2011 Newsgroup postings (11/07 - 11/27) Lynn Wheeler

2011 Newsgroup Postings (11/07 - 11/27)

John R. Opel, RIP
Silicoin
Dennis Ritchie
John R. Opel, RIP
The men who crashed the world
John R. Opel, RIP
John R. Opel, RIP
John R. Opel, RIP
John R. Opel, RIP
John R. Opel, RIP
UAV vis-a-vis F35
End Bonuses for Bankers
John R. Opel, RIP
Two-Factor Authentication - Hardware token or SMS OTP
John R. Opel, RIP
John R. Opel, RIP
Dennis Ritchie
Ancient Internet History
John R. Opel, RIP
Deja Cloud?
3270 archaeology
The "IBM Displays" Memory Lane (Was: TSO SCREENSIZE)
3270 archaeology
3270 archaeology
Dennis Ritchie
Deja Cloud?
The men who crashed the world
Measuring Cyberfraud, the fall rate of sky, and other metrics from the market for Silver Bullets
Confidence in banking: the EU500 supernote, or, we're all money launderers now
After a Romney Deal, Profits and Then Layoffs
Any candidates for best acronyms?
Civilization, doomed?
Deja Cloud?
Data Areas?
Data Areas?
Soups
Civilization, doomed?
Civilization, doomed?
Civilization, doomed?
Civilization, doomed?
Civilization, doomed?
Civilization, doomed?
Speed: Re: Soups
Deja Cloud?
Data Areas?
Humour
Humour
Civilization, doomed?
Civilization, doomed?
Civilization, doomed?
Civilization, doomed?
The men who crashed the world
Civilization, doomed?
HONE
Speed: Re: Soups
What is Cloud Computing?
Using Cross-Channel Fraud Detection
The lost art of real programming
Bllue Waters (ibm version) is dead. Long live Blue Gene/Q
The lost art of real programming
Civilization, doomed?
Civilization, doomed?
Civilization, doomed?
Intel's 1 teraflop chip
Civilization, doomed?
Hamming Code
Civilization, doomed?
Downwind from Alamogordo
Building a Better America-One Wealth Quintile at a Time
Civilization, doomed?
Electronics store with legacy parts
How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
Public misperception about scientific agreement on global warming undermines climate policy support
How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
The Wall Street Pentagon Papers: Biggest Scam In World History Exposed: Are The Federal Reserve's Crimes Too Big To Comprehend?
Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
Simple record extraction from a sequential file
Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
What is Cloud Computing?
How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
The banking sector grew seven times faster than gross domestic product since the beginning of the financial crisis and Too-Big-to-Fail: Banks Get Bigger After Dodd-Frank
Any candidates for best acronyms?
David Wheeler and the Subroutine
Clouds in mainframe
Any candidates for best acronyms?
EFF proposes new method to strengthen Public Key Infrastructure
What is Cloud Computing?
Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
Convergence of Mainframe and Distributed Computing Systems
Question regarding PSW correction after translation exceptions on old IBM hardware
The men who crashed the world

John R. Opel, RIP

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: John R. Opel, RIP
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:36:40 -0500

invalid@invalid.invalid (Tom Sherren) writes:
What was the film? ( "Dark Star"?)

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#93 John R. Opel, RIP

"King of Hearts" ... play on inmates in charge of the institution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Hearts_(1966_film)

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Silicoin

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Silicoin
Newsgroups: comp.arch, sci.crypt
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 18:21:09 -0500

Mark Murray <w.h.oami@example.com> writes:
Bad guy compromises the scheme, makes a fraudulent substitute that may be used fraudulently and/or "recharged". Similar attack has been done on Chip 'n Pin cards, transport cards and electronic ID.

Once the secret's out, there is a DVD/CSS situation; the secret _stays_ out.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#94 Silicoin

x9.59 financial standard done in mid-90s about same time as original chip 'n pin specification ... some refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

gave each hardware token unique private key w/o digital certificates ... countermeasure to replay attacks, static data, etc ... and harder to compromise than magstripe.

some metaphors about current/magstripe paradigm
security proportional to risk metaphor; basically vulnerability to skimming, evesdropping, data breaches, etc. value of the information to the merchant is profit from transaction ... possibly couple dollars (or to the transaction processor ... possibly couple of cents). value to the attackers is the account balance/credit-limit. as a result, the crooks can afford to possibly out-spend the defenders by factor of 100 times.

dual-use metaphor; information that is the target of the crooks, is also information needed by dozen of business processes at millions of locations around the planet. as a result, have claimed that even if planet was buried under miles of information hiding cryptography, it still couldn't stop information leakage.

...

long ago and far away, we had been brought in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server; the startup had also invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted to use; the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce"

then somewhat from having worked on electronic commerce, 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. the result was x9.59 standard.

in the late 90s, somewhat in support of x9.59 standard ... needed a chip that supported security proportional to risk ... aka possible to have a chip where the cost for crook to compromise was greater than the expected fraud benefit from the compromised chip (I had joked about taking a $500 milspec part and aggresively cost reducing it by several orders of magnitude while improving the integrity). At the same time, the transit industry requested that it also be able to perform transaction within elapsed time and (contactless) power constraint of transit turnstyle.

some past refs to the AADS chip strawman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

for other topic drift, old ref to YES CARD exploit ... gone 404, but lives on at the wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030417083810/http://www.smartcard.co.uk/resources/articles/cartes2002.html

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

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Dennis Ritchie

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Dennis Ritchie
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 18:25:02 -0500

Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
I just joined PPOE after a move to a new datacenter. 3090 and a big 3880/3380 DASD farm took up most of the new computer room with space left for expansion. Every year or so the footprint would get smaller as we upgraded equipment. We finally wound up with two system/z boxes and a large array of RAID DASD occupying perhaps 20% of the original space, with much greater capacity and horsepower. I joked that if I stayed around much longer we'd be able to fit the whole system in a broom closet.

totally unrelated recent post mentioning both 3090 and 3880/3380 DASD farm:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#95

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

John R. Opel, RIP

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: John R. Opel, RIP
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:59:45 -0500

despen writes:
Of course they did. Think about it, is there a monopoly associated with PCs?

They totally misunderstood the impact of giving away the OS to MSFT. One of the greatest blunders in all of business history.

With all their geniuses in all their research labs, they couldn't come up with their own toy OS. Pathetic.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#93 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#0 John R. Opel, RIP

there was group on the west coast doing software that would periodically poll boca ... with boca re-affirming that it wasn't interested in software; then all of a sudden, one day they say they wanted to "own" software. one of the side-effects of contracting with outside company for software ... was it eliminated internal politics/competition.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The men who crashed the world

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 8 Nov, 2011
Subject: The men who crashed the world
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#41 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#48 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#49 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#52 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#79 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#82 The men who crashed the world

there was recent item that effectively said that the four too-big-to-fail didn't have a problem with securitized loans (and therefor they couldn't have been carrying $5.2T off-book at the end of 2008)
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home

Citigroup Finds Obeying the Law Is Too Hard
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-02/citigroup-finds-obeying-the-law-is-too-darn-hard-jonathan-weil.html

but then there is this:

What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-caused-the-financial-crisis-the-big-lie-goes-viral/2011/10/31/gIQAXlSOqM_print.html

Congress didn't get the label of "most corrupt institution on earth" for nothing. one of the biggest justification for flat tax is to eliminate the greed and corruption around providing special provisions in the current 72,000 page tax code. A side effect is that the enormous tax code costs possibly 5-6% of GDP in lost productivity and non-optimal business decision. Any proposal for offering option of flat rate or current ... misses the major justification for flat rate ... reducing the 72,000 pages to 400-500 pages and eliminating the massive lobbying greed and corruption.

Recently somebody that helped Eisenhower with his Military-Industrial-Complex speech claimed that originally it was Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex, but Eisenhower dropped "Congressional" at the last minute. However, over the past 15yrs the Financial-Regulatory-Congressional-Complex has far surpassed the activities of the MICC. Note my comments upthread about being asked to provide an extensively indexed and HTML'ed version of the Pecora hearings in early 2009 ... that there was some anticipation that the new congress would have some appetite to do something. Then after having worked on it for some months ... got a call that it wouldn't be needed after all.

There have been some editorials contrasting centralized gov. controlled economies with open markets ... but as the person that had tried to get SEC to do something about Madoff referenced ... wallstreet is much more of a "dark" market than an "open" market ... i.e. in the reference calling for transparency and visibility (and that regulating is much, much harder w/o transparency and visibility)

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

John R. Opel, RIP

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: John R. Opel, RIP
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2011 11:05:22 -0500

Walter Bushell <proto@panix.com> writes:
And that traditional IBM type support was not supportable for PCs.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#93 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#0 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#3 John R. Opel, RIP

ibm/pcs had big uptake as 3270 terminal emulation ... for about the same price as a 3270 terminal ... business could get a ibm/pc ... it would do the function of 3270 terminal and also some local computing, all in single desktop footprint. medium and large corporations had tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of 3270 terminals. There was little incremental business justification to switch an (already justified) 3270 order to ibm/pc order.

this large business market install base with fairly large markup ... was one of the things that attracted the clone makers ... there was quite a bit of room between their costs and the ibm price.

in the late 80s, this huge terminal emulation intall base had the communication group attempting to block/delay client/server ... as part of protecting their install base. the communication group's efforts to protect the terminal emulation install base was behind senior disk engineer getting talk scheduled at internal, world-wide, annual communication group conference and opening the talk with the statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The communication group had strategic responsibility for everything that crossed the datacenter walls ... and this stranglehold was resulting in lots of data fleeing the datacenter to more distributed computing friendly platforms (they could see the leading wave of this in big drop off in mainframe disk sales).

the disk division had come up with a number of products that made the mainframe significantly more distributed computing friendly ... but they were constantly being blocked by the communication group.

misc. past posts on terminal emulation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

John R. Opel, RIP

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: John R. Opel, RIP
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2011 12:39:10 -0500

David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b@dd-b.net> writes:
So what do you think it was, then?

They were competing quite successfully with IBM in the "super-mini" category (DEC's side was called that; VMS systems).

(I worked there from 1979-1985).

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#93 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#0 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#3 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#5 John R. Opel, RIP

43xx and vax/vms sold into the mid-range market ... about same total numbers in orders involving small numbers. big difference between 43xx and vax/vms total sales were the large corporate 43xx orders involving multiple hundreds at a time ... leading edge of the distributed computing market. internally they were going in as departmental machines into departmental store rooms and conference rooms (starting to make conference rooms a scarce commodity) ... and also contributed significantly to big explosion in number of machines on the internal network (internal network was larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until sometime late 85 or early 86). part of internet overtaking internal network was communication group limiting PCs to terminal emulation while they started to appear on the internet as nodes. misc. past posts mentioning internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

old post with list of world-wide corporate locations that added one or more new network nodes during 1983 (year that internal network passed 1000 nodes):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#8

misc. old email with 43xx references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#4341

old post with decade of vax/vms numbers sliced and diced by year, model, us/non-us:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#0

as can be seen in the vax numbers ... mid-range market was starting to move to workstations and large PCs after the mid-80s. Something similar happened to 43xx ... the 4331/4341 follow-ons ... 4361&4381 never saw the expected continued explosion in sales (that the 4331/4341 had seen).

old post mentioning "departmental servers"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#15

majority of the new nodes on the internal network were vm/4341 machines. after the FS fiasco (which had terminated lots of 370 products), there was mad rush to get products back into the 370 product pipeline. Part of that was mvx/xa which was going to take 7-8 years elapsed time. The head of POK managed to convince the corporation to kill off the vm370 product, shutdown the (burlington mall) development group, and move all the people to POK to work on MVS/XA (or otherwise they wouldn't be able to make the MVS/XA ship schedule in the 80s).

the strategy was to not inform the vm370 people in order to minimize the possibility that they could make alternatives. however the information leaked early ... and numerous people didn't make the move. There was even joke that the head of POK was one of the major contributors to vax/vms in that period ... because so many people went to DEC after the closing of burlington mall location. recent reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#9
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#12
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#41

Endicott eventually managed to save the vm370 product mission, but had to reconsitute a development group from scratch. Some of this can be seen in the vmshare archives talking about vm370 code quality from the late 70s up through the early 80s.
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare
sometimes(?) "404" ... but also at wayback machine
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

misc. past posts mentioning future system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

John R. Opel, RIP

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: John R. Opel, RIP
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:15:28 -0500

"Charles Richmond" <netnews@aquaporin4.com> writes:
The more programmers you have involved with developing an OS, the *longer* it's going to take to complete the project. With IBM's "human wave" style of programming, that means it could take years and years... The personal computer industry just moves way too fast for that kind of thing.

re;
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#93 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#0 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#3 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#5 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#6 John R. Opel, RIP

there was analogy that as projects got into trouble ... they would add people ... that resulted in the executive's empire increasing and frequently executive compensation is proportional to size of the empire ... aka it is in many executive's interest to have failures (short of tanking the organization) and larger domain (some of this also prompted earlier reference to analogy with black holes)

this is similar to the federal gov. projects and large beltway bandits and the evolution of the Success of Failure culture ... where they make significant more money from failures:
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?filepath=/dailyfed/0407/040407mm.htm
http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20080220_1637.php

it is also related to the speech by Eisenhower about the military-industrial-complex ... recent post that it originally was "military-industrial-congressional-complex" ... but Eisenhower left out "congressional" at the last minute:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#4 The men who crashed the world

early last decade ... i analyzed a financial publication that gave avg. of thousand of measures for the largest regional financial institutions against the national financial institutions ... the regional ones were slightly more profitable than the national (seeming to show that the primary purpose for the too-big-to-fail was top executive compensation proportional to institution size). recent past posts on this subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#14 Innovation and iconoclasm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#22 Slouching toward Weimar
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#67 computer bootlaces

somewhat related, in the past, I sponsored Boyd's briefings at IBM ... and his OODA-loop is considered part of lean&agile movements ... misc. past posts & references ... at the moment there is some discussion about how slow the F-35 development is (decade into the effort) ... compared to how fast the drones and unmanned stuff is currently evolving:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

John R. Opel, RIP

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: John R. Opel, RIP
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:21:10 -0500

despen writes:
As of the Mythical Man Month, IBM was supposed to know that. I still say they should have been able to put something at least as good as DOS together with all the programmers they had on staff.

Lynn points out, the politics of the behemoth destroyed any chance of taking the correct action.

So I think they had the technical capability, it was the management (possibly including Opel) that flubbed a great opportunity.

with FS there was additional issues. As undergraduate in the 60s, I got to watch the TSS/360 stuff on 360/67 ... designed as "single-level-store" and compare it to cp67/cms. At the science center, i did a paged-mapped filesystem for cms ... attempting to avoid all the things that I had seen go wrong with the TSS/360 implementation ... this was at the same time that the Future System stuff was going on ... with single-level-store and apparently had learned nothing at all from the TSS/360 experience (this was part of my analogy about the inmates in charge of the institution ... something about if you never study history you are prone to always repeating the same mistakes).

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

John R. Opel, RIP

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: John R. Opel, RIP
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2011 17:38:06 -0500

David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b@dd-b.net> writes:
Yes, DEC certainly didn't win every confrontation, wasn't even "dominant". But the VMS people were competing fairly effectively, getting quite a few of the sales .

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#6

POK in the 80s turned around (after having done its best to kill vm370) turned around and made the assertion that 11,000 of the vax/vms sales should have been vm/4341s becuase 4341 was better price/performance hardware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#15

as previously mentioned vax/vms & 43xx somewhat split the mid-range market ... about equal aggregate sales (except for the 43xx sales to large corporate accounts in orders that ran several hundred at a time).

and then (both vax/vms and the 43xx( mid-range market was run over by workstations and large PCs. IBM survived on its high-end sales ... although it stagnated for some time as lots of applications fled the datacenter to distributed computing friendly platforms.

in the 90s, there was period that even that would disappear with all the traditional backend dataprocessing moving to large collections of "killer micros". The financial industry is current major legacy mainframe customer ... but in the 90s, they were spending billions of dollars to re-engineer lots of those applications for "killer micros". A big issue was that over a decade or so, online/real-time transaction support had been added ... but transactions still waited until overnight batch window to finish/settle. In the 90s, a combination of increasing workload an globalization was putting extreme pressure on the overnight batch window (more work that had to be done in shorter period). The billions in re-engineering was to parallelize and do straight-through processing (run to completion eliminating overnight batch) on large number of parallel "killer micros". It turned out that they had failed to do speeds&feeds (before deployment) and using parallelization technology that had factor of 100 times more overhead than the cobol batch (totally swamping any anticipated throughput increases). The scars from those failures in the 90s were still evident in dealing with the institutions in the past couple yars (extremely risk adverse).

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

UAV vis-a-vis F35

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 8 Nov, 2011
Subject: UAV vis-a-vis F35
Blog: Boyd's Strategy

re:
http://lnkd.in/Q3hJ5G
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#63 UAV vis-a-vis F35
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#4 UAV vis-a-vis F35
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#20 UAV vis-a-vis F35

recent F35 rants
http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com/2011/10/dopey-f-35-statement-from-bought-and.html
and
http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com/2011/10/maker-of-f-35-insults-koreas.html
and
http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com/2011/10/comms-gear-on-canadian-f-35-question.html

more f35 rants

How Much for That Stovl Capability?
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&newspaperUserId=27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7
More Problems With The F-35B?
http://defensetech.org/2011/10/24/more-problems-with-the-f-35b/

and a F22

No Fix in Sight as Stealth Fighters -- Oxygen Woes Spread
http://www.warisboring.com/2011/10/25/danger-room-no-fix-in-sight-as-stealth-fighters-oxygen-woes-spread/

Marine Corps rushes to develop armed UAVs
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2011/10/marine-corps-rushes-develop-armed-uavs-103011w/

F-35: an expensive hard-to-recycle form of garbage?
http://theaviationist.com/2011/10/28/f-35-garbage/

JSF: The First Decade:
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&newspaperUserId=27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7

Concurrency & The 10th Anniversary of the F-35 Contract
http://www.aviationweek.com/Blogs.aspx?plckBlogId=Blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7

Redesigned F-35B Lift-Fan Inlet Door Actuator Incoming
http://www.aviationweek.com/Blogs.aspx?plckBlogId=Blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7

Lockheed, Pentagon at odds over F-35 costs: sources
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/26/us-lockheed-fighter-idUSTRE79P06120111026

and

No such thing as 'too big to fail'
http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com/2011/10/no-such-thing-as-too-big-to-fail.html

F-35 program--paying for mistakes-- 4 less aircraft in LRIP 5
http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com/2011/10/f-35-program-paying-for-mistakes-4-less.html

DOD move could wipe out LM profits on F-35
http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com/2011/10/dod-move-could-wipe-out-lm-profits-on-f.html

they just keep coming:

The real expense
http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com/2011/11/real-expense.html

Pentagon Tester: F-35 is Too Risky to Start Flight Training
http://defensetech.org/2011/11/01/pentagon-tester-says-f-35-is-too-risky-to-start-flight-training/

Monday F-35 Update
http://defensetech.org/2011/10/31/monday-f-35-update/

25 Years Of The F-22
http://www.aviationweek.com/Blogs.aspx?plckBlogId=Blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7

In one year, USAF cuts 2012 F-35 buys by one-third
http://elpdefensenews.blogspot.com/2011/10/in-one-year-usaf-cuts-2012-f-35-buys-by.html

and on the UAV side: Rethinking Amphibious Assult
http://www.informationdissemination.net/2011/11/rethinking-amphibious-assault.html

F35 Story
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/11/07/1846256/the-f-35-story
Lockheed's F-35 Costs Rose 64% Over Decade in Rich Man's World
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2011-11-03/lockheed-s-f-35-costs-rose-64-over-decade-in-rich-man-s-world-.html
AUVs: From idea to implementation
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/auv-series-part1-1107.html
New Gunshot Detection Capability Expands the Role of Mini-UAVs in Force Protection
http://defense-update.com/20111031_new-gunshot-detection-capability-expands-the-role-of-mini-uavs-in-force-protection.html
The autonomy paradox; Why 'unmanned systems' don't shrink manpower needs
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2011/10/7604038
Faster, Meaner Apaches Allow Pilots to Control Drones in Battle
http://www.military.com/daily-news?col=1186032310810s

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

End Bonuses for Bankers

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 8 Nov, 2011
Subject: End Bonuses for Bankers
Blog: Facebook

End Bonuses for Bankers
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/opinion/end-bonuses-for-bankers.html?hp

note that it wasn't just banking executives ... GAO started doing audits of public company financial filings showing uptic in fraudulent filings ... even after Sarbanes-Oxley. Major motivation was to boost executive bonuses. They pointed out that even if the filings were later corrected ... the bonuses weren't adjusted.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

John R. Opel, RIP

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: John R. Opel, RIP
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2011 18:18:51 -0500

despen writes:
As of the Mythical Man Month, IBM was supposed to know that. I still say they should have been able to put something at least as good as DOS together with all the programmers they had on staff.

Lynn points out, the politics of the behemoth destroyed any chance of taking the correct action.

So I think they had the technical capability, it was the management (possibly including Opel) that flubbed a great opportunity.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#93 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#0 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#3 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#5 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#6 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#7 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#8 John R. Opel, RIP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#9 John R. Opel, RIP

and slightly closer to home (for pc) in boca, the folklore is that numerous of the os/360 MFT people moved from kingston to boca ... and attempted to recreate os/360 MFT for the Series/1 as "RPS" ... considered to be extremely bloated ... compared to "EDX" which was originated by a summer intern for a couple physicists doing lab stuff at san jose research.

misc past posts mentioning RPS & EDX:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#63 System/1 ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000b.html#87 Motorola/Intel Wars
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#62 California DMV
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001.html#68 California DMV
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#16 Large Banking is the only chance for Mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#55 The System/360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#2 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#60 How long before Microsoft goes the way of DEC (and in part, IBM)?

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Two-Factor Authentication - Hardware token or SMS OTP

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 8 Nov, 2011
Subject: Two-Factor Authentication - Hardware token or SMS OTP
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security

financial standard done in mid-90s about same time as original chip 'n pin specification
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959

gave each hardware token unique private key w/o digital certificates ... countermeasure to replay attacks, static data, etc ... and harder to compromise than magstripe.

long ago and far away, we had been brought in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server; the startup had also invented this technology called SSL they wanted to use; the result is now frequently called electronic commerce

then somewhat from having worked on electronic commerce, 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 (point-of-sale, face-to-face, unattended, internet, etc, aka ALL). the result was x9.59 standard.

in the late 90s, somewhat in support of x9.59 standard ... needed a chip that supported security proportional to risk ... aka possible to have a chip where the cost for crook to compromise was greater than the expected fraud benefit from the compromised chip (I had joked about taking a $500 milspec part and aggressively cost reducing it by several orders of magnitude while improving the integrity). At the same time, the transit industry requested that it also be able to perform transaction within elapsed time and (contactless) power constraint of transit turnstyle.

some past refs to the AADS chip strawman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads

for other topic drift, old ref to yes card exploit ... gone 404, but lives on at the wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030417083810/http://www.smartcard.co.uk/resources/articles/cartes2002.html

past posts mentioning yes card exploit:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard

in the same time frame, there was the EU FINREAD standard as countermeasure to numerous kinds of PC compromises (including man-in-browser, impersonation, etc). The issue was that there was also other products that were deploying in that time-frame ... including giving away serial-port based readers. The issue was that serial-port based devices had known consumer support problems for long time (and was major motivation for development of USB) ... which resulted in significant issues ... leading to wide-spread opinion in the financial industry that hardware tokens weren't practical in the consumer market (based on the problems with serial port device, not actually hardware token). In the mid-90s, there had been financial industry conference presentations by online, dial-up banking regarding migrating to the internet. One of the major motivations discussed was the enormous customer support problems associated with serial-port dial-up modems. Apparently all the institutional knowledge about serial-port consumer support problems had evaporated between dial-up banking move to the internet and the introduction of serial-port token readers. In any case, shortly afterwards the activities related to EU FINREAD also disappeared
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#finread

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

John R. Opel, RIP

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: John R. Opel, RIP
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2011 10:23:37 -0500

Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
TSS was a rush job in response to losing the MIT Multics computer bid. Unlike the 360 development that was the result of a lot of planning with inputs from all of IBM. I think someone (TJW?) said "hey, we've got to do something quick before we lose more of these customers!" I believe that the schedule was a lot more ambitious than the original OS/360 schedule, and there was less planning. (I'll have to check).

It seems as though FS was the opposite: arguments over details resulted in the plan being changed often right up to the time development started (and probably after) so that the people working on it never quite knew what they were supposed to be implementing. For example, the line between microcode and OS kept moving back and forth.

Obviously I wasn't directly involved in any of this, but this is what I understand from what I've been reading.

read melinda's
https://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda#VMHist

early history about science center and 360 hardware with virtual memory support ... and it going to some other (tss) group. one of several of the files in various formats (i did the merge and conversion recently and sent it to her)
https://www.leeandmelindavarian.com/Melinda/neuvm.azw

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

misc. past posts mentioning future system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

also see the external refs/urls at above reference.

at one point there was something like 1200 people attached to tss/360 one way or another, at a time when the science center had possibly 12 people doing cp67/cms. i contend that one of the big reasons that tss/370 improved so much was after tss/360 was canceled and the group cut back to 20 people (to support a couple customers) ... that 20, then converted tss/360 to 370 as well as making large number ofimprovements.

tss/370 then was basis for ssup ... special project for AT&T that layered UNIX on the underlying tss/370 kernel.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

John R. Opel, RIP

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: John R. Opel, RIP
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:20:11 -0500

hancock4 writes:
I don't understaned how "a PC is not a computer".

I bring up BASIC and write a program to get input, process it, and write output. That is exactly the same as writing a program on the mainframe; the only difference is size and complexity, which are irrelevant.

That the PC runs a lot of canned programs is of no matter. I used PROFS off the mainframe which was essentially a giant telegraph switch (Western Union 1948 technology). Before spreadsheets came along we would run accounting programs many times to try out different inputs.

last weekend was at conference and had long conversations with Bob Frankston ... mentioned in this tome about spreadsheet history
http://bricklin.com/visicalc.htm
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc
youtube item
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb30PCtOemY

Bob had been one of the early people at IDC ... one of the first virtual machine online commerical service bureaus ... misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#timeshare

they were located just outside downtown boston/cambridge; i had interviewed with them in 1969 ... before deciding on joining the science center. misc. past posts mentioning science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

PROFS group had picked up some number of internal applications and put menus around them ... simplifying use for less computer literate. One of the items was a very early version of VMSG, an email client. Later the author of VMSG offered the PROFS group a much improved later version and the PROFS group tried to get him fired (apparently having previously taken all the credit for the email client). The whole thing quieted down after the author pointed out that his initials appears in a non-displayed field in every PROFS message in the world. After that, he only shared the VMSG source with me and one other person.

Bob also made mention that he had developed IDC's own email client much earlier in the 70s. Then of course, there was also TYMSHARE which had developed vm/cms computer conferencing and made it available to the SHARE user group (as VMSHARE) for free starting in aug1976.
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare
sometimes(?) "404" ... but also at wayback machine
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Dennis Ritchie

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Dennis Ritchie
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:48:33 -0500

David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b@dd-b.net> writes:
A friend recently mentioned having lost some writing, some years ago, in a five-fold backup failure. This was at home user, non-technical, on home-level hardware, so possibly they contributed, but it's still pretty impressive / depressing.

I also have a friend who once discovered that the backup tapes they were writing and shipping off-site weren't readable, the hard way.

past posts about having loads of stuff from lates 60 through mid-70s triple-replicated in the Almaden tape library ... which were lost when there was a glitch in Almaden operations and apparently random tapes were being mounted as scratch:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#14 A Dark Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#42 vmshare
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#51 Scholars needed to build a computer history bibliography
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#8 Is SUN going to become x86'ed ??
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#66 Evolution of Floating Point
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009s.html#17 old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#51 Source code for s/360
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#32 Need tool to zap core
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#45 Is email dead? What do you think?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#39 1971PerformanceStudies - Typical OS/MFT 40/50/65s analysed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#89 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#3 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#4 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#80 TSO Profile NUM and PACK
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#29 Congratulations, where was my invite?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#12 Selectric Typewriter--50th Anniversary

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Ancient Internet History

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 10 Nov, 2011
Subject: Ancient Internet History
Blog: Old Geek

re:
http://lnkd.in/E6daDw

sample of old (usenet) posts about arpanet, csnet, bitnet, internal net, IMP (used for the arpanet nodes), arpanet, change-over from arpanet to internet on 1jan1983, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/internet.htm

we were working with NSF on what was to become NSFNET backbone ... some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

then when the NSFNET backbone RFP was released, internal politics prevented us from bidding on it. The director of NSF tried to help by writing a letter to the company 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO) (statements like what we already had running was at least five years ahead of all RFP responses), but that just made the internal politics worse

for a time, there was a company that provided a full usenet feed via (9600 baud) satellite link. I got a free version in the early 90s for writing some drivers for the modem and co-author a BBS magazine article ... picture of me with downlink dish in the backyard (in these old pictures)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#oldpicts

later, they doubled the link to 19.2kbit downlink when full usenet feed no longer for in 9600 baud (running continuous, 24hrs/day).

Postel use to let me do part of STD1 (arpanet/internet standards):
https://web.archive.org/web/20240612205634/https://www.postel.org/jon-postel/

my index of of (RFC) standards (early ones are arpanet and then transition to internetworking standards)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

John R. Opel, RIP

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: John R. Opel, RIP
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:37:34 -0500

Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
With a _lot_ of hindsight; DEC could have been a serious contender to Novell, Sun, SGI.

From 1981 until the Internet, all the PCs were islands. Making the airline between these islands became the business of Novell. These Novell servers easily cost $20k.

Just imagine what a competent organisation could have done with something like an LSI-based, multiprocessor PDP11, with a decent network stack (=!DECNET). [I try to write DECNET but my fingers want to write DISNEY. Even my fingers have an opinion.)

VMS was out, for the VAX was too expensive for this market. But DEC had the PDP11s, the LSI11, the multiprocessing, the network cards and all the components almost a decade before the PC revolution took hold ca 1984.

But that would imply working WITH the killer micros. We saw that this was not happening after looking 10 minutes at the "Professional" and the "Rainbow".

in the early 80s, san jose disk division had a project called "datahub" ... PC lan-based server ... subcontracting a bunch of software implementation to small group in provo (work for hire contract); there was somebody from san jose commuting to provo nearly every week. Then at some point, the corporation decided to kill the effort ... and allowed the small company in provo to retain rights for the work they had done so far. several montsh later, a new lan-server company appears in provo (name starts with an "N").

roll forward to microsoft developers conference at moscone in '96 ... there were all these banners about embracing the internet ... but the actual/subthread of the conference was "preserve your investment" ... aka all the applications (mostly various forms of basic) that had been developed for closed LAN business environment would continue to function over the internet. note that in the closed, business LAN environment there were no externel threats nor requirement for lots of countermeasures from internet-enabled threats ... as a result during the last part of the 90s ... automatic executable scripts that had grown up as part of application files during the closed/business LAN days emerged as major vulnerability.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Deja Cloud?

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 10 Nov, 2011
Subject: Deja Cloud?
Blog: Old Geek

re:
http://lnkd.in/Gj_N63

Some number of companies in the 60s were installing cp67/cms (precursor to vm370/cms) for (corporate) online service. Then in 68&69 there were start of some number of commerical online service bureaus using cp67/cms.

In the summer of '69, i was brought into Boeing to help spawn BCS (moving most of dataprocessing into its own business unit) ... this included getting cp67/cms service up and running in hdqtrs .... expand hdqtrs 360/30 machine room, primarily used for payroll to also have a one megabyte 360/67. This was far cry from renton datacenter which had dozens of 360/65s as well as large number of other stuff ... and was in the process of being replicated up at the 747 plant in Everett.

On the west coast, Tymshare started offering vm370/cms commercial online service ... and then made its online computer conferencing available for free to SHARE user group starting in Aug1976 ... VMSHARE archives:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

One of the largest vm370/cms online operations was the internal HONE world-wide sales and marketing support. It started out as several cp67/cms datacenters in the US after the 23jun69 unbundling announcement. In the mid-70s the US datacenters (by this time vm370/cms) were consolidated in silicon valley (as it happens, wasn't far from Tymshare, SLAC, and/or some number of other institutions). This included several large multiprocessor (SMP or tightly-compled) tied together in single-system-image, loosely-coupled (i.e. mainframe for cluster) operation. There were additional replicated (smaller) HONE operations all over the world. misc. past posts mentioning HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

The silicon valley HONE datacenter has a different occupant now ... but the bldg. is right next door to the (much newer) Facebook bldg (or the first Facebook bldg before Facebook started moving over to the bldgs. at the "old" SUN campus)

For other trivia, the first webserver in the US was the SLAC vm370/cms service:
https://ahro.slac.stanford.edu/wwwslac-exhibit

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

3270 archaeology

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

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: 3270 archaeology
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 11 Nov 2011 08:46:06 -0800

shmuel+ibm-main@PATRIOT.NET (Shmuel Metz , Seymour J.) writes:
That came later, along with the 3278 and 3279,

we complained to kingston that 3274/3278 was much worse for interactive computing that 3272/3277 ... kingston eventually came back and said that 3274/3278 target market was "data entry" (aka updated keypunch) not interactive computing (and nobody considered TSO in anyway related to interactive computing).

we had hacked the 3277 to remove some of the worst human factors ... but part of the change to 3274/3278 was moving lots of the electronics out of the 3278 head back into the 3274 controller ... reducing manufacturing costs but eliminated some of the additional human factor hacks (like fixing trying to type just as the screen was being update ... normal processing would lock the keyboard and require reset to be hit).

old post with some of the 3272/3277 comparisons with 3274/3278
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19 3270 protocol

the 3274 controller also had lots of bugs requiring the it be reset/re-impl'ed ... however, we discovered a hack to force 3274 to re-impl w/o requiring manual operation ... just very quickly hit every subchannel address with HDV/CLRIO combo in tight loop.

a couple years later there was corporate decisions to officially say that vm370/cms was the official corporate interactive computing platform (in part because nearly all of internal development was on vm370/cms ... even when it was for other platforms). What was really unusual was that it motivated the TSO product manager to contact me about rewriting MVS dispatch/scheduling for interactive workload (which wouldn't have helped a whole lot because there were major problems with several other areas of MVS)

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The "IBM Displays" Memory Lane (Was: TSO SCREENSIZE)

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

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: The "IBM Displays" Memory Lane (Was: TSO SCREENSIZE)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 11 Nov 2011 09:39:00 -0800

mike@MENTOR-SERVICES.COM (Mike Myers) writes:
The 2250 was very interesting to me. I took a class on 2250 programming in 1968. I learned that it had both character and graphics mode. The character mode was of special interest and I developed a full-screen editor that let the group I was working in at the time develop and edit source code and data files. It wasn't quite as good as ISPF's editor (which wasn't around yet), but it was a lot better than TSO's line editor. The screen was also much bigger than the 2260's and could display a whole card image.

You could overtype data directly on the screen and there was a single line on the screen (at the bottom) which permitted commands that supported single line and block moves, copies and deletes.

It saved the group a great deal of effort in developing programs and course material. I was teaching PSRs at IBM's Field Engineering school in Poughkeepsie at the time.

Brings back some pleasant memories.

2250 had a number of different models ... 2250-1 was direct 360 channel attach while 2250-4 was 2250/1130 combo ... (but they cost approx. the same).

we had 2250-1 at the univ in the 60s ... and i used the CMS 2250 graphics fortran library from lincoln labs ... to hack 2250 support into the cms editor.

the science center had 2250-4 (2250/1130 combo), which somebody ported a copy of spacewars from PDP1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewar!

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

then summer of 1969 ... i got brought in to boeing hdqtrs to help with the fledging boeing computer services (bringing all dataprocessing into its own business unit). hdqtrs had 360/30 mainly used for payroll and the machine room was built out to add a 1mbyte 360/67 to run cp67/cms. This was tiny compared to the renton datacenter which had dozens of 360/65 and some claim to have $300M or so in 360 equipment ... which was being replicated at the 747 plant up in everett.

For a long time, I thot Renton was the largest mainframe machine room ... but later i would sponsor Boyd's briefings at IBM ... and in recent bio ... it mentioned Boyd was in command.of.spook base (about the time I was at Boeing) ... which was a $2.5B "windfall" for IBM (possibly $17+B inflation adjusted in today's dollars?).

this has description of spook base ... gone 404, but lives on at the wayback machine
https://web.archive.org/web/20030212092342/http://home.att.net/~c.jeppeson/igloo_white.html

above has picture claimed to be 2250s ... but obvious is something else.

Later replacements for 2250 i believe were repackaged/relogo'ed graphics display from Sanders Associates (in NH)
http://www.pong-story.com/sanders.htm
http://books.google.com/books?id=XK4v1gh0JroC&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31&dq=sanders+associates+graphics+display&source=bl&ots=62_kZWXpki&sig=zKyb8WrQnJUzEQFgVMcJBZvq-XQ&hl=en&ei=QVu9ToTQPKWsiQL63I2mAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CFgQ6AEwBA

3270 archaeology

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

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: 3270 archaeology
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 11 Nov 2011 10:09:33 -0800

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#20

a different problem with moving all the electronics back into the 3274 controller (and making terminal response agonizingly slow) was that it really drove up the channel busy time for any kind of operation.

this is old reference to Jim Gray palming off doing database consulting for the IMS group in Santa Teresa (now silicon valley labs)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#1

however, another issue with the IMS group in Santa Teresa was that they were adding so many people that STL was bursting at the seams ... and they were going to move 300 of the IMS group to offsite building with remote access back to STL. They had tried remote 3270 and it was considered horrible, totally unusable for interactive computing ... especially after getting use to local 3274 channel-attached CMS (even tho 3274 was much worse than 3272 ... but enormously better than TSO for anything). In any case, I got con'ed into doing support of NSC HYPERchannel remote device support running over T1 microwave link (to remote bldg). The tests at the remote bldg. showed no perceptual difference between CMS response for the IMS people in STL and response at the remote bldg.

However, it had an interesting side-effect, the vm370/cms systems started running 10-15% faster. The large mainframes had all the channels with both 3274 and 3830 disk controllers spread out on all the channels. The enormous 3274 channel busy was cutting into overall system throughput. Replacing channel attached 3274 ... with the significantly faster NSC A220 channel attached boxes (drastically reduced channel busy for the identical operations) reduced channel busy and improved overall disk and system thruput. The enormous 3274 channel busy overhead was shifting to the NSC A51x channel emulators boxes at the remote bldg.

misc. past posts mentioning NSC, HYPERchannel, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

Something similar ... but different shows up later with 3880 disk controller and 3090s. While 3880 disk controller supported 3mbyte/sec transfer ... it otherwise had significantly higher channel busy overhead compared to 3830. The 3090s channel configuration was originally designed assuming that the 3880 controllers would be as efficient as the 3830 controllers ... but that turned out to not be the case. As a result, 3090 had to drastically increase the number of channels ... which required an extra TCM and higher manufacturing costs. There were jokes that the 3090 people were going to bill the 3880 controller group for the higher 3090 manufacturing costs. This was also somewhat the start of the myth that mainframes were so much better because they had huge number of channels (when all the extra channels really turned out to be trying to compensate for the inefficiencies of the half-duplex channel architecture and enormous channel busy from slow controllers).

