So... I'm just at the start of this ERP process (about 12 months). Any war stories or pointers?
Two things are given; it's going to take longer than planned and cost more than expected.
If you are 12 months in, you may already have problems if your project management was lacking. The lessons I learned, other than not working on a project like that ever again, are:
Get as much training as possible BEFORE the conversion starts. Consultants and contractors don't have to live with the fallout from a bad implementation.
Realize that 'out of the box' ERP is probably not going to work for you, management will have to address numerous times how much customization is acceptable. And how that affects your upgrade path.
Make sure that EVERY user process is fully understood and documented. This requires getting buy-in from every department. Foster those relationships, you're going to need those people for process testing throughout the conversion. Management will need to know when to push (someone doesn't like change, just too busy to test) and when to listen (stock ERP process just doesn't have necessary features) Your user's opinion of IT will have a big impact on the project. You really need to stomp out any 'Us' and 'Them' sentiments.
Start at the front, get your data imports from existing systems squared away first, then move to the external systems that will create new data in the system. (EDI, B2B, etc) You need real data for testing, not stuff that is generated by you to test various aspects of the system. Test sets only find the problems you are looking for.
If those old programs are business critical, budget time to maintain them. (in house apps may even need new features) Sometimes it's more efficient to modify a current app to access the ERP rather than customize the ERP to support an essential process.
And last but not least, despite what management says, the ERP is going to cost people their jobs. Theirs, yours, or the worker whose job has become redundant.
Porsche and BMW exaggerate speed the most, and the theory is because owners of these cars are quite likely to upsize their rolling stock (and thus make the speedo read lower). It's annoying, but it's simply in response to a legal requirement.
Wouldn't a better solution be a programmable speedometer like the trucking industry uses? Any time tire size or axle ratio is changed, you simply plug the new info into the computer and it adjusts. IMO, if Porsche and BMW do that, every vehicle they sell is defective. Their speedo is about as useful as a Windows progress bar.
ERP makes legal compliance a lot less expensive. Many things just happen automagically in the next release.
From what I've been told, if you want to successfully roll out ERP, your business complies to the package. If you want a failure, then go right ahead and try to customize it.
From experience, I'd argue that ERPs don't make anything less expensive. I also doubt there is any business that is large enough to benefit from an ERP that doesn't have necessary business processes that must be tacked on or maintained outside the ERP. Just some of the things we ran into were; export documents, NAFTA certifications, barcode printing, and wireless data collection were not available. Lean was a 3rd party (incomplete) add-on. EDI required biztalk with custom COM objects to reformat the data both going in and coming out and a 3rd party program to actually transfer the data.
It personally wouldn't hurt my feeling to dump all the blame on Microsoft Dynamics, but there are way too many stories of failures with SAP and Oracle out there to think it's isolated. And I don't believe that after making the commitment of millions of dollars, that management suddenly decided to be stubborn and no try to adapt processes to the ERP.
One of the ideas behind thin clients was to cut costs, but that fell victim to the general decrease in computer costs: it's probably cheaper to buy low-end PCs than to get ones without disks and set them up to work as traditional thin clients.
Wyse S10 terminals are about $230 each, plus monitor. While it's possible to buy a desktop in that range, it would be severely limited and have a short life span. One of the strong selling points of terminals is that there is no reason that a well designed one can't be used for 10 or more years. It's end of life will more likely be due to hardware failure or a network upgrade than the whim of some OS vendor.
Wyse calls theirs 'thin clients' because they are marketing to businesses. Asus is marketing their eeeBox PC for essentially the same type of user in the home market.
To qualify as a thin client in my book, the device has to be thin "all the time", i.e. not a PC used mainly for browsing.
I don't know that your definition of thin client agrees with the market. Most of the windows based thin clients that everyone is complaining about (big harddrives, etc) are the result of re-purposing outdated systems to get a little more life out of them. For example, a previous employer didn't want to spend all the money necessary to upgrade every PC to run XP well. Instead, they installed Win2000 (getting Win95 machines off the network), and then connected them to Citrix servers.
WYSE is a good example of current generation thin clients. When I left my former employer they had concluded extensive tests deploying thin clients to various employees, and were happy enough that they were buying new ones in batches of 30-50 at a time. They found that they could replace 3-4 PCs at about the same cost as getting one new desktop PC.
Of course, not everyone was moved to a thin client. Anyone who made a case for needing a real PC kept theirs. And a few were able to get an additional thin client as well.
When a corporation passes a certain size, having a packaged ERP is a good idea (for legal compliance).
