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  • Mad Dog 21/21: Sometimes You Eat the Bear, Sometimes Its Porridge

    May 18, 2009 Hesh Wiener

    The computer industry is desperately in need of Goldilocks goods and services in these bearish times, things that are not too big and not too small, things that are just right. Can there actually be such offerings when there’s not just one kind of customer, and when industry folk and pundits alike say business conditions are bad and getting worse? Some people think the answer is yes. These are the hardware, software, and services vendors behind those little computers called netbooks. In addition, there is another constituency: People who are buying these things by the millions.

    Once upon a time,

    …

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  • Peeling Apart IBM’s Q1 Server and Storage Sales

    May 18, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    Big Blue’s April Power Systems announcements hit just after IBM filed its financial results for the first quarter of 2009, and I have been too distracted by going through the announcements to do my quarterly analysis of the company’s server sales. I took some time on Saturday morning, plus some Advil and a whole lot of coffee, and came up with some revenue figures for IBM’s server and storage lines that fit the skinny bit of data IBM gives about sales each quarter.

    This is a maddening process, since each successive quarter of data reveals a bad assumption made in

    …

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  • IBM Shows Off Power6+ Performance on SAP, Lawson Apps

    May 18, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    IBM and its software business partners are putting the new Power6+ versions of the Power Systems i boxes announced on April 28 through the paces, and benchmark results are starting to come out.

    So far, I have been able to get my hands on some benchmarks coming out of SAP and Lawson, and it is debatable how useful these tests are considering the lack of comparative benchmarks available for other platforms. (And yes, IBM does this on purpose just to confound anyone trying to do such comparisons.) The benchmark tests are nonetheless useful if you want to do some

    …

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  • Memory and Disk Prices Slashed on Selected Power i Gear

    May 18, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    As part of the April 28 Power System i product line enhancements, IBM has decided to cut the memory, disk, and processor prices on selected models of its Power Systems lineup.

    It is hard to say for sure what IBM’s thinking is whenever it cuts prices, but there is little doubt in my mind that Big Blue is feeling the competitive pressure from Intel‘s “Nehalem EP” Xeon 5500 servers, which compete head-to-head against the Power 520 and Power 550 machines as well as their analogues in the Power blade lineup, the JS12, JS22, JS23, and JS43.

    Not every machine

    …

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  • Older Power Iron Starts Heading for the Dustbin

    May 18, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    With Power6+ systems in the market and Power7 machinery slated for next year, and with IBM’s supply chain expert (Bob Moffatt) in charge of its Systems and Technology Group, you can’t expect older gear to stay in the product line for very long.

    And so it comes as little surprise that IBM is already starting to wind down some Power6 iron. As part of the April 28 announcements, IBM said that starting July 1 it would stop selling 4.2 GHz Power6 processor boards and processor activations for them inside the original Power 570 server announced in the summer of 2007.

    …

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  • IBM developerWorks Becomes Socially Acceptable

    May 18, 2009 Dan Burger

    Sort of like a neighborhood within a city, IBM‘s developerWorks is a community within a community. It’s the locale, sort of like the local watering hole for the herds of thirsty developers seeking technical resources and answers to a spaghetti dish of gnarly conundrums. It’s an online source with a huge amount of content–from published articles to technology updates to individual experiences and expert commentary. It is shared through libraries, blogs, and forums. And now it is adapting to the social networking trend that IBM is certain will build on developerWorks’ already considerable success.

    The old developerWorks is becoming

    …

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  • More Idle Talk About IBM or Microsoft Buying SAP

    May 18, 2009 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    Last week there was chatter, once again, about either IBM or Microsoft acquiring software giant SAP. And both companies picked a different media outlet to shoot the rumors down.

    Steve Mills, the general manager of IBM’s Software Group, spoke to Fortune and tried to quash the recurring rumors, saying that Big Blue has “consistently shied away from going deep into the applications space” and that the company did not intend to change that strategy. Which could turn out to be one of the stupidest strategies that IBM has, now that Oracle is shelling out $5.6 billion to buy Sun

    …

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  • A Not-Quite-As-Sleepy RPG Program

    May 13, 2009 Hey, Ted

    Thanks for the information about the sleep API. On a recent project, we had a requirement to ensure that two operations were at least a microsecond apart, but a full second proved to be far too long. (Seconds add up quickly!) We created a DLYJOBSML (Delay Job for Small Duration) command and invoked the usleep API in the CPP.

    –Blair

    Like sleep, usleep also delays a job. The difference is that the usleep parameter denotes milliseconds, rather than whole seconds. You might say that sleep is like going to bed at night, whereas usleep only takes a nap.

    Here’s the

    …

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  • SQL’s Other Fetch Options

    May 13, 2009 Ted Holt

    I consider fetch a great word, and lament that it is no longer used in daily English, at least not where I live, except maybe when speaking to dogs. Fortunately, fetch is still used heavily in SQL. High-level language programs need it to convert set-at-a-time processing into row-at-a-time processing. Fetch can do more than read a result set from beginning to end. Do you know what else it can do?

    From Top to Bottom

    For starters, let’s look at the most common use of fetch–to read an SQL cursor from beginning to end. The following highly sophisticated demonstration program shows

    …

    Read more
  • Admin Alert: Four Ways To Encrypt i5/OS Backups,

    May 13, 2009 Joe Hertvik


    Part 1

    Backup media encryption is becoming a rapidly growing concern for companies that are dealing with ever increasing regulatory, legal, compliance, and identity theft prevention requirements. This issue and next, I’ll look at four techniques that i5/OS users have for encrypting backups for greater protection and to satisfy auditors and government agencies. I’ll explore what technologies are available, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of using each technology.

    What To Encrypt?

    Your first encryption decision involves specifying what you need to encrypt. In general, one or more of the following items need to be encrypted as they are

    …

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