Possibly the greatest spam item ever

'We Apologize for the delay of your payment and all the Inconveniences and hiccups that we might have caused you. However, we were having some minor problems with our payment system, which is Inexplicable, and have held us stranded and Indolent, not having the Prerequisite to devote our 100% endowment in accrediting foreign payments.'

'stranded and Indolent' sounds like something out of Tristram Shandy.

What's so terrible about charging for content?

There's again been a lot of discussion in the media recently about charging for digital content.

Many otherwise law-abiding people clearly think it's perfectly acceptable to obtain a free copy of chargeable content.

The issue gets mixed up with perennial (and often justified) moans about the ridiculous prices charged by the recording industry for CDs.

But it seems pretty simple to me. A.com publishes some content. B wants to access it. A.com is entitled to charge whatever it likes. If B doesn't like the charge, tough, they don't get to access the content. If A.com overcharges, its revenues will be affected. If A.com charges a reasonable amount for a good product, its bank manager is happy, and so is B.

I am, admittedly, rather biased. I work in the software industry. I come from a family of publishers and am married to a sheet music publisher. I spent many years acting as librarian for a choir, and being aware that if we were caught photocopying music it would be the librarian who got the rap.

When people purchase choral music as downloads from my husband's website, they almost invariably buy only one copy - the exceptions shine out. So are these purchasers of single copies sharing a single score? I think not. For some reason they think printing multiple copies acceptable, despite the clear indication on the website that one purchase equals one print. If they bought a printed copy of a score from Barenreiter or Oxford, would they think it acceptable to photocopy it for 30 choir members? Almost certainly not.

I don't want to sound holier than thou. In my early youth I did copy LPs to tape, because I couldn't afford to buy them, and I did photocopy music, for the same reason. But now, if I want to listen to a CD but I don't want to buy it, I can look it up on Spotify and listen legally and free of charge; I just have to put up with extraordinarily banal advertisements. If I want to listen to something right away and it's not on Spotify, I do have to pay, but I can download it on demand - I don't have to wait for the record shop to open. If I want a piece of choral sheet music but I don't want to buy it, I try the Choral Public Domain Library; I may not get such a good edition; tough.

Publishers are not, generally, in the business of diddling people. They are in the business of preparing content that people want, presenting it in a high quality way, and expecting a reasonable return. What justification can people possibly have for bypassing this? No more than they would have for walking into Waitrose and stealing a banana.

2009 Logicalis IT Forum Trip to Rochester, Minnesota, 15-20 September

This year's Logicalis IT Forum trip to Rochester, Minnesota is scheduled for 15-20 September (travelling out on the Tuesday morning, getting back around lunchtime on the Sunday).

We will be in the Executive Briefing Center, now in the blue buildings, for all three days of sessions (Wednesday 16th, Thursday 17th, Friday 18th).

Here's the current draft agenda:

Wednesday 16 September
9:00 AM Welcome - John Rathke, Briefing Project Manager for Europe and Latin America
9:10 AM IBM Dynamic Infrastructure - Kurt Rump, Consulting IT Specialist
9:40 AM IBM i Update and Directions, including hardware and IBM i V6R1 update - Kurt Rump
10:40 AM Break
11:00 AM IBM i - Beyond 6.1 - Steve Will, Chief Architect, IBM i
12:00 PM Luncheon
1:15 PM Virtualization - AIX, Linux, XIV, VIOS, Blades - Nick Harris, Consulting IT Specialist
2:45 PM Break
3:05 PM Backup and Recovery Update - Debbie Saugen, IBM Rochester

Thursday 17 September
8:20 AM Continental Breakfast
8:40 AM Portable Utilities - Fant Steele, Advanced Technical Support
9:10 AM Application Development Directions
10:25 AM Break
10:45 AM DB2 Update (to include Omnifind) - Michael Cain, DB2 for i5/OS Lab Services Co-Chair
12:05 AM Luncheon
01:05 PM IBM Systems Director - Greg Hintermeister, User Experience Imagineer and IBM Master Inventor
2:25 PM Break
2:45 PM Security Update - Terry Ford, Project Manager, Security Services Delivery

Friday 18 September
8:40 AM Continental Breakfast
9:00 AM Marketing Update - Ian Jarman, Manager, Power Systems
9:45 AM Break
10:00 AM Smart Business Update - Mike Smith, Distinguished Engineer, STG Software Architecture/Strategy
11:00 AM Break
11:15 AM Energy Management - Brad Brech, Distinguished Engineer, STG Software Architecture/Strategy
12:15 PM Luncheon
1:15 PM Cloud Computing - Dave Gimpl, Software Architect
2:15 PM Break
2:35 PM Web Support Update - Paula Fulton, Executive IT Specialist - Technical Sales and Support

We can probably also arrange a Plant and/or Benchmark Center Tour for those who are interested.

Please let Sharon Ferguson or me know ASAP if you are interested in attending the trip. Current IT Forum members may send one delegate within the subscription (flights, hotel accommodation, and meals are covered). If others are interested, please speak to Sharon or me re costs. A current IT Forum Confidential Disclosure Agreement is required (I can arrange these).

