Not true. I worked at a hospital in IT for 10 years. The $9 asprin and other wierd pricing is based on what insurance pays for. For example, the asprin may be $9 because they will always pay for asprin. You may pay $1 for a course of Cipro even though the hospitals cost is much more because that's all they cover. Prices vary from hospital to hospital due to the insurance carriers they work with. It may be $9 at General Hospital and $0.01 at Specific Hospital across town. Toss in DRG (Diagnosis Related Groups) payments from Medicare/Medicade and it gets even wierder. Medical service pricing is very complex and completely divorced from the actual cost of providing the service.
The problem with payroll/HR/whatnot data is not so much keeping it but having the metadata around to read it in a few years.
Most IT departments have the rack of permanantly archived tapes that the government requires them to keep. In many cases they were written by various payroll/HR/whatnot systems that are no longer in use and nobody has the metadata to read them.
In the olden days we just used a tape that was going to be tossed anyway. In rare case that you needed to read it if you couldn't because of media fade or lack of metadata you just called it lost data. The government requires you to HAVE the data not be able to READ the data.
I imagine it could be a lot better now by saving it as XML with it's associated Schema. It sure would beat mapping the data to a COBOL WORKING STORAGE definition.
It's all about having a good backup strategy. For home users the USB/Firewire removable drives are probably good enough. If your business continuity depends on your data you need better. Disk for online backup, tape for offsite. You need both.
If the disk backup is online all the time you risk losing your backups to errors (OS or human) but are great for automated restores (i.e. the "I deleted the $IMPORTANT_SPREADSHEET from the shared drive" problem). Tape is used to get your business back up and running after disasters of all sorts. Find a good storage service. A lot of companies in the World Trade Center kept their offsite backups in the other tower.
Oh yes, the most important bit is to test your recovery procedures. I've seen too many cases where people thought their backups were good but they missed critical files. If you haven't tested your restore you don't have a good backup.
Me personally, I keep my important files on my file server on a RAID1 (mirror) array and use a USB drive for backups periodically. For home use I find that using the philosophy of "never trust a single spindle" works for most cases. I still need to add an offsite backup though.
I used to keep archived stuff offline on tape/floppy/ZIP disk but with disk as cheap as it is I just keep it all online and keep migrating new drives into the server array.
For long term storage (5+ years) I just don't know. Magnetic media has fade, burned optical media won't last all that long (it's just emulsion). Pressed optical (DVD/CD) media will probably last a bit longer but the adhesives used to hold the plastic together may degrade over the longer term.
I pulled my DDS2 drive when I got a DVD drive for my home server. It's the same amount of storage but the media is cheaper.
I'm not all that fond of DDS drives. They can get head skew and then the only drive that can read a tape is the one that wrote it. Be sure to test your restores on another machine.
Indeed, tapes are durable. The 3480 (yea, it dates me) tapes were pretty darn durable. When you have operator - sleep + coffee you get lots of dropped tapes.
I pulled my DDS2 drive from my home server. I've got a DVD burner and a DVD holds a little bit more then a DDS2 tape. It'll be going on eBay eventually.
DLT is still better then DDS. The DDS drives can get head skew so the only drive that can read a tape is the one that wrote it. Be sure and test your restore procedure on another machine.
No, but wouldn't a hotel be better served by using a thin client (Sun Ray or somesuch)?
Many of the places we use PCs are single task workspaces. A low power, low maintenance thin client would work just as well, cost less and be more secure.
The general purpose workstation will always have their place but are expensive overkill for a lot of tasks. The mainframe had some things right all along.
I don't think it's the provider. I have too keep letting my wife borrow my N-Gage QD (sucky game machine, great phone) because her Moto just can't get a signal, or the stupid 2 pronged charger wiggled loose and now it has no charge.
