Savage Popcorn

Richard Reid, the so-called “Shoe Bomber”, has been jailed for life.

Given that this former member of al-Qa’ida is a British citizen, I’d be interested to know how locking up asylum seekers would have stopped him.

So now Europe is split on whether or not we should go to war with Iraq.

If the US and Britain go to war without the backing of the UN and without the support of world opinion, we are giving the likes of Osama Bin Laden all the ammunition he needs recruit a whole new generation of terrorists.

Terrorism cannot be bombed out of existence - much as Bush seems to believe this is so.

People turn to terrorism when someone convinces them that whatever grievances they hold are not going to be resolved through civilised means and that bombs and bullets are the only route left open to them. This means that to go to war in Iraq without the support or world - and especially Muslim - opinion or to abandon the country to it’s fate once Saddam has been removed will make the world a more, not less, dangerous place.

I noticed this while forwarding an email:

If you have Microsoft Word, open a new document and type “DiCaprio”. Then run the spell check.

Kind of an appropriate suggestion given his latest movie.

Ten days ago, IBM announced a whole new packaging of the venerable iSeries range of servers, significantly changing the way the platform is sold.

Not only has the pricing structure been simpler, the iSeries is now a lot cheaper - which will hopefully boost its appeal to companies that have yet to enjoy the benefits of a dirt cheap rock solid enterprise system.

Organisations which do not already have an iSeries don’t tend to fully grasp what it is capable of or why it is so popular. So, with no apology for the potentially evangelical nature of this entry, I’d like to express why iSeries users love their box.

There is a huge selection of software packages available for the iSeries - including over 30,000 applications designed specifically for the system. Whatever your industry sector - the all the software you need is already available for the iSeries

The iSeries is the most integrated platform around. The operating system, database and development languages are all designed from the ground up to work together. This means that, if you buy an iSeries, not only can you get it up and running very quickly but you can rely on the various components of your environment working together reliably.

The tight integration of the iSeries makes it a phenominally stable system and one that can keep going for years with minimal technical support. This all makes for a machine that is incredibly cheap to own.

The development environment is highly productive and very easy to find your way around regardless of whether you intend to stick with the 3rd generation languages supplied or take advantage of some of the most advanced tools available, such as Lansa

If you want to take advantage of new technologies, the iSeries provides advanced support for Linux, Apache, Lotus Domino, Java, NT, PHP, among others.

Multiple Intel servers can be consolidated into a single platform, providing instant stability and reliability

And one of the more recent innovations, logical partitioning, allows you to divide the disk storage into multiple segments and run a variety of operating systems on each.

The bottom line is that the iSeries is still one of the best business servers available. You can’t beat it for reliability, scalability and total cost of ownership.

iSeries systems offer advanced capability without complexity. Many other computers can perform the same jobs as an iSeries. Some can do things the iSeries cannot. The difference is that other computers require users to integrate a number of hardware and software products. The iSeries
offers a fully integrated environment, making it easier to buy, install, support and use.

I have been working on the iSeries (formerly the AS/400) for over 12 years and it’s been a great experience, knowing that I can discuss and develop solutions that I know will work and that there are no hidden conflicts to trip me up. The iSeries and OS/400 (the operating system) combined provide an environment that is as close to 100% reliable as you can get.

This reliability makes it the front-runner when looking for a platform on which to run mission critical applications - and for managing the rest of your network for that matter, a task that can be easily achieved using the automation software from Help/Systems.

In fact, the iSeries 64-bit architechture is so ahead of the game that it is only now beginning to assert itself. The iSeries supports the ability to use multiple file systems at the same time. It has its native single-level store, plus the Integrated File System which allows it to support Intel and Unix based networks. Communications protocols like TCP/IP are built in to their own subsystems, increasing security, recoverability, and manageability. Work management is a rarely lauded feature, but it does give you ease of use. And, the iSeries has had this from the beginning.

In short, if you have a mission critical business application that isn’t running on the iSeries, good luck - you’re going to need it.

From the BBC.

The Visibuddy.

Not wanting to be left out by Labour’s cheap publicity seeking at the expense of asylum seekers, the Tories have now propsed that anyone foolish enough to seek refuge in the UK should be immediately locked up.

Current bidding:

Tories: enter a reservation against article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights so that Britain no longer has to recognise the right to freedom from torture or inhuman or degrading treatment.

Labour: UK might quit the European Convention on Human Rights and leave Johnny Foreigner at the mercy of whatever regime he was trying to escape.

From Expatica: A large majority of Dutch people are opposed to any involvement by the Netherlands in a US-led war against Iraq, according to a new opinion poll.

Interesting comparison of US and European attitudes to the prospect of war in Iraq.

It cannot be emphasized too often that not one of the principal figures associated with the Bush White House’s foreign policy, with the exception of Colin Powell, has any actual experience of war, most of them having actively sought to avoid military service in Vietnam. Their inexperience and ignorance could not be better displayed than by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s recent comment that draftees have added “no value, no advantage really, to the United States armed services over any sustained period of time.” Who does he think fought World War II - the 174,000-man prewar regular army?

The American regular army has never been truly effective until large numbers of flexible, brainy and nonconformist wartime civilian soldiers were integrated into its command, staffs and ranks.

This has been true from the Civil War to Vietnam - when the system of egalitarian civilian service was finally destroyed by draft evasion by the privileged in American society, and the army was brought close to mutiny.

Original link from one.point.zero

I’m lost for words… *

The Prime Minister raised the possibility [of abandoning our obligations for dealing with refugees] amid fears that the asylum crisis is damaging [...] the Government’s popularity

… because, if someone is fleeing torture and death and we send them back, it won’t be long before they’re no longer in any position to complain.