ERPs don't guarantee legal compliance. Legal requirements are about process, not software. For example, Microsoft's Dynamics AX does nothing to comply with SOX, HIPPA, or even NAFTA. When a company passes a certain size, it's better to hire a compliance officer to make sure your processes are in line with legal requirements.
From experience, the problem with ERPs is they are generic one solution fits all. Management has to decide whether to force their business to conform to the software or work around it to run the business. And if your business operates the same way as all of your competitors due to software requirements, how do you differentiate yourself in the market?
Dollhouse started slow, but I think it's grown steadily more interesting.
For me, it has been the opposite. Dollhouse looked interesting at the start, but now it seems like it has become 'how many ways can we prostitute Eliza.' I was truly sad when I heard TSCC got canceled but Dollhouse got picked up. But with Summer making an appearance on Dollhouse, maybe they'll find a story for an episode or two. I'll continue to Tivo it for at least that long I guess.
Microsoft did eventually release a patch that activated the Uninstall button, it's been out for a while now.
Click on uninstall. Then, after Firefox restarts go back into Add-Ons and look at the Plugins tab instead of the Extensions tab if you really want a surprise.....
I have upgraded my Ubuntu Dell 4 times without any issues
While it's not germane to a discussion on upgrading Windows... My experiences with Ubuntu haven't been as rosy. My Mac mini is waiting for a reinstall of OSX because the upgrade of Ubuntu PPC. It would no longer boot properly afterwards, and I'm not willing chase down problems with the distro. I'm just going to put it back to OSX and get rid of it. And my server, running KUbuntu currently has issues as well due to an OS upgrade. It seems that when I installed it I used a.10 release and Ubuntu removed the repository. I had to do a full version upgrade and I can no longer log into the desktop remotely. Since the server is a headless app server, that's a pretty significant issue. Of course, Ubuntu isn't the only Linux distro that has done that to me recently. I told my eeePC to pull down all of it's waiting updates, and then it had an X problem and wouldn't fully boot. I managed to get it up enough to copy my files to a thumb drive, then put it back to the factory image. If there is a necessary update it will just have to live without it. That's 2 failed Linux upgrades and a simple update in about 3 months. I wouldn't have even considered the last, the server, if the repository hadn't been deleted.
There is no migration path directly from Windows XP to Windows 7.
Never do upgrades, it's the best opportunity to clean the trash out of the registry. It'll improve the speed and stability of the PC.
In our experience it is better to buy components and build our own computers.
I haven't bought a Dell in about 5 years, and haven't built a white box machine for even longer. But unless you are VERY specific about the components you want (or intend to reuse from an existing machine), it's hard to match the price of a complete system. And if you factor in time for troubleshooting defective components/compatibility, it doesn't make sense to build one-off systems.
I was really impressed with the quality of the case of the Dell SC400 servers. Not only are they easy to work with, the wires are all neatly tied, there are no sharp edges to cut you, and they are the quietest machines I've ever owned. Antec is the best white box case I have used.
As far as upgrading to Windows 7 is concerned, for many of us there is no advantage to it. The things that have been driving base PC requirements are OS releases and gaming. Windows 7 offers flashy new features and moves everything around so you have to re-learn the OS. And it requires new hardware. As for gaming, I personally don't have any interest in any that a few simple upgrades (video and RAM) wouldn't suffice. I'm not a bleeding edge gamer. And the only business apps I can think of would be niche products; video editing, game development, and maybe CAD.
Just look at the US government's management history, it is terrible. Social Security is going bankrupt, Medicare and Medicaide are going bankrupt (these three programs already make up most of the national budget, and yet they are running out of money), the postal service is supposed to pay for itself but it can't, the rail transportation system collapsed. Probably the best run portion of government is the Department of Defense, and that's what I was comparing to the corporation!
Social Security is still receiving more than it is spending. It is fully funded by payroll taxes. And it would have a considerable reserve (4+ years and it's current spending level) if the government hadn't been borrowing from it to reduce budget deficits.
Estimates are that it will bring in $950b this year while only spending $650b. Social Security's problem is that as the boomer's retire, the next generation is considerably smaller and if costs aren't controlled (and borrowed money returned), that generation won't be able to support their parent's generation without huge tax increases.
The second largest component of the budget is Defense. But it's only second because the 'War on Terror' is itemized separately. Also note than many of the costs of the Iran/Afghanistan wars are outside the budget as well. And I doubt that anyone would have problems finding problems with the way the Department of Defense manages things. Things like open top/unarmored humvees used during the Iraqi invasion. Soldiers having to purchase their own body armor and other necessities because the government was unable to provide them.
And financial problems with Medicare and Medicaid would be solved by getting health care costs under control.
