Archive for October 2008
Information Reformation
I wrote the following article about a dozen years ago when I was a technology evangelist at Sun. Back in the mid-’90s, we were experienced the early part of the first wave of "The Web." Today, with the advent of Web 2.0 technologies we’re seeing an explosion in different dimensions. Wikis, social networking, mass collaboration,…
Read MoreHistory of October 31
HISTORY OF OCTOBER 31 On October 31, 1517, an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg 95 propositions or theses and marked the beginning of the Reformation. Of course, the Reformation began long before that, but this date proves to be a convenient coat hanger for historians…
Read MoreHow to Raise Your Visibility on the Web
How to Raise Your Visibility on the Web, Part 1 Recently, a friend of mine who is doing a job search asked me: Bill… Petro… dot com, how did you come to get a .com after your name, and more importantly, how could potential employers find me more easily on the InterWeb? And…
Read MoreHistory of Halloween
.!. HALLOWEEN Halloween (Allhallows Even) is the evening of October 31. In its strictly religious aspect this occasion is known as the vigil of Hallowmas or All Saints’ Day , November 1, observed by the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches. In the fourth decade of the 8th century, Pope Gregory III moved this holiday to…
Read MoreHistory of Daylight Saving Time
HISTORY OF DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME Daylight Saving Time, or DST, is a brilliant campaign to convince people that we’re getting more daylight each day, when in reality we’ve simply changed our clocks and then forgotten about it within two weeks. DST begins each year at 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday in March in most…
Read MoreHistory of Kirking of the Tartans
HISTORY OF KIRKING OF THE TARTANS This Sunday all over the world many churches will observe the Kirkin’ o’ th’ Tartans, a celebration of Scottish heritage and culture. What is The Kirking of the Tartans? Etymologically it simply means: Kirking, from the Scottish Gaelic word kirk which means church, in this usage means “blessing.” Tartans…
Read MoreCLARiiON co-stars in Body of Lies
Last week I saw the new Ridley Scott spy thriller Body of Lies. Scott has made a number of movies in recent years starring Academy Award winner Russell Crowe, including Gladiator, A Good Year, and American Gangster. In this film Crowe co-stars with Leonardo DiCaprio, and additional co-stars who are even more flashy. EMC loaned…
Read MoreInformation Growing Exponentially
Information Growing Exponentially Why Info Exponential? Because information is growing faster right now than it ever has in history. Much of it is coming from so-called “end users” like you and me. IDC estimates 70% will come from individual creation by 2010. Personally, I create a data wake, or digital footprint of about 10 gigabytes…
Read MoreHistory of Yom Kippur
HISTORY OF YOM KIPPUR The Jewish High Holy Days begin with Rosh Hashana and continue until Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur , which begins and sundown this evening, also known as the Day of Atonement , or more correctly Yom ha-Kippurim (Leviticus 16) goes back to Jewish antiquity almost 4,000 years to the time of Moses.…
Read MoreEagle Eye on EMC DMX
This weekend, I saw producer Steven Spielberg’s latest #1 blockbuster Eagle Eye. In a particularly exciting scene, the cameras flashed to the front of a some impressive looking information processing equipment. When they needed equipment to represent the super-computer named ARIA, they used EMC’s DMX arrays. The “Direct Matrix” Symmetrix storage systems are indeed the…
Read MoreB2D and TiVo
While giving a talk to a group of sales reps in New York, we were discussing the concepts of Backup to Disk (B2D) and Virtual Tape Libraries (EMC Disk Library). Some of these folks were quite experienced as sales reps, but didn’t quite understand the value proposition of the Disk Library. At one point, the…
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