From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2008 10:08:56 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
where was SOX in all this?
business news show this morning are wringing hands about
gov. negotiations for Lehman bailout ... claiming that Lehman had
6months after Bear bail-out to get house in order. Since they didn't
... this is starting to look more and more like moral hazard
.... no consequences and accountability for risky behavior resulting
in increasing risky behavior, another kind of play on the "Peter Pan"
reference at financial cryptography blog, never having to grow up and
face consequence, aka treating financial industry executives as if
they are minors and not adults
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001095.html
recent references mentioning GSE accounting methods:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#75 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#76 When risks go south: FM&FM to be nationalized
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#78 When risks go south: FM&FM to be nationalized
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#80 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#83 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#86 WSJ finds someone to blame.... be skeptical, and tell the WSJ to grow up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#87 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#92 Blinkylights
recent references mentioning moral hazard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#64 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#71 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#76 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#16 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#51 Monetary affairs on free reign, but the horse has Boulton'd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#67 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#83 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#86 WSJ finds someone to blame.... be skeptical, and tell the WSJ to grow up
misc. past posts mentioning SOX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#4 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#71 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#78 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#26 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#87 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#86 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#17 Hannaford breach illustrates dangerous compliance mentality
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#64 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#20 IBM's 2Q2008 Earnings
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: IBM celebrates forgotten supercomputer Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:01:45 -0400IBM celebrates forgotten supercomputer
from above:
It was fifty years ago this week that IBM built the Stretch
supercomputer, and IBM marked the event on Thursday with a retrospective
at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, attended by
three of the system's pioneers: Fred Brooks, Fran Allen and Harwood
Kolsky.
... snip ...
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:38:20 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
there have been references to increasing number of CEOs cooking books to pump up financial statements to really boost bonuses and then filing restatements later (and don't have to return the bonus).
past posts mentioning GAO creating database of increasing
numbers of filing restatements
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#96 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#97 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#1 The Workplace War for Age and Talent
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#2 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#4 CDOs subverting Boyd's OODA-loop
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#25 IBM's 2Q2008 Earnings
again, where was SOX?
recent other references to bonuses
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#76 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#52 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#66 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#42 The Return of Ada
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#4 A Merit based system of reward -Does anybody (or any executive) really want to be judged on merit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#11 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#26 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#83 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
possibly helps account for the ratio of executive compensation to
worker compensation having ballooned to 400:1 ... after having been
20:1 (and 10:1 in most of the rest of the world)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#73 Should The CEO Have the Lowest Pay In Senior Management?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#24 To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#76 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#71 Cormpany sponsored insurance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#25 Taxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#33 Taxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#53 Are family businesses unfair competition?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#93 What do you think are the top characteristics of a good/effective leader in an organization? Do you feel these characteristics are learned or innate to an individual?
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2008 19:02:46 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
so with "Peter Pan" a theme for "moral hazard" bailouts; they never
grew up, so they aren't adults and therefor can't be held responsible
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#0 Blinkylights
then "Winnie The Pooh" can be a theme for all those that dealt in
triple-A rated, toxic CDOs ... i.e. pooh bear's periodic refrain about
being a bear of "Very Little Brain" (or sometimes, "No Brain at All",
i.e. single-digit IQs, the corollary would be the periodic articles
over the past couple decades about the dumbing of america).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#96 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#99 Blinkylights
and
Subprime = Triple-A ratings? or 'How to Lie with Statistics' (gone 404 but lives on at the wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20071111031315/http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/07/25/subprime-triple-a-ratings-or-how-to-lie-with-statistics/
a cross-over between "Peter Pan" and "Winnie the Pooh" is that those
with single-digit IQs also aren't held responsible.
past post mentioning the "dumbing of america":
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#50 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
This outlines declining world role by 2025
http://odni.gov/speeches/20080904_speech.pdf
some other topic drift from above:
And even with the climate change, it is not a good time to live in the
Southwest because it runs out of water and looks like the Dust
Bowl. It is not a good time to be along the Atlantic seaboard,
particularly in the South because of the projected increase and
intensity and severity and frequency of severe weather -- more
hurricanes, more serious storms, and so forth. And kind of practical
problems -- I think the number is 63 military installations that are
in danger of being flooded by storm surges. The number of nuclear
power plants that are so similarly vulnerable is almost as high.
... snip ...
other posts mentioning (declining) educational ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#38 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#58 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#78 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#80 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#82 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#10 About 1 in 5 IBM employees now in India - so what ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#16 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#19 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#20 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#38 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#39 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#44 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#45 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#51 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#71 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#52 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#55 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#60 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#62 competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#81 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#83 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#13 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#56 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#65 How do you manage your value statement?
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Michigan industry Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2008 10:51:17 -0400jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
It was also in the period that the commerce department was sponsoring meetings about HDTV ... that the level of technology and volumes in HDTV ... if captured by foreign competition ... would (also) allow them to dominate the whole high-tech industry. The volumes of consumer electronics was enabling much greater investment in R&D and advances ... allowing to surpass traditional advanced technology operations.
It was also in the period where there was increasing public press articles about dumbing of america.
Much of that focus was then temporarily overshadowed by the internet bubble (which was largely enabled by non-native-born individuals).
misc. past posts mentioning Boyd &/or OODA-loops
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Michigan industry Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2008 11:39:43 -0400Larry Elmore <lelmore@verizon.nospam.net> writes:
university departments have been documented as having similar problems analogous to political affiliation in gov. agencies.
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Michigan industry Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2008 10:00:49 -0400jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
a couple archived posts in a boyd blog (thread on Toyota and US automobile
industry)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#52 Are family businesses unfair competition?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#53 Are family businesses unfair competition?
and a 3rd (unarchived) post in the same thread:
note that this is also coming off a year where both GM and Ford had
massive losses ... while Toyota and Honda showed profits.
Honda reports record profit
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aotYtbPxfOe4&refer=home
from above:
GM dropped 20 percent and Ford was down 27 percent. Each further pared
production plans for the rest of the year. Deliveries at their main
Japanese rivals, Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., fell less than
10 percent.
... snip ...
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2008/07/25/honda-reports-record-profit-after-ford-suffers-huge-loss
Ford posts eye-popping loss
http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/daily-news/080724-Toyota-Outsells-GM-Ford-Posts-Eye-Popping-Loss/
... end
While Ford and GM showing massive losses last year ... both Toyota and Honda showed profits ... Honda even reporting record profit
other posts mentioning Boyd &/or OODA-loops
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Michigan industry Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2008 13:16:22 -0400jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
however, there are executives that know what they are doing and there
are executives that don't know what they are doing ... but the worst are
the executives that (at least) act like they know what they are doing
... and organization that might otherwise be effective would be better
off if such executives just never bothered to show up ... old reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#18 Do any architectures use instruction count instead of timer
these tend to be the ones that misstate profits in quarterly reports
to inflate their bonuses (which hasn't just been limited to GSEs)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#0 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#2 Blinkylights
there is also the line about heads rolling up hill (hoping to
promote people to a position where they can no longer directly
interfer with getting work done) ... post references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#91 Ux's good points.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#29 Review of Steve McConnell's AFTER THE GOLD RUSH
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#22 MS to world: Stop sending money, we have enough - was Re: Most ... can't run Vista
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#26 MS to world: Stop sending money, we have enough - was Re: Most ... can't run Vista
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#41 IBM--disposition of clock business
and the corollary boyd's line about having to choose between doing and
taking credit for doing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#35 War, Chaos, & Business (web site), or Col John Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#20 MS to world: Stop sending money, we have enough - was Re: Most ... can't run Vista
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#74 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#61 Lean and Mean: 150,000 U.S. layoffs for IBM?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#77 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#3 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#5 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#4 the Depression WWII
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#44 the Depression WWII
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#45 windows time service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#30 Taxes
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Taxcuts Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008 10:11:50 -0400US in 'once-in-a-century' financial crisis : Greenspan
from above:
In an interview with Bloomberg Television Friday, Greenspan said the
nation could not afford 3.3 trillion dollars of tax cuts proposed by
McCain without matching cuts in spending
Greenspan, a long-time friend of McCain and a Republican, said about the
Arizona senator's plans to extend massive tax cuts imposed by President
George W. Bush: "I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed
money."
... snip ...
there have been a number of programs looking at tax-related campaign statements from both parties ... and advise that they should be taken as campaign statements. One of the things looked at was earmarks and they could come up with only about $30billion that would realistic had some chance of being cut ... but that it is only one percent of the $3.3tril.
this is has been the kind of theme by the comptroller general (appointed in the 90s by the former administration) over the past couple years ... that nobody in congress for the past 50yrs has been capable of simple middle school arithmetic ... things like drug program being $40trillion unfunded mandate (60-mins had segment on the machinations that was used to shepherd the legislation thru congress ... and by 18mths later all the major participants, congressmen and staffers, were working for drug companies).
past comptroller general references (about budget):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#41 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#44 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#9 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#14 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#27 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#2 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#3 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#4 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#17 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#19 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#33 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#61 Health Care
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#17 Health Care
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#0 Cray-1 Anniversary Event - September 21st
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#26 Universal constants
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#20 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#91 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#19 Another "migration" from the mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#74 Horrid thought about Politics, President Bush, and Democrats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#22 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#7 what does xp do when system is copying
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#1 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#13 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#14 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#15 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#24 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#25 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#33 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#35 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#26 2007 Year in Review on Mainframes - Interesting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#57 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#40 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#50 fraying infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#86 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#1 The Workplace War for Age and Talent
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#3 America's Prophet of Fiscal Doom
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#26 The Return of Ada
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#98 dollar coins
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Taxcuts Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:07:10 -0400John Byrns <byrnsj@sbcglobal.net> writes:
comptroller general reference mentioned in the above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#43 The Pankian Metaphor
the above references personal income tax paid:
http://www.house.gov/jec/publications/109/Research%20Report_109-20.pdf
http://www.house.gov/jec/publications/109/rr1094tax.pdf
from those reports in similar thread from spring of '06
Percentials ranked AGI Threshhold Percentage of
by AGI on Percentiles Fed. personal
income tax paid
Top 1% $295,495 34.27%
Top 5% $130,080 54.36%
Top 10% $94,891 65.84%
Top 25% $57,343 83.88%
Top 50% $29,019 96.54%
Bottom 50% <$29,019 3.46%
... snip ...
previous comment in the reference referred to "1984" redefining what words mean ... like using the federal income infrastructure to distribute funds (i.e. effectively a "negative" tax ... which isn't a tax ... just a social program funds distribution).
I haven't checked to see if there is updated numbers since 2006 ... but i wouldn't expect that they changed significantly.
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:04:57 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
re:
Fannie, Freddie Regulator Blocks 'Golden Parachutes' for CEOs
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=auug.npwKdPE&refer=home
a couple questions ... 1) will they really be blocked and 2) is this
because of all the current publicity (differentiating it from past
treatment).
comments about inflated financial statements appears to have become well
used mechanism to boost executive bonuses:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#2 Blinkylights
and enormous lobbying effort ... at one point freddie supposedly had more lobbyists than employees.
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:11:01 -0400Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> writes:
citing gov. source about increasing storm severity and increasing damage.
there was an item a couple years ago about that majority of housing in
some of the Caribbean islands had been destroyed in some storm or
another ... and were suggesting a new kind of bldg ... that was
significantly better at surviving storms. they looked something like
large concrete igloos ... the curved walls survived extremely high wind
much better than traditional flat walls. much of it was prefab
manufacturing and large numbers could be deployed very quickly.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#42 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:34:52 -0400re:
I've seen no reference that he still direct hand in any of this ... but note that Lehman (at least so far) didn't survive the weekend discussions.
for other citibank involvement
Citibank chairman tells Sibos: "The worst may be yet to come"
http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=18985
from above:
On the day that the investment banking industry lurched closer to
disaster following announcements from Wall Street, Bill Rhodes, Citibank
chairman, told Sibos delegates that the worst could be yet to come,
adding that "we are currently in the eye of the storm".
... snip ...
past stories was that Citibank was at the center of creating the current situation and so far has had the largest write-downs from (formally) triple-A rated toxic CDOs ... and may have significant more in some trillion plus held offbalanace
past references to citibank being at the center of creating the current
siutation (repeal of Glass-Steagall that had been passed in the
wake of crash of '29 to keep the safety&soundness of regulated
banking separate from the risky unregulated investment banking):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#13 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#46 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#71 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#97 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#2 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#51 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#66 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#89 Credit Crisis Timeline
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#36 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#41 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#67 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#70 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#16 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Michigan industry Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:26:58 -0400Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> writes:
scenario is some percent of operating revenue is available for pension benefits. in pay-as-you-go ... in a growing economy (especially with baby-boomers coming to age) ... the number of workers and size of business is increasing ... increasing business activity is much larger than the current number of retirees. pay-as-you-go in such situation allows pension benefits per retiree to be pegged at a much larger number. I would expect the retirees and older workers would much prefer the larger benefits from pay-as-you-go (effectively taking advantage of the young baby boomer population bubble entering the labor & consumer market).
business drops off and the number of workers are reduced ... doesn't
reduce the amount of pension benefits in pay-as-you-go (number of
retirees hasn't changed). for steel industry ... some companies hit a
point where pension benefits got to be one of their largest expense
and several companies declared backruptcy to get out from under the
pension burden. recent posts about pension benefit guaranty corp
getting stuck with a lot of these retirement benefits:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#91 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#65 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#38 What do YOU call the # sign?
business downturn can because of wide variety of economic conditions ... and/or it can be systemic issue of baby boomer bubble moving from the labor market into retirement.
consumer business flattens out and/or starts to decline ... baby boomer bubble has matured and the number in the following generation is smaller. the pension expense as percentage of operating revenue starts to balloon ... number of baby boomer retirees is four times previous generation ... along with flat or declining business .... can mean that either benefits per retiree has to be cut by factor of 8-10 ... or total pension benefits as percentage of operating revenue increases by factor of 8-10.
effectively pay-as-you-go pensions (out of current operating revenue) only worked in period with rapidly expanding business/economy ... as consequence of large population baby boomer bubble entering the market. The significantly increased benefits for retirees as baby boomers moved into labor market ... is effectively inverted as baby boomer bubble moves out of the labor market and into retirement (fairly predictable systemic event ... independent of other kinds of economic conditions).
some discussion of baby boomers increasing retiree population by
factor of four while following generation is only half as large
(change in ratio of workers to retirees by factor of eight):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#99 The Workplace War for Age and Talent
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#1 The Workplace War for Age and Talent
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#5 The Workplace War for Age and Talent
other past posts mentioning problems of not having fully funded
pensions and/or the baby boomer bubble moving out of the labor market
into retirement.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#9 A hundred subjects: 64-bit OS2/eCs, Innotek Products,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#30 I am an ageing techy, expert on everything. Let me explain the
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#37 I am an ageing techy, expert on everything. Let me explain
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#39 I am an ageing techy, expert on everything. Let me explain
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#41 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#35 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#36 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006o.html#61 Health Care
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#93 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#65 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#66 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#69 Toyota Beats GM in Global Production
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#50 fraying infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#46 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#52 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#3 America's Prophet of Fiscal Doom
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#26 The Return of Ada
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#57 our Barb: WWII
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#98 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#30 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#33 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#37 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#3 Medical care
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:25:12 -0400greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
winnie the pooh reference? ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#3 Blinkylights
for other than pooh bears ... toxic CDOs had been used two decades ago in the S&L crisis to obfuscate the underlying values (sell off stuff that wouldn't otherwise sell)
long-winded, decade old post discussing several of the current
issues
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
related recent comment:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#26 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
this mentions GSE documents from 2006, where GSE executives were bragging
about their brilliant/wonderful strategy moving into subprime toxic CDOs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#12 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
and this reference raises the question how could the whole industry
believe that toxic CDOs are worth more than the sum of the parts ... aka
how is it it possible that a large number of subprime mortgages,
collectively turn into triple-A rating:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#96 Blinkylights
or how did it happen for speculators to sneak into the home owner market
and treat it like the 1920s unregulated stock market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#91 Blinkylights
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:39:06 -0400re:
some additional drift to "how to lie with statistics"
is recent (unarchived) post to Boyd blog in the thread: Did Boyd hate statistics?
lynn wrote:
My impression wasn't that Boyd hated statistics ... but he didn't like
some of the ways that they were used. One of the example "problems" that
he cited in briefings was early heads-up display in F16 ... that would
scroll numbers ... in fast tempo environment it was taking the pilot too
long to translate the scrolling numbers into meaning.
