Conference 7.286::digital

DEC 21 change unknown; DJIA unknown at 116:128pm
Report was entered at Wed Nov 25 14:57:56 1992

    31 5/8  change -1/4  at 13:02

    No joke. I saw it too:
    
    LITTL4>quo
    DEC 199 1/2, change +162 3/8; DJIA 2321.12, change +40.00 at 14:30.
    Report entered at Wed Nov 25 14:49:03 1992.
    LITTL4>quo
    DEC 21, change unknown; DJIA unknown, change unknown at unknown time.
    Report entered at Wed Nov 25 14:57:56 1992.
    LITTL4>quo
    DEC 31 5/8, change -0 1/4; DJIA 3266.26, change +17.56 at 14:59.
    Report entered at Wed Nov 25 15:01:37 1992.
    LITTL4>quo
    DEC 31 3/4, change -0 1/4; DJIA 3267.72, change +17.02 at 15:06.
    Report entered at Wed Nov 25 14:16:07 1992.
    

    
    Next time it shows 199 let me know too.  I'll sell it all real fast.
    
    Ken
    

sounds like someone got "tapped" and is taking it out on the quote program...

-Mike

    Would someone please mail me the stock quote program.  We used to have 
    it but it was lost (along with our system) in the earthquake.
    
    Thanks,
    Brian Basura @FVO
    SWAM1::BASURA_BR

    
    See NYOSS1::DIGITAL_INVESTING note #231.1 for info on
    copying the kit.

        <<< NYOSS1::DISK$LIB:[NOTES$LIBRARY]DIGITAL_INVESTING.NOTE;1 >>>
                             -< Digital Investing >-
================================================================================
Note 289.0             DEC QUOTE -- Need updated .EXE's!!              5 replies
DIODE::CROWELL "Jon Crowell"                         13 lines  25-JUL-1994 16:14
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    The QUOTE_V0 program in all of it's flavours need to be updated.
    I've moved node DIODE:: from the Mill to PKO and had to change it's
    node address to area 29.  If you have the source to your program
    updated the line in that points to 26120:: should now say 30296::.
    
    If you use QUOTE_V0 a new .EXE can be found on
    DIODE::DSA0:[QUOTE]QUOTE_V0.EXE...
    
    It was linked under VMS V5.5-2
    
    Jon
    

    So who's the A$$ that's jerkin' around with the quote display.
    
    There's an executable or commmand procedure out there that is 
    setting all fields to zero every 5 seconds.  Does anyone have 
    a way to  track down this idiot and turn him off.
    
    Robin

        <<< NYOSS1::DISK$LIB:[NOTES$LIBRARY]DIGITAL_INVESTING.NOTE;1 >>>
                             -< Digital Investing >-
================================================================================
Note 353.1              QUOTE_V0/ 7.5 Years Service /RIP                 1 of 12
DIODE::CROWELL "Jon Crowell"                         42 lines   7-APR-1995 14:27
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:	POWDML::ECOHEN       "Eric Cohen, Corporate Functions IM&T, 223-3223, MSO1-1/L9"  7-APR-1995 12:14:07.45
To:	DIODE::CROWELL
CC:	WHITNEY,MTS$::"mso::dick fishburn",MTS$::"mso::kevin sweeney",MTS$::"mso::eliot quill",AKOFIN::POLLASTRI,DEVLPR::GROARK,MWHITNEY,ECOHEN
Subj:	A - re: shutting down the unofficial Digital stock quote server

To:  John Crowell
CC:  Dick Fishburn
     Mike Whitney
     Eliot Quill
     Kevin Sweeney
     Lou Pollastri
     John Groark


John,


Thanks for all your help working with Lou Pollastri and John Groark to
identify what has been happening with incorrect stock quotes and for
brainstorming options for dealing with the situation.

This note is the formal confirmation for you to shutdown the Digital stock
quote server (named QUOTE_V0) that operates on the DIODE node.  This 
particular server is providing unauthorized quotes without business controls,
and, as I know from our discussions, has no useful security and is easily
capable of providing incorrect quotes.  The result of such problems can well
be real harm, and so we are taking the issue seriously.

To be clear, I know that you are not responsible for these problems.  I very 
much appreciate your help in rectifying the situation.

Thanks also for your excellent suggestion that we post a message in the
Digital Investing notes file indicating what we've done, alternatives for
getting quotes and whom to contact.

I contacted both Eliot Quill and Kevin Sweeney of Digital's Investor Services
group about the action we are taking.  They will help us to get the right
message for posting in the notes file.

Thanks again for your help.

  Eric

    	What a shame. I sent mail to POWDML::ECOHEN expressing that
    thought. I also mentioned that I don't understand the reason given -
    
    "providing unauthorized quotes without business controls"
    
    	If anyone else has a clue as to why this is all of a sudden a
    problem after 7.5 years, please share it.
    
    	Ray

    I hate to see a grown man cry...!
    
    Symbol        : DEC          Exchange    : New York Stock Exchange
    (NYSE)
    Description   : DIGITAL EQUIP CORP                           
    Last Traded at: 40.7500      Date/Time   : Apr 07  4:01:00
    $ Change      : 1.8750       % Change    : 4.82    
    
    Volume        : 1878100      # of Trades : 547      
    Day Low       : 39.3750      Day High    : 41.0000  
    52 Week Low   : 18.2500      52 Week High: 41.0000  
    
    
    
    from http://www.secapl.com:82/cgi-bin/qsy
    
    
    8^)

    
    	Gee, I wonder if this is just coincidence that QUOTE shutting down
    happened the same day the stock has broken the $40 mark. This seems to be 
    the magic SELL # for a lot of people I've talked to.
    
    	Ray
    

    re:16
    
    	I tried the URL you gave, entered the symbol DEC, and got...
    
    Error: your system is not authorized to use the Internet relay server.
    
    	Ray

Hi,
I just tried it and it worked like a charm.

You will probably find that you are running an old version of
Mosaic. You need at least V2.4, or a recent version of Netscape.
They have changed the method we use to get past the firewall from
relay to proxy.

For further information look in INTERNET_TOOLS for the various
topics complaining that people can't get to external pages.

The new system will probably improve your response time significantly
as well, I think the relay server was heavily overloaded.

Mark

It's good to see reactionary management alive and well in Digital.

Dave.

>>It's good to see reactionary management alive and well in Digital.

Its the people inside of Digital that take the information quote_v0 was
providing as 100% accurate and "blessed by corporate" then call corporate to
say "someone's changing the Digital's stock price on me".  I don't even 
know who the hell I would call to complain to (now I do, someone listed on 
that memo!).  

The www URL listed back a few notes it going to start to get flooded with
requests now.   It has been hinted that if this happens that too will be shut
off (I guess it already has been shut down once).  The overhead to get the 
quote from that server is HUGE compaired to what quote_v0 was doing. 

As I posted in the DIGITAL_INVESTING conference, I would like to see this
service re-enabled with what ever controls someone in corporate would see fit
(first off, a HUGE disclaimer... something like:

	This quote may not be accurate, don't sell your farm based on this 
	information, call your broker before putting in any BUY or SELL orders.

				THIS MEANS YOU !

Brian J. - decw_quote (now just a new mail counter) author

Now we know what all those VPs are doing with all the time on their hands:-(

Bob

    	Evidently, the problem is that there are one or more people that
    can, and have, changed the stock price via quote_v0. I saw it go up to
    50 a couple months ago, and it was obviously off.
    
    	The problem comes when someone changes it to something closer to
    believable and causes a bunch of stock to get sold. If this happens,
    and the person messing with quote gets caught, they should at a minimum
    make the the person pay the difference to the people that sold based on the
    phoney price, or terminate them.
    
    	Hacking can sometimes be fun, but when it starts costing people
    money it gets a bit more serious.
    
