https://www.facebook.com/lynn.wheeler/posts/10203018063788164
and
https://www.facebook.com/lynn.wheeler/posts/10203018065228200
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 00:13:46 -0400re:
New Report from Princeton and Northwestern Proves It: The U.S. is an Oligarchy
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/04/16/new-report-from-princeton-and-northwestern-proves-it-the-u-s-is-an-oligarchy/
Princeton Study Confirms 'US Is An Oligarchy'
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-17/princeton-study-confirms-us-oligarchy
from above:
The study found that even when 80% of the population favored a
particular public policy change, it was only instituted 43% of the
time. We saw this first hand with the bankster bailout in 2008, when
Americans across the board were opposed to it, but Congress passed TARP
anyway (although they had to vote twice).
... snip ...
TARP was originally supposedly for purchase of toxic assets. However
with TARP only $700B
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program
and over $27T 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
and just the four largest too big to fail still carrying $5.2T
"offbook" 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
posts mentioning too big to fail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
the fiction didn't last long. recent posts mentioning there was some
reference in Jan2009 about evaluating the offbook toxic assets
... involving a company that started out as a virtual machine based
online service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#2 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#34 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
earlier in 2008, several tens of billion of these offbook toxic CDOs had gone for 22cents on the dollar. The $700B would almost cover the $5.2T of just those four TBTF at 22cents on the dollar ($1.14T) ... but then they would have to record $3.8T loss ... making them insolvent and forced to be liquidated.
posts mentioning toxic CDOs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo
The TARP funds were then used in other ways ... and it fell to the Federal Reserve to come up with ways to clear the offbook toxic assets
posts mentioning bernanke
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#bernanke
also Jan2009, I had been asked to HTML'ize the Pecora hearings (that
resulted in Glass-Steagall; which had been scanned the fall before at
Boston Public library) with lots of internal xrefs and lots of URLs
corresponding between what happened then and what happened this time
(some assumption that the new congress would have appetite to do
something). Old posts (in a.f.c.) about OCR'ing hearing scans
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#58 OCR scans of old documents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#60 OCR scans of old documents
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#75 OCR scans of old documents
I worked on it for awhile and then got call saying it wouldn't be needed after all (reference to enormous piles of wallstreet cash blanketing capital hill).
posts mentioning Glass-Steagall
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Why IBM Is Tumbling: BRIC Sales Plunge, Total Revenue Lowest Since 2009 Date: 18 Apr 2014 Blog: IBMersre:
note the "buyback machine on steroids" is reference to "The Great
Deformation" by Stockman
https://www.amazon.com/Great-Deformation-Corruption-Capitalism-ebook/dp/B00B3M3UK6/
also refers to it a form of mini-LBO. This reference has LBO being
pioneered by Kravis, one of the founders of KKR ... a lot more
information here
https://www.amazon.com/Buyout-America-Private-Destroying-American-ebook/dp/B002SV37FO/
LBOs got such a bad reputation in the 80s ... using junk bonds for a lot of the LBO financing (and major factor in the S&L mess), that in the early 90s they change the industry name to private equity and junk bonds became "high-yield bonds". In the 80s, Gerstner had won the competition to be the next CEO of AMEX. Then AMEX was in competition with KKR to do LBO of RJR and KKR won. However, KKR ran into trouble with RJR and hired Gerstner away to fix it. The IBM board then hired Gerstner away to "resurrect" IBM ... where a lot of private equity/LBO techniques were applied. After leaving IBM he went to heading another large private-equity firm, Carlyle. A lot of what is going on in IBM now is still typical of a LBO operation.
Typical LBO operation is to heavily load the corporate with debt for
payouts in dividends and stock buybacks (one of the many ways they
plunder and suck value out of a company). This has reference that over
half corporate defaults are corporations currently or formally held by
private-equity.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmons.html?_r=0
One could make some analogy with Sherman's scorched earth campaign as
they move through US corporations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_earth
posts mentioning Gerstner
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
posts mentioning private equity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 14:44:16 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
The Warren Brief
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2014/04/21/140421crbo_books_lepore?currentPage=all
Larry Summers explains Washington to Elizabeth Warren in one sentence:
"In the spring of 2009, after the panel issued its third report,
critical of the bailout, Larry Summers took Warren out to dinner in
Washington and, she recalls, told her that she had a choice to make. She
could be an insider or an outsider, but if she was going to be an
insider she needed to understand one unbreakable rule about insiders:
'They don't criticize other insiders.'"
... snip ...
she served as chair of the TARP oversight panel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren
previous post mentioned TARP had been passed on claim that it would be used to purchase toxic assets ... either that was pure fiction from the start ... or they didn't realize the magnitude of the problem ($700B would only make a very small dent in the problem).
Summers is referred to as another protege of Rubin (along with
Geithner) ... Rubin after helping (head of Citi)
get Glass-Steagall repealed, resigned as secretary of treasury,
and joins Citi as co-CEO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers
note that every once and awhile, local news will refer to what goes on in washington (& especially congress) as kabuki theater ... much of what you see is purely performance ... especially in pursuit of getting money (including a lot of the contrived conflict between the parties)
posts mentioning Kabuki theater
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#kabuki.theater
posts mentioning Glass-Steagall
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
posts mentioning (triple-A rated) toxic CDOs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Three Expensive Milliseconds Date: 18 Apr 2014 Blog: Facebookre:
The problems of HFT, Joe Stiglitz edition
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/04/15/the-problems-of-hft-joe-stiglitz-edition/
High-Speed Trader Virtu Said Questioned in N.Y. Inquiry
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-17/high-speed-trader-virtu-said-questioned-in-n-y-inquiry.html
"Holy Grail" HFT Firm Virtu Questioned By NY AG
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-18/holy-grail-hft-firm-virtu-questioned-ny-ag
and
More From Ex-SEC Lawyer James Kidney on the Agency's Failing
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/04/ex-sec-lawyer-james-kidney-agencys-failing.html
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler) Subject: Re: Another Golden Anniversary - Dartmouth BASIC Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: 18 Apr 2014 16:21:22 -0700shmuel+ibm-main@PATRIOT.NET (Shmuel Metz , Seymour J.) writes:
is this your work?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen-Babcock
pg20 "RUSH as a PL/I Subset"
http://www.iron-spring.com/PLI_Bulletins/PLI_Bulletin_4.pdf
and this: Conversational Programming System
http://home.uchicago.edu/~rthielen/cps.html
from above:
"Conversational Programming System is a time-sharing system that runs in
a partition of OS/360 Release 17 MFT II or MVT. The CPS language is a
conversational dialect of PL/I and includes a modified subset of the
BASIC language of IBM CALL/360. The system also provides Remote Job
Entry to batch processing and Remote Job Output to a designated terminal
from a dataset designated by any batch job." (This was hot stuff!)
... snip ...
Call/360 terminal reference guide
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/360/os/call_360/CALL_360_Terminal_Reference_Manual_Sep69.pdf
1968 ...
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/dpd50/dpd50_chronology3.html
from above:
The Information Marketing Department is transferred on October 22 from
the Data Processing Division to IBM's Service Bureau Corporation. The
department is responsible for marketing QUIKTRAN, as well as the
company's new CALL/360 time sharing subscriber services, BASIC and
DATATEXT.
... snip ...
at the time the cp67 group takes over the IBM Boston programming center
on the 3rd flr ... Jean Sammet was part of the group
http://computer.org/computer-pioneers/sammet.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_E._Sammet
as well as nat rochester
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Rochester_%28computer_scientist%29
trivia ... further expansion of the vm370 group ... they eventually
outgrow the 3rd flr (they only had part of the 3rd flr, the other
occupant was listed in bldg. directory as a law firm, however the telco
closet was on the ibm side and it clearly listed the other occupant as
certain 3letter gov. agency) ... and they move out to the vacant former
SBC bldg at burlington mall
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Bureau_Corporation
Jean Sammet and & Nat Rochester don't move out to Burlington.
posts mentioning 545 tech sq
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
recent posts mentioning burlington mall location:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#4 Application development paradigms [was: RE: Learning Rexx]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#92 write rings
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#105 Happy 50th Birthday to the IBM Cambridge Scientific Center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#16 23Jun1969 Unbundling Announcement
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#39 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 10:37:36 -0400Ibmekon writes:
recent post in ibm-main mailing list
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#56 NSA foils much internet encryption
and somewhat back to the original subject:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#34 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
x-over from recent ibm-main mailing list thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#74 Another Golden Anniversary - Dartmouth BASIC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#4 Another Golden Anniversary - Dartmouth BASIC
reverences allen-babcock, CPS, conversational PLI, basic ... but
also wanders into call/360 and IBM's service bureau corporation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Bureau_Corporation
above references call/360 was time-sharing and points to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing
which has
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing#Notable_time-sharing_systems
while most of those provided online access ... not all of them were used for "public" online access.
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 11:29:15 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
recent article: Bankers are Behind the Wars
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-04-18/bankers-are-behind-wars
includes reference to
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in
the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a
director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings ... continued until his company's assets were
seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act
from: How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
past a.f.c. post repeated some of the above
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#54 Singer Cartons of Punch Cards
the 2012 a.f.c. post also has reference to Nazi financial support that I found in my wifes father's WW2 status reports at National Archives (he was command of 1154th engineering combat group).
theme is similar to Spinney's "Perpetual War"
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/domestic-roots-of-perpetual-war.html
past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#perpetual.war
similar theme "War Is a Racket"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
also "Triumphant Plutocracy" mentions "League to Perpetuate War":
http://archive.org/details/triumphantpluto00pettrich
past a.f.c. post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#82 What Makes Economic History Bizarre?
posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#team.b
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex
from:
How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
past a.f.c. post repeated some of the above
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012l.html#54 Singer Cartons of Punch Cards
the 2012 a.f.c. post also has reference to Nazi financial support that I found in my wifes father's WW2 status reports at National Archives (he was command of 1154th engineering combat group).
theme is similar to Spinney's "Perpetual War"
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/domestic-roots-of-perpetual-war.html
past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#perpetual.war
similar theme "War Is a Racket"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
also "Triumphant Plutocracy" mentions "League to Perpetuate War":
http://archive.org/details/triumphantpluto00pettrich
past a.f.c. post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#82 What Makes Economic History Bizarre?
posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#team.b
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 11:50:56 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Moyers came out yesterday: Reactions to "Capital in the Twenty-First
Century"
http://billmoyers.com/2014/04/18/reactions-to-capital-in-the-twenty-first-century/
other posts in this thread (with lots of topic drift):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#34 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#37 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#38 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#39 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#41 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#46 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#48 Before the Internet: The golden age of online service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#49 Before the Internet: The golden age of online service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#54 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#55 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#59 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#61 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#62 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#69 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#73 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#75 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#76 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#79 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#80 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#0 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#2 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#5 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#6 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Is cybersecurity the next banking crisis in the making? Date: 19 Apr 2014 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityHacking Into Tomorrow's Banking Crisis
Note at financial conferences in the mid-90s, there were presentations
from the consumer dial-up banking groups about moving to the internet
... primary motivation was the enormous support costs for their
proprietary dialup banking operations which would be offloaded to ISPs
(including they had dozens of different drivers for different dialup
modems and each driver had dozens of versions for each version of
different operating systems). However, the cash management/commercial
dialup banking operations said that they would *NEVER* move to the
internet (although most eventually did) because of a long list of
(cybersecurity) vulnerabilities (most of which continue to exist to
this day). posts mentioning dialup banking
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#dialup-banking
Slightly related at the end of the 90s and early part of the century,,
there was lots of work on hardware tokens for the consumer market
supporting strong authentication that would address many of the
current vulnerabilities ... including the EU FINREAD standard ... with
several pilots being deployed. One such large consumer pilot appeared
to obtain a large supply of (obsolete) serial-port cardreaders that
they were giving away free. However, a major factor in the move off
dialup banking to the internet because of enormous consumer support
costs was because they were serial-port devices ... and a major
motivation for the development of USB was the enormous consumer
problems with serial-port devices. In any case, the institutional
knowledge about the enormous consumer support problems with
serial-port devices had appeared to evaporate over a period of
5-6yrs. The consumer support disaster with the pilot resulted in a
rapidly spreading opinion in the financial industry that hardware
tokens weren't practical in the consumer market (even tho the problem
was actually with the obsolete serial-port cardreaders) ... and
pullback from strong authentication hardware tokens in the consumer
market (including the EU FINREAD effort). past posts mentioning
EU FINREAD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#finread
There is currently long-winded thread in crypto mailing list about heatbleed problem is to be blamed on C programming language ... where buffer&pointer bugs resulting in exploits has been epidemic ... something that I've been pontificating about for at least two decades (tcp/ip stacks implemented in other programming languages have not had similar epidemic of buffer&pointer programming bugs).
Long ago and far away, we were brought in as consultants to small
client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their
server; they had also invented this technology called "SSL" they
wanted to use; the result is now frequently called "electronic
commerce". Part of this was reviewing "SSL", doing audit/walk-throughs
of new businesses selling SSL domain name certificates, guidelines for
webserver deployments (including use of "SSL") and development of
something called "payment gateway" that sat at processors and handled
transactions between webservers and the payment networks.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#sslcerts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway
Part of example deployment was "firewall" that included https filter ... it would look at incoming https transactions for all the possible ways that might take advantage of buffer&pointer related programming bugs that might occur in the actual application.
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 15:55:45 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
7,000 pages released by Clinton library on Friday ...
Wall Street deregulation pushed by Clinton advisers, documents reveal;
Previously restricted papers reveal attempts to rush president to
support act, later blamed for deepening banking crisis
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/19/wall-street-deregulation-clinton-advisers-obama
but for some reason, Rubin didn't make Time's list of those
responsible. Time's list of 25 people responsible
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1877351,00.html
Note, at the time, news was Rubin was resigning to become co-CEO of citi ... wiki now just says he resigned to become member of the board and later served as chairman.
posts mentioning Pecora hearings and/or Glass-Steagall
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
repeal of Glass-Steagall opening door for too big to fail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
some amount of folklore that dispite all this, the president was still
going to veto the legislation ... explaining why congress after vote
with simple majority (pretty much along party lines) went back and
added various amendments until it passes senate with veto-proof 90-8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act
along with financial industry having made $250m contributions to congress ... almost eveningly divided between the two parties.
Most of the attention about GLBA now is about repeal of Glass-Steagall, however leading up to passage ... the rhetoric on the floor of congress was that the primary purpose for GLBA was "if you already had a banking charter you could keep it, but if you didn't already have a banking charter you couldn't get one" ... aka targeted at eliminating new competitors in the financial industry (specifically mentioning walmart and microsoft). In the end, the repeal of Glass-Steagall ... *AND* not allowing other businesses banking charters ... allowed the financial institutions to compete with other industries ... but prevented other industries from competing with them.
Later when they abandoned the fiction that TARP funds would be used to
purchase toxic assets ... and left the major effort to the federal
reserve ... the federal reserve was handing out banking charters to
some of the investment banks (that didn't already have one) so they
would be eligible for the FED's largess ... but theoretically in
violation of GLBA. posts mentioning (triple-A rated) toxic CDOs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo
As previously mentioned the primary person pushing repeal of
Glass-Steagall had recently acquired Citi (in violoation of
Glass-Steagall) ... had previously been in competition for the next
CEO of AMEX and after loosing, left with his protege and made some
number of acquisitions (before acquiring CITI).
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/15/why-jamie-dimons-2-billion-gambling-loss-will-not-speed-financial-reform/
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: It's all K&R's fault Date: 19 Apr 2014 MailingList: cryptoI've been pontificating for two decades about C language applications having epidemic of exploits and vulnerabilities. It isn't that it is impossible to write correct code in C ... or that it is impossible to write incorrect code in other languages .... but that C string, pointer, and buffer semantics results in significantly larger number of mistakes. posts
the original IBM mainframe product tcp/ip stack (in 80s) was
implemented in vs/pascal and not known to have any of the
buffer/pointer problems epidemic in C language implementations. I
didn't do the original implementation ... but i made the modifications
to support RFC1044 and in some tuning tests between Cray and 4341
got possibly 500 times improvement in number of bytes moved per
instruction executed. posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044
2002 paper "Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security
Evaluation"
http://www.acsac.org/2002/papers/classic-multics.pdf
referencing
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/history/karg74.pdf
Multics was implemented in PLI and one of the observations was that Multics was not known to have had any of the buffer/pointer problems epidemic in C language implementations.
old post from decade ago about attempting to characterize exploits
from the CVE database
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#43
there had been reports from the late 90s, that the majority of internet vulnerability/exploits were buffer/pointer related. They were no longer the majority ... the frequency hadn't dropped ... it was that other kinds had increased. Note that the 1996 MDC at Moscone, all the banners said "internet" ... but the subtheme in all the sessions was "preserve your investment". All the automatic execution of visual basic code embedded in data files ... from the days of small closed, safe business LANs was being preserved as low-level support for tcp/ip was being added (but w/o the necessary added integrity and security measures).
I had some number of discussions with Mitre about CVE entries were
free-form and hard to analyze ... and suggested that they add some
structured keywords. In any case, nearly a year later NIST releases
similar analysis. old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#20
referencing Linux magazine quoting NIST CVE study.
as an aside, multics sites
https://www.multicians.org/sites.html
I use to see some number of agency people in financial industry security & crypto meetings ... in the 90s, their email was #76 in above list.
other drift ... I was at science center involved in virtual machines
and some number of other things ... which was on the 4th flr, 545 tech
sq. Multics was on the 5th flr in same bldg ... so there was some
feeling of competition between the two groups. 545tech sq posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
#72 was AFDSC ... in late 70s some AFDSC people came by to talk about
what was going to be 210 vm/4341s (more than the total of all multics
installations). past reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15
some old vm/4300 related email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#4300
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 18:53:26 -0400re:
archived from the crypto mailing list
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#10 It's all K&R's fault
I've been pontificating for two decades about C language applications
having epidemic of exploits and vulnerabilities. It isn't that it is
impossible to write correct code in C ... or that it is impossible to
write incorrect code in other languages .... but that C string, pointer,
and buffer semantics results in significantly larger number of
mistakes. posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#buffer
the original IBM mainframe product tcp/ip stack (in 80s) was implemented
in vs/pascal and not known to have any of the buffer/pointer problems
epidemic in C language implementations. I didn't do the original
implementation ... but i made the modifications to support RFC1044 and
in some tuning tests between Cray and 4341 got possibly 500 times
improvement in number of bytes moved per instruction executed. posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#1044
2002 paper "Thirty Years Later: Lessons from the Multics Security
Evaluation"
http://www.acsac.org/2002/papers/classic-multics.pdf
referencing
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/history/karg74.pdf
Multics was implemented in PLI and one of the observations was that Multics was not known to have had any of the buffer/pointer problems epidemic in C language implementations.
old post from decade ago about attempting to characterize exploits from
the CVE database
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#43
there had been reports from the late 90s, that the majority of internet vulnerability/exploits were buffer/pointer related. They were no longer the majority ... the frequency hadn't dropped ... it was that other kinds had increased. Note that the 1996 MDC at Moscone, all the banners said "internet" ... but the subtheme in all the sessions was "preserve your investment". All the automatic execution of visual basic code embedded in data files ... from the days of small closed, safe business LANs was being preserved as low-level support for tcp/ip was being added (but w/o the necessary added integrity and security measures).
I had some number of discussions with Mitre about CVE entries were
free-form and hard to analyze ... and suggested that they add some
structured keywords. In any case, nearly a year later NIST releases
similar analysis. old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005b.html#20
referencing Linux magazine quoting NIST CVE study.
as an aside, multics sites
https://www.multicians.org/sites.html
I use to see some number of agency people in financial industry security & crypto meetings ... in the 90s, their email was #76 in above list.
other drift ... I was at science center involved in virtual machines
and some number of other things ... which was on the 4th flr, 545 tech
sq. Multics was on the 5th flr in same bldg ... so there was some
feeling of competition between the two groups. 545tech sq posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
#72 was AFDSC ... in late 70s some AFDSC people came by to talk about
what was going to be 210 vm/4341s (more than the total of all multics
installations). past reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#15
some old vm/4300 related email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#4300
....
also
Long ago and far away, we were brought in as consultants to small
client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their
server; they had also invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted
to use; the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce". Part
of this was reviewing "SSL", doing audit/walk-throughs of new businesses
selling SSL domain name certificates, guidelines for webserver
deployments (including use of "SSL") and development of something called
"payment gateway" that sat at processors and handled transactions
between webservers and the payment networks.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway
Part of example deployment was "firewall" that included https filter ... it would look at incoming https transactions for possible ways that attackers might take advantage of buffer&pointer (& other) related common programming bugs that might occur in the actual application.
other recent posts mentioning above:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#4 IBM Plans Big Spending for the Cloud ($1.2B)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#93 Curious observation: lack of a simple optimization in a C program
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#30 Zeus malware found with valid digital certificate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#56 "NSA foils much internet encryption"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#57 NSA and Heartbleed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#58 NSA and Heartbleed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#65 How the IETF plans to protect the web from NSA snooping
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 22:26:44 -0400re:
So far 122 posts in crypto mailing list this month on heartbleed related to C language contributing to programming mistakes (only one of them is mine so far) by 41 different people (and/or it takes much more effort in C to avoid making such programming mistakes) ... although 2 more just arrived as I was writing this.
a model for data move/copy would be the MVCL instruction introduced with
the original 370 ... where pointer and length are specified for both
origin and destination:
http://publibz.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/bookmgr_OS390/BOOKS/DZ9ZR003/7.5.90?SHELF=DZ9ZBK03&DT=20040504121320
programming language needs to provide equivalent constructs where pointer/length for both origin and destination are managed (like PLI or VS/Pascal, even on machines w/o MVCL).
posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#buffer
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 10:19:17 -0400Ibmekon writes:
part of the original effort that was "electronic commerce" ... included
"SSL" ... but also included something called "payment gateway" that sat
at service processor and handled transactions between internet commerce
servers and payment networks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#gateway
this thread mentions that non-internet environment, the trouble desk
was expected to do 1st level problem determination within 5mins ... but
initial internet commerce server trouble call went on for 3hrs before
closing trouble ticket as "NTF" (no trouble found)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#70 How the Internet wasn't Commercial Dataprocessing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#78 How the Internet wasn't Commercial Dataprocessing
it then required a whole lot of work to develop and document
compensating procedures to be able to have internet operation close to
non-internet operation. this included enhancing the webserver code with
lots of diagnostic and automatic retry/recovery operations. I've
mentioned developing large failure/recovery matrix and that the code
either had to automatic recovery/retry and/or provide diagnostic for
identification.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm25.htm#41 Why security training is really important (and it ain't anything to do with security!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#32 Mainframes & Unix
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#51 [Lit.] Buffer overruns
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#33 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#42 Development as Configuration
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007f.html#37 Is computer history taught now?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#33 Mainframe Project management
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#35 Builders V. Breakers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#25 Database Servers: Candy For Hackers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#31 comp.arch has made itself a sitting duck for spam
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009s.html#8 Union Pacific Railroad ditches its mainframe for SOA
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#66 Happy DEC-10 Day
I've periodically commented that it can take 4-10 times the effort to take a well-written and tested application and turn it into a "service" (some of it is more code, but a lot of it is painstaking work through all possible failure modes).
I had also gotten involved in work that required 2167A ... which has
gone thru some morphing ... software.org used to have this spaghetti
diagram (Framework quagmire) for secure software
https://web.archive.org/web/20001018151708/http://www.software.org/quagmire/frampapr/frampapr.html
which also tended to require ten times the software development effort
of that for a well-designed and tested "normal" application. I did
some amount of work on software development environment that could
meet the 2167A requirements but only require 2-3 times standard
development effort. Note that since there are required processes that
occur during the actual development process ... it wasn't possible to
take already developed software and bring it up to 2167A standard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOD-STD-2167A
2167A was replace by
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIL-STD-498
which was replace by
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_12207
some past posts mentioning "assurance"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#assurance
past posts mentioning 2167A and/or the frameworks quagmire
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#48 If your CSO lacks an MBA, fire one of you
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#50 If your CSO lacks an MBA, fire one of you
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#55 Computer security: The Future
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#70 Computers in Science Fiction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004q.html#1 Systems software versus applications software definitions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#42 Development as Configuration
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006.html#37 The new High Assurance SSL Certificates
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#40 Was FORTRAN buggy?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#64 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#66 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#16 Far and near pointers on the 80286 and later
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#17 Far and near pointers on the 80286 and later
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#60 Far and near pointers on the 80286 and later
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#61 Far and near pointers on the 80286 and later
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#101 Perspectives: Looped back in
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 11:01:06 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
note commercial/business loans are packaged as CLOs (similar to consumer toxic CDOs and rating agencies being paid to give them triple-A rating) discussion today on CLOs (private equity & Glass-Steagall)
Banks Cling to Bundles Holding Risk
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/business/banks-cling-to-bundles-holding-risk.html?ref=business
posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
slightly related tax avoidance, tax evasion, and the enormous congressional corruption ... lots of it because of influence being applied for tax loop holes
Our Corrupt Tax Code
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/04/abigail-field-corrupt-tax-code.html
posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#tax.evasion
recent posts that move to "flat tax" would have enormous benefit, even
if the only thing it did was eliminate the enormous congressional
corruption.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#30 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#33 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#57 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#50 Broadband pricing
and "An Indictment of the Invisible Hand"
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/23178-an-indictment-of-the-invisible-hand
from above:
Now, that's changed again. Capital is rising to its old levels, what
Piketty calls the patrimonial state, epitomized by Britain in the first
two thirds of the 19th century. As capital rises, the rich simply get
richer, and inequality soars. They own the capital, after all, and reap
its rewards. And in America, this has mostly been a function, Piketty
calculates, of outsize remuneration for CEOs and other managers, who get
huge stock options. Their compensation has risen with the stock market.
... snip ...
recent refs:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#63 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#7 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
recent posts mentioning ratio of top executive to avg worker exploding to
400:1 (after having been 20:1 for a long time and 10:1 in much of
the rest of the world):
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013d.html#33 IBM Spent A Million Dollars Renovating And Staffing Its Former CEO's Office
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#10 The Knowledge Economy Two Classes of Workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#28 Flag bloat
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#50 IBM Furloughs U.S. Hardware Employees to Reduce Costs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#51 What Makes a Tax System Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#91 IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe cuts as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Why IBM Is Tumbling: BRIC Sales Plunge, Total Revenue Lowest Since 2009 Date: 20 Apr 2014 Blog: IBMersre:
this is getting a lot of play recently "Capital in the Twenty-First"
https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty-ebook/dp/B00I2WNYJW/
and
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/thomas-piketty-new-gilded-age ..
http://billmoyers.com/2014/04/18/reactions-to-capital-in-the-twenty-first-century/
"An Indictment of the Invisible Hand"
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/23178-an-indictment-of-the-invisible-hand
from above:
Now, that's changed again. Capital is rising to its old levels, what
Piketty calls the patrimonial state, epitomized by Britain in the
first two thirds of the 19th century. As capital rises, the rich
simply get richer, and inequality soars. They own the capital, after
all, and reap its rewards. And in America, this has mostly been a
function, Piketty calculates, of outsize remuneration for CEOs and
other managers, who get huge stock options. Their compensation has
risen with the stock market.
... snip ...
