ... it was possible to manufacture a counterfeit magstripe card based solely on guessing an account number (there is a pre-screening algorithm for valid account numbers ... so the crooks also made sure that guessed numbers conformed to the pre-screening algorithm).

so as part of the countermeasure to account number guessing attacks ... they started requiring the "expiration date" as additional information (i.e. low probability that guessed account number would have the corresponding expiration date).

there was further problems with counterfeit magstripes based on guessing account numbers as well harvesting account numbers with their corresponding expiration dates.

so a new countermeasure was a sort of encrypted hash code. each bank/bin (for credit card processing) has a secret key. the account number information is calculated as a form of hash and then encoded with the bank/bin key ... a truncated version of this is written/appended to valid magstripes when they are created.

for electronic transactions ... the association networks have a table of the bank/bin keys ... and can validate the magstripe validation code as it passes thru the network.

this pretty well put an end to counterfeit magstripe based on account number guessing.

now in parallel with the credit card infrastructure magstripe ... there has been the pin-debit magstripe card infrastructure. for most of the time, the infrastructure treated the two-factor authentication pin-debit (combination of pin and magstripe information) as sufficient countermeasure to pin-debit card counterfeit magstripe (account guessing) exploits (a counterfeit magstripe isn't sufficient for faudulent transaction ... since the valid pin is also required). as a result, there has been a lack of debit cards with the magstripe validation code (basically relying on the pin in lieu of magstripe validation code).

the problem shows up with signature-debit transactions being introduced into the pin-debit infrastructure. the pin-debit magstripe cards are now being accepted for valid "signature debit" transactions w/o requiring a PIN ... and lots of these (originally) pin-debit-only magstripe cards don't have the magstripe validation code as (additional) countermeasure to account guessing counterfeit magstripe card.

one way of characterizing the situation is missing long-term institutional knowledge regarding trade-offs where magstripe validation codes weren't added to debit magstripe cards ... because the required PINs were at least as secure as the magstripe validation code (and then later allowing that same card infrastructure to be used w/o PINs).

there have been a number of articles over the past several years claiming that debit magstripe cards are less secure than credit magstripe cards ... however this is only true when "signature-debit" has been introduced and debit magstripe cards (w/o magstripe validation code) are allowed to be used w/o a required PIN.

note that possibly two decades ago ... there also started appearing a new counterfeit magstripe threat ... involving "skimming" ... the full magstripe was recorded (including the magstripe validation code ... originally introduced as countermeasure to account number guessing). a counterfeit magstripe was then built from the recording of a valid magstripe (including the magstripe validation code).

... and for rote statement ... in the mid-90s, the x9a10 financial standard working group was given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for ALL retail payments ... resulting in the x9.59 financial standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

which included detailed end-to-end analysis of retail payment transaction vulnerabilities and threats.

Govt demands password to personal computer

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Govt demands password to personal computer
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:12:43
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
Thanks for the reply.. as the account is of a card that was hardle ever used, sounds like it was an old one. I suppose an analogy could be with virus-detecting programs, wwhere the best one could hope for is of a recently updated algorithm. (A completely up-to-date one could not take account of viruss released that day, or even that week, as the virus-detecting programs would have to have examples to work against.)

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#67 Govt demands password to personal computer

i don't know if it is as simple as new one or an old one issue ...

a partial old one issue was that debit cards didn't tend to have expiration dates (since in the credit card world ... the expiration date was as much a countermeasure to account number guessing as anything ... and with pin-debit cards wouldn't be needed as a account number guessing countermeasure).

the issue is at what point was there the realization that pin-debit cards ... that became enabled for signature-debit and needing re-issue with a magstripe validation code ... and what implications might have for possible changes for the old pin-debit processing ... and what other parts of the "signature-debit" infrastructure that would have to be changed to correctly handle magstripe validation codes ... aka it not be as simple as getting the latest virus-detection ... since you might not have had any of the other components that were needed to use/support the virus-detection application.

it is more like not needing any virus-detection application since you had a completely different mechanism ... so that you were never bothered by viruses in the first place ... and then bypassing the total virus elimination process ... which then forced having to retrofit the whole virus-detection infrastructure.

How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:01:05
Peter.Farley@BROADRIDGE.COM (Farley, Peter x23353) writes:
Granted, but the converse is also true: A posix-style semaphore or queuing mechanism is way overkill for the simplest cases, which IMHO most non-software-house application (not systems) programmers are most likely to need or encounter.

Typical in my non-software-house application experience is a single master task with N children, each child with different responsibilities, and each child's only communication need is with the parent, not with any sibling. In this type of application, ECB/POST/WAIT is more than adequate and no requests are ever lost using FastPOST or FastWAIT.

Software houses and systems programmers tend to deal with far more complex designs where multiple requestors and/or multiple servers are involved. For those applications a semaphore or queuing mechanisms of some sort are certainly the correct solution. BTDTGTTSTPI.

IOW, suit the tool to the job you need to accomplish. ECB/POST/WAIT is a perfectly proportioned mechanism for even quite sophisticated application programming. It's only when you must step up to the next level of multiple requestor/server designs that ECB/POST/WAIT becomes insufficient to your application's needs.


all of the large DBMS vendors have gone to some sort of internal task management ... and are using compare&swap ... or similar instruction from other hardware vendors (that would offer similar semantics, although the 370 compare&swap is the granddaddy).

one of the problems that rs/6000 and aix ran into getting all the major vendors to port to the RS/6000 and aix ... was that it failed to have an instruction offering compare&swap atomic semantics ... forcing (by comparison) significant performance degradation (using kernel calls). It was possibly initially anticipated that RS/6000 didn't require a compare&swap instruction because the rios/power chip didn't offer a multiprocessor option.

however, one of the first AIX "enhancements" for the major DBMS vendors was an emulated compare&swap instruction ... which translated into an SVC call with an extremely short instruction emulation fastpath in the supervisor call first level interrupt handler ... with immediate return to application mode.

rios/power was always only a single processor but needed to run disabled for all interrupts to provide the emulated atomic compare&swap semantics ... and do it with minimal pathlength overhead (thus the special case emulation and return done totally in the svc interrupt handler).

there is significant amount of commonality in design across the dbms industry on how to leverage compare&swap semantics to implement multithreaded/multitasking operation.

lots of past posts mentioning multiprocessor designs and implementations and/or compare&swap instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

things get more complex going to cluster (loosely-coupled) operation. my wife had been con'ed into going to POK to be in charge of loosely-coupled architecture. while there, she came up with peer-coupled shared data architecture ... which didn't see a lot of takeup until sysplex (which contributed to her not staying long in the position) ... except for the people doing ims hot-standby ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

later we did the ha/cmp product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

with a distributed lock manager that managed serialization function & transaction semantics across a clustered, loosely-coupled environment.

we had extended the work in ha/cmp and distributed lock manager for large-scale scale-up ... mentioned in this old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
and some of the scale-up issues discussed in these old emails
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

Wheeler Postings

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Wheeler Postings
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:43:15
jbrock@GHS.ORG (Jon Brock) writes:
Here, for instance:
http://groups.google.com/group/bit.listserv.ibm-main/msg/7941aee482af5b48?


i.e. also archived here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#25 garlic.com

and some related recent references, also about posting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#65 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#66 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

now, a post on the subject in the original thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#63 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#69 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?

mentions work on original relational/sql implementation, including technology transfer to endicott for sql/ds:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

also mentioned was scale-up for our cluster/distributed high availability product:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

one of the people in this (ha/cmp) meeting, previously mentioned
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

says that he handled much of the technology transfer from endicott (sql/ds) back to STL for DB2.

now two of the other people in that same meeting show up a little later at a small client/server startup responsible for something called the commerce server. we were called in to consult because they wanted to do payment transactions on their server ... and also wanted to use a technology that had been invented called SSL for the implementation:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway

that work is now frequently referred to as electronic commerce.

40yrs since science center installed cp67 at the univ. the last week of jan68.

was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:11:55
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
Clausewitz regarded forts as being an obstacle

I would claim that Boyd applied his fighter pilot & "dog fight" background to (ground based) maneuver warfare ... including bypassing fixed fortifications. There have been numerous claims that way too much cannon fodder was wasted not doing that in the ww2 pacific campaign.

recent boyd reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#45 windows time service

misc. past posts mentioning boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd
and various URLs from around the web mentioing boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd2

wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuver_warfare

(a) The Maneuver Warfare Page
http://www.fauconinternational.com/mw.html

from above:
Today Maneuver Warfare (MW) is taught in business schools as well as the military academies. It has been used in fields as diverse as tactics for air dogfights and acting.

... snip ...

