this is a very good point. If I spec up a server it'll have redundant PSUs, it'll have hotswap backplane - building a rechargeable battery into the PSU wouldn't seem that bad an idea. I guess in the data center you'll need UPS's anyway to run your networking hardware, but I think building a small battery into the PSU's a good idea. Maybe 15 minutes run time, with a powerchute-style clean shutdown on power failure.
I'm on the other side of the fence, but most of my job is in making sure that IT know what the business really want, and articulating those demands in a form that the budget holder can readily say yes or no to based on the benefit.
You're completely right, of course - this is big IT's problem in a nutshell.
What it eventually, and inevitably, leads to is a situation where department A are running some Excel/VBA/Access stuff to generate a report, and department B are doing likewise. The two reports eventually hit the CEO/CFOs desk, and the numbers don't match. Hilarity ensues.
What can you do about it? Well, if I were being glib I'd say "Don't outsource your IS function to IBM or EDS" but it's seldom that easy.
If you've got reporting requirements you could maybe stick in place a Business Objects or Microstrategy service they could use. Get your Business Analysts to help them define some standard reports, with a modicum of customisation available so they can do some more ad-hoc work. Help make sure that the canonical source data's clearly defined and in one place, not being pulled from a million different systems and hand-cranked into spreadsheets every month.
It's a big problem - I left my last position primarily to get away from big, slow IS functions and guess what? It's the same everywhere when you get past a certain critical mass of bureaucracy.
Surely the point is that with various different file systems the chances are quite high that you'll insert SD-shaped-card-with-new-disk-format into your consumer device, it'll try and read it and assume it's unformatted, and pressing Y at your prompt results in it trying to write FAT32 all over it, wiping the contents?
Don't forget that with DSL the quality of *your* wiring is important. In the UK, British Telecom are responsible for all cabling up to the "master socket" inside your house. You're responsible for the rest of it, which is fair enough.
I'm on Sky Broadband's "up to" 8 meg package, and until last month was getting around 1.5 meg. When I could be bothered to troubleshoot this I realised it was down to my crappy wiring - had a new master socket fitted with an ADSL direct socket on it, phoned up Sky and got them to see how fast they could profile my line. Got up to 13.5meg before it started to hit its limits.
My point? a) It's not always someone elses' fault, and b) there's a reason that ISPs say "up to" - no-one would be willing to pay for 1:1 contention ratio on DSL for domestic purposes.
Bravo. Great post that should be C&Pd everytime this comes up. I particularly like "You won't get root. That's like inserting code changes out of version control or QA because they're "obvious"" which just sums it up perfectly.
Business Relationship Management - running a team of BAs, owning the relationship between IS and customer groups, understanding the strategy of both IS and what the customers it's serving are - might well fit. It's what I've drifted into, anyway, after all the tech jobs drifted off into outsource companies. Pays reasonably well, too.
This is a genius idea. For extra bonus points, encase LED screen and mic in a huge, ominous blinkenlights box or rack. Make occasional reference to your 80:20 project you've been working on. Hilarity ensues
...Bravo! And to this, I add: we did such a "Heck of a job, Browny" over New Orleans's flooding that we can rest assured FEMA would help us all out in a jiffy.
Given the US's excellent record of containing human suffering due to natural, forseeable disaster in New Orleans the other year, I'm sure you have nothing to worry about.
Might make sense in light of the rumours that iWork is going to turn into a web app: http://9to5mac.com/iwork-going-cloud
"We just got a truckload of Macworld information dumped on us from our best source. As we piece it together we'll trickle it out. The first big piece of information is that iWork is going into the Cloud. Not just storage, either. We are talking interface for Numbers, Pages and Keynote (which is going to see some interesting new templates and transition additions). Yes, the iWork applications are now going to be Web Applications."
Same generally, I think.
Presumably it's an easy differentiator of which activities stand a better chance of a prosecution proceeding against them, i.e.
