That's odd. We haven't seen that, and we're usually buying 400 to 500 of any given model at a time. It hasn't been a problem and some things (like the switch to widescreens) has been pretty welcome. Of course, we're also buying units with 4 year warranties and accidental damage protection, which we've always done. We have had some issues in the past, but they were on models that IBM was directly responsible for. We've been pretty happy, overall. And they've kept the Thinkpad "look". Personally, I'm fond of a laptop that looks like you could beat someone to death with.
That's just nuts. I've seen that as well. You're right, and I do realize that there's an AD policy for the screen savers and suspending, etc., but I don't think you get is full control over the all the power management (powercfg utility) settings. A big organization probably ought to come up with its own (named) power scheme for desktops and set it by default on any desktop PC images.
On a Windows XP system, you also want to set the CPU performance in the default power profile to "ADAPTIVE". I'd actually think you'd do well to set the hard drives to spin down and the monitor to turn off after 15 or 20 minutes, set the system to suspend after 30 or 45 minutes, and hibernate after an hour and a half to two hours. You might have to exempt some systems from hibernating - some software and drivers don't always react well to hibernate, and it would be a pain in the (*#)(@ to have to restart after lunch or every meeting. Suspend is a good middle ground. With something more disruptive, a company could well look at that and say "it's not worth the few minutes per day of productivity loss, when factored against the employee's salary + benefits cost." Especially if it leads to calls to your internal helpdesk to try to recover documents in progress or some other work. By the way, productivity vs. conservation is one of the reasons organizations need to be given incentives to conserve power if we want them to do it before energy prices actually exceed cost per hour of labor.
I've been buying 2-socket, 8-core servers for use with VMware ESX server for more than a year now. I can tell you that while everything on the system benefits hugely from 8 cores vs. 4, it can be hard to predict how much you can really throw at a box. What I'd really like to save is power - build in the hooks for an OS to take cores or an entire socket off-line to cut back on power use even more. The HP servers we're using do some dynamic power saving (an 8-core, 10-12 virtual machines, 16Gb of RAM server uses barely 80 watts more power on average during a day than a single, standalone 4-core server running Windows or Linux), but I'd like to do better. By the way, I just replaced an older DL380 G4 - a dual 3.6 ghz Xeon with 8GB of RAM - with a DL380 G3 with dual quad-core 3ghz processors and 32GB of RAM. For the same amount of money, not adjusting for inflation. That's essentially 8x the server for the same amount of money.
It's likely to be reversed. It's a state school, so they have an additional legal obligation to not violate free speech and due process rules. Even with a private school, if they don't follow their written judicial procedures to the letter, they'll often lose. Schools like to tell students and their parents not to retain lawyers during internal judicial / discipline proceedings, saying it makes the process "adversarial". They're trying to kick you out or impose some other sanction. It's hard to imagine it getting any more adversarial than that.
Seriously. If we end up in a recession, there will be a huge attitude adjustment. I graduated from college in 1991, and job hunting at that point sucked, at least in the northeast. The people who had been laid off and had been in the workforce 5-10 years were dropping down to the entry level stuff. It often comes down to luck - or someone who knows what you're capable of doing putting in a good word. That's why working your ass off - in college, in a part-time job, at your first few jobs - matters so much. That manager who saw how hard you worked might be in a position to hire you at the next (better) firm he or she goes to. Or may give you a good reference. And if you can send a good person looking for a leg up in his/her direction when they're hiring later? Great. The fact is that a ton of your co-workers in IT have college degrees. And they know that you can coast through almost any school, and that whether you get an education vs. merely a degree is up to the individual student. So, yeah, you have to prove that you're not a lazy idiot, you're not going to get much individual attention, and you're going to be expected to work as hard as the other people in the office when they were at your level.
Patchlink actually will handle this - they repackage the Firefox updates, and you can push them out to your client machines after testing. You have to wait a little longer for the update, since they have to repackage and test it, but it does work.
