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Author: Adam

VMware jobs boost in Cork

23/02/2007

I didn’t even know VMWare had an office in Cork tbh! Ballincollig apparently. I wonder was that because of the EMC acquisition, or were they here already?

siliconrepublic.com: Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Micheál Martin TD has confirmed 369 jobs for Cork as part of an expansion by EMC’s virtualisation software subsidiary VMWare of a major operation in the area.

Storage giant EMC already employs 1,600 at its plant in Ovens and the news is a welcome turn of events for the beleagured county of Cork, which saw up to 1,000 jobs lost in the past few weeks.

I hate to sound like a bitch with an axe to grind, but I hope this isn’t along the lines of the “800” jobs that Martin announced shortly – very shortly – after Motorola in Cork went bang. That was a little convenient to my mind.

The No-Asshole Rule

19/02/2007

Great story, great policy, but I wonder does it work in practice.

One day, I waited behind an especially rude customer who was sitting at the counter. He made crude comments, tried to grab the waitress, complained about how his veal parmigiana tasted, and insulted customers who told him to pipe down.

This creep kept spewing his venom until a fellow customer approached him and asked (in a loud voice), “You are just an amazing person. I’ve been looking everywhere for a person like you. I love how you act. Can you give me your name?” He looked flustered for a moment, but then seemed flattered, offered thanks for the compliment, and provided his name.

Without missing a beat, his questioner wrote it down and said, “Thanks. I appreciate it. You see, I am writing a book on assholes … and you are absolutely perfect for Chapter 13.” The entire place roared, and the asshole looked humiliated, shut his trap, and soon slithered out — and the waitress beamed with delight.

(I’m an asshole from time to time, although I’d like to think I become an asshole only when I need to, because it’s the only language they understand.)

Google’s hard drive survey

19/02/2007

Engadget has broken down Google’s paper on hard drive failures to save us all the time of reading it, and I’m going to break it down even further for you:

  1. 1ook 80-400GB 5400-7200rpm drives evaluated.
  2. SMART doesn’t work very well.
  3. Failure rates correlate to manufacturers.
  4. Drive usage is not a major factor.
    1. (Except in young or old drives.)
  5. Heat isn’t as big an issue as you’d think.
    1. (Overcooling is actually worse.)

Need to update your website?

19/02/2007

As of April 1, you need to state the following details on your website:

  1. The name of the company and the company’s legal form;
  2. the place of registration of the company, the number with which it is registered and the address of its registered office;
  3. in the case of a company exempt from the obligation to use the word “limited” or “teoranta” as part of its name, the fact that it is a limited company;
  4. in the case of a company which is being wound up, the fact that it is being wound up; and that:
  5. if there is reference to the share capital of the company on any letters or order forms, the reference shall be to the paid-up share capital.

You may need to state this information in your emails too, but as is typical with Irish legislation, I’m not entirely sure if that’s the case. The ODCE doesn’t seem to either, or surely they would have been clearer than “company letters and order forms” in their information notice?

It’s definitely a good idea to require companies to put this information on their websites, but ffs ODCE, piss or get off the pot: what, if any, emails does this info need to go into?

Inkless printers

17/02/2007

Still on the subject of printers, here’s another one I came across, that uses a thermal process on pre-dyed “zink” paper to print without cartridges or cassetted. I’m not much of a TCO nerd so I haven’t looked into whether it’d actually save money, but it’s a clever idea nonetheless.

Recommend a Dell rep?

15/02/2007

Can anyone out there recommend a small business Dell rep that won’t piss me off by basically not giving a flying fuck at the moon about their customers?

I need to buy a server asap and thus far I’ve been lobbed from one rep to another, and treated with the kind of attitude I expect from an Eircom biddy, not a customer that’s likely to bring in quite a lot of server business in the next few years. At the moment it’s low margin business, but surely that’s their problem for selling low margin, not mine?

Failing that, can anyone recommend a supplier for low-end 1U rack-mounted servers in Ireland? By low-end I mean less than a grand fully-configured. So far I only have dabs4work, and I’m not mad about the idea of buying something relatively important to the network outside the country. Encom is too expensive.

Exxon: ‘Climate getting warmer’

15/02/2007

Star-Telegram: Exxon Mobil Chairman Rex Tillerson told a world energy conference today that “there is no question that the world’s climate is getting warmer,” and said that technological advances and a global strategy will be needed to combat the rise in carbon emissions.

“It is foolish for individual countries to engage in their own actions because it won’t do much more than make them feel good,” Tillerson said. “It is particularly important for the emerging economies of the Pacific Rim, where the biggest increases in carbon emissions will occur, to take part in the discussions.”

Tillerson’s remarks, to the annual Cambridge Energy Research Associates conference, marked a continuation of Exxon Mobil’s growing strategy to make itself part of the global climate debate rather than denying that the problem exists. More than 2,000 people from 44 countries are attending the CERA conference.

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