What do you think manufacturers do? Maxtor had a "burn in test" which I presume consisted of having the controller scan though each physical sector on the disk and map out the bad ones. They had racks that would power up a hundred or so drives at a time, just to allow this to happen. The "self test" program wrote its results to private areas of the drive so they could always look at them, with the right software.
And the fact that you are happy with a 2007 dell means you really dont use your computer. Which is fine. facebook doesnt need much power.
I wear the letters off of a keyboard in 12 months. and the Quad core 3.0ghz i7 in my current laptop is a bit slow for what I am doing. But it's a laptop, and for field use, I can suffer until I return to my 12 core desktop.
Some of us actually use their computers as tools to make money, others look at them as toys for fun. It's like the guy that has a big cabinet of Snapon tools at home that are all clean and new looking. He doesnt actually use them.
Oh please! I have a laptop that is over 7 years old that I *use* on a regular basis too. True, I don't have (or need) multiple cores to keep my gaming frame rates up but I have gone as far as swapping the motherboard, upgrading the processor and maxing out the memory to keep my working laptop a usable tool. It is getting noticeably slow as software gets more power hungry, but I still have $500 twice over in my wallet that you would not have. I think many folks get caught up in the "Mine is better than yours" mind set and end up spending though the nose to get the latest, fastest etc, when they really *DON'T* need to have the fastest frame rate in Minecraft (or some such nonsense).
Just because you choose to spend your money on the latest and greatest hardware doesn't mean the guy next to you with the 7 year old laptop is someone to be looked down on. I routinely drive my cars well beyond them being paid off (last one was 17 years old when I finally replaced it) and typically use my computing equipment 10 years or longer. Mainly because I prefer to use my money for more important things (to me). If having the fastest laptop on the plane is more important to you, fine with me, but I think many who are driven to have the latest are really wasting their money on stuff they could do just fine without.
Which is why most SSD drives implement some kind of wear leveling. They will move the often written sectors around the physical storage space in an effort to keep the wear even.
Rotating media drives do similar things and can physically move "bad" sectors too, but this usually means you loose data. Many drives actually come from the factory with remapped sectors. You don't notice it because these sectors are already remapped on the drive onto the extra space the manufacturers build into the drive, but don't let you see.
Reminds me of when I interviewed with Maxtor, years ago. They where telling me that the only difference between their current top of the line storage (which was like 250G at the time) and their 40 Gig OEM drive was the controller firmware configuration and the stickers. Both drives came off the same assembly line and only the final drive power up configuration and test step was different, and then only in the values configured in the controller and what stickers got put on the drive. If you had the correct software, you could easily convert the OEM drive to the bigger capacity, by writing the correct contents to the right physical location on the drive. The reason they did this was it was cheaper than having to stop and retool the production line every time an OEM wanted 10,000 cheap drives.
I'm sure drive builders still do that sort of thing today. Set up a 3Tb drive line, then just down size the drives which are to be sold as 1Tb drives.
Shielding is pretty much all about mass. You need boat loads of mass to make an effective enough shield to survive in space for very long. You can use water, but you need to get it into space (or find it someplace already in space), then climb inside and get all this mass heading in the correct direction (burning fuel or something) fast enough you don't die before you get there, then slow down all this mass so you can stop someplace (more fuel). All this amounts to HUGE amounts of mass..
I really don't think that we are going to figure this problem out any time before the sun burns us to cinders in a billion years.
I'm just wondering why you think Red Hat wants to kill open source? I don't think they are trying to kill the goose that is laying their golden eggs. In fact, I'm pretty sure they contribute a lot of development effort to many of the open source projects they use/abuse.
They do charge for what's generally available for free in some folks view, but they are a model for how you can make money from Open Source (at least one way. And a quick search on Google would surely lead anybody who didn't already know to CentOS which distributes a Red Hat free distribution that matches Red Hat's distribution down to the jot and tittle (sans the Red Hat Trade mark and Copyrighted art work).
The problem with colonizing is basically the radiation in space pretty much kills everything given the time frames involved at sub-light speeds. We might work out some way to get to Mars and back with some kind of shielding, but we are talking about round trips that take under a year and the radiation doses will be pretty bad for those of reproductive age or younger. I hate to think of what would happen at 20 years round trip, assuming you could get to half the speed of light....
I think the best we can hope for is limited local (no further than Mars) travel.
Let me guess, the Cisco Switches are the Small Business Series, right?