Actually, I'm criticizing people who think that they're making a broader personal statement by consuming. It's kind of like the "Grey Goose vodka" taste test done by one of the TV magazines a while back - none of the people who swore by it couldn't pick it out in a taste test, for obvious reasons when you think about what vodka is. It's the idea of an association with the company or other customers that drives sales long term, not the product. Brand loyalty gets largely set in concrete by a fairly young age. And while the original iPod was clearly better than the competition at the time, I think that's a harder case to make with the low-end models now, and I'd question if the higher end models were worth the premium. But people don't comparison shop, don't evaluate alternatives, etc. I mean, do you really think waiting outside all night for an iPhone was actually rational? If you think about it, anyone who want was paying extra for the phone (demonstrated by the later price drop), and spent hours in line. And it was to buy something that's going to end up in a landfill in a couple of years, since most consumers don't bother properly disposing of electronics. Sure, it felt like an event, but it was a marketing event created by the company with the help of "news" outlets. It seemed like a hollow event, sort of a sad shadow of an actual happening. Kind of like kids going to trick or treat at the local shopping mall.
And by the way, I don't shop at Wal-Mart. Personally, I can't stand their labor policies. However, I'd argue that if you're spending a ton of money on mass-marketed consumer goods that aren't essentials, regardless of where you're buying them, you're not doing much to be better than "a valued Wal-Mart customer." We're all becoming pack rats, attracted to shiny objects. Well, with energy prices headed where they're going, it's all a house of cards anyway.
Then Linux has a problem as a desktop OS, doesn't it? After all, decision makers, reviewers, and people in the general population who have never really used anything but Windows (which is most of the computer-using population, mind you) are all going to be seeing Linux that way. And is that bad? Sure, Linux has things going for it, but if it doesn't work the way people expect, or have the hardware support, or run certain pieces of software people want, can we ever expect it to be more than a niche player? And since a lot of since school systems use Windows at this point (Apple really gave up a lot of that market) and kids are likely to use their parents' computers first, they're going to be used to Windows. It's not a bad bias - if Linux can't either offer spectacular features that overcome other objections, or else deliver what people expect, does it "deserve" to be a mainstream desktop OS?
But hey, we Westerners are so much above all that. So, instead of wasting something that anyone can grow, we can use an obsolete-when-you-buy-it consumer electronic doodad to buy a cup of coffee (often lousy). Wow!
When they can bankrupt you simply with legal fees, hoping you cave before you eventually win? Always. Often, when I see stuff like this, I suspect that someone in legal got carried away. Not Apple - it seems like this sort of thing must actually bother Jobs and the executives. This person or site ruined their little PR event, or that one made fun of him. It's just sad. Does he actually throw tantrums like a 3-year-old, or does he just put up with toadies who do this crap on his behalf?
Actually, I think you're pointing to part of the problem - people don't feel dumb because they can't memorize dates. They figure it doesn't matter. When they see a date, they can understand it - they don't feel dumb. However, they can stare at a mathematical proof for hours and get nowhere, so they don't bother - their lack of comprehension makes them feel dumb. They're not conversant in the "language", so they dislike it. I suspect that deep down, some of the folks objecting to it fall into this camp. At the same time, they could link to Mathworld - they do have a good assortment, and they annotate nicely. Wikipedia probably can't do as good a job. The Mathworld entry on the Pythagorean theorem is surprisingly engaging - even including pop culture references like the Scarecrow reciting it incorrectly in the Wizard of Oz. And the listing of various proofs for it points to part of Wikipedia's problem - this stuff does require real editing, and the project probably isn't up to it. They're not making that point, though, or acting like they're concerned about quality - they seem to be arguing it on the basis of it being textbook material.
Real video editing software, probably. Real finance software (corporate, not quicken!), real HR software - stuff that has to follow specific regulations on a schedule. And there really isn't a replacement for autocad that a mechanical or civil engineer, or an architect is going to run out and install. Medical applications would be difficult for some of the same reasons as the finance software. And real enterprise email/calendaring and the archiving/retention software to go with it. There aren't any open-source email packages that you could actually use to replace Exchange/GroupWise/Notes in a corporate, healthcare, government and even education. There are pieces, but nothing it would be worth your job to try to sell your organization on.
