A possible platform for VMS?

[Dirk Munk]

Just have a look at this mini PC:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nafVHocx5Kg#t=291>

This Minix Neo Z64 has 2GB internal memory, 100Mb ethernet as well as a
WiFi network connections, and you can get it with Android ($145) or
Windows 8.1 ($175).

It uses an Intel CPU with embedded GPU, and it runs typical applications
like a browser or office program just as good as your desktop PC.

I'm sure it has much more processing power as a MVII.

If it runs Windows 8.1 with ease, then it will run VMS even better.

I suppose machine in this class could be used for data entry stations
(to replace VT and Windows terminals), points of sale, ATM machines etc.
where the more secure aspects of VMS can play a role. Perhaps you could
even use them with secure VMS?

Your thoughts please.....

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

It would be absolutely unsellable today. And besides, VMS
has never been optimal for that kind of places, anytime.
There are better client environments, as the producer
obviously already knows. Maybe add some popular Linux
distro to Android and Windows and that's that.

Could be some fun maybe, but that's it.

Jan-Erik.

[Dirk Munk]

I wasn't referring to this particular machine, I was referring to this
*class* of machines. That can mean embedded motherboards etc.

Cheap, low power, well performing hardware and with VMS on it far less
susceptible to tempering and viruses.

This particular Minix device is meant as a settop box / media player.

[Bob Gezelter]

Dirk and Jan,

The other day, I noted an Ars Technica article on a recent AMD annoucement (see http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/amds-carrizo-system-on-chip-more-transistors-more-performance-less-power/ ). This SOC also includes a built-in GPU (which has other potential uses besides actual graphics).

Such a system would need an adjusted licensing policy, possibly on a site basis or some other basis, but could be technically and otherwise viable.

Having recently seen some research on the pervasiveness of poor implementation in other (e.g., Windows and *IX kernels, including Linux), and taking into account the ongoing and major problems resulting from security compromises, there could be a market opportunity in a variety of spaces for a far more secure platform.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

[Simon Clubley]

On 2015-02-27, Bob Gezelter <geze...@rlgsc.com> wrote:
>
> Having recently seen some research on the pervasiveness of poor
> implementation in other (e.g., Windows and *IX kernels, including Linux), and
> taking into account the ongoing and major problems resulting from security
> compromises, there could be a market opportunity in a variety of spaces for a
> far more secure platform.
>

When comparing VMS security to modern operating systems, it would be
a good idea to remember that while VMS security has traditionally
been well ahead in traditional security practices, those modern
operating systems have a number of security concepts built in which
simply don't exist in VMS.

A couple of examples are the MAC based security present in (for example)
SELinux and various forms of jails.

It would also be wise to remember that the Purdy algorithm is considered
to be way too efficient/light on resource requirements when compared to
modern password algorithms.

IOW, VMS has a very good security background it can build on, but it
needs some serious updating to compete with some modern security setups.

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-02-27 10:27:44 +0000, Dirk Munk said:

NUCs and such have been around for a while.

> It uses an Intel CPU with embedded GPU, and it runs typical
> applications like a browser or office program just as good as your
> desktop PC.

There's no modern browser on VMS, and no office application that'd
interest enough folks to matter.

> I'm sure it has much more processing power as a MVII.

Smartphones have substantially more processing power and RAM and
storage capacity than a MicroVAX II offered.

> If it runs Windows 8.1 with ease, then it will run VMS even better.

Facts not yet in evidence. Microsoft has had decades to tune and to
tailor the performance of their operating system.

By the time VMS is available on x86-64, we'll be heading for whatever
version is after Windows 10, if we're not already running that
software, too.

> I suppose machine in this class could be used for data entry stations
> (to replace VT and Windows terminals), points of sale, ATM machines
> etc. where the more secure aspects of VMS can play a role. Perhaps you
> could even use them with secure VMS?
>
> Your thoughts please.....

When I can get that box running Windows 8.1 for $175 and the front-end
tool chain and related support such as Visual Studio, and access to a
huge installed base of application software and folks that know the
platform, there'd have to be a seriously convincing case to add the
US$900 for the VMS license for each box deployed, ignoring the costs of
migrating the existing point-of-sale or the ATM software environment
over to VMS. (Many of the ATMs around are running Windows Embedded,
BTW.) Those folks that are still on VMS and still using VT displays —
which is about zero percent of the point-of-sale market — might be
interested, though some of those folks may well be migrating to Windows
or Windows Embedded for staffing and development costs and software
availability, or migrating over to tablets for the smaller footprint or
for device mobility.

This is a central part of why folks have been replacing VAX, Alpha and
Itanium servers with x86-64 boxes — smaller and much more efficient
boxes, better software tools, wider software availability, packaged
applications, etc. The software availability and GUI support on
Windows and Windows Embedded and more recently on tablets is why folks
have been migrating their user interfaces and front-end boxes from VT
displays for decades.

Selling this gear to the installed base is very nearly a no-brainer,
assuming that the folks have their code and are willing to port it to
x86-64, and don't already have a migration plan targeting a ubiquitous
operating system. This is VSI's market.

Selling this gear running VMS to new customers, that's a much more
difficult endeavor, particularly given the lack of modern development
tools and APIs, and the lack of common applications and the dearth of
applications at x86-64 prices, mass-deployment tools and related. This
is not VSI's market. Not until VSI and associated third-party
providers get to critical (revenue) mass; not until there are viable
ATM and point-of-sale applications at competitive prices, for what was
cited above.



--
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-02-27 12:27:52 +0000, Bob Gezelter said:

> Having recently seen some research on the pervasiveness of poor
> implementation in other (e.g., Windows and *IX kernels, including
> Linux), and taking into account the ongoing and major problems
> resulting from security compromises, there could be a market
> opportunity in a variety of spaces for a far more secure platform.

seL4?

[johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk]

Q: Are you aware that Mandatory Access Controls are nothing new to VMS
(and, iirc, DIGITAL UNUX)?

Distant memory says that both used to have Mandatory Access Control
variants (Orange Book B1 secure for VMS, C2 for Tru64?). Documentation
will confirm details for anyone who's that interested (not me right now).

Both fell out of favour over time - "cheap" generally used to trump
"secure", and the extra work involved in the security enhanced variants
was hard to justify when the major customers had decided that "cheap"
was preferable to "secure". And even for the customers who wanted
"secure", the first choice was frequently "Trusted Solaris" because it
was what they knew.

In many cases "cheap" still does win against "secure", despite recent
history, but some folks might have more motivation than others.

Maybe the VMS mandatory access controls and such could be resurrected
if "the market" has decided it's interesting again, possibly even worth
paying for. "Paying for" may not mean paying VSI for, it may mean
investing time+money in moving off legacy vulnerability-prone OSes in
places that care about these things.

Correction/expansion welcome - it's going back a loooong time.

Whether an OS like VMS needs a concept like jails, and if so how much
investment is needed, is another discussion. I'm not sure what underlying
capabilities might be missing from VMS in order to implement something
comparable with what the industry now calls 'jails', but it seems highly
likely the ease of management of such stuff on VMS could be improved.

VSI: resurrecting 1980s/1990s technology for a world that's finally
realised it did actually need it sometimes :)

Or, in short:

DIGITAL had it *when*?

[johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk]

Can't believe I tryped DIGITAL UNUX. After effect of BBC Radio 4's "In
Our Time" earlier in the week, perhaps:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b053bsf9
"Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history and significance of
eunuchs, castrated men who were a common feature of many civilisations
for at least three thousand years."

Castrated operating systems have been a feature of the mainstream IT
world for twenty years or so.

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-02-27 14:54:02 +0000, johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk said:

> Q: Are you aware that Mandatory Access Controls are nothing new to VMS
> (and, iirc, DIGITAL UNUX)?
>
> Distant memory says that both used to have Mandatory Access Control
> variants (Orange Book B1 secure for VMS, C2 for Tru64?). Documentation
> will confirm details for anyone who's that interested (not me right
> now).

Specific versions of OpenVMS were evaluated at NCSC class C2.

Specific versions of OpenVMS with SEVMS were evaluated at NCSC class B1.

Neither C2 nor B1 are particularly current security standards having
been replaced a ~decade ago by Common Criteria.

<http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/356>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computer_System_Evaluation_Criteria>

As will be an issue in any modern configuration, the OpenVMS evaluation
— and most other NCSC evaluations, for that matter — greatly restricted
the evaluated network configuration.

> Both fell out of favour over time - "cheap" generally used to trump
> "secure", and the extra work involved in the security enhanced variants
> was hard to justify when the major customers had decided that "cheap"
> was preferable to "secure". And even for the customers who wanted
> "secure", the first choice was frequently "Trusted Solaris" because it
> was what they knew.

Security is analogous to purchasing insurance. You want some —
"enough" — but having too much just wastes money, and it wastes your
time and effort maintaining it all.

As for mandatory access controls and multi-level security systems, what
was known as "System High" was cheaper to build and buy and to use.
What were usually multiple class C2 boxes, in the old NCSC world, with
one or potentially more systems dedicated for each compartment. Why?
Mandatory access controls are not easy to use, and more effort to
administer, and they're expensive to build and buy and support.

> In many cases "cheap" still does win against "secure", despite recent
> history, but some folks might have more motivation than others.
>
> Maybe the VMS mandatory access controls and such could be resurrected
> if "the market" has decided it's interesting again, possibly even worth
> paying for. "Paying for" may not mean paying VSI for, it may mean
> investing time+money in moving off legacy vulnerability-prone OSes in
> places that care about these things.

By "legacy vulnerability-prone OSes", I presume you are referring to
operating systems with no support for sandboxes or jails, no central
certificate storage and no per-user encrypted password storage, no boot
disk encryption support, far too efficient password hashes, unencrypted
network disk data transports including the network-visibility of the
aforementioned efficiently-calculated password hashes, minimal buffer
overflow protection and no canaries and no bounds checking mechanisms,
no anti-malware tools, and no address space layout randomization?

Of course, on those systems where these and other defenses have been
implemented, none of these mechanisms will provide absolute certainty
against well-financed and/or determined and/or clever attackers.

Mandatory access controls differ from jails and sandboxes; jails and
sandboxes can and do intentionally allow leakage out of the sandbox for
certain operations, but block such access for others. For instance,
you'd want to allow access to a user-specified file secondary to a user
request such as a File Open dialog, but you'd want to block the app
from performing random rummaging. SEVMS has no mechanism for granting
that sort of transient access.

Managing and using mandatory access controls is an effort — information
only flows inward and upward by default, and you need privileges to
transport data "outward"; to transfer files to other systems or to
lower-security settings. Management must assign the appropriate
secrecy and integrity settings to various objects, too. See the
DOWNGRADE, UPGRADE and EXPORT privileges in OpenVMS and SEVMS.

Try that at most sites, and that'd get shut off faster than OS X
Gatekeeper or Windows UAC mechanisms ever do, too.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatekeeper_(OS_X)>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Account_Control>

> Correction/expansion welcome - it's going back a loooong time.
>
> Whether an OS like VMS needs a concept like jails, and if so how much
> investment is needed, is another discussion. I'm not sure what
> underlying capabilities might be missing from VMS in order to implement
> something comparable with what the industry now calls 'jails', but it
> seems highly likely the ease of management of such stuff on VMS could
> be improved.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD_jail>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox_(computer_security)>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qubes_OS>

> VSI: resurrecting 1980s/1990s technology for a world that's finally
> realised it did actually need it sometimes :)
>
> Or, in short:
>
> DIGITAL had it *when*?

What matters more than computing history is what's available now, and
on what's going to be available soon. On the costs and revenues
associated with the platform and third-party software, too. That's the
usefulness of the operating system to users and to third-party
providers, and the source of profits for the vendor.

VSI needs to get rolling with and get engaged with the installed base
of OpenVMS users, and needs to get profitable. Security issues and
limitations aside, OpenVMS can and does solve problems that a number of
folks have, and OpenVMS can solve those problems in what are still
revenue-efficient ways. Addressing and improving VMS security will
take years of design and implementation and test effort, and may and
probably will break some existing applications, and then there are the
requirements for signed packages that can be tracked back to the vendor
or to a vendor-designed developers.

One more URL, for the folks looking at the vulnerability counts:
<https://plus.google.com/+JustinSchuh/posts/CNEgtJWYTb5>

[Simon Clubley]

On 2015-02-27, johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk <johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On Friday, 27 February 2015 13:40:35 UTC, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>
>> IOW, VMS has a very good security background it can build on, but it
>> needs some serious updating to compete with some modern security setups.
>>
>

> Q: Are you aware that Mandatory Access Controls are nothing new to VMS
> (and, iirc, DIGITAL UNUX)?
>

Yes, I am aware of the SEVMS work. However, based on previous discussions,
it had no support for TCP/IP unfortunately.

>
> Both fell out of favour over time - "cheap" generally used to trump
> "secure", and the extra work involved in the security enhanced variants
> was hard to justify when the major customers had decided that "cheap"
> was preferable to "secure". And even for the customers who wanted
> "secure", the first choice was frequently "Trusted Solaris" because it
> was what they knew.
>
> In many cases "cheap" still does win against "secure", despite recent
> history, but some folks might have more motivation than others.
>

Any Linux boxes I'm responsible for (both work and home) always have
SELinux set to enforcing mode. RHEL didn't target the early profiles
correctly and they required too much work, but later profiles got
the mix about right.

For example, it actually feels rather nice being able to lock down
outgoing TCP/IP connections from server processes in a way that
simply isn't possible on VMS at the moment.

It's certainly no magic bullet, but it's yet another tool to help
keep the system secure and to help keep a compromise contained if
such a thing happens.

[Dirk Munk]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-02-27 10:27:44 +0000, Dirk Munk said:
>
> NUCs and such have been around for a while.
>
>> It uses an Intel CPU with embedded GPU, and it runs typical
>> applications like a browser or office program just as good as your
>> desktop PC.
>
> There's no modern browser on VMS, and no office application that'd
> interest enough folks to matter.

I made my remark to show CPU and GPU performance, not to suggest some
kind of VMS desktop system.

>
>> I'm sure it has much more processing power as a MVII.
>
> Smartphones have substantially more processing power and RAM and storage
> capacity than a MicroVAX II offered.
>

These Intel CPUs are also designed for tablets, same class as powerful
smartphone CPUs.

>> If it runs Windows 8.1 with ease, then it will run VMS even better.
>
> Facts not yet in evidence. Microsoft has had decades to tune and to
> tailor the performance of their operating system.

Less overhead in VMS, and I have confidence in VSI engineering.

>
> By the time VMS is available on x86-64, we'll be heading for whatever
> version is after Windows 10, if we're not already running that software,
> too.
>
>> I suppose machine in this class could be used for data entry stations
>> (to replace VT and Windows terminals), points of sale, ATM machines
>> etc. where the more secure aspects of VMS can play a role. Perhaps you
>> could even use them with secure VMS?
>>
>> Your thoughts please.....
>
> When I can get that box running Windows 8.1 for $175 and the front-end
> tool chain and related support such as Visual Studio, and access to a
> huge installed base of application software and folks that know the
> platform, there'd have to be a seriously convincing case to add the
> US$900 for the VMS license for each box deployed, ignoring the costs of
> migrating the existing point-of-sale or the ATM software environment
> over to VMS. (Many of the ATMs around are running Windows Embedded,
> BTW.)

I know, and even on Windows XP. These things have been hacked quite
often. With regard to VMS license costs, I'm sure you remember the VAX
Pathworks servers with reduced VMS license costs. The same could apply
to dedicated systems like points of sale or ATM machines.

> Those folks that are still on VMS and still using VT displays —
> which is about zero percent of the point-of-sale market — might be
> interested, though some of those folks may well be migrating to Windows
> or Windows Embedded for staffing and development costs and software
> availability, or migrating over to tablets for the smaller footprint or
> for device mobility.
>
> This is a central part of why folks have been replacing VAX, Alpha and
> Itanium servers with x86-64 boxes — smaller and much more efficient
> boxes, better software tools, wider software availability, packaged
> applications, etc. The software availability and GUI support on Windows
> and Windows Embedded and more recently on tablets is why folks have been
> migrating their user interfaces and front-end boxes from VT displays for
> decades.
>
> Selling this gear to the installed base is very nearly a no-brainer,
> assuming that the folks have their code and are willing to port it to
> x86-64, and don't already have a migration plan targeting a ubiquitous
> operating system. This is VSI's market.

Sure

>
> Selling this gear running VMS to new customers, that's a much more
> difficult endeavor, particularly given the lack of modern development
> tools and APIs, and the lack of common applications and the dearth of
> applications at x86-64 prices, mass-deployment tools and related. This
> is not VSI's market. Not until VSI and associated third-party providers
> get to critical (revenue) mass; not until there are viable ATM and
> point-of-sale applications at competitive prices, for what was cited above.
>

Yes, but the functionality of the systems is limited and well known.
Compared to Windows an Linux far less need for frequnt security patches
etc, and that seves costs.

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-02-28 16:04:32 +0000, Dirk Munk said:

> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>> On 2015-02-27 10:27:44 +0000, Dirk Munk said:
>>
>> Smartphones have substantially more processing power and RAM and
>> storage capacity than a MicroVAX II offered.
>
> These Intel CPUs are also designed for tablets, same class as powerful
> smartphone CPUs.

Sort of. Then there's that Intel's margins are in deep trouble in that
product range:

<http://www.pcworld.com/article/2089421/how-intel-is-buying-a-piece-of-the-tablet-market.html>

<http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-4-billion-loss-mobile,28413.html>

>>> If it runs Windows 8.1 with ease, then it will run VMS even better.
>>
>> Facts not yet in evidence. Microsoft has had decades to tune and to
>> tailor the performance of their operating system.
>
> Less overhead in VMS, and I have confidence in VSI engineering.

Again, facts not in evidence. Also there's whether incremental
performance improvements really matter. More than a few folks are
swimming in CPU cycles and cores and cheap boxes, which makes
incremental performance rather less of a marketing and sales advantage
than competitive features and application compatibility, and — of
course — price.