    	Ray

>>    	Evidently, the problem is that there are one or more people that
>>    can, and have, changed the stock price via quote_v0. I saw it go up to
>>    50 a couple months ago, and it was obviously off.

quote_v0 allowed anyone to update the stock price.  The first year this was in
place, April 1'st was "funny" for a while.

>>    	The problem comes when someone changes it to something closer to
>>    believable and causes a bunch of stock to get sold. If this happens,
>>    and the person messing with quote gets caught, they should at a minimum
>>    make the the person pay the difference to the people that sold based on 
>>    the phoney price, or terminate them.

>>    	Hacking can sometimes be fun, but when it starts costing people
>>    money it gets a bit more serious.

No, the problem is that someone may act on what quote_v0 returned.  Its not 
being fed by Wall Street directly and I guess too many people think that it is.

I doubt anyone will get fired over this, for all I know some DCL programmer
wanna-be accidently wrote a DCL procedure that was supposed to get the stock
quote every "5 seconds", but they had a "w" on the command line and that caused
the program to update the quote.  An accident - do you fire them for that?  I
hope not.

bjm

I'm surprised that this could happen in a company of
computer professionals.  Doesn't everyone know that
it is an exceedingly bad idea to trust the output from
a computer when you're making real-world decisions?
Doesn't everyone know that you shouldn't trust output data
unless you have some idea where the input data came from?

OK, that sounds a little snottier than I really feel.
I tended to act as though I believed that what QUOTE
said was real, even though I knew it wasn't.  But I think 
that whoever sold stock based on QUOTE (for such is the
rumoured cause of this little imbroglio) was a little
bit naive or foolish. 
 

    Look, it's unfortunate that someone did not take proper precautions
    with the data quote_v0 was returning but lets point our anger at where
    it belongs, whichever peabrain with a broken sense of humour that
    thought it was funny to jig with the stock price on April 1, har, har,
    har, I'm still laughing. Funny is adding to the snowbags thread in
    KAOSWS::CANADA, playing with the stock price display is just plain
    pathetic.

re: .26

April 1st was on Saturday this year.

Bob

    re:24
    
    	If this was done by accident, that's one thing. If this was done as
    a joke, that's altogether different. I doubt the person that did it
    will get caught. 
    
    	I wouldn't want to see someone lose their job over this. I would like 
    to see them given the choice of termination or "paying" for their joke by 
    paying the difference between the phoney price they posted and what a 
    persons stock actually sold for.
    
    	Ray

Why can't node DIODE get the stock price from a reliable source and not allow
anyone to change it?

Now lots of people are going to be rolling their own stock programs, probably
less reliably than the DIODE server.

Paul

    
    	"Wow, DEC stock jumped 20 points in the last hour!!  I think I'll
    	sell!!"
    

    
    
    I hope you waited, now it's up to $3500 a share.......

    
     Wow, 3500 a share... If I could only get that quote program working.
    I really would have sold it, but ya' know I called my broker and he
    said they missed the boat too. Never saw anything like it, in Wall
    Street history.
    
     What a riot. Hey if you sold on the basis of one input, well that is
    your own business.
    
    -Mike Z.

    re:33

    > What a riot. Hey if you sold on the basis of one input, well that is 
    > your own business.

    FWIW - Not sure who (if anyone) this was directed at, but I was not one 
    of the people taken by this. I still use the touch-tone system to sell,
    which gives you the price from another source. 
    
    	I do find it sad that some people are amused at the possibility
    that others may have actually been duped by this. My personal name
    lends a clue as to why I don't see any humor in messing with peoples
    money. At least the people that fell for this will have wound up with 
    a decent selling price.

    	Ray

Who said anything about "duped"?  The quote program
accepted input from just about anyone, and relayed
the info to everyone.  With no checks.   A single typo
could result in inaccurate data.  Knowing that, it's
unnecessary to assume evil intent on anyone's part.
The information was inherently unreliable; I'm simply
surprised when people didn't know that.

    
    
    
    I think a disclaimer explaining such would have solved the problem.
    
