Conference 7.286::digital

RE .0 

Seems like a message to Peter Brown would get you the answers....

re: .1

Someone just mailed me that they heard that the author of the memo was
removed from the job as head of Corporate Telecommunications and that it
was probably their last memo.

Lee

Lee,  I imagine if he has been removed from that position, he could tell you
who took over.  According to ELF:

Common Name:   PETER BROWN
Search Surname:  BROWN  Search Given Name:  PETER,  PETER E,  PETE
DTN:  226-7350  Telephone:  508-486-7350  Intrnl Mail Addr:  LKG1-2/G9
Location:  LKG  Node:  CTHQ1  Username:  PBROWN
Org Unit:  SYSTEMS & NETWORK OPS.,  CORPORATE TELECOMMUNICATIONS
Position:  CORP. TELECOMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

    Bob McCauley is the acting manager.  According to one account, Peter
    was ordered to reduce expenses of running the corp. network by $52M
    without laying off anyone and without a reduction in service.  He said
    he couldn't do that, and ...
    
    Mark

    I'm sure that this memo is going to get widely circulated as a
    "new policy"; I've already seen suggestions that it be posted
    in all notesfiles.  The silly thing is that not only is it NOT
    a policy, but Mr. Brown makes some completely unsupportable 
    statements, despite his undoubtedly good intentions.
    
    Corporate policies are published in a defined manner and after
    review.  If this WERE a policy, it would either show up as a new
    entry in VTX ORANGEBOOK or would be a revision of an existing
    policy.  (There are also corporate security policies, but this
    memo doesn't relate to them.)
    
    Mr. Brown lists several activities which he doesn't like (most of
    which are indeed abuses of some sort) and makes a blanket statement
    that they are violations of P&P 6.54.  Letting family members use
    a Digital calling card may indeed be an abuse, but it's not
    related to P&P 6.54.  Copying of weather maps may be expensive,
    but it doesn't fit in with the sort of thing that 6.54 covers.
    
    Having Mr. Brown say that these things are abuses of 6.54 doesn't
    make them so.  Though I support the general idea of using our
    corporate resources wisely, and have been known to rap some
    knuckles when I've discovered someone trolling the network for
    games, I don't believe that heavy-handed and incompletely thought
    out missives such as this one are the answer, especially when
    most of the categories are so vague as to be unenforceable.
    
    Sometimes I think Jack Smith is still with us...
    
    				Steve

    
    RE: .5
    
    Steve, Digital Policies & Procedures are written in a way that they
    may be interpretted however somebody who wishes accomplish something
    wants to interpret them.  If a manager or Personnel person wants to
    interpret them as .0 does, that is entirely possible.  It is no
    coincidence that lawyers work in high positions in Personnel
    and write these policies.  
    

    It's ok.  I have a license to copy games across the network here at 
    Digital, I'm in Sales support:-)
    
    When we have a customer (remember them) who would like some software
    (remember that) which doesn't cost them any money but will demonstrate
    the Computer Systems we Sell (remember $$) I provide them with as 
    many MBytes of Games (er) Digit Dexterity Tests  as seems appropriate.
    
    If a customer doesn't do business with us I give them twice as many
    MBytes of Games to ENHANCE their computer productivity via the DDTs;-)
    
    
    Fraud is one thing, Using company resources to run a private business
    or make phone calls is wrong.  Using the bandwidth of our Paid Up
    network only for prescribed purposes is just plain dumb too.
    
    Could we reduce our bandwidth needs? Certainly, but at night the 
    nets quiet to almost no background noise.  Perhaps we could be 
    selling this time to DECUS, Our Customers, or Schools who need 
    to move files/access DECUServe/desire a private secure link/ 
    at night or on weekends.
    
    If we'd Sell time on the worlds largest private Network instead of 
    just hogging it for ourselves and designing it just for Peak bandwidth
    during daylight hours we could make money instead of viewing Easynet
    as a just another "Overhead Item"
    
    Internet is Damned expensive at the high bandwidths, not very secure and 
    has chaos as a network adminstrator.... We could provide the same 
    resources, security and all at a modest cost with support staffs and 
    800 numbers, maybe even make a real business out of it... We might 
    even get the Net to pay for itself making it free to Digital Internal 
    users...
    
