So Amazon jump the Apple gun and get movie downloads out before Apple, supposedly, make their announcement next week. Apple have been pretty shrewd, actually, they could have announced the iMac and Mac Mini updates next week as part of the bigger announcement, but didn't, released it early, just to build the tension further.
Amazon, I suspect, wanted to steal at least some of Apple's thunder and announced their Unbox service.
So Amazon jump the Apple gun and get movie downloads out before Apple, supposedly, make their announcement next week. Apple have been pretty shrewd, actually, they could have announced the iMac and Mac Mini updates next week as part of the bigger announcement, but didn't, released it early, just to build the tension further.
Amazon, I suspect, wanted to steal at least some of Apple's thunder and announced their Unbox service.
Computerworld’s podcast this week features a short interview with me on my aventures with the T1000.
The podcast Computerworld Input Output: The NYPD’s expanded data warehouse; testing out Sun’s T1000.
For the in-depth review of the T1000: T1000 in more detail
The headline in this article: Unplanned Work Is Silently Killing IT Departments will not be news to anybody running an IT department.
Despite our best intentions to be proactive, rather than reactive, in IT departments, the problem is that by the nature of technology you cannot help but have to react to issues as they arise. Some of these can be expected, if not entirely planned for.
In my experience, the best way to handle the issue of unexpected work and events was to put aside time in the weekly/daily schedule (a 'reserve') that would be used to catch those elements that didn't fit into the planned schedule. It wasn't perfect, for the simple reason that unplanned work could take up none or all of that time (and more) in a given period, but you could usually even it out over time to a reasonable level.
The headline in this article: Unplanned Work Is Silently Killing IT Departments will not be news to anybody running an IT department.
Despite our best intentions to be proactive, rather than reactive, in IT departments, the problem is that by the nature of technology you cannot help but have to react to issues as they arise. Some of these can be expected, if not entirely planned for.
In my experience, the best way to handle the issue of unexpected work and events was to put aside time in the weekly/daily schedule (a 'reserve') that would be used to catch those elements that didn't fit into the planned schedule. It wasn't perfect, for the simple reason that unplanned work could take up none or all of that time (and more) in a given period, but you could usually even it out over time to a reasonable level.
Check out the latest desktops and notebooks and you'll find a large number of them are widescreen devices. From a consumer angle, widescreen makes the machines compatible with movie watching.
From a business perspective, it's kind of a two way street; the lack of height means that you can generally see less of your document on screen (although it can be useful with spreadsheets), but with a wider aspect you can have two documents side by side and refer between them.
Years ago, the A4 monitor (including those that pivoted between portrait and landscape) were all the rage, and I used on both at home and at work. Better still was the A3 monitor (basically a 21inch); at the time I worked in an ad agency were the graphic people had an A3 monitor, the copywriters had either an A4 or an A3 monitor, and some of us were lucky enough to get a combination of the two (the owner being the only one for some to have two color A3 monitors, an expensive and extravagant option at the time).
Check out the latest desktops and notebooks and you'll find a large number of them are widescreen devices. From a consumer angle, widescreen makes the machines compatible with movie watching.
From a business perspective, it's kind of a two way street; the lack of height means that you can generally see less of your document on screen (although it can be useful with spreadsheets), but with a wider aspect you can have two documents side by side and refer between them.
Years ago, the A4 monitor (including those that pivoted between portrait and landscape) were all the rage, and I used on both at home and at work. Better still was the A3 monitor (basically a 21inch); at the time I worked in an ad agency were the graphic people had an A3 monitor, the copywriters had either an A4 or an A3 monitor, and some of us were lucky enough to get a combination of the two (the owner being the only one for some to have two color A3 monitors, an expensive and extravagant option at the time).
One of my new articles is on smplifying your command line (read more about System Administrators Toolkit: Standardizing your UNIX command-line tools, making your life easier as you move between different environments. The same principles can be applied just to make your life easier. Here’s a function I’ve had in my bash init script for years that gets round the issue of extracting a compressed archive file of various types, even if your tar isn’t aware of the compression type:
function uz ()
{
file=$1
case $file in
(*gz) gunzip -c $file|tar xf -;;
(*bz2) bunzip2 -c $file|tar xf -;;
(*Z) tar zxf $file;;
(*zip) unzip $file;;
esac
}
Now I can extract any file with:
$ uz file{gz|bz2|zip|Z)
And not worry that my Solaris tar isn’t bzip2 aware even though it is Gzip aware.
Managing your authentication service across your network can be achieved in many different ways, but there is a solution that has been available for years that provides synchronized authentication service, and that was designed to work with the Network File System (NFS) for identifying files and access.
The content of the article, as described by the intro:
Examine how to set up, configure, and update a Network Information System (NIS) installation for sharing information, and learn how NIS can be merged with other solutions, such as files and Domain Name System (DNS), to provide subnet, network, and worldwide data sharing facilities. In a large UNIX network, the ability to share information among the many systems helps to alleviate many problems, such as sharing permissions across different systems with Network File System (NFS), or simply providing a single login for the entire network.
Read System Administration Toolkit: Managing NIS services for authorizations.