    
    Mike

    re:36
    
    	Your right that it wouldn't take much to render the data inaccurate, 
    but it seems hard to believe someone could "accidently" pass a 44 in a 
    parameter to quote. I know of quite a few people who used quote from a 
    time-sharing system that had no idea how quote worked, only that about 
    99.9% of the time it was right.
    
    	Ray
    

    
    why anyone would make a decision to sell based on the quote program
    seems incredible to me. what ever happened to individual
    responsibility and the ability to think? sigh.. 

    Individual responsibility was taken from me.  I'm unempowered.  Sniff.
    
    			     I'm, I'm... a victim.

    re .40
    
    We're sorry to inform you you are not allowed to be a victim.
    You don't meet the demographic criteria.....
    
    
    bk

    Good points, bk.
    
    I think Tex is making false claims again...I'm sure he's had
    zero Victim Training, is not an Officially Qualified Victim,
    and has probably not even requested to be screened as a 
    Potential Victim.

       	Obviously some of you people have never had any involvement with
    Human Factors testing :-) If you had, then you'd know that if there is any 
    way something can possibly be misconstrued, overlooked, or misread, it 
    will, and this is *WITH DIRECTIONS*. Quote comes with no directions,
    explanations, or disclaimers.
    
    	With VTX being the supposed preferred internal method of selling
    stock, I can see someone typing QUOTE on a time-share system that has 
    a logical defined to execute quote_v0. They get a price, enter VTX
    STOCK (which doesn't give the current price) and if the two are
    close enough (and a small number of shares are involved) making a
    decision to sell. Entering VTX IS and selecting Sell Shares also does
    not give a price.
    
    	But of course, all shippers/recv'rs, secretaries, assemblers,
    material handlers, and other non-software engineering types should be well 
    versed in DCL and the quote executable. So it would seem from some of
    the last few replies anyway. 
    	
    	What really amazes me is that the quote program was so poorly designed
    so as to allow inputs from anyone that would change the stock price. Never 
    had any cause to muck with it myself, but if it was so easy to do, I'm 
    even more surprised this went 7.5 years without so much as a disclaimer. 
	
    	Ray

I have never used QUOTE, but even I knew that anyone could change the
value.  It has been mentioned in here several times, perhaps more than
once per year. 

re .43

>> Quote comes with no directions, explanations, or disclaimers.

Quote comes with no directions, explanations, or claims, either.

re .*
Type this, and a number will appear. Often it is the price of DEC common
stock some time in the not too distant past.

I believe it has been established that WSJ and other papers are not
responsible for errors in their published stock prices. One of the brokerage 
houses sent bad data not too long ago. Does anyone recall if anything
happened to anyone because of it?

>    	What really amazes me is that the quote program was so poorly designed
>    so as to allow inputs from anyone that would change the stock price. Never 
>    had any cause to muck with it myself, but if it was so easy to do, I'm 
>    even more surprised this went 7.5 years without so much as a disclaimer. 

QUOTE_V0 took the place of a command procedure that would update a
title in the INVESTING conference with the current price.   The network
overhead to the node on which INVESTING lived was so great they had to stop the
service (set that note to NOWRITE).  

QUOTE_V0 was designed to be as simple and as fast as it could.  It was over
seven years ago and the only problem it ever ran into is when DIODE changed its
network address. 

It was intended so that ANYONE knowning the lastest, (and at that time
GREATEST) Digital and DJIA quote would update the server and let the rest of
the company know about it.  What a concept huh?  

Entering the wrong quote (mis-typing) isn't tha big of a problem, quote_v0 used
to prompt you with "do you want to update the quote with this data?" or
something like that.

There are a very large number of people inside of Digital who don't know what a
"$ prompt" is (I know SET PROMPT changed that but...).  Those people were most
likly not taken into account when a simple client/server application was made
public and reported what what someone else inside of Digital knew to be the
current Digital stock price.

Hey we are all professionals here right - with common sense. (strike that last
part).

