Netezza’s April Fool press release
Short and cute. Even makes a genuine marketing point (low power consumption), and ties into past marketing gimmicks (they’ve played Pimp My SPU in the past, with dramatic paint jobs).
Netezza Corporation (NYSE Arca: NZ), the global leader in data warehouse and analytic appliances, today introduced a limited-edition range of its award-winning Netezza system. Expected to become an instant industry collectible, the systems can now be purchased in a variety of color finishes – pink, blue, red or silver. The standard gun-metal gray unit will continue to be the default option for orders requiring eight or more units, to ensure availability.
Affectionately known as ‘the Netezza’ by customers and partners, the systems not only offer unparalleled processing performance, but the secret sauce of its innovative design is also leading the way in effective power and cooling management – making it a truly green option for any data center.
Not earth-shaking — even if it purports to be earth-saving — but unless I’ve overlooked a biggie, there isn’t much competition this rather lame April Fool’s year.
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Humor, Netezza | 5 Comments |
LISP humor
Cartoon
Song (previously posted)
Poem
Another cartoon — not particularly funny on its own — that appears to come between two of the above
A cautionary tale
Maybe I was just in an odd mood, but I laughed for a LONG time at this cautionary tale.
Hat tip to Dan Weinreb, who introduced me to xkcd by sending over a link to this funny cartoon, in response to this filksong.
| Categories: Humor | 2 Comments |
One of the funniest fake press releases ever
About an extended outage in Lord of the Rings Online.
Edited July 2, 2008: New URL that works at least for now.
| Categories: Games and virtual worlds, Humor | 1 Comment |
Dude, you stole my joke!
October 15: We know what BEA is — now it is just a matter of negotiating the price
October 25: We’ve already established what you are, now we’re just working out a price
The news in the latter is that BEA has admitted it.
Note: Of course, the original joke is so old as to be variously attributed to all of George Bernard Shaw (most credibly), Winston Churchill, and Oscar Wilde.
| Categories: Application servers, Humor, Oracle | Leave a Comment |
The Vertica guys have their own blog now
I’ve written a considerable amount about Vertica and/or the opinions of Mike Stonebraker. Now the Vertica guys have their own blog, which they pledge will not just be a rehash of Vertica marketing pitches — notwithstanding the Vertica-related wordplay in the blog’s name.*
*Those guys are good at wordplay.
| Categories: Columnar database management, Humor, Vertica Systems | 1 Comment |
Leaving Microsoft with a laugh
Jim Allchin’s farewell blog post is a hoot. There’s even a bit of database stuff in it.
| Categories: Humor, Microsoft and SQL*Server | Leave a Comment |
It’s a good week for puns …
… unless you think that is inherently an oxymoron. I thought I was doing well catching and expanding on a clever pop culture reference. But the folks at columnar DBMS start-up Vertica Systems may have topped that with their slogan
The tables have turned
Ouch.
| Categories: Columnar database management, Humor, Vertica Systems | Leave a Comment |
Hot times at Intersystems
About a year ago, I wrote a very favorable column focusing on Intersystems’ OODBMS Cache’. Cache’ appears to be the one OODBMS product that has good performance even in a standard disk-centric configuration, notwithstanding that random pointer access seems to be antithetical to good disk performance.
Intersystems also has a hot new Cache’-based integration product, Ensemble. They attempted to brief me on it (somewhat belatedly, truth be told) last Wednesday. Through no fault of the product, however, the briefing didn’t go so well. I still look forward to learning more about Ensemble.
| Categories: EAI, EII, ETL, ELT, ETLT, Humor, Intersystems and Cache', Object, OLTP | Leave a Comment |
God’s programming language
To the melody of the classic filk song “God Lives on Terra.” Parody lyrics written in 1996.
It’s wonderful. But then, I love filk. And I also love flexible data structures.
The lyrics start
I was taught assembler in my second year of school.
It’s kinda like construction work — with a toothpick for a tool.
So when I made my senior year, I threw my code away,
And learned the way to program that I still prefer today.Now, some folks on the Internet put their faith in C++.
They swear that it’s so powerful, it’s what God used for us.
And maybe it lets mortals dredge their objects from the C.
But I think that explains why only God can make a tree.
| Categories: Humor | 5 Comments |