Yeah, we have ~2,100 locations across North America, some of which are fractional T1. Our model has a "package server" at the site that caches software installs, and the OS images. Many times, it's just a service running in the background of a workstation that serves a specific line of business purpose. The packages copy at an anemic 20KB/sec or less so that when we deploy, everything is presaged locally. It takes a while, but it doesn't get in the way of priority WAN traffic. Once we see that it's mirrored properly, we can enable that site for deployment on our migration "console" web site, and communicate that to the IT folks who support that site.
The #1 requirement we have of any vendor solution, or anything that we put together, is that they can't impact our WAN - if they do, credit card processing gets delayed, VoIP calls drop, logistics centers stop packing pallets, etc. It's real cost, and it causes lots of people to start getting phone calls in the middle of the night.
We started by looking at what SCCM could do, as well as Altiris Deployment Solution (which we used for the XP deployments), and then did some home-grown scripting in order to get it done. We relied on some Altiris stuff here and there, and built some of our own solutions for things we couldn't find elsewhere. Some people may think that we're a bit loony for growing our own solution for this, but in the end it's something that our site coordinators love, and it's scalable over our sensitive WAN environment.
We're not using PXE because we have an environment with over 2100 locations, and we don't want to support 2100 PXE servers, or a combination of 2100 PXE servers and IP Helper entries. Plus, we have a large amount of priority traffic that we can't afford to disrupt over our WAN by booting a PC over a low-bandwidth connection. Thus, we're using a file-based version of PXE by dropping a WIM file (image files that WinPE uses for PXE, but instead booting out of the local filesystem by using bootmgr) from the local disk. It's also faster than PXE, because the crappiest hard disk in modern equipment is still faster than GbE.
Trust me, I love everything about my E92. I'm also surprised at how good the suspension handles 95% of the bumps in the road, even with the run-flats. It's that last 5%, which amount to frost heaves that I've only experienced since moving to the midwest.
As for the issue with run-flats and finding a replacement at 6:00p on a Sunday - they're good for 500 miles with zero pressure. Unless you're driving halfway across the country all at once, you can definitely get it to a proper shop or dealership - I had a chunk taken out of the side of one by a nasty pothole that cut the sidewall and it lost all pressure, and the TPM system didn't tell me until I was leaving work late on a Friday afternoon. I was able to drive it home, drive the few errands I had over the weekend, and get it to the dealership on Monday to have a new tire fitted.
I see why they did it, I just wish they weren't so damn stiff.
That's not the Microsoft way. The Microsoft way is to fail, then fail again, then double down on the double failure, then start to get some traction, then fail some more, then double down again financially, and then get some more traction, etc.
Microsoft wins by outspending the competition. The problem with the Microsoft of today, is that they can't outspend Google or Apple anymore.
Except that Microsoft allows downgrade rights in their Enterprise Agreements.
My company can do n-2 versioning. We won't be moving to Windows 8 unless it's a touchscreen device. It's Win7 until we see what Windows 9 is.
And it's not like we're a stranger to Linux. We're HP's biggest thin client customer, all of them running a flavor of Debian. Yet we still have over 50,000 Windows devices.
Taskbar spanning? NT4 did that. I really liked it. Then they took it away in Windows 2000.
However, it's important to know that NT4's taskbar spanning was a result of it seeing all connected displays as one connected display with combined resolution, e.g. two 1280x1024 displays (common when people were running NT4) would be seen as 2560x1024, and modal dialogs that were locked to be at the center of the screen (like the login dialog) would have half on each display.
Also, the only way to get multiple display support on NT4 was to have 2+ of the exact same PCI video cards. Same video BIOS. Same revision of the card. No AGP. Deviating from that, and you'd never get it to work.
