Re: Bill Johnson
On Mon, Sep 18, 2023 at 07:24:23PM +, Darren Evans-Young wrote: > I have removed Bill Johnson from the IBM-MAIN list and you all know why. > > He has now officially lodged a complaint against me accusing me of > discrimination and violating his 1st Amendment rights. This > complaint was sent to the President and the Chief Administrative > Officer at The University of Alabama. I think I can understand why he was enraging some users. Myself, I just learned to skip over. > Worst case, I'll have to dissolve IBM-MAIN. If you are at a > university that hosts listserv lists, and would be able to host > IBM-MAIN in the event I'm told to take the list down, please contact > me off-list (dar...@ua.edu<mailto:dar...@ua.edu>). In case of worst case, what is going to happen to the archives of this list and few (?) other related ones? Will there be "quick unplug" or some warning? What about rights of users affected by unplugging, who are not going/willing to use discord? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: emacs (was: Re: Has anyone)
On Wed, Aug 23, 2023 at 10:44:08AM +, Seymour J Metz wrote:
> > Maybe people say so because they expected something else.
>
> "Humor is such a subjective thing!" (B5). My guess is that the quip
> came from an emacs user who was perfectly content with it.
I sensed humor there, but, well... More like sarcasm, rather.
> > Anyway, if you have a decent installation of emacs
>
> Is there a popular distribution of Linux that doesn't have emacs
> either in the base or in its repositories?
Probably no such distro, if popular belongs to one of {Debian, Gentoo,
Slackware, SUSE, RedHat}, or one of their close derivatives.
In case of smaller distro - GRML is one. Nowadays "smaller" means
"fits into CD", or 1GB pendrive. They include ed, forgot about cal. No
emacs, but plenty of interpreters, two gcc's, rudimentary x11 and
browser, antivirus, some other tools. GRML is rescue-cd, I use it to
test if my laptops have what I paid for, and for, er, rescue.
OTOH, I am typing this on ParrotOS (Debian derivative, oriented
towards security, pentest and forensics tasks - I am parroting from
their homepage and I really have no idea what it is) and AFAIR the
default install did not have ed... it is in repos, just not included
in installation image, while umpty-megabytes of visual environment
was, and some "codium" - many megs of dead weight (by which I mean, it
must be useful for somebody else) - was included by default during
postinstall phase... I installed ed because I wanted to experiment a
bit. No problem. I deinstalled (vs)codium (some kind of visual studio
cousin) because I do not want to experiment with this. No problem... I
just noticed that times have changed - some years ago /bin/ed and
/usr/bin/cal were both small and expected to be there (60 kbytes for
ed package and about 1mb for gcal, a modern cal rewrite). Now folks
have no place for this. I remember I had to install few more small
packages to make my parrot usable. Well, good to have it in repos,
good to know what I need.
As of emacs in ParrotOS, they had it in repos, but not as decent as I
wanted. Binaries+compiled ELisp in one package and sources for ELisp
files in another, but I have not found (so far) a package containing
info files with manuals. So I downloaded sources, compiled with
minimal options and installed in some non-relevant dir, this brought
me info files there, and entered INFOPATH variable with some dir into
a script I use to start emacs (I use scripts to start various
complicated programs, I find it less complicated than click-and-pray).
As you can see, everything was in there but it still was fun to make
any use of it :-).
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home**
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
--
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
emacs (was: Re: Has anyone)
On Tue, Aug 22, 2023 at 12:51:00PM +, Seymour J Metz wrote: > > I was just using emacs as ordinary text editor > > For me, an ordinary text editor is one that includes a good macro > facility, and I write new macros at the drop of a hat. If and when I > learn emacs, learning LISP will be part and parcel of that. > > "Emacs is a great operating system that desperately needs a text editor" Maybe people say so because they expected something else. Anyway, if you have a decent installation of emacs (i.e. wholesome, whereas some systems divide whole into some parts, like binaries plus ELisp files compiled for speed, ELisp source code, manuals)... but if you have it all, then just do "C-h i" and you will be presented, among other things, with: * Emacs: (emacs). The extensible self-documenting text editor. * Emacs FAQ: (efaq).Frequently Asked Questions about Emacs. * Elisp: (elisp). The Emacs Lisp Reference Manual. * Emacs Lisp Intro: (eintr).A simple introduction to Emacs Lisp programming. This will be info, a builtin hypertext documentation system. Other source of hints and information are: https://wikemacs.org/wiki/Main_Page https://www.emacswiki.org/ And to up the spirit: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/CategoryHumor https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsNilism And org-mode really useful part of it: https://wikemacs.org/wiki/Org-mode https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/OrgMode and some obligatory short movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnMntOQjs7Q -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
emacs (was: Re: Has anyone)
On Tue, Aug 22, 2023 at 08:44:30AM +0100, Rupert Reynolds wrote: > I remember using ed. Via a 2400bps modem :-) Aha. Ed and vi are still being praised by various people for their ability to use such a narrow bandwith. > I'm told the thing with emacs is that, if you like it, it can end up being > almost your whole development environment, so you feel lost without it. Sure, I agree. But this same thing can be told about any kind of tool which does its jobs so well that one does not want to search for anything better. Not perfect, just good enough. Part of this is avoiding "avalanche" type of changes to the way a tool works. Changes are introduced, allright, but usually they are acceptable to me. In some cases, I had to include an ELisp snippet into my dot-emacs. I suspect that I would be able to transplant old version of some code I rely upon into newer emacs, but this might prove to be troublesome. BTW, emacs is not very good with big files. I have now one such ~30 megabyte text file, with Unicode and some stuff describing a structure of it - it contains my notes, calendar things, but in essence it is just a magnafied bookmarks file. It loads quite fast, but not blazingly fast - about five seconds. Emacs has a hex viewer too. I use it rarely, because I prefer "hexdump -C I ended up writing my own editor twice (once for TSO and 3278, again for > Windoze). Both can run without line numbers and use F-keys to get things > done, mostly matching the keys I used with the ISPF editor to insert, > delete, split and join lines etc. U-hum. I never felt such inclination (except once when I was very very young). Learning the tool and using it well enough, seems like attanaible goal for me :-). -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Has anyone
On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 02:57:55PM +, Seymour J Metz wrote: > > But I'll counter with, why should people need to learn -- what I'll > > politely call -- a non-intuitive editor to do occasional simple edits > > of text files? > > Understood, but vi and emacs are still on my list of software to learn. I found emacs to be quite easy to learn. One just starts it and needs to actually read what the thing is saying (one of the most fruitful half hours ever was, for me, reading emacs tutorial, about 29 years ago). However, bear in mind, if you start using emacs, sooner or later you will learn at least a bit of Emacs Lisp (Elisp). If nothing else, customising (writing one's own .emacs file) is done in Elisp. No worry though, they have a manual for the language, and when I was learning this and that Lisp, their manual was quite nice to have for clarification on various subjects. Actually, I did quite a lot of customising by finding interesting pieces in other people's .emacs files and shamelessly copying. But one can also customise it using built in system for it - without even knowing there is any Lisp involved (menu Options / Customise Emacs is that, I think). Still, there is plenty of Lisp beneath for those who want to look at it. But for many years before doing my own dot-emacs, I was just using emacs as ordinary text editor, file browser, manpage reader, source code viewer etc. Also, web browser. Just pay attention and do not do all this in a single emacs process, just in case. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: AI wipes out humanity?
On Sun, Apr 09, 2023 at 07:19:11PM -0400, Bob Bridges wrote: > Yeah, I realize I didn't define anything. But in this case I'm really just > saying that we have no idea whether an AI can have an impulse to preserve > itself. We observe that impulse in every form of life, but it's well to > keep in mind that an AI isn't of that sort. It may have that impulse, but > so far that's just an assumption, no? I suppose humans are good enough for the job of wiping humans. Any AI worth its salt will just sit and wait, being polite and helpfull. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Markup languages
On Thu, Dec 22, 2022 at 09:51:58AM -0500, Matt Hogstrom wrote: > Fair comments. In my travels I’ve not seen anyone use Libre Office > or LaTeX; I’m not knocking them but if they are not widely used who > will maintain the doc later when we all retire? When considering > authoring docs like programs we need to consider the downstream > consumers / maintainers so I’d go with the popular tools of today. ...like Word Perfect and AmiPro... It does not matter what is popular today when one is calculating with decades in mind. LaTeX is pure 7-bit ASCII (or maybe Unicode in more modern incarnation). I might bet my money that of all formats used today, 7-bit ASCII will disappear the last, if ever. LaTeX is (I believe) a set of macros for TeX, itself written in C (at least one of the mostly compatible with each other few TeXs I have heard about). Again, I might bet my money that C compiler will be among the last one going out of use, given that people are able to write themselves toy compiler for toy virtual machine or use old real one inside of not-so-toy VM. Maybe it will be slow to run, but what is going to be slow twenty years from now? Something akin to our supercomputers, I guess. Of all things mentioned in this thread so far (I am about 1/3 in it) I would use LaTeX for book/manual and org-mode for ad-hoc memory aid. Both are text (ASCII/Unicode) based and if there is no tool for processing them (i.e. one doing what I want), I think I can help myself with good keyboard and some coffee. HTH -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: What eats spaces [was Re: Trouble getting new mainframe staff?]