Hey, the Cisco Small Business stuff isn't all that bad... At least the older stuff from a few years ago is OK. Where I admit the Cisco/Netgear hardware suffers from a higher failure rate, you can easily buy two of them for every main line Cisco switch and have some change left over. Now I'm not saying they are *easier* to configure, but most of us don't make a habit of changing switch configurations all the time.
You have a good point, but in this case, the DNA evidence was the last bit of evidence that folks have been waiting for. Where the DNA evidence is not proof alone, it is the last piece of the proof. Often we say "Well that proves it!" about a single fact when really there is a whole series of facts which must be true before the final fact removes doubt. So I don't see the statement that the DNA test proves it is Richard III to be false or worthy of critique.
Now if you wish to take on the DNA proves *everything* mystique, then you need to really dig further into the methods and facts about how DNA (in its various forms) are inherited and why various forms of genetic testing might or might not be usable in situations like this. I'm afraid you are taking on a huge task in this CSI one hour (less commercials) to solve a crime world of scientific knowledge and Hollywood misinformation for dramatic license. I wish you luck, because I'm pretty tired of that kind of thing myself.
It doesn't, it just says that the corpse was closely related to someone who is known to be a descendant of Richard III.
It's all the other evidence that starts cutting down the odds that it might be somebody else... Obvious injury consistent with accepted cause of death. Evidence that indicates medical conditions consistent with known medical conditions of Richard III. Location consistent with the accepted possible burial locations. And most of all, no other known possible bodies that match DNA and what we know about this guy from history.
Of course, one can always argue the possibility that this is not Richard III, just like they argue other silly stuff...
Seems likely that you could be on the right track. I wonder if this has less to do with in flight conditions and more to do with APU and Ground power transitions because all the noted events took place close to either takeoff or landing and not in the middle of a long flight. I wonder about ambient temperature changes might be a factor too.
I can see where the transition to/from in flight and ground operations could be a lot more problematic for batteries and charging circuits due to momentary interruptions and voltage sags during a time of large temperature swings. Such transient events can be extremely difficult to design for and even more difficult to effectively test in a complex system like an airplane. Issues like this can be difficult to debug because the problems can easily be highly dependent on factors that are not readily obvious.
Boeing will eventually get this worked out. The only question is how long will it take them to fix the issue and how much will it cost in the process
Personally, I'm pulling just plain old cat 5 because I'm cheap. But as I said, "if cost is no object" and the goal is to not have technology over run your cabling, pull fiber. In your case, if there is no power outlet close enough to your POE powered device, you might want to pull some twisted pair copper too, but expect the twisted pair to be outdated long before the fiber.
There are reasons to run fiber... As a ham radio operator, I like not having long runs of copper wires carrying noisy digital signals or suffering from RFI dropouts in my network when I transmit. Your milage may vary.
Scratch that.. If you are going to wire, put in 3/4" conduit to boxes next to every receptacle that dump into some accessible void like an attic, basement or central closet. Make sure you can easily get from any box to any other. That way you can pull whatever wire or cable they come up with when ever you like at minimum of cost.
I knew a guy who built his house with a double gang box every 8' connected by 3/4" conduit into the attic or basement with a number of 2" runs from the attic to his basement back in the 10Base-2 day. He can easily replace any low voltage signal cables he wants without having to tear up his house with nothing more than a fish tape and screw driver. Now, when they come out with Cat-5000 in 100 years, his kids can put it in..
I'm not sure I'm ready to claim that Cat-5e or Cat-6 cabling is going to be staying forever. There are limits to the speed of each of these cable types and I think that we will continue to see a need for increased bandwidths as time progresses. Eventually, the necessary speeds will exceed the available bandwidth on the cable and you will end up replacing it.
The real issue is how long will it take? I remember back when commercial grade networks ran on Coax and you got 1 Megbit/second or less. This was only 20 years ago and nobody is installing this kind of network equipment and wiring anymore, at least in the industrialized world. Only recently did the required bandwidth for most applications exceed the capacity on this equipment so you would not have been forced to upgrade for nearly 15 years.
I suspect that you are likely going to be very safe with Cat-6 for a few decades, but I suspect that the state of the art will push us beyond 4 twisted pair on copper within a few short years. To continue the bandwidth increase, Physics demands that we add pairs or make some structural changes to Cat-6 at some point. This means that eventually, even Cat-6 will be obsolete.
