[ih] Better-than-Best Effort

[Bob Purvy]

Since the Sigma was mentioned several times here, maybe some of you can msg
me privately (since it's kinda off-topic and I don't want to derail the
discussion):

Was there third-party software for the Sigma that you had to pay for? I
don't mean consulting / managing / leasing services.

I'm writing a companion blog post for my book about "what Xerox should have
done," and one of the things I'm addressing is Dave Liddle's contention
that there really wasn't a software industry prior to the Apple II and the
IBM PC.

I know that there was for IBM mainframes and for DEC machines, but it would
be especially ironic if it also existed for XDS machines!

On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 6:48 PM Dan Lynch via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Jack, thanks for the very accurate description of what has happened in the
> past 60 years or so. In the early 70s I experienced something quite unique.
> I was the single user of a SDS Sigma 5 (IBM copycat) that was used to track
> missiles with a very advanced radar in New Mexico. So I wrote the software,
> keypunched it myself, loaded it into the card reader and ran the batch
> monitor to compile the program and then ran the radar with the program. I
> had the whole system to myself. Since this was a high priority program for
> the defense department it was deemed the best use of the money!  And I had
> the first taste of a big machine all to myself. What fun.  Oh, I also was
> given the source code to all the systems software and libraries because the
> activity was highly classified and if I ran into a bug in the software
> provided by the manufacturer I had to find the problem and solve it without
> bringing anyone else in to my location. Hence I learned a lot of stuff that
> way. When I found and fixed a bug I would tell them the fix I had found.
> Quite an education!
>
> Dan
>
> Cell 650-776-7313
>
> > On Aug 28, 2021, at 11:31 AM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> >
> > Actually, I think of "The Cloud" as TimeSharing 2.0.
> >
> > When I look at the last 60 years or so of history with an economics
> lens, there's a sort of cyclic pattern.
> >
> > Computers in the 60s were very expensive and users were charged for use
> by the number of CPU seconds their programs used.  To keep those expensive
> computers busy, they were fed a continuous stream of jobs on punch cards,
> day and night.   You submitted your "job" and often got the results the
> next day.   People could wait, computers could not.   Their time was too
> valuable.
> >
> > People could interact directly with computers, but that would mean that
> the expensive computer would be idle while waiting for the user to digest
> what it had just done and tell it what to do next.   So TimeSharing evolved
> as a useful technique to keep that expensive computer busy while allowing
> users to get their results faster, especially for very simple (to the CPU)
> tasks.
> >
> > TimeSharing was popular for quite a while, but eventually users got
> frustrated by the experience of relying on "The Comp Center" to keep the
> machine running, and the tendency for those managers to put more and more
> users on a machine until it no longer felt like a User had a whole computer
> to work with.
> >
> > But the Economics had changed.  Computers had gotten much much less
> expensive, so much so that it became economically feasible to purchase your
> own computer, and not worry about keeping it busy every minute of every
> day.  Plus you controlled that computer, rather than some bureaucracy
> inside the glassed-off computer installation.   Power was in the Users'
> hands.  Workstations and departmental minicomputers arrived.  As costs
> dropped even further, Personal Computers became the norm.
> >
> > As LANs and PCs became dominant in offices and such commercial
> environments, the now-less-expensive "big computers" became servers,
> interacting with all those PCs in computer-to-computer communications,
> rather than the computer-to-terminal norm of TimeSharing.
> >
> > With costs still dropping rapidly, and silo-ization of "networking"
> creating an unwieldy mix of incompatible networking technologies even
> inside a single organization, corporate managers noticed that the expensive
> part of IT had become the labor involved in keeping all that stuff running,
> updated to fix critical vulnerabilities, and continuously upgraded as
> software vendors dictated and Users demanded.   TCP/IP was a universal
> replacement for that hodgepodge, and Industry "embraced the Internet".
>  All of the other networking schemes withered away.
> >
> > With costs of computing, and of communications, still dropping fast, the
> labor to operate an organization's "IT Department" became the dominant
> cost.   Especially in smaller organizations, it was difficult to have the
> right personnel skills around to handle problems and needs that arose.   A