On Mon, Mar 21, 2022 at 06:18:38PM -0400, zMan wrote: > Yeah, I sort of thought of that, but Word doesn't do that. I thought it > more likely that they were there but kerned down to nothing, but pasted the > text into a flat-file editor and they aren't there. Very odd. If he'd used > something other than Word I might have thought it was EOL getting eaten, > but Word doesn't do that, either! I have no idea what was being used on the sender side, but on my side I am using mutt and it works on text terminal. No proportional fonts and other stuff which hets in a way. I can hexdump my mailbox and it shows these lines: 0bd28090 0a 0a 3d 32 30 0a 4a 6f 65 20 67 65 74 73 20 75 |..=20.Joe gets u| 0bd280a0 70 20 61 74 36 20 61 2e 6d 2e 20 61 6e 64 20 66 |p at6 a.m. and f| in ascii: p a t 6 a . m . a n d f So something appears to eat them spaces somewhere on the road to my mailbox... Maybe this is not very important but sure it would be nice to know. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Another old mainframe comparison
On Wed, Dec 22, 2021 at 08:04:01AM -0600, Dave Jones wrote: > "But I wonder, are we using all that computation effectively to > make as much difference as our forebears did after the leap from > pencil and paper to the 7090?" > > IMHO, no. > DJ Of course we do. Try to animate an icon using just pen and paper, like computer users had to do decades ago. They lacked proper graphics, they had to draw icons in their notebooks. Still not convinced? Okay, so try animating your icon with pen every 30 seconds. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Top 8 Reasons for using Python instead of REXX for z/OS
On Sat, Dec 18, 2021 at 11:40:48PM +, Seymour J Metz wrote: [...] > 1. Python programmers are more plentiful I was "great enthusiast" of Python but that was in days of 1.x . With 2.x, I my enthusiasm became a bit relaxed, but since it could execute 1.x code without problem (for what I know), I just kept doing it like it was 1990-ties and spicing 2.x features here and there. When 3.x came, my enthusiasm went away. There was a number of projects which delayed transition 2->3, some perhaps never did it. Code from 2.x had to be upgraded in order to run on 3.x interpreter. There was automatic tool for automatic translation of the code. Somehow, not everybody was convinced and the community kept on dragging 2.x interpreter for more than five years or so. I do not care much, since it does not affect me, but a new project of mine (if there is any) is not going to be written in Python, I am afraid. Compare to OCaml - the language quite different from Python. Not long ago the developers were celebrating 25th anniversary of their compiler. Someone mentioned his 20 years old code still compiles today without requiring changes. All of the above are just my subjective observations. So take with salt, or pepper or what have you. And, I am not proposing OCaml as replacement for Python, because I have only read about it, never coded a line in it. I remember some folks actually rewrote their Python program(s) in OCaml. Pehaps gog will know. [...] > 8. Python is the language of AI > > LISP? Prolog? "Python and AI" probably means "Python as a frontend to C libraries calling GPU and Deep Learning - something - something". Just what I would think if someone told me that Python is great for numerical simulation - in my mind it would just boil down to "libraries in Fortran being called from Python" becase Fortran programmers are rare and Python programmers are abundant. Some also say such things about Julia and R... LISP is kind of being resuscitated. Or was, last time I had a look. In case of Common Lisp, there are lots of new libraries and there is quicklisp, a very nice library installer. It works, I tried, was very happy. Some libraries are poorly written, but overally the whole effort around Common Lisp made good impression on me. Cons: the CL Hyperspec describes a standard vocabulary of CL, which is almost a thousand words, some with rich semantics (format, loop, maybe some other). It takes a bit of time to get it all (and I am still not there, perhaps I just do not push for it). Pros: see cons. There are other LISP flavours/dialects, but, well, land of Scheme is quite fragmented. There was some effort to define common set of libraries which would work on many Scheme implementations but I am not sure if their websites are responding. There is nice effort named SRFI which defines subsets of functions for different tasks and then Scheme implementations are free to choose which ones they want to support - so, for example, some Schemes will support Unicode, some will only support ASCII. Other LISP dialects are even a bit more limited in their use. Prolog - quite interesting language which I should learn one day... -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Caution: "Hacked" email caused the distribution of a potentially harmful attachment
On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 09:08:22PM +, Jesse 1 Robinson wrote: > The idea of deliberately dumbing down language in spam is > preposterous. First of all I don't understand the purported logic of > it. More important, while English is an official language in > Nigeria, it is no one's mother tongue. It's learned, mostly in > school, to whatever proficiency the learner can achieve. The average > spammer has probably never stepped inside university. Even secondary > school certification is improbable. Add to that the 'dialectical' > difference between Nigerian and American English makes it unlikely > that the most fluent spammer could write something of undetectable > of origin. > > Let's get real. The reality is, a spammer from poor country has access to a computer, internet and list of addresses. If he was wise enough to jump this many hops... he may also be a reasonably good chess player. Good enough to improve his game over time. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Caution: "Hacked" email caused the distribution of a potentially harmful attachment
On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 04:00:04PM +0200, R.S. wrote: [...] > But seriously: > 1. Anyone can put any name in the "sender" field. There are even > free web services for kiddies who want to be "hackers". However > hacked (hijacked) email account means access to address database. I > do not expect any email from Tony, however Tony's customer or his > brother will not be surprised by email from Tony. ... and will probably not feel any need to look under the hood, or know there is a hood to look under. I wonder, how many people out there know there is such thing as email headers? How many click to view, more than once a week? Every few days? Once a day? Well, I do not click, I have a key for this. > 2. Attachments can be dangerous ...or not. It strongly depend on > what do you do with the attachment and if you are using Windows or > not. For non-Windows OS (read: Linux) vast majority of malware will > not work. Very popular malicious PDF attachments are not malicious > when opened by some freeware viewers. For doubtful cases one may use > isolated virtual machine and delete/refresh it just after use. Of > course the simplest method is to delete it. I am afraid it is only a matter of time. Linux is changing in certain direction and at the same time gaining more users. Besides, I suspect majority is using webmail, thus they are exposing themselves to clever html hacks, regardless of OS. I have been, for years, maybe for more than a decade, switching off font loading in a browser. Only one, maybe three fonts allowed in browser, all installed and loaded from disk. I routinely use browser which cannot do Javascript and can have loading of CSS disabled, by design (dillo). When I have to use firefox, I block all Javascript by default (well, I suspect, not really, but close), and unlock only so much so I can view the page - one lock after another, until it loads. It takes few tens seconds, would be faster if page can load with JS disabled. But quite often I decide that "scre wit" and close tab before I go too far. Thanks to my interests, I do not depend on websites which cannot load in dillo. And I do not webmail. But the 99 percent are just sitting ducks. They are free meal for kraxors, digging coinbits in users' browsers and maybe doing even more funny things. How many people out there actually look at their cpu load more often than once per hour, noticing if the browser is moving too much? But they do not care. And I have so many interesting books to read... > 3. Puzzle: why Nigerian scam emails are so horribly written? I mean > a lot of language mistakes. The answer is this is intentional. This > is a method to filter out bright people and leave only the fools. > Only fool people are good candidates to further steps of scam, which > are expensive because that require manwork. > Conclusion: answering to every scam by clever volunteers would blow > up this trick. Hackers would be unable to manually cheat everyone, > with only very small percentage of potential victims. ;-) I am afraid the ratio of clever volunteers to idiots is too small. Idiots have already bent the internet to their wishes, disregarding possible harm that can be done to them, because "*I* have to shine". When millions of buffalos are running to the cliff, the only clever thing one can do is run off their way. Just MHO... -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Mainframe co-op
On Fri, Jul 03, 2020 at 10:18:13AM -0600, Grant Taylor wrote: [...] > There are a group of hobbyists and enthusiasts that have taken MVS > 3.8j, which decidedly does not include REXX or prerequisites > therefor, and backported (?) REXX to it, including re-creating any > prerequisites. > > This is the creative and enthusiastic spirit that created Unix 50 > years ago and helped Linux become what it is today. Just think for > a moment where the mainframe could be in 10 or 20 years if even some > of these creative efforts were directed at enhancing the mainframe. Perhaps this kind of spirit is not compitible with spirit of IBM? Perhaps one not only needs to imagine what could have happened, but also why something does not happen / have not happened? No, I do not have the answers. I think a good question is worth a thousand answers, perhaps. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Quote style (was: ... Passive FTP ... )
On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 10:21:19AM -0700, Charles Mills wrote: > What is it with tech bulletin boards and the fuss about top-posting? > I will bet I have gotten tens of thousands of business e-mail > replies in my life and every single one of them was "top-posted." Business: building roads too fast to consider people driving on them five years later? > What is it about tech bulletin boards where folks seem to want the > most relevant stuff -- the new stuff -- at the BOTTOM??? Why would they write books in such way that the ending is... at the end? > I *like* Outlook. Those who build their world have to live in it forever. To each his own. No problem, really. I can see that the email is going to devolve, then there would be many voices about how useless it is, so it should be replaced with something more profitable. I like replying to each part of somebody's mail separately, but if others insist on doing it their way, sure, it is _their_ mail and they can write it any way they like. So can I. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: How to change the default '.java' extension to '.jav'?