The company I work for is starting our mass rollout of Windows 7, upgrading from Windows XP. The team I work on has fully automated this process to the point where a site technical coordinator goes to a web page, clicks the assets he wants to migrate, selects "roles" for the machines (what application package sets they get for the user's responsibilities) and then clicks a button to execute. The XP machine then does the following:
1. Check to see if there's enough free disk space to complete the migration 2. Download a RAMdisk image of WinPE to boot from 3. Swap out the bootloader for the Windows 7 version, which allows booting from the RAMdisk image 4. Update the firmware on the device (BIOS / uEFI) 5. Reboot to the RAMdisk image 6. RAMdisk image detects if the device has an encrypted file system (laptop) and retrieves the unlock key from the encryption keystore server, and unlocks the filesystem 7. Create a virtual hard drive file from the network that contains everything this system needs to remotely reimage, minus applications. 8. Data is migrated out of user profiles to a temp folder 9. Old OS and applications are moved to a backup folder 10. New OS image of Win7 SP1 is dropped on the disk around the migration store and backup folder, from the VHD created before 11. Drivers specific to the device are injected into the new Win7 install, from the VHD created before 12. Reboot back to the hard disk 13. Drivers are found and installed 14. Applets and agents necessary for hardware (Laptop power management, Lenovo "craplets" necessary for hardware features, etc.) are installed, from the VHD created before 15. Antivirus is installed and updated 16. Encryption agent is reinstalled if it's a laptop (no mandate for desktops to be encrypted at this point) 17. Reboot 18. User data is migrated forward from the migration store temp folder 19. Applications are delivered by our software deployment infrastructure 20. User is presented with "Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to login". 21. When they log in, they find all their stuff is still there, and all their applications are freshly installed. Total time on hardware that isn't an antique? 40 minutes.
All kicked off from a web page. On an 11 year old Windows XP. Don't knock what you don't know, or haven't spent time to learn.
Where is it written that Microsoft must force users of one device category to use the same interface as a completely different device category, no matter how flawed it is for that device?
They did this before with Windows XP Tablet Edition - a mouse driven stack on touchscreen / pen input devices. It was horrible. Now they've flipped the coin and we have a touchscreen / pen input driven stack on keyboard / mouse devices. It's horrible, and people don't want it.
Google and Apple have done this right - a different UI layer and API over a (mostly) common lower system. This way you can have a user experience that is tailored to the device you're using. Android does this. Chrome OS does this. iOS does this. Mac OS X does this.
Manufacturers are forced to put a license sticker for it on there. Enterprise will immediately image the hardware after unwrapping it with whatever OS they're standardized on, because they have downgrade rights in their enterprise agreements.
My particular company gets version N-2 rights. Meaning, once Windows 8 ships, we cannot put Windows XP on a device with a Windows 8 sticker. Thus, our project to migrate to Windows 7 that started a year ago.
We're good until Windows 10, at which point we'll move to a less crappy (hopefully) Windows 9.
Everyone I work with still detests the ribbon, and most of them are jealous of the Mac Office 2011 where you have the option to turn it off, and use the standard Mac OS menu bar that's been there since 1984.
That's great, except they aren't garbage - they're actually a highly-rated summer performance tire; and since every single car they sold of this model had run-flats it has no spare. To replace with non run-flats would be to risk being stuck on the side of the road waiting for a monkey with a hook.
Interestingly, though, it has a scissor jack behind the left trunk wall. Guess they forgot to delete that when they deleted the spare from the manifest...
I don't give a fuck if a tax hike happens for "the 1 percent." However, there's a lot of people that seem to think that is the magic answer to the fiscal issues the US faces.
It's not. Not by a long shot. "The 1%" don't make enough money to carry "the 99%" even if they gave every fucking cent they make to the IRS. 2 + 2 doesn't equal 17.
The solution needs to be both revenue and reform - a better tax system that allows people to not dodge taxes on a quasi-criminal scale, AND cuts in spending money that doesn't need to be spent. Starting with getting out foreign wars, today. Stop building huge fucking artillery pieces that nobody, except Congress critters elected from the district where it's built, wants. Stop dictating to NASA how to engineer rockets, based on nothing but who's congressional district would lose the business that they knew was going away someday when they signed up as the contractor. Stop having multiple departments in the Federal government tasked with the same responsibilities, where none of them do the job effectively - several examples were given during an Obama State of the Union address. Stop stealing money from the highway trust fund to pay for transit projects that nobody rides, and are nothing but giveaways to real estate developers. Stop giving massive tax breaks to oil companies that are the most profitable corporations on the planet not named Apple. Stop bending over backwards to Wall Street investment banks that just got done fucking over the entire world without so much as a thank you.
