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It was actually a holdover from the mainframe/3270 days, when F3 (PF3 in IBM parlance) was universally used to exit a running program.

IBM's CUA (Common User Access) at the time. Every mainframe program (WAAAY before PCs) had a different set of function key actions. CUA standardized that, and F3 was Exit.

LIke the parent said, the DOS F3 was copied from that for compatibility. (Muscle Memory. My God, why don't UI designers realize that? QUIT changing things just to change things!!)


If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?

So, just make it impossible for even the vendor to read the (unencrypted) data. The most the vendor could do is hand over encrypted data, leaving authorities to try to decrypt it without the key. Or try to force the owner to give up the key.

One such new offering is IBM Hyper Protect DBAAS:

Hyper Protect DBaaS: the evolution of cloud databases

Getting started with IBM Cloud Hyper Protect DBaaS

IBM® hosts your databases in a highly available and secure environment:

The underlying technologies prevent IBM or a third party from being able to access your data.
The IBM Secure Service Container technology protects the system via a tamper-proof environment. Access to the system is restricted and is only enabled through well-defined RESTful APIs.

Data is encrypted at rest and in flight.
The system hardware, the system configuration, and the database setup ensure high availability.

BTW, this doesn't run on Intel hardware. It runs on IBM Z hardware, on dedicated cores per instance, which should minimize the potential for Spectre-type attacks.

IBM is rolling this out aggressively. How aggressively?

For now, they are handing out well-provisioned Postgres (8G memory, 80G data) and MongoDB (8G memory, 40G data) experimental instances for free.
Only reason I am not taking them up on this is that I know we won't be able to afford the price, once it is not free. I'll stick with out 1G memory Databases for PostgreSql instance for our little educational app.

Hyper Protect DBaaS (pricing)

Not an IBM shill. Just happy to not be drinking the AWS kool aid.

Oddly enough, even non-working cases may be useful. Say a corporation uses a long-outdated process/system. Instead of opting for a normal and obvious solution, management decides to invest in hype (blockchain/big data/AI/IoT) to gain a lead....If you are offered the chance to use blockchain, make sure it is actually blockchain. However, even if it is not, it could still be a sensible offer.

I am sure IBM right now is selling people "blockchain" technology that doesn't have any blockchain at all, just like they sell Watson technology without and Watson. It's a brand.

This is an entire analytics SaaS sub-genre. TechCrunch is just figuring this out? Have they never heard of IBM's Tealeaf?

Since were talking oranges , individually, then you need the cheap method with a centrally authorized set of approver nodes.

Well done - that is exactly what it is. The thing IBM is hyping is called appropriately enough Hyperledger. They call it a "permissioned blockchain", which has about as much in common with the blockchain bitcoin uses as "permissioned rape" has in common with "rape".

To be fair to IBM, it is probably useful thing in this context. As others have pointed out, The Bill Of Lading Electronic Registry Organization (BOLERO) already does something very similar, and it is useful. Hyperledger is just a chained of signed statements (I bought 10 oranges off the batch of 1000 Y had) - but those statements could be about anything, not just bill of ladings.

Because it lacks proof of work it really doesn't have much in common with Bitcoin. It certainly doesn't use a custom "blockchain like" data structure - Hyperledger stores it's state in a conventional database like LevelDB or CouchDB, so it is a conventional database for some definition of conventional.

I know it's hard to imagine, but it appears at first blush they're actually walking the talk: I checked a couple of entry level posted jobs at IBM:

Entry Level HW Computer Technician/System Services Rep- Palatine, IL
https://careers.ibm.com/ShowJo...

and
(Cyber) Security Services Specialist - Intern
https://careers.ibm.com/ShowJo... ..and BOTH required only High School Diploma/GED.

That's great and refreshing.

I know it's hard to imagine, but it appears at first blush they're actually walking the talk: I checked a couple of entry level posted jobs at IBM:

Entry Level HW Computer Technician/System Services Rep- Palatine, IL
https://careers.ibm.com/ShowJo...

and
(Cyber) Security Services Specialist - Intern
https://careers.ibm.com/ShowJo... ..and BOTH required only High School Diploma/GED.

That's great and refreshing.

Etherium is not a crypto coin. It is a blockchain company/platform with which one can build a crypto coin or any other blockchain based technology. IBM has a blockchain department as do most of the big companies. I wouldn't be surprised to find Alphabet has either their own blockchain company or are heavily invested in a rival blockchain company.

Wrong.

Potential Impact on Processors in the POWER Family

the third vulnerability, CVE-2017-5754, is known as Meltdown, and allows user-level code to infer the contents of kernel memory.

