Four Hundred Monitor, February 21
February 21, 2018 Dan Burger
Artificial intelligence (AI) may be the goose that laid the golden egg, with promises of systems endowed with the intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience. But there are seldom talked about dangers that could cook your goose. Pay attention to regulatory compliance, law, privacy, and ethics as you integrate AI into your systems.
Class action lawsuits are barking at the heels of Intel stemming from the handling of the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. These stories, plus tips on communications skills that aid project planning, make it into Monitor this week.
Top Stories From Outside The Jungle
(CIO) AI presents a wide range of hidden dangers for companies, especially in areas such as regulatory compliance, law, privacy, and ethics. There is little visibility into how AI and machine learning technologies come to their conclusions in solving problems or addressing a need, leaving practitioners in a variety of industries flying blind into significant business risks.
(ZDNet) Intel says it faces 32 class action lawsuits over its handling of the Meltdown and Spectre CPU vulnerabilities. As of February 15, 2018, 30 customer class action lawsuits and two securities class action lawsuits have been filed. The securities class action suits represent people who bought Intel stock between July 27, 2017 and January 4, 2018. These lawsuits allege that Intel and certain officers violated securities laws by making statements about Intel’s products and internal controls that were revealed to be false or misleading. Three law suits appear to relate to Intel CEO Brian Krzanich selling $24 million in stock and options in November, two months before the bugs were publicly disclosed. Google reported the bugs privately to Intel in June 2017, about four months before Krzanich set up the stock-sale plan.
(Harvard Business Review) It’s frustrating to work with someone who doesn’t listen. Especially when pushing ideas as big as IBM i modernization. It could be a co-worker or a manager. To make things work out better, make sure your colleagues feel heard and understood by validating their points. Stress the importance of your message before launching into the conversation. More useful tips can be found in this article.
(CIO) While algorithms are fascinating and metrics are important, what’s been trending in our good old-fashioned personal conversations with CIOs and some leading technology providers is a need to communicate solutions to business challenges in non-IT speak.
Redbooks, White Papers, and Other Resources
(ARCAD Blog) The technical definition for source code management includes version control and revision control. That doesn’t tell you much. Truth be told, it looks different depending on your goals and the scope of the development staff.
(HelpSystems) The annual IBM i Marketplace Survey is one of the most cited references for data about the IBM i installed base. It measures Power System hardware releases, operating system releases, user concerns, development preferences, and many additional metrics. The 2018 report features data collected in late 2017.
(Rocket Software) “9 Ways to API-Enable Host-Based Enterprise Apps” is an E-book that describes building application programming interfaces (APIs) that provide real-time access to enterprise app functionality without invasive and potentially risky changes to the code.
(IBM) Full IBM support for i 7.1 will cease in April. Will you be upgrading to 7.2 or 7.3? Read the official 7.1 withdrawal announcement from IBM and check out the information on OS upgrades that is available here.
(Seiden Group) The Git trend makes perfect sense as IBM i teams adopt languages such as PHP, JavaScript, and Python to develop Web user interfaces, APIs, and other functionality. That said, Git also supports the traditional IBM i language, RPG.
(Profound Logic) This survey of the IBM i community is focused on modernization projects completed and projected. Among its findings are that more businesses have upgraded to the latest versions of IBM i and RPG compared to last year and that companies remaining on the platform are embracing options to optimize IBM i for their modern enterprise. There’s plenty here to discover and discuss.
(CEF) The COMMON Education Foundation (CEF) has added a new video library containing live-session recordings from COMMON Conferences and webcasts. Business development and technical development topics, presented by respected authorities, are included in the new library, which is available 24×7.
Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings
February 21 — Westbury, New York – The Long Island Systems Users Group monthly meeting will include two presentations by Architect for Open Source and Java on IBM i Jesse Gorzinski. At 5 p.m., Gorzinski will discuss open source utilities supported by IBM i. At 7 p.m., he will explain the integration opportunities between IBM i and Watson. In between the sessions is time for networking, cocktails, and dinner. LISUG meetings are held at the Westbury Manor located at 1100 Jericho Turnpike.
February 22 — Parsippany, New Jersey – Guest speaker Jesse Gorzinski, architect for open source and Java on IBM i will discuss open source tools at the meeting of the Northeastern Systems Technology Users group. Topics will include various ways to edit open source code on IBM i, accessing and using shells, and how to be a productive open source user and developer. The event begins at 5 p.m. and will be held at the Spice Grill located at 111 US-46.
February 22 — Webinar – “Building and Sharing RDi Templates to Improve Developer Productivity” is an online session that’s free to COMMON members and $99 for non-members. The session focus is on improving productivity by reusing code created by others. Using Rational Developer for i to create templates and snippets and share them with other developers will be discussed. The presenter is Ray Everhart of Fresche Solutions. His presentation begins at noon Central Time. Non-member register procedure begins with the link to “Create a new account” on the registration page.
February 24 — Costa Mesa, California – A one-day workshop featuring HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is being hosted by the OCEAN user group. The agenda includes elements and attributes of HTML; a hands-on HTML lab session; cascading style sheets including cascading, selectors, menus and declaration; a hands-on CSS lab; JavaScript, including synchronous and asynchronous functions; and some hands-on JavaScript coding. The educational day includes breakfast and lunch. The sessions will be presented by Patrick Behr, a professional programmer, analyst, designer and integrator of new applications featuring modern RPG, SQL and database design. The program begins with breakfast at 8 a.m. The event will be held at National University located at 3390 Harbor Boulevard. Registration fees are $50 for OCEAN members and $75 of non-members.
February 26 through March 8 — Six European cities – The IT Leadership Forum is an opportunity to meet and hear from leading IBM i experts, industry thought leaders, other IT executives and special guests from IBM. Discussion topics will include how IBM i shops are innovating for the future, overcoming modernization challenges and leveraging existing systems to build a solid strategy for IT. There will be an emphasis on prioritizing initiatives pertaining to security, improving agility and developing a forward-looking IT strategy. Key speakers include Alison Butterill, Trevor Perry, Mike Pavlak, Emmanuel Tzinevrakis, Donnie MacColl, and Pascal Polverini. The events are hosted by Fresche Solutions.
February 27 — Itasca, Illinois – A discussion on PHP 7 will be the highlight of the monthly meeting of the OMNI User Group. This session will explore multiple features of PHP 7, as well as highlight those features/functions from earlier versions of PHP that are deprecated in the latest version. Additionally, the session will examine migration strategies for moving from PHP version 5 to version 7. Details of how separate subsystems for version 7 and version 5 of the PHP engine on IBM i can be leveraged to perform a step-wise migration of your PHP application(s) will be included. Guest speaker is Erwin Early, a consultant for Rogue Wave Software. The meeting begins at 5 p.m. with registration and networking, followed by dinner at 6, and the business meeting and presentation at 7. It will take place at the Fox and Turtle Restaurant located in 400 East Orchard Street in the Itasca Country Club.
March 6 — Toledo, Ohio – A one-day seminar featuring the new Power9 hardware and Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.2 and 7.3, along with an overview of Db2 Web Query and the backup to disk or the cloud is being hosted by DMC Technology Group. These topics will be discussed from 8:30 a.m. until noon. After lunch, there will be a Db2 Web Query workshop from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. The event will be held at the Inverness Club located at 4601 Dorr Street.
March 7 — Beachwood, Ohio – A one-day seminar featuring the new Power9 hardware and Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.2 and 7.3, along with an overview of Db2 Web Query and the backup to disk or the cloud is being hosted by DMC Technology Group. These topics will be discussed from 8:30 a.m. until noon. After lunch, there will be a Db2 Web Query workshop from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. The event will be held at the Embassy Suites Hotel located at 3775 Park East Drive.
March 13 -15 — Delavan, Wisconsin – The Wisconsin Midrange Computing Professionals Association Spring Technical Conference is the largest conference in the Midwest. It features more than 50 informative presentations on current topics such as SQL, PHP, RPG, .NET and IBM administration. The tech conference includes a vendor expo and is hosted by the Lake Lawn Resort.
March 19-22 — Las Vegas, Nevada – Think 2018 is a new IBM conference that highlights topics such as IT transitions to the cloud, data and analytics, application development, IBM research, the Internet of Things, IT infrastructure, mobile, security, collaboration, and Watson. Programs available for C-level executives, IT managers, developers, and academics.
March 19 & 20 — Dallas, Texas – IBM i Chief Architect Steve Will and a select group of CIOs will be discussing the potential of modern IBM i applications during the IBM i CIO Summit. The CIO Summit is an executive-level forum facilitating the exchange ideas in a confidential setting where they can talk candidly about the challenges they face and to learn what works for their peers. Conversation will be supplemented by brief talks on select topics such as staffing, how to attract young RPG developers, and IBM i direction. The CIO Summit is a free, by-invitation-only event open to a limited number of CIOs or IT directors whose IT staff includes developers.
March 20-22 — Dallas, Texas – The twice-a-year, spring and fall, RPG & DB2 Summit returns to the Southwest for its next technical conference with an agenda of in-depth sessions that covers new and traditional topics. In addition to the three-day Summit, an optional fourth day of hands-on workshops provide intensive education into popular IBM i development technologies.
April 23-25 — Framingham, Massachusetts – The Northeast IBM i User Group Conference features more than 70 educational sessions in seven skills categories. It offers the opportunity to learn about new technologies, engage with vendors to discuss packaged software advancements, hear IBM i executives and lead developers discuss products and roadmaps for the platform, and gain knowledge that can benefit your company and your career. The user groups that combine to organize this conference come from the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
May 20-23 — San Antonio, Texas – PowerUp 18 (formerly the COMMON Annual Meeting and Exposition) is the largest IBM i educational event of the year. It includes more than 300 sessions related to IBM i, as well as AIX and Linux. Open source, high availability, security, DB2, and application development are a few of the popular skill-building topics. The agenda includes all-day pre-conference workshops, open labs, and a wide variety of lecture-type sessions presented by subject matter experts. Pre-conference workshops (May 19) are also planned.
