List of Archived Posts

2008 Newsgroup Postings (02/07 - 02/23)

Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
What happened to resumable instructions?
Spammers' bot cracks Microsoft's CAPTCHA
Govt demands password to personal computer
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
How Safe Are Your Personal Records In The Hands Of Government Officials?
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Govt demands password to personal computer
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
New Research Confirms Identity Fraud Is On Decline
more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
Javascript disabled in Firefox
Remembering The Search For Jim Gray, A Year Later
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Kerberized authorization service
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
Interesting Mainframe Article: 5 Myths Exposed
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
New Research Confirms Identity Fraud Is On Decline
Interesting Mainframe Article: 5 Myths Exposed
Interesting Mainframe Article: 5 Myths Exposed
COTS software on box ? to replace mainframe was Re: Curious(?) way to ZIP a mainframe file
outsourcing moving up value chain
Throwaway cores
Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
COTS software on box ? to replace mainframe was Re: Curious(?) way to ZIP a mainframe file
VM/370 Release 6 Waterloo tape (CIA MODS)
more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
Prison pushes for exploitation of slave labor of prisoners
Throwaway cores
Linux zSeries questions
VM/370 Release 6 Waterloo tape (CIA MODS)
Linux zSeries questions
CPU time differences for the same job
It has been a long time since Ihave seen a printer
Throwaway cores
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Throwaway cores
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Throwaway cores
Fwd: Linux zSeries questions
Linux zSeries questions
more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Formerly common things
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Interesting ibm about the myths of the Mainframe
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Time to rewrite DBMS, says Ingres founder
Throwaway cores
Regarding the virtual machines
Regarding the virtual machines
Time to rewrite DBMS, says Ingres founder
Interesting ibm about the myths of the Mainframe
Price of CPU seconds
Price of CPU seconds
Price of CPU seconds
Richard Feynman, the Challenger Disaster, and Software Engineering
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Escaping decades of hidden app development inefficiency and expense
was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
The Economic Impact of Stimulating Broadband Nationally
Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
The hands-free way to steal a credit card
Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
U.S. Science Funding Hits a Political Wall
Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
The hands-free way to steal a credit card
Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
z10 presentation on 26 Feb
Database Pioneer Rethinks The Best Way To Organize Data
1998 vs. 2008: A Tech Retrospective
The Economic Impact of Stimulating Broadband Nationally

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, 07 Feb 2008 14:49:48
sidd@situ.com () writes:
the Case-Shiller index now shows that home prices have dropped 7.7% over the last year. OFHEO shows a smaller decline (for a different set of houses). even the NAR today admitted that prices would drop a little this year. Merrill Lynch sees 20% more. Other observers are calling 30%.

easy (irrational?) credit would have added significantly to home price inflation ... one scenario is transition to more restrictive (rational) credit policies, the boom in real estate valuation would have to experience adjustment (deflation) ... back to some level that would correspond to what would have happened if there hadn't been so much easy credit and bad loans.

in the past, when the fed lowered prime, there would be economic stimulus with increased borrowing/loans because of an increase on the demand side (borrowers finding lower rates more attractive).

in the current scenario, there has been so much easy/bad credit ... there is now quite a bit of downward adjustment on the supply side (compared to what it had been; the prime rate previously having represented little or no barrier on either the supply or demand side). it would be very hard for prime rate incentives for the demand side to compensate for the downside adjustment on the supply side (lending institutions adjusting to more rational loan policies).

some of this could also be attributed to individuals on the loan side ... having had significant compensation in the past for their brilliant judgments ... which now has been shown to be significantly flawed ... now there is some amount of decision paralysis ... having made so many thoroughly bad loans, they may be quite gun shy going forward, making new loan decisions; over adjustment for significant amount of past mistakes. recent decision paralysis post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#75 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

What happened to resumable instructions?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: What happened to resumable instructions?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:46:48
slegel writes:
I just noticed this thread today. I see there is a lot of speculation and incorrect statements, so let me try to clarify.

First, from a processor implementation point of view, there is no problem with the old-style MVCL/CLCL interruptible instructions. At appropriate points based on pending interrupts and potential page crossings leading to an access exception, the millicode exits from their execution and sets the GRs and PSW appropriately to continue later. There is no risk of checkstops and it is perfectly well architected to handle a page fault in the middle, as some have speculated.

The reason for the new CC3-style interruptible instructions is very simple. It was requested by software developers (both internal and external to IBM). It allows more flexibility in handling other system activity that is not interrupt driven. So for example, software can go off and perform some housekeeping while a long running MVCLE is executing. Note that POPS requires the processor to exit with a CC3 every (approximately) 4KB processed. So for a multi-page move, the overhead of starting and stopping can actually slow down the throughput of the move very slightly.

I would expect that all future interruptible ops be of the CC3-style. That said, there will be at least one new interruptible version of an existing instruction announced soon, however, it is an instruction never used by the vast majority of software developers.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#67 What happened to resumable instructions?

long storage-to-storage operations with lots of accesses back to real storage ... is costing ever increasing number of processor cycles (as mismatch between processor speed and memory speed increases) ... recent reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#92 CPU time differences for the same job

one could claim that nearly the same effective results (cc3-style) could be achieved for old-style interruptable instructions under program control ... but requiring a few more registers for loop control ... i.e. actual length is kept in other registers and the lengths used for mvcl/clcl instructions being limited (to 4096).

there are other thruput issues associated with long storage-to-storage operations; even back to working on original mainframe tcp/ip product implementation.

at the time, some of the competitive tcp/ip implementations were looking at 5k pathlength and five buffer copies ... and there was comparison with something like 150k instruction pathlength and 16 buffer copies for lu6.2. at that time, assuming 8kbyte NFS size buffer ... the processor overhead for the 16 (LU6.2) 8kbyte storage-to-storage buffer copy operations exceeded the processor time for the rest of the pathlength.

the other factor that some processors provided was cache-bypass, storage-to-storage instructions. Large number of significant sized storage-to-storage operations ... not only has ever increasing significant overhead in terms of processor cycles ... but can have an extremely detrimental effect on cache occupancy (the actual data in most of the buffers has little probability of ever being needed in the cache, but replacing data that would be needed).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Spammers' bot cracks Microsoft's CAPTCHA

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Spammers' bot cracks Microsoft's CAPTCHA
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:21:37
Spammers' bot cracks Microsoft's CAPTCHA; Bot beats Windows Live Mail's registration test 30% to 35% of the time, says Websense
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9061558

from above:
The bot, said Hubbard, grabs the CAPTCHA -- which is not plain text but actually an image -- and sends it back to the spammer's server, where the image is somehow "read" and a clear text match is generated. The text is then sent back to Live Mail, where it's plugged into the box where users normally type the CAPTCHA characters.

... snip ...

past 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
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#2 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#19 Yahoo's CAPTCHA Security Reportedly Broken
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#23 Yahoo's CAPTCHA Security Reportedly Broken

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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: Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:25:56
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
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#72 Govt demands password to personal computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#59 Govt demands password to personal computer

somewhat related item:

Consumers Favor PINs Over Banks' Debit Payment Needles; Contact-less and signature-based authorizations are not preferred because consumers believe the methods favored by banks are less secure, a Gartner survey found.
http://www.informationweek.com/consumers-favor-pins-over-banks-debit-payments/d/d-id/1064365

from above:
According to a survey of 4,500 online U.S. adults, the marketing push has failed to steer most consumers away from the use of PINs, Gartner said. Consumers refuse to change because they believe the methods favored by banks are less secure.

Consumers prefer entering a PIN when using a debit card over all types of signature-based card payments, whether credit or debit, Gartner found. Banks promote signature-based debit payments because they earn more fee revenue from card-accepting merchants.

Banks charge more on the premise that signature-based payments are riskier and more prone to theft.


... snip ...

one of the issues discussed in this thread is certain kind of vulnerabilities with debit transactions when signature debit was introduced ... even when it might involve a card that had never been used.

another debit card vulnerability that crops up with signature debit ... can involve debit cards that are enabled for both signature debit and pin-debit. even if the card is only used in pin-debit mode ... it would still be possible for a crook to skim the magstripe, create a counterfeit card ... and use the card in signature debit mode .... w/o ever knowing the pin.

this is somewhat analogous to part of the x9.59 standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

referenced in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#89 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

about account numbers used for x9.59 transaction can not be used in any other kinds of transactions.

it usually involves special request now, but it is possible to obtain a debit card that can only be used in pin-debit mode.

note that past studies have found signature debit has 15 times the fraud of pin debit ... misc. past references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#21 Debit Cards HACKED now
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#24 Debit Cards HACKED now
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#59 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#15 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#60 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#12 IBM Unionization

... for other topic drift ... in the same time frame as the x9a10 financial standard working group effort on the x9.59 financial standard for retail payments ... there were a number of other efforts that attempted to come up with specifications for small pieces of the overall problems.

some of the other work was doing internet specific specification, but wasn't applicable to point-of-sale and involved enormous payload and processing bloat
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#bloat

other work in the period was for chipcards that could only be used at point-of-sale ... but specification wasn't usable for internet (card-not-present, cardholder-not-present, MOTO) transactions ... and had other deficiencies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard

a problem with using PIN-debit in internet environment is that the PIN is a shared-secret ... and is to be kept confidential and never divulged (which is difficult to achieve in an internet environment)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#secrets

there were various attempts in the early part of this decade to introduce various debit-based products for the internet environment (even some that had specification very similar to x9.59 protocol). however, there was large disconnect between the merchants and the financial institutions which has never been resolved. As per the referenced article, the merchants have gotten use to the justification that (significantly higher) interchange fees are proportional to products' vulnerability to fraud. For a product that eliminated nearly all of the existing fraud ... it follows that there would be much lower interchange fees. The counter offer was that since such products eliminated nearly all the fraud, the interchange fees should carry a premium over and above the products that were vulnerable to lots of fraud.

the x9a10 financial standard working group there was work on making the resulting (x9.59) standard (light weight and) applicable to all possible environments (including being able to meet iso 14443 contactless power profile within transit gate timing constraints) ... w/o sacrificing any security.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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: Fri, 08 Feb 2008 01:29:58
krw <krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzz> writes:
Tax returns are confidential. A SSNs don't even come close to getting you access to others' files. AFAIK, you can't even allow others to access your IRS records. The IRS isn't in the credit reporting business.

as part of working on x9.99 financial privacy standard ... we met with some number of people involved in HIPAA and GLBA ... as well as people from various agencies (including irs) involved in privacy impact assessments. there were thousands and thousands of PIAs (across the gov) ... and significant effort was getting them published (and all the information that had to be redacted for publishing as part of gov. disclosure). for small sample, use search engine restricted to just irs.gov sites for
privacy impact assessments

the first couple
IRS Privacy Policy
http://www.irs.gov/uac/IRS-Privacy-Policy
Privacy Impact Assessments
http://www.irs.gov/uac/Privacy-Impact-Assessments-PIA


--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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: Fri, 08 Feb 2008 08:45:38
jmfbahciv writes:
It's not only merchants these days. There are AmEx gift cards out on the racks.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#90 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

note that from business process standpoint ... the amex gift cards are little different from amex checks (they are bought from amex, amex retains the float, etc) ... the introduction of electronic card processing makes them more convenient

the original gift card processing offering to merchants is over decade old and there was only one vendor in the market for quite some time.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

How Safe Are Your Personal Records In The Hands Of Government Officials?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: How Safe Are Your Personal Records In The Hands Of Government Officials?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:03:28
Stimpy <stimpy1997uk@yahoo.com> writes:
The lost Social Security data wasn't outsourced. It was lost between a DSS office in the North of England and HM Revenue & Customs in London.

The missing CDs have never been found and no-one has owned up to losing them.

There's a persistent rumour that they were never sent and the whole affair was started by a junior clerk at the DSS trying to cover up the fact he'd forgotten to send the data.


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#4 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

How Safe Are Your Personal Records In The Hands Of (UK) Government Officials?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080208133900.htm

from above:
The loss of a CD by HM Revenue & Customs in November 2007 containing personal and financial details of over 7 million families claiming child benefit was swiftly followed by assurances that such a mistake would never happen again. Then in February, an agency of the Department for Health* admitted that over 4,000 NHS smartcards (UK cards providing access to an individual's health records), giving potential computer access to patient records, had been lost or stolen - and nearly a third of these in the last year alone.

... snip ...

related discussion going on in mainframe n.g. regarding zeroization of disks & tapes ... couple posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#47 Data Erasure Products
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#48 Data Erasure Products

a couple recent gov related security/privacy news items

GAO creates checklist for auditor requirements
http://fcw.com/online/news/151234-1.html
GAO: IRS has fixed only 30 percent of security gaps
http://www.fcw.com/online/news/151245-1.html
OMB wants privacy review details in FISMA reports
http://www.fcw.com/online/news/151386-1.html
OMB stresses FDCC compliance means 100 percent
http://www.fcw.com/online/news/151428-1.html
Panel: DOD software is at risk
http://www.fcw.com/print/22_2/policy/151347-1.html

older:

GAO: VA data still at risk
http://www.fcw.com/online/news/150225-1.html
GAO: IRS slow to fix numerous IT security gaps
http://www.fcw.com/online/news/98135-1.html

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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: Sat, 09 Feb 2008 08:25:40
jmfbahciv writes:
Are you talking about traveler's checks? I can't buy them in any old store nor off the shelf.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#90 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#5 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

the (amex) gift card business process is effectively the same as its travelers checks ... except that the gift cards are a lot more convenient

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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: Sat, 09 Feb 2008 08:59:44
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#3 Govt demands password to personal computer

related article:

3D Secure, give it your best short
http://digitaldebateblogs.typepad.com/digital_money/2008/02/3d-secure-give.html

from above:
How pathetic is it that when I want to buy something on the Internet using my bank card I have do mess around typing in endless details, numbers, codes, passwords and the like. It's all so 1994. In an a modern economy, that sort of thing is seen as being on a par with Babylonian clay tablets or filling out paper forms to make a SEPA Credit Transfer. But in advanced countries, there is another way:

... snip ...

dates back to original payment gateway
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway
for a small client/server startup that had invented something called SSL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcert
and wanted to use it for something that is frequently now referred to as electronic commerce.

misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm6.htm#terror7 [FYI] Did Encryption Empower These Terrorists?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm6.htm#terror10 [FYI] Did Encryption Empower These Terrorists?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm6.htm#terror13 [FYI] Did Encryption Empower These Terrorists?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm6.htm#pcards The end of P-Cards?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay7.htm#3dsecure 3D Secure Vulnerabilities? Photo ID's and Payment Infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay7.htm#3dsecure2 3D Secure Vulnerabilities? Photo ID's and Payment Infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay7.htm#3dsecure4 3D Secure Vulnerabilities? Photo ID's and Payment Infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#pcards5 FW: The end of P-Cards?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm7.htm#3dsecure 3D Secure Vulnerabilities?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay8.htm#epso ePSO-N 10 available on Internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm8.htm#3dvulner 3D Secure Vulnerabilities?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm8.htm#softpki16 DNSSEC (RE: Software for PKI)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm8.htm#3dvulner3 3D Secure Vulnerabilities?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm9.htm#3dvulner4 3D Secure Vulnerabilities?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm9.htm#3dvulner5 3D Secure Vulnerabilities?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay10.htm#17 Visa 3-D Secure vs MasterCard SPA Whitepaper (forwarded)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay10.htm#37 landscape & p-cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay10.htm#76 Invisible Ink, E-signatures slow to broadly catch on (addenda)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#19 IBM alternative to PKI?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#28 Proposal: A replacement for 3D Secure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#29 Proposal: A replacement for 3D Secure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#30 Proposal: A replacement for 3D Secure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#31 Proposal: A replacement for 3D Secure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#37 ALARMED ... Only Mostly Dead ... RIP PKI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm11.htm#38 ALARMED ... Only Mostly Dead ... RIP PKI ... part II
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#1 3D Secure GUI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#2 3D Secure GUI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#3 [3d-secure] NEWS: 3D-Secure and Passport
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#4 NEWS: 3D-Secure and Passport
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#5 NEWS: 3D-Secure and Passport
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#6 NEWS: 3D-Secure and Passport
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#7 NEWS: 3D-Secure and Passport
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#8 [3d-secure] 3D Secure and EMV
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#10 [3d-secure] 3D Secure and EMV
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#5 Is cryptography where security took the wrong branch?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#8 Is cryptography where security took the wrong branch?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#38 FAQ: e-Signatures and Payments
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm15.htm#39 FAQ: e-Signatures and Payments
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm17.htm#27 Re:Identity Firewall. l PKI International Consortium
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#12 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/2007t.html#3 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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: Sat, 09 Feb 2008 21:41:40
Bernd Felsche <bernie@innovative.iinet.net.au> writes:
The "mainframe" model doesn't. The "mainframe on a stick" still can. It's entirely feasible to build "secure" data stores that cannot be easily hacked/interrogated. Encrypted data is useless data without a key.

I carry around a hard disc will several gigabytes of sensitive data. It's encrypted. Based on the present state of technology, it'd take tens of years to crack by brute force.


a lot of the data breaches are related to the ease that the information can be used for fraudulent transactions. some of the information has diametrically opposing requirements ... aka that it is required to be readily available over extended period of time for numerous business processes ... and at the same time the information has to be keep confidential and never divulged. this has led to our comment that even if the planet was buried under miles of encryption, it wouldn't prevent information leakage. the wide exposure of the information in large number of different places ... also contributes to studies that up to seventy percent of fraud involves insiders.

x9.59 financial standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

didn't do anything about trying to protect the information ... however, it did include countermeasure making the information useless by crooks for fraudulent transactions.

it is similar ... but different to the idea behind one-time account nubmers ... recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#89 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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: Sun, 10 Feb 2008 08:10:33
Walter Bushell <proto@oanix.com> writes:
Probably much more by Euro value. We have had several market reactions to actions by single traders where governments had to step in. Now how do you categorize the housing scandal? A lot of fraud by individuals, abetted by loaning institution, rating agencies and consolidators and marketeers.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#9 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

insider problems can be divided into two scenarios.

1) systems that are vulnerable because they have dual-use secret based operation. the secret ... like an account number ... is required for both authentication ... aka something you know authentication, from 3-factor authentication paradigm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#3factor
... and also for standard business process. all sorts of processes are put in place to keep the secret information confidential and never divulged ... but at the same time, the dual-use nature requires that it has to be exposed to large number of individuals (ala insiders) performing their duties. the core systemic flaw is the dual-use characteristic, insiders still can harvest the information and leak it for "imposter" attacks. one approach (ala x9.59 financial standard) is to eliminate the dual-use vulnerability of the information.

2) insiders just performing their day to day operations. countermeasures are multi-party operations, partitioned duties and authority. attacks on these systems involve either an insider exceeding their authority by impersonating other individuals (in the multi-party operatons), collusion where multiple parties are involved, and/or lax controls enforcing the multi-party operations.

first kind of insider scenario could be copying master account database and making it available for others to perform fraudulent transactions, impersonating the individual account owners. this frequently gets lumped into the identity theft/fraud category

the second kind of insider scenario are things like embezzlement ... where the individual "exceeds" their authority to transfer organization funds to an outside account. more complex might be loans to ficticious individuals and/or based on non-existent collaterial. One of the loan fraud scenarios from the 80s (as well as other eras) was large mortgages on buildings at addresses that turned out to be empty lots and/or mortgages to individuals that have possibly no possible way of repaying them (and the money otherwise disappears). Countermeasures supposedly were controls requiring independent appraisals and audits. When online satellite photos systems were introduced ... there were suggestions that at least there could be controls that independently verified whether there was actually a building at the address (some of the more blantent mortgage fraud scenarios from the 80s). However, the mortgage fraud scenario can also simply be theft by outsiders, although they may be aided and abetted by incompetent "insiders" and lax processes (evolution of controls tend to try and compensate for both incompetent as well as crooked insiders)

The identity theft/fraud scenarios are more likely to show up in the popular press ... especially after the introduction of breach notification laws. The natural tendency for many of the institutions has been to sweep such incidents under the rug. Part of the issue is many of the involved institutions ... their basic "currency" is trust ... and publicity of such events tends to tarnish and devalue that "currency" (sometimes more so than the events themselves).

other recent posts mentioning insiders, breaches, identity theft/fraud and/or collusion:
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#11 Information security breaches quadrupled in 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#35 U.S. Identity Theft at Record Level in 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#36 1970s credit cards, was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#26 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#82 Break the rules of governance and lose 4.9 billion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#44 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#76 Neglected IT Tasks May Have Led to Bank Meltdown
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#89 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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: Sun, 10 Feb 2008 10:38:49
jmfbahciv writes:
There is a third: just a plain goof up.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#9 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#10 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

sometimes that is incompetent insiders ... as per previous ... and some of it is plain/normal human mistakes.

to wander back into computers and dataprocessing ... i've mentioned before we were spending some time talking with a major financial network a few years ago. they had attributed nearly a decade of 100percent availability to

ims hot-standby involved triple replicated systems in two geographic locations. this provided high availability for system failures as well as various kinds of natural disasters.

however as referenced in the past ... starting sometime in the early 80s, hardware problems stopped being the major cause of failures. as other kinds of failures were addressed ... human mistakes started becoming one of the (few) remaining sources of failures. automated operator eliminated most of the (remaining) human mistakes as a source of failures that they had previously experienced.

mainframe IMS used to dominate backend financial systems ... and is still found in large number of core backend systems (even with the apparent ascendancy of rdbms in more popular mind ... but ims continues to be a main component of major industrial dataprocessing).

for random drift ... old email reference to when jim was leaving for tandem ... and palming off on me, consulting with the IMS group ... and interfacing to outside organizations on relational (including large financial institution looking at relational)
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

there was funny situation about a particular large financial institution. one of the people from the IMS organization (in STL) had gone there to head up dataprocessing. he was out hiring IMS development programmers and the "joke" was that he had managed to put together a larger IMS development team ... than the "official" IMS development group in STL. that financial institution (or at least one with the same name) continues to have very large amount of core financial dataprocessing systems using IMS.

for other drift ... i've mentioned before my wife being con'ed into going to pok to be in charge of loosely-coupled architecture (i.e. mainframe for cluster) ... where she developed peer-coupled shared data architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

... she left the position after short stint, because (except the IMS group for IMS hot-standby) there was very little uptake until much more recent with (mainframe) sysplex.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2008 11:54:43
"Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <urjlew@bellsouth.net> writes:
Is that why: BOS, TOS, DOS, MVT, MVS and related and derivative systmes both Operating systms, and program products, are so rarely discussed here? :)

lots of people whos' computer experience is PCs and windows?

some recent posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#15 hacked TOPS-10 monitors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#19 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers [was: Re: What do YOU call
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
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#35 U.S. Identity Theft at Record Level in 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#40 No Gory for the *NIX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#41 IT managers stymied by limits of x86 virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#42 Inaccurate CPU% reported by RMF and TMON
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#45 No Glory for the PDP-15
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
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#76 Rotary phones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#77 Radix Partition Trees
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#89 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#0 on-demand computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#8 on-demand computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#11 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#17 Flash memory arrays
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#18 Flash memory arrays
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#19 Yahoo's CAPTCHA Security Reportedly Broken
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#24 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#25 Flash memory arrays
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#27 Re-hosting IMB-MAIN
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#31 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#33 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#38 What do YOU call the # sign?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#40 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#42 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#50 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#52 China's Godson-2 processor takes center stage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#55 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#58 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?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#71 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#72 Govt demands password to personal computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#75 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#79 Did early Oracle run on the IBM mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#81 Did early Oracle run on the IBM mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#1 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#9 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#10 Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#24 Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#35 New Opcodes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#37 Diversity ( was Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#38 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#45 Young mainframers' group gains momentum
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#49 No Glory for the PDP-15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#50 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#52 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#53 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#54 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bel?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#55 Kernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#68 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#72 No Glory for the PDP-15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#78 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#81 Random thoughts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#82 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#84 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#88 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#92 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#1 What happened to resumable instructions?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#6 How Safe Are Your Personal Records In The Hands Of Government Officials?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#9 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#11 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2008 12:39:47
Chris Barts <chbarts+usenet@gmail.com> writes:
So it's cute that people here can look at Xen and say "We were doing that in 1963" or "We were doing that in 1968". Ultimately, though, it isn't entirely on-point.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#28 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#61 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

then in a computer folklore n.g. talking about doing something in "1968" has become "isn't entirely on-point" ... sort of the inverse of the comment replied to in this recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#12 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

it might be that in a xen or a vmware n.g. .... related to current implementations ... there might be more of the attitude that there isn't anything to learn about what was done in 1968 ... but it seems odd to make that assertion that something from 1968 isn't "entirely on-point" in a computer folklore n.g.???

there has been some relatively recent threads in mainframe newsgroup about the difficulty that i/o subsystems present for virtualization ... which is along the lines of similar articles regarding the difficulty that i/o subsystems (in some of the PC-based platforms) present for virtualization (on those platforms). the difficulty of i/o subsystem virtualization dates back to at least the early efforts in the mid-60s.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:38:04
Lon <lon.stowell@comcast.net> writes:
Very early in the conflict, Ho Chi Minh was not anti-US. He asked for help in removing all foreign intervention in the country and only went to China/Russia for help after being insulted by the US. The US backed regime was so thoroughly inept and corrupt that even the local and regional religions protested against it, however by that time Ho had pretty much concluded that the USofA was just as arrogant and ignorant as the other invaders.

there were stories that (later) special forces had pretty much won over the hearts & minds ... but that the top military commander wanted traditional military set-pieces to provide the corps opportunity for promotions.

some additional topic drift mentioning bureaucrats (back in the states), valuing budget share over military tactics & strategy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#52 Current Officers

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:14:04
Chris Barts <chbarts+usenet@gmail.com> writes:
What's more important is that it can now be improved upon without the beancounters at IBM or any other company holding the reins. Progress in the real world usually comes from startups and other dorm-dwellers (Dell, Sun, Apple, and the rather marginal MITS). /That/ is essential, not the details of any specific project.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#28 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#61 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#13 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

actually software back then was free (and source readily available) and lots of univ. and other organizations actively worked on the software. it was mostly gov. litigation that led to the "unbundling" announcement on 23jun69 (starting to charge for software) ... misc. past posts mentioning unbundling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

however, the corporation was able to make the case with the gov. that kernel software still should be free ... which pretty much continued for nearly another decade ... before the pressure & transition to charge for all (including kernel) software.

a lot of the work came out of the corporations science center on the 4th flr of 545 tech sq:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

and was somewhat a small, lean operation. it was only about 30-40 people at the time ... and was responsible for creating all the virtual machine stuff, as well as lots of timesharing work
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

and other interactive, online technology. It was also responsible for the technology that was the basis of the internal network (the internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until possibly summer 85)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

and also univ. bitnet/earn network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

it was also where gml was invented in 1969 ... precursor to sgml, html, xml, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

there were some number of commercial timesharing service bureaus startups that spun out of the science center and/or were cp67 and/or vm370 based ... recent reference in D&B and NCSS thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#63
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#71

the original html stuff was based on the sgml work originally out of the science center
http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/

and the first website outside of europe was on the vm370 system at slac:
https://ahro.slac.stanford.edu/wwwslac-exhibit

for some amount of other virtual machine and science center history, see the papers at melinda's web site:
https://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda#VMHist

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 13:12:30
cb@mer.df.lth.se (Christian Brunschen) writes:
The cloning experiment was not, from Apple's point of view, working; on the contrary, it meant increased expense (developing reference motherboards) and reduced income (customers choosing clones rather than Apple machines).

lots of cloning scenarios down thru the ages have relied on fundamental (viable) eco-system and then leverage it into additional niches.

sometimes there can be mutual parasitic relationship between the clones and the large infrastructure. lots of clones dramatically increased the market size. the increase in market size justified spending on fabs that run to billions of dollars each ... in order to get further economies of scale. in some cases the fab costs are justified for specific chip ... but the same fab/process can also be leveraged for other chips (relying on economies of scale of large operation to succeed in their nich markets).

the internet growth is somewhat similar ... combination of massive scale of personal computers and massive telecommunication infrastructure (also requiring billions of dollars in investment).

for some additional topic drift:

Cable breaks expose weakness of industry economics
http://www.commsday.com/node/219

one of the earlier cloning activities had prompted the future system effort
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

reference from "IBM Crisis and Change" article:
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm

quote from the above (i.e. response to clone controllers):
IBM tried to react by launching a major project called the 'Future System' (FS) in the early 1970's. The idea was to get so far ahead that the competition would never be able to keep up, and to have such a high level of integration that it would be impossible for competitors to follow a compatible niche strategy. However, the project failed because the objectives were too ambitious for the available technology. Many of the ideas that were developed were nevertheless adapted for later generations. Once IBM had acknowledged this failure, it launched its 'box strategy', which called for competitiveness with all the different types of compatible sub-systems. But this proved to be difficult because of IBM's cost structure and its R&D spending, and the strategy only resulted in a partial narrowing of the price gap between IBM and its rivals

... snip ...

in addition to stuff done as undergraduate in the later half of the 60s on various system and software stuff (including a lot of work on virtual machine system) ... i had also gotten involved with a project at the university on creating a (mainframe) clone controller.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

this got written up later as four of us being responsible for some amount of the clone market.

later with the appearance of clone processors, the focus on the future system effort ... and letting the 370 product pipeline dry up ... contributed to letting the clone processors get a foothold in the market place.

the success of the clone processors contributed to the decision to start charging for kernel software. the gov. litigation was big motivation behind the 23jun69 "unbundling" announcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

and starting to charge for application software. however, the corporation was manage to make the case that kernel software should still be free ... which lasted for nearly another decade.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#28 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#61 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#13 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#15 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:43:40
Stimpy <stimpy1997uk@yahoo.com> writes:
Not *everyone* wants to know anything about how their computer works. They want to switch it on and write letters, access their bank account and surf the web.

i got to have some discussions like this with some of the mac developers (before initial mac announcement). my brother was regional marketing rep for apple (claimed to have the largest physical region in conus). he would periodically come to town and we'd go out to dinner ... with other people from apple (including some mac developers).

my assertion was that a significant contributing factor to achieving market size and breaking out of the computer hobbyiests market segment was terminal emulation. business could buy a pc for about the same price as 3270 terminal and in single desktop footprint ... get both existing terminal operation and some local computing capability. individual businesses might have tens of thousands of such terminals ... so it was enormous market ... ready-made to be taken over by PCs. It was relatively no-brainer business decision, money would have already been budgeted for the terminals ... so no really new financial case and/or major justification was required for the purchases.

once some market size threashold had been past ... it started attracting large number of application developers and the clone makers ... creating snowball effect ... increasing number of new applications, increased the perceived value ... while at the same time, the clone makers were driving down the price ... which fueled increased purchases.

misc. past post mentioning terminal emulation contributed to pc market breaking out of computer hobbyiest
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

the mac developers (effectively) were insisting that they were going to make it purely as kitchen table appliance. it was long battle ... in part, it wasn't until after online & internet became more pervasive ... that the perceived value of the appliance (along with the technology cost plummeting) that it made lots of sense for general public.

for some trivia drift ... my brother figured out how to dial into the apple datacenter to access assembly line schedules, delivery dates, etc.

a trivia question:
what was the business computer used in the apple datacenter?

two hints:
future system rochester

other posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#28 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#61 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#13 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#15 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#16 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

New Research Confirms Identity Fraud Is On Decline

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: New Research Confirms Identity Fraud Is On Decline
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 18:21:14
latest study:

New Research Confirms Identity Fraud Is On Decline
http://www.govtech.com/gt/262138?topic=117671
New Research Confirms Identity Fraud Is On Decline
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080211/20080211005754.html?.v=1

same company/study from last feb:

Identity Fraud: ID Theft Victims, Losses Take Welcome Nosedive
http://www.banktechnews.com/article.html?id=20070226T5LTLE8K

the above references identity fraud with respect to opening new accounts (as opposed to fraudulent transactions against existing accounts) and banks were doing better processing of new account requests

other references to same fraud study late year:

Study: ID fraud in decline
http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/423
US ID theft losses decline
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/05/us_id_fraud_survey/

referenced in these posts from last spring:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#29 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#58 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#62 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#58 Securing financial transactions a high priority for 2007

a couple weeks after the studies from last year ... there was a number of articles that identity fraud was exploding. it seemed to be that the different studies were looking at totally different numbers:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#19 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies

one of the "opposite" studies from last March

ID Theft Is Exploding In The U.S.; The number of victims and the amount stolen are both ballooning, according to a new study (Gartner as opposed to the organization doing the Feb. study):
http://www.banktech.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=198002061

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:29:22
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
misc. past post mentioning terminal emulation contributed to pc market breaking out of computer hobbyiest
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#17 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

for additional topic drift:

Emerging compute models locked in a dead heat
http://www.echannelline.com/usa/story.cfm?item=22928

from above:
A survey of 705 U.S.-based IT decision-makers at mid-sized to large enterprises found the most established alternative to thick-client systems, Terminal Services (a.k.a. thin client computing), scored highest in awareness of the compute model (96 per cent); familiarity with the technology (84 per cent); deployment in any capacity, including test installations (64 per cent); and high-volume production installations (31 per cent).

... snip ...

for businesses, thin client (current flavor of terminal emulation) addresses a lot of the compromises and vulnerabilities of PCs ... especially connected to internet with employees loading up all sorts of unimaginable stuff.

somewhat related posts about 2008 being the year that businesses disable employees being able to download from the internet:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#39 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#0 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#4 folklore indeed

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:44:04
Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> writes:
Somebody who don't understand the way that computers work have no business using things that look like computers. That's a crucial distinction -- for the vast majority out there, a word processor should look like a word processor just as a microwave oven should look like a microwave oven.

there was supposedly a period when there was issue about whether people that didn't understand automobiles should be allowed to have them (and/or at least didn't have a chauffeur that understood and operate autombiles on their behalf). automobiles supposedly should have only been driven by people that knew how to take them apart and put them back together, do their own repairs and maintenance, etc. ... automobiles didn't need starter motors ... they should only be driven by people capable of starting engines with hand crank.

later there were issues about whether automobiles should have countermeasures for common accident results ... things like bumpers, safety glass, padded dash boards, seat belts, impact zones, brake lights, turn signals, etc. along the way, there was also stuff about the need for traffic rules, right of way, traffic lights, crosswalks, etc.

in many respects computers are still undergoing the transitional period from professional use ... to general public appliance.

there is still a lot of automobile use by people that have no business using them. random past reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#4 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#7 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#10 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#18 Traffic Jam Mystery Solved By Mathematicians

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 07:11:21
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
Confirms my findings through experience and a lot of massaging of PPOE outage data. For five nines uptime, you must go to three geographically diverse systems.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#11 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

a little related news from today:

Euroclear establishes third back-up data centre
http://www.finextra.com/fullpr.asp?id=19855

from above:
The Euroclear group's two primary data centres, located outside metropolitan areas, use real-time data replication and load-balancing features to ensure full synchronisation of data and transaction-processing capabilities between the two facilities. This allows either of the two primary data centres to take over technical operations within one hour of a local disaster affecting the other centre. Production data is also streamed asynchronously to the newly opened third data centre, located hundreds of kilometres away from the primary sites. The third data centre is designed to take over the group's (including Euroclear UK & Ireland targeted for 2010) critical transaction-processing and data-storage operations within three hours of a regional or metropolitan disaster that renders both primary data centres out of action. In extreme cases, a period of reconciliation may be required before full processing resumes using the third data centre.

... snip ...

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

we had coined the terms disaster survivability and geographic survivability (to differentiate from disaster recovery)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Toyota Beats GM in Global Production

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:01:32
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#22 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production

GM reports record annual loss, offers buyouts to hourly workers
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2008-02-12-gm-earnings_N.htm

from above:
GM said it lost $38.7 billion in 2007. The loss largely was due to a third-quarter charge related to unused tax credits.

...

The 2007 loss topped GM's previous record in 1992, when the company lost $23.4 billion because of a change in health care accounting, according to Standard & Poor's Compustat.


... snip ...

also ...

GM offers buyouts to all U.S. hourly workers
http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/12/news/companies/gm/index.htm?postversion=2008021207

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:51:13
Lon <lon.stowell@comcast.net> writes:
Roughly 1996 rumor was that it was largely Solaris.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#17 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

original trivia question was regarding time prior to mac announcement.

another hint ... shipped the first raid.

the product announcement quoted here
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_1978.html

states the "only commercial computer with a built-in relational database"(?)

multics relational database was earlier ... but distinction might be that MRDS was a separately charged for product(?)
https://www.multicians.org/history.html#tag7.2
and
http://www.mcjones.org/System_R/mrds.html

lots of posts mentioning original relational/sql implementation (on virtual machine vm370 platform)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

reference to having worked with the original raid inventor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#72 Remembering the CDC 6600
in disk engineering lab
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

another rochester reference:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/rochester/rochester_4009.html

lots of future system posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

another raid invention reference:
http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/pr.nsf/pages/news.20001113_nmt.html

although the above states "IBM research" filed importantant patents like the first for RAID in 1978.

however
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#47 "25th Anniversary of the Personal Computer"

references wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

and patent 4,092,732 awarded in 1978. The inventor was in the disk division, not in the research division.

