Actually as I mentioned earlier, the inrush current at power on is statistically what causes the most failures in servers. That combined with the other problem of "stiction" where hard disks that have been running for extended times are allowed to cool. Generally a percentage will either plain die, or will develop stiction whereby the heads can't develop enough inertia to move, hence the click-click sound often heard with HDD's. The idea that constant current causes damage to servers is only true if it is not limited to a value equal or below what the components are rated at. Allowing the +/- 10% fluctuations that is. Most enterprise grade servers deliberately run components like fans at higher voltages at power on to stress test during boot, this is why servers are noisy as hell for the first couple of minutes at power up and then settle down a bit. If the filtering isn't great, the inductive load, and ripple this can present to other components can often be enough to push it over the edge. Any onboard RAID controllers will also do a fair bit of interrogating of attached disks, again always not good for disks that have been running for years, and then powered off.
I still think powering off a server is simply false economy in almost every corporate environment I can think of. Ever been in a datacentre where the UPS has failed? It's very scary! Pot luck if they all come up. The longer they've been running is directly proportional to the risk of failure.
The analogy is actually spot on sorry! Power up and the associated current surge is when most server components fail. Your own explanation bears this out, if the light bulb was left on, it has a much reduced chance of blowing! Same with servers!
While servers != light bulbs (servers usually aren't round), being pedantic about it doesn't contribute anything.
I can you from my experience vMotion along with DRS and HA are absolutely awesome, no real troubles, but amazing increase of performance and availability. And at a very reasonable price I would say. But I would still baulk at the idea of powering servers off to save cents on power, as opposed to the risk they don't come online when needed. So is the solution then to have an extra powered backup for the backup, how far do you take it?
I really think this whole argument of powering servers off is completely irrelevant and not economical (let alone common sense) except for extremely large sites that run large farms. Anything less is false economy, and the first time a site is down for a day because a server had to be rebuilt as a result of trying to save a few cents or dollars on the power bill, that will be the day management will mandate that under no circumstances are servers allowed to be powered off again except for maintenance.
Again, it's not the cost of the power that matters in 99% of companies, it's the risk to business continuity and data that is the more important factor, and that means running servers 24/7 is cheaper insurance than the problems that could occur by saving a little on power costs.
While it's cool technology and I absolutely love using ESX, I run several clusters, if you provide any services and provide any decent form of SLA, you actually can't afford to have the temporarily non-loaded or lightly loaded servers powered off. If another node failed during this period, the time to wake up the powered off server and then vmotion all the virtuals could be very long and likely cause problems with uptime, and thus the SLA you offer customers.
I still think powering servers off is the wrong answer, if you can power them then essentially they aren't needed. If you can power off an ESX node that has the virtuals vmotioned off it with none off the virtuals powered down, then that server clearly isn't needed, and what probably is, is a memory upgrade on the other nodes allowing more consolidation. but by reducing the number of nodes you increase the distributed load on each other machine, and increase the risk of failure. ESX nodes can be roughly thought as similar to a RAID 5 array, but with servers instead of disks.
I would think that if any servers can be regularly powered off, then they probably fall into one of two categories, they aren't really needed or they are only loaded at certain times. In both cases there's a good reason for consolidation, whether it be physical or virtual. obviously virtual gives the best bang for buck. I run several ESX clusters and despite dept's not trusting virtual servers, they all come around in the end. I think virtuals really are the only way to go to really save money, space, power, and the all important UPS load. Don't forget, the myth about hard disks dying after they have been running for a long time and then allowed to cool after a power failure, well that myth isn't a myth, it happens, and it happens a lot.
I cannot think of situation where powering off a server that is needed provides any benefit whatsoever, you might save a few dollars, but as we all know when you're IT dept struggles to get budget for anything, the risk of failure and the HUGE costs associated with that far outweigh ANY power savings you might achieve.
I don't give a rat's arse if powering off a few minor servers saves $100 a month, when if the disk dies after it cools down, and I then have to go into repair mode to find out what peculiar apps were installed on the server, somehow scrounge another system with no budget, and then rebuild the whole damn thing, only to find out the developers have changed so many configurations it takes weeks or months before everything is really working as it should. Even more joy is that usually occurs at night if power is lost, as we have nothing better to do anyway. NO THANKS!
For companies who have massive budgets for IT, and routinely swap out hard disks, etc, maybe that would work, most companies I know and have worked for over the years though tend to view IT as a parasitic loss centre run by people who spend there days watching the blinkety lights and having fun, "it's just a bunch of servers, how hard could it be" or "how much money could they need, I can go the PC shop and get a whole quad core rig for $600!"
But I will say, nothing gets Capital Exp forms signed faster than a major downtime!
So using your own analogy, Apple should be able to tell any other company or reseller to shove it as Apple has the right to do whatever it wants so long as it's in their EULA, but you say users SHOULDN'T have to agree with any EULA's they consider unreasonable as there should NO restrictions on users!
