Many years ago (back when all processing was done on big boxes) that model was used. As I recall accounting of CPU time used was done by separate CPU time accountng software rather than the app itself. The model, however, was largely abandoned as it was found that the administration of it was prohibitively expensive.
Yup! I was at a technology day from UK Oracle User group last week where there was a presentation from Oracle on licensing. They basically said the above. The thinking seemed to be that HyperThreading isn't truly multicore processing (I don't know enough about the technology to comment on the accuracy of that assertion). Where they will charge more is for true Multicore chips where you essentially have two processors that just happen to both be etched on the same piece of silicon. Quite logical really, they're licensing by number of processing cores not by the number of slices of silicon.
Where I work we're adopting OSS in a number of areas. Where we make changes to the code (e.g. porting to a new platform, RDBMS &c) we contribute that back to the project. In terms of funding I'm not aware of any direct donations but we do by support from organisations who are involved in the development where possible so we do indirectly contribute that way.
Gmail's 1 GB mailbox without the option to
1. forward the messages
So what does the 'Forward' link at the bottom of all my mails in my GMail account do when I click it then? I had been naively assuming that clicking it, entering an email address, clicking send and then having the mail arrive in the mail box of the address I entered constituted forwarding.
A swede is a vegetable. A Swede is a Swedish person. It's all in the context and capitalisation. Unfortunately these sorts of things tend to only make it into the paper edition (they're just filler) so there's no link. If you try Googl;ing on "amusingly shaped vegetable" then you may get lucky.
What about car GPS systems? Are they banned from bases?
I don't know what sort of bases you've been on so you're experience might be different to mine. Those that I've been on, if you're in a civillian or otherwise untrusted vehicle, usually you park up in the outer car park, walk to the inner gate and are picked up by a vehicle that has come from within the base to be taken to your destingation. These are also the sort of places where any deliveries are unloaded on a dock well a way from any sensitive locations, unpacked, examined in detail (by hand & eye, X-ray, sniffer &c) and then repacked before being allowed onto the base. Paranoid maybe but, to quote a well known book title, "Only the paranoid survive!" It's often better too be a bit too cautious than not quite cautious enough.
The problem with books is that if you're dealing with a field that is rapidly changing very often they are months or years behind the times. Magazines are usually only a month or two behind. Books are great for indepth analysis and historical information but magazines are better for up to date information and zeitgeist. The web tends to be even better for up to the minute information but there can be problems with signal to noise ratio due to the vast number of personal sites and issues around Googlebombing.
I've seen that quote (or something functionally equivalent) in books by Faith Popcorn, Tony Robbins and Tom Peters. I believe all three have claimed to be the original authors. It's actually very good advice. I usually try to get at least one magazine a month on a subject I'm unfamiliar with. The biggest advantage I've found is that it means I'm much less often caught out in a group with nothing to say. No matter where the conversation turns I've usually read something fairly recently that's relevant so I can participate.
Most of the magazines I read relate to photography rather than IT, I get most of my IT information from the web.
Personally there's only two reasons I ever run IE. The first is that there are a few sites that I have to use that will only work with IE. I've been trying to pressure the owners to get rid of the IE only functions but thus far no luck. The second is that the authentication for the web proxy at work (Novell Border Manager) will only let you authenticate using IE (it uses client side VB script for something, I'm not sure what). I've complained and hopefully we'll be getting a different proxy soon (it's also very flaky and keeps falling over). The work around I've got set up for it is on my own web site theres a page that refreshes it self ever 4 minutes 49 seconds. I point IE at that and authenticate then fire up Mozilla for my web browsing. IE just sits in the background keeping the authenticated link alive.
The sad fact, according to the stats a page on my site, is that something like 80-90% of hits are from IE. Obviously that's going to vary from site to site (I noticed that the stats for another page show IE at only about 65%) but until other browsers start to take a serious bite out of that margin site owners aren't goign to bother to change.