There have been several past references that recently the ratio of avg top executive compensation to avg worker compensation had exploded to 400:1 after having been 20:1 for a long time (and 10:1 in much of the rest of the world).
some older references to the 400:1 ratio
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#73 Should The CEO Have the Lowest Pay In Senior Management?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#24 To: Graymouse -- Ireland and the EU, What in the H... is all this about?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008j.html#76 lack of information accuracy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008k.html#71 Cormpany sponsored insurance
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#25 Taxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#33 Taxes
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#53 Are family businesses unfair competition?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#93 What do you think are the top characteristics of a good/effective leader in an organization? Do you feel these characteristics are learned or innate to an individual?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#2 Blinkylights
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008n.html#58 Traditional Approach Won't Take Businesses Far Places
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#14 realtors (and GM, too!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008q.html#17 realtors (and GM, too!)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#61 The vanishing CEO bonus
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#5 Greed - If greed was the cause of the global meltdown then why does the biz community appoint those who so easily succumb to its temptations?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#41 Executive pay: time for a trim?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008s.html#44 Executive pay: time for a trim?
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 11:36:30 -0400re:
from Ian's financial crypto blog:
Code as if everyone is the thief.
https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001496.html
The Codeless Code: Case 140 Heartbleed
http://thecodelesscode.com/case/140
as an aside ... Ian has been quite active recently in the crypto mailing list on both the heartbleed problem and the associated C-language issues ... also in the past, I've frequently posted on issues in his blog.
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Online Debit, Credit Fraud Will Soon Get Much Worse Date: 20 Apr 2014 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityOnline Debit, Credit Fraud Will Soon Get Much Worse. Here's Why.
the card associations started two different efforts about the same
time, one was payment for online/internet and a different one was
chip-based for point-of-sale. The online/internet specification never
really caught on ... it was an enormously heavyweight specification
... the crypto increased processing requirements by a factor of more
than 100 times and increased the payment transaction payload size by a
factor of 100 (w/o actually significantly improving end-to-end
integrity). bloat posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#bloat
the early part of the century there was a large pilot in the US of the
chip-based point-of-sale ... the technology at the time had a
reference as Yes Card ... old reference to presentation at
cartes2002 (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
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard
in 2003, somebody from the secret service was making presentation of the chip-based Yes Card at the "ATM Integrity Task Force" meeting and somebody observed that they managed to spend billions of dollars to prove that chipcards are less secure than magstripe. In the wake of that, all evidence of the pilot appeared to disappear and there was some references that it would be a long time before it was tried again in the US until it had been much more thoroughly vetted.
Note at financial conferences in the mid-90s, there were presentations
from the consumer dial-up banking groups about moving to the internet
... primary motivation was the enormous support costs for their
proprietary dialup banking operations which would be offloaded to ISPs
(including they had dozens of different drivers for different dialup
modems and each driver had dozens of versions for each version of
different operating systems). However, the cash management/commercial
dialup banking operations said that they would *NEVER* move to the
internet (although most eventually did) because of a long list of
(cybersecurity) vulnerabilities (most of which continue to exist to
this day). past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#dialup-banking
At about the same time the point-of-sale chip-based solution was being
piloted in the US ... there were a number of different chip-based
solutions being piloted for the internet ... including the EU FINREAD
standard (which address nearly all current exploits &
vulnerabilities). One such large consumer pilot appeared to obtain a
large supply of (obsolete) serial-port cardreaders that they were
giving away free. However, a major factor in the move off dialup
banking to the internet because of enormous consumer support costs was
because they were serial-port devices ... and a major motivation for
the development of USB was the enormous consumer problems with
serial-port devices. In any case, the institutional knowledge about
the enormous consumer support problems with serial-port devices had
appeared to evaporate over a period of 5-6yrs. The consumer support
disaster with the pilot resulted in a rapidly spreading opinion in the
financial industry that hardware tokens weren't practical in the
consumer market (even tho the problem was actually with the obsolete
serial-port cardreaders) ... resulting in pullback from strong
authentication hardware tokens in the consumer market (including the
EU FINREAD effort). past posts mentioning EU FINREAD
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#finread
Also falling victim to the rapidly spreading opinion that chipcards
weren't practical in the home consumer market (even tho it wasn't
actually the chipcards, it was the obsolete serial-port chipcard
readers) was the NACHA (debit network) effort ... reference gone 404
but lives on at the wayback machine
https://web.archive.org/web/20070706004855/http://internetcouncil.nacha.org/News/news.html
... 23July2001 ... digital signature can secure ATM card payments on the internet ... can click on the final report at referenced wayback URL.
disclaimer, We wrote the response for the NACHA effort ... and it was
presented on our behalf because we weren't NACHA members (also
referenced in the final report).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/nacharfi.htm
AADS reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 00:29:15 -0400Alfred Falk <falk@arc.ab.ca> writes:
but apparently things have just gotten worse in the US (#1
expenditure/capita #37 in quality/outcomes). also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States
LBOs got such a bad repuation in the 80s ... using junk bonds for lot
of the LBO financing (and major factor in the S&L mess), that in
the early 90s they change the industry name to private equity and
junk bonds become "high-yield bonds". Later one of the sources of
funds are large employee retirement funds ... which it many cases
loose all their investment ... just like others that played with
private equity operations (putting the retirement plans at
risk). recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#1 Why IBM Is Tumbling: BRIC Sales Plunge, Total Revenue Lowest Since 2009
part of the health care problem in the US was when private equity
started targeting (& looting) hospital chains and other health industry
like nursing homes. more detail
https://www.amazon.com/Buyout-America-Private-Destroying-American-ebook/dp/B002SV37FO
recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#107 Royal Pardon For Turing
with some of the references from above
Dental Abuse Seen Driven by Private Equity Investments
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-17/dental-abuse-seen-driven-by-private-equity-investments.html
HCA: The Unsustainable Private Equity Bubble in US Health Care
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2012/08/15/private-equity-wont-fix-health-care-either/
HCA Shareholders Allege Bain Capital, Other Private Equity Firms
Colluded in Buyout
http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/racs-/-icd-9-/-icd-10/hca-shareholders-allege-bain-capital-other-private-equity-firms-colluded-in-buyout.html
A Giant Hospital Chain Is Blazing a Profit Trail
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/15/business/hca-giant-hospital-chain-creates-a-windfall-for-private-equity.html
posts mentioning private equity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Is cybersecurity the next banking crisis in the making? Date: 21 Apr 2014 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Securityre:
Part of the "electronic commerce" effort was specifying how "SSL" should be securely configured and deployed. "SSL" is dependent on the user knowing the relationship of the URL they type into the browser and the webserver they want to communicate with. "SSL" then validates that the "URL" corresponds with the webserver they are actually talking to (both are required so that the webserver the user thinks they are talking to is actually the webserver they are talking to). Almost immediately webservers found that "SSL" cut their throughput by 90% and dropped back to just using "SSL" for payment/check-out. Now a browser typically connects to a non-validated webserver and then clicks on a button that provides the (HTTPS) URL from non-authenticated site. Now "SSL" is mostly validating that the webserver is the webserver that it claims to be (not necessarily the webserver that the user thinks it is).
In the mid-90s, somewhat as a result of having done this thing called
"electronic commerce" we were invited to participate in the x9a10
financial standard working group which had been given the requirement
to protect the integrity of the financial infrastructure for *ALL*
retail payments. Part of the effort was doing detailed end-to-end
threat & vulnerability studies of several kinds of payment in
different environments ... coming up with X9.59 transaction
standard. One of the things is x9.59 doesn't do anything about
preventing breaches ... what x9.59 did was slightly tweak the current
paradigm eliminating the ability of crooks to use information from
breaches to do fraudulent financial transactions (it didn't eliminate
breaches, but it eliminated the risk of breaches and the motivation to
do breaches). posts mentioning x9.59
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#x959
a couple metaphors we've used to characterize the current paradigm
... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#payments
dual-use ... since information from previous transactions can be used for fraudulent transactions, that information has to be kept totally confidential and never divulged. at the same time the same information is required in dozens of business processes at millions of locations around the world. we've periodically commented that even if the planet was buried under miles of information hiding encryption, it still wouldn't stop leakage
security proportional to risk ... the value of the transaction information to the merchants is the profit on the transactions, which can be a couple dollars (and a couple cents for the transaction processor) ... the value of the information to the crooks is the account balance and/or credit limit ... as a result the crooks can afford to outspend the defenders by a factor of 100 times (including bribing insiders)
posts mentioning security proportional to risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#security.proportional.to.risk
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: HFT, computer trading Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 17:45:37 -0400Lewis' recent book "Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt" mentions that the crash of 1987 ... and big turning point from human market operation to computer market operation. then talks about somebody spending nearly half billion dollars running fiber link from chicago market datacenter to new jersey market datacenter because it cut 1.5milliseconds off the latency. then co-location in market datacenters because it cut latency to microseconds ... then paying premium to have their co-located computers closer to the market computers (than other co-located computers).
loc60-61:
The 1987 stock market crash set in motion a process--weak at first,
stronger over the years--that has ended with computers entirely replacing
the people.
... snip ...
it talks about having direct links into different market datacenters and being able to use information from trades in one market to front-run trades in other markets. then the HFT players are paying brokers to perform their trades ... being able to front-run those trades also. One of the things they mention ... I guess when trading is slow ... they post trade offers & acceptances that are then canceled as part of gathering intelligence for front-running activity.
Implication much of this stuff unique to HFT is somewhat
gratuitous. I've periodically mentioned being asked into NSCC in the
late 90s (before merger with DTC that formed DTCC) to work on improving
integrity on exchange trades ... and then being told the work was
suspended because a side-effect would have been visibility and
transparency, antithetical to wallstreet culture. There was also
reference to possibly 30% of the trades being canceled (purely being
done to gather intelligence, akin to what is described for some of the
HFT activity). recent posts mentioning integrity work for NSCC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#29 Royal Pardon for credit unions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#7 N.Y. Barclays Libor Traders Said to Face U.K. Charges
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#72 Three Expensive Milliseconds
Also there is this from 2007 referring to lots of insider illegal
activity and they have nothing to worry about from the SEC:
http://nypost.com/2007/03/20/cramer-reveals-a-bit-too-much/
more from Lewis, loc1262-64:
Even more incredibly, the Merrill Lynch people ended up in charge of
Bank of America's equity division and set about firing most of the
people in it. A lot of those people had been good, loyal employees of
the bank. "Wall Street is corrupt, I decided," said Schwall afterwards.
... snip ...
... all the way through
other recent posts mentioning HFT:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#54 Pensions, was Re: Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#82 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#89 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#28 Royal Pardon for credit unions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#43 Royal Pardon for credit unions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#56 Royal Pardon for credit unions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#65 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#93 New York seeks curbs on high-frequency trading
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#18 FBI Investigates High-Speed Trading
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#60 FBI Investigates High-Speed Trading
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#3 Three Expensive Milliseconds
some news items
New York seeks curbs on high-frequency trading
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-26637465
CFTC Investigates The "Secret" HFT-Exchange Incentive Program
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-19/cftc-investigates-secret-hft-exchange-incentive-programs
Algo Activity (And Manipulation) Breaks Record On Friday's Quad Witching Debacle
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-24/algo-activity-breaks-record-fridays-quad-witching-debacle
The Holy Grail Of Trading Has Been Found: HFT Firm Reveals 1 Losing Trading Day In 1238 Days Of Trading
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-10/holy-grail-trading-has-been-found-hft-firm-reveals-1-losing-trading-day-1238-days-tr
FBI Investigates High-Speed Trading; Probe Centers on Whether It's
Insider Trading When High-Frequency Traders Act on Information Others
Can't See
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304886904579473874181722310
FBI to Investigate Wall Street's Latest Blemish: High-Frequency Trading
http://www.thewire.com/business/2014/03/fbi-to-investigate-wall-streets-latest-blemish-high-frequency-trading/359938/
"The Market Is Rigged" - Michael Lewis Explains How HFTs "Screw" Investors Every Day
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-31/market-rigged-michael-lewis-explains-how-hfts-screw-investors-every-day
The Wolf Hunters of Wall Street; An Adaptation From 'Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt,' by Michael Lewis
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/magazine/flash-boys-michael-lewis.html?pagewanted=all
High Frequency Trading: Why Now And What Happens Next
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-31/high-frequency-trading-why-now-and-what-happens-next
Here Come The Feds: FBI Probing HFT
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-31/here-come-feds-fbi-probing
Michael Lewis' Flash Boys: How to curb high-frequency trading.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_edgy_optimist/2014/04/michael_lewis_flash_boys_how_to_curb_high_frequency_trading.html
High-Speed Trading Is Turning Wall Street Into a Casino
http://time.com/45822/high-speed-trading-is-turning-wall-street-into-a-casino/
On A 'Rigged' Wall Street, Milliseconds Make All The Difference : NPR
http://www.npr.org/2014/04/01/297686724/on-a-rigged-wall-street-milliseconds-make-all-the-difference
New York State AG Eric Schneiderman: Some high-frequency trading
practices "may be illegal"
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-state-ag-eric-schneiderman-some-high-frequency-trading-practices-may-be-illegal/
FBI Seeks Help From High-Frequency Traders to Find Abuses
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-31/fbi-said-to-probe-high-speed-traders-over-abuse-of-information.html
Michael Lewis' Flash Boys: How to curb high-frequency trading
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_edgy_optimist/2014/04/michael_lewis_flash_boys_how_to_curb_high_frequency_trading.html?wpisrc=burger_bar
MICHAEL LEWIS: David Einhorn A 'Dumb Tourist' In A Casino
http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-lewis-david-einhorn-a-dumb-tourist-in-a-casino-2014-4
From The Small To The Big: Earthquakes, Avalanches, & High-Frequency
Trading
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-02/small-big-earthquakes-avalanches-high-frequency-trading
High-Frequency Trading Allegations Lead To Confrontation On CNBC
http://news.firedoglake.com/2014/04/02/high-frequency-trading-allegations-lead-to-confrontation-on-cnbc/
Presenting The Next Market Rigged By High Frequency Trading
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-02/presenting-next-market-rigged-high-frequency-trading
Michael Lewis Doesn't Like High-Frequency Traders
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-31/michael-lewis-doesn-t-like-high-frequency-traders
High-Frequency Traders Chase Currencies as Stock Volume Recedes
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-02/high-frequency-traders-chase-currencies-as-stock-volume-recedes.html
High-Speed Trading Is Turning Wall Street Into a Casino
http://time.com/45822/high-speed-trading-is-turning-wall-street-into-a-casino/
Lewis Explains The Casino: "Why Are You Even Arguing" That This Is Not
Rigged?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-02/lewis-explains-casino-why-are-you-even-arguing-not-rigged
Have We Reached Peak Wall Street?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-02/have-we-reached-peak-wall-street
It's 3:29:57 pm - Do You Know Where Your Massive "Send DJIA Green For
2014" Order Is?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-02/its-32957-pm-do-you-know-where-your-massive-send-djia-green-2014-order
Peak HFT?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-02/peak-hft
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Complete 360 and 370 systems found Date: 21 Apr 2014 Blog: IBM Historic Computingreference to ACS-360 being shutdown because IBM management thot it would advance state-of-the-art too fast and they would loose control of the market ... also discusses features from ACS-360 showing up in ES/9000 over 20yrs later.
in early 70s, IBM had FS effort that would completely replace 370 and
they were killing off 370 efforts, past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
later when FS imploded there was mad rush to get stuff back into 370
product pipelines, including Q&D efforts for 3033 & 3081 from warmed
over FS technology
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm
the 3090 was first wholly now product effort
in the 3033 period we had a project for 16-way SMP and had subverted
some of the 3033 processor engineers to work on it in their spare
time. Lots of POK thot it was really neat project until one day
somebody told the head of POK that it might be decades before the POK
favorite son operating system (aka MVS) had (any sort of effective)
16-way support. Shortly afterwards, some of us were invited to never
visit POK again.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp
see this reference describing how 3033 & 3081 (both, starting in
parallel) were Q&D efforts to produce something using warmed over FS
technology (after FS failed)
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm
the 3033. started out being 168 design using 20% faster chips (originally developed for FS). 3081 was the 370 simulator from FS ... sowa describes how the ratio of circuits to performance ... and therefor cost/performance ... was enormously poor ... especially compared to clone processors, had to significantly lower the price in order to compete.
when engineers got 3033 out the door, they started on trout1.5 (aka
3090). some old email mentioning trout 1.5
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#email810630 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003j.html#email831118 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#email890615
even tho the head of POK invitation to never visit POK again included me ... the processor engineers had an open invitation for me to join them on their regular bikerides whenever I might be in the POK area.
note that 3081 was originally going to be multiprocessor only ... however TPF (renamed airline control program) didn't have multiprocessor support. Initially they did some very unnatural things to vm370 for running TPF on 3081 ... but it was part of the standard product and degraded throughput for every other vm370 customer. Eventually not wanting to loose all TPF customers to clone processors (which were still producing uniprocessor machines) ... they eventually came out with single processor 3083 ... which was 3081 with one of the processors removed. The problem was that the easiest way was to remove the 2nd processor ... but that was in the middle of the box and would have made it dangerously top-heavy. They were forced to remove the top processor and do some amount of rewiring to map the first processor to the middle box position.
for other drift some old email about 3092 (3090 service processor)
... which started out being a customized version of vm370 release 6 on
4331 and morphed into a pair of 4361s
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#email861031 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#email861223
other 303x trivia ... they took the integrated channel microcode from 370/158 for the 303x channel director ... a 3031 was a 370/158 engine with just the 370 microcode and a 2nd 370/158 engine w/o the 370 microcode and just the integrated channel microcode. A 3032 was a 370/168 with new panels and rewired to use channel director for external channels. A 3033 is 370/168 design remapped to 20% faster chips ... and using channel director.
claims were
• 168-3 3mips • 3033 4.5mips • 3081d 10mips (5mips/processor) • 3081k 14mips (7mips/processor)
with just straight forward map of 168 to 20% faster chips would have been 3033 @3.6MIPS. However technology also had 10 times as many circuits/chip ... initial cut-over extra circuits going unused. There was then some remapping of critical portions to make better use of onchip operations ... that got performance up to 50% overall (4.5MIPS).
claims were 3081D processor was supposedly about 10% faster than 3033 processor ... but many benchmarks had it significantly slower. 3081k doubled the 3081 processor cache size to get the higher throughput ... but many benchmarks had processor only slightly faster than 3033.
note from Ferguson/Morris Computer Wars (effect of Future System
failure):
... and perhaps most damaging, the old culture under Watson Snr and Jr
of free and vigorous debate was replaced with sycophancy
and make no waves under Opel and Akers. It's claimed that
thereafter, IBM lived in the shadow of defeat
... and:
But because of the heavy investment of face by the top management, F/S
took years to kill, although its wrongheadedness was obvious from the
very outset. "For the first time, during F/S, outspoken criticism
became politically dangerous," recalls a former top executive.
... snip ...
From IBM senior executive: "The rise and fall of IBM" (about
motivation for FS being countermeasure to clone controllers):
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm
from above:
IBM tried to react by launching a major project called the 'Future
System' (FS) in the early 1970's. The idea was to get so far ahead
that the competition would never be able to keep up, and to have such
a high level of integration that it would be impossible for
competitors to follow a compatible niche strategy.
... snip ...
later there was observations that the subsequent SNA vtam/ncp embodied many of the FS objectives.
trivia: CP67 was delivered to univ with 1052&2741 support ... but the
univ had some number of ASCII/TTYs so I added TTY terminal support to
cp67. Part of it, I tried to make the 2702 terminal controller do
something that it couldn't quite do. This was part of the motivation
for the univ then to do clone controller project (emulating 2702 but
doing everything I wanted it to do) using a vendor's minicomputer. The
vendor then started marketing it to customers as clone controller and
four of us were written up as responsible for (some part of) the clone
controller business.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#360pcm
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Complete 360 and 370 systems found Date: 22 Apr 2014 Blog: IBM Historic Computingre:
The 3033, 3081, & 370xa architecture all started out about the same
time. 3033 was remap of 168 to 20% faster chips (from FS), 3081 was
the FS 370 simulator and 3081 initially came out as plain 370 box.
fs posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
XA architecture extensions to 370 were known as "811" for Nov1978 date on all the specifications. They were 31bit addressing, some access register extension, and some i/o extensions ... note: 360/67 previously had 32bit addressing and some of the i/o extensions (including all processors could address all channels)... so it wasn't all that new. Although a subset of the access register extension was eventually retrofitted to 3033 as "dual-address space" mode (before XA became available on 3081).
A major problem was getting the changes to MVS to support "811". Part was the head of POK managed to convince corporate to kill vm370 product, shutdown the burlington mall development group and transfer all the people to POK or (claimed) MVS/XA wouldn't meet the ship scheduled for well into the 80s. Eventually endicott managed to save the vm370 product mission, but had to reconstitute a development group from scratch (there are customer complaints about code quality during this period). They also delaying telling the vm370 group about shutdown and move until the very last minute to minimize the number that might escape. However, the information leaked and lots were able to escape (this was right at the very start of VAX/VMS at DEC, and there was joke that the head of POK was one of the major contributors to VMS).
As an aside, after FS imploded, and mad rush to restart 370
... including POK starting on XA, Endicott started on "E-architecture"
... 370-extensions completely different than XA architecture. The
"E-machines" (E4 for 4341 and E3 for 4331) came out in the 70s
... although they continued to mostly run straight 370 ... however the
"E" in "VSE" comes from the name of that architecture. Some past 43xx
email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx
One of the issues was that 4341 drastically improved price/performance and drastically reduced environmental footprint ... large corporations (including IBM) started getting hundreds at a time and deploying out in departmental areas (sort of the leading edge of the coming departmental tsunami). Also back in the datacenter, clusters of 4341 had much more aggregate processing power, much lower price, more aggregate i/o capacity and much smaller footprint than 3033. At one point, head of POK managed to convince corporate to cut allocation of a critical 4341 manufacturing component in half (as a way of reducing endicott competition).
The 3033 also had a hack to address more than 16mbyte real storage (supporting up to 64mbytes) although it was still limited to 24bit/16mbyte addressing. The problem was that MVS kernel was becoming enormously bloated and it was becoming increasingly difficult to get realistic throughput in a machine limited to 16mbyte real storage. The 370 virtual memory architecture had 16bit page-table-entry (mapped virtual address to real address), 12bit real page number, two defined bits, and two undefined bits. The 3033 hack was to prepend the two undefined bits to the 12bit real page number to create a 14bit real page number (addressing up to 64mbit real storage) ... even though there was still only 24bit addressing. The base 370 CCW IDAL was 32bit word ... which allowed for specifying larger than 24bit real addresses ... and was used for I/O into the >16mbyte area. This effectively allowed MVS kernel to have 16mbyte while still having >16mbyte for running applications.
A lot of 3081s ran for quite awhile as 3033 multiprocessors with just the dual-address space mode and the hack for >16mbyte real storage ... w/o actually running 370xa.
However, 3081 hardware was still the FS "hardware" ... starting out with just the 370 microcode and not the 370 microcode extensions for XA. .. after release, 3033 got the hacks for dual-address space mode and >16mbyte real storage ... these were then carried forward into 3081 for quite awhile because of delay in getting mvs/xa out the door and then getting customers to convert from mvs/370 to mvs/xa.
other trivia ... there were cases where application virtual pages
located above the 16mbyte line had to be brought down below the
16mbyte line (for one reason or another). Their original design was to
use IDALs CCW to write the page out to disk and then read it back in
from disk (at a real page location below the 16mbyte line). This was
ridiculous and I provided them with a hack were I stuffed the two
different real page numbers into reserved page table entries and then
did a MVCL to copy the application page from above the line to below
the line (w/o having to resort to I/O). old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006t.html#email800121
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#email810927
The leading edge of the cloud/grid computing ... I got asked to do
4341 benchmark for national lab ... if the price/performance was good enough
.... they were looking at 70 4341s for a (supercomputer) compute
farm. old email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email790220
The issue was I was at sjr ... but was providing a highly enhanced production operating systems to the disk engineering and product test labs for doing anytime, on-demand disk testing. Their alternative was running prescheduled, around the clock, 7x24 single test at a time, stand-alone testing. At one point they had tried MVS ... but it had 15min MTBF in that environment (with single disk testing). I rewrote i/o supervisor to make it bullet proof and never fail.
In any case, the disk labs tended to get #2 or #3 engineering processor model for disk testing ... and I had better access to 4341 than most of the people in the endicott 4341 lab (and so I got asked to do early benchmarks)
old posts about playing disk engineer ... since I was providing them
operating system ... they would increasingly call me in to diagnose
problems ... even when it turned out to be their hardware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 11:27:29 -0400hancock4 writes:
private PBXs started showing up on the market ... one of the makers was rolm (also in san jose) ... which ibm bought in the 80s. folklore is that the ibm group running around doing these things weren't bothering to check financials and they did the ROLM deal the quarter that ROLM went into the red (enormously overpaying).
when the IBM research installed its ROLM box ... some of the people went through it and found all sorts of features ... like it was easily possible to remotely use any phone for remote evesdropping ... with no indication showing at the phone.
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 14:37:28 -0400hancock4 writes:
In the very early 80s, two people I had known and worked with left IBM to do a startup for a 3270 clone controller ... they had a business case to put a whole lot of features in the controller to compensate for the horrible interactive computing human factors in MVS & TSO. However, the advent of IBM/PC as emulated 3270 overtook them ... able to put the features in the IBM/PC rather than in the controller. One of the people then went on to be VP of software development at MIPS (and then when SGI bought MIPS, went to be general manager of the business unit at SUN that included JAVA). The other person then went on to head up the datacenter at ROLM.
When IBM bought ROLM ... one of the first things they did was place an order for Series/1 boxes ... that was more than a year's production of Series/1 boxes. They had been using data general boxes ... and I guess they felt that they might be able to convert over(?).
At the time, one of my projects was HSDT ... doing T1 and faster
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt
since IBM didn't have any standard product supporting T1, I had to work with lots of vendors ... last standard controller product that IBM had supporting T1 was the 2701 ... which at the time was 20yrs old. FSD did have a special bid "zirpel" T1 card for the Series/1 ... so part of my getting funding for HSDT ... I had to show some zirpel T1 operation along side stuff from other vendors. However, the lead time for Series/1 orders was now over a year. I visited ROLM and did some horse trading with the person I knew running the ROLM datacenter ... to get some Series/1 boxes.
One of the issues that I was asked to look at was T1 support in the existing PBX boxes ... at least for testing. Development was done on another platform and it was taking 24hrs elapsed time to transfer a new development test system into a test PBX box ... they were hoping if they got T1 support, they could cut new test system loading down under an hr elapsed time.
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 17:00:36 -0400re:
OpenSSL code beyond repair, claims creator of "LibreSSL" fork
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/openssl-code-beyond-repair-claims-creator-of-libressl-fork/
LibreSSL
http://www.libressl.org/
one of the issues is that there is usually considered that a much higher level of diligence and care is required for something for general use than something that is developed purely for personal use (extreme example is software for "human rated" operations, medical instruments, flight control, etc). this is analogous to my comment that it takes 4-10times the effort taking a well developed and tested application and turning it into something for a service.
for a little drift
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#20 HFT, computer trading
"Flash Boys" ... spends some amount of the book on the russian charged and convicted of "stealing" HFT code from Goldman-Sachs (press at the time something about the code in the wrong hands could wreck havoc on the financial system).
eventually on appeal, the judge throws out the conviction because the statute for charge/conviction didn't even apply to the situation. furthermore, almost all of the "stolen" code ... except for some trivial pieces was open source code where the license required returning the code to open source with any modifications ... instead the defense attorney showed that goldman-sachs was replacing open-source copyright notice with goldman-sachs copyright notice.
there now seems to be some amount of press and blogging that is obfuscation and misdirection (and oldtime "FUD") regarding "Flash Boys".
