Re: VTOCs vs. catalogs
> What you described about VSAM is what I heard too, a replacement of the then dominant access methods. > Wow -- I distinctly remember that goal. It really scared many of us (customers and IBMers) and made some of us aware of the gaps between "developers" and "users". KSDS worked well to replace ISAM (and ISAM is another bad memory!) The other VSAM types mostly vanished, although there is a newer one for LINEAR data. Some participants here are roughly as old as I am -- with notes about 2311s and 2314s (and we should probably skip our potential comments about 650s, 1620s, 1400s, and 709xs)! Bill Ogden -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: VTOCs vs. catalogs
Subject: Re: VTOCs vs. catalogs > I'm curious whether any of you old-timers can explain why we have both VTOCs and catalogs. Please note that you can have datasets with exactly the same name on different volumes, but only one can be cataloged. This was (and might still be) a common practice for sysprogs who try to maintain a system. (I still do it when it is convenient.) Also, it is easy to move a non-VSAM non-SMS volume to a completely different z/OS system and simply recatalog the datasets (or some of them) on that volume. Bill Ogden -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Subject: Re: RACF, external password management
A simple suggestion: Do not let this project create an even worse situation!
More recent z/OS setups (with RACF) can "disable" a userid after "n"
password failures. ("n" is often 3.) If your userids are easily
found/duplicated, a really bad guy could, with relatively minor
Linux/Windows scripts, disable many of your userids! (RACF SPECIAL users
have a way around this, but that method depends on prompt z/OS operator
actions, etc. Unfortunately, some z/OS installations have almost banished
the operator functions and have very, very few SPECIAL users --- and these
few might not be readily available if this situation happens.)
Long, long ago I was involved in minor "checkups" of OS/390 security
situations. In those days, long ago, it was not too difficult to monitor
token-ring traffic to see userids/password. We also wrote a program that
checked a list of about 5000 "common passwords" we helped create. (A
surprisingly large number were variations of profane/obscene words.) This
list might have been useful to push users into a thought pattern for
"acceptable" passwords and this "thought pattern" itself was a bad result.
This was long ago, and I realize things are more sophisticated now.
Bill
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Re: Insecure security - was SDSF PS Command column
My trivial comments: 1. Using a password manager seems to be putting all our eggs in one basket. What if that basket fails? Is it secure? Can I always access it? If we need to make a particular password available to a "trusted" friend (at some indefinite time), how should we manage that. 2. I have about 60+ passwords noted (on a paper, not in view of any camera) for various sites. Some have not been used in years, some are used frequently. I rather expect than very few of us (on this site) have a tiny number of passwords that can manage everything we need to do. 3. Minimum 16 characters, upper & lower case, numbers, symbols --- this can be very obscure to all the "computer uneducated" people that try to use the many services available via the web. We are expected to remember these? Many PWs are needed to avoid using the same PW for too many purposes. 4. Like most of us (on this site) I place tape over the camera lenses on all my systems. 5. Github? Being old and stupid, I have not used it yet. On my z/OS systems (that often run odd versions of z/OS, etc, etc) I really do not want to depend on a web service for program source code, etc, etc. A nice SMALL book that covers the most basic, practical uses of github (for a gethub beginner) without going into all the really wonderful things that might be done with it, would be handy. To me, a basic book would illustrate the specific web commands, the specific z/OS JCL, the specific TSO actions to install and perform basic operations in a simple/practical manner. 6. Too much obscure/difficult security == insecurity? Amen, Amen, Amen. The IT executives seem to be in a terrific rush to go down this path. (Also, "too much security" seems to actually diminish the time available to create/improve application code, etc.) 7. "Trusted" (in the meanings used on this site) can be a very very complex concept! Bill Ogden z/OS old, old time z/OS person (started on OS/360 option 1), but still active (to some extent)! -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Subject: Re: Kinda fun
I used 026, 029, and 129 machines. (And the 010 machines; remember those!) Never bothered me, but I agree with the comment that their use (and punched cards in general) encouraged me to be much more careful with my "on paper" programming before starting to punch cards. Dunno how to translate this "feeling" into the modern world where we start typing (on a graphics screen) before we have finished deciding how the program "should" work. Times certainly change. Also as mentioned, I quickly found it was better to do my own keypunching! I had lots of "hands on" on 1620s, 1401s, 1410s, and 7040s. (I used 7090s and 7094s, but not "hands on"!) Being ancient and over the hill, I cannot remember how I worked with our 1130s and 1800s (and 1500s, if you remember those). I remember paper tape on one of the 1620s and I hated it! Trying to make modern sense of this discussion (if possible) I can see where starting to type before most of the thinking process is complete can lead to a "liking" for interpreted languages --- where at least some of the error messages occur at the typing stage --- instead of much later times that occur long after the keypunching stage! In a sense, it often seems that some of our "modern" techniques have eliminated inspecting compiler listings. ... Why sequence numbers? Like many of us, I used a carefully drawn diagonal line (with a "magic marker") across the top of the card deck as a useful restoration tool when I dropped the deck! Bill Ogden -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Subject: Re: [EXT] Re: Cloud may be overpriced compared to on-premises systems