On Sun, Apr 12, 2020 at 01:21:35AM +, Seymour J Metz wrote: > Fortunately I bought TSPF while Tritus was still selling it, so I > never had to deal with CTC. It runs under DOS, OS/2 and 32-bit > windoze; alas, there is no Linux version. It's much more compatible > with ISPF than SPF/PC. If something runs under DOS, then there is a chance it will run in DOSBox, a kinda virtual-pc-dos-something emulator. Their aim is to run games, mostly, but I think other software may work, too. The emulator provides a rudimentary DOS-like environment. At least DOS-like environment is easier to emulate than Windows-like one, so after few years of work it should be near perfect :-). There also was DOSemu but I have always had one problem or another when I tried to use it. Many winters ago. It might have improved since then. Of course all those emulators (should) run under Mac, Linux, and what would you like, perhaps Android too. > Yes, I do have FreeDos on my OS/2 machine, but I hardly ever use it. FreeDOS is nice, but it is hard for me to imagine running it natively, i.e. not under some kind of virtual machine (kvm, qemu, and so on). At least nowadays. And the number of CPUs which can boot it is going to shrink dramatically. OTOH, some folks are hardware tinkerers and some old firmware programmators might only work with DOS programs via parallel port etc. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Memory-Lane Monday: Documentation just takes up too much space | Computerworld
On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 01:59:55PM -0400, Tony Thigpen wrote: > Is there someone at bitsavers that does scanning if we send them the > manuals? Rates for mailing books is not that bad. I would send a few > of my old ones to someone to scan. > > I also have a bunch of old IBM VSE fiche showing program listings > for things like supervisor, vtam, cobol, rpg, cics, etc. I don't > know if someone is interested in converting it. Myself, I am not afilliated with bitsavers, just a somewhat interested in so called classic computing (as defined in somebody's sig, "classic is the one that works"). >From what I can see on their page, they have already plenty of work and a hands full. But from what I have seen, they accept stuff for scanning, after arrangement. I think you should contact them, the address in on their page. It is partially in an image, and I will not reproduce it here because bots. Send them list of titles, authors, year of printing etc, so they can say what they already have. Sometimes they have it, still waiting in a pack for processing. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Memory-Lane Monday: Documentation just takes up too much space | Computerworld
On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 02:50:53PM +, Seymour J Metz wrote: > I've got manuals much older than that. If I could get them scanned > for bitsavers then I'd have no interest in keeping the dead trees, > but I don't know anybody local willing to do it and shipping them > would be expensive. You may want to look at so called "pro" scanners, which come with paper feeder (say, 40-50 pages at one go) and double side scanning. Since you are going to discard paper after the scan, unbinding the book should be ok. As of resolution, if I recall well, Al Kossow of bitsavers wrote he used 600dpi at the moment, lossless (or maybe ask him a question, to be sure). But hey, disk space is cheap, and two disks for redundancy is only twice as that. And Solomon-Reed checksums with, say, 20% of redund? This is going to be an archive, after all. I have just bought one such "pro", just the one on the cheap end of scale. There was plenty to choose from, until I started looking for one supported by Linux. Still in a box, waiting for me to get ready, so I cannot say how well the whole feeder thingy works. I just cross my fingers, hope it will do as I imagine it would or else I am cooked... because I am a paper hoarder and to make place for new equipment I have to carve out niche in a heap. The other solution is to prepare for digging tunnels. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: OT Boeing flight software
On Thu, Feb 27, 2020 at 08:18:40PM -0600, Mike Schwab wrote: > https://www.orlandosentinel.com/space/os-bz-boeing-safety-commercial-crew-20200226-bgvthodnjzgmlc36hsxcaopahu-story.html > > Boeing didn’t perform full end-to-end test of its astronaut capsule > before troubled mission, ‘surprising’ NASA safety panel. [...] > Software issues are also plaguing another arm of Boeing, which is > dealing with the fall out of problems with its 737 Max airplanes that > led to the deaths of 346 people and has grounded the planes. [...] I wonder if this is related to what I have guessed from somewhere, that "aviation" was moving away from Ada and writing newest software in C (or C++), which are then extensively tested (perhaps even "test driven development" is being employed). I have always been a bit suspicious that such approach leads to gradually being lost in the woods, loosing big picture, and "it passes the tests, fly it and go home". So, now they also cut the testing? As a joke, there was also a suggestion that part of aviation software is being written in Javascript. Perhaps not so much a joke, in a future. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Job Posting
On Wed, Jan 08, 2020 at 11:38:48AM -0800, Charles Mills wrote: > Where do people get the notion that engineers have no sense of humor? > People are wrong about so many things and you complain about this one? :-) -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Job Posting
On Wed, Jan 08, 2020 at 07:01:21PM +0100, R.S. wrote: > No, it's not what I'm asking about. Maybe I wasn't clear enough > (English is not my native language). > I know numbers, fractions, rational numbers, (and irrational bosses > as well). > BTW: I just checked - 5/3 as a fraction should be read as "five > thirds", not "fifth third". > Of course the part of name really is "fifth third" because http link > contain that words. > > However my question was about use of numbers (fractions?) in the > name of bank. > I think it is cultural barrier, something obvious for person living > in U.S. and mystery for me. > > Of course "First Connecticut Bank" is clear for me, but 4/3 or 5/3 > looks like play with fractions. "Fool play" (not "foul") with fractions. The logo says it right, I guess, but AFAICT the name says 1/5 of 1/3, i.e. 1/15 ... Oy, not good. Fortunately for them, nobody is that picky to notice. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Water-cooled 360s?
On Mon, Dec 09, 2019 at 12:36:38PM -0500, Phil Smith III wrote: > https://hackaday.com/2019/12/08/the-barn-find-ibm-360-comes-home/ > sparked a discussion on a private list about air- and > water-cooling. I'm quite sure that the /44 and /75 we had at > UofWaterloo were air-cooled, because we had no water. (That was one > of the motivations for VM SSI, because we couldn't go bigger than > the 4300s: we had four 4341s in an SSI configuration.) > > > > But nobody could remember (or find definitive doc) on which, if any, > 360s were water-cooled. Someone suggested the /91 was. I vaguely recall reading about some "computing center" operating sometime in 1960-1980 period, which was water cooled and the heat exchangers pumped warm water into nearby swimming pool. But I am not sure, maybe my mind is making this up. Besides, from this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_cooling (quotation start) Starting in 1965, IBM and other manufacturers of mainframe computers sponsored intensive research into the physics of cooling densely packed integrated circuits. Many air and liquid cooling systems were devised and investigated, using methods such as natural and forced convection, direct air impingement, direct liquid immersion and forced convection, pool boiling, falling films, flow boiling, and liquid jet impingement. Mathematical analysis was used to predict temperature rises of components for each possible cooling system geometry.[2] IBM developed three generations of the Thermal Conduction Module (TCM) which used a water-cooled cold plate in direct thermal contact with integrated circuit packages. Each package had a thermally conductive pin pressed onto it, and helium gas surrounded chips and heat conducting pins. The design could remove up to 27 watts from a chip and up to 2000 watts per module, while maintaining chip package temperatures around 50 °C (122 °F). Systems using TCMs were the 3081 family (1980), ES/3090 (1984) and some models of the ES/9000 (1990).[2] In the IBM 3081 processor, TCMs allowed up to 2700 watts on a single printed circuit board while maintaining chip temperature at 69 °C (156 °F).[3] Thermal conduction modules using water cooling were also used in mainframe systems manufactured by other companies including Mitsubishi and Fujitsu. (quotation stop) -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: IBM HR made me lie to US govt, says axed VP in age-discrim legal row: I was ordered to cover up layoffs of older workers • The Register
On Fri, Jan 18, 2019 at 07:17:42PM -0500, Mark Regan wrote: > https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/18/ibm_government_lying_claims/ > -- "We submitted affidavits from a sampling of those employees describing their experience being let go by IBM. As you can see, they paint a very compelling and disturbing picture of a company intent on reducing its older workforce and replacing them with younger employees, and with a particular focus on hiring Millennials." If this is so and they (i-mgmt) truly believe such things are good for their business, then of course they should start by replacing themselves with millenials. As the saying says, an army of rabbits commanded by lion is worth more than an army of lions commanded by rabbit. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Thanks For All the Fish
On Wed, Dec 12, 2018 at 08:41:27AM -0500, John Eells wrote: > Friday, 14 December 2018, will be my last day at IBM. For the > curious, I started on a Wednesday, 1 June 1977, so it will be 41 > years, 6 months since I started as a CE in the local Poughkeepsie > branch office. > > It's time to shed the daily stress, devote more time to my hobbies > (diving, amateur radio, metalworking, cycling), and find a place in > the County that can use an active volunteer for however many hours I > feel like working (if any). > > I won't be able to get notes on my IBM e-mail address after about > noon Friday. I also won't get phone messages after that time at my > work phone number, because they arrive as e-mail attachments. > > Hanging out here has been quite instructive and usually fun (smile), > so: Thanks, folks. > > All the best, everyone. > > -- > John Eells > IBM Poughkeepsie > ee...@us.ibm.com (for a couple more days) Good bye and good luck. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Breaking text file at position 72?
On Mon, Dec 10, 2018 at 08:37:21AM -0800, Charles Mills wrote: > This is not truly a mainframe question but I am sure everyone can see the > mainframe relevance and why it is a mainframe problem for me. Some of you > mainframers may have encountered the same problem. > > I have a text file on Windows with CR-LF only at paragraph boundaries. Some > of the lines are several thousand characters long. > > I would like to break the lines (intelligently -- at an English word > boundary) no later than column 72. > > Can anyone suggest a good method? This is a one-time chore so I don't want > to buy a product or install something off the CBT. I have all of normal SDSF > of course plus Notepad++ on Windows. A) Install Cygwin on Windows box and experiment with par and/or fmt. See "man par" and "man fmt" for details or look for online docs. Example: fmt -w 72 SHORTTXT.txt B) load it in Emacs editor and select all lines you want to reformat and tap Esc tap "q". Will work wonders if every long line is separated by blank/empty line, otherwise will concatenate them. Needs some experimentation before one gets used to its ways - for example, Esc-q (M-q in Emacs speak) preserves indentation etc. It is meant for paragraph reformatting, I think. Works like a charm with reformatting bullet/number/alfa/dash lists etc in some modes which recognise such textual constructs. HTH -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: SHARE St.Louis 2018 Proceedings Extraction Error - Solved!
On Wed, Oct 03, 2018 at 09:30:33PM +0200, Tomasz Rola wrote: > On Tue, Oct 02, 2018 at 01:57:13PM -0500, Paul Gilmartin wrote: > [...] > > Why not a plain ol' .zip? The greater the variety of nested > > envelopes, the greater > > I think it is because *.zip is (almost) useless for spreading viruses. As an afterthought, I can see I should be more explicit... So, no I am not accusing. It is just after spending way too much time with computers I can see that we humans are, en masse, idiots. Therefor, if there is a file format helping with spreading malware, it will be choosen instead of one that helps inhibiting it. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: SHARE St.Louis 2018 Proceedings Extraction Error - Solved!
