* Break all down the requirements into the smallest steps you can * Take a look at the steps and write down your gut feel on how long it will take on a system that you wrote and know well^ * Double it * Double it again if you are not familiar with the system * Add 50% if it is in a language you are not familiar with * Add 50% if the code is Convoluted, Uncommented or generally WTF * Add 5 hours for compiling/deployment/support
This is certainly worst case estimates, so tell your customer that, but better to come in cheaper than overrun.
^ You will always underestimate this step, just human nature
This UPS requires a 15A circuit (for 240V, 30A for 120V). You will need to get a special plug. As for is it enough? Yes. You can run 3 _real_ servers off that.
Downside is the battery is going to be expensive. You will be better off getting two 740VA back-ups units.
I highly recommend you put your kids (when old enough) into a youth group like Scouts. I joined scouts when I was 8 (22 now) and it has considerbly influenced my life. I believe if I had not been in it, I would be very shy and spend all my time indoors alone.
It has made me love the outdoors and to socialise with others, which makes a nice change from the cubicle (I'm a programmer). I'm still in it and go out and camp every other weekend. I also think that coed groups are the best (Scouts in Australia is coed).
It has given me: - Social Skills - Friends - Confidence - Leadership Skills - Something to do away from the computer - Direction - Love of camping/abseiling/climbing etc
<shameless_plug>It's never to late to join most youth groups. They are always on the lookout for adults to lead the youth</shameless_plug>
A company who needs/wants the software you describe makes two evaluations: 1) Is the purchase price going to be offset by reducing costs or increasing sales (ROI) 2) Is it cheaper to purchase existing software or write your own (taking into consideration that purchased software may not be an exact fit)
If your company invested $2million in this project, they obviously think the ROI is going to be $2mill+.
If I was faced with the opportunity to pay $0.5mill to get $2mill return, my choice would be obvious.
- User's are not allowed to touch the server If you break it, you fix it. Not on servers. If the server goes down 30 people can't work. If too many people play with the server, no one can get blamed and it lands on you.
Techies (Programmers, Hardware, Engineers) tend to mess around with their computers They are also less likely to call for help and more likely to succesfully fix things they break. I disagree, depending on their capabilities, they will try to fix it, but break more stuff along the way
High user churn In a team of 30? Possible, we have a client (10 emp) who changes an employee every month
I work for a (small) company that manages the whole IT infrastructure for several other small companies. We have a client (non-technical) with about 30 employees, and they only require approx 1 hr of our time after it is set up. However they are set up in a Windows Terminal server environment and we have locked it down so the user's can't mess ANYTHING up.
A network needs minimum maintenance if: - User's are not allowed to touch the server - Workstations are either locked down, or managed 100% by the user - Workstations/Server are quality hardware. A fleet of 30 computer can have 1 non-HDD failure in 3 years. HDD failures are worse. - Workstations are identical equipment - You create a standard image and use Symantec Ghost (or equiv) to roll out - You roll out a clean image if anything goes wrong with software and it takes longer than 15mins to fix
This is all expensive to start, but pays for itself withing the 1st year. Things that may work against you: - Techies (Programmers, Hardware, Engineers) tend to mess around with their computers - Maintaining Programs (new, upgrades, etc) - Security updates - High user churn - Management who do not see the value of doing it right from the word go - Development servers tend to break every other day.
Contary to popular opinion Windows networks can be secure, and can be easy to manage. Operative word is "can". Windows 2003 and Exchange 2003 are rock solid.
As I pointed out in another point, you are correct. Copyright gives control of the creation to the author, who then may release it under GPL which controls how an end user may use the creation.
Without Copyright the GPL would be unenforcable because without Copyright the author would have no right to demand specific restrictions.
One of the restrictions that the GPL puts on creations (above do-what-ever-you-want) is that modifications also have to be made public.
GPL depends on copyright. You can support copyright but not the GPL, BUT you cannot support GPL and not copyright.
What the parent misses is that GPL relies on Copyright to work. If there was no Copyright, then the owner of the code would not be able to restrict how the code is used. GPL restricts the use of the code so that it cannot be modified and distributed without distributing the source of the modifications.
If the author has no claim to the code under Copyright then the GPL has no legal standing.
Then any college student could lawfully decompile source code, hand-assign variable names, and release the result to the public.
I'm not sure if your comment is in favour or against copyright.