We saw something analogous with early Basel-II. Basel has had
quantitative (statistical) analysis for some time. A new "qualitative"
section was introduced in the original Basel-II draft ... effectively
requiring demonstration of understanding what the processes actually
were. However, during the review process ... the qualitative section was
almost totally eliminated (a caustic view could be that statistics were
substituted for understanding).
a scenario when statistics have been substituted for understanding, it
would be possible to use statistics that had very little relationship to
the topic of interest (say little or no correlation) ... and a lot of
people wouldn't even realize there was a problem.
somewhat related post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#14 Blinkylights
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: VMware Chief Says the OS Is History Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:39:21 -0400VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
from above:
VMware's CEO made his pitch on Tuesday for a new type of operating
system for the data center, and in the process assigned the "traditional
OS" to the dustbin of history.
... snip ...
pitch goes on to say that most of the new generation of software doesn't exist yet ... but this has been a repeated theme over the past year or so ... including reference to various kinds of things called virtual appliances.
misc. references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#67 Operating systems are old and busted
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#3 Hypervisors May Replace Operating Systems As King Of The Data Center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#25 VMware: New King Of The Data Center?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#4 Why do we think virtualization is new?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#39 New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#41 New, 40+ yr old, direction in operating systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#97 Is virtualization diminishing the importance of OS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#14 recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#21 recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#67 Is Virtualisation a Fad?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#68 New technology trends?
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Michigan industry Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:23:56 -0400CBFalconer <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes:
the money has been spent ... its gone ... its like people removing money from 401k early and spending it. bail-out plans for impending SS (disaster) shortfall revenue ... are about 1) increasing annual revenue to match annual benefits ("pay-as-you-go") and 2) decreasing annual benefits to match annual revenue ("pay-as-you-go"). congress has also obfuscated social security as a retirement plan in other ways ... for instance lumping non-retirement benefits under social security.
recent article:
The only way to fix Social Security
http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/20/news/economy/social_security_election/
from above:
If lawmakers wait until 2017 to make changes to Social Security, their
options for making relatively painless ones will shrink, since a large
portion of the 78 million Boomers will have started receiving
benefits. "You're probably not going to change the benefit of someone
already retired," Gebhardtsbauer said.
Their options will be further constrained by other problems. Barring
changes, Uncle Sam will also be contending with a long-term deficit for
Medicare approaching $34 trillion, or nearly 5 times that of Social
Security
... snip ...
other ways of reducing benefits looked at ... since social security is taxed at the point it is paid in (i.e. social security taxes aren't tax-deductable) ... they are looking at making social security beneifts fully taxeable ... which would eliminate any final facade that social security is fully-funded and that money collected is in any way related to benefits received.
by comparison, other retirement plans are "tax-deferred" ... no taxes at the time money goes in ... but are taxable at the time money is taken out ... or straight savings plan where money is not tax-deferred ... but is not (directly) double taxed at the time it is spent.
this has been part of the (former) comptroller generals (walker) theme
that nobody in congress for the past 50 yrs has been capable of simple
middle-school arithmetic. recent reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#8 Taxcuts
recent comptroller generals references from the above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#57 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
which includes:
U.S. Financial Condition and Fiscal Future Briefing, 2008 Economic Forecast Forum
http://www.gao.gov/cghome/d08395cg.pdf
as mentioned in numerous other references to the above and similar
briefings by comptroller general
percent of federal budget
1966 1986 2006
defense 43 28 20
social security 15 20 21
medicare/medicaid 1 10 19
interest 7 14 9
all other 34 29 32
projections have social security, medicare, and medicaid easily
dominating all other parts of federal budget by 2030 and exceeding
20percent of GDP by 2060.
for other drift ...
wiki reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comptroller_General_of_the_United_States
from above:
For every fiscal year since 1996, when consolidated financial statements
began, the Comptroller General has refused to endorse the accuracy of
the consolidated figures for the federal budget
... snip ...
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: VMware Chief Says the OS Is History Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:55:51 -0400null@nada.net (Peter BP) writes:
a little x-over from this recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#17 Michigan industry
which references this:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#57 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
a combination of the following generation (after baby-boomers retire) being only half as large ... and the "dumbing of america" ... the literacy/education level is much lower, where is the next generation of IT workers coming from?
tv newsbytes yesterday that 1/3rd of entering college freshman require extensive remedial education ... also NSF given out large new grants for math & science education.
recent post referencing (declining) educational ranking (and sarcastic
reference to bears of very little brain and no brain at all):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#3 Blinkylights
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:11:28 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#12 Blinkylights
last night after the AIG loan announcement, one of the business tv news shows mentioned that current toxic CDO write-downs are at $550bil and that projections of total write-downs range from (low) of $950bil (another $400bil still to come) to $2tril (another $1.5tril still to come).
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Michigan industry Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:22:16 -0400Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> writes:
I would contend it is the greed of nearly all participants ... the
approach to funding pay-as-you-go has permeated the whole society; the
earlier generation of older/retiring workers able to take advantage of
the large increase of young workers of the baby boomer population bubble
(huge ratio of workers to retirees) ... with no consideration to what is
going to happen when the baby boomers retire (inverting the raio of
workers to retirees) ... also
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#17 Michign industry
the owners are the stockholders ... both sides in the actual negotiations tend to have very short time horizons (be long gone before any long term consequences).
the scam works for a while because the number of young baby boomer workers is much larger than the retiring generation (basically a form of pyramid scam). the quid-pro-quo could be the corporate side gets half the annual expense (compared to fully-funded for all the young baby boomers) and the labor side gets 4-10 times the benefits per retiree (i would contend that the labor side of the negotiations may evem have significantly more vested interest in such a deal).
the scam falls apart (again like pyramid schemes) when the baby boomer workers hit retirement and the ratio of workers to retirees inverts.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Michigan industry Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:33:18 -0400sidd <sidd@situ.com> writes:
modulo those that got all those triple-A ratings for toxic CDOs that provided the funding for unregulated speculation in the home owners market.
the home owners market had previously been indirectly regulated since the main source of funding came from regulated institutions.
with funds channeled thru the triple-A rated toxic CDOs ... allowed
speculators enormous, unregulated activity in the home owner market
(basically akin to '20s unregulated stock market)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#91 Blinkylights
with the bursting of the speculation bubble ... there is deflation on
the home owner side of the triple-A rated toxic CDOs ... as well as huge
write-downs for those that bought those triple-A rated toxic CDOs
.... current guesses, somewhere between half-way and one-quarter of the
way there
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#19 Blinkylights
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: VMware Chief Says the OS Is History Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:51:38 -0400Natarajan Krishnaswami <nxk3@cwru.edu> writes:
as an aside ... we periodically claim that the original SOA was the
payment gateway we did as part of what is now commingly called
"electronic commerce"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway
however, the name that was coined in the early 70s was service
virtual machines .... some recent references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#59 old internal network references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#55 Kernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#11 Kernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#15 Kernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#22 Was CMS multi-tasking?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#97 Is virtualization diminishing the importance of OS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#14 recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology
one of the difficulties with service virtual machines ... was getting them up and running automagically. enhancements had been done to the cp67 kernel for it to do fast, automatic (re)boot. the problem was that bringing up individual virtual machines (still) required manual operations.
i had originally done the autolog command, including automatic
execution during boot process, as part of automatic benchmarking. this
was quickly adapted for production operation and I had included it in
early csc/vm (internal) distribution ... some old email:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#email731212
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750102
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email750430
which was then picked up and included in standard product release.
i had done automated benchmarking as part of the performance and
algorithm work that I had been doing.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#benchmark
One scenario where it was used ... was I ran a sequence of 2000
automated benchmarks that took three months elapsed time ... as
part of final calibration & verification for my resource
manager product release ... some references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock
and for other archeological drift ... 23jun69 unbundling announcement
(in large part results of fed. gov. litigation) started to charge for
software (services, maint, etc).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle
However, as part of that announcement, they managed to make the case that kernel software should still remain bundled/free. Later about the time, I was to release my resource manager, there was decision for transition to charging for kernel software ... and my resource manager was selected as guinea pig. As a result, i had to spend a lot of time with lawyers and business planning people about policy for kernel software charging.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Michigan industry Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:40:32 -0400greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
this afternoon, tv business news show had somebody from one of the rating agencies, to talk about new "ratings" of all the companies having problems .... however the host kept trying to get the guy to admit to being responsible for the whole thing with the incorrect triple-A ratings on all the toxic CDOs.
the following segment got into asking why were all the illegal naked short sales still going on and nothing being done ... which appeared to be major factor behind the current stock market volatility. a little later there was an item about some of the companies filing formal complaints about the illegal naked short sales in their stocks.
there have been complaints about little being done about illegal naked
short sales going back at least a year. some recent posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#1 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#9 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#25 IBM's 2Q2008 Earnings
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:00:37 -0400CBFalconer <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes:
as mentioned ... there are two sides with the triple-A rated, toxic CDOs
in the middle ... the home owners market ... and the institution market
for credit instruments.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#21 Blinklights
the shape of the homeowners value inflation bubble since 2001 ... and recent subsequent de-flation .... overlays what appears to be speculation akin to unregulated '20s stock market speculation .. over the top of the home owner market ... and is now starting to look like a like a large pimple. the possibility is that the deflation continues back to the 2001 level.
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#91 Blinkylights
which references
http://mysite.verizon.net/vodkajim/housingbubble
as mentioned in the previous post, the "pimple" run up in speculation values wasn't uniform across the country (some cases larger than 25 percent in the period ... in some cases the speculation fever had 25percent inflation in single yrs) ... and also as previously mentioned some amount of collaterial damage is happening in the reset of the home owners market ... akin to the crash of '29 (after the frenzy of unrelated speculation).
that is on the home owners side of the triple-A toxic CDO transactions.
on the investment banker side of the CDO transactions were institutions that were heavily leveraged into the triple-A rated toxic CDO transactions. Heavy leverages is 50 to nearly 100 times ... some numbers had GSEs leveraged around 80 times. This is akin to buying something with only 1-2 percent down ... and the rest borrowed. The whole things start to crash ... and they find themselves trying to sell toxic CDOs for 22cents on the dollar. The projections are that when the dust clears the institutions will have taken as much as $2trillion in write-downs on the toxic CDOs. At approx. 80percent write-down ... that implies that the institutions had originally paid $2.5trillion for these triple-A rated toxic CDOs that were actually now only worth $500billion (after $2 trillion write-down).
At 50times leverage ... i.e. purchase was made with only two percent down (and the rest borrowed) ... $2.5trillion of toxic CDOs (worth only $500billion) were bought by institutions with only $50billion down and the rest borrowed.
There are stories about home owners that bought $250k homes with no down and 20percent deflation, the home is worth only $200k. If they sell the house ... they still own $50k.
Similarly, institutions have bought possibly $2.5 trillion in triple-A rated toxic CDOs with very close to zero down (GSEs bought with 1/80th ... slightly more than one percent) ... which have seen 80percent deflation. They sell the toxic CDOs for $500billion ... but the institutions still owe possibley $2tillion which they have to declare as a loss. Part of the issue is only $550bil loss has been declared so far.
Part of the issue is the institutions paid a significantly large amount because of the original triple-A rating ... when things fell apart and the toxic CDOs lost their triple-A rating ,,, the toxic CDOs had 80percent deflation.
this is the part of laying the institution side of the problem
at the doors of the rating institutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#23 Michigan industry
The basic theory of the CDOs was that their value would be directly tied to the value of the underlying components .... a 20percent drop in underlying value would be reflected in 20percent drop in the value of the CDOs. The problem was that the triple-A rating significantly overvalued the underlying values ... and the toxic CDOs have been reset to 22percent of their original triple-A rated value.
this is the part of the thread about CDOs having been used two decades ago in the S&L crisis to obfuscate the underlying values and sell the CDO at significant higher than the sum of the underlying values.
this is also part of the discussion in the long-winded, decade old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
Institutions have to clear possible $2trillion in total losses (only $550billion so far) off their books (in these toxic CDOs) ... to possibly get down to the point where the toxic CDOs financial instruments start to reflect the value of the underlying components.
Cross the bridge between the home owners market and the institutions, the use of the triple-A rated, toxic CDOs allowed enormous (unregulated) amounts of speculation money to be funneled into the home buyers market ... effectively fueling the speculation bubble (the home owners market had been indirectly regulated in the past because the major source of funds had come from regulated institutions). The use of toxic CDOs provided a very large unregulated source of funds.
The toxic CDO loss of triple-A rating started happening before bursting of the home owner market bubble. The deflation of the toxic CDOs started the burst of the speculation bubble part of the home owner market. Bursting the speculation pimple in the home owners market then possible will reset the home owner market values to 2001.
There is uncertain/unknown fear component in the market ... after seeing the toxic CDOs loose their triple-A rating ... how much trust can be placed in the ratings?
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:47:24 -0400CBFalconer <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes:
walking away from the home are additional ongoing insideous effects from the unregulated speculation and resulting crash.
a large inventory of empty homes will increase downward pressure on home prices ... possibly beyond resetting to 2001 with the start of the unregulated speculation frenzy. It can contribute to negative feedback cycle in the home owner market ... resulting in increased decline in prices which then increases defaults and empty homes, which contributes to further decline in prices leading to more defaults and more empty homes. Disastrous downward home price spiral effects can continue beyond the price point where the unregulated speculation began.
One of the things that the FED is attempting to do is prevent any rapid acceleration in such a downward spiral in home owner market ... as a result of the unregulated speculation frenzy.
On the other side of the triple-A rated toxic CDOs, there are equivalent dangers involving institutional dealings. There are also downside interaction between adjustment effects at the institutions, contributing to negative feedback adjustment in the home owner market ... and downward price spiral in home owner market, contributing to negative feedback adjustments at the institutions.