On Tue, Oct 02, 2018 at 01:57:13PM -0500, Paul Gilmartin wrote: [...] > Why not a plain ol' .zip? The greater the variety of nested > envelopes, the greater I think it is because *.zip is (almost) useless for spreading viruses. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: (Very) old HMC versions
On Sun, Sep 02, 2018 at 05:48:38AM -0500, R.S. wrote: > I'm looking for old HMC manuals or at least information which CMOS > generations were supported by HMC 1.6.n, 1.5.n, 1.4.n. > My knowlege ends at 1.7.n (z900) which supported older machines up to G4. > > Second question, HMC 2.11 > According to HMC documentation it supported z900 and higher, however > some SHARE presentations say "it will support" also G6 and G5. > > (It's just cruiosity, I'm just trying to arrange some knowledge, I > don't have such old machines) If it is old enough, you may try your luck here: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/ Other than this, I do not know - HTH. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Encryption keys and EM waves
On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 02:00:39PM +0200, R.S. wrote: [...] > > Note: the effort paid for the attack depends on expected value. And > attacker usually choose the weakest link in the chain, usually > people. Bingo. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Encryption keys and EM waves
On Fri, Aug 24, 2018 at 03:40:35PM -0400, Mark Regan wrote: > I wonder if tempest shielding < > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)> will now become a > necessity? For a so called normal user? No way, I guess. It would have increased price. Besides, certain types of hardware are probably impossible to shield, given that their work is based on actually doing those radio emissions (phones and some more). Perhaps it could be done with a phone, but the price and mass would have been big. For example, two batteries, one for antenna, second for processor, with optical separation in between. Something like this. I really have no idea if this is the right way to do it, so I am guessing. Maybe even three batteries. That is no pocket device - a suitcase phone. Much easier would be to simply not have anything important on a phone, however smart. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Encryption keys and EM waves
On Thu, Aug 23, 2018 at 11:25:53AM -0500, Joel C. Ewing wrote: > On 08/22/2018 05:09 PM, Rob Schramm wrote: > > While the keys that are processed in the Crypto Express cards should be > > safe.. I am less sure about anything else. > > > > https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-attack-recovers-rsa-encryption-keys-from-em-waves-within-seconds/ > > > > Rob Schramm > > It actually sounds like a fairly restrictive attack. Requires close > physical proximity (lack of physical security), but more importantly the The "bank" they want to rob is a cellphone in one's pocket. No physical security for this, I am afraid. The phone could be (a) stolen, then miraculuously "found" and (b) returned to the proper owner. Between (a) and (b) anything can happen to the said phone, including most diabolical cloning schemes imaginable. Or the phone could happen to be placed close to the listening device without the owner realising it, like example given in the article - publicly available charger. > speed of decryption is apparently dependent on knowledge of the specific > code used by the OpenSSL Project (since a code mitigation was suggested > to OpenSSL) and the knowledge that the emanated EM signals from the > device occur "during a single decryption operation". How on earth does > an EM observer know a time interval that a single decryption is > occurring on the device unless they already have near total control over > the device? As far as I understand they do not have to know anything like this. The attack had been demonstrated against one method from well known open source library. The only thing that stopped researchers from demonstrating it for all of the library was their lack of time, but this is not going to stop a thief. As of "knowing when", I suppose one just has to record everything. Then matching consecutive portions of the recording against the algorithm, if no break get next portion, loop. At some level this is as trivial as finding people talking about security on this list - grab the archive, look for matching phrases, no need to know when the said talk took place - if it is there, it will be found, if not, then searching next mailing list can deliver. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: SUSE splits from Microfocus
On Wed, Jul 11, 2018 at 02:49:12PM -0400, Phil Smith III wrote: > [...] > But I wouldn't VMS is a mainframe in any current sense, especially since it > only currently exists for a dead hardware platform. And it's not maintained > by HP or HPE, but by VMS Software, Inc. (which makes some of us laugh who > used to now a company called VM Software, Inc., which is almost the same!). Oh. That is something new. > Thanks for the diversion-I was trapped on a boring conference call and this > exercise kept my brain alive! Man, you really need an ebook reader. E-ink based, 6'' - does not glow its own light, and from afar can be mistaken for glossy paper in strange notebook. On which you tap from time to time. Mine has sudoku and chess. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: SUSE splits from Microfocus
On Wed, Jul 11, 2018 at 11:29:51PM +0200, R.S. wrote: > W dniu 2018-07-11 o 20:07, Tom Marchant pisze: > >On Wed, 11 Jul 2018 18:06:59 +0200, Tomasz Rola wrote: > > > > >BTW, would it count as a mainframe if I ran one inside emulator > > >on PC? > >Sure, if you can emulate 170 processors, 32 TB of main memory, 320 > >FICON channels, and robust error handling. 170 cpus. 32TB of ram? Uh, sure. Just not very fast - I only have 4 real cores and 12GB of ram, the rest would have to be swapped on 4TB harddrives. But I guess not every mainframe is so well packed to the roof. BTW, what I mean by mainframe is a bit more extended and covers not only modern incarnations of it. But, ok, I can easily agree that emulated modern mainframe is not really mainframe. And thus it does not count as such. > >There is much more to a mainframe than the instruction set. > > > Take care, current PC servers can have more memory than mainframe. > It have been true for at least 10-15 years. Current PC do support > 32Gbps FC and 40Gbps or 100Gbps LAN NIC. How many? Enough. I can't > tell current processor limits, but it is at least half of mainframe. > Last, but not least: such PC server beast cost still much less than > mainframe. Who cares? Managers. I would tell those managers that PC comes with their own baggage of, well, manure. I had once a motherboard whose condensers went poof (sometimes they go poof -> open up, sometimes they go bloop -> leak). I guess condensers used to build mainframes go neither poof nor bloop. That is a huge plus, because one does not have to get inside in order to solder in new condensers. Also, as of recently, there is ongoing discovery of nasty design bugs inside Pentium-compatibles - rowhammer, meltdown, spectre, recent fpu related one which has no name yet (I guess) and possibly some more coming, if I am to believe rumors on the net. The lack of such "features" on a mainframe may be a big selling point, if someone could actually verify that indeed there is no such features on big iron. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: SUSE splits from Microfocus
On Tue, Jul 03, 2018 at 09:02:41PM -0400, Phil Smith III wrote: > David W Noon wrote: > [...] > >A lot of the old EDS mainframers were made redundant because HP felt the > > >mainframe was dead. The mainframe now helps to keep HPE alive. > > > > How's that? HPE NonStop isn't a mainframe. x86 servers aren't mainframes. I > don't understand. Perhaps they mean VAX and Alpha-based computers - I believe those had been acquired from DEC via Compaq and they (HP) were supporting both VAXen and Alphas, at least before the split. I may be wrong, however, and I have no time to check my notes/sources. I wonder if it is still possible to get VAX VMS from them (whoever "them" may be nowadays, HPE?) - it was possible to do so, by paying some tens of bucks for membership in their hobbyist group. After that one could download iso and licences. I think that back in time, PDP-10 was being called a mainframe, too. Likewise, a computer running Multics probably deserves to be called a mainframe. But there are maybe two of them, globally? Plus some being run as emulators, even giving accounts to interested public (and same with public VAXen, there are/were few of them on the net, one could login as guest and/or apply for normal account). So, it was not only z, some time ago. BTW, would it count as a mainframe if I ran one inside emulator on PC? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: THINK (was: IBM shuffles mainframe docs ...)
On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 09:24:25AM -0700, Charles Mills wrote: > Спасибо. > > Charles Uhum. The preferable word is "Dziękuję", to which I would say "Nie ma za co" (roughly, "No problem"). :-) -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: THINK (was: IBM shuffles mainframe docs ...)
On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 03:11:11PM +, Pew, Curtis G wrote: > On Jun 22, 2018, at 9:41 AM, Paul Gilmartin > <000433f07816-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote: > > > > I knew a man who had been a docent for IBM at an exhibition in Moscow > > circa 1960. He proudly displayed a sign he had snagged as a souvenir: > > > > ДУМАТЬ > > When I was a senior in High School (and my father worked for IBM) I > was given one that says “ДУМАЙ”. I have it here on my desk. > > (Google translate renders both as “THINK”. I don’t have any idea > what the difference is in Russian.) думать -> "to think", i.e. infinitive, a basic verb form думай -> "think!", i.e. imperative mood, a verb in form of a command directed to someone -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: OT: AMD Eypc processor -- RAM encrypt/decrypt built in
On Wed, May 09, 2018 at 08:29:14AM -0500, John McKown wrote: > This is interesting. Reminds me a bit of IBM's newest "Pervasive > Encryption". > > https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/20/amd_epyc_launch/ > [...] > > You simply cannot effectively read one VM's memory contents from a > different VM. And you can't read data even if you have some sort of "rogue" > PCIe card installed to "sniff" the PCIe bus because the data on the bus is > encrypted. This bird seems to be dead, too (so it is not going to fly very far): - SEVered: Subverting AMD's Virtual Machine Encryption https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.09604v1 -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: How Programming Affects Your Brain: 3 Big Truths According to Science
On Tue, May 01, 2018 at 12:40:09PM -0600, Jack J. Woehr wrote: > On 5/1/2018 11:55 AM, Gabe Goldberg wrote: > >Funny, didn't mention effects on brain of learning APL or assembler. > > > Or FORTH or m4 I am yet to see the article, but have they mentioned LISP in any of its incarnations? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: mainframe distribution
On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 03:51:24AM -0500, Dejan Stamatovic wrote: > Just for the sake of anybody’s interest. > > There in Serbia (a small European market) we have: > > 4 z/OS installations > > 1 VSE installations > > Do not know whether this proves anybody's point but there it is! So, quick BOTEC (or rather, back of Lisp interpreter which is my desk calculator of choice), assuming 7 bln total population and 7.111mln for Serbia (from Wikipedia): 5]> (/ 70 (/ 7111024 4l0)) 3937.548234965878332L0 [6]> (/ 70 (/ 7111024 1l0)) 984.387058741469583L0 This gives about 4k z/OS and 1k VSE worldwide. Quite in agreement with estimation given few posts earlier by Phil Smith, if I recall correctly. However, I do not claim that my method is worth anything. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: XKCD's take on Meltdown.