3270 archaeology

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

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: 3270 archaeology
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 11 Nov 2011 14:16:27 -0800

lynn@GARLIC.COM (Lynn Wheeler) writes:
the 3274 controller also had lots of bugs requiring the it be reset/re-impl'ed ... however, we discovered a hack to force 3274 to re-impl w/o requiring manual operation ... just very quickly hit every subchannel address with HDV/CLRIO operation in tight loop.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#20 3270 archaeology

san jose disk development in bldg. 14 had numerous testcells on channel switches and a couple mainframes for testing ... running "stand-alone" ... each testcell got pre-scheduled, stand-alone (very simple monitor) time, frequently schedules running 7x24 around the clock. at one point they had tried doing testing under MVS ... but found that MVS had MTBF of 15mins (hang/crash requiring re-ipl) even with single testcell. I offered to rewrite I/O supervisor making it absolute bullet-proof and never crash/hang ... and eventually was doing multiple concurrent testing "on-demand" at any time (significantly improving development productivity). It did have downside that when there were problems, they would initially blame me ... so i had to do a lot of hardware diagnostics ... also got to play disk engineer (in both bldg14 and the product test lab in bldg15) ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk

I did an (internal-only) summary report of all the work and fixes ... and apparently because i included a passing mention of the MVS 15min MTBF, it brought the full wrath of that organization down on my head.

bldg. 15 product test lab got a very early engineering model 3033. The 303x channels were a six channel "channel director" ... which was actually a repackaged 370/158 with the integrated channel microcode and w/o the 370 instruction microcode. There would periodically be a problem with the 3033 channel directors which required manual reset and re-IMPL ... somewhat similar to 3274. However, we found that if we did CLRCH very quickly to all six channel addresses ... the channel director would automatigically re-IMPL itself w/o manual intervention.

The downside was the 370/158 channels were just about the slowest of the 370 line ... even slower than the 148 & 4341. We got 4341 that with slight tweak would run 3880/3380 3mbyte/sec transfer ... which 158, 168, and none of the 303x would ever do.

Since testcell activity was heavy i/o bound and never used more than a percent or two of the processor ... bldg.14&15 also started using the mainframes for more general online service. one monday morning I got a call asking what i had done to the (3033) system over the weekend. I said nothing ... and eventually found that they had replaced a 3830 controller (supporting 16 3330 drives for online service) with 3880 controller. At the time, the 3880 was even much slower than what eventually shipped ... and mentioned in this recent post about 3880 and 3090
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#22 3270 archaeology

Fortunately, it was still six months before first customer ship ... and they were able to do a lot of tweaking of the 3880 microcode ... but couldn't make all the problems go away ... because the internal microprocessor was significantly slower than that used in 3830.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Dennis Ritchie

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Dennis Ritchie
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2011 10:54:27 -0500

"Charles Richmond" <netnews@aquaporin4.com> writes:
ISTM that Reuters fell prey to the siren song of computer programmers... that assembly language can provide the greatest of efficiency, and they ignored the rocks (the downside) that they are losing portability and locking themselves into a system, in an area where technical progress is rapid and hardware becomes obsoleted very quickly (in a matter of a few years). IMHO (and the opinion of many others), C offers a very good trade-off between very reasonable efficiency and also reasonable portability. That explains much about the widespread use of C.

All that being said, Reuters could have spent the money and taken the financial hit (even twenty years ago) to re-code their monitor in C... and regain the portability, escaping the lock that the PDP-11 has on them. Though they would *not* like to spend the money to "do it right", the new monitor code written in C should undergo extensive testing to "beat out" all the problems with the re-code. After all, the PDP-11 code had decades to get all that beaten out of it.

That was a programmer's dictum: "There's *never* time to do it right, but always time to do it over." Just replace the word "time" with "money", and the dictum is just as true.

old email reference about executive layers in POK telling others inside the corporation that vm370 was dead and that they needed to be moving to MVS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email790216

and for HONE (vm370-based online world-wide sales & marketing support) with most of the applications implemented in APL (and over the years had previously been directed to convert to MVS several times and each time after strenuous efforts, failed) ... the POK line was that it would work this time as long as they just recoded all the APL applications in assembler. then disclaimer trying to retract letting their real intentions leak out
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email790220

other old email mentioning HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#hone

part of recent thread in linkedin about early virtual machine based services being early "cloud computing" (one of the largest was "HONE")
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#19 Deja Cloud?

one of the early ha/cmp applications was replacing DEC-based compisition based system that was in use by number of publications, including NYT. misc. past mentioning ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Deja Cloud?

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 12 Nov, 2011
Subject: Deja Cloud?
Blog: Old Geek

re:
http://lnkd.in/Gj_N63
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#19 Deja Cloud?

couple recent posts about NII (national information infrastructure) and NII testbed (NIIT) in the early 80s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#60
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#69

this is old email from the period
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#email920129

above email mentions not being able to make it to one of the meetings ... but a couple people stopped by my office afterwards to fill me in. One of the people had coined the term "information utility" in the 80s (which then was picked up by a number of operations)

Cloud sourcing and advanced face recognition software are other elements cited for "1984"

For other trivia, i was blamed for online computer conferencing on the internal network (larger than arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until possibly late '85 or early '86) in the late 70s and early 80s. Somewhat as a result, a researcher was paid to study how i communicated for 9months; they sat in the back of my office taking notes on my face-to-face and telephone conversations, went with me to meetings and got copies of all my incoming and outgoing email as well as logs of all my instant messages. This became a research report as well as Stanford phd thesis, language & computer AI ... with Winograd on the computer AI side.

Ramachandran has a book out: "The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human"
https://www.amazon.com/Tell-Tale-Brain-Neuroscientists-Quest-ebook/dp/B004HW6AGA

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The men who crashed the world

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 13 Nov, 2011
Subject: The men who crashed the world
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security

SEC Refuses to Fire Any Staff Involved with Madoff Debacle
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothyspangler/2011/11/12/sec-refuses-to-fire-any-staff-involved-with-madoff-debacle/

and upthread (old) comment there being nothing to fear from SEC:

CRAMER REVEALS A BIT TOO MUCH
http://nypost.com/2007/03/20/cramer-reveals-a-bit-too-much/

The issue was that there have always been pockets of greed and corruption ... it was eliminating most of the adult supervision during the last decade that allowed the individual pockets to combine together into an economic firestorm.

Being able to pay the rating agencies for triple-A was major factor in allowing the real-estate market to be treated like the 20s stock market with similar results.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Measuring Cyberfraud, the fall rate of sky, and other metrics from the market for Silver Bullets

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 13 Nov, 2011
Subject: Measuring Cyberfraud, the fall rate of sky, and other metrics from the market for Silver Bullets
Blog: Financial Cryptography

re:
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001343.html

a couple years ago I was asked to find public source numbers on the subject. A interesting trivia was that all the major law enforcement websites had public sections for drug related crime ... but the computer crime sections all required authorized access. I did find some supportive (public) evidence but it was in very obscure indirect references.

One significant issue is that cybercrime can include non-internet financial crime that happens to involve dataprocessing. These events tend to be ones that large institutions (especially financial) are extremely adverse about making public. In the 90s financial infrastructure protection meetings, one of the major topics was whether the financial industry ISAC .. aka information sharing, would be subject to FOIA (the FI-ISAC specifically being structured so as to be not subject to FOIA)
http://www.fsisac.com/

past references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#25 Cybercrime Could Be As Destructive As Credit Crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#44 Cybercrime cost $1 trillion last year, study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#38 Cybercrime running into trillions, experts claim
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#47 Cyber crime 'more profitable than drugs'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#14 Electronic Theft Costs Businesses More Than Physical Theft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#20 Electronic Theft Costs Businesses More Than Physical Theft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#31 Cyber-crime: bigger than the drugs trade, and growing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#40 The Great Cyberheist
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#53 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Confidence in banking: the EU500 supernote, or, we're all money launderers now

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 13 Nov, 2011
Subject: Confidence in banking: the EU500 supernote, or, we're all money launderers now
Blog: Financial Cryptography

re:
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001344.html

the congressional testimony into the pivotal role that rating agencies played in the whole thing had lots of the no-documentation, no-down, 1% interest only payment mortgages going to speculators (2000% ROI in parts of country with 20-30% inflation during the bubble) ... but also a large number going for drug cartel money laundering.

On the real-estate side of the operation, the mostly unregulated loan originators being able to pay for triple-A ratings on the packaged mortgages (toxic CDOs), met they no longer had to care about the borrower's qualifications or mortgage quality ... contributing to no-documentation loans. On the wallstreet side of the operation they were taking enormous cut, fees & commissions on the estimated $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs done during the bubble.
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

Wallstreet used the off-book of the too-big-to-fail as dumping ground for huge amounts of the triple-A toxic CDOs (end of 2008, $5.2T in triple-A toxic CDOs being held off-balance by just the four too-bit-to-fail

recent references to $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDO transactions and/or $5.2% in triple-A rated toxic CDOs being held off-balance by just the four too-big-to-fail:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#50 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#80 Chinese and Indian Entrepreneurs Are Eating America's Lunch
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#84 The Imaginot Line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#94 The Curly Factor -- Prologue
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#27 The Zippo Lighter theory of the financial crisis (or, who do we want to blame?)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#42 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#43 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#45 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#56 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#46 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#23 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#25 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#28 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#7 I actually miss working at IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#36 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#41 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#48 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#60 In your opinon, what is the highest risk of financial fraud for a corporation ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#74 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#43 Massive Fraud, Common Crime, No Prosecutions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#66 Bank email archives thrown open in financial crash report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#30 Bank email archives thrown open in financial crash report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#47 Lords: Auditors guilty of 'dereliction of duty'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#71 Pressing Obama, House Bars Rise for Debt Ceiling
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#5 Home prices may drop another 25%, Shiller predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#7 Home prices may drop another 25%, Shiller predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#22 Is BitCoin a triple entry system?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#24 US Housing Crisis Is Now Worse Than Great Depression
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#25 US Housing Crisis Is Now Worse Than Great Depression
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#29 Obama: "We don't have enough engineers"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#13 'Megalomania, Insanity' Fueled Bubble: Munger
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#16 'Megalomania, Insanity' Fueled Bubble: Munger
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#19 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#33 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#37 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#24 rating agencies
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#38 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#39 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#41 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#44 S&P Downgrades USA; Time to Downgrade S&P?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#45 S&P's History of Relentless Political Advocacy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#50 How Many Divisions Does Standard and Poors Have?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#2 First Website Launched 20 Years Ago Today
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#16 Feds Launch Probe Into S&P Mortgage Rates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#25 Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed's Secret Loans
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#56 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#60 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#81 How Joe and Mary Six Pack Saved Wall Street, London, Frankfurt and Big Corporates in the USA and Europe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#62 The true cost of 9/11: Trillions and trillions wasted on wars, a fiscal catastrophe, and a weaker America
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#67 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#73 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#18 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#24 AMERICA IS BROKEN, WHAT NOW?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#38 The Mark to Market Fantasy Fraud
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#41 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#52 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#57 The Mortgage Crisis---Some Inside Views
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#73 Did You Hear the One About the Bankers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#77 Did You Hear the One About the Bankers?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#79 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#82 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#4 The men who crashed the world

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

After a Romney Deal, Profits and Then Layoffs

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 13 Nov, 2011
Subject: After a Romney Deal, Profits and Then Layoffs
Blog: Facebook

re:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/us/politics/after-mitt-romney-deal-company-showed-profits-and-then-layoffs.html

These operations really came into their own during the last decade ... with nearly zero percent money ... they would borrow to buy or reverse ipo, some taking billion or two commission on the deal, wait a couple years and then do an IPO ... taking possibly another billion or two on the deal ... leaving the new corporate entity with tens of billions of dollar debt from the cost of doing the deal ... and potentially facing bankruptcy servicing the enormous debt. rolling stones has done some on the practice.

also this ref:

The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis
https://www.amazon.com/Buyout-America-Private-Equity-Credit/dp/1591842859/

some past refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#80 Favourite computer history books?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#23 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#46 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#45 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#70 TCM's Moguls documentary series

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Any candidates for best acronyms?

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 13 Nov, 2011
Subject: Any candidates for best acronyms?
Blog: Greater IBM

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#55 Any candidates for best acronyms?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#60 Any candidates for best acronyms?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#15 Any candidates for best acronyms?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#54 Any candidates for best acronyms?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#55 Any candidates for best acronyms?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#5 Any candidates for best acronyms?

for the fun of it ... an old post with a parasite/story for autologging into RETAIN and automatically retreiving PUT bucket
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#36

story was HLLAPI kind of language from the 70s that was used with parasite which leveraged the vm370 logical device support to create a virtual 3270 interface to PVM ... allowing networked 3270 session support all over the corporation.

It was written by the same person that authored VMSG ... an email client also from the 70s. The PROFS group had taken a very early source pre-release VMSG and used it for their email client. When the author of VMSG later offered them a significantly enhanced and up-to-date version ... the PROFS group tried to get him fired (apparently they had taken credit for the email client used in PROFS). The whole thing quieted down when the VMSG author demonstrated that every PROFS email contained his initials in a non-displayed field.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2011 19:31:23 -0500

"Peter Duncanson (BrE)" <mail@peterduncanson.net> writes:
There is a horrible irony behind the effects of the Irish potato famine. The potato was a nutritious wonder crop that could grow in places where other food plants couldn't. The growing of potatoes on their small plots of land by poor labourers allowed the population to grow. I understand that when the famine and subsequent fever struck the population was reduced to what it might have been if the potato had never been introduced.

Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed ... describes how new world empires expanded with the introduction of potatos from europe. military expeditions included having to carrying their own food ... potatos had significantly higher food value per pound (compared to what they previously had available) ... extended the range of military expeditions.

recent ref in another thread
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#46 computer booklaces

other recent threads mentioning Diamond's work
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#46 Leaving the world of standard operating procedures
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#50 Having left IBM, seem to be reminded that IBM is not the same IBM I had joined
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#7 Innovation and iconoclasm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#14 Innovation and iconoclasm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#59 Why did the OODA-loop tactic grow into a strategy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#52 Chinese researchers say early climate changes responsible for human crisis

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Deja Cloud?

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 12 Nov, 2011
Subject: Deja Cloud?
Blog: Old Geek

re:
http://lnkd.in/Gj_N63
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#19 Deja Cloud?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#25 Deja Cloud?

lots of the major online service providers have several mega-datacenters at various places around the world (hundreds of thousands to millions of processors in such mega-datacenters).

this is example of webhosting for large number of major websites with its own mega-datacenters at various places around the world
http://www.akamai.com/

clients include all sorts of companies (including some major financial operations). webclient will tend to get directed to datacenter that provides efficient service. two different webclients at different places in the world ... going to what they believe is the identical webserver ... may in fact directed to different datacenters on different continents (the physical location of the webserver may have nothing to do with the nationality of the associated corporation)

old nasa dependable computing workshop where i was one of the keynotes ... as well as jim gray from m'soft and somebody from alkamai (gone 404, but lives on at wayback machine).
https://web.archive.org/web/20011004023230/http://www.hdcc.cs.cmu.edu/may01/index.html

Over the past decade, I seen several situations involving https to a financial webserver and the alkamai configuration bleeds through with a alkamai SSL digital ceritificate rather than the financial webserver SSL digital certificate that I'm actually trying to contact.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Data Areas?

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

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Data Areas?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 13 Nov 2011 19:43:28 -0800

gerhard@VALLEY.NET (Gerhard Postpischil) writes:
In the sixties, IBM was sued by Applied Data Research for distributing free software (purportedly) similar to what ADR wanted to sell (ROSCOE vs. IBM's CRBE/CRJE). The outcome was IBM's decision to charge for all software other than the base system. In the seventies, a company a friend of mine refers to as Jujitsu took the entire MVS system code, removed all copyright statements, removed all references to IBM, made some minor changes, and sold the resulting system with its own hardware. IBM's response, other than a court case, was to restrict all source code (other than HASP/JES2) from distribution, and to cease making the optional source and fiche available. They referred to this as Object Code Only (OCO). A result is a lack of needful information in manuals, as you noted. Some of us look through dumps, and trace execution flow, to figure out what is happening, but that's a gray area, as IBM's standard contracts prohibit reverse engineering.

23jun69 unbundling announcement starting to charge for application software, SE services, etc (made case that kernel/operating system was still free). misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

in the early 70s, there was Future System effort which was going to be significantly different from 360/370, during that period 370 product efforts were being shutdown. when FS failed, there was then mad rush to get 370 software & hardware items back into the 370 product pipelines; however that long delay is credited with giving clone processors a foothold in the market. misc. past future system references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

the mad rush also contributed to release some number of 370 items that i had continued to do all during the FS period (i would periodically ridicule FS activities in various ways ... which possibly wasn't exactly career enhancing). One of my pieces to ship was my resource manager ... and it was selected to be the guinea pig for starting to charge for kernel software. I got to spend a lot of time with lawyers and business people about politices for kernel software charging. At that time, it was just going to be kernel software that was *NOT* directly related to hardware support (aka device drivers, multiprocessor operation, etc) and that *FREE* kernel software couldn't require as pre-req, *PRICED* software.

I had also been doing a lot of work on multiprocessor support during the period ... and what went out in the resource manager was a lot of kernel restructuring done for multiprocessor support (but not actual multiprocessing support).

The next release (after release associated with my initial resource manager) was going to have multiprocessor support ... but was dependent on all the restructuring that had already shipped in my resource manager. The *FREE* multiprocessor (aka hardware) support could require my (*PRICED*) resource manager as pre-requisite. The eventual solution was moving something like 90% of the code from my resource manager into the *FREE* software base ... while leaving the price for my resource manager the same.

There were a couple more of free *base* system releases with growing body of kernel software addons that were charged for. Then came the switch to all charged for kernel software. The last release of base *FREE* kernel software is typically what is used with Hercules 370 emulation. There then was a 1-2 years of charging for all kernel software before starting the transition to OCO (object code only) in the first part of the 80s.

old "Data Areas Manuals to be dropped" ibm-main post from 2007 that discusses OCO and OCO-wars. Tymshare had provided its online computer conferencing to SHARE for free as VMSHARE starting in AUG76 ... and this post references some of the OCO online discussions from the period:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007k.html#15 Data Areas Manuals to be dropped
and also here
http://www.mail-archive.com/ibm-main@bama.ua.edu/msg48551.html

more OCO discussion on ibm-main later in 2007
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#6 Open z/Architecture or Not
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#8 Open z/Architecture or Not
and
http://www.mail-archive.com/ibm-main@bama.ua.edu/msg62826.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/ibm-main@bama.ua.edu/msg62831.html

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Data Areas?