This is among the systemic risk issues sporadically referenced that the fed. government is trying to juggle in attempting to deal with the adjustments from the unregulated speculation frenzy in the home owners market (in large part enabled by the huge monetary infusion from triple-A rated, toxic CDOs).
quote/question from tv business news show two minutes ago is how could ratings agencies give triple-A rating to what is now appearing to be almost worthless. confidence in ratings becomes another systemic contribution to negative feedback and downward spiral.
apparently nothing being done about illegal naked short selling ... which leverages negative/bad news to turn a profit ... is further contributing to negative feedback (on the institution side).
other recent posts mentioning toxic CDOs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#4 CDOs subverting Boyd's OODA-loop
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#32 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#44 Fixing finance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#51 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#52 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#59 Credit crisis could cost nearly $1 trillion, IMF predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#62 Credit crisis could cost nearly $1 trillion, IMF predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#64 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#1 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#28 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#32 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#48 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#89 Credit Crisis Timeline
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#90 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#4 A Merit based system of reward -Does anybody (or any executive) really want to be judged on merit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#30 subprime write-down sweepstakes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#64 Is the credit crunch a short term aberation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#77 Do you think the change in bankrupcy laws has exacerbated the problems in the housing market leading more people into forclosure?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#104 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#3 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#9 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#12 To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#18 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#22 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#23 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#38 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#40 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#46 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#48 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#64 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#68 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#69 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#71 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#6 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#10 Why do Banks lend poorly in the sub-prime market? Because they are not in Banking!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#11 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#12 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#13 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#14 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#16 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#19 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#20 IBM's 2Q2008 Earnings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#23 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#27 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#33 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#42 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#44 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#67 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#70 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#12 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#15 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#16 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#26 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#76 When risks go south: FM&FM to be nationalized
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#80 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#91 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#92 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#95 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#96 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#99 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#3 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#12 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#14 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#19 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#21 Michigan industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#23 Michigan industry
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:36:15 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
a tv business news show this morning had some followup on complaints sent to SEC regarding nothing (long term tolerating) being done about illegal naked short selling ... news show claimed that there was very strong words laying blame on SEC (the "blood" is on their hands).
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: VMware Chief Says the OS Is History Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:28:56 -0400Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
one of the things the article mentioned was that the chinese were at a disadvantage because India has legacy of british civil servant tradition which were providing a much higher level of infrastructure (needed by modern business, i.e. transportion, communication, water, electricity).
early 90s also saw increasing number of articles about foreign students (from asia and india) starting to dominate US high tech advance degree programs. there was also some articles speculating about tipping point ... which would start attracting them to return home ... rather than stay in the US after graduation.
i've remarked in the past that outsourcing seemed to significantly accelerate with y2k remediation ... requiring big increase in legacy dataprocessing ... concurrently when all available resources were being diverted by the Internet bubble (during the internet bubble, there were very few articles at the time complaining about the legacy dataprocessing work going overseas).
posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#16 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#18 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#22 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
misc past posts mentioning y2k remediation:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#214 Ask about Certification-less Public Key
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#2 The SOB that helped IT jobs move to India is dead!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004f.html#39 Who said "The Mainframe is dead"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#66 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#20 I told you ... everybody is going to Dalian,China
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#16 Is a Hurricane about to hit IBM ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#21 Taxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#40 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#7 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#39 India is outsourcing jobs as well
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#26 The new urgency to fix online privacy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#36 Students mostly not ready for math, science college courses
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#19 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#81 Is IT becoming extinct?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#65 How do you manage your value statement?
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:33:43 -0400Andrew Swallow <am.swallow@btinternet.com> writes:
the complaint was about lack of prosecution for illegal naked short sales
(illegal) naked short selling has actually been illegal ... but just not being prosecuted. it is somewhat analogous to pump&dump stock scams involving penny stocks that are periodically shutdown. typical illegal naked short selling includes starting false speculation/rumors ... also similar to the pump&dump scams. there were articles over a year ago that such illegal activity involving illegal naked short selling was quite common & tolerated (lots of traders had vested interest in not seeing the illegal activity prosecuted).
another similar scam is the increasing practice of companies' filing inflated statements providing executives with increased bonuses and then later (after the executives have the bonus and don't have to give it back) filing restatements. GAO has started a database of such refiling activity for listed stock companies. Freddie was fined $400m for such activity ... and the ceo removed (although he still got to keep the bonuses).
misc. other posts mentioning it:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#1 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#25 IBM's 2Q2008 Earnings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#23 Michigan industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#25 Blinkylights
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 08:50:33 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
all sorts of speculation now going on about how the FED might stop the home owners market continuing negative feedback ... downward spiral.
the ugly home owner price pimple/boil
http://mysite.verizon.net/vodkajim/housingbubble/
with runup in prices (because of unregulated speculation activity in the home owners market akin to '20s stockmarket speculation frenzy) looks to be about half-way back down to the 2001 level (when it started). Part of the problem facing the FED is not having the home owner market continue its downward spiral past resetting to the 2000-2001 level prices (when this whole mad speculation frenzy started).
on visits to s. florida (before things fell apart), the high rise rabbit warrens were starting to march their way up the coast, north of palm beach. it was part of building boom (and speculation frenzy), apparently anticipating the mass retirement of baby boomers, selling their mc-mansions in the cold north and all descending on s. florida with huge sums of money burning holes in their pockets (modulo small issue that there are more baby boomers than there are younger generation to buy all their properties).
a few mornings, we were sitting in new development starbucks in west palm beach (these developments have been cropping up in cal, florida, and other places, outdoor shopping malls with stores on ground level and 2-3 stories of condos on upper floors) and could watch (sale/promotion) groups with 15-20 people touring the properties.
later there were articles about all sorts of people (teachers, police, garbage collectors, clerks) getting caught up in the speculation frenzy, buying 2-3 condos, getting "no documentation", "no down payment", ARMs ... with very low 2-3 yr introductory interest rate and were anticipating flipping the properties for huge profit before the ARMs rate reset.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Macs for security (now, with new improved NSA hardening tips!) Date: September 19, 2008 09:21 AM Blog: Financial Cryptographyre:
similar, but different ... nearly 40yrs ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml
I wasn't aware of it at the time, didn't find out until much later. However, as undergraduate in the 60s, I was doing lots of kernel enhancements (many would be picked up and shipped in product) ... and would even periodically get requests from the vendor about doing specific enhancements.
In later years, I conjectured that some requests may have even originated from some of these other customers. More recently i've periodically commented that some of these (security oriented) things I was asked to do ... wasn't just things not being addressed in many current platforms ... they were things that current platforms don't even seem to realize are security issues.
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40+ yrs virtualization experience, online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 09:46:28 -0400Andrew Swallow <am.swallow@btinternet.com> writes:
several comments this morning about the new rule (regarding "no short sales") wouldn't have been necessary if SEC had been enforcing existing regulations ... including prosecuting illegal naked short sales.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: VMware Chief Says the OS Is History Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2008 09:43:32 -0400Andrew Swallow <am.swallow@btinternet.com> writes:
past references (when my wife's dad was posted to Nanjing, her mother
attended dinners with one of the sisters)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#19 Message To America's Students: The War, The Draft, Your Future
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#58 China overtakes U.S. as top Web market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#62 China overtakes U.S. as top Web market
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2008 10:09:18 -0400jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
the triple-A rating of the toxic CDOs were in the middle that made it all possible ... provided the monetry fuel for the mortgage originators (and being able to unload as triple-A rated toxic CDOs eliminated any worry about holding such mortgages) ... and then the triple-A toxic CDO instruments for institutions to heavily leverage (GSEs apparently leveraged in triple-A rated toxic CDOs at 80-to-1).
all winnie-the-pooh and bear of no brain at all
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#3 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#14 Blinkylights
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Builders v. Breakers Date: September 20, 2008 12:24 PM Blog: Financial Cryptographyre:
we had been brought in to consult with this small client/server
startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server ... and
they had this technology they had invented called SSL which they
wanted to use. in previous life, we had worked with the two people
responsible for their "commerce" server (on scale-up for high
integrity, high availability, high thruput DBMS).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
we had sign-off on various aspects of the server to payment gateway
operation ... so could mandate various things about industrial
strength networking (before things like internet SLA contracts, so had
to invent/design compensating processes). lots of past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway
however we weren't allowed to make corresponding mandates about the interface between client and the server. we did some tutorials about industrial strength networking. For instance, one of the things we mandated for the server/gateway interface was multiple A-record support (with the payment gateway having multiple connections to different parts of internet backbone)... for availability.
We had spec'ed multiple interfaces for some number of deployed commercial "commerce" servers (for their availability) and "suggested" that client needed multiple A-record support. Initial response (from client developers) was that multiple A-record support was "too advanced" ... even after we provided client multiple A-record support from 1988 4.3 tahoe tape. It took another yr before there was multiple A-record support in their client.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Builders V. Breakers Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:30:12 -0400followup x-over
work on earlier high-integrity, high-availability networking (and scalable cluster DBMS) ... we had done a detailed vulnerability analysis of network specifications and code implementations. Most common security issues were viewed as just part of deploying industrial strength operation.
For the server/gateway interface we had developed a failure matrix for different states ... and required that all possible cases were covered. We've frequently commented in the past that taking a well tested/designed application and creating industry strength service ... requires 4-10 times the original effort.
In the time frame of the payment gateway work ... there was a situation where the largest online service provider was experiencing failures on their internet interface. After two months of having numerous experts come in and look at the problem, one of the people flew out to the west coast and bought me a hamburger after work. While I ate the hamburger, they explained the symptoms. I then said that was one of the top ten problems we had earlier identified in detailed vulnerability analysis and gave them a Q&D fix which they installed later that night.
misc. past refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#75 Test and Set (TS) vs Compare and Swap (CS)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#91 Buffer overflow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#93 Buffer overflow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002b.html#59 Computer Naming Conventions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#11 Wanted: the SOUNDS of classic computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#62 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#15 A Dark Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#37 The BASIC Variations
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#8 Mars Rover Not Responding
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004b.html#48 Automating secure transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004k.html#20 Vintage computers are better than modern crap !
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#49 "Perfect" or "Provable" security both crypto and non-crypto?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#51 stop worrying about it offshoring - it's doing fine
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#23 Systems software versus applications software definitions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#63 Systems software versus applications software definitions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#64 Systems software versus applications software definitions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#40 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#42 Development as Configuration
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#26 Data communications over telegraph circuits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006n.html#20 The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#37 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#51 IBM to the PCM market(the sky is falling!!!the sky is falling!!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#78 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#10 The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#76 PSI MIPS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#77 PSI MIPS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#23 Outsourcing loosing steam?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#54 Industry Standard Time To Analyze A Line Of Code
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#53 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#41 IBM announced z10 ..why so fast...any problem on z 9
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#50 fraying infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#53 Why Is Less Than 99.9% Uptime Acceptable?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#33 Mainframe Project management
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Builders V. Breakers Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2008 10:11:00 -0400re:
along the lines of industrial strength dataprocessing, there are periodic articles about the general poor quality of many software products and the large number of defects (not limited to security defects).
separate from the perceived peer "points" from breaks, there are also the claims that products are generally being shipped and letting users/customers "debug" the product (development skimping on time, skills, money).
a couple past posts about holding a mini-conference at our house a
decade ago for cal. computer security graduate program and discussing
the difficulty of getting students interested in building rather than
breaking:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#26 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#62 folklore indeed
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Success has many fathers, but failure has the US taxpayer Date: September 21, 2008 11:09 AM Blog: Financial Cryptographyre:
note that CDOs were used two decades ago during the S&L crisis to unload toxic properties (obfuscating actual value from the buyers).
long-winded, decade old post discussing many of the current problems
(including obfuscating CDO-like instruments):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
In the past, mortgage originators had a vested interest in maintaining loan quality. getting triple-A rating on toxic CDOs allowed unregulated mortgage originators to immediately unload all the loans they could write (regardless of quality), effectively eliminating any motivation for mortgage originators to pay any attention to loan quality.
As a result, there were large number of no documentation, no down payment, 1%-2% intro rate ARMs, possibly interest only payments. These were gobbled up by speculators ... anticipating flipping the property before the rate reset.
On the other side of the triple-A rating, institutions were heavily leveraged buying up all these triple-A rated toxic CDOs (some claim that GSEs were leveraged 80:1 with toxic CDOs, i.e. only had a little over one percent capital actually invested).
There was business school article from last spring claiming that possibly 1000 executives are responsible for 80% of the current mess and it would go a long way to fixing the problem if the gov. could figure out a way for them to loose their jobs.
There seems to be a separate problem with financial reporting ... despite SOX. GAO is now doing a database of increasing number of companies "restating" financial numbers ... basically the top executives get bonuses based on the original numbers ... but don't have to forfeit the bonus after the restatement. Freddie did get fined $400m in 2004 for $10bil inflated statements and the CEO replaced .... but the CEO got to keep tens (hundred?) of millions in bonuses.
Slightly changing the "Peter Pan" theme to never having to grow up and therefor never having to be held responsible, ... I've also made sarcastic references to Winnie-The-Pooh and pooh-bear's comment about being a bear with "no brains at all".
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit? Date: September 21, 2008 Blog: Credit Cardpast studies have indicated that signature debit is 15 times the fraud of pin debit .... basically pin-debit is nominally considered two-factor authentication while signature debit is only single factor.
there have been some unanticipated consequences regarding the introduction of signature debit. pin-debit transactions for accounts enabled for signature debit ... means that just the magstripe can be skimmed (from pin-debit transaction) and then used later in signature-debit transaction (i.e. even if account is only used in pin-debit, two-factor authentication mode ... there is still a single factor authentication vulnerability).
signature debit transactions are basically a form of credit transactions. credit magstripes have gone thru some evolution over the past several decades (being only single factor authentication). One of the vulnerabilities was generation of counterfeit magstripes based on account number guessing. Special magstripe encoding was introduced for credit cards as countermeasure to account number guessing. This wasn't a problem with two-factor pin-debit ... so didn't see the equivalent evolution. When signature debit was introduced for previously pin-debit cards ... many were all of a sudden made vulnerable to the account number guessing counterfeiting.
there have been a number of articles that significantly higher transaction fees are charged merchants for signature debit (comparable to credit fees, higher fraud because no two-factor authentication) ... so there has been some preference for signature debit because of the larger revenue stream.
for an indication of financial incentive ... tally the number of check card tv spots ... vis-a-vis the number of pin-debit tv spots.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Wrapping up the FBEMBA Date: September 21, 2008 Blog: BoydOODA-loop scenario (with respect to finger-feel), Boyd would use example of war games after-action reviews he was involved in ... the story was that during all the practice sessions ... the staff participated while the admirals/generals were characterized as spending their time out playing golf. For the actual war games, the admirals/generals came in and it was disaster since they had no "finger-feel" for the tempo of the operations center (lots of mistakes happening in slow-motion) ... which was typically followed by comments about the golf playing culture.
Fluency, practice, and understanding can be considered facets of orientation (correcting "false" orientation).
A software analogy is fluency in computer programming language ... equivalent to fluency in natural language ... i.e. the fluent person actually "thinks" & "dreams" in the programming language; as opposed to thinking in some natural language and having to translate into programming statements.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Success has many fathers, but failure has the US taxpayer Date: September 22, 2008 11:20 AM Blog: Financial Cryptographyre:
on the mortgage origination side of the triple-A rated toxic CDOs
... this shows the large ugly speculation pimple/boil in home owner
prices (enabled by the use of toxic CDOs and eliminating any
motivation to pay attention to mortgage quality)
http://mysite.verizon.net/vodkajim/housingbubble
the large ugly speculation pimple/boil is about half-way deflated back to where it started.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: VMware Chief Says the OS Is History Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:50:49 -0400Steve O'Hara-Smith <steveo@eircom.net> writes:
nearly all highway design, building and maintenance is based on heavy truck mile/axle-loads i.e. if taxes were directly apportioned based on expenses, then road-use taxes drop nearly to zero for other than heavy trucks ... and road-use taxes to cover total highway expenses are apportioned solely against heavy trucks.
past ref:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#41 Transportation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#21 Spam Bomb
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#57 TGV in the USA?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#20 Parallel programming again (Re: Intel announces "CT" aka
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#7 OT Global warming
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#44 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#2 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#5 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#6 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#7 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#10 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#12 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#15 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#19 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#24 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#26 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#32 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#35 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#46 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#48 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#49 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#50 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#51 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#52 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#53 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006g.html#54 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#1 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#2 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#3 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#5 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#6 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#11 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#23 The Pankian Metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#97 Loads Weighing Heavily on Roads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#21 Horrid thought about Politics, President Bush, and Democrats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#55 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#56 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#48 fraying infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#68 Historian predicts the end of 'science superpowers'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#25 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#36 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#37 dollar coins
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:59:03 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Science unveils hidden drivers of stock bubbles and crashes
http://www.physorg.com/news141015420.html
from above:
At this point -- when the bubble is most inflated -- the investor
becomes indifferent to warning signs, such as share values or
price-earnings ratios that are stratospherically high.
