From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: How did the monitor work under TOPS? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 11:15:06 -0400Chris Barts <chbarts+usenet@gmail.com> writes:
in the port of apl\360 to cms\apl, workspaces was allowed to be as large as virtual address space ... and providing mechanism for invoking traditional operating system functions ... like file i/o. this significantly increased the class of problems that could be implemented with in cms\apl.
i've mentioned before this created early security issue for the science center. science center ran their cp67/cms as timesharing service ... including allowing students & other non-employees in the boston area to have access. however, some of the business planning people in armonk corporate hdqtrs ... started using the cambridge system for business modeling using cms\apl ... that involved the most precious of corporate data (detailed customer information) to be loaded on the cambridge system.
another issue was that the access to (cms) system facilities opened something of a rift in the apl community ... the implementation having violated the purity of apl. this wasn't resolved until apl "shared variables" were introduced (to replace the cms\apl implementation).
in this perioid, (cms\) apl started being used for lots of things that were later implemented in spreadsheet technology.
another big use of (cms\) apl was the internal HONE system ... lots of
past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone
(CP67) HONE had started out after the 23Jun69 unbundling announcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle
(which was reaction to various litigation; starting to charge for software and other things), as a SE training tool i.e. HONE (Hands-On Network Environment) ... for technical training/practice of new SEs. previously much of new SE training was sort of apprentice-like as part of a team on-site at the customer. With the unbundling announcement ... all time at the customer had to be charged for (and couldn't figure out mechanism to charge for apprentice activity).
Very quickly, HONE also started being used to deploy a lot of sales & marketing support applications ... mostly implemented in (CMS\)APL. It wasn't too long before the use of HONE for running other operating systems in virtual machine disappeared ... and HONE purely became an online timesharing system providing sales & marketing support (mostly cms\apl) application. HONE then migrated from cp67 to vm370 ... and HONE systems were cloned/replicated all over the world.
For much of the period, I provided highly modified CP67 ... and then VM370 systems .... to HONE (as well as to many other internal installations) ... which got me various world-wide trips as part of the initial (HONE) cloning period.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Architectural Diversity Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2009 13:57:31 -0400Andrew Swallow <am.swallow@btinternet.com> writes:
this approach created some amount of difficulty for the typical pc user ... who was used to exceptions being bumped up to human processing (as opposed to end user having to acquire huge amount of expertise regarding the wide variety of automated exception handling).
while the mainframe "batch" side ... with little end-user friendly characteristics ... it tended to be relied on to get critical operations performed every time (one of the major financial transaction infrastructures has attributed 100% availability over extended number of yrs to 1) automated operator (little or no chance for human mistakes) and 2) IMS hot-standby
recently saw a bumper sticker take-off on one of the delivery company's logo "when it positively, absolutely has to be delivered overnight" ... except it was "when it positively, absolutely has to be destroyed overnight".
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: CEO pay sinks - Wall Street Journal/Hay Group survey results just released Date: Apr 05, 2009 Blog: Greater IBM Connectionre:
there was article a year ago that the ratio of avg executive compensation to avg employee compensation had exploded to a ratio of 400:1 after having been 20:1 for a long time (and 10:1 in most of the rest of the world).
in the congressional Madoff hearings, the person trying to get SEC for a decade to do something about Madoff was not very complimentary towards the SEC.
ENRON has been put at the door of congress passing the Commodities Futures Modernization act (that exempted over-the-counter derivatives from regulation). In the wake of ENRON, congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley putting big part of responsibility on SEC ... but didn't do anything about the underlying problem ... resulting in AIG.
Possibly because GAO didn't think SEC was doing anything, it started
doing a database of financial filings of public companies (problems
increased something like 300% in period after SOX was passed)
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-06-1079sp
from above:
The database consists of two files: (1) a file that lists 1,390
restatement announcements that we identified as having been made
because of financial reporting fraud and/or accounting errors between
July 1, 2002, and September 30, 2005, and (2) a file that lists 396
restatement announcements that we identified as having been made
because of financial reporting fraud and/or accounting errors between
October 1, 2005, and June 30, 2006.
... snip ...
executives fiddle financial statements in order to boost compensation ... later the filings may be restated, but the extra is not forfeited.
Last fall there was a study published of something like 270 companies that had significantly redone their executive compensation plan (after having problems) ... as part of eliminating the executive motivation to fiddle financial statements.
and another article
What happened to the global economy and what we can do about it Two
Things That Have Nothing To Do with Each Other (2008 CEO compensation
and total return):
http://baselinescenario.com/2009/04/05/two-things-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-each-other/
misc. past references mentioning the above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#73 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#12 Amid Economic Turbulence, Mainframes Counter IT Cost-Cutting Trend
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#25 The recently revealed excesses of John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, while the firm was receiving $25 Billion in TARP funds makes me sick
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#36 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#48 The blame game is on : A blow to the Audit/Accounting Industry or a lesson learned ???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#49 US disaster, debts and bad financial management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#52 What has the Global Financial Crisis taught the Nations, it's Governments and Decision Makers, and how should they apply that knowledge to manage risks differently in the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#53 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#54 In your opinion, which facts caused the global crise situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#73 What can we learn from the meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#80 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#0 Audit II: Two more scary words: Sarbanes-Oxley
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#20 Decision Making or Instinctive Steering?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#29 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#0 PNC Financial to pay CEO $3 million stock bonus
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#3 Congress Set to Approve Pay Cap of $500,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#37 NEW SEC (Enforcement) MANUAL, A welcome addition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#42 Bernard Madoff Is Jailed After Pleading Guilty -- are there more "Madoff's" out there?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#61 Quiz: Evaluate your level of Spreadsheet risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#63 Do bonuses foster unethical conduct?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#36 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#37 How do you see ethics playing a role in your organizations current or past?
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Cybersecurity hearing highlights inadequacy of PCI DSS Date: Apr 05, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityCybersecurity hearing highlights inadequacy of PCI DSS
from above:
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is
ineffective and major payment processing infrastructure improvements
are needed to secure credit and debit card transactions, lawmakers
said Tuesday
... snip ...
related article ....
Congress Presses Credit Card Companies on PCI Failures; House
subcommittee hearing highlights rift between retailers, credit card
firms over PCI
http://www.darkreading.com/security/government/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=216402346
from above:
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chair of the Homeland Security
Committee, said he was concerned that credit card companies were
trying to "shift risk" of fraud and the associated costs to the
retailers rather than truly improving their "product and procedures."
"The payment card industry's effort to shift risk appears to have
contributed to our current state of insecurity, and I am concerned
that as long as the card industry is writing the standards, we will
never see a more secure system," Thompson said.
... snip ...
another article
PCI security standard gets ripped at House hearing; Payment card
industry's data security rules aren't working, critics say; Visa, PCI
council continue to defend standard
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9130901&intsrc=news_ts_head
and one more
Visa, MasterCard In Security Hot Seat; Following massive breaches,
Congress grills credit card companies.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/31/visa-mastercard-security-technology-security-visa.html?partner=alerts
some recent posts mentioning using various metaphors to characterize the
existing paradigm's vulnerabilities (in contrast to x9.59 financial standard
transaction protocol):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#60 The 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#13 US credit card payment house breaches by sniffing malware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#15 It's Me, and Here's My Proof: Why Identity and Authentication Must Remain Distinct
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#62 Study: Data breaches continue to get more costly for businesses
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#63 Study: Data breaches continue to get more costly for businesses
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#6 Heartland Data Breach Update: Now More Than 150 Institutions Impacted
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#69 PCI Compliance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#72 Why Are CC Numbers Still So Easy To Find?
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Obscene exec pay packets for poor performance or outright failure. Is it acceptable? Is regulation the answer. What are the issues? What are the practical alternatives? Date: Apr 05, 2009 Blog: Organizational Developmentfrom baselinescenario.com website
What happened to the global economy and what we can do about it; Two
Things That Have Nothing To Do with Each Other (2008 CEO compensation
and total return):
http://baselinescenario.com/2009/04/05/two-things-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-each-other/
then there is their article
The Quiet Coup
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice
from above:
But there's a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business
interests -- financiers, in the case of the U.S. -- played a central
role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the
implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable
collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent
precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the
economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or
unwilling, to act against them.
... snip ...
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Operating Systems and I/O Driven Scheduling Date: Apr 06, 2009 Blog: Computers and SoftwareI had done dynamic adaptive resource management as undergraduate back in the 60s ... this was when software was still free ... before the 23jun69 unbundling announcement that started charging for software (in large part response to gov. litigation). community started calling it "fair share" scheduling because the default resource policy was "fair share". Part of the work was "scheduling to the bottleneck" ... attempting to identify major system thruput bottleneck and biasing the resource decisions towards resource consumption of major bottlenecks (memory, cpu, i/o). this was shipped in some number of products.
note that 23jun69 unbundling announcement started out with just application software being charged for ... they were successfully able to make the case that operating system should still remain free. that remained the case for nearly a decade ... when there was a transition to also starting to charge for operating system software (one of my resource manager offerings was selected as guinea pig for separately priced operating system component).
It started out being fully pre-emptive ... for those in "active" set (i.e. possible subset of tasks allowed to compete for real storage simultaneously ... as measure to control page thrashing ... back when real storage was smaller than many caches are today) ... but as processor caches became prevalent ... then I started to place some amount of limitations even on that pre-emption ... attempting to gain some execution progress & limiting cache hit problems (somewhat the equivalent to the earlier page thrashing problem)
misc. past posts mentioning fair share
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: IBM take-over of SUN Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2009 09:32:29 -0400lots of news articles for past two weeks about IBM negotiating to buy SUN ... and then appearing to fall apart over the weekend ... recent post on the subject (also mentions long-ago and far-away meeting at PASC where people that would go on to found SUN ... were trying to talk IBM into producing it as a product):
Hopefully the IBM acquisition of Sequent wouldn't predict what might
happen to SUN (some conjecture that might have been associated with
IBM's acquisition of Informix RDBMS ... since Sequent was major platform
for Informix customers). misc. recent posts mentioning Sequent &/or
Informix:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#5 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#8 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#39 "Larrabee" GPU design question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#12 Assembler Question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#21 IBM tried to kill VM?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#30 I need magic incantation for a power conditioner
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#7 IBM in Talks to Buy Sun
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#22 Payment downtime threatens online retailers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#27 Microminiaturized Modules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#36 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#37 How do you see ethics playing a role in your organizations current or past?
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: An interesting take on Verified by Visa Policy Date: Apr 06, 2009 Blog: Payment Systems Networkre:
after having done this thing, frequently now called "electronic
commerce", we were also asked to participate in the x9a10 financial
standard working group (in addition to the SET stuff which was going
on concurrently). The x9a10 financial standard working group had been
given the reguirement to preserve the integrity of the financial
infrastructure for ALL retail payments (this was ALL, like in
debit, credit, ACH, stored-value, POS, internet, attended,
non-attended, etc ... aka ALL). part of this effort included doing
detailed, end-to-end threat and vulnerabilities studies of the various
environments & methods. the result was the x9.59 financial
transaction standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
part of the x9.59 financial transaction standard was being able to make it light-weight enuf that it could work within the power & time constraints of a contactless, transit turnstyle ... and still have the strength & integrity to be used for the highest value online banking, internet, and POS transactions.
some of the current environment is result of some problem deployments at the start of this decade/century; one was for POS and a different one for home/internet.
There was a good sized pilot POS chipcard/hardware-token deployment in
the US, but it happened to have yes card vulnerability
... which might account for its disappearance with hardly a
trace. this has reference to yes card vulnerability
presentation at Cartes 2002
https://web.archive.org/web/20030417083810/http://www.smartcard.co.uk/resources/articles/cartes2002.html
misc. archived posts in various yes card threads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard
About the same time, there was a home/internet chipcard/hardware-token deployment. This also has appeared to have disappeared w/o a trace. The issue here was the "free" give-away of the chipcard readers. In the mid-90s there were several presentations about justifying moving the dialup, proprietary online banking to the internet (in part) based on the significant customer support problems related to "serial-port" device. One of the big justifications for development of USB was the significant consumer support problems with "serial-port" devices. Hardly five years later, all that institutional knowledge appeared to have evaporated ... a load of "serial-port" cardreaders were picked up (possibly at firesale prices specifially because they were serial-port) for free give-away. The resulting disastrous consumer support problems resulted in rapdily spreading institutional rumor that smartcards weren't practical in the consumer market ... which not only brought to a halt that specific effort ... but numerous other home chipcard activities (even tho the actual problem wasn't with chipcards, but use of serial-port devices).
some of this is discussed in a kansas city fed paper from
last fall:
http://www.kansascityfed.org/Publicat/ECONREV/PDF/3q08Sullivan.pdf
and these archived posts from related threads:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#7 Dealing with the neew MA ID protection law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#10 Strings story
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#11 Can Smart Cards Reduce Payments Fraud and Identity Theft?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#20 Donald Knuth stops paying for errata
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#21 Would you say high tech authentication gizmo's are a waste of time/money/effort?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#23 Your views on the increase in phishing crimes such as the recent problem French president Sarkozy faces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#38 How do group members think the US payments business will evolve over the next 3 years?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#55 Can Smart Cards Reduce Payments Fraud and Identity Theft?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#67 Web Security hasn't moved since 1995
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#69 ATM PIN through phone or Internet. Is it secure? Is it allowed by PCI-DSS?, Visa, MC, etc.?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#72 Alternative credit card network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#74 2008 Data Breaches: 30 Million and Counting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#75 Alternative credit card network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#76 Multi-Factor Authentication - Moving Beyond Passwords for Security of Online Transactions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#83 Residual Risk Methodology for Single Factor Authentication
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#3 GPG
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#2 Payment Card + Digital Signature
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#69 Double authentification for internet payment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#41 Return of the Smart Card?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#75 The Future Shape of Payments Is Anything But Flat
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Revolution Money raises $42m Date: Apr 07, 2009 Blog: Payment Systems NetworkRevolution Money raises $42m
from above:
Revolution Money, an online interchange-free payments platform, has
raised $42 million in funding from a group including a Goldman Sachs
affiliate
... snip ...
another item
Internet Pioneer Case Promotes RevolutionCard to Audience of Bankers
http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=2134
from above:
Case cited what he sees as the card's superior security against fraud
compared to other credit cards and its potential popularity with
consumers, who he said stand to reap instant, tangible rewards for
usage. Unlike other credit cards, the RevolutionCard bears no
identifying information or account numbers, and transactions are
authenticated by a cardholder PIN.
... snip ...
slightly related x-over thread in this post in linkedin "First Data
Networking"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#75
commenting on this American Banker article:
http://www.firstdata.com/pdf/AmericanBanker2.24.09.pdf
which also mentions RevolutionCard
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Time zones Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 09:29:44 -0400jmfbahciv <jmfbahciv@aol> writes:
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet RFCs Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:06:01 -0400Happy 40th Birthday, Internet RFCs
from rfc index
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm
select "Date" in RFCs listed by section
and go to the bottom of the page ...
1969/04
6 3 2 1
1969/03
4
1969/01
32
1968/02
31
...
clicking on the RFC number brings up that RFC summary in the lower
frame. for whatever reason, RFC "31" is listed as Feb1968:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcidx0.htm#31
31
Binary message forms in computer, Bobrow D., Sutherland W.,
1968/02/01 (6pp) (.txt=10925)
...
while:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcidx0.htm#1
1
Host software, Crocker S., 1969/04/07 (7pp) (.txt=21088)
...
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Unfair taxes Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,humanities.classics Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:21:18 -0400CBFalconer <cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes:
operations by one of the big gaming corporations. original plan was week of testing before going live 7x24 ... but they decided to open for business after first 24hrs (lots of crossed fingers).
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: School traditions Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,humanities.classics Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:29:25 -0400Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> writes:
gov. lotteries have claimed as little as 60-70% payout (of amount collected) AND that payout has personal taxes (in effect they can take 30-40% of the money coming in ... and then again as taxes on the money paid out).
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: System/360 Announcement (7apr64) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:45:13 -0400System/360 Announcement
I also recently got an inquiry regarding early virtual machines
... a few recent extracts from Melinda's history document
https://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda#VMHist
Creasy had decided to build CP-40 while riding on the MTA. 'I launched
the effort between Xmas 1964 and year's end, after making the decision
while on an MTA bus from Arlington to Cambridge. It was a Tuesday, I
believe.' (R.J. Creasy, private communication, 1989.)
CP-40 would be far more modular than CTSS, in that it would be divided
into two independent components. In the words of Bob Creasy: A key
concept of the CP/CMS design was the bifurcation of computer resource
management and user support. In effect, the integrated design was
split into CP and CMS. CP solved the problem of multiple use by
providing separate computing environments at the machine instruction
level for each user. CMS then provided single user service
unencumbered by the problems of sharing, allocation, and protection.
As the weeks went by and the real power of the virtual machine
concept unfolded before them, their excitement grew. In discussing the
decision to create exact replicas of real machines, Les Comeau has
written, 'It seems now that the decision to provide a Control Program
interface that duplicated the System/360 architecture interface was an
obvious choice. Although it was, given our measurement objective, it
wasn't, given our in-house interactive system objective.'