And BTW, a while back I saw an article that claimed that Medicare was more efficient than private insurers because they didn't waste money on marketing, advertising, lobbying, or profit. I'm sure if you're even halfway Google literate you can find considerable discussion, on both sides of the issue.
As far as the postal service and Amtrak, the postal service is required to provide universal service. They can't choose to only deliver the cost effective mail, like UPS and FedEx do. And the government can't decide what it wants to do about public transportation. Under funding can be as bad as no funding at all.
But you can live and eat without having to deal with, for example, Tescos. You can't live and eat in the UK without dealing with HMRC. My own experience of dealing with the public versus private sector is that the private sector will deliver services quicker and better, not necessarily (although usually) cheaper.
How about a situation that isn't invented.... Many local utilities around the US are privately owned but guaranteed monopolies by government agencies. These have the worst of both worlds. You HAVE to do business with them, the (appointed) government oversight committees rubber stamp rate increases, and the private business has NO incentive to provide any customer service since you are a captive customer; short of selling your home and moving. Many seem to have back office systems so backward that you have to wonder if the employees own shoes.
These private monopolies consist of; (landline) telephone, cable TV, water, sewer, electric, and gas services.
So while Cloud providers are moving their clouds around for the best deal...what restricts them to hosting in the USA at all?
Their customers. If US customers say they want their data kept within the US, the companies will either keep their data centers here or lose their customers. It's the same thing that drives companies to go 'green'. Sometimes it's better to pay higher costs to keep the customer happy. Another example, how many people like dealing with off-shored customer support. Some companies have pulled their support staff back to the US because they were losing customers.
"Cloud" computing is just another way of saying client/server, except that "cloud" computing usually means that the Internet is involved somehow.
Cloud computing is much more than just client/server or throwing your servers on the internet. Cloud computing is about scaling the services to meet the demand of the clients. In client server (or even n-tier), you handled load by distributing clients across a pool of servers. You could use various means; certain clients to certain servers, DNS round robin, load balancers, etc. You needed enough server capacity to handle your peak load, and the rest of the time any extra capacity was idle. Cloud computing is much more like time sharing used on mainframes decades ago. You pay for the computing you need, and what you aren't using would be assigned to other cloud customers.
That, and isn't it usually much more expensive to heat your house with electric than with gas? This might come to bite you in the ass later once you are finished with the remodeling and are living in the place?
As part of the remodel all the exterior walls have been insulated along with a vapor barrier, so the building envelope is pretty tight.
Where cost is concerned, in the past going electric over gas would have been expensive, but electric heating has gotten much more efficient. And gas prices have been rising a lot faster than electric. Although I attribute that more to the stability of coal prices rather than any benevolence of the power company. Ideally I would have preferred a ground source heat pump, but that wasn't an option. So instead I have electric heat mats incorporated in the floor (concrete slab) under the hardwood and tile, and some radiant heat panels on the walls to supplement.
If I can find an absorbent chiller small enough for residential use, I'd like to add a collector for heating, cooling, and hot water. Failing that, I'll replace my A/C unit with an air source heat pump just to make sure I have enough capacity for the extreme months. My mom's total electric bill for a year is under $1200 for a 1500 sq/ft house, and she uses an air source heat pump. And that's with 1950's insulation. I'll only have about 1000 sq/ft and my initial goal is $900/yr and then eventually under $600.
Power companies (generally) don't make a ton of profit, they're regulated to keep costs down.
This may be pedantic, but they are regulated to keep _prices_ down. As a monopoly, unregulated they could charge any price. Ideally regulation would be customer centric. But in reality, tariffs tend to be based on cost plus formulas. Which is what makes the lack of innovation by electric and telephone companies ludicrous. They were content to sit on their wasteful practices rather than innovate and become more efficient. The Telcos learned the hard way when cellular and cable companies joined the party. Alternative energy production could teach electricity providers some of the same lessons.
"Unless this law is changed, we plan not to renew our contracts with cities in this state. You will have to find a different electric company." What would prevent that from happening?
Infrastructure costs. It the county doubled your property taxes, would you walk away from your home? It's not likely to happen though, electric tariffs are set by a state's public utility commission and they generally rule in favor of the utilities. My electric company, for example, pushed through a rate increase during this recession (depression?). I've been following the rate increases on my utilities for about 10 years, and I'm only aware on one time when it was denied. Although the gas company overcharged for several years and eventually had to refund some of the money.
It's more than double dipping if they try to charge more, and too damned bad if their connection fee didn't cover future (I'm not using much of your power anymore).