What happens when the market starts to tank? The initial response is
dismissal, for the investor still believes that his stocks will come
back up and there is no point in selling.
... snip ...
the triple-A rated toxic CDOs enabled mortgage orginators to ignore mortgage quality ... focusing on writing as many mortgages as fast as possible ... which provided the fuel for speculators to treat the home owner market like the unregulated 1920s stock market.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: VMware Chief Says the OS Is History Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:26:29 -0400Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> writes:
the total infrastructure costs are just being obfuscated and spread around to a lot of different areas. that contributes to little action with regard to creating more efficient operations ... because true infrastructure costs are so thoroughly obfuscated.
changes would result in "fully loaded" transportation costs to be more accurately reflected in the price of goods. adaptive feedback systems work efficiently when the components of the infrastructure are accurately reflected. currently, true infrastructure transporation costs are significantly obfuscated and don't show up in the resulting price of many goods. the traditional result has always been less efficient operation and non-optimal choices.
this was also raised in the way that 60,000+ pages of tax code (mostly
special exemptions) affects the infrastructure to bias decisions and
influence adaptive feedback. the myriad of special exemptions has
created significant obfuscation regarding efficient business operation
... and has also created a significant diversion of resources devoted to
just dealing with special provisions (and the diversion of the resources
to dealing with special exemptions is calculated at representing a
significant drain on GDP)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#49 Taxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#87 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
one of the big advances that I found when doing resource manager and dynamic adaptive feedback operation ... was going thru all the code and accurately instrumenting actual resource utilization ... and having the resource utilization reflect accurately in resource manager controls.
frequently the state of the art at the time (in resource managers) utilized indirect indications that were (just) assumed to have some correlation with various kinds of resource utilization. typically the indications only had relatively weak correlation and possibly then only under specific conditions. the result (of these poor implementations) was frequently characterized as having numerous unexplained and anomolous behavior.
misc. past posts mentioning resource manager
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: VMware Chief Says the OS Is History Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:16:23 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
tying dynamic feedback resource management to Boyd's OODA-loops ... in part because having done so much work on dynamic feedback resource controls in the 60s & 70s
... when I encountered Boyd ... I was extremely attracted to his
OODA-loops .... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd
accurate infrastructure costs of transportation have been extremely obfuscated (OBSERVE part of OODA-loops) resulting in non-optimal resource decisions. In past period, the country's dependency on resources for transportation was also significantly obfuscated (which contributed to non-optimal decisions about resource utilization).
a similar distortion in decision making happens with the 60,000+ page tax code ... mostly with special exemptions. even if there was some quirk of fate and all the special tax provisions magically resulted in optimal decisions ... just the magnitude of the number of provisions subverts Boyd's OODA-loops. Not only is there an assumption about accuracy in OODA-loops there is also the implication of timeliness ... 60,000+ page tax code creates enormous "friction" in the infrastructure ... resulting in enormous resource waste.
and as in this prior post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#4 CDOs subverting Boyd's OODA-loop
CDOs were used to obfuscate underlying value, subverting OBSERVATION in Boyd's OODA-loop.
this contributed to the toxic CDOs getting triple-A rating.
The triple-A rating on the toxic CDOs, in large part fueled speculators move on the home owners market, effectively treating it like the 1920's unregulated stock market.
There is plot of prices in the home owner market showing a large ugly
specualtion pimple/boil that has only half-way deflated.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#24 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#29 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#40 Success has many fathers, but failure has the US taxpayer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#42 Blinkylights
There is a very similar large ugly speculation pimple/boil, when prices (in the home owner market) are plotted as a percent of average income (again only about half-way deflated) ... i.e. both the deflation in absolute prices as well as prices as percent of average income have a ways to go.
And as in all the news ... institutions gobbling up all those triple-A rated toxic CDOs is behind the current crisis/threat to US economic health.
And for something a little different:
U.S. May Find Painful Parallels in Nordic Bailout
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=au3.PKtIo9oM&refer=home
For a little more topic drift ... recent reference to a MBA program based
on Boyd's OODA-loop:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#4 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
and recent post in Boyd blog and OODA-loop MBA thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#39 Wrapping up the FBEMBA
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit? Date: September 23, 2008 Blog: Credit Cardre:
part of the problem with password/pins as part of something you know
(shared-secret) authentication
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#secrets
... is that unique values are required for every unique security domain (as countermeasure to cross-domain attacks). Back in the 60s, when I first got online access ... I only had to deal with a couple something you know shared-secrets... this has since proliferated to large scores of something you know shared-secrets ... and the problem of dealing with large scores ... or hundreds of such shared-secrets spans all generations (the problem isn't remembering a single PIN, it is remembering one more PIN, possibly among hundreds).
One of the things done over a decade ago in the AADS chip strawman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads
in support of X9.59 financial standard transaction protocol
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
was enabling a paradigm change from institution-centric authentication to person-centric authentication ... a person having the option of presenting the same authentication to a large number of different institutions (while still addressing cross-domain vulnerabilities).
... oh, there have been studies (because of the difficulty dealing with the large proliferation in shared-secret paradigm) claiming that PINs are written on 1/3rd of pin-debit cards (not limited to "senior" card holders).
with regard to some chip implementations, there was yes card
exploit that dates from possibly '99 ... mentioned here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030417083810/http://www.smartcard.co.uk/resources/articles/cartes2002.html
other posts mentioning yes card
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Mobile Payment/All-in-One Card Date: September 23, 2008 Blog: Credit CardPart of the work on enabling AADS person-centric authentication
... not only for all payments ... in support of x9.59 financial standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
we had been brought in to consult with small client/server startup
that wanted to do payment transactions on their server and they had
this technology they had invented called SSL they wanted to use. Part
of that infrastructure (frequently now called e-commerce) was the
payment gateway ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway
we then got asked to participate in the x9a10 financial standard working group which had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments. the result was the x9.59 financial standard. This was *ALL* as in *ALL* ... including POS, internet, face-to-face, CNP, mobile, and transit.
As part of design of the AADS chip strawman .... not only enabling person-centric authentication ... including all payments ... we were approached over a decade ago to make sure the chip would function within requirements for transit gate power & timing constraints ... for contactless operation (w/o sacrificing any security or integrity features)
Another scenario that had to be considered as part of the x9.59 standard support was wireless operation for both cellphone and PDA operations.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Virtualization Adopters Hit The Tipping Point Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:30:03 -0400Government Clients Eye Virtualization
from above:
With some 65 percent of commercial accounts expecting to have
virtualization technology in place by the end of 2009, government
accounts, too, now seem focused on jumping on the virtualization
bandwagon.
... snip ...
somewhat related about gov. virtualization 40 yrs ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml
I wasn't aware of the installations until quite a bit later.
recent posts mentioning the above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#4 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#60 Job ad for z/OS systems programmer trainee
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#32 Interesting Mainframe Article: 5 Myths Exposed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#31 confluence of virtualization and trusted computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#67 Virtualization's security threats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#68 Virtualization's security threats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#26 CA ESD files Options
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#58 Virtualization: History repeats itself with a search for security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#46 Whitehouse Emails Were Lost Due to "Upgrade"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#74 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#81 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#62 German court finds Bank responsible for malwared PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#40 IBM--disposition of clock business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#68 New technology trends?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#30 Macs for security (now, with new improved NSA hardening tips!)
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit? Date: September 24, 2008 Blog: Credit Cardre:
small part of AADS chip strawman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads
was anticipating things like the yes card exploit and not having similar vulnerabilities. We had semi-facetiously joked in the mid-90s that we would take a $500 milspec part, aggressively cost reduce by 2-3 orders of magnitude while improving the integrity. Part of the trick was getting on the (least expensive) RFID (i.e. UPC/EPC) chip cost curve while not sacrificing any integrity or security.
various threads and posts mentioning yes card vulnerability ... and
apparently still applicable ... at least within the past 2-3 yrs.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: VMware Chief Says the OS Is History Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:03:45 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
and a similar article from summer of 2007:
Subprime = Triple-A ratings? or 'How to Lie with Statistics' (gone 404 but lives on at the wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20071111031315/http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/07/25/subprime-triple-a-ratings-or-how-to-lie-with-statistics/
from above:
This distortion brings me back to the subject of worthy reading
material that came up in this week's Sunday Funnies: Barron's "The Art
of Successful Investing," where I remembered (in the comments) the
classic 1954 book by Darrell Huff, How to Lie with Statistics, which
is still in print. Some of you may not agree with me that it is an
investment book, but I would put it forward as a must-read. It is
cleverly written, simple to understand, short and to the point.
.., snip ...
note that CDOs had been used two decades ago in the S&L crisis to obfuscate underlying values.
long-winded, decade old post discussing some of the issues and problems with
visibility into CDO-like instruments:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
prior crisis references to fiddling numbers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#96 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#99 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#3 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#15 Blinkylights
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: The Digital Dark Age or.....Will Google live for ever? Date: September 24, 2008 Blog: Greater IBM ConnectionThere has also been the wayback machine
and LOC and others have various digital library programs.
http://www.loc.gov/library/libarch-digital.html
I've gone thru numerous generations. As an undergraduate I had done a
presentation on MT/SC magtape for SHARE presentation
http://www.etypewriters.com/history.htm
part of presentation given at '68 SHARE meeting in Atlantic City ... from '94
usenet posting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18 CP/67 & OS MFT14
I did have a bunch of stuff from the 60s & early 70s that I had
migrated thru several tape generations ... even triple replicated
... unfortunately all tapes in the same tape library met with
unfortunate accident in mid-80s. old posts referencing the incident:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#13 A Dark Day
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#29 Folklore references to CP67 at Lincoln Labs
misc. old email ... going back to early 70s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Baudot code direct to computers? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:04:00 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
I had ordered my employee IBM/PC in nov82 and it was delivered mar83
and replaced my 3101 for online access from home ... previous reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#48 Hey! Keep Your Hands Out Of My Abstraction Layer!
with other old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#email820210
in the following, "disconnected" virtual machine was another common term for service virtual machine. PVM (another service virtual machine) provided facility analogous to 3270 telnet demon (using "virtual" 3270 interface to the CP kernel).
Date: 03/31/83 08:30:24
From: wheeler
Subject: pcterm
pcterm is the program from YKT. it requires PCTERM running in a
disconnected virtual machine & in your PC. PCTERM in the virtual
machine VMCFs to PVM for simulation of the terminal session. From the
PC, you have to dial the disconnected virtual machine after initial
connection ... & there currently has to be a unique virtual machine
running PCTERM for each connection.
PCTERM does both extensive data compression for transmission and the
two programs handshake on character strings currently in each other's
buffer ... allowing host to send down buffer pointers to PC instead of
character strings (where possible). It also supports overlapped file
transfer concurrently with active terminal session.
... snip ... top of post, old email index
Starting in the late 70s, I would co-sponsor "friday's after work"
(sometimes with Jim Gray before he left for Tandem). The "new" deli
(an Eric's) was still there I was by the old plant site ... but as in
this recent reference/post ... the old research bldg (28) is now gone:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#29 Historic IBM Building 25 in San Jose destroyed by fire
Date: 03/31/83 12:43:56
From: wheeler
Subject: friday
To: friday distribution
since tomorrow is a day off ... today is virtual friday. Meet at the
new deli across from the plant-site. ... this is a real bummer,
plant-site substation is being turned off for the three days and also
Los Gatos lab. is getting it's power turned off also. Anybody have a
machine that will be up and running???? I've discovered PCTERM running
on an IBM/PC ... but it requires an extra virtual machine(a "service"
virtual machine which runs PCTERM and interfaces to PVM).
... snip ... top of post, old email index
previous picture of the setup
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/homepc.jpg
misc. past posts mentioning PCTERM:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003n.html#7 3270 terminal keyboard??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003p.html#44 Mainframe Emulation Solutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#0 Why so little parallelism?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#66 The use of "script" for program
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#74 What do YOU call the # sign?
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Technology and the current crisis Date: September 25, 2008 Blog: Risk Managementrelated answer here:
a somewhat non-technical issue is how is it possible that anybody could believe that adding up a large number of subprime loans could ever result in triple-A ratings (the whole being much larger than the sum of the parts) ... this is either How to Lie with Statistics or the industry is staffed with a large number of pooh-bears (from winnie-the-pooh and the line about being a bear with no brain at all)
recent article:
How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/how-wall-streets-quants-lied-to-their-computers/
Another part of fiddling books ... is that at least part of the $700B
would be required to replenish the $137B paid out in bonuses/rewards
for having created the current situation ... article from last march:
The Fed's Too Easy on Wall Street
http://www.businessweek.com/#missing-article
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Your thoughts on the following comprehensive bailout plan please Date: September 25, 2008 Blog: Financial RegulationI gave a talk at financial conference a couple yrs ago ... that SOX wouldn't actually reduce real fraud ... possibly just catch mistakes.
One example is that GAO has started database of increasing number of financial restatements (despite SOX) .... basically initial financial statements are inflated which are used to determine top executive bonuses ... then later when statements were restated, the bonuses aren't forfeited. An example freddie was fined $400m in 2004 for $10B in inflated statements ... and the CEO was replaced ... but allowed to keep tens (hundred?) of millions in bonuses.
some part of the $700B is to replenish the $137B sucked out by wall street as bonuses/rewards for having created the current situation.
reference in this answer
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/financial-markets/equity-markets/MKT_EQU/325790-5105043
this recent article:
How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/how-wall-streets-quants-lied-to-their-computers/
and related article from last March:
The Fed's Too Easy on Wall Street
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-03-19/the-feds-too-easy-on-wall-streetbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice
PBS has program looking in detail at repeal of Glass-Steagall
... which can be found here:
The Wall Street "fix"
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit? Date: September 25, 2008 Blog: Credit Cardre:
part of the work in the x9a10 financial standard working group (had been given the requirement in the mid-90s to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for ALL retail payments) was detailed threat and vulnerability analysis. in the signature scenario ... there is basically single factor authentication ...... this is not only problem at the time the transaction is performed ... but also represents a vulnerability thruout the infrastructure (for things like skimming, data breaches, etc).
One of the (signature) analysis with respect to skimming & data breaches was from kindergarten security 101; security proportional to risk. Basically the value of the information to the merchant is proportional to some percentage of profit from the transaction ... while the value of the information to the crook is proportional to the credit limit &/or account balance. The implication is that the crook can potentially outspend by a factor of 100 times, attacking the system than the merchant can afford to spend defending the information (attempting to prevent data breaches)
As a result, the x9.59 financial transaction standard (from the x9a10
financial standard working group) ... eliminated the usefulness of the
information to the attacker/crooks. X9.59 did nothing to eliminate
skimming and/or data breaches
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
... however, x9.59 changed the paradigm and eliminated the usefulness of the information to the crooks (the crooks could still attack ... but the resulting information is now worthless to the crooks). This reversed the positions on the playing field between the attackers/crooks and the merchants (since the information is now worth more to the merchant than to the crooks ... i.e. the information is effectively worthless to the crooks for the purpose of performing fraudulent transactions).