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

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Data Areas?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 13 Nov 2011 20:58:35 -0800

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#33 Data Areas?

stage1 os/360 sysgen was a 40-100 card assembler (macro) program that was assembled and produced possibly 1000-2000 cards as stage2. stage1 "macros" didn't generate any machine code ... it was all "punch" statements that generated their own card images. stage2 was large number of job steps, mostly iebcopy & iehmove ... that took mostly PDS members from libraries on "starter system" disk to target production disks.

starting with sysgen for release11 ... I would take the stage2 card ouput and rework it so i could run it in production jobstream (with HASP, instead of in the starter system) and also significantly re-organized the steps and the member copy/move. this was at univ with large number of student jobs ... predating watfor. The univ. had been running student fortran jobs on IBSYS/709 tape->tape with 1401 front-end that did tape<->unit record (tapes manually moved between 1401 drives and 709 drives). On 709, student jobs ran a second or two elapsed time. Initial move to os/360 on 360/65, the elapsed time increase to more like 100 seconds (without HASP). Adding HASP got elapsed time down to almost 30 seconds. Extensive hand-crafting stage2 ... so that files and members were ordered for optimal disk arm seek ... got elapsed time down to approx. 13 seconds (almost three times faster). For small student fortran G 3-step jobs, majority of the time was spent doing job scheduler related stuff that was extrodinarily disk arm intensive.

part of old presentation i gave at fall '68 SHARE meeting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18

The machine was actually a 360/67 but ran nearly all the time as 360/65 but I was allowed to play with cp67 on the weekends. The presentation includes measures of extensive code rewrite that I did of cp67 during spring and summer of 1968, in addition to performance of os/360 running under cp67 and os/360 running on bare machine (as well as extensive work i did on os/360 sysgen for optimal arm seek operation).

One of the problems was that most PTFs were PDS member replacements ... which could totally destory optimal arm seek operation over the period of several months (resulting in throughput degradation to almost that of unoptimized system and could require periodic regen just to re-establish optimal throughput).

all of cp67 started out being purely source it wasn't until later that a object/pre-assembled option was added. many customers defaulted to assemble. besides virtual machines and bunch of online stuff, the internal network also came out of the science center ... misc past posts mentioning science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

GML was also invented at the science center in 1969 ... and GML tag processing was added to CMS script (dot-command formating process ... port from ctss runoff), decade after invention, GML morphed into ISO international SGML standard ... and another decade SGML morphed into HTML (at CERN). misc. past posts mentioning GML, SGML, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml

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

one of the early uses of the network technology was distributed development between Cambridge and Endicott to add virtual 370 machine support to cp67. Part of the effort also resulted in development in the cms-based multi-level source update process. The cambridge 360/67 ran the cp67 "L" system. In 360/67 virtual machine would run the cp67 "H" system (updates to add support for 370 virtual machine as alternative to 360/67 virtual machine, issue was to not expose base cp67 users ... which included non-employees/students from universities in boston area, to 370 virtual memory which hadn't been announced yet). In an "H" system 370 virtual machine ran CP67 "I" system (i.e. cp67 code changed to run with 370 hardware definition rather than 360/67 hardware definition). CP67 "I" was running normal operation a year before first 370 engineering machine with virtual memory support was operational. Later, as increasing number of 370 machines became available internally, most of them ran cp67I (also well before vm370 virtual machine product became available).

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Soups

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Soups
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2011 09:52:45 -0500

Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
This is where you all show 1970s thinking.

Firstly, you are correct in that chatty, stateful protocols like SNA; X.25; Frame Relay; CONS; ISDN; ATM; etc have no business on a mainframe. A small processor can handle these.

You then have a bandwith problem between the small processor busy with comms chatting and the big iron; if you are indeed able to bring forth any real bandwith in the chatter.

But the solution isn't built of more small, outboarded boxes. The solution is to get rid of the statefulness and the chatter.

Enter Ethernet and TCP/IP. (Token Ring is in an intermediate class). You want the ethernet frames directly onto your mainframe with as little hassle as possible. DMA is fine.

If you e.g. run NFS you want the file system code to send/get these packets directly.

Of course, some parts of tcp/ip emulate the old chatter on top of itself, like telnet, XOT, etc. So, it may be sensible to have a second tcp/ip link to some chatterbox to handle these.

Last time I had a look, the old chatter from X.25, SNA, Frame Relay etc. represented nearly 6% of the IP traffic over public exchange points. The X.25 networks themselves have died, but the Internet carries more X.25 than these networks ever did.

late 80s, one of the senior disk engineers got a talk scheduled at annual, world-wide, internal communication group conference, and opened with the statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. the communication group had strategic ownership of everything that cross the datacenter walls and were actively trying to preserve their terminal emulation paradigm and install base ... as a result of this stranglehold, the disk division was seeing lots of data fleeing the datacenter (and corresponding large drop in disk sales) to more distributed computing friendly platforms.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

the communication groups strategy for token ring was putting 300 or more PCs on the same T/R lan segment ... all sharing the same bandwidth ... which is adequate for terminal emulation and helps prevent deployment of high-bandwith client/server apps. the workstation group had done their own 16bit (AT-bus) 4mbit t/R card (for the pc/rt) ... but for the rs/6000 they were forced to use the standard microchannel 16mbit t/r card (which had lower per card thruput than the workstation group's 4mbyt t/r card ... even with only one or two cards on LAN segment).

the disk division was doing lots of products to overcome the problems, but they were constantly being vetoed by the communication group. One that communication group couldn't quite totally block was mainframe tcp/ip support ... however the channel interface lan box ... the communication group took over ownership and raised the purchase price by factor of ten times. also it was a LAN bridge box ... not a tcp/ip router ... so the mainframe software had to do all the IP<->MAC processing. I added rfc1044 support to the base product ... supporting a real channel attach tcp/ip router box ... and in some tuning tests at cray research got possibly 500 times improvement in the bytes moved per instructions executed on mainframe
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 02:33:55 -0500

"Robert A. Woodward" <robertaw@drizzle.com> writes:
The Federal Reserve kept interest rates rather low for years to aid the recovery from the bust of the dotcom bubble. And, of course, the US government has been subsidizing home ownership for decades.

the real-estate bubble was mostly unregulated loan originators able to pay rating agencies for triple-A ratings on toxic CDOs (securitized mortgages) ... allowing them nearly unlimited market to unload them. Being able to immediately unload all mortgages eliminated any reason to care about borrower's qualifications or loan quality ... resulting in just about anybody able to get no-documentation, no-down, 1% interest only payment ARMs. Speculators found them extremely attractive since they could get 2000% ROI (in parts of the country with 20-30% real-estate inflation, with speculation further fueling inflation). Testimony is that they were also very attractive to drug cartels for money laundering.

estimate was that there were $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDO transactions during the bubble (i.e. didn't need fed money or money from depository institutions).

Evil Wall Street Experts 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 ...

mostly unregulated loan originators and real-estate bubble was on the front-end of the triple-A rated toxic CDOs ... on the backend was wallstreet taking significant cut of the $27T in fees and commissions (aggregate fees and commissions of 10% would be $2.7T; 15% would be $4T)

pieces of recent "The men who crashed the world" discussion in linkedin Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security group:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#41
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#48
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#49
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#52
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#79
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#82
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#4

I had been asked early 2009 to take the recently scaned Pecora Hearings (1930s congressional hearings into the '29 crash, resulted in Glass-Steagall), "html'ize" it with heaving href indexing along with references between what happened then and what happened this time (some anticipation that the new congress would have appetite to do something). After working on it for some time, I got a call that it wouldn't be needed after all.

from Pecora 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 ...

with the triple-A rated toxic CDOs providing the equivalent fuel to the Brokers' loans.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:03:42 -0500

Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
The government "encouraged" Fannie and Freddie to back mortgages to people who could never afford what they were borrowing. After all, doesn't everyone have a right to the home of their choice?

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#36 Civilization, doomed?

the vast majority of the mortgages were being done by mostly unregulated loan originators ... that were able to package them as toxic CDOs and then pay the rating agencies for triple-A ratings and sell them off through wallstreet (weren't going to freddie&fannie) ... aka $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDO operations during the bubble.
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

fraudulent mortgages and packaged as securitized instruments had been done during the S&L crisis ... the securitization attempt to obfuscate the underlying details; however w/o the triple-A rating there was very little uptake. big reason paying for the triple-A rating (even tho both the rating agencies and the sellers knew they weren't worth triple-A ... from fall2008 congressional hearings into rating agencies) was open the market to organizations that are restricted only dealing in high quality (like large soverign funds and large retirement funds).

being able to pay for triple-A ratings and immediately sell them off eliminated any reason for the loan originators to care about borrowers' qualifications (including speculators and drug cartels) ... would have just slowed down their money making mill. Wallstreet went along because of the enormous fees and commissions that they were making for their part in the money making mill.

everybody were candidates for dumping the triple-A rated toxic CDOs ... including investment bankers' own institutions (their individual enormous compensation as part of buying&selling the instruments eliminating concerns about their institution, the economy and/or the country).

at the end of 2008, just the four too-big-to-fail institutions were holding $5.2T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs "off-book" (courtesy of repeal of Glass-Steagall). earlier in the fall of 2008, there were something like $60B in triple-A rated toxic CDOs that had gone for 22cents on the dollar. If the assets had been forced to be brought back on the books, the institutions would have been declared insolvement and had to be liquidated
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home

TARP funds were originally appropriated for purchase of these toxic assets, but that was before they knew that the allocated funds would never had made a small dent in the ($27T dollar) problem. They found out possible late Jan2009 (after starting to do evaluations) and then needed to find some totally different uses for the TARP funds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program

It then was left up to the federal reserve to address the problem, mostly from behind the scenes. They bought trillions of the off-balance triple-A rated toxic CDOs at 98cents on the dollar.

The federal reserve also made $9T in loans to the too-big-to-fail
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/1201/Federal-Reserve-s-astounding-report-We-loaned-banks-trillions
and then another $7T for $16T total
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/21/audit-fed-gave-16-trillion-in-emergency-loans//

hoping that the enormous loans to the too-big-to-fail, they would turn around and use to stimulate the economy. however they found that the too-big-to-fail were mostly buying treasuries ... booking the interest as profits for paying enormous executive bonuses. the federal reserve was then left with little additional that they could do
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/geithner-bernanke-have-little-in-arsenal-to-fight-new-crisis/2011/08/12/gIQAFuFvFJ_story.html

if they had let the too-big-to-fail ... fail ... then the federal reserve could have bought trillions in treasuries directly ... and not bothering to charge the federal government interest (rather than not charging the too-big-to-fail interest ... aka letting the too-big-to-fail book the interest as profits) ... which would have significantly mitigated all the rhetoric about the costs of the enormous federal deficit.

misc. past posts about Federal Reserve play:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#17 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#23 They always think we don't understand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#46 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#58 Programmer Charged with thieft (maybe off topic)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#66 Ernst & Young sued for fraud over Lehman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#48 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#45 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#3 Greed, Excess and America's Gaping Class Divide
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#11 Innovation and iconoclasm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#39 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#4 Geithner, Bernanke have little in arsenal to fight new crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#23 Wall Street Aristocracy Got $1.2 Trillion in Fed's Secret Loans
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#73 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#49 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#57 The Mortgage Crisis---Some Inside Views

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:38:35 -0500

from Sept 2008:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were victims, not culprits
http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/mar2008/pi20080318_697440.htm

from above:
Look at the numbers. While the credit bubble was peaking from 2003 to 2006, the amount of loans originated by Fannie and Freddie dropped from $2.7 trillion to $1 trillion. Meanwhile, in the private sector, the amount of subprime loans originated jumped to $600 billion from $335 billion and Alt-A loans hit $400 billion from $85 billion in 2003. Fannie and Freddie, which wouldn't accept crazy floating rate loans, which required income verification and minimum down payments, were left out of the insanity.

... snip ...

Fannie/Freddie part of the mortgage market shrank as the market in triple-A toxic CDOs boomed (total $27T during the bubble).
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

above also references (from March 2008):

Understanding the Securitization of Subprime Mortgage Credit
http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr318.html

there is also reference to (from Dec 2007)

Fed Shrugged as Subprime Crisis Spread
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/business/18subprime.html?pagewanted=all

and from July 2008:

Fannie & Freddie: Myth vs. Reality
http://seekingalpha.com/article/84584-fannie-freddie-myth-vs-reality

as in the analogy to the '29 stock market crash ... the enormous speculation, bubble and crash involving the real-estate market in the last decade ... badly affected anybody holding mortgages (including Fannie and Freddie) ... independent of whether they were players in the "insanity".

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:54:17 -0500

for the fun of it:

AMERICA IS BROKEN, WHAT NOW?
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2011/10/journal-why-the-us-middle-class-is-broken.html

from above:
The reason for Wall Streets claim? In reality it was pure short sighted greed, but at the time it was argued that smart decision makers on Wall Street could allocate capital better than tens of millions of American households. It's only in retrospect that we know how wrong that argument was not only false, but the opposite. Wall Street, and the rest of the global financial system that replaced it, was simply another form of central planning. The result of this central planning was a little different than we saw in the Soviet Union. In our case, Wall Street just gambled it away and spent it on lavish lifestyles (complete with the arrogance to claim they actually earned it).

... snip ...

above reference to claims about wallstreet being able to do better job than federal government ... i.e. centralized gov. planning vis-a-vis "open markets" ... however, as implied in testimony by the person that attempted for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff, it is anything but "open" ... actually quite "dark" (statements about "transparency" and "visibility" required on wallstreet ... being much more important than new regulations). recent article on that subject:

SEC Refuses to Fire Any Staff Involved with Madoff Debacle
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothyspangler/2011/11/12/sec-refuses-to-fire-any-staff-involved-with-madoff-debacle/

and (old) comment there being nothing to fear from SEC:

CRAMER REVEALS A BIT TOO MUCH
http://nypost.com/2007/03/20/cramer-reveals-a-bit-too-much/

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 12:17:32 -0500

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#31 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#36 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#37 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#38 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#39 Civilization, doomed?

another facet of the easy money and lax adult supervision during the last decade:

After a Romney Deal, Profits and Then Layoffs
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/us/politics/after-mitt-romney-deal-company-showed-profits-and-then-layoffs.html

These operations really came into their own during the last decade ... they would borrow to buy or reverse ipo, some taking billion or two fees&commission on the deal, wait a couple years and then do an IPO ... taking possibly another billion or two on the deal ... leaving the new corporate entity with tens of billions debt (from the cost of doing the deal) ... and facing potential bankruptcy servicing the enormous debt.

also this ref:

The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis
https://www.amazon.com/Buyout-America-Private-Equity-Credit/dp/1591842859/

and:

Joshua Kosman, Predicting The Next Credit Crisis
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120391729

some past posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#80 Favourite computer history books?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#23 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#46 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#45 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#70 TCM's Moguls documentary series

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:08:04 -0500

wdstarr@panix.com (William December Starr) writes:
Or, it now seems in many cases, about keeping track of the paperwork.

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#36 Civilization, doomed?

fraudulent mortgages were packaged/securitized during the S&L crisis to obfuscate the underlying characteristics ... securitized (fraudulent) mortgages w/o the triple-A rating ... there was little market.

In the late 90s, we were asked to look at improving the integrity of mortgage documents in securitized mortgages. however, being able to pay for triple-A ... they no longer needed to care about borrowers' qualifications or loan quality and could do no-down, *NO-DOCUMENTATION* loans (documents just slowing down how fast they could write loans); ... but w/o documents ... there was no longer issue regarding integrity (of non-existent documents).

other posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#31 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#37 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#38 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#39 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#40 Civilization, doomed?

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Speed: Re: Soups

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Speed: Re: Soups
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:39:02 -0500

Howard Brazee <howard@brazee.net> writes:
Bush did more to socialize medicine than Obama did. Medicare part D was a Bush administration program. Obama's program is requiring people to have insurance and requiring insurance companies to insure.

I have to admit that my niece was able to change states to find a job because they expanded the age where she was covered on my sister's insurance, and that was good.

But basically, medical care is just as expensive, and we can't afford to take part time jobs which don't have insurance.

after fiscal responsibility act expired late 2002, congress appeared to go "crazy" ... the comptroller general would include statements about nobody in congress was capable of middle school arithmetic ... legislation total mismatch in revenue and spending ... including comments about medicare part-d was going to explode into $40T unfunded mandate ... totally swamping all other budget issues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Part_D

60mins had segment on process getting medicare part-d ... especially a one liner added at the last minute the precluded competitive bidding; they showed drugs from VA (which allows competitive bidding) identical to the same drugs from part-D that costs three times as much (w/o competitive bidding). 60mins identified 18 staffers and members of congress that handled getting part-D passed ... and shortly later had all resigned and were on drug company payrolls. The one liner, non-competitive bidding was added at the last minute and supposedly the 18 managed to prevent the CBO report of the effect of the change from being distributed in congress until after the vote.

reference to 60mins segment
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2007/04/ugliest-night-i-have-ever-seen-60.html
article about later/followup cbs segment
http://www.propublica.org/article/medicare-drug-planners-now-lobbyists-with-billions-at-stake-1020

misc. past posts mentioning comptroller general statements about fiscal responsibility act expiring the end of 2002 and nobody congress capable of middle school arithmetic:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#20 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007j.html#91 IBM Unionization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007o.html#74 Horrid thought about Politics, President Bush, and Democrats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#22 U.S. Cedes Top Spot in Global IT Competitiveness
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#13 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#40 Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008e.html#50 fraying infrastructure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008f.html#86 Banks failing to manage IT risk - study
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#98 dollar coins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#8 Taxcuts
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/2009n.html#55 Hexadecimal Kid - articles from Computerworld wanted
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#39 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#60 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#33 The 2010 Census
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#79 Idiotic take on Bush tax cuts expiring
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#59 They always think we don't understand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#66 They always think we don't understand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#69 They always think we don't understand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#75 origin of 'fields'?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#18 Congressional Bickering
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#36 The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#59 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#68 Bernanke Hearings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#67 The debt fallout: How Social Security went "cash negative" earlier than expected

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Deja Cloud?

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 10 Nov, 2011
Subject: Deja Cloud?
Blog: Old Geek

re:
http://lnkd.in/Gj_N63
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#19 Deja Cloud?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#25 Deja Cloud?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#32 Deja Cloud?

recent FACEBOOK scam news on TV all seem to show the 1601 building sign. If you do satellite map of the address, the (older) building next door at 1501 was where the US HONE datacenters were consolidated in the mid-70s ... and I spent a large amount of time in that building (it has a different occupant now). As mentioned upthread, that was possibly the largest "cloud" operation of the period ... providing online US sales&marketing support. And just like the modern day cloud mega-datacenters, clones of the HONE datacenter sprouted up all over the world.

misc. past posts mentioning HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

One of my hobbies in the period was providing production operating systems to internal datacenters ... and HONE was a long-time customer

and

Intel's 1 teraflop chip, exascale computing needs better story

precursor to 1997 mentioned here (jan92 meeting)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
not long before effort was transferred and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors. some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Data Areas?

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

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Data Areas?
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 16 Nov 2011 07:34:36 -0800

lynn@GARLIC.COM (Lynn Wheeler) writes:
23jun69 unbundling announcement starting to charge for application software, SE services, etc (made case that kernel/operating system was still free). misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#33 Data Areas?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#34 Data Areas?

another result of unbundling announcement was starting to charge for SE services. Previously SE training included apprentice activity as part of large SE team onsite at customer account. With charging for SE services, they couldn't figure out how to account for the apprentice SEs.

This led to the creation of several virtual machine cp67 "HONE" datacenters around the country that would allow SEs in branch office to practice their operating system skills in virtual machines.