One could argue that it won't happen in your lifetime, so why worry? But I'll be willing to wager Cat-5e won't outlive me.
yea, Cause you can get easily grab a fiber xbox adapter. Not.
Actually you can easily get media converters for about $100 US each and use a short patch cable to wire it directly to your XBox 360 network port...
If I was you, I'd be more concerned about getting the fiber pulled and terminated. Putting on fiber connections is something that takes a bit of equipment and a bit of skill that can be somewhat costly to obtain. But, remember, I said if cost was no object...
Personally, I'm pulling Cat5e in my house, but that's mainly because it is easy to access the walls from the attic of my single story home and cost *IS* an object of concern for me...
Cat5 (or Cat6e if you want futureproofing) is just better for any device that doesn't move.
If cost is no object, I'd use fiber myself. It is unlikely you will *ever* out grow the wiring if you pull fiber... Eventually, even Cat6e is going to be obsolete, but fiber will never really go away.
Unlikely this will have better range than 2.4Ghz. 5Ghz is attenuated a lot more than 2.4Ghz by walls, plants and such.
The good news though will be that with an expanded available spectrum, speeds will go up. Higher attenuation and lower usable distances will help with crowded environments. But I don't think the available range will be greater than 2.4Ghz equipment.
This is an interesting story considering that in Cali, employee non-compete contracts are not enforceable.
In effect, the result of such "no poaching" agreements was to have the same affect as the non-compete contract with the employee. Employees would be restrained from changing jobs and going to a competitor. Give them class status. This seems like a problem for the Cali courts to figure out.
You have lots of choice, I change them at every job I have ever taken.
You do realize that in making a "special" contract that applies only to you it becomes all that more enforceable right? One of the things that can be used to argue the non-compete doesn't apply is if they simply have a default contract that everybody from the admins to the CEO all sign. One can argue that your job function is so much different from the CEO that there is no way the same non-compete contract can apply. It was just a formality that everybody signed the same paperwork, nothing more.
This is not to say it is not a good idea to make the contract more specific. By all means, hire a lawyer and have him rewrite the contract in your favor and get them to sign it if you can..
Non-compete contracts are unenforceable in Cali I believe. I had an lawyer suggest that I could move to the state in order to nullify a non-compete contract I was under.
In your situation, I believe that there where a number of defenses to breaking the contract available. However, I would not suggest anybody use any of them thinking you won't have an issue. Companies can, and sometimes do sue in such situations. Remember, even if it is unlikely the company will prevail in court, it doesn't stop them from dragging you though legal fees and lost work attempting to defend yourself.
We don't disagree here. As Microsoft increases its price, Open Source becomes more and more easily justified. I figure that Microsoft is full of bright intelligent folks who look on the "free" competition and adjust prices accordingly, but I'm not saying they don't overcharge their customers.
These bright folks know that the last thing they need is for Open Source to become an accepted alternative. The day that happens it will be game over. I would expect them to do anything and everything they can to avoid that day. That's why we see the FUD campaign, why they keep altering the file formats for Office products, why they covertly supported SCO's lawsuit and why I believe they must consider Open Source's Total Costs in their pricing structures. They may overcharge for their products, but that they have to be mindful of what will happen to them if the floodgates of Open Source get opened and their revenue stream gets flushed overnight.
We all know that every time a nation or large company threatens to go open source, Microsoft sends its army of sales people with large expense budgets to offer 'better deals' to persuade them against moving away. These types of deals, of course mean better pricing and/or other terms along with lots of wining, dining, bonuses, gifts and kickbacks. It is quite likely their study includes these deep discounts which everyone would demand if this type of information was made available.
I know that in general, costs are available through open government legislation, but do we usually get to see the terms and numbers and types of licenses or how much is given for 'free'?
So, in effect, Open Source has saved even Microsoft customers a lot of money by providing a downward force on the price Microsoft can charge.
I strongly suspect that Microsoft has fairly closely calculated the actual TCO of their products and has pricing policies in place to keep themselves competitive with Open Source competitors, at least in the short term calculations. As with any TCO calculation, much of the result depends on the time frame involved. Paying Microsoft yearly volume license fees makes short term sense, but long term becomes pretty expensive. Switching to Linux/OpenOffice is an expensive short term expense with a long term ROI.
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What do you think manufacturers do? Maxtor had a "burn in test" which I presume consisted of having the controller scan though each physical sector on the disk and map out the bad ones. They had racks that would power up a hundred or so drives at a time, just to allow this to happen. The "self test" program wrote its results to private areas of the drive so they could always look at them, with the right software.
