Something else I forgot to add. Vista performance seems to be tied to closely to drivers. The guy at work with the new quad-core HP says his dual-core Dell still boots faster (dunno exact specs). Another guy at work says his wife's $500 Toshiba laptop came with Vista and it performs fine for her. He didn't know specifics but said if it totally sucked his wife would make sure he knew about it.:-)
So maybe a big part of the Vista performance problem is the drivers. Some vendors must have 1/2 baked drivers released and it shows. Not at all unlike Vista itself;-)
The thread on this subject the other day had an good comment from a former MS employee. Vista works well if you do the following
1. Turn of Aero 2. Switch to Classic mode/view whatever it is called (makes it look like Windows 2000) 3. Go into System properties and set to optimize for best performance.
A friend tried it on two systems (one is a new quad-core) and is much happier now. So where does that get you? Basically, system that looks like Windows 2000, performs like XP, and has the underneath the cover features of Vista like "enhanced" security, searching, etc.
I haven't tried Vista yet because of the lackluster performance and no compelling reasons to run it. Knowing it can be setup to run faster is nice but I still can't see anyone spending money on Vista just to turn off all of the eye candy.
I'll stick with XP at work and Ubuntu & XP at home for now.
I believe it works this way. The record companies pay artists royalties and they pay the RIAA as well. I don't think the artists pay the RIAA. It seems to me that IF the RIAA is going to pay anyone it is going to be the record companies. If that happens will the record companies kick any money back to the artists? I doubt it.
What if the electric companies managed your power usage? Imagine if they could determine that you ran the AC too much or ran the hot water heater too warm and could restrict the power those devices could use. Geez things would not work as expected and if you didn't know any better you would think something is wrong with the devices.
What if the power companies let customers opt in to a system that would turn off certain devices during peak usage? OMGWTFSANDWICH power companies already do this. In my area customers can get a small discount on their monthly bill if they let the power company hook up a small device that will cut off their hot water heater during peak usage.
To me it sounds like the Comcast network can't handle the customer load. They advertised how much faster they are than DSL and sold too much. Now they don't have the resources or the want to build the infrastructure they need to handle things. The cheap way out is to restrict usage and charge the same. -- Screwing the customer.
Comcast could run a program similar to the power companies. Let customers opt-in and offer them a small discount on their monthly bill. For that discounted rate the customer would allow to do some kind of throttling during peak usage.
My local CompUSA has been a terrible place to shop for many years. Nothing was priced, things were misplaced, and the workers were nowhere to be found on the floor or allowed to be helpful in any way.
My friends and I gave up on CompUSA years ago. Most folks I know only go there if they are in desperate need of something and can't wait for mail order.
What a shame. Now my local options will be whatever Best Buy and Circuit City carry. There will be the occasional mom&pop store that will open up but for the most part I will continue to mail order. I hear Fry's is a great store but I have never been to one nor do I expect them to open one in my area any time soon.
Some guys did a research paper on the Mass. lottery many years ago and found basically the same thing. 10,000 people play 1,2,3,4,5,6 each week and you are better of to play combinations that have at least one number greater than 31.
Having at least one number greater than 31 doesn't increase your odds of winning but it does mean you are less likely to split the winnings if you do win.
It is all about choosing the right tool for a job. Sometimes you use a new tool and you wind up feeling like you are trying to put in a screw with a hammer. Sure it will work but not the way you want.
Sometimes you go back to the tool you know how to use best.
I hear ya man. People tend to trivialize the amount of work it takes to do something if they aren't the ones doing it.
I have over 10yrs at a college that is mostly a Windows shop but plagued with the many of the same issues you stated. My first few years were doing desktop and departmental server stuff like yourself. Then I moved over to the infrastructure type stuff taking care of the enterprise servers, LAN, WAN, Active Directory, email (Exchange), firewall, VPN, DNS, DHCP, etc. Add on to that a variety of apps (WebCT, fund-raising app, custom apps, etc) that just get dropped in your lap. Some of these apps require quite a bit of babysitting in addition to normal maintenance.
In order to gain some sanity we have *tried* (with some success) to require that new systems/apps include a budgeted position. A few yeas ago the powers that be decided it was time for an imaging system. Well we (IT) said no problem just give us another staff position so we can dedicate them to it. That project had enough bigwigs behind it that getting a new position wasn't really a problem.