One of the other issues in the current paradigm attempting to add ever increasing security in attempt to prevent data breaches ... is that upwards of 70percent of such events involve insiders ... mostly supposedly going about their jobs.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit? Date: September 25, 2008 Blog: Credit Cardre:
oh .... the largest use of SSL in the world today is for hiding
financial transaction information .... as part of this stuff we had
worked on that is now frequently called electronic commerce
(basically countermeasure to crooks using the information to generate
fraudulent financial transactions). part of that activity was something
called the payment gateway ... referenced in these posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway
with the x9.59 financial standard eliminating the usefulness of such information to crooks ... it also eliminates the major use of SSL in the world today (for hiding financial transaction information).
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: VMware Chief Says the OS Is History Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:39:28 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
I've sporadically drawn the parallel between CDOs and obfuscating
"observation" in OODA-loops
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#4 CDOs subverting Boyd's OODA-loop
... CDOs were used two decades ago in the S&L crisis to obfuscate underlying values and unload the properties.
This is long-winded, decade-old post about many of the current problems,
including the need for visibility into CDO-like instruments:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
There is possibility that one of the people responsible for the
analysis that resulted in citibank getting out of the home mortgage
business (in the troubles two decades ago, mentioned in the above
post) ... was involved with increasingly sophisticated analytics:
How Conventional CDO Analytics Missed the Mark
http://www.bobsguide.com/guide/news/2007/Dec/20/Kamakura_Releases_Study:_How_Conventional_CDO_Analytics_Missed_the_Mark.html
from (20Dec2007) above:
"Two years ago the Wall Street Journal in a page 1 story pointed out
the dangers in relying on the copula approach for CDO valuation, but
investors were slow to realize the magnitude of their model risk"
... snip ...
the above isn't inconsistent with claims that computerized risk was manipulated.
however, somewhat the other side (although again not necessarily
inconsistent)
Subprime = Triple-A ratings? or 'How to Lie with Statistics' (gone 404 but lives on at the wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20071111031315/http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/07/25/subprime-triple-a-ratings-or-how-to-lie-with-statistics/
disclaimer, in the past we've visited these guys' offices (nice
location); misc. past posts mentioning Kamakura:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#25 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#66 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#70 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#21 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#87 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#64 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#29 dollar coins
Then there is (from last march) the following which includes mention
that wall street took $137B out in bonuses during the period (reward for
creating the current situation?, the proposed $700B would in part be
used to replenish the amount taken out of the system by those bonuses):
The Fed's Too Easy on Wall Street
http://www.businessweek.com/#missing-article
The GAO has started a database of the increasing numbers of financial
restatements (despite SOX). Basically financial statements are inflated
... and bonuses for top executives taken based on the inflated
statements. Later the numbers are restated, but the bonuses not
forfeited. An example, Freddie was fined $400m in 2004 for $10B
inflation in statements and the CEO replaced ... however, the CEO kept
tens of (hundred?) millions.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: VMware renders multitasking OSes redundant Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:56:28 -0400VMware renders multitasking OSes redundant
from above:
What would be good would be for the multi-tasking part of each guest OS
to be simply discarded. It's not needed and, as VMware says, a
paravirtualized guest OS (one that knows it's running under a
hypervisor) could ignore it. The guest OS running under a hypervisor
could be stripped down to a kernel, letting the hypervisor handle things
like multi-tasking and talking through drivers to physical resources.
... snip ...
reminiscent of cp/67 and cambridge monitor system from the 60s.
i've mentioned that was very much what was done when apl\360 was ported
to cms (for cms\apl) .... misc past posts mentioning APL (and/or HONE
which extensively used apl applications for world-wide sales and
marketing support):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone
recent mentions of virtual appliances or service virtual machines ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#59 old internal network references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#52 China's Godson-2 processor takes center stage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#55 Kernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#42 VM/370 Release 6 Waterloo tape (CIA MODS)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#11 Kernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#15 Kernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#22 Was CMS multi-tasking?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#97 Is virtualization diminishing the importance of OS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#14 recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#67 Is Virtualisation a Fad?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#68 New technology trends?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#22 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#51 Baudot code direct to computers?
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Traditional Approach Won't Take Businesses Far Places Date: September 25, 2008 Blog: Business IntelligenceI had sponsored Col. Boyd's briefings at IBM in the early 80s. It started with Patterns of Conflict .... military examples of his OODA-loop concept ... but with applications of conflict to the commercial world. Along the way, he added a second briefing Organic Design for Command and Control.
The example for Organic Design for Command and Control was that many that had gotten their training as young officers during WW2, were starting to come of age and joining corporate America's executive ranks. The issue was that entry to WW2, US had to field large numbers of quickly trained and inexperienced men. In order to leverage the little experience available, a very rigid, top-down command & control infrastructure was created. As a result, this style of management was starting to permeate the corporate world. Several examples were given contrasting this style (basically assumed that only a few at the very top were qualified to make decisions) with lots of other organizations that assumed a high level of experience at all levels of the organization. The briefing ended with "Leadership and Appreciation" being more appropriate description for an alternative (much more agile and dynamic adaptive) style.
The rigid, top-down "command & control" style has been used to explain recent studies that the ratio of executive compensation to worker compensation has exploded to 400:1 ... up drastically from 20:1 and compared to 10:1 in much of the rest of the world.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit? Date: September 26, 2008 Blog: Credit Cardone of the things looked at in the x9a10 financial standard working group and the x9.59 financial transaction standard ... was trade-off of eliminating the ever increasing costs of things like countermeasures for skimming and data breaches against the capital cost of new, more sophisticated POS terminal (i.e. x9.59 standard didn't do anything to preventing skimming and data breaches ... it just eliminated that anything bad would happen ... so it really no longer mattered if skimming and data breaches occurred).
The aggregate infrastructure cost for upgrading every POS terminal (not already upgraded) is significantly less than the alternative aggregate infrastructure costs (associated with the current status quo).
In the past, part of the issue about technology upgrades were that they didn't result in significant change ... so it started to appear like there would be a continued series of technology upgrade costs w/o any corresponding offsetting expense.
There is an alternative to looking at new, additional value propositions to offset the increased infrastructure costs ... there are approaches which can leverage technology to decrease aggregate infrastructure costs.
small footnote; there was article from 2006 that payment revenue at EU banks typically represent almost ten percent of annual revenues while it is closer to 40 percent for US banks (the higher interchange fees from signature products). the original article has gone 404.
related post from mar2006:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm23.htm#35 3 of the big 4 - all doing payment systems
Some of the related economics appears to also have affected SEPA.
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#38 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#45 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#48 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#53 Your thoughts on the following comprehensive bailout plan please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#54 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#55 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Costing for IT Services Date: September 26, 2008 Blog: The Greater IBM ConnectionAs an undergraduate, I got dragged into assisting with setting up Boeing Computer Services. In the period, dataprocessing was typically treated as cost/expense but at the same time recognized as a significant competitive business advantage. The idea was that if dataprocessing was moved into its own business unit, it could help reconcile the cost/expense aspect and the necessary investment to maintain competitive advantage (the executives heading up the dataprocessing business unit now dealt with the other executives on somewhat level playing field)
The idea seemed to catch on because the univ. also went to the legislature and got a similar setup for the university computing center.
In the 80s & 90s, there was some moves to superficially reduce the dataprocessing costs by replacing centralized mainframes with desktop computers ... where each individual employee was expected to provide services (previously performed by the datacenter).
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: VMware Chief Says the OS Is History Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2008 10:13:26 -0400CBFalconer <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes:
Deactivating Radioactive Waste In Hundreds, Not Millions, Of Years
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080922100148.htm
from above:
An efficient transmutation of radioactive waste requires the
development of new facilities. In addition to specially designed fast
reactors, the Accelerator-Driven Systems (ADS) present a new potential
concept. This is an undercritical reactor, which cannot sustain any
chain reaction. The neutrons necessary for stationary operations are
supplied by a proton accelerator with a spallation target located in
the reactor core.
... snip ...
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: VMware Chief Says the OS Is History Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 27 Sep 2008 10:34:33 -0400Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: To what extent do IP networks meet the stringent requirements of High Availability (HA) where the target performance is 99.999%? What performance is obtained in practice. Date: September 28, 2008 Blog: Computer NetworkingLittle or none of the gear is hardware fault tolerate ... most of it is commodity ... so to obtain five-nines (or five minutes of outage per year) ... there has to be lots of replicated boxes/connections for high-availability and no single point of failure. This typically implies multiple, parallel connections.
We had been brought in to consult with small client/server startup
that wanted to do payment transactions on their server and wanted to
use this technology they had invented called SSL. We had worked with
the two people responsible for the thing called commerce server in
prior life when we were doing our HA/CMP product as well as cluster
scale-up. Old post mentioning that prior life
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
Part of doing what is now frequently called electronic commerce was
something called a payment gateway ... lots of past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway
For the payment gateway deployment ... there was lots of HA replication.
There were additional issues for business critical dataprocessing ... not just limited to having lots of replicated boxes. At the time, we had to invent some amount of compensating processes and procedures ... in addition to just throwing in replicated hardware.1
we had signoff on the server/gateway so could mandate how it operated ... including compensating procedures related to how SSL was used. we had a little more difficult problem on the browser side ... and it took another year to get some simple compensating procedures on the client side.
I had worked with Jim Gray at research during the System/R days (original relational/sql implementation). After he left for Tandem, he did a study/report that (normal) hardware reliability was getting to the point where other parts of the infrastructure was starting to dominate failure modes .... software, people, environmental.
For instance, when we were out doing marketing for our HA/CMP product,
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
we coined the terms disaster survivability and geographic survivability.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available
Typically to get from say, 1-2 nines availability, all the way to five-nines availability requires (at least) things like diverse (physical) routing as countermeasure to the dreaded backhoe (and similar) vulnerabilities. This is sometimes also referred to under the heading of telco provisioning.
There have been some differences moving from (telco) circuit-based infrastructure (having to support "dumb" endpoints) to packet-based (internet) operation with intelligent end-points. In the circuit-based operation with dumb endpoints, the infrastructure had to include all the fault masking. With intelligent end-points and packet-based infrastructure ... there has been a lot of fault masking built into the client protocols resident in the intelligent end-points.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: VMware Chief Says the OS Is History Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2008 14:54:15 -0400Mensanator <mensanator@aol.com> writes:
related issue is efficiency of motor that converts the heat from
burning into usable energy. i believe that there is something like
30percent for gasoline engines. wiki page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency
from above:
Diesel engines often achieve greater fuel efficiency than petrol
(gasoline) engines. Diesel engines have energy efficiency of 45% and
petrol engines of 30%
... snip ...
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Whether, in our financial crisis, the prize for being the biggest liar is... Date: September 28, 2008 Blog: Change Managementrelated answer here:
Do you think a robust business continuity and recovery plan could have
saved the current financial crisis in US?
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/management/planning/MGM_PLN/330761-17266660
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#56
including reference to this article:
How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/how-wall-streets-quants-lied-to-their-computers/
Part of inflating the bottom line (mentioned in the referenced answer) as part of boosting bonuses, included enormous leveraging ... despite it creating enormous long term risk. It could be considered consistent with the theme that such extremely risky behavior is rewarded and there being no corresponding downside risk (and therefor promotes moral hazard).
"Peter Pan" has been used as a snide analogy ... "never having to grow up" also means never being held responsible.
there was a business school article last spring that estimated possibly 1000 executives are responsible for 80percent of the current crisis and that it would go a long way to fixing the problem if the gov. to figure out a way for them to loose their jobs.
following has speculators significant bigger/larger problem than owner-occupied
Mortgagees Who Live In Home Less Likely To Default
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/10/mortgage_owners.html
the enormous amount of unregulated speculation moving in on the home owner market is going to take some time to clean out (basically allowed to treat home owner market like the unregulated 1920s stock market).
plots of home prices back to 70s and plots of ratio of home prices to salary ... also back to the 70s .... basically shows the recent situation as a unique, huge, ugly pimple/boil ... that has only about half-way deflated.
basically the above reference has something like $80B will take-care of the owner-occupied mortgages ... and everything else is pretty much enormous greed, corruption, and/or fraud.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: The 50 most significant moments of Internet history Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:44:48 -0400The 50 most significant moments of Internet history
from above:
Back in 1995, Time magazine published a cover story called 'On A Screen
Near You'. It highlighted the results of an 18-month Carnegie Mellon
University study (with the dated title 'Marketing Pornography on the
Information Superhighway') that looked at how much porn there was on the
Net. And as demonstrated by the magazine's cover image of a shocked
little boy in front of a computer, the Internet was overrun with porn
and perverts, and the kids weren't safe any more.
... snip ...
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: VMware Chief Says the OS Is History Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2008 23:57:25 -0400Andrew Swallow <am.swallow@btinternet.com> writes:
there were some snide remarks that it was actually used as federal economic subsidy to the state (state construction industry keep rebuilding in the same places year after year, possibly refer to them as disposible houses?).
ref in past posts/thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#41 Where do the filesystem and RAID system belong?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#42 Where do the filesystem and RAID system belong?
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: VMware Chief Says the OS Is History Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2008 01:57:09 -0400Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> writes:
power is handled by BPA
http://www.bpa.gov/corporate/
bpa "facts"
http://www.bpa.gov/corporate/about_BPA/Facts/FactDocs/BPA_Facts_2007.pdf
The above mentions sustained peak capacity (january) is 41,528MW (from all sources ... i.e. about half hydro).
also from above:
Federal Hydro Projects Name River, state service rating Albeni Falls Pend Oreille, ID 1955 43 MW Anderson Ranch Boise, ID 1950 40 MW Big Cliff Santiam, OR 1953 18 MW Black Canyon Payette, ID 1925 10 MW Boise River Diversion Boise, ID 1912 3 MW Bonneville Columbia, OR/WA 1938 1,077 MW Chandler Yakima, WA 1956 12 MW Chief Joseph Columbia, WA 1958 2,458 MW Cougar McKenzie, OR 1963 25 MW Detroit Santiam, OR 1953 100 MW Dexter Willamette, OR 1954 15 MW Dworshak Clearwater, ID 1973 400 MW Foster Santiam, OR 1967 20 MW Grand Coulee *10 Columbia, WA 1942 6,795 MW Green Peter Santiam, OR 1967 80 MW Green Springs Emigrant Crk, OR 1960 16 MW Hills Creek Willamette, OR 1962 30 MW Hungry Horse Flathead, MT 1953 428 MW Ice Harbor Snake, WA 1962 603 MW John Day Columbia, OR/WA 1971 2,160 MW Libby Kootenai, MT 1975 525 MW Little Goose Snake, WA 1970 810 MW Lookout Point Willamette, OR 1953 120 MW Lost Creek Rogue, OR 1977 49 MW Lower Granite Snake, WA 1975 810 MW Lower Monumental Snake, WA 1969 810 MW McNary Columbia, OR/WA 1952 980 MW Minidoka Snake, ID 1909 28 MW Palisades Snake, ID 1958 176 MW Roza Yakima, WA 1958 11 MW The Dalles Columbia, OR/WA 1957 1,808 MW Total (31 dams) 20,460 MW Owned and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (21 dams) Owned and operated by the Bureau of Reclamation (10 dams). *10 Includes pump generation.... snip ...
past reference to pump generation:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#62 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002n.html#43 VR vs. Portable Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#14 Geothermal was: VLIW pre-history
this post references some large datacenters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#3 It's Too Darn Hot
and looking at Iceland. But some of these large datacenters are going into the Washington (state) area because of both available electricity (from BPA) and water (for cooling).
earlier post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#43 21st century pyramids--super datacenters
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#72 Price of CPU seconds
some references cited in the above regarding large datacenters around
the columbia river:
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
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Another quiet week in finance Date: September 29, 2008 Blog: Financial Cryptographyre:
somewhat long winded post repeated a few places ... archived flavors:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#52
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#53
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#56
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#65
------
so on one side now there is:
Risk Management Failings Spur Big Financial IT Investments
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=EANUZD2ESZ23GQSNDLRSKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=201400075
and on the other side there is:
How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/how-wall-streets-quants-lied-to-their-computers/
(postings to the above blog have added some number of examples)
I've sporadically drawn the parallel between CDOs and obfuscating
"observation" in OODA-loops
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#4 CDOs subverting Boyd's OODA-loop
... CDOs were used two decades ago in the S&L crisis to obfuscate underlying values and unload the properties.