Something I'd add is that if you must have open plan (or are stuck with dividing up an open plan office) then partitions between workers must be at least tall enough that a person of average height (say 5'10") cannot see over them when they stand and should of the type that adsorbs sound to minimise noise leakage.
Addtionally:
All PCs have wireless headphones.
No shared phone lines, everyone has their own line.
All phones have voice mail with a 'Do Not Disturb' button and all staff are trained in how to use it with instructions available on the intranet to be used as an aide memoir. Ideally a system such as Oracle collaboration suite that captures the voice mail to a sound file and emails it to the user. Also out going message should be individual and recorded by a member of staff (or, preferably, a hired actor/actress) -- using clear, unaccented, diction -- giving the number, name and email address of the person who's line it is along with clear instructions on how to leave a message. Phones should not give any audible indication that there are messages waiting.
All phone lines and phones support call waiting, call forward, call on hold and conferencing (many places I've worked/visited don't even have the basic faccility of putting a call on hold whilst you deal with another call).
Internal phone book quickly and easily accessible to all employees that is updated promptly whenever anything changes. Ideally thus should also include building management, local services and any other external numbers that may be needed by workers.
Procedure that admin/reception staff have read access to all people's email. When people are on leave admin/reception are tasked with checking their mail once a day for urgent messages. All staff are aware of this and admin/reception staff are bound by suitable privacy agreements.
All staff have remote access to their email.
The rationale here is that ringing phones are annoying. Even if you're ignoring your phone waiting for it to go to voice mail you are still distracted. You need to be able to just hit a button and know that all calls will go to voice mail.
One company I worked for, the phones would ring out every 10 minutes with an especially shrill ring if there was a voice mail waiting. This got very annoying if the person who's phone it was happened to be out of the office for a week and no-one had the authority to pick up their email (voice mail was passcode protected). Hence the no audible indicator of voice mail.
If your voice mail is sent to your email as an audio file then you can pick it up anywhere you can pickup email (assuming the device you use has the ability to play audio files).
One line each means that when I put my line on voice mail (or forward to my mobile) I don't have to worry that I'm going to get calls intended for a collegue who shares the line. It also means that if I move within the company I can take my number with me (less updating of the company phone directory and cuts down on having to notify people of new/changed numbers).
Individual out going messages mean that you don't find people leaving messages for the wrong person. If the out going message says that this is Stephen Booth's line then only an idiot would leave a message for Fred Bloggs (and, yes, I know there are plenty of idiots about who would still leave the message). Putting the email address in the out going message means that the person calling can choose to hang up the phone and send an email (which, based on the calls I get, is what they probably should have done anyway). Using an actor/actress (i.e. someone who is trained to speak clearly) for all voice mail out going messages means that you'll have a consistent out going message (useful for corporate image) and it will actually be understandable by the people at the other end. I'm sure we've all been in the position of calling someone and being faced with a garbled, pointless and rambling message (or a garb
In the public sector often the press do, so long as you have a free press. Bearing in mind that a juicy fraud in city hall is usually good for a screaming banner headline and increased sales they're often quite good at it and keen to give it a try. In most 'developed' nations (US certainly and increasingly in European nations) you have a legally protected right to look at a lot of the information produced and used by public sector organisations and government, usually comes under the heading of 'Freedom Of Information'. If you can be bothered to that is. If you find out that you don't like what the incumbants are doing then vote for someone else. If you think they're all a bunch of crooks then either run against them yourself or convince someone you trust to run against them and help out on the campaign. If you don't trust anyone then buy an island and secede.
Ont he subject of freedom of information, here in the UK the Freedom of Information Act is coming into force soon. A lot of people in public sector bodies are starting to get very worried. It's coming to light exactly what sorts of information they're going to have to make public, their excuses are evaporating like a snowball before a flamethrower. If anyone in the UK is reading this then I strongly recommend that you contact your local council data protection teram and do a subject access request for all information they have on you. You'll probably be very suprised at some of the things they have about you that you didn't realize they did, and how much of it is incorrect, out of date or just plain wrong.