[edit - I had a really long rant about our history with WebCT but I cut it down to just this] We weren't as lucky with WebCT. We are still helping babysit that 800 LB gorilla. What was a collection of PERL scripts with a simple install/patch/upgrade is more. Nobody wants to take ownership of it now that it is so widely used and really really needs a dedicated person with tech skills.
Like I said before, people tend to trivialize the amount of work it takes to do something if they aren't the ones doing it.
Because anybody with a clue is using VoIP by this point
Just to add more fuel to the fire you shouldn't have started. Because anybody with a clue is NOT blindly using VoIP at this point.
VoIP is fine for non-essential areas or if you have a POTS to back it up. I live in an area that sees power outages often enough to care... think hurricanes.:-) Try dialing 911 when the power is out on your VoIP line. When the power is out POTS will usually work if you have a regular old corded phone in the house.
And don't get me started on how many of the VoIP systems sound horrible. We have a few smaller vendors that have switched to VoIP systems and it is obvious from the start. The calls sound so bad they call back on their cell phones... which by the way are not really much better.
Who cares? It all depends on your driving style. If you run around do an excessive amount of speeding, accelerating, and delayed braking then you probably aren't going to get close to the EPA MPG ratings in ANY kind of vehicle.
I see it every day during my commute. SUVs speeding along, tailgating, braking, accelerating back up to speeding.... lather, rinse, repeat.
Our new car shows current MPG and MPG for each trip meter. It has done wonders for how we drive every day. It turns into a little game.
I didn't see SIP support in my scan of the article. I currently have that ability with Trillian via a free 3rd party plugin to use SIP to connect to my employer's MS LiveCommunications server.
I am not sure if that is a must have for me so I will give the new version a try.
It looks like you play some stuff I like so I'm tuning in now. Check out radioparadise.com. Ignore the look and feel part and look at the content. The playlist, ratings, comments, etc.
How many of the EU registrations are clear attempts to catch typos looking for an EDU domain traffic. Some are just typo squatters and some are looking for more...
Upper management has already made the decision for us to do the same thing. They chose MS Live Mail for a few reasons.
1. It is free. To do it ourselves would be expensive when you start looking at the HW requirements. 2. No ads for current students. Once they become alumni MS will put ads in their stuff. 3. When the decision was made, Google supposedly wanted 10K a year. Now its free I think. 4. Colleges want student email so they can eliminate paper communications (save on postage) for "official" communications.
MS is trying to build up their Live Mail user base so they can afford to give it away to schools for now.
I am no fan of student email or going with the MS solution but it wasn't my decision to make. I can think of worse solutions.
Companies that venture beyond their core skill set rarely get things right the first couple of times. Sometimes they never get it right but they don't care because it is all about making more money and/or keeping control.
Companies like MS, Cisco, IBM, et. al. typically don't want to coexist with complementary companies. It just goes against their greedy nature. They usually try to buy them or drive them out of business through competition.
There must be a theory that states this is good for consumers but we all know that it isn't always the case.
It makes you wonder how many translations of other books (cough cough the Bible) had similar variations. Over time which translations become the official one. The same variations happen with verbal retelling of stories. Anyone ever play the "phone game" in elementary school?
It is no wonder why there are so many variations within a single religion. If these sects within a single religion can't always get along then why do people have any expectations of major religions will get along with one another?
The way to ruin a good thing is for someone to try and make a buck from it. Just about every time the marketing industry gets wind of a free way to advertise they destroy they system they exploit.
A more effective method would be to redirect web clients to a page explaining they are being blocked/quarantined, why they are being blocked, and how they can become unblocked.
I'm sure it would be next to impossible to get this system up but its one idea.