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 17:43:48 -0400hancock4 writes:
... and had some number of things on chip so it took fewer chips to make
a PC ... and it totally took over the market. all those 286 machines
would then show up for fire sales. old post on the subject
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#47
one of the POK mainframe executives became head of the PC division and was directing the PS2 and OS2 activity. Part of it was reports about PC prices ... and I started posting to internal discussion groups, the unit-1 pricing of PCs from SJMN sunday paper ... showing prices had significantly dropped below what they were claiming in internal reports.
they then contracted with dataquest (before it was bought by gartner) to
do indepth study of the PC market ... also to include video taped several
hour round table discussion involving silicon valley "experts". I knew the
parson at dataquest that was charged with putting it all together and
was asked to be one of silicon valley "experts". I cleared it with my
management ... and dataquest garbled my introduction on the video.
past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#55 Moore law
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004.html#34 Two subjects: 64-bit OS2/eCs, Innotek Products
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#21 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007g.html#81 IBM to the PCM market
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#0 The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#60 more on (the new 40+ yr old) virtualization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#5 Houses
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008o.html#6 Houses
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009b.html#69 Intel's Future is integrated
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010.html#62 How long before Microsoft goes the way of DEC (and in part, IBM)?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#10 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#78 SLIGHTLY OT - Home Computer of the Future (not IBM)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011f.html#47 First 5.25in 1GB drive?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#44 Slackware
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#4 IBM commitment to academia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#20 9th Feb 2014
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#24 IBM sells Intel server business, company is doomed
internal inside IBM, there was frequently repeated scenario where
developement people would order PS2M80 (486) machines with 8514 displays
for real project ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_8514
and when the machines arrive ... various executives and middle management would redirect the machines to their offices as status symbols. They would typically set there with the PROFS memu burning into the 8514 screen ... typically they weren't actually used (other than logon/logoff) ... since their mail was handled by a secretary.
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Complete 360 and 370 systems found Date: 22 Apr 2014 Blog: IBM Historic Computingre:
more topic drift ... I never heard of mvs/xa delays being related to industrial espionage ... all was internal schedules (even when convinced corporate to kill vm370 and got all the people or otherwise mvs/xa wouldn't ship on time).
part of the federal investigations into industrial espionage was that periodic visits of japanese groups to ibm san jose research turned up extensive debriefing when they returned to japan ... with model of the bldg and even low-bandwidth information filling out what projects were going on in which rooms.
at one point i got a call from head hunter to interview for technical
assistant to president of one of the US clone processor companies
(that was selling Japanese clones). It turns out during the interview
they descreetly asked about "811" documents (I don't know how they
found out I might have had a full set ... "811" (aka 3081 370/xa)
documents were "IBM Registered Confidential" ... highest IBM security
... each document was individual numbered and registered with special
security procedures and regular security audits). I made some oblique
reference to complaining that the "IBM employee conduct" manual was
too lenient and I had drafted some stronger provisions. That sort of
did it for the interview. Later in the Federal court case they got
list of all visitors from IBM ... and I had 3hr discussion with FBI
agent about what went on during that particular interview. Part of the
settlement was that the japanese company licenses MVS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MVS#Closely_related_operating_systems
Part of the killing of vm370 product and transfer of all the people to POK was to do VMTOOL ... an internal IBM only virtual machine development tool supporting MVS/XA ... that was never intended to ship to customers. Later when there was some amount of customer difficulty moving from MVS/370 to MVS/XA (3081 not supporting concurrent execution), it was decided to ship the VMTOOL as VM/MA (migration aid) ... not full function vm/370 system.
Then there was some corporate politics with the POK organization
eventually changing their mind and wanting to have VMTOOL enhanced to
be a full-function VM system and released to customers ... as opposed
to Endicott releasing VM370 with 370/XA support. A sysprog in (IBM)
Rochester had done the 370/XA enhancements to VM370 and was running
production ... but the POK politics prevailed and it wasn't allowed to
ship. It took years for the VMTOOL-based VM/XA to be brought up to
equivalent capability and performance of VM370 ... even after it was
shipping to customers. Old email about Rochester sysprog 370/XA
enhancements for vm370 & falling victim to POK politics.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#email860121 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#email860122 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011c.html#email860123 ..
a couple old posts mentioning vm/ma
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012o.html#35 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#17 ..
note earlier, I had written an internal research report about all the things for the I/O supervisor to make it bullet proof and never fail ... including a trivial reference to the MVS 15min MTBF. I got a call from the MVS group about the report, I initially thought they wanted to have me help fix MVS ... it turns out what they wanted to do was get me fired ... or failing that, make my IBM career so unpleasant, I would resign. One possible scenario was that in the wake of FS failure and change in corporate culture (make no waves and sycophancy) ... there was radically increased management of information up the management chain. My report possibly highlighted that not totally accurate information was making it up the management chain and they wanted revenge. I was told that one result of that reference would make sure that I never got a corporate award for the disk engineering work (even though it significantly improved productivity) or anything else.
Note that this is old email about 3380s shipping and FE had 3380 error
regression tests of things expected to see at customer
installation. MVS was still failing in all cases (needing to be
manually re-ipled) and in 2/3rds of the cases there was no indication
of what caused the failure.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#email801015
reference to getting to play disk engineer in bldgs 14&15
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 09:52:32 -0400re:
as i've repeated several times ... one of the big upswings for ibm/pc was the enormous corporate 3270 terminal market ... an ibm/pc was about same price as 3270 terminal ... business justification that already existed for tens of thousands of 3270 terminals could be retargeted to ibm/pc doing 3270 terminal emulation ... and get single screen and keyboard on the desk that also had capability of doing some local computing (w/o needing to come up with a personal computer specific business case).
recent post mentioning 3270 clone controller startup that was going to
try and put features in controller attempting to compensate for horrible
interactive computing human factors of MVS&TSO ... but advent of IBM/PC
with terminal emulation killed that niche.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#24 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
the size of that market attracted software developers as well as clone
builders that could operate in the significant profit margin that ibm
had for the ibm/pc. the clone builders dropping price drove higher
volumes which became snow ball of commoditizing (volumes reducing price
increasing volumes). past post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007m.html#63 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
that quotes article giving PC market share 1976-2004 ... gone 404
but at wayback machine
https://web.archive.org/web/20070528014237/http://www.wowdailynews.com/pegasus/total_share.html
also references version here
Total share: 30 years of personal computer market share figures
http://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/
past posts referencing market share articles
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#0 The Development of the Vital IBM PC in Spite of the Corporate Culture of IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007v.html#76 Why Didn't Digital Catch the Wave?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008r.html#5 What if the computers went back to the '70s too?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#4 What is the protocal for GMT offset in SMTP (e-mail) header
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#56 Steve Jobs passed away
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013n.html#80 'Free Unix!': The world-changing proclamation made30yearsagotoday
past posts mentioning terminal emulation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#emulation
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 10:39:35 -0400hancock4 writes:
This training started to seep into corporate culture as former military officers started to move into corporations. In corporate scenario it becomes only those at the very top know what they are doing and everybody else are replaceable parts.
It has also been used as justification/explanation about reports that ratio of top executive compensation to worker compensation as exploded to 400:1 (after having been 20:1 for long time and 10:1 in much of the rest of the world).
It possibly also contributes to analysis that worker compensation
tracked productivity from ww2 to about 1980 but since then compensation
went flat even as productivity continued on same increase.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html
from this article
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/opinion/sunday/jobs-will-follow-a-strengthening-of-the-middle-class.html
One of Boyd's acolytes wrote a book "Pentagon Wars" that HBO made
into movie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars
it describes lots of pentagon populated by people totally focused on
their own career ... those at the top constantly fabricating things to
make themselves look better and firing underlings that don't support
their climb to the top ... referring to people in pentagon, loc158-59:
Quite often, however, the bizarre behavior--and misbehavior--that I
describe occurred because people were corrupt, incompetent, blindly
ambitious, or a combination of all three.
... snip ..
I've recently drawn somewhat parallel at IBM in the wake of the
Future System failure and change in IBM corporate culture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#27 Complete 360 and 370 systems found
the above is in linkedin discussion started about a huge cache of old 360 & 370 systems have been discovered in a couple warehouses ... they are currently inventorying the contents ... and just starting to post some pictures.
posts mentioning IBM's failued "future system"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
posts & URLs referencing Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html
posts mentioning MICC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex
Spinney was another Boyd acolyte ... reference to his "perpetual
war" them (that supports MICC revenue flow)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#perpetual.war
and "team b" slanted analysis to increase MICC revenue flow
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#team.b
recent posts mentioning the 400:1 ratio and/or the NY Times
article about worker compensation flat since 1980:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#37 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#42 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#105 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#91 IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe cuts as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#63 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#14 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#15 Why IBM Is Tumbling: BRIC Sales Plunge, Total Revenue Lowest Since 2009
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 11:24:01 -0400hancock4 writes:
the linkedin group is closed/members only
they aren't revealing the location just yet ... still doing the inventory and trying to find out who is interested. reference two bldgs, one 10k sqft and one 5k sqft ... crammed full, some places card readers are stacked five high (a little like car junk yard).
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 11:32:01 -0400hancock4 writes:
there has been lot written recently on private-equity (aka LBO) companies are only in it for short 2-3yr flip ... come in buy the company (with loan that is then put on corporate books) ... goose short-term profit w/o regard to long-term ... including firing people and cutting wages ... and then flipping the company. ROI is enormous since they've used very little of their own money up front, they get enormous commissions and fees on the size of the whole deal and then get major piece of the selling price (w/o having to pay off original loan).
private equity posts.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 14:36:02 -0400Boyd was making his comments about corporate culture being contaminated by former military officers steeped in rigid, top-down, command&control about the same time worker compensation started to go flat around 1980
however about the same time saw the rise of LBO ... frequently using
junk bonds and major factor in the S&L crisis ... take-over a company,
plunder it for all it was worth and then flip/unload it ... looking for
purely short-term profit (and oblivious to any long term
considerations), along the way firing workers and cutting the salaries
of the rest. There would essentially be enormous bribes/bonuses for the
top executives to go along.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#31 upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire"
By the early 90s, the industry got such a bad reputation that they
changed the name to private equity (and "junk bonds" became "high
yield bonds"). "The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Is Destroying
Jobs and Killing the American Economy", log63-64:
I soon realized the rapacious leveraged-buyout (LBO) kings of the 1980s
were still around. They had just adopted a new name, now calling
themselves private-equity investors.
... loc465-67:
At about the same time that LBO groups became private-equity firms, junk
bonds were renamed high-yield bonds, and investment banks like
Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, full of former Drexelites, began to sell
them increasingly to mutual funds, money managers, and insurers
... snip ...
As an aside, some amount of what I saw inside IBM during the 80s wasn't
all that different from what Burton descibes in "Pentagon Wars" (and
some of the same kind of people)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars
Then Gerstner resurrecting IBM in the early 90s starting using his
private equity experience on IBM ... including the employee retirement
plan
https://www.amazon.com/Retirement-Heist-Companies-American-ebook/dp/B003QMLC6K
some ibm specific:
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml
from above:
IBM couldn't just pull the plug on the subsidy, because pension law
doesn't allow a company to take away a benefit a person has already
earned or take away a pension right or feature the company has
granted. "So we had to design something different," Sauvigne
said. Enter Louis V. Gerstner Jr., IBM's new president. He'd headed
RJR Nabisco in 1993 when it faced a similar dilemma: how to reduce
pensions and remove the retirement subsidy without obviously violating
the law or provoking an employee backlash. Gerstner and IBM turned to
Watson Wyatt, the same consulting firm that had helped Nabisco solve
its pension problem.
... snip ...
in recent IBMer linkedin discussion somebody commented that IBM had Wyatt involved in some recent changes to retirement plan (something called "Project Waltz") where employees sued and so far, the court has ruled in employees' favor. I've mentioned before, after leaving IBM, Gerstner went back to the private equity industry, becoming head of one of the largest.
boyd posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html
LBO/private equity posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
Gerstner posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
posts referencing pensions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#pensions
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 15:27:33 -0400lots of recent IBM related news
references:
GlobalFoundries Is The Front Runner To Buy IBM Chip Biz
http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh040714-story06.html
To make it plain and simple: IBM made the choice to put financial
engineering ahead of real chip engineering, and now it is suffering the
consequence
... snip ...
Project Waltz reference
IBM was wrong to force UK workers off final salary pensions --
judge UK High Court rules Big Blue breached contract with staff
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/09/ibm_pension_uk_high_court_breach/
references
IBM UK snuffs 'final salary' pensions -- Bow to the 'Productivity
objective'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/07/ibm_final_salary_pension_killed/
and then ... which references some amount of the financial engineering
Big Blue: Stock Buyback Machine On Steroids
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-17/big-blue-stock-buyback-machine-steroids
references Stockman and activity is effectively "mini-LBO" (aka
top executives continue to use practices from private equity industry)
recent reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#1 Why IBM Is Tumbling: BRIC Sales Plunge, Total Revenue Lowest Since 2009
posts mentioning private equity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
recent posts referencing Stockman (& his "Great Deformation")
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#48 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#14 IBM to invest 1.2B into Cloud Data Centers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#25 IBM Asian Revenues Crash, Adjusted Earnings Beat On Tax Rate Fudge; Debt Rises 20% To Fund Stock Buybacks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#48 IBM Dumps Its Server Business On Lenovo For $2.3B
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#79 Shocking news: Execs do what they're paid to do
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#93 Maximizing shareholder value: The Goal that changed corporate America
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#101 Defense Department Needs to Act Like IBM to Save Itself
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#24 IBM sells Intel server business, company is doomed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#54 IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe cuts as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#55 Maximizing shareholder value: The goal that changed corporate America
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#91 IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe cuts as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#75 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 19:23:36 -0400greymausg <maus@mail.com> writes:
Boyd would also point out that the in WW2, the german military was 3% officers while the US military needed 11% growing to nearly 20% for its rigid, top-down, command&control structure ... which may also account for today's extremely bloated, top heavy pentagon.
past posts that Germany had 3/4ths of its military forces deployed
against russia ... by contrast the rest of the allies only had to deal
with 1/4th of the military force.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#10 The Knowledge Economy Two Classes of Workers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#60 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013g.html#77 What Makes collecting sales taxes Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#70 OT: "Highway Patrol" back on TV
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#38 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#70 Royal Pardon For Turing
recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#55 Royal Pardon For Turing
with reference to: "Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Forces, 1901-1940, and the Consequences for World War II" including several things that US thought it learned with people at German military institutions before and after WW1 ... and got wrong ... with US military institutions comparing poorly to German institutions (included west point curriculum also totally unrelated to what the army needed)
also this video of a talk the author gave at (US) first division
museum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7unu0fLYvc
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 20:55:31 -0400Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> writes:
the 11% & growing was from ww2 (compared to german 3% at the time)
recent reference to (current) bloated pentagon including that 20% cut
in flag officers (and their staffs) would save $1B/yr ... $5B over
5yrs ... which would more than offset what they are trying to save by
eliminating a10
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#41 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#24 Tandem Memos
extremely bloated pentagon bureaucracy somewhat separate from issue of overall MICC budget.
Bloated Pentagon budget leaves crying needs underfunded
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2014/01/12/bloated-pentagon-budget-leaves-crying-domestic-needs-underfunded/5HeVbriHAWsFidUiqAnsaI/story.html
The Costs of Having Too Many Generals Are Crippling
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/05/does-the-military-have-too-many-generals/the-costs-of-having-too-many-generals-are-crippling
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From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: IBM Historic computing Date: 24 Apr 2014 Blog: IBM Alumnire:
recent post in the mentioned ibm historic group about a large cache of
old 360&370 systems in old warehouses found and currently being
inventoried ... the specific discussion has had lots of topic drift
wandered off into other topics about old 360s&370s systems ... a
couple of my (long winded, wandering posts)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#21 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#22 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#27 ..
I met John Boyd after the Spinney Time article appeared ... sometimes
behind paywall but lives free at wayback machine
https://web.archive.org/web/20070320170523/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html
also
https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,953733,00.html
and then I would sponsor Boyd's briefings at IBM. Boyd would talk
about the preparation for the front page time article took
18months. Tribute to John by Spinney in USNI
http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1997-07/genghis-john
also here
http://radio-weblogs.com/0107127/stories/2002/12/23/genghisJohnChuckSpinneysBioOfJohnBoyd.html
above refers to when Boyd was instructor at Nellis, he had standing offer to take on any fighter pilot in the world and beat them within 40secs (claims are he never lost)
another of Boyd acolytes wrote "Pentagon Wars" which HBO made into
movie ... detailing some of their experiences during the 80s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars
One of Boyd's biographies talks about him doing stint in charge of
"spook base" (about the same time I was one of the first employees of
BCS, Boeing was working on consolidating its dataprocessing into
Boeing Computer Services) ... it claims "spook base" was $2.5B
windfall for IBM (possibly over $17B in today's dollars, would have
come in very handy about that time; at the time I thought Renton
datacenter was possibly largest in the world ... but it only had
around $300M of IBM 360s). Discussion of "spook base" ... gone 404 but
lives on at wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030212092342/http://home.att.net/~c.jeppeson/igloo_white.html
Boyd would say it had the largest air conditioned building in that part of the world. With some of his acolytes, Boyd is credited with the F15, the F16, the F18, and the A10 ... as well as the battle plan for desert storm. One of the comments was that a major problem with the last decade was Boyd had passed in 1997.
Burton's "Pentagon Wars" includes early reference to people might not
believe the level of corruption and deceit that goes on in the
pentagon (although Eisenhower did warn about it in his goodby speech)
loc158-59:
Quite often, however, the bizarre behavior -- and misbehavior -- that
I describe occurred because people were corrupt, incompetent, blindly
ambitious, or a combination of all three.
... snip ...
For something different, Hugh Laurie (tv actor House) wrote a novel about military-industrial-complex (was published about the time Boyd passed) that includes references to Boyd and the enormous level of corruption in the MIC (or folklore is that Eisenhower's speech was originally going to say military-industrial-congressional complex, but he shortened it at the last minute).
Boyd had a whole lot of additional stores about Pentagon corruption
that don't appear in Burton's book. However, it turned out that I
would have similar stories about IBM internal politics during the same
period covered by "Pentagon Wars". One was that we had been working
with NSF and some of the NSF supercomputer centers and we were suppose
to get $20M to connect them together. Then congress cuts the budget
and some number of other things happened and finally NSF releases an
RFP (NSFNET). Internal politics prevented us from bidding on the
RFP. The director of NSF tries to help, including writingthe company a letter 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO), but that just makes the internal politics
worse (as does comments that what we already have running is at least
5yrs ahead of all RFP responses). During this period, the
communication group internally was spreading a lot of mis-information
that NSFNET could be run over SNA/VTAM. Somebody packages up all the
email mis-information and sends us a copy ... heavily clipped and
redacted to protect the guilty.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email870109
other NSFNET related email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
As regional networks connect to the NSFNET supercomputer centers, it
morphs into the NSFNET backbone and eventually the modern internet
(also the precursor to modern cloud):
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401444/grid-computing/
MICC posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex
NSFNET posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: IBM hopes new chip can turn the tables on Intel Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2014 09:43:07 -0400IBM hopes new chip can turn the tables on Intel; IBM will license new Power 8 chip to other companies for hyperscale systems
Sounds like replay of Somerset/AIM from the early 90s ... the executive
we were reporting to when we were doing HA/CMP went over to head up
Somerset. Past posts mentioning ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
AIM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance
PowerPC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC
past posts mentioning 801, risc, romp, rios, iliad, power, power/pc etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801
also IBM may be selling chip business
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#33 upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire"
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From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2014 10:36:42 -0400hancock4 writes:
connection between the switch and the backend was pair of T1 links (for availability and redundancy). the problem was that the existing backend system had to be taken down for software maintenance ... even once a year, it used up a century of 5-nines outgage budget.
putting ha/cmp systems on the ends of the two redundant T1s ... the existing switch support for retransmit on the separate T1 ... also masks any ha/cmp backend downtime ... including rolling outages for software maintenance.
The hardware fault tolerant vendor then said that they could also do an ha configuration ... but then that negates the justifcation for (cost of) hardware fault tolereant.
whole thing got suspended and back to the drawing board when congress passed legislation that customers could take 1-800 numbers beween service provides.
past posts mentioning ha/cmp
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2014 12:14:12 -0400hancock4 writes:
good question ... we were just told that if they didn't get answer back on one T1 ... they would automatically redrive request on the other T1 ... that masked communication failure ... but would also work to mask any backend redundant system outage.
the existing backend they were using for 1-800 was fairly standard software with expensive fault tolerant hardware (operating system mainteanance was over 30mins elapsed time ... even if done once a year was still a problem).
we were proposing relatively standard hardware replicated for availability ... so there was never more than one system out ... even with software maintenance.
I assumed the switch was either replicated systems so they could do rolling software updates with small outages ... or a blazingly fast hot-swap software (for upgrades and possible downgrades).
quick search on the web turns up a few switch available articles but nothing specific on software maintenance.
past ha/cmp support
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
turns out the fault tolerant backend bellcore was using for the 1-800
also had a deal with IBM to sell it under IBM brand and model number.
The IBM product manager kept sucking us in to various strategy things
because they really wanted an IBM solution. the product manager also got
me to write a section for the IBM corporate continuous strategy document
... but it got pulled because Rochester (as/400) and POK (es/9000)
complained that they couldn't meet the objectives (I guess it was
alright if non-ibm product could meet the objective but the internal
politics were such that they didn't want a real IBM competitor). some
past posts about coining marketing terms geographic survivability,
disaster survivability and/or writing the continuous availability
section
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available
That may have also played a factor in less than a month
after this meeting in Ellison's conference room (jan1992)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
the scale-up part was transferred, announced as supercomputer (for
technical, scientific, numeric intensive only) and we were told we
couldn't work on anything with more than four processors.
17Feb1992 press reference to the supercomputer announce
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1
and then another later in the spring 11May1992
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: IBM 360/370 hardware unearthed Date: 24 Apr 2014 Blog: IBM Alumnisome topic drift in thread ... Old 4341 email
I worked with disk engineers testing engineering 4341 ... and worked
with the endicott benchmark people because i had better access to 4341
than they did. posts getting to play disk engineer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk
One benchmark was for national lab compute farm of 70 4341s. Large numbers of 4341s in datacenter was the leading edge of grid&cloud computing. Also large corporate customers were ordering hundreds of vm/4341s at a time for installation out in departmental supply and conference rooms (inside ibm conference rooms became scarce resource because of so many departmenal vm/4341s) ... the leading edge of the coming distributed computing tsunami .
High-end datacenter disks were CKD 3380s ... however the low &
mid-range disks were 3310 & 3370 FBA (non-ckd, fixed-block
architecture). Lack of FBA support locked MVS out of the exploding
distributed computing market. Eventually they came out with 3375
... CKD architecture simulated on 3370 FBA to somewhat enable MVS
entry into the market. However, frequently a MVS system required
dozens of staff for care and feeding ... which couldn't scale to
hundreds of systems out in departmental locations. Note that the
current MVS descendant still doesn't have FBA support even though real
CKD disks haven't been built for decades (being simulated on industry
standard fixed-block disks). posts CKD DASD, multi-track search
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#dasd
Note when 4341s first came out, a datacenter cluster of 4341 was more processing than 3033, more memory than 3033, more i/o capacity of 3033, significantly lower cost and significantly lower environmental footprint. At one point, to counter the competition w/3033, the head of POK got the allocation of a critical 4341 manufacturing component cut in half.
other recent "IBM Alumni" post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#36 IBM Historic computing
semi-related discussion in "IBM Historic Computing" group on the
360/370 system find ... posts with lots of topic drift
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#21 Complete 360 and 370 systems found
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#22 Complete 360 and 370 systems found
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#27 Complete 360 and 370 systems found
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: System Response Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2014 09:16:30 -0400google+
What Professional Buyside Traders Really Think Of HFT
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-24/what-professional-buyside-traders-really-think-hft
from above:
The typical human has a response time of about 0.25 seconds, or 250
milliseconds. That's the time it takes us to process a stimulus and
generate a response. Light tends to generate faster responses than
sound, and world-class athletes can have quicker reflexes than the
average population. Sprinters at the Beijing Olympics logged an average
189 millisecond response time to the starter's gun, and a few could get
down to 109-121 milliseconds.
... snip ...
