Slashdot Mirror
Sun Discovers Dumb Terminals
Yahoo has a story about how Sun is practicing a sort of floating workforce - many employees have no permanent desks, they just come in and log on to a dumb terminal, err, thin client. Besides being a sneaky way to encourage employees to arrive ever earlier at work, it probably is cheaper to run the business off a few large Sun servers - at least for Sun.
Never mind the fact that employees like to have file cabinets, desk toys, and other stuff to keep them happy during the day, and organized and productive. Essentially what Sun has said in implementing this concept is "everything important about your job is on the computer, or small enough to be carried with you everywhere you go."
-Evan
It mentioned in the article that each terminal cost 500$. 500$ for a dumb terminal? Thats pretty expensive, one could buy an entire pc for that price... but then again its sun hardware.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
After reading Slashdot for the last couple years, I've always been told it was more mature to embrace free software and accept it as inevitable than try and actually sell something you've built. :)
In all seriousness though, this means that people's workspaces change pretty dramatically, having no personalization. Also, management becomes a bit different when you don't really know where your employees are sitting on any given day. No longer is "management by walking around" a possibility.
I don't think the return of the mainframe/fat server model is necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't need to go hand in hand with a hotel/no permanent desk model.
I'd bet that within a few months, they will abandon the no real desk policy, but the dumb terminal thing may work well for them.
They tried this a while back - get to work, go to a window, get your laptop and cell phone, head off to work in your 'office', the caf, outside, etc. They ditched it after finding it was hell to find anyone to have a meeting, which is still necessary no matter how much cyber you want to throw at a situation. One manager had a two-around rule - if he had to walk around the campus twice to find someone he needed, screw them - go on to something workable.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
With all the software for monitoring a worker's machine, and all the work thats been done with distibuted software management (Novell Zenworks for example), don't we already have enough options for avoiding going back to dumb terminals, while still maintaining an easy to manage computer network system?
they called it musical chairs
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
God knows that these lusers are predisposed to interacting with dumb things. Dumb TV. Dumb spouses. Dumb coworkers. Dumb terminals.
It only makes sense.
I have been pwned because my
first post...
The system only works at Sun. Here at slashdot getting in early doesn't get you a better spot.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
i like this idea very much, both because it saves the company money and is a much better (as they said) then every employee having their own stuff on their own personal computers...this way employees can get information from other employees much easier...i mean, you ever run into the problem when Employee X is out one day, but has some data that you need on his laptop that isn't at work...that kinda thing would be eliminated by this "floating" network workspace initiative... now, to play devil's advocate...
this is the bad side of the idea to me...at my desk at work, i have several assorted programming books, pictures of friends and family, my walkman, a dilber calendar, a rubik's cube, etc...with this kind of floating workspace, that kind of personal touch to your office would be eliminated...
plus, what if i wanted to go visit Employee X in person? i guess i would have to call them first, to find out where they are on any given day...also might make "stopping by" the desk of any female employees to try in vain to flirt a little more difficult...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
Not coincidentally, the company tanked soon after this started, and had to be sold in order to survive. In their new offices, traditional offices are the rule of the day.
Scene: A staff meeting is in progress...
PHB With Diagram: We're taking away your cubicles. In the new system you'll sign up for whatever cube is open that day.
PHB: It's based on the model of public restrooms. But I call it "hotelling" because it increases my chances of getting tips.
PHB: Each cubicle will have a computer, a chair, and a roll of note paper ... take on and pass it around. [Hands out notepaper roll which looks like toilet paper roll.]
you said:
The cool thing about a server/dumb terminal model is that none of the client terminals need to have anything beyond basic capabilities. Anything besides input and display is handled quite capably (in theory anyway) by the server. Data storage and processing occurs on Ye Olde Giant Box.
That rolling cabient thing sound extremely cool. ;-)
Come on I thought this was supposed to be NEWS. Sun's been doing this for, oh, about 3 years now. Some do fine, some hate it (raises hand). Here's an interesting thought for ya though: how much do you think all that dedicated office space for people who are supposed to be at customer sites selling or servicing equipment would have added to the pain of the last two years since the bubble burst?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Get In Early, Get A Good Office
"'You come in early, you get a good a parking space, you get a good office.' Chief Executive Scott McNealy has summed up the iWork program. "
Interesting idea, as you show up earlier to get a nice seat by the window/cooler. But what could be the disadvantages of having a roaming system of seats?
For starters, you can't really put many personal belongings around you, your workspace feels less personal. I think Sun's offices would feel less friendly, unless they had a lot of company parties to make up for it.
A friend of mine works at Sun and gave me a tour a little while back. The building itself was an interesting structure, and of course the computer systems were an experience in themselves.
The server rooms, conference rooms, and most offices had 24" monitors connected to Sun Ray 1 machines. My friend showed me how he could put his smart card in, and then it would ask him for his password, and he was logged into the exact same desktop that he had in his office. So whatever he was working on "followed" him around. Granted, it was just a remote X terminal, but I thought it was cool.
And I'm sure there's those of you who say, "it's been done before" or "that's old tech" but as servers get more powerful, and workstations become smaller, quieter, and dumber, it was cool to see this "old tech" being put to (damn) good use.
While my friend did have his own office, as did everyone else at that particular campus, it could be an interesting management experiment (if you want to call it that) to rotate people's desks around... maybe every month. That way, if people have a problem with coworkers, you can separate them, and that way everyone can get to know everyone else... and the new people don't feel so alienated. Of course, when you have roaming profiles, or dumb terminals, that makes things that much easier.
err thin clients err network computers - what ! do they not think we have a memory of more than 2 years to raise their $6 stock?!
...but it pisses everyone off because I'm the only one doing it so I leave my crap everywhere.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
This reminds me of college. Make sure you are among the first few in the classroom, so you get a good computer. But even if you got the best computer it would still have a crappy keyboard on which the backspace key would get stuck every now and then (it would ALWAYS be the backspace key, so it would delete a few more characters than you wanted it to and you'd have to retype them) and the mouse would be so dirty that it would stick to your hand!! Well, I might be exaggerating a little bit. But the bottom line is if people can't say "this computer is mine" then they simply won't bother treating it with a little care.
Alas, but in practice, Brenda in Marketing NEEDS the graphics card right in her terminal, or else she needs a Fibre connection to the server.......
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
- So the company has a place to keep its stuff
- So people from outside the company have a place to contact the company
- So employees have a physical space in which to work together
Now, this doesn't really affect the first or second reason for an office. But the third.. what's the point of having a common workspace if your team is never in the same place at the same time?Hint: If you think telecommunication has advanced to the point that physical, face-to-face communication is no longer necessary, you're nuts. I could maybe work at 80% of my current efficiency without having the other guys a raised voice away, but even then I wouldn't be happy about it.
You mean the R in "Reality"?
<Amanda`> I just went out to the parking lot in my bathrobe to exchange warez CDs.
A story on NewsForge Secretaries use Linux, taxpayers save millions amost a year ago parallels this. I think the concept is a good idea, esp for those in the Bay area. My desk is nothing more than a junk pile anyway, I would be all for it.
Plus, it makes the IT departments job SOOOOOO much easier.
If you're interested in what happened, people working out of the trunks of their car, check out this overview.
...
Wacky Stuff
Chiat/Day Experiment
...but I *like* having a desk/cubicle to call my own. I like the security of feeling fairly confident that nobody but me has farted in my chair, and nobody has had their greasy hands on my mouse or stapler, not to mention their greasy fingerprints on my monitor.
I shudder at the thought of having to sit at my co-worker's desk. I wouldn't have any time for work after I finished cleaning the coffee stains from the desk and keyboard, and the potato chip crumbs out of the mouse rollers.
I don't know about the rest of you, but if this were implemented at my office, I'd come in as *late* as possible. I may bet the worst desk in the office, but I'd probably get teh same one every day.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
Ok, I guess folks haven't gotten the joke yet, but Sun is starting to do the exact same thing IBM did back in the 60's.
Maybe the Sun machines have more then 80x24 amber
7-character ASCII display, but the principle is the
same.
Karma: Food Fight (Mostly affected by Date Plate).
I wonder if people really roam around like they're "supposed to," or if people settle into a routine of sitting in the same place. Like in a college class where this girl walks up and accuses me of being in "her" seat.
When I worked at Bell Labs we had Bit Blit graphics terminals that were all networked to an Amdahl 5880 Mainframe running SVR2. We also had real offices with walls and doors. We could work at our desks or in the labs. It was true mobility without any of the dehuminizing crap. This was back in the late 80's when people were still valued as people.
"'You come in early, you get a good a parking space, you get a good office.' Chief Executive Scott McNealy has summed up the iWork program. "
How early do I have to come in to get Scott's office?