Some folklore regarding driving factor behind shipping first raid implementation was that the filesystem infrastructure treated all available disks as common subpool resulting in pieces of files scatter allocated across all available devices. Single failures affected complete system and could require restore of complete system across all devices.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Javascript disabled in Firefox

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Javascript disabled in Firefox
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:57:47
HMerritt@JACKHENRY.COM (Hal Merritt) writes:
Interesting observation about Firefox users - folks a bit more knowledgeable. Also interesting is that the risks of using IE are borne by the end user, not the company. Perhaps we need to give these companies some incentives to support Firefox to counter the pressure from MS.

before firefox, i was using mozilla with tab support ... i had folder that i could click on and fetch 100 or so different websites in different tabs (while i went out for coffee) ... this was somewhat to compensate for having a dial line ... and objected to the latency with standard web browsing.

the initial folder had lots of news sites ... and interesting links, I would click for loading asynchronous in the background (into yet another new tab). by the time, i had finished the first 100 tabs ... i might have yet another 400-800 (or sometimes more) to look at. all of these default to javascript off.

at the time, mozilla would start to noticeably bog down with more than 300-400 open tabs. Enabling javascript execution would really aggravate the situation ... to the point that mozilla would frequently hang saying that some script was not responding (and required clicking on a popup).

firefox appeared and pushed as significantly more lightweight ... so i switched (but still kept javascript disabled).

along the way, i found that it was possible to signal firefox externally for loading URL into new tab. I moved the initial folder URLs to an external process that used WGET to retrieve the initial URLs, and (having saved the previous retrieval) check for new URLs on the pages. Then the external process would remove any duplicates and cross-check "new" URLs against the browser history information ... before signalling firefox to load each URL into new tab (sort of analogous to very targeted search engine process ... with background asynchronously fetching of "new" web pages into new tabs).

recent post describing some of the process
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#32 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#35 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers

firefox has since moved its history (and other) information into relational respository ... so looking at the history information requires some sql queries.

for a little relational topic drift ... recent thread mentioning apple's datacenter in the early 80s and what system did they use for running their business:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#17 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#23 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Remembering The Search For Jim Gray, A Year Later

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Remembering The Search For Jim Gray, A Year Later
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 13:23:03
Remembering The Search For Jim Gray, A Year Later
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206801203

from above:
Microsoft researcher Jim Gray went missing at sea more than a year ago. Co-worker Tom Barclay describes how the tech industry rallied to help the search efforts.

... snip ...

postings from last year:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#4 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#6 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#8 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#17 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#33 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#28 Jim Gray Is Missing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#68 A tribute to Jim Gray

somewhat related old posts mentioning original relational/sql
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

misc. other posts (even old email) mentioning jim:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#18 Computer of the century
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#29 20th March 2000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#7 New IBM history book out
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#15 HP-UX will not be ported to Alpha (no surprise)exit
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#44 SQL wildcard origins?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#60 Amiga Rexx
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#22 Vnet : Unbelievable
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/2003h.html#22 Why did TCP become popular ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#15 If there had been no MS-DOS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#28 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#39 Facilities "owned" by MVS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#50 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#44 FULIST
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#38 Mainframe Applications and Records Keeping?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#41 Mainframe Applications and Records Keeping?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006d.html#14 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#39 sorting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#30 Why so little parallelism?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#46 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#1 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#13 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#4 The Genealogy of the IBM PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#21 Ellison Looks Back As Oracle Turns 30
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#42 Newbie question about db normalization theory: redundant keys OK?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#43 distributed lock manager
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#65 No Glory for the PDP-15

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 13:42:58
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
2) insiders just performing their day to day operations. countermeasures are multi-party operations, partitioned duties and authority. attacks on these systems involve either an insider exceeding their authority by impersonating other individuals (in the multi-party operatons), collusion where multiple parties are involved, and/or lax controls enforcing the multi-party operations.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#10 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

for some additional

Security Report Claims Net Holes Hidden
http://www.physorg.com/news125597526.html

from above:
Rouland contends the 2007 number would have been higher if not for the emergence of a black market that will pay up to $100,000 to computer whizzes who find such threats and sell the information to criminal gangs eager to exploit them.

... snip ...

however ... as to the insider subject ... also from above:
"Do you think Societe Generale cares that there's 6,000 vulnerabilities, or the few weak controls they had that cost them billions of dollars?" Weiss said, referring to the French bank that recently said a rogue employee's unauthorized trades cost it more than $7 billion. "That's what really matters."

... snip ...

another article mentioning the study:

IBM Report: Vulnerabilities Decline for First Time in 10 Years
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=145752

from above:
But the number of high-severity vulnerablities increased by 28% last year, according to the new 2007 X-Force Security report

... snip ...

other articles mentioning crooks paying for vulnerability knowledge:

Web security report says known vulnerabilities fall because criminals pay to hide them
http://www.technologyreview.com/Wire/20206/ IBM : Browsers are Under Attack
http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2008/02/ibm-browser-are-under-attack.html
X-Force Warns of Malware Black Market
http://news.digitaltrends.com/news/story/15718/x-force_warns_of_malware_black_market Security Report Claims Net Holes Hidden
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gVWd4IC6SXtYqkvfycLtL39zsFlAD8UOFST80 Web Browsers Under Siege From Organized Crime
http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/02/12/175213.shtml
Critical bugs surge in reduced flaw haul
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/02/07/vuln_trends/

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Kerberized authorization service

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Kerberized authorization service
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.kerberos
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:05:00
Ken Hornstein <kenh@cmf.nrl.navy.mil> writes:
You know, I never liked the term "roles". It's a "hot" term in the theoretical world, but I guess I never see a practical use of it when we get down to actually assigning rights to people. To me the easier concept is ACL - that's something that just naturally fits into the sort of access control decisions we want to make. The examples I've seen where they show "role" assignment always seem contrived, and somehow we never end up doing things like that.

part of NIST/RBAC from a decade ago was to provide some support for separation of duties. this is somewhat trying to get back to (at least) the early 80s when multiple party operations was being used as countermeasure to insider fraud. the internet somewhat distracted attention from insider fraud ... even tho during the period, it has continued to be as much as 70percent of the problem.

fine-grain permissions would be separated into roles with a view to supporting separation of duties ... as part of multi-party operations as countermeasure to insider fraud.

the problem in the real word ... was that the separation of permissions might not completely account for real business processes. Since some amount of the institutional knowledge may have evaporated with regard to all the work that went into exactly which permissions needed to maintain separated ... and the sometimes mismatch between the aggregate defined roles not matching real-world roles ... the same individual might be assigned multiple roles ... undermining the objective of mandating multi-party operations and separation of permissions (as insider fraud countermeasure).

because of the typical roll-up of permissions into roles and the way the related hierarchical information was being maintained ... it frequently was not possible to easily evaluate consequences of assigning the same individual multiple roles ... aka would the aggregate set of permissions violate multi-party mandates and negate the insider fraud countermeasures ... or exactly what are all the possible combinations of fine grain permissions that will create insider fraud opportunities (and undermine separation of duties)

part of the issue getting back to the early 80s state-of-the-art is maintaining the separation of duties and permissions and then having to deal with multi-party collusion as a vulnerability ... and then working on developing collusion countermeasures.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:27:24
jmfbahciv writes:
The Finns feel they are ostracized by the rest of Europe because they did fight with the Nazis. If the word isn't allies, what is the correct word that describes what the Finns did?

i thot i saw on history/military channel where (vichy) france was in north african action against allies killing 5000(?).

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

lists allies 479+ dead and 720 wounded ... vis-a-vis vichy 1346+ dead and 1997 wounded

although a couple hundred more allies here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Madagascar

this doesn't mention allied casualties
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dakar

search engine also turns up:

Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America's Disastrous Relationship with France
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385512198/

from this review:
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/miller_molesky200410060852.asp
A little-known fact from the Second World War: During the Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942, the first hostile fire American GIs faced came from the guns of Vichy France. In fact, the Greatest Generation had to fight its way through the French to get to the Nazis.

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 17:27:14
D.J. <jollycamper72@cableone.net> writes:
The Vichy Frence fought the Free French in North Africa. The Vichy French considered the others to be traitors, but it was the Vichy that were the traitors and collaborators.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#28 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

the history/military channel(?) and the wiki pages list vichy/french battles with allies and casualties ... mostly americans

i've mentioned before some number of trips to paris in the early to mid 70s for computer installs ... included helping with emea hdqtrs move to la defense in the early 70s.

on one visit, somebody (had been a history major) took me on weekend tour visiting all the war memorials to dead french soldiers in&around paris. at the end of the tour, i was asked if i noticed anything ... and it was pointed out that there were no ww2 war memorials to dead french solders.

misc. past posts mentioning helping with emea hdqtrs move from westchester to la defense:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#149 OS/360 (and descendants) VM system?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#43 Withdrawal Announcement 901-218 - No More 'small machines'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002c.html#30 OS Workloads : Interactive etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#67 history of CMS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#58 Oldest running code
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#7 IBM operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#25 System/360 40th Anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#37 passing of iverson
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#31 NEC drives
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#13 Amusing acronym
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#29 IBM Plugs Big Iron to the College Crowd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#34 Not enough parallelism in programming
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#8 Arpa address
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#34 PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#6 Article on Painted Post, NY
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#11 Article on Painted Post, NY
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#35 Metroliner telephone article
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#55 IBMLink 2000 Finding ESO levels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#48 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#65 Help settle a job title/role debate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#33 Age of IBM VM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#47 In The US, Email Is Only For Old People

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:40:56
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
Banking is usually overdoing their uptime requirements. They are not normally that stringent. As long as the service isn't out for much more than half a day , and front end systems can handle checking and validation they can do business almost as usual. Provable correctness is much more important.

that and things like adequate countermeasures to insider fraud and collusion

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#21 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

some of it is a lot of systems with split between real-time/frontend authorization and settlement in (mostly) overnight batch windows ... it starts to become more of a problem if there are successful conversions to straight-through processing ... putting more and more stress on real-time availability.

a little topic drift mentioning "stand-in":
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#17 Lack of fraud reporting paths considered harmful
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#18 Lack of fraud reporting paths considered harmful

the above was reference to institution doing upfront fraud analysis and denying transactions ... and looking for processing message type (indicating the denial) that would make it back to their acquiring processor and all the way back to the issuing processor (as a way of automatically indicating to the issuer possible fraudulent transactions against the account).

recent posts mentioning straight-through processing:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#3 on-demand computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#74 Too much change opens up financial fault lines

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:33:14
Walter Bushell <proto@oanix.com> writes:
What if you need to make a withdrawal from the ATM, stat.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#21 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#30 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

a little x-over post from the thread here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#35 H2.1 Protocols Divide Naturally Into Two Parts

that discusses real-time authorization (which includes possibility of "stand-in") and batch settlement processes ... that frequently occur in overnight batch window. As implied in other posts about overnight batch windows and efforts to transition to straight through processing (i.e. combine authorization and settlement in straight-through sequence) ... which would result in requirement for increased availability (the payment and transaction networks already having five-nines or better availability requirements).

misc. past posts mentioning dealing with five-nines availability requirements:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#137 Mainframe emulation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#50 Egghead cracked, MS IIS again
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#48 Withdrawal Announcement 901-218 - No More 'small machines'
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/2001n.html#85 The demise of compaq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#90 Buffer overflow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#24 Buffer overflow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#28 Buffer overflow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#44 Calculating a Gigalapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#63 Filesystem namespaces (was Re: Serving non-MS-word .doc files (was Re: PDP-10 Archive migrationplan))
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#47 Multics_Security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#67 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#68 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#6 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#73 Where did text file line ending characters begin?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#15 Large Banking is the only chance for Mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#44 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#14 Home mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#68 META: Newsgroup cliques?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002p.html#54 Newbie: Two quesions about mainframes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#37 Calculating expected reliability for designed system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#50 Filesystems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#17 unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#3 Disk capacity and backup solutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#31 OT What movies have taught us about Computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#56 The figures of merit that make mainframes worth the price
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#11 how long does (or did) it take to boot a timesharing system?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#22 foundations of relational theory? - some references for the
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#40 AMD/Linux vs Intel/Microsoft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#48 Automating secure transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#24 Relational Model and Search Engines?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#34 RISCs too close to hardware?
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/2006w.html#16 intersection between autolog command and cmsback (more history)
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/2007k.html#71 The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#36 Future of System/360 architecture?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#64 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#33 windows time service

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Interesting Mainframe Article: 5 Myths Exposed

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Interesting Mainframe Article: 5 Myths Exposed
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:15:26
Gary@EVERGREEN-SYSTEMS.COM (Gary Green) writes:

http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid80_gci1299376,00.html?track=NL-576&ad=624866&asrc=EM_NLN_3060935&uid=1900046


previous posting mentioning zNextGen program:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#45 Young mainframers' group gaims momentum

can you say HONE? (Hands-On Network Environment) ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

before the 23jun69 unbundling announcements ... novice system engineers would get hands-on experience in customer accounts ... as part of larger team of SEs (with a variety of experience) ... sort of apprentice type program.

after the 23jun69 unbundling announcements ... besides starting to charge for software ... SEs time at customer accounts were also charged for. The situation at the time couldn't come up with having apparentice SEs learning on the customer nickle.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

the initial solution was to put in some number of cp67 virtual machine systems ... and provide remote login access to SEs from branch offices.

the science center had pioneered virtual machines systems in the mid-60s ... starting with cp40 (on specially modified 360/40 supporting virtual memory) which morphed into cp67 (when standard 360/67 machines with standard virtual memory support become available)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

the science center had also ported apl\360 to cms\apl. apl\360 installations had typically been limited to 16kbyte or 32kbyte workspaces. the cms\apl port opened up workspace size to full virtual memory (although parts of apl had to be reworked for virtual memory operation).

The dramatically increased workspace size and some other features (added to cms\apl) ... allowed a lot more real-world applications to be done in apl. One instance was that corporate hdqtrs people loaded the most sensitive coporate information on to the cambridge system and ran remote business modeling applications from armonk. This required a very high level of security since the cambridge system also had various non-employees from the area universities and colleges using the same system.

a little topic drift regarding the security issue:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml

another use of cms\apl was to deploy sales and marketing applications on the HONE systems, supporting branch office (other than SEs). Eventually these sales and marketing applications came to dominate all HONE activity ... to the exclusion of SE "hands-on" use. Before long, it was not even possible for customer machine orders to be submitted unless they had been preprocessed by some HONE application.

for slightly other topic drift:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#17 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#23 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

for other folklore topic drift ... starting in the late 70s, there was constant series of efforts to move HONE (sales & marketing apl applications) off of vm370 and on to MVS. The cycle was approx. two years, a new executive would come in, discover to their horror that the corporation didn't actually run on MVS ... and mandate HONE be moved to a MVS platform. All work would stop for 6-9 months while everybody worked on attempting to move things over ... which would eventually fail miserably ... and then things would be back to almost normal for a short period until the next executive replacement. At one point in one of cycles in the early 80s, one of the POK executives admonished the HONE organization that a MVS port would easily be possible if they would just rewrite all the APL applications in assembler.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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

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, 13 Feb 2008 14:39:54
t-bone@address.invalid (Stan Barr) writes:
You're _so_ right! I consider WW2 as lasting from 1934 when we (UK) starting ramping weapon production up for the coming conflict to two-thousand-and--something when we finally paid off the last of the loans.

I had a german teacher in college who told a story about when they were much younger, scheduling a tour of germany during the summer of 1939. They claimed to have devined that hostilities would most likely start on Sept. 1st and so had carefully scheduled their departure date for Aug. 31st. I don't remember the reasons they had given for deciding on the 1sep date ... but the claim was that the evidence was clear to anyone bothering to pay any attention.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

New Research Confirms Identity Fraud Is On Decline

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: New Research Confirms Identity Fraud Is On Decline
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:40:40
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#18 New Research Confirms Identity Fraud Is On Decline

Consumer fraud complaints up 20 percent in 2007; Identity theft the top complaint, gov't says
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20080213-1210-consumerfraud-ftc.html

and ...

FTC Releases List of Top Consumer Fraud Complaints in 2007
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2008/02/fraud.shtm

from above:
The FTC collects consumer fraud complaints from more than 125 other organizations and makes them available to more than 1,600 civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad via Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database. In 2007, the FTC received almost 140,000 more consumer fraud complaints than in 2006. These additional complaints came from numerous data contributors, primarily the Better Business Bureaus.

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Interesting Mainframe Article: 5 Myths Exposed

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Interesting Mainframe Article: 5 Myths Exposed
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 20:23:32
Paul Hinman <paul.hinman@shaw.ca> writes:
How much time was spent doing garbage collection in the APL workspace given all of arrays that would get created as intermediate results in a single statement? I could imagine that garbage collection might be even be required one or more times during the execution of a single statement in a function. A description of how APL managed storage in workspaces might make interesting reading.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#32 Interesting Mainframe Article: 5 Myths Exposed

on assignment, apl would always allocate a new storage location ... until it exhausted storage and then perform garbage collection and compact all variables. storage utilization was based on number of assignments ... somewhat independent of amount of in-use variables. this was developed for 16k real workspace that was swapped in&out (as single unit)

this was initially quite tramatic moving to large virtual memory, paged environment (apl application guaranteed to repeatedly touch all available virtual memory)

one of the was things developed at the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

(used to look at performance and execution characteristics) was the precursor to vs/repack (release as product by the science center in the mid-70s) ... basically instruction address and data store&fetch addresses. initial version would create plots out on 1403 ... used was greenbar fanfold paper loaded backwards ... so printing was on whiteside. standard setup was to print every storage references ... storage addresses scaled to about 6' of printed output (vertical) and equivalent to 2000 instructions for every print position (horizontal) ... i.e. equivalent of 264,000 instructions acrossed a page. These printouts were taped to the walls of science center hall ... so instruction execution progressed as you walked down the hall ... showing storage & instruction location use from low storage (near the floor) to high storage (near the ceiling).

initial apl storage use had very sharp sawtooth pattern ... references progressing quickly from low storage (near the floor) to high storage (near the ceiling) ... and then sharp vertical line when garbage collection was performed. apl would quickly & repeatedly touch every available page in virtual memory ... regardless of actual program size. so one of the things that was done before cms\apl shipped (originally on cp67/cms) as a product was to redo garbage collection so that its storage use was much more virtual memory and paging friendly.

later palo alto science center did significant apl enhancements ... as well as implementing the 370/145 apl microcode assist ... which was released as apl/cms (on vm370/cms).

recent posts mentioning vs/repack ... which would do program execution and storage utilization analysis and perform semi-automatic program reorganization (for optimizing real storage use in virtual memory environment)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#24 Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#78 CPU time differences for the same job

old systems journal article describing early vs/repack precursor implementation D. Hatfield & J. Gerald, Program Restructuring for Virtual Memory, IBM Systems Journal, v10n3, 1971
http://domino.research.ibm.com/tchjr/journalindex.nsf/495f80c9d0f539778525681e00724804/9260d68c69f3965d85256bfa00685a76?OpenDocument

the article has some reproductions of some of the printed displays:
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/103/ibmsj1003B.pdf

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Interesting Mainframe Article: 5 Myths Exposed

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Interesting Mainframe Article: 5 Myths Exposed
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 20:38:58
Paul Hinman <paul.hinman@shaw.ca> writes:
So what does this all mean, there are those of us who use tools in ways that they were not intended for but now we do it on PC's that are many times more powerful than the mainframes of yesteryear.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#32 Interesting Mainframe Article: 5 Myths Exposed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#35 Interesting Mainframe Article: 5 Myths Exposed

oh, quicky search engine turns up some references to apl implementations available for download:
http://www.thefreecountry.com/compilers/apl.shtml
http://www.chilton.com/~jimw/getstart.html

the above includes reference to this "free" download which mentions that it is "slow" because it is the 360 implementation running via a 360 emulator: ftp://watserv1.uwaterloo.ca/languages/apl/sharp.apl/

and this one:
http://www.soliton.com/Systems/SHARP_APL_for_Linux/index.html

from above:
And an awesome development in the APL world is Soliton's decision to release the new SHARP APL for Linux free for personal use. This is a serious, state-of-the-art APL system, priced right. If you're running Linux, download this interpreter today (before they change their mind!).