If it's anything like my electric company, they get an ongoing fee as well in the form of a minimum usage charge. I have a house I'm remodeling and I never hit minimum usage on any utility. The electric company gets a minimum $16.50 a month. I forget how much that covers. Water and sewer EACH get $14.50 a month until I use more than 1000 gallons of water. And gas wanted $27!!! a month. I told them what they could do with their connection charge, and went all electric. Now if I could just get them to pull their leaky meter and cap the line. In my opinion, the only organizations more customer abusive than a utility company are government agencies.
Her agenda isn't going to stand up to the wind towers that just started operating 15 miles away that people can just go look at though.
Don't count on it. Never underestimate the persistence of a narrow minded person. And believe it or not, some people are willing to lie to advance their agenda. Like finding some specious way to link infrasound to autism and alzheimers.
The law gives a $0.50 tax credit for every gallon of diesel mix used but the credit should have been based on some fraction of the price of diesel. The paper makers scam only works because the price of diesel has fallen so much.
The price of diesel doesn't really matter. For example, suppose your manufacturing process produced a waste product of biodiesel (or in this case, the equivalent black liquor). The cost of the waste product doesn't matter, they are already reusing it and will continue to use all that is available, making essentially a 'free' component of the final cost. If you made B99 you would use 1 gallon of petro diesel for every 99 gallons of biodiesel. Gain from tax credit, $49.50. Cost of diesel now, $2. Cost of diesel last summer, $4.50. So the profit from taking the credit only changes from $47.50 to $45.00. Even at $25 a gallon it would still be cost effective, and this is assuming they had to mix at a minimally B99 level. Suppose they only used one gallon of diesel per 1000 gallons of final fuel mix.
The problem here is if it was intended to be a transportation tax credit encouraging a reduction of fossil fuel use, it should have been tied to both transportation usage AND a demonstrable decrease in actual fossil fuel used.
And yes, if the law making process wasn't retarded, or corrupted, this wouldn't have been an issue.
I thought they were inconsistent with their handling of technology. For instance, they have raptors they can land anywhere they choose (for instance, Galen being dropped on an island). So why do we see a column of people marching off in search of a new place to live? And they did keep at least one raptor, Adama carries off Rosalyn in it.
I would have believed the whole "let's give up the ships and live on this planet" story line if it was only Galactica, since it was essentially dead. Having recently re-read Robinson Crusoe, I have to think they would have stripped whatever they felt they could have used, given the opportunity. You see Baltar and Caprica talking about farming, and realize that you have seen no farming implements. Helo and Athena are discussing who will teach Hera to hunt, and you've seen no weapons of any kind for hunting. The only reason I can see for sending the ships into the sun and abandoning all technology would be to hide from the cylons, and that wasn't the case. Individuals might choose to do it, but not a whole society.
Like some others here, I wasn't unhappy seeing Rosalyn die. I was tired of the drama associated with her character. Kind of like I became sick of Starbuck after the season of her and Lee.
Any MP3 player and a small FM transmitter with a stereo headphone jack can play your MP3 player over the air into your car's radio.
Several people have mentioned using FM transmitters, and there is a big problem with that when you are traveling. As you change regions quite often you have to change your FM transmitters channel because a frequency that it available in Tulsa might be in use in Denver.
I used one for a while when I had XM and used it on several road trips. If you go that route, make sure it can be configured for many different frequencies and put them in the presets on your stereo. I also had a couple occasions when none of the frequencies my XM transmitter worked on were available.
And for the reasons I no longer use XM; they raised the price after 6 months, their play lists aren't any deeper than broadcast stations, they have the same endless DJ chatter, they have commercials too, but it's for their own shows and channels, and despite all the channels available most people will only find 2 or 3 that suit their tastes. Oh, there is never any local information (traffic, weather, events, etc)
I had an APC brand UPS go down sometime around midnight. It's most likely a coincidence becuase without power failures UPS's get bored and find creative ways to shut down while everything on mains stays up:(
I have an APC UPS on my Tivo, cable box, Link Theatre, and WII that started shutting off after I added the WII. I thought I'd overloaded it with the WII, so I moved everything except the Tivo and WII. When That didn't solve the problem, I bought a new, identical APC UPS. Sure enough, within a couple weeks I'd come home and find it powered off. Then one day I was home and my cat jumped onto my entertainment center. A few seconds later, off went the UPS. It seems that when my big 33" CRT TV died and I just dropped in a little 20" replacement, the entertainment center became a good playground. My cat was actually stepping on the power button while running around behind the TV.
I'm convinced the whole zune thing is a feline conspiracy.
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So... I'm just at the start of this ERP process (about 12 months). Any war stories or pointers?
Two things are given; it's going to take longer than planned and cost more than expected.