Sure, it sounds like a good idea. Personally, I wouldn't mind a trial run of it. However, most people need to have some sort of stuff on their desk, in dead-tree format, be it manuals or a Dilbert book. I don't see this promoting that, obviously. It could work for a little while, but people would get fed up really fast with that.
Every cloud has a silver lining (except for the mushroom shaped ones, which have a lining of Iridium & Strontium 90)
If going to work could be as rich and variable, as, say, going to the library, this could be very cool!
Imagine! No office cliques, since there'd be no fixed offices!
Good thing, IMHO.
Cliques are for idiots.
You 'rub elbows' with many folk that you don't know! [duffman!] Ohyeah! [/duffman!]
Excellent foundry for mating opportunities!
You don't have to deal *every fscking day* with that drooling moron in the next cube that thinks large eyed velvet painting child images of the early 70's constitute 'high art'.
I'm liking this more and more.
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
Ugh, check out the english on this.
"An office costs about $15,000 per year to maintain, Agnello says, and Sun plans about one desk per employee, including the remote locations, once the system is running, with 18,000 employees, roughly half the company, floating. "
comma hell!
I've heard it called "hotelling". One implementation I heard about had a 'locker room' where you could store your personal effects. They got around having filing cabinets in each office by having a central bullpen for all the filing.
Here's a similar story, slightly off-topic, but illustrative of a similar corporate mindthink.
A few years back someone told me of how "Kal Kan", the american dog-food company, operates. The entire headquarters is run out of a large open space similar in size to a high-school gymnasium. There are no cubes and no offices. Desks were arranged class room style, in neat rows. Everyone, from the president on down, worked from identical desks and identical chairs. Everyone had a single 2 drawer filing cabinet in their desk. At night, the cleaners were instructed to throw away anything that was left on top of the desk. Fax machines, copiers, water coolers, and conference rooms were along the outside walls. Apparently everyone respected everyone's privacy and kept their voices down.
There is a certain comfort knowing that everyone at work is being treated equally. Hotelling is another way to bring that about.
I think it might be most useful for businesses where a lot of staff are always 'out of the office'. When I started out as a environmental consultant, I only had a couple of project files at any one time. A hotelling setup would have been ideal for us most of us were in the field half the time.
My father is a blogger.
So, what is the point of having an office building for most workers at this point? With all the 'hot desking' going on, won't you have trouble finding people for a face to face chat?
It would seem just as good an idea (or bad) to have everyone work remotely from home.
Just have a few people on site to make sure nothing catched fire or something, and that's it.
its like low income housing as opposed to a nice apartment complex.
most people take care of a nice apartment (there are exceptions) but low income housing is almost always in shambles.
if you have your own workstation & cubicle/office you will have a sense of pride, like you would if you rented a nice apartment. you take care of it and it takes care of you. the people that had it before you more than likely took care of it and the management knew what was wrong with each unit and who the trouble makers were.
the first come first serve grab a PC would be like low income housing, you would have very little chance of knowing what kind of person was there before, much less the time before that, the management doesnt really care, or is off site and there is very little pride in where you live.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
First they are not dumb ternimals, far from it. It is called a SunRay. If you want to know more about them, try http://www.sun.com/products/sunray/. Amongst other things you can take your SunRay card, pull it from your terminal and go put it in another. As long as the SunRay is on the same system you get your exact desktop back. With SunRay you also dont waste the vast amount of computing resources in your workplace. Don't take my word for it, go ask distribted.net. And that is just for wasted CPU cycles.
Second it is called Flexable Field Office. This means that you do NOT have to go into to the office to work. It is BECAUSE of this meany of the Sun workers were NOT in the World Trade Center Last September 11. You also do not have to be in your home town to go to an office to do work. Where it made sense, some employes kept their offices.
Ever wish you could telecommute?Yes Sun even pays for its workers home office equipment and Internet access so they can work.
And Sun saved money doing it.
I thought this "hot desking" fad died back in the 90's. If advertising trendoids can't be weened off their desks, what hope do you have with conservative techies?
It also has the sinister effect of making employees feel less secure about their job, like they are already half way out the door.
You go CEO! Turn that fear dial up to 11.
No big fucking deal. Everyone pretty much chooses the same general area everyday. It is not a fight to get to THE best desk first.
I don't really like the centralized shit, they can watch stuff too easily.
On a side note:
Sun also has its own word processing and office suite, called Star Office, which it has begun selling, instead of it giving away, in a sign of maturity for the Microsoft Office rival.
Explain to me how selling a piece of software is "maturity". Idiots.
Doesnt anyone remember the recent story about microbe levels on keyboards and mice? This will be a great victory for the common cold.
Personnally I cant stand it when other people use my terminal (I learned dvorak, and popped out all the keys on my keyboard primarily to prevent people from using my terminal)
Somehow, this idea seems stupid, especially wrt their programmers. I certainly wouldnt put up with that environment.
The last thing I need to see on a monday morning is a moniter covered in fingerprints in front of a coke-sticky keyboard next to the mouse with the retarded ball.
Uh....Brenda in Marketing has a good resolution (and typically LARGE) graphics screen, and a dedicated 100bT full duplex link to the server. Where does this alleged need for fibre come from?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Not for nothing, but I kind of like knowing that I'm the only dude using my keyboard mouse & phone.
What happens to me if the guy who used the terminal the day before had a really flu, or if he didn't wash his hands after using the bathroom.
Pretty disgusting eh?
Imagine finding someone else's coffee stains or bagel seeds on or inside your keyboard?
You'd be finding something new and disgusting every day!!!
The terminals are called 'Sun Ray', and consist of either a 17" CRT or 15" LCD or a headless cpu, all of which contain a card reader.
They have dedicated motherboards with built-in ethernet and USB. They have no floppy or HD. They do have video (RCA) out and audio I/O (headphones).
I'm sure you can get the unit price down much lower when negotiating multiple units and a server. No one would buy just one of these things.
One server can drive hundreds of these. You simply use your smart card to logon, and your current saved desktop is delivered to your screen. There are no costs involved in administrating a stand alone cpu, and you never have to upgrade.
you said:
The cool thing about a server/dumb terminal model is that none of the client terminals need to have anything beyond basic capabilities. Anything besides input and display is handled quite capably (in theory anyway) by the server. Data storage and processing occurs on Ye Olde Giant Box.
From the original post:
Brenda from Marketing needs something with more graphics capabilities for banner ads.
Sounds like a graphic card could do lots here. Sounds like the Olde Giant Box gets onto some Limitationz here my friend.
Nice theory.
I didn't even get that far before returning here to complain about the poor writing skills! I hope to god that writer has a backup career.
The first sentence sets the ugly tone of incompetence.
"How much would you give not to have show up at your desk every day?"
The second paragraph keeps pace with a misplaced comma in what I guess he thought was a proper noun.
"...follow them on the computer maker's network."
The third paragraph isn't so bad.
The infamous fourth paragraph. This is where I decided to hit the all mighty back button. What a confusing beginning to a run on sentence!
"Sun says will save it $150 million annually, and the program is essentially an advertisement for the company's marketing pitch that business runs better on a network of big computers than smaller boxes powered by software from rival Microsoft Corp. "
Anyone else read Snowcrash? Didn't one of the characters who worked for the gov't work in a similar setup?
Here's the kicker: I NEED my Kinesis. I also NEED my Wacom tablet. Without them I'd be in the hospital within a week.
I'm glad my employer is smarter (and more profitable) than Sun.
-----------------------
To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.
At first, the whole $500 thing might seem a bit pricey, especially since you can get a full blown PC for about as much (monitor included). However, the cost of installing, configuring, and deploying a PC ends up making it cost much more. Also, I doubt you will need to upgrade the terminals for a long, long time.
I've been a developer at Sun for about a year and a half now. I started when I was going to school in Worcester, Mass and commuting to Chelmsford. Soon enough though, they kicked all us developers out and moved us to Nashua, about an hour away. So 4 months ago I packed up and moved up here. Now we're being moved back right near Worcester, and I asked about the iWork program. I was basically told no, and here's why.
The idea is basically that people who work in sales and marketing and stuff like that who travel a lot were using the predecessor of the iWork office, called simply a drop-in, more often then their "real" office anyway, so why bother reserving them space for a "home" office"? It's a nifty idea for them, but not for us. As developers, we need to be near the people we're developing with. I kinda aggree, but I still hate the commute, not to mention paying Mass taxes...
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
If there is no specific advantage to me being in a specific location, with a specific phone and reference books, notes, hardware, etc around me... Why should I come in at all? Telecommute
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Alright, so they can plug you into the system really quickly and get rid of you just as fast. I mean, we wouldn't want companies to be "inconvenienced" by those mass layoffs would we?