The Firmware and OS patches released by IBM in February and March 2018 to address the original Meltdown vulnerability (CVE-2017-5754) also address the L1TF/Foreshadow vulnerability, except for Power 9 Systems running with KVM Hypervisor. OS patch for Power 9 KVM Systems will be made available soon. The Firmware and OS patches for all other Power Systems are available in this blog below.

We are committed to helping our clients address these vulnerabilities and have introduced an offer for pre-POWER7 clients to upgrade their security profile and protect against Spectre and Meltdown through the purchase of POWER8 or POWER9 systems and available migration services, security support, and financing offers.

Bullshit.

From ibm.com: https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/z/os/linux-tested-platforms.
I don't think it gets any bigger than one of those mainframes. Except for some supercomputers in research, but many of those are running Linux too.

both Spectre and Meltdown can apply to non-x86 processors like POWER9. There are patches to help on POWER9 but it did have a performance cost.

Have these companies considered using IBM Cybersecurity Services or HPE Server Infrastructure Security Solutions?

Based on what I am reading, these products are designed to stop cyberattacks by being the "strongest defense."

HCL was already improving Notes/Domino as they were contracted by IBM to do so, also they were doing active development for other IBM products. In Asia, Europe, Africa, Middle East still have a lot of Business's using Domino/Notes. State Farm still has 10's of thousands of Notes Applications. A lot of companies have dumped Notes Email but there are companies that still have Notes applications and have tried and failed to find something else to put them in, etc https://www.redpillnow.com/a-n... https://prominic.net/2018/12/0... https://www.ibm.com/blogs/coll...

Maybe the problem is this article is looking at "Blockchain vendors" (aka tiny startups). One of the biggest problems in having a successful blockchain use case is it requires PARTNERSHIP with many external companies, who are usually competitors. This is not something easily brokered by startups.

IBM Food Trust (IBM / Walmart / Dole / Kroger / Carrefour ) Expands Blockchain Network to Foster a Safer, More Transparent and Efficient Global Food System

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2018-...

--

Maersk and IBM Introduce TradeLens Blockchain Shipping Solution

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2018-...

Maybe the problem is this article is looking at "Blockchain vendors" (aka tiny startups). One of the biggest problems in having a successful blockchain use case is it requires PARTNERSHIP with many external companies, who are usually competitors. This is not something easily brokered by startups.

IBM Food Trust (IBM / Walmart / Dole / Kroger / Carrefour ) Expands Blockchain Network to Foster a Safer, More Transparent and Efficient Global Food System

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2018-...

--

Maersk and IBM Introduce TradeLens Blockchain Shipping Solution

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2018-...

...and IBM had a patent (or at least a major tech announcement) regarding a microfluidics system. It was a few years back and concerned using water in IC chips. There are obvious compatibility problems with water in an electrical chip but IBM claimed to have solved those.

Might be this announcement here:

https://www.cytofluidix.com/ibm-researchers-try-to-build-thermal-management-into-microfluidic-chip-designs/

They also sponsor microfluidics research in other areas, especially medical diagnostics:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/416410/ibms-move-in-microfluidics/
https://www.zurich.ibm.com/st/precision_diagnostics/

Guess that includes the Cambridge Dictionary, as well as all those fools at Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, HPE, IBM, Pixar, and most of the machine-learning industry, not to mention those well-known charlatan World Go champions at DeepMind.

I'm not sure what about the phrase terrifies you so much.

Don't SMIT me again!

Footnote: $699 License Fee applies to your systemP server running RHEL 7 with 4 cores activated for one year. To activate additional processor cores on the systemP server, a fee of $199 per core applies. systemP offers a new Semi-Activation Mode now. In systemP Semi-Activation Mode, you will be only charged for all processor calls exceeding 258 MIPS, which will be processed by additional semi-activated cores on a pro-rata basis. RHEL on systemP servers also offers a Partial Activation Mode, where additional cores can be activated in Inhibited Efficiency Mode. To know more about Semi-Activation Mode, Partial Activation Mode and Inhibited Efficiency Mode, visit http://www.ibm.com/systemp or contact your IBM systemP Sales Engineer.

IBM TS4500 R3 Tape Library Guide

Increased capacity: The TS4500 can grow from a single L frame up to an additional 17 expansion frames with a capacity of over 23,000 cartridges.

IBM TS1150 tape drives deliver the fastest and largest capacity drive for enterprise archiving and data protection

Uncompressed cartridge formatting of up to 10 TB with the use of IBM Tape Cartridge 3592 Advanced Data (Type D).