... snip ...
misc. past posts mentioning science center, 4th flr, 545 tech. sq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: SSL: Broken Even More Date: Apr 07, 2009 Blog: Payment Systems NetworkSSL: Broken Even More
from above:
Lately, security conferences have been bad news for SSL. At this
year's Black Hat, independent security guru Moxie Marlinspike
explained how he was able to completely bypass SSL security
... snip ...
The article from today shows an MITM attack on Internet Banking
... basically the MITM acts similar to a proxy ... passing all the
user's (real) input to the (real) website ... and forwarding all the
(real) website information back to the (real) user. misc. posts
mentioning MITM-attacks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#mitm
In some ways a MITM-attack proxy is actually easier than attempting to phish using a fradulent website (it doesn't require the attacker to try and emulate all the webpages of the real internet banking site ... since it is actually using all the information directly from the real internet banking site).
some recent posts referring to such MITM attack (on internet banking):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#35 Perfect MITM Attacks With No-Check SSL Certs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#60 SSLstrip hacking tool bypasses SSL to trick users, steal passwords
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#64 An interesting take on Verified by Visa Policy
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: System/360 Announcement (7Apr64) Date: Apr 08, 2009 Blog: Greater IBM Connectionre:
I got to play with cp67 at the univ as undergraduate starting in Jan68. Because of some of the work I had done, a year later I was talked into teaching a 1week (40hr) class during spring break to the BCS technical staff (even tho the current Boeing website says BCS wasn't actually formed until the following year). Then I was hired as fulltime BCS employee for the summer '69. I got tour of 747 mock-up and some number of visits to Renton datacenter (which was being replicated up in Everett). For a long time, I thot the Renton datacenter (several hundred million in IBM mainframes, 20? some 360/65s) was the largest machine room I had ever seen (that summer, there was also a smp 360/67 transferred from Boeing Huntsville to Seattle).
Later in the early-80s I had the opportunity to sponsor John Boyd's briefings at IBM ... and John happened to mention having done some dataprocessing in SE asia circa 1970. It was much later that I read John's biography which mentioned he ran "spook base" (also mentioned that it was a $2.5B "windfall" for IBM ... which would have made "spook base" larger than renton datacenter).
misc. past posts mentioning John Boyd:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Cybersecurity hearing highlights inadequacy of PCI DSS Date: Apr 08, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Securityre:
lots of material here ....
PCI Debate: How Do We Raise the Bar on Security? Congressional Leaders
Call for Reform; Industry Experts Say Fraud is the Real Issue
http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/articles.php?art_id=1359
"Do the Payment Card Industry Data Standards Reduce Cybercrime?"
Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science and
Technology
http://homelandsecurity.house.gov/hearings/index.asp?ID=185
High-Tech Heists a Risk for Banks
http://www.toptechnews.com/news/High-Tech-Heists-a-Risk-for-Banks/story.xhtml?story_id=0200028Q7J4O
from above:
Robberies affecting U.S. banking customers go far beyond
U.S. borders. Data vulnerability is a concern, but the biggest threat
to bank data may not be within banks themselves -- it may be exposure
to hackers breaching credit and debit card processors. Hackers
sometimes get through the armor of processors, creating massive data
heists.
... snip ...
the above makes mention of both POS/card-present fraud as well as
card-not-present (& internet) fraud. various recent items on parts of
the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#28 Verifying Verified By Visa - Registration breaks chain of trust
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#29 Verifying Verified By Visa - Registration breaks chain of trust
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#30 Verifying Verified By Visa - Registration breaks chain of trust
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#31 Authentication in the e-tailer / payment gateway / customer triangle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#32 Authentication in the e-tailer / payment gateway / customer triangle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#33 Authentication in the e-tailer / payment gateway / customer triangle
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#69 Verifying Verified By Visa - Registration breaks chain of trust
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#1 PCI's Bob Russo: Data loss hurts brand more than a fine
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#64 An interesting take on Verified by Visa Policy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#7 An interesting take on Verified by Visa Policy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#14 SSL: Broken Even More
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:50:44 -0400Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers
Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9129459
past posts in above thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#29 Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#32 Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#34 Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#39 Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#55 Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind
they don't mention (large) projects that never made it out the
door. There was the whole Future System project ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
and Apple's PINK and Sun's SPRING "object-oriented" system implementations
... misc. past posts mentioning PINK &/or SPRING:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#42 IBM's Workplace OS (Was: .. Pink)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#45 IBM's Workplace OS (Was: .. Pink)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#46 Where are they now : Taligent and Pink
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#48 Where are they now : Taligent and Pink
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#32 Whom Do Programmers Admire Now???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002m.html#60 The next big things that weren't
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#45 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#28 A Speculative question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#51 A Speculative question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#53 defination of terms: "Application Server" vs. "Transaction Server"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#69 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#1 The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#46 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#22 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#24 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#3 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: System/360 Announcement (7Apr64) Date: Apr 09, 2009 Blog: Greater IBM Connectionre:
Science Center tried to get 360/50 to make the hardware modifications to support virtual memory ... but apparently so many were going to FAA ATC project ... that none were available and so they had to settle for a 360/40. They made hardware modifications to the 360/40 to support virtual memory and built (virtual machine) CP40 system using that 360/40. Later when standard virtual memory machine product (360/67) became available, theu replaced the (modified) 360/40 with 360/67 and morphed cp40/cms into cp67/cms.
The "official" operating system for the 360/67 was suppose to be TSS/360 ... so the availability of cp67 from the science center resulted in some discord between the product group and the science center.
An example of 360/67 customer is referenced here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml
I didn't learn about those customers until much later. However, as undergraduate, I would get some number of suggestions from IBM regarding (security & integrity related) enhancements ... which, in retrospect, likely originated from such customers
There were some number of big internal uptakes of cp67 (and later vm370) ... the obvious was operating system development use for testing in virtual machines. There also started to be big uptake of CMS interactive use internally ... basically personal computing befor the advent of personal computers. Most of the internal network was also mostly cp/cms based (larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until possibly late '85 or early '86).
Another big uptake of CP/CMS was the dataprocessing (sales&marketing)
division HONE system ... lots of past post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone
Prior to 23Jun69 unbundling announcement ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle
... new SEs got a lot of their training effectively as "apprentices" as part of SE team onsite at customer accounts. After the unbundling announcement, all time at the customer had to be charged for (and nobody could figure out mechanism for apprentice charging). HONE (Hands-On Network Environment) initially was some number of cp67 systems for branch SEs to gain operating system experience (via cp67 virtual machines).
The science center had also ported apl\360 for cms\apl ... recent post
discussing in some detail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#0 How did the monitor work under TOPS?
A growing number of sales&marketing applications were being implemented in cms\apl and deployed on HONE ... and very quickly those applications squeezed out the SE virtual operating system use. HONE migrated from cp67 to vm370 and HONE "clones" were setup all over the world. For instance, by the mid-70s, mainframe system orders had to be first validated/checked by HONE application.
One of my hobbies in the 70s & 80s was building highly modified cp67 (and later vm370) system product for internal datacenters ... including HONE. At some point in the 80s, an executive finally raised the question how could IBM have its world-wide sales & marketing be dependent on somebody doing it purely as a hobby.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: greenbar Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:11:25 -0400Larry__Weiss <lfw@airmail.net> writes:
for other drift ... the VMSHARE Archive webpages have a greenbar
emulated background
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/
which dates back Aug1976 when Tymshare (on of the virtual machine based
commercial online timesharing service bureaus) offering free online
computer conferencing to SHARE (IBM customer user group) organizaton
http://www.share.org/
misc. past posts mentioning virtual machine based online timesharing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare
Fairly early, I cut a deal with Tymshare to get monthly tape of all VMSHARE (and later added PCSHARE) files ... which I would make available on a number internal corporate systems.
some random 1403 URLs
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/1403.html
http://www.ibm1130.net/functional/Printers.html
and then there is this one
http://webpages.charter.net/thecomputercollection/ibm1410/ibm1410.htm
from above:
One bit of historical interest. The IBM 1410 was the system for which
the acronym SPOOL was developed. The IBM 1410 SPOOL program (SPOOL
stands for Simultaneous Peripheral Operation On Line) was used on 1410's
that had replaced IBM 1401's which were often used for card-to-tape and
tape-to-print operations, essentially acting as "front ends" for IBM's
powerful 7000 series scientific computers of the day.
... snip ...
for other topic drift ... a couple past posts mentioning (student job)
implementing "MPIO" on 360/30 ... that performed the 1401 front-end MPIO
function (unit record<->tape) for univ. 709:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#18 Magnetic tape storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#19 Magnetic tape storage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#71 IBM tried to kill VM?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#55 1401's in high schools?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#67 Architectural Diversity
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today? Date: Apr 10, 2009 Blog: Change Managementin the early 90s, there was an auto industry "C4" effort to completely remake themselves that I participated in. the responsible parties could articulate an understanding of all the issues and the required remedies.
a decade earlier in the early 80s, there was article (I believe in washington post) that stated the auto import quotas were designed as temporarily reducing competition to give the domestic auto industry time and profits to remake themselves ... instead they followed business as usual, squandering both the time & profits. the claim was as a result, the gov. should impose a 100% unearned profit tax on the industry.
so the situation has been going on for at least 30 yrs. I've had occasion to characterize the situation as majority of the individuals having vested interest in not taking corrective action, continually pushing the responsibility off to somebody else in the future. this just continues until some major disaster makes it unable for them to push it off any further.
effectively there is nearly a whole generation or two spending their lifetimes plundering the future. the recent US comptroller general that stepped down (appointed in the 90s for 15yr term) would rant about congress similarly plundering the future ... with characterization that nobody in congress for at least 50yrs has been capable of simple middle school arithmetic (with respect to appropriations, unfunded mandates, etc).
misc. past posts mentioning auto industry "C4"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#43 Reason Japanese cars are assembled in the US (was Re: American bigotry)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#51 [OT] Lockheed puts F-16 manuals online
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#49 The Pankian Metaphor (redux)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#50 Toyota's Value Innovation: The Art of Tension
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#65 Is a military model of leadership adequate to any company, as far as it based most on authority and discipline?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#50 update on old (GM) competitiveness thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#58 Mulally motors on at Ford
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#21 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#52 Are family businesses unfair competition?
more general ... there is this x-over from another:
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/management/organizational-development/MGM_ODV/451968-18284492
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#4 Obscene exec pay packets for poor performance or outright failure. Is it acceptable? Is regulation the answer. What are the issues? What are the practical alternatives?
from baselinescenario.com website
What happened to the global economy and what we can do about it; Two
Things That Have Nothing To Do with Each Other (2008 CEO compensation
and total return):
http://baselinescenario.com/2009/04/05/two-things-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-each-other/
then there is their article
The Quiet Coup
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice
from above:
But there's a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business
interests -- financiers, in the case of the U.S. -- played a central
role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the
implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable
collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent
precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the
economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or
unwilling, to act against them.
... snip ...
there is business school article from year ago that estimated approx
1000 execs 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 how they
could loose their jobs:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1933 (gone 404 and/or requires registration)
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 09:54:37 -0400Chris Barts <chbarts+usenet@gmail.com> writes:
i had done my own one-level store implementation in the period (which was deployed in my internal distributions but never shipped to customers) ... although most of what I drew from (failed) tss/360 one-level store was mostly related to what not to do.
i would somewhat ridicule future system by drawing parallels with a cult
film that had been playing down in central sq. for over a decade. at the
time, my wife reported to the head of the (future system) "interconnect"
section ... and her observation was that much of the rest of the future
system definition lacked any substance (even after the enormous amount
of money spent ... it would have been impossible to have actually created
a running system from the specification). even "spook base" $2.5B
windfall for IBM wouldn't have been enough to cover the cost. recent
mention of "spook base"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#15 System/360 Announcement (7Apr64)
the s/38 follow-on, as/400 ... as well as the 4341 follow-on ... were part
of much larger effort that was going to replace the large numbers of
different corporate microprocessors with common 801/risc (Iliad chips). This
floundered for a number of reasons and the projects reverted to cisc.
Few would claim that later success of 801/risc drew much from the
earlier, failed Iliad efforts (although after that failure, some number
of 801/risc chip engineers left the company and showed up on risc
efforts at other vendors). misc. past posts mentioning 801, iliad,
risc, romp, rios, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801
ROMP was a much smaller effort that was suppose to be used in the displaywriter follow-on. when that project was canceled, the group looked around for some other market to sell the machine into ... and decided on the unix workstation market (rebranding the machine as PC/RT). they got the company that had done the (AT&T) unix port for PC/IX to do a similar port for what was shipped as AIX on the PC/RT.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Does anyone know if there is a 'version' of CICS that IBM is planning to implement for AIX or something that does a similar function already? Date: Apr 10, 2009 Blog: Greater IBM ConnectionAT&T came out with (unix) transaction monitor called TUXEDO ... that was spun off (eventually to BEA ... which was more recently bought by Oracle).
This was back in the days when AT&T and SUN were aligning as the
"official" UNIX organization ... and other vendors wanting to be in
the UNIX market formed OSF as competing organization (putting together
implementation that wasn't tainted by AT&T code)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Software_Foundation
Before that, IBM had provided significant funding to both Project Athena at MIT and Andrew stuff at CMU. CMU did Andrew File System, MACH (unit look-alike), and Camelot (unix transaction processing). Several of these were included in parts of OSF.
The CMU group was spun-off as independent corporation (with
significant investment) as Transarc and then bought outright by IBM
(I've made semi-facetious comments about IBM having paid three times
for the work).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transarc
above mentions camelot becames Encina ("basis for IBM's UNIX-based CICS products; including IBM's TXSeries and later WebSphere").
(1999) transarc web page from way-back machine
https://web.archive.org/web/19990203093626/www.transarc.com/Corporate/index.html
above is after purchase by IBM listing Transarc as wholly owned subsidiary and discusses the CICS offerings.
for other topic drift ... when I was undergraduate in the 60s, the
univ. library got a ONR grant to do online catalog ... and the project
was also selected for beta-test of the original CICS product (it had
been developed originally at a customer site ... and was in the
process of being picked up and released as product). I got tasked to
support & debug the deployment ... I remember having to shoot some
"open" related bugs in CICS (which resulted from library using
different BDAM options, not used in the original implementation).
misc. past posts mentioning BDAM &/or CICS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bdam
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:24:12 -0400Chris Barts <chbarts+usenet@gmail.com> writes:
other downside of Future System was that the distraction (based on assumption FS was totally going to replace 360/370) resulting in the 360/370 software & hardware product pipeline to dry-up ... which, in turn is considered what allowed the 370 clone processors to gain foothold in the market.
also the morris/fergus book claims that the failure of the effort
resulted in corporate culture significantly changing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#33 IBM's "VM for the PC" c.1984??
quote from somebody's previous post out of morris/fergus book:
... and perhaps most damaging, the old culture under Watson Snr and Jr
of free and vigorous debate was replaced with sycophancy and make no
waves under Opel and Akers. It's claimed that thereafter, IBM lived in
the shadow of defeat (by the FS failure),
... 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: Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:09:23 -0400Chris Barts <chbarts+usenet@gmail.com> writes:
i think that the reference is that early os/360 releases were more akin
to prototype or test code ... also spawning brook's "mythical
man-month" ... url reference from the original article:
https://www.amazon.com/reader/0201835959#reader
part of the issue was that small real storage and little caching ... and
heavy dependency on random disk accesses ... made it unwieldy (disk
random access was faster than tape random access ... but much slower
than tape sequential access) ... recent post discussing some of the
issues and that it wasn't until a combination of HASP&WATFOR ... that
the univ. student programming job workload had higher thruput on os/360
(360/67 running in 360/65 mode) than thruput on 709 ... recent post ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#18 Microminiaturized Modules
semi-related recent thread regarding CKD dasd and associated trade-offs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#41 "A foolish consistency" or "3390 cyl/track architecture"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#61 "A foolish consistency" or "3390 cyl/track architecture"
a lot of os/360 unwieldy processing and overhead eventually was compensated for by "subsystems" ... many of which were developed in customer shops ... HASP, WATFOR, IMS, CICS, APL\360 etc ... basically "monitors" that would startup ... acquire a large batch of resources ... and then manage/sub-allocate those resources for extended period of time (I've made reference to some number of "development groups" were actually maintenance groups that had been assigned to support products that had originally been developed in customer shops).
recent post mentioning CICS:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#22 Does anyone know if there is a 'version' of CICS that IBM is planning to implement for AIX or something that does a similar function already?
an archeological reference in the above mentions univ. library had an
ONR grant to do online catalog and then was also selected to be betatest
for original CICS product. I think that the ONR grant also paid for the
univ 2321/datacell ... recent 2321 reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#35 Why do IBMers think disks are 'Direct Access'?
misc. past posts mentioning cics &/or bdam:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bdam
misc. past posts mentioning hasp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#hasp
semi-related thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#13 System/360 Announcement (7apr64)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#15 System/360 Announcement (7Apr64)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#18 System/360 Announcement (7Apr64)
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Is FINANCE the institutionalized form whereby (smart?) elites exact payment for the rest's being...? Date: Apr 10, 2009 Blog: Equity Marketsre:
new article from today:
Citigroup's Place on a Roll of Shame
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/10/news/citigroup_loomis.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009041014
from above:
But neither competitors nor Congress liked open-bank assistance,
wondering why the institutions getting it shouldn't just be allowed to
fail. So a 1991 banking law called FDICIA, and a subsequent amendment
to a related law, essentially barred the FDIC from granting such
assistance -- except in instances of systemic risk.