The list goes on and on. This isn't a left thing. This isn't a right thing. It isn't a "red state" or a "blue state" thing. It's just a thing, and if this thing isn't dealt with, the last recession is going to look like a skinned knee in comparison to what's coming if Congress doesn't stop fucking around.
I also drive a German automobile, but unfortunately they fitted it with run-flat tires that completely negate the suspension. They might as well have fitted it with Flinstones rocks.
if you don't believe the parent, drive on any freeway in the US where freezing temperatures are common in the winter. You'll no doubt experience a "frost heave" and think you're about to fly through the windshield.
I'm a firm believer that it should be a hard requirement to take a motorcycle safety course to get a drivers license, even if you have no desire to ride a motorcycle. It just makes you way more aware of what a rider is doing, and dealing with if you should encounter one on the road.
Oh, and you get an insurance discount for taking a volunteer traffic safety course.
The difference is that when someone buys WoW gold, they aren't looking to get some return on that other than the entertainment value of being able to afford the item they're looking to buy in-game. It isn't an investment that they are looking to liquidate at some point in the future, as the value of whatever they use that gold for is going to depreciate rapidly to zero as soon as the next content patch hits.
Even the value of WoW gold is depreciating, as it's stupidly easy to get gold in the game, and has been for quite some time. You can get 10k gold for like $8 now, found doing a 4-second Google search. I'd love to see what the price per thousand was 5 years ago, I'll bet it's somewhere above 20x that.
And the farmer selling the contract, 6 months away from one single kernel of corn being harvested, betting against drought, pestilence, floods, fire, famine, etc.; they're not gambling... how?
Slashdot Mirror
Because the cockpit windows work perfectly when descending through a cloud, or other limited-visibility situations, right?
There's a reason why these pilots are also instrument-rated.
And posting "the Christians in the US are ignorant of this fact" isn't ignorant in itself?
You can't say that 100 million people think the same thing about ANYTHING.
but except for the freedom to be armed
This is a key difference, as history shows that this freedom leads to other freedoms.
Yeah, we have ~2,100 locations across North America, some of which are fractional T1. Our model has a "package server" at the site that caches software installs, and the OS images. Many times, it's just a service running in the background of a workstation that serves a specific line of business purpose. The packages copy at an anemic 20KB/sec or less so that when we deploy, everything is presaged locally. It takes a while, but it doesn't get in the way of priority WAN traffic. Once we see that it's mirrored properly, we can enable that site for deployment on our migration "console" web site, and communicate that to the IT folks who support that site.
The #1 requirement we have of any vendor solution, or anything that we put together, is that they can't impact our WAN - if they do, credit card processing gets delayed, VoIP calls drop, logistics centers stop packing pallets, etc. It's real cost, and it causes lots of people to start getting phone calls in the middle of the night.
Yeah, go ahead and show me how that gets WinXP to Win7, which we have a business requirement to run.
Idealism bends to those that sign paychecks.
We started by looking at what SCCM could do, as well as Altiris Deployment Solution (which we used for the XP deployments), and then did some home-grown scripting in order to get it done. We relied on some Altiris stuff here and there, and built some of our own solutions for things we couldn't find elsewhere. Some people may think that we're a bit loony for growing our own solution for this, but in the end it's something that our site coordinators love, and it's scalable over our sensitive WAN environment.
We're not using PXE because we have an environment with over 2100 locations, and we don't want to support 2100 PXE servers, or a combination of 2100 PXE servers and IP Helper entries. Plus, we have a large amount of priority traffic that we can't afford to disrupt over our WAN by booting a PC over a low-bandwidth connection. Thus, we're using a file-based version of PXE by dropping a WIM file (image files that WinPE uses for PXE, but instead booting out of the local filesystem by using bootmgr) from the local disk. It's also faster than PXE, because the crappiest hard disk in modern equipment is still faster than GbE.
Trust me, I love everything about my E92. I'm also surprised at how good the suspension handles 95% of the bumps in the road, even with the run-flats. It's that last 5%, which amount to frost heaves that I've only experienced since moving to the midwest.
As for the issue with run-flats and finding a replacement at 6:00p on a Sunday - they're good for 500 miles with zero pressure. Unless you're driving halfway across the country all at once, you can definitely get it to a proper shop or dealership - I had a chunk taken out of the side of one by a nasty pothole that cut the sidewall and it lost all pressure, and the TPM system didn't tell me until I was leaving work late on a Friday afternoon. I was able to drive it home, drive the few errands I had over the weekend, and get it to the dealership on Monday to have a new tire fitted.
I see why they did it, I just wish they weren't so damn stiff.
That's not the Microsoft way. The Microsoft way is to fail, then fail again, then double down on the double failure, then start to get some traction, then fail some more, then double down again financially, and then get some more traction, etc.
Microsoft wins by outspending the competition. The problem with the Microsoft of today, is that they can't outspend Google or Apple anymore.
"Apple fanboys" have no problem with facts. They have a problem with straight up lies marketed as facts, which is what your post is.
THERE IS NO RETINA DISPLAY ON A MACBOOK AIR.
This mere fact invalidates the GP post in entirety.
I'd add the Lenovo X1 Carbon to the list of Ultrabooks that could give Apple a run for their money. But it's also not the cheapest thing out there.
Or with software color correction, like they already have in Aperture and iPhoto.
I see a software update coming that will detect the lens flare, and correct it out.
Except that Microsoft allows downgrade rights in their Enterprise Agreements.
My company can do n-2 versioning. We won't be moving to Windows 8 unless it's a touchscreen device. It's Win7 until we see what Windows 9 is.
And it's not like we're a stranger to Linux. We're HP's biggest thin client customer, all of them running a flavor of Debian. Yet we still have over 50,000 Windows devices.
Taskbar spanning? NT4 did that. I really liked it. Then they took it away in Windows 2000.
However, it's important to know that NT4's taskbar spanning was a result of it seeing all connected displays as one connected display with combined resolution, e.g. two 1280x1024 displays (common when people were running NT4) would be seen as 2560x1024, and modal dialogs that were locked to be at the center of the screen (like the login dialog) would have half on each display.
Also, the only way to get multiple display support on NT4 was to have 2+ of the exact same PCI video cards. Same video BIOS. Same revision of the card. No AGP. Deviating from that, and you'd never get it to work.
I'll go one better.
The company I work for is starting our mass rollout of Windows 7, upgrading from Windows XP. The team I work on has fully automated this process to the point where a site technical coordinator goes to a web page, clicks the assets he wants to migrate, selects "roles" for the machines (what application package sets they get for the user's responsibilities) and then clicks a button to execute. The XP machine then does the following:
1. Check to see if there's enough free disk space to complete the migration
2. Download a RAMdisk image of WinPE to boot from
3. Swap out the bootloader for the Windows 7 version, which allows booting from the RAMdisk image
4. Update the firmware on the device (BIOS / uEFI)
5. Reboot to the RAMdisk image
6. RAMdisk image detects if the device has an encrypted file system (laptop) and retrieves the unlock key from the encryption keystore server, and unlocks the filesystem
7. Create a virtual hard drive file from the network that contains everything this system needs to remotely reimage, minus applications.
8. Data is migrated out of user profiles to a temp folder
9. Old OS and applications are moved to a backup folder
10. New OS image of Win7 SP1 is dropped on the disk around the migration store and backup folder, from the VHD created before
11. Drivers specific to the device are injected into the new Win7 install, from the VHD created before
12. Reboot back to the hard disk
13. Drivers are found and installed
14. Applets and agents necessary for hardware (Laptop power management, Lenovo "craplets" necessary for hardware features, etc.) are installed, from the VHD created before
15. Antivirus is installed and updated
16. Encryption agent is reinstalled if it's a laptop (no mandate for desktops to be encrypted at this point)
17. Reboot
18. User data is migrated forward from the migration store temp folder
19. Applications are delivered by our software deployment infrastructure
20. User is presented with "Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to login".
21. When they log in, they find all their stuff is still there, and all their applications are freshly installed. Total time on hardware that isn't an antique? 40 minutes.
All kicked off from a web page. On an 11 year old Windows XP. Don't knock what you don't know, or haven't spent time to learn.
Where is it written that Microsoft must force users of one device category to use the same interface as a completely different device category, no matter how flawed it is for that device?