Going back to ancient history, DEC tried selling faster boxes for use
with Microsoft Windows, and got shellacked in that market. Alpha did
well with high-performance for a while, but not so well with folks that
wanted compatible products, or cheaper products, or with folks that
wanted Windows on x86.

Going forward, VMS will be on x86-64, and so are most of the
competitive products — there's just not very much room to differentiate
on raw performance.

> I know, and even on Windows XP. These things have been hacked quite
> often. With regard to VMS license costs, I'm sure you remember the VAX
> Pathworks servers with reduced VMS license costs. The same could apply
> to dedicated systems like points of sale or ATM machines.

What's this "MicroVAX" or "VAX" you keep talking about? Few folks
care about Alpha, even fewer about VAX or MicroVAX, and PATHWORKS is
long gone. Again: that's all ancient history. Fun for some folks to
endlessly debate and to what-if (and thankfully with precious little
fanfic, but I digress), interesting for the OS tourists and retronauts
to explore, hassles and some revenues for the few folks that are
maintaining the old Alpha gear and the remaining VAX gear and the
existing OpenVMS installations, but otherwise irrelevant in the IT
market. A very, very small niche.

Want to see VMS or some other product play in the ATM market, or the
desktop market, or the server market, or the embedded NUC-sized box
market? What's the competitive product offering now, and what'll be
available soon? How much does it all cost? How much will I have to
pay to migrate my existing stuff to this new platform? How does it
integrate with my existing user training, existing repair services and
existing networks and systems and deployment tools? When can I buy
it? Now those questions... are the interesting questions, and those
are all in the future of VSI. With VMS outside of the installed base,
those conversations are just not going to lead anywhere. Not now, and
likely not for the next ~five years.

As it is currently priced and configured, VMS is not competitive in the
NUC server market — again, not outside of the VMS installed base.

An as-yet-unavailable box that might be somewhat faster, but without a
competitive story around applications and integration and pricing? Not
gonna sell many of those.

> Yes, but the functionality of the systems is limited and well known.
> Compared to Windows an Linux far less need for frequnt security patches
> etc, and that seves costs.

I'd bet on Windows security and tools and defenses over VMS security,
but that's not likely going to convince you. Put VMS and third-party
VMS applications under the same sort of scrutiny that Windows has been
under, and VMS will likely crack.

To be absolutely clear, VMS solves current problems for existing folks,
and — for most of the existing users — VMS solves those problems more
economically than the cost of porting to a different platform, or of
restarting.

But getting VMS into the ATM market? Or into Point-of-Sale systems?
Or onto NUC-sized servers? Or onto high-end systems with hundreds of
cores, for that matter? Or displacing existing applications and
services that are running Windows Embedded or iOS or one of the Linux
or BSD variants, or some HPTC-focused distro? That's no small
investment, and that puts VSI into a price and feature competition with
some large and established vendors, and with some entrants building on
Android and iOS platforms; with lower-cost platforms and what is likely
lower-cost software.

VSI is going to need to engage resellers that foresee being able to
make a profit here, as VSI itself is probably not going to be creating
or porting the software necessarily involved in most any of the areas
I've mentioned here. Tossing a NUC running VMS over the wall might be
fun, but there's a whole lot more information and a whole lot more work
— prices, features, support, compatibility, etc — needed before that
might ever become a viable product.

Getting VMS over onto x86-64 will solve problems that some existing
OpenVMS users have. The rest comes later. This all assuming that VSI
can keep going, and can start to grow the VMS installed base, and start
to show that there are and can be revenues for third-party software and
hardware providers, too.

[David Froble]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:

> What's this "MicroVAX" or "VAX" you keep talking about? Few folks care
> about Alpha, even fewer about VAX or MicroVAX,

Hey! I care! Not that that means a damn thing ...

> and PATHWORKS is long
> gone. Again: that's all ancient history. Fun for some folks to
> endlessly debate and to what-if (and thankfully with precious little
> fanfic, but I digress), interesting for the OS tourists and retronauts
> to explore, hassles and some revenues for the few folks that are
> maintaining the old Alpha gear and the remaining VAX gear and the
> existing OpenVMS installations, but otherwise irrelevant in the IT
> market. A very, very small niche.

Tiny ..

> Want to see VMS or some other product play in the ATM market, or the
> desktop market, or the server market, or the embedded NUC-sized box
> market? What's the competitive product offering now, and what'll be
> available soon? How much does it all cost? How much will I have to pay
> to migrate my existing stuff to this new platform? How does it
> integrate with my existing user training, existing repair services and
> existing networks and systems and deployment tools? When can I buy
> it? Now those questions... are the interesting questions, and those
> are all in the future of VSI. With VMS outside of the installed base,
> those conversations are just not going to lead anywhere. Not now, and
> likely not for the next ~five years.

Frankly, assuming that VMS could run on such platforms, and no, I
wouldn't spend a wooden nickle just to do that, the only way I see this
happening is a VMS user needing to play in this venue, and developing
what they need to do so. I have a very hard time seeing a software
vendor consider such a thing.

Can I see advantages, for a current VMS user, yes, I can. Being able to
develop on the same OS, and deploy on minimal HW, would be an advantage,
at least to me. Now, I don't use C, and those who do just might find it
easier to develop for other platforms.

> As it is currently priced and configured, VMS is not competitive in the
> NUC server market — again, not outside of the VMS installed base.

Now, here is where I see a problem. What is the use of charging license
fees? None that I can see, and, I can see disadvantages in trying to do so.

Let's look first at the current user market. How many VMS licenses will
they be buying. I suggest zero. They already have their systems and
licenses, and if upgrading the HW, will most likely feel they should be
able to transfer their existing licenses. No money to be made here.

Ok, the mythical "new customer". They see free OSs all over the place.
They are not going to like license fees. Go ahead, chase potential
business away.

So what's better, a limited number of people exposed to VMS, or, maybe a
few more people exposed to VMS? The best thing that could happen to VSI
would be for as many people being exposed to VMS as possible. Then,
where it's going to happen, make money of service contracts, which are
recurring, not one time. It it's (service) not going to happen, then
those people sure wouldn't have paid any license fees, and so there is
no loss.

This idea that "we have to charge license fees, people should pay for
VMS" just isn't going to work. VSI does NOT have to charge license
fees, unless HP is making them do so.

Even if there are people, (hobbyists for example), who do not pay a
license fee, not contract for support, VSI still has their product in
front of more rather than less people, and who knows when one of those
people might cause VSI to gain a new service customer?

> An as-yet-unavailable box that might be somewhat faster, but without a
> competitive story around applications and integration and pricing? Not
> gonna sell many of those.
>
>> Yes, but the functionality of the systems is limited and well known.
>> Compared to Windows an Linux far less need for frequnt security
>> patches etc, and that seves costs.
>
> I'd bet on Windows security and tools and defenses over VMS security,
> but that's not likely going to convince you. Put VMS and third-party
> VMS applications under the same sort of scrutiny that Windows has been
> under, and VMS will likely crack.

I wouldn't agree. Whiel weendoze may not be so bad, it runs browsers,
and they are maybe the worse offender. More likely the user who runs
with full privs and likes to click on something to see a song and dance,
and unseen intrusion into their computer.

NO BROWSER FOR VMS !!!!

Sorry Philip ...

[JF Mezei]

You know how vinyl records are making a comeback ? People have nostalgia
for old stuff. (like hipsters who wear 1950s eye glasses)

Why not leverage this and get VMS to run on vacuum tube computers that
take a whole basement in a house ? Create a new hobby "continual caring
for vacuum tubes, and if you don't replace the tubes daily, your
computer starts to hate you (remember those japanese obsessive toys ?)

:-) :-) :-) :-) :-)


Bring back the VT52s !!!


Heck, bring back the card punchers in USA. " Vote at home, pre-punch
your voting card so you save time at the voting booth" :-)

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-02-28 21:24:33 +0000, David Froble said:

> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>
>
>> As it is currently priced and configured, VMS is not competitive in the
>> NUC server market — again, not outside of the VMS installed base.
>
> Now, here is where I see a problem. What is the use of charging
> license fees? None that I can see, and, I can see disadvantages in
> trying to do so.
>
> Let's look first at the current user market. How many VMS licenses
> will they be buying. I suggest zero. They already have their systems
> and licenses, and if upgrading the HW, will most likely feel they
> should be able to transfer their existing licenses. No money to be
> made here.

It'll be interesting to see how that will work in practice, with HP
providing the Itanium hardware and VSI the software, and HP and other
vendors providing x86-64 and VSI providing the software. VSI is going
to want revenue, and HP isn't going to want to cut too far into their
server hardware revenues. That there are now two vendors involved in
each server sale is part of why I've wondered whether VSI will be drawn
into packaged or even private-branded hardware, too. configurations
with VSI-co-branded and/or pre-packaged HP ProLiant servers, combined
with the VSI software. With packaged and supported server
configurations — with VSI co-branded and/or vendor pre-configured and
pre-tested servers server hardware — the end-customers aren't dealing
with which NICs, RAID controllers, and other widgets will work with VMS.

> Ok, the mythical "new customer". They see free OSs all over the place.
> They are not going to like license fees. Go ahead, chase potential
> business away.

Ayup. That's not an easy decision, though. These pricing decisions
make or break a company's future, and can massively disrupt the
finances.

> So what's better, a limited number of people exposed to VMS, or, maybe
> a few more people exposed to VMS? The best thing that could happen to
> VSI would be for as many people being exposed to VMS as possible.
> Then, where it's going to happen, make money of service contracts,
> which are recurring, not one time. It it's (service) not going to
> happen, then those people sure wouldn't have paid any license fees, and
> so there is no loss.

Service contracts and patch access is one approach to recurring
revenue, and can tie into automated tools and related mechanisms that
could theoretically be added into OpenVMS, if VSI sought to avoid using
the HP HPSC patch-portal model. SaaS is another approach that would
undoubtedly get discussed in these business discussions. HP had some
of this with iCAP and LMF features, and various vendors have tested
license subscriptions. Periodic SaaS licensing means a vendor can
shepherd many of its customers forward onto more current software,
based on escalating prices for older and aging versions, too. Some
customers won't want these SaaS software "rentals", though.

> This idea that "we have to charge license fees, people should pay for
> VMS" just isn't going to work. VSI does NOT have to charge license
> fees, unless HP is making them do so.

VSI has stated that they're expecting to follow the HP pricing and
sales model, at least based on the initial VSI discussions.

> Even if there are people, (hobbyists for example), who do not pay a
> license fee, not contract for support, VSI still has their product in
> front of more rather than less people, and who knows when one of those
> people might cause VSI to gain a new service customer?

Ayup. This all combines with whatever VSI might decide for the
hobbyist and the partner programs.

>> An as-yet-unavailable box that might be somewhat faster, but without a
>> competitive story around applications and integration and pricing? Not
>> gonna sell many of those.
>>
>>> Yes, but the functionality of the systems is limited and well known.
>>> Compared to Windows an Linux far less need for frequnt security patches
>>> etc, and that seves costs.
>>
>> I'd bet on Windows security and tools and defenses over VMS security,
>> but that's not likely going to convince you. Put VMS and third-party
>> VMS applications under the same sort of scrutiny that Windows has been
>> under, and VMS will likely crack.
>
> I wouldn't agree. Whiel weendoze may not be so bad, it runs browsers,
> and they are maybe the worse offender. More likely the user who runs
> with full privs and likes to click on something to see a song and
> dance, and unseen intrusion into their computer.

Web browsers are big targets, but there are many other targets in an
average network-facing operating system, and there are certainly
reasons to have web-related tools around — I've just started looking at
gRPC
<http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2015/02/introducing-grpc-new-open-source-http2.html>,
for instance, and there are a number of other web-based tools that are
very useful beyond the familiar web browsers. (No, I haven't yet
ported the gRPC code to VMS; working on a different port right now...)

As for Windows, Microsoft has done a tremendous amount of work to
verify their source code, to automate the detection of hazardous and
deprecated mechanisms in their source code, to increase the difficulty
and the costs of attacks on Windows, to make downloads and
installations easy and secure, to improve Internet Explorer, and to
make the detection and remediation of security breaches quicker and
easier. Windows 7 is a pretty solid offering, as are more recent
releases. Yes, there are still Windows bugs and zero-days around, and
likely always will be. Yes, users can also click through Windows UAC
or OS X Gatekeeper, and get themselves into trouble. That written,
Windows security has been very heavily tested, and by some very savvy
attackers. Microsoft has learned more than a few lessons from those
attacks, too.

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax [mailto:info-vax...@info-vax.com] On Behalf Of
> Stephen Hoffman
> Sent: 28-Feb-15 5:07 PM
> To: info...@info-vax.com
> Subject: Re: [New Info-vax] A possible platform for VMS?
>
> On 2015-02-28 21:24:33 +0000, David Froble said:
>

[snip..]

> As for Windows, Microsoft has done a tremendous amount of work to
> verify their source code, to automate the detection of hazardous and
> deprecated mechanisms in their source code, to increase the difficulty
> and the costs of attacks on Windows, to make downloads and
> installations easy and secure, to improve Internet Explorer, and to
> make the detection and remediation of security breaches quicker and
> easier. Windows 7 is a pretty solid offering, as are more recent
> releases. Yes, there are still Windows bugs and zero-days around, and
> likely always will be. Yes, users can also click through Windows UAC
> or OS X Gatekeeper, and get themselves into trouble. That written,
> Windows security has been very heavily tested, and by some very savvy
> attackers. Microsoft has learned more than a few lessons from those
> attacks, too.
>

Microsoft has been doing and saying this for years. Each new major
release is "their most secure release ever".

Yet, the monthly security patch saga continues...

November 2014:
http://tinyurl.com/Windows-IE1
" Microsoft is out today with it November Patch Tuesday update,
providing 14 security updates that address 33 vulnerabilities. As part
of the update, Microsoft is closing the last piece of an exploit that
emerged after the October Patch Tuesday update. "

Feb 2015:
http://tinyurl.com/Windows-IE2
"This month there are nine security bulletins, three of which are
marked as 'critical', the rest as 'important'. Top of the shop is
MS15-009 which plugs no fewer than 41 vulnerabilities in
Internet Explorer."

If there was ever an award for most hacked and patched program
on the planet, I am betting Microsoft's IE would win hands down.

:-)

Regards,

Kerry Main
Back to the Future IT Inc.
.. Learning from the past to plan the future

Kerry dot main at backtothefutureit dot com

[johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk]

On Saturday, 28 February 2015 22:07:57 UTC, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-02-28 21:24:33 +0000, David Froble said:
>
> > Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> >
> >
> >> As it is currently priced and configured, VMS is not competitive in the

> >> NUC server market -- again, not outside of the VMS installed base.

> >
> > Now, here is where I see a problem. What is the use of charging
> > license fees? None that I can see, and, I can see disadvantages in
> > trying to do so.
> >
> > Let's look first at the current user market. How many VMS licenses
> > will they be buying. I suggest zero. They already have their systems
> > and licenses, and if upgrading the HW, will most likely feel they
> > should be able to transfer their existing licenses. No money to be
> > made here.
>
> It'll be interesting to see how that will work in practice, with HP
> providing the Itanium hardware and VSI the software, and HP and other
> vendors providing x86-64 and VSI providing the software. VSI is going
> to want revenue, and HP isn't going to want to cut too far into their
> server hardware revenues. That there are now two vendors involved in
> each server sale is part of why I've wondered whether VSI will be drawn
> into packaged or even private-branded hardware, too. configurations
> with VSI-co-branded and/or pre-packaged HP ProLiant servers, combined
> with the VSI software. With packaged and supported server

> configurations -- with VSI co-branded and/or vendor pre-configured and
> pre-tested servers server hardware -- the end-customers aren't dealing

> reasons to have web-related tools around -- I've just started looking at

> gRPC
> <http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2015/02/introducing-grpc-new-open-source-http2.html>,
> for instance, and there are a number of other web-based tools that are
> very useful beyond the familiar web browsers. (No, I haven't yet
> ported the gRPC code to VMS; working on a different port right now...)
>
> As for Windows, Microsoft has done a tremendous amount of work to
> verify their source code, to automate the detection of hazardous and
> deprecated mechanisms in their source code, to increase the difficulty
> and the costs of attacks on Windows, to make downloads and
> installations easy and secure, to improve Internet Explorer, and to
> make the detection and remediation of security breaches quicker and
> easier. Windows 7 is a pretty solid offering, as are more recent
> releases. Yes, there are still Windows bugs and zero-days around, and
> likely always will be. Yes, users can also click through Windows UAC
> or OS X Gatekeeper, and get themselves into trouble. That written,
> Windows security has been very heavily tested, and by some very savvy
> attackers. Microsoft has learned more than a few lessons from those
> attacks, too.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

Some people might believe "Microsoft has learned more than a few lessons
from those attacks" but that might come as a surprise to those who still
regularly see previously unpatched flaws in "all supported versions of
Windows".

E.g. errors in JPEG rendering leading to remote code execution. How hard
can it really be to secure something like that be in a presentation-layer
OS like Windows?

See e.g.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/11/microsoft_adobe_patch_tuesday/
<quote>
* Patch bulletin MS14-013 sorts out a flaw in the Windows DirectShow
component, which incorrectly processed JPEGs allowing a maliciously
crafted image to execute code on the victim's machine once opened.
All supported versions of Windows are at risk except for Windows Server
2008 for Itanium and Windows RT.

* Patch bulletin MS14-015 addresses a privilege escalation flaw in the kernel-level wink2k.sys component of Windows. A hacker could exploit
this bug to gain administrator access on Windows XP, Server 2003, Vista,
Server 2008, Windows 7, Server 2008 R2, and Windows 8 and 8.1, Server
2012, Windows RT and RT 8.1.
</quote>

That's from March 2014's Patch Tuesday, simply because it was the first
search hit that fitted.