Couldn't disagree more, in real life in most companies people "gravitate" to their end jobs, "you looked after doc control, docs live on servers, let's make you a sys admin!". And yes, this is a real case, I have many, many more. And while you are the sole guy who got where you are because you did the hard slog, day and night at UNI, working part-time to eat, studying around the clock, and are now on call, looking after the whole setup, AND you have to work with people who don't want to do the hard yards themselves, but instead have it handed on a platter, do you then allocate even more of the unpaid time you currently work to make up for their.....(insert laziness, incompetence, indifference as required)?
Senior sometimes doesn't count for anything except on a resume when you look for a new job, but in a lot of companies that means that you run on a shoe-string budget, working 50-70 hour weeks for 38 hours pay, WHILE constantly training yourself. And you say I should also train the others who go at 5pm on the dot, and don't want to learn what they need??? So far as I'm concerned, IT is not just a job, it's a career and sometimes a way of life, and if you aren't prepared to do any of the hard slog yourself, you DON'T deserver to be there, dragging other people down, wasting their time, increasing their workload, and generally adding to their already stressful lives.
If all us admins took 2 minutes to fix a 2 minute problem, that would just serve to place unrealistic expectations that all problems require a 2 minute fix, thus leading to tears and suffering when a big problem occurs. And the user would probably also get upset!
I know of one guy here who has made a career out of looking busy walking around with a piece of paper while every 2 minute job takes AT LEAST a week! True! Unfortunately for us he is a moron, albeit a highly paid moron.
@sedmonds, I absolutely agree with you on this one, here in OZ there are some really woeful teachers. I don't know if it's the school saving dollars by hiring twits, or just bad luck. At my daughters school several of us parents had to band together and threaten to lodge official complaints with the DOE to get some adequate maths tutoring for the class. On some exams there were kids who in year 8 got 0 scores for very basic algebra.
Initially we were nice and tried to allow the school to fix the situation, but they just kept fobbing us off and we had to become VERY demanding and threatened to pull our kids out, (which really gets the governments notice) as well as lodge official complaints (which affect funding). We were told by the headmistress that even though the entire class was failing and at half-way through the year was 3 months behind, the maths teacher who was retiring the next year "was a really, really nice person" and maybe the kids could up the following year!
But then again, in the same school our son at a higher level had the most wonderful maths teachers possible and he thrived.
Funny enough while working for a fairly major tech company, I ordered a large amount of HP laptops, no special contracts or anything, but extended warranties on all. Over a 3 year period where we had the engineers previous laptops dying at the rate of around 4 or so with major failures, and a further few with more minor keyboard/screen/power supply issues every year, the HP's travelled the world and performed flawlessly, with only two service calls needed for approx 15 laptops, each had the spare part waiting within around 12 hours max.
With tape units the support is just perfect, a month ago we had a tape unit eject mechanism stuff up, with 1 month of a 3 year warranty to go, HP had a replacement (refurbished unit) there the following morning, unfortunately, it was DOA, (faulty power connection to the switch) so I rung HP and they had a brand new unit the following morning. Every corporate dealing I have had with HP over the last 10 years has been unbelievably good. I could reel other things like laptops people had password protected the BIOS that were'nt under warranty but HP spent 45mins on the phone helping me to remove it.
As a consumer though I must admit HP support left a lot to be desired, I recently had to go in to bat for my nephew who bought a laptop from Harvey Norman (who were the most useless and deceitful pricks possible to him and his mother). After 6 months it packed up with various faults, and then spent most of the following 6 months either in repairs, or sitting on the shelf at Harvey Norman who were lying and saying it was with the HP authorised repairer in Clayton. The repairer sent it back one last time but it packed up again with the same faults that day. I got involved as it had taken 6 weeks for the last repair and was now out of warranty, so the repairer who was supposed to have fixed it, stated it would cost around $1000 for repairs.
To HP's credit, when I initially rung them they correctly stated it was out warranty, but luckily I had collected all the paperwork, and hassled Harvey Norman for the previous repair details, as well as looking up HP's own part and maintenance manuals, and proved it was a recurring fault that had never been fixed despite being in for repairs 6 times! When I provided them the details of the shoddy repairs, along with their own recommended repair procedure for the faults, they immediately agreed to send it to the repairer, and the motherboard as well as the screen driver would be replaced regardless of any testing. Upon pickup (3 weeks later!) I made sure I obtained copies of all the repair paperwork, and got the staff to write down exactly what work was done. I immediately opened the unit up, and what dd I find, they hadn't replaced a single part, and the unit still had the same fault!
This then started a 2 month merry go round with HP, as I now had photo graphic proof of consumer fraud, as well as an authorised HP repairer deliberately forging repair docs, and charging HP for parts that were never fitted! In the end I had to send a fairly terse letter that if I didn't have a resolution by COB that day, I will be forwarding copies of all the photos I had taken of the parts before and after the "replacement", along with copies of the docs and parts serial numbers signed by the repairer that new parts had been fitted, to the entire Board of Directors of HP USA, as well as the local media, and a report to consumer affairs.