It is against, and you support the above action, then think about how a company/artist/writer can survive without copyright. They will write it once, sell it and from there on it would be legal to make free copies of it leaving the author with no reward for their hard work.
What the parent misses is that GPL relies on Copyright to work. If there was no Copyright, then the owner of the code would not be able to restrict how the code is used. GPL restricts the use of the code so that it cannot be modified and distributed without distributing the source of the modifications.
If the author has no claim to the code under Copyright then the GPL has no legal standing.
ReWorx allows you to convert Word documents to HTML web sites. The document is written in one Word document and marked up as per usual using styles. Reworx converts this into a series of web pages. Free trail available.
The policy my company takes is that if is a phone call only (no Terminal services required) and the call is less than 10mins per issue then it is free, otherwise it is billed.
This is one of the downsides of skimping on cheap hardware. The parts and support are just not there 3-4 years down the track. Thus us the advantage of the expensive Intel/Sun/IBM.
I'm sure you can still get parts for IBM machines 10-20 years old.
Lets say wind moving at 5 meters/second and a wind turbine (blades) bit of the turbin is 30m, which would make it 60m in total diameter.
So the area of the turbin = 30*30*3.14 = 2800sq m. so 2800sq m * 5 = 14000 cu m/s (amount of "air" moving through the area covered by the blades.)
1 cu m of air weighs 1.3kg. So 14000 * 1.3 = 18200kg.
18 tonnes of air moves through the area covered by the turbine every second.
Kenetic Energy of 18000kg moving at 5m/s = 0.5mv^2 = 0.5 * 18200 * 5 *5 = 227500 kg m^2/s = 227 kilojoules
227 kJ are produced per second = 227 kilo Watts (1 J/s = 1W)
Therefor the total energy of wind passing though the wind turbine's blade area is 227kW.
I've heard of wind turbines putting out about 20kW, so that's less that 10% of total power contained in the wind. So the wind would slow down a sililar amount.
http://www.awea.org/faq/basicen.html
Disclaimer: - Size of blades and speed of wind pulled out of thin air - Assuming 100% wind-power efficiency, but most likely is more like 50%, which would make it 40kW of wind consumed for every 20kW of power
We have a moderatly large customer base mostly running XP and 2k, and we get hardly any blue screens/lockups. When we do it is mostly shoddy hardware that we did not supply (eg Dell).
Having said that, Thin clients are great, as the Terminal server can be locked down so that _nothing_ can be changed from login to login, yet the users can still do their wordprocessing and internetting.
Mind you, getting a good terminal server will set you back a lot (At min, SERVER motherboard, 2 CPU, 1-2GB RAM, SCSI Drives). Anything less and you will have performance issues. We use the above type setup for 30-70 users.
You can get the same effect using group policies (on a domain) and ghost. You can restrict the users in almost anything they do, and you have ghost to reload the systems when someone does manage to stuff it up.
Use 2003, it is the same as 2000 with added admin features. There are a few issues that we have had, but they have all been patched by now.
If you are worried about stability, we have found 2003 is much more stable than 2000. 2003 is just 2000 with extra features, I don't think much in the core has been changed.
Additionally you if you go with 2000, you have 3 years less support on the product. I assume you are using licencing, so upgrades are free, but the labour in changing over is huge.
Remember work out how much time it is going to take you and triple it. You WILL run into problems. Always have a fall back position for when the shit hits the fan.
Call back and speak to someone else. From my expirience if you don't get a good result, you will get it from someone else. We have only ever had one CPU fail (out of 500) and they did not want the fan back. But that was some time ago.
Slashdot Mirror
Well.. it really only ever got borrowed from German:
Schaden = Damage
Freude = Enjoyment
In this case the literal translation is accurate, it's enjoying something (someone else) being damaged.
* Break all down the requirements into the smallest steps you can
* Take a look at the steps and write down your gut feel on how long it will take on a system that you wrote and know well^
* Double it
* Double it again if you are not familiar with the system
* Add 50% if it is in a language you are not familiar with
* Add 50% if the code is Convoluted, Uncommented or generally WTF
* Add 5 hours for compiling/deployment/support
This is certainly worst case estimates, so tell your customer that, but better to come in cheaper than overrun.
^ You will always underestimate this step, just human nature
But only a 1/12th of the population.
Veritas BackupExec can restore single mailboxes and even single messages.& productId=57
http://veritas.com/Products/www?c=option&refId=79
Of course you need to buy the Exchange component that backs up based on mailboxes and not on physical files.