> specialist in some aspect of technology might be needed urgently, but
> keeping such a person on the payroll would be an unnecessary expense when
> that particular problem or need had been addressed.
> >
> > Cloud computing provided a solution.   By concentrating the technology
> all in one place, somewhere "out in the cloud", the expensive resources,
> whether computers or people, could be kept busy.   Cloud computing might be
> viewed as TimeSharing of not only computers and storage, but also of
> people.   TimeSharing 2.0 is here.  But instead of Users themselves
> interacting with a Computer in the Cloud, a User's personal computing
> device is interacting on that Users' behalf with often many Computers in
> several Clouds.
> >
> > Of course, similar changes have been happening, and continue to happen,
> in the costs of communications.  Back in the late 60s, when TimeSharing was
> emerging, computers were still expensive and there was a desire to share
> such expensive resources to keep them busy. Computers were connected to
> Users by use of Terminals, sending and receiving characters.
> >
> > At the time, communications was expensive.   Leased lines could be
> bought, but not economically justified unless they were kept busy. Dial-up
> access was available, also expensive and priced by distance involved, and,
> just like in the case of the big expensive computers, dial-up lines were
> "wasted" while the User was thinking about what to do next.
> >
> > IIRC, a major motivation for Packet Switching was to address that
> economic problem, by allowing multiple Users to share communications
> circuits.   The circuits could be kept busy, and a mix of leased and
> dial-up circuits could be used to achieve the lowest-cost means to
> interconnect those Users and Computers.
> >
> > I recall many visits to ARPA on Wilson Blvd in Arlington, VA. There were
> terminals all over the building, pretty much all connected through the
> ARPANET to a PDP-10 3000 miles away at USC in Marine Del Rey, CA.  The
> technology of Packet Switching made it possible to keep a PDP-10 busy
> servicing all those Users and minimize the costs of everything, including
> those expensive communications circuits.  This was circa 1980.   Users
> could efficiently share expensive communications, and expensive and distant
> computers -- although I always thought ARPA's choice to use a computer 3000
> miles away was probably more to demonstrate the viability of the ARPANET
> than because it was cheaper than using a computer somewhere near DC.
> >
> > Since 1980, costs of everything have continued to drop.  But of course,
> Users' expectations have also continued to rise.  In the 1980s, the only
> economic way to move things like video files was shipping magtapes on an
> airplane.   Streaming such material wasn't even a dream.
> >
> > The economics now are also different, and it would seem that eventually
> the economic motivation for techniques such as Packet Switching might have
> disappeared.  In addition, the limitations of such technology are becoming
> more evident, and some silo-ization of specific solutions has been
> happening.   Bob Purvy's and Louis Mamakos' descriptions strike me as two
> examples of innovators tackling a specific problem with a point solution
> that mitigates that problem for a specific User community (aka their
> customers).
> >
> > There's a lot more to the story of course, as other changes and
> innovations occurred.  E.g., we no longer interact much directly with
> remote computers, but rather with the one on our desks or in our hands.
> Latency is possibly more important now than bandwidth, since while fiber
> can provide lots of bandwidth but no one has yet figured out how to move
> data faster than the speed of light.
> >
> > So, that's a hopefully not too long explanation of why I mused that
> perhaps Packet Switching is no longer the best solution, at least when
> viewed through my economic lens.   The need to share expensive
> communications lines has apparently almost disappeared, and latency is a
> new hurdle.    If someone ever figures out how to make software that "just
> works" and doesn't need lots of care, perhaps "The Cloud" will wither away
> as well.  Maybe some AI like we see in the SciFi world.  Hopefully
> benevolent.....
> >
> > Just my perspective - YMMV,
> > /Jack Haverty
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> On 8/27/21 5:24 PM, Dave Crocker wrote:
> >>> On 8/27/2021 4:10 PM, Vint Cerf via Internet-history wrote:
> >>> time-sharing is alive and well - spelled CLOUD
> >>
> >> As PCs started to emerge Postel commented that that would eliminate the
> need for time-sharing.  I suggested that even for one person, it would be
> good for their computer to be running multiple, simultaneous activities.
> >>
> >> So, nevermind the cloud.  Look at your phone.
> >>
> >> d/
> >>
> >
> >
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