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

COTS software on box ? to replace mainframe was Re: Curious(?) way to ZIP a mainframe file

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: COTS software on box ? to replace mainframe was Re: Curious(?) way to ZIP a mainframe file.
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:31:49
steve@TRAINERSFRIEND.COM (Steve Comstock) writes:
Sorry. What is COTS?

commercial off the shelf ... i believe coined by somebody in gov. sometime around the early 80s ... as alternative to highly customized, one-off, specialty implementations.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

outsourcing moving up value chain

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: outsourcing moving up value chain
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:04:37
KPO identified as the next wave of outsourcing
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/022108-disk-encryption-cracked.html

from above:
A new report has labeled Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) as a recognized and mainstream outsourcing option, particularly in the financial services sector.
...
To better explain KPO, Hayward cites the hypothetical example of a Wall St equities research firm which is faced with spending $250,000 to cover a specific stock when the most it can hope to achieve in revenues from that research is $200,000.

However, if that research can be outsourced to a KPO provider at a cost of $100,000, the operation suddenly returns to profitability


... snip ...

however, it may also be explained by increase in demand for knowledge workers ... and decline in number/quality of new college graduates.

old post referencing when we were considering copyrighting the term business science ... and trying to depict relationship between information, knowledge and wisdom
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#8aa 2nd wave?

for other drift, also referenced is this recently mentioned post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm The Thread Between Risk Management and Information Security

a few recent posts mentioning educational competitiveness:
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#57 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
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#73 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#81 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#83 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#3 on-demand computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#6 Science and Engineering Indicators 2008
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#13 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#56 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Throwaway cores

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Throwaway cores
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:29:26
Alex Colvin <alexc@TheWorld.com> writes:
Gosh, is the CDC 6600 I/O processor coming back?

or 360 channels ... however, a lot of the 360 channel processors were "integrated" with the processor executing instructions ... aka two sets of micrcode, ... one set for executing 360 instructions and the other set of microcode for executing channel commands. however, as you moved up the 360 processor line ... there were separate dedicated processors for executing channel commands. low-end & mid-range 360s implemented integrated channels (the channel microcode and 360 instruction microcode shared the same processor), while the high-end 360s implemented separate hardware boxes for execution of channel microcode and 360 instruction microcode.

later in the 370 line, the same processor was initially released in integrated channel implementation ... i.e. 370/158 product. it was later revamped and later re-released as 3031 ... where instead of one microprocessor engine, there was two of the same microprocessor engine ... one called the channel director ... which only ran the 370/158 integrated channel microcode and the other called the 3031 ... which only ran the 370/158 instruction microcode.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:20:36
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
and for more drift, latest effort from the comptroller general

U.S. Financial Condition and Fiscal Future Briefing, 2008 Economic Forecast Forum
http://www.gao.gov/cghome/d08395cg.pdf


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#57 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

somewhat related to
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#38 outsourcing moving up value chain

note the comptroller general was appointed in nov98, by the previous administration (position that has a 15 yr term)

Comptroller general to leave GAO for foundation
http://www.fcw.com/online/news/151644-1.html

from above:
"As comptroller general of the United States and head of the GAO, there are real limitations on what I can do and say in connection with key public policy issues, especially issues that relate to GAO's client -- the Congress," Walker said in a statement.

... snip ...

including having made some offhand references to nobody in congress for the past 50 yrs have been capable of simple middle school arithmetic.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#20 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#21 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#80 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#91 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#22 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#13 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

COTS software on box ? to replace mainframe was Re: Curious(?) way to ZIP a mainframe file

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: COTS software on box ? to replace mainframe was Re: Curious(?) way to ZIP a mainframe file.
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:56:52
EPhilbrook@OSC.STATE.NY.US (Ed Philbrook) writes:
Clark et al,

Depending on the degree of modifications, isn't it a major negative that mods to a COTS package have to be reapplied or reworked for every upgrade to the package?


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#37 COTS software on box ? to replace mainframe was Re: Curious(?) way to ZIP a mainframe file

it is all relative ... and/or return-on-investment

aka whether overall lower net costs of COTS w/modifications or a wholly developed RYO (roll-your-own) implementation.

also there are business opportunity costs ... aka whether the business can better spend the same amount of money someplace else (ROI).

for extreme scenario ... a large datacenter (billion or two in mainframe hardware) paid all the engineering and development for a new, significantly better PDU (power distribution unit) ... and then turned it over to a PDU vendor. the business easily justified having a much better PDU ... but couldn't justify actually getting into the PDU business. That PDU is now a staple in large number datacenters.

another such example was a large financial institution hired several experts in complex pattern algorithms and created a sophisticated new fraud detection tool ... and then turned it over to a vendor of fraud detection applications. Again, the business easily justified having much better fraud detection ... but didn't actually justify ongoing development and support ... any competitive business advantage was more than offset by having ongoing support&development amortized across a large number of customers (and because of competitive business issues they wouldn't have been able to easily directly vend the product to other institutions)

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

VM/370 Release 6 Waterloo tape (CIA MODS)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: VM/370 Release 6 Waterloo tape (CIA MODS)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:03:03
from long ago and far away, the following was posted yesterday to the z/VM mailing list .... it refers to somebody trying to track down old contributions to the vm share "waterloo" tapes. This period was just the leading edge before starting to charge for system software and several years before the OCO-wars (i.e. object-code-only, stop shipping full source code and shipping source code maintenance)

x-over from z/VM mailing list:
Does anyone have a copy of the old Waterloo tapes "CIA Mods" tape referen= ced in this entry in the ABSTRACT ABSTRACT of the Waterloo tape for VM/370

M1086V00CIA MODS-- Our local mods that have been contributed to the Waterloo VM Library now consume more than a reel of tape. Since our local facilities tend to be of interest to a relatively small number of installations, we will merely place a notice of availability for mods that have been updated to the current level of VM/370. RELEASE6 MEMO describes our contributions and current level of VM/370. They include: 1) Batch Monitor Facility - A disconnected virtual machine that monitors and controls jobs submitted for processing on remote batch systems. Formerly M0081V00 on Release 5. 2) PROC Structure Macros and Library - The PROC system is a set of several hundred assembly language macros that perform a variety of functions, including subroutine linkage and storage allocation. Formerly M1112V00 on Release 5. 3) SEDIT - An editor that is more powerful than EDIT yet less than XEDIT. Formerly M1113V00 on Release 5. 4) TAPEMON - A disconnected service virtual machine that processes user requests for tape drives and volumes. 5) CLASSIFY - A printed output classification facility that allows users to specify protective markings to be 'rubber stamped' at the top and bottom of spool files directed to the real printer. This mod is M1085V00 on this Release 6 Library.--David Farnham, Central Intelligence Agency, ODP/SPD, Washington, D.C. 20505, (703) 351-6078, August 27, 1980.

Please advise. Thanks.


... snip ...

old email mentioning attempting to help with performance problem at the installation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#email830420
in this old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#57 any 70's era supercomputers that ran as slow as today's supercomputers?

a couple other posts of bygone days reference to that installation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#66 History of project maintenance tools -- what and when?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#10 Why so little parallelism?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:07:56
Chris Barts <chbarts+usenet@gmail.com> writes:
The Internet was all pretty much free in the days of NSFNet and, before that, ARPANET. It was all government-funded in this country, in fact. However, you had to have capital-C Connections (political and technical) to do anything more than email and netnews.

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

including this reference to NSFNET program announcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#12
and this reference to NSFNET award announcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#10
and some related old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

we had been working with univ and nsf ... starting before the mid-80s about being able to have T1 being deployed ... rather than the 56kbit that was commingly being deployed ... since we had done an operational backbone internally ... misc. past posts mentioning internal network that was larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning to sometime summer of '85. Part of the reason that the internal net was so much larger than the arpanet ... was the incremental costs for link on the internal network was orders of magnitude smaller than the incremental cost for arpanet link:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

our backbone was T1 (and higher speeds) that we had done out of a project that i had named HSDT (high-speed data transport)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

somewhere along the way, we were not allowed to continue in the effort and univ/nsf meetings that we had already scheduled were being canceled ... some of this is detailed in the old email references. Attempting to help us, the director of NSF had an audit of what we already had running ... that concluded that it was at least five years ahead of all NSFNET bid submissions (to build something new) ... and wrote a letter (to the effect) copying the ceo ... which actually aggravated the internal corporate politics. however, we do believe that we contributed significantly that the NSFNET-1 RFP called for T1 links.

As it happened, the winning bid wasn't able to deploy T1 links ... they were only 440kbits; however, possibly to meet the letter of the contract, the did install T1 trunks with telco multiplexing equipment to run multiple 440kbits links over the T1 trunks.

As it turned out ... this was in a period that the telcos and others had significant amounts of extra transmission capacity (lot of it in the form of dark fiber). They were faced with a significant chicken and egg situation ... they had pretty high fixed run rate that was in large part covered by transmission charges. They needed new bandwidth hungry applications to utilize all the bandwidth ... however it wasn't very likely that these applications would appear without dropping trasmission charges by order of magnitude. If they did that, it would take several yrs for the new applications to appear and catch on ... during a period where the transmission-based charging paradigm wouldn't be able to cover their fixed infrastructure run rate.

the mechanism was to significantly enhance the resources availble to the NSFNET backbone. conservative estimate was that these resources were 4-5 times what gov. actually paid for in the contract. however, along the way, it was in the interests of the commercial operations (contributing the resources) ... to not allow them to be used for commercial purposes (i.e. not siphon off commercial revenue) ... have them purely dedicated for the incubator purpose, encouraging the evoluation of a whole generation of new bandwidth hungry applications.

on the other hand ... there was separate "csnet" with 56kbits links leading up to nsfnet ... old email references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#email821022
in this post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#59

and in that same time, there was bitnet ... which was a separate educational network using "mainframes" (effectively the same technology used in the internal network). however a lot of these mainframes were large numbers of 43xx machines (sold into the same market segment as vax machines ... although there were more 43xx machines sold than vax machines)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

and a little later, EARN was being formed in europe ... using the same bitnet technology ... and earn/bitnet was interconnected. old email from person charged with putting together earn ... and asking if i could help
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#email840320
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#65

both BITNET and EARN were largely a corporate funded operations ... not government. as in the case of the internal network ... most of the network connected machines were running the virtual machine operating system.

lots of universities offered online accounts to these virtual machine systems ... so there were large number of people with access to virtual machine facilities ... and it was possible to run other operating systems in these virtual machines ... including another copy of the virtual machine operating system.

this is alluded to for internal sales support technical employees in this recent post regarding 23jun69 unbundling announcement (i.e. starting to charge for software) and creation of the HONE "system":
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#32 Interesting Mainframe Article: 5 Myths Exposed

the above makes reference to corporate program offering additional virtual machine mainframe resources to students. also reference in this previous post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#45 Young mainframers' group gaims momentum

participants were universities and students. some of this can be seen in the vmshare postings ... an online conference system provided by tymshare to the SHARE organization starting in aug76 ... on their vm370 based commercial timesharing system ... the archive can be accessed here:
http://www.marist.edu/~vmshare/

now, in these recent posts mentioning COTS:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#37 COTS software on box ? to replace mainframe was Re: Curious(?) way to ZIP a mainframe file
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#41 COTS software on box ? to replace mainframe was Re: Curious(?) way to ZIP a mainframe file

there were fanctions in the gov. starting around 1980 (including guy who coined the term) starting to push COTS ... i.e. being able to amortize (frequently technology) costs over a much larger commercial base. The issue was where to target funding to aid things along a little bit and/or provide an incubator environment ... on the way to COTS. NSFNET backbone was (pretty much) plain service agreement ... although encouraging the evoluation of T1 and faster speed usage .... although the HSDT project somewhat got shanghied along the way and not allowed to directly participate, install and/or run the operation ....

somewhat as seen in this old email reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email870109

some of the factions responsible for blocking our nsfnet participation were also pontificating inside the corporation that corporate proprietary communication implementations could be used for nsf.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:28:35
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
and in the same time, bitnet ... which was a separate educational network using "mainframes" ... effectively the same technology used in the internal network. however a lot of these mainframes were large numbers of 43xx machines (sold into the same market segment as vax machines ... although there were more 43xx machines sold than vax machines)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#43 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

there was big upswing of vax & 43xx class machines in the early 80s ... especially in educational institutions ... providing increased computers exposure.

old post giving detailed vax sales, sliced & diced, by year, model, us, non-us, etc:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0 Computers in Science Fiction

43xx machines saw similar uptake. the big difference is that there were large institutions placing orders for multiple hundreds of 43xx machines (which wasn't really seen in the vax sales) ... and as a result ... totally number of machines shipped was greater. This old email refers to customer with a large mainframe installation (from a different vendor) starting to look at 4341 machines ... initially 20 such machines (each approx. as powerful as their old "glasshouse" mainframe) ... the order quickly become 210 machines (instead of 20)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#email790404b
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15

other old email on various subjects related to 43xx machines and their starting to change perception of computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx

this contributed to conference room crisis in the early 80s for some organizations. they were getting so many of these machines for departmental usage ... and having them installed out in the individual departments ... frequently in a room that previously had been designated a conference room.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Prison pushes for exploitation of slave labor of prisoners

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Prison pushes for exploitation of slave labor of prisoners...
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:54:32
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
(Very simplistic, M0 is the physical cash, M1 also includes mature cheques and similar bills, M2 includes everything you can issue a debit card on, and M3 includes everything in bank, broker and credit card accounts; account credits included. The latter figure is usually close to 100 times the first (zeroth?) one.)

and now for something different, decoupled debit card:

Decoupled Relationships: The Evolution of Debit
http://www.americanbanker.com/usb_article.html?id=2008012594PXFM5M

from above:
Here's how it works: An intermediate service provider, such as Capital One, issues a consumer a new "debit" card. When the consumer makes a purchase, the transaction is performed and settled between the merchant and the intermediary online, over the branded payment networks. Then, the funds are then deducted from the consumer's checking account and paid to the intermediary using the offline ACH network. The "decoupling" of the debit transaction from the bank at which the consumer maintains a checking account allows the intermediate service provider to capture the interchange income from the card transactions which would normally go to the bank that holds the checking account, Mercator says. That allows the consumer to capture points he might not otherwise.

... snip ...

in effect the processing is little different than needed for a gift/stored-value card ... but the consumer registers their ach routing code for the card. the processor for the card then takes the incoming transactions and eventually schedules it for the ACH network. i would guess that anybody that has processing setup for doing gift/stored-value cards ... could add the additional processing and be able to execute the ACH transaction (and the card they issue to do both debits and as well as credits via ACH transactions) ... just need the ability to register the consumer's bank (ACH) routing code.

recent posts mentioning gift/stored-value cards:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#90 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#91 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#5 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#7 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Throwaway cores

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Throwaway cores
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:10:44
Eric Smith <eric@brouhaha.com> writes:
Prior to the 3031, did those "standalone" channel boxes (e.g., 2860, 2870, 2880) use execution units similar to the 360 processors, or were they designed from the ground up to be a channel?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#39 Throwaway cores

the 360 processors didn't (necessarily) use execution units that were in any way to similar to 360 instructions.

the execution unit in the 370/158 was horizontal microcode engine ... it had one set of (horizontal) microcode for the integrated channel program and another set of (horizontal) microcode that implemented 370 instructions.

the native microcode engines that were used didn't have a lot of relationship to each other or to 360.

the low-end and mid-range machines tended to be vertical microcode machines ... the high end tended to be horizontal microcode engines.

the corporation eventually had a very large variety of different microprocessor.

a semi-close scenario would be project i got involved with as undergraduate ... i was trying to get the standard corporate telecommunication controller to do something that it couldn't do. somewhat as a result, the university had a project to build a clone controller ... but using an interdata/3 ... which had a somewhat 360 instruction set. the channel interface was reverse engineered and a channel interface board was built for the interdata/3, and interdata/3 software was implemented to emulate the standard mainframe communication controller ... interfacing to channel. this got written up blaming us for some amount of the mainframe clone controller business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

the implementation evolved into a cluster of interdata/4 and interdata/3s .... with the interdata/4 managing the channel interface, and the interdata/3s dedicated to linescanner functions.

for other drift, later generation of interdata (decade later) was one of the first (non-pdp) unix ports.

another example was 3830 disk controller ... which was also a (high performance) horizontal microcode processor. there was a decision to implement the 3880 (3830 follow-on) using (jib-prime) vertical microcode processor. part of the issue was that there was going to be significant more function put into the 3880 controller ... and programming state-of-the-art for vertical microcode was significantly better than for vertical microcode. the jib-prime was significantly slower than the processor used in the 3830 ... even tho there was requirement for 3880 to handle twice the max. transfer rate (3mbytes vis-a-vis 1.5mbytes). The implementation compromise involved custom hardware data paths for transfers ... so that the jib-prime only needed to handle control function (a lot less effort). Even with data transfer offloaded to custom circuits ... the jib-prime (in the 3880) handled many functions signficantly slower than the 3830 horizontal microcode engine.

