TFH Volume: 28 Issue: 29 Archives

The Platform Matters More Than Ever, The Operating System Less So

April 16, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Those of us who have been in the IBM midrange for three or four decades are so used to thinking about systems and application platforms for so long it is hard to remember that this sort of thinking is fairly new to the rest of the IT community that did not grow up on proprietary mainframes or midrange gear. Platforms matter more than ever and continue to evolve, but that core operating system – the basic kernel that runs on a processor and has some management features on it – is changing very slowly.

This is not a bad thing. …
Read more
IBM Patches Samba Vulnerabilities In IBM i

April 16, 2018 Alex Woodie

Big Blue has issued two patches for serious flaws in IBM i’s implementation of Samba, flaws that could result in an attacker launching a denial of service attack or changing user’s passwords. The company patched IBM i 7.2 and 7.3, as support for IBM i 7.1 wanes.

On April 3, IBM published a security bulletin informing users of the existence of two flaws in IBM i, as well as the existence of two program temporary fixes (PTFs) to patch the problems. Both of the flaws involve Samba, a free and open source implementation of the SMB/CIFS protocol to provide interoperability …
Read more
Guru: RDi and Refactoring

April 16, 2018 Ted Holt

When I first heard the term refactoring, I thought, “So that’s what they call it.” I had been refactoring for years, my only tools being SEU and a compiler listing. I learned a long time ago that refactoring is often necessary to enhance code, especially poorly written code. Another reason I often refactor is to better understand poor code.

To refactor means to rewrite source code without changing its external behavior. Due to all the “legacy” source code (RPG II, RPG III, fixed-form RPG IV, OCL, etc.) in IBM i shops, the ability to refactor source code is a …
Read more
As I See It: The Curse Of The Clever

April 16, 2018 Victor Rozek

By all accounts, Neville Chamberlain was a clever man. Clever enough to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. But it turned out he was also stunningly naïve, signing the Munich Agreement granting Germany the right to annex the Czech Sudetenland in return for a promise of peace, thus emboldening one of history’s great monsters, Adolf Hitler.

The consequences of extreme cleverness and dangerous naiveté play out across the entire spectrum of human interactions, but are perhaps most visible in politics and business. The pursuit of power and money invites troves of uber-clever people who all too soon become enamored …
Read more
Tesla Teases IBM i Software Vendor Into Some Experimental Coding

April 16, 2018 Dan Burger

First of all, let me assure you this is not Car & Driver. You’re going to hear about a car and a driver, but the resemblance stops there. The driver is Alex Roytman and the car is a Tesla Model 3. I’d describe the car as a “cross-over” because it appeals to driving enthusiasts and technology geeks. I’d describe Roytman as an enthusiast, more so in the second category than the first.

Loyal IT Jungle readers are familiar with Roytman because he’s the CEO of Profound Logic, an IBM i modernization company specializing in Web and mobile application …
Read more

The Platform Matters More Than Ever, The Operating System Less So

IBM Patches Samba Vulnerabilities In IBM i

Guru: RDi and Refactoring

As I See It: The Curse Of The Clever

Tesla Teases IBM i Software Vendor Into Some Experimental Coding

Content archive

Recent Posts

Subscribe

Pages

Search