Back in 70s & early 80s, there were IBM studies of system response time
and human threshold perception of "immediate" ... it varied between .10
& .25. A lot of POK favorite son operating systems were well over a
second. Some systems were .25 and I was doing systems that were .11. One
of the issue was the best terminal hardware was .086 ... which then
required system response of no more of .16 in order to meet human
perceived .25sec. old post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#19 3270 protocol
which gives old comparison between 3272/3277 at .086 hardware response and 3274/3278 had best case .283secs, but varied, frequently more like .53secs
we had complained to the 3274 product manager ... and eventually they
came back and said that 3274/3278 wasn't designed for interactive
computing ... but data entry (aka electronic keypunch). recent posts
mentioning clone controller effort trying to address some interactive
computing human factors:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#24 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#28 upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire"
some recent posts mentioning HFT:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#54 Pensions, was Re: Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#82 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#89 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#28 Royal Pardon for credit unions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#29 Royal Pardon for credit unions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#43 Royal Pardon for credit unions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#56 Royal Pardon for credit unions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#65 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#7 N.Y. Barclays Libor Traders Said to Face U.K. Charges
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#93 New York seeks curbs on high-frequency trading
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#18 FBI Investigates High-Speed Trading
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#60 FBI Investigates High-Speed Trading
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#72 Three Expensive Milliseconds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#3 Three Expensive Milliseconds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#20 HFT, computer trading
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#25 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
other past posts mentioning 3272 versus 3274:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#23 CP spooling & programming technology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/99.html#193 Back to the original mainframe model?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#63 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#66 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000c.html#67 Does the word "mainframe" still have a meaning?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001k.html#30 3270 protocol
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#2 IBM 327x terminals and controllers (was Re: Itanium2 power
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002k.html#6 IBM 327x terminals and controllers (was Re: Itanium2 power
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003c.html#69 OT: One for the historians - 360/91
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003e.html#43 IBM 3174
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#15 Mainframe Tape Drive Usage Metrics
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003i.html#30 A Dark Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003k.html#20 What is timesharing, anyway?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003o.html#14 When nerds were nerds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#12 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005r.html#28 Intel strikes back with a parallel x86 design
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005u.html#22 Channel Distances
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006q.html#10 what's the difference between LF(Line Fee) and NL (New line) ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006s.html#42 Ranking of non-IBM mainframe builders?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007h.html#39 sizeof() was: The Perfect Computer - 36 bits?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#7 IBM System/3 & 3277-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007r.html#10 IBM System/3 & 3277-1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007t.html#40 Why isn't OMVS command integrated with ISPF?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008h.html#9 3277 terminals and emulators
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009e.html#19 Architectural Diversity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009h.html#42 Book on Poughkeepsie
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#60 ISPF Counter
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#50 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#53 The 50th Anniversary of the Legendary IBM 1401
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#72 Now is time for banks to replace core system according to Accenture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#31 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010d.html#36 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010m.html#80 3270 Emulator Software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010o.html#57 So why doesn't the mainstream IT press seem to get the IBM mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#94 coax (3174) throughput
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#41 My first mainframe experience
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011g.html#43 My first mainframe experience
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011o.html#20 3270 archaeology
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#19 Deja Cloud?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#84 Is there an SPF setting to turn CAPS ON like keyboard key?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#12 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#13 From Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#19 Writing article on telework/telecommuting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012e.html#87 Just for a laugh... How to spot an old IBMer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012i.html#74 HELP WITH PCOM - PASTE OPTION NOT WORKING CORRECTLY
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#3 printer history Languages influenced by PL/1
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#15 cp67, vm370, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#37 Why File transfer through TSO IND$FILE is slower than TCP/IP FTP ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#61 Should you support or abandon the 3270 as a User Interface?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#1 3270 response & channel throughput
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#12 HCF [was Re: AMC proposes 1980s computer TV series "Halt &Catch Fire"]
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013e.html#66 Sequence Numbrs (was 32760?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013g.html#14 Tech Time Warp of the Week: The 50-Pound Portable PC, 1977
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013g.html#17 Tech Time Warp of the Week: The 50-Pound Portable PC, 1977
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013g.html#21 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#89 spacewar
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#25 Teletypewriter Model 33
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#5 Voyager 1 just left the solar system using less computing powerthan your iP
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2014 09:31:44 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
doesn't specifically all out PE as the dominate problem
The Stealthy, Ugly Growth of Corporatized Medicine
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/04/stealthy-ugly-growth-corporatized-medicine.html
but it is major factor underlying the "coporatized medicine" theme where PE attempts to loot/plunder the operation and then unload when they are finished with it.
posts mentioning private equity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
other recent posts referencing theme of PE looting health industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#48 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#17 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#48 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#58 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#100 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#106 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#107 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#108 Royal Pardon For Turing
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2014 10:57:00 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
recent item on the financial engineering (and stock buybacks)
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2160023-why-ibm-continues-to-lose-its-luster
other recent posts mentioning IBM & stock buybacks:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#48 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#14 IBM to invest 1.2B into Cloud Data Centers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#16 IBM to invest 1.2B into Cloud Data Centers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#25 IBM Asian Revenues Crash, Adjusted Earnings Beat On Tax Rate Fudge; Debt Rises 20% To Fund Stock Buybacks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#34 IBM sells x86 server business to Lenovo (was Levono)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#48 IBM Dumps Its Server Business On Lenovo For $2.3B
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#79 Shocking news: Execs do what they're paid to do
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#93 Maximizing shareholder value: The Goal that changed corporate America
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#101 Defense Department Needs to Act Like IBM to Save Itself
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#104 Defense Department Needs to Act Like IBM to Save Itself
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#24 IBM sells Intel server business, company is doomed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#54 IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe cuts as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#55 Maximizing shareholder value: The goal that changed corporate America
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#91 IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe cuts as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#75 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#77 Why IBM Is Tumbling: BRIC Sales Plunge, Total Revenue Lowest Since 2009
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#1 Why IBM Is Tumbling: BRIC Sales Plunge, Total Revenue Lowest Since 2009
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: System Response Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2014 13:59:46 -0400"Charlie Gibbs" <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
from ibm jargon:
bad response - n. A delay in the response time to a trivial request of
a computer that is longer than two tenths of one second. In the 1970s,
IBM 3277 display terminals attached to quite small System/360 machines
could service up to 19 interruptions every second from a user I
measured it myself. Today, this kind of response time is considered
impossible or unachievable, even though work by Doherty, Thadhani, and
others has shown that human productivity and satisfaction are almost
linearly inversely proportional to computer response time. It is hoped
(but not expected) that the definition of Bad Response will drop below
one tenth of a second by 1990.
... snip ...
Doherty was in YKT ... YKT had claim best (vm370-based) in the company with .25secs. Thadhani was in san jose where I was doing .11secs.
I've mentioned before getting sucked into doing channel extender support for STL in 1980 ... they were bursting at the seams and moving 300 people from the IMS group to offsite bldg with service back to the STL datacenter. The group had tried "remote" 3270 but found in totally unacceptable.
The channel extender work put local channel attach controllers at the
remote bldg ... and part of the support was to download mainframe
channel programs to channel emulator at the remote bldg ... to help mask
the latency with the enormous amount of channel program protocol chatter
that goes on. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#channel.extender
in 1988 I get asked to help LLNL standardize some serial stuff they have
... which morphs into fibre-channel standard ... part of the standard
includes i/o programs download to remote end as part of latency
compensation. later some POK channel engineers become involved and
define an enormous heavy-weight protocol on FCS that drastically
cuts the native i/o throughput ... that eventually morphs into
FICON
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#ficon
past refs to "bad response"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011d.html#53 3270 Terminal
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011p.html#84 Is there an SPF setting to turn CAPS ON like keyboard key?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#12 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#13 From Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012.html#15 Who originated the phrase "user-friendly"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#2 The PC industry is heading for collapse
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012d.html#19 Writing article on telework/telecommuting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#15 cp67, vm370, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012m.html#37 Why File transfer through TSO IND$FILE is slower than TCP/IP FTP ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012n.html#37 PDP-10 and Vax, was System/360--50 years--the future?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012p.html#1 3270 response & channel throughput
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#55 Dualcase vs monocase. Was: Article for the boss
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: IBM hopes new chip can turn the tables on Intel Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2014 14:05:01 -0400Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
somebody earlier today (in a different forum) claimed about time Apple switched to Intel ... not only wasn't IBM not doing low-power power/pc for laptops ... but also Motorola dropped out and there was no 2nd source (& competition).
Lots has been written that some of major advances and price/performance of i86 has come because of competition between amd & intel.
power/pc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC
Apple's transition to Intel processors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Intel_processors
past posts mentioning 801, risc, romp, rios, iliad, power, power/pc etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: The Pentagon Wars Date: 26 Apr 2014 Blog: FacebookThe Pentagon Wars
Burton goes into some amount of additional details about failures of
Desert Storm and allowing the Republican Guard to escape ... besides
the M1s being tightly tethered to supply lines ... enormous fuel
consumption and frequent maintenance. He has Franks obsessed with
synchronizing the advance of all forces across a broad front ... any
glitch at any place stops progress across the whole front ... then
Schwarzkopf has to hold back other forces to correspond with lack of
Franks's progress. loc5361-62
Because of Franks's plodding progress, Schwarzkopf was forced to order
McCaffrey to slow down and restrain his rate of advance for two days
because he was getting too far out in front of Franks.
... snip ...
To contrast Franks's obsession with synchronization, Burton would
contrast loc5248-49:
"You synchronize watches, not people," Boyd would say over and
over. He argued that if people must synchronize their actions, then
their initiative and agility are stifled,
... snip ...
In Boyd's briefings he would emphasize Guderian's blitzkrieg (nearly exact opposite of Franks's synchronized "triple-division fist") and Verbal Orders Only to promote agility and initiative.
It turns out that computers have been fighting something similar ... having synchronized end-to-end operation increasingly major throughput limitation as things get faster and faster. All sorts of things trying to compensate for latency bottlenecks ... for instance it is a major driver behind multiple cores and algorithms that attempt to minimize synchronization.
I've recently done a lot of pontification about IBM mainframe FICON
channel/IO operation. In 1980 I was asked to do support for
channel-extender (IBM mainframe I/O implementation for datacenter that
operated end-to-end synchronized half-duplex) that would go to offsite
buildings. In the channel-extender operation it ran asynchronous
dual-simplex end-to-end and only simulated end-to-end synchronized
half-duplex at the end-points). posts mentioning channel extender
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#channel.extender
In 1988 I was asked to help LLNL standardize some serial technology
they had ... which turns into fibre-channel standard (including
high-throughput asynchronous dual-simplex operation ... with minimal
synchronization at end-point). Later some IBM channel engineers become
involved and define (emulation of conventional mainframe channel
paradigm as) enormously heavy weight protocol on top of FCS (that
radically cuts native throughput) that is eventually released as
FICON. Recently IBM had a peak I/O mainframe benchmark that reaches 2M
IOPS (input/output operations per second) using 104 FICON (protocol
layered on top of 104 FCS). About the same time there was an
announcement that claims over a million (native) IOPS for a single FCS
(two such FCS have higher native throughput than 104 FCS running FICON
protocol). posts mentioning FICON
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#ficon
posts mentioning Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html
Burton also discusses success of A10 as tank killer in desert
storm. The later GAO study of Iraqi tank kills was possibly motivated
by AF attempting to bound the A10 success. The GAO study did come up
with significant number of Iraqi tank kills by A10s, F15s, F16s, and
B52s ... in the air campaign before the ground war started ... also
referencing Iraqis were walking away from their tanks because they
turned out to be sitting ducks ... which may be significant factor in
the ground forces later claims of significant tank kills (there was
nobody home).
http://www.gao.gov/products/NSIAD-97-134
recent posts mentioning Abrams/M1 and/or Iraqis walking
away from their tanks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#42 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#61 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#64 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#79 Army Modernization Is Melting Down
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#36 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#83 11 Years to Catch Up with Seymour
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#2 Royal Pardon For Turing
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Barbarians at the Gate Date: 26 Apr 2014 Blog: FacebookBarbarians at the Gate
Gerstner wins competition to be next CEO of AMEX, AMEX is then in
competition with KKR for LBO take-over of RJR and KKR wins. KKR runs
into some trouble and hires Gerstner way to fix it ... using
private-equity techniques (LBO had used junk bonds in the 80s for
take-over and caused quite a bit of the S&L mess, by 90s the
industry has such bad reputation that they changed the name to
private-equity and junk bonds become high yield bonds). The IBM board
then hires Gerstner to do some of the same stuff to IBM. Then Gerstner
goes to head up another large private-equity company after leaving
IBM. Some detailed here
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml
for the fun of if (fall 2008) Barbarians at the Gate 2.0 -- Will
private equity behave any better in this downturn?
http://www.economist.com/node/12499201
... and no it won't
posts mentioning gerstner
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
posts referencing pensions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#pensions
posts mentioning private equity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: IBM hopes new chip can turn the tables on Intel Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2014 16:53:03 -0400Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> writes:
some other background
Apple's transition to Intel processors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Intel_processors
Stockman has characterized IBM as stock buyback on steroids ... lots of
private-equity industry techniques, cutting costs and reducing expenses
... including long-term steady decline in R&D spending (recent
post with quote from stockman's "Great Deformation")
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#91 IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe cuts as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
a few other recent Stockman references
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#75 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#1 Why IBM Is Tumbling: BRIC Sales Plunge, Total Revenue Lowest Since 2009
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#33 upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire"
other recent analysis here
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/big-blue-stock-buy-back-machine-on-steriods/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-17/big-blue-stock-buyback-machine-steroids
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2160023-why-ibm-continues-to-lose-its-luster
and slightly earlier
https://web.archive.org/web/20140623003038/http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-21/ibm-asian-revenues-crash-adjusted-earnings-beat-tax-rate-fudge-debt-rises-20-fund-st
and another way of looking
Barbarians at the Gate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate_%28film%29
Gerstner wins competition to be next CEO of AMEX, AMEX is then in
competition with KKR for LBO take-over of RJR and KKR wins. KKR runs
into some trouble and hires Gerstner way to fix it ... using
private-equity techniques (LBO had used junk bonds in the 80s for
take-over and caused quite a bit of the S&L mess, by 90s the
industry has such bad reputation that they changed the name to
private-equity and junk bonds become high yield bonds). The IBM board
then hires Gerstner to do some of the same stuff to IBM. Then Gerstner
goes to head up another large private-equity company after leaving
IBM. Some detailed here
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml
for the fun of if (fall 2008) Barbarians at the Gate 2.0 -- Will
private equity behave any better in this downturn?
http://www.economist.com/node/12499201
... and no it won't
posts mentioning gerstner
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
posts referencing pensions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#pensions
posts mentioning private equity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler) Subject: Re: Beyond the EC12 Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: 26 Apr 2014 13:43:44 -0700aledlhughes@AOL.COM (Aled Hughes) writes:
this account has 3081 (& 3033) using warmed over FS technology ... both
started off Q&D efforts to get stuff back in the 370 product pipelines
(after demise of FS ... FS was completely different than 370 and was
going to completely replace it ... 370 efforts were being killed off
during the FS period ... and the lack of 370 products during the period
is credited with clone processors getting market foothold).
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm
posts mentioning FS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
The initial 3081D was supposedly two 5mip processors but some benchmarks had it slower than 3033 (at around 4-4.5mips). Doubling cache for 3081K then supposedly was two 7mip processors ... and some benchmarks had it about same as 3033.
3081 was initially going to be multiprocessor only ... but TPF (renamed airline congrol program) didn't have multiprocessor support and there was concern that the whole TPF customer base would migrate to clone vendors (which continued to ship newer, faster uniprocessors). Initial response was some very unnatural things done to vm370 for customized TPF running in virtual machine on 3081 (but significantly impacting vm370 throughput for all other customers).
They eventually decide to come out with single processor 3083 ... part of the problem was simply removing the 2nd 3081 processor ... was it was in the middle of the box ... which would have made the box dangerously top heavy ... so they had to remove the top processor and rewire the box for the only processor in the middle of the box.
Also the latency and throughput of the I/O microcode in the 3081 was really poor ... and TPF environments tended to be very I/O intensive ... as a result there were also customized I/O microcode loads for 3083 TPF environments (that attempted to compensate/mask its otherwise poor performance characteristics).
The other issue is long time POK 370s had 10-15% hardware multiprocessor penalty ... processor clock was slowed down 10-15% (compared to single processor machine) to allow for cross-cache synchronization in two-processor system. In theory initial 3083 processor should have gotten a 10-15% processor boost (over 3081), but it continued to run the processor clock at 3081 speed. Lots of difficulty going to 3084 because each processor cache had to deal with three other caches instead of only one other cache. For 3084, MVS & VM370 got a lot of storage allocation work, kernel storage was change to multiple of cache-line size and aligned on cache boundaries (so didn't have two different pieces of storage occupying same cache line) ... which is claimed to increased overall performance by 5-6% (for 4-way operation).
some past 3083 posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#38 MVCIN instruction
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009l.html#65 ACP, One of the Oldest Open Source Apps
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010n.html#16 Sabre Talk Information?
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler) Subject: Re: Beyond the EC12 Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: 26 Apr 2014 21:10:31scott_j_ford@YAHOO.COM (Scott Ford) writes:
4341 was being done in Endicott, maybe thinking about (slower) 4331
that was being done in Europe (Boeblingen) on 4361 (4331 follow-on)
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PP4331.html
Date: 08/26/82 12:00:34
From: wheeler
to be fair, Endicott has a faster 4341mp that they won't get to
announce. POK has strapped back a 3081 to create a slowdown'ed 3083
and I expect that Endicott is now under POK's thumb, they will not be
allowed to do anything more in that area ... 4341 frame was engineered
to hold two CPUs and 16meg of 32k OEM chips (in case IBM tried to
screw them on deliveries of IBM 64k chips). The E7 would only be a
little slower than the 3083. Also it is not clear from some of the
high I/O benchmark reports whether or not the 3081 technology with
high I/O rates & high task switch rates (lots of cycle stealing &
lower cache hit ratios) is faster than a 3033.
... snip ... top of post, old email index
other past 4300 email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx
3033 was by POK 168 group ... mapping 168 logic to 20% faster chips
from FS, at the same time 3081 was being done by different group
As soon as 3033 is out the door, that group starts on 3090 (in
parallel with the 308x efforts).
I've mentioned before cluster of (original) 4341 had more aggregate
processing power than 3033, more aggregate memory than 3033, more
aggregate I/O than 3033, lower cost than 3033, and much lower space &
environmental footprint than 3033. At one point, head of POK getting
allocation of critical 4341 manufacturing component cut in half (as
way of dealing with 4341 competition). With minor tweak, 4341 channels
handle datastreaming 3mbytes/sec. By the time, 3083 is coming out the
door, Endicott has faster 4341.
3083
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PP3083.html
3081
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PP3081.html
3081
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3081
recent slightly related 370xa/3081 folklore ... or how I got to spend
3hrs being interviewed by FBI agent (recent linkedin discussion about
two bldgs crammed full of old 360&370 systems have been found)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#27 Complete 360 and 370 systems found
308x channels are slow and have lots of issues:
Date: 09/17/82 10:40:29
From: wheeler
Talking to a GPD engineer he says that IBM has not technical talent to
come out with another control unit. As an example, he said that when
he joined the group out here, there were at least 10-12 people in his
area alone that understood the channel interface ... he thinks that
there might be one such person now in the whole GPD division ... the
rest have left the company. I've heard what sounds like contigency
projects on the east coast with channel development that completely
bypass control units and connects directly to drives. .... I was in
meetings all day yesterday, but one time I stopped by my office two
people down the hall were talking about head crash on 3380 and now
might be a good time to sell all your IBM stock. SJRLVM1 took head
crash on customer ship level of 3380s yesterday and they replaced the
HDAs last night in the box. ...
Performance numbers for the 3084 seem to have some liberties. 4-way
should have three times the performance interferance that a 2-way
(cache invalidation signals from 3 other processors instead of
one). They cheat with the 3083 versis 3081. for example, on a 158ap,
running a UP generated system ... the processor runs 10% slower if the
switch on the machine is in AP-mode rather than UP-mode (additional
delay in each machine cycle just to listen for cache invalidation
signals from the other processor ... this is w/o the other processor
even executing anything generating storage alterations & cache
invalidation signals). For 3083 the machine cycle invalidation
listening delay was left in the machine. I've heard that the 3084
numbers are somewhat selected benchmarks that do minimal storage
alterations ... extensive storage alteration programs can have
disastrous effects on 3084 performance. ... I've been told that almost
every control unit that has attached to a 308x has had to undergo
hardware ECs ... apparently it was easier for every control unit
hardware group in the company (even on machines no longer with
development group people available) to resolve the problems than for
the 308x channels. Also did you see the message that ACP runs 20%
slower on a 3081d than on a 3033. On a 3081k, ACP runs 5% faster than
a 3033. POK is started a special 3081k CPU program where the 3081s
coming down the line will be tested to see if they can run with their
clock cranked down. If they pass, they will be special high
performance 3081Ks which run slightly faster than normal 3081ks.
... snip ... top of post, old email index
Note that there was some early 3380 quality problems with "sticktion" that required crash effort to resolve.
There was problem in the 70s with lots of senior disk engineers (that
understood the channel interface) leaving for startups. That was also
the explanation that they gave me about increasingly insisting that I
sit in on conference calls with POK channel engineers ... another one
of the ways I was being ask to play disk engineer ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler) Subject: Re: Beyond the EC12 Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: 27 Apr 2014 10:14:45 -0700re:
for additional 4341 drift ... old post in (linkedin) IBM Historic
Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#46 From The Annals of Release No Software Before Its Time
also has an old, different email from 26Aug1982 on 4341
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#email820826
with more details about clusters of 4341s beating 3033.
other old 4300 related email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#43xx
and some I/O topic drift (3033/3081 compared to 4341) ... i've
periodically referenced FICON and how FICON is a enormously heavy-weight
protocol layered on fibre-channel standard that drastically reduces
native FCS throughput ... z196 peak i/o benchmark getting 2M IOPS with
104 FICON (layered on top of 104 FCS) about same time as claim of single FCS
for e5-2600 getting over million IOPS (two such FCS tops 104 FICON).
posts mentioning FICON
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#ficon
in 1980 I had gotten roped into doing channel-extender for STL that was
moving 300 people from IMS group to offsite bldg with service back to
STL datacenter. The support downloaded channel programs to the remote
end and ran the extender asynchronous full-duplex ... with only
simulation of half-duplex synchronous at the end-points ... reducing the
enormous amount of channel protocol chatter latency and significantly
increasing throughput ... then in 1988 I was asked to help LLNL
standardize some serial stuff they had ... which quickly becomes
fibre-channel standard. posts mentioning channel-extender
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#channel.extender
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: IBM hopes new chip can turn the tables on Intel Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2014 20:18:32 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
recent PE news
PE Firms' Dividend 'Epidemic' Intensifies Junk-Debt Alarm
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-22/dividend-deal-epidemic-intensifying-junk-debt-alarm.html
This Is Crazy! Current Leveraged Recap Binge Is Clone Of 2007 Mania
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-27/crazy-current-leveraged-recap-binge-clone-2007-mania
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: IBM hopes new chip can turn the tables on Intel Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2014 09:36:53 -0400re:
RISC started out having significant performance advantage over i86 ... pioneering lots of throughput technologies ... however, i86 for the past several generations have migrated to RISC cores with hardware layer that translates i86 instructions into risc micro-ops ... largerly negating the differences.
Large cloud megadatacenters have been driving commoditizing i86 server chips (a large megadatacenter having hundreds of thousands of system) ... there even have been reports that i86 manufacturers are shipping more server chips to mega datacenters than to brand name server vendors ... for some time cloud megadatacenter claim they are assembling their own systems for 1/3rd the price of brand name vendors ... and some of the server vendors starting to do "white box" assemblies for cloud operations (at significantly below list price) ... all likely contributing to motivation for IBM to unload its i86 server business.
The radical drop in i86 system costs for cloud megadatacenters has contributed to their being on bleeding edge of green technologies (as power&cooling start to dominate their costs).
The migration of lots of computing to large cloud operations is not only impacting i86 server business but starting to impact other server business (including risc and mainframes). However there can be radical gap in price/performance .... system price/BIPS (processing power) for i86 is now possibly getting down around $1/BIPS ... compared to something like $350,000/BIPS for a max. configured (mainframe) z196 system (with 80 processors).
The radical drop in system price also allow them to provide significant provisioning for "on-demand" operation ... processing power several times avg. use but idle standby for immediate use (also they have put significant pressure on chip builders to have power/cooling requirements drop to zero when idle).
There is some movement of cloud operators to ARM chips ... while ARM chips don't have peak processing power comparable to RISC & i86 ... they can have lower power&cooling per BIPS (which is increasingly becoming major consideration).
recent posts mentioning cloud megadatacenters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#23 Scary Sysprogs and educating those 'kids'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#94 Santa has a Mainframe!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#97 Santa has a Mainframe!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#4 IBM Plans Big Spending for the Cloud ($1.2B)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#27 IBM sells x86 server business to Levono
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#72 How many EBCDIC machines are still around?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#22 US Federal Reserve pushes ahead with Faster Payments planning
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#108 The IBM Strategy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#4 Can the mainframe remain relevant in the cloud and mobile era?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#8 The IBM Strategy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#12 The IBM Strategy
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: IBM Sales Fall Again, Pressuring Rometty's Profit Goal Date: 28 Apr 2014 Blog: IBMersIBM Sales Fall Again, Pressuring Rometty's Profit Goal
Stockman has characterized IBM as stock buyback on steroids ... lots of private-equity industry techniques, cutting costs and reducing expenses ... including long-term steady decline in R&D spending
other recent analysis here
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/big-blue-stock-buy-back-machine-on-steriods/ ...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-17/big-blue-stock-buyback-machine-steroids ...
and slightly earlier
https://web.archive.org/web/20140623003038/http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-21/ibm-asian-revenues-crash-adjusted-earnings-beat-tax-rate-fudge-debt-rises-20-fund-st
and another way of looking
Barbarians at the Gate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate_%28film%29
Gerstner wins competition to be next CEO of AMEX, AMEX is then in
competition with KKR for LBO take-over of RJR and KKR wins. KKR runs
into some trouble and hires Gerstner way to fix it ... using
private-equity techniques (LBO had used junk bonds in the 80s for
take-over and caused quite a bit of the S&L mess, by 90s the industry
has such bad reputation that they changed the name to private-equity
and junk bonds become high yield bonds). The IBM board then hires
Gerstner to do some of the same stuff to IBM. Then Gerstner goes to
head up another large private-equity company after leaving IBM. Some
detailed here
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml
for the fun of if (fall 2008) Barbarians at the Gate 2.0 -- Will
private equity behave any better in this downturn?
http://www.economist.com/node/12499201
Besides Stockman's treatment of IBM (in the "Great Deformation") there
is
https://www.amazon.com/Who-Stole-American-Dream-ebook/dp/B007MEWAX2/
which has some amount to say about IBM including quotes from former IBM VP and head of research.
"The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America"
pg464/loc9995-10000:
IBM was not the born-again growth machine trumpeted by the mob of Wall
Street momo traders. It was actually a stock buyback contraption on
steroids. During the five years ending in fiscal 2011, the company
spent a staggering $67 billion repurchasing its own shares, a figure
that was equal to 100 percent of its net income.
pg465/10014-17:
Total shareholder distributions, including dividends, amounted to $82
billion, or 122 percent, of net income over this five-year
period. Likewise, during the last five years IBM spent less on capital
investment than its depreciation and amortization charges, and also
shrank its constant dollar spending for research and development by
nearly 2 percent annually.
... snip ...
New IBM Buyback Plan Is For Over 10 Percent Of Its Stock
http://247wallst.com/technology-3/2013/10/29/new-ibm-buyback-plan-is-for-over-10-percent-of-its-stock/
from above:
The company has represented that its dividends and share repurchases
have come to a total of over $159 billion since 2000.
... snip ...
IBM Asian Revenues Crash, Adjusted Earnings Beat On Tax Rate Fudge;
Debt Rises 20% To Fund Stock Buybacks
https://web.archive.org/web/20140623003038/http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-21/ibm-asian-revenues-crash-adjusted-earnings-beat-tax-rate-fudge-debt-rises-20-fund-st
Stockman also has stock buybacks as mini-LBO,
posts mentioning gerstner
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
posts referencing pensions
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#pensions
posts mentioning private equity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
Part of the issue is the downturn of mainframe business in the late 80s. Top executives were predicting that IBM revenue was going to double ... mostly based on mainframe products and there was massive internal building program to double manufacturing capacity of mainframe products.
Late 80s, a senior disk engineer got a talk scheduled at annual, internal, world-wide communication group conference supposedly on 3174 performance ... however he started the talk with the statement that the communication group was going to be responsible for the demise of the disk division. The issue was that the communication group had stranglehold on mainframe datacenters with its corporate strategic ownership of everything that cross the datacenter walls; fighting off distributed computing and client/server trying to preserve its dumb terminal paradigm and install base. The disk division was seeing data fleeing the mainframe to more distributed computing friendly platforms with drop in disk sales. It had come up with a number of solutions to correct the problem, but they were all being vetoed by the communication group.
posts mentioning terminal emulation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal
A few years later, the company goes into the red ... the stranglehold on the datacenter wasn't just resulting in downturn in disk sales.
GlobalFoundries Is The Front Runner To Buy IBM Chip Biz
http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh040714-story06.html
from above:
To make it plain and simple: IBM made the choice to put financial
engineering ahead of real chip engineering, and now it is suffering
the consequence
... snip ...
with ibm going into the red, there is plan to breakup the company
... old 28Dec1992, "13 baby blue" breakup article (sometimes behind
paywall, but lives free at wayback machine):
https://web.archive.org/web/20101120231857/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977353,00.html
we had left the company by that time (part of a product we had been developing got transferred and announced out of another organization and we were told we couldn't work on that technology any more). In the breakup period, we heard lots of complaints from former co-workers that top management wasn't paying attention to running the company but were playing with the books. Then somewhere in the bowels of Armonk we get a call asking if we could help inventory MOUs (inter-division agreements where one division can piggy-back on supplier contract out of another division ... which were not going to be in different divisions). Gerstner is brought in and the breakup is reversed before we get started on MOU inventory. However somebody does relate to us the purpose of all the book fiddling, primarily moving expenses from the following year into the year in red. Executives didn't get bonus for year in red (no difference on how far in the red), but the way the executive bonus plan was written, the book fiddling showed minor profit for the following year and they supposedly get bonuses more than twice as large as any previous paid (basically they come out ahead for taking the company into the red).
for other historical data point ... demise of ACS-360
https://people.computing.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.html
comment towards the bottom, ACS canceled because management was afraid that ACS would advance state-of-the-art too fast and they would loose control of the market ... also describes features that show up more than 20yrs later in es/9000.
note from Ferguson/Morris Computer Wars (effect of Future System
failure):
... and perhaps most damaging, the old culture under Watson Snr and Jr
of free and vigorous debate was replaced with sycophancy and make no
waves under Opel and Akers. It's claimed that thereafter, IBM lived in
the shadow of defeat
... and:
But because of the heavy investment of face by the top management, F/S
took years to kill, although its wrongheadedness was obvious from the
very outset. "For the first time, during F/S, outspoken criticism
became politically dangerous," recalls a former top executive.