They did this before with Windows XP Tablet Edition - a mouse driven stack on touchscreen / pen input devices. It was horrible. Now they've flipped the coin and we have a touchscreen / pen input driven stack on keyboard / mouse devices. It's horrible, and people don't want it.
Google and Apple have done this right - a different UI layer and API over a (mostly) common lower system. This way you can have a user experience that is tailored to the device you're using. Android does this. Chrome OS does this. iOS does this. Mac OS X does this.
Windows does not.
Manufacturers are forced to put a license sticker for it on there. Enterprise will immediately image the hardware after unwrapping it with whatever OS they're standardized on, because they have downgrade rights in their enterprise agreements.
My particular company gets version N-2 rights. Meaning, once Windows 8 ships, we cannot put Windows XP on a device with a Windows 8 sticker. Thus, our project to migrate to Windows 7 that started a year ago.
We're good until Windows 10, at which point we'll move to a less crappy (hopefully) Windows 9.
Everyone I work with still detests the ribbon, and most of them are jealous of the Mac Office 2011 where you have the option to turn it off, and use the standard Mac OS menu bar that's been there since 1984.
That's great, except they aren't garbage - they're actually a highly-rated summer performance tire; and since every single car they sold of this model had run-flats it has no spare. To replace with non run-flats would be to risk being stuck on the side of the road waiting for a monkey with a hook.
Interestingly, though, it has a scissor jack behind the left trunk wall. Guess they forgot to delete that when they deleted the spare from the manifest...
I don't give a fuck if a tax hike happens for "the 1 percent." However, there's a lot of people that seem to think that is the magic answer to the fiscal issues the US faces.
It's not. Not by a long shot. "The 1%" don't make enough money to carry "the 99%" even if they gave every fucking cent they make to the IRS. 2 + 2 doesn't equal 17.
The solution needs to be both revenue and reform - a better tax system that allows people to not dodge taxes on a quasi-criminal scale, AND cuts in spending money that doesn't need to be spent. Starting with getting out foreign wars, today. Stop building huge fucking artillery pieces that nobody, except Congress critters elected from the district where it's built, wants. Stop dictating to NASA how to engineer rockets, based on nothing but who's congressional district would lose the business that they knew was going away someday when they signed up as the contractor. Stop having multiple departments in the Federal government tasked with the same responsibilities, where none of them do the job effectively - several examples were given during an Obama State of the Union address. Stop stealing money from the highway trust fund to pay for transit projects that nobody rides, and are nothing but giveaways to real estate developers. Stop giving massive tax breaks to oil companies that are the most profitable corporations on the planet not named Apple. Stop bending over backwards to Wall Street investment banks that just got done fucking over the entire world without so much as a thank you.
The list goes on and on. This isn't a left thing. This isn't a right thing. It isn't a "red state" or a "blue state" thing. It's just a thing, and if this thing isn't dealt with, the last recession is going to look like a skinned knee in comparison to what's coming if Congress doesn't stop fucking around.
I also drive a German automobile, but unfortunately they fitted it with run-flat tires that completely negate the suspension. They might as well have fitted it with Flinstones rocks.
BMW needs to fix that, if they haven't already.
if you don't believe the parent, drive on any freeway in the US where freezing temperatures are common in the winter. You'll no doubt experience a "frost heave" and think you're about to fly through the windshield.
I'm a firm believer that it should be a hard requirement to take a motorcycle safety course to get a drivers license, even if you have no desire to ride a motorcycle. It just makes you way more aware of what a rider is doing, and dealing with if you should encounter one on the road.
Oh, and you get an insurance discount for taking a volunteer traffic safety course.
The difference is that when someone buys WoW gold, they aren't looking to get some return on that other than the entertainment value of being able to afford the item they're looking to buy in-game. It isn't an investment that they are looking to liquidate at some point in the future, as the value of whatever they use that gold for is going to depreciate rapidly to zero as soon as the next content patch hits.
Even the value of WoW gold is depreciating, as it's stupidly easy to get gold in the game, and has been for quite some time. You can get 10k gold for like $8 now, found doing a 4-second Google search. I'd love to see what the price per thousand was 5 years ago, I'll bet it's somewhere above 20x that.
And the farmer selling the contract, 6 months away from one single kernel of corn being harvested, betting against drought, pestilence, floods, fire, famine, etc.; they're not gambling... how?