Greg In The Desert

Intel just barely made Forbes “100 Best Companies To Work For” list at number 98. I generally don’t think top-whatever lists are very useful and I would hate to think someone chooses their employment based on a list like this. Having worked for other large companies I can only say this: Intel is a huge company are there are plenty of good and bad places to work within it. There were quite a few comments made. There would have probably been more if it didn’t require Facebook.

From Hector Martinez:

I worked for Intel for 13 years and was recently laid off. I state those facts so I won’t be accused of toting the company line. While it is true that Intel expects much of their employees they also provide great opportunities to grow, as long as you are wiliing to work for them. Not everyone is going to like the pressure but this is a cutting edge company that leads their industry and not a place for those that cannot embrace the pace and the chaos the pace sometimes causes. Overall I had a great time there and would go back there if they ever chose to hire me back. Each person has a different experience even though they may be in the same place. In all those 13 years I only knew of a handful of techs or engineers that turned in their badge and walked out. I think that speaks to the ability of the company to keep talent regarless of the unrelenting pace of the factories.

From Pablo Luengas:

Vlad and Stephen are free to express themselves because, just like I, they don’t work there anymore. There is no risk of reprecautions. It’s not the same for people who are currently working there, who cannot say much because their identity in facebook will get them in trouble. Laurel’s experience -and a few others- she probabbly didn’t work directly for the fabs (factories as Intel call them), and her experience may be different for that reason. Unfortunately the great majority of people working for intel are related to the fabs and know what I’m talking about. they can corroborate what I say. When you work for intel, there is no life outside the company. if you are a process engineer, they will call you at 3am -you are not obligated to answer- but your review will reflect the “lack of cooperation” if you don’t. You are “owned” by them 24/7. I was there 87-01. Intel, keep your profit share bonus, I’ll take my life back. For my family and my own well being, I think is a great deal!!!!

• Buyers flock to cheap foreclosed homes – A Glendale home that sold less than two years ago for $259,000 sold again three months ago for $113,000. A Phoenix home that fetched $190,000 two years ago just went for $45,900. A Queen Creek home sold for nearly $275,000 when it was built in 2005. Last month's price: $78,000.
• Bomb threat prompts search at Dobson High – Police searched the school buildings and fields this morning before students arrived for school. Bareiss said the school day proceeded as usual.

  "I think this is a time of year when students get spring fever and may think this is a joke," Bareiss said. "It's not a joke, and as a district it's our responsibility to take every threat as real."

• Costco Homes in Tempe to close – Costco Homes in south Tempe will close July 3.

  ]The Tempe home store, which sells furniture and appliances, is one of just two Costco Homes in the nation. The other one, in Kirkland, Wash., also is closing.

  "Costco Home has been a valuable experiment for us," Costco's CEO, Jim Sinegal, said in a news release.

  "The current economic slowdown and resulting weakness in the home furnishings business in particular have led us to conclude that the single-format Costco Home concept does not fit into our long-term expansion plans."

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• The Pragmatic Studio | iPhone Developer’s Roadmap – So where do you start on the path to learning how to create iPhone applications? Well, that depends. There's no single book, screencast, or training course that suits everyone. You'll need to take honest stock of your current skills and choose the appropriate resources. Here are some pointers to help you get started:
• Hulu tries HTML encoding trick to protect streaming content – Ars Technica – The discovery was made by TunerFreeMCE's Martin Millmore, whose media center software makes it possible for users to watch video feeds from a variety of sources in one application (similar to Boxee). Millmore noted on his website that new Hulu content contained a string of URL-encoded characters that are byte shifted from the original characters. "They then run the character stream through a series of JavaScript functions to convert it back in to plain text before pushing it in to your browser using DHTML," Millmore wrote. "That's quite a lot of effort just for fun, so I assume that is to stop screen scrapers from parsing content."
• GE and Intel to unveil health care partnership| Reuters – U.S. conglomerate General Electric Co and Intel Corp, the world's largest chip maker, have scheduled a joint press conference for Thursday, and are expected to discuss an alliance in health care, according to a source with knowledge of the plans.

  The companies' respective chief executives, Jeff Immelt and Paul Otellini, are scheduled to discuss their tie up at an event in New York.

• Windows 95 almost had floppy insertion detection but the training cost was prohibitive – One feature which Windows 95 almost had was floppy disk insertion detection. In other words, Windows 95 almost had the ability to detect when a floppy disk was present in the drive without spinning up the drive.

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• Local Pistachio Farmers React To Recall – Albuquerque News Story – KOAT Albuquerque – Pistachio farmers in southeast New Mexico are angry over the Food and Drug Administration's warning that people should stay away from the nut.
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  They said they have been busy doing damage control since the FDA's general warning to stay away from all pistachios.
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• Intel's Barrett to retire as tech crisis simmers – Forbes.com
  Intel Corp said Friday that Chairman Craig Barrett, the former academic credited with building the company into the world's foremost chip maker, will retire in May after 35 years with Intel.
• GeoEye › Gallery
  This half-meter resolution image of the United States Capitol, Washington D.C. was collected by the GeoEye-1 satellite on Jan. 20, 2009 to commemorate the Inauguration of President Barack Obama. The image, taken through high, whispy white clouds, shows the masses of people attending the Inaugural Celebration.
• iPhone Twitter App Battlemodo: Best and Worst Twitter Apps for iPhone
  (tags: iphone application twitter)

I’ve known for a while that Intel won’t be deploying Microsoft Vista internally. Now that the New York Times is reporting on it, you can know too.

Intel, the giant chip maker and longtime partner of Microsoft, has decided against upgrading the computers of its own 80,000 employees to Microsoft’s Vista operating system, a person with direct knowledge of the company’s plans said.

The person, who has been briefed on the situation but requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of Intel’s relationship with Microsoft, said the company made its decision after a lengthy analysis by its internal technology staff of the costs and potential benefits of moving to Windows Vista, which has drawn fire from many customers as a buggy, bloated program that requires costly hardware upgrades to run smoothly.

“This isn’t a matter of dissing Microsoft, but Intel information technology staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista,” the person said.

An Intel spokesman said the company was testing and deploying Vista in certain departments, but not across the company.