We would anticipate flying Heathrow-Minneapolis direct (NWA), and then hiring cars (volunteers to drive are always very welcome). We normally stay at the Hawthorn Suites, very close to the labs, and move to the Minneapolis Airport Marriott (100 yards from the Mall of America) on the Friday night.

I will organise some sort of outing on the Friday night and/or Saturday, and there will be plenty of free time before we fly out on Saturday evening. The Minnesota Twins are playing at home on the Friday night. A riverboat trip is also a possibility.

My contact details:
Email mandy.shaw@iperimeter.co.uk
'Phone 01225 436302

Logicalis Power Systems Forum: Wroxall Abbey, 7/8 July: External Storage for System i, led by Dave Painter, Senior IT Specialist, IBM Europe

Given IBM's major change of strategic direction in this area, we have decided to focus on External Storage for System i at our next Logicalis Power Systems Forum meeting on Wednesday 8 July at Wroxall Abbey (near Solihull).

Dave Painter, IBM Europe's top specialist in this area, will be leading the session.

The agenda is as follows:

• System i storage: present and future
  
• External storage attach fundamentals
  
• Hardware options and connectivity
  
• Migration
  
• High availability and disaster recovery with external storage (to include coverage of Power HA/Toolkit)
  
• External storage with AIX and Linux partitions and Virtual I/O Server
  
• Planning and sizing for external storage attach
  
• Hints, tips and examples
  

We will also be taking the opportunity to discuss IBM's new XIV Information Systems product. This revolutionary architecture is specifically designed to mitigate the impact of hardware failures while supporting high levels of scalability. It maximizes storage utilization with data spread across all drives, allowing for easier management and configuration, reduced energy consumption and autonomic performance tuning, all while presenting a simple user interface. This additional session will be led by John Brooker of IBM.

If you are interested in attending, please let me know (mandy.shaw@iperimeter.co.uk or 01225 436302).

If you haven't come across the Logicalis Power Systems Forum (IT Forum) before, here's some information about it:

Logicalis' Power Systems Forum is a community of large-scale System i users interested in the application of the i operating system on the Power Systems platform from both business and technical perspectives.

The Power Systems Forum is enabled by Logicalis' strong relationships within IBM's Rochester, Minnesota i development labs and has been in existence since 1995 to address a wide range of issues relevant to the UK's largest System i users and to provide the opportunity to exchange views and ideas with other people running similar large i installations.

We aim to give members the information they need for budgeting and to provide a direct and regular conduit to the Rochester labs, influencing development strategies and giving the labs important feedback on the issues facing large users.

The Forum, which is subscription based, meets four times a year, annually visiting IBM Rochester. Each member organisation signs a confidential disclosure agreement with IBM Rochester, allowing our speakers to share future plans.

A few recent topics:
April 2009: SOA and enterprise Web 2.0 Development Options for System i, Kurt Rump, Executive Briefing Center, IBM Rochester, and Jon Mell of Headshift.
July 2008: To DBA or not to DBA: that is the question, Barry Thorn, BI Spectrum.
April 2008: Regulatory compliance in a System i environment, Thomas Barlen, Consulting IT Specialist, System i Security, IBM Europe, and Lewis Honour, Security Practice Manager, Logicalis UK.
December 2007: Business Applications of Unified Communications, Mark Adams, Unified Communications Practice Manager, Logicalis UK.
April 2007: IBM's strategy for System i, Mike Smith, System i Software Chief Engineering Manager, IBM Rochester.

A font with a mind of its own

I've just, very painfully, modified the Ashton Singers website (http://www.ashtonsingers.hampshire.org.uk/) to have a nice blue background and an even nicer logo (both courtesy of the choir's resident graphic designer) ... so far so very good ... and to use Garamond. Oh dear. Garamond is a lovely font for printing - I did the last concert programme in it & it looked miles more professional that any other programme I have ever done - but it really doesn't work well on the screen, especially in small sizes - I think this is partly because the letters are made of very thin strokes. The actual size doesn't seem to go up linearly with the point size. The italic is very small and very narrow (unless you apply bold to it, when it suddenly becomes enormous). All very strange.

I promise this is my last rant this month ...

Why do people post stuff like this (this particular one is off the BleedYellow blog)?

'Test Blog
This is test for to Publish on Blogging.'

If you want to start blogging, why not wait until you have something to say? Meaningful content provides just as good a test. Otherwise please don't waste our bandwidth. Would you 'phone someone you didn't know and say 'sorry, just testing'?

Worst moment so far as a Saints fan ... approx 7.15pm yesterday

Leon Crouch came on 5 Live and managed to sound
a) naive
b) inarticulate
and, worse, to expose the labyrinthine workings of the so called brains at St Mary's in a way that made the actions of the Football League seem completely reasonable.
Having said which, relegation and the loss of 10 points may yet seem minor problems.