... snip ...
From IBM senior executive: "The rise and fall of IBM" (about
motivation for FS being countermeasure to clone controllers):
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm
from above:
IBM tried to react by launching a major project called the 'Future
System' (FS) in the early 1970's. The idea was to get so far ahead
that the competition would never be able to keep up, and to have such
a high level of integration that it would be impossible for
competitors to follow a compatible niche strategy.
... snip ...
Note FS was going to completely replace 370 and 370 products efforts
were being killed off (lack of products during this period is credited
with giving clone processors market foothold) ... then with demise of
FS there was mad rush to get products back into the 370 product
pipeline (I continued to work on 370 during the FS period and
periodically ridiculed the FS activity ... not the greatest career
enhancing activity) Both subsequent 370 mainframe 3033&3081 efforts
kicked off with warmed over FS technology ... discussed here
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm
not until 3090 is IBM starting to recover ... but that is short lived with communication group strangling customer datacenters.
posts mentioning future system
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Fifty Years of BASIC, the Programming Language That Made Computers Personal Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2014 09:45:09 -0400Fifty Years of BASIC, the Programming Language That Made Computers Personal
recent threads mentioning basic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#74 Another Golden Anniversary - Dartmouth BASIC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#4 Another Golden Anniversary - Dartmouth BASIC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#5 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#11 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Fifty Years of BASIC, the Programming Language That Made Computers Personal Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2014 13:52:28 -0400Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> writes:
science center
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
did a couple things with peoples' initials and then had to come up with something for their initials
a couple recent scans
https://www.facebook.com/lynn.wheeler/posts/10203018063788164
and
https://www.facebook.com/lynn.wheeler/posts/10203018065228200
blue 360/67 card I got from former co-worker at science center ... the "M"
in GML (invented at the science center in 1969), precursor to SGML,
HTML, etc ("G", "M", and "L" are three inventors of GML)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml
another is compare-and-swap instruction, charlie (CAS are his
initials) had invented the compare-and-swap instruction while
working on fine-grain multiprocessor locking for cp67 ... some
past posts mentioning multiprocessor and/or compare-and-swap
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#smp
also referenced in scans
Aug1976, Tymshare started providing its VM370/CMS-based online computer
conferencing facility to SHARE organization (for free). Archives here:
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare
sometimes(?) "404" ... but also at wayback machine
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare/
I was able to set up process where they sent me regular tape of all
VMSHARE files which I would put up on internal IBM network ... some old
email mentioning VMSHARE
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#vmshare
and "SHARE" sing-along at SCIDS ... does anybody remember "boney fingers"
(working your fingers to the bone on MVS)? Supposedly a member of share
was relative of member of the band and got it adapted and performed at
SCIDS.
http://www.songlyrics.com/hoyt-axton/bony-fingers-1974-lyrics/
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqf2daVP3yI&feature=kp
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Fed's stress tests were a confidence-rattling comedy of errors Date: 30 Apr 2014 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityFed's stress tests were a confidence-rattling comedy of errors
from above:
The latest example is Bank of America. Today the bank announced that
it discovered an error in the way it accounted for the certain assets
that were a part of its 2009 crisis-era acquisition of Merrill
Lynch. As a result of the error, the firm is halting a planned $4
billion stock buyback as well as a dividend boost.
... snip ...
Bank of America Finds a Mistake: $4 Billion Less Capital
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/bank-of-america-suspends-buyback-and-dividend-increase/
How Bank of America Botched Some Basic Accounting
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-28/how-bank-of-america-botched-some-basic-accounting
Meet BofA's Culprit: Structured Notes
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/04/28/meet-bofas-culprit-structured-notes/
Bank of America Pleads "We're Idiots, not Crooks!"
http://firedoglake.com/2014/04/29/bank-of-america-pleads-were-idiots-not-crooks/
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Consumers Ditch Their Breached Retailers, Banks and Doctors Date: 30 Apr 2014 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityConsumers Ditch Their Breached Retailers, Banks and Doctors
from above:
Welcome to the post-Target breach world: One-third of consumers stop
shopping at retailers that have been breached, and nearly one-third
ditch their healthcare providers after they've been breached, a study
published today finds. One-fifth of consumers say they will leave
banks or credit card companies that have been breached.
... snip ...
End of last century, we were tangentially involved in the cal. state
data breach notification legislation. We had been brought in to help
wordsmith the cal. state electronic signature legislation
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#signature
posts mentioning data breach
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#data.breach.notification.notification
and several privacy groups were involved. They had done in-depth detailed public privacy surveys and the #1 issue was identity theft, primarily fraudulent financial transactions using information from data breaches. At the time there was little or nothing being done and it was hoped that the publicity from notifications would prompt corrective action. The issue is normally entities take security measures for self-protection ... but in the breach cases, it wasn't the institutions that were at risk, it was the public (and so the institutions had little motivation to take corrective action).
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: GAO and Wall Street Journal Whitewash Huge Criminal Bank Frauds Date: 30 Apr 2014 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityGAO and Wall Street Journal Whitewash Huge Criminal Bank Frauds
U.S. Banks to Help Authorities With Tax Evasion Probe
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303939404579531123348248430
Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas at Risk of Criminal Charges Over Taxes,
Business With Banned Nations
http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=5867303427142356992&gid=127198&trk=NUS_UNIU_SHARE-grp
WASHINGTON: GAO rips regulators on foreclosure prevention efforts
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/04/29/225961/gao-rips-regulators-on-foreclosure.html
U.S. GAO - Foreclosure Review: Regulators Could Strengthen Oversight
and Improve Transparency of the Process
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-376
Henry G. Manne--Busting Insider Trading: As Pointless as Prohibition
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304279904579516170211639290
Waters: Regulators used "nonsensical system" to setup
mortgage settlement fund Waters is "troubled" by GAO report on
foreclosure process
http://www.housingwire.com/articles/29829-waters-regulators-used-nonsensical-system-to-setup-mortgage-settlement-fund
A mortuary of 7,000,000 foreclosures and counting
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-04-29/mortuary-7000000-foreclosures-and-counting
"Independent" Foreclosure Review Error Rate Vastly Higher Than
Previously Admitted
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/04/independent-foreclosure-review-error-rate-vastly-higher-previously-admitted.html
posts mentioning tax evasion, avoidance, havens
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#tax.evasion
recent posts mentioning foreclosure mess
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#12 More Whistleblower Leaks on Foreclosure Settlement Show Both Suppression of Evidence and Gross Incompetence
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#16 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#24 What Makes a substance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013f.html#52 What Makes a substance Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#48 OT: "Highway Patrol" back on TV
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#50 OT: "Highway Patrol" back on TV
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#73 Why DOJ Deemed Bank Execs Too Big To Jail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#14 What Makes Infrastructure investment not bizarre
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#22 Why DOJ Deemed Bank Execs Too Big To Jail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#9 What Makes a Tax System Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#17 What Makes a Tax System Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#57 What the Orgy of "Lehman Five Years On" Stories Missed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#58 OT: NYT article--the rich get richer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#57 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#70 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#46 Wells Fargo made up on-demand foreclosure papers plan: court filing charges
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#64 Wells Fargo made up on-demand foreclosure papers plan: court filing charges
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#78 Wells Fargo made up on-demand foreclosure papers plan: court filing charges
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: GAO and Wall Street Journal Whitewash Huge Criminal Bank Frauds Date: 01 May 2014 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Securityre:
Why Only One Top Banker Went to Jail for the Financial Crisis
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/magazine/only-one-top-banker-jail-financial-crisis.html
The Rise of Corporate Impunity
http://www.propublica.org/article/the-rise-of-corporate-impunity
Two Giant Banks, Seen as Immune, Become Targets
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/04/29/u-s-close-to-bringing-criminal-charges-against-big-banks/
Criminal Charges Against Banks Risk Sparking Crisis
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-01/criminal-charges-against-banks-risk-sparking-crisis.html
Since When Does Refusing to Put Fraudulent Banks into Receivership
Help the Economy?
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/05/bill-black-since-refusing-put-fraudulent-banks-receivership-help-economy.html
from above:
At a meeting last September, a top federal regulator vowed not to
interfere if Mr. Bharara obtained a guilty plea from JPMorgan Chase
over its ties to Bernard L. Madoff, according to the lawyers and
records of the meeting. But the regulator, Thomas J. Curry, a frequent
critic of Wall Street, warned that federal law might require him to
reconsider JPMorgan's charter if the bank was convicted of a
crime.
... snip ...
Why Did the Justice Department Kill the Madoff Subpoena Against
JPMorgan?
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2013/12/why-did-the-justice-department-kill-the-madoff-subpoena-against-jpmorgan/
TBTF sort of was part of TARP justification (fabrication) to buy
(off-book) toxic assets ... however only $700B was appropriated
... not even close. End of 2008, just four largest TBTF were still
carrying $5.2T "off-book" (summer & fall 2008, tens of billions had
gone for 22cents on the dollar)
Bank's Hidden Junk Menaces $1 Trillion Purge
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=akv_p6LBNIdw&refer=home
In total, over $27T had been 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
then first started seeing too big to prosecute and too big to jail with reports that TBTF were caught money laundering for terrorists and drug cartels (and not being held accountable; the money laundering also enabling the vast resources as major factor in the enormous upswing in corruption and violence)
Then articles started showing up about last decade was much worse than S&L mess (which yielded over 700 convictions) ... and now TBTF effecitvely able to operate with near impunity.
Early to middle of last decade GAO was doing reports of public company fraudulent financial filings (and nobody being convicted), even increasing after Sarbanes-Oxley (despite all the claims that SOX would prevent another ENRON and guarantee executives and auditors did jail time). The congressional Madoff hearings also had the person that had tried unsuccessfully for a decade to get SEC to do something about Madoff (SEC hands were forced when Madoff turned himself in).
too big to fail, too big to prosecute, too big to jail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
madoff
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#madoff
regulatory capture
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#regulatory.capture
Sarbanes-Oxley
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#sarbanes-oxley
Enron
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#entron
fraudulent financial reporting
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#financial.reporting.fraud.fraud
money laundering
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#money.laundering
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Before the Internet: The golden age of online services Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 01 May 2014 12:19:02 -0400Peter Flass <Peter_Flass@Yahoo.com> writes:
to china discovers america in 1421. they had aggressive sailing exploration program ... going both east and west. then the empress decrees all efforts stopped, all ocean going vessels destroyed and all records wiped ... to eliminate disruptive threats to status quo and her rule. china at higher level than europe at the time ... but the freeze on change and resulting stagnation allows europe to overtake china (attributed also to competition/strife between countries in europe, aka monopolies are bad ... some of the articles then morph into MBAs and business schools are part of the downfall of the US ... teaching how to protect monopolies rather than how to compete and innovate).
past posts in this thread:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#34 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#37 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#38 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#39 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#41 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#46 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#48 Before the Internet: The golden age of online service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#49 Before the Internet: The golden age of online service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#54 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#55 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#59 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#61 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#62 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#63 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#69 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#73 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#75 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#76 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#79 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#80 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#0 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#2 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#5 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#6 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#7 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#9 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#11 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#12 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#13 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#14 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#16 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#18 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#23 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#24 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#25 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#38 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#39 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#42 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: RCA Data Record File? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 01 May 2014 16:44:01 -0400hancock4 writes:
it was decided to use new IBM 3590
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3590
the complete file would fit on one tape ... the transaction updates would be sorted in account tape order and applied in batch tape-to-tape.
3590 tape held 10gbytes and tape operation was 9mbytes/sec ... batch update taking less than 30mins every night (buffered overlapped reads and writes).
later tape capacity increased to 60gbytes and 14mbytes/sec transfer
the summary information from transactions would then be used periodically to generate target marketing offers.
the operation was periodically monitored by half dozen privacy organizations for privacy violations.
latest version (up to 4terabytes and 250mbyte/sec transfer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3592
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: RCA Data Record File? Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 02 May 2014 09:10:10 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
Sony develops tape tech that could lead to 185 TB cartridges; Sony has
created a magnetic tape material that can store up to 74 times more data
per unit area than materials in use today
http://www.itworld.com/storage/416783/sony-develops-tape-tech-could-lead-185-tb-cartridges
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler) Subject: Re: non-IBM: SONY new tape storage - 185 Terabytes on a tape. Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: 2 May 2014 07:55:23 -0700m42tom-ibmmain@YAHOO.COM (Tom Marchant) writes:
up to 4TB/tape ... 4secs/gbyte (@250MB/sec) ... 4000secs/tbyte (thousand gigabytes, 67mins)
28Apr2014 TS2260 ... only 160MB/sec
http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=ca&infotype=an&appname=iSource&supplier=897&letternum=ENUS114-088
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler) Subject: Re: non-IBM: SONY new tape storage - 185 Terabytes on a tape. Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: 2 May 2014 12:22:02 -0700lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler) writes:
TS1140 mentions 8Gbps fibre channel interface ... which potentially could run nearly 1gbyte/sec sustained ... which could get to terabyte in around 1000 secs.
Fibre Channel will come with 32-Gigabit, 128-Gigabit speeds in 2016
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2096980/fibre-channel-will-come-with-32gigabit-128gigabit-speeds-in-2016.html
32-gigabit/sec could then get to terabyte in 250 secs and 128-gigabit/sec could get down to terabyte in almost a minute.
I've mentioned before doing channel-extender support for STL (now
silicon valley lab) in 1980 (moving 300 people from the IMS group to
offsite building with service back to STL datacenter ... allowing for
"local" channel attached controllers at remote site). Part of it was
downloading channel programs to the remote channel emulator ... to
compensate for the significant channel program protocol chatter,
overhead, and latency. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#channel.extender
At the time, I ran into opposition to releasing it from a group in POK playing around with some fiber stuff ... they were afraid it might get in the way of eventually being able to release their stuff.
In 1988, I was asked to help LLNL standardize some serial stuff they had which morphs into the fibre channel standard (includes download of i/o programs to remote ends to help compensate for latency).
Finally the POK people get their fibre stuff out in 1990 with es/9000 as escon ... but it is already obsolete.
Then some of the POK channel engineers get involved in fibre channel
meetings and define an enormously heavy-weight protocol that drastically
cuts the native throughput that eventually morphs into FICON ... some
past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#ficon
as i've periodically pointed out the z196 "peak i/o" benchmark achieved 2M IOPS using 104 FICON (running on 104 fibre channel standard) about the same time there was announce of a single fibre channel for e5-2600 claiming over million IOPS (aka two @million+/sec would beat 104 FICON).
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: GAO and Wall Street Journal Whitewash Huge Criminal Bank Frauds Date: 03 May 2014 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and Securityre:
Banksters Pretend that Prosecuting Wall Street Crime Will Blow Up the
Economy
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/banks.html
Criminal Charges Against Banks Risk Sparking Crisis
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-01/criminal-charges-against-banks-risk-sparking-crisis.html
Banks Get Break on New Tax-Evasion Enforcement
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303948104579537924282856770?mg=reno64-wsj
Citigroup says prosecutors probing Mexico unit
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/citigroup-says-prosecutors-probing-mexico-unit-2014-05-02
30,000 Criminal Referrals Led to 1,000+ Felony Convictions In Major
Fraud Cases During the S&L Crisis ... Not Even a SINGLE Prosecution
Today, Even Though the 2008 Crisis Was 70 Times Bigger
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/03/30000-criminal-referrals-led-1000-felony-convictions-major-fraud-cases-sl-crisis-even-single-prosecution-today-even-though-2008-crisis-70-times-bigger.html
too big to fail, too big to prosecute, too big to jail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
tax evation, tax avoidance, tax havens
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#tax.evasion
money laundering
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#money.laundering
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Is end of mainframe near ? Date: 03 May 2014 Blog: Mainframe Expertsre:
Sony develops tape tech that could lead to 185 TB cartridges; Sony has
created a magnetic tape material that can store up to 74 times more
data per unit area than materials in use today
http://www.itworld.com/storage/416783/sony-develops-tape-tech-could-lead-185-tb-cartridges
a little x-over from ibm-main mailing list
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#64 non-IBM: SONY new tape storage - 185 Terabytes on a tape.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#65 non-IBM: SONY new tape storage - 185 Terabytes on a tape.
two decades ago we were asked to design/implement targeted marketing system for small pilot with 60million accounts that would have between 1million to 20million transactions updates/day. the updates would be done overnight.
it was decided to use new IBM 3590
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3590
the complete file would fit on one tape ... the transaction updates would be sorted in account tape order and applied in batch tape-to-tape.
3590. tape held 10gbytes and tape operation was 9mbytes/sec ... batch update taking less than 30mins every night (buffered overlapped reads and writes).
later tape capacity increased to 60gbytes and 14mbytes/sec transfer
the summary information from transactions would then be used periodically to generate target marketing offers.
the operation was periodically monitored by half dozen privacy organizations for privacy violations.
from 9may2011 ... TS1140, 250MB/sec physical transfer, up to 650MB/sec
compressed transfer ... also no mention of mainfame
http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=ca&infotype=an&appname=iSource&supplier=872&letternum=ENUSAG11-0093
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3592
up to 4TB/tape ... 4secs/gbyte (@250MB/sec) ... 4000secs/tbyte (thousand gigabytes, 67mins)
from 28Apr2014 TS2260 ... only 160MB/sec
http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=ca&infotype=an&appname=iSource&supplier=897&letternum=ENUS114-088
TS1140 mentions 8Gbps fibre channel interface ... which potentially could run nearly 1gbyte/sec sustained ... which could get to terabyte in around 1000 secs.
Fibre Channel will come with 32-Gigabit, 128-Gigabit speeds in 2016
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2096980/fibre-channel-will-come-with-32gigabit-128gigabit-speeds-in-2016.html
at 32-gigabit/sec could then get to terabyte in 250 secs and 128-gigabit/sec could get terabyte in almost a minute.
I've mentioned before doing channel-extender support for STL (now
silicon valley lab) in 1980 (moving 300 people from the IMS group to
offsite building with service back to STL datacenter ... allowing for
"local" channel attached controllers at remote site). Part of it was
downloading channel programs to the remote channel emulator ... to
compensate for the significant channel program protocol chatter,
overhead, and latency. some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#channel.extender
At the time, I ran into opposition to releasing it from a group in POK playing around with some fiber stuff ... they were afraid it might get in the way of eventually being able to release their stuff.
In 1988, I was asked to help LLNL standardize some serial stuff they had which morphs into the fibre channel standard (includes download of i/o programs to remote ends to help compensate for latency).
Finally the POK people get their fibre stuff out in 1990 with es/9000 as escon ... but it is already obsolete.
Then some of the POK channel engineers get involved in fibre channel
meetings and define an enormously heavy-weight protocol that
drastically cuts the native throughput that eventually morphs into
FICON ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#ficon
as i've periodically pointed out the z196 "peak i/o" benchmark achieved 2M IOPS using 104 FICON (running on 104 fibre channel standard) about the same time there was announce of a single fibre channel for e5-2600 claiming over million IOPS (aka two @million+/sec would beat 104 FICON).
reference to ACS-360 being shutdown because IBM management thot it
would advance state-of-the-art too fast and they would loose control
of the market ... also discusses features from ACS-360 showing up in
ES/9000 over 20yrs later.
https://people.computing.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.html
max. configured z196 with 80 processors is rated at 50BIPS and goes for $28M or $560,000/BIPS; ibm financials has IBM mainframe group earning total of $6.25 for every processor dollar ... or total customer system costs closer to $3.5M/BIPS. About the same time, IBM had base list price for E5-2600 blade of $1815 which have processor ratings between 400BIPS to over 500BIPS ... aroundd $3.40/BIPS (one millionth that of z196). Cloud vendors have been claiming for some time that they assemble their own blades for 1/3rd the price of brand name blades ... possibly closer to $1/BIPS (along with 500+BIPS performance and single fibre channel capable of over million native IOPS)
for some time risc processors have had competive advantage of I86 processors ... but for some time, I86 chips have been hardware layer that translates i86 into risc microops ... largely mitigating the performance difference between i86 and risc.
recent mainframe:
z900, 16 processors, 2.5BIPS (156MIPS/proc), Dec2000
z990, 32 processors, 9BIPS, (281MIPS/proc), 2003
z9, 54 processors, 18BIPS (333MIPS/proc), July2005
z10, 64 processors, 30BIPS (469MIPS/proc), Feb2008
z196, 80 processors, 50BIPS (625MIPS/proc), Jul2010
EC12, 101 processors, 75BIPS (743MIPS/proc), Aug2012
the claim is that at least half of the z10->z196 per processor speedup was the implementation of various features that have been in risc (and i86) processors for decades (out-of-order execution, branch prediction, speculative execution, etc) ... and some amount of the z196->ec12 improvement is further inclusion of risc-like processor features.
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: A-10 Attack Jets Rack Up Air-to-Air Kills in Louisiana War Game Date: 03 May 2014 Blog: Boyd and BeyondA-10 Attack Jets Rack Up Air-to-Air Kills in Louisiana War Game
This has a different motivation for the GAO report, that Air Force was
lying about the F117 effectiveness (traditional MICC tactics, besides
lying, are obfuscation, misdirection and character assassination
... anything to divert attention)
http://defenseissues.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/why-usaf-hates-a-10-and-why-it-cant-be-replaced/
"COST AND PERFORMANCE OF THE AIRCRAFT AND MUNITIONS IN DESERT STORM" appendix
https://www.fas.org/man/gao/nsiad97134/app_04.htm (gone 404)
now at wayback machine
https://web.archive.org/web/19970726131942/https://www.fas.org/man/gao/nsiad97134/app_04.htm
from
http://www.gao.gov/products/NSIAD-97-134
A10
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II
posts mentioning Boyd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subboyd.html
recent posts mentioning Desert Storm, Pentagon Wars, A10, etc
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#61 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#67 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#79 Army Modernization Is Melting Down
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#92 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#36 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#38 Can America Win Wars
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#97 Where does the term Wild Duck come from?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#106 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#83 11 Years to Catch Up with Seymour
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#2 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#29 upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#32 upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#36 IBM Historic computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#46 The Pentagon Wars
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Is end of mainframe near ? Date: 04 May 2014 Blog: Mainframe Expertsre:
basically putting top executive compensation above everything else ...
Stockman in "The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in
America" pg464/loc9995-10000:
IBM was not the born-again growth machine trumpeted by the mob of Wall
Street momo traders. It was actually a stock buyback contraption on
steroids. During the five years ending in fiscal 2011, the company
spent a staggering $67 billion repurchasing its own shares, a figure
that was equal to 100 percent of its net income.
pg465/10014-17:
Total shareholder distributions, including dividends, amounted to $82
billion, or 122 percent, of net income over this five-year
period. Likewise, during the last five years IBM spent less on capital
investment than its depreciation and amortization charges, and also
shrank its constant dollar spending for research and development by
nearly 2 percent annually.
... snip ...
IBM Shrinks - Analysts Hate It
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1876891-ibm-shrinks-analysts-hate-it
New IBM Buyback Plan Is For Over 10 Percent Of Its Stock
http://247wallst.com/technology-3/2013/10/29/new-ibm-buyback-plan-is-for-over-10-percent-of-its-stock/
from above:
The company has represented that its dividends and share repurchases
have come to a total of over $159 billion since 2000.
... snip ...
IBM Asian Revenues Crash, Adjusted Earnings Beat On Tax Rate Fudge;
Debt Rises 20% To Fund Stock Buybacks
https://web.archive.org/web/20140623003038/http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-21/ibm-asian-revenues-crash-adjusted-earnings-beat-tax-rate-fudge-debt-rises-20-fund-st
GlobalFoundries Is The Front Runner To Buy IBM Chip Biz
http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh040714-story06.html
from above:
To make it plain and simple: IBM made the choice to put financial
engineering ahead of real chip engineering, and now it is suffering
the consequence
... snip ...
and another area is employee retirement, some ibm specific:
https://web.archive.org/web/20181019074906/http://www.ibmemployee.com/RetirementHeist.shtml
from above:
IBM couldn't just pull the plug on the subsidy, because pension law
doesn't allow a company to take away a benefit a person has already
earned or take away a pension right or feature the company has
granted. "So we had to design something different," Sauvigne
said. Enter Louis V. Gerstner Jr., IBM's new president. He'd headed
RJR Nabisco in 1993 when it faced a similar dilemma: how to reduce
pensions and remove the retirement subsidy without obviously violating
the law or provoking an employee backlash. Gerstner and IBM turned to
Watson Wyatt, the same consulting firm that had helped Nabisco solve
its pension problem.
... snip ...
Recent IBM "Project Waltz" ... also by "Watson Wyatt"
IBM was wrong to force UK workers off final salary pensions -- judge
UK High Court rules Big Blue breached contract with staff
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/09/ibm_pension_uk_high_court_breach/
references
IBM UK snuffs 'final salary' pensions -- Bow to the 'Productivity
objective'
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/07/ibm_final_salary_pension_killed/
IBM revenues drop 5% as hardware sales crash
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240212952/IBM-revenues-drop-5-per-cent-as-hardware-sales-crash
from above:
However, x86 sales were not the worst performer - revenue fell 16%,
while Power Systems revenue dropped 31% and System Z mainframe sales
declined by 37%.
... snip ...
Lots of business is moving to (public & private) cloud. The enormous drop in system costs for large cloud megadatacenters has made power&cooling an increasing part of their costs and put them on the forefront of green. The dramatic reduction in system costs and the intense pressure they put on chip makers to reduce power&cooling allows the public cloud big megadatacenters to install large numbers of excess systems for peak on-demand (including power&cooling dropping to zero when systems are idle, but to come online instantaneously). Some reports that server chip vendors now ship more chips to large cloud operations than to the major server vendors.
IBM's reaction to large public cloud megadatacenters (assembling their
own systems at 1/3rd major server vendor prices) is to sell its i86
server business. This has HP taking different approach ...
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/21/ibms-loss-is-hewlett-packard-companys-gain-in-hard.aspx
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9248071/HP_creates_a_new_way_to_sell_data_centers
http://www.crn.com/news/data-center/300072673/hp-foxconn-team-to-break-price-performance-server-barrier-for-internet-giants.htm
However, lots of IBM recent press is all about its cloud service offerings (not its mainframe business)
IBM Faster Chip Design with Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series
http://www.infoworld.com/t/hardware/wp/faster-chip-design-intel%C2%AE-xeon%C2%AE-processor-5500-series-838
from above:
With compute capacity growing exponentially and chip size expectation
shrinking, the new 5500 series delivers on both fronts. This white
paper delivers test results that show increased performance and speed
along with greater efficiency.