The cambridge science center (responsible for virtual machines, cp40, cp67, GML, internal network, bunch of other stuff) had also ported APL\360 to CMS for CMS\APL. There started to be a large number of online sales&marketing support CMS\APL applications deployed on HONE ... and eventually that came to dominate all HONE activity (with the guest operating system activity dwindling away)

Recent FACEBOOK scam news on TV all seem to show the 1601 building sign. If you do satellite map of the address, the (older) building next door at 1501 was where the US HONE datacenters were consolidated in the mid-70s ... and I spent a large amount of time in that building (it has a different occupant now). This was possibly the largest "cloud" operation of the period ... and just like the modern day cloud mega-datacenters, clones of the HONE datacenter sprouted up all over the world.

misc. past posts mentioning HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

One of my hobbies in the period was providing production operating systems to internal datacenters ... and HONE was a long-time customer

As part of several attempts to kill off first cp67 and later vm370 ... this is reference claiming that there would be no more high-end vm370 ... and HONE needed convert to MVS ... which would be possible if they would just recode all their APL applications in assembler.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email790216
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email790220

as mentioned in above, senior IBM executive that had made the presentation to HONE, the comments were retracted, saying he must have been using the wrong flip charts for the presentation.

other old email mentioning HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#hone

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Humour

From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Subject: Re: Humour
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: 16 Nov 2011 08:50:22 -0800

George.Mosley@ICBC.COM (Mosley, George) writes:
Does anyone remember, and better still, have a copy of a humourous piece poking fun at IBM from years ago called (as I recall) "The End of OS"?

previous postings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#38 Virtual Cleaning Cartridge
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#52 Where can you get a Minor in Mainframe?

... small excerpt:
The end finally came in mid-October. System Release 110.7 was distributed, which converted everyone to MPSS (Multiple Priority Scheduling System), which combined the following control program options:

Multiprogramming with a Valuable Number of Tasks
Multijob Initiation
Multiple Priority Secection
Multiprocessing with a Variable Number of CPUs

SYSGEN was accomplished with little difficulty in 504 system hours. Expectantly, customers IPLed and initiated their job streams.

Nothing Happened
Nothing.

... snip ...

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Humour

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Humour
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 12:19:19 -0500

lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler) writes:
previous postings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#38 Virtual Cleaning Cartridge
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#52 Where can you get a Minor in Mainframe?

the 2006u.html#52 post also has a number of other items ... I still have an early (cms) script file.

also referrences this old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001f.html#38 Ancient computer humor - Gen A Sys

from CLOUD magazone, July 1979

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 12:31:49 -0500

scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) writes:
When I first started to drive about twenty years later, gas was over $1.25 a gallon, if you could get it at all. By the early 80's, it was less than $0.80/gallon in Los Angeles (notable in a scene from Die Hard).

Late 60's gas wars in Janesville, Wis had gas around a quarter/gal.

business news just now said that oil creeped above $100/barrel again and guests were saying that there was no justification (and which results in big jumps in gas prices).

passed references to section in griftopia about commodity markets had rule that players were required to have significant positions in commodity ... because speculators resulted in wild, irrational price swings; then last decade there were "19 secret letters" that allowed specific speculators to play ... just before oil spiked well over $100/barrel summer of 2008
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#6 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#57 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#90 CFTC Limits on Commodity Speculation May Wait Until Early 2012
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#46 Sand in Machine Makes a Stable Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#76 FIA shocked and outraged after Senator leaks oil trading data
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#21 HOLLOW STATES and a CRISIS OF CAPITALISM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#18 computer bootlaces

this is similar to traders able to manipulate stock prices ... mentioned in this reference

CRAMER REVEALS A BIT TOO MUCH
http://nypost.com/2007/03/20/cramer-reveals-a-bit-too-much/

and not having to worry about SEC doing anything.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 12:48:41 -0500

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#41 Civilization, doomed?

The ART OF PATHOGENIC WARFARE
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2011/11/the-art-of-pathogenic-warfare.html

from above:
Parasitic pathogens, like the owners of the hedge fund Magnetar Capital, who are willing to severely damage the host system in order to either best the competition (a big boy's version of capture of the flag, but with money). What's worse is that this wasn't an isolated incident. It's becoming more common. From the collapse of Long Term Capital Management to the bankruptcy of Greece, these toxin floods are proliferating. Why?

... snip ...

other references to Magnetar Capital:

The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Bubble Going
http://www.propublica.org/article/all-the-magnetar-trade-how-one-hedge-fund-helped-keep-the-housing-bubble/single
Rahm Emanuel and Magnetar Capital: The Definition of Compromised
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/04/rahm-emanuel-and-magnetar-capital-the-definition-of-compromised.html
Rahm Emanuel and Magnetar Capital: The Definition of Compromised
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yves-smith/rahm-emanuel-and-magnetar_b_535827.html

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:17:16 -0500

greymaus <greymausg@mail.com> writes:
It strikes me that if one joined the Viet(Cong|Minh), which had fairly heavy casulties, the life-enhancing virtues would be the least of your worries.

currently reading

Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam
https://www.amazon.com/Westmoreland-General-Lost-Vietnam-ebook/dp/B005OCG11Q

mentions that one of the biggest pockets of anti-attritionists (and body count campaign) were the Marines, which resulted in them drawing lots of critism from Westmoreland. It possibly accounts for lots of attritionists being selected for promotion.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110817133447/http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/attritionist-letters-archives

I was at conference last month at Marine Corps Univ. that spent some amount of time discussing the subject.

somewhat computer related, one of Boyd's biographies talks about him doing stint in command.of.spook base (also being a $2.5B windfall for IBM ... possibly $17+B in todays dollars) ... old reference to spook base, gone 404, but lives on wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030212092342/http://home.att.net/~c.jeppeson/igloo_white.html

other posts/references to Boyd and/or OODA-loop
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2011 18:50:03 -0500

Morten Reistad <first@last.name> writes:
Go read econbrowser;
http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2011/08/fundamentals_sp.html

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#47 Civilization, doomed?

the tv business news guest made comment that excess worldwide daily production is now 3+mil barrels/day and libya will be coming back online shortly which will be another 1+mil/day ... so he couldn't see why price was creeping back over $100/barrel.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The men who crashed the world

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 17 Nov, 2011
Subject: The men who crashed the world
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security

Possibly in case SEC were to wake up

Congress: Trading stock on inside information?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-trading-stock-on-inside-information/

from above:
Schweizer: These meetings were so sensitive-- that they would actually confiscate cell phones and Blackberries going into those meetings. What we know is that those meetings were held one day and literally the next day Congressman Bachus would engage in buying stock options based on apocalyptic briefings he had the day before from the Fed chairman and treasury secretary. I mean, talk about a stock tip.

While Congressman Bachus was publicly trying to keep the economy from cratering, he was privately betting that it would, buying option funds that would go up in value if the market went down. He would make a variety of trades and profited at a time when most Americans were losing their shirts

... snip ...

Why Not Break-Up Citigroup?
http://baselinescenario.com/2011/11/17/why-not-break-up-citigroup/

long-winded post from jan1999
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.riskm

In 1989 Citibank realizes that its ARM portfolio could take down the institution, sells it off, gets out of the market (largest player in the market at the time) and requires a (private) bailout to stay in business. Roll forward to this last decade ... Citi (under new management) is one of the largest players in triple-A rated toxic CDOs (toxic CDOs mostly ARM mortgage backed securities ... basically a large ARM portfolio in slight disguise). End of 2008, the four too-big-to-fail are holding $5.2T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs off-balance ... and Citi is holding more than the other three.
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home

apparently the institutional knowledge regarding ARM mortgage portfolios had evaporated between 1989 and the last decade (along with new management). the new management at Citi was one of the most instrumental in the repeal of Glass-Steagall opening the way for too-big-to-fail
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/
and
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/weill/

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2011 10:38:36 -0500

Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
at the end of 2008, just the four too-big-to-fail institutions were holding $5.2T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs "off-book" (courtesy of repeal of Glass-Steagall). earlier in the fall of 2008, there were something like $60B in triple-A rated toxic CDOs that had gone for 22cents on the dollar. If the assets had been force to be brought back on the books, the institutions would have been declared insolvement and had to be liquidated
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
>http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#37 Civilization, doomed?

a little recent x-over
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#61 The men who crashed the world

Why Not Break-Up Citigroup?
http://baselinescenario.com/2011/11/17/why-not-break-up-citigroup/

long-winded post from jan1999
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm

In 1989 Citibank realizes that its ARM portfolio could take down the institution, sells it off, gets out of the market (largest player in the market at the time) and requires a (private) bailout to stay in business. Roll forward to this last decade ... Citi (under new management) is one of the largest players in triple-A rated toxic CDOs (toxic CDOs mostly ARM mortgage backed securities ... basically a large ARM portfolio in slight disguise). End of 2008, the four too-big-to-fail are holding $5.2T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs ... and Citi is holding more than the other three.
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home

The rhetoric on the floor of congress during GLBA (including repeal of Glass-Steagall):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act

was that the primary purpose of the bill was that if you were already a bank, you got to remain a bank, but if you weren't already a bank, you didn't get to become one (specifically calling out walmart and m'soft)

the bill initially passed but w/o enough votes to override a rumoured veto ... then there was other things added so the resulting vote was 90-8-2 ... making it "veto proof".

There was also "opt-out" privacy provision that was viewed as federal pre-emption of work on cal. legislation requiring "opt-in" ... aka opt-out allows institutions to share your information unless they have "opt-out" on record, "opt-in" only allows sharing if they have your "opt-in" permission on record.

in the middle of the last decade there was a national, annual privacy conference in Wash DC that included panel discussion with the FTC commissioners. During the session, somebody got up in the back of the room, saying that they work on 1-800 call-centers for major institutions ... and they claimed that none of the "opt-out" lines provided the people answer the phone, with any method of recording the information ... and was wondering if the FTC commissioners were ever going to look into the matter.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

HONE

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 17 Nov, 2011
Subject: HONE
Blog: z/VM

re:
http://lnkd.in/VtbbdE

Past HONE references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

Recent FACEBOOK scam news on TV all seem to show the 1601 building sign. If you do satellite map of the address, the (older) building next door at 1501 was where the US HONE datacenters were consolidated in the mid-70s ... and I spent a large amount of time in that building (it has a different occupant now). This was possibly the largest "cloud" operaton of the period ... providing online US sales&marketing support. And just like the modern day cloud mega-datacenters, clones of the HONE datacenter sprouted up all over the world.

One of my hobbies in the period was providing production operating systems to internal datacenters ... and HONE was a long-time customer

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

had done lots of work on performance and performance modeling. Part of early cp67 was constantly gathering performance statistics which was used for things like workload profiling and eventually turns into capacity planning. There was also a system even simulator and an analytical model written in APL. The version of the APL analytical model was eventually made available on HONE as the performance predictor ... branch office could characterize the customer's system and workload and then ask "what-if" questions about the effects of changing hardware and/or workload. A version of the performance predictor was also modified and used by HONE to perform the load-balancing decisions across the loosely-coupled, single-system image complex .... references in the "From The Annuals of Release No Software Before Its Time" discussion
http://lnkd.in/rr-CEv

In the 90s, somebody in Europe obtained the rights to a descendent of the performance predictor and ran it through a APL->C converter and was using it as part of a datacenter performance consulting business. I ran into it a decade ago when I was asked to help out with a large, 450+k Cobol statement batch program that ran every night on 40+ maximum configured mainframes (avg. something like $30m per).

other recent posts mentioning 1601 & 1501
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#43 Deja Cloud?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#44 Data Areas?

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Speed: Re: Soups

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Speed: Re: Soups
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2011 11:35:04 -0500

Howard Brazee <howard@brazee.net> writes:
Are you saying "Yes, you agree with me", or "Yes, it will hurt those who are planning fraud"?

there is an issue with believing that some security measure solves a problem ... when it actually doesn't.

we were brought in to consult with small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on its server, they had also invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted to use; its now frequently called "electronic commerce". Part of the deployment was audits & walkthrus of these new businesses selling domain name digital certificates as well as several assumptions of how merchant servers implemented it ... including requiring merchants to use it for the whole session. Almost immediately merchant servers dropped back from using it for the whole session to just check-out/paying ... which invalidated several security assumptions. Very quickly I coined the term "comfort certificates" ... aka it providing the appearance of security. some past posts about SSL digital certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcerts

some recent posts mentioning comfort certificates:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#14 How is SSL hopelessly broken? Let us count the ways
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#25 Fear the Internet, was Cool Things You Can Do in z/OS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#24 Fight Fraud with Device ID
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#63 Why do defenders keep losing to smaller cyberwarriors?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#64 Fraudulent Google credential found in the wild
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#65 Somewhat off-topic: comp-arch.net cloned, possibly hacked
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#48 Does outsourcing cause data loss?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#23 Benefits of Online Banking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#48 ISBNs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#6 Founders of SSL Call Game Over?

in the mid-90s, there were several industry conferences where consumer, online, dial-up banking were making presentations about migration to internet. One of the primary reasons was enormous customer support costs realated to serial-port dial-up modems (typical operation might have library of 60+ different serial-port dial-up modem drivers and high call-center costs helping users get things correctly configured). This would effectively be off-loaded to internet ISP ... who could spread the support costs across the whole online environment.

However, at the same time, the commercial, online dial-up cash-management/banking operations were claiming that they would never move to the internet because large number of security issues ... which continue today ... recent refs:

Another US firm sues bank after cyber-attack
http://www.finextra.com/news/Fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=23161

misc. past posts on the subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#61 German court finds Bank responsible for malwared PC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#2 Cyber attackers empty business accounts in minutes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#61 Hacker charges also an indictment on PCI, expert says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#64 Hacker charges also an indictment on PCI, expert says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#9 Cyber crooks increasingly target small business accounts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#68 Definition of a computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#70 Client Certificate UI for Chrome?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#73 Definition of a computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009n.html#3 Hacker charges also an indictment on PCI, expert says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#18 security and online banking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#21 security and online banking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#72 Users still make hacking easy with weak passwords
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#79 Customers risk online banking fraud by reusing bank credentials
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#86 NY Town's Bank Account Hacked; Poughkeepsie Loses $378K in Fraudulent Transfers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#30 Michigan firm sues bank over theft of $560,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#6 Online Banking & Password Theft
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#92 Why do most websites use HTTPS only while logging you in...and not for the entire session?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#41 Monet, was Re: A "portable" hard disk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#38 U.K. bank hit by massive fraud from ZeuS-based botnet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#82 Nearly $1,000,000 stolen electronically from the University of Virginia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#87 Nearly $1,000,000 stolen electronically from the University of Virginia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#22 An online bank scam worthy of a spy novel
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#48 Is the magic and romance killed by Windows (and Linux)?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#4 1st round in Internet Account Fraud World Cup: Customer 0, Bank 1, Attacker 300,000
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#65 US Business Banking Cybercrime Wave: Is 'Commercially Reasonable' Reasonable?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#40 Banks blocking more fraudulent money transfers from hijacked business accounts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#23 Benefits of Online Banking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#38 ISBNs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#40 ISBNs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#3 Banks Face Ongoing Cyber Threats

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

What is Cloud Computing?

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 17 Nov, 2011
Subject: What is Cloud Computing?
Blog: Greater IBM

misc. past posts mentioning HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

longer, winded version on ibm-main
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#44

also in this Geek Computing "Deja Cloud" discussion:
http://lnkd.in/Gj_N63

In the 60s&70s, there were both internal & external virtual-machine based "cloud" operations ... providing online access. The online virtual machine support was created by the science center ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

first with cp40/cms and then morphed into cp67/cms (which later morphs into vm370/cms). HONE system was an example of an (IBM) internal cloud ... but many other corporations were doing it also. There were also commercial online virtual-machine based service bureaus that were providing "external" cloud services. Early ones were IDC, NCSS, and TYMSHARE.

TYMSHARE had developed its own online computer conferencing system for its customers ... and in AUG76 also made it available free to SHARE members
http://www.share.org

as VMSHARE ... archive here:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

Last week I was at a conferencing and ran into somebody that had been early member at IDC ... and we had some discussions about the "old days" ... for other trivia ... the person was also responsible for the implementation of visicalc:
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa010199.htm

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Using Cross-Channel Fraud Detection

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 17 Nov, 2011
Subject: Using Cross-Channel Fraud Detection
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security

Using Cross-Channel Fraud Detection; Enterprise Security Must Go Beyond FFIEC Authentication
http://ffiec.bankinfosecurity.com/articles.php?art_id=4252&rf=2011-11-17-eb&elq=3e4cb098ad6740e9ab8250b2de7e0030&elqCampaignId=835

I've periodically mentioned that in the mid-90s, at industry conferences, the consumer online, dial-up banking operations were making presentations about moving to the internet (in large part motivated by the significant consumer support costs related to serial-port dial-up modems ... being able to offload to internet ISPs). However, at the same time, the commercial online, dial-up cash-management/banking operations were saying they would *NEVER* move to the internet ... because of a large number of security issues ... problems that continue to persist today.

misc. recent references:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#48 Is the magic and romance killed by Windows (and Linux)?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#65 US Business Banking Cybercrime Wave: Is 'Commercially Reasonable' Reasonable?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#40 Banks blocking more fraudulent money transfers from hijacked business accounts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#23 Benefits of Online Banking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#3 Banks Face Ongoing Cyber Threats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#13 Two-Factor Authentication - Hardware token or SMS OTP
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#54 Speed: Re: Soups

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The lost art of real programming

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 18 Nov, 2011
Subject: The lost art of real programming
Blog: Old Geek Registry

re:
http://lnkd.in/S73dbN

C had convention to not keep track of storage sizes ... which has led to enormous numbers of failures and exploits based on buffer overruns. Until the end of the century, these tended to be the majority of programming exploits and vulnerabilities ... going into this century ... C buffer overruns had to start competing with automated script execution exploits and vulnerabilities.

This old post where i download the exploit database and tried to create taxonomy ... but found it difficult to classify exploits because of the free form reporting. I did word frequency and word-pair frequency which tended to show C language buffer overruns were still around 20percent (I had talk to mitre at the time about adding more structure ... but they said that they were lucky to get even the free-form reporting).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#43 security taxonomy and CVE
and some more comments
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#74 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#28 [Lit.] Buffer overruns

and this post notes that Feb2005 magazine article quoting NIST as finding roughly same proportion that I found
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#20 [Lit.] Buffer overruns

other buffer overrun related posts:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#overflow

IBM mainframe tcp/ip product had been implemented in vs/pascal ... and suffered none of the buffer length vulnerabilities of C-based implementations. There were some performance issues ... but I did the rfc1044 enhancements and in some tuning tests at Cray Research, got possibly 500 times improvement in terms of bytes moved per instructions executed ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044

Later the implementation was ported to MVS by implementing simulation of some of the vm370 functions.

Old posts about the early 70s security evaluation of multics and followup paper 30 years later. Part of this was that there had been no buffer overruns found in Multics (which had been implemented in PLI)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#42 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#43 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#44 Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security Evaluation

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Bllue Waters (ibm version) is dead. Long live Blue Gene/Q

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Bllue Waters (ibm version) is dead.  Long live Blue Gene/Q
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2011 10:10:24 -0500

Terje Mathisen <"terje.mathisen at tmsw.no"> writes:
Transactional memory indeed. I assume this is a fairly limited resource, to be used for locks only?

for 801 it was sometimes called database memory (available across all memory, aka it was used for the actual data in lieu of requiring locks) ... for rs/6000 they did JFS (journaled filesystem) with it ... the unix filesystem metadata was laid out. the claim was that it was both simpler and more efficient. the palo alto group then did a portable version of JFS ... w/o need for special hardware ... and it was shown to be more efficient across all platforms.

of course, originally 801 avoided any sort of multiprocessor support, cache consistency, and/or serialization primitives.

compare&swap had been invented by Charlie (CAS are his initials) at the science center while doing fine-grain multiprocessor locking work on cp67. overcoming push-back ... it was incorporated into 370 and eventually found uptake in many other platforms ... and use became common in multi-threaded operations, especially large DBMS implementations. misc. past posts mentioning smp &/or CAS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp

in porting major RDBMS to RS/6000 AIX ... there was severe performance hit because of the lack of compare&swap semantics on the machine. Finally, a compare&swap "fastpath" simulation was implemented in supervisor call interrupt handler (aka since it wasn't a multiprocessor machine, the only requirement was disable for interrupts during compare&swap simulation)

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The lost art of real programming

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 18 Nov, 2011
Subject: The lost art of real programming
Blog: Old Geek Registry

re:
http://lnkd.in/S73dbN
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#57 The lost art of real programming

at moscone 1996 m'soft developers conference ... all the banners were about supporting the internet ... however the constant sub-theme and references in sessions was "protecting your investment". Lots of scripting code had been added to application files that would be automatically executed by applications ... this was done for the small, closed, safe, business LANs. Moving this environment over to the hostile environment of the internet w/o adequate countermeasures was like going out the airlock (in open space) w/o space suite.