>>    	With VTX being the supposed preferred internal method of selling
>>    stock, I can see someone typing QUOTE on a time-share system that has 
>>    a logical defined to execute quote_v0. They get a price, enter VTX

FYI - it would be a DCL (That's Digital Command Language) SYMBOL, not a 
logical name.  

bjm

Re: .43

>    	What really amazes me is that the quote program was so poorly designed
>    so as to allow inputs from anyone that would change the stock price.

I don't use the quote program much, and I had no hand in designing it.  Still,
I take exception to this remark.

Have you ever heard of the Reasonable Person Principle?  Letting anyone change
the stock price probably had the advantages of

   a.  Making frequent updates likely, without

   b.  Requiring a large time commitment from any one person, or

   c.  Requiring official funding from Digital

For an official service, it would make sense to add access controls on writes.
But this might also cost real money.  Given a choice between

   a.  A volunteer-provided service, with the following disclaimer

       -----------------------------------------------------------------------
       This quote is maintained entirely by volunteers.  Anyone on the network
       can update it, and the price is not guaranteed to be timely or accurate
       by Digital Equipment Corporation or by anyone else.

       Double-check other sources before buying or selling any stock.
       -----------------------------------------------------------------------

   b.  No service at all

which would you prefer?

    Re .43:
    
    > Quote comes with no directions, explanations, or disclaimers.
    
    That is not true; I provided directions with it.
    
    > What really amazes me is that the quote program was so poorly
    > designed so as to allow inputs from anyone that would change the stock
    > price.
    
    That's a perfectly reasonable design for use by reasonable human
    beings.  Our mistake was allowing senior managers to use the program.
    
    Engineers understand trust -- both its value as an endearing human
    attribute and its risks, and so they are capable of using information
    provided on trust with appropriate safeguards for checking that
    information before relying on it.  Managers are different.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

RE: .47

	"Managers are different"

	Gee Eric, that's almost a Politically Correct statement from you.
	I'm disappointed. 

	:)

								mike

    RE. .47
    
    I don't think that many would want to debate the statement that
    "engineers understand trust", however unless you have the facility to
    put something like :
    
    If Quote_V0_Update_Person_type = "Engineer"
    
    then you have a systems design issue.  You need to have a
    dumb_sales-type lockout, a Error_prone_Digital_consulting-type lockout,
    a lets_change_it_for_fun_MCS-type lockout as well as van drivers, admin
    staff etc.  Of course it stands to reason that managers should not even
    be given to the network at all.  Perhaps in your view a stand alone
    VT220 would be sufficient for them.
    
    This is not a "trust" issue this is just plan and simple systems
    design.
    
    - the not too humble opinion of a non-engineer-dumb-sales-type

       	For every one of the people in here that "knew all about quote", I 
    can find two more that had no idea. Obviously, I did not realize that it 
    was meant to be a volunteer sort of thing. I saw a pointer somewhere a few
    years back, copied it to my system, added the symbol to my LOGIN.COM, and 
    started using it. 

    	I saw the Px parameters being passed in QUOTE_V0.COM, but assumed that 
    they would alter the output format, not the price. I honestly thought that 
    the price input to quote was automatically driven from a single source. 
    Hell, that's what I would have went for if I designed it. Sorry, I didn't
    mean to call anyone's baby ugly; it's ahhh, different than I expected ;-)

    	I don't mean to sound sarcastic, but if it was so widely known by
    so many people that there was a large potential for "inaccurate results", 
    why hasn't someone automated the process ? Is it that difficult or time 
    consuming to automate a feed from a single source and not accept inputs 
    from just anyone ? Just more of a "practicality" thing than a "trust" 
    thing.

    	I have worked in areas (manufacturing) where people didn't have their 
    own systems to "play" with. Most (if not all) of the things they did were
    driven via menus. I still run across people that are NOTES illiterate, 
    and have even less knowledge about the WEB. FWIW - when these people
    make a comment or ask me a question, I don't hit them with "I'm surprised 
    you didn't know that". Not only is it obvious that they didn't know
    that, it can be construed as condescending as well.

    	I also know people that are on the other end of the spectrum. I like 
    to think I fall somewhere in the middle. I guess *my* surprise here is that 
    the existence of this diverse range of knowledge comes as any surprise to 
    anyone. 

