WWRUG10

I am currently at the WWRUG10 conference in Las Vegas. The WWRUG (World Wide Remedy User Group) is a community gathering around the Remedy tools and applications provided by BMC. This is the first time I am attending the RUG and I hope to be able to attend again in the future. Two persons have attended all of the RUGS and several have attended ten times or more. My guess is that around a quarter of us are here for the first time ever.


One new "cool" thing presented was an iPad version of the SRM interface. Some think this is great and I just wonder, Why?. Who needs to order stuff from their iPad, if you have one? I would see a larger need to have an interface for incidents and tasks for technicians on the run. Then even iPad is a bit bulky and you would need access with your Android/iOS/webOS/whateverOS smart phone. Maybe I am just confused about this new iPad product? We will see in a short future what it will become.

I was hoping to post blog entries at least once a day when I am here but I don't have Internet access. Now I am able to borrow a computer with Internet access so I can post this entry. I will write something more when I get home again.

Windows Installer for SRM 7.6

I am just about to upgrade our BMC Service Request Management 2.2 patch 4 to SRM 7.6 patch 1. It should be a straight forward upgrade. I will install everything on the D-drive and I've deleted stuff so I have at least 2 GB free space. On the C-drive we have only the Windows operating system and we are not allowed to install anything else on the C-drive.

I start the installation but it halts before the actual installation starts with a message that I need to free up space on the C-drive for temporary 1500 MB data and it is only 1376 MB space available.

WTF! I have nothing to free up on the C-drive. Can't I use some network drive for temporary storage during the installation? Or use the 8GB memory that is mostly unused at the moment? Quite often I wish we were using Unix/Linux instead of this toy-OS called Windows.

See you later... now I have to call some Windows-tech to help me expand the C-drive or whatever they do.

New BMC Home Page?

Yesterday I and a couple of AR System consultants were talking about the ugly Home Page we have in our ARS ITSM 7.0 environment.

We have the standard out of the box stuff with links to the left and a huge empty blue void on the right side. I want to build something useful on that empty space but so far there have not been enough of a business need for that.

Then one of the consultants mention that he saw this new cool Home Page in arslist. So I dug down and found it. Yes it is cool and you can see it in the picture here. But as I understand it, this is nothing that you will get out of the box, this is an example of what you can build with the technology that BMC will release in mid 2010.


It looks cool but then the question for me will be... Will my company find a business need for me to let me build something like this for them? Probably not, because we are aiming really hard at buying more and more applications out of the box and not customizing anything. Everything should be configurable.

This is both good and bad...

Bad because I will not be developing as much as before.
Good because it will force me to change career.  ;)

In the head of Emily

I just found out that one of my friends have a blog at IT24. Emily is writing about her work with processes, ITIL and all other things she stumble over at work. She is writing in Swedish so if you are able do decrypt the language you can read about what is In the head of a processor. Her posts are written in a smart and funny way and it is worth reading about every one of her trivial and highly interesting reflections.

Create a social network on Ning.com

Do you want to create your own Facebook.com? Or maybe your own XiaoNei.com? Maybe you want to make it more specialized to a certain area? You don't care that much about all your current friends but instead want to focus on your special areas of interest and maybe make some new friends?

That is where Ning.com has found their idea. Let people create their own Social Networks on the Internet. I just heard about it today and it sounds really good compared to Facebook that is getting more and more boring for every day. When will the hype die out? Probably when someone figured out something better and neither Facebook or Myspace will be fast enough to catch up. Maybe that is what we are seeing now? Maybe Ning.com will be able to activate us again and keep the interest alive and permanent? We'll see...

Anyway... I just registered and created a new Social network called The world of WeiQi. The reason that I created it is that there were no social network that was general enough. There only existed one for a weiqi club in America. I thought about creating one for Sweden or Stockholm but I feared that was too small, so what a heck here is a network for the whole world!

Next I need to find a social network for Sci-Fi, Star Trek, Star Wars, Programming, Linux and all other stuff I find interesting. There already exist a lot of specialized networks and if you miss one, you can always create one on just a couple of simple steps.

If programming languages were...

As a computer programming nerd you often find yourself amused with smart jokes about nerdy stuff like programming and other things like that. So when I the other day got an email with a link where they compare different famous programming languages with religion I can not help to read it and smile approvingly.