Within an hour HP had gotten back to me and offered a couple of very much higher specced models to choose from, along with an extended warranty in exchange for the dead laptop!
All in all, an absolutely horrible experience for my nephew and his mum, who saw his first laptop wasted, and then treated like crap by Harvey Norman at Southland, and then a HP repairer lying repeatedly and forging documents. Luckily the fact I work for a large corporation, and that I have enough knowledge and push allowed me to finally get satisfaction, but you just wouldn't believe how hard I had to work for it!
Point 1) As offered by the VENDOR, the customer simply exercised their LEGAL right to not agree with the EULA supplied with laptop as they didn't want the OS but wanted the laptop.
Point 2) Well, thats just silly. Again, please read Point 1.
But I suppose having people exercise their rights to not be ripped off by what amounts to not much more than collusion is somehow against the constitution?
Bear in mind, quite often in principle the groups supporting people like this, are also the groups supporting things like, not being discriminated against with DNA testing, health insurance, etc, etc. But I guess you would see things like that as bad for business too?
While I am sure someone will inevitably locate some obscure stores that you can buy non-OS supplied laptops, (probably for a premium), but has anyone here actually ever tried to buy a laptop without an OS, it's pretty damn hard. I well understand that this is done from a sellers point to offer a complete solution that fits 99% of the market, and in turn MS locks the sellers in with reseller contracts that benefit MS.
This is fine, but to obstruct customers from not paying extra for the software they are forced (and the important word here is FORCED) to buy when they want a laptop is plain wrong, and clearly in some countries, illegal. If I want an Asus laptop because of some particular feature or price, and want to run my own software on it, why the hell shouldn't I be able to return the supplied software for a refund, AS MOST EULA"s VERY CLEARLY STATE AND OFFER!
In sales speak this is nothing more than a line item, and shouldn't be any more complicated than "I'd like to return the software as I don't agree with the EULA and would like a refund". The only reason it is at all a problem, is because MS do not want consumers enforcing their legal rights.
Or as most people seem to think, should we all "just suck it up" even though we don't agree with it?
Well all I hope is that the they don't do to one of the best Sci-Fi's ever created, what they did to "War of the Worlds", another timeless classic. I think that Reeves should pull it off quite well unless they go all "sensitive new age" on the film. The Day the Earth Stood Still is still as good now, as the first time I saw it years and years ago.
I guess we should all be thankful that Tom Cruise wasn't cast as Klaatu!
I'm playing around with solar power myself on the cheap and there are a number of very worthwhile uses. For example, Ebay has a large number of sellers selling LED downlight replacements, (MR16) that draw around 100ma while producing a fairly large amount of light, although the angle is much narrower and whiter than halogen downlights. These generally are from around $5AU to $25AU depending on power rating.
There are also a number of intelligent (micro controlled) solar chargers, a good charger is critical to getting the best possible performance out of the cells, while keeping losses to a minimum, and also charging the batteries for maximum life. These are around $80-$125AU. Cells themselves are very cheap, now, Oatley Electronics over here sells a complete 100w package among others, with a battery and rudimentary charger.
Batteries can be obtained cheaply, I use electric wheelchair batteries rated at around 12v and 35 to 45amphour. These are designed for deep cycling and are usually replaced when the chairs are serviced, regardless of the condition. Batteries from auctions for commercial UPS'es are also great, usually 2v at around 100-200amphour! Just don't short them, can be very nasty.
I'm slowly adding additional standard downlight fittings to all the rooms in my house, and fitting LED downlights to run off (two at the moment) solar cells hooked up to a smart charger/regulator and 12v cells. No electrician required, no heat, very minimal expense, doesn't affect existing wiring, although clearly marking the cable runs is advised for safety. Long term i'll be hooking up to the solar system a ventilation system throughout the house to help with moving stagnant air from inside wardrobes, etc to cut down on any mildew problems in winter. As well as overhead fans during summer to help with circulating air.
All up for 2 x 12v 20watt cells, 20 odd LED downlights, a smart charger/regulator, and 3 x 12v batteries, i'm out around $450-$550AU. People might argue that if would ages to recover that cost in the electricity bill savings, but this isn't about just that, I can now also do things that I wouldn't normally do with standard electric powered stuff because the cost now is nill.
Seriously, what an amazingly well-researched, and informed article! This seems to be the same level of quality and insightful, professional journalism as some of the "articles" that Maureen O'Gara and Daniel Lyons came up with.
And for those who can't tell, yes, I am being very sarcastic. I am also using the term " articles" very, very loosely!
Wow, what an amazingly ignorant, and foolish remark!
Australians funny enough generally don't like to be pissed on their backs, and then be told it's raining!
Standing up for our rights to have choice, and not be forced to endure extra fee's at the whim of some organisation, is considered a natural right. How you confuse this with communism makes me wonder what brand cool-aid you've been drinking?
