Continuing my theme of telling you where I’m not – I’m not at MacWorld.
It’s really interesting to see how the press goes into over-drive at these times though. The press must be one of the most environmentally friendly businesses in the world – they get to recycle the same material at least three times. We have rumours before the event, reports of the event and then comment on the results of the event .
One of the nice things about running StatCounter on this blog is that I get to see how people arrived. One of the ones that fascinates me is search strings. Some of them are truly comical.
Yesterday, for instance, someone found this site by typing “graham dull” into Google and yes apparently I’m the number 2 hit for that search . I get lots of visitors arriving by searching on “Microsoft system center capacity planner 2006” which is fine, that’s to be expected. I still get loads for happy bunny which I only mentioned once; now I think about it though I’ve mentioned it twice because I also posted about getting lots of hits for it; but now of course I’ve just made it worse . I also got one today for “stuart downes mercedes”. I know a Stuart Downes but I don’t think he drives a Mercedes and why would anyone be searching for his Mercedes.
(Oh dear I’m nearly out of Jimmy and Granddad pictures will have to take some more.)
Stuart Downes has written an interesting piece on why he believes that collaboration workplaces aren’t working:
However perhaps the least useful and most burdensome technology has been the workspace, in my organisation that takes the form of either a Notes Teamroom database or a browser accessed Quickplace. Am I the only person that finds these areas cumbersome and painful to use, and eventually I find that all they are used for is a document repository. Even where the project is staffed by collaborative engineers we still seem to revert to the more basics of communication (IM, email and telephone – and probably in that order).
Many gadgets are just a faster sleeker version of the the thing that has passed before it. But this year at CES it looks like the SkyScout has created a real buzz.
“The SkyScout is a revolutionary, one of a kind, patented handheld device that instantly identifies and/or locates any celestial object visible to the naked eye, providing educational and entertaining information, both in text and audio.
A fun learning tool for all ages, the SkyScout personal planetarium puts the knowledge of an expert astronomer in the palm of your hand.”
This fits the gadget title in so many way. It’s definitely something you look at and say “I need knew I wanted one of those, that’s great”. It also fits the “Brilliant, take existing technology, put it together in an innovative way and this is what you get”. It isn’t going to solve world hunger though – shame .
Living in one of the cloudiest parts of the world the number of times I would use such a thing are limited, but that doesn’t stop me wanting one.
Ron Jacobs is asking for feedback on a new set of principles for TechED sessions.
Microsoft have picked up a some stick recently for not appealing to the ‘Windows Experience’ and I would have to agree with that point of view.
The new Windows Vista Site is something different though – now that has feeling.
The ‘Experience’ comes first and then the ‘Features’ – great.
ZDNet are looking for bloggers I here. Am I interested? Not sure. What are the requirements?
Do you have a passion for technology? Want to share your from-the-trenches perspective with ZDNet’s readers? ZDNet is expanding its coverage with a series of new blogs on a variety of business and technology topics. We’re also seeking lT execs to contribute to blogs covering the government, education and healthcare fields.
What’s your area of expertise?
If you’ve got great credentials, good writing ability, and passionate authenticity, we’d like to hear from you. Please send an e-mail–with your full name, preferred daytime contact information, and a relevant writing sample–to David Grober. And yes, we’ll pay for steady, high-quality blogging.
Well I have a lot of this experience, but could I ever live down the description “passionate authenticity” – I’m British . If this is you, please feel free to apply.
I’m not at CES this week.
Just wanted everyone to know.
No real reason, just felt left out not having anything to say about a big show with a few gadgets. Tried to watch the Bill Gates Keynote so I didn’t feel as left out; even that wouldn’t stream.
Can’t say I’m too bothered about not being in Las Vegas though.
Ah well .
Someone sent me an interesting statistic today which fascinated me, mainly because I couldn’t understand it. In the experience of this particular person someone supporting Windows could support nearly 40 servers, whereas someone supporting another OS (which shall remain nameless) could support less than 10 servers. We are talking about two mature operating systems here.
I haven’t got around to a full challenge of the assertion but I couldn’t see it. Surely the operating system support overhead is about the same these days, I certainly wouldn’t have expected a four-fold difference, that’s huge. That would mean that a Windows server would only need to carry a quarter of the load of any other operating system to be cost effective. OK, there are some capital cost differences but they are small compared to the operating costs.
Am I that far out of touch?