There have been more of the same since then, I can't be bothered finding
them. And there will likely continue to be more of the same, despite MS's
earlier and often repeated claims of "code reviews from the ground up".
If those code reviews had realy been done and were worth anything we
wouldn't repeatedly see bug lists like the one above.

[johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk]

> > NUC server market -- again, not outside of the VMS installed base.

> > and -- for most of the existing users -- VMS solves those problems more

> > economically than the cost of porting to a different platform, or of
> > restarting.
> >
> > But getting VMS into the ATM market? Or into Point-of-Sale systems?
> > Or onto NUC-sized servers? Or onto high-end systems with hundreds of
> > cores, for that matter? Or displacing existing applications and
> > services that are running Windows Embedded or iOS or one of the Linux or
> > BSD variants, or some HPTC-focused distro? That's no small investment,
> > and that puts VSI into a price and feature competition with some large
> > and established vendors, and with some entrants building on Android and
> > iOS platforms; with lower-cost platforms and what is likely lower-cost
> > software.
> >
> > VSI is going to need to engage resellers that foresee being able to make
> > a profit here, as VSI itself is probably not going to be creating or
> > porting the software necessarily involved in most any of the areas I've
> > mentioned here. Tossing a NUC running VMS over the wall might be fun,

> > but there's a whole lot more information and a whole lot more work --
> > prices, features, support, compatibility, etc -- needed before that might

> > ever become a viable product.
> >
> > Getting VMS over onto x86-64 will solve problems that some existing
> > OpenVMS users have. The rest comes later. This all assuming that VSI
> > can keep going, and can start to grow the VMS installed base, and start
> > to show that there are and can be revenues for third-party software and
> > hardware providers, too.
> >
> >
> >

What business model do Tandem-class systems use?

What business model does Windows Embedded use?

What business model do the various flavours of cloud use?

What business model(s) should VSI use?

One size does not necessarily fit all, either in technologies or in business models.

[johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk]

IE might historically have had more holes than a Swiss cheese, but
even if you eliminate all the IE-specific holes there are plenty left.
I specifically picked the two I mentioned above, from the larger
selection in that month's list, because those two didn't require IE
as part of the exploit.

Have a lot of fun.

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-02-28 22:43:56 +0000, johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk said:

> Some people might believe "Microsoft has learned more than a few lessons
> from those attacks" but that might come as a surprise to those who still
> regularly see previously unpatched flaws in "all supported versions of
> Windows".

Beyond Cutler and other ex-Digits that worked on Windows NT, I know
some of the folks that were working on Windows and on Windows security
over there — they're very clever folks, and the tools they're using are
good ones.

> E.g. errors in JPEG rendering leading to remote code execution. How hard
> can it really be to secure something like that be in a presentation-layer
> OS like Windows?

Tougher than it looks. Somebody handed SMG some keypresses on VMS,
and got kernel access. What happens if VMS RMS is handed a
maliciously-crafted file or volume?

[Richard Maher]

On 3/1/2015 6:48 AM, johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk quoted a telephone book
and War & Peace just to offer:

>
>
> What business model do Tandem-class systems use?
>
> What business model does Windows Embedded use?
>
> What business model do the various flavours of cloud use?
>
> What business model(s) should VSI use?
>
> One size does not necessarily fit all, either in technologies or in business models.
>

Just FYI, I use news.aioe.org which is free AND limits your quotes and
line-length. Just sayin'

[Richard Maher]

On 3/1/2015 6:57 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> Beyond Cutler and other ex-Digits that worked on Windows NT, I know some
> of the folks that were working on Windows and on Windows security over
> there — they're very clever folks, and the tools they're using are good
> ones.
>

Just had to write some code (very very little) to authenticate users
with UserPrincipal. Very easy and the Properties did look very familiar
(Login fails since last successful login etc) Don't know exaclty why my
service account has access to see everyone and the intrusion detection
appears to be on the LDAP "rules" but I'm happy.

[David Froble]

What a web browser does is allows the user to pull in and run just about
anything.

To much weendoze software requires Administrator privs, and so many
(most) ((all)) will run with those privs, and turn off some or all of
the security stuff.

Put those two together and you have a compromised system.

> As for Windows, Microsoft has done a tremendous amount of work to verify
> their source code, to automate the detection of hazardous and deprecated
> mechanisms in their source code, to increase the difficulty and the
> costs of attacks on Windows, to make downloads and installations easy
> and secure, to improve Internet Explorer, and to make the detection and
> remediation of security breaches quicker and easier. Windows 7 is a
> pretty solid offering, as are more recent releases. Yes, there are
> still Windows bugs and zero-days around, and likely always will be.
> Yes, users can also click through Windows UAC or OS X Gatekeeper, and
> get themselves into trouble. That written, Windows security has been
> very heavily tested, and by some very savvy attackers. Microsoft has
> learned more than a few lessons from those attacks, too.

There is still the apps that need full privs, and the people who are
used to running as administrator, and will continue to do so. Without a
router.

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax [mailto:info-vax...@info-vax.com] On Behalf Of
> Stephen Hoffman
> Sent: 28-Feb-15 5:57 PM
> To: info...@info-vax.com
> Subject: Re: [New Info-vax] A possible platform for VMS?
>

Pure speculation on my part, but I suspect the issue MS has is that
the really good programmers on staff that really understood Windows
have long since taken their big payloads and are now off and doing
things they much more prefer.

The senior programmers they have doing critical programming now
are likely the Waterloo and similar programmers hired out of
university only 8-10 years ago (read not much real world experience)

The other possibility for the continued issues might be that the code
In Windows has become so incredibly complex (might explain 8GB
memory being required to run Win8.1 comfortably) that fixes to fixes
to fixes have become the only way to keep up. (picture of ancient
mummy covered in bandages comes to mind)

In some ways, Windows has a similar issue with OpenVMS i.e. the
requirement(?) to maintain compatibility at all costs. I am sure there
are those at MS who would like to scrap some components all
together, but that would break compatibility.

I remember when MS bought the Windows clustering product
"Digital Clusters for NT" from DEC .. it was a great product, but MS just
shelved it because to properly implement it in the OS kernel (as
opposed to DEC LP) would apparently have broken too much
compatibility.

Ahh .. oh well, as long as MS continues on its current path, then
all sorts of future opportunity exists for OpenVMS.

[Craig A. Berry]

On 2/28/15 3:24 PM, David Froble wrote:

> NO BROWSER FOR VMS !!!!
>
> Sorry Philip ...

Does anyone actually read the roadmap? "Secure Web Browser" is on the
list of additions for Q4 2014 a few lines down from "Java 1.8". I guess
it could be the same old version of Seamonkey that's been kicking around
for years, but then why would it be considered an addition and be
omitted from the OE DVD planned for release earlier in Q2 2015?

[David Froble]

That was my opinion, not necessarily what's going to happen.

[Paul Sture]

As long as the browser comes as an optional installation both camps
should be happy.

I note that OpenVMS Management Station also makes an appearance in that
list. I'm pretty sure I saw that somewhere quite recently as being
demoted to retired status. In its initial incarnation I rated it as
about as useful as a chocolate fireguard. In particular the server
backend which managed the disks would seemingly randomly grab disk
controllers in a fashion that denied access to the controller console
serial port.

OVMS Management Station might have been fine for someone with half a
dozen users and a similar number of disks but it fell way short of the
mark for servers with dozens of disks and hundreds of users.

--
Don't ever use the last two versions of GCC in serious stuff :)
-- fortune cookie seen on GCC Bugzilla – Bug List

[terry+go...@tmk.com]

On Saturday, February 28, 2015 at 5:53:24 PM UTC-5, johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> IE might historically have had more holes than a Swiss cheese, but
> even if you eliminate all the IE-specific holes there are plenty left.
> I specifically picked the two I mentioned above, from the larger
> selection in that month's list, because those two didn't require IE
> as part of the exploit.

Regarding the IE issue, a good chunk of the problem is due to the historical decision to make IE "part of Windows" (IE code in the OS proper, and OS code in IE). 3rd-party browsers manage to provide (generally) more nimble and more secure implementations in a smaller footprint. Perhaps Microsoft's "new browser" (the code they're working on that will NOT be called IE and jettisons IE compatibility) will have learned from this mistake.

As someone who advises a number of customers on patching / security on a number of platforms, what is of much more concern in the Microsoft Model is the number of dud patches in the last year or so. I think the record was "the patch to fix the patch to fix the patch that patched the bug".*

Also of concern are "critical" or "important" patches that are un-necessary. The one that really drives this point home is this month's KB3006137, which caused a reboot when a user logged out. Why? "Update changes the currency symbol of Lithuania from the Lithuanian litas (Lt) to the euro (EURO) in Windows". That is just idiotic to release as an out-of band force-reboot patch, and I told Microsoft that (not that they listen to me any more).

On the other hand, in modern Windows a good number of the patches can be applied without needing a reboot. Video drivers are an excellent example of wholesale driver replacement without needing a reboot. Quite a far cry from the old "Your mouse pointer has moved. Windows must restart to recognize these changes" model.

Patch-in-place is becoming more popular. Recent Linux kernels now support live patching, for example. Perhaps this is something VSI can investigate as part of the port to a new architecture.

* http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/15/microsofts_patchwork_falls_apart_again

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-03-01 11:14:45 +0000, terry+go...@tmk.com said:

> On Saturday, February 28, 2015 at 5:53:24 PM UTC-5,
> johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
>> IE might historically have had more holes than a Swiss cheese, but
>> even if you eliminate all the IE-specific holes there are plenty left.
>> I specifically picked the two I mentioned above, from the larger
>> selection in that month's list, because those two didn't require IE
>> as part of the exploit.
>
> Regarding the IE issue, a good chunk of the problem is due to the
> historical decision to make IE "part of Windows" (IE code in the OS
> proper, and OS code in IE). 3rd-party browsers manage to provide
> (generally) more nimble and more secure implementations in a smaller
> footprint. Perhaps Microsoft's "new browser" (the code they're working
> on that will NOT be called IE and jettisons IE compatibility) will have
> learned from this mistake.

OS X and iOS ship with an integrated and embedable browser framework
(Safari WebKit), and that works quite well.

With Microsoft Internet Explorer and the other associated web tools,
Microsoft seems to have tried embrace and extend, and they didn't get
traction with their bugs and their incompatibilities.

Current MSIE is actually a decent web browser, in terms of performance
and standards compliance. They're also doing pretty well to remain
compliant with the old MSIE rendering, but they're likely going to
chuck that compatibility sooner or later.

> As someone who advises a number of customers on patching / security on
> a number of platforms, what is of much more concern in the Microsoft
> Model is the number of dud patches in the last year or so. I think the
> record was "the patch to fix the patch to fix the patch that patched
> the bug".*

All software vendors approach the limit of their ability to manage
complexity. Some software vendors will reach or exceed that limit.
The survivors pull back from the brink, and take steps to upgrade their
tools and processes and mechanisms; to reduce their complexity and
purmutation, and to locate and preemptively address the most
problematic parts of their environment.

> On the other hand, in modern Windows a good number of the patches can
> be applied without needing a reboot. Video drivers are an excellent
> example of wholesale driver replacement without needing a reboot. Quite
> a far cry from the old "Your mouse pointer has moved. Windows must
> restart to recognize these changes" model.

Had a look at Oracle's KSplice acquisition?

[Michael Moroney]

terry+go...@tmk.com writes:

>On the other hand, in modern Windows a good number of the patches can be
>applied without needing a reboot. Video drivers are an excellent example
>of wholesale driver replacement without needing a reboot. Quite a far cry
>from the old "Your mouse pointer has moved. Windows must restart to
>recognize these changes" model.

>Patch-in-place is becoming more popular. Recent Linux kernels now support
>live patching, for example. Perhaps this is something VSI can investigate
>as part of the port to a new architecture.

The vast majory of VMS patches to the base OS are really in the "You don't
need to reboot, but you won't see any of the effects of the patch until
you do" category. That's because drivers and execlets are loaded into
memory (nonpaged pool) at boot time, and the files aren't touched
thereafter. The OS won't notice or care if the file has been replaced,
deleted etc. until reboot. There are exceptions, of course, such as
"Reboot NOW before something horrible happens/the bug we're fixing decides
to crash and reboot for you" or perhaps cluster instability if mixed
versions are in place, or when a driver is replaced along with a user mode
image where the user mode image depends on the driver change, and bad
things happen with the new image/old driver combo exists. Also SDA of a
live system (ANALYZE/SYSTEM) can get confused when it tries to match new
driver files to an old driver in memory, but it will tell you that the
link dates don't match.

I'll suggest to VSI that a "Reboot at your convenience for changes to take
place" category be created for the "Reboot required" item (just yes/no
right now).

[johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk]

On Saturday, 28 February 2015 22:58:43 UTC, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-02-28 22:43:56 +0000, johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk said:
>
> > Some people might believe "Microsoft has learned more than a few lessons
> > from those attacks" but that might come as a surprise to those who still
> > regularly see previously unpatched flaws in "all supported versions of
> > Windows".
>
> Beyond Cutler and other ex-Digits that worked on Windows NT, I know
> some of the folks that were working on Windows and on Windows security

> over there -- they're very clever folks, and the tools they're using are

> good ones.
>
> > E.g. errors in JPEG rendering leading to remote code execution. How hard
> > can it really be to secure something like that be in a presentation-layer
> > OS like Windows?
>
> Tougher than it looks. Somebody handed SMG some keypresses on VMS,
> and got kernel access. What happens if VMS RMS is handed a
> maliciously-crafted file or volume?
>
>
>
> --
> Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

I can't answer "what happens if VMS RMS is handed a maliciously-crafted
file or volume" but I can speculate based on twenty years observation of
NT and thirty or so of VMS (also thirty or so of *ix).

I watched, and occasionally translated, as the SMG hiccup emerged but
don't want to comment on that here, except to say that nobody's perfect,
which is why consistent defence in depth can be an important consideration
in doing a proper job; no point having an ultra-secure door surrounded
by plasterboard walls (was that a Cutler comment?).

System robustness to unplanned conditions depends on various factors but
two things I want to mention here are philosophy (call it design,
architecture, whatever) and features.

VMS since day 1 has seemingly considered that preservation of customer
data was a fairly important subject. That's a core part of the philosphy
and lots of people know that.

So stuff inside VMS, and often in VMS apps, is designed defensively and
stuff is often checked for consistency as it is passed around. Same goes
for working practices, but that's another story.

If an unexpected inconsistency arises, action can (and often will) be
taken. The last resort is a system crash. There are features which mean
that if a system crash is necessary as a last resort, it will include
lots of potentially relevant debug info and there will be people available
to help interpret it. There will also be lots of other resources which
may or may not be helpful in diagnosing unexpected conditions (including,
but not limited to, privileges, quotas, accounting, operator logs, audit
logs, and so on).

It's a mixture of philosophy and features which could fill far more
space+time than I have here and now.

In contrast, Windows offers us what? A GUI-based program loader and a
bit of networking, plus (and, from a historic point of view, more
importantly) an ecosystem of MS-dependent professionals, forums,
bloggers, etc. OK I exaggerate, but only slightly.

Looked at from another angle, Windows is perceived to offer cheap (at
least initially), and shiny.

Windows doesn't offer secure (neither in confidentiality nor in
robustness). Windows doesn't offer consistency (neither from release
to release nor from product to product). Windows doesn't even offer well-supported, beyond the usual "re-install and try again". It's not
really obvious whether it really offers cheap, in general.

The historic stranglehold of MS on volume PC vendors has made things so
much easier for the Windows folks. The five or ten year future of
Windows clients is now rather less clear than it has been for a couple
of decades.

Windows may well be acceptable for lots of outfits. VMS was in that
position once, but times changed. The same could happen to MS. Much
as it happened to Apple (and then a miracle occured).

At the risk of getting repetitive again, one size does not necessarily
fit all (not in a sensible world anyway).

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-03-01 17:41:52 +0000, johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk said:

> Windows may well be acceptable for lots of outfits. VMS was in that
> position once, but times changed.

Windows solves the problems — bugs and all — that a whole lot of folks have.

Most folks buy computer systems to do work, and security is secondary
to that, after all.

> The same could happen to MS. Much

And already has, if you include mobile and tablet devices in the
population of client devices in use.

> as it happened to Apple (and then a miracle occured).

A whole lot of focus, a whole lot of work on products, and a whole lot of "no".

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh_9Wwx43r4>.

More than a little of what's been discussed here in comp.os.vms will be
getting a "no" from VSI, too.

> At the risk of getting repetitive again, one size does not necessarily
> fit all (not in a sensible world anyway).

At the risk of being entirely too repetitive myself, please provide a
better alternative.

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax [mailto:info-vax...@info-vax.com] On Behalf Of
> terry+go...@tmk.com
> Sent: 01-Mar-15 6:15 AM
> To: info...@info-vax.com
> Subject: Re: [New Info-vax] A possible platform for VMS?
>

This is a good example of what can happen when shops adopt
"patch-n-pray" and do not retest important things before rolling out
to prod environments.

The concept of patch-in-place is a good one so long as it is recognized
that testing still needs to be done before implementation in prod
environments.

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax [mailto:info-vax...@info-vax.com] On Behalf Of
> Stephen Hoffman
> Sent: 01-Mar-15 1:11 PM
> To: info...@info-vax.com
> Subject: Re: [New Info-vax] A possible platform for VMS?
>

A flash from the past - time to back to basics.

Windows is a thick client model. In the days of expensive and unreliable
networks, that model worked well. It is well known the huge Mgmt
costs, complexity and security challenges this thick client distributed
model has.

Imho, with 10MB+ Inet connectivity becoming common place to homes,
And 1GbE to work desks, a better model is a secure thin client accessing
files on a private (internal shared services) or external cloud (not
necessarily public).

With this model -
- patches applied to the thin client whenever the user connects (can
be optional or mandatory)
- back end uses clustering so that patches can be applied with zero
service availability impact.

