• Security Outlook Poor as 2008 Winds to Close

  December 16, 2008 Alex Woodie

  The state of IT security appears to be on the decline as 2008 comes to a merciful close. Microsoft just issued a massive number of patches one week ago, but it’s the one patch that wasn’t issued–for a zero-day flaw discovered in IE 7 just days before–that ruins the batch. Meanwhile, the global economic crises plods on as cyber pirates continue to ramp up their online schemes–events which have combined to form what IBM labeled a “perfect storm” of security threats. Happy holidays! Microsoft released eight security patches to resolve a total of 28 vulnerabilities last week, the final monthly

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• Video Rental Chain Taps Inovis for VAN

  December 16, 2008 Alex Woodie

  Rogers Plus, a chain of movie and video game rental stores in Canada, has turned over the managements of its Inovis EDI software to Inovis and its Inovisworks value added network (VAN), the vendor announced recently. Rogers Plus is expected to benefit through easier access to additional trading protocols as well as historic trading data, Inovis says. Rogers Plus owns and operates more than 300 stores that offer movie and video game rentals and cell phone services, making it the second largest video chain in Canada. (Blockbuster is the first.) The company is the retail division of Rogers Cable, which

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• ACOM Unveils Secure Laser Check Printer

  December 16, 2008 Alex Woodie

  Companies concerned about the security of their MICR check printing operations may want to check out ACOM Solutions latest laser check printer. The printer–a modified Xerox Phaser 3250 printer–offers enhanced security features like a three-way switch and security card that can disable check printing, enabling it to be used as a standard laser printer. ACOM’s new printer starts at $895 and is aimed at companies that need to print about 1,000 checks per month. What’s unique about the printer are the security features, such as the three-way switch that turns MICR on or off, or turns the printer off. Such

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• IBM Seeks Organic Solution to Power Systems Challenge, Global Warming

  December 16, 2008 Alex Woodie

  IBM and a team of Harvard university researchers launched a new initiative last week to develop and deliver power systems that utilize more efficient solar technology. The Clean Energy Project–the newest project to join the World Community Grid–seeks to tap into the computing power of millions of idle PCs and servers to crunch scientific data in the hopes of speeding the discovery of organic chemical compounds that have better electric properties than silicon, the main–but inefficient–ingredient in today’s solar panels. Current silicon-based solar cells are only about 20 per cent efficient and cost about $3 per watt of electricity

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• Four Ways to Avoid Problems Caused by Global Data

  December 10, 2008 Ted Holt

  Junior J. Programmer modifies an RPG program. His testing works properly. The user’s test works properly. The user approves the change, the modified program is installed, and everything is copasetic until a few months later when the program gets stuck in a loop. What happened, and why is Junior not entirely to blame? Here’s the code Junior added to the program: C 1 DO 5 X 1 0 C EXCEPT PLINE C ENDDO What could go wrong with such simple code? It turns out that the subroutine that contains Junior’s code is also conditionally and indirectly executed from another part

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• Where’s the Service Program?

  December 10, 2008 Hey, Ted

  We have two environments: a homegrown system for financials and a canned ERP system for manufacturing. We have written a service program containing subprocedures that access manufacturing data. This service program is stored in a library that is in the manufacturing system’s library list, but is not in the financial system’s library list. Now we need a financial program to use a routine from this service program. We add manufacturing libraries to the end of the finance library list when we create the finance program so the compiler finds the service program and binds to it. It would be nice

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• Admin Alert: The Dangers of User Profiles with Privileges

  December 10, 2008 Joe Hertvik

  Handling user profile authorities is one of the more critical i5/OS administrative duties. In particular, there are three crucial user parameters that must be set up correctly to prevent your users from inadvertently accessing objects and functions that they should not be using. Today, I’ll look at how you can work with these values to prevent several avoidable security pitfalls. The Hierarchy of User Authority Before you can work with user authorities, you must understand what they do. Here is the basic hierarchy of user profile security settings and how they relate to each other. System privileges–Eight user profile

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• A Better Kind of OCR Promised by Brainware

  December 9, 2008 Alex Woodie

  The advent of optical character recognition (OCR) technology has done much to speed the handling of documents. Without a way to digitize the information in documents, the paper crush would threaten to overwhelm. But OCR and related workflow technologies aren’t perfect, and often just shift the burden from manual paper shuffling to manual electronic document shuffling. A company called Brainware says it has way to lessen the e-document drudgery by truly automating the input and verification of any paper-based document, from the mailroom to the ERP system. For decades, visions of the paperless office have danced like sugarplum fairies in

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• Bug Busters Adds Remote Journaling to HA Offering

  December 9, 2008 Alex Woodie

  Bug Busters Software Engineering last week unveiled RSF-HA 8.3, a new release of its replication and high availability software for IBM i environments. The new release introduces support for remote journaling, which can ease replication task management and drive better performance, particularly in high volume environments, the company says. Bug Busters has been selling its Remote Software Facility product line for many years, but only in recent years has the Seattle, Washington, company altered the product to provide high availability functionality. Previously, RSF was used to chain AS/400s together for purposes such as distributing application upgrades. As the market for

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• PARADE Magazine Turns a Page with ASNA’s AVR and DataGate

  December 9, 2008 John Ghrist

  PARADE needed a more efficient method to replace many manual and time-consuming processes for laying out the magazine’s editorial and advertising contents. The time-honored tradition of one person manually preparing the publication for printing had become a bottle neck when making last minute changes. Recently, the publishing company turned to ASNA‘s AVR for .NET and DataGate for .NET tools to create a new system that lets advertising and editorial staff plan and build individual magazines online. PARADE is the most widely read magazine in the United States, appearing in more than 440 newspapers nationwide, with a circulation of 32

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