It doesn't work. How long does it take a state's medical boards to remove a butchering quack from the ranks of medical professionals? Seriously. When you add anonymity to the mix, you're counting on a huge group of people all acting in an ethical manner. It just won't happen. And the administrators aren't any better - it's an anonymous group with "power" (albeit in a rather meaningless realm - if Google didn't give such high page rankings to Wikipedia entries, it wouldn't matter half as much as it does), and they're going to use it. That's what happens. In the absence of strong ethical standards, and a group who feels that the way to avoid criticism and attack is to behave in a manner utterly beyond reproach, it's far to easy for critics to think it's the product of infinite monkeys or a bunch of crazy, obsessive nutjobs who drive out qualified contributors. Wikipedia would be better off getting rid of the "flat" structure officially and putting something in place, than pretending it's flat and have groups forming up behind the scenes to impose it themselves.
Huh? I work in higher ed. We have a multi-server, clustered email system hooked up to a fibre channel SAN. Same for file storage. It takes far less than a full-time person to manage either. We've only got a couple of admins to handle the other 60 or so servers - mostly Windows and Linux app servers, some physical, many virtual. We've been using VMware ESX server for more than three years. Oh, yeah, and our IT spending and staffing levels are below average for schools our size. Higher ed pays substantially less than retail for enterprise hardware and software. And I know a lot of folks working in higher ed who are doing similar work.
Offering services doesn't have to be hugely labor intensive, or expensive, if the system is designed well to start.
Been a while since the story came out (this was the PHRACK case), but I seem to remember that specific items were the cost of the VAXstation and the software used to generate the document - which, in late-80's / early 90's dollars was a hefty tab. Also, I think the time to write it was included, but I might be misremembering that part.
Yeah, it's static discharge. Aside from it being unpleasant to get zapped constantly, you do have to be a bit concerned about the equipment. Not as much exterior surfaces, but if you're handling components and plugging in cables. Also, it tends to be more comfortable for anyone working in the facility if you keep it above 20%. There's only so much water and lip balm you want to have to keep in your office. "Operating" is usually between 20% to 80% RH (Noncondensing). Somewhere between 40% to 50% is considered optimal. (I've seen as low as 35% - below 35% charge dissipation isn't as easy, apparently)
Wonder what they're going to do to humidify the air. I'd bet it would easily get below 10% RH if they don't do something. A lot of equipment is rated for 10% to 90% these days, but I'd want it over 20%.
Maybe they can use the exhaled breath of a herd of yaks to raise the humidity level. Oh, wait, no, you wouldn't actually get any LEED points for that.
Trust me, there's a ton of expenses. Liability insurance of various kinds? Huge. Utility bills? Substantial. Maintenance, upkeep, renovations of buildings? On most campuses, it's going to be millions per year unless you're letting the buildings fall apart. Library materials / subscriptions / electronic resource fees? Big. Health / Counselling services? Costs increasing all the time. You have to account for depreciation on capital assets - equipment, buildings, etc. Maintaining the grounds? Snow removal (think overtime)? Health benefits for employees? Plus, your discount rate (direct financial aid) might amount to 30% of the tuition revenue. Also, payments on bonds used to build buildings, etc. And students now demand much nicer housing with more amenities than they did 20 years ago. That gets expensive as well. A huge number of the costs are basically fixed. There's not usually a lot of discretionary money in your average college budget. Unless you're one of the schools with multi-billion dollar endowments. I've sat on the budget committee at a university. Trust me, at a lot of schools, the tuition revenue doesn't cover all expenses. It's revenue from the spending rate of the endowment, federal and state money, grants, etc. Even if you're paying "full tuition" at your average institution, there's still a subsidy coming from somewhere to support the services you're using.
It's not so much a working culture. It's more like watching one of those nature documentaries where the slower and weaker animals are getting run down and eaten, or wander into quicksand and drown. If you're lucky. In some areas, it's positively Dickensian.
It's likely that they're going to borrow elements and concepts developed when they were working on Lightroom. Which wouldn't be all bad - Lightroom is really easy to use at a basic level, but it's not difficult to access more advanced features either.
I'd guess not much. It sounds like the GC may have actually fought Gehry on some decisions because they thought they would be problematic, and these aren't inconsistent with problem's he's had with other buildings. I suspect that if MIT wins, the GC will be held responsible a minority of the damages. The GC has done other major projects.