Woof! The rest of the text would make paint cry.

That makes 230 PB of uncompressed storage.

But there's a more recent TS1170 with 40 TB raw capacity. So we could be looking at a raw 0.92 EB.

But that's assuming the new drive fits into the old frame, and I haven't sacrificed any recently warm chickens to the product matrix oracle on this quick scrape, so who's to say?

IBM provides firmware patches for POWER9, so your Talos II workstation is protected from Spectre and Meltdown.

In addition, When secure boot is properly configured, and if the mainboard is located in a physically secure environment (e.g., a datacenter or locked workstation case), you can be assured that only your pre-approved and pre-audited firmware, kernel, and user space components are executing on a Talos II system.

Can you implement blockchain in COBOL?

Here's where you can ask: https://www.ibm.com/it-infrast...

Go ahead and ask . . . and then tell us how it went . . .

IBM says they've vulnerable to Meltdown. And, hmmm, adding this item from them it's much worse than the one new microarchitecture ARM discovered was vulnerable to a Meltdown variant, looks like POWER 7+, 8, and 9 processors, can't confirm if 7 is affected, but this is clearly pretty much all of their currently supported CPUs. The first item also implies problems, without mentioning Meltdown specifically, with POWER 4 through 6 CPUs. Ah, and following a link in that first one, per RedHat z/Architecture CPUs are also vulnerable to one or both.

I'm not sure the problem occurred in the IBM 1960's design, for I don't know if it included speculative execution as well as out-of-order execution, in those days IBM built its computers with discrete silicon transistors, 1 or a very few of them along with resistors and maybe capacitors on a single module. Played well to their manufacturing strengths when true single die silicon integrated circuits were just too new, and no one could make them in the volumes IBM needed. So gates were very expensive, and they might have satisfied themselves with just out-of-order execution. Especially since this was just for the FPU.

By the time of the Pentium Pro in 1995, gates were a lot cheaper, so adding speculative execution when you already had all those anonymous registers, and doing it for your integer instructions wouldn't have been hardly as expensive. Or as complicated or gate intensive, since you could afford to use microcode, the top 2 IBM System/360 CPUs didn't, and fared less well in the marketplace because they couldn't emulate earlier IBM CPUs using some additional microcoded instructions.

IBM says they've vulnerable to Meltdown. And, hmmm, adding this item from them it's much worse than the one new microarchitecture ARM discovered was vulnerable to a Meltdown variant, looks like POWER 7+, 8, and 9 processors, can't confirm if 7 is affected, but this is clearly pretty much all of their currently supported CPUs. The first item also implies problems, without mentioning Meltdown specifically, with POWER 4 through 6 CPUs. Ah, and following a link in that first one, per RedHat z/Architecture CPUs are also vulnerable to one or both.

I'm not sure the problem occurred in the IBM 1960's design, for I don't know if it included speculative execution as well as out-of-order execution, in those days IBM built its computers with discrete silicon transistors, 1 or a very few of them along with resistors and maybe capacitors on a single module. Played well to their manufacturing strengths when true single die silicon integrated circuits were just too new, and no one could make them in the volumes IBM needed. So gates were very expensive, and they might have satisfied themselves with just out-of-order execution. Especially since this was just for the FPU.

By the time of the Pentium Pro in 1995, gates were a lot cheaper, so adding speculative execution when you already had all those anonymous registers, and doing it for your integer instructions wouldn't have been hardly as expensive. Or as complicated or gate intensive, since you could afford to use microcode, the top 2 IBM System/360 CPUs didn't, and fared less well in the marketplace because they couldn't emulate earlier IBM CPUs using some additional microcoded instructions.

ARM may license some technology from Intel, AMD licenses a lot by definition, but ARM has always had their own unique designs, governed from the very beginning by low power usage. Back then, it was so that they could use inexpensive plastic instead of ceramic packaging for their desktop computer target, they beat their target by a factor of two. That's one of the main reasons ARM chips now own the mobile market.

If your claim was true, it wouldn't explain why every other one of their earlier out-of-order designs only suffer from Spectre flaws. Instead, that, along with IBM's POWER Meltdown and Spectre issues, including this very latest set of Foreshadow/L1TF ones, and AMD's Spectre problems starting with the first reporting of this class of bugs, show that this has been a massive blind spot of the entire industry.

The main issue is Meltdown, which is Intel-only.

ITYM Intel and IBM, whose POWER processors are also vulnerable to both SPECTRE and MELTDOWN... and on whose processors mitigation is just as expensive as on Intel.