Even if the money is creditors money at a given time, most companies (those that want to stay in business) make a point of repaying their creditors before buying iPODs. I realize that your goals/ethics may be different. Whilst companies such as Enron make the news they are, fortunately, a small minority.
Maybe it's something to do with us doing searches on different subject areas but, I often find that when blog entries show up in my search results they either have the information I need or have links to sites that have the information.
I blog, over on Livejournal, and I freely admit that most of my entries are probably only of interest to myself and my friends. That's part of the reason most of my entries are on 'Friends Only' security setting, therefore they won't show up in search engine results. I know from the comments and the mails I recieve that some entries are ones that people find useful and interesting, those ones have 'Public' security setting so do show up in search engine results.
I think the point was that common courtesy exists and it's usually a good idea to follow it. Prockcore didn't say that it was they who were behind the polite and courteous behavior, rather that it was the company who, presumably, were the ones paying.
There's also the fact that, due to it's current dominance, if I buy a book about DNS it probably assumes BIND. Therefore in a lot of people's heads BIND = DNS. Heck, for that very reason if I had to set up a DNS server (I'm not a networking expert) I'd select BIND as then I know that there's going to be examples in a book I can adapt to suit what I want to do. If it's not my core area then I don't want to have to spend hours learning how to configure a system, I just want to copy something out of a book and for it to work. Looking at the MyDNS site that has a second strike against it, it requires MySQL. Not only do I have to learn to setup and configure the product I actually want but I also have to learn another unrelated product! At least BIND uses text files, I know how to edit those.
I just checked on UpMyStreet. At the moment There's 8 MEPs: 4 Tory, 3 Labour, 1 Lib Dem. I've never seen or even heard of any of them (unless Michael Cashman is the same one as was in EastEnders years ago, in which case I've heard of him but only as an actor; not that I've watched Eastenders in the last 15 years).
I did some checking (OK, called the local council's elections office). It seems that the MEP election is PR. Guess that means they'll be even less acountable than usual. Strange. I watch the news at least twice a day, read at least one newspaper a day (Metro, Guardian or Independant) and read my poll card when it came through yet this is the first I've heard about it being PR. How did i miss that? You'd think with that big a diverence from the status quo they would have made a bigger thing out of it.
Mind you for most people these days voting is something you do on "Big Brother" or "Pop Idol", not for something trivial like who runs the country. Maybe that would be a way to get more people involved. Put all the MEPs, MP and couincillors in a series of buildings 24x7 and each week have one voted out and interviewed by Davina?
Election literature and that it's closely in line with their core ideals (concentration of wealth in the hands of the upper echelons, IP=wealth these days).
I'd vote Lib Dem but they've got no hope in my area. As I indicated before, I'm not so much voting for one party as against others. The area I'm in is a firm JFK stronghold, Labour are the only party that have a chance of winning against them. There used to be a divide on racial lines with a strong white Labour support and a stronger Pakistani/Bangeldeshi JFK support. In recent years younger Pakistani/Bangledeshi voters have become disillousioned with JFK and have swung to Labour or Lib Dem.
Last week on BBC Breakfast News they had an interview with one guy (a 'Pakistani Community Leader') in Small Heath who said that the reason JFK were so strong in the area was a protest against the war in Iraq. This totally ignored the fact that in the one election since the war began the JFK candidate had lost his seat!
So far as I know it's still along constituency lines, I hadn't heard anything about a PR vote. A lot of constiuency boundaries were redrawn this year (especially at the local government level) but so far as I am aware they're still being used. There are a number of constituencies that are postal vote only. Perhaps it's a mix of PR and constituency based?
You mean you'll be voting for the party that is pushing most strongly for software patents.
That would be the Tories.
