The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.

It is a slow day in the small South Carolina town of Pumphandle and streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody is living on credit. A tourist visiting the area drives through town, stops at the motel, and lays a $100 bill on the desk saying he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs to pick one for the night.

As soon as he walks upstairs, the motel owner grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.

The IBM Internet Technology Group has been publishing a fantastic series of articles about Drupal:

Using open source software to design, develop, and deploy a collaborative Web site.

Particularly exciting is the new support for IBM DB2 (see Part 9).

• Part 1: Introduction and overview
• Part 2: Design for an effective user experience

• AS/400 custom application development
• ERP consulting and implementation services
• Lawson Software modifications, enhancements, data conversions, interfaces, version upgrades, configuration, reporting. Technical and functional expertise in all application areas
• Database design and administration
• Business intelligence, financial reporting
• Systems integration
• Change Control
• Web development

The following corporations represent a partial list of our satisfied clients:

HBO

The EMI Group

Sony Music Entertainment

Olympus America

PricewaterhouseCoopers

Computer Generated Solutions

MSC Industrial Supply