If programming languages were cars...

• Ada is a tank. A butt-ugly tank that never breaks down. People laugh uncontrollably if you tell them you drive Ada, but really, do you want to be driving a sports car in a war zone?

• Assembly Language is a bare engine; you have to build the car yourself and manually supply it with gas while it's running, but if you're careful it can go like a bat out of hell.

• Basic is a simple car useful for short drives to the local shops. Once popular with learner drivers, it has recently been stripped down to a shell and rebuilt by a major manufacturer, The new version has been refurbished for longer journeys, leaving only cosmetic similarities to the original model.

• C is a racing car that goes incredibly fast but breaks down every fifty miles.

• Cobol is reputed to be a car, but no self-respecting driver will ever admit having driven one.

• C# is a competing model of family station wagons. Once you use this, you're never allowed to use the competitors' products again.

• C++ is a souped-up version of the C racing car with dozens of extra features that only breaks down every 250 miles, but when it does, nobody can figure out what went wrong.

• Eiffel is a car that includes a built-in driving instructor with a French accent. He will help you quickly identify and learn from your mistakes, but don't you dare argue with him or he'll insult you and throw you out of the car.

• Erlang is a fleet of cars that all cooperate to get you where you want to go. It takes practice to be able to drive with one foot in each of several cars, but once you learn how you can drive over terrain that would be very hard to navigate any other way. In addition, because you're using so many cars, it doesn't matter if a few of them break down.

• Forth is a car you build yourself from a kit. Your car doesn't have to look or behave like anyone else's car. However, a Forth car will only go backwards. FORTH LOVE IF HONK THEN !

• Fortran is a pretty primitive car; it'll go very quickly as long as you are only going along roads that are perfectly straight. It is believed that learning to drive a Fortran car makes it impossible to learn to drive any other model.

• Java is a family station wagon. It's easy to drive, it's not too fast, and you can't hurt yourself.

• Haskell is an incredibly elegantly-designed and beautiful car, which is rumored to be able to drive over extremely strange terrain. The one time you tried to drive it, it didn't actually drive along the road; instead, it made copies of itself and the road, with each successive copy of the road having the car a little further along. It's supposed to be possible to drive it in a more conventional way, but you don't know enough math to figure out how.

• Lisp looks like a car, but with enough tweaking you can turn it into a pretty effective airplane or submarine.

• Mathematica is a well-designed car that borrowed a lot from the Lisp car without giving it nearly the credit it deserved. It can solve equations to determine the most efficient way to get to the destination, but it costs a fortune

• Matlab is a car designed for novice drivers going on short trips over terrain similar to the terrain the Mathematica car is usually driven over. It is very comfortable when driving over this terrain, but if you go off the trail even a little the car becomes so hard to drive that more snobby drivers refuse to even acknowledge that it's a car.

• Ocaml is a very sexy European car. It's not quite as fast as C, but it never breaks down, so you end up going further in less time. However, because it's French, none of the controls are in the usual places.

• Perl is supposed to be a pretty cool car, but the driver's manual is incomprehensible. Also, even if you can figure out how to drive a Perl car, you won't be able to drive anyone else's.

• PHP is the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, it's bizarre and hard to handle but everybody still wants to drive it.

• Prolog is fully automatic: you tell it what your destination looks like, and it does all the driving for you. However, the effort required to specify most destinations is equivalent to the effort of driving there.

• Python is a great beginner's car; you can drive it without a license. Unless you want to drive really fast or on really treacherous terrain, you may never need another car.

• Ruby is a car that was formed when the Perl, Python and Smalltalk cars were involved in a three-way collision. A Japanese mechanic found the pieces and put together a car which many drivers think is better than the sum of the parts. Other drivers, however, grumble that a lot of the controls of the Ruby car have been duplicated or triplicated, with some of the duplicate controls doing slightly different things in odd circumstances, making the car harder to drive than it ought to be. A redesign is rumored to be in the works.

• Smalltalk is a small car originally designed for people who were just learning to drive, but it was designed so well that even experienced drivers enjoy riding in it. It doesn't drive very fast, but you can take apart any part of it and change it to make it more like what you wanted it to be. One oddity is that you don't actually drive it; you send it a message asking it to go somewhere and it either does or tells you that it didn't understand what you were asking.

• Visual Basic is a car that drives you.