... snip ...
well, maybe not mainframe compute capacity growing exponentially
In the 90s there was billions spent by financial institutions to re-engineer their mainframe financial software. The issue was that real-time front ends were added during the 70s&80s ... but the actual transactions were queued for mainframe cobol overnight batch settlement. Globalization was increasing the workload and decreasing the size of the overnight window. They were attempting to re-engineer for straight through processing with parallel operation on lots of "killer micros" (part of the press from the day about the demise of the mainframe). Unfortunately they were using off-the-shelf parallelization technology that increased overhead by factor of 100 (compared to batch cobol) ... they didn't bother with the speeds&feeds and ignored the warnings (I've told some number of times in my career that they can forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right) ... and then the actual deployments were total disaster (overhead totally swamping anticipated throughput improvements from large number of killer micros) ... and all the efforts were abandoned.
A few years ago I was involved in taking some technology to financial industry community groups that has enormous workload speedups for re-engineering, straight-through processing, parallelization, etc. It uses high-level business rules decomposed into fine-grain SQL statements that operate with industry standard RDBMS systems. It relies on the enormous amount of speedup and parallelization work that all the major RDBMS vendors (including IBM) have done for their non-mainframe products over the last decade. At first it saw high acceptance by the industry community groups (workload throughput 10-100 faster at significant cost reduction, plus much simpler implementation and maintenance). Then it hit a brickwall ... we were told that there are large number of executives in the industry that still bear the scars from the 90s disasters ... and change will have to wait for a new generation.
As an aside, not long after the disasters ... I did get to look at one such operation ... it had a 450k line cobol program that ran on 43 max'ed mainframe systems (@$30M, constantly being upgraded, no system older than 18m), the number of systems needed to complete batch settlement in the overnight window. The program had been growing for a number of decades and overhead was increasing non-linearly as it got more complex and requirements grew. Even tho they had on the order of 100 people that constantly worked on its performance care & feeding ... I was able to find another 14% improvement. That operation accounted for significant percent of total IBM mainframe revenue ... but there are at least half-dozen other financial operations that are larger.
Two years ago, IBM financials has it selling the equivalent of almost 180 maxed z196 systems per year ... and had been relatively stable for decade or so ... but 37% decline takes that to just a little over 100.
when Jim left Research for Tandem, he was palming off bunch stuff on
me ... consulting with IMS group in STL, interfacing with (Bank of
America) early adopter of IBM's original relational DBMS
implementation, etc. At the Berkeley celebration (after he
disappeared) he was credited with lots of advances in DBMS technology
... including ACID properties (is claimed to have gone a long way
contributing to uptake of computers for financial operations,
increasing auditors trust in numbers) ...
http://coe.berkeley.edu/news-center/publications/forefront/archive/forefront-spring-2008/alumni-update/may-31-event-celebrates-jim-gray
and Special ACM SIGMOD edition
https://web.archive.org/web/20111118062042/http://www.sigmod.org/publications/sigmod-record/0806
... and TPC
https://www.tpc.org/information/who/gray5.asp
... note many of the UCB refs have gone 404, but live on at the wayback machine
https://web.archive.org/web/20080618071815/http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/IPRO/JimGrayTribute/
Even though he was at Tandem, in 1984 he did a series of reports that
the major cause of failures were human, software, and environmental
(no longer hardware) ... some old "foils"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/grayft84.pdf
Later when we were doing IBM's HA/CMP ... I got into dustup with Jim
at ACM SIGOPS over being able to use commodity hardware to provide
high-availability (he was at DEC database at the time using
proprietary hardware). However, later when he went to Microsoft
Research, he had to get up on stage with the CEO and push high
availability on commodity hardware.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#hacmp
Part of IBM's HA/CMP was addressing the environmental issues and when
I was out marketing, I coined the terms disaster survivability and
geographic survivability. Then I was asked to write a section for
IBM's corporate strategic continuous availabiilty document ... but it
got pulled because both Rochester (AS/400) and POK (mainframe)
complained that they couldn't meet the requirements.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#available
This references meeting in Ellison's conference room Jan1992 about
significant scale-up (mainframe DB2 was complaining if I was allowed to
proceed, it would be at least five years ... or maybe 10-15yrs
... ahead of mainframe DB2)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
By the end of Jan1992 the scale-up effort was transferred and shortly
announced as IBM supercomputer (for scientific and technical *only*)
and we were told we couldn't work on anything with more than four
processors. 2009 post "Annals Of Release No Software Before Its Time"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#43
about the scale-up work showing up for RDBMS (many years later,
although there was folklore that oracle reversed engineered ha/cmp to
work on other platforms)
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/28593.wss
trivia ... long ago and far away my wife had been con'ed into going to
POK to be responsible for (mainframe) loosely-coupled architecture
... where she did Peer-Coupled Shared Data architecture. She didn't
remain very long because 1) ongoing battles with communication group
trying to force her into using SNA for loosely-coupled operation and
2) very little uptake except for IMS hot-standby (until sysplex and
parallel sysplex).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata
AMEX, Private Equity, IBM related Gerstner posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Obama Administration Launches Plan To Make An "Internet ID" A Reality Date: 04 May 2014 Blog: FacebookObama Administration Launches Plan To Make An "Internet ID" A Reality
in the Haden/Ingles panel
http://lsgs.georgetown.edu/events/InternationalEngagementonCyber2014
they let me pontificate about US confusing authentication and identification. I worked on international financial transaction standards and there was big push in the US to use "identification" to authenticate transactions ... however privacy standards in other parts of the world required that strong authentication is used to authenticate transactions.
In late 90s I was asked in to NSCC (before HFT and before NSCC merge w/DTC for DTCC). To look at improving integrity of trading flr transactions. I worked on it for awhile and then got a call saying it was being suspended ... a side-effect of the integrity work would have greatly increases transparency and visibility ... antithetical to wall str culture ... no idea how bad it really is
Also, late 90s I was asked to look at improving integrity of
supporting documents in securitized mortgages (securitized mortgages
had been used in the S&L mess as part of obfuscating fraud). However
the business not long later learned that they could pay the rating
agencies for triple-A ratings on the securitized mortgages (even when
the rating agencies knew they weren't worth triple-A ... from Oct2008
congressional hearing testimony). Triple-A rating trumps supporting
documentation and they start doing no-documentation (no-down, liar)
loans. The triple-A ratings are significant factor in doing over $27T
during the economic mess.
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
toxic CDOs posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#toxic.cdo
TV news public comments during the Oct2008 congressional hearings were that they would be able to financially blackmail the gov. to avoid federal prosecution
Later the law of unintended consequences has too big to fail
manufacturing fraudulent, "robo-signed" documents as part of
foreclosures. too big to fail, too big to prosecute, too big to
jail posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
and ... 30,000 Criminal Referrals Led to 1,000+ Felony Convictions In
Major Fraud Cases During the S&L Crisis ... Not Even a SINGLE
Prosecution Today, Even Though the 2008 Crisis Was 70 Times Bigger
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/03/30000-criminal-referrals-led-1000-felony-convictions-major-fraud-cases-sl-crisis-even-single-prosecution-today-even-though-2008-crisis-70-times-bigger.html
Banksters Pretend that Prosecuting Wall Street Crime Will Blow Up the
Economy
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/banks.html
There is this security paradigm (PAIN/CAIN):
privacy/confidentiality,
authentication,
identification, and
non-repudiation
Current financial fraud risk is crooks being able to use information from previous transactions to perform fraudulent transactions (sort of "replay" attack, not only evesdropping but also breaches). Long ago and far away we were brought in as consultants to small client/server startup to work on payment transactions they wanted to do on their server; they had also invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted to use (to hide transaction information), the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce".
Somewhat as result of doing "EC", in the mid-90s were invited into
X9A10 financial standard working group which had been given the
requirement to preserve the integrity of financial infrastructure for
*ALL* retail payments. The resulting standard uses strong
authentication, but also slightly tweaks the current paradigm so
crooks can't use previous transaction information to perform
fraudulent transactions (also eliminates need to use SSL encryption to
hide transaction information). x9.59 standard ref
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#x959
The agency was ambivalent, they liked eliminating the need for encryption but didn't like substituting strong authentication for identification. In any case, during panel discussion, Ingles slightly needles me about the "security paradigm".
At least for the payment transaction ... privacy at least required removing name on payment cards (and associated magstripe and electronic forms) and related requirements for identification for doing payment transactions. There are sometimes articles that there is no point in making any privacy efforts because there are cases where gov. agencies with sufficient resources can subvert privacy issues. Part of that strategy is that nominally the gov. would have to at least resort to court orders to subvert privacy measures ... if the argument that there is no point in making any privacy efforts ... then the information would be trivially available to everybody with or w/o court orders (for instance clerks at point-of-sale).
We were tangentially involved in cal. legislation related to privacy issues ... including the data breach notification law. However, about the same time they were also working on an "opt-in" privacy sharing law (institutions required to have a record of you agreeing to have your personal information shared). Then there was (federal pre-emption) amendment added to GLBA (now better known for repeal of Glass-Steagall) for "opt-out" privacy sharing (institutions can share your information unless they have a record of you objecting).
At a national annual privacy conference a few years ago in DC there was panel of all the FTC commissioners. Somebody in the audience got up and asked them if they were going to do anything about "opt-out" law. He said he was associated with call-center technology used by majority of financial institutions and he found that none of the "1-800" opt-out services had any provisions for recording information from the call (there never would be a record of opt-out). The FTC commissioners just ignored him.
Disclaimer, I was also co-author for the financial industry privacy standard.
footnote on data breach notifications ... primary issue was in current payment paradigm, crooks can use information from previous transactions to perform fraudulent transactions. At the time there was little or nothing being done. The issue is institutions normally take security measures to protect themselves. In the case of data breaches, the institutions weren't at risk (it was their customers) and so they had little motivation to do anything. It was hoped that the publicity from notifications might motivate corrective action. Since the cal. law has passed there been numerous fed. notifications bills introduced (so far none have passed) ... about evenly divided between those similar to the cal. legislation and those that would effectively eliminate notification requirement (hiding behind facades like the misdirection that it is pointless to ever doing anything about privacy).
there are lots of parties that have significant financial interests in selling personal information ... the opt-out farce has had no impact ... however an effective opt-in law would put enormous dent in it. They and various other parties have lots of interest in having ubiquitous identification information and blunting any activity related to improved privacy
posts mentioning Glass-Steagall
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
posts mentioning data breach
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#data.breach.notification.notification
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Stopping Cybersecurity Breaches Means Rethinking Consequences Date: 06 May Apr 2014 Blog: Information SecurityStopping Cybersecurity Breaches Means Rethinking Consequences
End of last century, we were tangentially involved in the cal. state
data breach notification legislation. We had been brought in to help
wordsmith the cal. state electronic signature legislation and several
privacy groups were involved. some posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#signature
posts mentioning data breach
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#data.breach.notification.notification
They had done in-depth detailed public privacy surveys and the #1 issue was identity theft, primarily fraudulent financial transactions using information from data breaches. At the time there was little or nothing being done and it was hoped that the publicity from notifications would prompt corrective action. The issue is normally entities take security measures for self-protection ... but in the breach cases, it wasn't the institutions that were at risk, it was the public/customers (and so the institutions had little motivation to take corrective action). In the years since there have been numerous federal bills introduced (none passed), about evenly divided between those similar to the cal. legislation and those that would effectively eliminate notification requirement.
In the current payment paradigm, much of the risk is a form of replay
attack ... being able to use information from previous transactions
to perform fraudulent transactions. some posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#payments
a couple metaphors we've used to characterize the current paradigm
dual-use ... since information from previous transactions can be used for fraudulent transactions, that information has to be kept totally confidential and never divulged. at the same time the same information is required in dozens of business processes at millions of locations around the world. we've periodically commented that even if the planet was buried under miles of information hiding encryption, it still wouldn't stop leakage
security proportional to risk ... the value of the transaction information to the merchants is the profit on the transactions, which can be a couple dollars (and a couple cents for the transaction processor) ... the value of the information to the crooks is the account balance and/or credit limit ... as a result the crooks/attackers can afford to outspend the defenders by a factor of 100 times (including bribing insiders)
some security proportional to risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#security.proportional.to.risk
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@GARLIC.COM (Anne & Lynn Wheeler) Subject: Re: Mainframe (in general) running at 100% not always a bad thing Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main Date: 7 May 2014 10:20:44 -0700eamacneil@YAHOO.CA (Ted MacNEIL) writes:
the documentation is that the 14 SAPs run 100% at 2.2M SSCH/sec ... but the recommendation is to keep SAPs no more than 70% busy ... aka 1.5M SSCH/sec.
The SSCH was part of the original XA extensions to 370 ... with 3081. There were two issues: 1) the horrendous MVS pathlength to handle an interrupt and redrive the device with queued request (as I/O was getting faster & quicker ... the idle "redrive" latency was becoming significant factor in limitating aggregate I/O throughput) and 2) asynchronous I/O interrupt handling was having horrible effects on cache hit rations.
SSCH would offload lots of MVS redrive pathlength as well as providing queued interface that helped mitigate asynchronous interrupt cache effects.
I've mentioned before getting to play disk engineer in bldgs 14&15
(disk enginneering and product test) ....
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#disk
one of the issues was that they were running stand-alone testing on variety of mainframes pre-scheduled 7x24 (around the clock). At one point they had tried MVS for concurrent testing ... but found MVS had 15min MTBF in that environment ... even with only a single test device. I then rewrote I/O supervisor to make it bullet proof and never fail ... so they could do on-demand, concurrent testing with any number of devices (and not have to have the lag time with pre-schedule), greatly increasing productivity.
This was about the same time that all the work was first going on with SSCH ... in large part trying to compensate for the horrendous MVS pathlength for device redrive latency ... and so for the fun of it, in addition to I/O supervisor never fail and bullet proof, I also worked on trying to make standard 370 pathlength for device redrive latency as close to zero as possible.
Now with SSCH ... some amount of the MVS queueing problems when running 100% busy have been offloaded to dedicated processors ... but still haven't been done away with altogether.
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Is end of mainframe near ? Date: 07 May 2014 Blog: Mainframe Expertsre:
mainframe, following 37% decline 4q2013, 40% decline 1q2014
http://www.maximumpc.com/ibm_posts_revenue_decline_eighth_consecutive_quarter_2014
IBM use to give breakout of hardware revenue by systems with mainframe running somewhat under $5B/yr ... the decline quotes seem to now have z-processor revenue under $3B/yr (less than the equivalent of 100 max configured z196 systems)
regarding the plane metaphor ... there is currently an actual plane
discussion involving A10/warthog and the F35. F35 was designed to be a
"bomb" carrier with limited capability and stealth relying on F22
flying cover handling air-to-air combat and high value threats (and
supposedly much less expensive than F22). The F22 got cut and F35
morphs into the most expensive weapons systems in the history of the
world ... but still with only the original design point capability. As
a result there has been a lot of F35 related FUD (something long
practice by IBM marketing), obfuscation and misdirection ... including
attempts to kill many other weapons systems in order to contribute to
F35 funding. Another issue is in the early 80s, MICC developed concept
of radar stealth as a military capability ... but only for specific
radar technology of the period. The F35 has stealth capability for
purely approach (not needing all aspect for things like air-to-air
combat) ... but with F22 program being cut, there will no longer be
the F22 numbers needed to fly cover ... so there are now all sorts of
misstatements about F35. The other characteristic is that opponents
have developed newer radar technologies that are less susceptible to
the 80s stealth designs. more than you might ever want to know:
http://ausairpower.net/APA-2009-01.html
Somewhat on the other side is the A10 capable of doing many types of
operations ... and existence of A10 threatens many of the F35
justifications ... and more importantly threat to justification for
the trillion+ spending for the F35 program. Related to Desert Storm
(90/91 gulf war), the Air Force was making all sorts of claims about
what the F117 accomplished and significantly down played the role of
A10 (which the air force doesn't like). Eventually there was call for
GAO study ... which found very little accomplished by F117 and much of
what went happened was by A10s. In fact, GAO found that so many Iraqi
tanks were being killed by A10s before the land war started, that the
Iraqis were walking away from their tanks (because they were sitting
ducks for A10s). Later there were claims about large number of Iraqi
tank kills by land forces ... but no evaluation of how many of those
tanks had anybody home.
http://www.gao.gov/products/NSIAD-97-134
disclaimer: I use to sponsor John Boyd's briefings at IBM ... and
Boyd's fighter mafia are credited with the F15, F16, F18, and A10
... as well as analysis of Bradley and Abrams that forced significant
improvements. ... HBO made a movie of a book by one of Boyd's acolytes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars
A lot of IBM marketing institution FUD came from late 70s and early
80s. This discusses the end of ACS-360 ... because it would advance
the computer state-of-the-art too fast and they would loose control of
the market; there is also discussion of lots of ACS-360 showing up in
ES/9000 more than 20yrs later.
https://people.computing.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.html
then in the early 70s, IBM had the future system effort as
countermeasure to clone controllers. FS was totally different from
360/370 and was going to completely replace it; during the FS period,
370 efforts were suspended and/or killed off ... and the lack of 370
products during the period is credited with giving clone processors a
market foothold. with the death of FS then there was a mad rush to get
stuff back into the product pipelines ... including both the 3033 and
3081 being kicked off using warmed over FS technology. This is
discussion of 3033/3081 as warmed over FS technology and how poorly it
compared to competition (and a major motivation for IBM having to
resort marketing FUD).
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm
it isn't until you get to 3090 that you have first new competitive product and technology (followed by es/9000 using ACS-360 features).
In the late 80s, a senior disk engineer gets a talk scheduled at the
annual, internal world-wide communication group conference supposedly
on 3174 performance. However, he opens his talk with the statement
that the communication group was going to be responsible for the
demise of the disk division. The issue was the communication group had
a stranglehold on mainframe datacenters with its corporate strategic
ownership of everything that crossed datacenter walls and was fighting
off distributed computing and client/server; trying to preserve its
dumb terminal paradigm and install base. The disk division was seeing
data fleeing the datacenters to more distributed computing friendly
platforms with drop in disk sales. The disk division had come up with
several solutions to turn things around but they were constantly being
vetoed by the communication group. This also strangles the turn-around
of the 3090 with the first new competitive product and was also major
contributor to the company going into the red in the early 90s.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#terminal
more plane background ... with all the claims about benefit of strategic bombing during ww2 ... especially since 1/3rd of total US WW2 spending went to heavy bombers for strategic bombing ... the US Postwar Strategic Bombing Survey found nearly all strategic bombardment campaigns were failures, contributing little to Allied victory.
Also the most important thing to remember about the U2 ... air force
had been making all sorts of claims about soviet bombers agitating for
20% increase in DOD budget for building US strategic bombers
... Eisenhower was able to use the CIA U2 photo recon to debunk the
air force fabricated claims ... it was also a major motivation for
Eisenhower's warnings about military-industrial complex in his goodby
speech
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex
Somewhat planes & ibm mainframe. Boyd expressed lots of doubts with
several Vietnam programs ... possibly as punishment they sent him over
to be command of "spook base". About that time, I had been brought in
(one of 1st half dozen employees, even tho I was still undergraduate)
to help setup boeing computer services (consolidate all dataprocessing
into separate business unit to better monetize the investment,
somewhat precursor to modern day clouds). At the time I thought Renton
was the largest datacenter in the world ... something like $300M in
IBM mainframes ... that summer, 360/65s were arriving faster than they
could be installed, there was always pieces of 360/65s being staged in
hallways around the machine room. However, Boyd's biographies comment
that "spook base" was $2.5B windfall for IBM (would be something like
$17+B in today's dollars). some detail 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
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Is end of mainframe near ? Date: 07 May 2014 Blog: Mainframe Expertsre:
In the early 80s, I started an effort to build new 370 microkernel
implemented in a "portable" language ... some analogy with unix and
"C". It got co-opted by hudson valley to be a common i/o supervisor
across all 370 platforms ... issue was there was enormous amount of
duplicate device driver efforts (& cost) across all the 370 operating
systems which could be eliminated by having common base
infrastructure. From proposed small agile effort ... reference to
internal adtech conference on the subject I sponsored spring 1982
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a
it then grew into hundreds of people writing specs by 1985 and
suffered the same fate as the "Future System" effort from a decade
earlier
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
Also In the early 80s, AT&T has project to move UNIX environment to
370 by layering high-level UNIX ontop of stripped down TSS/370 kernel
RPQ called SSUP (SSUP providing device support, resource management
and scale-up).
ftp://netlib.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/otherports/ibm.pdf
old email ref (within AT&T there was competitive activity with
Amdahl's GOLD/UTS)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#email840109
the stranglehold that the communication group had on datacenters in
late 80s was major factor in downturn of mainframe *AND* the company
going into the red in the early 90s. In the mid-80s, top executives
were predicting that corporate revenue was going to double, mostly
based on mainframe hardware revenue and had a massive internal
building program to double mainframe manufacturing capacity ... which
never materialized. During the early 90s downturn, top executives were
preparing to split IBM into the "13 baby blues" How IBM Was Left
Behind ... 28Dec1992 (sometimes paywall but lives free at wayback
machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20101120231857/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977353,00.html
In this period, email from POK mainframe people would frequently close with tag line "Would the last person to leave, please turn out the lights" (fully expected that the mainframe decline wouldn't be possible to halt).
Trivia, Gerstner wins competition to be next CEO of AMEX, the looser
leaves and takes their protege with them. Then AMEX is in competition
with KKR for LBO takeover of RJR and KKR wins. KKR runs into trouble
with RJR and hires Gerstner away to turn RJR around ... then the IBM
board hires Gerstner away to resurrect IBM. About this time, AMEX
spins off a large amount of its mainframe dataprocessing as First Data
(in the largest IPO up until that time). Looser in the competition for
next CEO of AMEX (and protege) take over a number of financial
institutions, eventually acquiring Citibank in violation of
Glass-Steagall. Greenspan give them an exemption while they lobby
congress for repeal of Glass-Steagall (enabling too big to
fail). The protege then leaves and becomes CEO of another too big to
fail. In the late 90s, First Data merges with First Financial which
includes Western Union (FDC has to divest MoneyGram as part of the
merger). By the middle of last decade, illegal workers sending
paychecks home had exploded so that WU was half FDC bottom line
... and WU is spun off in IPO (press is quoting president of Mexico
that he would be happy to throw First Data executives in jail if they
would visit Mexico). Then KKR does LBO take-over of the remaining FDC
in the largest LBO up until that time (after having been the largest
IPO 15yrs earlier). posts mentioning gerstner
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#gerstner
posts mentioning LBOs and private equity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
As mentioned upthread, in this period the financial industry pumped billions into straight through processing on killer micros only to see it go up in flames.
Long ago and far away we were brought in as consultants to small client/server startup that wanted to do payment transactions on their server; they had also invented this technology called "SSL" they wanted to use (to encrypt/hide financial transaction information); the result is now frequently called "electronic commerce". As part of it we had to audit this new businesses selling "domain name" digital certificates ... and propose how things were being deployed. Almost immediately the guidelines were violated ... contributing to large number of exploits that continue to this day.
In part having done "electronic commerce", in the mid-90s we were
asked to participate in the x9a10 financial standard working group
which had been given the requirement to preserve the integrity of the
financial infrastructure for all retail payments. The result was the
x9.59 financial standard ... which did nothing to prevent breaches,
skimming and/or evesdropping. However, it slightly tweaked the current
paradigm and eliminated the ability for crooks to use information from
previous transactions to do fraudulent transactions (eliminating the
risk in breaches and major motivation for crooks to perform breaches).
references to x9.59
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#x959
We've characterized the current paradigm as replay attack vulnerability (using static information) with metaphors:
dual-use ... since information from previous transactions can be used for fraudulent transactions, that information has to be kept totally confidential and never divulged. at the same time the same information is required in dozens of business processes at millions of locations around the world. we've periodically commented that even if the planet was buried under miles of information hiding encryption, it still wouldn't stop leakage
security proportional to risk ... the value of the transaction information to the merchants is the profit on the transactions, which can be a couple dollars (and a couple cents for the transaction processor) ... the value of the information to the crooks is the account balance and/or credit limit ... as a result the crooks/attackers can afford to outspend the defenders by a factor of 100 times (including bribing insiders)
posts mentioning security proportional to risk
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#security.proportional.to.risk
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Is end of mainframe near ? Date: 07 May 2014 Blog: Mainframe Expertsre:
part of the fall of unix was because of the unix wars ... at&t/sun
wanting to make it proprietary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars
IBM and the other vendors responding with
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Software_Foundation
and in all the discord, Linus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds
was able to slip in with linux
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux
a factor was that grid computing with enormous number of commodity systems in racks needed freely available source for the enormous amount of innovation needed for the rapidly changing paradigm.
This was somewhat reminiscent of early days of IBM's cp67 and vm370 systems, where not only was source freely shipped, but maintenance was done in source updates (the source shipped exactly corresponded with the executable code, this shows up as issue at certain gov. installations ... not possible with any other IBM systems). Eventually there was some judgement that there was almost as much software on the SHARE Waterloo tape as there was in the base system (a similar observation was made about the "internal" COMMON system ... including comments that there was significant overlap between the features/functions in the customer developed software on the Waterloo tape and the internally developed software in the COMMON system).
other drift ... connecting NSF supercomputing centers, Grid computing,
and cloud computing. The connecting of the NSF supercomputer centers
morphs into the NSFNET backbone as regional networks begin connecting
to the centers. The NSFNET backbone is the precursor to the modern
internet.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401444/grid-computing/
Originally we were suppose to get $20m to connect the NSF
supercomputer centers. Then congress cuts the budget and several other
things happen. Eventually NSF release an RFP but internal politics
prevents us from responding. The director of NSF tries to help by
writing the company a letter 3Apr1986, NSF Director to IBM Chief Scientist and IBM Senior VP and director of Research, copying IBM CEO) ... but that just makes the internal politics worse (as did comments about what we already had
running was at least five years ahead of bid responses). some old
email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
part of the internal politics is lots of internal misinformation
including claims that the NSFNET backbone could run over SNA/VTAM.
Somebody collects a lot of the misinformation email and forwards it to
us ... a copy heavily snipped and redacted to protect the guilty
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email870109
The NSF RFP calls for T1 (1.5mbits/sec) ... we have T1 and faster links running ... but there are no SNA/VTAM products capable of T1 (SNA/VTAM at the time only goes up to 56kbits/sec).
posts mentioning nsfnet
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#nsfnet
Note that original UNIX had been done at AT&T ... somewhat after the
people become disenchanted with MIT Multics ... UNIX is supposedly
take-off on the name MULTICS and is simplification. Note that some of
the people from MIT CTSS (done on IBM 7094) went to the 5th flr of 545
tech sq to do MULTICS and others went to the IBM science center on the
4th flr (opened 1Feb1964) and did cp40/cms ... which morphs into
cp67/cms and later vm370/cms (unix and vm370/cms share common heritage
and originally several characteristics).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
Then there were several unix work-alikes (even before the unix wars), BSD at UCB and Locus at UCLA. IBM provided $50M to CMU for several projects, Camelot transaction system, Andrew filesystem and the unix work-alike MACH. MACH is then used by a number of vendors including Jobs for NextStep and later for the basis for the (new) apple operating system. It is also used for OSF in the unix wars.