EqualLogic was kind of a cool company that bundled value and decent software engineering into a good package, and had good support for stuff besides just Windows and Linux (VMware, NetWare, etc). Good service, etc. There are probably more than a few EqualLogic customers that are less than thrilled about this.
Outside of a huge number of corporate clients running Adobe apps in Citrix environments or on Windows. It's a cash cow. Adobe wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't.
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Some of the neater Lego people sets is available through the Lego education line - stuff like the community workers set: http://www.legoeducation.com/store/detail.aspx?CategoryID=169&by=9&ID=420&c=1&t=0&l=0
or some of the Duplo people stuff like the "world people" set: http://www.legoeducation.com/store/detail.aspx?CategoryID=155&by=9&ID=1370&c=1&t=0&l=0
That's odd. We haven't seen that, and we're usually buying 400 to 500 of any given model at a time. It hasn't been a problem and some things (like the switch to widescreens) has been pretty welcome. Of course, we're also buying units with 4 year warranties and accidental damage protection, which we've always done. We have had some issues in the past, but they were on models that IBM was directly responsible for. We've been pretty happy, overall. And they've kept the Thinkpad "look". Personally, I'm fond of a laptop that looks like you could beat someone to death with.
That's just nuts. I've seen that as well. You're right, and I do realize that there's an AD policy for the screen savers and suspending, etc., but I don't think you get is full control over the all the power management (powercfg utility) settings. A big organization probably ought to come up with its own (named) power scheme for desktops and set it by default on any desktop PC images.
On a Windows XP system, you also want to set the CPU performance in the default power profile to "ADAPTIVE". I'd actually think you'd do well to set the hard drives to spin down and the monitor to turn off after 15 or 20 minutes, set the system to suspend after 30 or 45 minutes, and hibernate after an hour and a half to two hours. You might have to exempt some systems from hibernating - some software and drivers don't always react well to hibernate, and it would be a pain in the (*#)(@ to have to restart after lunch or every meeting. Suspend is a good middle ground. With something more disruptive, a company could well look at that and say "it's not worth the few minutes per day of productivity loss, when factored against the employee's salary + benefits cost." Especially if it leads to calls to your internal helpdesk to try to recover documents in progress or some other work. By the way, productivity vs. conservation is one of the reasons organizations need to be given incentives to conserve power if we want them to do it before energy prices actually exceed cost per hour of labor.
I've been buying 2-socket, 8-core servers for use with VMware ESX server for more than a year now. I can tell you that while everything on the system benefits hugely from 8 cores vs. 4, it can be hard to predict how much you can really throw at a box. What I'd really like to save is power - build in the hooks for an OS to take cores or an entire socket off-line to cut back on power use even more. The HP servers we're using do some dynamic power saving (an 8-core, 10-12 virtual machines, 16Gb of RAM server uses barely 80 watts more power on average during a day than a single, standalone 4-core server running Windows or Linux), but I'd like to do better. By the way, I just replaced an older DL380 G4 - a dual 3.6 ghz Xeon with 8GB of RAM - with a DL380 G3 with dual quad-core 3ghz processors and 32GB of RAM. For the same amount of money, not adjusting for inflation. That's essentially 8x the server for the same amount of money.
It's likely to be reversed. It's a state school, so they have an additional legal obligation to not violate free speech and due process rules. Even with a private school, if they don't follow their written judicial procedures to the letter, they'll often lose. Schools like to tell students and their parents not to retain lawyers during internal judicial / discipline proceedings, saying it makes the process "adversarial". They're trying to kick you out or impose some other sanction. It's hard to imagine it getting any more adversarial than that.
Seriously. If we end up in a recession, there will be a huge attitude adjustment. I graduated from college in 1991, and job hunting at that point sucked, at least in the northeast. The people who had been laid off and had been in the workforce 5-10 years were dropping down to the entry level stuff. It often comes down to luck - or someone who knows what you're capable of doing putting in a good word. That's why working your ass off - in college, in a part-time job, at your first few jobs - matters so much. That manager who saw how hard you worked might be in a position to hire you at the next (better) firm he or she goes to. Or may give you a good reference. And if you can send a good person looking for a leg up in his/her direction when they're hiring later? Great. The fact is that a ton of your co-workers in IT have college degrees. And they know that you can coast through almost any school, and that whether you get an education vs. merely a degree is up to the individual student. So, yeah, you have to prove that you're not a lazy idiot, you're not going to get much individual attention, and you're going to be expected to work as hard as the other people in the office when they were at your level.
Patchlink actually will handle this - they repackage the Firefox updates, and you can push them out to your client machines after testing. You have to wait a little longer for the update, since they have to repackage and test it, but it does work.
And by the way, I don't shop at Wal-Mart. Personally, I can't stand their labor policies. However, I'd argue that if you're spending a ton of money on mass-marketed consumer goods that aren't essentials, regardless of where you're buying them, you're not doing much to be better than "a valued Wal-Mart customer." We're all becoming pack rats, attracted to shiny objects. Well, with energy prices headed where they're going, it's all a house of cards anyway.
Then Linux has a problem as a desktop OS, doesn't it? After all, decision makers, reviewers, and people in the general population who have never really used anything but Windows (which is most of the computer-using population, mind you) are all going to be seeing Linux that way. And is that bad? Sure, Linux has things going for it, but if it doesn't work the way people expect, or have the hardware support, or run certain pieces of software people want, can we ever expect it to be more than a niche player? And since a lot of since school systems use Windows at this point (Apple really gave up a lot of that market) and kids are likely to use their parents' computers first, they're going to be used to Windows. It's not a bad bias - if Linux can't either offer spectacular features that overcome other objections, or else deliver what people expect, does it "deserve" to be a mainstream desktop OS?
But hey, we Westerners are so much above all that. So, instead of wasting something that anyone can grow, we can use an obsolete-when-you-buy-it consumer electronic doodad to buy a cup of coffee (often lousy). Wow!
When they can bankrupt you simply with legal fees, hoping you cave before you eventually win? Always. Often, when I see stuff like this, I suspect that someone in legal got carried away. Not Apple - it seems like this sort of thing must actually bother Jobs and the executives. This person or site ruined their little PR event, or that one made fun of him. It's just sad. Does he actually throw tantrums like a 3-year-old, or does he just put up with toadies who do this crap on his behalf?
Actually, I think you're pointing to part of the problem - people don't feel dumb because they can't memorize dates. They figure it doesn't matter. When they see a date, they can understand it - they don't feel dumb. However, they can stare at a mathematical proof for hours and get nowhere, so they don't bother - their lack of comprehension makes them feel dumb. They're not conversant in the "language", so they dislike it. I suspect that deep down, some of the folks objecting to it fall into this camp. At the same time, they could link to Mathworld - they do have a good assortment, and they annotate nicely. Wikipedia probably can't do as good a job. The Mathworld entry on the Pythagorean theorem is surprisingly engaging - even including pop culture references like the Scarecrow reciting it incorrectly in the Wizard of Oz. And the listing of various proofs for it points to part of Wikipedia's problem - this stuff does require real editing, and the project probably isn't up to it. They're not making that point, though, or acting like they're concerned about quality - they seem to be arguing it on the basis of it being textbook material.
Real video editing software, probably. Real finance software (corporate, not quicken!), real HR software - stuff that has to follow specific regulations on a schedule. And there really isn't a replacement for autocad that a mechanical or civil engineer, or an architect is going to run out and install. Medical applications would be difficult for some of the same reasons as the finance software. And real enterprise email/calendaring and the archiving/retention software to go with it. There aren't any open-source email packages that you could actually use to replace Exchange/GroupWise /Notes in a corporate, healthcare, government and even education. There are pieces, but nothing it would be worth your job to try to sell your organization on.
It doesn't work. How long does it take a state's medical boards to remove a butchering quack from the ranks of medical professionals? Seriously. When you add anonymity to the mix, you're counting on a huge group of people all acting in an ethical manner. It just won't happen. And the administrators aren't any better - it's an anonymous group with "power" (albeit in a rather meaningless realm - if Google didn't give such high page rankings to Wikipedia entries, it wouldn't matter half as much as it does), and they're going to use it. That's what happens. In the absence of strong ethical standards, and a group who feels that the way to avoid criticism and attack is to behave in a manner utterly beyond reproach, it's far to easy for critics to think it's the product of infinite monkeys or a bunch of crazy, obsessive nutjobs who drive out qualified contributors. Wikipedia would be better off getting rid of the "flat" structure officially and putting something in place, than pretending it's flat and have groups forming up behind the scenes to impose it themselves.
Huh? I work in higher ed. We have a multi-server, clustered email system hooked up to a fibre channel SAN. Same for file storage. It takes far less than a full-time person to manage either. We've only got a couple of admins to handle the other 60 or so servers - mostly Windows and Linux app servers, some physical, many virtual. We've been using VMware ESX server for more than three years. Oh, yeah, and our IT spending and staffing levels are below average for schools our size. Higher ed pays substantially less than retail for enterprise hardware and software. And I know a lot of folks working in higher ed who are doing similar work.
Offering services doesn't have to be hugely labor intensive, or expensive, if the system is designed well to start.
Been a while since the story came out (this was the PHRACK case), but I seem to remember that specific items were the cost of the VAXstation and the software used to generate the document - which, in late-80's / early 90's dollars was a hefty tab. Also, I think the time to write it was included, but I might be misremembering that part.
Yeah, it's static discharge. Aside from it being unpleasant to get zapped constantly, you do have to be a bit concerned about the equipment. Not as much exterior surfaces, but if you're handling components and plugging in cables. Also, it tends to be more comfortable for anyone working in the facility if you keep it above 20%. There's only so much water and lip balm you want to have to keep in your office. "Operating" is usually between 20% to 80% RH (Noncondensing). Somewhere between 40% to 50% is considered optimal. (I've seen as low as 35% - below 35% charge dissipation isn't as easy, apparently)
Wonder what they're going to do to humidify the air. I'd bet it would easily get below 10% RH if they don't do something. A lot of equipment is rated for 10% to 90% these days, but I'd want it over 20%.
Maybe they can use the exhaled breath of a herd of yaks to raise the humidity level. Oh, wait, no, you wouldn't actually get any LEED points for that.
Trust me, there's a ton of expenses. Liability insurance of various kinds? Huge. Utility bills? Substantial. Maintenance, upkeep, renovations of buildings? On most campuses, it's going to be millions per year unless you're letting the buildings fall apart. Library materials / subscriptions / electronic resource fees? Big. Health / Counselling services? Costs increasing all the time. You have to account for depreciation on capital assets - equipment, buildings, etc. Maintaining the grounds? Snow removal (think overtime)? Health benefits for employees? Plus, your discount rate (direct financial aid) might amount to 30% of the tuition revenue. Also, payments on bonds used to build buildings, etc. And students now demand much nicer housing with more amenities than they did 20 years ago. That gets expensive as well. A huge number of the costs are basically fixed. There's not usually a lot of discretionary money in your average college budget. Unless you're one of the schools with multi-billion dollar endowments. I've sat on the budget committee at a university. Trust me, at a lot of schools, the tuition revenue doesn't cover all expenses. It's revenue from the spending rate of the endowment, federal and state money, grants, etc. Even if you're paying "full tuition" at your average institution, there's still a subsidy coming from somewhere to support the services you're using.
It's not so much a working culture. It's more like watching one of those nature documentaries where the slower and weaker animals are getting run down and eaten, or wander into quicksand and drown. If you're lucky. In some areas, it's positively Dickensian.
It's likely that they're going to borrow elements and concepts developed when they were working on Lightroom. Which wouldn't be all bad - Lightroom is really easy to use at a basic level, but it's not difficult to access more advanced features either.
I'd guess not much. It sounds like the GC may have actually fought Gehry on some decisions because they thought they would be problematic, and these aren't inconsistent with problem's he's had with other buildings. I suspect that if MIT wins, the GC will be held responsible a minority of the damages. The GC has done other major projects.
EqualLogic was kind of a cool company that bundled value and decent software engineering into a good package, and had good support for stuff besides just Windows and Linux (VMware, NetWare, etc). Good service, etc. There are probably more than a few EqualLogic customers that are less than thrilled about this.
Outside of a huge number of corporate clients running Adobe apps in Citrix environments or on Windows. It's a cash cow. Adobe wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't.