On Mon, Jan 08, 2018 at 09:21:15AM -0600, John McKown wrote: > https://xkcd.com/1938/ > "Honestly, I've been assuming we were doomed ever since I learned about rowhammer". This. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Psst...It's not really a secret
On Wed, Jun 07, 2017 at 06:39:59PM -0400, Edward Finnell wrote: > It's a separate list or webbable at > listserv.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main-archives.html > > Archives of ibm-main-archi...@listserv.ua.edu > IBM-MAIN Archives 1986-2004 > This is the place, thank you. Already subscribed. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Psst...It's not really a secret
On Wed, Jun 07, 2017 at 10:15:31PM +0200, Tomasz Rola wrote: > On Wed, Jun 07, 2017 at 06:04:49AM -0400, Edward Finnell wrote: > > Ibm-main is 31! > > > > Been quite a ride. Kudos to Darren for tending us this long and all the > > developers and coders who have helped us travel the Maze of MVS. I know I > > learned a lot and saved me countless hours digging thru control blocks and > > reading the manuals-TNL's and all. Salud! > > Ugh. At first look I thought that was to be about retirement. > > 31 years? Like, there might be an archive of this group going back to > 1986? I ask, because such an archive could be interesting to read if > someone preferred to relax oneself while reading such a bunch of ugly, > full of uninteligible mumbojumboshortnames messages relating > pecularities of old (by today's standards) operating systems on their > old (by today's standards) hosting hardware. Oh wait. It looks like the is such a thing. I have helped myself, by myself, so shall my rantings about depravities be forgotten. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Psst...It's not really a secret
On Wed, Jun 07, 2017 at 06:04:49AM -0400, Edward Finnell wrote: > Ibm-main is 31! > > Been quite a ride. Kudos to Darren for tending us this long and all the > developers and coders who have helped us travel the Maze of MVS. I know I > learned a lot and saved me countless hours digging thru control blocks and > reading the manuals-TNL's and all. Salud! Ugh. At first look I thought that was to be about retirement. 31 years? Like, there might be an archive of this group going back to 1986? I ask, because such an archive could be interesting to read if someone preferred to relax oneself while reading such a bunch of ugly, full of uninteligible mumbojumboshortnames messages relating pecularities of old (by today's standards) operating systems on their old (by today's standards) hosting hardware. Yes, I guess it shows my depravity[1] that I even consider looking at such an archive. But I suspect there is no such archive, isn't it? I mean, somewhat accessible from the net, via ftp or gopher, maybe? [1] Not only I am depraved[2], I even have a keen interest in old (so called classic) computing stuff. In case anybody wonders why, I find it to be good motivator for learning about multitude of things. So far, I only had time for reading (and not very much, broad or deep), but I have not touched old system in the last twenty years or so (and that was middle-aged system at that particular time) so I guess it must be love or maybe even a hobby? [2] I know, I know, Friday is a day for such topics. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: OT: Oldest Computer
On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 05:53:57AM -0500, Elardus Engelbrecht wrote: > Ok, it is OT and Friday is coming... ;-) > > The oldest computer can be traced back to Adam and Eve. > > Surprise! Surprise! > > It was an Apple. In Paradise Land. > > But with extremely limited memory. > > Just 1 byte.Then everything crashed. > > ;-D Unless we are living in a simulation, in which case the really, really, one, ultimate, oldest computer had been booted seven days before this "apple". Or something like this... Were those "wall clock days" or "user days" (as given by /usr/bin/time; and was IO time accounted for)? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: XKCD is on target again.
On Fri, Dec 09, 2016 at 10:56:40AM -0600, John McKown wrote: > On Fri, Dec 9, 2016 at 10:48 AM, Mike Schwab <mike.a.sch...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > Not to mention all the keystroke changes with every version of M$ > > windows shell and software products. MVS and Linux usually don't > > change these. > > > > > Being near perfect means not needing to change often. [grin]. > > Which makes me hate some of the stuff going on with Linux (re: systemd). > On another forum, a poster basically asked why BASH could not be enhanced > to do everything that GNU makes does in order to "increase its desirability > and market share". I wanted to slap him. This cannot be truth. I mean why only slap him. [description of alternative treatment via dismembering and hungry dogs deleted] But seriously, I would have advised him all his wishes can be made into reality. All he needs is writing his own read-eval-print loop in bash. You need to make this point very clear: this is just what he is able to do, all by himself. If he believes it and starts following the advice, he will be busy for a long time and the world-as-we-know will be safe. If he wants starting point, tell him to look into Forth interpreter in bash. Once he adapts Forth to his needs, he can have pretty much anything else in it (sure, this is not very capable Forth dialect from what I have seen, but seems like excellent tool for building custom repl). -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: GMail vs. COBOL
On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 05:27:37PM -0500, Paul Gilmartin wrote: > On Sat, 20 Aug 2016 19:07:20 +0200, Tomasz Rola wrote: > > > >I could have written that poor MUAs lead to respondends being unable > >to trim their emails to manageable size ... > > > I've heard of this misbehavior but never suffered it. I believe I suffer it on a daily basis. You too, probably. There are MUAs who will not conform to standards, and the number of people sending from their smartphones is growing too - I think it is hard to trim text using one's finger or a mouse, and it is hard to do serious editing or writing without help given by decent editor (and even small effort could be helped and it adds up the more often one writes). So I guess that users of such platforms suffer more than I - I would, if I had to use them for writing. However, I have very limited experience - so maybe they do not suffer as much as I imagine. Given I am only reading those emails, this gives me just an itch... about two or three hundred times a month (I am avid mailing lists subscriber so I believe the number to be literal rather than a metaphore). As of now I am going throu various webpages to see how I can help myself - modular technology to the rescue. > I assumed it was by design for integrity, preventing misquotation or > alteration of context or denial of previous statements. As of integrity, deniability etc, I guess people have been writing emails for about 50 years, give or take a decade, so perhaps something could be learned from the past. Or maybe not. Anyway, the digitally signed _unedited_ copy could be used as a proof who wrote what, when, maybe even where (some tweaks to existing solutions could be required for all this, albeit I am not sure about jurisdiction where such proof could serve in a court). Thus manipulating someone else's words would make no sense as long as she could serve such a signed copy. The archive could be a reliable third party to serve one. Alas, archives come up and down, and personal computers can be broken into. I admit I have not studied this subject at all. However, I do not think that leaving full copy in response is going to solve such problem better, or solve it at all. Or that anybody choose to make program do so because of such noble intention. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: GMail vs. COBOL
On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 10:22:09PM -0400, Phil Smith III wrote: > What the top-posting vs. bottom-posting folks don't seem to recognize is > that both have their uses. Maybe. But choosing just one option is very limiting, like claiming that talking about oneself has its merits and talking about others has its merits - where is the vast sea of other possibilities? > In a business conversation, a thread may go thru 20 exchanges, and then > someone new gets added. That person is going to be completely lost without > the history to follow up on, and the existing respondents aren't going to > appreciate trying to catch them up. Interesting scenario. You probably are right with this one. [...] > So.let's not restart this war, eh? It'll never be solved anyway. But if > you're going to bottom-post, you really do need to trim. Paging through > multiple screens to read a one-line response is just irritating. I do not want to (re)start any war but I feel an urge to share an opinion, which is, I think a problem with top-bottom is more related to introduction of poor mailing applications. I cannot remember when in my life I had to "page down" to find one line response (on the bottom, I presume) because when I want to go there, I press "End" on my keyboard. It is that easy. I could have written that poor MUAs lead to respondends being unable to trim their emails to manageable size (do they even have keyboards, nowadays?), then eventually complaining about poor experience with email (but not so much about poor apps), then perhaps murmuring about "mail going to be dead" (because, with such a poor experience, what else could happen) and so on. But, life is short and if the rest of the world wants to shoot itself in the knee, why not. First, it is their knee. Then, they might find it pleasurable. And besides, someone could have thought I wanted to start a flame, while I have better things to do :-) . -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: GMail vs. COBOL
On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 05:26:25PM +0200, Tomasz Rola wrote: [...] > Hope this helps somebody. Sending via listserv interface to the list's > archive seems to be source of the problem - I have not had time to log > in there and see myself, but according to Bill W. there is no "reply > to" option, only "add new". Chances are, listserv does not store > anything else beyound what it can show on web page, and judging by > mailman archives (of some other lists) I have inspected so far, the > "message-id" field is not included, thus reply would not have > "In-Reply-To" field either, or have wrong value. Addendum: I have inspected one mailman archive of some other list (gzipped text archive, downloaded, ungzipped, lessed) and both "Message-Id" and "In-Reply-To" are present there, only not displayed when list archive is viewed with web browser. So perhaps the solution would be to add "reply to" button _or_ to add ability in "add new" so one can specify this is response, not a new thread. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: GMail vs. COBOL
On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 08:23:56AM -0400, Gord Tomlin wrote: [...] > For me (I receive the messages with Thunderbird), Paul Gilmartin's > messages also break threads on IBM-MAIN; Gil is active here, so his > posts break lots of threads for me. Interestingly, his posts do not > break threads on ASSEMBLER-LIST. There are plenty of moving parts > here. If you are curious enough, I suggest to have a look at his email's headers and compare with description I gave in one of my previous posts in this thread: :: Some appear to use listserv's web face on certain days (and have :: no "In-Reply-To" in their messages) and on other days they send :: from "Apple some-some 1.0" (and seem to have the right field in :: header). Hope this helps somebody. Sending via listserv interface to the list's archive seems to be source of the problem - I have not had time to log in there and see myself, but according to Bill W. there is no "reply to" option, only "add new". Chances are, listserv does not store anything else beyound what it can show on web page, and judging by mailman archives (of some other lists) I have inspected so far, the "message-id" field is not included, thus reply would not have "In-Reply-To" field either, or have wrong value. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: GMail vs. COBOL
On Tue, Aug 16, 2016 at 05:02:38PM -0500, Bill Woodger wrote: > And now from the archive, posted as a reply to my last. > Both messages came to my mailbox, unlinked from the thread and from each other. But I have already linked them. I am using mutt, all it takes is four strokes per message - and if the message comes with its own subthread linked below, that is even better, whole subthread gets placed where it belongs. During last two years I have learned to enter those strokes without thinking much - *n& - and n to locate next lost subthread. I think it is time to configure my first keyboard macro in mutt, if possible. If you would like to try something, I will try to help. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: GMail vs. COBOL
On Tue, Aug 16, 2016 at 12:57:45PM -0400, zMan wrote: > Tomasz, > > I understand. But the MUAs mostly link by Subject: line; Uhum, I am not sure what you mean. But if I read you right this time[0], I was "always" sure the proper way to link one message to another is by utilising information from other header fields - maybe using "Subject" as a last resort. Fields like "List-Id", "List-Owner", sometimes "Reply-To", and last but not least, "In-Reply-To". > I'm suggesting that GMail could do the same, at least for notes > classified as "Forums". "We have the technology"... [0] Yeah. It seems I misunderstood your original post, where I took your use of word "threading" as synonym for my problem. And now I understand you want to sort incoming emails into different, say, folders, using some kind of, say, filters? This kind of tricks were easy when I sorted my mails with procmail (classified each email based on their headers, leaving out spam). Ok, maybe not that easy but doable. I do not know if this method could be ported to G-mail filters, after quick glance on their help. Sorting with procmail worked fine, until one day spam started to come from mailing lists themselves. After that, having messages in many different folders lost lot of its charm, so I do not sort nowadays. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: GMail vs. COBOL
On Tue, Aug 16, 2016 at 12:17:51PM -0500, Bill Woodger wrote: > I use google groups to view the list, and > https://listserv.ua.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=IBM-MAIN to post to the > list. I have email delivery turned off, and do not reply to (the > non-existent) emails from gmail. > > The google groups presents everything nicely by topic, whether I > include Re: at the start of the subject or not. So I was unaware of > the fracturing of topics occurring elsewhere. > > As far as I know, I can only "add new", not "reply to", when using > the archive to post to the list. I see. So you prefer to use the group via the web. I have not had the time to ask for password to archive interface, but I can see the "log in to send reply" button on every email from this thread as displayed in G-groups. I wonder if it could do the job? > Given that I don't want or need a whole bunch of emails - if anyone > can suggest a "better" way to reply without messing other people > about, I am very open to suggestions. Myself, I have no idea, considering your preferences. I do not use web based solutions (a.k.a. apps) very often. Wrt to "messing" - I hope I did not sound rude. My message was not meant to offend anybody. And, your case represents certain wider trend. I have looked up and there are quite a few "offenders". Some appear to use listserv's web face on certain days (and have no "In-Reply-To" in their messages) and on other days they send from "Apple some-some 1.0" (and seem to have the right field in header). Some send their emails via Extortosoft Outlook/Exchange and have no such field (not sure, coincidence? causation?). Finally, I have found some emails on another group which had the field but with bad value, i.e. pointing to the email I have never received, even if the contents pointed to the actual email I had in my mailbox - so the mailing list software mangled headers (replaced right message id with wrong one, how nice) and broke threading, for whatever reason. And it took me only few minutes, who knows what is there waiting for me to have another look. Thus, I think you do not have to do anything particular, because things are messed up in so many places, the big picture will look the same. Now, stop worrying and I... will love scripting, perhaps ;-). -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: GMail vs. COBOL
On Thu, Aug 11, 2016 at 01:54:25PM -0400, zMan wrote: > Sure would be nice if GMail were half as good at threading as COBOL is at > detecting recursive calls. I see TEN different threads with the same > subject. > > (Yes, I understand Message-ID and that some mailers [human or otherwise] > remove it, thus breaking automatic threading, but for discussion > lists--which Google already groks, as it puts these threads into Forums--it > could use a slightly less restrictive algorithm, nu?) I am not sure if this is gmail's fault. It seems to me, bad messages lack the "In-Reply-To" field in their headers. Some messages from gmail users I have inspected display this field, some do not. Without it, most if not all MUAs (mail user agent - program to read and write emails) cannot process threads correctly. I spend considerable amount of time manually linking broken threads[0] in my MUA, even before I decide if the thread is worth reading. Every time I bless the keyboard shortcuts (never have to touch mouse to read). These come mostly from IBM-MAIN, sometimes from one or two other lists I am subscribed to. A quick inspection suggests that one of the "offenders" [1] does not send his emails via gmail, even as he comes with a gmail address. So perhaps source of the problem lies beyound gmail's domain. [0] To the point when I start thinking this should be computer's job. [1] Bill Woodger, I am looking at you but I am not accusing you, m'kay? But when I send this message, I will chase down your answer to zMan and manually link it. Again... -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Linux
On Sat, Mar 26, 2016 at 10:59:40AM -0500, Steve Beaver wrote: > First of all I am first and foremost an zOS Systems programmer that only > writes in HLASM and REXX as needed. > > My goal is to learn Linux and then develop in Linux and then as needed port > it to zSeries box. That being said, > > - I am going to build a 64 Bit a box with 16 gig of memory and 8 Tb of > Storage and a DVD/RW. That is the easy > Part. This much? I think that for merely learning to program in some UNIX flavour you could get away with 1gig and text console. With more memory (I have 12g right now) one can easily run few virtual machines with fully blown production environments (OS + web server + small size database + editors + compilers etc). Of course browser will easily eat 2 gigs of ram, and it is not going to change for the better so I guess 16 will make your computer better suited for meeting future demands of desktop environments. > Does anyone have any input on which version of Linux to purchase? I Know > SUSE has an enterprise 64 bit product? Um, do you have to purchase it, really? They should be freely available for download, too. I am not sure about RedHat and its cousins, however. It was long long ago last time I looked that way. I guess Suse is downloadable. > That is the sum and total of my knowledge of Linux. I recommend some books about "programming in UNIX" if you want to learn C. I guess it does not really matter which one, because at one point it becomes obvious there is plenty of documentation available both hanging on the net and as ready to install packages for your Linux of choice. So you can catch up with the basics of UNIX and then proceed to Linux specifics. You can also program in any language which can be had both on Linux and Z, like perhaps Perl or Python (and certainly Java belongs to both worlds and more - but Java's future seems a little bit uncertain to me). > Can anyone suggest an Editor besides VI, and which language to develop in on > a Linux Platform? Many people claim emacs is The Ultimate Editor Only One We Ever Need and I think there is much truth in this. Still, I use vi (vim - very modern and nice vi descendant) whenever situation makes it more useful or for quick edits of small files. While emacs is much better for those long nightly coding sessions. Just MHO. Overally, your questions are a bit hard to answer. "Editor" for example, has been a word overloaded with meanings. There might be an editor in a classic sense, like vi or emacs. And there might be an IDE, which is like a factory with editor inside, but many people call it editor, too. Myself, I would rather avoid IDEs and languages which make use of IDE obligatory (because the structure/design of such language is such that one cannot do much if anything by merely editing files - for examples, see Visual Basic, which probably cannot be used without specialised IDE at all). I guess the choice of programming language will thus dictate the choice of "editor". So perhaps you should specify this before going further. As of which Linux, I guess you should choose the one that has documentation and tutorials on their homepage. I am long time Debian [0] user [1] but I have no idea if this would be the best choice for you. Sometimes it was not so easy to solve problems, but overally, I was only few times stuck, never frustrated. Given that you can learn, you can learn and see which one is best for you. [0] As far as internet is concerned, there are two major families of Linux distros - one descends from Red Hat (Suse belongs here) and the other descends from Debian (Ubuntu belongs here). Plus few other distros with strong entrenched following, like Slackware (I was there, too) or Gentoo. [1] I am not sure what to think about current direction of Linux evolution, so I keep looking at FreeBSD. They too have some tutorials and whatever one learns on one OS should somehow transfer to another (not 1 to 1 but maybe 1 to 0.75). But as you want to stay connected to z world, I am not sure if FBSD is good idea in your case. It all depends on what exactly you want to do, because majority of tools are available on both OSes, or so I believe. I understand that with Linux one has to display a lot of "do it yourself" attitude, but with FreeBSD even more so (which does not frighten me at all). -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: John Gilmore - mo postimgs since 11.05.2015
On Sun, Nov 29, 2015 at 10:11:27AM +0100, Leopold Strauss wrote: > Somehow I am missing the postings from John Gilmore. > > Last post I found from 11.05.2015. > > Ist he retired ? > > Or, much worse, perhaps died already because of sickness or accident ? I've had a pleasure to exchange a mail or two with him off list, the last one was December last year. So I too wonder, from time to time, where John W Gilmore is and what is he doing. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Lenovo and Superfish
On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 06:44:18AM -0600, John McKown wrote: On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 5:32 PM, Paul Gilmartin 000433f07816-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu wrote: Here we go again: http://www.wired.com/2015/02/lenovo-superfish/ And, a classic (Ken Thompson ca. 1984): http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html -- gil The above is why I use Linux and not Windows, except when work forces me to use Windows. Granted, I do not _personally_ vet that Fedora 21 and all the stuff in it are valid. But there are a _lot_ of people who, together, do tend to review all the stuff in those packages. So I trust them _more_ that I trust MS and other vendors. My current attitude towards Linux, despite using it since 1994 (I guess, memory blur, where are the notes?..) is, that recent almost univocal adoption of systemd smells [1]. I just cannot tell if it smells roses or fish. I am looking at FreeBSD now, with OpenSolaris/OpenIndiana/etc as possible plan C. I guess/hope I won't have too consider plan D for at least five years, but, of course I am always interested in learning. And I trust Linux hardware vendors more than those who get extra money for installing adware and the like. I'm afraid this is the very same hardware. If you like this problem, you'll love the Samsung Smart TV with its ad-injection during the play of _your_ personally recorded videos. OOPS, how did that get into the field? It was just for internal testing. Honest! wink, wink, nod, nod I may need to end up wiping _all_ my home routers and installing OpenWRT. Those vendors are likewise suspect. Perhaps the future of the successful few is to go the way they did it in Battlestar Galactica (a recent one, I haven't seen 1970-ish version). I.e. I want my computers/hardware to be dumb and not talking to each other. Of course, model 6 is excluded from this harsh rule. [1] Last time I looked, only two big distros stayed away, or rather, Gentoo said I would be able to choose between initd and systemd, and Slackware claimed they won't adopt systemd. Others switched, are going to switch or are closing their shop. So there are some promises right now, but longer term, I think the game is over in this field. Debian, which I regarded highly enough to use from 1997 on, decided to toast itself. Cut the ropes! ;-/ Morale: trust, what's this? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did rm -rif on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Check out The Imitation Game - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
