It looks like IBM did not want for IBM i 7.1’s Technology Refresh 8 update to get lost in the shuffle of various Power Systems, operating system, and systems software announcements that are no doubt on the way with the impending launch of Power8 processors and systems that use them. Last week, IBM put out TR8 without nary a warning to the usual gang of suspects, including those of us here at the Four Hundred stack of newsletters.

As you can see from announcement letter 214-097, this is the first of what will be two TR updates for IBM

Last week’s revelation of the Heartbleed security vulnerability in OpenSSL took the world’s computing community by storm. Apparently, a bug introduced more than two years ago could enable hackers to eavesdrop on Web sessions encrypted with SSL or TLS, and thereby put people’s passwords at risk. Because of the widespread use of SSL and TLS in tens of millions of websites–not to mention IBM operating systems and application code–the situation has been dubbed a computing disaster of epic proportions.

The Heartbleed bug, also known as CVE-2014-0160 , was revealed to the world a week ago by security researchers at Codenomicon

Not every business problem is solved by the cloud or managed service providers or social media. That’s just like saying not all IBM i application development is dependent on a single language. Both statements are more true than false, but as has often been pointed out to me, each case is different. However, the commonalities are still to be found despite the ever present differences of opinion. How about application development from the Java point of view? Is it better or just different?

Last week I talked with Paul Holm about Java development and how he would describe the typical

Fifty years ago, the American computer industry had eight major participants. IBM had about two-thirds of the market; seven dwarfs shared the rest, and none of them is particularly important anymore. That is the nature of enterprise. Many companies prominent in the Dow Jones Industrial Average back in 1966 have faded. Looking back a century, only General Electric can be found in both the 1914 list and today’s roster. IBM didn’t make the DJIA until 1979 and it might not get a 100-year run. The way things are going, it might not even get half that far.

Charles H.

The cat is officially out of the bag. IBM is hosting a big launch event on April 28 and it is all about Power Systems. Well, and Watson and big data and analytics and the manufacturing operations at IBM Microelectronics, from the looks of the agenda. So it may be the long wait for Power8-based systems is finally over.

You can register for the online event at this link, and at the moment as we prepare to go to press, the specific time of the launch has not yet been announced for that Monday.

The agenda for the launch

April 1, 2014, marks the end of a publication, but the end of the “NEWS” culture ended not very long after Dave Duke sold his company, Duke Communications, to Penton Media.

The “corporate” mentality never understood or believed in the passion of NEWS’ editors, tech editors, contributors and readers and passionate and instrumental folks such as Dale Agger and I took advantage of exit opportunities when we saw where this was inevitably headed.

Looking back . . . at Dave Duke’s invitation, I joined Bob Tipton and Chuck Lundgren in 1986 to provide Dave with strategic advice on content in

Concerns about intellectual property infringement led Oracle‘s lawyers to force a JD Edwards support website to shut down. The UK-based website JDEREF.com says it agreed to pull down the content of its site after receiving a threatening letter from Oracle’s managing counsel about violations of Oracle’s copyright concerning database schemas for JD Edwards EnterpriseOne.

“It is with a heavy heart that I must inform you that jderef.com can no longer exist, having recently been served legal notice from Oracle regarding information copyright infringements relating to their product schemas,” the website’s webmaster posted to the site. “This is a bitter

The mainframe, as first embodied in the System/360 and carried forward to the System z, celebrated its 50th birthday last week. And while we technically do not cover the mainframe in this publication, the very fact that IBM created the mainframe and was paranoid about losing this fast-growing and lucrative business is perhaps the very reason that the IBM i platform as we know it exists.

I am not going to go through the entire history of the IBM mainframe line. So many others did that last week, and that is all interesting and fun reading. Over at EnterpriseTech,

IBM is sharpening the knife and plans to slice additional jobs as soon as next week, according to Lee Conrad, who has been organizing the Alliance@IBM local chapter of the Communications Workers of America union for decades.

As of Friday evening, Conrad estimated 500 employees at the Burlington, Vermont, chip plant would be terminated beginning April 14 or 15. These job losses have been expected since a report in February. Conrad was also expecting IBM job losses in New York to hit home with 250 employees this week. That number allows IBM to stay beneath the level that triggers the

Education has been the traditional pathway to opportunity, but this pathway doesn’t begin and end in classrooms. It’s more than classrooms. It’s more than textbooks and homework and tests. As many in the IT profession have discovered, the connection between education and career is enhanced by being part of a community. In the IBM i community, the COMMON user group plays an important role in career development through education. And the connection between education and career begins with a separate organization called the COMMON Education Foundation (CEF).

Bringing IT students to the COMMON Annual Meeting and Exposition is one of