Anyone who trusted Intel or IBM before this was a tool, but anyone who trusts Intel or IBM now is a moron.

Cars last about 15 years. They can last 50, or 5. When you replace them depends on the economics of keeping them running. When you can't get service techs, and parts shoot up in price, you figure out how to migrate to and finance a less expensive car.

If your local police department was running a fleet of 30 year old Ford LTD Crown Vics you would rightfully question the economics. And (possibly) rightfully decide to keep them running.

Lotus Notes is nearly 30 years old, though its architecture dates to the early 70s.

They were shilling IBM Jazz SCM. Management bought everything that they were selling hook, line and sinker.

We were looking at replacing ClearCase and Git had to be bad because it was free.

They were shilling IBM Jazz SCM. Management bought everything that they were selling hook, line and sinker.

We were looking at replacing ClearCase and Git had to be bad because it was free.

Kids playing with toys doesn't affect the OS that is used to keep the economy going.

Haha, that's really funny. Surely you have not forgotten that the PC was originally a toy home computer to compete with Apple II.

Even if you are a knuckledragger with mod points you did not change the facts because the internet remembers

Hey yeah, tiny. You only need one of these: http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/hist...

Maybe he was selling old tools that IBM was trying to retire / migrate from.

Based on how many places I've seen it in industry he could have been shilling for IBM ClearCase, or "IBM Jazz" (who the hell came up with that platform name?).

I can see how commission for them easily adds up while being a technical debt burden on everyone.

Maybe he was selling old tools that IBM was trying to retire / migrate from.

Based on how many places I've seen it in industry he could have been shilling for IBM ClearCase, or "IBM Jazz" (who the hell came up with that platform name?).

I can see how commission for them easily adds up while being a technical debt burden on everyone.

IBM SPSS. https://www.ibm.com/analytics/...

The thing is, you have years of accumulated business logic in C**** (I will not utter its name here). Do you reverse engineer and rewrite all that stuff in whatever language is bending on twatface and cackexchange?

No. Because you daren't. You have no idea what the holy fucking Mary it does, but you know that if it suddenly stops doing it you're in big shit[1]. There's magic 12s and 20s and 240s scattered about like underwear in Ibiza that are probably something to do with converting old money into metric[2], and if they left it alone in 1972 you're about as keen to change it now as you are to eat your own cock. So you wrap the shiny around it using something like this evil motherfucking ratbastard. https://www.ibm.com/developerw...

[1] Yes, TSB, I did glance at you.
[2] It was just an excuse to put prices up, you know. Toilet rolls, 37p for two - that's over ten guineas each!

The story has focused so far on how the US got the #1 crown back. But the real story is about how we can now run the fastest and largest AI jobs. Because this IBM supercomputer has 27K+ GPUs, it can run massive deep learning jobs. IBM has been very focused on this deep learning space with their TensorFlow-based open-source PowerAI software offering.

Because an attacker can tamper with the raw binary object that can still be deserialized, but now has different contents and now will run differently on the other end, in a manner not expected or possibly controlled.
Yeah, and he can use an SQL statement to change a row in the data base ... or a PERL script to change a line in a text file ... what exactly is the difference?
And it has nothing to do with graphs anyway. It can be a single object, only consisting out of primitive types.

Hint: the problem is code, not data. Your explanation makes pretty clear that you don't know what the problem with "simple deserialization" is.

because deserialization ignores all that. the build in standard, yes. However you can augment it.

Preventing the problems the people here get heated up about is super simple:
https://wiki.sei.cmu.edu/confl...
(Original: https://www.ibm.com/developerw...)
Interesting discussion: https://github.com/atomix/cata...

The whole claim that there is a "problem" and the inventors of Java made design mistakes: is clearly wrong! They designed the ObjectInputStream and the way how objects are serialized/deserialize in an easy to adapt and change manner. In other words: they showed great foresight!

People have been working on the emotion aspect of this as well. See for example, https://www.ibm.com/watson/ser... And https://emoshape.com/

They looked out on the horizon and saw IBM coming for them.

I run into this a great deal, even from people who are otherwise technically sophisticated.

Here are some things to let you learn for yourself just what is and is not possible:

* https://www.ibm.com/watson/dev...
* https://www.ibm.com/watson/ser...
* https://www.safaribooksonline....
* http://devarea.com/machine-lea...
* https://ai.google/research/pub...

In short, I can track real-time recombinant memetics geographically now. I'm trying to get permission from my employer to publish some animations I've been working on that model injection and growth geographically and looks a lot like infection models put out by the CDC. You can even model meme-interaction and the spawning of new memes (not the innocent pictures, actual radicalized hyperbole spreading geographically).