Even gamers are starting to look at this model as the fat clients are
constantly being hacked and the games are becoming much less fun
for many users.

Google is already getting quite a few converts to their hosted docs
and email offerings - including many universities.

Imho, with the exception of some heavy duty design / graphics use
cases, the thick client days are numbered.

Perhaps OpenVMS based thin client on cheap x86 is a future option?

:-)

[johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk]

On Sunday, 1 March 2015 18:12:40 UTC, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-03-01 17:41:52 +0000, johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk said:
>
> > Windows may well be acceptable for lots of outfits. VMS was in that
> > position once, but times changed.
>

> Windows solves the problems -- bugs and all -- that a whole lot of folks have.

>
> Most folks buy computer systems to do work, and security is secondary
> to that, after all.
>
> > The same could happen to MS. Much
>
> And already has, if you include mobile and tablet devices in the
> population of client devices in use.
>
> > as it happened to Apple (and then a miracle occured).
>
> A whole lot of focus, a whole lot of work on products, and a whole lot of "no".
>
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh_9Wwx43r4>.
>
> More than a little of what's been discussed here in comp.os.vms will be
> getting a "no" from VSI, too.
>
> > At the risk of getting repetitive again, one size does not necessarily
> > fit all (not in a sensible world anyway).
>
> At the risk of being entirely too repetitive myself, please provide a
> better alternative.
>
>
> --
> Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

Provide a better alternative for what requirements?

If someone starts from the mindset that the requirement is "Windows",
then Windows will inevitably be the best answer (and there can then be
a dialogue over which flavour is required, and maybe over why the answer
has to be Windows regardless of the underlying requirements).

This is the stereotypical legacy IT Department starting position:
whatever the question, the answer is Windows. It's been almost plausible
for a couple of decades; it's now looking less plausible as time goes by.

On the other hand, if someone comes up with a specific set of
requirements, without explicitly stating an OS, then a different
discussion hopefully arises. For example...

High end highly scalable high availability: not Windows. Might be Tandem,
might be VMS. Heck in some places it might even be mainframes (IBM and
others are still doing mainframe business, even if it's never in the
trade rags).

Low(ish) end embedded (e.g. set top box): not Windows. Likely Linux.
Probably not VMS. MS MediaRoom tried to get the set top market by
going the CEO-led route (if you can't win the debate engineer to
engineer, go CEO to CEO). It worked in BT in the UK. But now even BT
management have realised that Windows is not always the answer; the
newer boxes don't have Windows, they are iirc Linux based, and TVs
themselves seem to like ARM/Android at the moment. But not Windows.

A UNIX system to run specific corporate UNIX apps: Sun/Solaris? Linux?

Joe Public at home, surfing and email: traditionally Windows.
Increasingly Android or Mac or occasionally Linux. Not usually going
to be VMS (with a small number of locally well known honourable
exceptions).

In other areas: who knows?

Volume rollout of corporate retail branch systems: now maybe we're
talking? Why 100% Windows? Convince the ePoS vendors and their larger
customers that VMS may make some of their nightmares less severe, and
there may be a dialogue to have. If they continue with 100% Windows,
there's no evidence that anything will get better.

Industrial automation, SCADA, etc: see corporate retail. Different
vendors, similar considerations to think about (different details).

Both of those two need pretty clients with limited intelligence, and
reasonably capable reasonably robust reasonably secure back ends that
have no overwhelming need to be the same as the user-visible systems.

There are doubtless other similar market sectors.

Fwiw, the "pick relevant players and work with them" tactic was what
took NT/Alpha rapidly from nowhere to a serious player in the print
sector; the speed was an advantage that outweighed the incompatibility.
NT/Alpha was a better fit to the requirements (speed, primarily) than
the NT/x86 of the day. And then just as quickly, Gates and Palmer took
NT/Alpha away again. Ho hum.

The answer depends on the requirements.

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-03-01 18:43:06 +0000, Kerry Main said:

> A flash from the past - time to back to basics.
>
>
>
> Windows is a thick client model. In the days of expensive and
> unreliable networks, that model worked well. It is well known the huge
> Mgmt costs, complexity and security challenges this thick client
> distributed model has.
>
>
>
> Imho, with 10MB+ Inet connectivity becoming common place to homes, And
> 1GbE to work desks, a better model is a secure thin client accessing
> files on a private (internal shared services) or external cloud (not
> necessarily public).
>

> ....

>
> Imho, with the exception of some heavy duty design / graphics use
> cases, the thick client days are numbered.
>
>
>
> Perhaps OpenVMS based thin client on cheap x86 is a future option?

That'd be interesting. Not a small effort, though. Different
licensing model, too; the return of the old Files and Applications
licensing and/or the old no-logins server licensing.

Android, ChromeOS, iPad, the embedded Linux distros, Windows Thin PC
and Windows Embedded are all already in this market, among other
competitors. Services including Office365 and Google Documents running
at public servers, and private configurations with HP with Helion and
OpenStack, or OwnCloud, or other providers, etc. Potentially with VMS
servers, if the cloud services were ported over.

As for x86-64 platform, if you want cheaper hardware, that's usually a
system based on an ARM SoC, and not the extra cost of an Intel
processor. (Not unless Intel is underwriting part of the costs and the
the effort, as was discussed within the last day or so, that is.) That
means an ARM port, or your hardware prices can end up higher.

Unless you're targeting boxes tethered to a power socket, creating a
thin client also involves some non-trivial work in the OS and
application APIs to optimize battery like and and power management.
Then there's getting the core applications updated and services
working, ROM-based or download-based operations and updates, secure
device provisioning, and getting the GUI working and cleaned up on
whatever graphics processor is present in your target box. Whether
you're going to implement touch support too, and which isn't a trivial
effort.

[Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)]

In article
<mailman.15.1425235402.11...@info-vax.com>, Kerry
Main <kerry...@backtothefutureit.com> writes:

> PiAtLS0tLU9yaWdpbmFsIE1lc3NhZ2UtLS0tLQ0KPiBGcm9tOiBJbmZvLXZheCBbbWFpbHRvOmlu
> Zm8tdmF4LWJvdW5jZXNAaW5mby12YXguY29tXSBPbiBCZWhhbGYgT2YNCj4gU3RlcGhlbiBIb2Zm

Kerry, is there any reason your posts are base-64 encoded? Most of your
recent posts have been.

No, I don't have a MIME-aware newsreader. I will consider one when
there is one for VMS. :-| Yes, I could read news via another client,
but the extra work is not worth it. A suite of EDT macros deals with
most problems. :-)

[David Froble]

Ok, let's look at the average home computer user. What is the normal
usage for many? Surfing the web could be high on that list. While many
times being run on what you call a thick client, a web browser could
exist on your thin client. Tablets and smart phones could be considered
thin clients. Many people get by with just a smart phone these days.

For such users, if there was a decent "cloud" (I dislike that term) that
could provide content on demand, and some additional things, most home
based users would be satisfied, AND BETTER OFF. The pointy stick in the
eye here is "decent cloud".

> - back end uses clustering so that patches can be applied with zero
> service availability impact.
>
> Even gamers are starting to look at this model as the fat clients are
> constantly being hacked and the games are becoming much less fun
> for many users.
>
> Google is already getting quite a few converts to their hosted docs
> and email offerings - including many universities.
>
> Imho, with the exception of some heavy duty design / graphics use
> cases, the thick client days are numbered.
>
> Perhaps OpenVMS based thin client on cheap x86 is a future option?

But, what's the client?

[Dirk Munk]

Over 20 years ago I had a remote booting Vaxstation, so what's new about
this concept?

[Dirk Munk]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-02-28 16:04:32 +0000, Dirk Munk said:
>
>> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>> On 2015-02-27 10:27:44 +0000, Dirk Munk said:
>>>
>>> Smartphones have substantially more processing power and RAM and
>>> storage capacity than a MicroVAX II offered.
>>
>> These Intel CPUs are also designed for tablets, same class as powerful
>> smartphone CPUs.
>
> Sort of. Then there's that Intel's margins are in deep trouble in that
> product range:
>
> <http://www.pcworld.com/article/2089421/how-intel-is-buying-a-piece-of-the-tablet-market.html>
>
> <http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-4-billion-loss-mobile,28413.html>
>
>

But for settop boxes they are great, there are at least 5 different
brands of . And *if* VSI decides to make a VMS desktop/laptop version
with GPU support, then it's nice to know that these chips use the same
family of Intel graphics as a high end i7 CPU. So no need for sperate
drivers.

>>>> If it runs Windows 8.1 with ease, then it will run VMS even better.
>>>
>>> Facts not yet in evidence. Microsoft has had decades to tune and to
>>> tailor the performance of their operating system.
>>
>> Less overhead in VMS, and I have confidence in VSI engineering.
>
> Again, facts not in evidence. Also there's whether incremental
> performance improvements really matter. More than a few folks are
> swimming in CPU cycles and cores and cheap boxes, which makes
> incremental performance rather less of a marketing and sales advantage
> than competitive features and application compatibility, and — of course
> — price.
>
> Going back to ancient history, DEC tried selling faster boxes for use
> with Microsoft Windows, and got shellacked in that market. Alpha did
> well with high-performance for a while, but not so well with folks that
> wanted compatible products, or cheaper products, or with folks that
> wanted Windows on x86.
>
> Going forward, VMS will be on x86-64, and so are most of the competitive
> products — there's just not very much room to differentiate on raw
> performance.
>
>> I know, and even on Windows XP. These things have been hacked quite
>> often. With regard to VMS license costs, I'm sure you remember the VAX
>> Pathworks servers with reduced VMS license costs. The same could apply
>> to dedicated systems like points of sale or ATM machines.

>
> What's this "MicroVAX" or "VAX" you keep talking about?

You could buy a special version of these systems that would allow only
one (or perhaps two) interactive users. They were meant as servers for
LAD and LAST services and remote booting PC's. There was something in
the hardware that distinguished these servers from 'normal' VAX servers.
The VMS license for these systems was much cheaper. I can imagine
something similar in the bios of an x64 system that will also allow only
one interactive user.

> Few folks care
> about Alpha, even fewer about VAX or MicroVAX, and PATHWORKS is long

> gone. Again: that's all ancient history. Fun for some folks to
> endlessly debate and to what-if (and thankfully with precious little
> fanfic, but I digress), interesting for the OS tourists and retronauts
> to explore, hassles and some revenues for the few folks that are
> maintaining the old Alpha gear and the remaining VAX gear and the
> existing OpenVMS installations, but otherwise irrelevant in the IT
> market. A very, very small niche.
>

> Want to see VMS or some other product play in the ATM market, or the
> desktop market, or the server market, or the embedded NUC-sized box
> market? What's the competitive product offering now, and what'll be
> available soon? How much does it all cost? How much will I have to pay
> to migrate my existing stuff to this new platform? How does it
> integrate with my existing user training, existing repair services and
> existing networks and systems and deployment tools? When can I buy
> it? Now those questions... are the interesting questions, and those
> are all in the future of VSI. With VMS outside of the installed base,
> those conversations are just not going to lead anywhere. Not now, and
> likely not for the next ~five years.
>

> As it is currently priced and configured, VMS is not competitive in the
> NUC server market — again, not outside of the VMS installed base.
>

> An as-yet-unavailable box that might be somewhat faster, but without a
> competitive story around applications and integration and pricing? Not
> gonna sell many of those.
>
>> Yes, but the functionality of the systems is limited and well known.
>> Compared to Windows an Linux far less need for frequnt security
>> patches etc, and that seves costs.
>
> I'd bet on Windows security and tools and defenses over VMS security,
> but that's not likely going to convince you. Put VMS and third-party
> VMS applications under the same sort of scrutiny that Windows has been
> under, and VMS will likely crack.
>

Maybe, I don't know. The difference is that VMS was designed with
security in mind, Windows NT (Windows 8.1 is Windows NT after all) was
too, but many security aspects were watered down as you will know.

But there is something else. Everybody knows Windows and Linux, no one
knows VMS. There is a lot of information about Windows an linux,
including about hacking these operating systems, there is far less
information about VMS. That is a security feature in itself.

> To be absolutely clear, VMS solves current problems for existing folks,

> and — for most of the existing users — VMS solves those problems more

> economically than the cost of porting to a different platform, or of
> restarting.
>
> But getting VMS into the ATM market? Or into Point-of-Sale systems? Or
> onto NUC-sized servers? Or onto high-end systems with hundreds of
> cores, for that matter? Or displacing existing applications and
> services that are running Windows Embedded or iOS or one of the Linux or
> BSD variants, or some HPTC-focused distro? That's no small investment,
> and that puts VSI into a price and feature competition with some large
> and established vendors, and with some entrants building on Android and
> iOS platforms; with lower-cost platforms and what is likely lower-cost

> software.
>

> VSI is going to need to engage resellers that foresee being able to make
> a profit here, as VSI itself is probably not going to be creating or
> porting the software necessarily involved in most any of the areas I've
> mentioned here. Tossing a NUC running VMS over the wall might be fun,

> but there's a whole lot more information and a whole lot more work —
> prices, features, support, compatibility, etc — needed before that might

[dodecah...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, March 1, 2015 at 5:46:42 AM UTC+11, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-02-28 16:04:32 +0000, Dirk Munk said:
>
> > Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> >> On 2015-02-27 10:27:44 +0000, Dirk Munk said:
> >>

<snip>

> But getting VMS into the ATM market? Or into Point-of-Sale systems?
> Or onto NUC-sized servers? Or onto high-end systems with hundreds of
> cores, for that matter? Or displacing existing applications and
> services that are running Windows Embedded or iOS or one of the Linux
> or BSD variants, or some HPTC-focused distro? That's no small
> investment, and that puts VSI into a price and feature competition with
> some large and established vendors, and with some entrants building on
> Android and iOS platforms; with lower-cost platforms and what is likely
> lower-cost software.
>
> VSI is going to need to engage resellers that foresee being able to
> make a profit here, as VSI itself is probably not going to be creating
> or porting the software necessarily involved in most any of the areas
> I've mentioned here. Tossing a NUC running VMS over the wall might be
> fun, but there's a whole lot more information and a whole lot more work

> -- prices, features, support, compatibility, etc -- needed before that

> might ever become a viable product.
>
> Getting VMS over onto x86-64 will solve problems that some existing
> OpenVMS users have. The rest comes later. This all assuming that VSI
> can keep going, and can start to grow the VMS installed base, and start
> to show that there are and can be revenues for third-party software and
> hardware providers, too.
>

> --
> Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

Agreed

Most of the discussions here are straddling the notion that vms needs to be profitable soon and that means targeting existing customers and the need for vms to modernize to open up new avenues

On the second front, is why I like the notion of pushing into the HPC arena. Unlike other markets that are already saturated, the HPC market is still being defined, especially on the large data store side of things with even linux being reworked to accommodate the exabyte camp. How feasible is this market to target? I have no idea but I do know there's a number of players clambering to get there because it's still being defined

If I could wave a magic wand and morph vms into anything I wanted, I would have it expand way further the concept of galaxy into a Multiverse, under which you have universes and galaxies and superclusters etc in a dynamic formation but centrally controlled if that's what a customer wants.

I would expand the concept of the uic or object protection so that it can start at the top of the chain listed above all the way down. In file headers I would embed encryption that could lock the contents of files or parts of files by date for release, or limit access by way of contact with a central security server if that's how a customer wanted to configure their multiverse.

I'd start by looking at the multiverse as just that, a top down approach where the whole of say a government would be a multiverse (think say the UK government), under which entire universes of vms systems sit as an arm of government such as defense, then further drill down to a galaxy which I would redesign as a super cluster and so on and so on all the way down to the individual node

Other systems now are continually pushing upwards trying to wrap up management and security under ever higher levels of centralized management, so why not just extrapolate all the way up and start with a design right up as high as you can go and then push downwards - someone had the concept of a cluster many years ago, why not go further all the way up to the multiverse?

I know it's fanciful and lofty minded but without a long term vision of something that is different to what other systems are even dreaming about (I have not seen anyone proposing such madness, the furthermost I have seen is fully distributed systems) vms will be forced to compete against other systems who have already cornered their particular markets

With a top down design as lofty as this, you can bring higher security lock down into play because you have a more unified model

Here's some of the idea I have been thinking about (don't prod and poke at it too much, I have not spent a lot of time totally thinking it through) but uic's would become entities like: [multiverseid, universe, galaxy, solar-system, super cluster, cluster, node, group, member] etc. Like IP6, you can short form parts of it and wildcard other parts. uic ownership is inherited from the multiverse down, it cannot be assigned upwards beyond what the security server dictates. In this way, a document produced by say a certain arm of government can set a policy to never allow the uic to be granted to say a public node of say the social services department etc. The key is of course a security server, which could be a universe in and unto itself
I believe the "THE" OS had a notion of giving permissions on a document that could never in turn be granted to another even if copied several times via other parties.

I'd also like to see things like the sys areas completely locked down with staging areas where patches are installed to and moved to various phases before being accepted into their final SYS area. You could have these areas checksummed and verified against say a code base at vsi or something to ensure your system is always running in a known code base configuration. VMS system areas get into a royal mess over time. Why we are at it, how about vendor code also being segregated into areas that totally isolate them from the OS. Vendors could register with say vsi and be given a code id or a unique naming convention that would then be applied across all vms systems out there in the world. Vendors could then install into these areas and could in turn be verified as a base install using a checksum arrangement to ensure code is valid. You could then checksum across base os installs and vendor installs to create higher and higher levels of checksum authentication. I was looking into perfect checksum algorithms but the maths was well beyond me :-(

Once you have checksummed base systems and vendor code, it becomes easier to validate and catch a rougue exe from running. If the exe isn't registered in a known directory for execution, then it is thrown out. This to me is how production systems should be running, code verified and registered before running. In production you should work with known code bases only

Yes, vms needs to be viable again or it's gone :-( but we need think tanks for future ideas of where we can take vms so as to have a vision to work towards or the linux's of this world will continue to eat our lunch

Sorry for being so dreamy about vms but I'm going to steal out of context, a biblical quote that I think is apt here, "Without a vision, the people perish"

Just what is vms's long term vision? I don't think it's just up to vsi to tell us (even if they have the ultimate say), it's up to all of us to put forward where we believe vms should/could go. We start with dialogue no matter how crazy the idea, then thrash out what can and cannot be done, but without an overall plan of where we want to end up, were going to get sidetracked into little alcoves along the way

My vision for vms's ultimate destination is the multiverse concept, don't laugh please but instead put forward your ideas

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax [mailto:info-vax...@info-vax.com] On Behalf Of
> Dirk Munk
> Sent: 02-Mar-15 3:24 AM
> To: info...@info-vax.com
> Subject: Re: [New Info-vax] A possible platform for VMS?
>

[Snip..]