If you are 12 months in, you may already have problems if your project management was lacking. The lessons I learned, other than not working on a project like that ever again, are:
Get as much training as possible BEFORE the conversion starts. Consultants and contractors don't have to live with the fallout from a bad implementation.
Realize that 'out of the box' ERP is probably not going to work for you, management will have to address numerous times how much customization is acceptable. And how that affects your upgrade path.
Make sure that EVERY user process is fully understood and documented. This requires getting buy-in from every department. Foster those relationships, you're going to need those people for process testing throughout the conversion. Management will need to know when to push (someone doesn't like change, just too busy to test) and when to listen (stock ERP process just doesn't have necessary features) Your user's opinion of IT will have a big impact on the project. You really need to stomp out any 'Us' and 'Them' sentiments.
Start at the front, get your data imports from existing systems squared away first, then move to the external systems that will create new data in the system. (EDI, B2B, etc) You need real data for testing, not stuff that is generated by you to test various aspects of the system. Test sets only find the problems you are looking for.
If those old programs are business critical, budget time to maintain them. (in house apps may even need new features) Sometimes it's more efficient to modify a current app to access the ERP rather than customize the ERP to support an essential process.
And last but not least, despite what management says, the ERP is going to cost people their jobs. Theirs, yours, or the worker whose job has become redundant.
Porsche and BMW exaggerate speed the most, and the theory is because owners of these cars are quite likely to upsize their rolling stock (and thus make the speedo read lower). It's annoying, but it's simply in response to a legal requirement.
Wouldn't a better solution be a programmable speedometer like the trucking industry uses? Any time tire size or axle ratio is changed, you simply plug the new info into the computer and it adjusts. IMO, if Porsche and BMW do that, every vehicle they sell is defective. Their speedo is about as useful as a Windows progress bar.
ERP makes legal compliance a lot less expensive. Many things just happen automagically in the next release.
From what I've been told, if you want to successfully roll out ERP, your business complies to the package. If you want a failure, then go right ahead and try to customize it.
From experience, I'd argue that ERPs don't make anything less expensive. I also doubt there is any business that is large enough to benefit from an ERP that doesn't have necessary business processes that must be tacked on or maintained outside the ERP. Just some of the things we ran into were; export documents, NAFTA certifications, barcode printing, and wireless data collection were not available. Lean was a 3rd party (incomplete) add-on. EDI required biztalk with custom COM objects to reformat the data both going in and coming out and a 3rd party program to actually transfer the data.
It personally wouldn't hurt my feeling to dump all the blame on Microsoft Dynamics, but there are way too many stories of failures with SAP and Oracle out there to think it's isolated. And I don't believe that after making the commitment of millions of dollars, that management suddenly decided to be stubborn and no try to adapt processes to the ERP.
One of the ideas behind thin clients was to cut costs, but that fell victim to the general decrease in computer costs: it's probably cheaper to buy low-end PCs than to get ones without disks and set them up to work as traditional thin clients.
Wyse S10 terminals are about $230 each, plus monitor. While it's possible to buy a desktop in that range, it would be severely limited and have a short life span. One of the strong selling points of terminals is that there is no reason that a well designed one can't be used for 10 or more years. It's end of life will more likely be due to hardware failure or a network upgrade than the whim of some OS vendor.
Wyse calls theirs 'thin clients' because they are marketing to businesses. Asus is marketing their eeeBox PC for essentially the same type of user in the home market.
To qualify as a thin client in my book, the device has to be thin "all the time", i.e. not a PC used mainly for browsing.
I don't know that your definition of thin client agrees with the market. Most of the windows based thin clients that everyone is complaining about (big harddrives, etc) are the result of re-purposing outdated systems to get a little more life out of them. For example, a previous employer didn't want to spend all the money necessary to upgrade every PC to run XP well. Instead, they installed Win2000 (getting Win95 machines off the network), and then connected them to Citrix servers.
WYSE is a good example of current generation thin clients. When I left my former employer they had concluded extensive tests deploying thin clients to various employees, and were happy enough that they were buying new ones in batches of 30-50 at a time. They found that they could replace 3-4 PCs at about the same cost as getting one new desktop PC.
Of course, not everyone was moved to a thin client. Anyone who made a case for needing a real PC kept theirs. And a few were able to get an additional thin client as well.
When a corporation passes a certain size, having a packaged ERP is a good idea (for legal compliance).
ERPs don't guarantee legal compliance. Legal requirements are about process, not software. For example, Microsoft's Dynamics AX does nothing to comply with SOX, HIPPA, or even NAFTA. When a company passes a certain size, it's better to hire a compliance officer to make sure your processes are in line with legal requirements.