But how do you fight against (the large number of) serial fraudsters who claim they never got the goods, and as a seller you are at Ebay and Paypals mercy when it comes to these. So not only do you risk suffering chargebacks at any time on a whim, you also have to fight a (generally losing) battle with Paypal, it's not regulated so Paypal at the end of the day can do whatever they want! And they don't have to justify themselves either at any time to anyone.
Don't get me wrong, I think the idea of buyer protection is needed, but the problem is when it starts becoming one-sided, and is arbitrarily enforced by a greedy company, then there's something wrong.
I would strongly urge all OZ Ebayers to lodge a complaint online to the ACCC. I wouldn't be so worried if Paypal/Ebay didn't have carte-blanche to my accounts. But when they create a monoply like this and also increase the costs at the same time, while reducing the risk of financial security i think they really need to be taken to task and regulated just like any other financial institution's.
This is what i (very hurriedly) wrote to give some an idea of what to lodge if they want to complain but aren't sure what to write:
Ebay as of 17th June 2008 is removing all forms of payment from being allowed in almost all auctions and is forcing all sellers (and buyers) to instead use their Paypal online debit/credit system. This not only creates a banking and auction house monopoly for Paypal, and by extension Ebay, it also greatly increases the costs to all sellers who then are forced to partially subsidize the payments from buyers in the new multiple fees introduced. More worryingly though is the fact that while all other forms of payment, including direct bank deposit, arguably the most popular form of fast and fee-free payment system used in Australia, will not be allowed, Paypal is not a regulated bank, and as such we are literally at the mercy of Ebay/Paypal with absolutely no guarantees of security for our accounts. While Paypal and Ebay insist this is done to increase the safety of payments made for items purchased, there exists a long history of abuse from Paypal with regards to account freezes with no reasons provided, numerous cases of buyer fraud where items have been force ably and automatically refunded by Paypal to customers routinely claiming non-receipt of goods, debits for non-existent fees, etc. There is also virtually no form of arbitration when these events occur, with Paypal arbitrarily enforcing their will onto the consumers/sellers. Paypal also has the ability to withdraw funds from accounts and credit cards on a whim at any time, with no protection whatsoever to the consumer.
I'm guessing that maybe he is one of the talented bunch who actually takes pride in his abilities and instead of crying at broken drivers decides he'll have a crack at them himself, and share his results with the public for free?
And as for donations, I really don't understand why people are saying he shouldn't have accepted them, why the hell shouldn't he accept small gifts in the form of money from people appreciative of his efforts and time? He certainly didn't demand fee's, now that would be wrong and give cause for complaint.
As I stated in my previous post, all thoughts of COS simply being a harmless bunch of nutters doesn't go anywhere near describing the way the world would change if they had their way. In a COS world the doctor and psychiatrist who prescribed the medication keeping the persons psychotic behaviour under control, along with the company manufacturing the drugs, WOULD ALL BE THROWN IN JAIL!
This is the scary reality of the view that COS is the only organisation in the UNIVERSE that can save and run this planet, these are their own words by the way.
Seriously, read up on it, www.xenu.net is a great start to get the facts on this group. I am really horrified at the amount of power and wealth this group wields, mostly through intimidation. Probably from a US specific view, the worst realisation would be members of COS running for government, a COS staffer being given the health or mental heath port-folio would be a worst case scenario. The more people become informed with the intent and activities of COS, the better for humanity. And if you think this sounds extreme, remember that this is an organisation that would make criminal any form of Phsycology and Psychiatry. Along with ALL the pharmaceutical companies. Simply because any form of heath or mental health treatment directly competes with their money making scheme.
Without starting a flame war on who has the best imaginary friend, and while there are many valid points raised as to the validity of reilgion with regards to suicide bombings, hangings, etc, I should have generalized more along the lines of "modern day, somewhat civilized" religions. In other words religions that over the millennium have evolved from the original (somewhat fairly hideous and violent) sect beginnings to what most western based religions are now, which for all their faults generally try to be a positive source of strength and support in todays society. Unlike specifically the money making machine that is the COS built on a Sci-Fi story as part of a bet, that routinely victimises and harasses any form of opposition, sometimes to their deaths.
Thanks to living in democracies, people can voice their opinion that the COS is being picked on, or question how is it different to any modern day religion, and so on, but I would not expect that the vast majority of people in the western world would even remotely consider suicide bombings, hangings, persecution, etc, to be the norm in religion. And for that same reason, I don't think it unreasonable to consider the "documented and recorded" behaviour and practices of the COS falls most certainly more into the organised cult area than a western based church. Especially given that people have no excuse to not know more about COS with the release of large amounts of information legally and illegaly.
Sometimes people confuse playing Devil's Advocate with being pedantic.