Downloading of non-free content = often illegal, may be legitimate under some circumstances, uncertain you'd get a conviction
Uploading of same content = pretty much always illegal, could probably get a conviction
But the operating system is the badge. The brand, the experience, the infamous "look and feel" is the OS. Unless Apple licenced a cut down version that looked completely different and had different functionality to OEMs, then simply by having the OS installed, it's perceived as an Apple product in the main (more so with desktops, less so with laptops I guess due to the cosmetic design: I suspect a desktop user wouldn't really care).
http://www.insanelymac.com/ - check out the forums. It's very easy if you don't mind a bit of work and some fragility around the point releases of OS X.
A counter example: you can either buy a Mercedes ML, or you can buy something that looks identical, but is a little cheaper. "What the hell - it's still got substantially the same hardware under the skin" you think, and you go for the cheaper one.
Shortly afterwards, you realise you've bought a lemon. Sure, it *looks* nice but nothign quite fits: there are error messages on the dash, it squeaks, bits are starting to fall off and generally the whole thing feels like a half-assed mish mash of nice styling with very poor quality control.
Question: does the brand image of Mercedes improve because of this, or does it get worse?
I've built a couple of Frankenmacs, in fact I have a mini ITX intel-atom based one in the cellar as my current home fileserver. It's not particularly hard if you start with the correct hardware, although generally you lose the ability to just apply point releases of OS X - this can break stuff, as you've typically been messing with kexts to get it to install on a non-Mac board, and if the update replaces those kexts with later versions, you're hosed.
I've taken the approach that - no biggie. I don't typically need to apply every update immediately, and I'm comfortable with that level of risk given my data's secure. It's a project, you know how it is. Works great, mind.
If you want an *easier* way of doing it, buy an EFI-X dongle which will handle all this stuff for you.
To the naysayers: how about a netbook OS X for 400 bucks? The MSI Wind runs OS X very nicely...
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My password is 10 asterisks, you insensitive clod!
Apologies to Dilbert.
this is a very good point. If I spec up a server it'll have redundant PSUs, it'll have hotswap backplane - building a rechargeable battery into the PSU wouldn't seem that bad an idea. I guess in the data center you'll need UPS's anyway to run your networking hardware, but I think building a small battery into the PSU's a good idea. Maybe 15 minutes run time, with a powerchute-style clean shutdown on power failure.
I'm on the other side of the fence, but most of my job is in making sure that IT know what the business really want, and articulating those demands in a form that the budget holder can readily say yes or no to based on the benefit.
You're completely right, of course - this is big IT's problem in a nutshell.
What it eventually, and inevitably, leads to is a situation where department A are running some Excel/VBA/Access stuff to generate a report, and department B are doing likewise. The two reports eventually hit the CEO/CFOs desk, and the numbers don't match. Hilarity ensues.
What can you do about it? Well, if I were being glib I'd say "Don't outsource your IS function to IBM or EDS" but it's seldom that easy.
If you've got reporting requirements you could maybe stick in place a Business Objects or Microstrategy service they could use. Get your Business Analysts to help them define some standard reports, with a modicum of customisation available so they can do some more ad-hoc work. Help make sure that the canonical source data's clearly defined and in one place, not being pulled from a million different systems and hand-cranked into spreadsheets every month.
It's a big problem - I left my last position primarily to get away from big, slow IS functions and guess what? It's the same everywhere when you get past a certain critical mass of bureaucracy.
Surely the point is that with various different file systems the chances are quite high that you'll insert SD-shaped-card-with-new-disk-format into your consumer device, it'll try and read it and assume it's unformatted, and pressing Y at your prompt results in it trying to write FAT32 all over it, wiping the contents?
I'm on Sky Broadband's "up to" 8 meg package, and until last month was getting around 1.5 meg. When I could be bothered to troubleshoot this I realised it was down to my crappy wiring - had a new master socket fitted with an ADSL direct socket on it, phoned up Sky and got them to see how fast they could profile my line. Got up to 13.5meg before it started to hit its limits.