Slashdot Mirror
Something else I forgot to add. Vista performance seems to be tied to closely to drivers. The guy at work with the new quad-core HP says his dual-core Dell still boots faster (dunno exact specs). Another guy at work says his wife's $500 Toshiba laptop came with Vista and it performs fine for her. He didn't know specifics but said if it totally sucked his wife would make sure he knew about it. :-)
;-)
So maybe a big part of the Vista performance problem is the drivers. Some vendors must have 1/2 baked drivers released and it shows. Not at all unlike Vista itself
The thread on this subject the other day had an good comment from a former MS employee. Vista works well if you do the following
1. Turn of Aero
2. Switch to Classic mode/view whatever it is called (makes it look like Windows 2000)
3. Go into System properties and set to optimize for best performance.
A friend tried it on two systems (one is a new quad-core) and is much happier now. So where does that get you? Basically, system that looks like Windows 2000, performs like XP, and has the underneath the cover features of Vista like "enhanced" security, searching, etc.
I haven't tried Vista yet because of the lackluster performance and no compelling reasons to run it. Knowing it can be setup to run faster is nice but I still can't see anyone spending money on Vista just to turn off all of the eye candy.
I'll stick with XP at work and Ubuntu & XP at home for now.
I believe it works this way. The record companies pay artists royalties and they pay the RIAA as well. I don't think the artists pay the RIAA. It seems to me that IF the RIAA is going to pay anyone it is going to be the record companies. If that happens will the record companies kick any money back to the artists? I doubt it.
What if the electric companies managed your power usage? Imagine if they could determine that you ran the AC too much or ran the hot water heater too warm and could restrict the power those devices could use. Geez things would not work as expected and if you didn't know any better you would think something is wrong with the devices.
What if the power companies let customers opt in to a system that would turn off certain devices during peak usage? OMGWTFSANDWICH power companies already do this. In my area customers can get a small discount on their monthly bill if they let the power company hook up a small device that will cut off their hot water heater during peak usage.
To me it sounds like the Comcast network can't handle the customer load. They advertised how much faster they are than DSL and sold too much. Now they don't have the resources or the want to build the infrastructure they need to handle things. The cheap way out is to restrict usage and charge the same. -- Screwing the customer.
Comcast could run a program similar to the power companies. Let customers opt-in and offer them a small discount on their monthly bill. For that discounted rate the customer would allow to do some kind of throttling during peak usage.
You local power company said they are going to decide how much power will be allocated to each device in your house.
My local CompUSA has been a terrible place to shop for many years. Nothing was priced, things were misplaced, and the workers were nowhere to be found on the floor or allowed to be helpful in any way.
My friends and I gave up on CompUSA years ago. Most folks I know only go there if they are in desperate need of something and can't wait for mail order.
What a shame. Now my local options will be whatever Best Buy and Circuit City carry. There will be the occasional mom&pop store that will open up but for the most part I will continue to mail order. I hear Fry's is a great store but I have never been to one nor do I expect them to open one in my area any time soon.
Some guys did a research paper on the Mass. lottery many years ago and found basically the same thing. 10,000 people play 1,2,3,4,5,6 each week and you are better of to play combinations that have at least one number greater than 31.
Having at least one number greater than 31 doesn't increase your odds of winning but it does mean you are less likely to split the winnings if you do win.
EDGE sucks!!!! :-D
It is all about choosing the right tool for a job. Sometimes you use a new tool and you wind up feeling like you are trying to put in a screw with a hammer. Sure it will work but not the way you want.
Sometimes you go back to the tool you know how to use best.
I haven't fully thought this out but I wonder how different these things would go if it were illegal to ever give up your rights.
I hear ya man. People tend to trivialize the amount of work it takes to do something if they aren't the ones doing it.
I have over 10yrs at a college that is mostly a Windows shop but plagued with the many of the same issues you stated. My first few years were doing desktop and departmental server stuff like yourself. Then I moved over to the infrastructure type stuff taking care of the enterprise servers, LAN, WAN, Active Directory, email (Exchange), firewall, VPN, DNS, DHCP, etc. Add on to that a variety of apps (WebCT, fund-raising app, custom apps, etc) that just get dropped in your lap. Some of these apps require quite a bit of babysitting in addition to normal maintenance.
In order to gain some sanity we have *tried* (with some success) to require that new systems/apps include a budgeted position. A few yeas ago the powers that be decided it was time for an imaging system. Well we (IT) said no problem just give us another staff position so we can dedicate them to it. That project had enough bigwigs behind it that getting a new position wasn't really a problem.