Now, I got a friend the newer Moto because it was the cheapest Bluetooth phone T-Mobile had. The BT was to save her having to mess around with the directory since her eyesight is not too good. Well, this one has a camera and one of those itty bitty SD cards. She wanted to get a couple of pictures off it so I tried plugging it into the USB on her computer. The SD showed up fine but the pictures weren't there. Why would you put SD in a camera phone and not store photos on it?
Also, she wanted to show someone a couple of pictures and she couldn't find them in the menu. It took me a couple of minutes of poking around to find them myself. Not the sign of a good UI.
The new USB charger/connector is a step in the right direction but they've got a long way to go before I get another one.
That only happens once. Then the inevitable reinstall (it is Windows after all) and they can no longer play their music I doubt they use WMA the second time round.
Tell me about it. Before I bought my now deceased GeForce 4 Ti4200 I did a bit of research. The difference between the 4200 and 4600 was about 10% in the best case and about even most of the time. There was no way the 4600 was worth the extra $40 (I think, it was a while ago).
My GeForce 4 Ti4200 died recently and I replaced it with a GeForce 6600/256MB (AGP). I think it's a great card and the price is good. Yea, $80 is pretty cheap. $500 is way too much. I like the spot between $100 and $200. Seems to be the best bang for the buck.
Oh yea, stay far away from the 6600LE. I couldn't handle a Linux console scrolling much less 3D. I think the LE is for Lame Edition.
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Not true. I worked at a hospital in IT for 10 years. The $9 asprin and other wierd pricing is based on what insurance pays for.
For example, the asprin may be $9 because they will always pay for asprin. You may pay $1 for a course of Cipro even though the hospitals cost is much more because that's all they cover.
Prices vary from hospital to hospital due to the insurance carriers they work with. It may be $9 at General Hospital and $0.01 at Specific Hospital across town. Toss in DRG (Diagnosis Related Groups) payments from Medicare/Medicade and it gets even wierder. Medical service pricing is very complex and completely divorced from the actual cost of providing the service.
You are a sick man.
Follow the link and you'll know what I mean.
My kindergarden teacher was Mrs. Hammermeister. At least I think that's how it was spelled. That was a long time ago.
I thought you had to be dead before you got the "Hero and Patriot" title.
Well, maybe after his unfortunate suicide.
The problem with payroll/HR/whatnot data is not so much keeping it but having the metadata around to read it in a few years.
Most IT departments have the rack of permanantly archived tapes that the government requires them to keep. In many cases they were written by various payroll/HR/whatnot systems that are no longer in use and nobody has the metadata to read them.
In the olden days we just used a tape that was going to be tossed anyway. In rare case that you needed to read it if you couldn't because of media fade or lack of metadata you just called it lost data.
The government requires you to HAVE the data not be able to READ the data.
I imagine it could be a lot better now by saving it as XML with it's associated Schema. It sure would beat mapping the data to a COBOL WORKING STORAGE definition.
Well, poo. Ignore the extra post. I must have read this last night.
It's all about having a good backup strategy. For home users the USB/Firewire removable drives are probably good enough. If your business continuity depends on your data you need better. Disk for online backup, tape for offsite. You need both.
If the disk backup is online all the time you risk losing your backups to errors (OS or human) but are
great for automated restores (i.e. the "I deleted the $IMPORTANT_SPREADSHEET from the shared drive" problem). Tape is used to get your business back up and running after disasters of all sorts. Find a good storage service. A lot of companies in the World Trade Center kept their offsite backups in the other tower.
Oh yes, the most important bit is to test your recovery procedures. I've seen too many cases where people thought their backups were good but they missed critical files. If you haven't tested your restore you don't have a good backup.
Me personally, I keep my important files on my file server on a RAID1 (mirror) array and use a USB drive for backups periodically. For home use I find that using the philosophy of "never trust a single spindle" works for most cases. I still need to add an offsite backup though.
I used to keep archived stuff offline on tape/floppy/ZIP disk but with disk as cheap as it is I just keep it all online and keep migrating new drives into the server array.