    Nah.. Let's just complain about how much it costs and yell at folks
    who copy some MS Shareware to teach their kids about computers or 
    copy Duke Nukem to give to a customer....

    
    
    The Orange Book clearly states that Digital policies are only management 
    "guidelines" and therefore all policies in the Orange Book are _not_
    contracts or guarantees of any kind, and that _only_ top management
    and "personnel professionals" -- not you, not me, not a court of law 
    -- can apply or interpret company policy, including what is in the 
    Orange Book.

    As a rule of thumb I accept the interpretations of my direct management
    chain. As long as they copy shareware over the net I'm not going to
    worry about doing it myself.

    		Alfred

re .7, WISNIEWSKI

|    If we'd Sell time on the worlds largest private Network instead of 
|    just hogging it for ourselves and designing it just for Peak bandwidth
|    during daylight hours we could make money instead of viewing Easynet
|    as a just another "Overhead Item"

...can't do that - makes too much sense.

    If memory serves me correctly, Compuserve started out as a commercial
    timesharing house that sold "off-hours" access to their systems as a
    way to get a little extra revenue.  Look where it got them ...
    
    Geoff

Re: .11

Quite correct. Compuserve originally created online applications that
catered to engineering, scientific and business needs to attract
commercial customers. This, of course, was back in the days when
purchasing a computer was a hefty investment. Also, they would work with
your company to develop custom online applications.

Compuserve built an internal communications network so that their
commercial timeshare customers could use local telephone access to get to
the hosts that were in a remote city (I remember when 300 baud was top
notch for a dialup... many still had old Teletype machines at 110 baud).
They found that systems and network usage dropped after 5PM and decided
to offer services geared to the individual user. 2400 baud modems were
becoming cheaper. The rest is history.

Compuserve is still chugging along on DECsystem 20's running a modified
TOPS-10 operating system, BTW. That nnnnnn,nnnnn format of the user ID
is your UIC under TOPS-10.

Lee
(former Compuserve nee CSNI [CompuServe Network Inc.] employee from
loooong ago. Can you say KA10/KI10?  That long ago.)

>That nnnnnn,nnnnn format of the user ID is your UIC under TOPS-10.

From the online jargon file:

PPN (pip'in) [DEC terminology, short for Project-Programmer Number] n.
   1. A combination `project' (directory name) and programmer name,
   used to identify a specific directory belonging to that user.  For
   instance, "FOO,BAR" would be the FOO directory for user BAR.  Since
   the name is restricted to three letters, the programmer name is
   usually the person's initials, though sometimes it is a nickname or
   other special sequence.  (Standard DEC setup is to have two octal
			     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   numbers instead of characters; hence the original acronym.)  2.
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   Often used loosely to refer to the programmer name alone.  "I want
   to send you some mail; what's your ppn?"  Usage: not used at MIT,
   since ITS does not use ppn's.  The equivalent terms would be UNAME
   and SNAME, depending on context, but these are not used except in
   their technical senses.
				/AHM

Yes, PPN. It's been a LONG time, as I said.

Lee

P.s. One day, I typed "PI<cr>" instead of "PIP<cr>". Any old timers
recall what happens then?

   The TECO command on TOPS was neat too.  You enter
   
   	.make love
   
   and the system would respond
   
   	Not war
   
   Ah, the old days.  When you would go to a customer's TOPS-10 site and
   not know what operating system they were running because they had all
   the sources.  The energetic ones (like CompuServe and
   Reynolds+Reynolds) hacked together their own OS from TOPS and
   expected the local DEC gurus to fix it.  My first assignment with
   Digital was at Wright-Pat AFB to try and figure out exactly how the AF
   hosed TOPS with their mods.  They had a bizaar memory sharing device
   from Digital that allowed 8 PDP-11s running RSX-11 to share an 8K
   memory segment with the KI-1077.

> The TECO command on TOPS was neat too.  You enter
>   	.make love

Not just on TOPS-10 ...

$ make :== $teco32 make
$
$ make love
Not war?
*^Z^Z^Z
$

It's traditional; I think all TECOs I've used (TOPS, RT, RSTS, RSX, VMS)
have had this feature.
 