I think this is the new way that companies will do their layoffs.
Take away 50 cubicles each day, and if there's no cubicle left for you when you get to work, well, you know what that means...
I have a hard enough time keeping track of my team now that they sit all together. I would have to pack a lunch and a compass for code walk throughs in a situation like this.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
So if I get there really early can I have McNealy's office or Zander's old offfice? And if I get their offices can I make the decisions for the day?
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Who does that leave?
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
And Sun didn't just discover them. They've been using them for a long, long, long time.
The SunRay, though, is different from your standard X-terminal.
It's not an X-terminal.
It's a remote framebuffer, smartcard reader, keyboard, mouse, and audio device.
When you see an X screen on a sunray terminal, the X server is actually running on a Sun server somewhere, not on the workstation. You are only getting the display; hence there is 0 processing on the terminal, hence it can crash and you can just go to another and re-attach.
This is nothing new, the SunRay has been out for years.
It's solid state. It's entirely hot swappable (you can smash it with a bat, go to the next one, pop your smartcard in, and your session is intact)
You could buy shit workstations for $500. Then you have to load them out with the software you want. Then you have maintenance.
I *guarantee* that doing this with normal pc's will cost you more than double this.
I interviewed at Sun in '98 these where everywhere
This is neither new nor interesting from a UNIX user's perspective. Only in the Windows world do you really really need a workstation of your own. The model they where using then was the JavaStaion these have been around since 1996 http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/9611/sunflas h.961114.html
A thin client (Oracle/Larry Ellison propaganda aside) is a jumped up X-Term with a disk drive and maybe a local hard drive or large removable media. If you have a really skilled SysAdmin staff (I imagine Sun does) you can run all your regular UNIX customization & Window Makers on this, Gnome, Enlightenment, and even play Quake where ever your at in the whole world. Your not tied to hardware with can be stolen or virus'd
So the workstation is $500 a pop, the CPU isn't just a local P-4 or something it's the front end for some big set of Mid-range or higher box like a Sunfire or SunCat or some other UNIX or even Microsoftie server.
when somebody tells me about how cool their new Dell is and how well it can crunch that Excel, I just smile, I can have screensavers that are actual Fractals in real time. Wine sessions that out run the latest P4
Ok, so the one you saw has got a little Grey Flannel Suit look to it, but you have to remember it's a company system. Sorry to be L33tist but if the bulk of your contact with a computer is 9-5 your going to have fish as your screensaver and a picture of your kids as your background.
As we progress with the routine technical advancement your going to see a things like SUN 450 Enterprise w/Quad 480Mhz processors showing up on Ebay for $500, Likely in about 18 months
Schools and small businesses are going to start wondering why they are being nibbled to death by Microsoft and Apple and the various shadowy and dodgy hardware vendors (Compaq, Dell, Packard Bell) and switch into where this setup is more common it will look more like the NAVI from Lain
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
>You can't buy an entire computer, with monitor and OS for that price.
/w PS: $24.
:-)
You sure can buy an entire computer with monitor and OS and many other peripherals for less. I'll stick to the same online company to show it can be done without effort.
Allow me to demonstrate:
- Motherboard with CPU, sound, video, network, USB: $79 (mentioned above by me cause I was too lazy to log in and I tire of seeming like a PCChips pusher)
- 17" Monitor: $125.
- Mouse and Keyboard: $15 (not worth linking -- they're usually cheaper).
- Windows: $86.
- Memory: $42
256 MB.
- Case
Total: $356
Let's make it better than the sun box though:
- Hard Drive: $65.
- Floppy Drive: $9.
- CD Burner: $67.
Total: $512 and this does far more than the Sunray.
Savings: Up to $144. More if you don't want to use Windows. Another $124 if I'm right and the $500 sunray doesn't include a display.
And I know you can get that price much, much, much lower if you were to deal with distributors (and if you're talking 50 or more units, you most likely would have to).
>There are no costs involved in administrating a stand alone cpu, and you never have to upgrade.
More video performance is always needed with age, vendors obsolete proprietary old hardware by not providing necessary software upgrades, network standards change, people spill coffee into them, people stuff postit notes in silly places, people destroy the buttons, they stack telephone books on them, stack books to block the fan, stop the fan with pens when its too noisy, open them to "fix" them -- there's way more, but I'm not interested in reliving the pain.
BTW: Speaking as someone who has worked as computer support staff for a college with over 1000 terminals, I can tell you that software is one of the least worries. Computers, even though most parts don't move, do "wear out" -- parts either fail or stupid people beat the crap out of the computers.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
it promotes flex time, which means that parents can go to soccer games and workers can go to the office nearest them when there is a problem with trying to commute.
Why can't people with dedicated offices work flex time? Or is the idea that Sun now has fewer terminals than employees (to save money), thus forcing people to work staggered shifts?
cpeterso
Slashdot just told us that workstations are dirtier than toilets and now Sun wants people to share them on a regular basis? Be sure to bring a can of Lysol in your briefcase.
ppl seem to slamming these, but they are assuming everybody is running on these, and that is WRONG, ITS JUST THE SALES FORCE, you know the ppl that only on into the office once a week for team meetings or what have you.
:p
why have a desk for your mobile sales force when you only need 1/5th the space at any given time?
this is sun's solution and its pretty sweet, works perfect for a sales force.
this is prolly the best branded solution I can sell, everything i do is "custom".
I am every happy with the sunrays that are the thin clients, and the sunray server software, every slick, now i am just hoping for a linux port of that software
Sun has turned normal office work into something more like a call center sweatshop. Damnit! When I was doing tech support, I had to 'share' my desk with 400 other agents. I NEVER sat in the same place twice for something like 2 and a half years. And boy is that a killer on the old moral. Now those Sun folk have to deal with traffic, an empty coffee pot at work and now they have to fight each other for desks. Oh well...at least I don't work there.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Sounds like a graphic card could do lots here. Sounds like the Olde Giant Box gets onto some Limitationz here my friend.
Huh? The wench is making banner ads, ferchrissakes. Give her a windows box and hope it never gets beyond safe mode.
... that no matter how early you arrive you cannot take Scott McNealy's office. Bleh, the big wigs that push these things through to "save costs" and encourage the grunts to get in earlier should have to play by the same rules! :-)
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
A library near me even uses this for search terminals. They all log into a central X server. Interestingly enough, the internet terminals are all WindowsNT boxes.
But not THAT cool.
:-P
They're a bit smarter than dumb terminals. But I have a feeling I'd either go nuts or quit fairly quickly in a setup like this. I like the feeling of being able to go to work in the morning, and sit at my desk where I always sit. Yes, I'm a sheep.
Besides, I bet the've got a Fire 15k serving these. You can do MUCH cooler things with a 106 CPU server than serve thousands of frame buffers
I have implemented a few of these solutions, and guess what they work!!! And what's more there is still that lovely jaw dropping sound when you first demostrate the smart card bit. They are a great solution, but perhaps not for everyone.
.
Where I have found them to be very useful is College and School campus's (Sp?). As a student I would have loved the ability to do my projects, feel the need for a coffee an a bite to eat, stroll down the the cafeteria, and check up on my stuff from there.
Another way they are being used is providing a centralised Sun SPARC compute resource for Post Graduate & Doctorate students in labs and offices all over the campus. Check out http://www.bcs.ie/tipperaryinstitute.pdf
Regards,
JB
I have to say.. if you are having problems like that, then two things are happening.
- You don't have adequate resources to handle what you are doing
- Your administrators have no idea how to maintain large sun servers. You should NOT have reboots that frequently. Once or twice a year, if that is adequate.
You can't measure a system based on the cost per workstation alone.
What about software? Maintenance? Etcetera?
Maintaing a network of PCs is HUGELY expensive compared to a network of sunray machines.
Six hundred bucks per workstation? I've seen sunrays for a fraction of that. Those must be the ones with built in displays.
If you say sun claimed one e4500 (or whatever oyu have with 16 processors) could handle 700 desktops, I'd say you, or whoever told you that, is lying, or didn't understand what they said. THat is such outrageous bullshit I can't believe even sun would say that. You'd need an E10k loaded out to the nuts to even *maybe* do that.
Also, did you have sun factor in the applications you would be running? You see...
If you tell sun precisely what you want, they will give you a price *and deliver*
The link above is just a brief summation, you can get the full story at:
r .h tml
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.02/chiat_p
I can see this working for my company but only for certain job functions. I'm sure that Sun isn't implementing this across the board for all their employees. I think this might work well at my company for inside sales, technical support, and in conjunction with a beefy PDA even for outside sales. Basically anything that doesn't require storing piles of stuff someplace or leaving parts laying out for extended periods.