This is long-winded, decade-old post about many of the current
problems, including the need for visibility into CDO-like instruments:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
There is possibility that one of the people responsible for the analysis that resulted in citibank getting out of the home mortgage business (in the troubles two decades ago, mentioned in the above post) ... was involved with increasingly sophisticated analytics:
How Conventional CDO Analytics Missed the Mark
http://www.bobsguide.com/guide/news/2007/Dec/20/Kamakura_Releases_Study:_How_Conventional_CDO_Analytics_Missed_the_Mark.html
from (20Dec2007) above:
"Two years ago the Wall Street Journal in a page 1 story pointed out
the dangers in relying on the copula approach for CDO valuation, but
investors were slow to realize the magnitude of their model risk"
... snip ...
the above isn't inconsistent with claims that computerized risk was manipulated.
however, somewhat the other side (although again not necessarily inconsistent)
Subprime = Triple-A ratings? or 'How to Lie with Statistics' (gone 404 but lives on at the wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20071111031315/http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/07/25/subprime-triple-a-ratings-or-how-to-lie-with-statistics/
disclaimer, in the past we've visited these guys' offices (nice
location); misc. past posts mentioning Kamakura:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#25 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#66 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#70 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#12 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#21 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#87 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#64 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#29 dollar coins
Then there is (from last march) the following which includes mention that wall street took $137B out in bonuses during the period (reward for creating the current situation?, the proposed $700B would in part be used to replenish the amount sucked out of the system by those bonuses):
The Fed's Too Easy on Wall Street
http://www.businessweek.com/#missing-article
The GAO has started a database of the increasing numbers of financial restatements (despite SOX). Basically financial statements are inflated ... and bonuses for top executives taken based on the inflated statements. Later the numbers are restated, but the bonuses not forfeited. An example, Freddie was fined $400m in 2004 for $10B inflation in statements and the CEO replaced ... however, the CEO kept tens of (hundred?) millions.
Part of inflating the bottom line, as method of boosting bonuses, included enormous leveraging ... despite it creating enormous long term risk. It could be considered consistent with the theme that such extremely risky behavior is rewarded and there being no corresponding downside risk (and therefor promotes moral hazard)
There was a business school article from last spring that estimated approx. 1000 executives are responsible for 80percent of the current crisis and that it would go a long way to correcting the situation if the gov. figured out a way for them to loose their job.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Could you please tell me about RADIUS authentication and how it works? Date: September 29, 2008 Blog: identitymanagementI first worked with it as part of setting up Livingston routers (RADIUS was part of Livingston product) ... before AT&T bought them. RADIUS was later provided to IETF for internet standard.
From my RFC index
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm
select Term (term->RFC#) in the RFCs listed by section. Then select
RADIUS in the fastpath section ... i.e.:
remote authentication dial in user service (RADIUS )
see also authentication , network access server , network services
5176 5090 5080 5030 4849 4818 4679 4675 4673 4672 4671 4670 4669 4668
4603 4590 4372 4014 3580 3579 3576 3575 3162 2882 2869 2868 2867 2866
2865 2809 2621 2620 2619 2618 2548 2139 2138 2059 2058
clicking on RFC number brings up the RFC summary in the frame ... i.e.
2865 DS
Remote Authentication Dial In User Service (RADIUS), Rigney C., Rubens
A., Simpson W., Willens S., 2000/07/05 (76pp) (.txt=146456) (Updated
by 2868, 3575, 5080) (Obsoletes 2138) (See Also 2866) (Refs 768, 1144,
1321, 1352, 1700, 1990, 2138, 2279, 2486) (Ref'ed By 2868, 2869, 2881,
2882, 2924, 2989, 3162, 3423, 3457, 3539, 3575, 3576, 3579, 3580,
3588, 3702, 3723, 3748, 3770, 3819, 3871, 3931, 3955, 3957, 4005,
4014, 4017, 4029, 4072, 4111, 4230, 4282, 4284, 4306, 4334, 4372,
4441, 4590, 4603, 4668, 4669, 4670, 4671, 4672, 4673, 4675, 4679,
4718, 4721, 4741, 4743, 4775, 4784, 4793, 4818, 4849, 4917, 4949,
4962, 5030, 5080, 5090, 5176, 5193, 5209, 5213, 5218, 5247, 5281,
5296, 5324) (RADIUS)
clicking on the ".txt=nnn" field (in the RFC summary) fetches the actual RFC.
For other topic drift ... past posts about AADS extensions for RADIUS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#radius
... basically registering public key in lieu of password ... and
performing certificate-less digital signature based authentication.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#certless
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Clickjacking -- the new browser wipe-out Date: September 29, 2008 Blog: Financial Cryptographyre:
After having been involved in trouble shooting a network integrity problem in the 70s related to automatic scripting ... i've always run with no scripting, no plug-ins, no cookies, no automatic application.
I've found only a few sites that figure they absolutely need it ... so i have two browsers instances with different personalities open at the same time in different workspaces. The 2nd personality has noscript plug-in configured.
This is basically a form of the virtualization theme ... keeping things strongly isolated/partitioned. For the really paranoid there is process that automagically creates a whole virtual machine (from scratch) for browser session ... and then the whole thing is scrubbed/discarded.
This is also related to the theme about virtualization being used eliminating the current traditional desktop operating systems and replacing it with a virtual machine layer with multiple virtual appliances ... basically drastically simplified monitors for specific environments (increasing security since it eliminates a lot of the complexity that contributes to vulnerabilities).
this was somewhat the cp67 & cms implementation from the 60s.
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40+ yrs virtualization experience, online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Why was Sarbanes-Oxley not good enough to sent alarms to the regulators about the situation arising today? Date: September 29, 2008 Blog: Financial RegulationGAO has started a database of increasing number of financial restatements (despite SOX). Basically the financial statement is inflated ... and the executives take bonuses based on the inflated statement. Later the finances may be restated but the bonuses are not forfeited. An example is freddie that was fined $400m in 2004 for statements that had been inflated $10B and the CEO was replaced ... however the CEO kept tens of (hundred?) million in bonuses.
I gave a talk a couple yrs ago at european financial conference that SOX wouldn't be able to catch various kinds of computerized financial fiddling.
some related articles:
How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/how-wall-streets-quants-lied-to-their-computers/
Subprime = Triple-A ratings? or 'How to Lie with Statistics' (gone 404 but lives on at the wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20071111031315/http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/07/25/subprime-triple-a-ratings-or-how-to-lie-with-statistics/
related answer:
Do you think a robust business continuity and recovery plan could have
saved the current financial crisis in US?
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/management/planning/MGM_PLN/330761-17266660
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40+ yrs virtualization experience, online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit? Date: September 29, 2008 Blog: Credit Cardas referenced previously about significance of interchange revenue, there have been several times over the past decade ... the issue of impact on interchange revenue has raised its head with regard to the introduction of new payment technologies. (the difference in possible impact on profit between US and EU financial institutions has also been claimed to contribute to the difference in uptake in new technologies)
E-payment threat to bank revenue
http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=19054
from above:
The increasing popularity of online payment providers like PayPal and
Amazon Checkout, combined with the emergence of mobile commerce,
threatens to leave banks lagging in the e-commerce world, according to
Cisco.
Cisco says payments represent 35% to 45% of banking revenue and
30%-40% of operating profits but warns that high-speed networks and
mobile devices are opening up opportunities for new players to bypass
the existing value chain.
... snip ...
past posts in threads:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#38 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#45 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#48 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#54 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#55 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#59 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
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40+ yrs virtualization experience, online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Why can't we analyze the risks involved in mortgage-backed securities? Date: September 29, 2008 Blog: Risk Managementa couple related answers/questions:
Do you think a robust business continuity and recovery plan could have
saved the current financial crisis in US?
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/management/planning/MGM_PLN/330761-17266660
Did the financial institutions on Wall Street violate the basic tenets
of diversification as it relates to the amounts of mortgage backed
securities on their balance sheets?
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/finance-accounting/economics/FIN_ECO/331412-20738879
Sarbanes-Oxley is considered to be overly complex and regulatory
burden on US Companies by many opponents of the act. Why was
Sarbanes-Oxley not good enough to sent alarms to the regulators about
the situation arising today?
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/finance-accounting/financial-regulation/FIN_FRG/331712-8075913
referencing several articles about fiddling of computerized risk.
Warren Buffett gave an interview a couple weeks ago and commented about having been the largest shareholder in Freddie in 2000-2001 ... but got totally out because of their accounting practices.
GAO is doing database of increasing number of financial restatements. Basically financial statements are inflated to boost executive bonuses (in spite of SOX). Later the financials may be restated but the bonuses aren't forfeited. An example was Freddie which was fined $400m in 2004 for $10b inflation in statements and the CEO replaced ... but allowed to keep tens of (hundred?) of millions.
The extreme leveraging of triple-A rated toxic CDOs ... also showed inflated earnings ... which increased executive bonuses ... but would eventually crash (basically another kind of play on juicing bonuses).
There was an article from last spring claiming wall street sucked out $137b in bonuses during the period (reward for creating the crisis?). Part of the $700b could be considered replenishing the $137b sucked out in those bonuses.
There was a business school article last spring that claimed possible 1000 executives are responsible for 80% of the crisis and it would go a long way to fixing the problems if the gov. could figure out how they could loose their jobs.
On the consumer side of mortgage origination and the triple-A rated toxic CDOs ... unregulated morgage originators being able to unload all the mortgages they could write (as triple-A rated toxic CDOs) ... pretty much eliminated any motivation to pay any attention to mortgage quality. They could write no-documentation, 1-2percent introductory interest rate ARM, no-down payment, interest only payment (and immediately unload as triple-A rated toxic CDO) .... providing huge amount of fuel for speculators (who figured they could unload before rate reset at huge profit).
The enormous amount of speculation caused huge inflation in prices. Graphing inflation adjusted house prices .... as well as ratio of avg house price to avg salary (going back to 70s) ... both shows a huge ugly pimple/boil that is only about half-way deflated (much worse than the S&L crisis)
The enormous amount of speculation also motivated over production and building ... which has resulted in large excess inventory. Besides the ugly speculation boil still having a ways to go deflating ... there is danger, because of the excess inventory, that the downward spiral will continue past the reset point.
--
40+ yrs virtualization experience, online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Should online transactions be allowed on credit cards without adequate safeguards? Date: September 30, 2008 Blog: Risk ManagementThere is extended discussion related to several of the issues in the
In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit ? In markets where Chip n PIN are not mandated, have Banks preferred one scheme over the other?
thread in the Credit Card Professionals group
We had been called in to consult with a small client/server startup
that wanted to do payment transactions on their server and they had
this technology they had invented called SSL they wanted to use. Part
of that effort is something called the payment gateway ... misc. past
posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway
and is now frequently called electronic commerce.
We were then asked to participate in the x9a10 financial standard
working group which had been given the requirement to preserve the
integrity of the financial infrastructure for all retail payments
(ALL ... POS, non-face-to-face, internet, etc). As part of x9a10,
there were detailed, end-to-end threat and vulnerability studies and
resulted in the x9.59 financial standard ... misc. past references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
Part of the detailed, end-to-end threat and vulnerability studies looked at issues with single factor, static, shared-secret, something you know authentication information. In effect, the current paradigm horribly burdens the account number with both needing to be widely available for numerous business processes and at the same time requiring it to be kept confidential and never divulged.
the other was looking at things like skimming, evesdropping (primary use in the world today of SSL is to prevent divulging account number), and data breaches. Something from kindergarten, security 101 was security proportional to risk. Basically the value of the information to the merchant is worth some percent of the profit off each transaction while the value of the information to the attacker/crook/insider is worth the account balance/credit-limit ... as a result the crooks (attacking the system) can frequently afford to outspend the merchant (defending the system) by a factor of 100 to one.
Part of x9.59 standard was to slightly tweak the paradigm and eliminate the usefullness of the information to the crooks (and as a side-effect eliminates the major use of SSL in the world today).
we would periodically joke ... that because of the dual-use nature of transaction information with diametrically opposing requirements (generally available for numerous business processes and at the same time must be kept confidential and never divulged) ... that even if the planet was buried under miles of information hiding encryption ... it still wouldn't be able to prevent information leakage.
lots of past archived posts discussing various aspects of current
paradigm in threads about naked transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#payments
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40+ yrs virtualization experience, online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: VMware Chief Says the OS Is History Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:29:58 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Power sources Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:44:17 -0400jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
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40+ yrs virtualization experience, online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Isn't it the Federal Reserve role to oversee the banking system?? Date: September 30, 2008 Blog: Equity MarketsIn the aftermath of the crash of '29, the Glass-Steagall act was passed to keep the safety&soundness of regulated banking separate from unregulated high risk investment banking. A little less than a decade ago, Glass-Steagall was repealed. PBS programming looking at the repeal of Glass-Steagall in some detail:
the Wall Street "FIX
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet
In the past, the home owner market was somewhat indirectly regulated since mortgage origination was by regulated banks using deposits (& loans would remain on their books and therefor there was significant motivation to manage for loan quality)
in the current situation, unregulated mortgage originators would leverage triple-A rated toxic CDOs as a mechanism to fund their operations as well as unloading the mortgages. Being able to immediately unload mortgages as triple-A rated toxic CDOs, basically eliminated a lot of the motivation to pay attention to loan quality. As a result there were a lot of no-documentation, no-down-payment, 1-2 percent introductory rate ARMs, possibly done as interest-only payments. There were a lot of speculators picking up these loans ... basically planning on flipping before the rates adjusted.
The huge amount of speculation created a huge ugly pimple/boil inflation in the home owner market. Basically plot both inflation adjusted home prices as well as home prices as ratio to avg. salary .... back to the 70s ... the current ugly inflated boil uniquely stands-out and has only about half-way deflated.
Toxic CDOs had been also used two-decades ago in the S&L crisis to obfuscate the underlying values and unload the related properties.
A year or so ago ... there were comments that freddie & fannie would be little affected by "sub-prime" mortgage meltdown... since they didn't deal in subprime mortgages. However, there are now claims that freddie leveraged up as much 80 times buying triple-A rated toxic CDOs (as opposed to directly buying the mortgages). Laundering the "sub-prime" mortgages thru triple-A rated toxic CDOs seemed to have caught a lot of institutions. related articles:
How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/how-wall-streets-quants-lied-to-their-computers/
Subprime = Triple-A ratings? or 'How to Lie with Statistics' (gone 404 but lives on at the wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20071111031315/http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/07/25/subprime-triple-a-ratings-or-how-to-lie-with-statistics/
.... basically a combination of factors allowed speculators to move in on the home owner market and treat it like the unregulated 1920s stock market.