around 1980, there was big push to replace the large variety of internal corporate microprocessors with 801 risc processors (some number of Iliad chips). some of these floundered. the 4341 follow-on machine (4381) was nominally going to be a 801/risc processor (which got killed and different processor chip was used) ... although some subsequent low-end 370 processors did use 801/risc chip (i.e. significantly reduce the software development that had to be done each time for every new unique microprocessor)

the as/400 (s/38 follow-on) started out going to be a 801/risc Iliad ... but ran into troubles and eventually switched to a custom cisc chip. somewhat a decade later ... as/400 was moved to a 801/risc power/pc flavored platform.

some amount of folklore is that 801/risc chips are extensively used in various channel functions for current generation of mainframes.

some number of past post mentioning jib-prime chips and/or iliad chips.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#25 Merced & compilers (was Re: Effect of speed ... )
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#66 System/1 ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#16 Computer of the century
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#38 How to learn assembler language for OS/390 ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#75 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?>
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#60 "all-out" vs less aggressive designs (was: Re: 36 to 32 bit transition)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#54 VLIW at IBM Research
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#44 Golden Era of Compilers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001l.html#63 MVS History (all parts)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#2 Microcode? (& index searching)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#3 Microcode? (& index searching)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#39 "Soul of a New Machine" Computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#55 Multics hardware (was Re: "Soul of a New Machine" Computer?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#2 What is microcode?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#27 End of Moore's law and how it can influence job market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#3 PLX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#2 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#3 vax6k.openecs.org rebirth
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003b.html#7 Disk drives as commodities. Was Re: Yamhill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#43 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#69 unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#3 Ping: Anne & Lynn Wheeler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#43 S/360 undocumented instructions?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#45 hung/zombie users ... long boring, wandering story
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#65 System/360 40 years old today
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#28 [Meta] Marketplace argument
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#17 mainframe and microprocessor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#15 360 longevity, was RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#21 First single chip 32-bit microprocessor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#30 First single chip 32-bit microprocessor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#25 CKD Disks?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#61 IBM 3614 and 3624 ATM's
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#50 non ECC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#6 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#9 Mainframe Jobs Going Away
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#46 Hercules 3.04 announcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#0 IBM 3380 and 3880 maintenance docs needed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#37 History: How did Forth get its stacks?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#50 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#32 Why magnetic drums was/are worse than disks ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#7 32 or even 64 registers for x86-64?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#31 To RISC or not to RISC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#37 To RISC or not to RISC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#38 To RISC or not to RISC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#6 Reasons for the big paradigm switch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#17 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#31 MB to Cyl Conversion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#16 V2X2 vs. Shark (SnapShot v. FlashCopy)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#44 Why so little parallelism?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#14 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007c.html#50 How many 36-bit Unix ports in the old days?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#43 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#38 FBA rant
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#22 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#27 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#17 MIPS and RISC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#31 Latest Principles of Operation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#14 Some IBM 3033 information
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#67 Non-Standard Mainframe Language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#53 Drums: Memory or Peripheral?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#42 mainframe performance, was Is a RISC chip more expensive?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#46 "Server" processors for numbercrunching?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#65 Remembering the CDC 6600
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#0 It keeps getting uglier

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Linux zSeries questions

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Linux zSeries questions
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 04:00:32
jim_elliott@CA.IBM.COM (Jim Elliott, IBM) writes:
You are full of it. Linux is written in C, not COBOL or Assembler. Also, there is not a different version of Linux for mainframes, the vast majority of the code is the same on all platforms. What is difference is memory management and of course I/O. This is done mostly through IFDEF statements in the Linux kernel C code. And the System z "changes" are integrated into the mainstream Linux code, not something kept separate by IBM.

Also, Linux is the NUMBER TWO operating system in the world now in terms of units (more than all other UNIX variants combined). It is the fastest growing operating system and will continue to grow.


as an aside ... as per various previous posts ... most of the mainframe unix ports in the 80s were products deployed under vm370 (uts, aix/370) ... in large part because field engineering and service people had requirement for mainframe EREP and RAS. the issue was that adding mainframe EREP and RAS to unix was a project several times larger effort than the port itself (i.e for those unix functions that existed ... porting/adapting as necessary to mainframe dependencies ... however, mainframe EREP and RAS were functions that didn't already exist). running under vm370, they could rely on vm370 to provide the mainframe EREP and RAS.

the primary exception was the special project for internal AT&T use ... which was adapting unix functions to sit ontop a stripped down tss/370 kernel.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

VM/370 Release 6 Waterloo tape (CIA MODS)

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: VM/370 Release 6 Waterloo tape (CIA MODS)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 04:28:35
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#42 VM/370 Release 6 Waterloo tape (CIA MODS)

... oh and repository with copy of waterloo share tape
http://www.cbttape.org/vm6.htm

hercules page:
http://www.hercules-390.org/

related public domain software for above:
http://www.ibiblio.org/jmaynard/

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Linux zSeries questions

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Linux zSeries questions
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 09:24:02
lists@AKPHS.COM (Phil Smith III) writes:
Absolutely; I've made a career out of source-level CP and CMS mods and fixes. In no way was I intending to disparage the use of source -- rather, I was assuming that the question meant that the OP really wanted to find/understand "the" Linux library, in which case "go read the source" wouldn't have been a very useful answer. And certainly when you're in a hurry and trying to Just Get The D*** Thing Working, reading the source isn't usually what you want to have to do.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#47 Linux zSeries questions

a little source x-over from zVM mailing list
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#42 VM/370 Release 6 Waterloo tape (CIA MODS)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#48 VM/370 Release 6 Waterloo tape (CIA MODS)

internally, there was similar collection of mods ... analogous to what waterloo did for share. in the dawn of the oco-period ... there was a study done of both the waterloo share tape and the internal repository ... one of the summaries was the approx. size of collected new/changes was the same for the two respositories ... and the features provided were approx. the same (even tho they were two independent communities).

the online vm (vmshare) service (provided by tymshare, vm370 platform online commercial timesharing service bureau, starting nov76) ... provided community communication analogous to what is found in the mailing lists and usenet (that came along later). vmshare archive
http://www.marist.edu/~vmshare/

and a little x-over bringing in a little of issues raised in the COTS thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#43 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

CPU time differences for the same job

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: CPU time differences for the same job
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 12:48:45
jmfbahciv writes:
This was always a trade-off, wasn't it? Either you keep the index in core or you kept it on disk. Core imporved the "performance" in favor of data integrity and disk favored data integrity over "performance".

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#88 CPU time differences for the same job

some systems keep stuff in memory and didn't provide transaction acid semantics with what was on disk ... and so sacrificed integrity.

cms filesystem (dating back to mid-60s) kept stuff in memory, but always wrote control information to new location and then in case of failure ... recovery check whether to use the old (consistant) copy or a new (consistant) copy ... but never had a problem with their being an inconsistant copy.

relational implementations had multi-level index structure ... which was managed & updated with transaction semantics (always consistant). however, with the increase in real storage sizes ... increasing amounts/levels of the indexes could be kept in real storage (alliviating the multiple physical reads that had been required to find a specific disk location). however, any changes to these indexes (as well as the records themselves) conformed to transaction semantics and maintained consistency (both on disk and in real storage).

these relational implementations used "cache" for both indexes and actual data records ... managed somewhat analagous to how paging algorithms manage virtual memory in real storage ... or how processor caches operate ... but provide transaction semantics to guarantee consistency during any recover scenario.

unix started out using real-memory to cache filesystem control information ... but didn't guarantee any consistency about how changes done in real-memory got reflected back to disk. there are numerous folklore down thru the ages about momental unix filesystem disasters when glitches occurred at inopportune time. in fact, for a long time, unix rdbms implementations were done to "raw devices" ... totally bypassing any filesystem involvement.

the "in-core" dbms systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#32 How does the smart telco deal with the bounty in its hands?

would implement relational & transaction semantics ... but have default location of record in memory (as opposed to default location on disk) ... while still guaranteeing disk consistency for recovery ... and at the same time achieving ten times the thruput of equivalent DBMS relational database (running on same exact hardware) that used paradigm of default location on disk (aka via a different processes ... but somewhat the cms filesystem had been doing since the mid-60s for its control information). In fact, some people that i had worked with in research in the early 80s ... at least exposed to both the mechanics of the cms filesystem as well as the original relational/sql implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr

showed up in some of these shops.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

It has been a long time since Ihave seen a printer

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: It has been a long time since Ihave seen a printer
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:07:58
Paul Hinman <paul.hinman@shaw.ca> writes:
I have been on disability leave for 12+ years. In the intervening years mainframes have been subject to extreme miniaturization. Disk drives are microscopic in comparison to 3380's that I remember. The one question I have is, "what happened to the printers?" I remember the 3800 as the workhorse printer. There are still applications that have high volume print requirements, such as utility companies, credit card companies, banks, etc. How are these needs being met today?

in much the same way that 43xx machines (and vax) start to move computing out into departments (before workstations and PCs) ... laser printers ... example was ibm copier/3 being connected to computer as 6670 and sherpa/apa6670.

workstations/pcs continued this migration out to desktops and somewhat alleviated some of the printing requirements ... with online display.

the result was that printing sort of split ... lots moving into the low-end (printing on the desktop and/or departments ... much of it using technology originaged for "copying" ... sort of mirroring computing migration) ... and the other moving to really high-end ... stuff that print massive productions of statements, bills, and other high volume operations (corresponding to industrial strength computing that still much of modern day society is dependent on).

following
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ISJ/is_n4_v32/ai_15037994/pg_6

lists 3800-follow-on 3900 page printer capable of 229 "impressions per minute"

the following lists 4000 announced in nov97
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1997_Nov_10/ai_19984047

capable of 1000 impressions per minute

3800 from 1976
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_1976.html

for other topic drift ... recent posts about 43xx (& vax) moving into departmental/mid-range computing:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#44 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

some number of people took early out on the same day we did in 92 ... one was person who had done a lot of the stuff for AFP. later I did some work for him when he was doing an alternative implementation ... that was sold into some of the high-end industrial operations.

old posts mentioning 6670 and/or sherpa/apa6670:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#42 Enter fonts (was Re: Unix case-sensitivity: how did it originate?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#43 Enter fonts (was Re: Unix case-sensitivity: how did it originate?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#52 Enter fonts (was Re: Unix case-sensitivity: how did it originate?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#29 20th March 2000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000d.html#81 Coloured IBM DASD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#1 What good and old text formatter are there ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#50 IBM 705 computer manual
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#5 New IBM history book out
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#31 Hercules etc. IBM not just missing a great opportunity...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#7 disk write caching (was: ibm icecube -- return of
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#52 Microsoft's innovations [was:the rtf format]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#24 IBM Selectric as printer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#29 6670
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#43 Early attempts at console humor?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#1 Oldest running code
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004d.html#13 JSX 328x printing (portrait)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#48 Xah Lee's Unixism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#61 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#34 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#48 1403 printers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#51 1403 printers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#54 1403 printers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#29 Job seperators
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#20 Seeking Info on XDS Sigma 7 APL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#44 Materiel and graft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#49 Materiel and graft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#1 Materiel and graft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#36 Special characters in passwords was Re: RACF - Password rules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#27 The Complete April Fools' Day RFCs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#72 Parse/Template Function

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Throwaway cores

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Throwaway cores
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 08:34:07
Del Cecchi <delcecchinospamofthenorth@gmail.com> writes:
But jib prime was a single chip having less than 1400 gates. And 94 signal I/O. How much stuff was in that 3830?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#46 Throwaway cores

misc. past 801/risc posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

3830 supported dual channel interfaces ... and they were able to add ACP RPQ ... with logical locks (instead of just device reserve/release) ... with 512 "symbolic" lock fields. Both data and control paths went thru 3830.

3880 could have dual jib primes with 4channel interfaces each and handshaking/hand-off between the two processors. 3880 only had control paths thru jib-prime ... with data path flowing separately.

recent post with discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#33 Internal DASD Pathing

the above has discussion of subsequent (hardware) enhancement called "dynamic pathing" (also some corporate site URLs for 3380s).

one of the problems was that the jib primes handled control functions so much slower ... that operations took longer on the 3880 than the 3830 (even with jib-prime only handling control operations and data transfer being offloaded to custom hardware). one of the acceptance test for 3880 was that it performed within five perecent of 3830 ... which it initially failed. one of the gimicks to get 3880 within specs ... was to signal operation complete to the channel ... before jib-prime had completed some operation cleanup functions.

this resulted in flurry of problem for me. bldg 14 (disk engineering lab) and bldg 15 (disk product test lab) had been running "stand-alone" "testcell" testing. They had done some experiments with MVS with single "testcell" and experienced 15 mins MVS MTBF. So I had undertaken to build a system with absolutely bullet-proof input/output supervisor that wouldn't fail ... even when concurrently operating multiple testcells. misc. past posts getting to play disk engineer in bldgs. 14 & 15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

This worked out so well ... that they also started doing internal timesharing service (for engineers) on the same machines. At one point, bldg. 15 had gotten (one of the very first engineering) 3033s and scavenged 16 3330 drives & 3830 controller for internal timesharing service.

one monday morning i got a call from bldg. 15 asking what i had done to their system over the weekend. they claimed that timesharing response and thruput had severely degraded (and they had made no changes). Well after some investigation, they had swapped the 3830 with a 3880. more investigation was that the gimick/hack to signal completion was causing the problem. Nominally they figured that the 3880 could signal operation complete interrupt ... and the 3880 could complete clean-up overlapped with the operating system processing the interrupt ... and there would be no-foul. In large timesharing operation with multiple concurrent operations across multiple drives ... there could be queued requests for the controller. As soon as controller signaled complete, the operating system would redrive the controller with queued request ... which was hitting the 3880 while it was still busy. The 3880 then would have to reflect SM+BUSY (controller busy) ... the operating system requeues the operation and waits for the required CUE (control unit end) interrupt (required after having signaled controller busy). All of this additional back&forth plus the additional processing required in the 3880 ... severely degraded aggregate disk i/o to get through the 3880. As a result, they had to quickly generate a new hack/fix to make 3880 look like it was within 5percent of 3830 (at least from the standpoint of external single operation elapsed time measurement) . Fortunately all of this occurred six months before scheduled first customer ship for 3880.

This slower processing also significantly impacted the 3090. Besides the problem with operations taking longer elapsed time ... the jib-prime spent much longer connected to the channel (per operation). The 3090 was manufactured with a small number of TCMs ... and overall system thruput performance was modeled with a specific number of channels. When the severity of the 3880 increased channel busy became known, they realized that they would have to increase the default number of channels ... which necessitated adding an additional TCM ... which was a significant hit on increased manufacturing costs. There was some joke that the additional TCM costs per 3090 should be reflected against the disk division bottome line ... not the processor division.

As part of the input/output supervisor rewrite ... in addition to eliminating crashing and hangs ... i had also simplified the code and shortened the pathlength (part of it was the existing implementation had somewhat evolved spaghetti code implementation over nearly a decade). At the same time, I had greatly improved channel load balancing support ... for situation where there were multiple channel paths (from same processor) to common 3880 controllers and common disk pool (from earlier implementation where there was default primary path and some number of alternate paths used in case of failure or problems). It turns out that part of 3880 optimization was keeping information about channel path that disk i/o had previously occurred. On channel path changes, the 3880 was forced to do a huge amount of additional house keeping ... on the order of milliseconds ... that completely negated any possible benefits of any channel load balancing (i.e. thruput was actually greater with primary/alternate scheduling policy than with path load balancing strategy).

With reference to earlier reference to "dynamic pathing" (later models of 3880 having much faster processor and being able to switch paths much more efficiently) ... one of the issues that it was suppose to address was RPS-miss.

Recent post with regards to old claims I had made about disks having an order of magnitude reduction in relative system thruput over a period of more than decade (disks got faster ... but rest of the system got more than ten times faster than disks did)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#88 CPU time differences for the same job

the disk performance group got tasked with refuting my claims ... and eventually came back that i had slightly understated the problems ... specifically with respect to RPS-miss scenarios. old post mentioning dynamic path
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#18 Disk caching and file systems. Disk history...people forget

another (new) 3880 function, above also mentions 3880 disk caches ... i.e. initially 8mbytes, 3880-11 was 4k page record cache and 3880-13 was fulltrack cache. later there was upgrade from 8mbytes to 32mbytes, 3880-11 to 3880-21 and 3880-13 to 3880-23.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 09:16:06
jmfbahciv writes:
Consider that it's a trick. Congress can always change the tax law on Dec. 31, 2008 and make it retroactive.

there are already complaints that congress had made changes so late in 2007 ... that it was going to take until possibly march before the irs dataprocessing systems were updated to reflect the changes. there have been references that some amount of IRS dataprocessing costs, as well as glitches, are directly because of the rush and frantic activity associated with such last minute changes.

slightly related:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#40 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Throwaway cores

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Throwaway cores
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 11:56:24
Del Cecchi <delcecchinospamofthenorth@gmail.com> writes:
Actually it was going to be a different design until the maroon management came up with fort knox. When Iliad and fort knox crashed and burned, C-RISC was done. See the Silverlake book and the one by frank soltis. Iliad lived on as service processor.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#39 Throwaway cores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#46 Throwaway cores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#52 Throwaway cores

as another aside ... i did help with writeups that got iliad killed for the 4381 (4341 following)

endicott did get a modern multi-story brick office bldg. out of the iliad/4381 effort ... prior to that offices were being carved out of large warehouse/manufacturing bldgs.

folklore is that after killing iliad/4381 effort, one of the primary people behind the effort gave notice; they were allowed to spend the last two weeks in los gatos doing various things on iliad before starting work with another vendor. later the person shows up as one of the prime architects of itanium ... old reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#29 [Meta] Marketplace argument

other post from another c.a. iliad thread from last yr
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#16 conformance

as in above post ... old posts with even older email mentioning 801 &/or iliad
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#801

several of the old 801/iliad emails from the 79-81 timeframe are in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#65 801 (was Re: Reviving Multics

including (old) email asking if i was going to join in (risc) defections to other vendors

other reference in the above old email ... with respect to dedicated cores was a project called VAMPS that I got dragged into early '75 ... aka company was starting to recover from the disastrous forey into FS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

this was a 370 machine that had been designed with 9-position memory bus for microprocessors ... effectively all the same. Original design only called for single processor with microcode for 370 instruction execution ... the other processors would have custom microcode for various other dedicated functions (channel, control units, etc). however, most shipped machines were configured with only 4-5 memory bus positions occupied (with microprocessors)

project i got dragged into would have up to five of the memory bus positions populated with microprocessors with microcode loaded for 370 instruction execution ... aka 5-way 370 smp operation.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bounce

unfortunately, the product never shipped, however as part of the work (besides doing the multiprocessor kernel design) ... i took advantage of microcode availability to get fancy. I designed a queued multiprocessor dispatching interface aka queued interface that kernel software placed work on ... and the underlying microcode took work off of for execution (sort of reminiscent of later work for i432). I also did a queued i/o interface ... instead of strictly synchronous initiate/interrupt i/o paradigm ... somewhat akin to queued i/o that shows up later in 811 (started to ship in 370-xa).