When you dont use a computer. That happens.
And the fact that you are happy with a 2007 dell means you really dont use your computer. Which is fine. facebook doesnt need much power.
I wear the letters off of a keyboard in 12 months. and the Quad core 3.0ghz i7 in my current laptop is a bit slow for what I am doing. But it's a laptop, and for field use, I can suffer until I return to my 12 core desktop.
Some of us actually use their computers as tools to make money, others look at them as toys for fun. It's like the guy that has a big cabinet of Snapon tools at home that are all clean and new looking. He doesnt actually use them.
Oh please! I have a laptop that is over 7 years old that I *use* on a regular basis too. True, I don't have (or need) multiple cores to keep my gaming frame rates up but I have gone as far as swapping the motherboard, upgrading the processor and maxing out the memory to keep my working laptop a usable tool. It is getting noticeably slow as software gets more power hungry, but I still have $500 twice over in my wallet that you would not have. I think many folks get caught up in the "Mine is better than yours" mind set and end up spending though the nose to get the latest, fastest etc, when they really *DON'T* need to have the fastest frame rate in Minecraft (or some such nonsense).
Just because you choose to spend your money on the latest and greatest hardware doesn't mean the guy next to you with the 7 year old laptop is someone to be looked down on. I routinely drive my cars well beyond them being paid off (last one was 17 years old when I finally replaced it) and typically use my computing equipment 10 years or longer. Mainly because I prefer to use my money for more important things (to me). If having the fastest laptop on the plane is more important to you, fine with me, but I think many who are driven to have the latest are really wasting their money on stuff they could do just fine without.
Which is why most SSD drives implement some kind of wear leveling. They will move the often written sectors around the physical storage space in an effort to keep the wear even.
Rotating media drives do similar things and can physically move "bad" sectors too, but this usually means you loose data. Many drives actually come from the factory with remapped sectors. You don't notice it because these sectors are already remapped on the drive onto the extra space the manufacturers build into the drive, but don't let you see.
Reminds me of when I interviewed with Maxtor, years ago. They where telling me that the only difference between their current top of the line storage (which was like 250G at the time) and their 40 Gig OEM drive was the controller firmware configuration and the stickers. Both drives came off the same assembly line and only the final drive power up configuration and test step was different, and then only in the values configured in the controller and what stickers got put on the drive. If you had the correct software, you could easily convert the OEM drive to the bigger capacity, by writing the correct contents to the right physical location on the drive. The reason they did this was it was cheaper than having to stop and retool the production line every time an OEM wanted 10,000 cheap drives.
I'm sure drive builders still do that sort of thing today. Set up a 3Tb drive line, then just down size the drives which are to be sold as 1Tb drives.
How's that? Oh, he should install Linux then?
Shielding is pretty much all about mass. You need boat loads of mass to make an effective enough shield to survive in space for very long. You can use water, but you need to get it into space (or find it someplace already in space), then climb inside and get all this mass heading in the correct direction (burning fuel or something) fast enough you don't die before you get there, then slow down all this mass so you can stop someplace (more fuel). All this amounts to HUGE amounts of mass..
I really don't think that we are going to figure this problem out any time before the sun burns us to cinders in a billion years.
I'm just wondering why you think Red Hat wants to kill open source? I don't think they are trying to kill the goose that is laying their golden eggs. In fact, I'm pretty sure they contribute a lot of development effort to many of the open source projects they use/abuse.
They do charge for what's generally available for free in some folks view, but they are a model for how you can make money from Open Source (at least one way. And a quick search on Google would surely lead anybody who didn't already know to CentOS which distributes a Red Hat free distribution that matches Red Hat's distribution down to the jot and tittle (sans the Red Hat Trade mark and Copyrighted art work).
The problem with colonizing is basically the radiation in space pretty much kills everything given the time frames involved at sub-light speeds. We might work out some way to get to Mars and back with some kind of shielding, but we are talking about round trips that take under a year and the radiation doses will be pretty bad for those of reproductive age or younger. I hate to think of what would happen at 20 years round trip, assuming you could get to half the speed of light....
I think the best we can hope for is limited local (no further than Mars) travel.
Let me guess, the Cisco Switches are the Small Business Series, right?
Hey, the Cisco Small Business stuff isn't all that bad... At least the older stuff from a few years ago is OK. Where I admit the Cisco/Netgear hardware suffers from a higher failure rate, you can easily buy two of them for every main line Cisco switch and have some change left over. Now I'm not saying they are *easier* to configure, but most of us don't make a habit of changing switch configurations all the time.