One of the current issues is the loss of confidence in rating services ... having given out all those triple-A ratings to toxic CDOs (and the resulting uncertainty contributing to lots of paralysis). There is a separate issue with the toxic CDOs being somewhat obscure and harder to evaluate ... provides for plausible deniability.
One of the tv business news shows had spokesman from one of the rating agencies on last week to talk about rating downgrades to some of the companies. The host of the show, spent much of the time trying to get the spokesman to admit to being responsible for the current crisis.
following has speculators much bigger problem than owner-occupied:
Mortgagees Who Live In Home Less Likely To Default
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/10/mortgage_owners.html
the enormous amount of unregulated speculation moving in on the home owner market is going to take some time to clean out (basically allowed to treat home owner market like the unregulated 1920s stock market).
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Google Data Centers 'The Most Efficient In The World' Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:40:27 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Google Data Centers 'The Most Efficient In The World'
http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=209600041
from above:
Teetzel explained that while all data centers use water for cooling,
Google-designed data centers don't use water for chillers, which are a
kind of air conditioner. Instead, Google uses cooling towers, which just
let the water evaporate without using any power.
... snip ...
Are Google's Data Centers the Greenest?
http://blogs.cioinsight.com/parallax_view/content/data_center/are_googles_data_centers_the_greenest_1.html
Google Commitment to Sustainable Computing
http://www.google.com/corporate/datacenters/
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Why did Sox not prevent this financal crisis? Date: October 1, 2008 Blog: Risk ManagementA couple weeks ago Warren Buffett in an interview said that he had been the largest freddie shareholder in 2000-2001 but got out because of their accounting practices
GAO has started database of inceasing number of financial restatements (despite SOX). Basically financials were inflated and the executives take bonuses based on the inflated financials. Later the financials may be restated but the executives don't forfeit the bonuses. An example was freddie was fined $400m for $10B inflated statements and the CEO was replaced ... but tens of (hundred?) millions were kept.
somewhat related article ...
How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/how-wall-streets-quants-lied-to-their-computers/
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Sea level Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:49:13 -0400CBFalconer <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes:
related reference on welland canal (part of st. lawrence seaway) to
"bypass niagara falls"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welland_Canal
from above:
The canal's Lake Erie (southern) terminus, at Port Colborne, is 99.5 m
(326.5 feet) higher in elevation than the Lake Ontario (northern)
terminus at Port Weller. The canal comprises eight lift locks,
... snip ...
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Fraud in financial institution Date: October 1, 2008 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityGAO has started a database of increasing numbers of financial restatements (in spite of SOX). Basically the financial statements are inflated, the executives take bonuses based on the inflated statements. Later the financials may be restated ... but the bonuses aren't forfeited. An example in 2004, freddie was fined $400m for $10B in inflated statements. The CEO was replaced ... but kept the tens of (hundred?) millions in bonuses.
Somewhat related articles:
How Wall Street Lied to Its Computers
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/how-wall-streets-quants-lied-to-their-computers/
The Fed's Too Easy on Wall Street
http://www.businessweek.com/1997/34/trans34/shugart.htm
Subprime = Triple-A ratings? or 'How to Lie with Statistics' (gone 404 but lives on at the wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20071111031315/http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/07/25/subprime-triple-a-ratings-or-how-to-lie-with-statistics/
The Wall Street "fix
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet
We had been called in to help word-smith the cal. electronic signature legislation (and later fed). Some of the other parties involved were also involved heavily in privacy issues and had done in-depth consumer privacy studies and found the most important issue was identity theft ... and the second most important issue was "denial of services" (by institutions and gov. agencies based on personal information). In turned out that much of "identity theft" was a result of various kinds of security breaches and data breaches ... but little or nothing was being done to address the cause. This appeared to be the origin of the cal. state data breach notification legislation (and then later similar legislation in other states; i.e. assumption that the resulting publicity would result in action being taken). There are also studies that up to 70percent of such identity theft have involved insiders.
FTC and others have done some effort at kinds of identity theft ... with the largest subclass being "account fraud" ... i.e. using information gathered to perform fraudulent transactions against existing accounts.
Somewhat related answer:
Should online transactions be allowed on credit cards without adequate
safeguards?
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/finance-accounting/risk-management/FIN_RMG/331693-1207156
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Sea level Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:44:28 -0400jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
some cases this happens when the flow of the river has cut a channel (than the surrounding area) and the dam is then built in the channel.
related hydroelectric post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#68 VMware Cheif Says the OS Is History
related Sea level post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#81 Sea level
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Sea level Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2008 09:00:34 -0400jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
Fort Peck bills itself as great recreational and hunting area. Last summer, I was returning to the states from Victoria and the US custom agent had just recently been posted there from eastern montana ... and talked about deer hunting in the Fort Peck reservoir area.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: VMware Chief Says the OS Is History Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2008 09:06:31 -0400Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
Sharp Launches Mass Production of 2nd-Generation Thin-Film Solar Cells
http://www.physorg.com/news142100382.html
from above:
Photovoltaic modules fabricated using the 2nd-generation thin-film solar
cells manufactured on this new production line feature an
industry-leading 9% module conversion efficiency and high 128 W power
output. Also, making the substrates larger and boosting power output
means fewer modules are required for a given installation than before,
making it possible to reduce the cost of installed systems. This can be
expected to lower the cost of generating electricity.
... snip ...
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:28:57 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
following has speculators significant bigger/larger problem than owner-occupied
Mortgagees Who Live In Home Less Likely To Default
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/10/mortgage_owners.html
the enormous amount of unregulated speculation moving in on the home owner market is going to take some time to clean out (basically allowed to treat home owner market like the unregulated 1920s stock market).
basically the above reference has something like $80B will take-care of the owner-occupied mortgages ... and everything else is pretty much enormous greed, corruption, and/or fraud.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: STUDY: Lights Out In 2009? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:34:42 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
STUDY: Lights Out In 2009? The United States Faces Serious Risks of
Brownouts or Blackouts in 2009, Study Warns
http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1575722/study_lights_out_in_2009/index.html
from above:
The study, estimated that the U.S. will require about 120 gigawatts (GW)
of new generation just to maintain a 15 percent reserve margin. That
will require at least $300 billion in generation and transmission
facility investments by 2016.
... snip ...
slight drift:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#86 Blinkylights
misc. past posts mentioning fraying infrastructure:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#18 Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007q.html#60 Fixing our fraying Internet infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#42 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#43 fraying infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#47 System z10 announcement (in English)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#48 fraying infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#49 Any benefit to programming a RISC processor by hand?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#50 fraying infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#53 Why Is Less Than 99.9% Uptime Acceptable?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#54 news maintenance: Prison pushes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#3 America's Prophet of Fiscal Doom
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#98 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#24 To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#80 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#61 Historian predicts the end of 'science superpowers'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#68 Historian predicts the end of 'science superpowers'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#71 Cormpany sponsored insurance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#25 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#36 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#38 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#8 Taxcuts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#13 Michigan industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#35 Builders V. Breakers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#41 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 03 Oct 2008 10:43:06 -0400jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
note that the study basically says that $80B would pretty much handle the mortgage problems with standard owner-occupied homes ...
as per prior posts ... the enormous problems are with the speculation on the home-owner/mortgage-origination side of the triple-A rated toxic CDOs .. and on the other, institutional side of the triple-A rated toxic CDOs.
that would make it appear that "normal" home owners have been significantly more rational than the enormous greed, corruption, and/or fraud that permeated much of the other parties in all this.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:15:41 -0400sidd <sidd@situ.com> writes:
eventual aggregate trillion dollar plus provides for a lot more opportunities (and can be used to cover a whole lot more sins) ... than doing the direct possibly only $80B
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Credit Card Security Date: October 3, 2008 Blog: Financial RegulationChips by themselves don't necessarily improve security ... the YES CARD scenario has even been described as having spent billions of dollars to prove that chips are less secure than magstripe .... i.e. skim static data ... effectively using some of same skimming technology used w/magstripe ... which is then used to create a counterfeit. The difference then is that the counterfeit chip is allowed to tell the terminal that the 1) transaction is to be done offline ("YES"), 2) the correct PIN has been entered ("YES"), and 3) transaction is within credit limit ("YES"). Deactivating the account number at the issuing institution didn't do anything since the chip was allowed to dictate an offline transaction. old reference here:
archived answer to similar question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#45 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
in credit card professional group
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=65738
We had been called in to consult with a small client/server startup
that wanted to do financial transactions on severs and they had
invented this technology they called "SSL" that they wanted to
use. Part of the deployment included something called the payment
gateway
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway
and is now frequently called "electronic commerce".
Then in the mid-90s, we were asked to participate in the X9A10
financial standard working group which had been given the requirement
to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure for all
retail payments (i.e. ALL as in ALL, internet, point-of-sale,
face-to-face, non-face-to-face, etc, i.e. ALL). This involved doing
detailed, end-to-end, vulnerability and treat studies ... and
resulted in the x9.59 financial standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
Part of the analysis was something from kindergarten, security 101 ... security proportional to risk; basically static information from previous transactions are sufficient for a crook to create new, fraudulent transactions. The security proportional to risk (for the merchant) the information from previous transactions is worth some percent of the profit on the transaction ... while the information to the crook is worth the account credit-limit/balance; as a result, the crook can frequently out-spend the merchant by 100 times attacking the system as the merchant can afford to spend defending/protecting the system.
oh and similar question also here:
Should online transactions be allowed on credit cards without adequate
safeguards?
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/finance-accounting/risk-management/FIN_RMG/331693-1207156
and also archived answer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#75 Should online transactions be allowed on credit cards without adequate safeguards?
Another part of the detailed end-to-end threat and vulnerability studies was the aspect that previous transaction information represented "dual-use" ... i.e. the transaction information needed to be generally available for numerous business processes ... but crooks having access to the transaction information could use it for fraudulent transactions. This created diametrically opposing requirements ... the information generally available and at the same time has to be kept totally confidential and never made available (presumably even for the purpose of executing the transaction). Part of the vulnerability included reports that up to 70percent of identity theft (accessing the information) has involved "insiders".
In any case, we've periodically made the semi-facetious statement that even if the planet was buried under miles of information hiding encryption ... it still wouldn't prevent information leakage.
other posts in the "credit card professionals" thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#38 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#48 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#54 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#55 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#59 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#73 In your experience which is a superior debit card scheme - PIN based debit or signature debit?
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: How did http get a port number as low as 80? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 04 Oct 2008 21:42:58 -0400James Harris <james.harris.1@googlemail.com> writes:
summary for rfc 1060:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcidx3.htm#1060
1060 -H
ASSIGNED NUMBERS, Postel J., Reynolds J., 1990/03/20 (86pp)
(.txt=173105) (Obsoleted by 1340) (Obsoletes 1010) (Ref'ed By 1171,
1172, 1177, 1188, 1190, 1201, 1206, 1207, 1209, 1221, 1224, 1225,
1234, 1246, 1247, 1293, 1294, 1325, 1329, 1331, 1332, 1349)
rfc1060 Assinged numbers, march 1990 doesn't have http.
part of the (port) assigned numbers from 1060
61 NI-MAIL NI MAIL [5,SK8]
63 VIA-FTP VIA Systems - FTP [DXD]
65 TACACS-DS TACACS-Database Service [3,KH43]
67 BOOTPS Bootstrap Protocol Server [36,WJC2]
68 BOOTPC Bootstrap Protocol Client [36,WJC2]
69 TFTP Trivial File Transfer [126,DDC1]
71 NETRJS-1 Remote Job Service [10,RTB3]
72 NETRJS-2 Remote Job Service [10,RTB3]
73 NETRJS-3 Remote Job Service [10,RTB3]
74 NETRJS-4 Remote Job Service [10,RTB3]
75 any private dial out service [JBP]
77 any private RJE service [JBP]
79 FINGER Finger [52,KLH]
81 HOSTS2-NS HOSTS2 Name Server [EAK1]
83 MIT-ML-DEV MIT ML Device [DPR]
85 MIT-ML-DEV MIT ML Device [DPR]
87 any private terminal link [JBP]
89 SU-MIT-TG SU/MIT Telnet Gateway [MRC]
91 MIT-DOV MIT Dover Spooler [EBM]
93 DCP Device Control Protocol [DT15]
95 SUPDUP SUPDUP [27,MRC]
97 SWIFT-RVF Swift Remote Vitural File Protocol [MXR]
98 TACNEWS TAC News [ANM2]
99 METAGRAM Metagram Relay [GEOF]
... snip ...
rfc1340 replaced rfc1060, july 1992 and has http
summary for rfc 1340:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcidx4.htm#1340
1340 -
ASSIGNED NUMBERS, Postel J., Reynolds J., 1992/07/10 (139pp)
(.txt=232974) (Obsoleted by 1700) (Obsoletes 1060) (Ref'ed By 1334,
1356, 1374, 1377, 1378, 1390, 1392, 1393, 1408, 1409, 1413, 1414, 1416,
1428, 1480, 1490, 1492, 1521, 1522, 1531, 1532, 1533, 1541, 1542, 1545,
1548, 1552, 1561, 1570, 1572, 1576, 1577, 1583, 1584, 1590, 1591, 1594,
1602, 1613, 1638, 1639, 1661, 1662, 1692, 2067)
part of the (port) assigned number range from 1340 (astericks are new):
• gopher 70/tcp Gopher [MXC1] • gopher 70/udp Gopher [MXC1] netrjs-1 71/tcp Remote Job Service [10,RTB3] netrjs-1 71/udp Remote Job Service [10,RTB3] netrjs-2 72/tcp Remote Job Service [10,RTB3] netrjs-2 72/udp Remote Job Service [10,RTB3] netrjs-3 73/tcp Remote Job Service [10,RTB3] netrjs-3 73/udp Remote Job Service [10,RTB3] netrjs-4 74/tcp Remote Job Service [10,RTB3] netrjs-4 74/udp Remote Job Service [10,RTB3] 75/tcp any private dial out service [JBP] 75/udp any private dial out service [JBP] 76/tcp Unassigned [JBP] 76/udp Unassigned [JBP] 77/tcp any private RJE service [JBP] 77/udp any private RJE service [JBP] • vettcp 78/tcp vettcp [CXL1] • vettcp 78/udp vettcp [CXL1] finger 79/tcp Finger [52,KLH] finger 79/udp Finger [52,KLH] • www 80/tcp World Wide Web HTTP [TXL] • www 80/udp World Wide Web HTTP [TXL] hosts2-ns 81/tcp HOSTS2 Name Server [EAK1] hosts2-ns 81/udp HOSTS2 Name Server [EAK1] • xfer 82/tcp XFER Utility [TXS2] • xfer 82/udp XFER Utility [TXS2] mit-ml-dev 83/tcp MIT ML Device [DXR3] mit-ml-dev 83/udp MIT ML Device [DXR3] • ctf 84/tcp Common Trace Facility [HXT] • ctf 84/udp Common Trace Facility [HXT] mit-ml-dev 85/tcp MIT ML Device [DXR3] mit-ml-dev 85/udp MIT ML Device [DXR3] • mfcobol 86/tcp Micro Focus Cobol [SXE] • mfcobol 86/udp Micro Focus Cobol [SXE] 87/tcp any private terminal link [JBP] 87/udp any private terminal link [JBP] • kerberos 88/tcp Kerberos [BCN] • kerberos 88/udp Kerberos [BCN] su-mit-tg 89/tcp SU/MIT Telnet Gateway [MRC] su-mit-tg 89/udp SU/MIT Telnet Gateway [MRC] • dnsix 90/tcp DNSIX Securit Attribute Token Map [CXW1] • dnsix 90/udp DNSIX Securit Attribute Token Map [CXW1] mit-dov 91/tcp MIT Dover Spooler [EBM] mit-dov 91/udp MIT Dover Spooler [EBM] • npp 92/tcp Network Printing Protocol [LXM] • npp 92/udp Network Printing Protocol [LXM] dcp 93/tcp Device Control Protocol [DT15] dcp 93/udp Device Control Protocol [DT15] • objcall 94/tcp Tivoli Object Dispatcher [TXB1] • objcall 94/udp Tivoli Object Dispatcher [TXB1] supdup 95/tcp SUPDUP [27,MRC] supdup 95/udp SUPDUP [27,MRC] • dixie 96/tcp DIXIE Protocol Specification [TXH1] • dixie 96/udp DIXIE Protocol Specification [TXH1] swift-rvf 97/tcp Swift Remote Vitural File Protocol [MXR] swift-rvf 97/udp Swift Remote Vitural File Protocol [MXR] tacnews 98/tcp TAC News [ANM2] tacnews 98/udp TAC News [ANM2] metagram 99/tcp Metagram Relay [GEOF] metagram 99/udp Metagram Relay [GEOF]... snip ...
for some drift ... slac/vm system had the first webserver outside
europe:
https://ahro.slac.stanford.edu/wwwslac-exhibit
recent posts mentioning webserver at slac/vm system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#65 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#15 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#47 System z10 announcement (in English)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#100 OS X Finder windows vs terminal window weirdness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#86 CLIs and GUIs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#88 CLIs and GUIs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#59 CHROME and WEB apps on Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#64 CHROME and WEB apps on Mainframe?