and as before ... various past posts mentioning 801, fort knox, iliad, romp, rios, power, power/pc, etc.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

for other drift, the same time as I got dragged into doing the VAMPS, 5-way smp 370 ... endicott also dragged me into doing ecps ... this predated the 4341 ... it was 370/145 follow-on; the 370/148. It had spare microcode capability and ecps was going to be virtual machine performance assist ... i.e. top 6kbyte instruction pathlengths in vm370 kernel moved into 148 microcode ... old post with early analysis details selected instruction paths to be moved to microcode
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21 370 ECPS VM microcode assist
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#27 370 ECPS VM microcode assist
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#28 370 ECPS VM microcode assist

the issue in this scenario (for vertical microcode microprocessor) ... was that the typical microcode 360 & 370 emulation required 10:1 instruction execution ... avg of 10 microcode instructions for every 360/370 instruction (i.e. for 1mip 370, required 10mip microprocessor). As it turns out typical supervisor kernel 370 instructions would map nearly 1:1 to equivalent microprocessor instructions ... achieving a 10:1 performance improvement.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:03:31
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
there are already complaints that congress had made changes so late in 2007 ... that it was going to take until possibly march before the irs dataprocessing systems were updated to reflect the changes. there have been references that some amount of IRS dataprocessing costs, as well as glitches, are directly because of the rush and frantic activity associated with such last minute changes.

slightly related:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#40 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#53 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

another contributing factor can be this post referencing an article claiming this past session has had the worst attendance in the history of congress (implying it has accomplished the least amount of any congress in history) ... possibly contributing to some things being done at the last minute and in a rush:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#20 Education ranking

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Throwaway cores

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Throwaway cores
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:27:38
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
other reference in the above old email ... with respect to dedicated cores was a project called VAMPS that I got dragged into early '75 ... aka company was starting to recover from the disastrous forey into FS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#54 Throwaway cores

i've claimed several times before that at least part of John's motivation in starting risc ... was to swing the pendulum to the opposite extreme from what was going on in FS with regard to hardware complexity

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Fwd: Linux zSeries questions

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Linux zSeries questions
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:20:35
gilmap@UNIX.STORTEK.COM (Paul Gilmartin) writes:
Of course, there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth from customers discovering that code compiled to the bare metal far outperformed their beloved Assembler programs on the emulated hardware. The vendor would need to cover its collective ears and encourage the customers to migrate to better technology.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#47 Linux zSeries questions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#49 Linux zSeries questions

this is somewhat 30yrs gone ...

some number of this has all been encountered before ... recent thread in comp.arch mentioning 360/370 vertical microcode microprocessors having 10:1 execution ... i.e. avg. of 10 microcode instructions executed for every 360/370 instructions. this gave rise to "ECPS" on 138/148 & 43xx machines ... moving kernel code into microcode getting 10:1 performance improvement:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#39 Throwaway cores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#46 Throwaway cores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#52 Throwaway cores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#54 Throwaway cores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#56 Throwaway cores

however, this was the low-end and mid-range 370s ... using vertical microcode microprocessors ... and wasn't true for the high-end machines using horizontal microcode microprocessors.

as also mentioned in the comp.arch thread ... the wide proliferation of different (vertical microcode) microprocessors (systems, controllers, channels, etc) resulted in projects circa 1980 to move corporation to single 801/risc microprocessor architecture (iliad chips). However, for various reasons this effort floundered. As mentioned, the 4341-follow-on (4381) started out being one of these 801/risc processors ... and I contributed to the writeups killing that strategy. the issue was that chips were getting complex enuf that it was starting to be possible to implement the 370 instructions directly in circuits ... rather than having intermediate microcode level.

now, the high-end product line was using horizontal microcode microprocessors ... this required extremely complex programming ... since different fields in the same instruction controlled different functions ... like starting a data move from one unit to another unit ... overlapped with variety of other functions. the programmer then had to manually count machine cycles (instructions) before the data could be expected to have finished the moved. because of the overlap complexity, these machines measured performance in the avg. machine cycles per 370 instruction (rather than avg. number of microcode instructions executed per 370 instruction). 370/165 was measured in an avg. of 2.1 machine cycles per 370 instruciton. this was optimized for 370/168 for an avg. of 1.6 machine cycles per 370 instruction. For 3033 it was approx. one machine cycle per 370 instruction.

this resulted in various problems .... ECPS virtual machine microcode assist on 148 & 4341 (i.e. moving part of the kernel instructions into microcode) got a 10:1 performance improvement. However, an attempt to do something similar on 3033 actually resulted in slight performance degradation (there was no gain doing a one-for-one translation from 370 instruction to 3033 native).

as in the discussion regarding virtual machine microcode assist:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#21 370 ECPS VM microcode assist
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#27 370 ECPS VM microcode assist
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#28 370 ECPS VM microcode assist

there was one set of (ECPS) things that just did a 1:1 kernel 370 instruction into microcode (for 10:1 performance improvement). there were another set of things that directly executed privilege instruction (but according to virtual machine rules) w/o interrupting into kernel. This later set of things showed performance improvements across all hardware implementations ... since it eliminated interrupts into the kernel, state change overhead, register save/restore overhead, etc (aka eliminated virtual machine kernel execution at all ... as opposed to trying to make the kernel execution run faster). this shows up in Amdahl hypervisor, 3090 pr/sm and current day LPARs.

in this day & age, the place where ECPS approach might be useful would be the intel platform 370 simulators (ala hercules implementation) ... where there is (again) the equivalent of vertical microcode implementing 370 instructions.

the slight caveat in all this is 370 architecture allowing self-modifying instructions ... supposedly half the cycles in many (earlier) hardware implementations, involved double checking whether the previous instruction has modified the current instruction (impacting instruction execution thruput).

current generations of chip technologies (not just mainframe chips) have significantly more complex implementations and enormous amounts of spare circuits. general chip technologies have implemented pipelined speculative execution ... associated with pipelining and not being able to tell for sure which branch path might be taken. speculative execution includes being able to undo instruction execution path (branch actually went the other way) ... something similar to speculative execution can be used to pipeline execution and then undo the operation if there has been self-modifying code.

recent post referencing pipelining and speculative execution for compensating for memory latencies &/or cache misses:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#92 CPU time differences for the same job

but hypothetically, technology could also be used as mechanism for dealing with self-modifying instruction streams.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Linux zSeries questions

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Linux zSeries questions
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:50:45
rfochtman@YNC.NET (Rick Fochtman) writes:
IMHO, the programming language, whether for applications or operating systems, is unimportant, PROVIDED that all the necessary functions can be provided in an efficient manner. The important matter is whether the desired end can be reached efficiently or not. There lots of ways to drive from Chicago to Houston; which route best serves your needs?

lots of past posts discussing common C language environment having a paradigm that promotes buffer length programming errors.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#overflow

up through 1999, (c-language related) buffer overflow exploits accounted for the majority of all internet related vulnerabilities.

the majority of these buffer overflow exploits wouldn't happen in PLI and PASCAL. They also wouldn't occur in 360 assembler conforming to standard system services (because os/360 system services avoided buffer length shortcoming convention that was part of common C language programming convention).

in the early part of this decade ... there was a big increase in internet-related exploits involving the greater use in some platforms and/or associated (personal) applications, which would automatically execute scripts arriving over the network. this increased until automagic script execution exploits were about equal to buffer length related exploits.

a couple past posts related to doing frequency analysis on the CVE vulnerability database ... and having difficulty categorizing exploits ... and lobbying the CVE interests to improve the strucuture/nature of CVE reports.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#43 security taxonomy and CVE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#28 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#32 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#20 Hackers Attack Apps While Still in Development

some amount of the problem was that common personal computer platforms had started out on stand-alone environment with possible terminal emulation connection
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

and then LAN connections were introduced for local departmental networking. The automatic scripting grewup (as purely content enrichment enhancement) in a purely non-hostile environment.

The problem was treating the LAN connections, in a purely non-hostile departmental networking environment, as the same as LAN connections in the extremely hostile internet networking environment ... and not having evolved the appropriate countermeasures for the wide variety of possibly attacks.

for other drift, recent reference to the cms xmas exec
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#87 CompUSA to Close after Jan. 1st 2008
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#2 folklore indeed

on bitnet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet

a year before the morris worm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm

on the internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internet

and for other topic drift ... attempted reproduction (in html) of an old '81 3279 xmas tree exec
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#54 An old fashioned Christmas
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#55 An old fashioned Christmas
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#56 An old fashioned Christmas

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 15:06:18
Walter Bushell <proto@oanix.com> writes:
"Better to lose business to yourself that to someone else." (Who said?)

actually there is frequently what appears to be the exact opposite ... including better to outsource to an external organization (that you believe to have contractual control over) ... than to let it go to a competitive corporate entity (individuals effectively willing to sacrifice the rest of the corporation than to give up any perceived personal corporate political advantage).

a corollary is the "budget share" rivalry referenced in these posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#52 Current Officers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#14 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuf

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 15:41:40
Walter Bushell <proto@oanix.com> writes:
In article <87r6fdwjal.fsf@chbarts.home>, Chris Barts <chbarts+usenet@gmail.com> wrote: or to convince all of the clonemakers that a single company's profits matter more than giving the consumers what they want (as IBM found out when it made the PS/2 based around the 80286 instead of the 80386 Compaq went with: IBM didn't want to kill the more profitable parts of its hardware business).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#59 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

actually many of the real clone vendors had gotten creamed when intel did the 386sx

far east clone vendors had built up huge inventory of 286 PCs over the summer ... anticipating an extremely rewarding xmas season ... which was undermined when intel announced/priced 368sx ... and a lot of last minute machines were produced with the 368sx. the huge 286 inventory eventually was unloaded at firesale prices.

most of the clone vendors were selling on cheaper price ... this dates back to mainframe clone controller vendors ... lots of past posts about getting blameed for the mainframe clone controller market after having participating in building one as an undergraduate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

and then later there were the mainframe processor clone vendors.

compaq wasn't so much selling into a "cheaper" clone price market segment ... they were selling into the business "portable" market segment ... and the cost of the (386dx) chip wasn't particularly an issue.

lots of companies were looking at selling 286-based PCs into the price sensitive market ... when Intel (effectively) blew them out of the market with the introduction of the 386sx (the 286 chips had already been sold ... so the 386sx was all brand new business).

part of the issue was that one of the executives from the mainframe division had been brought down to boca to head up the PS2 operation ... pure aside ... it was the same individual that had earlier con'ed my wife into doing a stint in POK in charge of (mainframe) loosely-coupled architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

one of the things the new PS2 executive did was contract with Dataquest (west coast technical marketing organization since bought by Gartner) for detailed study of where the PC market was going over the next 5-10 yrs. Part of the study was several hr (video tapes and transcribed) round-table discussion with 10-12 experts from silicon valley.

Dataquest contacted me to be one of the experts. The problem was that i had been heckling boca (internally) for years about where the market was at and where it was going ... and they simply ignored me. Since I was in the same corporation, but a different division ... I did get executive approval (from my division) to participate in the videotape dataquest roundtable ... so long as dataquest garbled my identity ... so the PS2 division executives wouldn't easily recognize who i was.

part of my heckling was posting to internal corporate forums ... quantity one prices from the sunday sjmn ... old references to the posts and/or even extracts/copies:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#79 a.f.c history checkup... (was What specifications will the standard year 2001 PC have?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#21 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#81 IBM to the PCM market

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2008 16:35:11
greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
i was told that only a small proportion of the troops in Vietnam were in a position of danger?

quicky search engine turns up

statistics about the vietname war
http://www.vhfcn.org/stats.htm
Deaths avg. age Total 58,148 23.11 years Enlisted 50,274 22.37 years Officers 6,598 28.43 years Warrants 1,276 24.73 years E1 525 20.34 years 11B MOS 18,465 22.55 years

...

One out of every 10 Americans who served in Vietnam was a casualty. 58,169 were killed and 304,000 wounded out of 2.59 million who served. Although the percent who died is similar to other wars, amputations or crippling wounds were 300 percent higher than in World War II. 75,000 Vietnam veterans are severely disabled.


--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Formerly common things

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Formerly common things
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 09:23:45
CBFalconer <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes:
This is one of those appliances that I haven't seen in 40 or 50 years. There must be an antiques market. However, wooden spoons are still common.

old posts mentioning rain barrel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#41 The 8008
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#45 The 8008
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#28 What do YOU call the # sign?

were at corners of the house ... just out of the picture.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#18 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography

old fashion machine with wringer would be moved out to about where i'm standing in the picture ... for washday

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 09:43:23
jmfbahciv writes:
My mother wasn't allowed to go to high school because she was not a male. However, she did get to go to an extension school session held by Michigan State University. I looked at her papers. All of the classes were aimed at training farm girls to become middle class. The kitchen footprints were 1/4 the size of a farm kitchen. Emphasis was put on high-class eating and dressing manners.

my dad didn't go to high school because he was an orphan ... at the time they only got up thru 8th grade ... and then a yr of vocational training ... and then were out in the job market.

mid-90s, we were doing some consulting for commerce dept about systems for 2000 census ... moving vans had already been scheduled for apr97 to pickup 20yr old dataprocessing mainframes.

commerce had audit/revue on progress which we were asked to come in to handle. towards the end of the day ... person doing the audit relaxed and there was some informal chit-chat ... and he happened to mention that he had graduate degree in computer engineering from univ of mich. my wife then asked what year did he graduate. She then mentioned that at the time, she had been the only woman in engineering graudate school. He replied, no you weren't, somebody else was. In the subsequent exchange ... he happened to comment something about she had gotten quite a bit older.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Interesting ibm about the myths of the Mainframe

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Interesting ibm about the myths of the Mainframe
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:25:49
howard.brazee@CUSYS.EDU (Howard Brazee) writes:
Why do graphics belong on the server anyway? I don't want a Windows server to do the pretty graphics either. Put the pretty stuff on the client side, and put the data on the server side.

this was a battle that the disk division had with the communication division. in the late 80s at an internal world-wide communication division conference ... a senior technical person from the disk division started their talk by saying that the head of the communication division was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division (and would everybody in the audience please call the ceo to voice their concern).

the problem was that communication division had helped with the rapid uptake of PCs with terminal emulation. however, by the late 80s, the terminal emulation paradigm was starting to represent a severe bottleneck. the disk division had numerous products in the works to eliminate most of the problems ... however the products were all being block by the communication division protecting their terminal emulation install base.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

the frustration with the communication division blocking all of these products contributed to the subterfuge behind the presentation ... and the opening remarks.

the issue was, as work-around to the enormous impedence represented by the terminal emaulation paradigm, ... data was leaking out of the glass house in almost every way possible ... being replicated on local PCs and servers (outside the glass house).

in this period ... the communication division had also come up with SAA ... which could be construed as an alternative to client/server paradigm ... and attempting to preserve the terminal emulation install base.

in the same period ... we had come up with 3-tier networking architecture and were out making customer executive presentations (and taking all sort of barbs and arrows from the SAA forces).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#3tier

one of the battles that the senior tech guy (that gave the talk about the demise of the disk division) fought and lost was over the channel interface box for mainframe tcp/ip product. The product that shipped got 44kbytes/sec consuming a 3090 processor. I added rfc 1044 support to the product (for different vendor box), and in some tuning tests at cray research between 4341-clone and cray got 1mbyte/sec (4341 channel speed) using only modest about of the 4341 (around three orders magnitude improvement in bytes transferred per instruction executed).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

another example was the 8-way vm/4341 cluster support done by research. internally it used a custom protocol over 3088/trotter (8-arm channel-to-channel). For product ship they were required to convert to sna. An example was the internal implementation would perform the cluster synchronization function in under a second elapsed time. The sna flavor took over 30seconds elapsed time to perform the same operation.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:38:53
Lon <lon.stowell@comcast.net> writes:
Not at all unusual in rural america. Up to the 8th grade, males tended to be a bit too small and fragile for full blown farm/ranch work, but at roughly that age, they were more valuable as labor than as students. Plus in a goodly number of places the schools just werent set up for that many kids in the 9-12 grade range and the high schools were fewer and further away--where that extra commute was lost time very valuable in farming/ranching.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#63 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff

my mother's brothers and father were large ... and were expected to be able to do full days work at younger age ... as was i ... reference here at 8:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#18 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography

or this indirect reference at 11 to hands so calloused that lit a firecracker in palm of hand:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002d.html#25 Security Proportional to Risk (was: IBM Mainframe at home)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#79 Working while young
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#57 Govt demands password to personal computer

reference to my mother's father in that area of the country in the 90s:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#51 Year-end computer bug could ground Shuttle

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Time to rewrite DBMS, says Ingres founder

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Time to rewrite DBMS, says Ingres founder
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 15:19:39
Time to rewrite DBMS, says Ingres founder
http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2008/02/18/stonebraker_dbms_outdated/

from above:
Database management systems (DBMS) are 20 years out of date and should be completely rewritten to reflect modern use of computers.

That's according to a group of academics including DBMS pioneer Mike Stonebraker, Ingres founder and a Postgres architect taking his second controversial outing so far this year. Stonebraker upset many last month for his criticism of Google's MapReduce.


... snip ...

recent posts on the MapReduce topic:
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?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#81 Did early Oracle run on the IBM mainframe?

however, with respect to rewrite to reflect "modern" computers ... some references to "in-store" dbms implementations:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#32 How does the smart telco deal with the bounty in its hands?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#51 The Chant of the Trolloc Hordes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#88 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#50 CPU time differences for the same job

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Throwaway cores

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Throwaway cores
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 15:56:29
Eric Smith <eric@brouhaha.com> writes:
I understand that. My question was whether the standalone channel boxes reused microcode engines from 360 processors, with different microcode, and perhaps stripped down to drop features unnecessary for channels.

Given how much work it was to design a processor (or channel) from scratch, I could easily imagine that the standalone channels could have been derived from the 360/50 CPU design or the like. (Or maybe even the 360/30 or 360/40, though those had narrower data paths which would have required adding extra logic to assemble and disassemble 32-bit words.)


