INFO-VAX Sun, 10 Aug 2008 Volume 2008 : Issue 435 Contents: RE: HP buys EDS Re: HP buys EDS Who chopped my lines! Re: Who chopped my lines! Re: Who chopped my lines! Re: Who chopped my lines! Re: Who chopped my lines! Re: Who chopped my lines! Re: Who chopped my lines! Re: Who chopped my lines! Re: Who chopped my lines! Re: Who chopped my lines! Re: Who chopped my lines! Re: Who chopped my lines! Re: Who chopped my lines! Re: Who chopped my lines! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:15:42 +0000 From: "Main, Kerry" Subject: RE: HP buys EDS Message-ID: > -----Original Message----- > From: johnwallace4@yahoo.co.uk [mailto:johnwallace4@yahoo.co.uk] > Sent: August 9, 2008 9:23 AM > To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com > Subject: Re: HP buys EDS > > On Aug 4, 12:17 am, johnwalla...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: > > On Aug 3, 11:29 pm, "winston19842...@yahoo.com" > > > > > > > > wrote: > > > On Aug 3, 3:10 pm, JF Mezei wrote: > > > > > > Bill Gunshannon wrote: > > > > > was adamant that HP was a hardware company that knew nothing > about > > > > > software > > > > > > HP knows that to reach the same size as IBM, it needs to grow its > > > > services business. Unfortunatly, instead of growing its own > service > > > > business, it has chosen to buy EDS. > > > > > > This means that its existing service business (which is a > combination of > > > > HP and what is left of Digital/Tandem) won't get "fixed" to grow > since > > > > the impetus will be growth through acquisitions, leaving HP with > a > > > > mismash of not-finely-tuned service businesses. > > > > > > Compare this with IBM that has a far more integrated and > coordinated > > > > service business. The fact that EDS will remain, initially, a > separate > > > > subsidiary is an indication that at least HP knows it lacks > competant > > > > upper management and doesn't wish to infect EDS with its own > incometant > > > > service/enterprise management. > > > > > This shows how little you know of EDS. Their management is the king > of > > > incompetence. > > > > Depends what you mean by competent. At least in the UK, EDS > management > > seem perfectly comptetent at winning big deals, both with the > > government and with the private sector. They seem to do this despite > > (rather than because of) their UK track record, which at least in the > > public sector, is far from rosy. I suspect their private sector track > > record isn't that different, but the private sector is often better > at > > concealing business incompetence to avoid public embarrassment, as > > senior management generally don't particularly need to be held > > accountable, except perhaps to their Remuneration Committee. > > Well, speaking of competent... a joint venture company whose major > shareholders include EDS and US defence contractor Cubic just got > notice of premature termination of their =A3100M/year 17-year contract > to run the ticketing for what passes for "public transport" in London. > Termination discussions had been ongoing for some months, but in > recent weeks there had been two separate catastrophic failures of the > system reported in the UK national press (not just the IT rags). The > failures weren't the kind of behaviour you'd expect from a properly > designed and implemented VMS-based setup, but the termination of the > contract is equally notable as such terminations are remarkably rare. > > Jul 26: 2nd failure: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/151cdf22-5aac-11dd-bf96- > 000077b07658.html > Aug 9: termination: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3339b3c2-65ab-11dd-a352- > 0000779fd18c.html John - Not sure if this is the same Cust environment you are referring to, but it looks and sounds like it: http://tinyurl.com/6baeo5 (May 2008) "Linux opens London's Oyster" Above tiny url translates to: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/misc/print/0,1000000169,39419829-39001110c,00.htm And most recently: (August 2008) http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39458726,00.htm "TfL terminates Oyster contract" Regards Kerry Main Senior Consultant HP Services Canada Voice: 613-254-8911 Fax: 613-591-4477 kerryDOTmainAThpDOTcom (remove the DOT's and AT) OpenVMS - the secure, multi-site OS that just works. ------------------------------ Date: 10 Aug 2008 16:37:07 GMT From: billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) Subject: Re: HP buys EDS Message-ID: <6g8jpiFen8kbU1@mid.individual.net> In article , johnwallace4@yahoo.co.uk writes: > On Aug 4, 12:17 am, johnwalla...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: >> On Aug 3, 11:29 pm, "winston19842...