;)
As for being able to talk to people you work with in person, this system will enable personal teleconferencing with an optional camera. And if you still want to be face to face how about browsing to a webpage on your intranet that displays a floorplan highlighting everyone in your department? You could also search by name. You would be registered automatically when you swipe your card in the reader.
Besides people will automatically congregate together based on physical location and habit. For example, Marketing people might head for the open cubes near the color copier while Engineers would look first for an open cube near the R+D lab. And everyone is going to want to be near people they hang around with so they can take breaks or go to lunch with friends.
Also inter-personal conflicts will work themselves out since workers can relocate easily. So the hot girl in Accounting can avoid that creepy MSCE guy and move closer to her hunky Unix god.
I worked at a large company a number of years ago who did essentially the same thing. They had a similar set up to the one in this article only using PCs instead of dumb terminals. Every computer in each section was exactly the same and you just got whichever one was assigned to you each day. Thus, no family photos, desktoys, personal storage, customized wallpaper, customized desktop, etc. They chose to do this because there were three shifts that worked there and they thought this setup would work to minimize hardware and support costs.
This lasted for about three months. Morale was bad, people's productivity was at an all time low and the attrition rate soared. After that they assigned each employee a desk, which was shared with two other people who worked on other shifts. Each employee was assigned a locking drawer and was allowed to make temporary customizations to their work area during their shift. It still wasn't the best work environment, but it was better than what is described in this article.
I think they will make a change fairly soon.
Not in US, though, in an asian city where office space were expensive. They locked us up in a tight room where no. of 3270 terminals is much less than no. of interns, contracts and supplementary staffs(yes, they called us supplementary) in this room. If you were late and couldn't find a terminal then you must search thru the building for an unused one "there's always one out there" they said.
:)
It worked as the PHBs expected - in the beginning. In order to fight for a terminal which had no blind spot on the green screen and keyboard with no defective keys we had come up with all the dirty tricks a human could imagine. Some people took the aggressive approach like splitting on the keyboards and claimed that they had got some incurable infectable disease, some took a rather defensive tactics like taking sleep beds to office and stayed in the room overnight just to get a working terminal until their projects done; some are very organizational who formed gangs to create their own 'district' where no others could cross the lines to approach their terminals.
We could tolerate this because we didn't have the concept of 'sweatshop' and we didn't usually sue our employers here, but I'm sure those PH-cluebies finally learnt when all the good people left.
Finally Sun is catching up with this.
First, giving priority to the people to arrive first is discrimination. My only defence would be to stay all night and doze off on the keyboard so that all early rising jerks have to suffer with the cubes without windows.
Ozwald
Do they issue new employees a shopping cart to put all thier stuff in when they hire a new employee. I'm certain of one thing, I wouldn't keep near as many reference books at work as I do now.
My Weblog
At my office we've all got different keyboard/mouse/trackball/headphone preferences. We all run two monitors, but placement and all-'round ergonomics vary greatly. Maybe the next company to try this will make the user hardware some sort of detachable module for reasons of efficiency, RSI and sanitation?
And under Sun's plan, how much time is alloted to pneumatic chair adjustments every time you grab a new desk?
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Sigh ...
Working Link
They are actually really cool. You stick the card in (I think they once called it a "java card"), log in and start working. Open a bunch of terminals, vi, debugger, etc., then pull out the card. It goes back to the login screen. Take the card to another terminal and plug it in. The desktop is restored to *exact same* state you left it: vi is still running with your file loaded, the gdb is still waiting at the same step, netscape shows the same page -- everything is *exacly* in the state you left it. And it takes about 2 seconds for it to "boot". The terminals apparently support sound too, though I've never tried it.
:-)
It would be even cooler if it worked reliably though. The server that ran the lab full of SunRays had to be rebooted every night because of memory leaks. Apparently the login screen was the culprit. As far as I know they are still rebooting it.
But basically, if they got the reliability problems fixed (and I assume they did), then this box is probably worth the money. The terminal, monitor, keyboard and mouse will essentially last forever. All the code runs on a server, so you don't need to worry about upgrading it. Yet at the same time, they are basically expendable: if one breaks, plug another one in and you're back to work in 1 minute. Plus you have the extreme mobility I mentioned above. Plus you have centralized data storage and easy backups....
In contrast, PCs need to be upgraded every 2-3 years. They are tied to a particular user. They need to be supported and maintained. If there is a virus/HD breaks/fire/whatever you lose all the data stored on the PC. The cost of maintenance is very very high.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
positives:
1. fewer specialized configured desktops
(did you just format my hard drive which
has the calendar for the entire department
for the next give years?!)
2. less hardware disappearing. Can't use most
of the parts on the Sunray in your home PC
and wouldn't work w/o a sunray server. This
makes the less scrupulous less tempted to
steal hardware from the company.
(I came in last night, and my U10 is gone!)
3. less hardware issues to troubleshoot.
No dying hard disks, CPUs, CPU fans, cables
etc. If you suspect the hardware put a
new sunray in, user up in a few minutes.
4. Keeps the impatient from getting in trouble
by rebooting their system, even if the cause
is a NIS server outtage rather than their
desktop.
Negatives:
1. Single point of failure! Sunray server
freezes, you can end up with several buildings
of people sitting on their hands.
This problem negates all of the positives,
if the sunray server develops a problem
that you can not resolve quickly or get the
parts quickly, you're in a world of hurt
productivity wise.
the Sunray field office configuration works
for 90% of the people, and 75% will be happy with
it. the other 15% typically wants to do funky
with the system instead of doing real work.
the last 10% won't be happy no matter what you
give them anyways, so screw them.
Being able to personalize a space does make
people happier. But some people personalize
their space and system to the point of
distraction (all those damn illegal mp3 servers,
and playing games rather than working).
It's much easier to convince your boss to
let you log in from a building closer to home
a few days a week, saving some commute and
aggravation.
PC are an administrative mess, it's the option
of the worst sort.
-- I have enough stupid gadgets to know that I can do without -- http://www.modestneeds.org
I'd like to save the state of an X session from one machine and transfer it to another.
... Now clean out your cu- oh wait... Just get the hell out!
This is EXACTLY what I believe. We will all buy $600 dollar basic wireless servers, and terminals in which we login. I could, for example, have a flat-screen, keyboard, small CD drive, mouse, speakers/headphones, and a small hub in which all this would connect. And my parents could have a laptop with all of the features I would have, just in a laptop. We would all use the same hard drive, processor(s), and internet connections. Like X terminals, but far more advanced. All of this could be wireless and connect to your palm for when you leave the house. Imagine all that...Sun is probably on to something here...
Slashdot is a waste of time. I enjoy wasting time.
it's interesting how everything works in circles, 20 years ago everyone had dumb terminals using a central unix server, well here we are again, ain't life grand? A butterfly flaps it's wings, and sun switches to dummy terminals, it's really really profound when you think about it.
a bit more about me http://www.advogato.org/person/trelane/ or my private page http://trelane.net
A Senior executive in a nice corner office with 2 big windows and a personal secretary. These directives only create resentment towards management unless executives are willing to work under the same conditions. I sincerely doubt Scott McNealy is working in one of these cubes with a dumb terminal.
I talked to our Sun FE and he said Sun discovered so many of their employees work in the field that only 30% of the office space is in use at any one time. So by going to this unassigned office model they are able to reduce office space they rent and can close some facilities.
Because they can, and they think it will save them money. It does bring in the concept of substituting someone for yourself. If you are working at a desk, for a large company, with only your id tag to swipe in a slot, all you have to do is farm out your job to someone else at a percentage of the going rate. Do this more than once, and you could be making a nice profit.
Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?
de-hu-man-ize
Pronunciation: (dE-hyOO'mu-nIz" or, often, -yOO'-), [key]
--v.t., -ized, -izing.
to deprive of human qualities or attributes; divest of individuality: Conformity dehumanized him. Also, esp. Brit.,de-hu'man-ise".
So, who would move my large, and full, book shelf every single day?
This strategy is clearly completely brain-dead.
If you're going to have a fully roaming office where people work at any computer that happens to be convenient then you need:
Computers dedicated for people with normal skin
Computers dedicated for people with greasy skin
Computers dedicated for women with hand cream addiction
I'm tempted to post anonymously, but since this is now in my past, I won't.
I actually worked in Sun's San Francisco flex office (the one that is mentioned in the article.) I have a lot of stories, both good and bad, about this way of working. First, let me start with a bit of an explanation.