    	Ray

>    This is not a "trust" issue this is just plan and simple systems
>    design.

This is an "what is it supposed to be" issue. Quote was designed to allow anyone
who happened to know the price of the stock to tell his co-workers around the
world in a fast effiecent manner. When users decided that it was a "trusted 
bet-my-money corporate sponsored tool" without understanding what is was and how
it worked, it was in trouble. As someone who understood the tool, I am very 
upset that individuals with no clue about the tool can "by their ignorance and 
stupidity" shoot themselves in the foot and then because they do not want to 
admit that they made a mistake cause enough noise to DEC management to cause 
the tool to be removed. BE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN ACTIONS and don't blame
others for YOUR mistakes.

A magnet is a very useful tool but because I could cause valuable data to be 
lost by putting a powerful magnet in the tape library should all magnets be 
banned from Digital facilities?

If I called you on the phone right now and said DEC stock was up to $100/per
share, would you go into VTX and sell your shares without checking the price??

Dan Buckley

|    	I don't mean to sound sarcastic, but if it was so widely known by
|    so many people that there was a large potential for "inaccurate results", 
|    why hasn't someone automated the process ? Is it that difficult or time 
|    consuming to automate a feed from a single source and not accept inputs 
|    from just anyone ? Just more of a "practicality" thing than a "trust" 
|    thing.

	It would be very easy to do an automatic feed. But the problem is,
	who is going to pay for the feed? As you may know, they are not free.
	Or rather, free feeds are not reliable enough and stand a good chance
	of breaking your extract program on a regular basis.

	Some companies sell FM based PC cards with software and subscription
	for about $1K/year. With such software I'm sure you could write a
	small tool that dumps the DEC stock price into a file for viewing
	with Quote or whatever.

>Per

    Not having a tape library in our facility I do not know the answer to
    this but do they put locks on the doors of tape libraries ?

RE: .52

	But then the question of "do you have the right to re-publish that
	data to folks in DEC" comes into play.

							mike

    re:52
    
    	Perhaps someone that was updating QUOTE when it was in use can
    speak to this. Not sure if they were paying for the information or just
    relaying it from the Web, but QUOTE was being supplied the information
    from somewhere already. Perhaps that could be the automated feed ?
    
    	Ray
    

    Does this mean that I couldn't put a reply in this note saying that
    Digital stock is now upto $500 a share?  Am I violating the rule
    about giving out information without business controls?
    
    				-John
    
    DISCLAIMER: For those of you who might be on the phone to your broker,
    the $500 a share figure I used above is fiction, not true (though
    I wish), etc.

RE: .55/.56

	I just brought up the question. I didn't say either/or. 

							mike

re .43:

>    	What really amazes me is that the quote program was so poorly designed
>    so as to allow inputs from anyone that would change the stock price. Never 
>    had any cause to muck with it myself, but if it was so easy to do, I'm 
>    even more surprised this went 7.5 years without so much as a disclaimer. 

A little history behind how the Quote server came to be:

At one time there was an AP feed as well as an experimental VTX feed where DEC
(and other) stock prices were available.  The AP feed was cut off (I think it
wasn't authorized company-wide and AP got upset) and the VTX feed that got some
info off some satellite feed didn't work out or something, it vanished.  People
missed their "fix" of updated stock prices (just like now) and soon someone
started a note in the INVESTING conference where people could reply to the note
if they had a stock price to enter.  This was all unofficial prices but at
least there was a NODE::USER attached.  For obvious reasons this didn't work
out. (replies were often outdated in minutes and there was a threat of the note
growing to thousands of replies)

   To prevent this, I created a "blank" (deleted) note in ::INVESTING which had
no node::user attached.  The version of NOTES in use at the time allowed anyone
to change the title of such a note.  This "quote server" was simple: If you
had a quote, change the title of the special note to the latest quote.

Again totally unofficial but this time you couldn't tell who entered the quote
and often it was junk and often there was no time given.