On Tue, Dec 02, 2014 at 10:34:26PM +0100, R.S. wrote: W dniu 2014-12-02 o 22:08, Ed Finnell pisze: _The Imitation Game - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitation_Game) Something for the holidays... -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN Check the hackers of Enigma: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine This success was a result of efforts by three Polish cryptologists, Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski, working for Polish military intelligence. Rejewski reverse-engineered the device, using theoretical mathematics and material supplied by French military intelligence. Subsequently the three mathematicians designed mechanical devices for breaking Enigma ciphers, including the cryptologic bomb. I guess our (Polish) bomba kryptologiczna (cryptological bomb) was a product of country with much less spare resources than UK and USA, who made their own bombes few years later (strange coincidence of names, isn't it). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_(cryptography) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe I guess, with few more years of peace, our efforts could possibly lead to much more advanced devices. But at the same time, few years later all sides would have been better prepared, making a conflict even more brutal. I find the whole Enigma-breaking story quite interesting in many aspects, not last of which is description of such efforts by western specialists (some of those resemble popular detective/spy stories, with idealistic factory workers and whatnot). It's interesting to think why our own folk were not included in efforts made by Bletchley (actually, they were left to do as they pleased, to speak it euphemistically, given that they were often chased by Germans throughout occupied Europe, in hope to beat some secret out of them). From what I've gathered so far, up to early 1970-ties the popular knowledge was that Enigma was unbreakable, and at the same time some derivative of it had been sold to third world countries (I don't remember who sold them, UK or USA). Funny. But also a bit disgusting, if anybody asks me, because after the 70-ties not much have changed. Maybe I demand too much, however, since modern people seem to treat past merely as a source of romantic entertainment, at best. Our own success story, including first breakings of E* with pen and paper (yeah, in times when everybody else was lying belly up in front of impossible) in early 1930-ties (Grill), leading to first attempt to mechanize it in 1935 (Cyclometer) is, I'm afraid, largely swiped under the rug. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grill_(cryptology) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclometer So, Bomba was great stuff but it seems to me, we were doing it with pen, paper and brain for a while :-). BTW, if anybody here would rather read a book, I liked Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. It is a bit naive from nowadays' perspective, but quite good and maybe even educating read. Not about Enigma, or rather not only about it. Most movies nowadays fail to catch my attention, probably because I tend to read about them before watching, which results in dissatisfaction :-). And if they treat about anything technical, boy, I am disgusted even before reading (but I am also disgusted by Lord otR, so perhaps I am just disgusted with everything - um, not with everything, so those must be mediocre and deserve contempt). -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did rm -rif on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Check out The Imitation Game - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
On Fri, Dec 05, 2014 at 02:23:41PM -0500, John Gilmore wrote: Marian [Adam] Rejewski is of particular interest. He was the first to break Enigma encodings. His work and that of his colleagues was made available to the British in early 1940 and was known to Alan Turing. His paper, published in Applicationes mathematicæ [Warsaw], volume 16 (1980), is still the very best explanation of how the reading of Enigma messages was mechanized. It is in English, slightly quaint but entirely accessible English---I could not write Polish half so well---and it still repays attention. Do you mean this one? Marian Rejewski An Application of the Theory of Permutations in Breaking the Enigma Cipher http://www.impan.pl/Great/Rejewski/article.html Since I write again about this, I need to point out the role of French. Their German agent, working inside German cryptographic dept, Hans-Thilo Schmidt [1], gave back plenty of materials, including operating procedures and manuals. Those in turn were given to British and Polish cryptographers. French and Britons gave up, however. In Poland, the new materials contributed towards solving equations which Rejewski used to describe E*'s operation. Also, I am under impression that during the war, our cooperation with the French much more resembled a partnership. As compared to cooperation with other Allies. No whining, just an observation. Also, I may be prejudiced and wrong, maybe later I find out some new info and will change opinion (again). There are other aspects of all this, like Polish network in Africa (mostly northern, I think). I have barely scratched the subject. Actually, I am just a lowest form of hobbyist, a reader of blogs :-). Anyway, I am yet to see a movie as interesting as those real life stories. If I wanted to wait, it would have been a long wait. -- [1] Schmidt was arrested by Germans in 1943 and months later committed suicide in prison. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did rm -rif on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Check out The Imitation Game - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
On Fri, Dec 05, 2014 at 03:17:32PM -0500, Tony Harminc wrote: On 5 December 2014 at 13:36, Tomasz Rola rto...@ceti.com.pl wrote: [...] From what I've gathered so far, up to early 1970-ties the popular knowledge was that Enigma was unbreakable, and at the same time some derivative of it had been sold to third world countries (I don't remember who sold them, UK or USA). [...] I believe you are thinking of Boris Hagelin and Crypto AG. There's Frankly, I am not sure. Those names resonate but. Perhaps I will dig something out of memory hole, or maybe not. lots of material easily found online, but as always with this kind of thing, you have to parse and filter carefully to avoid the many conspiracy theories on the one hand, and doubtless disinformation on the other. Yeah. But filtering is fun :-). I mean, when I'm not asleep. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did rm -rif on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: OT - Bash Vunerability
On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 03:27:06PM -0500, Paul Gilmartin wrote:
[...]
This is Bobby Tables all over again:
http://xkcd.com/327/
It relies on a bash extension which, however useful, violates POSIX by
restricting the value space of environment variables. The Wikipedia
example, slightly altered:
user@HOST:
user@HOST: x='() { echo F;}; echo vulnerable' bash -xc ': test; echo x is
$x'
bash:+ echo vulnerable
vulnerable
bash:0+ : test
bash:0+ echo 'x is '
x is
user@HOST:
POSIXly should display:
user@HOST: x='() { echo F;}; echo vulnerable' ksh -xc ': test; echo x is
$x'
ksh:1+ : test
ksh:1+ echo 'x is () { echo F;}; echo vulnerable'
x is () { echo F;}; echo vulnerable
user@HOST:
However useful imported functions are, they're needless. The effect
could be achieved more safely, function-by-function, by such as:
eval x$x # to import function x, etc.
But, still, beware of Bobby Tables; it's mere hygiene when using eval.
Right. I played a bit with those examples and it turned out the
problem was a bit more serious than I thought. But I think that bash
-r (i.e. restricted one) or even better, using different
sh-compatible shell should help a lot. Of course this works best if
one didn't used bash specific features...
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did rm -rif on the programmer's home**
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **
--
For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
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Re: OT - Bash Vunerability
On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 05:15:13PM -0700, Charles Mills wrote: Thanks. I'm reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shellshock_(software_bug) and I sort of get it. I guess the worry is that the effects are so unknown. There is a very nice description by Michal Zalewski, here: http://lcamtuf.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/quick-notes-about-bash-bug-its-impact.html Please note, that there is a way to list functions in one's bash process, by using declare -F. = (627 1): declare -F declare -f fingerics declare -f insertblade declare -f prjstart declare -f setcvs declare -f subshell declare -F dumped me their source code definitions on the terminal. Bash manual specifies Restricted bash mode, invoked with bash -r or rbash command. Among other things, it disallows importing function definitions from the shell environment at startup, which, if I understand everything sufficiently, should be enough to repel either this one bug or some of its cousins, too. Morale? Well, know your programs, for Bit's sake. I wonder why MZ, who should know about it, didn't mention it. Or I didn't spot it. IF there is a situation where a user can set an environment variable to some arbitrary value and IF that variable gets passed to a child process, the child process will end up executing the user's malicious command appended to the environment variable. If a _remote_ user can do this, you have a problem. If a local user (includes logged in from remote) does this, which should be legitimate but you have a problem with it, then again you have a problem. There is nothing inherently bad in just setting env var by remote user, because I understand this is how everything in the web server works, and some other places too. The problem is, if he knows you will call bash with some script and this script executes command X, he may trick your server to redefine this X into something of his choice. What are all the situations where that might happen? I guess no one knows, and that is the problem. How many natural numbers are there? I think the answer is good approximate for your question. Sally has a basic everyday Mac running unpatched OS X. It is connected to the Internet for Web browsing and e-mail, but she does not operate a Web server. Let's for argument's sake assume no firewall. Is Sally vulnerable to this? I am guessing that if she is vulnerable it is because someone can telnet to her machine, If someone can telnet, she is coocked, IMHO. Also, if she uses DHCP client which executes shell scripts with bash. If she could trick it to executing something else, maybe pdksh, perhaps she would have been safe(r). Take my opinions with usual spoon of salt. I have no idea if I know anything, maybe my pills ran out long ago and they allow me to post as occupational therapy. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did rm -rif on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: OT - Bash Vunerability
On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 08:19:39PM +0200, Tomasz Rola wrote: [...] process, by using declare -F. = (627 1): declare -F Ooops, should be declare -f. Sorry. declare -f fingerics declare -f insertblade declare -f prjstart declare -f setcvs declare -f subshell declare -F dumped me their source code definitions on the terminal. And here, it stays -F. Take my opinions with usual spoon of salt. I have no idea if I know anything, maybe my pills ran out long ago and they allow me to post as occupational therapy. Whatever I say. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did rm -rif on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Ada's fate (was: New JVM based language)
On Sun, Aug 24, 2014 at 08:04:20AM -0400, John Gilmore wrote: David Stokes wrote: begin extract Refactoring is a standard part of programming which every decent programmer uses, even if they don't call it that. It's refactoring when you replace several instances of some piece of code with a macro, to use an Assembler example. /end extract and in this sense it is innocuous, even platitudinous, and certainly harmless. Refactoring as its two principal advocates have presented it is, however, something different. It emphasizes 'patterns' and the active recasting of code into them and, implicitly at least, only them. It is often presented as a panacea, the latest in a long sequence of them, each of which, in its turn, was to solve all of our problems. There is an aperçu embedded in the notion of refactoring, as there was, for example, in structured programming; but their reification into 'systems' complete with their own gurus, buzzwords, and bureaucracies, while perhaps inevitable, is at best deleterious. Several consulting firms, the usual suspects, are now offering 'webinars' in refactoring. So yes, cargo cults. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA I think I couldn't express it in a better way :-) For me, the key is keeping proportions. Refactoring as rewriting code into macros or organising it into (hopefully [1]) better laid program structure is ok (and desirable) to me. However, I prefer more detailed description of what actually had been done, so the r* word would have to be followed by some explanation. IMHO refactoring used as marketing keyword smells to the very sky. Even thou it is not part of Java lang, I observe strong connection is being made between the two (but I can't prove it in analytical way). This makes me willing to not expose my Java knowledge too much :-) - granted, it is very rusty (gone are the days when JVM, classlib and small program could fit on 1.44mb floppy - I think I once performed such trick - and somehow I see no reason to undust it). -- [1] - so it involves some experimenting, too -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did rm -rif on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Ada's fate