Govt demands password to personal computer

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Govt demands password to personal computer
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:54:51
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
Ive seen algorithms since way back which will generate a genuine-looking number. Mostly for producing spurious numbers for porn sites. There is always the feeling in these stories that we are not being told the whole story, there is usually someone else working on the problem. I DO know that there are simple checks that can be used by the sellers to weed out spurious buyers, in that story, the booty included 6 digital TV's (maybe from 6 different shops?).. I remember years aago, there was an inquiry when a man bought a 'job lot' of laptops for a small company (2, 3, something like that).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#67 Govt demands password to personal computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#68 Govt demands password to personal computer

in some places there are claims that the retailer shouldn't be playing enforcer regarding payment card fraud ... that the payment card integrity infrastructure should be a lot more robust and not get retailer into playing cop.

from the other side ... there was recent reference about validation that may be done by (especially large) retailers ... rejecting the most obvious fraudulent flavors ... however, the complaint was that there is no current mechanism for reporting to the issuer (consumer financial institution) that there may be an attack going on against that particular account number (that a crook is attempting fraudulent transaction for some account number .... which didn't pass the retailer's validation).

Is The Government Reselling Tapes With Sensitive Data?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Is The Government Reselling Tapes With Sensitive Data?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:49:50
'Erased' personel data on agency tapes can be retrieved, company says
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0108/012308j2.htm

from above:
According to its September 2007 report (GAO-07-1233R), GAO concluded it could not find "any comprehensible data on any of the tapes using standard commercially available equipment and data recovery techniques, specialized diagnostic equipment, custom programming or forensic analysis."

... snip ...

Sale of Magnetic Data Tapes Previously Used by the Government Presents a Low Security Risk
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d071233r.pdf

Is The Government Reselling Tapes With Sensitive Data?
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205920681

from above:
"Using a tape drive, a standard PC, programming knowledge, and understanding how data is written to media (which is publicly available), and a little more time than the GAO investigation, Imation personnel found the following recoverable sensitive data on these used tapes certified as clean: the origin of the tape, bank account numbers, employee information, travel expense reports, audit procedures and results, employee savings plan balances, international tax benefits documents," McCollum said in a letter demanding an investigation.

... snip ...

Too much change opens up financial fault lines

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Too much change opens up financial fault lines
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 08:19:40
Too much change opens up financial fault lines
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=1BB19739-2254-4B1A-8BD1-07A50A23D06A

this article talks about the lack of agility in lots of legacy financial dataprocessing.

some of this is related to the massive failed efforts in the 90s to replace legacy financial dataprocessing operations with parallel/distributed "object" implementations ... that addressed items like elimination of the overnight batch window bottlenecks with straight through processing.

recent post mentioning overnight batch window bottleneck and straight-through processing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#3 on-demand computing

"fault lines" tend to also open up fraud opportunities ... lots of of past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#fraud

related post about internet introduction creating discontinuity with regard to insider/outsider focus regarding fraud countermeasures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#26 folklore indeed

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 09:08:37
jmfbahciv writes:
The technical name for this kind of thinking is cognitive dissonance.

there was some of this on a business news tv talk show yesterday.

the fed is setup to deal with problems in the economy ... but recently has been asked to try and deal with problems in the financial markets (because it has somewhat been leaking out into the rest of the economy).

people have been paid enormous sums of money to play in the lending market ... however the recent disasters with toxic CDOs have demonstrated that many don't really know what they are doing ... the result is that they now seem to be in decision paralyses. the fed is lowering interest rates to help promote borrowing (to boost economic activity) ... but with the decision paralyses ... the lending side has been slow.

The other is that for at least the past six months ... lots of the financial markets have been constantly repeating the big "R" word ... sort of a lobbying mechanism to get the gov. to step in and bail out the mess that financial markets had gotten themselves in (with toxic CDOs). The downside is that a big component is customer confidence ... repeating the "R" word enuf can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

TV business news show (just now) claims that $2.3 trillion has been involved in these questionable toxic CDOs ... along with "bond" insurance that can't pay off. one of the individuals has used the "stupid" word at least a dozen times (as alternative to "cognitive dissonance").

hot news item in real time is that some trader at a french bank involving nearly $8billion was responsible for large part of world market volatility over the past week.

recent posts mentioning toxic CDOs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#25 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#66 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#70 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#90 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 09:54:57
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#80 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

Toyota says its 2007 sales a few thousand less than GM's
http://www.wtol.com/Global/story.asp?S=7765058

i can't find it at the moment ... but there was some article a couple months ago that this might happen based on incremental volume for GM from some overseas car manufacturing that it owns a few percent in (claiming the whole volume, not prorated based on percentage ownership).