> > Perhaps OpenVMS based thin client on cheap x86 is a future option?
> >
> > :-)
> >
>
> Over 20 years ago I had a remote booting Vaxstation, so what's new
> about
> this concept?
>

Nothing (as my reply stated, flash from the past ..)

As technology changes, solutions are re-invented and given new sexier
names to sell products & concepts.

In same fashion -

OLD (DEC) NAS (Network App Services) = Today SOA
OLD shared services (aka "utility") = Today Private Clouds
OLD Selective IT Outsourcing = Today Public Clouds
OLD (DEC) Notesfiles = Today Web Conferencing (still waiting
for "Next Unseen" feature)
OLD (DEC) VMS Phone Utility = Today Phone Chat (Whatsapp, BBM,
texting etc etc)

I am sure this list could go on and on ..

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <md0l4k$62c$1...@dont-email.me>,

OK, now that I have stopped laughing....

You people are making some very interesting assumptions about "home"
users. I just moved into a new home. I am 17 miles from the Scranton.
PA. 6th largest city inthe state. Guess what. I got no Internet.
Not avaialable. Not going to be any time soon. Only option is thru
DISH using HughesNET. And if you know anything about that, very few
people can afford it and they specifically state what it can and can't
be successfully used for. Email and HTTP. No video, no audio, no
gaming. Nothing that requires guaranteed bandwidth and low latency.
And I imagine that more than 50% of the US has this or less available
service.

I use thin clients at work. They are nice. But they also require
high bandwidth and low latency. Until everyone has fiber to their
home desktop and the backbone has unlimited bandwidth :-) the only
model that will work in the average home is what we have today.
doesn't have to be Microsoft, but the computing horsepower needs to
be local.

bill


--
Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
bill...@cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton |
Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <mctu35$hvc$1...@dont-email.me>,

And yet, people blame Microsoft when a machine gets compromised.
They provided the tools to prevent it, the user chooses to ignore
them.

>
>> As for Windows, Microsoft has done a tremendous amount of work to verify
>> their source code, to automate the detection of hazardous and deprecated
>> mechanisms in their source code, to increase the difficulty and the
>> costs of attacks on Windows, to make downloads and installations easy
>> and secure, to improve Internet Explorer, and to make the detection and
>> remediation of security breaches quicker and easier. Windows 7 is a
>> pretty solid offering, as are more recent releases. Yes, there are
>> still Windows bugs and zero-days around, and likely always will be.
>> Yes, users can also click through Windows UAC or OS X Gatekeeper, and
>> get themselves into trouble. That written, Windows security has been
>> very heavily tested, and by some very savvy attackers. Microsoft has
>> learned more than a few lessons from those attacks, too.
>
> There is still the apps that need full privs, and the people who are
> used to running as administrator, and will continue to do so. Without a
> router.

See above. Don't blame Microsoft for idiot users. If they didn't sell
their product to idiots, they would have no customers.

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Bill Gunshannon skrev den 2015-03-02 15:10:
> In article <md0l4k$62c$1...@dont-email.me>,
> David Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> writes:
>> Kerry Main wrote:
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Info-vax [mailto:info-vax...@info-vax.com] On Behalf Of
>>>> Stephen Hoffman
>>>> Sent: 01-Mar-15 1:11 PM
>>>> To: info...@info-vax.com
>>>> Subject: Re: [New Info-vax] A possible platform for VMS?
>>>>
>>>> On 2015-03-01 17:41:52 +0000, johnwa...@yahoo.co.uk said:
>>>>
>>>>> Windows may well be acceptable for lots of outfits. VMS was in that
>>>>> position once, but times changed.

>>>> Windows solves the problems — bugs and all — that a whole lot of folks

I just looked up Sweden and all but a few *very* low populated areas
in the far north has 10 Mb/s or better to over 90% of households.

The governements goal is that at least 90% of all housholds and
business will have 100 Mb/s via fiber at year 2020.

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Bill Gunshannon skrev den 2015-03-02 15:14:
> In article <mctu35$hvc$1...@dont-email.me>,
> David Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> writes:
>> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>> On 2015-02-28 21:24:33 +0000, David Froble said:
>>>
>>>> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> As it is currently priced and configured, VMS is not competitive in

>>>>> the NUC server market — again, not outside of the VMS installed base.

>>>>
>>>> Now, here is where I see a problem. What is the use of charging
>>>> license fees? None that I can see, and, I can see disadvantages in
>>>> trying to do so.
>>>>
>>>> Let's look first at the current user market. How many VMS licenses
>>>> will they be buying. I suggest zero. They already have their systems
>>>> and licenses, and if upgrading the HW, will most likely feel they
>>>> should be able to transfer their existing licenses. No money to be
>>>> made here.
>>>
>>> It'll be interesting to see how that will work in practice, with HP
>>> providing the Itanium hardware and VSI the software, and HP and other
>>> vendors providing x86-64 and VSI providing the software. VSI is going
>>> to want revenue, and HP isn't going to want to cut too far into their
>>> server hardware revenues. That there are now two vendors involved in
>>> each server sale is part of why I've wondered whether VSI will be drawn
>>> into packaged or even private-branded hardware, too. configurations
>>> with VSI-co-branded and/or pre-packaged HP ProLiant servers, combined
>>> with the VSI software. With packaged and supported server

>>> configurations — with VSI co-branded and/or vendor pre-configured and
>>> pre-tested servers server hardware — the end-customers aren't dealing

>>> to have web-related tools around — I've just started looking at gRPC

And those "idiots" are 99% of the normal user group for normal
standard PCs. Only idiots would call them "idiots"...

The fact that there also is a remaining 1% that concider them
selfs as "non-idiots", speaks more about them then anything else.

Jan-Erik.

[Dirk Munk]

Very true :-)
The number of wheels that are reinvented in the IT industry are
sufficient to supply the whole automotive industry for a year.

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-03-02 14:45:08 +0000, Jan-Erik Soderholm said:

> I just looked up Sweden and all but a few *very* low populated areas in
> the far north has 10 Mb/s or better to over 90% of households.
>
> The governements goal is that at least 90% of all housholds and
> business will have 100 Mb/s via fiber at year 2020.

In my experience, United States broadband speeds and coverage are not
particularly comparable to that of countries that consider broadband to
be a competitive advantage or to be a regional or national priority,
nor does the United States presently classify nor regulate nor
encourage broadband coverage similarly to that of telephone and
electrical services; as basic services. The US government holds
central the regulatory authority for broadband. The US only recently
decided to reclassify broadband providers as what are called common
carrier (though AFAIK, the details of that FCC decision and the new
regulations have not yet been published), and the US generally remains
committed to private carriers and to private broadband infrastructure
funding as the appropriate path forward for broadband coverage, and
(with a different recent FCC decision) to the possibility of
public-private and municipal broadband for those localities that wish
to vote on and fund and build that.

This funding model of course means that broadband carriers add coverage
only where that's likely to be most profitable and the investment most
quickly recouped, and the industry trends and profits have also been
leading to consolidations and to mergers among carriers — for the
potential merger of Time Warner Cable with Comcast, for instance. It
also means that there is quite often duplicated and competing
infrastructure in populated areas, and no infrastructure and no
coverage in others. As for optical coverage, it's also been reported
that a major wireline and wireless carrier Verizon is ending their
optical network build-out
<http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/verizon-nears-the-end-of-fios-builds/>
and concentrating their investments on wireless infrastructure.

The regional wireline incumbent telco carrier has met the planned 85%
broadband coverage of the state back around December 2010. The carrier
likely met 95% coverage back in April 2013, though that's with 75%
broadband coverage of their rural exchange customers; for what the
telco carrier refers to has UNE Zone 3 exchanges. Those exchanges are
for some parts of suburbs and the more rural areas.  Those coverage
percentages are also based on a much lower bandwidth definition for
broadband coverage than is now in common use, too. These build-outs
are slow and very expensive, and wireline subscriptions are in decline,
as folks move over to cellular communications. Further complicating
the upgrades and increasing the expenses, most of the regional
broadband coverage is (still) on copper wiring, and at ADSL speeds that
are sometimes hardware limited to 3 Mbps / 768 Kbps, or similar speeds.
More than a few nearby folks have no cable and no ADSL available, and
are connecting on wireless or satellite links, where those signals can
propagate. For some of these folks, the dial-up modem speeds they can
achieve are exceptionally low, due in no small part to the distances
and the state of the copper wiring involved, and some of those folks
also have no cellular coverage.

As for addressing and funding these build-outs, the policies of the US
presently seek to ensure a market for privatized and profitable
broadband providers, and — outside of a few local municipalities and
local governments — neither the federal government nor state
governments are seeking ubiquitous or publicly-funded broadband
build-outs. Wireline and wireless build-outs are proceeding in the US,
but slowly — chunks of state highways in this area have spotty or no
cellular coverage, for instance — and without the benefits (and issues,
of course) that national coordination and national build-out plans can
involve.

There's also that the population distribution in the US tends to
differs from that of Sweden and of most of Europe, and that the US is a
very large and — in many areas — comparatively empty country. To
borrow an old networking joke, broadband coverage around the US can
variously involve FedEx, which has rotten latency but massive bandwidth.

Outside of the population centers and particularly outside of the areas
deploying Google Fiber or equivalent, or with progressive telcos and
carriers as incumbents — US broadband is not particularly comparable
with what I've experienced in other countries.

But yes, having 100 Mbps fiber coverage for 90% of the local region
would be nice, but that's just not happening anytime soon; not in this
region.

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Yes, having private business running the broadband networks has the
drawback that every single connection is measured for profitability. With
a certain degree of regulation, you can force them to offer reasonable
services to more for a slightly higher cost in the high volume regions.

And yes, the Swedish government does consider IT and network access
as an important tool to let the whole country "live", so to speak.

But then, the last decades, other services has been deregulated such as
post handling. Before we had a single "Royal Mail" that *had* to deliver
latter and parcels anywhere within Sweden at a national flat rate. The
Royal Mail was 350 years old and the flat rate had been in use since 1855.

Then there come local post business that only had to deliver within the
larger cities, and took the profitable areas with the net result that the
old Royal Mail got problems to support less profitable areas. Idiots...

[Alan Frisbie]

On 03/02/2015 08:11 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-03-02 14:45:08 +0000, Jan-Erik Soderholm said:
>
>> I just looked up Sweden and all but a few *very* low populated
>> areas in the far north has 10 Mb/s or better to over 90% of
>> households.
>>

>> The governements goal is that at least 90% of all households

>> and business will have 100 Mb/s via fiber at year 2020.
>
> In my experience, United States broadband speeds and coverage are
> not particularly comparable to that of countries that consider
> broadband to be a competitive advantage or to be a regional or

> national priority...

Yeah, tell me about it. I live within sight of Los Angeles City Hall,
yet all I can get is 768 Kbps U-Verse from AT&T, unless I want to pay
$440/month for a T1 line.

Alan Frisbie

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

In our area in a smaller city (aprox 7.000 people) we have
100Mb/s fiber right into the appartment. That includes:
- The 100 Mb/s (10 Mb/s "up") connection as such.
- IP-TV with aprox 20 channels incl some in HD.
- IP-telephone subscription (call fees not included).
This costs aprox $35/month incl 10 years full replacement
support on the equipment (fiber converter, router and TV
set top box).

/Jan-Erik.

[Dirk Munk]

I have a cable connection with 200Mb/s download en 20Mb/sec upload. ere
in the NThere's also a kind of national fiber to the home project, it
will replace all of the old copper telephone lines. With a fiber
connection you can get up to 500Mb/s download & upload

[Dirk Munk]

I was trying to write "Here in the Netherlands there is also a kind of
of national fiber to the home project" when Seamonkey decided to post
the message.

[David Froble]

Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:

> Yes, having private business running the broadband networks has the
> drawback that every single connection is measured for profitability. With
> a certain degree of regulation, you can force them to offer reasonable
> services to more for a slightly higher cost in the high volume regions.

Actually, Verizon made a deal with the state of Pennsylvania some years
back to have high speed internet to everyone in the state. I'm guessing
they are arguing that wireless broadband is "high speed internet". I'll
dispute that. What it is is much more expensive than any wired or fiber
service, and there are monthly limits on usage.

They will most likely get away with breaking their promise with a few
well placed campaign contributions.

To a politician, the next election isn't everything, it's the ONLY
thing. (Thanks to Vince Lombardi for that concept.)

[Alan Frisbie]

On 03/02/2015 09:09 AM, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> Alan Frisbie skrev den 2015-03-02 17:58:

>> Yeah, tell me about it. I live within sight of Los Angeles City Hall,
>> yet all I can get is 768 Kbps U-Verse from AT&T, unless I want to pay
>> $440/month for a T1 line.
>>
>

> In our area in a smaller city (aprox 7.000 people) we have
> 100Mb/s fiber right into the appartment. That includes:
> - The 100 Mb/s (10 Mb/s "up") connection as such.
> - IP-TV with aprox 20 channels incl some in HD.
> - IP-telephone subscription (call fees not included).
> This costs aprox $35/month incl 10 years full replacement
> support on the equipment (fiber converter, router and TV
> set top box).

This makes me want to move to Sweden. Well, that and all
the beautiful women. :-)

Alan Frisbie

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax [mailto:info-vax...@info-vax.com] On Behalf Of
> Dirk Munk
> Sent: 02-Mar-15 1:00 PM
> To: info...@info-vax.com

My son just moved in before Christmas to new Apt building in Irvine, CA
(approx. 45 miles south of LA, CA).

He has 750 Mbs down AND up to the Apt.

In Ottawa, I have 25 Mbs down and 10 Mbs up via Bell. Could get 50Mbs
down if I wanted to pay about $15/month more. 175Mbs is available in
some areas for additional $30/month. I also get unlimited data for
additional $10/month.

http://www.bell.ca/Bell_Internet/Internet_access

Singapore company is rolling out 2Gbs in first half of 2015
http://news360.com/article/265876689#

I suspect you are going to see much more imbalance in interconnectivity
options in Asia going forward. Their Govts seem to have realized the
competitive Importance of future services on high bandwidth to its
citizens.

[JF Mezei]

On 15-03-02 13:42, Kerry Main wrote:

> In Ottawa, I have 25 Mbs down and 10 Mbs up via Bell.

Consider yourself lucky. I am in an area certified for 25mbps. The
building even has a sign from Bell that it was certified for 25mbps. But
can barely get 1mbps up (in fact, downgraded my package back to ADSL2
and now get only 880kbps up, when with ADSL1 on the further DSLAM, it
was capable of 1.3mbps up).

Ottawa is lucky that its VDSL deployment was delayed and by the time it
happened, Bell had runned out of its "liquidation sale" stocks of
ancient pre-VDSL2 compliant Stinger DSLAMs. (When Alcatel bought Lucent,
the first product line they canned is the Stinger which had never worked
properly or been popular).

I am stuck on stingers, unless I can convicne Bell to put me back on the
7330 on at the CO across the block from where the remote DSLAM is.


150mbps is only for areas with FTTH. Essentially areas where Bell is
losing so many customers to cable that Bell is investing to try to keep
customers. And yes, Bell si deploying FTTH (or FTTP to be politically
correct) in many areas where VDSL2 wasn't deployted yet. VDSL2 areas
will be last to get FTTH, except for Stinger-only areas which don't
perform).

Note that initial VDSL2 deployments not only had the dreaded
malfunctioning Stingers, but distances standards were set to 1km,
whereas the firmware patch to sort-of enable VDSL2 on Stingers only
works to 400m. (stingers require special modems, will not work with
normal VDSL2 modems).

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

The trunk into our local community (27 appartments, I'm the chairman
of the board) is 1 Gbs. Anyone can order 1 Gbs and the ISP will open
up the port in our local fiber switch (in our premises) for an extra
fee (do not know the fee, noone has asked). I do not think anyone
today sees any need for that. The IP-TV takes 2-5 Mbs and the rest
is enought for "surfing". And besides, one do not download VMS
ISO images every day... :-)

JF Mezei write the 2015-03-02 20:47:

about VDSL2...

I upgraded my office downtown from 24 Mbs ADSL (usual gave 15-16 Mbs)
to VDSL-60 (always stays spot on 60 Mbs +/- 1 Mbs when measured).
I was more interested in the higher up-link (from 2.0 Mbs to 12 Mbs)
for the document services on my server.

Jan-Erik.






.

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <md2344$kho$1...@news.albasani.net>,

I was waiting for this one. Guess what. They just voted to regulate
the Internet here under the misnomer "Net Neutrality". That move has
all but guaranteed that there will never be Internet where I now live.
t totally removed any chance of doing at anything but a major financial
loss.

>
> And yes, the Swedish government does consider IT and network access
> as an important tool to let the whole country "live", so to speak.
>
> But then, the last decades, other services has been deregulated such as
> post handling. Before we had a single "Royal Mail" that *had* to deliver
> latter and parcels anywhere within Sweden at a national flat rate. The
> Royal Mail was 350 years old and the flat rate had been in use since 1855.

That's called robbing peter to pay paul. Or did you really think the
cost had never increased?

>
> Then there come local post business that only had to deliver within the
> larger cities, and took the profitable areas with the net result that the
> old Royal Mail got problems to support less profitable areas. Idiots...