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Actually as I mentioned earlier, the inrush current at power on is statistically what causes the most failures in servers. That combined with the other problem of "stiction" where hard disks that have been running for extended times are allowed to cool. Generally a percentage will either plain die, or will develop stiction whereby the heads can't develop enough inertia to move, hence the click-click sound often heard with HDD's. The idea that constant current causes damage to servers is only true if it is not limited to a value equal or below what the components are rated at. Allowing the +/- 10% fluctuations that is. Most enterprise grade servers deliberately run components like fans at higher voltages at power on to stress test during boot, this is why servers are noisy as hell for the first couple of minutes at power up and then settle down a bit. If the filtering isn't great, the inductive load, and ripple this can present to other components can often be enough to push it over the edge. Any onboard RAID controllers will also do a fair bit of interrogating of attached disks, again always not good for disks that have been running for years, and then powered off.
I still think powering off a server is simply false economy in almost every corporate environment I can think of. Ever been in a datacentre where the UPS has failed? It's very scary! Pot luck if they all come up. The longer they've been running is directly proportional to the risk of failure.
The analogy is actually spot on sorry! Power up and the associated current surge is when most server components fail. Your own explanation bears this out, if the light bulb was left on, it has a much reduced chance of blowing! Same with servers!
While servers != light bulbs (servers usually aren't round), being pedantic about it doesn't contribute anything.
I can you from my experience vMotion along with DRS and HA are absolutely awesome, no real troubles, but amazing increase of performance and availability. And at a very reasonable price I would say. But I would still baulk at the idea of powering servers off to save cents on power, as opposed to the risk they don't come online when needed. So is the solution then to have an extra powered backup for the backup, how far do you take it?
I really think this whole argument of powering servers off is completely irrelevant and not economical (let alone common sense) except for extremely large sites that run large farms. Anything less is false economy, and the first time a site is down for a day because a server had to be rebuilt as a result of trying to save a few cents or dollars on the power bill, that will be the day management will mandate that under no circumstances are servers allowed to be powered off again except for maintenance.
Again, it's not the cost of the power that matters in 99% of companies, it's the risk to business continuity and data that is the more important factor, and that means running servers 24/7 is cheaper insurance than the problems that could occur by saving a little on power costs.
While it's cool technology and I absolutely love using ESX, I run several clusters, if you provide any services and provide any decent form of SLA, you actually can't afford to have the temporarily non-loaded or lightly loaded servers powered off. If another node failed during this period, the time to wake up the powered off server and then vmotion all the virtuals could be very long and likely cause problems with uptime, and thus the SLA you offer customers.
I still think powering servers off is the wrong answer, if you can power them then essentially they aren't needed. If you can power off an ESX node that has the virtuals vmotioned off it with none off the virtuals powered down, then that server clearly isn't needed, and what probably is, is a memory upgrade on the other nodes allowing more consolidation. but by reducing the number of nodes you increase the distributed load on each other machine, and increase the risk of failure. ESX nodes can be roughly thought as similar to a RAID 5 array, but with servers instead of disks.
I would think that if any servers can be regularly powered off, then they probably fall into one of two categories, they aren't really needed or they are only loaded at certain times. In both cases there's a good reason for consolidation, whether it be physical or virtual. obviously virtual gives the best bang for buck. I run several ESX clusters and despite dept's not trusting virtual servers, they all come around in the end. I think virtuals really are the only way to go to really save money, space, power, and the all important UPS load. Don't forget, the myth about hard disks dying after they have been running for a long time and then allowed to cool after a power failure, well that myth isn't a myth, it happens, and it happens a lot.
I cannot think of situation where powering off a server that is needed provides any benefit whatsoever, you might save a few dollars, but as we all know when you're IT dept struggles to get budget for anything, the risk of failure and the HUGE costs associated with that far outweigh ANY power savings you might achieve.
I don't give a rat's arse if powering off a few minor servers saves $100 a month, when if the disk dies after it cools down, and I then have to go into repair mode to find out what peculiar apps were installed on the server, somehow scrounge another system with no budget, and then rebuild the whole damn thing, only to find out the developers have changed so many configurations it takes weeks or months before everything is really working as it should. Even more joy is that usually occurs at night if power is lost, as we have nothing better to do anyway. NO THANKS!
For companies who have massive budgets for IT, and routinely swap out hard disks, etc, maybe that would work, most companies I know and have worked for over the years though tend to view IT as a parasitic loss centre run by people who spend there days watching the blinkety lights and having fun, "it's just a bunch of servers, how hard could it be" or "how much money could they need, I can go the PC shop and get a whole quad core rig for $600!"
But I will say, nothing gets Capital Exp forms signed faster than a major downtime!
So using your own analogy, Apple should be able to tell any other company or reseller to shove it as Apple has the right to do whatever it wants so long as it's in their EULA, but you say users SHOULDN'T have to agree with any EULA's they consider unreasonable as there should NO restrictions on users!
Strange kind of hypocrisy don't you think?
