• As I See It: Great Looking Genes

  October 8, 2007 Victor Rozek

  Ever since we began to understand the pivotal role of biology in behavior, the nature-or-nurture debate has been raging between proponents of the “hard” and “soft” sciences. Why are some people pleasant and some not? Why are certain co-workers more helpful than others? Alternately, why do some people delight in punishing and behaving cruelly? Are such traits an outgrowth of character; or are they inherited? Is it chance, luck, parenting, the mysterious workings of a deity; or is it the output of the human operating system we call genetics. As science unravels the complexities of the genome, we’re confirming what

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• The Never-Ending Story: Enterprise Software Integration

  October 8, 2007 Alex Woodie

  Say you wanted a fresh start in IT and had to pick an aspect of the business to work in. What would you choose? These days, hardware is a tough sell, ERP providers are consolidating, and too many professional services seem to end up outsourced to India. But if you chose enterprise software integration, you’d be rewarded with a never-ending demand for your software and skills, according to Martin Fincham, LANSA‘s general manager for the EMEA region. Fincham came to his realization in a round-about fashion, as is the case with any good realization. He had been working at

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• Patently Absurd: IBM Tries to Patent Outsourcing, Then Kills It

  October 8, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Sometimes, you have to laugh so you don’t cry. Last week, Barron’s, the weekend investment rag put out by Dow Jones and the companion to the Wall Street Journal, picked up on a story in the Westchester County, New York-based News Journal that detailed a patent application that IBM filed on July 12 concerning business methods to perform technical and economic analysis and recommend outsourcing options to customers. India is, of course, the hot spot for outsourcing in the IT sector these days. IBM already has 55,000 employees in India, having added 10,000 new jobs this year in

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• Lawson Profits on Booming Software Sales Despite U.S. Weakness

  October 8, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Midrange ERP software maker Lawson Software has finished up its first quarter of fiscal 2008, and has once again managed to pull down some profits despite what it calls some temporary weakness in the North American market. Lawson’s sales in the quarter, which ended on August 31, rose by 16 percent to $187.4 million, with sales up in the three major geographic regions–Americas, EMEA, and Asia/Pacific–where Lawson does business. In the quarter, Lawson’s software license fee sales rose by a remarkable 52 percent to $25.5 million. This is remarkable mainly because thanks to the acquisition of Intentia International, one of

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• BluePhoenix Hosts ASNAPalooza in San Antonio This Week

  October 8, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Software development tool maker ASNA may have recently merged with mainframe tool and integration software maker BluePhoenix Solutions, but as far as ASNA’s customers are concerned, the annual ASNApalooza conference for customers is going on this week in San Antonio, Texas, just like always. In fact, BluePhoenix and ASNA expect a record turnout for the event, which runs from October 8 though 10 at the Hyatt Regency along the famous Riverwalk in San Antonio. The event is expected to draw hundreds of IT managers, chief information officers, and programmers from all over the world. Anne Ferguson, who is chief

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• Gartner Warns IT Is Running Out of Space and Juice–Again

  October 8, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When you have a good drum and you are trying to get people to dance, you have to bang on it a lot. And so it is that IT consultancies and the trade press have been banging the drum concerning energy issues in the data center. Like everyone else–including IT Jungle for that matter–the analysts at Gartner are trying to suss out the energy and space issues in data centers and give people advice on how to cope. Back in December, Gartner made a prediction that by the end of 2008, 50 percent of the data centers in the world

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• What Are Else Are Employees Up To? Shopping Online During Con Calls

  October 8, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Last week, I told you about a survey commissioned by CareerBuilder.com that told of the shenanigans that employees in the American workforce admit to doing why they are at work–including sleeping on the job, kissing each other, backstabbing, and other office sports. This week, a survey by Bill Me Later, an online payment service provider that competes with eBay‘s PayPal and Google‘s Checkout services, and Ipsos Insight, a survey-based market research company, tells us all about the habits of employees as they shop online at work. While the CareerBuilder.com survey was based on data from 5,750

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• IFS Commands Give You Generic Access

  October 3, 2007 Bruce Guetzkow

  Note: The code accompanying this article is available for download here. Many i5/OS commands allow you to enter a generic name, such as OBJ*, to reference a collection of objects all beginning with the string OBJ. For example, the Delete File (DLTF) command allows you to delete a group of files using a generic name. Unfortunately there are some commands where generic names are not an option, like the Change Object Owner (CHGOBJOWN) command. The solution for some of these commands is to use their Integrated File System (IFS) equivalents. Starting at the

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• APIs Sometimes Fail (But Programmers Don’t Have To)

  October 3, 2007 Ted Holt

  My ambition is to eventually be as smart as my teenagers. Some days I think I’ll make it. After all, my old man became downright brilliant once I left home and had to start paying my own bills. On other days, like days when I try to write computer programs, I have the gravest of doubts. One of those days occurred recently, when I spent half a day trying to find a bug in my code. It turned out that a call to the Send Program Message API, QMHSNDPM, was failing, and I wasn’t bothering to check whether the

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• Admin Alert: Remotely Accessing an HMC System Console, Part 1

  October 3, 2007 Joe Hertvik

  The problem with i5/OS system consoles is that they are usually locked away in secured areas, and the only way that most people can use them is to go to the computer room. This week and next, I’ll demonstrate a technique for using a remote 5250 session to access a system console on the Hardware Management Console (HMC) without leaving your desk. Why Do I Need to Remotely Access My System Console? Most System i and iSeries administrators don’t mind walking to the computer room to use the system console if the console is in the same building, preferably on

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