This lasted a few months but this was at the time of the 1987 crash and soon
the slow DECnet link to the system was overloaded.  This is when Eric's/Jon's
quote_v0 came to be, as a much more efficient than reading a note, plus there
was no link people could sit on.

This was all unofficial, but at one point someone got a delayed ticker feed and
wrote a program that updated the quote quite often.  You weren't guaranteed
an official price but it was quite likely the quote you got was from the
feed.  This lasted until this person was TFSO'd, then it went back to the
"if you have a quote enter it" method.

-Mike

    re:58
    
    	Thanks for the explanation Mike. Again, I apologize for calling 
    someone's baby ugly. For what it was, it really did work pretty well.
    
    	The unfortunate thing was that it worked so well that it propogated
    its way onto various time-share systems. The instructions for its use
    were something like, "Look, if ya type QUOTE ya get the current stock
    price". In some cases, you didn't even get that much as I really did
    seen it as a menu item on a manufacturing system a while back.
    
    	Considering its potential for abuse, it was remarkably accurate the
    vast majority of the time. When it was off due to abuse, it was usually
    something quite ridiculous, although not quite as ridiculous as some of
    the prices mentioned in some of these replies ;-)
    
    	The incident mentioned in the INVESTING notesfile was a bit more
    believable. Someone bumped the price up 4-5 points. Still, up until the
    introduction of selling via VTX, you couldn't help but get the price
    from another source. The touch-tone system gives you the price before
    you sell any shares. I'm not sure when this gets updated, but VTX STOCK
    only shows the previous days close and the current days opening price. 
    
    	It doesn't happen very often, but I have seen the stock jump 4-5 
    points in a day. VTX would not reflect this, and it's possible that the
    touch-tone system wouldn't either, but if the three prices were close
    enough, I can see how someone could believe a 4-5 point spread. This is 
    especially true considering what the stock prices have done lately.
    
    	Ray

|	But then the question of "do you have the right to re-publish that
|	data to folks in DEC" comes into play.

	Comes back to the question: Who's going to pay. We had the same problem
	years ago when AP found out that their ''test'' connection was used
	by an almost world-wide population through VTX. They decided to
	confront Digital with the issue and asked for more money or for
	Digital to adhere to the license they'd signed. Digital decided to
	take AP off the net for a wide audience. Please fill me in, but I
	think AP was asking for $75K/year for the right to disseminate the
	information internally.

	On the other hand, a stock feed may not cost as much, beacuse it is
	not really news that require any editorial work. All they do is just
	broadcast it. And what we'd do is to relay the price of one single
	stock (out of thousands).

	>Per

    At Microsoft they use a service that transmits stock information via FM
    and they have a small box with a dipole antenna sitting next to a
    window.  That box connects to a terminal port in the wall.  The price
    is then available via a Windows appliation.

Re: .39 and many others

�    why anyone would make a decision to sell based on the quote program
�    seems incredible to me.

Well, each time I sold (parts of) my stock, I did this based on VTX and/or
QUOTE_V0. Both appeared as reasonable trustworthy, if not official information
sources. I only learned a couple of days ago, that quote_v0 was world writable.

On the other hand, the often suggested disclaimer should fix the problem.
Shutting down the server appears like pouring out the baby with the bath. At
least for informational/curiosity purposes, this seems to be a much cheaper
solution than to let everyone pass our firewall nodes to get to the appropriate
web server.

Hans.

>>Well, each time I sold (parts of) my stock, I did this based on VTX and/or
>>QUOTE_V0. Both appeared as reasonable trustworthy, if not official information

I trusted quote_v0 more than VTX!

>>On the other hand, the often suggested disclaimer should fix the problem.
>>Shutting down the server appears like pouring out the baby with the bath. At

I don't think you will find anyone going against you on this point.

bjm

    Re .63:
    
    >> Shutting down the server appears like pouring out the baby with
    >> the bath.

    > I don't think you will find anyone going against you on this point.
    
    Some idiot manager did.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

>>    > I don't think you will find anyone going against you on this point.
>>
>>    Some idiot manager did.