Couldn't disagree more, in real life in most companies people "gravitate" to their end jobs, "you looked after doc control, docs live on servers, let's make you a sys admin!". And yes, this is a real case, I have many, many more. And while you are the sole guy who got where you are because you did the hard slog, day and night at UNI, working part-time to eat, studying around the clock, and are now on call, looking after the whole setup, AND you have to work with people who don't want to do the hard yards themselves, but instead have it handed on a platter, do you then allocate even more of the unpaid time you currently work to make up for their .....(insert laziness, incompetence, indifference as required)?
Senior sometimes doesn't count for anything except on a resume when you look for a new job, but in a lot of companies that means that you run on a shoe-string budget, working 50-70 hour weeks for 38 hours pay, WHILE constantly training yourself. And you say I should also train the others who go at 5pm on the dot, and don't want to learn what they need??? So far as I'm concerned, IT is not just a job, it's a career and sometimes a way of life, and if you aren't prepared to do any of the hard slog yourself, you DON'T deserver to be there, dragging other people down, wasting their time, increasing their workload, and generally adding to their already stressful lives.
But that's my opinion!
And so far as i'm concerned, ANY of the "**** On Board" stickers automatically make you a target of derision.
If all us admins took 2 minutes to fix a 2 minute problem, that would just serve to place unrealistic expectations that all problems require a 2 minute fix, thus leading to tears and suffering when a big problem occurs. And the user would probably also get upset!
I know of one guy here who has made a career out of looking busy walking around with a piece of paper while every 2 minute job takes AT LEAST a week! True! Unfortunately for us he is a moron, albeit a highly paid moron.
@sedmonds, I absolutely agree with you on this one, here in OZ there are some really woeful teachers. I don't know if it's the school saving dollars by hiring twits, or just bad luck. At my daughters school several of us parents had to band together and threaten to lodge official complaints with the DOE to get some adequate maths tutoring for the class. On some exams there were kids who in year 8 got 0 scores for very basic algebra.
Initially we were nice and tried to allow the school to fix the situation, but they just kept fobbing us off and we had to become VERY demanding and threatened to pull our kids out, (which really gets the governments notice) as well as lodge official complaints (which affect funding). We were told by the headmistress that even though the entire class was failing and at half-way through the year was 3 months behind, the maths teacher who was retiring the next year "was a really, really nice person" and maybe the kids could up the following year!
But then again, in the same school our son at a higher level had the most wonderful maths teachers possible and he thrived.
Funny enough while working for a fairly major tech company, I ordered a large amount of HP laptops, no special contracts or anything, but extended warranties on all. Over a 3 year period where we had the engineers previous laptops dying at the rate of around 4 or so with major failures, and a further few with more minor keyboard/screen/power supply issues every year, the HP's travelled the world and performed flawlessly, with only two service calls needed for approx 15 laptops, each had the spare part waiting within around 12 hours max.
With tape units the support is just perfect, a month ago we had a tape unit eject mechanism stuff up, with 1 month of a 3 year warranty to go, HP had a replacement (refurbished unit) there the following morning, unfortunately, it was DOA, (faulty power connection to the switch) so I rung HP and they had a brand new unit the following morning. Every corporate dealing I have had with HP over the last 10 years has been unbelievably good. I could reel other things like laptops people had password protected the BIOS that were'nt under warranty but HP spent 45mins on the phone helping me to remove it.
As a consumer though I must admit HP support left a lot to be desired, I recently had to go in to bat for my nephew who bought a laptop from Harvey Norman (who were the most useless and deceitful pricks possible to him and his mother). After 6 months it packed up with various faults, and then spent most of the following 6 months either in repairs, or sitting on the shelf at Harvey Norman who were lying and saying it was with the HP authorised repairer in Clayton. The repairer sent it back one last time but it packed up again with the same faults that day. I got involved as it had taken 6 weeks for the last repair and was now out of warranty, so the repairer who was supposed to have fixed it, stated it would cost around $1000 for repairs.
To HP's credit, when I initially rung them they correctly stated it was out warranty, but luckily I had collected all the paperwork, and hassled Harvey Norman for the previous repair details, as well as looking up HP's own part and maintenance manuals, and proved it was a recurring fault that had never been fixed despite being in for repairs 6 times! When I provided them the details of the shoddy repairs, along with their own recommended repair procedure for the faults, they immediately agreed to send it to the repairer, and the motherboard as well as the screen driver would be replaced regardless of any testing. Upon pickup (3 weeks later!) I made sure I obtained copies of all the repair paperwork, and got the staff to write down exactly what work was done. I immediately opened the unit up, and what dd I find, they hadn't replaced a single part, and the unit still had the same fault!
This then started a 2 month merry go round with HP, as I now had photo graphic proof of consumer fraud, as well as an authorised HP repairer deliberately forging repair docs, and charging HP for parts that were never fitted! In the end I had to send a fairly terse letter that if I didn't have a resolution by COB that day, I will be forwarding copies of all the photos I had taken of the parts before and after the "replacement", along with copies of the docs and parts serial numbers signed by the repairer that new parts had been fitted, to the entire Board of Directors of HP USA, as well as the local media, and a report to consumer affairs.
