RPG: A Great Language with a Greater History
by Brian Kelly

The RPG programming language is the favorite still of many young and old who toil in the IBM i environment. Amazingly, this language is pushing 50 years old. Though the IT world believes that RPG began with RPG I, there really was an RPG 0 in the pre-1960 era called FARGO, also known as 1401 (Fourteen-o-one) Automatic Report Generation Operation, and this was the immediate predecessor to RPG. READ MORE >

IBM Tweaks Power 570, 595 Deals Yet Again
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

If you can keep track of the constantly modifying and remodifying trade-in and rebate deals that IBM is offering to customers of various Power Systems iron, you are probably doing a lot better than IBM's own sales reps and its reseller channel, and you are definitely doing a lot better than me. There are several deals that all have the same basic shape that are running right now, and they are all aimed at giving customers who get new Power-based servers (or upgrade to them) some kind of deal. These deals keep getting tweaked, making it all that more confusing to keep track of them all. READ MORE >

Reconsidering SAN in Wake of SCSI Disk's End
by Alex Woodie

In 11 days, IBM will officially stop selling SCSI disks for System i and Power Systems servers, leaving serial attached SCSI (SAS) and solid state drives (SSD) as the only option for internal storage on the platform. While support for SCSI disks will continue through 2010, storage experts recommend taking a hard look at external storage and storage area networks (SANs), not only for enterprise customers with big workloads, but mid sized shops, too. READ MORE >

As I See It: Daniel, Part II
by Victor Rozek

There are now 6.3 million people receiving unemployment benefits, the vast majority engaged in a desperate race to find work before the benefits run out. For many, like Daniel, with a family and a mortgage, at best unemployment offers a tenuous lifeline, easily stretched to breakpoint by the expenses of day-to-day survival. But having lost his home and family, maintaining his unemployment eligibility became even more of an imperative for Daniel. READ MORE >