Good point, but since I don't put managers into the group as "anyone" (a great
many of them act like they are SOMEONE), my statement stand for 'the working
class' of Digital.

bjm

    re: 65 
    
    Classical class warfare - Managers < working class
    
    How about saying something constructive.

re: .66

>>    Classical class warfare - Managers < working class

I don't consider it warfare, just the way big business does business.  Its rare
to find an exception - but I'm still looking.

>>    How about saying something constructive.

When I think of something I will. 

bjm

    http://networth.galt.com/www/home/networth.html
    
    go to the NETworth Equities Center, register and
    use the free stock quote service. (all stocks available, 15 minute
    delay)
    
    The secapl server previously mentioned has a limited number of accesses
    available per node per day (like one).
    
    Jon
    

    
    
    the secapl has a node limit per day?
    
    I have job to pull the quote every 1/2 hour  
    and I've never had any problems except for busy 
    periods like 4pm est.
    
    besides that it's always been available to me as
    many times as needed??
    
    
    Bill

Besides, since you're accessing it from within the firewall (presumably) it 
doesn't know what your node is anyway. It sees all connections from with DEC's 
firewall as coming from about 5 notes (the nodes on which the proxy servers are 
running).

from livewire

Enhanced stock information available to employees
   
         Employees worldwide can now access information about Digital's 
   stock price in four different ways:  via LIVE WIRE's stock quote page 
   (choice No. 3 on the main menu page); by typing VTX STOCK at the local 
   system prompt; via the World Wide Web (for internal access only within 
   the Digital firewall); and a secure version of QUOTE_V0, to be named 
   QUOTE_V1.  
         To access stock information through the Web, select "Stock Quote"
   on the Digital Equipment Corporation Internal Home Page, which is located 
   at the following url: http://www.crl.dec.com/Digital/home.html.  You will 
   need access to a Web Browser such as Mosaic or Netscape to get access to 
   the Web.
         To access stock information through QUOTE_V1, the software must be
   installed on your system.  Information on how to install the software is
   located in the Digital Investing Notes file (NYOSS1::DIGITAL_INVESTING, 
   note 367.0).
         Stock information is updated every 15 minutes via an automated 
   feed from Dow Jones.  This provides for a secure environment from an 
   authorized source, with business controls in place.  Periodically, 
   Investor Services will audit the information off-line.
         Investor Services will continue to provide automated Touch-Tone
   telephone access for quotes, in addition to the on-line options noted
   above. 

                       FOR DIGITAL INTERNAL USE ONLY

    For WWW access, you can, of course, save a visit to the CRL/Digital
    home page by going directly to:
    
    	http://vtx-info.shr.dec.com:888/cgi-bin/vtx?f+stock
    
    This in turn goes to $VTX STOCK. You can go to an actual WWW page at:
    
    	http://www.nyo.dec.com/info/stockquote.html [a long-standing service]
    
    or an external page at:
    
    	http://www.spacecom.com:8001/cgi-bin/getquote?TICKER=DEC
    
    -Tom
                                                                             

When I announced a UDP (don't need DECnet) quote_v1 program last week I also
announced the web page I created to describe it.  A complete description of how
quote_v1 gets it quote and the program options is available via your WWW 
browser at:

http://hndymn.zko.dec.com/quote_v1.html

Brian J.

        <<< HUMANE::DISK$SCSI:[NOTES$LIBRARY]DIGITAL_INVESTING.NOTE;1 >>>
                             -< Digital Investing >-
================================================================================
Note 406.29  Quote_V1 V1.2 (including UDP based access and www page)    29 of 29
HNDYMN::MCCARTHY "A Quinn Martin Production"          5 lines   9-FEB-1996 06:19
                   -< quote server off line for the weekend >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ZKO2 will be without power on Saturday February 10th from 9 til 5.  I will be
giving HNDYMN some time off (I have no choice!) so the quote_v1 server will be 
unavailable during that time - and most likly during the entire weekend.

Brian