For Third Consecutive Year, GM Sells More Than 9 Million Vehicles Globally
http://www.sunherald.com/447/story/318815.html

from above:
The 2007 tally was the second best global sales total in the company's 100-year history and marked the third consecutive and fourth time (2007, 2006, 2005 and 1978) GM sold more than 9 million vehicles in a calendar year.

... snip ...

GM Still No. 1, but Not by Much
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/23/AR2008012301709.html?hpid=sec-business

from above:
Much of the ground GM has lost has been on its own turf. Toyota has steadily expanded U.S. production and pounced on demand for small cars and hybrids, with such models as the Yaris and the Prius. Toyota has also challenged domestic automakers' lock on the pickup truck market with the Tundra, which is built in Texas. Last year, Toyota pushed aside Ford for second place in the U.S. market, a position Ford had held since the Great Depression.

... snip ...

other posts in the thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#84 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#86 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#55 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#56 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#59 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#75 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 10:32:29
cb@mer.df.lth.se (Christian Brunschen) writes:
For punched cards to be readable, at least one of the follow had to be true:

1) the human knows how to interpret them, including knowing which character set and encoding was being used

2) they were punched using a 'printing punch' which, thus, in addition to punching the card also printed the corresponding character.

For one thing, not all punches were printing punches. Even on printing punches, you might choose not to turn on the printing part.

Then of course, cards punched by computers as opposed to by operators at key punches would (at least frequently) not have anything printed either; sometimes because they would not contain anything recognizable as text, maybe using a binary as opposed to a zone-punched encoding.

So, when given an arbitrary card, there _might_ be printing on it, but there also might _not_ be, in which case you'd have to interpret the card.


there was bcdic which was 6bit code (2**6=64 punch hole combinations) ... and cards could be punched in bcd or column binary (all 12 rows in all 80 columns could be punched).

360 introduced ebcdic which allowed for 8bit code (256 punch hole combinations) ... other than lower-case, didn't involve a lot of differences with bcdic for printable characters.

my first student job was doing a 360 version of the 1401 MPIO application ... which was a tape<->unit record (reader, print/punch) front end for 709. for various reasons, i got to the point that i could readily interpret the (256) ebcdic card hole combination as hex as well as any corresponding character.

360 2540 card reader could read ebcdic mode ... or column binary mode (where 80 rows were mapped to 160 bytes). 2540 card reader had read, feed and select stacker ... as one ccw. or do the read and feed/stacker select as two different operations. i used the later mode ... attempt to read a card as ebcdic ... and if that failed ... reread the card as column binary.

this is q&d conversion of gcard ios3270 to html
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html

among other things lacks the table showing equivalence between hex, bcd, ebcdic, punch hole combinations. however this gives 2540 card reader ccw:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html#23

for other information ... recent scanning of the 360 reader/punch/printer control unit manual
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/28xx/2821/GA24-3312-9_2821_Unit_Description_Oct82.pdf
and scan of 2540 manual
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/A21-9033-1_2540_CompDescr.pdf

pictures of real green cards:
http://www.planetmvs.com/greencard/
another page with some real green card images
http://www.bouletfermat.com/backgrounds/

the above don't show the green card table giving the mapping between character sets and punch code.

a punch card website
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/cards/index.html

ibm (and other vendor) punch code mapping:
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/cards/codes.html

other posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#17 Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#46 Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?

Move over US -- China to be new driver of world's economy and innovation

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Move over US -- China to be new driver of world's economy and innovation
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 10:49:03
Move over US -- China to be new driver of world's economy and innovation
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/giot-mou012408.php

from above:
The study's indicators predict that China will soon pass the United States in the critical ability to develop basic science and technology, turn those developments into products and services – and then market them to the world. Though China is often seen as just a low-cost producer of manufactured goods, the new "High Tech Indicators" study done by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology clearly shows that the Asian powerhouse has much bigger aspirations.

... snip ...

misc. past posts mentioning competitiveness:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#14 hacked TOPS-10 monitors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#28 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#39 competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#57 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#62 competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#65 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#68 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#73 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#84 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#85 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#87 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#6 Science and Engineering Indicators 2008
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#38 What do YOU call the # sign?