... snip ...
but FDIC has had to do it anyway for five Citigroup banks ... to the tune of $306 billion.
A Captive FDIC; Has another regulator caved in to the banking
industry?
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/14/sheila-bair-banks-insurance-opinions-columnists-fdic.html
from above:
For many years, including the recent boom years of ever-increasing
profits and risks, the banks paid nothing into the insurance fund. And
then came the crisis.
... snip ...
Greenspan Slept as Off-Books Debt Escaped Scrutiny
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=home&sid=aYJZOB_gZi0I
Stay away from Citigroup
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/11/28/stay-away-from-citigroup-c/
from above:
Using household terms such as "QSPEs" and "VIEs," Pandit revealed that
Citi has more than $1.2 trillion dollars in off-balance sheet
assets. These off-balance sheet entities are similar in structure to
Enron's SPVs (special purpose vehicles)
... 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: greenbar Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 17:26:54 -0400Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> writes:
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: US banking Changes- TARP Proposl Date: Apr 10, 2009 Blog: Financial RegulationUS banking Changes- TARP Proposl
from baselinescenario.com website
What happened to the global economy and what we can do about it; Two
Things That Have Nothing To Do with Each Other (2008 CEO compensation
and total return):
http://baselinescenario.com/2009/04/05/two-things-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-each-other/
then there is their article
The Quiet Coup
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice
from above:
But there's a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business
interests -- financiers, in the case of the U.S. -- played a central
role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the
implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable
collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent
precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the
economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or
unwilling, to act against them.
... snip ...
there is business school article from year ago that estimated approx
1000 execs 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 how they
could loose their jobs:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1933 (gone 404 and/or requires registration)
somewhat related ....
Citigroup's Place on a Roll of Shame
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/10/news/citigroup_loomis.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009041014
Greenspan Slept as Off-Books Debt Escaped Scrutiny
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=home&sid=aYJZOB_gZi0I
Stay away from Citigroup
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/11/28/stay-away-from-citigroup-c/
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home
and ...
The Biggest Cause of the Financial Crisis
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/04/13/the-biggest-cause-of-the-financial-crisis.aspx
I've been doing some amount of work "cleaning" the OCR of scan of the
Glass-Steagall hearings ... from the hearings:
BROKERS' LOANS AND INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION
For the purpose of making it perfectly clear that the present
industrial depression was due to the inflation of credit on brokers'
loans, as obtained from the Bureau of Research of the Federal Reserve
Board, the figures show that the inflation of credit for speculative
purposes on stock exchanges were responsible directly for a rise in
the average of quotations of the stocks from sixty in 1922 to 225 in
1929 to 35 in 1932 and that the change in the value of such Stocks
listed on the New York Stock Exchange went through the same identical
changes in almost identical percentages.
... snip ...
there is a correspondence between the speculation in the real-estate market leveraging (ARM) loans from non-depository institutions and the speculation in the '20s stock market using brokers' loans.
PBS program describes citigroup playing significant role in
repeal of Glass-Steagall:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/
some related past posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#73 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#77 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#79 The Credit Crunch: Why it happened?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#85 Banks' Demise: Why have the Governments hired the foxes to mend the chicken runs?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#1 Are Both The U.S. & UK on the brink of debt disaster?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#11 Amid Economic Turbulence, Mainframes Counter IT Cost-Cutting Trend
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#25 The recently revealed excesses of John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, while the firm was receiving $25 Billion in TARP funds makes me sick
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#36 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#49 US disaster, debts and bad financial management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#53 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#54 In your opinion, which facts caused the global crise situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#11 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#28 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#38 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#39 'WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#3 Congress Set to Approve Pay Cap of $500,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#53 Are the "brightest minds in finance" finally onto something?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#59 Tesco to open 30 "bank branches" this year
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#86 Is FINANCE the institutionalized form whereby (smart?) elites exact payment for the rest's being...?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#2 CEO pay sinks - Wall Street Journal/Hay Group survey results just released
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#4 Obscene exec pay packets for poor performance or outright failure. Is it acceptable? Is regulation the answer. What are the issues? What are the practical alternatives?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#20 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 08:57:26 -0400Chris Barts <chbarts+usenet@gmail.com> writes:
I've watched coyotos ... since coyotos claims linage back to EROS and Keykos (capability based systems). Keykos was spin-off of GNOSIS developed at Tymshare ... as a (370) alternative to vm370 for commercial timsharing service.
when tymshare was bought by M/D ... I was brought in to evaluate GNOSIS as part of the spin-off process (I still have old GNOSIS manual).
from recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#4 Possibility of malicious CPUs
some Keykos info
http://www.cap-lore.com/CapTheory/KK/
EROS used a lot of Keykos in the implementation
http://www.eros-os.org/
continued as CapRos
http://www.capros.org/
and Coyotos
http://coyotos.org/
from above:
Coyotos is being developed on AMD-64 and Pentium platforms. A port is
also underway to recent Coldfire processors. Once we have a baseline
kernel working, we would welcome help getting it running on PowerPC and
ARM processors as well.
... snip ...
misc. past posts mentioning commercial timesharing service bureaus
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare
misc. (other) past posts mentioning gnosis, keykos, eros, coyotos, etc:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000f.html#69 TSS ancient history, was X86 ultimate CISC? designs)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000g.html#22 No more innovation? Get serious
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#73 7090 vs. 7094 etc.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#33 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#35 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#10 TSS/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#59 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#0 Blade architectures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#4 markup vs wysiwyg (was: Re: learning how to use a computer)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#43 IBM doing anything for 50th Anniv?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#63 Hercules and System/390 - do we need it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002j.html#75 30th b'day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003g.html#18 Multiple layers of virtual address translation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#41 Segments, capabilities, buffer overrun attacks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#15 two pi, four phase, 370 clone
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#20 A Dark Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#50 Slashdot: O'Reilly On The Importance Of The Mainframe Heritage
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#19 Secure OS Thoughts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#22 Secure OS Thoughts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003l.html#26 Secure OS Thoughts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#24 Intel iAPX 432
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003m.html#54 Thoughts on Utility Computing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004c.html#4 OS Partitioning and security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#27 NSF interest in Multics security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#29 Shipwrecks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004m.html#49 EAL5
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#41 Multi-processor timing issue
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#33 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#7 How do you say "gnus"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#6 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#7 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#12 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#67 intel's Vanderpool and virtualization in general
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#43 Secure design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#50 Secure design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005h.html#13 Today's mainframe--anything to new?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005k.html#30 Public disclosure of discovered vulnerabilities
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#12 Flat Query
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#37 PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#34 PDP-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#13 What part of z/OS is the OS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#7 Very slow booting and running and brain-dead OS's?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#42 vmshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#11 Multiple mappings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#16 "The Elements of Programming Style"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#26 user level TCP implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#25 LAX IT failure: leaps of faith don't work
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#17 Oddly good news week: Google announces a Caps library for Javascript
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#24 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#50 How does ATTACH pass address of ECB to child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#12 Kernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#7 was: 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" tech stuff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#23 Doug Engelbart's "Mother of All Demos"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#14 Two views of Microkernels (Re: Kernels
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#3 New machine code
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today? Date: Apr 11, 2009 Blog: Change Managementre:
There is also pervasive atmosphere of deregulation, lax regulation, lax enforcement ... example was congressional hearings testimony by the person that had been trying for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff. Another example is repeal of Glass-Steagall and the commodity futures modernization act (implicated in both ENRON & AIG):
25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis; Phil Gramm
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877330,00.html
from above:
He played a leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the
1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated
commercial banks from Wall Street. He also inserted a key provision
into the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that exempted
over-the-counter derivatives like credit-default swaps from regulation
by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Credit-default swaps took
down AIG, which has cost the U.S. $150 billion thus far.
... snip ...
In the session that repealed Glass-Steagall, the financial industry contributed $250M to Congress, and in the recent session that passed TARP, they contributed $2B. More recent was comment that financial industry contributed a total of $5B during the period.
Gramm and the 'Enron Loophole'
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/business/17grammside.html
from above:
Enron was a major contributor to Mr. Gramm's political campaigns, and
Mr. Gramm's wife, Wendy, served on the Enron board, which she joined
after stepping down as chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading
Commission.
... snip ...
Phil Gramm's Enron Favor
https://web.archive.org/web/20080711114839/http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-01-15/news/phil-gramm-s-enron-favor/
from above:
A few days after she got the ball rolling on the exemption, Wendy
Gramm resigned from the commission. Enron soon appointed her to its
board of directors, where she served on the audit committee, which
oversees the inner financial workings of the corporation. For this,
the company paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in stocks and
dividends, as much as $50,000 in annual salary, and $176,000 in
attendance fees, according to a report by Public Citizen, a group that
has relentlessly tracked Enron, which in turn has called the report
unfair.
... snip ...
Greenspan Slept as Off-Books Debt Escaped Scrutiny
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=home&sid=aYJZOB_gZi0I
from above:
That same year Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and SEC
Chairman Arthur Levitt opposed an attempt by Brooksley Born, head of
the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to study regulating
over-the-counter derivatives. In 2000, Congress passed a law keeping
them unregulated.
... snip ...
one of the articles from the period mentioned that House passed the bill ... and even before the copy of the bill was distributed in the Senate, the Senate passed it unanimously. Also Born (as chairman) must have been fairly quickly replaced by Gramm's wife (before she resigned the position to join Enron).
In the wake of ENRON, congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley, but did little
about the underlying problem. SOX put a lot of responsibility on
SEC. Possibly because GAO also thot SEC wasn't doing much, they
started database of problem filings of public companies (which should
have been dealt with by SEC under SOX ... but actually appeared to
increase by over 3times compared to the 90s)
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-06-1079sp
from above:
The database consists of two files: (1) a file that lists 1,390
restatement announcements that we identified as having been made
because of financial reporting fraud and/or accounting errors between
July 1, 2002, and September 30, 2005, and (2) a file that lists 396
restatement announcements that we identified as having been made
because of financial reporting fraud and/or accounting errors between
October 1, 2005, and June 30, 2006.
... snip ...
recent posts mentioning "25 People to Blame" article:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#38 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#53 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#55 Who will give Citigroup the KNOCKOUT blow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#65 is it possible that ALL banks will be nationalized?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#10 Who will Survive AIG or Derivative Counterparty Risk?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#28 I need insight on the Stock Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#61 Quiz: Evaluate your level of Spreadsheet risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#63 Do bonuses foster unethical conduct?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#0 What is swap in the financial market?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#8 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#13 Should we fear and hate derivatives?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#35 Architectural Diversity
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 13:02:29 -0400Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting; It is 50 years old this year, but Cobol is still a key player in behind-the-scenes business software
the picture they have looks to be like the operator is changing the IPL device address ... three rotary dials that was used to specify the device ipl/boot address ... then hits the "IPL" button.
"00C" was typical card reader address ... to do a boot/ipl from cardreader.
"180" was typical tape drive address ... to do a boot/ipl from tape
"190" was typical disk drive address ... to do a boot/ipl from disk.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today? Date: Apr 11, 2009 Blog: Change Managementre:
A combination of repeal of Glass-Steagall, lax regulation, lax enforcement and some other factors contributed to current credit mess
Unregulated loan originators were using securitization market as source of funds ... with disastrous results for a lot of borrowers
The Man Who Beat The Shorts
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1117/114.html
from above:
Watsa's only sin was in being a little too early with his prediction
that the era of credit expansion would end badly. This is what he said
in Fairfax's 2003 annual report: "It seems to us that securitization
eliminates the incentive for the originator of [a] loan to be credit
sensitive. Prior to securitization, the dealer would be very concerned
about who was given credit to buy an automobile. With securitization,
the dealer (almost) does not care."
... snip ...
speculators found the no-down, no-documentation, 1% interest only payment ARMs (outside any FED "prime" rate) were very attractive since the carrying cost were much lower than real-estate inflation in many parts of the country (and planning on flipping before the rates adjusted)
congressional hearings last fall highlighted that loan originators were paying rating agencies for triple-A ratings on toxic CDOs (securitized loans), even tho both the loan originators and rating agencies knew that they weren't worth triple-A ratings.
the triple-A ratings significantly increased the number of institutions that would deal in toxic CDOs ... as well as enormously increasing the funds available to these unregulated loan orginators
earlier, regulated financial institutions would be making loans using deposits as source of funds. in the securitization scenario, regulated financial institutions were providing a significant amount of the funds for the unregulated loan originators (in circuitous manner) with their (unregulated) investment banking arms (curtesy of repeal of Glass-Steagall) buying up the triple-A rated toxic CDOs and carry them off-balance.
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home
from above:
So investors betting for quick solutions to the financial crisis could
be disappointed. The tangled web that banks wove over the years will
take a long time to undo.
At the end of 2008, for example, off-balance-sheet assets at just the
four biggest U.S. banks -- Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc.,
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. -- were about $5.2
trillion, according to their 2008 annual filings.
... snip ...
this PBS program describes citigroup playing significant role in
repeal of Glass-Steagall:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/
this is decade-old (Jan99), long-winded post describing some number of
the current problems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
also mentions Citibank in 1989 did analysis that ARM mortgages could take down the institution ... resulting in them unloading the ARM portfolio and getting out of the business.
Roll forward to the current period ... and large percentage of the (off-balance) triple-A rated toxic CDOs are composed of ARM mortgages (effectively an ARM portfolio). Apparently, all the institutional knowledge of problems/issues with ARM mortgages evaporated between 1989 and this decade ...
Citigroup's Place on a Roll of Shame
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/10/news/citigroup_loomis.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009041014
from above:
But neither competitors nor Congress liked open-bank assistance,
wondering why the institutions getting it shouldn't just be allowed to
fail. So a 1991 banking law called FDICIA, and a subsequent amendment
to a related law, essentially barred the FDIC from granting such
assistance -- except in instances of systemic risk.
... snip ...
but FDIC has had to do it anyway for five Citigroup banks ... to the tune of $306 billion.
The 1989 case where citibank realizes that ARM mortgages could take down the institution (and almost did) ... is an indication that standard bank loan originators had experience in assesing loan values.
I've periodically claimed that securitization, (triple-A rated) toxic CDOs, CDSs, etc have an analogy with the Emperor's new clothes parable. Once the facade has been punctured ... then it can have a tendency to rapidly evaporate.
The securitization/toxic CDOs/CDS cloaking allowed underlying values to be significantly inflated ... more analogous to the new clothes parable. Futhermore, the people responsible had no exerperience dealing with the underlying values, didn't care about the underlying values, and/or were significantly motivated to greatly inflate the underlying values.
The obfuscation provided by securitization, along with many buying the instruments, having little or no experience in the underlying loans, allowed significant value inflation and significant profits to be declared, as well as enormous commissions and bonuses to be taken.
The other securitization analogy (besides Emperor's new clothes parable) is that the obfuscation allowed subverting the "observe" in Boyd's OODA-loop (observe, orient, decide & act) ... especially selling to large number of people that have little experience with loan management.
Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt
from above:
"Securitization was based on the premise that a fool was born every
minute," Joseph Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia
University in New York, told a congressional committee on
Oct. 21. "Globalization meant that there was a global landscape on
which they could search for those fools -- and they found them
everywhere."
... snip ...
some of the countermeasures to prevent exposing Emperor's new clothes
Messenger, shot; Accounting rules are under attack. Standard-setters
should defend them. Politicians and banks should back off
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13446745&source=hptextfeature
from above:
IN PUBLIC, bankers have been blaming themselves for their
troubles. Behind the scenes, they have been taking aim at someone
else: the accounting standard-setters. Their rules, moan the banks,
have forced them to report enormous losses, and it's just not fair.
... snip ...
misc. past posts drawing analogy with Emperor's new clothes
parable
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#40 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#60 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#69 lack of information accuracy
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#16 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#27 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#42 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#12 Fraud due to stupid failure to test for negative
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#35 The human plague
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#58 Obama, ACORN, subprimes (Re: Spiders)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#8 Do emperors from the banks have new clothes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#65 What can agencies such as the SEC do to insure us that something like Madoff's Ponzi scheme will never happen again?