I gave my reasoning for voting labour, which you conveniently cut out. Of the parties standing in my local area Labour are the least bad as far as I can tell. Most of the major parties support software patents, those that don't seem to all either have policies that are even more abhorrant or to not be putting forward candidates in my area.
You're an asshole.
Somehow that doesn't make your argument any more convincing.
Slashdot Mirror
Many years ago (back when all processing was done on big boxes) that model was used. As I recall accounting of CPU time used was done by separate CPU time accountng software rather than the app itself. The model, however, was largely abandoned as it was found that the administration of it was prohibitively expensive.
Stephen
Yup! I was at a technology day from UK Oracle User group last week where there was a presentation from Oracle on licensing. They basically said the above. The thinking seemed to be that HyperThreading isn't truly multicore processing (I don't know enough about the technology to comment on the accuracy of that assertion). Where they will charge more is for true Multicore chips where you essentially have two processors that just happen to both be etched on the same piece of silicon. Quite logical really, they're licensing by number of processing cores not by the number of slices of silicon.
Stephen
A lot of people turn on the the pop-up blocker.
My local council has recently converted their public facing library systems over to Mozilla running on Sun Solaris.
Stephen
Where I work we're adopting OSS in a number of areas. Where we make changes to the code (e.g. porting to a new platform, RDBMS &c) we contribute that back to the project. In terms of funding I'm not aware of any direct donations but we do by support from organisations who are involved in the development where possible so we do indirectly contribute that way.
Stephen
So what does the 'Forward' link at the bottom of all my mails in my GMail account do when I click it then? I had been naively assuming that clicking it, entering an email address, clicking send and then having the mail arrive in the mail box of the address I entered constituted forwarding.
Stephen
A swede is a vegetable. A Swede is a Swedish person. It's all in the context and capitalisation. Unfortunately these sorts of things tend to only make it into the paper edition (they're just filler) so there's no link. If you try Googl;ing on "amusingly shaped vegetable" then you may get lucky.
Stephen
I don't know what sort of bases you've been on so you're experience might be different to mine. Those that I've been on, if you're in a civillian or otherwise untrusted vehicle, usually you park up in the outer car park, walk to the inner gate and are picked up by a vehicle that has come from within the base to be taken to your destingation. These are also the sort of places where any deliveries are unloaded on a dock well a way from any sensitive locations, unpacked, examined in detail (by hand & eye, X-ray, sniffer &c) and then repacked before being allowed onto the base. Paranoid maybe but, to quote a well known book title, "Only the paranoid survive!" It's often better too be a bit too cautious than not quite cautious enough.
Stephen
Magazines/Periodicals I bought today:
Stephen
The problem with books is that if you're dealing with a field that is rapidly changing very often they are months or years behind the times. Magazines are usually only a month or two behind. Books are great for indepth analysis and historical information but magazines are better for up to date information and zeitgeist. The web tends to be even better for up to the minute information but there can be problems with signal to noise ratio due to the vast number of personal sites and issues around Googlebombing.
Stephen
I've seen that quote (or something functionally equivalent) in books by Faith Popcorn, Tony Robbins and Tom Peters. I believe all three have claimed to be the original authors. It's actually very good advice. I usually try to get at least one magazine a month on a subject I'm unfamiliar with. The biggest advantage I've found is that it means I'm much less often caught out in a group with nothing to say. No matter where the conversation turns I've usually read something fairly recently that's relevant so I can participate.
Most of the magazines I read relate to photography rather than IT, I get most of my IT information from the web.
Stephen
Personally there's only two reasons I ever run IE. The first is that there are a few sites that I have to use that will only work with IE. I've been trying to pressure the owners to get rid of the IE only functions but thus far no luck. The second is that the authentication for the web proxy at work (Novell Border Manager) will only let you authenticate using IE (it uses client side VB script for something, I'm not sure what). I've complained and hopefully we'll be getting a different proxy soon (it's also very flaky and keeps falling over). The work around I've got set up for it is on my own web site theres a page that refreshes it self ever 4 minutes 49 seconds. I point IE at that and authenticate then fire up Mozilla for my web browsing. IE just sits in the background keeping the authenticated link alive.