If programming languages were religions...

• C would be Judaism - it's old and restrictive, but most of the world is familiar with its laws and respects them. The catch is, you can't convert into it - you're either into it from the start, or you will think that it's insanity. Also, when things go wrong, many people are willing to blame the problems of the world on it.

• Java would be Fundamentalist Christianity - it's theoretically based on C, but it voids so many of the old laws that it doesn't feel like the original at all. Instead, it adds its own set of rigid rules, which its followers believe to be far superior to the original. Not only are they certain that it's the best language in the world, but they're willing to burn those who disagree at the stake.

• PHP would be Cafeteria Christianity - Fights with Java for the web market. It draws a few concepts from C and Java, but only those that it really likes. Maybe it's not as coherent as other languages, but at least it leaves you with much more freedom and ostensibly keeps the core idea of the whole thing. Also, the whole concept of "goto hell" was abandoned.

• C++ would be Islam - It takes C and not only keeps all its laws, but adds a very complex new set of laws on top of it. It's so versatile that it can be used to be the foundation of anything, from great atrocities to beautiful works of art. Its followers are convinced that it is the ultimate universal language, and may be angered by those who disagree. Also, if you insult it or its founder, you'll probably be threatened with death by more radical followers.

• C# would be Mormonism - At first glance, it's the same as Java, but at a closer look you realize that it's controlled by a single corporation (which many Java followers believe to be evil), and that many theological concepts are quite different. You suspect that it'd probably be nice, if only all the followers of Java wouldn't discriminate so much against you for following it.

• Lisp would be Zen Buddhism - There is no syntax, there is no centralization of dogma, there are no deities to worship. The entire universe is there at your reach - if only you are enlightened enough to grasp it. Some say that it's not a language at all; others say that it's the only language that makes sense.

• Haskell would be Taoism - It is so different from other languages that many people don't understand how can anyone use it to produce anything useful. Its followers believe that it's the true path to wisdom, but that wisdom is beyond the grasp of most mortals.

• Erlang would be Hinduism - It's another strange language that doesn't look like it could be used for anything, but unlike most other modern languages, it's built around the concept of multiple simultaneous deities.

• Perl would be Voodoo - An incomprehensible series of arcane incantations that involve the blood of goats and permanently corrupt your soul. Often used when your boss requires you to do an urgent task at 21:00 on friday night.

• Lua would be Wicca - A pantheistic language that can easily be adapted for different cultures and locations. Its code is very liberal, and allows for the use of techniques that might be described as magical by those used to more traditional languages. It has a strong connection to the moon.

• Ruby would be Neo-Paganism - A mixture of different languages and ideas that was beaten together into something that might be identified as a language. Its adherents are growing fast, and although most people look at them suspiciously, they are mostly well-meaning people with no intention of harming anyone.

• Python would be Humanism: It's simple, unrestrictive, and all you need to follow it is common sense. Many of the followers claim to feel relieved from all the burden imposed by other languages, and that they have rediscovered the joy of programming. There are some who say that it is a form of pseudo-code.

• COBOL would be Ancient Paganism - There was once a time when it ruled over a vast region and was important, but nowadays it's almost dead, for the good of us all. Although many were scarred by the rituals demanded by its deities, there are some who insist on keeping it alive even today.

• APL would be Scientology - There are many people who claim to follow it, but you've always suspected that it's a huge and elaborate prank that got out of control.

• LOLCODE would be Pastafarianism - An esoteric, Internet-born belief that nobody really takes seriously, despite all the efforts to develop and spread it.

• Visual Basic would be Satanism - Except that you don't REALLY need to sell your soul to be a Satanist...

New server on the way

My old Linux server died. First a fan stopped working so the computer froze now and then. After not so many days it refused to start at all again so something in the hardware is fried. I guess there is something on the motherboard that burned up. I really hope there is no real damage on the hard drive. That would be a small disaster because I have no fresh backup.... :P

So now I have ordered parts to build myself a new server. First time ever that I will get a new computer as server. Previous I have only taken some old computer that is ready to throw away and made it to my server. The one that just died was my fathers before I asked if I could take it when he bought a new one. He had even bought a new one after that switch. My dead server is probably over ten years old and deserves to rest in peace.