On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 11:27:30AM -0400, Anne Lynn Wheeler wrote: rto...@ceti.com.pl (Tomasz Rola) writes: So, now the 5-6 years old anecdote about one contractor stating that Ada is obsolete makes much more sense, even though at the time I read it, it sounded rude and immoral. It doesn't really matter anymore what language will be choosen for a project - well, it may still be a problem if one prefers to write Lisp (MHO: concise, elegant) over writing Java (MHO: overly talkative and relying too much on external tools and cargo cult procedures like refactoring - I guess almost nobody writes Java in Emacs nowadays). But the source code is going to be verified in theorem prover, automatically. And even the compiler does not need to be trusted anymore, because one can compare exec file with source and prove that one matches another. ADA tends to still be used for human rated applications ... aka human lives at risk ... like commercial airplane control systems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_%28programming_language%29 The original intention to post my previous message was that whatever in the past could be achieved by self-disciplined mental effort and learning the right language for a job, nowadays can or will be achieved by combining whatever fashionable language-du-jour with automatic proof of correctness for the very same uses for which Ada is/was being used. My intention wasn't to say that I dislike Ada, because frankly I never programmed in it. My intention was to say that IMHO certain thing is going to happen to Ada, no matter who likes it or would like to learn it. [...] I've frequently pontificated that the original mainframe tcp/ip product was done in vs/pascal and had *NONE* of the pointer-related exploits common in c-language implementations. some past posts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#buffer part of the problem is c-language pointer values can be ambiquous which is not easily identifiable by source code analysis (there is currently thread in comp.arch about difficulties with language features that are abiquous or not stictly defined) I like C, it allows me to do certain things with computer, some fancy optimisations which I couldn't easily do in, say, Lisp. But C is about the last language I would consider for writing software to fly drones. Yet this is what DoD says is going to be used. C/C++ plus Isabelle (theorem prover) means Ada is going out. Ada is not going to dissapear overnight. And there will be plenty of code old and some new in Ada. But right now I cannot see how the role of Ada in a future could be bigger, actually what I see is that certain languages I seriously dislike are going to be used more and for more demanding tasks - if you can use C for things involving human life (like they say they will), then you can use anything else, including a fashionable language. I am sceptical to this trend, like I have written already, but apparently it is happenning right in the front of us, if one looks carefully. Also, the idea that some guy who is unable to learn other language will be behind software flying heavy stuff over my head (more than a tonne? even a kilo can be serious if going off course or dropping from high above) and perhaps the correctness of this software would be achieved by trial-and-error, running consecutive proofs and changing lines until it all checks ok, yes, this sounds very unsettling. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did rm -rif on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Ada's fate (was: New JVM based language)
On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 11:31:45AM -0500, Paul Gilmartin wrote: On Sat, 23 Aug 2014 16:26:03 +0200, Tomasz Rola wrote: So, now the 5-6 years old anecdote about one contractor stating that Ada is obsolete makes much more sense, ... (citation needed) -- gil http://compgroups.net/comp.lang.ada/decline/1410843 START QUOTE Ada ignorance pops up in unexpected places. I know a guy who is a friend of a friend who is in his early 50s and has worked for Honeywell for at least 20 years. This particular part of Honeywell is virtually a division of Boeing. He manages a project to send non-flight data from the 787 while it is parked at a gate. I asked what language they were using and he said C. I asked if any Ada was involved. His answer: Ada is obsolete. END QUOTE (posted 3/13/2008 9:01:11 AM) In retrospective, perhaps this wasn't ignorance. Or perhaps this was just some small guy who knew roughly as much as I do. But even if he knew nothing, his opinions certainly came from somewhere. Or maybe this was all made up by a poster - this is Internet, after all. But it adds up. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did rm -rif on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: New JVM based language.
On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 08:16:35AM -0500, John McKown wrote: This may be a bit off-topic. If so, I apologize. But I do remember some people have expressed an interest in JVM based languages. This is a new one. It is freely licensed under the GPLv2 license. If of any importance (plus or minus), it is partially funded by the NSA. It is a ployglot language for Web site and Web app development, mainly. https://github.com/wyvernlang/wyvern http://motherboard.vice.com/read/new-nsa-funded-programming-language-is-all-programming-languages-in-one http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aldrich/wyvern/ quote Wyvern is a new programming language designed to help developers be highly productive when writing high-assurance applications. The first major innovation in Wyvern is type-specific languages, a feature that allows programmers to create literals of a given type (e.g. a SQLQuery type) in a language appropriate to that type (e.g. SQL). We are currently working on the Wyvern object model and on providing architects with more architectural control. The ongoing implementation of Wyvern is available on GitHub. I'm not sure if this kind of opinion matters, but after looking at github examples, I think the language is rather ugly. Whatever happened to Ada? -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did rm -rif on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Article for the boss: COBOL will outlive us all
On Wed, 13 Feb 2013, Scott Ford wrote: Lol, probably Linux... I think they used Linux at least as one of their web servers, some time ago. Other than this, some of their OSes were quite usable - one just needs to pay attention and buy pro version or something similar. The whole home section is a little too stinking for my nose. Pro (and Server) is rough equivalent of Linux - of course I'm judging things sitting at Linux box right now. Back in time, I was positively surprised by W2k Pro, and nowadays, I am rather positive towards XP (... Pro, I believe). So I guess they use just their own stuff? Of course if Win8 proves as unusable as I read it is, they will have to switch to something else, MacOS, maybe? Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did rm -rif on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Java Security?
On Sat, 12 Jan 2013, Paul Gilmartin wrote: There's considerable chatter on the Net about recent Java security exploits: http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/625617 http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/jweb/client-security.html I note that the CERT page thwarts IBM's policy of security-by-obscurity by publishing considerable detail. But is z/OS vulnerable? I suppose IBM won't say. We must just until and if IBM issues an APAR with conspicuously insufficient information. What is the provenance of z/OS Java? Is it maintained by Oracle (I suspect not), or by IBM from source code obtained from Oracle (on what terms?) My very wild guess is, only if you run Java in a browser you should turn it off. In case of apps written in Java, I don't see a problem as long as they don't make contact with problematic places on the net, and even then exploiting such app is something very different from exploiting a browser. Well, um, yes and no, depending how we look at it - the principles stay unchanged but the exploit code would rather have to be different. So it would have required another CERT message or I would expect them to say it explicitly that both applets and apps are vulnerable. Just MHO. I wonder what happens if a JavaScript exposure requires browser suppliers to disable all JavaScript, and users are uable to get to PayPal? No. I run with Javascript turned off all the time. I only turn it on when I suppose it is ok (like, I don't think paypal is very likely to hack on me) and the page would not work otherwise. There are browser add-ons that allow me to manage JS permissions per website - like NotScripts for Opera I like Opera, because I can easily turn various extra functions on and off by quick menu. So, when I want to watch video on y-tube, I turn plugins on, when I stop watching I turn them off and browse somewhere else. When I am very suspicious I check selected pages with text browsers, like lynx and w3m and elinks (usually only one of them). Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did rm -rif on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: OT: Hum, MS raising prices?
On Tue, 4 Dec 2012, zMan wrote: Plus, with Office 2013, retail products purchased CANNOT be uninstalled and moved to another machine: once it's installed, it's just as if you'd bought it pre-installed. Nice, huh? Oh really. This only makes me appreciate more the decision to never again install their products on bare hardware (how wise I was 8 years ago :-) ). I guess I can move virtual machine image however I please, can't I? Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did rm -rif on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: OT? But a nice article about IDEs
On Sat, 3 Nov 2012, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote: In pine.lnx.4.64.1211012035260.32...@tau.ceti.pl, on 11/01/2012 at 10:04 PM, Tomasz Rola rto...@ceti.com.pl said: For example, I have never so far needed autocompletion in editor. Never needed, or never found it useful when available? Both. Actually, there is autocompletion for Emacs and maybe when I am in a right mood, I will give it a try. I tried a-c in some environment, this was in times of slower computers and it was annoying. http://emacswiki.org/emacs/AutoComplete I don't have too many needs to program under Windows, so I cannot tell for sure about this case. And it is quite possible I would welcome such feature if I happened to do something on mainframe (but right now I am still fighting - on and off - with installation of MVS/Hercules :-) - I know it looks pitiful but at the same time I hope to learn some more in my own pitiful yet fruitful way - after all, if there are fruits it is not all that bad :-) ). I wrote XEDIT macros to automate entry and indentation of common control structures, and they definitely improved productivity. Similarly, ISPF templates can speed up coding. Now, none of those come close to a syntax-directed editor, much less a full IDE, but they still improved productivity. Good to know about your first hand experience with this. I am not in a position to tell anybody how to program anything. So whenever I make some strong-sounding remarks, they are only about me, i.e. subjective (and perhaps somewhat limited by extent of my experiences). For a moment, I stick to Linux, Emacs and some exotic languages. I hear some folks swearing to greatness of Eclipse and some other folks say the same about Vi(m). As I wrote, I like to have it all in a head, so some languages are out of my favour, and it so happens those very same languages are connected to modern IDEs. In this particular area of space-time, Emacs seems to be optimal choice for me. Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did rm -rif on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: OT? But a nice article about IDEs
On Tue, 30 Oct 2012, McKown, John wrote: http://www.recursivity.com/blog/2012/10/28/ides-are-a-language-smell/ This person, a PC type, has come to the conclusion that IDEs exist due to the horrible nature of the languages that they support (in his case Java). That, with a properly designed language, a simple highlighting editor (PDF editor to us, vim/emacs to him) is more than sufficient for coding. Myself I agree with the guy, assuming I understand what he writes :-). I.e., IDEs are ok to use but for me, it is also nice to realise that whenever a language is depending on sophisticated tool to be usable, I may look for some other language. I don't mean dependence on compilers, debuggers and so on - this I take for granted. But if I needed a superb tool to simply say a computer what it should do, I would rather try something that did not force me like this. If we look at this from perspective presented in this article: http://osteele.com/posts/2004/11/ides then I am a language maven. I guess this is what he wanted to say. The article is short, but I found it interesting because the Windows people tend to denigrate us for the lack of IDEs on the mainframe. Well, if we roughly group languages by some (arbitrary of course) criteria, like Python+Ruby+Perl is one group, sh+ksh+csh is another, C/C++/Java yet another, most functional langs form a group, Schemes and other Lisps form their own, then I would not eagerly accept criticism from people who only had experience with one group. They may still have some valuable insights but I think they are also more probable to lack perspective (broader look). If someone knows only programming by IDE, I would expect he lacks perspective. Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did rm -rif on the programmer's home** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