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#46 Throwaway cores

360/30, 360/40, 360/50 processors had integrated channels (i.e. same engine ran channel microcode as ran 360 instruction execution microcode) ... 65, 75, etc had external channel box. I don't remember anything about what the internal engines were in any of the boxes

I was undergraduate in that period. closest i came was some of the work that dealt with reverse engineering the channel interface (on 360/65 ... but didn't get into what the processor was like in the external channel box) ... as part of implementating a channel interface card for interdata/3 ... implementing a 2702 clone
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

other posts in thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#39 Throwaway cores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#52 Throwaway cores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#54 Throwaway cores
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#56 Throwaway cores

my impression was that the different engines were implemented at different locations by different organizations.

later I saw the architecture "redbook" for 370 (distributed in red 3ring binder) ... which presumably was carry over from 360. the 370 version had been moved to (cp67) cms script ... and command line option would either print the full architecture redbook ... or the principles of operation subset.

current principles of operation
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/dz9zr003/CCONTENTS

old 360 principles of operation
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/princOps/

... it was the architecture redbook that tied together the different implementations being done at various places (eventually around the world).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Regarding the virtual machines

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Regarding the virtual machines.
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:32:27
bybell writes:
No, suppose that the VM has its own memory management such that loads and stores can spill off to the filesystem just like page faults work for the host OS. For example, imagine a VM for a 64-bit processor running on a 32-bit processor. Conceivably the VM could run apps with far larger datasets than the real processor.

part i:

so imagine the original 801/risc from the mid-70s ... it has 32bit addressing ... 16 segment registers ... each one being able to select 256mbytes each. part of the design was significantly simplified hardware ... compensating by features in software. the program loader would only load code (for execution) from a valid pl.8 compiler ... and the pl.8 compiler would only generate correct code. the result was that "inlineq" code would easily change segment register values as easily as general (and/or address) registers could be change.

there was no using virtual address space to partition different applications from each other ... and/or requiring kernel calls to make modifications to virtual address space specification. there was no hardware protection and/or privilege mode ... i.e. no application execution not being able to execute certain instructions (ala changing segment register contents).

so we come up to romp in the early 80s ... joint research, office products 801/risc chip to be used as follow-on for the displaywriter. 801/risc was inverted tables ... so segment register contents were just unique identification associated with each segment (not a table pointer). romp segment registers were 12 bits. under the philosophy that segment registers could be changed by inline application code ... as easily as general/address registers ... the machine was claimed to be "40bit" virtual addressing.

addresses were actually only 32bits ... top four bits selecting one of the 16segment registers ... and 28bits selecting displacement within 256mbyte segment. since the value in a selected segment register could actually be one of 4096 segments ... the claim was it actually was a 28bit+12bit = 40bit addressing machine.

even after the displaywriter follow-on project was killed and it was decided to retarget the machine to the unix workstation market ... the claim of 40bit addressing continue to hangon. hardware privilege mode had to be added, requiring kernel calls to update segment registers ... in order to adapt it to unix paradigm ... the 40bit description still shows up in documentation. imagine it as if there was aggregate 40bit virtual address space .... effectively with 16 256mbyte "windows" that could be randomly moved around the actual space (maximum of 4gbyte concurrent at a time).

rios doubled the segment register value field to 24bits ... and even tho the machines had long been adapted to unix paradigm ... still 32bit virtual address spaces ... and some documentation still describing the machine as having 52bit address space.

misc. posts mentioning 801, risc, romp, rios, fort knox, power/pc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Regarding the virtual machines

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Regarding the virtual machines.
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:39:40
Jatin Bhateja <jatin.bhateja@gmail.com> writes:
Thus on a 32 bit machine, where any compiled application can occupy max 4GB address space, there an application running on a VM will always have less address space at its displosal , because application actully runs in the VM's address sapce and VM's code and data section will also occupy some space in the runtime image of the process. VM is also a software process.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#68 Regarding the virtual machines.

part 2 .... a different paradigm is the mainframe access register scenario.

mainframe batch systems from the 60s have everything in (single) real storage heavily implementing pointer passing api. transition to virtual memory first simulated a single 16mbyte virtual memory (as if it were real) ... then the transition was to a single 16mbyte virtual memory per application. however, the heavy use of pointer passing api ... resulted in the kernel appearing as 8mbyte of each application 16mbyte virtual address space.

there was a remaining problem with lots of "subsystem" applications that were outside the kernel ... and had been moved into their individual virtual address spaces ... however regular applications still continue to use pointer passing apis to these subsystem operations in different address spaces. the temporary solution was something called a "common segment" that appears in all address spaces ... which an application can use to squirrel away data and then use pointer-passing api to invoke a subsystem in different address space. problem was at large installations, having common segment growing to 5mbytes or more (16 mbyte virtual address space per application, 8mbyte dedicated for kernel image, and 5mbytes or more for common segment image, leaving 3mbytes or less for application).

late '70s mainframes (with 3033), "dual-address" space was introduced ... semi-privilege subsystems had two virtual address spaces that they could access ... their primary virtual address space ... and (secondary) virtual address space of the calling applciation.

early 80s, 31bit virtual address space was added ... but still required multiple virtual address spaces that could be accessed simultaneously. along the way special hardware program call (& return) was added. rather than having to pass thru kernel call to switch address space when calling a "subsystem" ... special hardware tables were setup that defined directly callable subystems along with the rules regarding virtual address spaces required. in effect, directly calleable library routines can now reside in different virtual address spaces.

as to the original question

this concurrent virtual address space operations continues into current 64bit address machines
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/dz9zr003/CCONTENTS

address spaces summary:
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/dz9zr003/3.8?DT=20040504121320

from above:
At any instant when the CPU is in the primary-space mode or secondary-space mode, the CPU can translate virtual addresses belonging to two address spaces -- the primary address space and the secondary address space. At any instant when the CPU is in the access-register mode, it can translate virtual addresses of up to 16 address spaces -- the primary address space and up to 15 AR-specified address spaces. At any instant when the CPU is in the home-space mode, it can translate virtual addresses of the home address space.

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Time to rewrite DBMS, says Ingres founder

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Time to rewrite DBMS, says Ingres founder
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:11:07
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#66 Time to rewrite DBMS, says Ingres founder

part of theme regarding taking into account changes in technologies are increasingly large real storage and fast interconnects.

i would claim that we were starting to address this in ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

scale-up work nearly 20yrs ago ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

part of which is discussed in this recent mention of ha/cmp distributed lock manager ... and work to support direct memory to memory record transfer (in large cluster configurations) ... w/o first requiring writing to disk ... while still supporting transaction acid properties and fault recovery.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#81 Random thoughts

and old posts discussing the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#40 Disk drive behavior
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#8 Avoiding JCL Space Abends
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#70 A few Z990 Gee-Wiz stats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#7 A few Z990 Gee-Wiz stats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#70 CAS and LL/SC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#32 the relational model of data objects *and* program objects
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#8 IBM 610 workstation computer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#33 When Does Folklore Begin???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007i.html#27 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#58 what does xp do when system is copying

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Interesting ibm about the myths of the Mainframe

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Interesting ibm about the myths of the Mainframe
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 09:53:20
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#64 Interesting ibm about the myths of the Mainframe

my wife had co-authored peer-to-peer networking architecture ... AWP39 ... in the time-frame of early sna. note that only in an institution where the term "network" had been usurped for communication protocols ... would be necessary to qualify networking with "peer-to-peer".

later she was con'ed into going to pok to be in charge in loosely-coupled architecture ... where she did peer-coupled shared data architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata

which saw little uptake until sysplex, except for ims hot-standby; ... which contributed to her short tenure in the position. other factors were constant battles with the communication group. at one point, they sort of reached a temporary truce; sna would be used for anything that crossed the walls of the glasshouse ... but she could do her own thing within the boundaries of the glasshouse. as can be seen in the previous vm/4341 cluster reference ... the truce didn't last very long.

in this recent post, there is discussion of working with educational institutions and nsf
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#43 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

and getting waylayed by internal politics and not being allowed to deploy the nsfnet backbone. some old email from the period
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

one of the above referenced emails, was forwarded to us by one of the other AWP39 co-authors ... which showed some amount of internal pontificating about how nsfnet would be able to take advantage of sna
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email870109

the NSF director had thot that sponsoring an audit of highspeed backbone that we already had running internallly ("at least five years ahead of all nsfnet bid submissions", to build something new) and writing a letter to the company 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO), ... would help the situation. however, it just appeared to aggravate the internal politics.

to sort of position AWP39 (peer-to-peer networking architecture) .... much later, appn was AWP164. At the time they were trying to announce appn ... the person responsible for appn and I directly reported to the same executive. the communication group objected to appn announcement. after some political escalation, the appn announcement letter was carefully rewritten to avoid implying any sort of relationship between sna and appn (also delaying the announcement by approx. two months).

misc. past posts mentioning AWP39:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#38 RS/6000 in Sysplex Environment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#31 IBM 3705 and UC.5
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#8 EBCDIC to 6-bit and back
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#15 DUMP Datasets and SMS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#17 DUMP Datasets and SMS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#27 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#23 Channel Distances
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/2006j.html#31 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#9 Arpa address
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#21 Sending CONSOLE/SYSLOG To Off-Mainframe Server
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#4 Google Architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#45 Mainframe Linux Mythbusting (Was: Using Java in batch on z/OS?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#62 Greatest Software, System R
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#4 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#9 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#36 The Future of CPUs: What's After Multi-Core?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#28 Assembler question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#55 What's a mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#9 Mainframe vs. "Server" (Was Just another example of mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#48 6400 impact printer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#55 Is computer history taugh now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#35 sizeof() was: The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
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/2007p.html#12 JES2 or JES3, Which one is older?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#23 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
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
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#53 folklore indeed

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Price of CPU seconds

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Price of CPU seconds
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:58:48
miklos.szigetvari@ISIS-PAPYRUS.COM (Miklos Szigetvari) writes:
If someone can tell me the price of a CPU second in a larger z/OS system (we discuss currently if 0.5% CPU usage is relevant or not )

part of the issue is total annual amortized capital costs (physical facilities, computers, disks, etc ) plus total annual expenses (utilities, telecom, power, water, software, people, etc) ... purely hypothetically $20m.

old article that mentions dec2004, there were 124,478 line items of software pricing:
http://www.zjournal.com/index.cfm?section=article&aid=258

then the issue is how cost recovery is achieved ... is it solely based on processor time charges ... or are other resources, like number i/os and storage space utilization, also priced ... contributing to infrastructure cost recovery.

even if it is just based on processor time charges (no other resource consumption billable charges) ... there is issue of capture ratio ... aka what percent of processor time actually shows up in accounting records. say processor avgs 50% busy, 7x24 ... and capture ratio is 50percent ... which could result in 42 processor billable hrs per week ... hypothetically 2184 billable hrs per year.

then hypothetical break-even would be $2.55/billable-processor-second.

if there were actually ten individual processors that made up the computer (CEC) ... then the actual billable processor hrs (in hypothetical example) could be ten times larger ... and break-even would be $.26/billable-processor-second.

there was recent articles that some number of companies are putting in large datacenters around the columbia river ... some search engine results:
http://www.isedb.com/db/blogs/1740/Size-Matters---Mega-Datacenters-Being-Built-Along-Columbia-River.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/technology/14search.html
http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/showGallery.jhtml?galleryID=62
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.10/cloudware_pr.html

as student ... i had been brought in for the summer (as full time employee) to help get BCS going. BCS objective was to consolidate the internal datacenters ... sort of moving them from cost center to a P&L center ... at least on paper ... however, not just selling services internally ... but also enabled to sell/market services externally (some idea of showing billed revenue covering business unit costs).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Price of CPU seconds

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Price of CPU seconds
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:22:57
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
And that is for a single system ? That is fantastically expensive.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#72 Price of CPU seconds

some recent posts about optimizating 450kloc cobol program that ran overnight batch window on 40+ systems that avg'ed $30m/per (hardware purchase) ... getting approx 15percent improvement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#50 Where can you get a Minor in Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#20 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#67 least structured statement in a computer language. And the winner
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#21 Distributed Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#24 Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Price of CPU seconds

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Price of CPU seconds
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:01:09
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
We still need the datacenters. Now they are just filled up with oodles of internet machines.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#72 Price of CPU seconds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#73 Price of CPU seconds

.. and part of the motivations for the billions sent on business process re-engineering during the 90s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#19 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#74 Too much change opens up financial fault lines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#37 Diversity ( was Re: Usefulness of bidirectional read/write?)

some spectacularly unsuccessful.

our work on ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
... and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

also put us right smack in the middle of some of it.

recent posts also somewhat related
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#66 Time to rewrite DBMS, says Ingres founder
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#70 Time to rewrite DBMS, says Ingres founder

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Richard Feynman, the Challenger Disaster, and Software Engineering

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Richard Feynman, the Challenger Disaster, and Software Engineering
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:57:17
Richard Feynman, the Challenger, and Engineering
http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/02/20/1449244.shtml

Richard Feynman, the Challenger Disaster, and Software Engineering
http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/2008/02/20/Richard-Feynman-Challenger-Disaster-Software-Engineering.aspx

from above:
So software is not the only discipline where the longer a defect stays in the process, the more expensive it is to fix. It's also not the only discipline where a "top down" design, made in ignorance of detailed bottom-up knowledge, leads to problems. There is however a difference here between design and requirements. The requirements for the engine were clear and well defined. You know, go to space and back, preferably without blowing up. Feynman is arguing not so much against Joel's functional specs, but rather against top down design such as that advocated by the UML as blueprint crowd.

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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

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, 20 Feb 2008 12:31:02
Kim Enkovaara <kim.enkovaara@iki.fi> writes:
Take a look into Hywind by Norsk Hydro. They are just building a prototype of a floating windmill to be tested at the north sea. The prototype should produce 3*3MW of power.

Few links:
http://www.offshore247.com/news/article.asp?Id=8070
http://www.energyportal.eu/newsflash/newsflash/floating-off-shore-wind-rig-based-on-oil-rig-techn.html


article from today:

Biggest farms in the world
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/304682/Biggest+farms+in+the+world.htm

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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

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, 20 Feb 2008 12:32:40
another article from today:

Waves and wind
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/304681/Waves+and+wind.htm

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Escaping decades of hidden app development inefficiency and expense

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Escaping decades of hidden app development inefficiency and expense
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:02:46
Escaping decades of hidden app development inefficiency and expense
http://news.zdnet.com/2424-3515_22-188832.html

from above:
The decades-old ingrained process for manually and iteratively resolving application problems dramatically stymies the productivity of development organizations, yet most executives have little to no understanding of the extent to which this commonly-accepted process is affecting their IT teams and their businesses. This was revealed however in an eye-opening Forrester Consulting study, commissioned by BMC Software: "The Business Case for Better Problem Resolution."

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:27:45
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
In terms of oil, we have probably extracted around 40% of what was there originally. It is just that the very last 40% of any field are very slow and expensive to extract.

it was something like two decades ago where there was work on pumping water into oil fields to aid in extracting additional oil ... and then there was story about suspending the activity. apparently the scenario was that the water could possibly lubricate fault lines ... placing the companies at risk of legal action if there ever was earthquake damage (claims that any earthquakes were a direct result of pumping water into the ground).

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

The Economic Impact of Stimulating Broadband Nationally

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The Economic Impact of Stimulating Broadband Nationally
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:16:59
Increased US Broadband Adoption Could Create 2.4 Million Jobs
http://slashdot.org/articles/08/02/21/2354226.shtml
Study: More US broadband has $134 billion economic impact
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;18916991
The Economic Impact of Stimulating Broadband Nationally
http://connectednation.org/economic_impact_study/index.php

from above:
"The Economic Impact of Stimulating Broadband Nationally" details the potential state-by-state impact of legislation to accelerate broadband access and use. The report's findings suggest that the U.S. could realize an economic impact of $134 billion annually by accelerating broadband availability and use across all states. The map above shows the potential for broadband that exists in every U.S. state. Please take the time to review the report and the potential for broadband in the U.S.

... snip ...

misc. past references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#25 Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#70 Latest OECD broadband data puts US in middle of the pack on speed, price
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#70 Fixing US broadband: $100 billion for fiber to every home

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Berkeley researcher describes parallel path

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:28:00
Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206801229
Wintel will fund parallel software lab at Berkeley
http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=206503988
Multicore puts screws to parallel-programming models
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206504466

from above:
Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp. have awarded an estimated $10 million, five-year grant to help fund a new Parallel Computing Lab at the University of California at Berkeley, with 14 faculty members initially involved. As many as 20 universities, including MIT, Stanford and the University of Illinois, competed for funding.

... snip ...

misc. past:

https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#20 Parallel programming again (Re: Intel announces "CT" aka
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005o.html#34 Not enough parallelism in programming
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#57 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#24 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#26 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#34 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#38 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
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#5 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#13 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#14 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#19 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#22 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#26 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#29 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#37 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#39 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#49 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#51 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#52 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#53 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#54 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#58 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#59 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#61 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#70 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#1 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#3 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#6 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#25 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/2007n.html#38 Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#39 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/2007v.html#7 Faster Chips Are Leaving Programmers in Their Dust

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?

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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:38:01
jeffj@panix.com (Jeff Jonas) writes:
Around 1990 I worked at the IBM Kingston NY facility on a "native" port of AIX to the 3030? mainframe.

My take on the project: it was IBM's "not invented here" resentment that a contractor (California's Convergent Technologies) successfully delivered AIX for the PS/2 and mainframe. They were clustered and tightly coupled using TCF (Transparent Computing Facility a/k/a Totally Confusing Facility). All machines in the cluster shared the process table, mount table, etc. so running processes could migrate to any available machine (of same CPU) without checkpoint/restart (unless that was done under the wrappers to the migrate system call). I rather doubt the project got very far due to internal politics.

The managers were too busy protecting their own interests to bother with the project.