Every day I drink water, every day it’s crystal clear and tastes great. I don’t have to think about it, I just go to the utility turn on the tap on the water filter and out it comes. I don’t really even need the water filter it just tastes a bit better that way.
I don’t have to walk for my water.
I don’t have to boil my water.
I don’t have to put a purifying tablet in it.
I don’t have to worry about disease.
I don’t have to worry whether the well will be empty.
What a luxury.
We can so often look at the things that we use everyday and miss the fact that they are a luxury. Pure clean water is indeed a luxury. There are millions of people all over the world for whom water is a constant concern. Apparently 1.2 billion of us don’t have access to safe drinking water. Water is even the cause of war in some parts of the world. I have none of those concerns I just go to the tap and there it is.
Jesus talked about a relationship with Him being like having ‘living water’, removing the need to ever be thirsty:
1Jesus realized that the Pharisees were keeping count of the baptisms that he and John performed 2(although his disciples, not Jesus, did the actual baptising). They had posted the score that Jesus was ahead, turning him and John into rivals in the eyes of the people. 3So Jesus left the Judean countryside and went back to Galilee.
4To get there, he had to pass through Samaria. 5He came into Sychar, a Samaritan village that bordered the field Jacob had given his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was still there. Jesus, worn out by the trip, sat down at the well. It was noon.
7A woman, a Samaritan, came to draw water. Jesus said, “Would you give me a drink of water?” 8(His disciples had gone to the village to buy food for lunch.)
9The Samaritan woman, taken aback, asked, “How come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (Jews in those days wouldn’t be caught dead talking to Samaritans.)
10Jesus answered, “If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water.”
11The woman said, “Sir, you don’t even have a bucket to draw with, and this well is deep. So how are you going to get this “living water’? 12Are you a better man than our ancestor Jacob, who dug this well and drank from it, he and his sons and livestock, and passed it down to us?”
13Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again. 14Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst–not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life.”
15The woman said, “Sir, give me this water so I won’t ever get thirsty, won’t ever have to come back to this well again!”
Water is a symbol of life itself, without water there is no life. I need water to live; I need ‘living water’ to really live. It’s a blessing and an honour to have both.
Sledging could be described as bouncing down a bumpy hill on a piece of plastic in the freezing cold. But that description would completely miss the point. Sometimes a purely factual description of something is just not adequate. Here in England we don’t really do winter sports because we don’t really get enough of a winter; especially here near as we are to Lancashire’s West Coast where the Gulf Stream and the Irish Sea keep everything wet and mild.
Every now and then though we do get the opportunity to get out into the snow and to enjoy the delights of the one thing that is for us English the nearest thing we will get to a winter sport in our home country – sledging. Last year (as it now is) while we were visiting family on the East Coast between Christmas and the New Year we were blessed with some truly glorious snow, crisp and fluffy.
Sledging reveals so much about the English psyche. All that is required for sledging is something that resembles a hill, a modicum of snow and something that can be sat up which will preferably slide on the snow. The ability to slide though doesn’t appear to be completely necessary though. Being an inventive nation we can think of all sorts of objects and places that fulfill two of the requirements the thing we struggle with is the snow.
When I was a child a friend had a sledge which was a converted bike; rather than having wheels at the end of the forks it had some metal guttering. It slid fabulously, the problem was stopping. Anyone who has learnt to ride a bike knows how painful it can be to reach a sudden stop on a bicycle; a sudden stop is inevitable when travelling down a hill on snow without any form of brakes.
Over the years I have had the pleasure of sliding down various slopes on all sorts of objects, each of which I have called a sledge. Some of them have been wonderfully successful; some less so. The simplest has to be the bivy bag, otherwise known as a long piece of plastic sheeting. This particular object requires you to take a little run and to throw yourself onto the floor belly first hoping to slide forward rather than landing in a heap and going nowhere.
As a child we used to have a metal framed sledge which managed to survive being used by both myself and my older brother; I think my younger sister may have also used it but I’m sure it was only occasionally when we boys were around.
The feeling of sliding out of control down a hill is great. Some people grow up never seeing snow and never getting the opportunity to sledge – I am so blessed.
If you don’t think Exchange scalability is an issue when compared to Domino look at this set of comments to a post by Ed Brill. In Exchange terms the discussion for most corporate customers isn’t anywhere near the 10,000 users per server mark it’s much lower than that – less than half normally.
The real issue isn’t the capital costs of hardware – it’s the cost of operation of a significantly more complicated infrastructure.