For long term storage (5+ years) I just don't know. Magnetic media has fade, burned optical media won't last all that long (it's just emulsion). Pressed optical (DVD/CD) media will probably last a bit longer but the adhesives used to hold the plastic together may degrade over the longer term.
I pulled my DDS2 drive when I got a DVD drive for my home server. It's the same amount of storage but the media is cheaper.
I'm not all that fond of DDS drives. They can get head skew and then the only drive that can read a tape is the one that wrote it. Be sure to test your restores on another machine.
Indeed, tapes are durable. The 3480 (yea, it dates me) tapes were pretty darn durable. When you have operator - sleep + coffee you get lots of dropped tapes.
It would be rather big and smelly but, people wouldn't talk on it in the car more then once.
I pulled my DDS2 drive from my home server. I've got a DVD burner and a DVD holds a little bit more then a DDS2 tape. It'll be going on eBay eventually.
DLT is still better then DDS. The DDS drives can get head skew so the only drive that can read a tape is the one that wrote it. Be sure and test your restore procedure on another machine.
No, but wouldn't a hotel be better served by using a thin client (Sun Ray or somesuch)?
Many of the places we use PCs are single task workspaces. A low power, low maintenance thin client would work just as well, cost less and be more secure.
The general purpose workstation will always have their place but are expensive overkill for a lot of tasks. The mainframe had some things right all along.
If you write to the standard instead of the bugs you can avoid a suprise when the bugs are fixed.
Not that I expect IE rendering bugs to get fixed but a guy can dream can't he?
I don't think it's the provider. I have too keep letting my wife borrow my N-Gage QD (sucky game machine, great phone) because her Moto just can't get a signal, or the stupid 2 pronged charger wiggled loose and now it has no charge.
Now, I got a friend the newer Moto because it was the cheapest Bluetooth phone T-Mobile had. The BT was to save her having to mess around with the directory since her eyesight is not too good.
Well, this one has a camera and one of those itty bitty SD cards. She wanted to get a couple of pictures off it so I tried plugging it into the USB on her computer. The SD showed up fine but the pictures weren't there. Why would you put SD in a camera phone and not store photos on it?
Also, she wanted to show someone a couple of pictures and she couldn't find them in the menu. It took me a couple of minutes of poking around to find them myself. Not the sign of a good UI.
The new USB charger/connector is a step in the right direction but they've got a long way to go before I get another one.
They could get a new slogan out of this:
If it's phony it must be Sony!
Apps are nice but I want the phone part to work first. No dropped calls, no wierd charging issues and for heavens sake clean up that godawful UI.
Aha! So Sun has figured out how to Use the Schwartz.
Sorry, that name just begs for a Spaceballs reference.
Just to pick a nit Sony's biggest enemy is Sony. Not Microsoft.
That only happens once. Then the inevitable reinstall (it is Windows after all) and they can no longer play their music I doubt they use WMA the second time round.
In the same night? You have a heroic liver.
But a man with 3 clocks has a NTP quorum.
I've got an old Number Nine (remember them?) S3 Virge card in my "useless but not broken" parts store. Judging from your nick you might like it.
Tell me about it. Before I bought my now deceased GeForce 4 Ti4200 I did a bit of research. The difference between the 4200 and 4600 was about 10% in the best case and about even most of the time. There was no way the 4600 was worth the extra $40 (I think, it was a while ago).
My GeForce 4 Ti4200 died recently and I replaced it with a GeForce 6600/256MB (AGP). I think it's a great card and the price is good. Yea, $80 is pretty cheap. $500 is way too much. I like the spot between $100 and $200. Seems to be the best bang for the buck.
Oh yea, stay far away from the 6600LE. I couldn't handle a Linux console scrolling much less 3D. I think the LE is for Lame Edition.
I use my Mac for web/email and my Linux box for gaming. UT2004 and Guild Wars (under Cedega) work fine.
Yes, Linux is my gaming OS.