The sad fact, according to the stats a page on my site, is that something like 80-90% of hits are from IE. Obviously that's going to vary from site to site (I noticed that the stats for another page show IE at only about 65%) but until other browsers start to take a serious bite out of that margin site owners aren't goign to bother to change.
Stephen
Something I'd add is that if you must have open plan (or are stuck with dividing up an open plan office) then partitions between workers must be at least tall enough that a person of average height (say 5'10") cannot see over them when they stand and should of the type that adsorbs sound to minimise noise leakage.
Addtionally:
The rationale here is that ringing phones are annoying. Even if you're ignoring your phone waiting for it to go to voice mail you are still distracted. You need to be able to just hit a button and know that all calls will go to voice mail.
One company I worked for, the phones would ring out every 10 minutes with an especially shrill ring if there was a voice mail waiting. This got very annoying if the person who's phone it was happened to be out of the office for a week and no-one had the authority to pick up their email (voice mail was passcode protected). Hence the no audible indicator of voice mail.
If your voice mail is sent to your email as an audio file then you can pick it up anywhere you can pickup email (assuming the device you use has the ability to play audio files).
One line each means that when I put my line on voice mail (or forward to my mobile) I don't have to worry that I'm going to get calls intended for a collegue who shares the line. It also means that if I move within the company I can take my number with me (less updating of the company phone directory and cuts down on having to notify people of new/changed numbers).
Individual out going messages mean that you don't find people leaving messages for the wrong person. If the out going message says that this is Stephen Booth's line then only an idiot would leave a message for Fred Bloggs (and, yes, I know there are plenty of idiots about who would still leave the message). Putting the email address in the out going message means that the person calling can choose to hang up the phone and send an email (which, based on the calls I get, is what they probably should have done anyway). Using an actor/actress (i.e. someone who is trained to speak clearly) for all voice mail out going messages means that you'll have a consistent out going message (useful for corporate image) and it will actually be understandable by the people at the other end. I'm sure we've all been in the position of calling someone and being faced with a garbled, pointless and rambling message (or a garb
In the public sector often the press do, so long as you have a free press. Bearing in mind that a juicy fraud in city hall is usually good for a screaming banner headline and increased sales they're often quite good at it and keen to give it a try. In most 'developed' nations (US certainly and increasingly in European nations) you have a legally protected right to look at a lot of the information produced and used by public sector organisations and government, usually comes under the heading of 'Freedom Of Information'. If you can be bothered to that is. If you find out that you don't like what the incumbants are doing then vote for someone else. If you think they're all a bunch of crooks then either run against them yourself or convince someone you trust to run against them and help out on the campaign. If you don't trust anyone then buy an island and secede.
Ont he subject of freedom of information, here in the UK the Freedom of Information Act is coming into force soon. A lot of people in public sector bodies are starting to get very worried. It's coming to light exactly what sorts of information they're going to have to make public, their excuses are evaporating like a snowball before a flamethrower. If anyone in the UK is reading this then I strongly recommend that you contact your local council data protection teram and do a subject access request for all information they have on you. You'll probably be very suprised at some of the things they have about you that you didn't realize they did, and how much of it is incorrect, out of date or just plain wrong.
Stephen
Even if the money is creditors money at a given time, most companies (those that want to stay in business) make a point of repaying their creditors before buying iPODs. I realize that your goals/ethics may be different. Whilst companies such as Enron make the news they are, fortunately, a small minority.
Stephen
Which brings us back to the point that in that case the people throwing the money around were, presumably, those people who's money it was.
Stephen
Maybe it's something to do with us doing searches on different subject areas but, I often find that when blog entries show up in my search results they either have the information I need or have links to sites that have the information.