Within an hour HP had gotten back to me and offered a couple of very much higher specced models to choose from, along with an extended warranty in exchange for the dead laptop!
All in all, an absolutely horrible experience for my nephew and his mum, who saw his first laptop wasted, and then treated like crap by Harvey Norman at Southland, and then a HP repairer lying repeatedly and forging documents. Luckily the fact I work for a large corporation, and that I have enough knowledge and push allowed me to finally get satisfaction, but you just wouldn't believe how hard I had to work for it!
I like your enthusiasm but you're wrong!
Point 1) As offered by the VENDOR, the customer simply exercised their LEGAL right to not agree with the EULA supplied with laptop as they didn't want the OS but wanted the laptop.
Point 2) Well, thats just silly. Again, please read Point 1.
But I suppose having people exercise their rights to not be ripped off by what amounts to not much more than collusion is somehow against the constitution?
Bear in mind, quite often in principle the groups supporting people like this, are also the groups supporting things like, not being discriminated against with DNA testing, health insurance, etc, etc. But I guess you would see things like that as bad for business too?
While I am sure someone will inevitably locate some obscure stores that you can buy non-OS supplied laptops, (probably for a premium), but has anyone here actually ever tried to buy a laptop without an OS, it's pretty damn hard. I well understand that this is done from a sellers point to offer a complete solution that fits 99% of the market, and in turn MS locks the sellers in with reseller contracts that benefit MS.
This is fine, but to obstruct customers from not paying extra for the software they are forced (and the important word here is FORCED) to buy when they want a laptop is plain wrong, and clearly in some countries, illegal. If I want an Asus laptop because of some particular feature or price, and want to run my own software on it, why the hell shouldn't I be able to return the supplied software for a refund, AS MOST EULA"s VERY CLEARLY STATE AND OFFER!
In sales speak this is nothing more than a line item, and shouldn't be any more complicated than "I'd like to return the software as I don't agree with the EULA and would like a refund". The only reason it is at all a problem, is because MS do not want consumers enforcing their legal rights.
Or as most people seem to think, should we all "just suck it up" even though we don't agree with it?
Well all I hope is that the they don't do to one of the best Sci-Fi's ever created, what they did to "War of the Worlds", another timeless classic. I think that Reeves should pull it off quite well unless they go all "sensitive new age" on the film. The Day the Earth Stood Still is still as good now, as the first time I saw it years and years ago.
I guess we should all be thankful that Tom Cruise wasn't cast as Klaatu!
I'm playing around with solar power myself on the cheap and there are a number of very worthwhile uses. For example, Ebay has a large number of sellers selling LED downlight replacements, (MR16) that draw around 100ma while producing a fairly large amount of light, although the angle is much narrower and whiter than halogen downlights. These generally are from around $5AU to $25AU depending on power rating.
There are also a number of intelligent (micro controlled) solar chargers, a good charger is critical to getting the best possible performance out of the cells, while keeping losses to a minimum, and also charging the batteries for maximum life. These are around $80-$125AU. Cells themselves are very cheap, now, Oatley Electronics over here sells a complete 100w package among others, with a battery and rudimentary charger.
Batteries can be obtained cheaply, I use electric wheelchair batteries rated at around 12v and 35 to 45amphour. These are designed for deep cycling and are usually replaced when the chairs are serviced, regardless of the condition. Batteries from auctions for commercial UPS'es are also great, usually 2v at around 100-200amphour! Just don't short them, can be very nasty.
I'm slowly adding additional standard downlight fittings to all the rooms in my house, and fitting LED downlights to run off (two at the moment) solar cells hooked up to a smart charger/regulator and 12v cells. No electrician required, no heat, very minimal expense, doesn't affect existing wiring, although clearly marking the cable runs is advised for safety. Long term i'll be hooking up to the solar system a ventilation system throughout the house to help with moving stagnant air from inside wardrobes, etc to cut down on any mildew problems in winter. As well as overhead fans during summer to help with circulating air.
All up for 2 x 12v 20watt cells, 20 odd LED downlights, a smart charger/regulator, and 3 x 12v batteries, i'm out around $450-$550AU. People might argue that if would ages to recover that cost in the electricity bill savings, but this isn't about just that, I can now also do things that I wouldn't normally do with standard electric powered stuff because the cost now is nill.
Seriously, what an amazingly well-researched, and informed article! This seems to be the same level of quality and insightful, professional journalism as some of the "articles" that Maureen O'Gara and Daniel Lyons came up with.
And for those who can't tell, yes, I am being very sarcastic. I am also using the term " articles" very, very loosely!
Why wasn't the Chewbacca Defense invoked?
Wow, what an amazingly ignorant, and foolish remark!
Australians funny enough generally don't like to be pissed on their backs, and then be told it's raining!
Standing up for our rights to have choice, and not be forced to endure extra fee's at the whim of some organisation, is considered a natural right. How you confuse this with communism makes me wonder what brand cool-aid you've been drinking?