>
>$ make :== $teco32 make
>$
>$ make love
>Not war?
>*^Z^Z^Z
>$

Except these days, someone seeing this would think of a computer virus before seeing it
as it was meant :-(.  Something like that recently happened with a UK customer, although
it was not TECO that was involved.

-Joe 

    My VMS 5.5-2 still does it.
    
>
>$ make :== $teco32 make
>$
>$ make love
>Not war?
>*^Z^Z^Z
>$
     

    >My VMS 5.5-2 still does it.
    
    VMS T6.1 still does it.  Think I'd make an assertion
    like that without checking it out first?  :-)
    
    

    
>P.s. One day, I typed "PI<cr>" instead of "PIP<cr>". Any old timers
>recall what happens then?
    
    	No, I never used TOPS, but do remember PIP as "Peripheral
    Interchange Program" common stuff on PDP11s..seems there was a carryover 
    for Exchange in the 11/78X to use PIP for console floppy access..or am I 
    hallucinating?
    
    	C'mon Lee, tell us what PI<cr> does.
    
    Phil

Print out the value of PI? (3.1415926...)

Yup, it would start printing pi, 3.14159 etc.

But, not just some canned value, it would actually calculate it. The
terminal (actually, the KSR35 in the case) would print about the first
20-25 characters in rapid succession, then the interval between
characters would get longer and longer... I don't remember how many
decimal places it went but seems to me about 50 or 60. After typing
the last digit it printed the word "approximately".

Lee

And of course, there's the TECO macro that computes PI.  Or is that
what you're all talking about?

-steve-

A nice short example -- this program will compute PI to lots of decimal
places, printing them out one by one.

The author, as far as I know, is either Stan Rabinowitz or Anton Chernoff.

!-------------------------------- cut here ---------------------------------!
+0UN QN"E 20UN ' BUH BUV HK
QN< J BUQ QN*10/3UI
QI< \+2*10+(QQ*QI)UA B L K QI*2-1UJ QA/QJUQ
QA-(QQ*QJ)-2\ 10@I// -1%I >
QQ/10UT QH+QT+48UW QW-58"E 48UW %V ' QV"N QV^T ' QWUV QQ-(QT*10)UH >
QV^T @^A/
/
!-------------------------------- cut here ---------------------------------!

    Help, I'm in a twisty maze of Q-registers, all alike...
    
    Wow, I'm glad I forgot all that stuff!!
    
    :-)
    

    The only thing is, if you store it in a file PI.TEC,
    and then type EIPI$$, shouldn't it print out -1?
    

Re: hacking their own versions of TOPS,

I remember the first time I tried to find out how to build VMS.

Hah. Yah, right.

Being a CSSE engineer on TOPS20 & a TOPS10 customer before that,
& being used to doing something like 8 builds of TOPS20 a day
when I was testing out different stuff before a release, it really 
p*ssed me off I couldn't hack up VMS the same way when I started 
getting VAXinated.

At least now with PCs we can get back to some fun by trying to figure out
what *&%$#@ driver code is loaded stealing & bending all the INTs! 

Haven't had a chance yet to try & snorkle NT on an AXP, but I can't wait.

>Being a CSSE engineer on TOPS20 & a TOPS10 customer before that,
>& being used to doing something like 8 builds of TOPS20 a day
>when I was testing out different stuff before a release, it really 
>p*ssed me off I couldn't hack up VMS the same way when I started 
>getting VAXinated.

This is one reason that many universities, which had been doing
significant CS research on TOPS-10 systems, switched to Unix when the VAX 
came out.  And that may have been the beginning of the end....

  Gary

>|    If we'd Sell time on the worlds largest private Network instead of 
>|    just hogging it for ourselves and designing it just for Peak bandwidth
>|    during daylight hours we could make money instead of viewing Easynet
>|    as a just another "Overhead Item"
>...can't do that - makes too much sense.


Just who's daylight hours are you talking about here?

Cross-pond access is slow enough as it is when we stick to AM 
access to stateside notes files and copying kits/patches, without 
increasing the traffic!