On 12/27/2017 02:02 PM, Alec Muffett wrote: That jives with what I understand as well. I don't agree with "…only came from IBM…". Please point your web browser to your preferred search engine and ask it for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as it relates to the computer industry. It's my (mis?)understanding that PDPs had a significant advantage that they came in with a significantly lower price tag which allowed them to get through finance / bursar office with less scrutiny. It mostly jive with what I've heard / read a number of places. Further, I'm not aware of any stories countermanding it. I don't know that I agree with that assessment. - Though as sure as I say that, what I start typing sort of parallels it. I think Linux broke into traditionally non-Unix shops as play things on old retired machines. Then as time moved on and things evolved, Linux started doing more to carry less-critical production load. More time passes with more evolution and Linux often picks up a non-trivial portion of the production work load from non-Linux systems. The other similar thing that I have seen, and think I will see more of, is that people play with Linux at home, learn some things, and realize that it can do things at work too. In which case it will likely more overtly take on production loads more directly. As for virtualization, I think that's evolution and people trying to avoid physical server sprawl. I think AWS (et al) are simply additional forms of virtualization. Okay. How does (the lack of) physical servers actually impact ISO 27001 compliance? - From my read of the Wikipedia article I don't see how (the lack of) physical on premise servers changes anything. I feel like ISO 27001 is more a business plan / policy / procedure type check than a technical to-do list. As such, I feel like such plans / policies / procedures would still apply to the infrastructure that people are using, be it physical on prem or virtual in the cloud. Someone still owns the equipment and is responsible for it. Further, businesses outsourcing to the cloud still have a responsibility to ensure that said infrastructure is secured / updated / managed to the same standards. Granted, virtual ~> AWS does make it a LOT simpler for people to start projects and do things that may be against company policy. But that's a matter of initial economics. For the project to continue, it will need to fall back in line with stated policies, be it physical on prem or virtual in the cloud. -- Grant. . . . unix || die

You are mixing a couple of different stories I fear... If you want the full story get a copy of: Computer Engineering: A DEC View of Hardware Systems Design <https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Engineering-Hardware-Systems-Design/dp/1483207676> But a snap shot for this mailing list is this ... The PDP term was used by KO when he was funding Digital because the VC's the 60s did not believe that a computer company would succeed. But making things for the instrumentation market (Lincoln Labs, Livermore, *etc*.). This is how PDP-1 came to be. The PDP term was keep for the first 25 years (until the Vax and renaming of the PDP-10/PDP-20 to DECSystem 10/20). [The 1 begat the 6, 9, 15 an 10 families]. The concept of purchasing smaller system, was indeed true. This was the idea behind the >>mini-computer<< or *minimal computer* that Gordon Bell who lad left DEC temporarily to be a CMU Prof for a time began to explore. He took the idea and commercialized and the PDP-8 line was the first in that line. The 11 & 15 were full computer systems. DEC also made something called the PDP-16 'Register Transfer Modules' (RTMs) which was an attempt to make the small controller idea even more accessible, but the Intel microprocessor would eclipse them (I think I was the last group at CMU was talk a course using them. Another factoid, the predecessor to VHDL/Verilog and the like, ISPL and ISPS actually spit out 'code' for DEC RTM modules instead of gates). But the key point is that in 1975 dollars, a PDP-11/40 system that was good enough to run something like Sixth Edition of UNIX cost somewhere between $50k-$150k. This would have been much, much cheaper than say a PDP-10, or a equivilent IBM 'mainframe' size system which would have started above $1M. Clem On Wed, Dec 27, 2017 at 4:02 PM, Alec Muffett &lt;alec.muffett(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: