January
2008
SPARTA
PresidentÕs Corner
by Brad Carson
Welcome to 2008, it's January and we've had some snow in
As I am writing this, we are migrating our Production hardware to a new EMC
DMX-4 DASD tower in RTP. Once we have this completed we will have our
production data behind all 4 Gig FICON channels. Sometime this year we will
begin to replicate the RTP DMX-4 to our Burlington DMX-4 for Disaster Recovery
purposes. I know that there will be more on this in the future.
In December we had a very successful DR test using the
I am still interviewing DB2 candidates for my open position at LabCorp and hope
to be making an offer to someone soon. I'll be glad when we get someone hired
for this. We are using a contractor to help us right now. That DB2 version 7
end of service date is getting closer and closer.
This month our presentation will be by William Bloemeke from SAS Institute,
with a "how it works" talk about SAS Fraud Management. I look forward
to seeing you all on the 29th at SAS in
Future Speakers
(subject to change)
Jan. 29 SAS Fraud Management by William Bloemeke of SAS (Special
Meeting Location: Building F at SAS in
Feb. 26
Mar. 25 Hurricanes Ice Hockey game at the RBC in
We need ideas and volunteers for future speakers. Presentations donÕt have to
be fancy, just informative and interesting. Even a 5 or 10 minute talk can
start an interesting interaction. Contact Ron Pimblett by phone as noted below.
2007-2008
SPARTA
Board of Directors
Brad Carson - President
LabCorp 336-436-8294
3060 S. Church St.
Burlington, NC 27215
Ron Pimblett - Vice President
Dignus, LLC 919-676-0847
8354 Six Forks Road
Raleigh, NC 27615
Mike Lockey - Secretary
Guilford Co. Information Services 336-641-6235
201 N. Eugene St.
Greensboro, NC 27401
Tommy Thomas - Treasurer
LabCorp 336-436-4178
231 Maple Ave, Koury Ctr 3rd Fl. 919-361-7267
Burlington, NC 27215
Ed Webb - Communications Director
SAS Institute 919-531-4162
SAS Campus Drive
Cary, NC 27513
Meetings
Meetings are scheduled for the last Tuesday evening of each month (except
no meeting in December), with optional dinner at 6:15 p.m. and the meeting
beginning at 7:00 p.m.
These monthly meetings usually are held at LabCorpÕs Center for Molecular
Biology and Pathology (CMBP) near the
Call for Articles
If you have any ideas for speakers, presentations, newsletter articles, or are
interested in taking part in a presentation, PLEASE contact one of the Board of
Directors with your suggestions.
Newsletter e-Mailings
The
February 2006 CBT Tape Online
The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V471 (dated February 28, 2006)
are available from www.cbttape.org.
If you need help obtaining one or more files, contact Brad Carson at
LabCorp or Ed Webb at SAS (see Board of DirectorÕs list for contact info).
Minutes of the November 27, 2007 Meeting
¥Meeting was called to order at 7:00 PM by Brad Carson, the Chapter President.
¥The meeting was held at LabCorp in
¥Sixteen (16) people were present; twelve (12) were members.
¥Everyone in the room introduced themselves, told where they worked, and
briefly described their job function and recent happenings at work.
¥The minutes of October 2007 meeting were accepted as published in the November
2007 newsletter.
¥Tommy Thomas, the Chapter Treasurer, gave the Treasurer's report. As of
November 18, 2007, the balance is $1110.34. Motion was made and approved to
accept the Treasurer's Report as published in the November 2007 newsletter.
OLD BUSINESS
¥Articles are needed for this newsletter. If you would like to write an article
for this newsletter, please contact Ed Webb. Keep in mind that you don't really
need to write the article; it can be an article that you read that you would
like to share with the membership.
¥The SPARTA Web site is available. To access the SPARTA Web site, point your
Web browser to this URL: http://www.spartanc.org. Please send any
comments or suggestions about the Web site to Mike Lockey. Be sure to check the
site every once in a while to see any new or changed information.
¥Brad Carson reminded everyone to keep the conference room clean.
NEW BUSINESS
¥Future Speakers and Topics:
(subject to change)
January 2008 SAS Fraud Management (meeting at SAS)
February 2008
March 2008 - Ice Hockey at the RBC
If you have suggestions about speakers and topics, contact Ron Pimblett.
¥The January 29th
¥Food for the January meeting will be sandwich platter, drinks, and dessert.
¥Thanks to Tommy Thomas for hosting the meeting.
¥Motion was made, seconded, and passed to attend a hockey game for the March
25th meeting. Tickets will be $15 with
¥The business portion of the meeting ended at 7:45 p.m.
¥Speaker Rob Scott and Terri Bonee of Rocket Software presented information and
a live demo of MXI G2.
Some of the topics from the presentation were:
MVS Extended Information Generation 2
A rich set analytical tools
Provides systems programmers with ready access to critical system information
Can kill a subtask or address space
64-bit support
Out of the box monitoring of important events
Panels are configurable
Can use access via optional keywords and pop-up menus
Obtain formatted DSECT view of memory
Historical information is available.
DB2 tools for IBM and backup programs
Obtain information about private region usage
REXX interface
Demo was given and many examples displayed from a live system.
For more details, see the handout from Rob Scott.
¥The meeting was adjourned at 8:50 p.m.
TreasurerÕs Report for January 2008
contributed by Tommy Thomas
The balance in the account is $ 1040.35 as of January 13, 2008.
Financial Report
3/01/2007 through 01/13/2008
|
INCOME |
|
|
Opening Balance |
1149.11 |
|
Dues |
600.00 |
|
Misc. |
0.00 |
|
TOTAL INCOME |
$1749.11 |
|
|
|
|
EXPENSES |
|
|
Food |
593.77 |
|
Petty Cash |
|
|
Bank Service Fees |
|
|
P.O. Box |
0.00 |
|
Hurricane Tickets |
180.00 |
|
Web Site |
|
|
TOTAL EXPENSE |
$813.77 |
|
|
|
|
BANK BALANCE |
935.34 |
|
PETTY CASH($175) |
105.11 |
|
TOTAL CASH |
$1040.35 |
Items of Interest
contributed by Tommy Thomas and Chris Blackshire
Jan. 29- Subs
Feb. 26 - Chicken
Mar 25 - RBC Hockey
Apr 29 - BBQ
May 20 - Pizza (May 27 = Memorial week)
June 24 - Chicken
July 29 - Subs
Aug. 26 - BBQ
Sept. 30 - Pizza
Oct. 28 - Chicken
Nov. 18 - Subs (Nov. 25 = Thanksgiving week)
A New Mainframe?
contributed by Ed Webb
New mainframe next month according to this online article: http://go.techtarget.com/r/2939899/567195
In February, IBM is expected to announce its "next-generation
mainframe." IBM CFO Mark Loughridge said the new version will be energy
efficient and have more capacity than the current System z9.
Brown Goes Green
contributed by Ed Webb
United Parcel Service's Tier 4 data center goes green according to this online
article: http://go.techtarget.com/r/2939901/567195 The
facilities team at United Parcel Service's data center in
In part two of this case study, we explore United Parcel Service's water-side
economizer use and other power-saving cooling strategies.
Time Warner Tests Internet Usage-based
Billing
contributed by Chris Blackshire
Company said it will try new billing with subscribers in Beaumont, Texas
Thurs., Jan. 17, 2008
NEW YORK - Time Warner Cable Inc. said on Wednesday it is planning a trial to
bill high-speed Internet subscribers based on their amount of usage rather than
a flat fee, the standard industry practice.
The second largest U.S. cable operator said it will test consumption-based
billing with subscribers in Beaumont, Texas later this year as a part of a
strategy to help reduce congestion of its network by a minority of consumers
who pay the same monthly fee as light users.
The company believes the billing system will impact only heavy users, who
account for around 5 percent of all customers but typically use more than half
of the total network bandwidth, according to a company spokesman.
Slowing network congestion due to downloading of large media files such as
video is a growing problem for Time Warner Cable. The company said the problem
will worsen as video downloading becomes more popular.
But the move could prove controversial. Unlike with utility bills such as the
phone or electricity, which have traditionally been based on usage,
Time Warner Cable, which has 7.4 million residential Internet subscribers, is
hoping the move will not confuse consumers if introduced nationwide and is
planning a trial period.
"Largely, people won't notice the difference," said the Time Warner
Cable spokesman. "We don't want customers to feel they're getting less for
more." News of Time Warner Cable's plans was originally leaked on an
online industry forum BroadbandReports.com.
Other cable operators may follow Time Warner Cable's lead and phone companies
such as Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. are likely to be watching
the New York-based cable operator's plans.
As
Has AT&T Lost Its Mind?
contributed by Chris Blackshire
A baffling proposal to filter the Internet.