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: How did http get a port number as low as 80? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2008 09:23:28 -0400James Harris <james.harris.1@googlemail.com> writes:
trivia drift ....
we had been called in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server and they had this technology they had invented called SSL they wanted to use ... the result is now frequently referred to as "electronic commerce". During the period we were working with them, they changed their name.
trivia question, who had the rights to their new name and let them have it????
part of the payment effort was this thing called "payment gateway" ...
misc. past references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway
the two people responsible for the "commerce server" ... we had
previously worked with when we were doing our ha/cmp product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
they were at this meeting held in jan92 ... mentioned in
this past post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
and later left to join this new client/server startup.
misc. past posts w/trivia reference about their new name:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#37 pop secure connection
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005e.html#51 TLS-certificates and interoperability-issues sendmail/Exchange/postfix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#0 More Phishing scams, still no SSL being used
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#7 Improving Authentication on the Internet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#4 private key encryption - doubts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#1 The Worth of Verisign's Brand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#2 The Worth of Verisign's Brand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#9 Which certification authority to use
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: How did http get a port number as low as 80? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2008 09:34:00 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
and SSL/443 didn't show up in rfc 1340 (Oct92), but did show up in rfc
1700 (Oct94).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcidx5.htm#1700
1700 -H
ASSIGNED NUMBERS, Postel J., Reynolds J., 1994/10/20 (230pp)
(.txt=458860) (Obsoleted by 3232) (Obsoletes 1340) (Refs 652, 653, 654,
655, 656, 657, 658, 698, 726, 727, 734, 735, 736, 741, 749, 768, 779,
791, 792, 793, 821, 822, 823, 826, 856, 857, 858, 859, 860, 861, 869,
877, 878, 885, 888, 894, 895, 903, 905, 908, 926, 927, 930, 933, 938,
946, 950, 951, 952, 969, 1005, 1028, 1034, 1035, 1036, 1041, 1042,
1043, 1045, 1053, 1072, 1073, 1075, 1079, 1091, 1095, 1096, 1108, 1112,
1119, 1146, 1155, 1157, 1183, 1184, 1190, 1191, 1213, 1229, 1230, 1231,
1239, 1241, 1243, 1253, 1256, 1271, 1274, 1284, 1285, 1286, 1293, 1304,
1314, 1315, 1323, 1327, 1345, 1348, 1349, 1353, 1356, 1357, 1358, 1372,
1377, 1378, 1381, 1382, 1389, 1393, 1406, 1407, 1408, 1409, 1414, 1421,
1422, 1423, 1428, 1455, 1456, 1461, 1468, 1471, 1472, 1473, 1474, 1475,
1485, 1486, 1489, 1494, 1505, 1514, 1515, 1516, 1518, 1519, 1521, 1531,
1533, 1554, 1556, 1557, 1559, 1565, 1566, 1567, 1568, 1572, 1573, 1583,
1584, 1585, 1586, 1587, 1595, 1596, 1598, 1611, 1628, 1639, 1641, 1642,
1647, 1650, 1651, 1652, 1653, 1657, 1658, 1659, 1660, 1661, 1662, 1664,
1665, 1693, 1694, 1695, 1696, 1697) (Ref'ed By 1717, 1729, 1763, 1788,
1812, 1819, 1826, 1827, 1828, 1829, 1831, 1841, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1866,
1883, 1889, 1922, 1940, 1945, 1962, 1968, 1970, 1983, 1987, 1990, 1994,
2002, 2023, 2042, 2043, 2049, 2052, 2053, 2058, 2059, 2064, 2066, 2068,
2074, 2097, 2107, 2122, 2124, 2130, 2131, 2132, 2138, 2139, 2153, 2175,
2178, 2181, 2189, 2201, 2219, 2222, 2225, 2278, 2283, 2284, 2297, 2328,
2332, 2334, 2335, 2341, 2360, 2365, 2390, 2391, 2393, 2402, 2406, 2408,
2427, 2428, 2434, 2443, 2460, 2461, 2472, 2473, 2484, 2507, 2516, 2521,
2522, 2548, 2564, 2577, 2590, 2616, 2637, 2641, 2642, 2643, 2661, 2663,
2694, 2707, 2720, 2723, 2730, 2740, 2741, 2776, 2782, 2784, 2834, 2835,
2841, 2858, 2865, 2866, 2868, 2869, 2877, 2878, 2888, 2895, 2896, 2909,
2922, 2924, 2960, 2978, 3010, 3017, 3021, 3022, 3025, 3036, 3077, 3095,
3115, 3122, 3147, 3173, 3208, 3220, 3309, 3330, 3344, 3359, 3406, 3422,
3518, 3530, 3588, 3611, 3775, 3805, 4064, 4213, 4302, 4678, 4728, 4746,
4861, 4985, 5226, 5251, 5281)
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2008 11:56:19 -0400sidd <sidd@situ.com> writes:
it isn't like the problems with toxic CDOs have been understood for going on two decades ... they had been used two decades ago in the S&L crisis to obfuscate the underlying values and unload them.
oft referenced, long-winded, decade old post discussing many of
the current problems including obfusication/visibility with
CDO-like instruments
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
current claims are that Wells is about the only major financial institution that didn't get heavily into subprime mortgages and/or heavily leveraged into triple-A rated toxic CDOs (and hasn't had significant write downs/losses in toxic CDOs)
being able to get triple-A rating on toxic CDOs allowed unregulated mortgage originators to fuel the speculation boom in the home owner market ... creating the (still deflating) huge, ugly pimple/boil in home prices (which also resulted in the significant overbuilding and current over supply that has to be drawn down ... and may deflate home owner market greater than just erasing the ugly speculation pimple/boil).
it was also getting triple-A rating on toxic CDOs that is involved in the enormous leveraging that has resulted in much of the losses and write-downs on the institutional side of the whole toxic CDO credit crisis mess.
misc. past posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#91 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#92 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#95 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#96 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#99 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#3 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#12 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#14 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#19 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#24 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#25 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#33 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#42 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#88 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#94 Blinkylights
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2008 13:53:20 -0400sidd <sidd@situ.com> writes:
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#94 Blinkylights
so besides the analogy of job requirement being a convicted arsonist for the new fire dept ... the other possible is full employment for the 1000 executives that supposedly are responsible for 80percent of the current mess.
references to business school article from last spring that claimed
possibly 1000 executives are responsible for 80percent of the current
mess ... and that it would go a long way to correcting the problems if
the gov. could figure out how they could loose their jobs.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#28 As Expected, Ford Falls From 2nd Place in U.S. Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#32 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#36 Lehman sees banks, others writing down $400 bln
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#44 Fixing finance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#52 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#66 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#89 Credit Crisis Timeline
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#4 A Merit based system of reward -Does anybody (or any executive) really want to be judged on merit?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#67 Do you have other examples of how people evade taking resp. for risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#37 Success has many fathers, but failure has the US taxpayer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#65 Whether, in our financial crisis, the prize for being the biggest liar is
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#69 Another quiet week in finance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#74 Why can't we analyze the risks involved in mortgage-backed securities?
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Wachovia Bank web site Newsgroups: microsoft.public.security Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:52:47 -0400metspitzer <metspitzer@gmail.com> writes:
and is now frequently called "electronic commerce".
Part of that effort was specifying part of the end-to-end of how SSL would be used and also doing detailed audits of some of these new things calling themselves certification authorities.
part of SSL was countermeasure to some perceived weaknesses in the domain name infrastructure ... which would provide that the server that the person thought they were talking to, was in fact, the web server they were talking to. this required that the person understand the relationship between the webserver they thought they were talking to and the corresponding URL. The browser SSL implementation then verified the relationship between the URL (used by the browser) and the corresponding server.
Almost immediately, majority of the deployed servers discovered that the use of SSL cut their thruput by 85-95 percent ... and so most of them dropped back to only using SSL for checkout/payment portion of the "electronic commerce" experience. Consumers were conditioned to clicking on a button (in a non-SSL page) which provided the URL to the browser. The browser then would (simply) confirm that the server that the server claimed to be, was the server that it was (as opposed to the server that the person thought they were talking to, was the server they were talking to) ... aka it would take a really dumb fraudulent server to obtain a SSL certificate that didn't correspond to the server URL it was using.
This conditioning to accept "click button" URLs, has significantly contributed to current epidemic of phishing and identity theft.
for a little more topic drift, misc. past posts mentioning SSL
domain name certification
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcerts
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:27:18 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
'Hope for Homeowners' Program Offers Faster Relief than Wall Street
Bailout; Rescue plan gives Uncle Sam an equity stake in troubled
mortgages
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/10/bailout12.html
from above (bailing out main street rather than wall street?):
Section 1402, effective Oct. 1, 2008, allows troubled mortgage holders
to avoid foreclosure by refinancing into smaller, more affordable,
Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-backed mortgages, provided they
give Uncle Sam a piece of the equity-growth action and provided the
lender voluntarily agrees to the deal by writing down loan balances.
... snip ...
other URLs from above:
Text of H.R. 3221: Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-3221
Sample Loan Modification Request:
http://www.cmpsinstitute.org/pdf/SampleLoanModificationRequest.pdf
Sharing The American Dream
http://deadlinenewsroom.blogspot.com/2008/07/sharing-american-dream.html
Home Equity Share
http://www.homeequityshare.com/
Foreclosure Prevention Efforts Grow
http://deadlinenewsroom.blogspot.com/2008/05/foreclosure-prevention-efforts-grow.html
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Houses Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2008 16:01:05 -0400kkt <kkt@zipcon.net> writes:
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2008 16:15:13 -0400jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
'Hope for Homeowners' Program Offers Faster Relief than Wall Street
Bailout; Rescue plan gives Uncle Sam an equity stake in troubled
mortgages
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/10/bailout12.html
Signed into law last July, provides $300B for refinancing mortgages into smaller, more affordable FHA-backed mortgages.
CSPAN this morning had guest talking about the "wall street bailout" legislation. Supposedly, financial industry had given congressional campaigns something like $250M during the session that repealed Glass-Steagall; during this current session, the financial industry has made something like $2B(?) in contributions to congressional compaigns and that those voting for the current bill received something like 45percent more than those voting against the current bill (although there was some disclaimer about not being sure what was cause and what was effect).
misc. past posts mentioning PBS program on repeal of Glass-Steagall:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#13 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#46 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#71 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#97 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#2 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#51 IBM CEO's remuneration last year ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#66 independent appraisers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#89 Credit Crisis Timeline
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#36 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#41 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#67 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#70 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#16 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#53 Your thoughts on the following comprehensive bailout plan please
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#78 Isn't it the Federal Reserve role to oversee the banking system??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#82 Fraud in financial institution
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Wachovia Bank web site Newsgroups: microsoft.public.security Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:19:44 -0400re:
i.e. SSL was to provide both
1) is the website you think you are talking to really the web site you are talking to (countermeasures to some perceived weaknesses in domain name infrastructure and various kind of hijacking/impersonation vulnerabilities)
and
2) hiding/encrypting information (countermeasure to various kinds of evesdropping vulnerabilities)
#1 required that the user understands the relationship between the website they believe they are talking to, and the corresponding URL ... since the only thing that the browser SSL implementation did is to verify that the provided domain name verified by all the SSL magic matched the domain name in the URL. In numerous of the current uses ... rather than the user providing the actual URL ... the server is providing the actual URL (and corresponding domain name) ... frequently in various obfuscated ways that the user may not even be aware of.
Phishers, scamming, as well as various kinds of man-in-the-middle attacks have been able to take advantage of this increasing disconnect ... where there may be a perfectly valid SSL operation performed ... and the information has been guaranteed to be encrypted during transmission ... but the user may never actually see the URL verified by the SSL operation (and so doesn't actually know where the information is going to).
if you look at the raw page source .... it turns out that there is a
https URL used to transmit the information
<form method="post" action="https://onlineservices.wachovia.com/auth/AuthService" name="uidAuthForm" id="uidAuthForm" onsubmit="return submitLogin(this)">
but there are few users in the world that know enough to understand what
is going on.
There have been lots of studies that show that such tricks by reputable instituations, condition normal users to be tolerant of similar implementation tricks by bogus websites i.e. rather than simple straight-forward black/white ... there is a lot of gray and complexity introduced, which majority of users aren't going to understand (and crooks/attackers can take advantage of)
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Blinkylights Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2008 18:24:27 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#28 Blinkylights
A Wikipedia Conspiracy and the Wall Street Meltdown
http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/10/05/201205.shtml
The Register Exposes More Wikipedia Abuse
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/12/07/1434221.shtml?tid=153
URL/references in the above:
Secret Mailing List Rocks Wikipedia
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/12/04/0333252.shtml?tid=267
and
Emails show journalist rigged Wikipedia's naked shorts; Overstock's
Byrne vindicated amidst economic meltdown
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/01/wikipedia_and_naked_shorting
URL/references in the above:
SEC Enhances Investor Protections Against Naked Short Selling
http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2008/2008-143.htm
Wikipedia black helicopters circle Utah's Traverse Mountain; SlimVirgin,
naked short selling, and the end of Web 2.0
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/06/wikipedia_and_overstock/
and
Naked In Wonderland
http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/09/23/naked-shorting-trades-oped-cx_pb_0923byrne.html
from above:
His research turned up at least 200 companies that were destroyed, for
"a combined market loss of more than $105 billion." Shapiro added, "we
believe that this type of stock manipulation has occurred in many
hundreds and perhaps thousands of cases over the last
decade. ... Illicit short-sales on such a scale or anything approaching
it point to grave inadequacies in the current regulatory regime."
... snip ...
misc. other recent posts mentioning illegal "naked short selling":
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#1 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#4 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#9 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#25 IBM's 2Q2008 Earnings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#31 SEC bans illegal activity then permits it
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#44 SEC bans illegal activity then permits it
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#23 Michigan industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#25 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#31 Blinkylights
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70