From experience, the problem with ERPs is they are generic one solution fits all. Management has to decide whether to force their business to conform to the software or work around it to run the business. And if your business operates the same way as all of your competitors due to software requirements, how do you differentiate yourself in the market?
Dollhouse started slow, but I think it's grown steadily more interesting.
For me, it has been the opposite. Dollhouse looked interesting at the start, but now it seems like it has become 'how many ways can we prostitute Eliza.' I was truly sad when I heard TSCC got canceled but Dollhouse got picked up. But with Summer making an appearance on Dollhouse, maybe they'll find a story for an episode or two. I'll continue to Tivo it for at least that long I guess.
Microsoft did eventually release a patch that activated the Uninstall button, it's been out for a while now.
Click on uninstall. Then, after Firefox restarts go back into Add-Ons and look at the Plugins tab instead of the Extensions tab if you really want a surprise.....
I have upgraded my Ubuntu Dell 4 times without any issues
While it's not germane to a discussion on upgrading Windows... My experiences with Ubuntu haven't been as rosy. My Mac mini is waiting for a reinstall of OSX because the upgrade of Ubuntu PPC. It would no longer boot properly afterwards, and I'm not willing chase down problems with the distro. I'm just going to put it back to OSX and get rid of it. And my server, running KUbuntu currently has issues as well due to an OS upgrade. It seems that when I installed it I used a .10 release and Ubuntu removed the repository. I had to do a full version upgrade and I can no longer log into the desktop remotely. Since the server is a headless app server, that's a pretty significant issue. Of course, Ubuntu isn't the only Linux distro that has done that to me recently. I told my eeePC to pull down all of it's waiting updates, and then it had an X problem and wouldn't fully boot. I managed to get it up enough to copy my files to a thumb drive, then put it back to the factory image. If there is a necessary update it will just have to live without it. That's 2 failed Linux upgrades and a simple update in about 3 months. I wouldn't have even considered the last, the server, if the repository hadn't been deleted.
There is no migration path directly from Windows XP to Windows 7.
Never do upgrades, it's the best opportunity to clean the trash out of the registry. It'll improve the speed and stability of the PC.
In our experience it is better to buy components and build our own computers.
I haven't bought a Dell in about 5 years, and haven't built a white box machine for even longer. But unless you are VERY specific about the components you want (or intend to reuse from an existing machine), it's hard to match the price of a complete system. And if you factor in time for troubleshooting defective components/compatibility, it doesn't make sense to build one-off systems.
I was really impressed with the quality of the case of the Dell SC400 servers. Not only are they easy to work with, the wires are all neatly tied, there are no sharp edges to cut you, and they are the quietest machines I've ever owned. Antec is the best white box case I have used.
As far as upgrading to Windows 7 is concerned, for many of us there is no advantage to it. The things that have been driving base PC requirements are OS releases and gaming. Windows 7 offers flashy new features and moves everything around so you have to re-learn the OS. And it requires new hardware. As for gaming, I personally don't have any interest in any that a few simple upgrades (video and RAM) wouldn't suffice. I'm not a bleeding edge gamer. And the only business apps I can think of would be niche products; video editing, game development, and maybe CAD.
Just look at the US government's management history, it is terrible. Social Security is going bankrupt, Medicare and Medicaide are going bankrupt (these three programs already make up most of the national budget, and yet they are running out of money), the postal service is supposed to pay for itself but it can't, the rail transportation system collapsed. Probably the best run portion of government is the Department of Defense, and that's what I was comparing to the corporation!
Social Security is still receiving more than it is spending. It is fully funded by payroll taxes. And it would have a considerable reserve (4+ years and it's current spending level) if the government hadn't been borrowing from it to reduce budget deficits.
Estimates are that it will bring in $950b this year while only spending $650b. Social Security's problem is that as the boomer's retire, the next generation is considerably smaller and if costs aren't controlled (and borrowed money returned), that generation won't be able to support their parent's generation without huge tax increases.
The second largest component of the budget is Defense. But it's only second because the 'War on Terror' is itemized separately. Also note than many of the costs of the Iran/Afghanistan wars are outside the budget as well. And I doubt that anyone would have problems finding problems with the way the Department of Defense manages things. Things like open top/unarmored humvees used during the Iraqi invasion. Soldiers having to purchase their own body armor and other necessities because the government was unable to provide them.
And financial problems with Medicare and Medicaid would be solved by getting health care costs under control.
Budget info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_States_federal_budget
And BTW, a while back I saw an article that claimed that Medicare was more efficient than private insurers because they didn't waste money on marketing, advertising, lobbying, or profit. I'm sure if you're even halfway Google literate you can find considerable discussion, on both sides of the issue.