On one of Sun's internal websites, there is a Java applet where you go to reserve workspaces. People like me who didn't have a "real" office were allowed to reserve 14 days in advance for up to 5 consecutive days. Others were allowed to reserve anything that was left. So it's not as much of a potshot as you might imagine -- I was in the office 4-5 days a week and most of the seats weren't even reserved. You could reserve at home through Sun's remote access, so it wasn't like there was a huge line building up at 7AM or something.
I can tell you the pros and cons, but I'm biased because I absolutely hated it. I hated the formulaic offices, and I hated that personal decorations were frowned upon. But the thing that really drove me crazy was that we were expected to use the UNIX terminals in lieu of any Windows or Macintosh laptop that we might have available. In fact, I was asked to give up my laptop because it looked bad for me to have a laptop on my desk and not be using my Solaris workstation (I had a real workstation because I tested websites on different browsers on Solaris.) The whole thing made me extremely bitter toward the company and was one of the main reasons for me leaving. I feel that it's hypocritical to hire a web developer who is used to using Photoshop, a nice solid text editor, and Dreamweaver, throw that developer in front of vi and the Gimp, and expect that web developer to be as productive as before.
However, if you could get all your work done on Solaris, it worked out well. Most of the non-technical people got used to CDE (!) and were fine with a Netscape window. If all you need is Netscape, Star Office, and a couple of other applications, then sure -- a flex office is beneficial. A friend of mine still works out of that office, but she's not there very often, which is the whole point. She works all over the Bay Area and doesn't seem to mind giving up the development applications of a Windows or Macintosh machine. Then again, she isn't a developer...
I think whether you like these offices or not depends on your personality. I must admit that Sun pulled it off well -- it's a solid implementation. The applet on the website shows you where person X is at any given moment, and you can forward your phone extension anywhere, even to a cell phone or to your home phone, so you're never out of touch. I had a real problem with it because I am a highly creative person who requires certain applications that simply aren't available on Solaris. This, and the lack of office decorations, really threw me out of my comfort zone, and I know I wasn't the only one. Apparently, however, I was in the minority. (I suppose the others who hated it, many of whom were my startup-personality friends, also left.)
I hesitate to just bash on Sun since I know that it was more of a personality clash than a bad implementation, but to anyone who is considering this: the creative minds in your company will hate it. I'm talking about the people with their offices/cubicles decorated with every imaginable sticker and toy -- the ones who treat their office as a second home. These are often some of your most productive and worthy employees, so be sure to listen to their needs.
This article really struck a nerve with me. It brought back all the frustration I had with working in that office. I can only hope that the others like me have had their complaints heard or, like me, have left for greener pastures. To the rest of you -- stick with the small-group (2-3 person offices). That was the environment in which most of us thrived.
-- I left Sun in May.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Savings: Up to $144. More if you don't want to use Windows. Another $124 if I'm right and the $500 sunray doesn't include a display.
You forgot software;
You forgot support;
This is where MS makes it's big killing. They probably get $500+ for each office worker in software. -- and then there's your AntiVirus Software too. .. just to keep all of those boxes inter-operating, since Microsoft software often fails to interoperate properly with it's older bretheren.
and your (semi) yearly software upgrages
And, of course, you need to pay people to run around doing the weekly MS security updates.
It also sounds like (from other posts) that the $500 quoted for a sunray is a bit high (unless it's for the 24" display model, in which case, it's pretty cheap).
It may be that $500/seat includes amortized server costs..
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Portable offices have been a reality in the Unix world for more than a decade.
When I worked at the University of British Columbia in 1991, we had it down pretty pat -- and this was in a hetrogenous (but almost entirely Unix) environment. We had Suns, SGIs, IBM RS/6000s, NeXts and a good smattering of other random UNIX varients. Everybody was served by a network of NFS and NIS servers, and you could log in anywhere you want to do your work..
Not all of this was dumb terminals, though. People with light CPU loads would have X terminals and people with heavy CPU (or better funding!) would use a real workstation. Because home directories (and most binaries) were NFS mounted, I could log into any machine in our department (split over 2 buildings and 1/2 a mile) and do my work.
For part of my time, my desktop terminal was a 5-year old Sun-3 set to boot dataless, later on I was assigned a low-end SGI. Now, granted, the SGI did a far better job as a flight simulator, but for most of my work, the Sun-3 was quite satisfactory. For any of my heavy work I could log into one of the heavy-duty compute monsters (Either physically or remotely depending on the type of work needed) and work there.
word to the wise: in any remote-computing environment, always double check which machine your terminal is connected to before you do things like rebooting the system or formatting a filesystem.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
You're comparing Sun hardware (usually fairly decent, isn't it?) to a system built around a PC Chips (aka Piece-o-Sh*t) motherboard? Let's see what we can build with something a bit better (prices are from Newegg):
Not counting the cost to ship all those parts, you're looking at $634. Drop Win2K from the order and you're down to $493. (Hmm...looks like I only ended up reinforcing your point, even with the better hardware. Damn, this stuff's getting cheap!)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I'd bet heavily that productivity (i.e. ability to find bugs, model a market, write a well crafted paragraph) goes down. Not hideously down, just enough to make great programmers merely good, and good programmers seek other employment.
Mixing phone people with keyboard people isn't nice. It makes the phone people feel guilty and rude, if they know the programmers, etc. are trying to meet deadlines. (And people who listen to their 19 voicemail messages by speakerphone: Dante has a 6th circle reservation just for you. It involves Muzak and a pair of 20 billion watt speakers, so Don't Do It. Thanks.) It makes the programmers jumpy- you never know when a beautiful train of thought and logic gets derailed on the "RING, RING...Hi! Glad you got Back to me on those trade show booth color quotes! Teal? Lets talk Blue!Blue Blue Blah Blah..." the next cubicle over. I've been in this situation, and it hurts.
And it ignores that paper is still a useful office object- crisp clear text that can be stared at for more than 1/2 hour without your eyes going numb, easy to spread out and cover with sticky notes...but no, you'll have to clean it up and put it away each night, regardless of sudden deadlines.
I'll bet even more heavily that they did only a Benefit estimate, not a Cost-Benefit estimate, when they came up with that $150 million figure. I doubt they'll study it at all.
Well, as Neal so aptly wrote (but darnitall he was making fun of them at the time, it wasn't supposed to be emulated):
Why not just use cell-phones and wireless-enabled laptops? That way you don't spread keyboard germs and if there is a wireless link (properly authenticated) at home, you could work/phone there too without any loss of productivity or change in work environment.
If the issue is centralized management, you could just have a hard-drive duplicator with everyone using the same image (with their home directory mounted from a server based on username/password).
Are the dumb terminals (+ mongo servers + superfast networks) that much cheaper? What happens when people have special needs like Kinesis keyboards, tablets, or speakers? What happens when a server goes down? Is everyone hosed? What happens when the network is down?
I think I must be missing something.
All fine and dandy, but does it have the nifty card-reader feature where you bring your desktop along to the next machine?
Let's make it better than the sun box though:
Total: $512 and this does far more than the Sunray.
Yes, it now has a harddisk that can fail, a useless floppy drive, and a cd-burner allowing employees to spend time maintaining their music collection instead of actual work. But does it still have the nifty features of Sun Ray?
More video performance is always needed with age, vendors obsolete proprietary old hardware by not providing necessary software upgrades, network standards change, people spill coffee into them, people stuff postit notes in silly places, people destroy the buttons, they stack telephone books on them, stack books to block the fan, stop the fan with pens when its too noisy, open them to "fix" them -- there's way more, but I'm not interested in reliving the pain. :-)
Yes, but there are fewer parts to destroy with a Sun Ray. Anyway, people who deliberately damage the fan should probably pay for repair themselves.
BTW: Speaking as someone who has worked as computer support staff for a college with over 1000 terminals, I can tell you that software is one of the least worries. Computers, even though most parts don't move, do "wear out" -- parts either fail or stupid people beat the crap out of the computers.
Yes, and that's why it's worth a little more to get something without moving parts.
Every coder I've ever known keeps a collection of vital dead-tree books at hand. And its usually a couple of shelves worth - not something you could cram into a locker or lug to your desk every day. What about whiteboards too?
These are common things for coders. I see no allowance for them in this system.
And it helps to have paper (filing cabinet) as well, things like notes from meetings, or desktop sketches where you are brainstorming. I use my Palm-Vx for some of that, or a PC drawing program, but, except for a whiteboard, nothing compares to 8x10 grid paper and a sharp Staedler Mars mechanical pencil for brainstorming with several other people.