[edit - I had a really long rant about our history with WebCT but I cut it down to just this]
We weren't as lucky with WebCT. We are still helping babysit that 800 LB gorilla. What was a collection of PERL scripts with a simple install/patch/upgrade is more. Nobody wants to take ownership of it now that it is so widely used and really really needs a dedicated person with tech skills.
Like I said before, people tend to trivialize the amount of work it takes to do something if they aren't the ones doing it.
I read Wii (instead of Will) at first and second glance. I don't have one but it is obviously in the headlines too much. :-)
Because anybody with a clue is using VoIP by this point
... think hurricanes. :-) Try dialing 911 when the power is out on your VoIP line. When the power is out POTS will usually work if you have a regular old corded phone in the house.
... which by the way are not really much better.
Just to add more fuel to the fire you shouldn't have started. Because anybody with a clue is NOT blindly using VoIP at this point.
VoIP is fine for non-essential areas or if you have a POTS to back it up. I live in an area that sees power outages often enough to care
And don't get me started on how many of the VoIP systems sound horrible. We have a few smaller vendors that have switched to VoIP systems and it is obvious from the start. The calls sound so bad they call back on their cell phones
Who cares? It all depends on your driving style. If you run around do an excessive amount of speeding, accelerating, and delayed braking then you probably aren't going to get close to the EPA MPG ratings in ANY kind of vehicle.
.... lather, rinse, repeat.
I see it every day during my commute. SUVs speeding along, tailgating, braking, accelerating back up to speeding
Our new car shows current MPG and MPG for each trip meter. It has done wonders for how we drive every day. It turns into a little game.
So if everyone is smart enough to buy used then what happens? Will it drive down the price of new products?
For now the used market relies on these "morons".
I didn't see SIP support in my scan of the article. I currently have that ability with Trillian via a free 3rd party plugin to use SIP to connect to my employer's MS LiveCommunications server.
I am not sure if that is a must have for me so I will give the new version a try.
It looks like you play some stuff I like so I'm tuning in now. Check out radioparadise.com. Ignore the look and feel part and look at the content. The playlist, ratings, comments, etc.
Didn't MS say the same thing about Linux? Seriously, didn't they?
How many of the EU registrations are clear attempts to catch typos looking for an EDU domain traffic. Some are just typo squatters and some are looking for more ...
http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=1866
That and maybe a little bit of badmouthing the free VMWare Server product to drive people to use the MS Virtual Server?
All and all nothing great to read unless you are new to virtualization and some of the basics explained to you.
Virtualization is like any other tool, it isn't the always the answer but when appropriate it is a good thing.
Upper management has already made the decision for us to do the same thing. They chose MS Live Mail for a few reasons.
1. It is free. To do it ourselves would be expensive when you start looking at the HW requirements.
2. No ads for current students. Once they become alumni MS will put ads in their stuff.
3. When the decision was made, Google supposedly wanted 10K a year. Now its free I think.
4. Colleges want student email so they can eliminate paper communications (save on postage) for "official" communications.
MS is trying to build up their Live Mail user base so they can afford to give it away to schools for now.
I am no fan of student email or going with the MS solution but it wasn't my decision to make. I can think of worse solutions.
Companies that venture beyond their core skill set rarely get things right the first couple of times. Sometimes they never get it right but they don't care because it is all about making more money and/or keeping control.
Companies like MS, Cisco, IBM, et. al. typically don't want to coexist with complementary companies. It just goes against their greedy nature. They usually try to buy them or drive them out of business through competition.
There must be a theory that states this is good for consumers but we all know that it isn't always the case.
It makes you wonder how many translations of other books (cough cough the Bible) had similar variations. Over time which translations become the official one. The same variations happen with verbal retelling of stories. Anyone ever play the "phone game" in elementary school?
It is no wonder why there are so many variations within a single religion. If these sects within a single religion can't always get along then why do people have any expectations of major religions will get along with one another?
That is pretty much what I was going to say.
The way to ruin a good thing is for someone to try and make a buck from it. Just about every time the marketing industry gets wind of a free way to advertise they destroy they system they exploit.
A more effective method would be to redirect web clients to a page explaining they are being blocked/quarantined, why they are being blocked, and how they can become unblocked.
I'm sure it would be next to impossible to get this system up but its one idea.