My understanding is that an IBM group in Austin, Texas did the rs/6000 AIX port, so they were wonderfully isolated from such politics. It simply worked and sold well!


it would have been a "3090"

the palo alto science center group had been working with UCLA and had a locus port both running on some 68k machines and on series/1 in the early to mid 80s. then they also picked up effort to port (Berkeley) BSD to 370 in the mid 80s. I did some consulting with that group on c compiler and 370. at some point that group spun off and moved into a different bldg across grassy quad (from the bldg. that science center was in).

the austin group had started out using 801/risc romp chip for opd displaywriter follow-on. when that project was killed they look around and decided to retarget the machine for unix workstation market. the company that had done the pc/ix port was hired to do similar port to romp. this was announced as the pc/rt and aix. misc. posts mentioning 801, risc, romp, rios, power, power/pc, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

the palo alto group then was redirected to take the 370 BSD port that they were working on ... and instead retarget to the pc/rt ... which was announced as "AOS". by this time, i believe the (unix related) palo alto group had been moved into the (new, academic and university) "ACIS" division.

the austin group then did a 801/risc romp follow-on chip called rios ... which was announced as pc/rt follow-on, the rs/6000. and the pc/rt aix (v2, sort of to differentiate from pc/ix on pc) ... was moved to rios and announced as aix v3.

the palo alto group then took some of the ucla locus work that they had been and did both a 370 and a 386 version ... this was sort of the SAA equivalent for the unix world. I don't remember any dealings with any outside contractors that may have been involved in the ucla locus work (other than some of the people from LA that had been involved with ucla locus).

the austin group then got heavily involved with OSF and DCE, recent references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#20 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#53 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?

which involved austin's distributed file system work, but also andrew & mach work at cmu, locus work at ucla, some mit project athena work ... and other technologies from various operations.

i can see where hudson valley viewed alternative kernels for mainframes as NIH ... vis-a-vis their own favorite son offering. There was somewhat similar situation between Austin (with "AIX" which they had taken as their strategic operating system) ... vis-a-vis ACIS "AOS" offering for pc/rt (especially since ACIS had significantly upstaged Austin in doing the BSD/AOS port ... orders of magnitude less resources and elapsed time).

there was similar NIH attitude in hudson valley towards science center's virtual machine operating system (initially cp67 and then vm370 when ported to 370). an example was the internal HONE timesharing system which provided the worldwide service to sales&marketing operation.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

A lot of (internal) vm370 enhancements went into HONE in the late 70s for clustering the US HONE operation (supporting all US sales & marketing at cal. datacenter) ... which requiried load balancing across max. collection of loosely-coupled SMP machines (single system image). Then because of disaster considerations (earthquakes in cal.), in the early 80s, the operation was extended to geographic loosely-coupled ... first with replicated datacenter in Dallas and then a 3rd in Boulder.

recent tale of repeated series of (disastrous, unsuccessful) efforts to try and get HONE moved to MVS-based operation:

trivia ... the cal. hone datacenter was across the back parking lot from the complex where the science center and the acis group were located:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#32 Interesting Mainframe Article: 5 Myths Exposed

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:47:29
jeffj@panix.com (Jeff Jonas) writes:
I'm now more confused about matching products to locations and companies. I'm rather sure that AIX/6000 for the RS/6000 was developed entirely by IBM's Austin Texas facility.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#82 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?

the displaywriter follow-on was cp.r operating system and pl.8 programming language. when the decision was made to retarget to unix workstation market ... and the company that had done the pc/ix port was hired to do unix port to romp (i.e. pc/rt, for aixv2) ... they needed something to do for all the pl.8 programmers.

something was defined called the VRM (virtual resource manager) which was sort of a abstract virtual machine layer (implemented in pl.8). the group that had done pc/ix was instructed to port to the VRM layer, not the real machine. The justification was that the resources and elapsed time to do VRM plus unix port to VRM ... was less than doing unix port directly to the real hardware.

part of the later issue with the palo alto group doing a bsd port directly to the romp 801/rsc chip for "AOS" ... was that it was done in less effort than just the unix port to the VRM interface. the VRM strategy also had other long-term implications ... like duplicate new device drivers ... one in the VRM layer and another in the unix layer.

a lot of the morph of aix v2 to aix v3 for rs/6000 was the elimination of all the VRM stuff.

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

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

The hands-free way to steal a credit card

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: The hands-free way to steal a credit card
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 10:07:52
The hands-free way to steal a credit card
http://www.news.com/8301-10789_3-9875961-57.html

from above:
As part of his presentation Wednesday, Laurie asked for someone from the audience to volunteer a smart card. Without taking the card out of the volunteer's wallet, Laurie both read and displayed its contents on the presentation screen--the person's name, account number, and expiration clearly visible.

... snip ...

similar but different:

Londoners fall victim to credit card fraud
http://www.moneynews.co.uk/4288/londoners-fall-victim-to-credit-card-fraud/

from above:
Figures released from Apacs last year show that total card fraud losses increased by 26 per cent in the six months leading up to June 2007, compared with the same period in 2006.

... snip ...

somewhat related articles:

middle banking in a english muddle
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/000999.html
Middle England's identity crisis
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2007/dec/15/scamsandfraud

which include reference to this blog:

http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2008/01/31/justice-in-one-case-at-least/

and this reference:

Has chip-and-pin failed to foil fraudsters?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/03/hitechcrime.news

from above:
Apacs doesn't say whether all UK cards are SDA-based, but an analysis by the team at Cambridge found no evidence of DDA cards in use. Some countries are now moving to another, more secure type of authentication, known as Dynamic Data Authentication (DDA), which will thwart yes cards altogether.

... snip ...

past posts mentioning YES CARD attacks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescards

which first appeared in early deployments nearly a decade ago.

other references to previously mentioned blog:

Financial Ombudsman losing it?
http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2008/01/23/financial-ombudsman-losing-it/
Chip-and-Pin relay attack paper wins "best student paper" at usenix security 2007
http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2007/08/08/chip-and-pin-relay-attack-paper-wins-best-student-paper-at-usenix-security-2007/
Chip & Pin terminal playing Tetris
http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2006/12/24/chip-pin-terminal-playing-tetris/
The mythical tamper-proof PIN pad?
http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2006/05/10/the-mythical-tamper-proof-pin-pad/

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

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: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 11:53:16
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
there has also been comments that revoking Glass-Steagall has contributed to the current CDO crisis.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?


re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#11 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM

major business channel show just had program on funds investing in hong kong and mainland china. comment was that since hong kong money was tied to the dollar, the strengthening dollar has helped them.

they went on to mention some recommended funds on mainland ... one that was made up of 50 percent chinese financial institutions ... mostly in Shanghai. They went on to comment that since China has had much better governance ... the Chinese financial institutions have been little affected by the toxic CDOs.

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

U.S. Science Funding Hits a Political Wall

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: U.S. Science Funding Hits a Political Wall
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:19:33
U.S. Science Funding Hits a Political Wall
http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/2153825.html

from above:
Despite bipartisan consensus to support the President's American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI), which was designed to double federal funding for science education and research at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Department of Energy Office (DOE) of Science over the next seven years, the amounts allocated in the FY2008 Omnibus Appropriations bill fell woefully short.
...
Compared to the proposed ACI funding levels, the FY2008 appropriations were $548 million (92 percent) short for the DOE, $397 million (77 percent) short for the NSF, and $72 million (70 percent) short for the NIST.


... snip ...

misc. recent posts mentioning competitiveness:
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#48 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
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#57 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
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#73 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#81 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#83 Education ranking
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#13 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#78 Move over US -- China to be new driver of world's economy and innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#11 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#12 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#46 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#56 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#70 Fixing US broadband: $100 billion for fiber to every home
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#38 outsourcing moving up value chain

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Berkeley researcher describes parallel path

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:40:37
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#81 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path

another of the articles on the same theme:

Opinion: Time to plow multiple paths to parallel computing
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206801376

from above:
The electronics industry is not investing nearly enough time, energy and money to address what has become a pressing need for a genuine technology breakthrough in parallel computing. It is time to fund multiple large-scale projects in this area and multiple stakeholders need to step up to the plate quickly.

... snip ...

we had been doing some of this sort of stuff when we were doing ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
an
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

some old reference to genre with this old reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email870604
in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#39 old tapes

of course lots of this also showed up in the "killer micros" from the 90s ... that were going to replace all the mainframes. business process reengineering was going to move all the business applications off the backroom mainframes onto large arrays of smaller processors.

in the financial industry, large amounts were spent in conjunction with the parallelising efforts which would also address the increasing overnight batch window problem ... with (significantly parallelized) straight-through processing. some of the disastrous failures of the period was attempts to use COTS and standardized parallelizing solutions ... which turned out to increase the processing by factors of one hundred times (vis-a-vis the batch implementations) .... totally obliterating any hopes of increased workload thruput.

recent posts mentioning overnight batch windows and/or straight through processing efforts.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#51 Mainframe not a good architecture for interactive workloads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#40 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#31 Quote from comp.object
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/2007u.html#19 Distributed Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#21 Distributed Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#37 folklore indeed
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#27 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#64 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#69 Controlling COBOL DDs named SYSOUT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#72 whats the world going to do when all the baby boomers retire
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#81 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#3 on-demand computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#74 Too much change opens up financial fault lines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#92 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#30 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#31 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#73 Price of CPU seconds

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

The hands-free way to steal a credit card

Refed: **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The hands-free way to steal a credit card
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:49:49
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#84 The hands-free way to steal a credit card

another

'Gecko' Penetrates Building Access Systems; Black Hat researcher builds device that lets intruders steal and clone legitimate credentials from biometric and contactless card-based systems
http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=146718

from above:
In the Gecko demo, a Black Hat volunteer scanned a legitimate access card through the reader, and then fellow researcher Adam Laurie -- acting as the bad guy -- was able to piggyback off of her access code with his own card and gain entry. He was also able to disable her card and enable his.

Franken said Version 2 of Gecko will store multiple identities in Flash memory, and Version 3 will include a Bluetooth interface that can fake out biometric scanners that don't use proximity cards. "Version 3 is ideal for biometric devices," he said.

Version 4, meanwhile, will come with a GSM interface, Franken said, and would let an attacker open a door remotely.


... snip ...

as an aside ... x9.59 from the mid-90s contained countermeasures for explicitly these kinds of vulnerabilities ... providing for its use in wireless and other environments that were easily evesdropped
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Berkeley researcher describes parallel path

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:27:17
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#81 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#87 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path

somewhat related (including parallelized straight-through processing and eliminating overnight batch window):

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

part of the agenda:
http://wallstreetandtech.com/accelerate/agenda.jhtml;jsessionid=NCF5XKQUSJJBEQSNDLPSKHSCJUNN2JVN

from above:
Data Tsunami: Using Multi-Core Processing to Stay Ahead

Message volume is going through the roof. NYSE Euronext is continually setting new records for message volume. The Options Price Reporting Authority (OPRA) is projecting required message capacity of 907,000 messages per second (mps) by this summer (80 percent higher than a year ago mps) with a 20 percent growth to more than 6 billion messages per day. What can multi-core processors and advanced architectures do to help firms stay ahead of the data flow?


... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Berkeley researcher describes parallel path

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:33:36
Al Kossow <aek@spies.com> writes:
Microsoft's effort is being lead by Chuck Thacker. Should be interesting...

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#87 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path

the referenced article
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206801376

also mentions:
I know Intel has already funded some efforts to help train the next generation of programmers in the latest parallel techniques. And Microsoft has hired a handful of heavy hitters in parallel programming including Burton Smith and Dan Reed.

... snip ...

the above has pointer to this article from last summer:

M'soft: Parallel programming model 10 years off
http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=201200019

from above:
"There is a fundamental change in computer architecture coming," Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft, said in an interview with EE Times. "I personally think this is one of the most disruptive things the industry will have to go through."

... snip ...

and from last fall:

Supercomputer vet joins Microsoft Research
http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml;?articleID=202804148

from above:
Reed will collaborate with Burton Smith, another parallel computing guru who joined Microsoft in 2005 to help spearhead work on multicore issues. In an interview earlier this year, Smith discussed work on at least two functional languages at Microsoft.

... snip ...

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

z10 presentation on 26 Feb

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: z10 presentation on 26 Feb
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 17:59:23
... "tap out at around 27,000 mips"

IBM leaks details of new z10 Enterprise Class mainframe
http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid80_gci1301967,00.html
Other features of the new big iron new offering include the following:

• a quad-core mainframe central processor previously called the z6;
• fixed hardware storage area (HSA) of 16 GB, so users won't have to sacrifice memory for HSA any longer;
• an integrated hardware decimal floating-point processor to aid with financial and enterprise resource planning applications;
• a reduction in power-on reset (POR), which could enable the ability to reassign additional logical partition (LPAR) resources without compromising application performance; and
• a feature called HiperDispatch, the details of which are unclear.


... snip ...

it has been 40yrs since (virtual machine) cp67 was "announced" at the spring share in houston.

i was undergraduate at university when three people had come out from the science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

to install cp67 the last week of jan68. as a result, i got asked to go to houston and participate in the announcement.

share is next week in orlando
http://www.share.org/events/Orlando/index.cfm

one of next week's (two) themes is virtualization:
http://www.share.org/events/Orlando/second_postcard.cfm#virtual
Featured sessions covering network and storage virtualization as well as System z virtualization include:

• IBM Transformation: Major IT Consolidation Initiative for Project Big Green
• Using Virtualization to Consolidate Servers
• The Role of Storage Virtualization in Enterprise Class Computing Using VSM from Sun
• Preparing to Successfully Deploy and Exploit Virtualization
• Data Centers of the Future: The Impact of High Density Computing
• The Role of Storage Virtualization in Enterprise Computing
• Introduction to Network Virtualization
• Details of SAN Virtualization - Today and in the Future
• Preparing to Successfully Deploy and Execute Virtualization
• IBM Transformation: Major IT Consolidation Initiative

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

Database Pioneer Rethinks The Best Way To Organize Data

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Database Pioneer Rethinks The Best Way To Organize Data
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2008 00:23:59
Database Pioneer Rethinks The Best Way To Organize Data
http://www.informationweek.com/news/smb/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228100030
Is there a better way to build a data warehouse? For years, relational databases--which organize data in tables composed of vertical columns and horizontal rows--have served as the foundation of data warehouses. Now database pioneer Michael Stonebraker is promoting a different way of organizing them, promising much faster response times.

... snip ...

misc. recent posts
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?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#81 Did early Oracle run on the IBM mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#88 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#50 CPU time differences for the same job
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#66 Time to rewrite DBMS, says Ingres founder

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

was somewhat optimized for early adopter ... account-based financial transactions ... given an account number ... retrieve a row that had lots of the information associated with that account number.

there are lots of things in this world that are account-based related (or userid, or some sort of other row/record locator).

however, after so many yrs with RDBMS ... is the continued prevalence of RDBMS row structure because the information is naturally organized/used in that manner ... or is the information organized in that manner to fit with a RDBMS???

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

1998 vs. 2008: A Tech Retrospective

Refed: **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: 1998 vs. 2008: A Tech Retrospective
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2008 01:13:46
1998 vs. 2008: A Tech Retrospective
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,142550-c,electronics/article.html
Think the iPhone is pricey? The cool cell phone of 1988 cost $4382 in today's dollars. A 150MB hard drive? $8755. Take a trip with us down memory lane, and you'll never whine about the price of a gadget again.

... snip ...

slightly related recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#60 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

with references to older posts ... this one containing old posts w/pc prices from 1990 (almost 1988)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#79 a.f.c. history checkup... (was What specifications with the standard year 2001 PC have?)

misc. from long ago and far away from long ago and far away:

Date: Sat, 26 Dec 1987 12:26:38
From: wheeler

re: pctech 1/88;

alr advertises 386/2m10 w/1meg memory for $1990. If somebody was really interested in LAN-environment workstation they should be able to eliminate some of the expansion slots and put the 2.5mbit lanstar appletalk interface on the mother board for about the same price (using LAN to access fileserver with majority of system and applications, files, etc).

problem for aix/386 is its so memory hungry. vm/386 with one of unix environment emulators would fit in bettter. Even at $100/mbyte, aix/386 would push the price up close to $2500 to configure reasonable memory.

also notice tandon advertisement for 40mbyte portable winchester hard disk (or "self-contained, portable Personal Data Pacs") for $350 (<$10/mbyte).

"New Directions" quotes Intel as '89 being the year of the 25mhz 386 and 386-based workstations for <$1000 are coming. Unfortunately in that time-frame they are likely to find 32mhz 68030s workstations.

Everex Systems has 2mb memory expansion board for ps/2 for $399 (just under $200/mbyte) using 1mbit dram chips

Maybe it would be possible to get 386 LAN-workstations with 4mbytes & 2.54mbit Appletalk Lanstar interface on the motherboard for just over $2k. But then presumably Apple could do something similar with a 32mhz 68030 ... then maybe entry-level machine with 68020, 1mbyte memory and appletalk interface on the motherboard could be had for $1k. Presumably Apple will announce its UNIX this month at their yearly meeting.


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

and raid ...
Date: 13 January 1988, 01:06:18
To: wheeler
Subject: Byte-striping DASD

Saw in this week's Computerworld an article which said Micropolis had announced such a beast. Uses five 5.25 inch drives of 380Mbytes each, each drive has 1.25Mb/sec data rate and the conglomerate is rated at 4Mb/sec. It appears to the computer as a single 1.5Gb drive with a SCSI interface.

Four drives hold data, while a 5th holds parity data. Sells for $12000 to OEMs; samples will be available THIS QUARTER. This technology holds at least two potential advantages: (a) data rate can be dramatically speeded up, as can be seen above, and (b) reliablity is drastically increased. In this case, if any of the five drives goes bad it can be replaced with a new one WITH NO LOSS OF DATA AT ALL, and little/no downtime of the DASD as seen by the CPU.

Perhaps I'm just out of touch, but this is the first product of this type I've seen announced (though it's been talked about for some time). So who needs 3380s?


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

other disk stuff:
Date: Wed May 11 10:05:29 1988
From: wheeler

o MINISCRIBE, in attempt to KEEP customers FROM SWITCHING to 3.5in drives, has a "featured" 85MB 5.25in drive, described in brief 40, which will list for under $700 vs. $845, for say, Quantums 3.5in 85MB 3.5in drive.

o MAXTOR's subsidiary, Storage Dimensions, has extended its LANstor 5.25in drives as subsystems supporting Novell's NetWare Ver. 2.1; prices range from $3,095 to $22,530 (37);--introduced SpeedStor 133 to compete with PRIAM's InnerSpace, also REDUCED PRICES of 120MB SpeedStor for DOS sys- tems by $500 to $2,495 (38).


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

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70

The Economic Impact of Stimulating Broadband Nationally

Refed: **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: The Economic Impact of Stimulating Broadband Nationally
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2008 10:05:34
Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
You never had any decent ISDN penetration. You still run pulse dialling on phones. There are still oodles of T1's with R-mode signalling (i.e. digital lines, but no ISDN). The Internet deployment by telcos are abysmal, only where they have competition by cable etc is there any decent service. GSM/UMTS Mobile phones have been delayed by two decades, and there is still no decent roaming. And you could have leapfrogged to UMTS, but didn't.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#80 The Economic Impact of Stimulating Broadband Nationally

some of ISDN penetration was figuring out how to charge ... analogous to the nsfnet backbone discussion where the telcos couldn't figure out how to change the revenue model (chicken & egg, how to reduce tariffs significantly to encourage the bandwidth hungry applications ... w/o first having the bandwidth hungry applications consuming huge amounts of bandwidth)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#43 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization

in the mid-90s, i had isdn for awhile ... 4cents/min per 56kbit channel (telco charges) to local isp (in addition to isp subscription). avg. over $500/month. that is compared to flat rate phone line $30/month for with 28kbit modem to local isp. I eventually got dsl.

later i moved and found there wasn't dsl (or cable) ... telco offered to install T1 frame-relay at $1200/month

other nsfnet posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet
and old nsfnet related email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70




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