Services cost money. Most people are willing to pay if they get their
money's worth. That is, of course, why the US PS should be done away
with.

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <_OidnbowLtI7C2nJ...@supernews.com>,

I can't have a T-1 at any price.

[Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)]

In article <md1t1k$8lm$1...@news.albasani.net>, Jan-Erik Soderholm

<jan-erik....@telia.com> writes:

> > You people are making some very interesting assumptions about "home"
> > users. I just moved into a new home. I am 17 miles from the Scranton.
> > PA. 6th largest city inthe state. Guess what. I got no Internet.
> > Not avaialable. Not going to be any time soon. Only option is thru
> > DISH using HughesNET. And if you know anything about that, very few
> > people can afford it and they specifically state what it can and can't
> > be successfully used for. Email and HTTP. No video, no audio, no
> > gaming. Nothing that requires guaranteed bandwidth and low latency.
> > And I imagine that more than 50% of the US has this or less available
> > service.
>

> I just looked up Sweden and all but a few *very* low populated areas
> in the far north has 10 Mb/s or better to over 90% of households.
>

> The governements goal is that at least 90% of all housholds and

> business will have 100 Mb/s via fiber at year 2020.

Sweden is not the US. :-)

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

>>> leading to consolidations and to mergers among carriers — for the potential

>>> providers, and — outside of a few local municipalities and local
>>> governments — neither the federal government nor state governments are

>>> seeking ubiquitous or publicly-funded broadband build-outs. Wireline and

>>> wireless build-outs are proceeding in the US, but slowly — chunks of state
>>> highways in this area have spotty or no cellular coverage, for instance —

>>> and without the benefits (and issues, of course) that national coordination
>>> and national build-out plans can involve.
>>>
>>> There's also that the population distribution in the US tends to differs
>>> from that of Sweden and of most of Europe, and that the US is a very large

>>> and — in many areas — comparatively empty country. To borrow an old

>>> networking joke, broadband coverage around the US can variously involve
>>> FedEx, which has rotten latency but massive bandwidth.
>>>
>>> Outside of the population centers and particularly outside of the areas
>>> deploying Google Fiber or equivalent, or with progressive telcos and

>>> carriers as incumbents — US broadband is not particularly comparable with

>>> what I've experienced in other countries.
>>>
>>> But yes, having 100 Mbps fiber coverage for 90% of the local region would
>>> be nice, but that's just not happening anytime soon; not in this region.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Yes, having private business running the broadband networks has the
>> drawback that every single connection is measured for profitability. With
>> a certain degree of regulation, you can force them to offer reasonable
>> services to more for a slightly higher cost in the high volume regions.
>
> I was waiting for this one. Guess what. They just voted to regulate
> the Internet here under the misnomer "Net Neutrality". That move has
> all but guaranteed that there will never be Internet where I now live.
> t totally removed any chance of doing at anything but a major financial
> loss.
>
>>
>> And yes, the Swedish government does consider IT and network access
>> as an important tool to let the whole country "live", so to speak.
>>
>> But then, the last decades, other services has been deregulated such as
>> post handling. Before we had a single "Royal Mail" that *had* to deliver
>> latter and parcels anywhere within Sweden at a national flat rate. The
>> Royal Mail was 350 years old and the flat rate had been in use since 1855.
>
> That's called robbing peter to pay paul. Or did you really think the
> cost had never increased?

I don't understand what you are saying here. Or did you got the
impression that I claimed the the postage fees never had increased
since 1855? Of course they have. But the point is that is is the
same fee no matter if you send a letter to someone in the same
city or someone 2.000 Km away.

If you ment something else with "cost", then I have no clue.

>> Then there come local post business that only had to deliver within the
>> larger cities, and took the profitable areas with the net result that the
>> old Royal Mail got problems to support less profitable areas. Idiots...
>
> Services cost money. Most people are willing to pay if they get their
> money's worth.

The point is that those in large cities maybe pays 5% extra on their
postage fees just so that they also can send a letter at the same
fee to the other end of the country. That is what makes the whole
county live. Now, if you let small private business *only* operate
in the large cities, well, the result is given, less postage
services in the far ends of the country. And all this is what
helped build this country over the last centuries.

[Richard Maher]

On 3/2/2015 10:45 PM, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>
> I just looked up Sweden and all but a few *very* low populated areas
> in the far north has 10 Mb/s or better to over 90% of households.
>
> The governements goal is that at least 90% of all housholds and
> business will have 100 Mb/s via fiber at year 2020.
>
>

What's your tax rate?

Here the govt wants to rollout some NBN (National Broadband Network) the
biggest EVER publicly funded project while cutting old age pensions and
I say NO! Let the movie pirates and pedophiles pay for the speed if they
want it.

[David Froble]

Bill Gunshannon wrote:

> I was waiting for this one. Guess what. They just voted to regulate
> the Internet here under the misnomer "Net Neutrality". That move has
> all but guaranteed that there will never be Internet where I now live.
> t totally removed any chance of doing at anything but a major financial
> loss.

I haven't read any details. But from what I now understand, that was a
good move. Otherwise we'd get what Google and Verizon allowed us to
get, and not much else.

The old idea of the internet was an "information superhighway" for
everyone. What it's turned into is a money making tool for big
business, and they were heading toward taking over more and more of the
possibilities on the internet.

Now, if you trust Verizon to do anything but screw you silly, you're
going to end up very silly.

Verizon, who wants to dump their wired network. So much for DSL.

Verizon, who wants to charge you several times as much for wireless
broadband, and then limit you to 5 GB of data per month. Oh, and the
frequent outages, just when you want a connection, are so enjoyable.

[David Froble]

Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> In article <_OidnbowLtI7C2nJ...@supernews.com>,
> Alan Frisbie <Usenet0...@Flying-Disk.com> writes:
>> On 03/02/2015 08:11 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>> On 2015-03-02 14:45:08 +0000, Jan-Erik Soderholm said:
>>>
>>>> I just looked up Sweden and all but a few *very* low populated
>>>> areas in the far north has 10 Mb/s or better to over 90% of
>>>> households.
>>>>
>>>> The governements goal is that at least 90% of all households
>>>> and business will have 100 Mb/s via fiber at year 2020.
>>> In my experience, United States broadband speeds and coverage are
>>> not particularly comparable to that of countries that consider
>>> broadband to be a competitive advantage or to be a regional or
>>> national priority...
>> Yeah, tell me about it. I live within sight of Los Angeles City Hall,
>> yet all I can get is 768 Kbps U-Verse from AT&T, unless I want to pay
>> $440/month for a T1 line.
>
> I can't have a T-1 at any price.
>
> bill
>

I've tried asking about fractional T1, and nobody at Verizon knows what
I'm talking about.

We're screwed, and we're probably going to stay screwed. At least as
long as big money continues to run things.

[mcle...@gmail.com]

J-E, by coincidence today, the Swedish online English newspaper The Local,
has an article "Sweden is second most 'digital' nation in EU", see
http://www.thelocal.se/20150224/sweden-is-europes-second-most-digital-nation

From the article

"Sweden was especially praised for making fixed broadband services
available for 99 percent of homes.

'This is remarkable given Sweden's geographical configuration,' noted
the report's authors in a nod to the country's sparsely populated rural north."


cheers

John

[JF Mezei]

On 15-03-02 21:36, mcle...@gmail.com wrote:

> J-E, by coincidence today, the Swedish online English newspaper The Local,
> has an article "Sweden is second most 'digital' nation in EU", see
> http://www.thelocal.se/20150224/sweden-is-europes-second-most-digital-nation

If you deploy VDSL2 to support modern speeds, you need to have a maximum
distance of roughly 500m between all homes and the DSLAM. This costs a
lot of money because installing a DSLAM outside is costly. Concrete
base, bringing the fibre AND POWER to it, and then bring all the local
copper there.

The old copper telephopne plant was often not architected to bring all
the copper in a neighbourhood togthere before going to the central
office, so it becomes hard to have at junction boxes that meet your
distance standards.

In my case, the distance standard is 1km and the DSLAM that serves me is
within eyesight of the central office that has a more modern DSLAM in it.

In Australia, the curent govt, while in opposition, was lobbied by
Tesltra to push for the govet renting Tesltra's copper. So as soon as
Turnbull got into power, he directed NBN to stop deppoying fibre and
deploy FTTN (DSLAMs near homes) and promised great speeds. Now, not
only have FTTN costs gone up, but they have also loosened the standards
otherwise the costs would have been way too high, and the latest is that
it will end up cositing the same as FTTH, but give unreliable and
variable speeds.

Each country is different on how it deployed its copper originally and
how it can be converted to FTTN service or whether FTTH ends up being
better.

Also, FTTH ends up costing much less is yearly maintenance and
performance does not degrade due to rain and squirrels as copper does.

[JF Mezei]

BTW, we had a CRTC hearing about the ussue of broadband in Canada last
december.

My second presentation:

http://www.cpac.ca/en/programs/cpac-special/episodes/36001548

Time index 94 minutes.

(just noticed I had a pen in hand, a big no no ! )

(This is the final reply, so the arguments are to kill the rethoric
brought up by incumbents with their scare tactics, threaths of lower
investment etc etc (which was seen in USA with net neutrality).

[Dirk Munk]

I'm glad I live in communist Europe where governments set up rules on
these matters :-).

All phone cables in The Netherlands are owned by KPN, the former Royal
Mail. KPN has to allow other service providers on their cables, so if I
wanted an ADSL/VDSL connection I can choose from dozens of ISPs.

KPN is also improving this old copper cable infrastructure by switching
to FTTN. They did that in my neighborhood too, and one of my neighbors
took the slowest ADSL/VDSL connection he could get, 20Mb/sec up and
downspeed. And guess what, that is what he measures as well.

Only in the countryside connections are slower due to the long telephone
lines.

As I wrote before there is a kind of national FTTH project, however
since KPN is no longer a state owned company they don't have to provide
fiber connections ro rural areas. So in some cases provinces are taking
the initiative to get fiber connections to these areas. It is in *their*
interest to have a good working economy in the countryside, and a good
working economy relies on good working and fast internet connections
these days.

By the way, there is a new ADSL/VDSL system in development. I don't know
how it is in the US, but over here a telephone cable has four or five
wires. Up till now only two of them were used for ADSL/VDSL. But now
there is a new standard where all four wires are used, in effect
doubling the speed.

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

That is a good point. Do we realy need 100 Mb/s? What are
the critical applications that are really needed?
Internet banking is probably first in the line as the
bank offices shutdown and begins to ask for high fees
to pay bills directly at the counter. That as such needs
just a few Mb/s.

eMail maybe also a few Mb/s. Skype is widely used over
here, many have reallatives "overseas". Maybe a few Mb/s
if used in sound-only mode.

The gaming folks really need low "ping" times, not the
massive bandwidth as such. Well, the new server based
games are another matter...

IP-TV needs 2-5 Mb/s. IP-Telephone maybe a few Mb/s.

So yes, for the large amount of users, 100 Mb/s is usualy
way over what really is "needed".

Jan-Erik.

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

I just called my ISP and checked the upgrade options.
The price is on top of the current $35 monthly fee above.

100/100 Mb/s: $24/month.
250/100 Mb/s: $30/month.
1000/100 Mb/s: $120/month.

This is only a setup in the fiber switch, the fiber network
and routers in the appartments are alrady Gb-ready.

But then, my wireless laptop on the second floor currently
measures aprox 40 Mb/s down and 12 Mb/s up. A Gb link into
my router would not change that a bit... :-)

Jan-Erik.

[Dirk Munk]

And how about people working at home, who would like the work the same
way as they do at the office? So the same speed and response times? How
about companies that need access to remote servers, looking for
documentation on parts, manuals etc.? I know that this is a major
problem for small and medium sized companies in rural areas, in fact it
may be such a problem that these companies have to move to more
populated areas thus making it more and more impossible for small
villages etc. to survive. Highly undesirable.

[Richard Maher]

I sometimes work from home with ~5MB. Maybe I'm just a slow typer?

What do these imaginary workers of yours do? Ride their battle-chickens
around WoW for a living?

For those who need/desire it let them pay or move! I'm not paying for
evryone to have there own personal EMR machine or helicopter so fucked
if I'm paying for them to download GoT to their fucking NAS.

Small villages died when the bank, the post office and the store closed
because there are nonviable especially when you want the cheap prices 10
miles away. But they really died when smoking was banned in pubs and
everyone stayed home.

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Richard Maher skrev den 2015-03-03 11:32:
> On 3/3/2015 5:53 PM, Dirk Munk wrote:
>> Richard Maher wrote:
>>> On 3/2/2015 10:45 PM, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I just looked up Sweden and all but a few *very* low populated areas
>>>> in the far north has 10 Mb/s or better to over 90% of households.
>>>>
>>>> The governements goal is that at least 90% of all housholds and
>>>> business will have 100 Mb/s via fiber at year 2020.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> What's your tax rate?
>>>
>>> Here the govt wants to rollout some NBN (National Broadband Network) the
>>> biggest EVER publicly funded project while cutting old age pensions and
>>> I say NO! Let the movie pirates and pedophiles pay for the speed if they
>>> want it.
>>
>> And how about people working at home, who would like the work the same
>> way as they do at the office? So the same speed and response times? How
>> about companies that need access to remote servers, looking for
>> documentation on parts, manuals etc.? I know that this is a major
>> problem for small and medium sized companies in rural areas, in fact it
>> may be such a problem that these companies have to move to more
>> populated areas thus making it more and more impossible for small
>> villages etc. to survive. Highly undesirable.
>
> I sometimes work from home with ~5MB. Maybe I'm just a slow typer?

I guess that is 5 Mb(it), not 5 MB(yte)?

I always work from home (or from my office which is just as "remote"
in regard to the customer as my home is). The access is through a
"remote desktop" that runs on Citrix servers at the customer.

This works over 100 Mb/s (or 60 Mb/s at my office).
I don't know if it would work over 5 Mb/s.

[Dirk Munk]

Richard Maher wrote:
> On 3/3/2015 5:53 PM, Dirk Munk wrote:
>> Richard Maher wrote:
>>> On 3/2/2015 10:45 PM, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I just looked up Sweden and all but a few *very* low populated areas
>>>> in the far north has 10 Mb/s or better to over 90% of households.
>>>>
>>>> The governements goal is that at least 90% of all housholds and
>>>> business will have 100 Mb/s via fiber at year 2020.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> What's your tax rate?
>>>
>>> Here the govt wants to rollout some NBN (National Broadband Network) the
>>> biggest EVER publicly funded project while cutting old age pensions and
>>> I say NO! Let the movie pirates and pedophiles pay for the speed if they
>>> want it.
>>
>> And how about people working at home, who would like the work the same
>> way as they do at the office? So the same speed and response times? How
>> about companies that need access to remote servers, looking for
>> documentation on parts, manuals etc.? I know that this is a major
>> problem for small and medium sized companies in rural areas, in fact it
>> may be such a problem that these companies have to move to more
>> populated areas thus making it more and more impossible for small
>> villages etc. to survive. Highly undesirable.
>
> I sometimes work from home with ~5MB. Maybe I'm just a slow typer?
>
> What do these imaginary workers of yours do? Ride their battle-chickens
> around WoW for a living?

Imaginary? I know big companies that expect their workers to work at
home as much as possible, thus saving on office costs. If these workers
go to the office, there is no fixed working place for them. Quite often
they even can't find a proper place to work. Costs saving you know.

>
> For those who need/desire it let them pay or move! I'm not paying for
> evryone to have there own personal EMR machine or helicopter so fucked
> if I'm paying for them to download GoT to their fucking NAS.

It should be obvious to you that you can't pay for a single high speed
connection. These connections are only viable when they are made
collectively.

>
> Small villages died when the bank, the post office and the store closed
> because there are nonviable especially when you want the cheap prices 10
> miles away. But they really died when smoking was banned in pubs and
> everyone stayed home.

Maybe if the village is hardly 150 years old like in the US, that may be
true. However when villages are a thousand years old, or even thousands
of years old, then those changes matter. Let me give you an example.
These days if you have a building project in Europe, and there is a
chance that there could be traces of previous human activities there,
then by European law you are obliged to perform a archeological survey
on that spot. Some years back they wanted to build some new house near a
English village, and the archeological survey came up with a bronze age
grave field. They extracted the bones, and they were also successful in
extracting DNA from those bones. The DNA from those bones was compared
with DNA from people in that area, and they found matches. The same
families had lived there for thousands of years. We want those villages
to stay alive, in fact a very recent pole showed that 86% of the people
in The Netherlands are very worried about what you might call the
quality of living in those villages.

[Richard Maher]

On 3/3/2015 7:01 PM, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
>
> This works over 100 Mb/s (or 60 Mb/s at my office).
> I don't know if it would work over 5 Mb/s.

Yes little B.

I use Juniper VPN and remote desktop to my PC. everything is just peachy.

BTW Australia now pays more to service the interest on our national debt
than we do on all or tertiary education.
>
>
>

[Richard Maher]

On 3/3/2015 7:27 PM, Dirk Munk wrote:
>> What do these imaginary workers of yours do? Ride their battle-chickens
>> around WoW for a living?
>
> Imaginary? I know big companies that expect their workers to work at
> home as much as possible, thus saving on office costs. If these workers
> go to the office, there is no fixed working place for them. Quite often
> they even can't find a proper place to work. Costs saving you know.

Bollocks! Name them.

Evry company I've worked for want to see bums on seats or they won't pay
the invoice.

>
>>
>> For those who need/desire it let them pay or move! I'm not paying for
>> evryone to have there own personal EMR machine or helicopter so fucked
>> if I'm paying for them to download GoT to their fucking NAS.
>
> It should be obvious to you that you can't pay for a single high speed
> connection. These connections are only viable when they are made
> collectively.

Yeah applied socialism 101 "When I waited tables in France I saw Applied
Socialism first hand. Everybody had to put tips in a collective jar but
I was the only one doing it." - Tony Blair

They don't *need* a highspeed connection just like most people don't
need a Ferrari! Where the hell do you get this sense of entitlement you
fucked up bolshevik!