I blog, over on Livejournal, and I freely admit that most of my entries are probably only of interest to myself and my friends. That's part of the reason most of my entries are on 'Friends Only' security setting, therefore they won't show up in search engine results. I know from the comments and the mails I recieve that some entries are ones that people find useful and interesting, those ones have 'Public' security setting so do show up in search engine results.
Stephen
I think the point was that common courtesy exists and it's usually a good idea to follow it. Prockcore didn't say that it was they who were behind the polite and courteous behavior, rather that it was the company who, presumably, were the ones paying.
Stephen
There's also the fact that, due to it's current dominance, if I buy a book about DNS it probably assumes BIND. Therefore in a lot of people's heads BIND = DNS. Heck, for that very reason if I had to set up a DNS server (I'm not a networking expert) I'd select BIND as then I know that there's going to be examples in a book I can adapt to suit what I want to do. If it's not my core area then I don't want to have to spend hours learning how to configure a system, I just want to copy something out of a book and for it to work. Looking at the MyDNS site that has a second strike against it, it requires MySQL. Not only do I have to learn to setup and configure the product I actually want but I also have to learn another unrelated product! At least BIND uses text files, I know how to edit those.
Stephen
Really? Cos I'm sure I remember voting in European Elections for named individuals.
Stephen
I do know that Eric Raymond went to speak to Sun UK a couple of months ago and it was strongly rumoured that it was about open sourcing Java.
Stephen
I just checked on UpMyStreet. At the moment There's 8 MEPs: 4 Tory, 3 Labour, 1 Lib Dem. I've never seen or even heard of any of them (unless Michael Cashman is the same one as was in EastEnders years ago, in which case I've heard of him but only as an actor; not that I've watched Eastenders in the last 15 years).
Stephen
I did some checking (OK, called the local council's elections office). It seems that the MEP election is PR. Guess that means they'll be even less acountable than usual. Strange. I watch the news at least twice a day, read at least one newspaper a day (Metro, Guardian or Independant) and read my poll card when it came through yet this is the first I've heard about it being PR. How did i miss that? You'd think with that big a diverence from the status quo they would have made a bigger thing out of it.
Mind you for most people these days voting is something you do on "Big Brother" or "Pop Idol", not for something trivial like who runs the country. Maybe that would be a way to get more people involved. Put all the MEPs, MP and couincillors in a series of buildings 24x7 and each week have one voted out and interviewed by Davina?
Stephen
Election literature and that it's closely in line with their core ideals (concentration of wealth in the hands of the upper echelons, IP=wealth these days).
I'd vote Lib Dem but they've got no hope in my area. As I indicated before, I'm not so much voting for one party as against others. The area I'm in is a firm JFK stronghold, Labour are the only party that have a chance of winning against them. There used to be a divide on racial lines with a strong white Labour support and a stronger Pakistani/Bangeldeshi JFK support. In recent years younger Pakistani/Bangledeshi voters have become disillousioned with JFK and have swung to Labour or Lib Dem.
Last week on BBC Breakfast News they had an interview with one guy (a 'Pakistani Community Leader') in Small Heath who said that the reason JFK were so strong in the area was a protest against the war in Iraq. This totally ignored the fact that in the one election since the war began the JFK candidate had lost his seat!
Stephen
So far as I know it's still along constituency lines, I hadn't heard anything about a PR vote. A lot of constiuency boundaries were redrawn this year (especially at the local government level) but so far as I am aware they're still being used. There are a number of constituencies that are postal vote only. Perhaps it's a mix of PR and constituency based?
Stephen
That would be the Tories.
I gave my reasoning for voting labour, which you conveniently cut out. Of the parties standing in my local area Labour are the least bad as far as I can tell. Most of the major parties support software patents, those that don't seem to all either have policies that are even more abhorrant or to not be putting forward candidates in my area.
Somehow that doesn't make your argument any more convincing.
Stephen