This is the specifications of my new server:

• Antec mATX Cube NSK1380 - (350w)
• Gigabyte Socket AM2+ mATX AMD 780G (GA-MA78GM-S2H)
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ 2.9GHz / 2x512kB Socket AM2 (65W)
• Corsair XMS2 Xtreme 2048MB DDR2 XMS2-6400 800MHz
• D-Link Nätverkskort DGE-530T 10/100/1000 (PCI)
• Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB (7200RPM / 32MB / SATA II / NCQ)
• Samsung SATA DVD±RW 22x - Svart (Dual Layer) (SH-S223F)

and a

• D-Link 5-Ports Switch DGS-1005D 10/100/1000

I didn't do so hard investigations about the hardware so I really hope I didn't make any bad/stupid choices. As long as it works well I don't care much about the performance. My previous server had 350Mhz CPU and 384Mb of memory and that worked very well except in the graphical X Window interface using KDE which was a bit flickery and slow but still usable. Maybe that pain was mostly because of the really bad graphics card.

I am not sure yet if I will use the hyped up Ubuntu or the old reliable Slackware that I have always used before. I have actually used Slackware since summer 1994 and am quite comfortable with that distribution. I have used Ubuntu on my dual boot workstation and think there are both good and bad things about it. Most things I feel that is bad is probably my lack of knowledge about Ubuntu so I should probably choose that one for my server so I learn everything I need to know. But it feels almost like betrayal to not use Slackware any more. Hmm.. so hard decisions... What should I do?

GNU Go 3.8

Finally after over three years of slow developments there has been a new release of GNU Go. As of this writing the homepage has not been updated with the new version but I sent them a reminder of it.

I found the information when I was reading the GNU Go mail archive where they have posted a "press release".

The new version is version 3.8 and as they write in their email the changes since last version is:

• many small improvements and tuning since 3.6
• experimental Monte Carlo mode (9x9 only)
• support for tiny boards
• GPL v3

Another thing what I understand is that they put some extra effort to make it easy to compile the source for windows. It used to be a bit tricky what I understand but now they should have all the needed files and a detailed description of how the process should be executed.

As usual it is very simple to compile the source under Linux.

So go ahead and download the new version to try it out!

Play Ogg!

I'm writing today to ask you to support the Play Ogg campaign.

Are you tired of constantly being prompted to download proprietary software and plugins to play the videos and listen to the music you want? Are you fed up with seeing new gadgets that only use incompatible and restrictive audio and video formats? Did you know that it's not a lack of technological know-how that causes this, but software patents and other legal restrictions?

Increasingly proprietary software companies like Microsoft, Apple and Adobe are pushing video and audio formats that restrict access and restrict software developers, but there is an alternative that can be played on all computers without restriction—Ogg.

Ogg provides professional grade multimedia formats. Ogg is used extensively by free software projects, artists and a growing number of music and video distributors.

Soon over a million children and their families will be receiving the One Laptop per Child XO computer designed to play and create Ogg files. By advocating now for Ogg we can help ensure that those children will gain access to, and not be unnecessarily restricted from thousands of educational resources and materials on the web.

Join us in advocating for Ogg right now by taking 4 Easy Steps: Install VLC multimedia player, sign-up for the PlayOgg advocate mailing list, find and share Ogg friendly sites, and put PlayOgg Buttons on your web site or blog. After all that, if you are still looking for more to do, consider encouraging others to do the same.

Start here: http://playogg.org/

AR-System 7.5 - What's new?

To increase the excitement in the project I want us to install the latest version of ARS in the server, mid tier, clients and why not exchange the whole ITSM with version 7.5! Yeeaahh! Here we go! :D


ARS developers x-mas:

• BMC Remedy Developer Studio. I haven't seen this yet but I have heard a little about what it can be and I want to say: Finally some improvements for us developers! I have also heard that it now can be possible to use Linux instead of this hated Windows for a development platform. I hope it is true. There is also a possibility to search for object, which is great when you have hundreds thousands to manage.

• Workflow debugger! Yeah! Finally!

• Version control. You can lock objects for others when you modify them and you can get a log of every change of an object.

• Application-Set-Filter-Phasing is a new run process command for delaying inserts of entries into a form so that they can be inserted in bulk for greater efficiency.

• Dynamic join of multiple forms on runtime using API call ARGetListEntryWithMultiSchemaFields. With this you can create recursive queries, value-set queries or joins with vendor form data in an external database.