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 08:26:39 -0400hancock4 writes:
2314 picture:
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_2314.html
better picture here with 2314 drawer opened ... as well as other
close-up pictures of 2314 disk. the page has comments about the
address plug ... but no closeup
http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/roger.broughton/museum/DASD/200426.htm
2314 details from bitsaver
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/dasd/A26-3599-4_2314_Sep69.pdf
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: greenbar Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 08:41:55 -0400re:
this is old reference to some agencies that started using cp67 in the
60s
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml
i didn't hear about them until much later ... but as undergraduate in the 60s, i was active in making lots of changes/enhancements to cp67 ... even periodic getting suggestions from the vendor about possible changes. in retrospect, the nature of some of the suggestions may have originated from such agencies.
about a decade ago, we were in town and had an occasion to visit somebody at one of the agencies (we were involved in financial standards which would have participation from gov. agencies). this required providing information ahead of time so we were on visitor list. we arrived at the gate and the guard behind the desk is checking a visitor list on fanfold paper ... and the top page is printed the vm separator page.
a current vm reference to printer separator page:
http://www.vm.ibm.com/pubs/cp43032/SEPPAG1.HTML
random past posts mentioning "separator" pages
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#5 New IBM history book out
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#48 1403 printers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#51 1403 printers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#29 Job seperators
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#8a Using Military Philosophy to Drive High Value Sales
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#68 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#69 Blinkenlights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#71 Password Rules
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#73 Most 'leaders' do not 'lead' and the majority of 'managers' do not 'manage'. Why is 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: Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:34:08 -0400"Joe Morris" <j.c.morris@verizon.net> writes:
there was an issue that standard ansi/fortran used a leading character to
indicate carriage control operation before the following data to be
printed. ansi/fortran
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/gcard.html#9
the printer channel command op-code was: 1) first write data and then perform carriage control (after the write operation) or 2) separate channel commands ... one that only wrote data and one that only did carraige control operation.
simulation of the fortran convention defaulted to two separate channel commands ... the first that did the carriage control operation only followed by separate channel command that did the data write (only).
there was some processes developed that attempted to optimize a printer channel program ... collecting a whole page worth of print channel commands into single channel program ... and merging stand-alone carriage control only channel command with any immediately preceeding write-only channel command (ideally halving the number of channel commands in a printer channel program).
fortran output might a "skip to channel 1" character ... (i.e. position at top of the next page) followed by the data to be printed on the first line.
standard printer channel command was either was only a "skip to channel 1" (and no write) or a write followed by "skip to channel 1". to do the fortran scenario defaulted to a channel command that only did the "skip to channel 1" followed by a channel command that only did the write.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: US banking Changes- TARP Proposl Date: Apr 13, 2009 Blog: Financial RegulationUS watchdog calls for bank executives to be sacked
from baselinescenario.com website
What happened to the global economy and what we can do about it; Two
Things That Have Nothing To Do with Each Other (2008 CEO compensation
and total return):
http://baselinescenario.com/2009/04/05/two-things-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-each-other/
then there is their article
The Quiet Coup
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice
from above:
But there's a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business
interests -- financiers, in the case of the U.S. -- played a central
role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the
implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable
collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent
precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the
economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or
unwilling, to act against them.
... snip ...
there is business school article from year ago that estimated approx
1000 execs 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 how they
could loose their jobs:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1933 (gone 404 and/or requires registration)
somewhat related ....
Citigroup's Place on a Roll of Shame
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/10/news/citigroup_loomis.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009041014
Greenspan Slept as Off-Books Debt Escaped Scrutiny
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=home&sid=aYJZOB_gZi0I
Stay away from Citigroup
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/11/28/stay-away-from-citigroup-c/
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home
related posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#20
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#29
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#31
I've periodically claimed that securitization, (triple-A rated) toxic CDOs, CDSs, etc have an analogy with the Emperor's new clothes parable. Once the facade has been punctured ... then it can have a tendency to rapidly evaporate.
The securitization/toxic CDOs/CDS cloaking allowed underlying values to be significantly inflated ... more analogous to the new clothes parable. Futhermore, the people responsible had no exerperience dealing with the underlying values, didn't care about the underlying values, and/or were significantly motivated to greatly inflate the underlying values.
The obfuscation provided by securitization, along with many buying the instruments, having little or no experience in the underlying loans, allowed significant value inflation and significant profits to be declared, as well as enormous commissions and bonuses to be taken.
The other securitization analogy (besides Emperor's new clothes parable) is that the obfuscation allowed subverting the "observe" in Boyd's OODA-loop (observe, orient, decide & act) ... especially selling to large number of people that have little experience with loan management.
Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt
from above:
"Securitization was based on the premise that a fool was born every
minute," Joseph Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia
University in New York, told a congressional committee on
Oct. 21. "Globalization meant that there was a global landscape on
which they could search for those fools -- and they found them
everywhere."
... snip ...
some of the countermeasures to prevent exposing Emperor's new clothes
Messenger, shot; Accounting rules are under attack. Standard-setters
should defend them. Politicians and banks should back off
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13446745&source=hptextfeature
from above:
IN PUBLIC, bankers have been blaming themselves for their
troubles. Behind the scenes, they have been taking aim at someone
else: the accounting standard-setters. Their rules, moan the banks,
have forced them to report enormous losses, and it's just not fair.
... snip ...
Accounting for Special Purpose Entities Revised: FASB Interpretation 46(R)
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2004/704/essentials/p30.htm
Bankers try to keep bad assets off books
http://www.azstarnet.com/business/266220
FASB's new QSPE rule implementation delayed
http://marketpipeline.blogspot.com/2008/07/fasbs-new-qspe-rule-implementation.html
FASB Renews Attempts to Amend QSPE Rules
http://www.complianceweek.com/article/5144/fasb-renews-attempts-to-amend-qspe-rules
from above:
That abuse became apparent when regulators provided guidance allowing
banks to work out troubled loans held in off-balance-sheet structures
without sacrificing off-balance-sheet accounting; that permission was
the smoke signal indicating financial institutions were more involved
in the assets than the accounting literature would intend to qualify
for off-balance-sheet treatment.
... snip ...
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: PCI security rules may require reinforcements Date: Apr 13, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityPCI security rules may require reinforcements; Critics carp that the standard isn't protecting credit and debit card data
from above:
Created by Visa and other credit card companies, the PCI rules will
have been in effect for four years as of June 30. But with breaches of
card data continuing and questions about the standard's effectiveness
on the rise, PCI DSS is showing signs of coming apart at the seams.
... snip ...
recent PCI thread/news:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#69 PCI Compliance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#3 Cybersecurity hearing highlights inadequacy of PCI DSS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#16 Cybersecurity hearing highlights inadequacy of PCI DSS
We had been called in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server ... they had also invented this technology called SSL they wanted to use. The result is now frequently called electronic commerce.
Somewhat as a result, in the mid-90s, we were asked to participate in
the x9a10 financial standard working group that had been given the
requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure
for all retail payments. This required doing detailed, end-to-end
threat & vulnerability studies of various mechanisms used in retail
payments (POS, attended, unattended, internet, debit, credit, gift
card, stored value, ACH, etc, i.e. ALL). The result was the x9.59
financial transaction standard ... some reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
One of the big threats/vulnerabilities was transaction information being harvested (skimming, phishing, evesdropping, data breaches) by crooks (&/or insiders) for the purpose of fraudulent transactions. X9.59 addressed this problem, not by attempting to prevent such activity ... but slightly tweaking the paradigm and making the information useless to crooks for purposes of fraudulent transactions.
In much of the current infrastructure, knowing the account number is sufficient for a crook to perform a fraudulent transaction. We've tried using a number of metaphors to describe the current infrastructure (fixed by x9.59):
• dual-use vulnerability metaphor
account number is required in a large number of different business processes and is required to be readily available. at the same time the account number has to be kept strictly confidential and never divulged to anybody (not even those needing it for business processes, since insiders have repeatedly been shown to be the major source of identity theft). we've claimed that even if the planet was buried under miles of information hiding encryption, that it wouldn't be sufficient to prevent information leakage.
• security proportional to risk metaphor
to the merchant, knowledge of the account number is worth some percent of the profit off the transaction; that same knowledge for the crook, is worth the account balance/credit-limit. as a result, the crook may be able to outspend by a factor of 100 times attacking the system (as the merchant can afford to spend protecting the system).
• naked transaction metaphor
lots of archived blog activity & posts related to naked
transaction metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#payments
....
One of the issues is that the earlier work we did for electronic commerce, uses SSL for hiding financial transaction information ... which appears to the largest use of SSL on the web today. X9.59 eliminates the need for hiding that information (as countermeasure to fraudulent transactions) and therefor eliminates the major use of SSL on the web today.
misc. (other) past posts mentioning the metaphors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#17 Hannaford breach illustrates dangerous compliance mentality
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#28 Hannaford case exposes holes in law, some say
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#4 You won't guess who's the bad guy of ID theft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#5 Privacy, Identity theft, account fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#7 Dealing with the neew MA ID protection law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#59 Can Smart Cards Reduce Payments Fraud and Identity Theft?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#53 21 million German bank account details on black market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#10 Data leakage - practical measures to improve Information Governance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#60 The 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#13 US credit card payment house breaches by sniffing malware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#15 It's Me, and Here's My Proof: Why Identity and Authentication Must Remain Distinct
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#62 Study: Data breaches continue to get more costly for businesses
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: System/360 Announcement (7Apr64) Date: Apr 14, 2009 Blog: Greater IBM Connectionre:
I got email from a nephew last nov. mentioning that hugh (uncle) had
died before the nephew was born; he had tripped across a lot of my TSS
comments and also mentioning Hugh ... from archived
(alt.folklore.computer) usenet comments that can be found here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
I was undergraduate at univ. that had 360/67 installed originally for tss/360 ... which the SE would test on weekends. I had grown into having responsibility for univ. production os/360 system that ran most of the time. Then some people from science center came out and installed cp/67 in Jan68. I then did some amount of cp67 testing and fixing on weekends. As a result, I was invited to the spring '68 SHARE meeting in Houston to be there as part of the cp/67 announcement. That was where I first met Hugh (we had an animated conversation at SCIDS that almost turned into a physical altercation, the next day there was a meeting for us in the astrodome in much more calm atmosphere).
TSS went on to do a stripped down kernel for AT&T that had unix layered on top ... followed by Germany doing a lot of work for putting it out as a product ... a lot of the TSS group took a tour in Germany.
this old (a.f.c. usenet post) has reference to some comparison that I
did in mid-80s of VM/SP vis-a-vis TSS kernel structure (part of much
longer thread).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#53
misc. old email mentioning tss &/or (at&t) tss/unix:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#email800404
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006f.html#email800404
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#email840109
overall index of old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html
we had a scenario where vm/cms 370/158 could pump out more work than mvs/tso 370/168 (for some definition of work ... modulo strict numerical intensive and some other caveats).
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis? Date: Apr 14, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityThe Biggest Cause of the Financial Crisis
25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis; Phil Gramm
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877330,00.html
from above:
He played a leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the
1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated
commercial banks from Wall Street. He also inserted a key provision
into the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that exempted
over-the-counter derivatives like credit-default swaps from regulation
by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Credit-default swaps took
down AIG, which has cost the U.S. $150 billion thus far.
... snip ...
PBS program describes citigroup playing significant role in repeal of
Glass-Steagall
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/
The Man Who Beat The Shorts
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1117/114.html
from above:
Watsa's only sin was in being a little too early with his prediction
that the era of credit expansion would end badly. This is what he said
in Fairfax's 2003 annual report: "It seems to us that securitization
eliminates the incentive for the originator of [a] loan to be credit
sensitive. Prior to securitization, the dealer would be very concerned
about who was given credit to buy an automobile. With securitization,
the dealer (almost) does not care."
... snip ...
Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt
from above:
"Securitization was based on the premise that a fool was born every
minute," Joseph Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia
University in New York, told a congressional committee on
Oct. 21. "Globalization meant that there was a global landscape on
which they could search for those fools -- and they found them
everywhere."
... snip ...
The Quiet Coup
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice
from above:
But there's a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business
interests -- financiers, in the case of the U.S. -- played a central
role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the
implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable
collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent
precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the
economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or
unwilling, to act against them.
... snip ...
there is business school article from year ago that estimated approx
1000 execs 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 how they
could loose their jobs:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1933 (gone 404 and/or requires registration)
earlier, regulated financial institutions would be making loans using deposits as source of funds. in the securitization scenario, regulated financial institutions could provide a significant amount of the funds for the unregulated loan originators (in circuitous manner) with their (unregulated) investment banking arms (curtesy of repeal of Glass-Steagall) buy up the triple-A rated toxic CDOs and carry them off-balance.
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home
from above:
So investors betting for quick solutions to the financial crisis could
be disappointed. The tangled web that banks wove over the years will
take a long time to undo.
At the end of 2008, for example, off-balance-sheet assets at just the
four biggest U.S. banks -- Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc.,
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. -- were about $5.2
trillion, according to their 2008 annual filings.
... snip ...
oh ... I've been doing some amount of work "cleaning" the OCR of scan
of the Glass-Steagall hearing transcripts (and creating HTML) ... from
the hearings:
BROKERS' LOANS AND INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION
For the purpose of making it perfectly clear that the present
industrial depression was due to the inflation of credit on brokers'
loans, as obtained from the Bureau of Research of the Federal Reserve
Board, the figures show that the inflation of credit for speculative
purposes on stock exchanges were responsible directly for a rise in
the average of quotations of the stocks from sixty in 1922 to 225 in
1929 to 35 in 1932 and that the change in the value of such Stocks
listed on the New York Stock Exchange went through the same identical
changes in almost identical percentages.
... snip ...
there is a correspondence between the speculation in the real-estate market leveraging (ARM) loans from (unregulated) non-depository institutions and the speculation in the '20s stock market using brokers' loans.
misc. recent posts reference some of the above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#14 What are the challenges in risk analytics post financial crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#42 Lets play Blame Game...?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#52 The Credit Crunch: Why it happened?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#58 HONEY I LOVE YOU, but please cut the cards
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#73 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#77 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#79 The Credit Crunch: Why it happened?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#84 what was the idea behind Citigroup's splitting up into two different divisions? what does this do for citigroup?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#85 Banks' Demise: Why have the Governments hired the foxes to mend the chicken runs?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#1 Are Both The U.S. & UK on the brink of debt disaster?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#11 Amid Economic Turbulence, Mainframes Counter IT Cost-Cutting Trend
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#18 Barbless
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#25 The recently revealed excesses of John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, while the firm was receiving $25 Billion in TARP funds makes me sick
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#36 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#37 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#48 The blame game is on : A blow to the Audit/Accounting Industry or a lesson learned ???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#49 US disaster, debts and bad financial management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#52 What has the Global Financial Crisis taught the Nations, it's Governments and Decision Makers, and how should they apply that knowledge to manage risks differently in the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#53 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#54 In your opinion, which facts caused the global crise situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#60 OCR scans of old documents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#73 What can we learn from the meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#78 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#80 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#0 Audit II: Two more scary words: Sarbanes-Oxley
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#10 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#11 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#20 Decision Making or Instinctive Steering?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#28 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#29 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#36 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#38 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#39 'WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#42 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#44 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#53 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#55 Who will give Citigroup the KNOCKOUT blow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#61 Accounting for the "greed factor"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#65 is it possible that ALL banks will be nationalized?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#3 Congress Set to Approve Pay Cap of $500,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#7 Are Ctibank's services and products so vital to global economy than no other banks can substitute it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#9 HSBC is expected to announce a profit, which is good, what did they do differently?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#10 Who will Survive AIG or Derivative Counterparty Risk?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#16 The Formula That Killed Wall Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#28 I need insight on the Stock Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#30 I need insight on the Stock Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#36 Bernanke Says Regulators Must Protect Against Systemic Risks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#37 NEW SEC (Enforcement) MANUAL, A welcome addition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#40 Bernanke Says Regulators Must Protect Against Systemic Risks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#59 Quiz: Evaluate your level of Spreadsheet risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#61 Quiz: Evaluate your level of Spreadsheet risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#63 Do bonuses foster unethical conduct?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#64 Should AIG executives be allowed to keep the bonuses they were contractually obligated to be paid?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#77 Who first mentioned Credit Crunch?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#0 What is swap in the financial market?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#8 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#13 Should we fear and hate derivatives?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#35 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#53 Are the "brightest minds in finance" finally onto something?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#59 Tesco to open 30 "bank branches" this year
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#82 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#86 Is FINANCE the institutionalized form whereby (smart?) elites exact payment for the rest's being...?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#4 Obscene exec pay packets for poor performance or outright failure. Is it acceptable? Is regulation the answer. What are the issues? What are the practical alternatives?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#20 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#27 US banking Changes- TARP Proposl
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#29 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#31 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#35 US banking Changes- TARP Proposl
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#38 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: PIN Crackers Nab Holy Grail of Bank Card Security Date: Apr 15, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityPIN Crackers Nab Holy Grail of Bank Card Security
from above:
Cyberthieves have seized on new, sophisticated hacking techniques to
bypass the encryption of bank-card Personal Identification Numbers
(PINs), a new report says. The revelation could explain the millions
of dollars lost in previous years.
... snip ...
recent thread discussion (PIN &) ATMs At Risk (along with some
historical magstripe, ATM machine, and PIN references)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#6 ATMs At Risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#16 ATMs At Risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#21 ATMs At Risk
wiki reference for IBM 3624
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3624
from above:
One of the most lasting features introduced with the 3624 was the IBM
3624 PIN block format used in transmission of an encrypted personal
identification number (PIN).
