My Major i, or iSeries, or AS/400, or Power Systems running i Gripe

I posed this response to the System i Network forums when they asked the question: "If IBM came to visit tomorrow and granted you one wish, what would you ask for?"

My response sums up my only gripe with the platform:

Call the operating system OS/400 again. "i" is a broad term that confuses the hell out of people.

Some Guy: "What are you running under the hood of that thing?"
Me: "i."
Long, awkward pause.
Bemused Guy: "O...K..."
Me: "OS/400...it's essentially a modern AS/400 running OS/400 V7R1 but they call it a Power System running i, or IBM i, or i5/OS...it's interchangeable even though they brought in the i5/OS name with the Power 5 processor and they've moved to Power 6 and 7 now but never changed the OS name to go along with the new processors. You'll find references to i5/OS on the system but it's really i now. Most of the licensed programs and literature and menus don't reference i5/OS anymore but some do. And it's not V7R1 anymore...it's 7.1"
Confused Guy Moving On: "Well, how fast are the processors?"
Me: "Well...it's a model 720, not to be confused with the old AS/400 model 720 from 1999...remember it's a Power System. Anyway it's a 720 so it's got a 6 core 3.0 GHz, but i processor performance is really measured in CPW, not necessarily clock speed..."

Mildly Frustrated Guy with the Million Dollar Question: "What's CPW?"

Collaboration: A Fresh Look at All Things Lotus

This article describes the current offerings from IBM Lotus and explains why IBM Power Systems running i5/OS is the platform on which you should be running them. Lotus Domino Server—it's just an email server, so let's move on.... Just kidding! Many shops use Domino just for the simple task of running their email. That's all well and good, but Domino offers a number of different servers for Web, database, applications, and LDAP. If you have a Domino server and you're only running email, then get informed!

Read the rest of the article here:


http://www.mcpressonline.com/application-software/collaboration-&-messaging/collaboration-a-fresh-look-at-all-things-lotus.html

Customizing Quickr Blog to Allow Authors to Comment Only

In the Lotus Quickr blog, logged in users need to have a minimum Author access in order to comment and create new blog entries/pages.  However the only people I want posting new blog entries are Editors or above, and disallowing anonymous comments no matter what a place creator specifies.

The instructions on the Blog Fast Start document are misleading, saying that Authors can comment but can't see the "Create..." links.  This is not the case.  Authors can comment and create new blog entries.  This is evidently a regression and hopefully there's movement in order to change the feature back or change the documentation.

In order to allow logged in users below Editor level authority to create comments, and comments only, I had to make a change to the qp_blog_pagelayout.js file.  This file is located in the domino/html/qphtml/html/templatecommon directory under the Domino server data directory.

In that file, look for the following line:

if(currentMember.m_isAnonymous && currentUserAccess > 2){

This IF statement and the code within will hide the blog's "New Blog Entry" button at the top and the "New Page or Folder" link on the left hand side.

What I did instead was check to see if the current user is either anonymous OR below an Editor (i.e., currentUserAccess < 4) and then hide those elements by changing that line to:

if(currentMember.m_isAnonymous || currentUserAccess < 4){

Nifty.