The IBM 801/risc workstation division originally uses AT&T unix for
its AIX operating system (RISC ROMP chip started out for displaywriter
follow-on, when that got canceled it was decided to retarget to the
unix workstation market and the company that did AT&T unix for PC/IX,
was hired to do AIX).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#801
However, IBM ACIS uses UCLA Locus for the portable distributed operating system for both AIX/370 (which morphs into AIX/ESA) as well as AIX/386 (aka other than the name AIX ... AIX/370 and PC/RT AIX were effectively totally different systems).
besides this article from Dec1992 on IBM near demise and breakup.
https://web.archive.org/web/20101120231857/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977353,00.html
there is this by former senior IBM executive (The rise and fall of IBM)
https://www.ecole.org/en/session/49-the-rise-and-fall-of-ibm
this says 1qtr/2013 system z sales were $800m ... or 30 max configured
z196 equivalents (@$28M).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2013/05/30/idc_q1_2013_server_numbers/
recent articles that 1qtr/2014 system z sales drop 40% compared to year earlier would make it $480m or 17 max configured z196 equivalents (@$28M) ... less than 70 on annualized basis.
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Fifty Years of BASIC, the Programming Language That Made Computers Personal Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 09 May 2014 15:21:31 -0400"Charles Richmond" <numerist@aquaporin4.com> writes:
a major big speedup with watfor/watfiv, it was also monitor (it collapsed 3steps into one ... but it could also ran large number of jobs per step).
univ had 1401/709 with ibsys doing student job fortran tape-to-tape in around second or less ... and tapes carried between 709 and 1401 drives with 1401 handling card->tape and tape->printer/punch. typical student fortran programs were 30-80 cards.
initial os/360 on 360/65 ... student jobs were 3step fortg
complie/link/executive(go) well over a minute. adding hasp got it down
under a minute ... but nearly all the time was spent in job scheduler
time for the 3steps. as undergraduate I did a lot of optimization of
os/360 sysgen to carefully organize files & pds members on disk for
optimal disk arm seek ... getting 3step time down to 12.9 sec (nearly
three times faster). part of old '68 SHARE presenstation that I did
regarding lots of os/360 work (for "stand-alone") as well as rewriting
lots of cp67 to significantly reduce virtual machine pathlength (from
20yr old post)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#18
it wasn't until we got WATFOR that stutdent job times got faster than 709 IBSYS (tape-to-tape). typically tray of student jobs (2000-3000 cards, typically 50-80 student jobs) would be batched in one WATFOR run ... approx. 4secs for the job step and WATFOR clocked about 20,000cards/min (330cards/sec) on 360/65 or 6-9 seconds for a tray ... for total 10-13seconds elapsed for the 50-80 student jobs ... avg. 5-6 student jobs/sec (finally faster than 709 ibsys).
If WATFOR had just been run as single step per student job ... it would have been 4+sec/job (standard, vanilla os/360 system more like 12sec/step-job) as opposed to 5-6jobs/sec.
a few past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#53 WATFOR's Silver Anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002f.html#54 WATFOR's Silver Anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#1 WATFOR's Silver Anniversary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#24 Is Microsoft becoming folklore?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#31 Java Security?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013g.html#39 Old data storage or data base
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#4 The cloud is killing traditional hardware and software
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#18 A Brief History of Cloud Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013o.html#49 The Mother of All Demos: The 1968 presentation that sparked atech revolution
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013o.html#54 Curiosity: TCB mapping macro name - why IKJTCB?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013o.html#87 The Mother of All Demos: The 1968 presentation that sparked a tech revolution
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#23 Scary Sysprogs and educating those 'kids'
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: SEC Official Describes Widespread Lawbreaking and Material Weakness in Controls in Private Equity Industry Date: 09 May 2014 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecuritySEC Official Describes Widespread Lawbreaking and Material Weakness in Controls in Private Equity Industry
Spreading Sunshine in Private Equity
http://www.sec.gov/News/Speech/Detail/Speech/1370541735361#.U2rbM2Bdqcd
SEC Official: Over Half Of All Private Equity Audits Revealed Crimes
http://news.firedoglake.com/2014/05/09/sec-official-over-half-of-all-private-equity-audits-revealed-crimes/
private equity posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Over in the Mainframe Experts Network LinkedIn group Date: 09 May 2014 Blog: Enterprise SystemsOver in the Mainframe Experts Network LinkedIn group
re:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#67 Is end of mainframe near ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#69 Is end of mainframe near ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#73 Is end of mainframe near ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#75 Is end of mainframe near ?
there are significant more related comments in the (closed linkedin)
IBMers group discussion (but not just limited to mainframe): IBM... "2
years with no growth... a sad story for both IBM customers, IBM
employees and start to generate an negative impact also for IBM
shareholders"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#54 IBM Sales Fall Again, Pressuring Rometty's Profit Goal
... most recent
and IBM revenues drop 5% as hardware sales crash
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240212952/IBM-revenues-drop-5-per-cent-as-hardware-sales-crash
However, x86 sales were not the worst performer - revenue fell 16%,
while Power Systems revenue dropped 31% and System Z mainframe sales
declined by 37%.
... snip ...
two years ago, IBM financials had IBM selling the equivalent of almost 180 max configured z196 per year ... which had been relatively stable for almost a decade. With a 37% drop that declines to around a 100/yr.
In the 90s there was billions spent by financial institutions to re-engineer their mainframe financial software. The issue was that real-time front ends were added during the 70s&80s ... but the actual transactions were queued for mainframe cobol overnight batch settlement. Globalization was increasing the workload and decreasing the size of the overnight window. They were attempting to re-engineer for straight through processing with parallel operation on lots of "killer micros" (part of the press from the day about the demise of the mainframe). Unfortunately they were using off-the-shelf parallelization technology that increased overhead by factor of 100 (compared to batch cobol) ... they didn't bother with the speeds&feeds and ignored the warnings (I've told some number of times in my career that they can forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right) ... and then the actual deployments were total disaster (overhead totally swamping anticipated throughput improvements from large number of killer micros) ... and all the efforts were abandoned.
A few years ago I was involved in taking some technology to financial industry community groups that has enormous workload speedups for re-engineering, straight-through processing, parallelization, etc. It uses high-level business rules decomposed into fine-grain SQL statements that operate with industry standard RDBMS systems. It relies on the enormous amount of speedup and parallelization work that all the major RDBMS vendors (including IBM) have done for their non-mainframe products over the last decade. At first it saw high acceptance by the industry community groups (workload throughput 10-100 faster at significant cost reduction, plus much simpler implementation and maintenance). Then it hit a brickwall ... we were told that there are large number of executives in the industry that still bear the scars from the 90s disasters ... and change will have to wait for a new generation.
As an aside, not long after the disasters ... I did get to look at one such operation ... it had a 450k line cobol program that ran on 43 max'ed mainframe systems (@$30M, constantly being upgraded, no system older than 18m), the number of systems needed to complete batch settlement in the overnight window. The program had been growing for a number of decades and overhead was increasing non-linearly as it got more complex and requirements grew. Even tho they had on the order of 100 people that constantly worked on its performance care & feeding ... I was able to find another 14% improvement. That operation accounted for significant percent of total IBM mainframe revenue ... but there are at least half-dozen other mainframe financial operations that were larger.
IBM 360 was originally supposed to have been ascii machine ... but
... periodically referenced: EBCDIC and the P-Bit, The Biggest
Computer Goof Ever
https://web.archive.org/web/20180513184025/http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM
reference to ACS-360 being shutdown because IBM management thot it
would advance state-of-the-art too fast and they would loose control
of the market ... also discusses features from ACS-360 showing up in
ES/9000 over 20yrs later.
https://people.computing.clemson.edu/~mark/acs_end.html
max. configured z196 with 80 processors is rated at 50BIPS and goes for $28M or $560,000/BIPS; ibm financials has IBM mainframe group earning total of $6.25 for every processor dollar ... or total customer system costs closer to $3.5M/BIPS. About the same time, IBM had base list price for E5-2600 blade of $1815 which have processor ratings between 400BIPS to over 500BIPS ... around $3.40/BIPS (one millionth that of z196). Cloud vendors have been claiming for some time that they assemble their own blades for 1/3rd the price of brand name blades ... possibly closer to $1/BIPS (along with 500+BIPS performance and single fibre channel capable of over million native IOPS)
for some time risc processors have had competitive advantage over I86 processors ... but for some time, I86 chips have a risc core and hardware layer that translates i86 into risc microops for execution ... largely mitigating the performance difference between i86 and risc.
recent mainframe:
z900, 16 processors, 2.5BIPS (156MIPS/proc), Dec2000
z990, 32 processors, 9BIPS, (281MIPS/proc), 2003
z9, 54 processors, 18BIPS (333MIPS/proc), July2005
z10, 64 processors, 30BIPS (469MIPS/proc), Feb2008
z196, 80 processors, 50BIPS (625MIPS/proc), Jul2010
EC12, 101 processors, 75BIPS (743MIPS/proc), Aug2012
the claim is that at least half of the z10->z196 per processor
speedup was the implementation of various features that have been in
risc (and i86) processors for decades (out-of-order execution, branch
prediction, speculative execution, etc) ... and some amount of the
z196->ec12 improvement is further inclusion of risc-like processor
features.
this says 1qtr/2013 system z sales were up 7% to $800m ... or 30 max
configured z196 equivalents (@$28M).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2013/05/30/idc_q1_2013_server_numbers/
recent articles that 1qtr/2014 system z sales drop 40% compared to
year earlier would make it $480m or 17 max configured z196 equivalents
(@$28M) ... less than 70 on annualized basis (40% decline 1q2014
following 37% decline 4q2013)
http://www.maximumpc.com/ibm_posts_revenue_decline_eighth_consecutive_quarter_2014
One of the articles about 40% drop in revenue mentions that there was something like 26% drop in MIPs shipped .... so the revenue drop was much larger than the drop in processing power ... possibly part of the revenue drop was shift to cheaper (mainframe) MIPS.
However, lots of IBM press is about IBM doing big push (pivot?) to cloud ... which has been significantly commoditized .... extremely heavy use of x86 blades, a single e5-2600 blade with something like ten times BIPS rating of max configured z196 at less than one millionth the cost per BIPS. Cloud operators have been claiming that they assemble x86 blades at 1/3rd cost of brand name sever vendors and server chip manufacturers are saying that are shipping more chips directly to cloud operators (than to brand name server vendors, possibly motivation for IBM to sell off its server operations).
The enormous drop in cloud system costs has resulted in power&cooling becoming an increasing major cost factor ... and as a result cloud operators are become significantly more sensitive to watts/BIPS. This has been such a big paradigm shift, that major cloud operators are increasingly looking at power frugal chips developed for battery operated portable devices.
recent post
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#72
in ibm-main mailing list
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/bit.listserv.ibm-main/LlEPZCEoZUE
mentioning that MVS had been tried ... but it had 15min MTBF in that environment.
However, they did put a big part of vm/370 into microcode and called it "LPAR" and "PR/SM"
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: EMV Date: 09 May 2014 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityWhy U.S. e-retailers need to pay attention to the arrival of EMV
There was a large pilot of chip&pin in the US a little over a
decade ago ... but it was during the yes card period
... reference to presentation at cartes2002 (and it was trivial to
clone a chip&pin, creating a counterfeit yes card) ... at
the bottom of the following ... gone 404, but lives on at the wayback
machine
https://web.archive.org/web/20030417083810/http://www.smartcard.co.uk/resources/articles/cartes2002.html
then at 2003 (US) ATM integrity task force, somebody from secret service gave presentation on the yes card vulnerability ... with somebody in the audience making a loud observation that the industry managed to spend billions of dollars to prove that chipcards had worse fraud than magstripe.
In the wake of the yes card, all evidence of the US pilot evaporated. Some reference to it would be a long time before it was tried again in the US ... allowing it to be much more thoroughly vetted elsewhere. It wasn't so much the cost of a deployment that was at issue ... it was the prospect of the costs of having a whole series of repeated deployments.
past posts referencing yes card
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#yescard
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: IBM Sales Fall Again, Pressuring Rometty's Profit Goal Date: 09 May 2014 Blog: IBMersre:
slightly related from (linkedin) Mainframe Experts discussion
http://lnkd.in/dfysC8N
and IBM revenues drop 5% as hardware sales crash
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240212952/IBM-revenues-drop-5-per-cent-as-hardware-sales-crash
from above:
However, x86 sales were not the worst performer - revenue fell 16%,
while Power Systems revenue dropped 31% and System Z mainframe sales
declined by 37%.
... snip ...
two years ago, IBM financials had IBM selling the equivalent of almost 180 max configured z196 per year ... which had been relatively stable for almost a decade. With a 37% drop that declines to around a 100/yr.
I was brought into to help form Boeing Computer Services while still undergraduate (one of the 1st half dozen employees), it would consolidate all dataprocessing into independent unit to better monetize the investment (sort of precursor to modern day cloud). I thought Renton datacenter was possibly largest in the world ... something like $300M in ibm mainframes ... that summer 360/65s were arriving faster than they could be installed, there were constantly pieces of 360/65s in the hallways outside the machine room.
I was told story by the Boeing people (as well as the IBM people on the account) about IBM salesman on the Beoing account at the time of 360 announce. Boeing asked him in and ordered a bunch of 360 machines (at the time, the salesman knew almost nothing about 360s). The commission was so large that it made him the highest paid person in IBM ... and as a result IBM management decided to change to quota system (from straight commission). The next year, Boeing made another large 360 order and the salesman made quota for the year by the end of Jan and so his quota was "adjusted". The salesman then left IBM and formed his own mainframe computer services company.
As IBM was on downward slide in the late 80s ... there was a joke that could see what products were not selling because they were declared strategic and there would be extra bonuses for selling them.
A modern day cloud megadatacenter will typical cost a small fraction of that (old) renton datacenter (especially inflation adjusted dollars) and have more processing power than the aggregate of all mainframes in the world today.
The stated strategy may just be disinformation ... the executed strategy for past decade or two is the "stock-buyback on steroids" with declining investment
some of this is repeat ... "The Great Deformation: The Corruption of
Capitalism in America" pg464/loc9995-10000:
IBM was not the born-again growth machine trumpeted by the mob of Wall
Street momo traders. It was actually a stock buyback contraption on
steroids. During the five years ending in fiscal 2011, the company
spent a staggering $67 billion repurchasing its own shares, a figure
that was equal to 100 percent of its net income.
pg465/10014-17:
Total shareholder distributions, including dividends, amounted to $82
billion, or 122 percent, of net income over this five-year
period. Likewise, during the last five years IBM spent less on capital
investment than its depreciation and amortization charges, and also
shrank its constant dollar spending for research and development by
nearly 2 percent annually.
... snip ...
New IBM Buyback Plan Is For Over 10 Percent Of Its Stock
http://247wallst.com/technology-3/2013/10/29/new-ibm-buyback-plan-is-for-over-10-percent-of-its-stock/
from above:
The company has represented that its dividends and share repurchases
have come to a total of over $159 billion since 2000.
... snip ...
IBM Asian Revenues Crash, Adjusted Earnings Beat On Tax Rate Fudge;
Debt Rises 20% To Fund Stock Buybacks
https://web.archive.org/web/20140623003038/http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-21/ibm-asian-revenues-crash-adjusted-earnings-beat-tax-rate-fudge-debt-rises-20-fund-st
GlobalFoundries Is The Front Runner To Buy IBM Chip Biz
http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh040714-story06.html
from above:
To make it plain and simple: IBM made the choice to put financial
engineering ahead of real chip engineering, and now it is suffering
the consequence
... snip ...
this says 1qtr/2013 system z sales up 7% to $800m ... or 30 max
configured z196 equivalents (@$28M).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2013/05/30/idc_q1_2013_server_numbers/
first qtr2014 system z sales drop 40% compared to year earlier would
make it $480m or 17 max configured z196 equivalents (@$28M) ... less
than 70 on annualized basis (following 37% decline 4q2013)
http://www.maximumpc.com/ibm_posts_revenue_decline_eighth_consecutive_quarter_2014
note mainframe processors had been less than 5% of revenue but the mainframe group had been 25% of revenue and 40% of profit (i.e. storage, software, services, etc) ... i.e. mainframes have been declining cash cow
part of the issue is that there almost nothing else with similar profit margin to replace the declining mainframe cash cow
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Is end of mainframe near ? Date: 11 May 2014 Blog: Mainframe Expertsre:
this mentions doing benchmarks on 4341 for national lab looking at getting 70
4341s for ("supercomputer") compute farm ... aka optimal price/MIPS
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006y.html#email790220
other old 4341 email
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#4341
installations were installing clusters of 4341 in datacenters as much more cost effective computing as well as large corporations ordering hundreds of 4341s for installation out in departmental areas ... the leading edge of distributed computing tsunami. MVS played in neither market ... not having the scale-up for cluster operation as well as the care&support was so enormous that it didn't scale to having thousands of distributed systems.
disclaimer: earlier my wife had been con'ed into going to POK to be in
charge of loosely-coupled architecture (aka mainframe cluster) where
she developed Peer-Coupled Shared Data architecture. She didn't remain
very long, in part because of little uptake (by POK's favorite son
operating system) except for IMS hot-standby (until sysplex and
parallel sysplex).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#shareddata
mid-80s ... I was proposing implementation that had intermix of large
number of 370 processors and non-370 processors in racks ... at the
same time was suppose to be doing what was to become the backbone for
NSF (precursor to modern internet) ... old email about being caught
between running meetings on large mixed 370/non-370 processor clusters
and doing supercomputer interconnect pitches for director of NSF:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#email850314 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007d.html#email850315 ..
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011b.html#email870315 ..
other old email about work related to interconnecting the NSF
supercomputer centers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
early 90s, old email about doing non-370 processor cluster scale-up
... working with national labs for scientific and numeric intensive
... as well as RDBMS vendors
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#medusa
reference to scale-up meeting in Ellison's conference room early
Jan1992
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/95.html#13
then by the end of Jan1992, scale-up was transferred, announced as
supercomputer for scientific and technical *ONLY* and we were told we
couldn't work on anything with more than four processor (and we decide
to leave). Old press references about supercomputer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters1 17Feb1992
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001n.html#6000clusters2 11May1992
reference to inter-connecting the NSF supercomputer centers was
precursor to modern internet ... and large compute clusters was
precursor to GRID computing and modern cloud computing
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401444/grid-computing/
As mentioned upthread, both GRID computing and modern cloud computing required open source for all the pieces in order to adapt to the enormous seismic shift in the computing system paradigm (and linux slips into the industry during the unix war period). Note once the computing seismic shift starts to settle down, enabled by the linux open source, some of the other platforms are trying to move into the market.
for other archeology ... old reference to putting on internal advanced
technology conference spring 1982 on doing new portable micro-kernel
in modern programming language by small experienced group:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/96.html#4a
the proposal morphs into project for common subsystem for all 370
operating systems justified on eliminating the cost of duplicate I/O
subsystems and device drivers (effectively the same across all
platforms, but all developed & supported totally independently). By
the mid-80s, it had hundreds of people writing specifications and
eventually suffers the same fate as Future System from a decade
earlier (for many of the same reasons; lots of people that understand
writing and reading specifications but very few that can actually
innovate)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: The NSA and Snowden: Securing the All-Seeing Eye Date: 11 May 2014 Blog: FacebookThe NSA and Snowden: Securing the All-Seeing Eye
I've been making similar comments for nearly the last year ... in part
based on both orange book as well as interactions with guys from
infosec part of the agency that got involved in financial industry
(security) standards meetings. They did criticize me about including
both "orange book" *AND* common criteria in my merged security
glossary & taxonomy (trying to get me to remove all "orange book"
references)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/index.html#glosnote
recent posts mentioning NSA &/or Snowden:
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012k.html#19 SnOODAn: Boyd, Snowden, and Resilience
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013c.html#39 NPC Luncheon with Thomas Drake, NSA Whistleblower
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#53 NSA phone records
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#54 NSA phone records
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#61 NYT: N.S.A. Chief Says Phone Logs Halted Terror Threats
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#23 OT: "Highway Patrol" back on TV
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#26 Louis V. Gerstner Jr. lays out his post-IBM life
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#28 NSA Releases Secret Pre-History of Computers
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#41 Is newer technology always better? It almost is. Exceptions?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#54 How do you feel about the fact that India has more employees than US?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#61 Big Data Is Opening Doors, but Maybe Too Many
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#65 The Real Snowden Question
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#76 The failure of cyber defence - the mindset is against it
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013i.html#77 Insane Insider Threat Program in Context of Morally and Mentally Bankrupt US Intelligence System
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#43 8080 BASIC
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#51 What Makes an Architecture Bizarre?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#54 copyright protection/Doug Englebart
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#74 How the NSA Manipulates Language To Mislead The Public
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#79 copyright protection/Doug Englebart
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013j.html#83 copyright protection/Doug Englebart
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#31 China mulls probe into IBM, Oracle, EMC after NSA hack claims - report
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#37 Do You Want Better Security? Eliminate System Administrators!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#77 German infosec agency warns against Trusted Computing in Windows 8
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013k.html#88 NSA and crytanalysis
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#41 Brazilian TV show accuses NSA of spying on oil firm based on leaked docs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#55 "NSA foils much internet encryption"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#0 UK NHS £10bn project failure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#2 UK NHS £10bn project failure
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#14 Gilmore response to NSA mathematician's "make rules for NSA" appeal
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#66 NSA Revelations Kill IBM Hardware Sales In China
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013n.html#9 America's Defense Amnesia
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013n.html#12 How the IETF plans to protect the web from NSA snooping
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013o.html#33 60 Minutes Puff Piece Claims NSA Saved U.S. From Cyberterrorism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013o.html#39 60 Minutes Puff Piece Claims NSA Saved U.S. From Cyberterrorism
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013o.html#50 Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013o.html#52 Secret contract tied NSA and security industry pioneer
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013o.html#57 Beyond Snowden: A New Year's Wish For A Better Debate
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013o.html#70 Who broke the law, Snowden or the NSA?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013o.html#76 Should New Limits Be Put on N.S.A. Surveillance?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013o.html#83 NSA surveillance played little role in foiling terror plots, experts say
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#9 NSA seeks to build quantum computer that could crack most types of encryption
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#11 NSA seeks to build quantum computer that could crack most types of encryption
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#12 5 Unnerving Documents Showing Ties Between Greenwald, Omidyar & Booz Allen Hamilton
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#32 NSA Insiders Reveal What Went Wrong
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#62 UK government plans switch from Microsoft Office to open source
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#93 Maximizing shareholder value: The Goal that changed corporate America
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#29 Broadband pricing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#39 Spy Chief Says Snowden Took Advantage of "Perfect Storm" of Security Lapses
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#55 Maximizing shareholder value: The goal that changed corporate America
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#85 11 Years to Catch Up with Seymour
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#1 RSA 2014: Target Breach Has Bigger Impact on Data Security than Snowden, says Vormetric
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#3 Let's Face It--It's the Cyber Era and We're Cyber Dumb
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#9 NSA chief criticises media and suggests UK was right to detain David Miranda
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#13 Royal Pardon For Turing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#81 Eisenhower's military-industrial warning rings truer than ever
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#102 How the IETF plans to protect the web from NSA snooping
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#0 Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#27 TCP/IP Might Have Been Secure From the Start If Not For the NSA
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#54 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#57 NSA and Heartbleed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#58 NSA and Heartbleed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#64 How the IETF plans to protect the web from NSA snooping
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#65 How the IETF plans to protect the web from NSA snooping
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#13 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Slashdot this day in history: Microsoft Asks Slashdot To Remove Readers' Posts Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Sun, 11 May 2014 16:08:40 -0400Slashdot this day in history: Microsoft Asks Slashdot To Remove Readers' Posts
also google+
https://plus.google.com/102794881687002297268/posts/S7rfqyhtk26
Trivia: at the time, we were on temporary assignment in Seattle working
on joint-project with company that m'soft had hired to do their Kerberos
implementation. A decade earlier I was on visit to Project Athena for
review of projects ... and happened to be there for long detailed
session designing cross-domain Kerberos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Athena
IBM & DEC contributed $25M each and both got co-director position (former co-worker at science center had IBM position)
IBM Trivia: Who was the CEO of the company hired to do m'softs Kerberos implementation (hint: at one time was head of the IBM PC division and before that had been head of POK mainframe division)
posts mentioning having done AADS pkinit (non-certificate) version of
Kerberos
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subpubkey.html#kerberos
AADS reference
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/x959.html#aads
misc. posts mentioning Project Athena
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#35a Drive letters
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#37 What is MVS/ESA?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm2.htm#pkikrb PKI/KRB
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aepay10.htm#31 some certification & authentication landscape summary from recent threads
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm12.htm#4 NEWS: 3D-Secure and Passport
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm14.htm#0 The case against directories
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm16.htm#24 Ousourced Trust (was Re: Difference between TCPA-Hardware and a smart card and something else before
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm20.htm#25 Cross logins
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm24.htm#15 Apple to help Microsoft with "security neutrality"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm27.htm#23 Identity resurges as a debate topic
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#33 John Mashey's greatest hits
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#54 Unisys A11 worth keeping?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#18 cost of crossing kernel/user boundary
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#46 Horror stories: high system call overhead
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#50 Origin of Kerberos
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#2 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003d.html#3 IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003h.html#53 Question about Unix "heritage"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#56 project athena & compare and swap
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#9 RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#19 RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#20 RISCs too close to hardware?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#38 RS/6000 in Sysplex Environment
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#31 Do I need a certificat?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005g.html#49 "Best practices" or "Best implementations"?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005i.html#53 Single Password - Linux & Windows
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#26 IBM Plugs Big Iron to the College Crowd
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#23 Logon with Digital Siganture (PKI/OCES - or what else they're called)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005q.html#49 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005s.html#24 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005t.html#19 What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#8 Free to good home: IBM RT UNIX
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006c.html#11 Mainframe Jobs Going Away
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006h.html#46 blast from the past, tcp/ip, project athena and kerberos
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006i.html#25 Benefits of PKI - 5,000 nodes organization
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006j.html#0 virtual memory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006l.html#43 One or two CPUs - the pros & cons
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#10 An Out-of-the-Main Activity
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#10 What's a mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006v.html#29 User Authentication
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007.html#32 V2X2 vs. Shark (SnapShot v. FlashCopy)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007b.html#58 Authentication architecture on a Unix Network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007u.html#76 folklore indeed
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#53 Really stupid question about z/OS HTTP server
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008.html#54 Really stupid question about z/OS HTTP server
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#31 Kerberized authorization service
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008c.html#53 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008d.html#82 Migration from Mainframe to othre platforms - the othe bell?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008i.html#46 Definition of file spec in commands
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#79 Book: "Everyone Else Must Fail" --Larry Ellison and Oracle ???