@yahoo.com" >> >> >> >> wrote: >> > On Aug 3, 3:10 pm, JF Mezei wrote: >> >> > > Bill Gunshannon wrote: >> > > > was adamant that HP was a hardware company that knew nothing about >> > > > software >> >> > > HP knows that to reach the same size as IBM, it needs to grow its >> > > services business. Unfortunatly, instead of growing its own service >> > > business, it has chosen to buy EDS. >> >> > > This means that its existing service business (which is a combination of >> > > HP and what is left of Digital/Tandem) won't get "fixed" to grow since >> > > the impetus will be growth through acquisitions, leaving HP with a >> > > mismash of not-finely-tuned service businesses. >> >> > > Compare this with IBM that has a far more integrated and coordinated >> > > service business. The fact that EDS will remain, initially, a separate >> > > subsidiary is an indication that at least HP knows it lacks competant >> > > upper management and doesn't wish to infect EDS with its own incometant >> > > service/enterprise management. >> >> > This shows how little you know of EDS. Their management is the king of >> > incompetence. >> >> Depends what you mean by competent. At least in the UK, EDS management >> seem perfectly comptetent at winning big deals, both with the >> government and with the private sector. They seem to do this despite >> (rather than because of) their UK track record, which at least in the >> public sector, is far from rosy. I suspect their private sector track >> record isn't that different, but the private sector is often better at >> concealing business incompetence to avoid public embarrassment, as >> senior management generally don't particularly need to be held >> accountable, except perhaps to their Remuneration Committee. > Well, speaking of competent... a joint venture company whose major > shareholders include EDS and US defence contractor Cubic just got > notice of premature termination of their £100M/year 17-year contract > to run the ticketing for what passes for "public transport" in London. > Termination discussions had been ongoing for some months, but in > recent weeks there had been two separate catastrophic failures of the > system reported in the UK national press (not just the IT rags). The > failures weren't the kind of behaviour you'd expect from a properly > designed and implemented VMS-based setup, but the termination of the > contract is equally notable as such terminations are remarkably rare. > Jul 26: 2nd failure: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/151cdf22-5aac-11dd-bf96-000077b07658.html > Aug 9: termination: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3339b3c2-65ab-11dd-a352-0000779fd18c.html And, unless you actually work on the project, you really have no idea if this was a failure to properly code the project or if the code accurately reflects the tasks as described by the customer. I offer as an example a case quite some time ago of a company paid to create a simulator for the F16. In the testing phase a someone climbed into the cockpit, hit the raise landing gear switch and watched the simulator crash on the the simulated surface. Of course, everyone immediately argued that this was a major bug, until they found out that performing the same action in a real F16 had the same result!! Thankfully, they they fixed both of them. bill -- Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves billg999@cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. University of Scranton | Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 09:45:47 +0000 (UTC) From: helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) Subject: Who chopped my lines! Message-ID: If I mail a file which has long lines (longer than 255 characters, probably) from a VMS system to a VMS system (over the internet; local VMS MAIL, i.e. within a cluster, is not affected), then the long lines are reformatted into 255-character lines (except that the last of these new lines, of course, might be less than 255 characters long). Only "newline" markers are inserted. Thus, context is lost if the line is supposed to be long. (With usenet headers, for example, the convention is to insert "newline" AND A SPACE to indicate that one line logically belongs to the previous one. Question: What is doing the chopping, the receiver or the sender? Or perhaps some mail gateway in-between? Can someone first verify that they can send a, say, 1000-character line via email and have it arrive (somewhere) intact, then send it to me from a non-VMS system? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 09:49:18 +0000 (UTC) From: helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) Subject: Re: Who chopped my lines! Message-ID: In article , helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) writes: > Question: What is doing the chopping, the receiver or the sender? Or > perhaps some mail gateway in-between? I suspect that it is the VMS TCPIP SMTP receiver, but I would like to confirm this. Assuming this is the case, is it RFC-conform? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 10:45:14 +0000 (UTC) From: david20@alpha2.mdx.ac.uk Subject: Re: Who chopped my lines! Message-ID: In article , helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) writes: >In article , helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de >(Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) writes: > >> Question: What is doing the chopping, the receiver or the sender? Or >> perhaps some mail gateway in-between? > >I suspect that it is the VMS TCPIP SMTP receiver, but I would like to >confirm this. > >Assuming this is the case, is it RFC-conform? > The RFCs specify that an SMTP MTA must accept messages with lines upto 1000 characters (including the terminating CRLF). See http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2822.txt Section 2.1.1. Line Length Limits A mail system wanting to send messages with longer lines should nowadays MIME encode the mail message eg Mime encoding it as quoted-printable or Base64 will convert it into an encoded message with a maximum linelength of 76 characters (plus CRLF). David Webb Security team leader CCSS Middlesex University ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 11:35:56 GMT From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan-Erik_S=F6derholm?