As CPUs move to multi-core architecture, companies - both OEMs and end users - are facing issues of licensing. If you have a multi-CPU machine, you often have to buy a multi-CPU licence.
The query is whether a multi-core CPU is really two (or more) CPUs, or just one?
Microsoft have already made the decision, classing a CPU as a CPU, no matter how many cores it has. The same model is being used by VMware for their software.
Last month, my review of StarOffice 8 was published. It had a subtitle of “Office Killer? - Alternatives to Microsoft Office”. I’ve mentioned this before, and I’ve been giving the matter some more thought.
I’m not entirely sure I agree with the approach of an ‘Office killer’. We are of course referring to Microsoft Office, and while I’m happy to support a product based on open standards and the open document format, compared to the proprietary format offered by Office, I have general issues with combined ‘office’ application suites.
The concentration on a ’suite’ and the competition with Office means that what we have is a range of different applications that compete with each other with similar features and a similar interface to Microsoft Office.
While the compatibility - and the ease of migration for users - between the different solutions is an obvious advantage of these office suites, we also end up in a situation where the choice between office suites comes down to the price and the philosophy of their development. In terms of functionality or method and ease of use all of the office suites are more or less on a par for the 95% of features that most users want.
This is not a criticism of the suites, the developers or of their approach. Any company developing a package that is competing with a market leading product that has the enormous advantage that Microsoft Office has is obviously going to have to work very hard just to match the capabilities of that product.
It would be nice to see, for example, different interfaces or approaches to interacting with the application than an environment which directly duplicates the familiarity of Microsoft Office. I also think an alternative approach to the idea of separate applications for key functionality is beginning to feel restrictive. Within the Web environment we’re seeing the merging of different technologies and environments into a single, but powerful, application. Why can’t we see this on the desktop?
Today marks the last day of my current job, because officially tomorrow, or more practically, Monday, I start a new job.
My current job is freelance writer and consultant, a job I've happily held for over 6 years. I work, almost, entirely from home, except for those times when I visit a client, and that freedom means that I sometimes start work as early as 3am, and have free reign over the jobs I do, when I work, what I write about and what hardware and technology I use for my own needs and that which I suggest, recommend and support to clients.
My new job will be Technical Writer for MySQL, and although my job and main focus of work will change, other aspects of my work will not. I still, for example, get to work from home. I'll be sitting at the same desk, initially using the same computers and still, on the whole, writing documentation. Most of my fellow workers around the world - for MySQL is very much a global company - will be doing the same. At our recent conference in Sorrento we had people from as distant as Australia, Seattle and Canada and as a near as Russia, Bulgaria, UK and of course Sweden, the home of MySQL.
Apple has released an update for their recent iPods that enables you to limit the maximum volume output, including the ability to lock it with a combination code.
Will this stop the problem?
In a few cases, maybe, but as I've argued before, this isn't going to make any difference to those people who want to play their iPod at maximum volume, and unfortunately that is the same group of people who will never install this update, and never set the maximum volume even if they did.
Apple has released an update for their recent iPods that enables you to limit the maximum volume output, including the ability to lock it with a combination code.
Will this stop the problem?
In a few cases, maybe, but as I've argued before, this isn't going to make any difference to those people who want to play their iPod at maximum volume, and unfortunately that is the same group of people who will never install this update, and never set the maximum volume even if they did.
The sixth and final part of the “Building a grid with Web services standards”, title “Monitoring and execution” is finally available. The final tutorial in the series wraps up the system by looking at the role of WS-Notification in the management and monitoring of your grid. WS-Notification uses a familiar subscription model, similar to RSS, to notify ‘watchers’ of events. These can be read and handled according to your needs, with the entire subscription and notification process taking place through the use of web services.
Here’s the description from the piece:
You’re going to look at the key role that notification and monitoring have in the execution and management of a grid. You’ll learn how to create a basic notification system and how the combination of topics and push technology (as defined by the WS-Notification standard) provides an open, flexible, and customizable environment for distributing events and information to grid services.
Please read the other parts first if you have not done so already:
And finally, read the final part Building a grid using Web services standards, Part 6: Monitoring and execution.
Once again, I’d like to thank Tyler Anderson who did the coding work based on my design and architecture, and did a fantastic job in the process!
I first picked up on it here, but the news is that Microsoft are delaying Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 until 2007 - with no firm date in that year.
As the Ars Technica piece mentions, Microsoft have already tried to grow market share by lowering the cost of their products, while VMware have just released their two key products - VMware player and VMware server for free.
Virtual Server is still my favourite solution for virtualization because of the security aspects, and the new release has some useful features, like live backups, as part of the feature set. I'll happily wait, but the delay makes me uneasy.
I've resisted for a while, but this post inspired me to comment.
Vista is a product that has been some time coming. In fact I can remember having discussions at Microsoft back in 2003 about the product.
Microsoft have trimmed features - check this item back in 2004, back when Vista was better known as Longhorn. With that piece, Microsoft trimmed those features to make a 'First half 2006' release date.
Now we hear its been pushed back, effectively by another year.
As if my earlier post on printing costs didn't convince you enough, there's a great fragment in today's Shark Tank on a simple waste of paper that could have been resolved with a little bit of user education.
I was reading an article in Information Age this weekend on Printing Costs. The article is about the costs and management solutions available for sorting out the costs of printing.
The article starts out with one of those scary statistics:
Each day in the UK, 523 million pieces of printed paper are thrown away by office workers.I'll ignore the 'thrown away' comment - I really hope that a large quantity of that is recycled, but whatever the destination, the figure is still scary. 523 million sheets of printed paper are thrown away each day. Whether that is mistakes, reports that needed edits, or any one of a million other possibilities doesn't matter - that is a lot of paper, a lot of toner or ink, and vast quantities of printer wear and tear that is being wasted each day.