The c-language buffer overflows exploits and vulnerabilities didn't decrease after this ... but the aggregate number of exploits and vulnerabilities were increasing significantly with automatic execution (so they became smaller percentage of a larger pie). this was also somewhat the start of the signature-based anti-virus industry. Later social engineering was combined with various kinds of obfuscated executables ... enticing users into explicitly executing the software for one reason or another.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2011 21:51:57 -0500

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#37 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#38 Civilization, doomed?

another discussion why CRA, freddie, fannie, etc wasn't the $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs
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

Mike Bloomberg's Marie Antoinette Moment
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/mike-bloombergs-marie-antoinette-moment-20111103

from above:
The whole game was based on one new innovation: the derivative instruments like CDOs that allowed them to take junk-rated home loans and turn them into AAA-rated instruments. It was not Barney Frank who made it possible for Goldman, Sachs to sell the home loan of an occasionally-employed janitor in Oakland or Detroit as something just as safe as, and more profitable than, a United States Treasury Bill. This was something they cooked up entirely by themselves and developed solely with the aim of making more money.

... snip ...

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2011 23:52:28 -0500

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#47 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#50 Civilization, doomed?

from last spring:

Will Federal Regulators Crack Down on Oil Speculation?
http://www.thenation.com/article/159078/will-congress-crack-down-oil-speculators

a little bit later last spring
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#90 CFTC Limits on Commodity Speculation May Wait Until Early 2012
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#1 CFTC Limits on Commodity Speculation May Wait Until Early 2012
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#3 CFTC Limits on Commodity Speculation May Wait Until Early 2012
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#46 Sand in Machine Makes a Stable Market

references this article from start of the year:

CFTC Limits on Commodity Speculation May Wait Until Early 2012
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-18/cftc-limits-on-commodity-speculation-may-wait-until-early-2012.html

this mentions above as well as item about ("outrage") releasing data on oil speculation ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#76 FIA shocked and outraged after Senator leaks oil trading dat

... aka

Sen. Bernie Sanders Leaks Oil Trading Data: Americans Have A Right To Know Who Drove Up Gas Prices
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/sen-bernie-sanders-leaks-oil-trading-
Bernie Sanders Demands Action From Obama On Wall Street Oil 'Gambling'
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/29/bernie-sanders-demands-ac_n_855495.html

and

FIA "shocked and outraged after Senator leaks oil trading data"
http://www.finextra.com/news/Fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=22911

from above:
Explaining his decision to leak, Sanders says: "This report clearly shows that in the summer of 2008 when gas prices spiked to more than $4 a gallon, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and other speculators on Wall Street dominated the crude oil futures market causing tremendous damage to the entire economy. The CFTC has kept this information hidden from the American public for nearly three years. That is an outrage"

... snip ...

past posts mentioning griftopia regarding commodity markets had measures to control speculation because it resulted in wild, irrational price swings ... until "19 secret letters" were issued allowing specific speculators to play:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#6 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#57 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#90 CFTC Limits on Commodity Speculation May Wait Until Early 2012
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#46 Sand in Machine Makes a Stable Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#76 FIA shocked and outraged after Senator leaks oil trading data
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#21 HOLLOW STATES and a CRISIS OF CAPITALISM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#18 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#47 Civilization, doomed?

griftopia
https://www.amazon.com/Griftopia-Machines-Vampire-Breaking-ebook/dp/B003F3FJS2

recent reference to (online) article by same author/reporter:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#60 Civilization, doomed?

Mike Bloomberg's Marie Antoinette Moment
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/mike-bloombergs-marie-antoinette-moment-20111103

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2011 08:19:01 -0500

Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
CFTC Limits on Commodity Speculation May Wait Until Early 2012
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-18/cftc-limits-on-commodity-speculation-may-wait-until-early-2012.html

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#61 Civilization, doomed?

one might make the case that CFTC and commodity speculation dates back to having Born replaced as chairperson with Mrs. Gramm ... recent reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#41 The men who crashed the world

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 ...

also
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#84 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook'

and

The Warning
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/

from above:
Amidst the 1990s' bullmarket, there was one lone regulator who warned about derivatives' dangers -- and suddenly became the enemy of some of the most powerful people in Washington...

... snip ...

and

Interview: Brooksley Born
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/interviews/born.html

as well as
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#41 Advice from Richard P. Feynman

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 ...

for Enron & Worldcom; past reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#0 Audit II: Two more scary words: Sarbanes-Oxley

referencing
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/

i.e. also enabling AIG.

mist past posts mentioning CFTC:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009c.html#49 How to defeat new telemarketing tactic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#13 Should we fear and hate derivatives?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#74 Administration calls for financial system overhaul
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#61 70 Years of ATM Innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#9 I actually miss working at IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#36 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#90 CFTC Limits on Commodity Speculation May Wait Until Early 2012
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#1 CFTC Limits on Commodity Speculation May Wait Until Early 2012
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#3 CFTC Limits on Commodity Speculation May Wait Until Early 2012
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#17 Hey all you Old Geeks (and younger ones too), with gas heading towards $6.00/gal, remote support, satellite offices and home office will become more cost effective
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#43 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#40 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#5 AIG's Bank Of America Suit Puts Trashy Paper On Display
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#46 Sand in Machine Makes a Stable Market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#60 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#76 FIA shocked and outraged after Senator leaks oil trading data
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#21 HOLLOW STATES and a CRISIS OF CAPITALISM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#2 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#18 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#80 A Close Look at the Perry Tax Plan
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#47 Civilization, doomed?

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Intel's 1 teraflop chip

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Intel's 1 teraflop chip
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2011 08:46:09 -0500

Intel's 1 teraflop chip, exascale computing needs better story
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/intels-1-teraflop-chip-exascale-computing-needs-better-story/63597

has refeence to 1997 teraflop.

recent reference:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#43 Deja Cloud?

this is ref. to jan92 meeting in ellison's conference room on cluster scale-up:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

and then old email reference to meeting at LLNL later in the month, I couldn't attend, but some of the other vendor's came by afterwards to fill me in.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#email920129

but possibly within hrs of the above email, the project was transferred and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors. within a couple weeks there is press about supercomputer for numerical intensive only
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1 920217

also in this post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#24 Deja Cloud?
that references NII and LLNL
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#60 Two studies of the concentration of power -- government and industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#69 The culture of the pre-commercial Internet

for more recent drift

The Top 10 Supercomputers, Illustrated, Nov. 2011
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/the-top-10-supercomputers-illustrated-nov-2011/

of course these are datacenters specifically configured for numerical intensive. There are all the mega-datacenters with hundreds of thousands and millions of processors. misc. past posts mentioning mega-datacenters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#72 Price of CPU seconds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#68 VMware Chief Says the OS Is History
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#79 Google Data Centers 'The Most Efficient In The World'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#56 IBM drops Power7 drain in 'Blue Waters'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#78 Entry point for a Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#27 A "portable" hard disk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010k.html#62 taking down the machine - z9 series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#51 Mainframe Hacking -- Fact or Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#14 Facebook doubles the size of its first data center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#3 When will MVS be able to use cheap dasd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#46 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#16 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#17 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#19 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#32 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#32 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#9 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear in future and it still has not happened
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#75 Check out June 2011 | TOP500 Supercomputing Sites
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#23 Cloud computing - is it a financial con trick?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#70 New IBM Redbooks residency experience in Poughkeepsie, NY
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#11 PKI "fixes" that don't fix PKI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#35 Last Word on Dennis Ritchie
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#32 Deja Cloud?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#43 Deja Cloud?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#44 Data Areas?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#53 HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#55 What is Cloud Computing?

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2011 09:09:08 -0500

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#47 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#50 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#61 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#62 Civilization, doomed?

misc other items on CFTC and oil speculation from search engine:

What Wall Street doesn't want us to know about oil prices
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-wall-street-doesnt-want-us-to-know-about-oil-prices/2011/09/14/gIQAiOodVK_story.html
CFTC Report Reveals Rampant Speculation in Oil Markets
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=e802998a-8ee2-4808-9649-0d9730b75ea4
Oil speculators made $50 million by manipulating price: CFTC
http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/24/markets/oil_price_speculation/index.htm
Leaked Documents Reveal Major Speculators Behind 2008 Oil Price Shock: Hedge Funds, Koch, Big Banks, Oil Companies
https://web.archive.org/web/20120203052434/http://thinkprogress.org/green/2011/09/15/317330/leaked-cftc-oil-speculation-data/
Speculation can destabilize oil prices, CFTC told
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/speculation-can-destabilize-oil-prices-cftc-told-2011-08-26

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Hamming Code

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Hamming Code
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2011 09:23:36 -0500

"Charles Richmond" <netnews@aquaporin4.com> writes:
When did folks stop using the term "Hamming code" and start calling it "ECC" all the time??? Okay, so there *might* be some other type of ECC rather than Hamming code... but certainly Hamming code *is* an ECC.

ECC is also elliptic curve cryptography ... both ECC (crypto) and ECC (Reed-Solomon) involve galois field ... old post:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#53 Mainframers: Take back the light (spotlight, that is)

Elliptic curve cryptography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_curve_cryptography
random triva from above ... at YKT Reseach
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_S._Miller

Reed-Solomon error correction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed-Solomon_error_correction
misc. past posts mentioning Berlekamp (referenced in above)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#27 shirts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#82 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#66 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#0 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#58 Is the magic and romance killed by Windows (and Linux)?

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2011 11:04:09 -0500

possible secondary issue is w/o the strife, turmoil, and contention ... the level of funding would drop off. congress has been called the most corrupt institution on earth ... and if everything was smooth, the amount of graft & fraud would tend to drop off. so sometimes you don't know whether somebody is making some expose because they want to right a wrong ... or it is just part of the Kabuki theater to maintain facade and keep the money flowing.

a similar issue about congress was raised in the article about the Success Of Failure culture (more press investigating disaster than preventing a disaster):
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?filepath=/dailyfed/0407/040407mm.htm
http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20080220_1637.php

misc. recent posts referring to "Sucess of Failure" culture:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#0 America's Defense Meltdown
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#45 If IBM Hadn't Bet the Company
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#32 Congratulations, where was my invite?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#34 Congratulations, where was my invite?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#72 77,000 federal workers paid more than governors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#36 Having left IBM, seem to be reminded that IBM is not the same IBM I had joined
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#79 Innovation and iconoclasm
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#33 China Builds Fleet of Small Warships While U.S. Drifts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#41 Rafael Team with Raytheon to Offer Iron Dome in the U.S
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#48 50th anniversary of BASIC, COBOL?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#0 Justifying application of Boyd to a project manager
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#8 The True Cost of 9/11 -- Includes 18 Veteran Suicides a Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#17 Washington's Cult of Continuous Failure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#25 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#30 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#34 Scotland, was Re: Solving the Floating-Point Goldilocks Problem!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#39 Beyond Patriot? The Multinational MEADS Air Defense Program
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#7 John R. Opel, RIP

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Downwind from Alamogordo

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

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Downwind from Alamogordo
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2011 16:50:11 -0500

john hevelin <bwotte@panix.com> writes:
I have seen convincing arguments that an invasion of the Japanese homeland would have been unnecessary. The Japanese navy had ceased to be an effective threat, and the U.S. navy could have blockaded Japan. The Japanese army was trapped on the Chinese mainland and was about to be ground into hamburger by the Soviets. Between starvation and LeMay's relentless firebombing, Japanese surrender was only a matter of time. No invasion would have been necessary. As Eisenhower put it, "There was no need to hit them with that awful thing."

counter, i've seen references that at the time, the invasion of japan was expected to be much larger than okinawa
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/okinawa-battle.htm

from above:
Okinawa was the largest amphibious invasion of the Pacific campaign and the last major campaign of the Pacific War. More ships were used, more troops put ashore, more supplies transported, more bombs dropped, more naval guns fired against shore targets than any other operation in the Pacific. More people died during the Battle of Okinawa than all those killed during the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Casualties totaled more than 38,000 Americans wounded and 12,000 killed or missing, more than 107,000 Japanese and Okinawan conscripts killed, and perhaps 100,000 Okinawan civilians who perished in the battle.

... snip ...

Battle of Okinawa
http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/okinawa/default.aspx

from above:
The Battle of Okinawa is distinguished among battles, yet often unrecognized when referring to the great battles of the Second World War. Over 250,000 people lost their lives. Approximately 150,000 Okinawans, about a third of the population, perished.[1] At the battle's end, somewhere between a third and half of all surviving civilians were wounded.[2] No battle during the Second World War, except Stalingrad, had as massive a loss of civilian life. The stakes were high. The Japanese, determined to fight to the last man, almost achieved their objective, but in defeat 100,000 Japanese combatants died rather than surrender.[3] In the end, fewer than 10,000 of General Mitsuri Ushijimas's Thirty-Second Army were taken prisoner.[4]

... snip ...

also from above, Okinawa larger than d-day:
The United States Navy assembled an unprecedented armada in April of 1945, with 1,300 ships laying in wait off the coast of Okinawa.[18] In fact, the effort in the spring offensive of 1945 was far greater than the previous spring offensive in Europe. During the Normandy invasion, the Allies had employed 150,000 troops, 284 ships, and 570,000 tons of supplies, all of which required a very short supply line. On Okinawa, in Japan's back yard, maintaining the supply line seemed an incomprehensible feat. In the invasion of Okinawa, there were 183,000 troops, 327 ships, and 750,000 tons of supplies.[19]

... snip ...

also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/battle_of_okinawa.htm
http://olive-drab.com/od_history_ww2_ops_battles_1945okinawa.php

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Building a Better America-One Wealth Quintile at a Time

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 20 Nov, 2011
Subject: Building a Better America-One Wealth Quintile at a Time
Blog: Facebook

Building a Better America-One Wealth Quintile at a Time
http://duke.edu/~dandan/Papers/BuildingBetterAmerica.pdf

and articles:

Americans Vastly Underestimate Wealth Inequality, Support 'More Equal Distribution Of Wealth': Study
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/23/americans-support-wealth-redistribution_n_736132.html
How to Think About Misperceptions Regarding the Distribution of Wealth in the U.S.
http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/248093/how-think-about-misperceptions-regarding-distribution-wealth-u-s-reihan-salam
Building a Better America -- One Wealth Quintile At A Time
http://benvitale-funwithnum3ers.blogspot.com/2011/02/building-better-america-one-wealth.html

...

this shows a turning point just before 1980
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2011/10/journal-why-the-us-middle-class-is-broken.html

other reports have shown wallstreet compensation tracking similar curve from 70s

Jan2009 I was asked to html'ize the Pecora hearings that had been scan'ed the previous fall at the Boston public library; extensive x-indexing with hrefs as well as lots of hrefs/urls between what happened in the 20s and what happened the last decade. There was anticipation that the new congress would have some appetite to do something. After working on it for some time, I got a call that it wasn't going to be needed after all (wallstreet was pouring enormous amounts of money into the hill on all sides). Long winded post from Jan1999 setting some of the stage for the last round:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm ...

there has been some attempts to blame bad risk models as the root of the problem ... but that is mostly obfuscation and misdirection; risk managers commenting that business executives telling them to fiddle the numbers until they got the desired numbers (GIGO). Being able to pay for triple-A ratings allowed unlimited mortgages to be packaged and sold; estimated $27T in triple-A toxic CDOs during the bubble ... turning real-estate mortgages into wallstreet transaction bonanza (trillions of dollars in fees & commissions being skimmed off)
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

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Civilization, doomed?

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Civilization, doomed?
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, alt.folklore.computers, rec.arts.sf.written
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2011 09:57:07 -0500

Rich Ulrich <rich.ulrich@comcast.net> writes:
No, I think it is not about special status of endowment funds by a few schools -- it is about every prestige-school charging a higher fee to those who can afford it. A good communist principle.

we did some work with large midwestern, state univ in the mid-90s. they commented that they had "dumbed" down the entering freshmen curriculum 2-3 times since the 60s. they also mentioned that essentially most of the states were bankrupt in one way or another ... and continued to maintain some pretense by shuffling budget items around, deferring payments, etc. They commented that they had previously been nearly all funded by state legislature ... with only 11% of funding coming from other sources. However seeing the handwriting on the wall, by the mid-90s, they had flipped funding, that by then, only 11% of univ. funding was coming from state legislature.

This is different state ... but may be typical:
http://www.uillinois.edu/administration/budget.tuition.cfm

budget is $5B, direct $693m from state plus another $793m for "payments on behalf" (like making up for prior underfunding of employee health and pension) (14% and 16%). Mentions that as of 6jun2011, the state was more than $300m in arrears to the Univ. I was looking for items that explicitly said what percent of total budget came from tuition ... but quick websearching, i didn't run across anything obvious. I did trip across one about 1/3rd of recent tuition increase would be for financial aid (to other stutdents).

this one does say for the first time student fees&tuitions will exceed state funding
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/22/local/la-me-college-pay-20110822

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Electronics store with legacy parts

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: Electronics store with legacy parts
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:03:58 -0500

"Joe Morris" <j.c.morris@verizon.net> writes:
After reading the NYT article I looked for the Leeds store in Brooklyn on GoogleMaps - it's not exactly advertising its existence to passers-by unless there's a sign that the Google cameras missed; based on the NYT description of the location it's apparently what looks like an auto repair garage with massive tagging artwork on the front.

not NYC ... but silicon valley ... I remember going into this place a few times in the 90s (before moving out of the area):
http://www.weirdstuff.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=sunnyvalestore

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 21 Nov, 2011
Subject: How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
Blog: Facebook

Clayton Christensen: How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/18/clayton-christensen-how-pursuit-of-profits-kills-innovation-and-the-us-economy/

and
https://www.amazon.com/Buyout-America-Private-Equity-Credit/dp/1591842859/

... in extreme, financial scorched earth

there is also story about CFO of very large US company on reaching retirement, sold off the largest profit making division and took percentage of the deal as he was walking out the door.

related:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#29 After a Romney Deal, Profits and Then Layoffs

some related comments about MBAs in Boyd's Strategy
http://lnkd.in/j9U4bS
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#90 PDCA vs. OODA
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#92 PDCA vs. OODA
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#27 PDCA vs. OODA
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#34 PDCA vs. OODA
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#86 PDCA vs. OODA

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Public misperception about scientific agreement on global warming undermines climate policy support

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 21 Nov, 2011
Subject: Public misperception about scientific agreement on global warming undermines climate policy support
Blog: Facebook

Public misperception about scientific agreement on global warming undermines climate policy support
http://phys.org/news/2011-11-misperception-scientific-agreement-global-undermines.html

Fox News successfully creates climate confusion, but only among conservatives
http://arstechnica.com/science/2011/11/fox-news-successfully-creates-climate-confusion-but-only-among-conservatives/
Dirty Oil and Dirty Politics Make Interesting Bedfellows; 2012 Documentary Film Exposes Koch Brothers
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dirty-oil-and-dirty-politics-make-interesting-bedfellows-2012-documentary-film-exposes-koch-brothers-2011-11-09

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 21 Nov, 2011
Subject: How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
Blog: Facebook

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#71 How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy

but i do think that the case is that some in the %1 were behind the bubble and financial collapse of the last decade and hard put to make a case that OWS was responsible for even 10% of the problem. comptroller general has medicare part-d growing to dominate all other federal budget items and 60mins segment places that all at the door of the parmaceutical regulatory congressional complex (PRCC) ... note there was recent item that Eisenhower's original talk was MICC ... but at the last minute dropped the word congressional. Going on two decades the FRCC (financial regulatory congressional complex) dominates both PRCC and MICC.

there just was news item that 10% unemployment insurance went to wrong people something like $10B out of some $100B plus ... but that is far short of the trillions that wallstreet siphoned off in fees and commissions on the $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs;
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
aka turned mortgage business into a wallstreet transaction bonanza ... also:
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2011/10/journal-why-the-us-middle-class-is-broken.html

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The Wall Street Pentagon Papers: Biggest Scam In World History Exposed: Are The Federal Reserve's Crimes Too Big To Comprehend?