= Subject: Re: Who chopped my lines! Message-ID: david20@alpha2.mdx.ac.uk wrote: > In article , helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) writes: >> In article , helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de >> (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) writes: >> >>> Question: What is doing the chopping, the receiver or the sender? Or >>> perhaps some mail gateway in-between? >> I suspect that it is the VMS TCPIP SMTP receiver, but I would like to >> confirm this. >> >> Assuming this is the case, is it RFC-conform? >> > The RFCs specify that an SMTP MTA must accept messages with lines upto 1000 > characters (including the terminating CRLF). > > See > > http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2822.txt > > Section 2.1.1. Line Length Limits > > > A mail system wanting to send messages with longer lines should nowadays MIME > encode the mail message eg Mime encoding it as quoted-printable or Base64 will > convert it into an encoded message with a maximum linelength of 76 characters > (plus CRLF). > > > David Webb > Security team leader > CCSS > Middlesex University > > > For VMS-to-VMS I usualy do zip->uuencode->mail->uudecode->unzip. That works for *any* file, test or binary. Jan-Erik. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 07:44:06 -0400 From: "Richard B. Gilbert" Subject: Re: Who chopped my lines! Message-ID: Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply wrote: > If I mail a file which has long lines (longer than 255 characters, > probably) from a VMS system to a VMS system (over the internet; local > VMS MAIL, i.e. within a cluster, is not affected), then the long lines > are reformatted into 255-character lines (except that the last of these > new lines, of course, might be less than 255 characters long). Only > "newline" markers are inserted. Thus, context is lost if the line is > supposed to be long. (With usenet headers, for example, the convention > is to insert "newline" AND A SPACE to indicate that one line logically > belongs to the previous one. > > Question: What is doing the chopping, the receiver or the sender? Or > perhaps some mail gateway in-between? > > Can someone first verify that they can send a, say, 1000-character line > via email and have it arrive (somewhere) intact, then send it to me from > a non-VMS system? > Mail was meant for messages! Complaining that it doesn't handle freight very well is pointless! Try FTP. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 11:49:33 +0000 (UTC) From: helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) Subject: Re: Who chopped my lines! Message-ID: In article , david20@alpha2.mdx.ac.uk writes: > >> Question: What is doing the chopping, the receiver or the sender? Or > >> perhaps some mail gateway in-between? > > > >I suspect that it is the VMS TCPIP SMTP receiver, but I would like to > >confirm this. Actually, I suppose the sender is more likely. > >Assuming this is the case, is it RFC-conform? > > > The RFCs specify that an SMTP MTA must accept messages with lines upto 1000 > characters (including the terminating CRLF). > > See > > http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2822.txt > > Section 2.1.1. Line Length Limits I still don't know if it is the receiver or the sender, but it seems to me that sending a message from VMS MAIL to VMS MAIL over the internet with HP TCPIP 5.4 with lines between 255 and 1000 characters in length has the long lines reformatted---apparently in violation of the RFC. How do newer versions of TCPIP do? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 11:53:39 +0000 (UTC) From: helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) Subject: Re: Who chopped my lines! Message-ID: In article , =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan-Erik_S=F6derholm?= writes: > For VMS-to-VMS I usualy do zip->uuencode->mail->uudecode->unzip. > That works for *any* file, test or binary. Yes, that should always work. (Sending such a uuencoded ZIP file to a non-VMS system often gets processed correctly, even if there is no MIME-encoding sent. In my case, I am concerned with usenet headers in connection with moderated newsgroups. This is non-zipped, non-encoded text-only stuff (which on the whole is a GOOD thing). Knowing the problem, I can repair the lines at my end. (Contrary to my previous post, I now think it is the receiver doing the reformatting, since I see it on many incoming messages which don't come from VMS; maybe the sender reformats as well, I don't know.) However, if I redirect a message to another moderator, say, it is a shame that long lines get reformatted (which is how I noticed the problem in the first place). ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 11:57:26 GMT From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan-Erik_S=F6derholm?= Subject: Re: Who chopped my lines! Message-ID: > sending a message from VMS MAIL to VMS MAIL over the internet > with HP TCPIP 5.4 with lines between 255 and 1000 characters... But, who on earth would want to do that anyway ? Isn't this a non-issue, for all practical purposes ? Jan-Erik. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 12:26:16 +0000 (UTC) From: helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) Subject: Re: Who chopped my lines! Message-ID: In article , "Richard B. Gilbert" writes: > Mail was meant for messages! Complaining that it doesn't handle freight > very well is pointless! I agree, in general. In my case, I am concerned with mail-transmitted usenet posts containing headers. In any case, though, a several-years-old RFC should be respected. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 12:29:12 +0000 (UTC) From: helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) Subject: Re: Who chopped my lines! Message-ID: In article , =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan-Erik_S=F6derholm?= writes: > > sending a message from VMS MAIL to VMS MAIL over the internet > > with HP TCPIP 5.4 with lines between 255 and 1000 characters... > > But, who on earth would want to do that anyway ? > Isn't this a non-issue, for all practical purposes ? As I mentioned in passing in another post, as the moderator of a newsgroup, I receive usenet posts via email. For what it's worth, some headers, especially the References: header, can be quite long. And it is important, so that threads can be displayed properly. A usenet client CAN, but doesn't HAVE TO, seperate long headers into multiple lines, continuation lines being denoted by a beginning space. In fact, I reformat the posts I feed back into the system this way. However, most do not, and I get emails with long lines. I know about the problem and since nothing is lost, I can deal with it, but it is a pain when redirecting posts to another moderator, say. (Normally, if I'm not active as a moderator, posts don't pass through me at all, but there are exceptional cases.) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 12:42:00 GMT From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan-Erik_S=F6derholm?= Subject: Re: Who chopped my lines! Message-ID: Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply wrote: > In article , > =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan-Erik_S=F6derholm?= > writes: > >> > sending a message from VMS MAIL to VMS MAIL over the internet >>> with HP TCPIP 5.4 with lines between 255 and 1000 characters... >> But, who on earth would want to do that anyway ? >> Isn't this a non-issue, for all practical purposes ? > > As I mentioned in passing in another post, And my reply above was sent before I had got that "other post" from you about mail-headers... :-) :-) If I'd known then about the actual "problem" I had never posted the comment above. Your specific issue might not fall within "all practical purposes"... :-) :-) Jan-Erik. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:47:18 +0000 (UTC) From: david20@alpha2.mdx.ac.uk Subject: Re: Who chopped my lines! Message-ID: In article , helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) writes: >In article , >=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan-Erik_S=F6derholm?= >writes: > >> For VMS-to-VMS I usualy do zip->uuencode->mail->uudecode->unzip. >> That works for *any* file, test or binary. > >Yes, that should always work. (Sending such a uuencoded ZIP file to a >non-VMS system often gets processed correctly, even if there is no >MIME-encoding sent. > >In my case, I am concerned with usenet headers in connection with >moderated newsgroups. This is non-zipped, non-encoded text-only stuff >(which on the whole is a GOOD thing). Knowing the problem, I can repair >the lines at my end. (Contrary to my previous post, I now think it is >the receiver doing the reformatting, since I see it on many incoming >messages which don't come from VMS; maybe the sender reformats as well, >I don't know.) However, if I redirect a message to another moderator, >say, it is a shame that long lines get reformatted (which is how I >noticed the problem in the first place). > Does the mail pass through DECNET at any point rather than just being straight SMTP-to-SMTP ? I seem to remember discussions on the PMDF newsgroup about a 255 character limit when mail was passed over DECNET. David Webb Security team leader CCSS Middlesex University ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 14:27:31 +0000 (UTC) From: helbig@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply) Subject: Re: Who chopped my lines! Message-ID: In article , david20@alpha2.mdx.ac.uk writes: > Does the mail pass through DECNET at any point rather than just being > straight SMTP-to-SMTP ? I seem to remember discussions on the PMDF > newsgroup about a 255 character limit when mail was passed over DECNET. Shouldn't be the problem. I'm not even running DECnet on my cluster (no need), and I can't think of any other place DECnet would be involved. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2008 09:23:31 -0700 (PDT) From: Hein RMS van den Heuvel Subject: Re: Who chopped my lines! Message-ID: <39d7ff56-f2cc-42ce-9522-005021a4ac9c@w7g2000hsa.googlegroups.com> On Aug 10, 5:45=A0am, hel...@astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig--- remove CLOTHES to reply) wrote: > If I mail a file which has long lines (longer than 255 characters, > probably) from a VMS system to a VMS system (over the internet; local > VMS MAIL, i.e. within a cluster, is not affected), Just use SEND/FOREIGN ? Hein. ------------------------------ End of INFO-VAX 2008.435 ************************