But how do you fight against (the large number of) serial fraudsters who claim they never got the goods, and as a seller you are at Ebay and Paypals mercy when it comes to these. So not only do you risk suffering chargebacks at any time on a whim, you also have to fight a (generally losing) battle with Paypal, it's not regulated so Paypal at the end of the day can do whatever they want! And they don't have to justify themselves either at any time to anyone.
Don't get me wrong, I think the idea of buyer protection is needed, but the problem is when it starts becoming one-sided, and is arbitrarily enforced by a greedy company, then there's something wrong.
I would strongly urge all OZ Ebayers to lodge a complaint online to the ACCC. I wouldn't be so worried if Paypal/Ebay didn't have carte-blanche to my accounts. But when they create a monoply like this and also increase the costs at the same time, while reducing the risk of financial security i think they really need to be taken to task and regulated just like any other financial institution's.
Lodge a complaint at (general complaints form):
http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml?itemId=54217
This is what i (very hurriedly) wrote to give some an idea of what to lodge if they want to complain but aren't sure what to write:
Ebay as of 17th June 2008 is removing all forms of payment from being allowed in almost all auctions and is forcing all sellers (and buyers) to instead use their Paypal online debit/credit system. This not only creates a banking and auction house monopoly for Paypal, and by extension Ebay, it also greatly increases the costs to all sellers who then are forced to partially subsidize the payments from buyers in the new multiple fees introduced. More worryingly though is the fact that while all other forms of payment, including direct bank deposit, arguably the most popular form of fast and fee-free payment system used in Australia, will not be allowed, Paypal is not a regulated bank, and as such we are literally at the mercy of Ebay/Paypal with absolutely no guarantees of security for our accounts.
While Paypal and Ebay insist this is done to increase the safety of payments made for items purchased, there exists a long history of abuse from Paypal with regards to account freezes with no reasons provided, numerous cases of buyer fraud where items have been force ably and automatically refunded by Paypal to customers routinely claiming non-receipt of goods, debits for non-existent fees, etc. There is also virtually no form of arbitration when these events occur, with Paypal arbitrarily enforcing their will onto the consumers/sellers. Paypal also has the ability to withdraw funds from accounts and credit cards on a whim at any time, with no protection whatsoever to the consumer.
I'm guessing that maybe he is one of the talented bunch who actually takes pride in his abilities and instead of crying at broken drivers decides he'll have a crack at them himself, and share his results with the public for free? And as for donations, I really don't understand why people are saying he shouldn't have accepted them, why the hell shouldn't he accept small gifts in the form of money from people appreciative of his efforts and time? He certainly didn't demand fee's, now that would be wrong and give cause for complaint.
As I stated in my previous post, all thoughts of COS simply being a harmless bunch of nutters doesn't go anywhere near describing the way the world would change if they had their way. In a COS world the doctor and psychiatrist who prescribed the medication keeping the persons psychotic behaviour under control, along with the company manufacturing the drugs, WOULD ALL BE THROWN IN JAIL! This is the scary reality of the view that COS is the only organisation in the UNIVERSE that can save and run this planet, these are their own words by the way.
Seriously, read up on it, www.xenu.net is a great start to get the facts on this group. I am really horrified at the amount of power and wealth this group wields, mostly through intimidation. Probably from a US specific view, the worst realisation would be members of COS running for government, a COS staffer being given the health or mental heath port-folio would be a worst case scenario. The more people become informed with the intent and activities of COS, the better for humanity. And if you think this sounds extreme, remember that this is an organisation that would make criminal any form of Phsycology and Psychiatry. Along with ALL the pharmaceutical companies. Simply because any form of heath or mental health treatment directly competes with their money making scheme.
If they've been proven to be lairs, wouldn't that then fall into the realm of common sense?
Without starting a flame war on who has the best imaginary friend, and while there are many valid points raised as to the validity of reilgion with regards to suicide bombings, hangings, etc, I should have generalized more along the lines of "modern day, somewhat civilized" religions. In other words religions that over the millennium have evolved from the original (somewhat fairly hideous and violent) sect beginnings to what most western based religions are now, which for all their faults generally try to be a positive source of strength and support in todays society. Unlike specifically the money making machine that is the COS built on a Sci-Fi story as part of a bet, that routinely victimises and harasses any form of opposition, sometimes to their deaths. Thanks to living in democracies, people can voice their opinion that the COS is being picked on, or question how is it different to any modern day religion, and so on, but I would not expect that the vast majority of people in the western world would even remotely consider suicide bombings, hangings, persecution, etc, to be the norm in religion. And for that same reason, I don't think it unreasonable to consider the "documented and recorded" behaviour and practices of the COS falls most certainly more into the organised cult area than a western based church. Especially given that people have no excuse to not know more about COS with the release of large amounts of information legally and illegaly. Sometimes people confuse playing Devil's Advocate with being pedantic.