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#59 CHROME and WEB apps on Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#60 CHROME and WEB apps on Mainframe?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008p.html#23 Your views on the increase in phishing crimes such as the recent problem French president Sarkozy faces
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009f.html#66 How did the monitor work under TOPS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009g.html#39 How did the monitor work under TOPS?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#18 Another one bites the dust
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#7 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009k.html#11 A Complete History Of Mainframe Computing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#49 Hacker charges also an indictment on PCI, expert says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#51 Chip with PIN or Chip with signature
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#4 Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#13 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010e.html#15 search engine history, was Happy DEC-10 Day
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010f.html#3 Why is Kerberos ever used, rather than modern public key cryptography?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010g.html#39 someone smarter than Dave Cutler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010h.html#25 In SSL We Trust? Not Lately
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010i.html#31 IBM Unix prehistory, someone smarter than Dave Cutler
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010j.html#5 Problem Statement on the Cross-Realm Operation of Kerberos
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010l.html#63 A mighty fortress is our PKI, Part II
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#36 TCM's Moguls documentary series
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011e.html#89 Mainframe passwords synced to active directory
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011h.html#56 pdp8 to PC- have we lost our way?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#11 PKI "fixes" that don't fix PKI
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2011m.html#67 NeXT, give Steve a little credit for the Web
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#45 Has anyone successfully migrated off mainframes?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012g.html#36 Should IBM allow the use of Hercules as z system emulator?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013.html#74 mainframe "selling" points
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013b.html#43 Article for the boss: COBOL will outlive us all
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013h.html#76 DataPower XML Appliance and RACF
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013m.html#65 'Free Unix!': The world-changing proclamation made30yearsagotoday
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Is end of mainframe near ? Date: 12 May 2014 Blog: Mainframe Expertsre:
cross-over from the "IBM Sales Fall Again, Pressuring Rometty's Profit
Goal" in (closed, linkedin) IBMers group discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#80 IBM Sales Fall Again, Pressuring Rometty's Profit Goal
note mainframe processors had been around 4% of revenue but the mainframe group had been 25% of revenue and 40% of profit (i.e. including storage, software, services, etc) ... i.e. mainframes have been declining cash cow
part of the issue is that there almost nothing else with similar profit margin to replace the declining mainframe cash cow
... part of the issue is that the (upthread) mainframe numbers have been relatively stable since the enormous decline in the 90s ... but is starting decline again. Discussions about resumption of the decline 1) the 90s decline flattening out was among very high value applications/market where risk of change was larger than the enormous premium for mainframe, 2) mainframe premium cost/MIPS is now on the order of million times that of modern cloud, 3) cloud is maturing and starting to see even high-value applications starting to move (even IBM press is now all about clouds, a typical cloud operation megadatacenter has more processing power than the aggregate of all mainframes in the world today)
One IBM article did point out that while there was 40% drop in mainframe processor sales, there actually was only a 26% drop in sales of mainframe MIPs ... i.e. part of the drop in revenue was move to less expensive mainframe MIPs .... but that still represents an enormous premium over typical cloud operation. The mainframe group has been earning avg. total of $6.25 for every $1 of mainframe processor sales.
other recent mainframe related posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#94 Santa has a Mainframe!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#97 Santa has a Mainframe!
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#25 IBM Asian Revenues Crash, Adjusted Earnings Beat On Tax Rate Fudge; Debt Rises 20% To Fund Stock Buybacks
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#22 US Federal Reserve pushes ahead with Faster Payments planning
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#54 IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe cuts as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#55 Maximizing shareholder value: The goal that changed corporate America
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#65 IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe cuts as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#69 IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe cuts as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#91 IBM layoffs strike first in India; workers describe cuts as 'slaughter' and 'massive'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#92 IBM India Battles Fraud Amid Scramble To Save Its $2.5B Airtel Contract
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#77 Why IBM Is Tumbling: BRIC Sales Plunge, Total Revenue Lowest Since 2009
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#1 Why IBM Is Tumbling: BRIC Sales Plunge, Total Revenue Lowest Since 2009
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#15 Why IBM Is Tumbling: BRIC Sales Plunge, Total Revenue Lowest Since 2009
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#54 IBM Sales Fall Again, Pressuring Rometty's Profit Goal
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#78 Over in the Mainframe Experts Network LinkedIn group
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Fifty Years of BASIC, the Programming Language That Made Computers Personal Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 12 May 2014 09:21:52 -0400Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:
part of the claim about watfor high "compile" rate (20,000cards/min on 360/65) was one pass that frequently did little more than generate call to watfor routine that was almost at the interpreted level.
the speedup was combination of monitor that cost of os/360 job step overhead was spread over multiple jobs ... and compile pass that was very little above interpreted level. execution also included extensive validity checking at runtime ... things like bounds checking ... preventing executing student program from doing bad things like overlaying the monitor.
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Is end of mainframe near ? Date: 12 May 2014 Blog: Mainframe Expertsre:
test, linkedin says my posts are being throttled, somebody complained
... either about the posts made in this thread ... or about another
post I made concerning a slashdot "this day in history 5/11" when they
received "takedown notice" from microsoft.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#83 Slashdot this day in history: Microsoft Asks Slashdot To Remove Readers' Posts
max. configured z196 w/80 processors listed for $28M and rated for
50BIPS ... or $560,000/BIPS. IBM financials has mainframe group
earning an avg. total $6.25 for every processor dollar or $3.5M/BIPS
(z196 with 80 processors, storage, software, services, etc). IBM
financials also had IBM selling approx. 180 max z196 equivalents
(@28M) for some time ... before the recent declines. peak i/o z196
benchmark clocks 2M IOPS using 104 FICON ... at same time a single FCS
was announced for e5-2600 claiming over million IOPS (two such e5-2600
FCS then beats peak z196 benchmark with 104 FICON). Peak z196 is 2.2M
SSCH/sec with all SAPs running 100% busy but recommendation is keep
SAPs to no more than 70% busy or 1.5M SSCH/sec. posts mentioning FICON
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#ficon
IBM has base list price of $1815 for e5-2600 blade which have ratings
of 400-500+ BIPS ... or approx. $3.44/BIPS (million times less than
mainframe using IBM's financial for fully loaded mainframe revenue per
processor dollar). Major public cloud vendors have been claiming for
decade that they assemble their own blade servers for 1/3rd price of
brand name vendors ... which makes it down around $1/BIPS. Also server
chip manufacturers have been saying that they now ship more server
chips to cloud operators than they are shipping to brand name vendors
... huge shift and commoditizing of server market (possibly motivation
for IBM to sell off its server business). Some rumors that some of the
brand name vendors have been doing specially priced assemblies for
private clouds (to compete with the 1/3rd reduction achieved by public
cloud vendors doing their own assemblies). Then there is HP taking
this approach (in contrast to IBM's selling off its server business):
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/21/ibms-loss-is-hewlett-packard-companys-gain-in-hard.aspx ..
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9248071/HP_creates_a_new_way_to_sell_data_centers ..
http://www.crn.com/news/data-center/300072673/hp-foxconn-team-to-break-price-performance-server-barrier-for-internet-giants.htm ..
Note in 1980, STL (now silicon valley lab) cons me into doing channel
extender support for 300 people from the IMS group being moved to
offsite bldg. with service back to STL datacenter (so they could have
local channel attached devices at the offsite bldg). Part of the
support was downloading channel programs to remote channel emulator at
the offsite bldg, largely mitigating the significant latency involved
in channel program protocol chatter. Efforts to get this released to
customers is thwarted by group in POK playing with some serial stuff
because they were afraid it would make it more difficult getting their
stuff released. posts mentioning channel extender
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#channel.extender
In 1988, I'm asked to help LLNL standardize some serial stuff they have which morphs into fibre channel standard. IBM POK finally gets their serial stuff released as ESCON in 1990 with ES/9000, when it is already obsolete. Then some POK channel engineers get involved in defining a heavy-weight channel protocol on top of fibre channel standard that drastically reduces the native throughput ... which morphs into FICON (needs 104 FICON to get 2M IOPS when single native FCS can get 1+M IOPS).
A typical public cloud megadatacenter has hundreds of thousands of systems (blades) with millions of processors and are operated by 60-120 people ... and fantastically optimized for energy use and cooling. Even at $2k/system (1/3rd cost of brand name systems) ... the systems would be $100M (but frequently more like $30M-$60M) and have total aggregate processing on the order of 250,000 TIPS (thousand BIPS or million MIPS). This is compared to single max configured z196 at $28M and processing power of 50BIPS. Even a max. configured ec12 (with 101 processors) only has rating of 75BIPS. A typical public cloud megadatacenter then would have more processing than three million max configured ec12 systems (and based on most recent qrtr, that would be thousand of years of ec12 sales).
trivia ... current genre of virtual appliances are highly efficient
monitors (tailored for specific tasks, like large RDBMS) that run in
standardized virtual machines. the original were called service
virtual machines originated at the IBM cambridge scientific center
for (virtual machine based) cp67 in the mid-60s (which later morphs
into vm370). The first was the "networking" service virtual machine
(VNET, predates and never was SNA). It was done by co-worker at the
science center and morphs into the basis for the IBM internal network:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edson_Hendricks
posts mentioning internal network
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet
It was also used for the IBM sponsored educational network BITNET.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BITNET
posts mentioning bitnet (&/or EARN)
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet
the internal network was larger than arpanet/internet from just about
the beginning until late '85 or possibly early '86. Arpanet great
cutover to internetworking protocol was 1jan1983 at time when they had
approx. 100 IMP network nodes and 255 connected host and at a time
when the internal network was rapidly approaching 1000 nodes. Ref to
internal network passing 1000 nodes in 1983 as well as list of all
corporate locations (world-wide) that added new nodes during 1983.
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006k.html#8
The original RDBMS/SQL implementation, System/R was also done as
service virtual machine on 370/145 VM370 at IBM San Jose Research
(bldg. 28). Standard folklore was the technology transfer to Endicott
and release as SQL/DS was because the corporation preoccupation trying
to ship EAGLE. Then when EAGLE imploded, they requested how long would
it take to port System/R to MVS (for DB2, originally announced for
decision support only).
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#systemr
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Fifty Years of BASIC, the Programming Language That Made Computers Personal Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 13 May 2014 14:54:02 -0400JimP. <pongbill127@cableone.net> writes:
gcc has "whole-program" option that merges all source files and compile
as if single entity ... and can be used in conjunction with "lto"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interprocedural_optimization
and
https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Optimize-Options.html
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Silicon Valley: an army of geeks and 'coders' shaping our future Date: 13 May 2014 Blog: Facebookre:
Silicon Valley: an army of geeks and 'coders' shaping our future
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/12/silicon-valley-geeks-coders-programmers
SLAC (sand hill rd)
https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/
would sponsor monthly BAYBUNCH evening meetings ... and then we would
usually adjourn to oasis
http://theoasisbeergarden.com/
or one of the other local establishments ... and early web trivia
https://ahro.slac.stanford.edu/wwwslac-exhibit
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Real Programmers Date: 13 May 2014 Blog: FacebookReal Programmers
real programmers directly multi-punch machine codes directly into cards. Long ago and far away we complained about 3274/3278 human factors were much worse (for interactive computing) than 3272/3277 .... eventually got response from 3278 product manager that 3278 wasn't designed for interactive computing ... it was designed for "data entry" (aka online key punch).
I have old email apologizing to the (internal) RED editor author for the XEDIT fiasco. RED was significantly more mature, more powerful, more function, etc than XEDIT. The review in Endicott about releasing XEDIT (rather than RED) tried to blame the RED author for RED being a much better editor than XEDIT.
Large IBM mainframe mainstream development had hard time adapting to
gov. rules for priced software ... customer price had to cover
original development plus ongoing development and maintenance. ISPF
group had couple hundred people and there was no way customers would
pay for the gov. calculated price. However, the gov. rules had
loopholes that included doing calculation based on all products in a
group and total revenue for a group ... so they combined the ISPF
group with the VM370 performance products ... which had large install
& revenue base and reduced it to only three people, using the VM370
revenue to subsidize ISPF. Old RED/XEDIT post with several emails from
79/80
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006u.html#26
as an aside ... from above ... one of my hobbies was providing highly enhanced production systems for internal datacenters ... originally cp67 then csc/vm (when I was at cambridge) and then sjr/vm after I moved to sjr.
old post with "Real Programmers Don't Each Quiche" (also "Real
Software Engineers Don't Read Dumps")
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001e.html#31
and "Real Programmers Don't Write Specs"
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002e.html#39
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: A Drone Could Be the Ultimate Dogfighter Date: 13 May 2014 Blog: FacebookA Drone Could Be the Ultimate Dogfighter
w/o gun, its mostly missiles which are already computerized. A10 has
gun but primarily air-to-ground. In "Pentagon Wars", Burton spends
some time on mini-A10 ... KISS-simple, forward deployed, and
maintained/operated by troops. One could imagine that such a mini-A10
be drone. This old article has army non-pilots doing better than air
force pilots operating nearly identical drone:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/29/young_usaf_predator_pilot_officer_slam/
past conferences talk about future drones having human "mission" operators, but the "flying" done by computer.
x-posted from similar thread in (linkedin) "Disciples of Boyd's
Strategy" ...
http://lnkd.in/bQxTtYF
I got notified yesterday that linkedin was throttling (all) my posts because somebody recently complained. The two possible posts were 1) about IBM mainframe viability (with lots of refs) and 2) posting URL ref to "this day in history 5/11" regarding m'soft sending slashdot a "takedown" letter.
General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_Falcon
from above:
The Fighting Falcon is a fighter with numerous innovations including a
frameless bubble canopy for better visibility, side-mounted control
stick to ease control while maneuvering, a seat reclined 30 degrees to
reduce the effect of g-forces on the pilot, and the first use of a
relaxed static stability/fly-by-wire flight control system helps to
make it a nimble aircraft.
... snip ...
Relaxed stability
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaxed_stability
from above:
A less stable aircraft requires smaller control deflections to
initiate maneuvering; consequently drag and control surface imposed
stresses will be reduced and aircraft responsiveness will be
enhanced. Since these characteristics will typically make control by
the pilot difficult or impossible, an artificial stability will
typically be imposed using computers, servos, and sensors as parts of
a fly by wire control system
... snip ...
... aka many modern planes already aren't flown by the pilot.
there is folklore about plane inverting after crossing equator because of computer programming ... human indicating intention and computer deciding how ... sort of split between strategic and operational ... question is level of computer sophistication
but f16 and fly-by-wire was already computerized that were too fast for the pilot ... pilot removed from lower level loops too fast for human ... treat it as incremental process as computer capabilities increase ... as opposed to sudden paradigm shift
Opposite is Boyd would complain about original F16 HUD with scrolling digital numbers ... pilot was spending longer time trying to convert numbers to information than w/o HUD. current is f35 competition has helmet targeting system ... but f35's still isn't working. F22 had 1.7m lines of code ... f35 has exploded to 24M and can become it's critical path and vulnerability. While f35 is on two decade generation, drones are doing multiple generations/yr. Drones may overtake f35 ... not necessarily because better solution ... but f35 so bad
Boyd did stint in command of spook base. this old reference mentions
drones at spook base but (some) commander said they couldn't be flown
w/o human pilot (gone 404, but lives on at wayback machine):
https://web.archive.org/web/20030212092342/http://home.att.net/~c.jeppeson/igloo_white.html
about that time, I was doing stint at Boeing (I was undergraduate but had been brought in to help create Boeing computer services ... consolidating all dataprocessing in independent business unit to better monetize the investment, sort of early precursor to cloud computing). 747#3 was flying skys of Seattle getting FAA certification. Then 747 (heavies) autoland were so precise that they were hitting SEATAC runway within the same 6ft location which runway wasn't designed for (starting to severely deteriorate) ... similar, but different to reference to non-pilot army drone operators doing better than air force officer pilots.
With enormous resources being diverted into F35 (including having to
produce 24M lines of code) ... it may slow down a lot of air force
activity ... however there is lots going on in commercial sector
... including things like autonomous cars starting to operate in city
traffic (things that were impossible 2yrs ago are now becoming easy)
http://www.dailytech.com/Google+Autonomous+Vehicles+Are+Working+On+Mastering+City+Street+Driving/article34807.htm
Driverless cars: we should question and challenge Google, but not as
haters
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/14/driverless-cars-google-data-privacy
Google self-driving car coming around the corner
http://phys.org/news/2014-05-google-self-driving-car-corner.html
Test-driving Google's driverless car: Look, Mom, no hands
http://www.mercurynews.com/mr-roadshow/ci_25755137/test-driving-googles-driverless-car-look-mom-no
recent posts mentioning drones
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#58 UK government plans switch from Microsoft Office to open source
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#29 Broadband pricing
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#3 Let's Face It--It's the Cyber Era and We're Cyber Dumb
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#97 The Planet's Best Stealth Fighter Isn't Made in America
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#1 Obama to Kill Tomahawk, Hellfire Missile Programs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#19 The IBM Strategy
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#35 upcoming TV show, "Halt & Catch Fire"
recent f35 posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#0 Navy's F-35C Completes Landing Tests Ahead of October Sea Trials
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#1 If We Don't Keep The F-22 Raptor Viable, The F-35 Fleet Will Be Irrelevant'
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#4 Defense Department Needs to Act Like IBM to Save Itself
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#40 F-35 JOINT STRIKE FIGHTER IS A LEMON
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#51 F-35 JOINT STRIKE FIGHTER IS A LEMON
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#66 F-35 JOINT STRIKE FIGHTER IS A LEMON
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#81 11 Years to Catch Up with Seymour
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#85 11 Years to Catch Up with Seymour
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#86 11 Years to Catch Up with Seymour
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014c.html#92 Why do bank IT systems keep failing ?
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#47 Stolen F-35 Secrets Now Showing Up in China's Stealth Fighter
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#69 Littoral Warfare Ship
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014d.html#96 Lockheed Martin F-35 Jet's Software Delayed, GAO Says
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#1 Obama to Kill Tomahawk, Hellfire Missile Programs
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#73 Is end of mainframe near ?
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Open Books Stop Self-Dealing and Corruption Date: 13 May 2014 Blog: Financial Crime Risk, Fraud and SecurityOpen Books Stop Self-Dealing and Corruption
Nearly a quarter of all state and local public pension assets have disappeared -- $660 billion in state workers' retirement savings taken off the radar and swept into high-cost hedge, private equity, venture and real estate funds with little or no public oversight.
... snip ...
refs:
How to Pay Millions and Lag Behind the Market
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/business/how-to-pay-millions-and-lag-behind-the-market.html?
private equity posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#private.equity
recent reference to looting public pension funds
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014.html#81 Pensions, was Re: Royal Pardon For Turing
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Is end of mainframe near ? Date: 13 May 2014 Blog: Mainframe Expertsre:
It took me ages to find price for max. configured z196 as well as the
peak i/o benchmark. If you can provide the numbers for ec12, I would
gladly use it. however, the price of the max. configured z196 is only
a small part of the analysis and don't expect it to change more than
factor of 3times what cloud operators are claiming for assembling
their own servers. If z196 max configured is million times more than
price/BIPS of brand name (v1) e5-2600 ... then max configured ec12
@75BIPS would be $42M for the same price/BIPS (as z196) ... but would
have to drop to $14M to only be a million times more price/BIPS as
cloud assembled (v1) e5-2600. This has max configured ec12 at $33M
http://www.tech-news.com/publib/pl2827.html
So price/BIPS of EC12 is now less than million times list price of
brand name (v1) e5-2600 ... but still way over million times that of
cloud assembled (v1) e5-2600. However, for apples to apples
comparison, I need to find the latest number for the e5-2600 V2 chips,
prices, BIPS benchmarks, etc ... shrank circuit size, more
circuits/chip, more processors/chip, faster chips,
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xeon-e5-2600-v2-ivy-bridge-ep-benchmarks,3714.html
IBM marketing is that V2 is so much better that it is worthwhile for
customers to upgrade from V1 to V2 (aka the improvement from z196 to
ec12 is less than improvement from e5-2600V1 to e5-2600v2 in the same
time frame). Also IBM reference for e5-4600v2 (rather than two 8-core
v1chips, four 12-core v2chips, 16processor to 48processor blade)
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips1159.html?Open
Now while max. configured EC12 is 1.5times the BIPS rate of z196, the
documentation says that the I/O throughput is only 1.3times. That
conceivably increases the peak SSCH/sec rate from 2.2M/sec to
2.9M/sec, but the recommended peak is only from 1.5M SSCH/sec to 1.95M
SSCH/sec. Conceivably the peak I/O benchmark would increase from z196
2M IOPS to EC12 2.6M IOPS but the implication is that it would require
increasing the number of FICONS from 104 to 135. ficon posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#ficon
The $480M 1st qtr mainframe processor sales rather than 17 equivalent max configured z196 is then 14 equivalent max configured ec12 (58 systems on annualized basis).
Note that mainframe already uses CKD emulation on top of industry standard fixed-block disks (no real CKD disks have been manufactured for decades) and FICON channel emulation is on top of industry standard fibre channel standard (one reason that native throughput can be so much higher than mainframe ... with the elimination of all the emulation overhead).
For several generations, i86 chips have gone to risc processor core with a hardware layer that translates i86 instructions into risc micro-ops for execution (largely mitigating the throughput difference between i86 and risc). Claims are that much of the z196 and ec12 per processor throughput improvement is the increasing use of features that have been long part of risc products (z10 459MIPS/processor -> z196 624MIPS/processor -> ec12 743MIPS/processor) ... raising prospect that mainframe eventually has common risc core with other processors. However, it will be harder & harder to justify the enormous mainframe price premium.
I previously reference being brought in (while still undergraduate) as one of first employees to Boeing Computer Services, an early precursor to modern day cloud. There was Boeing folklore about IBM salesman on the Boeing account when 360 was originally announced, he then leaves and forms a (mainframe) computer services company. This company is later bought and then spunoff by GM and currently owned by HP (and was brought up in the recently referenced news articles about IBM's loss is HP's gain).
--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Oligarchy Controls U.S. War-Making Date: 13 May 2014 Blog: Google+re:
Colonel Wilkerson: Oligarchy Controls U.S. War-Making
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-05-13/colonel-wilkerson-oligarchy-controls-us-war-making
"Triumphant Plutocracy"
loc5390-94:
War Is a Racket
folklore is that Eisenhower was originally going to warn about
military-industrial-congressional complex ... but he shorten it at
last minute. Hugh Laurie's (TVs house) novel references Boyd (I
sponsored Boyd's briefings at IBM), Boyd's OODA-loop ... but also MICC
& MICC dirty tricks
loc4605-11:
perpetual war posts
--
Roosevelt thereupon sent out navy and our marines to Colon, which is
the port on the Gulf side of the Isthmus of Panama, and secretly
notified the government of the State of Panama that, if they would set
up a republic and revolt against the Republic of Colombia, he would
give them the ten millions of dollars for the canal strip, and would
also see that Colombia did not send any troops to suppress their
rebellion. The Governor of Panama agreed to this arrangement, and, at
the proper time, started a rebellion to set up an independent
government
then loc6265-74:
XXX. THE LEAGUE TO PERPETUATE WAR The war has just begun. I said that
when the Armistice terms were published and when I read the Treaty and
the League Covenant I felt more than evercon vinced of the justice of
my conclusion. The Treaty of Versailles is merely an armistice--a
suspension of hostilities, while the combatants get their wind. There
is a war in every chapter of the Treaty and in every section of the
League Covenant; war all over the world; war without end so long as
the conditions endure which produce these documents.
... snip ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
Chuck's "Perpetual War"
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/p/domestic-roots-of-perpetual-war.html
https://www.amazon.com/The-Gun-Seller-ebook/dp/B000SEGK0M/
The day Alexander Woolf decided to take on the military-industrial
complex was the day everything changed. For him, for his family, for
his business. Things changed quickly, and they changed for
good. Roused from its slumber, the military-industrial complex lifted
a great, lazy paw, and swatted him away, as if he were no more than a
human being. They canceled his existing contracts and withdrew
possible future ones. They bankrupted his suppliers, disrupted his
labour force, and investigated him for tax evasion. They bought his
company's stock in a few months and sold it in a few hours, and when
that didn't do the trick, they accused him of trading in
narcotics. They even had him thrown out of the St Regis, for not
replacing a fairway divot.
... snip ...
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#perpetual.war
military-industrial complex
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#military.industrial.complex
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Privacy vs. freedom of the press--Google court ruling
Refed: **, - **, - **, - **
From: Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> Subject: Re: Privacy vs. freedom of the press--Google court ruling Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 14 May 2014 11:15:40 -0400hancock4 writes:
and several of the parties were heavily involved in privacy issues and had done extensive, in-depth public surveys ... and the number one issue was financial fraud ... mostly as the result of crooks being able to use information from breaches. At the time, there was little or nothing being done about breaches. The issue is that normally entities take security measures in self-protection ... in the breach cases, the institutions weren't at risk, it was the public (and so they had little motivation to take security measures). There was some hope that the publicity from breach notification would prompt corrective security measures. since then there have been numerous federal notification bills introduced (none passed), about evenly divided between those similar to cal. legislation and those that would effectively eliminate requirement for notification.
the group was also working on cal. "opt-in" personal information sharing bill (opt-in requires that the institution has record of explicit permission to share personal information) when a federal preemption "opt-out" admendment (institution can share your personal information unless it has record of you objecting) was added to GLBA (at the time, claim was primary purpose was to prevent competition getting into banking, but now better known for repeal of glass-steagall, enabling too big to fail). The cal. state "opt-in" work included consideration about "denial of service" ... insurance industry using personal information to deny or change service (including specifically cases similar to yours), employers/gov. using personal information to deny employment, etc. (there are lots of references that GLBA was primarily bought and paid-for by FIRE industry; Financial, Insurance, Real-Estate)
posts mentioning Glass-Steagall
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#Pecora&/orGlass-Steagall
posts mentioning too big to fail
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submisc.html#too-big-to-fail
A few years ago at an annual, national privacy organization conference in washington dc there was panel discussion with all the FTC commissioners. During the session, somebody in the audience got up and asked them if they were going to do anything about "opt-out" law. He said he was associated with call-center technology used by majority of financial institutions and he found that none of the "1-800" opt-out services had any provisions for recording information from the call (there never would be a record of opt-out request). The FTC commissioners just ignored him.
recent reference in different discussion
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014f.html#70 Obama Administration Launches Plan To Make An "Internet ID" A Reality
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virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
From: lynn@garlic.com Subject: Is end of mainframe near ? Date: 14 May 2014 Blog: Mainframe Expertsre:
Note mid-80s, IBM top management were predicting that revenue on IBM mainframes would shortly grow to over $100B (and kicked off massive internal building program to increase mainframe manufacturing capacity), over $219B in today's dollars. Instead it went downhill, IBM going into the red and on the verge of being broken up. 1qtr2014 mainframe processor revenue was $480m ... $2B on annualized basis ... less than 1% of what they were predicting in the mid-80s.
IBM mainframe marketing is frequently more about FUD ... fine-honed in
the late 70s & early 80s. The FS effort (to completely replace 370 in
the early 70s) killed off 370 efforts and scarcity of 370 products in
the period is credited with giving clone manufactures a market
foothold. When FS imploded, there was mad rush to get stuff back into
370 product pipelines, including kicking off 3033 & 3081 efforts using
warmed-over FS technology ... coming out late and didn't compare well
with competition (motivating massive IBM marketing FUD). some detailed
analysis (from IBMer directly involved)
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm
past FS posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#futuresys
some trivia ... before windows there was ms/dos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS
before ms/dos there was seattle computer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Computer_Products
before seattle computer there was cp/m,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M
before cp/m, kildall worked on cp67/cms at npg (gone 404, but lives on
at the wayback machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20071011100440/http://www.khet.net/gmc/docs/museum/en_cpmName.html
npg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Postgraduate_School
cp67/cms (aka precursor to vm/370)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/CMS
before cp67/cms ... there was virtual machine, interactive computing
cp/40
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/cp40seas1982.txt
at the IBM science center ... some past posts
https://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
other cp/67 starting in the 60s (gone 404, but lives on at the wayback
machine)
https://web.archive.org/web/20090117083033/http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/list-archive/0409/8362.shtml
note that after CTSS,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatible_Time-Sharing_System
some of the folks went to the IBM science center on the 4th flr and did
cp/40 and then cp/67. Other of the folks went to the 5th flr and did
multics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multics
some number of the people that started work on multics returned to
bell labs and did unix (play on simplified multics, unix & vm370 have
common heritage back to CTSS on IBM 7094)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX
other trivia ... some people in silicon valley that had worked on cp67
& vm370 were responsible for concurrent pc-dos
http://confchem.ccce.us/1985SpringCCCENLP3
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