Did early Oracle run on the IBM mainframe?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Did early Oracle run on the IBM mainframe?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 11:29:30
hancock4 writes:
I seem to recall that back in the early 1980s the Oracle database was sold to run on IBM mainframs (System/370). At that time there were several commercial products (e.g. Datacom, Adabase) that competed with IBM's own IMS. IMS was hiearchial while the independent products were relational.

I could only find that early Oracle ran on PDP/Vax machines.

Would anyone know anything more about that? Thanks.


old reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#40

to vmshare online discussion
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

of oracle on vm370
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/browse.cgi?fn=ORACLE&ft=MEMO

the references jump from 24jul80 entry saying oracle for vm370 would be available dec80

to 15dec82 entry asking for recommendations about installing it ... and then there is various additional entries through the 80s.

IMS had been developed on os/360 ... old email reference to Jim leaving for Tandem and palming off consulting with the IMS group on me:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801006
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801016
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#1

however, all the original relational/sql implementation (system/R) had been done during the 70s on vm370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

with technology transfer to endicott for sql/ds ... and then some amount of technology transfer from endicott (sql/ds) back to stl for db2 ... recent reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#70
by somebody at this meeting (at that time working for oracle)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

a little of other implementations are discussed in the sql reunion regarding other relational implementations
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/SQL_Reunion_95/index.html

1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:00:54
kkt <kkt@zipcon.net> writes:
In some cases, they're counterexamples. For instance, a section of the S.F. Bay Bridge collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. It was patched in a month, but a permanent replacement is still not done. It's under construction now, but it'll probably be 20 years after the earthquake before it's open for traffic.

we were something like 20 minutes late taking off from SFO for minneapolis ... to do some tuning work on (internet) rfc 1044 implementation at cray research
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

... about five minutes ahead of the quake. i 1st heard about the quake when i went to the galley in the back of the plane to find out what all the whispering was about.

it seemed like lots of the delay in work on collapsed overpasses was involvement by local citizen groups.

wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loma_Prieta_earthquake

Did early Oracle run on the IBM mainframe?

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Did early Oracle run on the IBM mainframe?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:15:32
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#79 Did early Oracle run on the IBM mainframe?

a little x-over from this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#29 MapReduce - a Major Step Backwards?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#30 MapReduce - a Major Step Backwards?

Database gurus slammed for Google post
http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2008/01/24/stonebraker_dewitt_mapreduce/

from above:
Ingres inventor and Postgres architect Mike Stonebraker and his colleague, University of Wisconsin computer science professor David DeWitt, have been accused of "not getting" data in the clouds while others have demanded the duo retract what's been branded a "highly inaccurate article".

... snip ...

Break the rules of governance and lose 4.9 billion

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Break the rules of governance and lose 4.9 billion
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:17:30
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
so one of the issues is when the integrity/security state-of-the-art gets back to where things were 25yrs ago in the early 80s ... and start to see attention being focused again on collusion countermeasures (as opposed to current situation where it is extremely difficult to just sort out the insider/outsider issues).

misc. past posts mentioning insiders/outsiders and/or collusion countermeasures:


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#26 folklore indeed

possibly a little x-over here
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#74 Too much change opens up financial fault lines

but definitely is related to mention of insider here ... i.e. earlier in the day some reports were saying nearly $8b
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#75 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

article here
SocGen: The trader vanishes
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c072c242-ca60-11dc-a960-000077b07658.html


and here (4.9 billion euros):
Break the rules of governance and lose 4.9 billion...
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/000997.html


from above (i.e. insider countermeasures) ..
OK, so rule #1 in governance is to separate the decisions from the implemention. Those on the decision side (in this case, traders) can not touch the money. Those on the money side (in financial lingo, back-office) cannot make any decisions. Seems simple, right?

The flaw here is that separation of roles also has to be backed up by more than mere words. Those in the back-office are supposed to check for valid trading by some metric or other, and supervisors are supposed to watch everything and make judgement calls. Those in the front-office (traders) are supposed to be rewarded for successful trades, and those in the back-office are supposed to be rewarded for safe trades.


... snip ...

this article lists $7.1 billion:
Societe Generale's Fraud: What Now?
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2008/gb20080325_139235.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_global+business


from above:
How could this possibly have happened? That was the question being asked in financial circles worldwide Jan. 24, after France's Societe Generale (SOGN.PA), one of Europe's biggest banks and a global superstar in the booming derivatives-trading business, disclosed a staggering $7.1 billion loss from rogue trading by a single employee.

... snip ...




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