My point? a) It's not always someone elses' fault, and b) there's a reason that ISPs say "up to" - no-one would be willing to pay for 1:1 contention ratio on DSL for domestic purposes.
...is presumably the Year Of Linux On The Desktop?
Have you posted this before? I swear I've had the weirdest deja vu reading this.
Bravo. Great post that should be C&Pd everytime this comes up. I particularly like "You won't get root. That's like inserting code changes out of version control or QA because they're "obvious"" which just sums it up perfectly.
Business Relationship Management - running a team of BAs, owning the relationship between IS and customer groups, understanding the strategy of both IS and what the customers it's serving are - might well fit. It's what I've drifted into, anyway, after all the tech jobs drifted off into outsource companies. Pays reasonably well, too.
I got "loose, pink, lips; slips". Probably just post Xmas hormones, though
This is a genius idea. For extra bonus points, encase LED screen and mic in a huge, ominous blinkenlights box or rack. Make occasional reference to your 80:20 project you've been working on. Hilarity ensues
..and thus is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but with a whimper.
...Bravo! And to this, I add: we did such a "Heck of a job, Browny" over New Orleans's flooding that we can rest assured FEMA would help us all out in a jiffy.
Given the US's excellent record of containing human suffering due to natural, forseeable disaster in New Orleans the other year, I'm sure you have nothing to worry about.
iPhone does have PDF support. Mail yourself one as an attachment. Also reads MS Office docs.
Might make sense in light of the rumours that iWork is going to turn into a web app:
http://9to5mac.com/iwork-going-cloud
"We just got a truckload of Macworld information dumped on us from our best source. As we piece it together we'll trickle it out. The first big piece of information is that iWork is going into the Cloud. Not just storage, either. We are talking interface for Numbers, Pages and Keynote (which is going to see some interesting new templates and transition additions). Yes, the iWork applications are now going to be Web Applications."
Same generally, I think.
Presumably it's an easy differentiator of which activities stand a better chance of a prosecution proceeding against them, i.e.
Downloading of non-free content = often illegal, may be legitimate under some circumstances, uncertain you'd get a conviction
Uploading of same content = pretty much always illegal, could probably get a conviction
But the operating system is the badge. The brand, the experience, the infamous "look and feel" is the OS. Unless Apple licenced a cut down version that looked completely different and had different functionality to OEMs, then simply by having the OS installed, it's perceived as an Apple product in the main (more so with desktops, less so with laptops I guess due to the cosmetic design: I suspect a desktop user wouldn't really care).
...although if you download it using Bittorrent you're also *uploading* it at the same time: i.e. making it available to others.
Funny, I never could get the hang of Thursdays...
http://www.insanelymac.com/ - check out the forums. It's very easy if you don't mind a bit of work and some fragility around the point releases of OS X.
A counter example: you can either buy a Mercedes ML, or you can buy something that looks identical, but is a little cheaper. "What the hell - it's still got substantially the same hardware under the skin" you think, and you go for the cheaper one.
Shortly afterwards, you realise you've bought a lemon. Sure, it *looks* nice but nothign quite fits: there are error messages on the dash, it squeaks, bits are starting to fall off and generally the whole thing feels like a half-assed mish mash of nice styling with very poor quality control.
Question: does the brand image of Mercedes improve because of this, or does it get worse?
Seriously, it's pretty damn obvious. "Apple hardware" refers to what you can buy from Apple - the gestalt whole machine.
I've taken the approach that - no biggie. I don't typically need to apply every update immediately, and I'm comfortable with that level of risk given my data's secure. It's a project, you know how it is. Works great, mind.
If you want an *easier* way of doing it, buy an EFI-X dongle which will handle all this stuff for you.
To the naysayers: how about a netbook OS X for 400 bucks? The MSI Wind runs OS X very nicely...
What about the huge numbers happily using iTunes and an iPod to playback their MP3 collection? You don't have to buy your media from the ITMS...