I know, I know, you wanted Margaret Thatcher to keep the coal mines open
for nostalgia and then pay to bury the coal again because of the green
house problems.

>
>>
>> Small villages died when the bank, the post office and the store closed
>> because there are nonviable especially when you want the cheap prices 10
>> miles away. But they really died when smoking was banned in pubs and
>> everyone stayed home.
>
> Maybe if the village is hardly 150 years old like in the US, that may be
> true. However when villages are a thousand years old, or even thousands
> of years old, then those changes matter. Let me give you an example.
> These days if you have a building project in Europe, and there is a
> chance that there could be traces of previous human activities there,
> then by European law you are obliged to perform a archeological survey
> on that spot. Some years back they wanted to build some new house near a
> English village, and the archeological survey came up with a bronze age
> grave field. They extracted the bones, and they were also successful in
> extracting DNA from those bones. The DNA from those bones was compared
> with DNA from people in that area, and they found matches. The same
> families had lived there for thousands of years. We want those villages
> to stay alive, in fact a very recent pole showed that 86% of the people
> in The Netherlands are very worried about what you might call the
> quality of living in those villages.
>

Then ask them if they'd prefer tax-breaks for living in a heritage
village or the fastest porn they can handle.

[Dirk Munk]

Richard Maher wrote:
> On 3/3/2015 7:27 PM, Dirk Munk wrote:
>>> What do these imaginary workers of yours do? Ride their battle-chickens
>>> around WoW for a living?
>>
>> Imaginary? I know big companies that expect their workers to work at
>> home as much as possible, thus saving on office costs. If these workers
>> go to the office, there is no fixed working place for them. Quite often
>> they even can't find a proper place to work. Costs saving you know.
>
> Bollocks! Name them.
>
> Evry company I've worked for want to see bums on seats or they won't pay
> the invoice.
>
>>
>>>
>>> For those who need/desire it let them pay or move! I'm not paying for
>>> evryone to have there own personal EMR machine or helicopter so fucked
>>> if I'm paying for them to download GoT to their fucking NAS.
>>
>> It should be obvious to you that you can't pay for a single high speed
>> connection. These connections are only viable when they are made
>> collectively.
>
> Yeah applied socialism 101

No, simple economics. having to dig in a cable for one connection is
just as expensive as for 10,000 connections.

> "When I waited tables in France I saw Applied
> Socialism first hand. Everybody had to put tips in a collective jar but
> I was the only one doing it." - Tony Blair

Ah, Tony Blair. One of the most disliked persons today in Britain. He
gets 2,5 million pound per year to advise the J.P. Morgan bank.

>
> They don't *need* a highspeed connection just like most people don't
> need a Ferrari! Where the hell do you get this sense of entitlement you
> fucked up bolshevik!
>

Well, companies in those areas do want those fast internet connections,
they are complaining that slow internet connections are very bad for
their business.

> I know, I know, you wanted Margaret Thatcher to keep the coal mines open
> for nostalgia and then pay to bury the coal again because of the green
> house problems.

There is a brand new giant coal burning power plant just 20 miles from
here. Now the oil and gas supplies in Europe are almost finished, modern
coal burning power plants are viable again. In fact some coals mines in
Europe are reopening.

>>
>>>
>>> Small villages died when the bank, the post office and the store closed
>>> because there are nonviable especially when you want the cheap prices 10
>>> miles away. But they really died when smoking was banned in pubs and
>>> everyone stayed home.
>>
>> Maybe if the village is hardly 150 years old like in the US, that may be
>> true. However when villages are a thousand years old, or even thousands
>> of years old, then those changes matter. Let me give you an example.
>> These days if you have a building project in Europe, and there is a
>> chance that there could be traces of previous human activities there,
>> then by European law you are obliged to perform a archeological survey
>> on that spot. Some years back they wanted to build some new house near a
>> English village, and the archeological survey came up with a bronze age
>> grave field. They extracted the bones, and they were also successful in
>> extracting DNA from those bones. The DNA from those bones was compared
>> with DNA from people in that area, and they found matches. The same
>> families had lived there for thousands of years. We want those villages
>> to stay alive, in fact a very recent pole showed that 86% of the people
>> in The Netherlands are very worried about what you might call the
>> quality of living in those villages.
>>
>
> Then ask them if they'd prefer tax-breaks for living in a heritage
> village or the fastest porn they can handle.
>

Why don't you ask them if they like to live in a city where they pay
twice as much for a house without a big garden? I've got news for you.
If you want a good road, or good public transport for your kids to go to
school, you can't set it up for your self. But paying for it
collectively by taxes does work.

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <md4b52$lvh$1...@speranza.aioe.org>,

Richard Maher <maher_rj...@hotmail.com> writes:
> On 3/3/2015 7:27 PM, Dirk Munk wrote:
>>> What do these imaginary workers of yours do? Ride their battle-chickens
>>> around WoW for a living?
>>
>> Imaginary? I know big companies that expect their workers to work at
>> home as much as possible, thus saving on office costs. If these workers
>> go to the office, there is no fixed working place for them. Quite often
>> they even can't find a proper place to work. Costs saving you know.
>
> Bollocks! Name them.
>
> Evry company I've worked for want to see bums on seats or they won't pay
> the invoice.

In 2009 when I working for DISA ( I was military but everyone else was
a civilian) they already had a program in place where everyone worked
a 4 day week and a 5 day week every pay period. The 5 day wee inluded
one Work-From-Home day so that people only worked from the office four
days any week. They wre in the process of developing a program that
would involve more work from home days and hot-swap desks shared by
more than one employee with only one ever being present on any given
day.

It is being done. And I would expect that businesses where saving
money is much more meaningful are looking at it even more.

[Kerry Main]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Info-vax [mailto:info-vax...@info-vax.com] On Behalf Of
> Jan-Erik Soderholm
> Sent: 03-Mar-15 4:31 AM
> To: info...@info-vax.com

We had the same discussion when the world jumped from 14.4K modems
to 28K and 56K modems - "why do you need such speed?"

Reality is that applications keep emerging which will use this network
capacity.

- video conferencing and remote medical consultations
- long distance or remote university course learning

I am sure there are many other work and non-work related apps brewing
out there that will take advantage of newer network capacities (at least
for those that choose to live in areas where these new network speeds
are available - trade-offs)

[Scott Dorsey]

Bill Gunshannon <bill...@cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>I was waiting for this one. Guess what. They just voted to regulate
>the Internet here under the misnomer "Net Neutrality". That move has
>all but guaranteed that there will never be Internet where I now live.
>t totally removed any chance of doing at anything but a major financial
>loss.

No, what they voted for was to regulate last mile internet service through
a public utility commission the way landline telephone service was regulated
back when landline telephone service worked, and the way that most higher
grade telco services are regulated today.

Tariffed service has some good points and some bad points and one of the
good points is that it can be used to eliminate the cream-skimming that
currently prevents you from getting real internet service.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Scott Dorsey]

Bill Gunshannon <bill...@cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>In article <_OidnbowLtI7C2nJ...@supernews.com>,
> Alan Frisbie <Usenet0...@Flying-Disk.com> writes:
>> On 03/02/2015 08:11 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>> On 2015-03-02 14:45:08 +0000, Jan-Erik Soderholm said:
>>>
>>>> I just looked up Sweden and all but a few *very* low populated
>> >> areas in the far north has 10 Mb/s or better to over 90% of
>> >> households.
>>>>
>>>> The governements goal is that at least 90% of all households
>> >> and business will have 100 Mb/s via fiber at year 2020.
>>>
>>> In my experience, United States broadband speeds and coverage are
>> > not particularly comparable to that of countries that consider
>> > broadband to be a competitive advantage or to be a regional or
>> > national priority...
>>
>> Yeah, tell me about it. I live within sight of Los Angeles City Hall,
>> yet all I can get is 768 Kbps U-Verse from AT&T, unless I want to pay
>> $440/month for a T1 line.
>
>I can't have a T-1 at any price.

Sure you can. You need to stop talking to internet service companies and
talk to the ILEC. Don't ask for internet service, ask for a T-1 to a service
provider.

The T-1 is available anywhere that phone pairs are available, the problem is
that it's really not very fast and it is extremely expensive (which is the
downside of having telco-grade reliability).

The T-1 is a tariffed service, the telco can't refuse to provide it. They
CAN quote you an insanely high price, though.

[Scott Dorsey]

David Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>
>I've tried asking about fractional T1, and nobody at Verizon knows what
>I'm talking about.

Verizon stopped offering fractional T-1 service on September 18, 2010.
Existing customers were grandfathered in until June 2013. They should have
told you that.

Call the Verizon business office and ask for the "Special Access Services"
supervisor. However, before doing that, contact your state PUC and get a
copy of your state tariff. This will show exactly what services the telco
is required to provide in your area.

You cannot just call some random idiot in the front office and expect them
to know about any particular service, you need to talk to the SAS people and
get routed to the one person in your area who handles the service you want.

>We're screwed, and we're probably going to stay screwed. At least as
>long as big money continues to run things.

Be that as it may, the telco world is not like the computer world. The
telcos are under tariff to provide certain services at certain rates. They
may not like to provide them, but they have to provide them. Other services
they aren't allowed to provide. Your job as an informed telco customer is
to know every detail of this, and that means reading and knowing the tariff.

Big companies have a telco guy on staff whose job it is to know all the
state tariffs by heart. If you don't have that guy on staff, you have to
do the work yourself.

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-03-03 16:21:06 +0000, Scott Dorsey said:

> David Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>
>> I've tried asking about fractional T1, and nobody at Verizon knows what
>> I'm talking about.
>

> ...

>
> Call the Verizon business office and ask for the "Special Access
> Services" supervisor. However, before doing that, contact your state
> PUC and get a copy of your state tariff. This will show exactly what
> services the telco is required to provide in your area.

Also by omission, what is not regulated. Which was most of broadband
and broadband carriers, at least up until the details and the effects
of the most recent FCC "net neutrality" decision are known and sorted
out.

> You cannot just call some random idiot in the front office and expect
> them to know about any particular service, you need to talk to the SAS
> people and get routed to the one person in your area who handles the
> service you want.
>
>> We're screwed, and we're probably going to stay screwed. At least as
>> long as big money continues to run things.

Broadband is universally available within the US. Affordable broadband
is not. If you can pay for it, you can get what you want and what you
need.

> Be that as it may, the telco world is not like the computer world. The
> telcos are under tariff to provide certain services at certain rates.
> They may not like to provide them, but they have to provide them.
> Other services they aren't allowed to provide.

That's true for the regulated telco services involving the common
carriers. Broadband wasn't one of these. The state PUC has little
or no regulatory authority over broadband providers nor over what are
referred to as except local exchange carriers, short of cases with
wires down in the right of way, broken poles causing hazards, or
related issues. The FCC preempts most state and local authority over
broadband, including — as states were informed after another recent FCC
decision — around various state-level attempts to legislate against and
to preclude municipal broadband networks.

The details of the FCC "net neutrality" broadband decision — the text
of which have not been published AFAIK, nor have the particular details
on how the FCC might choose to regulate broadband carriers as common
carrier — are not yet clear.

> Your job as an informed telco customer is to know every detail of this,
> and that means reading and knowing the tariff.
>
> Big companies have a telco guy on staff whose job it is to know all the
> state tariffs by heart. If you don't have that guy on staff, you have
> to do the work yourself.

That, and to read through the text of the FCC decision, once that
becomes available.

Per published statements and in the absence of details of the "net
neutrality" decision, the FCC decision "regains" the FCC authority to
regulate broadband, this after the recent court case that the FCC had
lost as the broadband carriers were not then-classified as common
carriers, and thus the carriers were not subject to certain forms of
FCC regulatory oversight. In short, the US federal court decided that
the FCC would need to reclassify the broadband carriers as common
carriers, if the FCC wished to regulate certain details of the carriers
under the current statutes and regulations.

It is not yet clear if or how the FCC will decide to regulate
broadband, now that at least some of the broadband carriers have
(apparently) been reclassified as common carriers.

What is quite clear is that discussions and the decisions around public
funding for build-outs and upgrades have not been made, and that only
minimal funding is (sometimes) available from the FCC and the
Department of Agriculture or other entities as part of various programs
or legislative acts, and it is clear that any substantive national
funding will invariably involve substantial debate in the federal
legislature.

It is also clear that coordinating the build-out of the so-called last
mile is not presently on the table for discussions nor for funding in
the US. This last-mile build-out being a natural monopoly to
competition, and with parallel build-outs of competitive and
oft-incompatible physical plants into the most populated (and therefore
likely most profitable) areas being both expensive and redundant. What
are called competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) were an attempt
to encourage competition among the telco carriers, though that was with
copper telco wiring and not optical. (Installing copper looks
increasingly questionable, given such problems as corrosion and the
occasional theft, and distance limitations and electronic interference,
and the weight and size of copper in comparison to how much more
bandwidth optical can carry.) It remains to be determined whether the
FCC decides to modify or to extend these CLEC regulations to apply to
optical and thus effectively share the last-mine optical infrastructure
that available in various areas.

Beyond the ever-shifting regulatory landscape, there are the more
technical matters of the broadband carriers, such the slow migration of
existing equipment over to IPv6.




--
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

[Scott Dorsey]

Stephen Hoffman <seao...@hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
>On 2015-03-03 16:21:06 +0000, Scott Dorsey said:
>
>> David Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I've tried asking about fractional T1, and nobody at Verizon knows what
>>> I'm talking about.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> Call the Verizon business office and ask for the "Special Access
>> Services" supervisor. However, before doing that, contact your state
>> PUC and get a copy of your state tariff. This will show exactly what
>> services the telco is required to provide in your area.
>
>Also by omission, what is not regulated. Which was most of broadband
>and broadband carriers, at least up until the details and the effects
>of the most recent FCC "net neutrality" decision are known and sorted
>out.

Right, they are not providing a telecom service, they are providing
"something else." That something else is actually a telecom service
combined with a network service together.

When you order a T-1 you get a point to point link from a telecom provider
which terminates wherever you want it. If you want, you can get it terminated
at a network service provider and have that network service provider route
it to the internet. The link is tariffed, but once the connection gets to
the MSP the service is not guaranteed.

>>> We're screwed, and we're probably going to stay screwed. At least as
>>> long as big money continues to run things.
>
>Broadband is universally available within the US. Affordable broadband
>is not. If you can pay for it, you can get what you want and what you
>need.

What is broadband service? Is a T-1 broadband? Is ISDN broadband? Nobody
will even define broadband service in a consistent way.

High speed telecom service is universally available within the US, but
getting it terminated to someplace with a fast IP route to where you want to
go is not necessarily easy or cheap either.

>> Be that as it may, the telco world is not like the computer world. The
>> telcos are under tariff to provide certain services at certain rates.
>> They may not like to provide them, but they have to provide them.
>> Other services they aren't allowed to provide.
>
>That's true for the regulated telco services involving the common
>carriers. Broadband wasn't one of these. The state PUC has little
>or no regulatory authority over broadband providers nor over what are
>referred to as except local exchange carriers, short of cases with
>wires down in the right of way, broken poles causing hazards, or
>related issues. The FCC preempts most state and local authority over
>broadband, including — as states were informed after another recent FCC
>decision — around various state-level attempts to legislate against and
>to preclude municipal broadband networks.
>

What is "Broadband"?

>Per published statements and in the absence of details of the "net
>neutrality" decision, the FCC decision "regains" the FCC authority to
>regulate broadband, this after the recent court case that the FCC had
>lost as the broadband carriers were not then-classified as common
>carriers, and thus the carriers were not subject to certain forms of
>FCC regulatory oversight. In short, the US federal court decided that
>the FCC would need to reclassify the broadband carriers as common
>carriers, if the FCC wished to regulate certain details of the carriers
>under the current statutes and regulations.

What is this "Broadband" you keep talking about?

>It is not yet clear if or how the FCC will decide to regulate
>broadband, now that at least some of the broadband carriers have
>(apparently) been reclassified as common carriers.
>
>What is quite clear is that discussions and the decisions around public
>funding for build-outs and upgrades have not been made, and that only
>minimal funding is (sometimes) available from the FCC and the
>Department of Agriculture or other entities as part of various programs
>or legislative acts, and it is clear that any substantive national
>funding will invariably involve substantial debate in the federal
>legislature.

Public funding? For telecom? I thought that went out in the 19th century?

>It is also clear that coordinating the build-out of the so-called last
>mile is not presently on the table for discussions nor for funding in
>the US. This last-mile build-out being a natural monopoly to
>competition, and with parallel build-outs of competitive and
>oft-incompatible physical plants into the most populated (and therefore
>likely most profitable) areas being both expensive and redundant. What
>are called competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) were an attempt
>to encourage competition among the telco carriers, though that was with
>copper telco wiring and not optical. (Installing copper looks
>increasingly questionable, given such problems as corrosion and the
>occasional theft, and distance limitations and electronic interference,
>and the weight and size of copper in comparison to how much more
>bandwidth optical can carry.) It remains to be determined whether the
>FCC decides to modify or to extend these CLEC regulations to apply to
>optical and thus effectively share the last-mine optical infrastructure
>that available in various areas.
>
>Beyond the ever-shifting regulatory landscape, there are the more
>technical matters of the broadband carriers, such the slow migration of
>existing equipment over to IPv6.

What is this "Broadband" again?

[JF Mezei]

On 15-03-03 11:00, Scott Dorsey wrote:

> No, what they voted for was to regulate last mile internet service through
> a public utility commission the way landline telephone service was regulated
> back when landline telephone service worked, and the way that most higher
> grade telco services are regulated today.

No. Nobody knows what they actually voted for. The document has not yet
been made public since it needs to go through checking and dissent
documents debated and tagged on to it.

What we know:

Internet to be Title II, and there will me some 27 rules forborne and
some 200 regulations forborne. We don't know which.