I do not see how this one would work for coders at all.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
Banner ads were a quick example of something graphics-oriented that I used to show the limitation of the Terminal-Server system. A more apt example would have been editing marketing videos, as this would have completely required more then the standard 'dumb' terminal
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Interesting philosophy at work here. Not surprisingly, microsoft's quite the opposite. Along with your own office, they have windows terminals (i.e. old crusty machines that are now only good as dumb terminals) in all the building lobbies and in several computer labs so you can terminal server to the machines in your office or to a central server that just has Office+IE. So you can work remotely or in your own office...funny how they give employees the much coveted _choice_ while sun doesn't.
Only in the Windows world do you really really need a workstation of your own
/Metaframe products before that. Get out more before spreading FUD.
Windows NT 4 Terminal server has been around for quite a while, and Citrix's Winframe
I recently did a project involving the Sunray Appliance. The college I recently graduated from uses them almost exclusively for the CS labs. We have a large 8 way V880 sun server that runs all the Sunrays. Administration is very simple, this is important because the school won't hire anyone to do it, so the professors need to spend as little time as possible bothering with it.
The sunrays can best be explained as a cat 5 connected video card. All the work is done with UDP packets, lots of them. There are commands to fill an area with a color, set an area with a specific bitmap or pixmap, and to copy a certain area to another location on the screen. The protocol is called SLIM and will be opened soon as all Sun protocols usually are. If this sounds like VNC designed for a high bandwidth low latency network, it's because it is.
You don't need the smart cards to log in to the things. We have them set up with a normal dt login. The cards are fun though. And any "java smart card" can be used... Providian VISA anyone!
Sounds like John Varley's "The Barbie Murders" in which a cult, all modified to look identical, wearing standard coveralls, and supposedly taking whichever cell was empty for the night, had renegades who secretly grabbed the same cell every time and kept exotic costumes in it for private parties.
Every office has secret stashes of one kind or another ("I know where there's plenty of Red Label Liquid Paper!"). Unless the building itself reconfigures every night they'll develop even under this plan.
Sounds like there'd be MORE walking around-- Looking for your team members.
Sun have been pushing diskless and dataless clients for as long as I can remember.
Wouldn't it be hypocritical for them *not* to use them?
When we started going down the flexible office path here in Italy people were not really happy about it. Expecially in Rome, where I work.
I must first of all admit that this kind of solution would not work for people that spend every single day of their worklife at the office or people that need, for the kind work they do, a well specified place to sit and think. On the other hand to most of these people flexible office simply doesn't apply.
I'm a project engineer. As such I spend most of my days sitting at the clients' site, or having meetings with colleagues to organise and plan our work, sometimes I do test installations in our labs, but at times I end up at the office. More often than not I go to the office simply to keep in touch with colleagues and to feel what's going on, other times to print documentation to be given to clients.
All that I need to work it's there. I read about people that were worried about their manuals, and I really don't see the problem. My own manuals are on the public shelf we have, and it's even better than having my own shelf, since I can lookup also books that other people have brought in. It may be some thing about us down here in Southern Europe, but I don't think anyone has had a problem about it so far.
When I arrive at the office I simply pick an empty spot near colleagues from my same team, plug in my laptop (yes, I do have a laptop, as all the people working on the field most of the time), put the smartcard in the SRay and at this point I have two workstations at hand!
But, "Oh My God!!", some of my colleagues was on this very same seat before me, and used this mouse and keyboard. He could have had a deadly virus, or a cold!!
Mmm. Let me think: I shake hand, hug, pat on the shoulders plenty of people everyday. I use often public transportation to move around, and damn: the ones I hang on are very dirty railings. And I'm doing still quite fine.
I don't know about the people who showed these sort of concerns, but I use to wash my hands before eating. And I wash my hands when I get home. Sometimes I even wash my hands _before_ I go to the toilet. See, I've always seen personal hygiene just like that: personal. I really don't rely much on others when it comes to it.
The point I'm trying to make is simple: I can't judge globally, but I have to admit that flexible office made my work better. I can't say it's the solution for anything, but it made my day better, because I can move near the people I'm working with at that point in time, and compared to a fixed office I can now choose in which office I want to go and work of the two we have here in Rome.
Just my twopence,
a smile,
MrWHO
It is me, none else but me. And who would you be?
My company has just over 200 employees, and a great majority of them (nearly all except developers) run on Citrix...
Dektops cost between $150 -> $450 (PII or greater is really sufficient), all files are stored on the servers, and I have the same desktop available on anyones desk in the company *or* remotely.
Dial-up performance is spotty, based on who your ISP is, but Cable modem/DSL owners have an experience that is nearly the same as users in the office...
Oh, and we can support all 200+ users with a 4 person IT group...
Ken
Ken
I find this corporate management personally insulting, when Scott McNeally et all Executive team don't abide by their own manegement policy's.
Not only does this set a bad example, it displays the difference in mentality.Furthermore this platform approach is what pulls companies apart.
What about a vote asking employees if they want this, and what they think about it? What about programmers with many heavy duty reference books on their desks? This decreases productivity but saves workspacing costs, what would you rather have? In the long term the productivity cost far outweigh the workspace costs.
Sell your Sun shares, becuase their going to be worthless.
Nobody in your building has assigned desks. You go in and sit at the desk that Big Jim had been sitting in for the previous three weeks. Big Jim can't make you move. Big Jim finds you during lunch hour, beats you up, and takes your lunch money.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Show me a fucking 10k by 10k pixel 32 bit banner ad. A simple link will be sufficient.
Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...
PHB obviously has not visited Germany, Belgium or the Netherlands often! Every toilet there (even in many McDonalds!) has a wizened old lady sitting by the cubicles collecting money.
the mouse and keyboard before you start work each morning - bring a mousse spray can of anti-static anti-bacterial gloop with you.
I work in a fairly large company with thousands of Sun users. Generally speaking, homedirs and application are NFS mounted. And NIS lets any user log in anywhere inside the company as needed.
Yeah, it lets users move around, but that's not the biggest reason we do things this way. People still have their own cubes, and their own desks. But if their machine dies -- like via a HD failure something -- they can just move over to a vacant machine and continue their work.
Plus, establishing a standard OS load (jumpstart, in Sun terms), and building standard build scripts, we can make easy-to-swap machines for our users. Need a newer machine? Sure -- just log out, swap boxes, and log in. no muss, no fuss.
Sun's officeless office place has a shocking reminder or the "Feds" from Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash. Where employees scramble each morning to get in early to get desk's at the 'front of the room' because it shows their commitment to work. Each employee's terminal, is monitored, even the amount of time spent reading a memo and the position of there eyes while reading is monitored all to generate information on the employee for there numerous personnel reviews, (which include polygraphs and the occasional truth drugs.)
Not to say that Sun is going to these paranoid extremes, but the initial parallel was shocking.
Geoffrey Cameron Peart
McMaster Software Engineering
Monkies? I like Monkies
shake hands with programmers. Of course my preferred method of greeting people (kissing them on the cheeks) has its own obvious disadvantages here also! Maybe I should move to Japan and just bow a lot...
Since I don't work for Sun, there's no pressure to maintain the image of "one OS is enough." We have a very mixed environment here. Most people use PCs with Windows, and many use Sun/Solaris boxes. Since the corporate types settled on Exchange/Outlook as the corporate mail system, they had to make that system available to all users.
To get it all to work, the engineering community (the primary Sun users) access Citrix servers via the ICA client for Solaris. With that, they can do their Outlook thing, and also get to the whole MS Office suite. It seems to integrate nicely with all the other apps.
Opps, the server is down....ummm, we lost everyone's week's work, we won't be able to restore it all from backups for 24 hours.
Go home.
--sig fault--
Sounds like some folks at the top desperately need to read Peopleware. I thought hoteling was an idea whose time has come and gone...trying to treat knowledge workers like factory workers is really, really stupid. The idea that workers might be a company's biggest asset is a really threatening concept to some companies, apparently, and I think that some of this bizarre behavior is indicative of that.
Also, just because it is easy to admin doesn't mean that it justifies this soulless environment.
"...it probably is cheaper to run the business off a few large Sun server..."
At Sun's prices, most companies can just buy cheap workstations from Dell or HPQ and still save money...
This is really for the most part used for consultants, sales and the like that travel a lot and really aren't in the office most of the time. Programmers, sys admins, admins and those that are in the office all the time still have real desks. And if you want to argue with me I work for Sun and I am a consultant and I had a desk the first year I was with the company and was in the office I think a total of 4 days. This kinda office enviunment makes sense if you understand the context it is used in.
First with the IPC "diskless workstation", then with the standalone X server, Sun did this a long time ago. Just because it is news to YOU doesnt mean it is news.
Given that it's Sun we're talking about, I hardly think these are Ye Olde Green Screen Terminals. We're talking X Terminals here.
And since the X Window System is quite able to serve different displays simultaneously, I would think that different workers needing different graphics capabilities is no problem whatsoever.
At least at home my desktop system has no problems serving a 1280x1024x32 display to my monitor and a 1024x768x16 to my laptop simultaneously. I expect Sun to have a little more powerful hardware, but the basic concept is the same.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Scary - life's starting to imitate sci-fi more and more.
Proteus' Child
Doko ni datte; hito wa, tsunagette iru.
This is just the successor to their previous "iDon'tWork" program.
(sorry, it was too irresistable)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I just want to make sure you know the difference between dumb terminals and thin clients, because it sounds like some people think they're the same thing. :-P But most likely, we're going to stick with thin clients, which are what are used in most call centers, be it progressive insurance or 1-800-EY-HELP3, Ernst and Young's helpdesk. Last I checked, EY used a program over windows called quintus to transact call mgmt over the network, and you could not install any software on the systems or you'd get canned (Not that this stopped anyone). Falls under the definition of a thin client. Progressive uses thin clients (again, using windows) to run a terminal emulator to connect to an AS-400. Thin client. The're everywere already, so this stuff isnt new :-P Sounds like sun is just finally catching up...
A dumb terminal is a monitor that has a power cord and a serial cord, and a keyboard that plugs into the monitor. All the screen does is display what is sent down the serial cord from the master computer. Not even the keyboard text is displayed unless the master computer has echo on.
A thin client is an actual computer that stores usually just the operating system, and maybe a couple basic apps, ie Call Tracking software, and uses the network for data storage/retrieval.
Aside from that, I dont see how, in this world of windows, we're going to go back to dumb terminals, unless someone makes a win-on-chip terminal, which would be pretty sweet. The serial signals could be retrofitted over 8-pin network architecture, albeit with totally different routers. But goodbye, bootup times
At the Swedish University of agr. sci.)
We are also using this very nice system....
When used with a NT-terminal server running citrix you can run m$ progs as well. (funny thing, M$ licence is payed per installed mashine -> 200 sunrays + citrix servers -> 4 university licences of msoffice or so.) As long as the NT-machines are powerful they can handle 20-30 word sessions or so...
Biggest advantage with the surays are actually the workers environment. Sunrays produce very little heat and no sound at all (no fan, harddrives etc...).
The internal speaker sux but with headphones or external speakers the sound is ok..
Somewhat slow screen update times when running cruel stuff like full screen video or image manip. (even with 100Mbit FullD)
They also (at least for us) come with a 5 year guarantee. (some of the sunrays have overheat problems and burn out).
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
Adaptability does not equal creativity.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security
as somebody else pointed out already, this whole setup is basicly remote X with CDE. they did a demo once at work, because management was looking at citrix/nt and sun's solution. .pps presentation was all very nice, until they turned on the sunray and showed the 'famous' cde interface to our poor managers. that was pretty much the end for sun's solution right there. :P), but i think most people will be able to adept faster to gnome then to cde. (i'm talking normal people here, not us, the /.-reading crowd)
well, the
sure, I would had no problems with cde (although it is not my favorite x environment), but imagine all those other people in the company used to win95.
'poor poor helpdesk', is about the only thing that came to all our minds.
anyway, I think that is the reason SUN is putting so much effort in GNOME (usability report, code contribution, etc). gnome is not windows (some people may argue
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Scott McNealy:
When an office is designed around making the office the primary focus, rather than the humans that occupy it, you have lost. It's not the office that generates revenue - it's the human workforce.
To create shareholder value, you have to make the workforce productive, and nothing - and I mean nothing - makes a workforce more loyal, productive and ready to jump through hoops for you than happiness and belief in their own greatness. This office deliberately sets out to destroy human qualities by dehumanizing the workplace (ie, photos being frowned upon, etc).
Offices such as this have no human response, and in fact, it's like a disgruntled or evil bean counter (ie a human Catbert) wanted to make the most offensive office they could.
I'll tell you a story about why Sun will go broke in the next 10-20 years, and irrelevant in 2-5 years (just as SGI are irrelevant now*). About six years ago, Sun (and several other high end Unix vendors) responded to a multi-milion dollar tender. All the other vendors concentrated on unique features of their hardware (Digital on clustering and massive scalability, etc), software and service offerings. Sun concentrated on bashing Microsoft for 90% of their face time with us. Microsoft wasn't even in the potential set of competitors! And to top it off, Sun was the least competitive of all the bids - slowest hardware, and most expensive.
Sun - you have to focus on making the humans happy. Whether they be your users, your customers, or your employees.
--
* I work in the security industry, and it's been three years since I've seen an SGI in production, and I've been to hundreds of clients all over Australia. I've seen an Aviion and a DG/UX box since the last time I saw an SGI, for example!
Andrew van der Stock
A flock of horny young engineers.
Can you imagine that kind of situation?
But hey at least with flex office if you stalk your geek girl you might just be able to get into the seat next to her. As oppose to being accross the office and making trips to the water cooler.
Pretty scary.
I feel that it's hypocritical to hire a web developer who is used to using Photoshop, a nice solid text editor, and Dreamweaver, throw that developer in front of vi and the Gimp, and expect that web developer to be as productive as before
It's not hypocritical, it's stupid. They shouldn't have hired you in the first place... a point proven when you left anyway.
I am not advocating the abolishment traditional offices, but this could be real nice for people who travel to other sites often. My company has visiting manager/employee offices in every building. It is an office, or cube that has a phone and a workstation. They are great to check email, or even use for a NetMeeting confrence. One problem is that they have a generic PC image on them. This usually include little more than the OS, Outlook and MS Office. This would be a great improvment. Imagine being able to carry your "workstation" in your wallet.
Once a corporation starts to think bodies replace productivity, creativity and loyalty then we have nothing but '1984'.
America is a nation of creative thinkers which is why we are the largest economy in the world. We love to personalize everything we do. So I see this as the final staggering step in Sun's final death or demise since they don't know the deference _period_
What i found most interesting about the article was this comment:
"Sun also has its own word processing and office suite, called Star Office, which it has begun selling, instead of it giving away, in a sign of maturity for the Microsoft Office rival."
For those who still doubt, this is why charging for Star Office is such a good idea (just so long as we still have OpenOffice.org for free that is).
It is amazing that the journalist has this attitude that it is better purely because they are now charging for it, but it goes to show what you can expect from the Pointy Haired Bosses.
I'm reading that exact strip, under the "Hoteling" section of The Dilbert Principle, in Chapter 2: Humiliation.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
"While I do respect people who are able to be productive in a strict *NIX environment more than people who need to use something else to get their work done, I understand that Linux is not for everyone."
Perhaps I would have gotten people more up in arms had I mentioned that Linux (any PC-based OS that required your own computer instead of a terminal) was frowned upon as much as Windows and Macintosh were. I said several times that I would work fine if they gave me a Macintosh instead (since the Windows 2000 computer I received from another part of Sun was evidently not adequate.) But my boss pointed out that other people (who were doing email support and not development) were fine with a Solaris box. He couldn't understand why I didn't want to give up my laptop for a CDE desktop and smart card, even though (here's the kicker) he too used a laptop on a daily basis.
When you hire an employee, you are expected to give that employee a standard set of tools. In this case, Sun bought me a Windows 2000 laptop and a Solaris workstation (well, the workstation was a hand-me-down.) Then my boss tried to force me to give up the laptop in favor of being Solaris-only because of the "image" that using Windows gave Sun (trust me, they were doing this to the Mac people as well.) I said no, and I quit.
When you don't give your employee the tools that that employee needs, and try to force their hand in using other tools that aren't designed for the job, then you have a bad match as the employer/employee relationship goes. What bothered me most was that they weren't trying to proclaim that Solaris was more productive or had better tools than Windows or a Mac, but that Sun's "image" would look bad if Sun's web developers used anything but SunRays. I can understand this attitude from a high corporate level, but can anyone seriously (with a straight face) tell me that you have the same applications available to you on Solaris as on Windows? (I'm not even sure if the GIMP was available on their servers.) It's a terrible mentality to push the "eat your own dogfood" attitude so far that your employees quit. I know I wasn't the only employee to leave over something like this, either.
I think Sun needs to rethink its position regarding the tools that its employees use. Sure, give everyone a SunRay. But don't shove Solaris down people's throats as the One True Way. Understand that there are a lot of things that simply don't run on it, and understand that your (Sun's) customers aren't going to want to run a 100% Solaris shop, either. Sun will fail in the marketplace if they believe that Solaris will fill every business niche that Windows fills now, and that is exactly the attitude I see from inside Sun.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
We converted to using a single Linux server a year or so back, with X terminals (very cheap PCs running nothing but X). It saves massive amounts of time, since nobody is willing to dick with the server for fear of messing it up for everyone else. We used to have to spend a lot of time fiddling with individual PCs, which of course could each be configured differently.
