* Posts by Torquemada_131

16 publicly visible posts • joined 17 May 2019

Hands up if you want to volunteer for layoffs, IBM tells staff

Torquemada_131

HR is not your friend,....

It was a lesson which took me too many years to understand,....

But HR isn't there to protect you from the company,...

HR are employed to protect the company from you.

Twitter set for more layoffs as Musk mulls next move

Torquemada_131
Holmes

"Musk told a Delaware court his reorganization of Twitter was almost complete"

I'm sure that Musk must have heard the words "Due Diligence" sometime in the past 40 years.

Sealed, confidential IBM files in age-discrimination case now public to all

Torquemada_131

I have no doubt that the "Managers" who are advocating this strategy are NOT young.

On the other hand, I've been able to observe the on-boarding and progress of of these same "EP's" at another US mega manufacturer... and so far, I've been forced into the conclusion that no university degree ever guarantees that your new hires are diligent, well educated or well balanced.

"Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance". — David Mamet

Cisco tells UCS owners they may have a screw loose – in the server chassis

Torquemada_131
Trollface

I have a solution!

Here's a great new idea,....

"Plastic" screwdrivers and hex tools.....

Wait, What?

Computers cost money. We only make them more expensive by trying to manage them ourselves

Torquemada_131
Trollface

Are you buying an asset, or a liability.

Anyone who has shelves and cupboards of technology with fixable errors or faults needs to review their priorities.

I used to deal with a certain Borough Council somewhere around Havant which had exactly that problem... They explained this by saying they had a problem finding a partner who could offer a "green" recycling service for the hardware using "confidential" practices.

My current laptop is an i5 Laptop from around 2013, to which I've added memory and replaced the Hard-drive with a 1Tb SSD drive and it's a better PC today than it was on the day it left the factory. If a component "breaks" which is fixable, I'll do it myself or pay the local guy who provides a great service at a reasonable cost.

From the reseller community, we all understand the great rush to "recurring revenue", having made good money from selling HP printers for years,..

Personally, I have an aversion to spending capital on hardware, then following this with an annual subscription service which allows the manufacturer to switch this service OFF if someone forgets to pay the bill, or worse still, when a COVID type event strikes and reduces everyone's revenue so heavily that they have to choose between paying staff or continuing service availability from a wireless access point or cloud based CRM.

We sell support contracts for all the hardware we sell,.. but if the client lets the contract lapse, the hardware doesn't stop working.

FYI: If the latest Windows 11 really wants to use Edge, it will use Edge no matter what

Torquemada_131

I have no interest in EDGE,... If it opens at the request of a notification or app, I close it immediately after I've copied the URL.

The last time I put any focus on Internet Explorer was 2009.

Android is OK,... But I'm now wondering how long it will be before Google or someone else develops a low impact Operating System to wrench Microsoft's grip on the OS Market.

IIRC the market developed the term "Bloatware" to describe WINDOWS® and it's ever increasing need for Hard-disk space and resources.... That hasn't changed.

Docking £500k commission from top SAS salesman was perfectly legal, rules judge

Torquemada_131

"Bluebirds" are by definition, unexpected and not forecast,... But in this situation SAS were reliant on the Contacts which the salesperson had generated across his previous career,.. Which makes their decision stupid. I've been there, and suffered a very similar fate working for a Japanese company,.. Despite the fact that the deal was one of the largest in many previous years, the UK General Manager decided that I was the one who was getting stiffed... so I left. Despite the "win" there was no one to carry the three year deal through to full completion it fell apart before the end of year one.

Shame.

Cisco bets on real-world events with overseas audiences resuming in late 2021

Torquemada_131
Mushroom

"not-quite-warm-enough and oddly tasteless stews"

I've had that stew,... bizarrely, it takes more skill to extract all the flavor and goodness from a stew than it does to just cook it and serve it.

I can 'proceed without you', judge tells Julian Assange after courtroom outburst

Torquemada_131

"tRump loves Wikileaks"

I don't see what Assange's problem is,... Donald professed his love for Wikileaks in 2016,... If this is true, won't Bunker Boy just give him a Pardon for his crimes..

Unless Mr. President lied!!!...

Oh my,... can anyone imagine such a thing?

Switchzilla? More like Ditch-your-staff-zilla: Cisco back at the layoffs as revenues shrink

Torquemada_131
Trollface

Resistance is futile... Prepare to be Un-BORG'd

There's no doubt that when faced with fiscal un-certainty, Cisco's bean counters tend to wield the man-power reduction scalpel as a first response.

I'd also add that, staff "at risk" are commonly given advance notice and a suggestion that they should look towards finding a new role in another team in the next 6 weeks. Those with a long service record can also be given an additional two weeks.

It's not the fairest system,... but there's a lot worse.

SecureX gon give it to ya: Cisco muscles into the integrated security game

Torquemada_131
Mushroom

Dear anonymous coward,

Your comment suggests that manufacturers should just develop new products and stack them on the shelf, waiting for customer to call them with orders....

Press Releases are a fully accepted method of getting a new product 'free' visibility.

After this point, every method of creating customer awareness costs money...

Beware, Tesla might take away your car's autopilot if you buy its vehicles from third party dealerships – plus more news

Torquemada_131

We've seen this all this stupidity before,....

I wonder how long it will be before TESLA owners start noticing that their uber fast electric cars are only just able to keep up with an average

saloon as Tesla have reduced the performance in order to sell the latest model... Or maybe every component which has a consumer profile (Brake Pads, Coolant, Oil etc) has to be purchased from Tesla so that they can secure some recurring revenues.

Sorry Mr. Musk,... we've seen all this crap before.

Torquemada_131

And that's why Apple's userbase is limited.

I won't buy anything with an Apple© badge for the same reason.

Proprietary Technology and proprietary attitudes go hand in hand.

Good luck Tesla with extracting yourself from this swamp.

Cisco helps ease blight of tourism on Orkney's Wi-Fi hotspot network thanks to £4.3m grant

Torquemada_131

SCALABILITY,... They need to deploy in a controlled area first, to uncover any weaknesses.

Once this has been tested and approved, rolling this out to a wider audience can be implemented without any potentially negative aspects.

UK's North Midlands hospitals IT outage, day 2: All surgery and appointments cancelled

Torquemada_131
Trollface

In support of the behemoth...

I'd just like to say that, if Cisco could identify this specifically as a Cisco fault, they'd have put manpower and resources behind it immediately.

Yes,.. I'm an ex-Cisco contractor,... and I still "like" and "Respect" the company, and around 99% of the people,...

When faced with a mission critical problem such as this, especially in the Health Sector, they know that anything less than 100% commitment will generate

bad news in the media,...

So whatever the problem is,... they'll be paying serious attention.

China trade tariffs? Fuhgeddaboudit, say Cisco execs. We, er, shifted some production

Torquemada_131
Pint

All the commentators who are waving their arms in the air and getting sweaty under the collar about how "China will suffer great pain" and "China can't afford to stand up to the Mighty US for long",.... etc have little appreciation for factual reality or differing cultural attitudes.

Look up "Rare-Earth Elements" in Wikipedia.... specifically in regard to the manufacture of Electronics.

Quote from The Economist" : "Slashing their exports of rare-earth metals… is all about moving Chinese manufacturers up the supply chain, so they can sell valuable finished goods to the world rather than lowly raw materials." Furthermore, China currently has an effective monopoly on the world's REE Value Chain. (all the refineries and processing plants that transform the raw ore into valuable elements).

China recognise that, whilst the rest of the world have Oil deposits,... China has the majority in REE's.

The reason so many mobile phones and devices are made in China is part of the deal they struck with manufacturers to get access to these elements.

Negotiation to achieve "mutually beneficial outcomes" strikes me as a better starting point than irrelevant tantrums and empty threats.

As an ex-Cisco employee, I'm very aware of Huawei indiscretions,... China treats IP the same way as Donald T. Rump treats Subpoenas,.... The fact is,... you'll still catch more Bees with honey than you will with vinegar.