Check your definition of free

There's a lot of fuss in the UK at the moment about the launch by TalkTalk of Free Broadband Forever.

The salient point here is the use of the word Free, especially when you consider that it actually costs £20.99 each month.

I don't want to be cynical, and yes, I appreciate that you also get your line rental and a very good calling plan bundled in for that price, but at the end of the day, what you are paying for is all three items (line rental, calling plan, broadband) for the £20.99. It is mere marketing to suggest that what you are actually paying for is the first two items and the third is the free one.

Using awk with different input/output separators

I had to reformat some stuff from the man pages for inclusion in another document that would be converted to a proper table. Here’s a trick for using awk/gawk to take the input (multiple spaces) and output with tabs using different input and output separators.

BEGIN { OFS = "t"; FS = "[ ][ ]+" }
{ print $1,$2,$3,$4 }

I only wanted the four columns from the original table, hence why I specified them explicitly here.

Converting your normal phone to Skype

I'm a big Skype user, and I have both SkypeIn and SkypeOut so I can make calls and receive them pretty much anywhere.

But I'm still waiting for a solution that will let me make Skype calls without having to use my computer.

The VoSky is a step closer. It plugs into your PC and your phone plugs into the VoSky, and it handles everything else.

It's not perfect - you still need a PC - but we are getting closer. The forthcoming

Converting your normal phone to Skype

I'm a big Skype user, and I have both SkypeIn and SkypeOut so I can make calls and receive them pretty much anywhere.

But I'm still waiting for a solution that will let me make Skype calls without having to use my computer.

The VoSky is a step closer. It plugs into your PC and your phone plugs into the VoSky, and it handles everything else.

It's not perfect - you still need a PC - but we are getting closer. The forthcoming

Licensing and multi-core CPUs

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.

Multi-core licensing revisited

I'm just clearing out the office and came across a piece in Information Age from August 2005. It was more or less along the lines I outlined in a previous post on multi-core CPUs and licensing.

I mentioned then (actually, just last week) about the potential ongoing problems:

I can see the problems extending though as more multi-core x86 cores come on line. It's going to take a year or so for the kinks to be worked out of the different systems, and we may yet see some changes and equalization of the different solutions across different suppliers and manufacturers.
The article in Information Age (actually in the Insider section, page 10 - I can't find an online copy) mentioned something I hadn't considered - the role that distributed computing, grids and virtualization might play in the way people are charged.

Multi-core licensing revisited

I'm just clearing out the office and came across a piece in Information Age from August 2005. It was more or less along the lines I outlined in a previous post on multi-core CPUs and licensing.

I mentioned then (actually, just last week) about the potential ongoing problems:

I can see the problems extending though as more multi-core x86 cores come on line. It's going to take a year or so for the kinks to be worked out of the different systems, and we may yet see some changes and equalization of the different solutions across different suppliers and manufacturers.
The article in Information Age (actually in the Insider section, page 10 - I can't find an online copy) mentioned something I hadn't considered - the role that distributed computing, grids and virtualization might play in the way people are charged.

Microsoft moves to x64

If you watch the CPU trends, the 64-bit computing has been here for years, but strangely in the commodity market of the x86 CPU, widespread adoption has not been as widespread compared to the high-end Unix and mainframe environments.

Now Microsoft are leading from the front by moving their own web servers to 64-bit CPUs - primarily to remove the memory limitations and therefore improve the speed and performance.

To show you how it is done, they've released a white paper on how it was done.