By Tim Wu
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2008, at 10:15 AM ET
Chances are that as you read this article, it is passing over part of
AT&T's network. That matters, because last week AT&T announced that it
is seriously considering plans to examine all the traffic it carries for
potential violations of
No one knows exactly what AT&T is proposing to build. But if the company
means what it says, we're looking at the beginnings of a private police state.
That may sound like hyperbole, but what else do you call a system
designed to monitor millions of people's Internet consumption? That's not just
Orwellian; that's Orwell.
The puzzle is how AT&T thinks that its proposal is anything other than
corporate seppuku. First, should these proposals be adopted, my heart goes out
to AT&T's customer relations staff. Exactly what counts as copyright
infringement can be a tough question for a Supreme Court justice, let alone
whatever program AT&T writes to detect copyright infringement. Inevitably,
AT&T will block legitimate materials (say, home videos it mistakes for
But the most serious problems for AT&T may be legal. Since the beginnings
of the phone system, carriers have always wanted to avoid liability for what
happens on their lines, be it a bank robbery or someone's divorce. Hence the
grand bargain of common carriage: The Bell company carried all conversations
equally, and in exchange bore no liability for what people used the phone for.
Fair deal.
AT&T's new strategy reverses that position and exposes it to so much
potential liability that adopting it would arguably violate AT&T's
fiduciary duty to its shareholders. Today, in its daily Internet operations,
AT&T is shielded by a federal law that provides a powerful immunity to
copyright infringement. The Bells know the law well: They wrote and pushed it
through Congress in 1998, collectively spending six years and millions of
dollars in lobbying fees to make sure there would be no liability for
"Transitory Digital Network Communications"-content AT&T carries
over the Internet. And that's why the recording industry sued Napster and
Grokster, not AT&T or Verizon, when the great music wars began in the early
2000s. Here's the kicker: To maintain that immunity, AT&T must transmit
data "without selection of the material by the service provider" and "without
modification of its content." Once AT&T gets in the business of
picking and choosing what content travels over its network, while the law is
not entirely clear, it runs a serious risk of losing its all-important
immunity. An Internet provider voluntarily giving up copyright immunity is like
an astronaut on the moon taking off his space suit. As the world's largest
gatekeeper, AT&T would immediately become the world's largest target for
copyright infringement lawsuits.
On the technical side, if I were an AT&T engineer asked to implement this
plan, I would resign immediately and look for work at Verizon. AT&T's
engineers are already trying to manage the feat of getting trillions of packets
around the world at light speed. To begin examining those packets for illegal
pictures of Britney Spears would be a nuisance, at best, and a threat to the
whole Internet, at worst. Imagine if FedEx were forced to examine every parcel
for drug paraphernalia: Next-day delivery would soon go up in smoke. Even
If this idea looks amazingly bad for AT&T, does the firm have an ingenious
rationale for blocking content? "It's about," said AT&T last
week, "making more content available to more people in more ways going
forward." Huh? That's like saying that the goal of a mousetrap is
producing more mice. If the quote makes any sense it all, perhaps it means that
AT&T, the phone company, has aspirations to itself provide Internet content.
Could it really be that AT&T's master strategy is to try and become more
like AOL circa 1996?
A different theory is that AT&T hopes that filtering out infringing
material will help free up bandwidth on its network. What is so strange about
this argument is that it suggests that AT&T wants people to use its product
less. That's like Exxon-Mobil complaining that SUVs are just buying up too much
gas. It suggests that perhaps AT&T should try to improve its network to
handle and charge for consumer demand, rather than spending money trying to
control its consumers.
I just don't get the business aspect, so perhaps the only explanation that
makes any sense is a political one. It may be that AT&T so hates being
under the current network neutrality mandate that it sees fighting piracy as a
way to begin treating some content differently than others-discriminating-in a
politically acceptable way. Or maybe AT&T thinks its new friends in the
content industry will let them into
Tim Wu is a professor at
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2182152/
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive
Redbooks: Drafts and Revisions
contributed by Ed Webb
Drafts
ABCs of z/OS System Programming Volume 1
Published: January, 3, 2008
More details are available at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/abstracts/sg246981.html?Open
Communications Server for z/OS V1R9 TCP/IP Implementation Volume 3: High
Availability, Scalability, and Performance
Published: January, 4, 2008
More details are available at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/abstracts/sg247534.html?Open
Redbooks
Introduction to the New Mainframe: z/VM Basics
Revised: January 10, 2008 ISBN: 0738488550 457 pages
Explore the book online at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247316.html?Open
z/OS Version 1 Release 9 Implementation
Revised: January 8, 2008 ISBN: 0738488607 546 pages
Explore the book online at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247427.html?Open
Server Time Protocol Implementation Guide
Revised: January 4, 2008 ISBN: 0738489034 422 pages
Explore the book online at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247281.html?Open
HFS to zFS Migration Tool
Published: January, 8, 2008
More details are available at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpapers/abstracts/redp4328.html?Open
Redpapers
Supporting Innovators and Early Adopters: A Technology Adoption Program
Cookbook
Published: December, 28, 2007
More details are available athttp://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpapers/abstracts/redp4374.html?Open
IBM Tivoli Security and System z
Published: January, 3, 2008
More details are available at http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpapers/abstracts/redp4355.html?Open
Humor
Things Kids Say
contributed by Chris Blackshire
1) NUDITY
I was driving with my three young children one warm summer evening when a woman
in the convertible ahead of us stood up and waved. She was stark naked! As I
was reeling from the shock, I heard my 5-year-old shout from the back seat,
"Mom! That lady isn't wearing a seat belt!"
