Category Archives: non-technical - Page 2

The EMC / Dell merger: my tears and thoughts

Dell EMC

It’s been a few weeks now since Mr Dell, Silver Lake and MSD Partners announced they want to take over EMC and with that become the world’s largest privately held IT company. For me I relived the whole HP / Compaq merger and at that time Compaq was my favorite company. My whole world collapsed. What was going to happen to the world I lived in? It was going to disappear! But luckily it did not. The best pieces of Compaq at the time, their servers, were simply rebranded and sold as HP Proliants and the Alpha CPU “suddenly” appeared as the Itanium from Intel. And everybody was happy. Well, sort of. At least the server department kept on delivering what they were famous for.

And now this happened

I never realized Michael Dell was even in a position to actually raise that kind of money. But with help from Silver Lake and MSD Partners he succeeded to raise sixty five Billion US Dollars! Just imagine! Oh, wouldn’t I like to get my hands on a small portion of that!! But that’s a whole other story. Forget the money, forget the stock exchange market: what will this mean for both companies and the people working there? As some of you know, I’m involved with both the EMC education department as well as the customer facing piece of EMC Support and I want to share my thoughts on the future of my current “Compaq” equivalent, aka “EMC”.

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Why securing devices using your fingerprint is not safe

fingerprint

Think about it: fingerprints are unique. Everybody has them and every one of them is unique, so it’s a secure way to prove your identity, right?

WRONG!

We all thought that passwords were easily hackable, if not by guessing, by brute force attacks. And we all know the “difficult” passwords: P@$$w0rd123 and 3AsyD03s1T. As if hackers are stupid! They’re not! Believe it or not, but these so called encrypted, but still “readable” passwords are easy to guess, just like your dog’s name and your mother’s birthday. I mean, a dog’s name is Bello, Spot, Rex, Fluffy or a dozen other names and as for birthdays: we only have to try every date since 1-1-1900, which is roughly only 115 x 365 = 42,000 dates which are there to try.

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EMC World 2015: my plans for the week (thinking out loud)

Las Vegas

It’s that time of the year again: EMC World in Las Vegas, which takes place from May 4 to May 7. And this year I’m not going unprepared again. So I made a list of do’s and don’ts, so I can more easily pick the best way to spend my precious time. Are YOU going too?

So what’s my week about?

When I arrive in Vegas after having 2 layovers in London and Dallas, I’m probably half asleep. Because of the 9 hour time difference I’m sure I will sleep at very odd hours and be awake at even worse hours. I just hope I’m not sleepwalking through the casino, since I don’t even like gambling. Although it would be funny to wake up, finding out that I’ve won a few grand, right? My stay in Sin City will start with a packed two days filled with meetings. Yes: working on the Saturday and Sunday: it’s all part of the game! And that day I already have a meeting conflict, but the week will have plenty of opportunity to catch up with old friends, so I’m not worried there.

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Solar eclipses are not that uncommon

Total eclipse

In Europe it’s happening RIGHT NOW, but if you’re missing it, here’s a list of sites where you can see where and when the next eclipse will take place:

Don’t forget to protect your eyes! You only have one pair.

Ga je naar EMC World 2015? Schrijf je ook in voor de Dutch Delegation!

EMC World 2015

EMC World 2015

Voor diegenen die naar EMC World afreizen in mei is er door EMC NL een sociaal programma samengesteld om “de week door te komen”. Net zoals voorgaande jaren is er weer een heel programma in elkaar gezet om het een fantastisch networking evenement te maken. Praat met je landgenoten, onder het genot van een drankje of hapje over wat jou bezig houdt, maar vooral: breid je netwerk uit en kijk waar mogelijkheden liggen.

Ook nu weer organiseert Jibe! Group in opdracht van EMC Nederland een aantal events waar je gewoon bij moet zijn!

Fremont street

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