I run into this a great deal, even from people who are otherwise technically sophisticated.

Here are some things to let you learn for yourself just what is and is not possible:

* https://www.ibm.com/watson/dev...
* https://www.ibm.com/watson/ser...
* https://www.safaribooksonline....
* http://devarea.com/machine-lea...
* https://ai.google/research/pub...

In short, I can track real-time recombinant memetics geographically now. I'm trying to get permission from my employer to publish some animations I've been working on that model injection and growth geographically and looks a lot like infection models put out by the CDC. You can even model meme-interaction and the spawning of new memes (not the innocent pictures, actual radicalized hyperbole spreading geographically).

They do it wrong. At least, most of the superscalar POWER processors do it wrong, and SPARC does it wrong. However, Itanic is supposed to be not vulnerable, so it finally has something going for it.

+1

They do it wrong. At least, most of the superscalar POWER processors do it wrong, and SPARC does it wrong. However, Itanic is supposed to be not vulnerable, so it finally has something going for it.

ZFS is not permitted, for reasons mostly boiling down to either "we didn't pay enough money for it" (for anything BSD) or "that's too expensive" (for anything Oracle). Free (as in beer) is a big scary concept according to one of our contract terms, but they still won't approve purchases.

I've been pushing the idea of a BTRFS-based NAS to get most of the same features, but even going to a NAS at all is a big architecture change, enough to require many assurances that "centralized is a good thing" and "this is cheaper in the long run (of the next 2 months)". Add on to that that BTRFS is new and scary, and the guy in charge just wants a nice big RAID 5 array, because that's what he's comfortable with... and I don't have nearly enough rum to discuss this further.

I don't think it will be that many decades, judging by what IBM's been doing lately.

Human brain: ~8.6×10^10 neurons, ~1.5×10^14 synapses, 20 Watts power used

TrueNorth 4U system IBM delivered to AFRS last year: 6.4×10^7 "neurons", 1.6×10^10 "synapses", 10 Watts power used

Same system per 32U rack: 5.12×10^8 "neurons", 1.28×10^11 "synapses", 80 Watts power used

So it'd take ~168 32U racks to rival the number of neurons in the human brain or ~1,172 racks for the synapses. That puts IBM still 3-4 orders of magnitude out from having something that somewhat works similar to the brain with the same number of connections in something approaching the same volume.

That said, according to that Wikipedia link one rack has about the same number of "neurons" as a Western tree hyrax, so I guess there's that.

Watson is also about to decimate radiologists.

Looks like the POWER8 is RISC based https://www.ibm.com/developerw...

From my blog:

Meltdown affects all Intel Processors with Out-of-Order-Execution (OOE) and, more importantly, Speculative-Execution, perhaps going back to the Original PentiumPro, and all Atom processors made after 2013 (the original Atoms were In-Order-Execution). AMD processors are immune [3], and Via (remember Via?) has remained silent. Meltdown also affects other architectures, like several ARM processors, including the up-and-coming Cortex-A75 (intended for datacenter use), as well as many others used in cellphones and appliances [5], also IBM’s POWER7+, 8 and 9 are affected [4]. But this paper is not concerned with other architectures.

[3] https://www.amd.com/en/corpora...
[4] https://www.ibm.com/blogs/psir...
[5] https://developer.arm.com/supp...

The Full Blog is here:
https://technologyunderbelly.b...

We are already doing that.

Likewise, though the project is still in the early phases.

The Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa (HUS) is planning to work with Watson Health and employ cognitive computing to aid in the early identification of serious bacterial infections in prematurely born babies and to bolster imaging of cerebral hemorrhage patients. HUS is also evaluating Watson Health and employing cognitive computing to aid physicians in providing patients with personalized cancer care.“ IBMs approach to AI, with its focus on augmenting human intelligence, may open up entirely new avenues for us to develop treatments. There is potentially globally groundbreaking research in these areas of application with Watson cognitive computing,” said Chief Medical Officer of HUS Markku Mäkijärvi.

Thanks to Ungrounded Lightning for a useful, snark-free posting. Years ago I was *very* interested in silicon fabrication and was considering trying to get a job with a fab plant. That didn't work out and I gradually lost interest in Si, Ge, GaAs, etc. Except for the 1N34, I thought germainum (as a semiconductor) was dead. When was the last time anyone bought a germainum transistor? (For me, it was the CK722.) In googling "silicon germainum" I found this: http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/siliconchip/ and was amazed to discover germainum had a new future.