2) OPINIONS
On the first day of school, a first-grader handed his teacher a note from his
mother. The note read, "The opinions expressed by this child are not necessarily
those of his parents."
3) KETCHUP
A woman was trying hard to get the ketchup out of the jar. During her struggle
the phone rang so she asked her 4-year-old daughter to answer the phone.
"Mommy can't come to the phone to talk to you right now. She's hitting the
bottle."
4) MORE NUDITY
A little boy got lost at the YMCA and found himself in the women's locker room.
When he was spotted, the room burst into shrieks, with ladies grabbing towels
and running for cover. The little boy watched in amazement and then asked,
"What's the matter, haven't you ever seen a little boy before?"
5) POLICE # 1
While taking a routine vandalism report at an
elementary school, I was interrupted by a little girl about 6 years old.
Looking up and down at my uniform, she asked, "Are you a cop?"
"Yes," I answered and continued writing the report. ?
"My mother said if I ever needed help I should ask the police. Is that
right?" "Yes, that's right," I told her. "Well, then,"
she said as she extended her foot toward me, "would you please tie my
shoe?"
6) POLICE # 2
It was the end of the day when I parked my police van in front of the station.
As I gathered my equipment, my K-9 partner, Jake, was barking, and I saw a
little boy staring in at me "Is that a dog you got back there?" he
asked. "It sure is," I replied. Puzzled, the boy looked at me and
then towards the back of the van. Finally he said, "What'd he do?"
7) ELDERLY
While working for an organization that delivers lunches to elderly shut-ins, I
used to take my 4-year-old daughter on my afternoon rounds. She was unfailingly
intrigued by the various appliances of old age, particularly the canes, walkers
and wheelchairs. One day I found her staring at a pair of false teeth soaking
in a glass. As I braced myself for the inevitable barrage of questions, she
merely turned and whispered, "The tooth fairy will never believe
this!"
8) DRESS-UP
A little girl was watching her parents dress for a party. When she saw her dad
donning his tuxedo, she warned, "Daddy, you shouldn't wear that
suit." "And why not, darling?" "You know that it always
gives you a headache the next morning. "
9) DEATH
While walking along the sidewalk in front of his church, our minister heard the
intoning of a prayer that nearly made his collar wilt. Apparently, his
5-year-old son and his playmates had found a dead robin. Feeling that proper
burial should be performed, they had secured a small box and cotton batting,
then dug a hole and made ready for the disposal of the deceased. The minister's
son was chosen to say the appropriate prayers and with sonorous dignity intoned
his version of what he thought his father always said: "Glory be unto the
Faaather, and unto the Sonnn, and into the hole he goooes."
10) SCHOOL
A little girl had just finished her first week of school. "I'm just
wasting my time," she said to her mother. "I can't read, I can't
write and they won't let me talk!"
11) BIBLE
A little boy opened the big family bible. He was fascinated as he fingered
through the old pages. Suddenly, something fell out of the Bible. He picked up
the object and looked at it. What he saw was an old leaf that had been pressed
in between the pages.
"Mama, look what I found," the boy called out.
"What have you got there, dear?" With astonishment in the young boy's
voice, he answered, "I think it's Adam's underwear."
DonÕt
Forget the Next
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
7 p.m.
Special Location: SAS in
Take I-40 to
Exit 287 Harrison Avenue Cary and go south (left over I-40 from
Free Food:
Program:
SAS Fraud Management With Live
Demo
Speaker:
William Bloemeke of SAS
First Class Postage