The MD wrote a tutorial about how we set these X terminals up.
If you want your employees to spend long hours getting your product out the door, you need to provide an environment that they'll want to spend long hours in....
That's right out of Snow Crash! The Fed (US Government) workforce functioned in exactly the same way. Early arrivals would sit close to the door of the office and latecomers would be forced to sit further away making them the obvious object of spurn and ridicule.
Frightening stuff.
teams work better together.
Body language & gestures don't work well in emails.
Plus someone getting up & explaining something on a white board for some reason actually works better that a white board networked work station program
Have you seen what those office specialist places charge that corporates & govt depts have accounts with?
It much cheaper just to give employees petty cash & send them to the local bargain basement shop in the mall & tell them to buy what they want & bring back a receipt.
You might want to start taking that medication again, Buddy. A spell checker wouldn't hurt, either.
I take it as a compliment that you can't verbalize an opinion without name calling. However, at that point, you've already lost. You didn't even argue on topic. Thanks.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security
People who put their fingers on screens need to be forcefully reeducated. People who don't know how to clean a mouse need the same treatment, although optical mice many render this skill obsolete.
And people who listen to their 19 voicemail messages by speakerphone: Dante has a 6th circle reservation just for you. It involves Muzak and a pair of 20 billion watt headphones , so Don't Do It. Thanks.
where do they keep all their mp3s?
There are a ton of free software projects on the Internet that have been developed by people all over the world who never met each other face to face. Imagine how much stuff they'd put out if it was their job as well as their hobby.
It will not be sufficient... There really is a Brenda in Marketing who edits images, maybe also video and 3D. She uses the hardware acceleration in her video card to make her session run at the rate to which she has become accustomed. She doesn't use a simple framebuffer on her current PC. What makes you think that a framebuffer with a relatively low-bandwidth high-latency connection to the CPU will suffice for her?
I really like the terminal model but it is not appropriate for every person in the enterprise. You cannot give someone a much slower computer than what they are using and have them accept it. The Sun Ray system was not built to compete with a high end graphics performance PC/workstation. A Sun Ray is not going to do it for the graphic professionals, not now, not ever. They will leave the company en masse.
SGI does sell some network terminal graphics systems that run fast, but they ain't Sun Ray.
I worked at Sun in a Sales office over two years ago and they started just after I left. And as stated in another reply above this it's not being done in the Engineering groups (for example) last I heard. Only the areas where the office is fairly transient.
Very OLD OLD news - there is better stuff out there than this
Yes but most of the major projects like GNome and KDE have regular conf to hash out yearly plans which most of the big players attend.
Apart from the obvious cost-savings and giving the employees better freedom, this initiative also has a lot of other important perspectives.
As a management student, one major challenge faced is the compromise on flexibility during growth. Typically in a startup, the advantages of flexibility, informal communication, etc., are tremendous. But growth often brings in heirarchy, structure and rigidness into an organisation. To have growth and retain the freshness of a startup has been till today very difficult. This is a move towards that. I've seen some videos of this being implemented in a design office in France. There
the guys come with a laptop and they have a movable trolley/table which they move to an indeterminate work-place. this way they have better cross-department informal communication channels. This way they do not have any binding with heirarchy or structure. It'll make the organisation a lot more flexible.
Another concept is that of focus, as an organisation, Sun should concentrate on building more computers and not on building campuses and
providing good workplaces. - a step towards it.
Most importantly, this goes hand-in-glove with sun's concept of "Network is the computer". there's no point in selling a concept to your customers, if you yourself don't believe in it. This has been practised in Sun for quite long, I believe all fixes go on a huge server that runs a lot of home directories, intranet servers etc., and that gives confidence to ship it to customers.
I am an atheist, thank God!
I've also worked in that office (Folsom and New Montgomery for the curious), though only for a week back in April as a contractor for a consulting company helping with Sun's web presence as well.
Part of that office is "hotelling", part of it is permanent space, some of it two person offices, some of it more open plan space. In this part of the building, things were business as usual... one of the web team had quite an array of office decorations and a bunch of machines, Slowlaris, Macs and PCs. Apparently the lack of office decorations and not letting people use their own tools didn't apply to him.
It was definitely mostly empty, except one day when there was a press event in the building, in which case there were a bunch of marketing flacks who parked there. (One slept, one yakked on the phone all afternoon setting up meetings, but not actually doing anything, one got seriously miffed that we had been in those spots for two days, but she was apparently able to book the spots, despite another one being right across the way.)
One of the silly things was the networking setups. Each four port had one phone jack, one port for the SunRay, one 10BaseT jack and one other port I never found out what it was for. We all had Winblows craptops, so we used the 10BaseT ports. But we wanted to all camp in one conference room to allow us to minimize our impact on the office as well as making it easier to collaborate. Except there were only three ports in that conference room and more than three of us. When we brought in a hub, the network ports shut down! We were told it was because it was using "too much bandwidth". A bunch of crap. So we had to spread out and squat in some of the hotelling space. We tried to reserve our spots, but it didn't take (see miffed woman above).
So long and short, interesting concept, works for some folks, doesn't work for other folks, not quite sure why she had the problems she did given what I saw in the permanent space.
Man, I'd go nuts if I had to put up with that. And probably take out a few people with me.
I'm back at school at the moment, but at my last job, I had a very particular set of requirements. They were absolutely necessary for me to work efficiently, and for me to be sufficiently happy with my job that I wouldn't just up and leave.
For example, I had to have a Mac, and it had to have the OS set up how I like it. The apps I like (e.g. Illustrator instead of Freehand, which is the vector program of the Devil), the preferences I like, and the file structure I like. I had to have a big ass CRT, and because I was a graphics person, I had to do a fair bit of work to ensure that everything was perfectly calibrated. (9300K sucks ass) I had to have the kind of keyboard that I like, despite the fact that they haven't been manufactured in years. (though it wasn't much trouble finding one) My headphones are too big to carry around with me ordinarily, so they needed to be left there, along with the extension cord for them.
The desk had to be extremely deep, very large overall, and have no middle drawer because of the way that I like to sit at it. The chair had to be precisely adjusted, and I needed to control the lighting for my comfort and to preserve the color calibration. This means no florescent lights, and no direct sunlight in my field of vision or where it interferes with the screen.
I had piles of notepads and sticky notes, which I needed to keep ideas handy. Not to mention several reference cards I made, laminated, and fixed to the desk surface for convenience. I needed to have certain reference books handy, since looking things up online would've been slower (I heavily tab and highlight my books, and I write and draw in the margins various useful things) and would waste valuable screen space that could be used to look at whatever it is that has me resorting to a reference book.
Fortunately I never had a phone at my desk -- I don't believe in them and don't like to use them.
And with all this, I was at my best. In a generic environment, where I am inevitably uncomfortable, because I haven't changed things to suit me (something humans tend to do, you know), I'd spend more time either trying to get things set up right, or slow because of conflicts with the surroundings (imagine getting direct sunlight on the screen for half a day!).
OTOH, I very much enjoyed having an open floor plan, since I could conveniently talk to my co workers, and them to me, as well as move about. When cubicals started to come in, I managed to stay out of them, and have an open desk.
This isn't to say that there aren't one or two good things about this. I'd like to be able to access my stuff as though I was sitting at my computer from another desk. But it wouldn't be my computer, or my desk, so it's not as though I'd ever make a habit of it.
I can definately imagine if I were ever stuck with something like this, having to establish someplace as my area, and perhaps having to wheel around a shopping cart to keep my stuff.
Given that business relies on human beings infinitely more than technology, I can't see that this is a good idea at all.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
AC - you're missing the point. You can log onto your desktop via. Terminal Server and get your exact desktop, with all of the applications that you left running. It's pretty much the same as the description of the SunRay, except that you're remoting off of your own machine, not a central server.
Also, people in core product groups usually have 2-4+ machines 2+ monitors in their office, so when you need to collaborate it's a mini lab. Someone else can just drop by and log in using a spare machine to reference source code or whatever else they need.
(Is this new? No, X has been doing it for years. But it's still cool.)
corrupted boot disk got mirrored to the other
boot disk. network interface glitch brought
down cluster causing cluster to not failover
correctly. 4 hours lost. real case.
still think you redundant power supply is worth anything?
-- I have enough stupid gadgets to know that I can do without -- http://www.modestneeds.org
hawk, refraining from pointing out that there is no such job, and that that's just some lady who wandered in and takies advantage of gullible tourists