... snip ...
above wiki page also reference some of my old posts about los gatos lab and its work on ATM machines, etc.
Part of the PIN-debit issue is two-factor authentication ... where
there is an implicit assumption that the different factors have
independent compromises, i.e. from 3-factor authentication model
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#3factor
So many passwords, so little memory
http://www.physorg.com/news159012042.html
so one of the issues with human inability to deal with the rapidly increasing number of shared-secrets ... is one study found that 30% of PIN-debit cards have the PIN written on them (negating the assumption about independent threats).
Another defeat of the assumption about independent threats ... is
end-point device skimming where information (sufficient to create a
counterfeit card) and the PIN are harvesting at the same
time. Misc. past posts discussing issues with shared-secret paradigm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#secret
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Time zones Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.arch Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:04:19 -0400Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> writes:
there were something similar in some of the articles about Boyd being brought in for desert storm battle plan ... which was significantly different than tank battle slugging it out until the last tank standing.
How Col. John Boyd Beat the Generals
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/comments/c455.htm
misc. past posts mentioning Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd
misc. URLs from around the web mentioning Boyd &/or OODA-loops
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html#boyd2
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis? Date: Apr 15, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Securityre:
Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt
from above:
The bundling of consumer loans and home mortgages into packages of
securities -- a process known as securitization -- was the biggest
U.S. export business of the 21st century. More than $27 trillion of
these securities have been sold since 2001, according to the
Securities Industry Financial Markets Association, an industry trade
group. That's almost twice last year's U.S. gross domestic product of
$13.8 trillion.
.... snip ...
From congressional hearings last fall, part of the circuitous route involving securitization was testimony that both toxic CDO issuers/sellers and the rating agencies knew that the toxic CDOs weren't worth triple-A ratings, but the toxic CDO issuers/sellers were paying the rating agencies for the triple-A ratings. This greatly increased the institutions that would deal in the triple-A rated toxic CDOs as well as the money paid ... and therefor enormously increased the amount of money available to non-depository loan originators ... and further contributed to eliminating any motivation to pay attention to details related to loan quality; no-down, no-documentation, 1% interest-only ARMs became very attractive to speculators since the carrying cost was much less than real-estate inflation in many parts of the country (planning on flipping before rate adjusted)
Part of the testimony was that the rating agency business process became misaligned in the early 70s when the rating agencies switched from the buyers paying for the ratings to the issuers paying for the ratings (significantly increasing potential for conflict of interest).
There were some news stories in January about gov. engaging IDC to help evaluate the off-balance toxic assets at financial institutions. IDC had bought the pricing services division from one of the rating agencies in the early 70s (in the period that rating agency business process became misaligned). Disclaimer, I interviewed with IDC in the late 60s, but didn't join them).
misc. past references to IDC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#21 Banks to embrace virtualisation in 2009: survey
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#31 Banks to embrace virtualisation in 2009: survey
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#32 What are the challenges in risk analytics post financial crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#42 Lets play Blame Game...?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#52 The Credit Crunch: Why it happened?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#77 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#79 The Credit Crunch: Why it happened?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#38 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#49 US disaster, debts and bad financial management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#53 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#78 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#1 Audit II: Two more scary words: Sarbanes-Oxley
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#15 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#53 Are the "brightest minds in finance" finally onto something?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#70 When did "client server" become part of the language?
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: More Data Breached In 2008 Than In Previous Four Years Combined Date: Apr 15, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityMore Data Breached In 2008 Than In Previous Four Years Combined
from above:
About a third of the breaches in Verizon Business' caseload have been
publicly disclosed, and additional disclosures are expected before the
end of the year. But many breaches will remain unreported because of
the absence of any applicable disclosure
... snip ...
Hackers steal 285m electronic records in 2008 - Verizon
http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=19911
from above:
Organised crime was responsible for nine in 10 breaches, with an
explosion of attacks targeting PIN data, which Verizon says hit the
consumer much harder than typical signature-based counterfeit attacks.
... snip ...
above also mentions that the larger fraud ROI with PINed accounts is fueling explosion in PIN related attacks.
recent related article:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#39 PIN Crackers Nab Holy Grail of Bank Card Security
misc. recent additional articles:
Attackers cash in on fundamental data handling mistakes, Verizon finds
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid14_gci1353871,00.html
Organized crime behind big spike in corporate data breaches
http://www.infoworld.com/d/security-central/organized-crime-behind-big-spike-in-corporate-data-breaches-601
Huge Data Breach Spike Caused By Organized Crime
http://www.cio.com/article/489391/Huge_Data_Breach_Spike_Caused_By_Organized_Crime
Security Fix - Glut of Stolen Banking Data Trims Profits for Thieves
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/04/glut_of_stolen_banking_data_tr.html
Hackers Created 1.6 Million Security Threats in 2008
http://www.cio.com/article/489393/Hackers_Created_._Million_Security_Threats_in_
So many passwords, so little memory
http://www.physorg.com/news159012042.html
Subverting PIN Encryption For Bank Cards
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/15/1424249
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis? Date: Apr 16, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Securityre:
there has always been numerous hotspots of greed and corruption, but a combination of deregulation, lax regulation, and lax enforcement allowed all those isolated hotspots to combine together into a world-wide economic firestorm.
... another analogy, in keeping with the large number of often repeated references to the trillions in "toxic assets" ... is the health scenario ... shutting down FDA, USDA, CDC, EPA, etc as well as all sewage and water treatment plants ... resulting in an economic cesspool.
This is long-winded, decade old (Jan99) post discussing some of the
current problems:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
it also discusses citibank, in 1989, doing the risk analysis that ARM portfolio could take down the institution (which it nearly did), unloading the portfolio and getting out of the business.
previous post mention this PBS program looking at citi being major
player in repeal of Glass-Steagall
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/
as mentioned previously, if it hadn't been for the world-wide appetite for triple-A rated, toxic CDOs, the unregulated loan originators would have had to pay a lot more attention to loan quality (as it was, they found they could unload everything they wrote, as fast as they could write it), and one of the biggest customers for those triple-A rated, toxic CDOs were the unregulated investment banking arms (courtesy of Glass-Steagall) of regulated banks (which enormously contributed to the amount of funds that unregulated loan originators had available for their lending mills).
Now, at least for citi, their lending business had demonstrated in 1989 that they understood how to evaluate an ARM portfolio ... but roll forward to the current time ... and a great deal of those (off-balance) triple-A rated, toxic CDOs are effectively an ARM portfolio ... and the institutional knowledge from 1989 appeared to have evaporated.
Citigroup's Place on a Roll of Shame
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/10/news/citigroup_loomis.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009041014
from above:
But neither competitors nor Congress liked open-bank assistance,
wondering why the institutions getting it shouldn't just be allowed to
fail. So a 1991 banking law called FDICIA, and a subsequent amendment
to a related law, essentially barred the FDIC from granting such
assistance -- except in instances of systemic risk.
... snip ...
but as mentioned, FDIC has had to do it anyway for five Citigroup banks ... to the tune of $306 billion.
Greenspan Slept as Off-Books Debt Escaped Scrutiny
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&refer=home&sid=aYJZOB_gZi0I
Stay away from Citigroup
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/11/28/stay-away-from-citigroup-c/
from above:
Using household terms such as "QSPEs" and "VIEs," Pandit revealed that
Citi has more than $1.2 trillion dollars in off-balance sheet
assets. These off-balance sheet entities are similar in structure to
Enron's SPVs (special purpose vehicles)
... snip ...
Bernanke Says Crisis Damage Likely to Be Long-Lasting
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=arpJXeelvfY4&refer=home
from above (something of an understatement):
Bernanke said the packaging and sale of mortgages into securities
"appears to have been one source of the decline in underwriting
standards" because originators have less stake in the risk of a loan.
... snip ...
tv business news show discussing the bank stress tests ... but conjectured there isn't enuf TARP funds left to cover any banks that might fail (the tests) ... but then there is this which claims that the economy is already worse than the worst-case scenario used in the tests:
The 'Stress Tests' Are Really 'Fudge Tests'
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/15/gdp-stress-tests-unemployment-banks-home-prices-opinions-columnists-nouriel-roubini.html
possibly becoming the new American way of life ... there have been a number of reports about the US educational system ranking near the bottom of industrial nations (29 out of 30; 35 out of 40, etc). For the past decade or so, supposedly proficiency tests are going to be mandated for high school graduation ... although many states keep postponing the effective date. Some number of the reasons given for postponements are that there would be too many 18 yr old flunking the tests, typically requiring just 7th grade proficiency in math, science, reading, etc.
recent, related posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#53 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#55 Who will give Citigroup the KNOCKOUT blow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#65 is it possible that ALL banks will be nationalized?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#67 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#0 PNC Financial to pay CEO $3 million stock bonus
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#7 Are Ctibank's services and products so vital to global economy than no other banks can substitute it?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#10 Who will Survive AIG or Derivative Counterparty Risk?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#16 The Formula That Killed Wall Street
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#18 HSBC is expected to announce a profit, which is good, what did they do differently?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#22 Is it time to put banking executives on trial?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#28 I need insight on the Stock Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#42 Bernard Madoff Is Jailed After Pleading Guilty -- are there more "Madoff's" out there?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#59 Quiz: Evaluate your level of Spreadsheet risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#61 Quiz: Evaluate your level of Spreadsheet risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#63 Do bonuses foster unethical conduct?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#64 Should AIG executives be allowed to keep the bonuses they were contractually obligated to be paid?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#0 What is swap in the financial market?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#8 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#13 Should we fear and hate derivatives?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#35 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#70 When did "client server" become part of the language?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#25 Is FINANCE the institutionalized form whereby (smart?) elites exact payment for the rest's being...?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#27 US banking Changes- TARP Proposl
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#35 US banking Changes- TARP Proposl
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Chip and PIN for ID cards: Not such a sharp idea?; Hackers PINing after your details Date: Apr 16, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityChip and PIN for ID cards: Not such a sharp idea?; Hackers PINing after your details
from above:
The inclusion of EMV is not without its downsides, however. Clive
Longbottom, service director for business processes facilitation at
analyst house Quocirca, questioned the desirability of chip and PIN
and warned that adding EMV functionality would make ID cards less
secure.
... snip ...
This has been brought up in the past several times ... even during
the yes card period ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard
this mentions presentation at Cartes2002 discussing some of the yes
card weaknesses:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030417083810/http://www.smartcard.co.uk/resources/articles/cartes2002.html
In our AADS framework ... we specify provisions for a person-centric
paradigm ... as opposed to the prevalent institutional-centric
paradigm ... some of this covered in the AADS patent portfolio
... which continue to be granted, long after we have left ... even one
more this week
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadssummary.htm
however, one distinction in the AADS framework ... the authentication
process is kept distinct and separate from the business rules related
to the processes making use of authentication. This is also evident in
the x9.59 financial transaction standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
a little x9.59 financial transaction standard x-over in the discussion
regarding this recent news item "PCI security rules may require
reinforcements" ... also archived here:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#36
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Artificial Intelligence to tackle rogue traders Date: Apr 17, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityArtificial Intelligence to tackle rogue traders
from above:
The Financial Times recently quoted as many as 25% of UK share dealing
may be tainted by insider trading. A study commissioned by the New
York Times suggested as many as 41% of North American deals may be
similarly affected.
... snip ...
The congressional hearing into the Madoff ponzi scheme, one of the testimonies was from somebody that had tried unsuccessfully for a decade trying to get the SEC to do something about Madoff. The repeated theme in the testimony was that while new regulations are needed, much more important is transparency and visibility; that crooks and fraud thrive where there isn't transparency or visibility.
We had been brought in to consult with a small client/server startup
that wanted to do payment transactions on their server; they also had
this technology they had invented called SSL they wanted to use. The
result is now frequently called electronic commerce. Somewhat as a
result of the electronic commerce work we were invited in the
mid-90s 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 ... which resulted in
the x9.59 financial standard transaction protocol ... some references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
somewhat as the result of those activities, we got invited to come into NSCC (since merged with DTC to become DTCC) to look at doing something similar for all trader operations. It wasn't too long before that effort was suspended ... possibly because a side-effect would have been a significant increase in transparency and visibility ... which apparently is counter to fundamental trader culture.
misc. recent posts mentioning DTCC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#63 Garbage in, garbage out trampled by Moore's law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#35 The recently revealed excesses of John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, while the firm was receiving $25 Billion in TARP funds makes me sick
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#65 What can agencies such as the SEC do to insure us that something like Madoff's Ponzi scheme will never happen again?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#80 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#1 Audit II: Two more scary words: Sarbanes-Oxley
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#47 Bernard Madoff Is Jailed After Pleading Guilty -- are there more "Madoff's" out there?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#63 Do bonuses foster unethical conduct?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#75 Whistleblowing and reporting fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#15 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#36 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#53 Are the "brightest minds in finance" finally onto something?
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Who moved my payment? Date: Apr 17, 2009 Blog: Payment Systems Networkwe had been called in to consult with a small client/server started that wanted to do payment transactions on their server; they had also invented this technology called SSL they wanted to use. The result is now frequently called electronic commerce. Somewhat from the work on electronic commerce, 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 POS, internet, debit, credit, ACH, attended, unattended, gift-card, stored-value ... aka *ALL*). The result was the x9.59 financial transaction standard ... some references
In the mid-90s, there was some X9A10 participation by telcos. the conventional wisdom at the time was that the telcos had significantly higher performing & efficient transaction processing system and there was possibility that they could take over the payment business (from financial institutions). Going into the late 90s, the telco participation seemed to evaporate. A major reason given was that the telcos had not expected the level of fraud they encountered in their foreys into payment transactions; and weren't prepared to deal with it.
.. although also in the timeframe of telcos departing payment landscape was the passage of the bank modernization act (mostly referred to now as being behind the current financial mess for its repeal of Glass-Steagall). one of the backers of bill, on the floor stated that the purpose of the bill was that institutions that were already banks got to remain banks and institutions that weren't already banks didn't get to become banks (although telcos weren't mentioned ... microsoft and walmart were specifically singled out ... since they were showing signs of getting into financial operations).
Part of the X9A10 work involved looking at detailed, end-to-end threat and vulnerability studies of the various mechanisms and environments. For example, one aspect was making x9.59 lightweight enough that it could be performed in the timing & power constraints of (contactless) transit turnstyle ... while having high enough integrity that it would also satisfy the highest valued transactions that might occur at POS or online banking. As mentioned, in other references, X9.59 goes a long way towards eliminating the major current threats and vulnerabilities ... but a side-effect was that it could also significantly lower the "fraud" barrier to entry into the payment business.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: TARP Disbursements Through April 10th Date: Apr 17, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityTARP Disbursements Through April 10th
and related:
Bailout acronym soup: A handy quide:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29900110/
but assistance isn't limited just to TARP ...
Citigroup's Place on a Roll of Shame
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/10/news/citigroup_loomis.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009041014
from above:
But neither competitors nor Congress liked open-bank assistance,
wondering why the institutions getting it shouldn't just be allowed to
fail. So a 1991 banking law called FDICIA, and a subsequent amendment
to a related law, essentially barred the FDIC from granting such
assistance -- except in instances of systemic risk.
... snip ...
but FDIC has had to do it anyway for five Citigroup banks ... to the tune of $306 billion.
tv business news show discussing the bank stress tests ... but conjectured there isn't enuf TARP funds left to cover any banks that might fail (the tests) ... but then there is this which claims that the economy is already worse than the worst-case scenario used in the tests:
The 'Stress Tests' Are Really 'Fudge Tests'
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/15/gdp-stress-tests-unemployment-banks-home-prices-opinions-columnists-nouriel-roubini.html
possibly becoming the new American way of life ... there have been a number of reports about the US educational system ranking near the bottom of industrial nations (29 out of 30; 35 out of 40, etc). For the past decade or so, supposedly proficiency tests are going to be mandated for high school graduation ... although many states keep postponing the effective date. Some number of the reasons given for postponements are that there would be too many 12th grade graduates flunking the tests, typically requiring just 7th grade proficiency in math, science, reading, etc.
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home
from above:
So investors betting for quick solutions to the financial crisis could
be disappointed. The tangled web that banks wove over the years will
take a long time to undo.
...
At the end of 2008, for example, off-balance-sheet assets at just the
four biggest U.S. banks -- Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc.,
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. -- were about $5.2
trillion, according to their 2008 annual filings.
... snip ...
Bernanke Says Crisis Damage Likely to Be Long-Lasting
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=arpJXeelvfY4&refer=home
from above (something of an understatement):
Bernanke said the packaging and sale of mortgages into securities
"appears to have been one source of the decline in underwriting
standards" because originators have less stake in the risk of a loan.