• Run process command line can handle 4096 characters instead of 256.

• ARGetCacheEvent API call can be used to monitor if changes have been done in the workflow or not. Can be useful... we'll see...

• It is now possible to join external data sources with internal AR System forms.

• Possible to log to forms instead of to files and then put workflow to filter out what you are really interested in. This can be useful...

• A new log file for measuring mid-tier performance.

• 64 bit AR servers for UNIX and Linux using a 64 bit database.

• Image server object. This is "a place" where to store images in the AR Server. Then references to these images are used when building applications instead of a lot of copies of the same image. It is common to have images on buttons to give them a nicer look and a common feel throughout the application suite. It is a bit strange that they didn't implement this earlier.

• Remedy Import tool is dead, long live Remedy data import tool! The old tool needed an upgrade so we will see later how much better this all brand new tool is.

• arimportcmd is dead, long live "a Java data import command-line utility". Hmm.. why?

User impressions, or details that makes the ARS developer cool:

• Auto completion in fields that have a menu attached.

• Tooltips which is small messages that are shown when holding the mouse over some field or data. There is a HOVER event that can trigger active links. This sounds quite powerful and can be very useful to create user friendly interfaces.

• File system browser character field. A new display type for the character field. With this you can search for a file in the network and save the file name in a field but not save the file. I can see its use but it is very limited.

• Cell-based tables. Display the whole data row with several columns in one cell instead of several. Yes we can make more beautiful designs with this.

• Possibility to remove the (clear) value from drop-down lists. Our customer will be so happy!

• Panels! These sounds great... replaces the page holders and in many cases the trim box. These will probably make my life as a user interface designer much easier!

• The panels in the panel holder can have tabs like the old page holder, collapsible/stacked (not really sure what that is), splitter which lets you see all panels and drag to resize them, accordion which sounds a lot like the old tabs but but a bit cooler.

• The panels can have solid or gradient colours, background images, rounded corners.

• Possible to expand or collapse panels with workflow.

• Possible to trigger workflow on when a panel expand or collapse.

• Text formatting templates in HTML to be used by workflow with tooltips or viewfields.

• Buttons and URLs inside a table field.

• Possibility to use PNG or GIF images and use the transparency effect.

• Yahoo User Interlace Library, a collection of libraries in JavaScript™. With this library we get the possibility of animated highlight effects of fields using workflow.

• Quick reports in the browser, saved per server, per form and per user.

• Flashboards are using Adobe flash technology.

• There will be a countdown clock in the browser telling an inactive user how much time there is until his license is expired. Do we really need this? Can I turn it off?

• If you close the web browser or navigate away from the mid-tier, the license will be released after a configurable delay timer has expired. I hope this time can be set really really short, because we see this will be a problem today in earlier versions.

You can read more details here about BMC Remedy Action Request System 7.5.0.

BMC Remedy Action Request System 7.5.0

Here it is! In the middle of our project to implement version 7.1.0 of BMC Remedy AR-System and here version 7.5.0 is released. I can not believe that we will jump on the 7.5-wagon this late in the implementation project. But I wish we would... I really do... That would be exciting... in many interesting ways... :P

I will soon dig into the documentation and see what is new about this release. :)

Counting lights

In China they have really cool street lights for walking people. When it turns green they start to count down the seconds until it turns red again. I wish we had that everywhere in Sweden. Then you would know if it is an idea to start running or if you see that there is no idea so you can just take it easy because you will never make it anyway.

Now they are trying this kind of green light in Stockholm. They also say that they will probably not use this because we use dynamic timing of the lights depending on the traffic. But I don't see the logical point by that comments. No matter if it is green for five minutes or 15 seconds, you can still have a counting light. Just let it be a green light and as soon there is less than say 30 seconds left it can start counting down. Let be that the counting sometimes starts at 20 seconds but that is ok. Just bring us these lights in Stockholm.

Higher skyscraper

I told you about that I went up in to the second highest building in the world. Next to that building they are building another one that will be a lot taller. I think it is supposed to be ready by 2014.

Here you can find a nice blogg that writes about it in more detail and click here for more info.

Shanghai World Financial Center

Here are some pictures from when we went to Shanghai World Financial Center. It is the second highest building in the world and the tallest building in the world to its roof. It looks just like a giant beer opener and actually you could buy miniature copies of the building with the function as a cool beer opener.