You have a good point, but in this case, the DNA evidence was the last bit of evidence that folks have been waiting for. Where the DNA evidence is not proof alone, it is the last piece of the proof. Often we say "Well that proves it!" about a single fact when really there is a whole series of facts which must be true before the final fact removes doubt. So I don't see the statement that the DNA test proves it is Richard III to be false or worthy of critique.
Now if you wish to take on the DNA proves *everything* mystique, then you need to really dig further into the methods and facts about how DNA (in its various forms) are inherited and why various forms of genetic testing might or might not be usable in situations like this. I'm afraid you are taking on a huge task in this CSI one hour (less commercials) to solve a crime world of scientific knowledge and Hollywood misinformation for dramatic license. I wish you luck, because I'm pretty tired of that kind of thing myself.
It doesn't, it just says that the corpse was closely related to someone who is known to be a descendant of Richard III.
It's all the other evidence that starts cutting down the odds that it might be somebody else... Obvious injury consistent with accepted cause of death. Evidence that indicates medical conditions consistent with known medical conditions of Richard III. Location consistent with the accepted possible burial locations. And most of all, no other known possible bodies that match DNA and what we know about this guy from history.
Of course, one can always argue the possibility that this is not Richard III, just like they argue other silly stuff...
One MAJOR issue with this... My TOS (Terms of Service) with AT&T specifically disallows me sharing my network connection with more than 4 devices.
My provider at home has TOS rules that keep me from letting people not living at or visiting my home from using the bandwith.
You can bet the providers would find a way to stop this, either by TOS restrictions, by technical means or both.
Seems likely that you could be on the right track. I wonder if this has less to do with in flight conditions and more to do with APU and Ground power transitions because all the noted events took place close to either takeoff or landing and not in the middle of a long flight. I wonder about ambient temperature changes might be a factor too.
I can see where the transition to/from in flight and ground operations could be a lot more problematic for batteries and charging circuits due to momentary interruptions and voltage sags during a time of large temperature swings. Such transient events can be extremely difficult to design for and even more difficult to effectively test in a complex system like an airplane. Issues like this can be difficult to debug because the problems can easily be highly dependent on factors that are not readily obvious.
Boeing will eventually get this worked out. The only question is how long will it take them to fix the issue and how much will it cost in the process
A few, is like two or three, maybe 5 at the most... So I sure hope you plan to live longer than a few decades... I sure am.
Personally, I'm pulling just plain old cat 5 because I'm cheap. But as I said, "if cost is no object" and the goal is to not have technology over run your cabling, pull fiber. In your case, if there is no power outlet close enough to your POE powered device, you might want to pull some twisted pair copper too, but expect the twisted pair to be outdated long before the fiber.
There are reasons to run fiber... As a ham radio operator, I like not having long runs of copper wires carrying noisy digital signals or suffering from RFI dropouts in my network when I transmit. Your milage may vary.
Scratch that.. If you are going to wire, put in 3/4" conduit to boxes next to every receptacle that dump into some accessible void like an attic, basement or central closet. Make sure you can easily get from any box to any other. That way you can pull whatever wire or cable they come up with when ever you like at minimum of cost.
I knew a guy who built his house with a double gang box every 8' connected by 3/4" conduit into the attic or basement with a number of 2" runs from the attic to his basement back in the 10Base-2 day. He can easily replace any low voltage signal cables he wants without having to tear up his house with nothing more than a fish tape and screw driver. Now, when they come out with Cat-5000 in 100 years, his kids can put it in..
I'm not sure I'm ready to claim that Cat-5e or Cat-6 cabling is going to be staying forever. There are limits to the speed of each of these cable types and I think that we will continue to see a need for increased bandwidths as time progresses. Eventually, the necessary speeds will exceed the available bandwidth on the cable and you will end up replacing it.
The real issue is how long will it take? I remember back when commercial grade networks ran on Coax and you got 1 Megbit/second or less. This was only 20 years ago and nobody is installing this kind of network equipment and wiring anymore, at least in the industrialized world. Only recently did the required bandwidth for most applications exceed the capacity on this equipment so you would not have been forced to upgrade for nearly 15 years.