Telstra Innefficient?? NEVER!!
This UPS requires a 15A circuit (for 240V, 30A for 120V). You will need to get a special plug. As for is it enough? Yes. You can run 3 _real_ servers off that.
Downside is the battery is going to be expensive. You will be better off getting two 740VA back-ups units.
I highly recommend you put your kids (when old enough) into a youth group like Scouts. I joined scouts when I was 8 (22 now) and it has considerbly influenced my life. I believe if I had not been in it, I would be very shy and spend all my time indoors alone.
It has made me love the outdoors and to socialise with others, which makes a nice change from the cubicle (I'm a programmer). I'm still in it and go out and camp every other weekend. I also think that coed groups are the best (Scouts in Australia is coed).
It has given me:
- Social Skills
- Friends
- Confidence
- Leadership Skills
- Something to do away from the computer
- Direction
- Love of camping/abseiling/climbing etc
<shameless_plug>It's never to late to join most youth groups. They are always on the lookout for adults to lead the youth</shameless_plug>
A company who needs/wants the software you describe makes two evaluations:
1) Is the purchase price going to be offset by reducing costs or increasing sales (ROI)
2) Is it cheaper to purchase existing software or write your own (taking into consideration that purchased software may not be an exact fit)
If your company invested $2million in this project, they obviously think the ROI is going to be $2mill+.
If I was faced with the opportunity to pay $0.5mill to get $2mill return, my choice would be obvious.
I agree, my point was that it is possible, IF
- Hardware was good
- Network was very well set out
- Environment was simple
Which does not seem to be the case for this situation.
Having said that, and slept on it, my main job function is as a programmer, and context switching alone does take more than 1/2 hour of my week.
- User's are not allowed to touch the server
If you break it, you fix it.
Not on servers. If the server goes down 30 people can't work. If too many people play with the server, no one can get blamed and it lands on you.
Techies (Programmers, Hardware, Engineers) tend to mess around with their computers
They are also less likely to call for help and more likely to succesfully fix things they break.
I disagree, depending on their capabilities, they will try to fix it, but break more stuff along the way
High user churn
In a team of 30?
Possible, we have a client (10 emp) who changes an employee every month
Forgot to mention, I do think Linux has it's place in servers (Don't love MS that much).
However, I also think Linux only starts paying of when managing 3 or more servers. The learning curve is pretty high compared to Windows Server.
How to do something in windows is easy to figure out, but takes some time to replicate to other servers.
How to do something in Linux is hard to figure out, but takes little time to replicate.
Right tools for the situation.
P.S. Look into Windows SBS 2003
I work for a (small) company that manages the whole IT infrastructure for several other small companies. We have a client (non-technical) with about 30 employees, and they only require approx 1 hr of our time after it is set up. However they are set up in a Windows Terminal server environment and we have locked it down so the user's can't mess ANYTHING up.
A network needs minimum maintenance if:
- User's are not allowed to touch the server
- Workstations are either locked down, or managed 100% by the user
- Workstations/Server are quality hardware. A fleet of 30 computer can have 1 non-HDD failure in 3 years. HDD failures are worse.
- Workstations are identical equipment
- You create a standard image and use Symantec Ghost (or equiv) to roll out
- You roll out a clean image if anything goes wrong with software and it takes longer than 15mins to fix
This is all expensive to start, but pays for itself withing the 1st year. Things that may work against you:
- Techies (Programmers, Hardware, Engineers) tend to mess around with their computers
- Maintaining Programs (new, upgrades, etc)
- Security updates
- High user churn
- Management who do not see the value of doing it right from the word go
- Development servers tend to break every other day.
Contary to popular opinion Windows networks can be secure, and can be easy to manage. Operative word is "can". Windows 2003 and Exchange 2003 are rock solid.
As I pointed out in another point, you are correct. Copyright gives control of the creation to the author, who then may release it under GPL which controls how an end user may use the creation.
Without Copyright the GPL would be unenforcable because without Copyright the author would have no right to demand specific restrictions.
One of the restrictions that the GPL puts on creations (above do-what-ever-you-want) is that modifications also have to be made public.
GPL depends on copyright. You can support copyright but not the GPL, BUT you cannot support GPL and not copyright.