... snip ...
past posts mentioning article about securitization eliminating
any motivation to pay attention to loan quality:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#14 What are the challenges in risk analytics post financial crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#42 Lets play Blame Game...?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#52 The Credit Crunch: Why it happened?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#73 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#1 Are Both The U.S. & UK on the brink of debt disaster?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#37 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#52 What has the Global Financial Crisis taught the Nations, it's Governments and Decision Makers, and how should they apply that knowledge to manage risks differently in the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#53 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#54 In your opinion, which facts caused the global crise situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#73 What can we learn from the meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#78 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#39 'WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#61 Accounting for the "greed factor"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#65 is it possible that ALL banks will be nationalized?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#37 NEW SEC (Enforcement) MANUAL, A welcome addition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#77 Who first mentioned Credit Crunch?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#8 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#31 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#38 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Bankers as Partners In Crime Stopping Date: Apr 18, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityBankers as Partners In Crime Stopping
In the 90s, there was the presidential directive for infrastructure
protection
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Infrastructure_Protection
... and each one of the critical infrastructure industries (including
financial) was to look at threat, vulnerability, & exploit
(information sharing) ISAC.
http://www.isaccouncil.org/
At least in the financial industry there was a great deal of concern
about sharing that information (competitors being able to leverage the
information) ... as well as getting a ruling whether the ISAC would be
subject to FOIA (bad guys getting access to the information)
http://www.fsisac.com/
payment processing information sharing
http://www.ppisc.com/
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Is the current downturn cyclic or systemic? Date: Apr 18, 2009 Blog: Corporate Governancere:
Bernanke Says Crisis Damage Likely to Be Long-Lasting
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=arpJXeelvfY4&refer=home
from above (something of an understatement):
Bernanke said the packaging and sale of mortgages into securities
"appears to have been one source of the decline in underwriting
standards" because originators have less stake in the risk of a loan.
... snip ...
The Man Who Beat The Shorts
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1117/114.html
from above:
Watsa's only sin was in being a little too early with his prediction
that the era of credit expansion would end badly. This is what he said
in Fairfax's 2003 annual report: "It seems to us that securitization
eliminates the incentive for the originator of [a] loan to be credit
sensitive. Prior to securitization, the dealer would be very concerned
about who was given credit to buy an automobile. With securitization,
the dealer (almost) does not care."
... snip ...
Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt
from above:
The bundling of consumer loans and home mortgages into packages of
securities -- a process known as securitization -- was the biggest
U.S. export business of the 21st century. More than $27 trillion of
these securities have been sold since 2001, according to the
Securities Industry Financial Markets Association, an industry trade
group. That's almost twice last year's U.S. gross domestic product of
$13.8 trillion.
... snip ...
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home
from above:
So investors betting for quick solutions to the financial crisis could
be disappointed. The tangled web that banks wove over the years will
take a long time to undo.
At the end of 2008, for example, off-balance-sheet assets at just the
four biggest U.S. banks -- Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc.,
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. -- were about $5.2
trillion, according to their 2008 annual filings.
... snip ...
oh ... I've been doing some amount of work "cleaning" the OCR of scan
of the Glass-Steagall hearing transcripts (and creating HTML) ... from
the hearings:
BROKERS' LOANS AND INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION
For the purpose of making it perfectly clear that the present
industrial depression was due to the inflation of credit on brokers'
loans, as obtained from the Bureau of Research of the Federal Reserve
Board, the figures show that the inflation of credit for speculative
purposes on stock exchanges were responsible directly for a rise in
the average of quotations of the stocks from sixty in 1922 to 225 in
1929 to 35 in 1932 and that the change in the value of such Stocks
listed on the New York Stock Exchange went through the same identical
changes in almost identical percentages.
... snip ...
there is a correspondence between the speculation in the real-estate market leveraging (ARM) loans from (unregulated) non-depository institutions (that were using securitization as source of funds) and the speculation in the '20s stock market using brokers' loans.
The Quiet Coup
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice
from above:
But there's a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business
interests -- financiers, in the case of the U.S. -- played a central
role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the
implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable
collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent
precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the
economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or
unwilling, to act against them.
... snip ...
From congressional hearings last fall, part of the circuitous route involving securitization was testimony that both toxic CDO issuers/sellers and the rating agencies knew that the toxic CDOs weren't worth triple-A ratings, but the toxic CDO issuers/sellers were paying the rating agencies for the triple-A ratings. This greatly increased the institutions that would deal in the triple-A rated toxic CDOs as well as the money paid ... and therefor enormously increased the amount of money available to non-depository loan originators ... and further contributed to eliminating any motivation to pay attention to details related to loan quality; no-down, no-documentation, 1% interest-only ARMs became very attractive to speculators since the carrying cost was much less than real-estate inflation in many parts of the country (planning on flipping before rate adjusted)
Part of the testimony was that the rating agency business process became misaligned in the early 70s when the rating agencies switched from the buyers paying for the ratings to the issuers paying for the ratings (significantly increasing potential for conflict of interest).
There were some news stories in January about gov. engaging IDC to help evaluate the off-balance toxic assets at financial institutions. IDC had bought the pricing services division from one of the rating agencies in the early 70s (in the period that rating agency business process became misaligned). Disclaimer, I interviewed with IDC in the late 60s, but didn't join them).
prior to securitization, regulated financial institutions would be making loans using deposits as source of funds. in the securitization scenario, regulated financial institutions could provide a significant amount of the funds for the unregulated loan originators (in circuitous manner) with their (unregulated) investment banking arms (courtesy of repeal of Glass-Steagall) buy up the triple-A rated toxic CDOs and carry them off-balance.
This is long-winded, decade old (Jan99) post discussing some of the
current problems:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
it also discusses citibank, in 1989, doing the risk analysis that ARM portfolio could take down the institution (which it nearly did), unloading the portfolio and getting out of the business.
if it hadn't been for the world-wide appetite for triple-A rated, toxic CDOs, the unregulated loan originators would have had to pay a lot more attention to loan quality (as it was, they found they could unload everything they wrote, as fast as they could write it), and one of the biggest customers for those triple-A rated, toxic CDOs were the unregulated investment banking arms (courtesy of repeal of Glass-Steagall) of regulated banks (which enormously contributed to the amount of funds that unregulated loan originators had available for their lending mills).
PBS program describes citigroup playing significant role in repeal of
Glass-Steagall
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/
Now, at least for citi, their lending business had demonstrated in 1989 that they understood how to evaluate an ARM portfolio ... but roll forward to the current time ... and a great deal of those (off-balance) triple-A rated, toxic CDOs are effectively an ARM portfolio ... and the institutional knowledge from 1989 appeared to have evaporated.
Citigroup's Place on a Roll of Shame
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/10/news/citigroup_loomis.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009041014
from above:
But neither competitors nor Congress liked open-bank assistance,
wondering why the institutions getting it shouldn't just be allowed to
fail. So a 1991 banking law called FDICIA, and a subsequent amendment
to a related law, essentially barred the FDIC from granting such
assistance -- except in instances of systemic risk.
... snip ...
but as mentioned, FDIC has had to do it anyway for five Citigroup banks ... to the tune of $306 billion.
Greenspan Slept as Off-Books Debt Escaped Scrutiny
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&refer=home&sid=aYJZOB_gZi0I
Stay away from Citigroup
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/11/28/stay-away-from-citigroup-c/
from above:
Using household terms such as "QSPEs" and "VIEs," Pandit revealed that
Citi has more than $1.2 trillion dollars in off-balance sheet
assets. These off-balance sheet entities are similar in structure to
Enron's SPVs (special purpose vehicles)
... snip ...
Another quote from "Bernanke Says Crisis Damage Likely to Be
Long-Lasting" article:
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the collapse of
U.S. lending will probably cause long-lasting damage to home
prices, household wealth and borrowers' credit scores.
... snip ...
The audacity of hope; Optimism that banks' fortunes have reached
bottom may be premature
http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13496794&source=hptextfeature
from above:
More blows are coming. Banks worldwide have written down their assets
by $1.1 trillion. The final tally is expected to be double that, or
more. The pain is only now starting to spread through commercial
property and commercial loans. As a result, the first-quarter reprieve
will turn out to be a "head fake", says Chris Whalen of Institutional
Risk Analytics.
past posts mentioning article about securitization eliminating
any motivation to pay attention to loan quality:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#14 What are the challenges in risk analytics post financial crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#42 Lets play Blame Game...?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#52 The Credit Crunch: Why it happened?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#73 CROOKS and NANNIES: what would Boyd do?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#1 Are Both The U.S. & UK on the brink of debt disaster?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#37 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#52 What has the Global Financial Crisis taught the Nations, it's Governments and Decision Makers, and how should they apply that knowledge to manage risks differently in the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#53 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#54 In your opinion, which facts caused the global crise situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#73 What can we learn from the meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#78 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#39 'WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#61 Accounting for the "greed factor"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#65 is it possible that ALL banks will be nationalized?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#37 NEW SEC (Enforcement) MANUAL, A welcome addition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#77 Who first mentioned Credit Crunch?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#8 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#31 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#38 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#47 TARP Disbursements Through April 10th
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: what IBM 360/370/etc. model was their best seller? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 11:23:42 -0400"Dave Wade" <g8mqw@yahoo.com> writes:
4381 was originally going to be one of the risc/801 microprocessors
... corporation converging the large number of different microprocessors to
risc/801 ... as/400 was also part of that original strategy, problems
showed up ... and they reverted to cisc microprocessors
... misc. risc/801 references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801
however, by the time 4381 came on the scene ... the
departmental/mid-range market was starting to move to workstations and
larger PCs. this can be seen in the decade of vax numbers (sliced &
diced by year, model, us/non-us) ... old post w/numbers:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0 Computers in Science Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005f.html#37 Where should the type information be: in tags and descriptors
big difference between 4341/4331 & vax ... was there were 4341/4331
(single) orders in quantities of multiple hundreds. some old email
referencing 43xx
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx
in some of the departmental server scenarios ... departmental "conference rooms" and "supply rooms" were being taken over for 4341 rooms. the proliferation of such departmental machines also started to dampen the growth in datacenter/glasshouse (and in some places resulted in shortage of conference rooms).
4341 sales were so successful that there was even internal politics
because 4341 was "eating" some number of 3031 sales ... and clusters of
4341 were better cost-effective & price/performance than 3033 ... some
of that is also discussed in the above reference post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15 departmental servers
part of the 3033 price/performance comparison was disk accesses was starting to be an increasing system thruput bottleneck and there was direction to leverage various kinds of caching (both outboard and processor memory) to compensate for the disk thruput bottleneck. 3033 (24bit/16mbyte addressing) nominally was limited to 16mbytes real storage ... which represented a real barrier ... although there was eventually a hack done configuring 3033 with 32mbyte of real storage. Clusters of 4341 had significantly more aggregate real storage
misc. past posts mentioning 4341 cluster cost effectiveness:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15 departmental servers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#57 Integer types for 128-bit addressing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#34 increasing addressable memory via paged memory?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005n.html#11 Code density and performance?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005p.html#1 Intel engineer discusses their dual-core design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#30 HASP/ASP JES/JES2/JES3
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#38 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#44 POWER6 on zSeries?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#39 another blast from the past
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#41 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#2 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#4 Google Architecture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006p.html#0 DASD Response Time (on antique 3390?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006r.html#4 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#41 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#42 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#15 more than 16mbyte support for 370
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#44 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#59 IBM to the PCM market(the sky is falling!!!the sky is falling!!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#71 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#20 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#10 IBM 8000 series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#56 360/30 memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#72 FICON tape drive?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#56 CSA 'above the bar'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#8 on-demand computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#64 Interesting ibm about the myths of the Mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#71 Interesting ibm about the myths of the Mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#73 Convergent Technologies vs Sun
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#60 recent mentions of 40+ yr old technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#57 Virtual
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#48 Mainframe Hall of Fame: 17 New Members Added
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#54 mainframe performance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#45 Mainframe Hall of Fame: 17 New Members Added
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis? Date: Apr 19, 2009 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Securityre:
25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis; Phil Gramm
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877330,00.html
In the session that repealed Glass-Steagall, the financial industry contributed $250M to Congress, and in the recent session that passed TARP, they contributed $2B. More recent was comment that financial industry contributed a total of $5B during the period.
Gramm and the 'Enron Loophole'
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/business/17grammside.html
from above:
Enron was a major contributor to Mr. Gramm's political campaigns, and
Mr. Gramm's wife, Wendy, served on the Enron board, which she joined
after stepping down as chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading
Commission.
... snip ...
Phil Gramm's Enron Favor
https://web.archive.org/web/20080711114839/http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-01-15/news/phil-gramm-s-enron-favor/
from above:
A few days after she got the ball rolling on the exemption, Wendy
Gramm resigned from the commission. Enron soon appointed her to its
board of directors, where she served on the audit committee, which
oversees the inner financial workings of the corporation. For this,
the company paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in stocks and
dividends, as much as $50,000 in annual salary, and $176,000 in
attendance fees
... snip ...
Greenspan Slept as Off-Books Debt Escaped Scrutiny
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&refer=home&sid=aYJZOB_gZi0I
from above:
That same year Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and SEC
Chairman Arthur Levitt opposed an attempt by Brooksley Born, head of
the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to study regulating
over-the-counter derivatives. In 2000, Congress passed a law keeping
them unregulated.
... snip ...
one of the articles from the period mentioned that House passed the bill ... and even before the copy of the bill was distributed in the Senate, the Senate passed it unanimously. Also Born (as chairman) must have been fairly quickly replaced by Gramm's wife (before she resigned the position to join Enron).
In the wake of ENRON, congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley, but did nothing about the underlying problem. SOX put much of the responsibility on SEC, which seemed to be lax in enforcement ... in part based on the Madoff hearing testimony by the person that tried unsuccessfully for a decade to try and get SEC to do something.
SOX also indicated that SEC do something about rating agencies ... but there doesn't seem to have been anything but:
Report on the Role and Function of Credit Rating Agencies in the
Operation of the Securities Markets; As Required by Section 702(b) of
the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
http://www.sec.gov/news/studies/credratingreport0103.pdf
recent references to Larry Summers part in repeal of Glass-Steagall:
Eight reasons to dump Larry Summers
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4548.shtml
Flashback: Clinton Repeals Glass-Steagall
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/clintons-financial-services-modernization-act
Lawrence Summers, the Glass-Steagall Act and Enron, An historic
reminder and flashback
http://forums.wallstreetexaminer.com/index.php?showtopic=804393
Rubin, Summers, Volcker and the Dirty Repeal of Glass-Steagall
http://slowsmile.hypocrisy.com/2009/03/14/rubin-summers-volcker-and-the-dirty-repeal-of-Glass-Steagall/
Glass-Steagall Accord Reached After Last-Minute Deal Making
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rfi/press/glasssteagall.htm
Larry Summers Received Money From Hedge Fund & Banks
http://blog.rebeltraders.net/2009/04/03/larry-summers-got-millions-banks/
Which Idiot Decided to Repeal Glass-Steagall?
http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/3828
from above:
In April of 1998, Citicorp (banking) and Travelers Group (insurance)
announced their supermerger. Although in violation of Glass-Steagall
Act and the Bank Holding Company Act, a temporary waiver delayed
required divestitures for two years and chairmen Sandy Weill and John
Reed indicated that they intended to pursue changing the law rather
than divestiture. Citibank alone spent "$100 million on lobbying and
public relations" in the year prior to repeal.
... snip ...
President Obama Must Dump Summers To Save His Presidency
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2009/3613must_dump_summers.html
from above:
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who heads the
President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, during a March 27 speech
in New York City, was even more emphatic on a point he has addressed
before: that the current system absolutely had to be reorganized, and
reorganized in a Glass-Steagall framework.
... snip ...
possibly because GAO also didn't believe SEC was doing much ... in
this case regarding public company financial filings (also a SOX
mandate for SEC), they started their own database of problem filings
(which increased something like 300% in the period after SOX):
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-06-1079sp
from above:
The database consists of two files: (1) a file that lists 1,390
restatement announcements that we identified as having been made
because of financial reporting fraud and/or accounting errors between
July 1, 2002, and September 30, 2005, and (2) a file that lists 396
restatement announcements that we identified as having been made
because of financial reporting fraud and/or accounting errors between
October 1, 2005, and June 30, 2006.
... snip ...
past posts mentioning the GAO database work:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#96 Bush - place in history
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#25 IBM's 2Q2008 Earnings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#25 The recently revealed excesses of John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, while the firm was receiving $25 Billion in TARP funds makes me sick
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#36 A great article was posted in another BI group: "To H*** with Business Intelligence: 40 Percent of Execs Trust Gut"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#48 The blame game is on : A blow to the Audit/Accounting Industry or a lesson learned ???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#49 US disaster, debts and bad financial management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#52 What has the Global Financial Crisis taught the Nations, it's Governments and Decision Makers, and how should they apply that knowledge to manage risks differently in the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#53 Credit & Risk Management ... go Simple ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#54 In your opinion, which facts caused the global crise situation?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#73 What can we learn from the meltdown?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#80 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#0 Audit II: Two more scary words: Sarbanes-Oxley
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#20 Decision Making or Instinctive Steering?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#29 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#0 PNC Financial to pay CEO $3 million stock bonus
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#3 Congress Set to Approve Pay Cap of $500,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#37 NEW SEC (Enforcement) MANUAL, A welcome addition
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#42 Bernard Madoff Is Jailed After Pleading Guilty -- are there more "Madoff's" out there?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#61 Quiz: Evaluate your level of Spreadsheet risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#63 Do bonuses foster unethical conduct?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#36 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#37 How do you see ethics playing a role in your organizations current or past?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#2 CEO pay sinks - Wall Street Journal/Hay Group survey results just released
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#29 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: School traditions Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:36:58 -0400Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> writes:
an example involved GNP effectively only measuring things that were sold (exchanged for money); food grown for their own consumption or local barter (and not sale) was not measured ... countries transitioning away from agriculture ... could have a higher GNP per capita ... but lower standard of living ... compared to some purely agriculture economies (where population had healthier/more plentiful food source that they produced for their own consumption or used in local barter).
there was also examples in the transition from production for self-consumption to exchanging everything for money ... there could be enormous overhead (middlemen preying on the infrastructure and not providing any significant incremental benefit).