So you don't get confused... It is the building to the right that is the highest one with its 101 floors and 492 meters. The other beautiful building to the left is the Jin Mao Tower and that one have 88 floors and 421 meters including the antenna.

A cool image I took on the way there.

Another cool picture I took of the building.

Here we arrive at 435 meters and 95th floor.

This is a view you can see when you are standing on the 94th floor and looking out over the Jin Mao Tower and the TV tower. The famous TV tower, The Oriental Pearl Tower, is the strange building with large balls on its body.

It is a really great view as you can see and next time I will go there during daytime. But it have to be a clear day and not one of those foggy ones you are used to in these huge cities.

Panorama of a street in Shanghai with the TV tower to the left.

Vertical panorama of Jin Mao Tower.

Vertical panorama of Jin Mao Tower, again.

Vertical panorama of Shanghai World Financial Center.

Shanghai bullet train

My parents had told us about the fantastic Transrapid maglev bullet train of Shanghai to Pudong airport.

The train accelerates up to 431 km/h and keeps that speed for maybe 30 seconds before it softly start to hit the brakes. Halfway the train meet the other train coming from the other direction closely on the left side. You better be prepared because otherwise you might think there was an explosion on the train.

So we had to try it! It was really cool! As you can see in the picture there is a display showing the current speed of the train. When we got to top speed everybody wanted to take pictures. One stupid businessman, who sat behind us, had to stand up in the way of everybody else to take his picture with his mobilephone camera.

We all love R2D2

Have you seen Star Wars? Yes I am sure you have. Most people have seen at least one episode of Star Wars. Some think they are silly space movies and some (like me) think they are really great epic space adventures. In these films we have some characters like Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Yoda, C-3PO, R2-D2, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader and more.

Which is your favourite? For me it is very hard to choose between the human like characters because they are all so very different individuals and there is really nothing not to like. When it comes to the robotic characters there are a bit easier for me to choose. C-3PO is a lot of fun and stupid while he is an expert servant droid. R2-D2 is an extremely talented astromech droid and at the same time extremely cute both in shape and in its squeaking sounding beeps. I like cute stuff so R2-D2 is my favourite robot.

Wouldn't it be great to have your own R2-D2 unit? Or any astromech for that matter? They are as smart as humans and designed to serve or be your friend. You can play chess or a game of go against it and be sure to lose every time. It might even be able to teach you something of the games. It will walk (or what you call it) around in your home, minding its own business or maybe cleaning it for you. Pick up your dirty socks and tell you where you put your mp3 player when you think you lost it. Like any good behaving wife. ;)

Well... that day might soon be here... and while you are dreaming you can start to build your own astromech droid and then you can post pictures and stories about your progress at the official website of the R2-D2 builders club astromech.net. Check it out! This is really great nerdy sci-fi stuff! :D

Coop self service

Today when I went to Coop to buy some groceries I got surprised from the new self service stations for paying the food. Of course I had to try it!

These self service counters are for people with 15 or less items to pay for. For most people it will be slower than taking the regular old style human controlled lines, especially in the beginning, but soon people will get used to it and know which buttons to press and it will be quite effective.

As you see in the picture to the right, you put your basked with groceries on the left side. In the middle you have the automatic scanning device for scanning bar codes and a scale for weighing food like potatoes. To be able to pay for stuff with no bar code, like potatoes and onions, you use the touch screen to tell the machine what you just placed on the scale. Then you are supposed to put the groceries in a bag on the right side. When you are done you must pay. You do that either by cache or card the usual way, except that now you do all the work yourself of course.

I guess this will tempt a lot of people to not pay for some things they take from the store. They will probably deal with this by have some random controls, or maybe they have calculated this possibility and see that they will have to live with this loss for the sake of saving a lot more by not needing as many persons working in the store.

I am not sure what I think about this new self service. I don't like the idea of tempting people to being dishonest but I like the idea that I might not have to stand in line sometimes when I can take one of these self service stations. In the end I guess it is good that they give the consumer more options. It is all about to please the customer... and make more money.

The force will be with them!

"In honor of the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, NASA will launch Luke Skywalker's original Jedi lightsaber into space along with the crew of the space shuttle Discovery. The launch is slated for October."

Äntligen! ;o)