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 21 Nov, 2011
Subject: The Wall Street Pentagon Papers: Biggest Scam In World History Exposed: Are The Federal Reserve's Crimes Too Big To Comprehend?
Blog: Facebook

The Wall Street Pentagon Papers: Biggest Scam In World History Exposed: Are The Federal Reserve's Crimes Too Big To Comprehend?
http://pubrecord.org/nation/8622/pentagon-papers-wall-street/

it was up to $16T by this summer:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/21/audit-fed-gave-16-trillion-in-emergency-loans//
another report from last dec:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/1201/Federal-Reserve-s-astounding-report-We-loaned-banks-trillions

it doesn't talk about just the four largest too-big-to-fail had $5.2T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs at the end of 2008
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home

... and were allowed to continue carrying them "off-balance". Took another month before treasury realized that appropriated TARP funds wouldn't make a dent in the problem. Several tens of billions in triple-A rated toxic CDOs had gone for 22cents on the dollar the fall of 2008; brought back on the books in 2009 would have had the four largest too-big-to-fail declared insolvent and liquidated. Somewhere in the fed data is that they (also) started buying (trillions) the triple-A rated toxic CDOs at 98cents on the dollar.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 21 Nov, 2011
Subject: Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
Blog: Mainframe Experts

re:
http://lnkd.in/2syFGU
and
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#10 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#11 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#13 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#27 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?

B52s may not be the example they are looking for

b52, produced 1952-1962, total produced 744
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-52_Stratofortress

"Ninety-four B-52s are still actively flying"
http://www.nampows.org/B-52.html

I made past references that some of the mega-datacenters with hundreds of thousands and millions of processors), individual mega-datacenter have more processing power than aggregate of all current mainframes.

total 5,573 manned aircraft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Air_Force

estimated 10,000 mainframes at 4,000 to 5,000 customers around globe
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2010-08-10/news/27620495_1_mainframe-ibm-big-challenge

on ibm-main there was mention that the world-wide estimated number is somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000 mainframes

IBM zEnterprise System
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_zEnterprise_System

can have 24 processors with total of 96 cores, 80 of which are available

zEnterprise 196 can execute 50BIPs/second
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2010/09/01/ibm-unveils-worlds-fastest-microprocessor/

Intel Core i7 at 177,730 MIPs/sec
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second

or almost 180BIPs/sec ... which makes i7 equivalent more than three z196??

eight socket, 64 core servers (8cores per socket):
http://hothardware.com/News/Intel-Unveils-NehalemEX-OctalCore-Server-CPU/

mega-datacenters run hundreds of thousands to millions of processors ... which would put a smaller mega-datacenter at ten times total aggregate global mainframe processing power (assuming every mainframe was max'ed out z196).

there have been reports that the mega-centers have optimized their server rack components so cost is around 1/3rd the cost of buying equivalent processor racks from major brand names (IBM, HP, Dell, etc).

from spring 2010:

Intel Nehalem-EX Aims for the Mainframe
http://www.internetnews.com/hardware/article.php/3873896/Intel+NehalemEX+Aims+for+the+Mainframe.htm

from above:
Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, is gunning for the mission-critical server space with the launch of the new Xeon 6500/7500 processor lines. It's a bid that will see it taking on mainframes and RISC, but the company says that its newest offerings have the goods.

... snip ...

Intel launches Xeon 7500 server processor lineup; Promises three times increase in processing speed and 20 new reliability features
http://www.cbronline.com/news/intel_launches_xeon_7500_server_processor_lineup_100331

from above:
The new processor possess Machine Check Architecture (MCA) Recovery feature currently used in Itanium and RISC processors that allows the silicon to work with the operating system and virtual machine manager to recover from otherwise fatal system errors.

... snip ...

IBM goes elephant with Nehalem-EX iron; Massive memory for racks and blades
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/01/ibm_xeon_7500_servers/

from above:
With so much of its money and profits coming from big Power and mainframe servers, you can bet that IBM is not exactly enthusiastic about the advent of the eight-core "Nehalem-EX" Xeon 7500 processors from Intel and their ability to link up to eight sockets together in a single system image. But IBM can't let other server makers own this space either, so it had to make some tough choices.

... snip ...

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 21 Nov, 2011
Subject: How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
Blog: Facebook

there is story that AIG was in the process of negotiating paying CDS off at 60cents on dollar. Sec. of Treasury (former GS CEO) stepped in and said that it was illegal for AIG to pay less than 100cents on the dollar, AIG was forced to take TARP funds and sign an agreement that they wouldn't sue CDS players. AIG then uses the TARP funds to pay off CDS 100cents on the dollar (biggest recipient was GS).

Originally TARP funds were to buy toxic assets, then they find that just the four largest too-big-to-fail were carrying $5.2T in triple-A toxic CDOs at the end of 2008; estimate that there were $27T in triple-A toxic CDOs; they realize that the appropriated TARP funds wouldn't make small dent in problem and find some other use.
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

misc. past refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#2 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#79 The men who crashed the world

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 21 Nov, 2011
Subject: How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
Blog: Facebook

AIG paid off $150B in CDS when it had been negotiating to only pay $90B until the sec. of treasury stepped in. wamu may have done trillions in questionable mortgages. this had wamu doing on the order of $50B-$100B mortgages/qtr (2003/2004)
http://www.inman.com/news/2004/04/2/wamus-mortgage-volume-total

maybe couple trillion for the period ... ten times or more that of AIG CDS? Not only on the mortgage side but also selling them off on the triple-A rated toxic CDO side:
http://www.bloomberg.com/article/2011-10-28/aYg.aRZBpVdI.html

Most of the ugly gets washed off both by feds. Wells was mostly west coast and wants east coast branches (wachovia). Chase is mostly east coast and wants wamu's mostly west coast branches (much bigger overlap between existing chase and wachovia branches than between existing chase and wamu branches).

this implies that chase had little of the ugly in the takeover:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Mutual#Bankruptcy

... note AIG had a new unit that was taking the CDS "bets" ... the unit was booking all of the premiums as profit and unit members take big cut in compensation ... and essentially nothing in reserve to pay on the bets. The parent company was then on the hook to pay off the (CDS) bets (and was negotiating 60cents on the dollar) ... so AIG hands weren't completely clean ... but squeaky clean compared to WAMU

there were several investment banks helping loan originators package mortgages as triple-A rated toxic CDOs and sell them off. In various of the scenarios the toxic CDOs were designed with a very high probability of failure. The investment banks then booked bets (CDS) with AIG for the value of the CDOs ... that the CDOs would fail. The AIG unit booking the bets treated the "premiums" as pure profit and took major chunk in compensation ... leaving the parent unit on the hook for the payouts. When AIG was negotiating to pay 60cents on the dollar for the CDS bets, the treasury secretary steps in and forces them to pay 100cents on the dollar ... and also sign a document that they couldn't sue the investment banks making the bets

re: wamu/aig; look at distance of wamu from DC; also 1) what company got largest CDS payout from AIG TARP funds, 2) what company could AIG no longer sue for CDS, 3) joke about treasury is what company's branch office in wallstreet, 4) what company was the sec. of treasury previously ceo/chairman

re: wamu/citi; long winded post from jan1999 some of background leading up to last decade:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay3.htm#riskm
what company had major lobbying in DC including instrumental in GLBA & repeal of Glass-Steagall:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstreet/
and the major force behind the whole too-big-to-fail

Note that the rhetoric on floor of congress was the major purpose for GLBA was (effectively) to prevent walmart and m'soft from becoming depository institutions (if you were already a bank you could remain a bank, but if you weren't alrerady a bank you couldn't become one). Other things were thrown in like repeal of Glass-Steagall (see previous pbs.org reference) that enabled too-big-to-fail.

Allocated TARP funds couldn't come close to buying up the $27T in triple-A rated toxic CDOs done during the bubble ... just the four too-big-to-fail were carrying $5.2T off-balance at the end of 2008.
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

It was left to the FED to handle much of the actual bail-out behind the scenes:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/21/audit-fed-gave-16-trillion-in-emergency-loans//

... besides the loans, also buying trillions in toxic CDOs at 98cents on the dollar (that had been valued at 22cents on the dollar).

Now as mentioned upthread, major justification for forcing AIG to take TARP was to funnel the money through to the institutions that had been making the CDS bets on toxic CDOs (frequently after having structured the CDOs to fail and selling them off) ... as well as forcing AIG to sign a document that it couldn't sue those institutions. Now one of the largest was purely an investment bank ... w/o a too-big-to-fail depository institution making it eligible for FED assistance. However, FED gave them a bank charter anyway (making them eligible) which should have been precluded under the original GLBA

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Simple record extraction from a sequential file

From: lynn@garlic.com (Anne & Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 22 Nov 2011 07:22:18 -0800
Subject: Re: Simple record extraction from a sequential file
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main

elardus.engelbrecht@SITA.CO.ZA (Elardus Engelbrecht) writes:
Not everyone can program properly. Not everyone can program a fast tight code specially optimised for that specific record layout and format and do it in Assembler. Those teenagers who can program in PL/I are very good, I admit, but what is the PL/I overhead?

old email about high level POK executive giving presentation about vm370 would no longer be available on high-end machines. HONE was the internal vm370-based online system that provided for world-wide sales&marketing support; most of the applications written in APL. The executive told them that they could migrate from vm370 to mvs if they would just rewrite all the apl applications in assembler (overhead reduction in apl->assembler would offset the enormous increase in overhead from vm370->mvs)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email790216

followup was that the executive had apparently been using the wrong flipcharts for the presentation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email790220

misc. past posts mentioning HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 22 Nov, 2011
Subject: Why are organizations sticking with mainframes?
Blog: Mainframe Experts

re:
http://lnkd.in/YvuRMq

see Nehalem-EX references in adjacent discussion:
http://lnkd.in/2syFGU
... relative inexpensive 8-core designed to relatively easily scale to 8 sockets (64 cores in shared memory multiprocessor ... with two threads per core ... gives appearance of 128 processors).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_(microarchitecture)

Nehalem-EX approx. same generation/time-frame as IBM's mainframe 196

Latest announce from this week was the 50-core teraflop chip
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/intels-1-teraflop-chip-exascale-computing-needs-better-story/63597

Note that long ago and far away, mid-90s, Sequent had done NUMA-Q with intel processors ... with 256 processors in shared-memory multiprocessor. IBM then came in, bought sequent and the whole thing was eventually shutdown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequent_Computer_Systems

disclaimer ... in the 80s, IBM kingston had a supercomputer effort as well as funding Steve Chen's supercomputer effort. After their senior executive support retired in Oct91, most of that went away. Steve Chen then shows up as CTO at sequent and we did some consulting for Steve Chen (before purchase by IBM).

In the past, the motivations for migrations was reduction in hardware/software cost and/or not being able to implement stuff. This was offset by cost of migrations (as well as risk potential). There is also ROI on scarce skilled resource, is the ROI using the resources for something else more than the ROI using the resource for migration. General reduction in hardware costs and cost increase & scarcity in skilled resource has shifted the trade-offs (away from migration). Also, better mainframe layering technologies ... allows mainframe to play better in distributed environment, enabling impossible things to be done with minimal changes at the mainframe (further minimizing motivation for migration).

However, a long time mainframe systemic risk is increasing scarcity of mainframe skills as baby boomers retire ... which can result in feedback, increasing use of other technologies has the following generation not going into mainframes, contributing to reducing mainframes, contributing to reduction in following generation not getting into mainframes.

One of the largest current pockets of mainframes is the financial industry (A decade ago, I was involved in an application that ran on 40+ fully blown out CECs @$30M per... which wasn't even considered one of the larger installations).

I've mentioned before that there was major efforts (billions of dollars) in financial industry & wallstreet in the 90s to replace mainframe overnight batch with large numbers of (parallel) "killer" micros ... I was somewhat involved in pointing out that they hadn't done speeds&feeds on the parallelization technology that turned out to introduce 100 times extra overhead compared to batch cobol ... totally swamping any possibility of the efforts succeeding (numerous of these had to get into initial deployment before the scale-up issues started to sink in). The scars & risk adverse culture that resulted from the failures continue today. I was involved going to industry groups a few years ago with technologies that addressed ALL of the shortcomings from the 90s ... and it was like deer in headlight time.

the members of the industry groups that still bore the scars from the ill-fated efforts in the 90s (and had adopted an extremely risk adverse culture) ... appeared like deer in headlights. there was conjecture that a whole new generation would have to replace them before it was attempted again.

It reminded me slightly of presentation I made in the mid-80s to the SNA architecture review board (ARB) in Raleigh about NCP emulation that ran on hardware that had enormously better price/performance than the 37x5 boxes and many times more function. After the talk, the SNA product director wanted to know who gave the permission for me to talk to the group (wanting to make sure that it was never repeated again). I could differentiate the technical folks from the management folks in the audience just by the reaction to the talk on their faces.

One of the lead technical people asked why Raleigh with 1200 people working on NCP weren't able to accomplish what had been done by a couple dozen people (in what I was describing)

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 22 Nov, 2011
Subject: How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
Blog: Facebook

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#71 How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#73 How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#76 How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#77 How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy

There was past study that found large percentage of wallstreet traders were sociopaths. More recent report from Germany found that traders tended to be worse than institutionalized psychopaths

see references to joke about treasury is the DC branch office for a wallstreet investment bank

Note that there is a case that can be made that removal of regulation (adult supervision) ... a major tenet of tea party ... is the reason for the enormous (trillions) looting that occurred in the bubble/bust the last decade. It was financial equivalent of a enormous riot with all police and national guard sent elsewhere. There is possibly an order of magnitude difference in the actual mooching (billions) that went on the last decade vis-a-vis (financial) looting (trillions) ... three orders of magnitude difference. There is some line about at some point quantitative difference becomes qualitative ... or in theory there is no difference between theory and practice ... but in practice there is. Another is ROI scenario ... if there was $100m to spend that would prevent billions in mooching or trillions in looting ... where should it be spent?

wallstreet specific ("America is broken"):
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2011/10/journal-why-the-us-middle-class-is-broken.html

aka Glass-Steagall from 30s & Pecora hearings ... the highly regulated, "safe", depository institutions were kept separate from the non-regulated, risky, unsafe, investment banking operations. GLBA repealed Glass-Steagall enabling too-big-to-fail (and risky unregulated in the same institutions with "safe" regulated).

In the Madoff hearings, the person that had unsuccessfully tried for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff, was asked if new regulations were needed. He said that while new regulations might be needed, significantly more important was transparency and visibility (i.e. current markets are extremely "dark").

In the late 90s, before NSCC was merged with DTC, I was asked in to look at improving the integrity of trading operations. After working on it for some time, I was called in and told it was suspended because a side-effect of the improved integrity would have also have greatly increased transparency and visibility ... which is an anathema to wallstreet culture.

In Jan2009, I was asked to HTML'ize the Pecora hearings (that had been scanned the previous fall at Boston public library), heavily x-indexing with HREFs and also lots of HREFs between what happened in the 20s and the last decade (some anticipation that the new congress would have appetite to do something). After working on it for some time, I got a call saying that it wouldn't be needed after all. The "America is broken" item also touches on how "dark" (lacking transparency & visibility) that wallstreet operates.

misc. past posts mentioning Pecora hearings:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#58 OCR scans of old documents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#59 As bonuses...why breed greed, when others are in dire need?
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/2009f.html#56 What's your personal confidence level concerning financial market recovery?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#65 Just posted third article about toxic assets in a series on the current financial crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#5 Do the current Banking Results in the US hide a grim truth?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#33 Treating the Web As an Archive
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#22 China's yuan 'set to usurp US dollar' as world's reserve currency
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#25 The Paradox of Economic Recovery
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#29 Analysing risk, especially credit risk in Banks, which was a major reason for the current crisis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#40 64 Cores -- IBM is showing a prototype already
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009i.html#57 In the USA "financial regulator seeks power to curb excess speculation."
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#35 what is mortgage-backed securities?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#23 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#2 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#20 U.K. lags in information security management practices
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#25 Opinions on the 'Unix Haters' Handbook
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#53 70 Years of ATM Innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#73 70 Years of ATM Innovation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#6 Bookshelves under BookMangler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#54 The 2010 Census
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#28 Our Pecora Moment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#52 Our Pecora Moment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#67 The Python and the Mongoose: it helps if you know the rules of engagement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#68 Our Pecora Moment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#69 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#73 Our Pecora Moment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#74 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#4 Goldman Sachs -- Post SEC complaint. What's next?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#16 Fake debate: The Senate will not vote on big banks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#77 Favourite computer history books?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#7 Seeking *Specific* Implementation of Star Trek Game
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#17 History--automated payroll processing by other than a computer?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#38 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#8 Who is Really to Blame for the Financial Crisis?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#67 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#36 Idiotic programming style edicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#59 They always think we don't understand
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#7 What banking is. (Essential for predicting the end of finance as we know it.)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#16 Rare Apple I computer sells for $216,000 in London
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#54 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#59 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#16 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#29 Ernst & Young sued for fraud over Lehman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#53 Programmer Charged with thieft (maybe off topic)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#49 What do you think about fraud prevention in the governments?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011.html#84 The Imaginot Line
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#42 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#43 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#45 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#53 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#19 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#27 The first personal computer (PC)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#36 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#6 Home prices may drop another 25%, Shiller predicts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#24 US Housing Crisis Is Now Worse Than Great Depression
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#25 US Housing Crisis Is Now Worse Than Great Depression
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#29 Obama: "We don't have enough engineers"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#55 CISO's Guide to Breach Notification
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#8 'Megalomania, Insanity' Fueled Bubble: Munger
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#18 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#42 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#45 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#2 House panel approves data breach notification bill
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011j.html#41 Advice from Richard P. Feynman
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011k.html#20 Study shows powerful corporations really do control the world's finances
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011l.html#74 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#2 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#14 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#68 Bernanke Hearings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#71 Don't Dump the Volcker Rule Just Because It's Not Perfect
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#41 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#48 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#52 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#79 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#82 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#4 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#26 The men who crashed the world
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#36 Civilization, doomed?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#68 Building a Better America-One Wealth Quintile at a Time

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

What is Cloud Computing?

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 22 Nov, 2011
Subject: What is Cloud Computing?
Blog: Greater IBM

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#55 What is Cloud Computing?

A couple people I was working with in Palo Alto in the mid-90s got called into Google to redo how Google's front-end boundary routers were doing load balancing requests between the internet and the backend Google server machines (this was just as Google was really started to really scale-up).

In the mid-70s, the US "HONE" datacenters (HONE provided online world-wide sales&marketing support) were consolidated in Palo Alto ... and we did a similar front-end for load-balancing across all the HONE machines. Then later in the early 80s, HONE consolidated operations was replicated in Dallas & Boulder ... and the load-balancing had to be extended to operate across all the machines across the different datacenters.

As mentioned above, old consolidated HONE datacenter bldg is next door to FACEBOOK "1601". I had spent a lot of time in that building ... although HONE wasn't my responsibility ... I treated HONE as somewhat a hobby ... providing them with operating systems and lots of other stuff over the years ... dating back to when HONE was originally created.

misc. past posts mentioning HONE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hone

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 22 Nov, 2011
Subject: How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy
Blog: Facebook

here is recent item about auditing:
http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001347.html

... I've commented that GAO didn't think (auditors &) SEC was doing anything ... as indicated, GAO started doing reports of public company financial filings with severe audit problems and/or were fraudulent ... showing uptic even after Sarbanes-Oxley.

SOX also asked SEC to look into rating agencies ... but there doesn't appear to have been anything other than from jan2003:
http://www.sec.gov/news/studies/credratingreport0103.pdf

FDR explains one dimension of our problem: bankers own the government
http://fabiusmaximus.com/2011/11/23/31228/

recent past posts mentioning GAO reports and/or SEC rating agency report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#42 Productivity And Bubbles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#36 On Protectionism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#35 At least two decades back, some gurus predicted that mainframes would disappear
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#28 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011i.html#41 Happy 100th Birthday, IBM!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#43 computer bootlaces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011n.html#49 The men who crashed the world

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The banking sector grew seven times faster than gross domestic product since the beginning of the financial crisis and Too-Big-to-Fail: Banks Get Bigger After Dodd-Frank

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 23 Nov, 2011
Subject: The banking sector grew seven times faster than gross domestic product since the beginning of the financial crisis and Too-Big-to-Fail: Banks Get Bigger After Dodd-Frank
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security

The banking sector grew seven times faster than gross domestic product since the beginning of the financial crisis and Too-Big-to-Fail: Banks Get Bigger After Dodd-Frank

from above:
In this revealing study (26 pages), Bloomberg Government exposes how the Dodd-Frank law includes a provision that could allow the largest financial firms, even those subject to concentration limits, to grow even larger. That could occur during a future crisis, when those firms will have the most flexibility to take control of failed firms. As a result, large banks will continue to grow disproportionately to other banks.

This study shows: The banking sector grew seven times faster than gross domestic product since the beginning of the financial crisis. This growth has been concentrated in the largest banks. As of December 2010, the top 10 banks in the U.S. held 77 percent of all U.S. bank assets, compared to 55 percent of the total assets at the end of 2002. Growth in total assets of banks in the U.S. has outpaced inflation every decade since the 1930s, when total assets in the banking system were first recorded.

... snip ...

Wallstreet turned the mortgage market into $27T triple-A rated toxic CDO transactions ... with wallstreet taking fees and commissions on each trasactions
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

claim is that resulted in tripling in size (as percent of GDP) during the bubble.

Part of the too-big-to-fail was repeal of Glass-Steagall allowing safety&soundness of regulated depository institutions to get into additional lines of (very risky) business ... theoretically improving institution efficiency by getting larger. However, there is periodic industry publication giving avg. of largest national banks compared to avg. of major regional banks ... for thousands of measures sliced and diced in all sorts of way. At the start of the bubble, the publication showed that the major regional banks were actually better than the too-big-to-fail national banks. About the only thing going for the too-big-to-fail institution ... was that top executive compensation was proportional to size of the institution.

wallstreet aggregate bonuses also spike over 400% during the bubble (2002 in the following was already seeing bonus upswing with the start of the bubble)
http://www.businessweek.com/#missing-article

since the crash, there has been enormous efforts trying to prevent bonuses from returning to pre-bubble levels

similar but different graph ... about changes over the last several decades
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2011/10/journal-why-the-us-middle-class-is-broken.html

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Any candidates for best acronyms?

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 23 Nov, 2011
Subject: Any candidates for best acronyms?
Blog: Greater IBM

trivia ... i saw mike two weeks ago at conference on the west coast. I've used several references from ibmjargon ... see post upthread. email from long ago and far away

Date: 04/13/82 15:59:30
To: wheeler

In this week's issue of Infoworld there's a review of an article by Mike Cowlishaw called:

IBM Jargon and General Computing Dictionary

Do you know of an online copy? I already checked with xxxx and yyy and they don't have one.

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

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

David Wheeler and the Subroutine

From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com>
Subject: Re: David Wheeler and the Subroutine
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:10:36 -0500

"Charles Richmond" <netnews@aquaporin4.com> writes:
Heck, I did *not* know that DEC had a research center back then in Palo Alto!!! Can anyone add some information about that research center???

(Sorry for the on-topic post... ;-) )

did millicent micropayment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment

also altavista:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaVista

i was still seeing "pa.dec.com" domain email through 1999 on various payment related matters.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Clouds in mainframe

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 23 Nov, 2011
Subject: Clouds in mainframe
Blog: MainframeZone

Clouds in mainframe
http://lnkd.in/7sybAm

similar thread in "Old Geek": Deja Cloud?
http://lnkd.in/Gj_N63

and some archived posts in "Greater IBM" (not open group) cloud discussions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#84 New job for mainframes: Cloud platform
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#6 New job for mainframes: Cloud platform
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#8 New job for mainframes: Cloud platform
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#12 New job for mainframes: Cloud platform
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#20 New job for mainframes: Cloud platform
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#55 What is Cloud Computing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#81 What is Cloud Computing?

however, this is discussion about the (cloud) mega-datacenters ... possibility that any of the typical mega-datacenters have more aggregate processing power than all currently installed mainframes ... a little x-over Mainframe Experts group:
http://lnkd.in/2syFGU
and
http://lnkd.in/YvuRMq
related archived posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#75
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#79

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Any candidates for best acronyms?

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 24 Nov, 2011
Subject: Any candidates for best acronyms?
Blog: Greater IBM

A bit-reverse story. At univ. where i was undergraduate ... i was responsible for the os/360 and did lots of enhancements. the univ had migrated from 709/1401 to 360/67 (but ran as 360/65), student jobs ran 709 ibsys monitor tape to tape ... moving to os/360 with hasp on 360/65 ... student jobs (fortgclg) ran possibly 50 times longer elapsed time (lots of stuff from linklib and svclib). Completely reordering all the statements in stage2 sysgen to optimally order files and PDS members ... for optimized arm seek ... I got nearly three times improvement. Part of old fall68 SHARE presentation:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18

cp67 was installed at the univ. jan1968 ... which i got to play with on weekends ... and rewrote significant amount of the cp67 code ... which is also mentioned in above presentation.

original cp67 had 2741&1052 support ... but the univ. had a lot of TTY/ASCII terminals ... so I added TTY/ASCII terminal support. The base code did automatic terminal type ... so i extended it to also handle tty/ascii. I then wanted to do a single dial-up number with hunt-group/port-pool for all terminals. The automatic type worked for leased lines ... while the 2702 could change the line-scanner dynamically associated with each port ... the actual line-speed was hard-wired (not being able to use a single pool of ports for variety of different line-speeds).

This somewhat was the motivation for the univ. to start clone controller effort ... reverse engineer the channel interface and build a channel interface board for Interdata/3 programmed to emulate 2702 ... supporting dynamic line-scanner and dynamic line-speed. One of the first "bugs" was data arriving in 360 memory was all garbage. Finally figured out that the 2702 line-scanner was placing leading bit into low-order (byte) bit position ... resulting in bytes transferred to 360 memory having bits in each byte in reverse order (the interdata/3 code preserved byte bit order by leading bit went into higher order position). The 360 translate tables were appropriately created to handle ibm controller bit-reversed bytes. later four of us were written up as being responsible for (some part of) clone controller business. misc. past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm

cp/67 eventually morphs into vm/370 and the current z/vm.

For other trivia ... the univ. library got an ONR grant to do online catalog ... part of the ONR money went for a 2321 datacell. The library project was selected as one of the betatest sites for the original CICS product ... and I got tasked with supporting/debugging the deployment (there were some number of teething problems because the univ. was using different BDAM options than used by the customer site where CICS was original developed). misc. past cics/bdam posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#cics

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

EFF proposes new method to strengthen Public Key Infrastructure

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 24 Nov, 2011
Subject: EFF proposes new method to strengthen Public Key Infrastructure
Blog: Google+

re:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102794881687002297268/posts/JYYHYS35672

EFF proposes new method to strengthen Public Key Infrastructure
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/041212-weak-passwords-still-the-downfall-258238.html

from above:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is proposing an extension to the current SSL chain of trust that aims to improve the security of HTTPS and other secure communication protocols.

... snip ...

old email discussing a pgp-like implementation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email810506
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email810515

bunch of patents (all assigned) on non-CA based public key
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadssummary.htm

there is a bunch of stuff on how to do a person-centric hardware token infrastructure (rather than institution centric) and what is necessary for getting high-integrity institutions to trust a person presented public-key hardware token

in the 90s, i joked about taking a $500 mil-spec part, aggressively cost reduction by 2-3 orders of magnitude while improving the integrity; A big problem is that removing cost from security, hardware tokens, payment transactions, etc ... the commoditizing eliminated interest since there was no profit left

for a lot more trivia ... bunch of past posts about CA industry is motivated to improve the integrity of the domain name infrastructure ... but the improvements can be "cattch22" since they can potentially evolve in obsoleting need for CA domain name digital certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#catch22

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

What is Cloud Computing?

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 24 Nov, 2011
Subject: What is Cloud Computing?
Blog: Greater IBM

re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#55 What is Cloud Computing?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#81 What is Cloud Computing?

for ancient history ... this is old email about a NII meeting at LLNL that I had conflict and couldn't make. Afterwards, two people from another vendor came buy to fill me in:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#email920129

one of the people i had worked with on&off since 1980 ... had later in the '80s coined the term "information utility". other trivia ... possibly within hrs of the above email, the cluster scale-up activity was transferred to kingston and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors. reference to meeting in Ellison's conference earlier in the month (jan92) regarding cluster scale-up for commercial
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13

after the transfer ... the cluster scale-up was announced for numerical intensive only (& national labs) ... no commercial

misc. other email mentioning cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa

misc. past posts mentioning ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

more recent comments about release no software before its time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#43 From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#46 From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 25 Nov, 2011
Subject: Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
Blog: Mainframe Experts

re: rs6000 at the beginning of the 90s;

was done by john cocke at research in the 70s. a "romp" chip was done for follow-on to the displaywriter for the group in austin. when that project was canceled, they looked around and decided to retarget the chip to the unix workstation market ... became the pc/rt ... with "AT" 16-bit bus (and the company that had done the at&t unix port for pc/ix was paid to do one for pc/rt becoming aixv2). The group did a number of adapter cards ... like 4mbit t/r card.

rios was the follow-on chip to romp ... for the rs/6000 with upgrade from 16bit at bus to the 32bit microchannel bus. However the rs6000 group was that they had to use all the microchannel cards designed for the ps2. There was joke, that except for processor speed, that would mean that rs/6000 wouldn't run any faster than ps2.

A typical example, was the communication group had microchannel 16mbit t/r card with design point of 300 (or more) ps2 doing terminal emulation all sharing the same 16mbit lan. The result was the thruput of a microchannel 16mbit ps2 card was much lower than the pc/rt 4mbit (16bit at bus) token ring card ... aka ancient pc/rt lan server with 4mbit t/r card was "faster" (had more thruput) than "modern" rs/6000 server with 16mbit microchannel t/r card.

The internal politics were so bad ... that the group eventually turned out a special rs/6000 with a vmebus ... which could make use of industrial strength vmebux cards (as alternative to being forced to use all the ps2 microchannel cards). misc. 801/risc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801

I had been working with number of the national labs ... LANL was doing standards work taking the 100mbyte/sec Cray channel and standardization as HiPPI. LLNL had the precursor to FCS (in the 80s) and working on standardization in the early 90s as (fiber) 1gbit FCS (full-duplex, sustained, concurrent 2gbit, 1gbit concurrent in each direction). This is reference to (rs/6000 & ha/cmp) cluster-scale-up (for both commercial and numerical intensive) ... commercial reference to jan92 meeting in ellison's conference room
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
this is old email at end of jan92 about LLNL and using it for numerical intensive
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006x.html#email920129

above was possibly hrs before cluster scale-up was transferred and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four processors .... low-end ha/cmp product w/o any cluster scale-up
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp

a couple weeks later cluster scale-up was announced for numerical intensive "only". As an aside, the DB2 mainframe group had complained if the commercial scale-up had gone ahead ... it would have been at least five years ahead of where they were.

Much later, mainframe eventually did their version of FCS as FICON.

Reference to ha/cmp doing some cluster scale-up much later:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#43 From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#46 From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Convergence of Mainframe and Distributed Computing Systems

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 27 Nov, 2011
Subject: Convergence of Mainframe and Distributed Computing Systems
Blog: Mainframe Experts

re:
http://lnkd.in/TDSmZS

I would claim that 43xx (especially vm/4341) were the leading edge of distributed computing starting 1979 ... some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx

internal ibm as well as some large corporations were doing hundreds at a time. inside the company, they were going into departmental supply rooms and conference rooms (conference rooms becoming a scarce corporate resource). the ibm internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until late '85 or early '86 ... and there was big explosion in the number of 43xx nodes in the early 80s ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet

list of corporate locations around the world that added one or more nodes in 1983 ... the year that the internal network passed 1000 nodes (also the year that arpanet transitioned to internetworking protocol ... before the transition, there was possibly 100 arpanet IMP nodes with possibly 250 connected mainframes).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#8 Arpa address

one of the main reasons for internet passing internal network in the number of nodes in the mid-80s ... was that workstations and PCs started appearing as nodes on the internet ... while they were restricted to terminal emulation on the internal network ... some past posts regarding terminal emulation issues
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation

The technology basis for the modern internet is tcp/ip, the operational basis was NSFNET backbone, and the business basis was CIX. We were working with NSF and locations on what was to become NSFNET backbone ... but when the RFP was released, internal politics preventing us from bidding (even tho the director of NSF wrote the company a letter 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO), ... which just made the internal politics worse) ... some old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

there was huge amount of mis-information internally ... included claims that SNA could be used for the NSFNET backbone.

Concurrently I was also working on effort for cluster scale-up involving an arbitrary mix of 370 processors and non-370 processors ... this is old email where I had conflict between cluster scale-up work and presentation to NSF:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#email850313 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#email850314 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email850315

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

Question regarding PSW correction after translation exceptions on old IBM hardware

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 27 Nov, 2011
Subject: Question regarding PSW correction after translation exceptions on old IBM hardware
Blog: Yahoo Hercules

interrupting old PSW has length of the interrupting instruction

pg.17, ga27-2719-2, 360-67 functional characteristics, from bitsavers
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/functional_characteristics/
Whenever a segment- or page-translation exception is recognized, the instruction is suppressed and storage is not modified. The virtual address that was to be translated is recorded in the translation exception address register (control register 2) and, if in 24-Bit Address mode, bits 0-7 are made 0s. The instruction length code for both exceptions may be 1, 2, or 3.

.... snip ...

aka, use the length code to backup the PSW address to the instruction with the exception.

There was a joint project with Endicott to modify CP67 (running on real 360/67) to provide 370 virtual machines. Then there was a set of updates to CP67 to run on 370 hardware (instead of 360/67 hardware). past posts mentioning cambridge science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech

In regular use on the cambridge 360/67 ... a year prior to the first 370 engineering machine with virtual memory hardware operational:

cambridge 360/67
   cp/67 "l" system on bare hardware
cp/67 "h" system running in 360/67 virtual machine
cp/67 "i" system running in "370" virtual machine

the issue regarding the "l" system was that 370 virtual memory hadn't been announced and there were non-employees (students and others from univ. in the boston/cambridge area) regularly using the cambirdge system ... and extra level was make sure that 370 virtual memory info didn't leak out. This effort was also somewhat the genesis of the cms multiple-level source update process. Booting the cp67 "i" system was used as test when first engineering 370 (145) with virtual memory became operational (cp67 "i" had been running for a year at this time). There was actually a hardware bug ... the engineers had incorrectly swapped some of the B2 "subcodes" and cp67 "i" had to be patched to indicated the wrong B2 subcodes before it could boot.

Also, in POK, Don Ludlow was testing "AOS" ... the prototype for VS2/SVS (precursor to VS2/MVS). It was/is basically MVT laid out in single 16mbyte virtual address space ... with a little bit of code to handle page faults and do paging. The big/major change was to support channel program translation. Don took the channel program translator from cp67 (CCWTRANS) and hacked it into MVT/SVS EXCP processing ... aka application code and library routines built channel programs and invoked SVC0/EXCP for execution. In MVT, the addresses were "real" and could be executed directly. In transition to VS2 (both SVS & MVS) the application space addresses in the passed CCWs are "virtual". For I/O execution, a copy of the passed channel programs has to be created with real addresses replacing virtual addresses (and the copy channel program executed) ... just like both cp67 & vm370 has to do for virtual machine operation.

Don Ludlow developing/testing AOS directly on 360/67 hardware was in addition to lots of 370 virtual memory development that was done with cp67 "H" (running on 360/67) in 370 virtual machines (before real 370 virtual memory hardware &/or vm370 became available).

pg. 79 ga22-7000-4, 370 principles of operation, from bitsavers
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/370/princOps/

segment-translation, page-translation, translation specification

instruction-length code is 1, 2, or 3 and indicates the length of the instruction causing the exception (and used to subtract from the address in the interrupt PSW).

also pg. 72 of (ga22-7000-4) 370 princ. ops ....

has protection, addressing, and specification program interrupts potentially having instruction length of 0,1,2,3 ... suppressed or terminated (length of zero indicating not backing up psw).

program event interrupt may also have 0,1,2,3 instruction length code.

also pg. 73 ... discusses instruction fetch exception (aka like branch to instruction address that results in page fault) ... the instruction is not available and therefor can't set the instruction length code.

When machines with virtual memory (mostly 370/145) became available internally ... standard system was cp/67 "i" ( or cp/67 "sj" ... "i" system with changes from san jose supporting 2305 and 3330s devices) ... long before vm370 became available.

It turns out that 370 virtual memory support had a lot more stuff than was eventually released. The problem was that the virtual memory hardware retrofit to 370/165 ran into lots of problems ... and they needed to eliminate lots of virtual memory features in order to make up schedule slips. This resulted in all the other 370 efforts having to remove all the dropped features from their implementations. One of the features removed was "segment" protect ... used by vm370 to "protect" cms shared segments. With the removal of this feature, the vm370 group had to come up with real ugly hack to protect cms shared segments.

There was a somewhat separate issue with mvs/xa. During the FS period
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys

lots of 370 development was shutdown. When FS died, there was mad rush to get stuff back into the 370 product pipelines ... as well as get XA in process (overlapped with the q&d 370 efforts). The head of POK managed to convince corporate that the vm370 product should be killed, the vm370 development group shutdown (in burlington mall) and all the people moved to POK to work on mvs/xa development (almost 8yrs out) ... or otherwise mvs/xa wouldn't be able to make the planned ship date.

Endicott managed to "save" the vm370 product mission, but required reconstituting a development group from scratch (there is some amount in vmshare archives about vm370 product quality during this period).
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

The men who crashed the world

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

From: lynn@garlic.com (Lynn Wheeler)
Date: 27 Nov, 2011
Subject: The men who crashed the world
Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Security

Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks Undisclosed $13B
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html

from above:
The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.

... snip ...

from year ago
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/1201/Federal-Reserve-s-astounding-report-We-loaned-banks-trillions
from last summer
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/21/audit-fed-gave-16-trillion-in-emergency-loans/

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970

previous, next, index - home