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: What every taxpayer should know about what caused the current Financial Crisis Date: Apr 19, 2009 Blog: Greater IBMrecent related answers/question in (linkedin) financial crime risk, fraud, and security group ... archived here:
some specific articles referenced:
The Biggest Cause of the Financial Crisis
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/04/13/the-biggest-cause-of-the-financial-crisis.aspx
25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis; Phil Gramm
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877330,00.html
PBS program describes citigroup playing significant role in repeal
of Glass-Steagall
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/
Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt
The Quiet Coup
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home
Citigroup's Place on a Roll of Shame
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/10/news/citigroup_loomis.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009041014
Greenspan Slept as Off-Books Debt Escaped Scrutiny
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&refer=home&sid=aYJZOB_gZi0I
Stay away from Citigroup
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/11/28/stay-away-from-citigroup-c/
Bernanke Says Crisis Damage Likely to Be Long-Lasting
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=arpJXeelvfY4&refer=home
The 'Stress Tests' Are Really 'Fudge Tests'
http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/15/gdp-stress-tests-unemployment-banks-home-prices-opinions-columnists-nouriel-roubini.html
The Man Who Beat The Shorts
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/1117/114.html
The audacity of hope; Optimism that banks' fortunes have reached
bottom may be premature
http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13496794&source=hptextfeature
Gramm and the 'Enron Loophole'
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/business/17grammside.html
Phil Gramm's Enron Favor
https://web.archive.org/web/20080711114839/http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-01-15/news/phil-gramm-s-enron-favor/
and
oh ... I've been doing some amount of work "cleaning" the OCR of scan
of the Glass-Steagall hearing transcripts (and creating HTML) ... from
the hearings:
BROKERS' LOANS AND INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION
For the purpose of making it perfectly clear that the present
industrial depression was due to the inflation of credit on brokers'
loans, as obtained from the Bureau of Research of the Federal Reserve
Board, the figures show that the inflation of credit for speculative
purposes on stock exchanges were responsible directly for a rise in
the average of quotations of the stocks from sixty in 1922 to 225 in
1929 to 35 in 1932 and that the change in the value of such Stocks
listed on the New York Stock Exchange went through the same identical
changes in almost identical percentages.
... snip ...
there is a correspondence between the speculation in the real-estate market leveraging (ARM) loans from unregulated/non-depository institutions and the speculation in the '20s stock market using brokers' loans.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Lisp Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:43:19 -0400patrick.okeefe@WAMU.NET (Patrick O'Keefe) writes:
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:20:10 -0400hancock4 writes:
i've mentioned before that several billion were spent in the 90s, on a number of failed business process re-engineering efforts. a lot of these were overnight batch financial settlement applications. in the 70s ... some number of financial infrastructures got "online" transactions ... but many of these "online" transactions didn't actually complete the operations ... things were partially done ... and then left for overnight batch (legacy) operations (many in cobol and dating back to the 60s).
in the 90s, a combination of increasing workload and globalizations ...
was decreasing the size of overnight batch window ... while also increasing
the amount of work that needed to be done. the re-engineering efforts
were to implement straight-through processing (i.e. run operation
straight through to completion ... rather than deferring completion for
overnight batch window). quite a few of these effort involved leveraging
large numbers of killer micros ... along with object-oriented
technologies to parallelize the workload. the problem was that the
object parallelization introduced a factor of 100 times increase in
overhead (compared to legacy cobol implementation) ... totally swamping
any throughput improvements from using large numbers of parallel
processors.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007e.html#31 Quote from comp.object
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#15 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#36 Future of System/360 architecture?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#3 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#5 Translation of IBM Basic Assembler to C?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#19 Distributed Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#21 Distributed Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#37 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#44 Distributed Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#61 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#19 Education ranking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#27 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#64 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#69 Controlling COBOL DDs named SYSOUT
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#72 whats the world going to do when all the baby boomers retire
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#81 Tap and faucet and spellcheckers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#3 on-demand computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008b.html#74 Too much change opens up financial fault lines
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#30 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#31 Toyota Sales for 2007 May Surpass GM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#73 Price of CPU seconds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#87 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#89 Berkeley researcher describes parallel path
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008g.html#55 performance of hardware dynamic scheduling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#50 Microsoft versus Digital Equipment Corporation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#56 Long running Batch programs keep IMS databases offline
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#26 What is the biggest IT myth of all time?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#30 Automation is still not accepted to streamline the business processes... why organizations are not accepting newer technolgies?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#35 Automation is still not accepted to streamline the business processes... why organizations are not accepting newer technolgies?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#7 If you had a massively parallel computing architecture, what unsolved problem would you set out to solve?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#87 Cleaning Up Spaghetti Code vs. Getting Rid of It
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#43 Business process re-engineering
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#14 Legacy clearing threat to OTC derivatives warns State Street
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery? Date: Apr 21, 2009 Blog: Greater IBM Connectionre:
also:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#53 What every taxpayer should know about what caused the current Financial Crisis
I think Bernanke has been quoted a number of times about it is going to require that the administration demonstrate the "will" to do what is necessary.
The Quiet Coup
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice
from above:
But there's a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business
interests -- financiers, in the case of the U.S. -- played a central
role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the
implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable
collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent
precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the
economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or
unwilling, to act against them.
... snip ...
Bernanke Says Crisis Damage Likely to Be Long-Lasting
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=arpJXeelvfY4&refer=home
from above (something of an understatement):
Bernanke said the packaging and sale of mortgages into securities
"appears to have been one source of the decline in underwriting
standards" because originators have less stake in the risk of a loan.
... snip ...
I've been doing some amount of work "cleaning" the OCR of scan of the
(1930s) Glass-Steagall (Pecora) hearing transcripts (and creating
HTML) ... from the hearings:
BROKERS' LOANS AND INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION
For the purpose of making it perfectly clear that the present
industrial depression was due to the inflation of credit on brokers'
loans, as obtained from the Bureau of Research of the Federal Reserve
Board, the figures show that the inflation of credit for speculative
purposes on stock exchanges were responsible directly for a rise in
the average of quotations of the stocks from sixty in 1922 to 225 in
1929 to 35 in 1932 and that the change in the value of such Stocks
listed on the New York Stock Exchange went through the same identical
changes in almost identical percentages.
... snip ...
there is a correspondence between the speculation in the real-estate market leveraging (ARM) loans from (unregulated) non-depository institutions (that were using securitization as source of funds) and the speculation in the '20s stock market using brokers' loans.
Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt
from above:
The bundling of consumer loans and home mortgages into packages of
securities -- a process known as securitization -- was the biggest
U.S. export business of the 21st century. More than $27 trillion of
these securities have been sold since 2001, according to the
Securities Industry Financial Markets Association, an industry trade
group. That's almost twice last year's U.S. gross domestic product of
$13.8 trillion.
... snip ...
$27 trillion is a lot to clean-up. There are the unregulated, non-depository institutions that used securitization as source of funds ... and being able to immediately package the loans and sell them off as triple-A rated toxic CDOs, eliminated any motivation to pay attention to loan qualification. speculators found no-down, no-documentation, 1% interest-only-payment ARMs quite attractive since the carrying cost was much less than real-estate inflation in many parts of the country (and planning on flipping before rate adjusted) ... basically able to treat home owner market like the unregulated 20s stock market.
then there are all the institutions that bought that $27 trillion in securitized loans (lot of it was triple-A rated, toxic CDOs) which need quite a bit of adjustment.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Data masking/data disguise Primer 1) WHY Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 22:07:18 -0400phil@VOLTAGE.COM (Phil Smith) writes:
from above:
Created by Visa and other credit card companies, the PCI rules will have
been in effect for four years as of June 30. But with breaches of card
data continuing and questions about the standard's effectiveness on the
rise, PCI DSS is showing signs of coming apart at the seams.
... snip ...
recent PCI thread/news:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#69 PCI Compliance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#3 Cybersecurity hearing highlights inadequacy of PCI DSS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#16 Cybersecurity hearing highlights inadequacy of PCI DSS
We had been called in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server ... they had also invented this technology called SSL they wanted to use. The result is now frequently called electronic commerce.
Somewhat as a result, in the mid-90s, we were asked to participate in
the x9a10 financial standard working group that had been given the
requirement to preserve the integrity of the financial infrastructure
for all retail payments. This involved doing detailed, end-to-end threat
& vulnerability studies of the different mechanisms & kinds of retail
payments (POS, attended, unattended, internet, transit turnstyle,
magstripe, contact, contactless, debit, credit, gift card, stored value,
ACH, etc, i.e. ALL). The result was the x9.59 financial transaction
standard ... some reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
One of the big threats/vulnerabilities was transaction information being harvested (skimming, phishing, evesdropping, data breaches) by crooks (&/or insiders) for the purpose of fraudulent transactions. X9.59 addressed this problem, not by attempting to prevent such activity ... but slightly tweaking the paradigm and making the information useless to crooks for purposes of fraudulent transactions.
In much of the current infrastructure, knowing the account number is sufficient for a crook to perform a fraudulent transaction. We've tried using a number of metaphors to describe the current infrastructure (fixed by x9.59):
• dual-use vulnerability metaphor
account number is required in a large number of different business processes and is required to be readily available. at the same time the account number has to be kept strictly confidential and never divulged to anybody (not even those needing it for business processes, since insiders have repeatedly been shown to be a major source of identity theft). we've claimed that even if the planet was buried under miles of information hiding encryption, that it wouldn't be sufficient to prevent information leakage.
• security proportional to risk metaphor
to the merchant, knowledge of the account number is worth some percent of the profit off the transaction (possibly only a dollar or two); for a processor the knowledge from each transaction may be worth only a few cents; that same knowledge for the crook, is worth the account balance/credit-limit. as a result, the crook may be able to outspend by a factor of 100 times attacking the system (as the merchant or processor can afford to spend protecting the system).
• naked transaction metaphor
lots of archived blog activity & posts related to naked transaction
metaphor
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#payments
....
One of the issues is that the earlier work we did for electronic commerce, uses SSL for hiding financial transaction information ... which appears to the largest use of SSL on the web today. X9.59 eliminates the need for hiding that information (as countermeasure to fraudulent transactions) and as a result would eliminate the major use of SSL
as an aside ... we were orthogonally involved in the cal. state breach notification legislation. we had been brought in to help word-smith the cal. electronic signature legislation and some of the other parties were involved in privacy issues. there had been detailed, in-depth consumer privacy surveys ... which found the number one issue to be identity theft, and a major form of identity theft involved information from data breaches being used for fraudulent transactions ... and at the time, there seemed to be little or nothing being done about data breaches. it apparently was hoped if the information was made public ... then there might be some stuff done about it.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:53:22 -0400pne.chomko writes:
in the referenced post, the url was for my (archived) answer to question
that originally appeared in greater ibm blog
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#22 Does anyone know if there is a 'version' of CICS that IBM is planning to implement for AIX or something that does a similar function already?
in the above ... i mentioned that the "aix" flavor started out as camelot (along with misc. other stuff, mach, andrew file system, etc) at cmu, morphed into encina at transarc ... and then got packaged as CICS for txseries and websphere.
also mentioned that the (original) mainframe flavor started out at a
customer shop in the 60s ... before getting picked up by ibm to put
out as product. i was at univ. where the library had gotten ONR grant
for digital library stuff ... i believed it paid for the univ. 2321
(datacell) as well as the library being selected to be one of the
customer betatest sites for the initial (ibm) cics product ... and i
got tasked to support/debug the deployment at the library
... misc. past posts mentioning cics (&/or bdam)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#bdam
original relational/sql was system/r at sjr ... misc. past
posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr
... there was then technology transfer of system/r to endicott
for sql/ds. now one of the people mentioned in this meeting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
claimed to have handled the technology transfer from endicott back to stl for (mainframe) STL.
the non-mainframe DB2 started out as relational database implementation (code-named shelby) at the toronto lab for OS2. It then morphed into DB2 for non-mainframe platforms (completely different implementation).
random past posts mentioning shelby
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#1 Foreign key in Oracle Sql
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#41 Mainframe Applications and Records Keeping?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#13 IBM sues maker of Intel-based Mainframe clones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#12 Newbie question on table design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#21 Ellison Looks Back As Oracle Turns 30
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#57 No offense to any one but is DB2/6000 an old technology. Does anybody still use it, if so what type of industries??
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Backup and Restore Manager for z/VM Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:48:39 -0400Backup and Restore Manager for z/VM
for the heck of it ... today i was at a ibm presentation on vm backup & restore.
it has been 30 yrs since i did cmsback ... some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#cmsback
and various backup/archive related past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#backup
cmsback was used internal for a number of years ... and then a flavor was released as a product called workstation datasave facility (which could use also network to backup workstation files ... and had a number of agents that would run on client machines). that morphed into ADSM and then was renamed TSM.
the presentation today described features and had screen demos that looked similar to 30yrs ago. part of the issue is that tsm doesn't run in cms environment ... and only supports scsi tapes drives(?) ... which appears to been the motivation to do the current back & restore manager (runs in cms and supports mainframe connected tapes). i asked whether or not the implementation was the pre adsm/tsm ... but apparently it was (re)done from scratch .... even tho the appearance and a lot of the feature implementation appears to be the same.
in the early 80s, one of the people that helped me with 2nd release of cmsback ... left the company and went to work doing vm activity for other companies ... including doing a similar vm backup product ... which went thru a number of coporate ownerships over the years ... but continues to be sold in the market.
wiki tsm page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Tivoli_Storage_Manager
from above:
The product was known as ADSTAR Distributed Storage Manager (ADSM)
before 1999 re-branding.
...
TSM is descended from the Workstation DataSave Facility (WDSF) project
done at IBM's Almaden Research Center around 1990. WDSF's original
purpose was to back up PC/DOS, OS/2, and AIX workstation data onto an
MVS (and later VM/CMS) server.
... snip ...
actually WDSF evolved from cmsback that i had originally done in the late 70s (used at a number of internal datacenters).
current tsm product
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/storage-mgr/
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:52:33 -0400"Nico de Jong" <nico@farumdata.dk> writes:
with old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#email841207
from an even earlier y2k thread (early 80s), with somebody at nasa mentioning various date/time issues ... including an issue with shuttle program ... while financial institution change control testing requirements may not be quite as stringent as "human (life) rated" ... but sometimes they may be.
during the peak xmas buying seasons ... say mid september thru mid january ... many financial institutions will freeze changes on their payment processing related systems ... otherwise allowing only once a month change to production systems ... for changes which can have a several month regression/test cycle.
A little topic drift from recent linkedin payment discussion:
How Washington's Credit Card Fray Could Hammer Acquirers
http://www.digitaltransactions.net/newsstory.cfm?newsid=2191
from above:
That the card industry is on the defensive is testimony not just to
consumer activists and Democrats controlling the White House and both
houses of Congress, but also to anti-interchange retailer groups such as
the Merchants Payments Coalition
... snip ...
and comment on above:
There have been several news articles regarding interchange and other
fees. A study from a couple yrs ago mentioned difference between US and
Europe ... that financial institutions in the US were avg. nearly
40percent of bottom line coming from payment related fees ... while it
was less than 10percent in Europe.