As far as the postal service and Amtrak, the postal service is required to provide universal service. They can't choose to only deliver the cost effective mail, like UPS and FedEx do. And the government can't decide what it wants to do about public transportation. Under funding can be as bad as no funding at all.
But you can live and eat without having to deal with, for example, Tescos. You can't live and eat in the UK without dealing with HMRC. My own experience of dealing with the public versus private sector is that the private sector will deliver services quicker and better, not necessarily (although usually) cheaper.
How about a situation that isn't invented.... Many local utilities around the US are privately owned but guaranteed monopolies by government agencies. These have the worst of both worlds. You HAVE to do business with them, the (appointed) government oversight committees rubber stamp rate increases, and the private business has NO incentive to provide any customer service since you are a captive customer; short of selling your home and moving. Many seem to have back office systems so backward that you have to wonder if the employees own shoes.
These private monopolies consist of; (landline) telephone, cable TV, water, sewer, electric, and gas services.
So while Cloud providers are moving their clouds around for the best deal...what restricts them to hosting in the USA at all?
Their customers. If US customers say they want their data kept within the US, the companies will either keep their data centers here or lose their customers. It's the same thing that drives companies to go 'green'. Sometimes it's better to pay higher costs to keep the customer happy. Another example, how many people like dealing with off-shored customer support. Some companies have pulled their support staff back to the US because they were losing customers.
"Cloud" computing is just another way of saying client/server, except that "cloud" computing usually means that the Internet is involved somehow.
Cloud computing is much more than just client/server or throwing your servers on the internet. Cloud computing is about scaling the services to meet the demand of the clients. In client server (or even n-tier), you handled load by distributing clients across a pool of servers. You could use various means; certain clients to certain servers, DNS round robin, load balancers, etc. You needed enough server capacity to handle your peak load, and the rest of the time any extra capacity was idle. Cloud computing is much more like time sharing used on mainframes decades ago. You pay for the computing you need, and what you aren't using would be assigned to other cloud customers.
Cloud computing
That, and isn't it usually much more expensive to heat your house with electric than with gas? This might come to bite you in the ass later once you are finished with the remodeling and are living in the place?
As part of the remodel all the exterior walls have been insulated along with a vapor barrier, so the building envelope is pretty tight.
Where cost is concerned, in the past going electric over gas would have been expensive, but electric heating has gotten much more efficient. And gas prices have been rising a lot faster than electric. Although I attribute that more to the stability of coal prices rather than any benevolence of the power company. Ideally I would have preferred a ground source heat pump, but that wasn't an option. So instead I have electric heat mats incorporated in the floor (concrete slab) under the hardwood and tile, and some radiant heat panels on the walls to supplement.
If I can find an absorbent chiller small enough for residential use, I'd like to add a collector for heating, cooling, and hot water. Failing that, I'll replace my A/C unit with an air source heat pump just to make sure I have enough capacity for the extreme months. My mom's total electric bill for a year is under $1200 for a 1500 sq/ft house, and she uses an air source heat pump. And that's with 1950's insulation. I'll only have about 1000 sq/ft and my initial goal is $900/yr and then eventually under $600.
Power companies (generally) don't make a ton of profit, they're regulated to keep costs down.
This may be pedantic, but they are regulated to keep _prices_ down. As a monopoly, unregulated they could charge any price. Ideally regulation would be customer centric. But in reality, tariffs tend to be based on cost plus formulas. Which is what makes the lack of innovation by electric and telephone companies ludicrous. They were content to sit on their wasteful practices rather than innovate and become more efficient. The Telcos learned the hard way when cellular and cable companies joined the party. Alternative energy production could teach electricity providers some of the same lessons.
"Unless this law is changed, we plan not to renew our contracts with cities in this state. You will have to find a different electric company." What would prevent that from happening?
Infrastructure costs. It the county doubled your property taxes, would you walk away from your home? It's not likely to happen though, electric tariffs are set by a state's public utility commission and they generally rule in favor of the utilities. My electric company, for example, pushed through a rate increase during this recession (depression?). I've been following the rate increases on my utilities for about 10 years, and I'm only aware on one time when it was denied. Although the gas company overcharged for several years and eventually had to refund some of the money.
It's more than double dipping if they try to charge more, and too damned bad if their connection fee didn't cover future (I'm not using much of your power anymore).