We also know that there will be no wholesale requirement ("unbundling"
in USA parlance).

Zero rating remains legal (the biggest net neutrality violation) so
T_mobile can continue to provide some free web sites and others that are
capped with UBB. However, the FCC's decisions sets up framework for
discussions on banning zero rating.


Note that in Canada, there was a big CRTC file on such a zero rating by
Bell Canada which exempted its onw video service from mobile phone UBB
limits, and consumers won. However, Bell Canada is now challenging the
CRTC's decision at the Federal Court of Appeals due to a loophole in the
Telecom Act that dats back from when TV was separate from
telecommunications. (and the process sees Bell actually suing citizens
who participated in the CRTC proceeding instead of suing the CRTC, so
yes, I may be slapped to pay Bell,s legal fees, although not likely).

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-03-03 17:40:49 +0000, Scott Dorsey said:

>
> Public funding? For telecom? I thought that went out in the 19th century?

Various grants having been issued for broadband would bely that sentiment.

> What is this "Broadband" again?

What comprises "broadband varies by context, and is also generally
codified. So you can go read all about it. You did point other folks
at the tariffs, after all.

> --scott

ps: you're utterly adorable.

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <md4m2s$d26$1...@panix2.panix.com>,

klu...@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) writes:
> Bill Gunshannon <bill...@cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>>In article <_OidnbowLtI7C2nJ...@supernews.com>,
>> Alan Frisbie <Usenet0...@Flying-Disk.com> writes:
>>> On 03/02/2015 08:11 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>>> On 2015-03-02 14:45:08 +0000, Jan-Erik Soderholm said:
>>>>
>>>>> I just looked up Sweden and all but a few *very* low populated
>>> >> areas in the far north has 10 Mb/s or better to over 90% of
>>> >> households.
>>>>>
>>>>> The governements goal is that at least 90% of all households
>>> >> and business will have 100 Mb/s via fiber at year 2020.
>>>>
>>>> In my experience, United States broadband speeds and coverage are
>>> > not particularly comparable to that of countries that consider
>>> > broadband to be a competitive advantage or to be a regional or
>>> > national priority...
>>>
>>> Yeah, tell me about it. I live within sight of Los Angeles City Hall,
>>> yet all I can get is 768 Kbps U-Verse from AT&T, unless I want to pay
>>> $440/month for a T1 line.
>>
>>I can't have a T-1 at any price.
>
> Sure you can. You need to stop talking to internet service companies and
> talk to the ILEC. Don't ask for internet service, ask for a T-1 to a service
> provider.

What are they going to run it on? There are no more cable pairs
available and no one is going to put in more.

>
> The T-1 is available anywhere that phone pairs are available, the problem is
> that it's really not very fast and it is extremely expensive (which is the
> downside of having telco-grade reliability).
>
> The T-1 is a tariffed service, the telco can't refuse to provide it. They
> CAN quote you an insanely high price, though.
> --scott

[Scott Dorsey]

Stephen Hoffman <seao...@hoffmanlabs.invalid> wrote:
>On 2015-03-03 17:40:49 +0000, Scott Dorsey said:
>
>> Public funding? For telecom? I thought that went out in the 19th century?
>
>Various grants having been issued for broadband would bely that sentiment.
>
>> What is this "Broadband" again?
>
>What comprises "broadband varies by context, and is also generally
>codified. So you can go read all about it. You did point other folks
>at the tariffs, after all.

What people normally mean by "broadband" is not a telecom service, and not
tariffed. What they normally mean is an internet service that provides
routed IP to and from the outside world at their demark. This has two
halves, really, a local loop telecom half and an internet provider half.

But... that's not always what people mean when they say "broadband."

--scott

>ps: you're utterly adorable.

<butt wiggle>

[Scott Dorsey]

Bill Gunshannon <bill...@cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
> klu...@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) writes:
>> Bill Gunshannon <bill...@cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>>> Alan Frisbie <Usenet0...@Flying-Disk.com> writes:
>>>> On 03/02/2015 08:11 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>>>> On 2015-03-02 14:45:08 +0000, Jan-Erik Soderholm said:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I just looked up Sweden and all but a few *very* low populated
>>>> >> areas in the far north has 10 Mb/s or better to over 90% of
>>>> >> households.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The governements goal is that at least 90% of all households
>>>> >> and business will have 100 Mb/s via fiber at year 2020.
>>>>>
>>>>> In my experience, United States broadband speeds and coverage are
>>>> > not particularly comparable to that of countries that consider
>>>> > broadband to be a competitive advantage or to be a regional or
>>>> > national priority...
>>>>
>>>> Yeah, tell me about it. I live within sight of Los Angeles City Hall,
>>>> yet all I can get is 768 Kbps U-Verse from AT&T, unless I want to pay
>>>> $440/month for a T1 line.
>>>
>>>I can't have a T-1 at any price.
>>
>> Sure you can. You need to stop talking to internet service companies and
>> talk to the ILEC. Don't ask for internet service, ask for a T-1 to a service
>> provider.
>
>What are they going to run it on? There are no more cable pairs
>available and no one is going to put in more.

And THAT is a problem that you can bring up with the PUC. Because the PUC
can beat on the telco and make them live up to the requirements in the tariff.
If that means burying more cable, or moving some voice lines onto pair
multipliers to make room for your circuit, the PUC can force the issue.

[Dirk Munk]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2015-03-03 16:21:06 +0000, Scott Dorsey said:
>
>> David Froble <da...@tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I've tried asking about fractional T1, and nobody at Verizon knows
>>> what I'm talking about.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> Call the Verizon business office and ask for the "Special Access
>> Services" supervisor. However, before doing that, contact your state
>> PUC and get a copy of your state tariff. This will show exactly what
>> services the telco is required to provide in your area.
>
> Also by omission, what is not regulated. Which was most of broadband
> and broadband carriers, at least up until the details and the effects of
> the most recent FCC "net neutrality" decision are known and sorted out.
>
>> You cannot just call some random idiot in the front office and expect
>> them to know about any particular service, you need to talk to the SAS
>> people and get routed to the one person in your area who handles the
>> service you want.
>>
>>> We're screwed, and we're probably going to stay screwed. At least as
>>> long as big money continues to run things.
>
> Broadband is universally available within the US. Affordable broadband
> is not. If you can pay for it, you can get what you want and what you
> need.
>

Can you give some examples?

Let me give you a price example from my cable ISP. The most popular
subscription will cost you €56 or $63 per month (incl 21% VAT)
For that you get a 120Mb/sec download by 12Mb/sec upload internet
connection, cable TV with 60 digital TV stations (27 in HD), interactive
TV (TV on demand) with free channels and paid channels, and a fixed
telephone line.

[Richard Maher]

On 3/3/2015 9:42 PM, Dirk Munk wrote:
> I've got news for you.
> If you want a good road, or good public transport for your kids to go to
> school, you can't set it up for your self. But paying for it
> collectively by taxes does work.

You don't want "good". You demand/expect gold-plated.

Why don't you demand fast trains to any village with more than 1 person.
(Germans always laughed at us when we called the Inter-City Express
trains ICE trains even though that was the English acronym. On second
thoughts an Ice-Cream Train is a bit funny :-)

You choose to ignore the opportunity-cost to health, welfare, and
education etc. You sir are like a drunken Greek full of flash trains and
Olympics and retiring at 50 on 100% pension and you never finish the top
storey of your house 'cos then you'd have to pay local tax.

But now you know the Germans will do anything but default so screw 'em
for evry cent they've got! The Irish, Portuguese, Italians and Spanish
are all lining up behind you with their pants down.

Don't get me going on the Irish (I am mostly one) they have a tax haven
for Google and Apple etc so they loan their Oz subsidiaries billions for
nothing and repatriate our profits back to the "Celtic Tiger" :-(

Anyway the most important thing is that YOUR govt pays you enough so you
can stay in a real hotel when you go on holidays and stop clogging up
(see what I did there?) the Deutsch autobahns with your bloody caravans!
How much tax did you pay Hitler for their roads eh? Take your "NL"
sticker and piss-off back to window-shopping Amsterdam and other village
curiosities that you're so eager to preserve.

[Dirk Munk]

Richard Maher wrote:
> On 3/3/2015 9:42 PM, Dirk Munk wrote:
>> I've got news for you.
>> If you want a good road, or good public transport for your kids to go to
>> school, you can't set it up for your self. But paying for it
>> collectively by taxes does work.
>
> You don't want "good". You demand/expect gold-plated.

Really? glass fiber is very cheap, and has an enormous capacity. The
telephone cables are very old and need to be replaced anyway.

>
> Why don't you demand fast trains to any village with more than 1 person.

Good that you mention trains. Our railway system is the most densely
operated railway system in the world. They are going to overhaul our
local railway station for some 275 million Euro if I'm not mistaken. A
few new railways are under construction, but for small villages we rely
on small buses. You just have to make a phone call, and a small bus will
come.

> (Germans always laughed at us when we called the Inter-City Express
> trains ICE trains even though that was the English acronym. On second
> thoughts an Ice-Cream Train is a bit funny :-)
>
> You choose to ignore the opportunity-cost to health, welfare, and
> education etc. You sir are like a drunken Greek full of flash trains and
> Olympics and retiring at 50 on 100% pension and you never finish the top
> storey of your house 'cos then you'd have to pay local tax.

The Netherlands have about 18 million inhabitants, that is about twice
as much as the city of New York. Never the less the pension fund
reserves of The Netherlands amount to €10,500 billion. That is the third
largest reserve, after the US and Japan. The national debt of Greece is
less than €500 billion.

>
> But now you know the Germans will do anything but default so screw 'em
> for evry cent they've got! The Irish, Portuguese, Italians and Spanish
> are all lining up behind you with their pants down.

The Irish and the Spanish governments had their finances in order. In
both countries stupid building companies and banks created so much debt
that the government had to bail out the banks, otherwise the banks and
with them the total economy would have been gone down the drain. In fact
banks all over Europe and the US created the crises we are recovering
from now. A Dutch journalist (a very good one) lived and worked in the
city of London a couple of years, and he just published a book about the
banks. Top managers in these huge banks still haven't a clue about the
risks they are taking, and they don't understand the financial products
they are selling. The next banking crises is on the horizon, these
idiots haven't learned anything.

It was an American bank that helped the Greek government to hide its
true debt when the Greeks wanted to join the Euro.

>
> Don't get me going on the Irish (I am mostly one) they have a tax haven
> for Google and Apple etc so they loan their Oz subsidiaries billions for
> nothing and repatriate our profits back to the "Celtic Tiger" :-(
>
> Anyway the most important thing is that YOUR govt pays you enough so you
> can stay in a real hotel when you go on holidays and stop clogging up
> (see what I did there?) the Deutsch autobahns with your bloody caravans!
> How much tax did you pay Hitler for their roads eh?

How much did Hitler steal from The Netherlands? How much do you think we
invest in railways and highways so that the German industry can
transport goods to and from the harbor of Rotterdam? In fact the Dutch
and German economies are so intertwined that we are almost a German state.

[Javier Henderson]

I remember when the argument was made here that using Twitter and Facebook
are time wasting diversions.

I'm glad this list is not.

-jav

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-03-03 20:52:14 +0000, Dirk Munk said:

> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>
>> Broadband is universally available within the US. Affordable broadband
>> is not. If you can pay for it, you can get what you want and what you
>> need.
>>
>
> Can you give some examples?

Examples of the sorts of folks who are very rich, and who can thus
afford bespoke communications links out to their cozy little
hundred-room cabin in East Overshoe Village, and where there are no
incumbent cable, DSL or wireless providers in East Overshoe with
sufficient bandwidth, or where there are no providers with any
available service? Outside of the population centers, limited
bandwidth or no coverage is fairly common in the US, and US broadband
is variously more expensive than broadband in other parts of the world.
This is part of why some of the local folks use high-latency
satellite, and some use comparatively high-cost and usually data-capped
cellular, where that's even available and stable. As I'd commented,
low-latency high-bandwidth broadband is generally widely available in
the US, if you are sufficiently rich and can thus afford your own
links. Most folks cannot afford dedicated links. I didn't think my
earlier statement was particularly arcane, either.

[David Froble]

Dirk Munk wrote:
> Richard Maher wrote:

>> you never finish the top
>> storey of your house 'cos then you'd have to pay local tax.

Hey, can I get away with that?

> banks created so much debt
> that the government had to bail out the banks, otherwise the banks and
> with them the total economy would have been gone down the drain.

Now, that was a big mistake. Here in the US, the government bailed out
the banks, and then the banks paid bonuses. Why save something that's bad?

Nor do I believe the claims that the total economy would go down the
drain. Maybe some rough times, but we''d recover, without the corrupt
and stupid banks.

[Richard Maher]

On 3/4/2015 8:09 AM, Dirk Munk wrote:
>
> Really? glass fiber is very cheap, and has an enormous capacity.

Really? And it jumps into the ground by itself? I'm guessing Wireless is
cheaper and a still emerging technology.

> The
> telephone cables are very old and need to be replaced anyway.

More bollocks!

>
>>
>> Why don't you demand fast trains to any village with more than 1 person.
>
> Good that you mention trains. Our railway system is the most densely
> operated railway system in the world. They are going to overhaul our
> local railway station for some 275 million Euro if I'm not mistaken. A
> few new railways are under construction, but for small villages we rely
> on small buses. You just have to make a phone call, and a small bus will
> come.

I bet that 275 million is spent mainly on your council edict that there
must be a separate toilet cubical for LGBI and T. With interconnecting
doors obviously.

>
>> (Germans always laughed at us when we called the Inter-City Express
>> trains ICE trains even though that was the English acronym. On second
>> thoughts an Ice-Cream Train is a bit funny :-)
>>
>> You choose to ignore the opportunity-cost to health, welfare, and
>> education etc. You sir are like a drunken Greek full of flash trains and
>> Olympics and retiring at 50 on 100% pension and you never finish the top
>> storey of your house 'cos then you'd have to pay local tax.
>
> The Netherlands have about 18 million inhabitants, that is about twice
> as much as the city of New York. Never the less the pension fund
> reserves of The Netherlands amount to €10,500 billion. That is the third
> largest reserve, after the US and Japan. The national debt of Greece is
> less than €500 billion.

Jokes aside I have always been envious of how the Netherlands sensibly
put aside the profits from Royal Dutch Shell! Compare that to Perth
where we just come out of the biggest resources boom in history
(primarily iron ore) and we have nothing to show for it except a State
Govt in debt so much that we lost our AAA rating :-(

>
>>
>> But now you know the Germans will do anything but default so screw 'em
>> for evry cent they've got! The Irish, Portuguese, Italians and Spanish
>> are all lining up behind you with their pants down.
>
> The Irish and the Spanish governments had their finances in order.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_tax_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland

Apple, Google, HP and their ilk set up HQ in Eire and loan millions in
unnecessary cash to their Oz subsidiaries at exorbitant rates of
interest. 90% of all profit in OZ is transferred as servicing the not
for business loan as well as paying royalties after deducting R&D
allowances in Australia. Sometimes our taxman ends up giving them a
return :-(

> In
> both countries stupid building companies and banks created so much debt
> that the government had to bail out the banks, otherwise the banks and
> with them the total economy would have been gone down the drain.

Euro countries are ham-strung by not being able to hike interest rates
to prevent asset bubbles. Unlike here and the US where asset bubbles are
positively encourage nay engineered :-(

BTW As you are a bit of a history buff and Dutch, I recommend looking up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia_(ship)

But you do own a bloody caravan don't you?

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Dirk Munk skrev den 2015-03-04 01:09:
> Richard Maher wrote:
>> On 3/3/2015 9:42 PM, Dirk Munk wrote:
>>> I've got news for you.
>>> If you want a good road, or good public transport for your kids to go to
>>> school, you can't set it up for your self. But paying for it
>>> collectively by taxes does work.
>>
>> You don't want "good". You demand/expect gold-plated.
>
> Really? glass fiber is very cheap, and has an enormous capacity. The
> telephone cables are very old and need to be replaced anyway.
>
>>
>> Why don't you demand fast trains to any village with more than 1 person.
>
> Good that you mention trains. Our railway system is the most densely
> operated railway system in the world. They are going to overhaul our local
> railway station for some 275 million Euro if I'm not mistaken. A few new
> railways are under construction, but for small villages we rely on small
> buses. You just have to make a phone call, and a small bus will come.
>
>> (Germans always laughed at us when we called the Inter-City Express
>> trains ICE trains even though that was the English acronym. On second
>> thoughts an Ice-Cream Train is a bit funny :-)
>>
>> You choose to ignore the opportunity-cost to health, welfare, and
>> education etc. You sir are like a drunken Greek full of flash trains and
>> Olympics and retiring at 50 on 100% pension and you never finish the top
>> storey of your house 'cos then you'd have to pay local tax.
>
> The Netherlands have about 18 million inhabitants,

Netherlands: 406 inhabitants/square kilometer
USA: 32 inhabitants/square kilometer
Sweden: 21 inhabitants/square kilometer

The northen part (59% of the area) has an average
of *4* inhabitants/square kilometer. Or 12% of the
total population.

This of course has an influence on cost for supplying
services to people, such as internet connections


Jan-Erik.

[Richard Maher]

On 3/4/2015 5:55 PM, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:

>> The Netherlands have about 18 million inhabitants,
>
> Netherlands: 406 inhabitants/square kilometer
> USA: 32 inhabitants/square kilometer
> Sweden: 21 inhabitants/square kilometer
>
> The northen part (59% of the area) has an average
> of *4* inhabitants/square kilometer. Or 12% of the
> total population.
>
> This of course has an influence on cost for supplying
> services to people, such as internet connections
>

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/australia/population-density-people-per-sq-km-wb-data.html

< 3 Cop that! 90% in capital cities and the rest around the coast.

But Dirk still wants his avatar to render seamlessly at Uluru and the
black-stump. If he can't upload the snaps of himself in his Speedos to
Facebook at 1Gb then the World is much the poorer for it.