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IBM i Power Blades not selling….YET?

COMMON 2008 announced the POWER platform. Which is of course just brilliant. The IBM i is now just an OS, and to beat all that IBM released some new blades that are POWER based, so in fact you could run any of the the greatest OSes on the face of the earth on them, IBM i, AIX, or Linux, so why are they not selling. I think it’s just a matter of time and IBM doing what they don’t do best, marketing.

I have tried everything to get the company I work for to replace some older System i units with Power Blades but they have the same fears that is pointed out by this article by Mark Fontecchio.

I would urge anyone who has a need for 515 and 525(520) based server to really take a long hard look at blades. I think over time you will see the blades are actually cheaper.

Bill Gates has no idea what he is talking about

First of all I am no fan of Microsoft. I have proven that fact over and over again. I do however respect Bill Gates, he is a smart guy with good form who knows his place in life.

But . . . Bill Gates has no idea what he is talking about when he says there are no decent Americans in the US willing to work for Microsoft. I know plenty of strong IT people who would work for Microsoft today if they had a way for them to get in and interview. I think there are a couple of things here going on.

1. Bill Gates is turning soft and forgetting about the country he has built his empire on, the USA, and is thinking he will be a global shill and pander to other “not so lucky” countries that would do anything to get here even work for less and not have as much “house hold goods” to move. It all comes back to money.

2. I would have worked for Microsoft if they would ever call anyone back. In the past 20 years I have read the Microsoft jobs web site and have found many positions I would like but have never even got so much as a call back on anything in 20 years. Getting into Microsoft, unless you are an H-1B visa holder, then they seem to be able to find you just fine.

3. Microsoft is now pandering to the country that is the second or third country to steal the most software from them. Most H-1B visa holders Microsoft wants to hire are from India, not Japan or China, but India and also a country that steals more software from Microsoft than the US.

4. Indians from India will work like crazy because they don’t want to go back to India and they don’t want to leave. If they work for $50 and hour 17 hours a day they and are only half as skilled as a seasoned US developer getting paid $120 an hour and only working 8-9 hours a day which looks better on the books? I have seen H-1B visa holders come over without any skills but the project leader who is India or the same nationality has moved them to the US only to have them learn the skills they need while in the US. Some I have seen come into the country as say Java developers, having never seen Java and work with a good developer so they they are lost in the shuffle, only later to find out the hard way they know nothing about Java, the team lead has been writing the code after work for them and they hold a position in a company a good hard working US citizen could fill but can’t. This happens a lot. It’s the H-1B visa shell game.

SO Mr. Gates. I urge you to look all over the US, there are developers here who are hard working US citizens and are willing to work for you for decent pay with decent work loads. PLEASE HIRE ALL THE US CITIZENS YOU CAN BEFORE YOU GO OVERSEAS. Another reason to buy an Apple I say!