>Concerning the comments on trucks, driving, and the rest of the world. I lived for years in various parts of the world, including Germany (for one year). Driving can be more complex there (such as when driving 100MPH and being "blinked" from behind asking me to get out of the way!) Knew a few truck people with different mixtures of trucks and their stories were very mixed. Lived in Arizona for a year. Anyone who says "wind is never a problem" needs a bit more real-world education. This is a large country and different parts are different! I do believe that some of our long-distance trucking might be better via train, but loading/unloading containers has its own problems and issues. Simple-minded solve-it-all presentations are not very helpful. Bill Ogden -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Channelized I/O WAS
> From Parwez: My mistake, the 370/195 had 2 MB, this customer's 360/75 had 1 MB In those ancient days an MB of memory was $$expensive$$ and fairly rare. In the very early 70s I worked in an installation that had two 360/75s, each with 3 MB (1 MB normal memory and 2 MB LCS). The second 75 was just for backup! I was impressed -- the largest systems I had touched before that were two 360/65s with large (256KB) memory and even these were impressive. Times have changed. (My primary laptop has 64 GB memory.) Bill Ogden -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: [EXT] Ars Technica: The IBM mainframe: How it runs and why it survives
>From:Seymour J Metz >Yep, "Model 1 displays 480 characters (12 rows of 40 characters)." >Did you have keyboard issues? My memory of those ancient history days (early 70s) simply fails too much. I seem to remember "something" simple we did with the keyboard, but the details have vanished. (And I am probably confusing it with the 2260 keyboards from a few years earlier!) Bill Ogden -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: [EXT] Ars Technica: The IBM mainframe: How it runs and why it survives
Comment for Seymour: > By the time the 370/148 came out 3270s were old hat. Not in all parts of the world! >3270-1? Did you mean 3277-1? I never saw one in the flesh, and it was way too small. Sorry, I used the "generic" 3270 instead of the specific "3277". Yes, the model 1 had a very small screen. My memory is not good, but I think it was 12x40. >OS/VS1 did have some things that MVS did not. I liked it because, in many ways, it was as simple as could be but still did the job needed. Bill Ogden -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Subject: Re: [EXT] Ars Technica: The IBM mainframe: How it runs and why it survives
Long ago and far away I helped an IBM customer set up his new 148 VS1 machine to use CICS. At that time it had the macro interface, but as an assembly programmer that was good for me. 3270s were very new at the time and controlling the screen appearance was important. The customer was an Electric company (in a very different cultural environment) and we rather quickly started production use, initially to simply display customer data. Some early mistakes: The IBM marketing people were very much unfamiliar with display terminals and thought that 3270-1 was a good start. I managed to change that immediately! (Who remembers the 3270-1?). We (myself (as an IBM SE) and the customer (both technical and management)) were very happy with how quickly the system became useful. IIRC (which is more difficult at my age) we were the first "real" virtual memory customer in that part of the world. We had about a dozen terminals on the system and had no response problems with the terminals or with batch jobs. CICS, at least in those days, seemed very efficient. Being young and stupid, I liked VS1. Bill Ogden -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: z/OSMF
Interesting discussion on screen sizes, keyboards, etc. Many of us have various different opinions. My opinions have changed since the early days when some of us (the "older" ones) used 2260s instead of 3270s. I am using a 21" screen at the moment, with three "windows" open on it. I would not want a larger screen and perhaps would prefer a slightly smaller one. I prefer a size that does not require me to constantly move my head to focus on different parts of the screen. For 3270 emulation I prefer 133 character width (and most of us probably agree on that) and at least 50 lines high (and this could vary somewhat). I find 17" laptop screens OK, but not great. More important for me (because I work mostly with text) is having good character resolution. Perhaps because I as not as young as I was a few years ago, I find long periods with crudely-formed characters to be more exhausting. Given a choice, I would say this is more important than the actual screen size. I am not fond of laptop keyboards --- IMO they range from barely OK to poor. At the moment I am using an old PC AT keyboard (with the "round" adapter plug going to a converter to connect it to a USB port). It has the numeric keypad (which I do not use) and has good "movement" of the keys that provides a positive feedback for an old guy like me. (The "real" 3270 terminals had great keyboards!) I can deal with the red "mouse control" on IBM-designed laptop keyboards when needed, but I prefer a "real" mouse (with the center "dial" function, if possible). I use the same glasses for reading books and for dealing with terminals -- I am lucky that they are fairly "weak" glasses. The discussion about z/OSMF? One of these months I will need to spend some time with it. These days I mostly use a relatively slow machine for z/OS and the performance is not attractive for z/OSMF. Bill Ogden -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: IBM-MAIN
Thank you for trying to stop the runaway politics. I do spend time looking at a fair amount of history. I have some memories of comments from the 1500s, the 1700s, the 1800s, and the early 1900s all saying (using various terms) that "changes" (aka "progress") should be stopped because "things are better without changes." For example, look how many people lost their jobs when "automation" replaced horses or how many "traditional" healers lost their hobbies when antibiotics were invented. One can carry this line of thinking to almost any point in history. "Stop progress" "Stop the smarter people" "Stop the more capable people" "Inventors/investors/organizers/hard-workers should not be allowed to profit from their special work" "etc, etc, etc" Silly? Look carefully at Russia from about 1920 to 1980 and see what enforced socialism brings. END no more on this topic! Bill Ogden -- 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?
>I have frequently caught him citing news sources that got the details wrong >- so frequently that I am now in the habit of looking up (for example) >Supreme-Court rulings to see what they actually say rather than what he >said they say. AMEN. News reports SHOULD be valuable, but this has become so questionable that it hurts. Maybe it is just myself growing old, but I now try to avoid television news reporting, especially from the major networks. Their goal, more and more, seems to be "excitement" and "look good for sponsors" rather than even, non-bias reporting. Bill -- 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?
>If humans ever get so dependent on AI that they blindly follow the >"advice" of an AI assistant, all it takes is for AI to feed humans a >mis-analysis of a life-threatening situation or potential extinction >event and let the humans do the damage. Sorry, but I cannot resist an obvious response to this statement. Consider a simple call to your General Physician's office for something reasonably simple. If you are lucky and a "real" person answers the phone call, they will insist on walking through a script of questions. That "script" was probably written via a contracting company, working with unknown programmers, with unknown backgrounds, in unknown locations, probably originally working in remote languages, on unknown computer systems, following unknown logic (if any), and hoping for an immediate $return$ on their effort. This is seen by many (of the public) as "today's wonderful computer help" and by others as "modern AI". If future AI can wipe out humanity, this might happen by "future AI" causing very basic human interactions to be replaced by extended nonsense. Bill *** -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Stop the ragging on COBOL please [was: RE: ASM call by value]
>The source was unreadable because of the amount and size of copybooks. >When compiled, the listing was so big that it was near impossible to follow. >Needless to say, the variable and paragraph names didn't help too much. >Have you ever tried reading a DMS for CICS (again, 40 years ago) >generated COBOL listing? >My point is that anything can be unreadable, including wordy COBOL. >I used to code FORTRAN, ASSEMBLER and APL for a living (early '80s). >These 3 can be readable if there are departmental standards in place. ** I agree that unreadable code can be written in any language. (Long, long ago I was a FORTRAN programmer. (This was on IBM 70xx machines.) The nature of some applications made meaningful variable names difficult.) IMO, wild use of copybooks was often a problem. Perhaps it is only my experience, but (again, long ago) I found that if the COBOL programmers were also experienced in the application area (such as payroll, billing, inventory, etc) they were much more likely to use meaningful variable names, minor but meaningful paragraph comments, etc. I realize this mixture of programming and actual application expertise is becoming less common, unfortunately. Bill Ogden -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Stop the ragging on COBOL please [was: RE: ASM call by value]
>I myself dislike COBOL for the very simple and personal reason that it's so >WORDY. *** I am not a COBOL programmer, except for some very minor attempts a long time ago. However, I very much respect the proper use of the WORDY aspect. It seems to help with maintenance and updating of large, complex commercial programs that were originally written (in good, well-thought out words) long ago. The language itself has been carefully updated and seems to lack the constantly changing, sometimes not-so-well-thought-out aspect of many of the PC languages today. (And, since so much of COBOL programming seems to be in significant financial areas, it seems to avoid the frequent "little problem details" that apparently afflict the "more modern" languages.) Very short story: Long ago, my manager and I were sent to a smaller, rather "northern" country to evaluate (to sell to customers) a potential application program written there. I cannot remember the application, but I do remember seeing a listing that fit on a single page, being an extreme opposite of WORDY. It was APL, of course, and even the authors needed considerable practice to be able to explain how it worked. (We rejected the potential SW product and managed to escape without being murdered.) Bill Ogden -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Subject: Re: How long for an experiened z/OS sysprog to come up to speed on a new environment?
I agree with Shumel and some others. It would be very nice if many panels would somehow display the actual commands they will use or, if that is not workable, perhaps a very short outline of the actions that will be taken. Being rather elderly now (and with failing memory at times) this would be especially nice for helping us old blockheads be nicer about zOSMF. Bill Ogden -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