Part of this could be much lower use of electronic payment in Europe
and/or use of payment types with much lower interchange fees (a few yrs
ago merchants were successful in litigation over default payment types
selected ... that had significantly different interchange fees)
... snip ...
old post with reference for above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm23.htm#35 3 of the big 4 - all doing payment systems
one of the cognitive dissonance related to interchange fees is that
merchants have been conditioned that the fees go up for payment
mechanisms with higher fraud rates ... and correspondingly are much
lower for payment mechanisms with lower fraud rates. For instance there
was study that signature-debit has 15 times the fraud rate as pin-debit
... old reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm22.htm#22 FraudWatch - Chip&Pin, a new tenner (USD10)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#21 Debit Cards HACKED now
Possibly because payment systems revenue represent such a significant part of the bottom line ... in some past efforts where there was attempts to introduce technologies that would significantly lower the fraud rate; the financial institutions wanted to increase the fees (compared to the existing) ... effectively changing the fee justification logic mid-stream ... up to certain level, fees are increased as fraud increases ... then there is a switch that reduces fraud ... and the fees continue increase even further (plotting the fees on y-axis against fraud rate on x-axis ... creates a plot with V on its side ... fees increase as fraud increases ..... until a certain point and then fraud reverses ... but fees continue to go up.
misc. past posts mentioning interchange fees:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm23.htm#37 3 of the big 4 - all doing payment systems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm26.htm#1 Extended Validation - setting the minimum liability, the CA trap, the market in browser governance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm26.htm#25 EV - what was the reason, again?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm26.htm#34 Failure of PKI in messaging
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#32 The bank fraud blame game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#33 The bank fraud blame game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#39 a fraud is a sale, Re: The bank fraud blame game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#62 Fingerprint Firefox Plugin?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#1 2008: The year of hack the vote?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#18 Lack of fraud reporting paths considered harmful
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#47 delegating SSL certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#77 How safe do you feel when using a debit or credit card?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#81 not crypto, but fraud detection
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm28.htm#82 Can we copy trust?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#31 Is the media letting banks off the hook on payment card security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#40 Is the media letting banks off the hook on payment card security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007s.html#64 Is the media letting banks off the hook on payment card security
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#7 Payments start-up Noca takes aim at interchange Achilles heel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#59 Tesco to open 30 "bank branches" this year
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Halifax faces legal challenge on chip-and-pin security Date: Apr 23, 2009 Blog: Payment Systems NetworkHalifax faces legal challenge on chip-and-pin security
from above:
Job decided to sue over the phantom withdrawal, marking the first
legal case in the UK challenging what banks contend is a strong
security system designed to prevent card fraud, according to Ross
Anderson, a security engineering professor at the University of
Cambridge.
... snip ...
the above article also references this paper on how chip&pin could be
subverted:
http://fipr.org/080116huntreview.pdf
there have been past references to privatization ... where consumers are to report fraud to their banks instead of the police.
the article also mentions (counterfeit) yes card .... this old URL
mentions presentation at Cartes2002 on such card exploits
https://web.archive.org/web/20030417083810/http://www.smartcard.co.uk/resources/articles/cartes2002.html
misc. references to past threads/posts discussing yes card:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescards
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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 the monitor work under TOPS? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:21:28 -0400Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
palo alto group then looked at porting jfs to non-801 architecture ... which required traditional calls to log altered information. one of the issues that austin jfs group had with palo alto was that the traditional/explicit calls for logging ran faster than the transaction memory implementation.
801/romp was originally going to be cp.r and pl.8 for a displaywriter follow-on. when that was canceled, the group decided to retarget to unix workstation market. they hired the company that had done pc/ix to do a similar port for romp. however, there were all the displaywriter people ... so they defined an abstract machine interface which was implemented in pl.8 ... and had the company doing the unix port do it to the abstract machine interface.
the claim was that would result in less elapsed time and less resources than if the unix port was done to the bare metal. in any case, the result was pc/rt and aix (v2).
at that time, the palo alto group had been working on BSD port to 370 ... but got retargeted to pc/rt (romp) ... doing it native to bare machine ... resulting in "AOS". The palo alto group pointed out that they did bare machine, native port to romp it significantly less time & resources than aixv2 (to abstract machine). They also pointed out that there was long-term resource issue with the abstract machine since new device drivers had to be done for both aix (in c) as well in abstract machine (in pl.8). possibly contributing to some of the austin/palo alto discord ... before jfs.
palo alto group (after bsd/aos for pc/rt) also did aix/370 and aix/386
... which was port of ucla locus system to the two architectures (also
getting named aix ... but completely different implementation).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOCUS_%28operating_system%29
early on, palo alto had also done a locus port to S/1.
this recent post made reference to OSF being formed as counter to
AT&T/SUN
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#22 Does anyone know if there is a 'version' of CICS that IBM is planning to implement for AIX or something that does a similar function already?
part of osf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Software_Foundation
was DCE (distributed computing environment):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_Computing_Environment
Early DCE meetings included both the cmu AFS people and the UCLA Locus people. one big issue was that AFS did whole file caching while locus could do partial file caching (as well as transparent process migration)
misc. past posts mentioning 801, romp, rios, power, power/pc, fort knox,
iliad, and/or somerset
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801
i've periodically make the statement that 801 was more like John going
to the opposite from FS ... misc. past posts mentioning FS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
for other drift ... "OSF/1 AD" (aka Tru64 UNIX)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSF/1#OSF.2F1_AD
from above:
OSF/1 AD (Advanced Development) was a distributed version of OSF/1
developed for massively parallel supercomputers by Locus Computing
Corporation. Variants of OSF/1 AD were used on several such systems,
including the Intel Paragon XP/S and ASCI Red, Convex Exemplar SPP-1200
(as SPP-UX) and the Hitachi SR2201 (as HI-UX MPP).
... snip ...
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: The rise and fall of Sun Microsystems Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 08:19:42 -0400The rise and fall of Sun Microsystems
recent posts mentioning that early on, they tried to interest ibm in
producing the machine ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#65 IBM in talks to buy Sun Microsystems? What do you think will be the effect on the industry?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#67 IBM in talks to acquire Sun Microsystems
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#70 Mainframe Hall of Fame: 17 New Members Added
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#7 IBM in Talks to Buy Sun
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:21:14 -0400Larry__Weiss <lfw@airmail.net> writes:
in addition to the y2k activity, the billions spent on failed reengineering on a number of these applications in the 90s ... burnt a lot of people (some were fired) and created reluctance to be the next sacrifice.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis Date: Apr 24, 2009 Blog: Greater IBM ConnectionJust posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
hard to imagine how to get to $27 trillion from subprime.
Evil Wall Street Exports Boomed With 'Fools' Born to Buy Debt
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-10-27/evil-wall-street-exports-boomed-with-fools-born-to-buy-debt
from above:
The bundling of consumer loans and home mortgages into packages of
securities -- a process known as securitization -- was the biggest
U.S. export business of the 21st century. More than $27 trillion of
these securities have been sold since 2001, according to the
Securities Industry Financial Markets Association, an industry trade
group. That's almost twice last year's U.S. gross domestic product of
$13.8 trillion.
... snip ...
$27 trillion is a lot to clean-up. There are the unregulated, non-depository institutions that used securitization as source of funds ... and being able to immediately package the loans and sell them off as triple-A rated toxic CDOs, eliminated any motivation to pay attention to loan qualification. speculators found no-down, no-documentation, 1% interest only payment ARMs quite attactive since the carrying cost was much less than real-estate inflaction in many parts of the country (and planning on flipping before rate adjusted) ... basically able to treat home owner market like the unregulated 20s stock market.
then there are all the institutions that bought that $27 trillion in securitized loans (lot of it was triple-A rated, toxic CDOs) which need quite a bit of adjustment.
a couple of long-winded, decade-old posts discussing some of the
current issues ... including securitization (note ... CDOs had been
used in the S&L crisis to obfuscate the underlying value)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskaads
Bernanke Says Crisis Damage Likely to Be Long-Lasting
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=arpJXeelvfY4&refer=home
from above (something of an understatement):
Bernanke said the packaging and sale of mortgages into securities
"appears to have been one source of the decline in underwriting
standards" because originators have less stake in the risk of a loan.
... snip ...
The obfuscation of the underlying value was further complicated by those selling (toxic) CDOs being able to pay rating agencies for triple-A ratings.
I think Bernanke has been quoted a number of times about it is going to require that the administration demonstrate the "will" to do what is necessary.
The Quiet Coup
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice
from above:
But there's a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business
interests -- financiers, in the case of the U.S. -- played a central
role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the
implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable
collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent
precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the
economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or
unwilling, to act against them.
... snip ...
A lot of "subprime" was being applied to low-income, 1st time home buyers. there were some statistics that accounted for less than one percent of the $27 trillion.
The CDOs had been around since (at least) the S&L crisis ... but there weren't a lot of buyers. Big change this decade was a lot of unregulated investment banking arms (now part of regulated banks, courtesy of repeal in Glass-Steagall in 1999) were buying them up and carrying them off-balance ... lot of the current too big to fail systemic risk is because those (regulated) banks are holding trillions in these toxic CDOs (courtesy of repeal of Glass-Steagall).
The two sides of the problem are
1) what all the speculation did to the real estate market ... I've
been doing some amount of work "cleaning" the OCR of scan of the
Glass-Steagall (Pecora) hearing transcripts (and creating HTML)
... from the hearings:
BROKERS' LOANS AND INDUSTRIAL DEPRESSION
For the purpose of making it perfectly clear that the present
industrial depression was due to the inflation of credit on brokers'
loans, as obtained from the Bureau of Research of the Federal Reserve
Board, the figures show that the inflation of credit for speculative
purposes on stock exchanges were responsible directly for a rise in
the average of quotations of the stocks from sixty in 1922 to 225 in
1929 to 35 in 1932 and that the change in the value of such Stocks
listed on the New York Stock Exchange went through the same identical
changes in almost identical percentages.
... snip ...
there is a correspondence between the speculation in the real-estate market leverage (ARM) loans from (unregulated) non-depository institutions (that were using securitization as source of funds) and the speculation in the '20s stock market using brokers' loans.
and the other side is
2) the current state of the financial institution from all those that bought and held the $27 trillion in toxic CDOs.
A trivial comparison is that much of those toxic CDOs are effectively an ARM portfolio
The posts/thread from 1999, mentions that in 1989, institutions aggregated their assets into generalized pools (somewhat analogous to a logical CDO for analysing the risk). Citicorp (largest player in the mortgage market at the time) discovered that ARM mortgage portfolio could take done the institution (and nearly did) ... which prompted them to get out of the business.
Roll forward to the current time and all that institutional knowledge appeared to have evaporated.
Citigroup's Place on a Roll of Shame
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/10/news/citigroup_loomis.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009041014
from above:
But neither competitors nor Congress liked open-bank assistance,
wondering why the institutions getting it shouldn't just be allowed to
fail. So a 1991 banking law called FDICIA, and a subsequent amendment
to a related law, essentially barred the FDIC from granting such
assistance -- except in instances of systemic risk.
... snip ...
Stay away from Citigroup
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/11/28/stay-away-from-citigroup-c/
from above:
Using household terms such as "QSPEs" and "VIEs," Pandit revealed that
Citi has more than $1.2 trillion dollars in off-balance sheet
assets. These off-balance sheet entities are similar in structure to
Enron's SPVs (special purpose vehicles)
... snip ...
The audacity of hope; Optimism that banks' fortunes have reached
bottom may be premature
http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13496794&source=hptextfeature
from above:
More blows are coming. Banks worldwide have written down their assets
by $1.1 trillion. The final tally is expected to be double that, or
more. The pain is only now starting to spread through commercial
property and commercial loans. As a result, the first-quarter reprieve
will turn out to be a "head fake", says Chris Whalen of Institutional
Risk Analytics.
... snip ...
the large (too big to fail, systemic risk) regulated financial institutions were providing a lot of funding for the loans ... but via a circuitous route. the circuitous route bypassed most of the traditional infrastructure regulation as well as traditional risk management/analysis. the circuitous route and all the related transactions also generated enormous fees, commissions, and bonuses for the individuals involved (ignoring the enormous risks that potentially could take down the institutions and the economy) ... which might be considered a major reason why it reached such proportion.
Following from author of "The Quiet Coup" (Glass-Steagall hearings are also referred to as the senate banking hearings or the "Pecora" hearings ... I included a quote regarding "brokers' loans", pg. 7281).
The Next Big Hearing?
http://baselinescenario.com/2009/04/24/the-next-big-hearing-bill-moyers-tonight/
from above:
Bill Moyers asked me to join his conversation this week with Michael
Perino - a law professor and expert on securities law - who is working
on a detailed history of the 1932-33 "Pecora Hearings," which
uncovered wrongdoing on Wall Street and laid the foundation for major
legislation that reformed banking and the stock market.
... snip ...
other references in above:
Bill Moyers
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04242009/profile2.html
U.S. Senate backs panel to probe financial fraud
http://uk.reuters.com/article/burningIssues/idUKTRE53L77020090422
A Commission on the Economic Crisis?
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/hearing/
... and misc. past posts mentioning The Quiet Coup &/or Brokers' Loans:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#28 I need insight on the Stock Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#62 Is Wall Street World's Largest Ponzi Scheme where Madoff is Just a Poster Child?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#73 Should Glass-Steagall be reinstated?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#77 Who first mentioned Credit Crunch?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#8 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#23 Should FDIC or the Federal Reserve Bank have the authority to shut down and take over non-bank financial institutions like AIG?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#40 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#53 Are the "brightest minds in finance" finally onto something?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#59 Tesco to open 30 "bank branches" this year
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#82 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#86 Is FINANCE the institutionalized form whereby (smart?) elites exact payment for the rest's being...?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#4 Obscene exec pay packets for poor performance or outright failure. Is it acceptable? Is regulation the answer. What are the issues? What are the practical alternatives?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#20 What is the real basis for business mess we are facing today?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#27 US banking Changes- TARP Proposl
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#35 US banking Changes- TARP Proposl
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#38 On whom or what would you place the blame for the sub-prime crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#49 Is the current downturn cyclic or systemic?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#53 What every taxpayer should know about what caused the current Financial Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#56 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
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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 the monitor work under TOPS? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:43:51 -0400Michael Wojcik <mwojcik@newsguy.com> writes:
science center was at 545 tech sq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
decade or so after I had transferred to the west coast ... they moved down the street to 101 main.
IBM had provided joint support along with DEC for Project Athena (to
tune of $25m each), IBM and DEC each got an assistant director at
Project Athena. I've mentioned before that the one from IBM, I had
worked with much earlier at the science center ... and was also
the inventor of the compare&swap instruction (CAS are his initials)
misc. past posts mentioning SMP &/or CAS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp
Because of the funding ... we got to be corporate reps that did periodic
reviews of Project Athena. One week we were there for review, I sat thru
the evoluation of cross-domain support in Kerberos. For some topic
drift, various past posts mentioning Kerberos and/or Kerberos pk-init
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#kerberos
ACIS also provided $50m to CMU for their activity. The CMU person heading it up had previously done a year sabatical at SJR. Also the ACIS rep. tapped to be on-site rep. was a CMU graduate that was then at SJR.
One of the ACIS employees working at Project Athena (display device
support for X ... including 8514 driver) and one of the science center
employees left and formed a software company along with a former science
center employee. He was the person that had come up with the original
idea to do virtual machine and cp40. Later he headed up "interconnect"
part of FS and Anne reported to him; she really enjoyed her time on FS
... although as I've previously mentioned, she thought that much of the
FS specification lacked any substance or depth, still mostly conceptual
w/o sufficient detail that it could be considered practical or possible.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
When we started our HA/CMP product
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
we subcontracted much of the implementation to this software startup in Cambridge. We provided most of their funding and direction and they quickly grew to well over hundred people. when the science center was dissolved ... they took over the vacated space at 101 Main.
First time I visited Cambridge ... I had stayed at the hotel at the end of the science museum bridge. It was still there when we were spending a lot of time in Cambridge as part of ha/cmp (although Lotus was starting to grow up all around it). I remember one day walking from the hotel to 101 Main and stopping to watch the "thinking machines" letters being pried off their building.
I think openmarket (early e-commerce startup) eventually took over that bldg. ... and some number of prior Project Athena people showed up there.
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis Date: Apr 25, 2009 Blog: Greater IBM Connectionre:
In the Madoff hearings, a person that had been trying to get SEC to do something about Madoff for a decade, testified. There was issues about deregulation and lax enforcement, but the frequent theme in the testimony was that crooks and fraud thrive where there is lack of transparency and visibility ... being much more important than just fixing regulation & enforcement.
We had been brought in to consult with a small client/server startup
that wanted to do payment transactions on their server and had this
technology they had invented called SSL they wanted to use. The result
is now frequently called "electronic commerce". Somewhat as a result,
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. debit, credit, stored-value, gift card, attended,
unattended, POS, internet, transit turnstyle, contact, contactless,
etc ... aka ALL). The result was x9.59 financial standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
Somewhat as a result of the X9.59 standards effort, we were asked to come into NSCC (which has since been merged with DTC for DTCC) to look at doing something similar for all aspects of trader operations. It turned out that a side-effort of adding a lot of integrity to all trader operations was increased transparency and visibility. Fairly early the effort was suspended, apparently transparency and visibility hasn't been part of the trader culture.
misc. past posts mentioning NSCC/DTC/DTCC:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#35 The recently revealed excesses of John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, while the firm was receiving $25 Billion in TARP funds makes me sick
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#65 What can agencies such as the SEC do to insure us that something like Madoff's Ponzi scheme will never happen again?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#80 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#1 Audit II: Two more scary words: Sarbanes-Oxley
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#47 Bernard Madoff Is Jailed After Pleading Guilty -- are there more "Madoff's" out there?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#63 Do bonuses foster unethical conduct?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009d.html#75 Whistleblowing and reporting fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#15 The background reasons of Credit Crunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#36 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#53 Are the "brightest minds in finance" finally onto something?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#45 Artificial Intelligence to tackle rogue traders
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40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar70