My position has been made redundant. Time to write my CV. But first... the pub.
posted by Jeremy Smyth 12:56  |  

It never rains, but it pours.

This week, since Monday, has been quite odd in work. Let me give you some background. We have three main offices globally, Ireland, the US, and the UK. In Ireland, there are two locations, within a few miles of each other. I am in an office with four others, the other location has perhaps 30. So already I'm a bit remote.

On Monday, I heard an entire wing got laid off, three people including their executive. Another executive (my boss) was axed. This was announced informally by the people concerned on Monday morning.

While this was going on, the majority of the other managers were sequestered away in a hotel somewhere, and had been since Saturday. No-one knew what they were discussing. Our fears were our only companions, and that is not a pleasant way to be.

Yesterday (Tuesday), one of the managers left the haven/hellhole of a hotel room, met with the staff - at this stage very disillusioned - to deliver what little news she had. Nothing specific, just that finances were a problem, and that some restructuring would be necessary. They were in the hotel planning different scenarios; what if there were only 20 people left? what if 30? 40? etc.

This morning I heard that today is the day, and it doesn't look good. The rumour as I write is that there will be over 20, perhaps 30 or even 40 layoffs. Bearing in mind that as of yesterday there were 67 people in the company, we're talking a serious percentage.

I will know more in an hour or so. Time to sit back, smoke a cigar, and wait.
posted by Jeremy Smyth 11:06  |  

Sunday, March 25, 2001

I don't normally post geeky stuff here - to be honest, I don't know why.

Most of you know I'm interested in fairly technical stuff like linux and other geeky toys, but I haven't ever posted any linux or unix related stuff, as far as I can remember (feel free to correct me...) anyway, here's a link to an article discussing
OSX, which is the Macintosh's new version of Unix. The argument is that although Linux has heralded the coming of "Unix for all", it has taken Apple (who incidentally introduced the first "Windows-like" operating system, long before Microsoft) to create a user-friendly Unix. Tough luck Linux!

Good article, shame there are no pictures. I like pictures :-)

Oh, and happy mother's day everyone - er, I think there's only one mother who reads this. Well happy mother's day to the rest of you. I know some of you have it in you ;-)
posted by Jeremy Smyth 13:41  |  

Thursday, March 22, 2001

EVENTUALLY my article made it onto Yap!!! Allegedly it's been there for AGES, but today's the first time I've seen it. It's lovely!! Even got a nice little graphic!!

Hrm... it's been ages since I last posted. Well what have I done? A spot of rollerblading, still sore. I need to do more. Also read a list of four ways to avoid bringing work stress home, and fourth on the list was "Keep fit at all costs" - something I've been "working up to" :-) but never quite getting there. *guilty look after finishing off a huge bag of peanut M&Ms this morning*

And an ex is getting engaged.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy for her. He sounds sweet and lovely, and they will be great together. But I feel OLD!! At least one other ex has since gotten married, and another is at least settled and sharing a mortgage with her partner. And me? Still in rented-accomodation-with-old-workmates land.

Speaking of which - I won't be living there for much longer. Those photos I posted on February 27th? I won't have that scene every morning as of the end of April. Our beloved landlord has found sense and is selling right at the peak of the property boom.

In my insanity I thought it may have been a good idea to try to buy the place, but as he is looking for a price something like 5 to 10 times my salary, I don't think it's going to happen. Looks like rentsville, population me, is going to continue for some time yet....

Oh - I tried posting the following last week, and failed:

There's something weird about publishing a website, about writing in general: why?

What prompts us to spend time on sitting down, putting our thoughts together, researching a topic, supporting our arguments, writing it down, editing it, and then giving it away for FREE?

Over the weekend I wrote a tirade against the lack of St. Patrick's Day in Ireland this year. Tirade is the wrong word, but I like it :-)

Oh, and this is the first blog I've written from my PDA. Woohoo!!

Innocence and naïveté, eh?
posted by Jeremy Smyth 11:21  |  

Friday, March 16, 2001

About time something like this happened - a drug company, Bristol-Myers Squibb, has agreed not to enforce its HIV drug patents in Africa. Not that it's giving them up. Heavens forbid, if it did that, it would lose its reason to develop new drugs. It's simply removing barriers in countries that could never afford to buy its products anyway. Competition doesn't enter into it. Well, actually it does, as the article shows, different companies are competing to LOWER their low prices in Africa already. Read.
posted by Jeremy Smyth 11:12  |  

Friday, March 09, 2001

New British patent - this guy must be taking the piss.
posted by Jeremy Smyth 11:31  |  

Tuesday, March 06, 2001

This is the funniest thing I've seen in ages... Right, you've heard of Napster, probably even of similar things like Gnutella and Aimster. And you may also have heard that Napster have fallen foul of the US government - specifically the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), a bill passed last year that protects copyright holders against various technical infringements of their copyright, including publishing copies of their works a la Napster et al, and reverse-engineering encryption a la DeCSS, a program that allows Linux users to use DVDs.

So Aimster, to avoid a fate worse than Napsters, has gone and used the DMCA for its own purposes: it has come up with a novel form of Encryption so that the copyright guys (specifically the RIAA - Recording Industry Association of America) have to break the law in order to figure what files are being transferred. This is quite significant, because in US law, evidence gathered by breaking the law is inadmissible.

Now the funny bit: the encryption tool uses a simlified form of Pig Latin. Here's a quote from the above link:
The Aimster Pig Encoder encodes the file names by simply changing the words in the file name very slightly. For example, "Music" becomes "usicM", "Hello" becomes "elloH", and you can guess what becomes "uckF ouY, ouY pyS astardsB".

I still can't believe this.

posted by Jeremy Smyth 18:20  |