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Taking social responsibility seriously is a core value at The Hot Aisle so starting today we are launching a new FREE service to advertise IT Jobs with a Environmental component.
If you are an employer or agency who is offering a full time or contract position anywhere in the world and that position has a green [...]

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This might be controversial, but yes we should allow cellphones into the Data Center. Here’s the thinking behind the answer.
Way, way back many enterprise data center operators were having huge problems with Sun SPARC I servers, like the Sun 4500, unexplained crashes, hang-ups and other strange events. At the same time rumors started circulation about [...]

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Recent cases of lost data have damaged public perception of government competence
Over 80% of the population in Scotland has lost confidence in the UK government’s ability to look after personal data; this is the stark finding of the first comprehensive survey of its kind into the psychological impact of recent public sector information losses.  
The [...]

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In spite of the huge popularity of social and professional networking sites, nearly two thirds of techies (62.5%) haven’t – as yet – used these channels to find an IT job, according to research carried out by The IT Job Board,www.theitjobboard.co.uk
The research also uncovered that more than half of those surveyed (57.4%) don’t currently see [...]

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The Washington Post reports that a single cyber crime group has stolen more than a half million bank, credit and debit card accounts over the past two-and-a-half years using one of the most advanced strains of computer spyware in existence, according to research to be published today. The discovery is among the largest stolen data [...]

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My absolutely favorite hotel in the whole world (and I have been in far too many in my career) is the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong and I picked up a press release that they have just relaunched it’s new website.
As part of its interactive marketing strategy, the Hong Kong-based luxury hotel operator has re-launched its global Web [...]

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The Pionen White Mountains underground data center has fog, waterfalls, German submarine engines, simulated daylight and ….
……  was also designed to withstand a near hit from a Soviet nuclear weapon.
It  is not a joke, this is a serious and real data center, a newly opened high-security site run by Banhof, one of Sweden’s largest ISPs, located in [...]

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The New York Times reports that a number of retailers and manufacturers have a gift for Christmas shoppers: product packaging that will not result hospitalization due to lacerations and stab wounds.
The companies, including Amazon, SONY Corporation, and Microsoft Corp, have begun to create alternatives to the infuriating plastic “clamshell” packages and cruelly complex twist ties that make products like electronics [...]

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I picked up a really interesting website from KyotoCooling that has a very interesting new approach to low energy cooling systems. The firm takes it’s name from the Kyoto Conference where our governments met and agreed Carbon reduction targets that none of them had any intention of meeting. The Hot Aisle is firmly of the [...]

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I am not sure if it increasing awareness about personally identifiable data loss or we are just becoming more careless with personal data but the data loss diary for October 2008 is a real stinker.
10 October – Theft of an MOD laptop containing personal identifiers, passport details, National Insurance numbers, family details and medical records [...]

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The BBC reported today that an inquiry has been launched after a memory stick with user names and passwords for a key government computer system was found in a pub car park. Subcontractor Atos Origin, which lost the stick, said there had been a “direct breach” of its procedures. It said the matter was being taken “extremely [...]

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I picked up a press release on the wire that caught my attention. A network equipment manufacturer that claims to offer the highest energy efficiency core router on the market. Claims based on a new standards body they set up themselves…..
Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: JNPR), announced that its T1600 core router has successfully completed testing using the [...]

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I got an email this afternoon, from a great friend of mine and fellow blogger Jonathan Davis of DNS Europe that I wanted to share with the readers of The Hot Aisle.
Jonathan and I used to work together - twice actually - (Coopers & Lybrand and Message Central). I took him on as a young [...]

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The BBC have reported that the thickness of Arctic sea ice “plummeted” last winter, thinning by as much as 49 centimetres (1.6ft) in some regions, satellite data has revealed. A study by UK researchers showed that the ice thickness had been fairly constant for the previous five winters.
 
The team from University College London added that the [...]

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In the largest Hot Aisle survey to date, 6273 readers participated, we asked “Does your IT Department pay the electricity bill for IT Equipment?” Despite best practice advice from industry heavyweights like Will Forest at McKinsey & Company, more than half of polled readers answered no.  A staggering 23% just didn’t know if IT picked up the [...]

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I found this bottle of Port in one of my local restaurants (Nandos in Norwich) and had to take a photograph. My family (and the rest of the diners) thought I was completely mad. Old Invalid Port just tickled my sense of humor and made me remember how many implementation issues have been because a [...]

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My friend and colleague Peter Hopton dropped me a mail announcing a remarkable offer that shows that the sticker price of your server is dwarfed by the energy consumption cost. Peter tells me that his VeryPC Janus servers create the same CO2 as a Prius driving 10,000 miles whilst the most popular big brand model [...]

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I picked up an extremely interesting article in the UK’s Daily Telegraph this morning. The article claims that some Chip & PIN Point of Sale devices manufactured in China have been tampered with at source and that PIN numbers and other secure data has been sent to offshore thieves.
Dr Joel Brenner, the US National Counterintelligence [...]

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I am a member of the IEEE and receive a great magazine called IEEE Spectrum in the mail. A recent article describes the incredibly advanced thinking within the US Department of Defence on Energy conservation. Why are the DoD so interested in saving the planet? As usual it is driven by economics:
Every $10 increase in [...]

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The Hot Aisle brings you yet another survey of over 6700 readers who commented on the impact of the current  banking crisis on their IT Investment plans. As expected many respondents (52%) are pulling back on investing in IT. Overall 69% of respondants reported an impact on spending plans.
Most interestingly a few (5%) are accelerating [...]

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How much CO2 does one Google search produce? How much for one EBAY auction or for a SecondLife avatar, or running one blog like http://www.thehotaisle.com? How do our activities on the Internet compare to driving our car? The answers might surprise you……
Fellow blogger Rolf Kersten pulled together some quite surprising numbers:

Web service

CO2 emission

Same emission as

One [...]

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