I suspect that you are likely going to be very safe with Cat-6 for a few decades, but I suspect that the state of the art will push us beyond 4 twisted pair on copper within a few short years. To continue the bandwidth increase, Physics demands that we add pairs or make some structural changes to Cat-6 at some point. This means that eventually, even Cat-6 will be obsolete.
One could argue that it won't happen in your lifetime, so why worry? But I'll be willing to wager Cat-5e won't outlive me.
yea, Cause you can get easily grab a fiber xbox adapter. Not.
Actually you can easily get media converters for about $100 US each and use a short patch cable to wire it directly to your XBox 360 network port...
If I was you, I'd be more concerned about getting the fiber pulled and terminated. Putting on fiber connections is something that takes a bit of equipment and a bit of skill that can be somewhat costly to obtain. But, remember, I said if cost was no object...
Personally, I'm pulling Cat5e in my house, but that's mainly because it is easy to access the walls from the attic of my single story home and cost *IS* an object of concern for me...
Cat5 (or Cat6e if you want futureproofing) is just better for any device that doesn't move.
If cost is no object, I'd use fiber myself. It is unlikely you will *ever* out grow the wiring if you pull fiber... Eventually, even Cat6e is going to be obsolete, but fiber will never really go away.
Unlikely this will have better range than 2.4Ghz. 5Ghz is attenuated a lot more than 2.4Ghz by walls, plants and such.
The good news though will be that with an expanded available spectrum, speeds will go up. Higher attenuation and lower usable distances will help with crowded environments. But I don't think the available range will be greater than 2.4Ghz equipment.
This is an interesting story considering that in Cali, employee non-compete contracts are not enforceable.
In effect, the result of such "no poaching" agreements was to have the same affect as the non-compete contract with the employee. Employees would be restrained from changing jobs and going to a competitor. Give them class status. This seems like a problem for the Cali courts to figure out.
You have lots of choice, I change them at every job I have ever taken.
You do realize that in making a "special" contract that applies only to you it becomes all that more enforceable right? One of the things that can be used to argue the non-compete doesn't apply is if they simply have a default contract that everybody from the admins to the CEO all sign. One can argue that your job function is so much different from the CEO that there is no way the same non-compete contract can apply. It was just a formality that everybody signed the same paperwork, nothing more.
This is not to say it is not a good idea to make the contract more specific. By all means, hire a lawyer and have him rewrite the contract in your favor and get them to sign it if you can..
Non-compete contracts are unenforceable in Cali I believe. I had an lawyer suggest that I could move to the state in order to nullify a non-compete contract I was under.
In your situation, I believe that there where a number of defenses to breaking the contract available. However, I would not suggest anybody use any of them thinking you won't have an issue. Companies can, and sometimes do sue in such situations. Remember, even if it is unlikely the company will prevail in court, it doesn't stop them from dragging you though legal fees and lost work attempting to defend yourself.
We don't disagree here. As Microsoft increases its price, Open Source becomes more and more easily justified. I figure that Microsoft is full of bright intelligent folks who look on the "free" competition and adjust prices accordingly, but I'm not saying they don't overcharge their customers.
These bright folks know that the last thing they need is for Open Source to become an accepted alternative. The day that happens it will be game over. I would expect them to do anything and everything they can to avoid that day. That's why we see the FUD campaign, why they keep altering the file formats for Office products, why they covertly supported SCO's lawsuit and why I believe they must consider Open Source's Total Costs in their pricing structures. They may overcharge for their products, but that they have to be mindful of what will happen to them if the floodgates of Open Source get opened and their revenue stream gets flushed overnight.
We all know that every time a nation or large company threatens to go open source, Microsoft sends its army of sales people with large expense budgets to offer 'better deals' to persuade them against moving away. These types of deals, of course mean better pricing and/or other terms along with lots of wining, dining, bonuses, gifts and kickbacks. It is quite likely their study includes these deep discounts which everyone would demand if this type of information was made available.
I know that in general, costs are available through open government legislation, but do we usually get to see the terms and numbers and types of licenses or how much is given for 'free'?
So, in effect, Open Source has saved even Microsoft customers a lot of money by providing a downward force on the price Microsoft can charge.
I strongly suspect that Microsoft has fairly closely calculated the actual TCO of their products and has pricing policies in place to keep themselves competitive with Open Source competitors, at least in the short term calculations. As with any TCO calculation, much of the result depends on the time frame involved. Paying Microsoft yearly volume license fees makes short term sense, but long term becomes pretty expensive. Switching to Linux/OpenOffice is an expensive short term expense with a long term ROI.