What the parent misses is that GPL relies on Copyright to work. If there was no Copyright, then the owner of the code would not be able to restrict how the code is used. GPL restricts the use of the code so that it cannot be modified and distributed without distributing the source of the modifications.
If the author has no claim to the code under Copyright then the GPL has no legal standing.
Then any college student could lawfully decompile source code, hand-assign variable names, and release the result to the public.
I'm not sure if your comment is in favour or against copyright.
It is against, and you support the above action, then think about how a company/artist/writer can survive without copyright. They will write it once, sell it and from there on it would be legal to make free copies of it leaving the author with no reward for their hard work.
What the parent misses is that GPL relies on Copyright to work. If there was no Copyright, then the owner of the code would not be able to restrict how the code is used. GPL restricts the use of the code so that it cannot be modified and distributed without distributing the source of the modifications.
If the author has no claim to the code under Copyright then the GPL has no legal standing.
ReWorx allows you to convert Word documents to HTML web sites. The document is written in one Word document and marked up as per usual using styles. Reworx converts this into a series of web pages. Free trail available.
http://www.republicorp.com/reworx.htm
The policy my company takes is that if is a phone call only (no Terminal services required) and the call is less than 10mins per issue then it is free, otherwise it is billed.
This is one of the downsides of skimping on cheap hardware. The parts and support are just not there 3-4 years down the track. Thus us the advantage of the expensive Intel/Sun/IBM.
I'm sure you can still get parts for IBM machines 10-20 years old.
Yeh, that's true, but what about those nasty jumping bonnet denters? Cleaning a roo, (or cow) out of the bull bar is not pretty.
Oh and the axles arn't going to be too good either on those roads.
Lets say wind moving at 5 meters/second and a wind turbine (blades) bit of the turbin is 30m, which would make it 60m in total diameter.
So the area of the turbin = 30*30*3.14 = 2800sq m.
so 2800sq m * 5 = 14000 cu m/s (amount of "air" moving through the area covered by the blades.)
1 cu m of air weighs 1.3kg. So 14000 * 1.3 = 18200kg.
18 tonnes of air moves through the area covered by the turbine every second.
Kenetic Energy of 18000kg moving at 5m/s
= 0.5mv^2
= 0.5 * 18200 * 5 *5
= 227500 kg m^2/s
= 227 kilojoules
227 kJ are produced per second
= 227 kilo Watts (1 J/s = 1W)
Therefor the total energy of wind passing though the wind turbine's blade area is 227kW.
I've heard of wind turbines putting out about 20kW, so that's less that 10% of total power contained in the wind. So the wind would slow down a sililar amount.
http://www.awea.org/faq/basicen.html
Disclaimer:
- Size of blades and speed of wind pulled out of thin air
- Assuming 100% wind-power efficiency, but most likely is more like 50%, which would make it 40kW of wind consumed for every 20kW of power
We have a moderatly large customer base mostly running XP and 2k, and we get hardly any blue screens/lockups. When we do it is mostly shoddy hardware that we did not supply (eg Dell).
Having said that, Thin clients are great, as the Terminal server can be locked down so that _nothing_ can be changed from login to login, yet the users can still do their wordprocessing and internetting.
Mind you, getting a good terminal server will set you back a lot (At min, SERVER motherboard, 2 CPU, 1-2GB RAM, SCSI Drives). Anything less and you will have performance issues. We use the above type setup for 30-70 users.
You can get the same effect using group policies (on a domain) and ghost. You can restrict the users in almost anything they do, and you have ghost to reload the systems when someone does manage to stuff it up.
Use 2003, it is the same as 2000 with added admin features. There are a few issues that we have had, but they have all been patched by now.
If you are worried about stability, we have found 2003 is much more stable than 2000. 2003 is just 2000 with extra features, I don't think much in the core has been changed.
Additionally you if you go with 2000, you have 3 years less support on the product. I assume you are using licencing, so upgrades are free, but the labour in changing over is huge.
Remember work out how much time it is going to take you and triple it. You WILL run into problems. Always have a fall back position for when the shit hits the fan.
Call back and speak to someone else. From my expirience if you don't get a good result, you will get it from someone else. We have only ever had one CPU fail (out of 500) and they did not want the fan back. But that was some time ago.
If you convince them your a techie, they will ship you advanced replacement parts. Also their stuff hardly ever fucks up (Motherboard, CPU).
Netherlands is Flat, it's mostly those darn hills that interfere with wireless.