Mainframe Meets 'The Office' 50
BBCWatcher writes "Tom Foremski (a.k.a. Silicon Valley Watcher) claims that IBM is doing some guerilla marketing for the mainframe. The three videos, now on YouTube, show how IBM allegedly trains new mainframe salespeople, in the style of the BBC's "The Office." IBM's videos arrive in the midst of a Microsoft "Office" controversy. Microsoft was not amused when somebody leaked internal training videos from 2004 that feature Ricky Gervais, The Office man himself. Gervais wasn't happy either."
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Get a Mac (Score:1)
I like guerilla marketing (Score:2)
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Go to a computer store and put that into every browser, then lock the workstations... Oh to be 12 years old again!
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Funny? (Score:3, Insightful)
But the IBM employees who are forced to watch this will laugh though. They better.
Just curious (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe thats even sadder, that this is a good proof of existance of people who hold stock who interpret this kind of leak to be a reflection on the internal controls of corperate communication.
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Well, considering TFA says that the videos were made in 2004, it took about 2 years before the programmers got their hands on them...
Lies! (Score:5, Funny)
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I was thinking
Listen to the bubbles pop (Score:5, Funny)
You mean... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh wow (Score:3, Insightful)
The mainframe market tanked in the 90's. In the past year it's starting to see some life in it again. There's even one company of former Amdahl people who are doing mainframes with Linux (and z/OS on top of it). Here's the link: http://www.platform-solutions.com/ [platform-solutions.com]
Disclaimer: I know some of these people.
Honestly, without some sort of life, and especially competition, the mainframe market was looking quite dead. Which would be a pity, as mainframes are still quite cool in the niche they fill.
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Re:Oh wow (Score:5, Insightful)
The second main reason why people go with mainframes is that it's more cost-effective to centralize your compute resources in one system, when it comes to maintenance, for many solutions. One single rack or so is a heck of a lot easier to maintain than a Beowulf cluster of boxes, particularly if the latter are scattered.
So yes, for certain niches, mainframes are the way to go.
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1. They saved money (they were paying $100,000 per month for support - once the cluster was in place they managed their own support at a fraction of that cost).
2. They saved time (jobs that took the super computer 48 hours to complete, were completed by the new cluster of Linux machines interconnected with fiber in 1 hour). So they could do more work.
From my own experience, using mainframe equipment has drawbacks - the major one being
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Just saying one is always good is just plain silly. And, no disrespect intended, it indicates to me that you don't understand all of the variances which go one.
A case in point is your strawman argument. All this says is that your main application is naturally parallel, nor IO bound. I ca
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AS/400s are mini computers, not mainframes..
And I was shocked. If you buy the low-end version, you already have the full power chip, but just slowed down. For about $ 20k per processor you can unlock that, but that will also require you to buy another license, for several additional k$ per processor.
Usually that also comes with on-site service and the like of a kind that Dell and friends haven't heard of yet.
Also check the p
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Initially I watched the IBM videos and I was very impressed.
The first episode of the Microsoft video though, was beyond incredible, i'm talking about Heat gang exfiltrating the bank gunfight in LA kinda of quality.
Definitely worth watching.
Definitely IBM's doing (Score:3, Funny)
Offtopic: flash download (Score:2)
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Firefox plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390/ [mozilla.org]
MPlayer: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/ [mplayerhq.hu]
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at least they provide avi for download, which i could use (as flash streaming is slow, error prone and sound-less for me)
Eek. Boring (Score:2)
I am so out of touch with the funny bone in this type of humor. I had to google for Ricky Gerva
Re:Eek. Boring (Score:5, Interesting)
Ricky Gervaise is brilliant at what he does, but I'm in the same position as you and can't really appreciate it. Slightly different reason though - I find comedy that makes me squirm hard to watch. The Office (UK, I've never seen the US version) is very cutting and accurate for so many places. Trouble is, being in those places makes me want to squirm and so seeing it reproduced on screen also makes me want to squirm.
Cheers,
Ian
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You are not alone - I can't watch that stuff either - for exactly the same squirmy reasons.
A lot of UK comedy seems to be going that way too unfortunately
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I guess everyo
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The IBM one was tame. I completely loved the Microsoft one.
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-Eric
Woo-hoo! New memes! (Score:2)
Could somebody post the microsoft ones to youtube? (Score:1)
Coffee is for closers! (Score:1)
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Nice to see a "Glenngary Glenn Ross" ref. Mod parent up please! (And rent the movie already.)
Seriously, though: My younger brother was in sales for a while, and he claims that this speech adequately reflects the attitude. Which is why he left that line of work forever.
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