If it's anything like my electric company, they get an ongoing fee as well in the form of a minimum usage charge. I have a house I'm remodeling and I never hit minimum usage on any utility. The electric company gets a minimum $16.50 a month. I forget how much that covers. Water and sewer EACH get $14.50 a month until I use more than 1000 gallons of water. And gas wanted $27!!! a month. I told them what they could do with their connection charge, and went all electric. Now if I could just get them to pull their leaky meter and cap the line. In my opinion, the only organizations more customer abusive than a utility company are government agencies.
There is no way, no how, you can simultaneously run hundreds of personnel at densities approaching one per square meter.
One per square meter? And I thought my cube was small.
Her agenda isn't going to stand up to the wind towers that just started operating 15 miles away that people can just go look at though.
Don't count on it. Never underestimate the persistence of a narrow minded person. And believe it or not, some people are willing to lie to advance their agenda. Like finding some specious way to link infrasound to autism and alzheimers.
We will reach the F-451 point when we will still have tons of books in small, dark book stores, and nobody will want to read them.
You mean like this?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,275840,00.html
The law gives a $0.50 tax credit for every gallon of diesel mix used but the credit should have been based on some fraction of the price of diesel. The paper makers scam only works because the price of diesel has fallen so much.
The price of diesel doesn't really matter. For example, suppose your manufacturing process produced a waste product of biodiesel (or in this case, the equivalent black liquor). The cost of the waste product doesn't matter, they are already reusing it and will continue to use all that is available, making essentially a 'free' component of the final cost. If you made B99 you would use 1 gallon of petro diesel for every 99 gallons of biodiesel. Gain from tax credit, $49.50. Cost of diesel now, $2. Cost of diesel last summer, $4.50. So the profit from taking the credit only changes from $47.50 to $45.00. Even at $25 a gallon it would still be cost effective, and this is assuming they had to mix at a minimally B99 level. Suppose they only used one gallon of diesel per 1000 gallons of final fuel mix.
The problem here is if it was intended to be a transportation tax credit encouraging a reduction of fossil fuel use, it should have been tied to both transportation usage AND a demonstrable decrease in actual fossil fuel used.
And yes, if the law making process wasn't retarded, or corrupted, this wouldn't have been an issue.
I thought they were inconsistent with their handling of technology. For instance, they have raptors they can land anywhere they choose (for instance, Galen being dropped on an island). So why do we see a column of people marching off in search of a new place to live? And they did keep at least one raptor, Adama carries off Rosalyn in it.
I would have believed the whole "let's give up the ships and live on this planet" story line if it was only Galactica, since it was essentially dead. Having recently re-read Robinson Crusoe, I have to think they would have stripped whatever they felt they could have used, given the opportunity. You see Baltar and Caprica talking about farming, and realize that you have seen no farming implements. Helo and Athena are discussing who will teach Hera to hunt, and you've seen no weapons of any kind for hunting. The only reason I can see for sending the ships into the sun and abandoning all technology would be to hide from the cylons, and that wasn't the case. Individuals might choose to do it, but not a whole society.
Like some others here, I wasn't unhappy seeing Rosalyn die. I was tired of the drama associated with her character. Kind of like I became sick of Starbuck after the season of her and Lee.
Any MP3 player and a small FM transmitter with a stereo headphone jack can play your MP3 player over the air into your car's radio.
Several people have mentioned using FM transmitters, and there is a big problem with that when you are traveling. As you change regions quite often you have to change your FM transmitters channel because a frequency that it available in Tulsa might be in use in Denver.
I used one for a while when I had XM and used it on several road trips. If you go that route, make sure it can be configured for many different frequencies and put them in the presets on your stereo. I also had a couple occasions when none of the frequencies my XM transmitter worked on were available.
And for the reasons I no longer use XM; they raised the price after 6 months, their play lists aren't any deeper than broadcast stations, they have the same endless DJ chatter, they have commercials too, but it's for their own shows and channels, and despite all the channels available most people will only find 2 or 3 that suit their tastes. Oh, there is never any local information (traffic, weather, events, etc)
I had an APC brand UPS go down sometime around midnight. It's most likely a coincidence becuase without power failures UPS's get bored and find creative ways to shut down while everything on mains stays up :(
I have an APC UPS on my Tivo, cable box, Link Theatre, and WII that started shutting off after I added the WII. I thought I'd overloaded it with the WII, so I moved everything except the Tivo and WII. When That didn't solve the problem, I bought a new, identical APC UPS. Sure enough, within a couple weeks I'd come home and find it powered off. Then one day I was home and my cat jumped onto my entertainment center. A few seconds later, off went the UPS. It seems that when my big 33" CRT TV died and I just dropped in a little 20" replacement, the entertainment center became a good playground. My cat was actually stepping on the power button while running around behind the TV.
I'm convinced the whole zune thing is a feline conspiracy.