....forgot to mention, when I say "water cooled," it's not the kind
that's recently coming back into vogue for high-end PC's, this water
cooling system has a big refrigeration unit just to chill the water,
cost per year is about the average yearly salary of anyone reading
this. Why is that system still in use? There's a reason. In two
words, Seymour Cray.

BTW, a "word" is 60 bits.

almo wrote:
> >"Dunno how to help ya, but I do have a question.
> >If you're being tasked to slaving adherence to a lockout policy (the
> >issue you're dealing with is pretty darned ticky tack), why in the
> >hell are they having you use an OS that's no longer supported by its
> >vendor?"
>
> If you think that's bad, there's a big flight critical system here
> (Kennedy Space Center) with a computer that takes up a whole building,
> and it's water cooled!!!! It has about 1.2 million lines of FORTRAN
> source code running on it (the binary,) but it's old FORTRAN, I mean
> old like before there was ASCII, and even old like before there was
> EBCDIC, and so old that 8 bits did not make a byte, and the word "byte"
> wasn't even in the dictionary. Of course, who decided a byte had to be
> 8 bits? And who decided to name it a "byte."
>
> ...ya know what, don't get me started. But I have the answers to those
> questions, and much more. And there's a good story behind this, and
> I'd love to tell it, and I will, but I'll have to remember all the
> stuff I know and maybe next week I'll post the story about that
> computer, and other things that all tie together, including how I saved
> the world, or helped a little bit (by accident + right place + right
> time + plus one guy smarter than me that sat next to me.) It's all
> pretty cool. A very good history lesson about how we got to where we
> are with computers, which I know about because I had to find out about
> it to do a project. Interesting story...stay tuned. BTW, the only
> mention I will make about Bill Gates is to say...there will be no
> mention of Bill Gates.
>
> And a shout out to M.J. who gave me a very good tip regarding the topic
> on this thread.
>
> 0xDEADABE wrote:
> > almo wrote:
> > >>"Dunno how to help ya, but I do have a question.
> > >>If you're being tasked to slaving adherence to a lockout policy (the
> > >>issue you're dealing with is pretty darned ticky tack), why in the
> > >>hell are they having you use an OS that's no longer supported by its
> > >>vendor? "
> > >
> > >
> > > It's called "government work." Some reallly big aerospace company with
> > > lots of ex-military brass on their staff pitches an idea to to
> > > government, which is also military brass, and big money changes hands,
> > > then a handful of average people have to build it. After about 2
> > > years, the system gets delivered. And then another company, a
> > > contractor, has to operate it. And they have their computer security
> > > people who flag these kind of things. But that company can't fix
> > > anything or change anything because that's not their job, and it's not
> > > in their charter, and then there's another contractor, the one I work
> > > for at the moment, who has the contract for support, maintenance, and
> > > depot operations. And, God forbid, the other contractor puts something
> > > in writing, like a defiency report or vulnerability, because then it
> > > takes on a life of it's own, and it can only be put to rest by fixing
> > > it, or hiding it and reporting that you fixed it (if you're me,) or
> > > saying it can't be done, which requires even more paperwork, and other
> > > people, like bosses, frown on you, or me, because they just like do
> > > that to me. So, when I looked at this problem, I thought, this can't
> > > be very hard to change, I'll just go fix the damn thing right now.
> > > And, in 1 minute, I found where that frst message was, so I looked for
> > > the second message, and it's been 5 days now. It's coming from
> > > somewhere. Next thing I'm going to do is write a script, since 4.3.3
> > > doesn't have -r for grep, and I can't add a new grep because there's no
> > > compiler on the the system, or even man pages, but I'll just sift
> > > through every last file on that system starting from "/" and use the
> > > strings(1) command into grep and find this sneaky little bastard. And,
> > > I'll collect my paycheck. BTW, when I work for myself on my own
> > > projects, I don't operate like the government.
> > >
> > > Alan
> > >
> > > prichard@blm.gov wrote:
> > >
> > >>I no longer have an AIX 4.3.3 system since I migrated to 5.1 and now
> > >>5.3. But you might be able to find your answer in /etc/security/user
> > >
> > >
> >
> > Precisely why I got completely out of government work. Good story!