Posts by Al S Cook

Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

Coastal regions not immune to deep cold

t doesn't have to be Norway or the Pole. I recently left my Model Y at a friend's house in Seattle for a week and when we were packing up in 21F weather, I thought I'd warm up the cabin. That's when I got the message about preparing the battery before driving. It took about 30 minutes to warm up, and house current could warm the cabin and the battery simultaneously. It wasn't a big problem in this case, but even in coastal Seattle it can be cold enough to need thawing.

I used to live in Edmonton and it was very common for people to run an ICE vehicle for 20 minutes before driving off, even if it was plugged into an engine warmer. Weather that cold can be very hard on an engine--engine oil is only warmish and the block is still very cold. Other parts of the car, like the suspension and doors. were making odd noises as well, so it's best to avoid driving more than you must.

Support chap's Sonic Screwdriver fixes PC as user fumes in disbelief

Deskside Support for the non-nerd

I worked in a newsroom and knew just enough about the technology to be the guy who dealt with the technicians who were called in to fix hardware issues. Quite often the problem was the user. There's a Yes\No box waiting on the status bar for a choice and they're frustrated because they can't type anything anywhere else, for example.

In that case I'd look at the tech solemnly, suggest that this one looked like another of those DEU errors. I'd move the user back from the PC, type a few things and eventually hit the "y" and the machine would work. "What's a DEU" the user might ask. We had some long fake name in our pocket to explain it but the acronym was really for "Defective End User."

Microsoft hikes SQL Server 2012 price 'by 20 per cent'

How about a 4x price rise?

Some customers will see the price go up much more than 20%.

Many enterprise customers' standard box is a 4x10 server--four procs, 10 cores each.

With SQL Server 2008, they could license the entire box using SQL Server Enterprise, with four proc licenses costing about $25,000 each, or $100,000 for the whole box. To do the same thing with SQL 2012, they need to license 40 cores, at about $7K each, which will cost them $280,000. Then, they need to have Software Assurance as well (which wasn't required with SQL 2008 if you wanted unlimited SQL VMs). That adds 75% to the price of the product over three years, and continues after that at 25% a year. So that's another $210,000 for the first three years. Total: $470K--nearly a half-million to license one of these boxes if you need to buy SQL licenses for it and want the right to run unlimited SQL instances. A bit more than a 20% increase, I'd say. (They can probably get a 20% discount for volume, but that still only brings the price down to about $400K)

Microsoft's futurologists virtualise the poor

Not hearing much compassion for the poor here

Finally someone (multipharious) speaks up with some common sense.

I assume that everyone who objects to this technology routinely goes out of their way to help reduce poverty and leaves a coin in the hand of every beggar who accosts them.

If that's not the case, then recognize that that, thanks to urbanization and technology itself (e.g., home-based workers like me), the poor are pushed even further out of the public space and most important, the public eye. I regularly use my computer to contribute to causes I believe in. I also drop coins into outstretched hands. I don't really care how it gets there.

I agree that the latter approach ensures that the money gets into the hands of the people who need it, much of the time, but frankly, for time reasons I'm not going to go way out of my way to find beggars that I can personally help if there are organizations that help them that I can contribute to.

Verizon snuffs Google for Microsoft search

Use Opera

Didn't notice the change on my Curve, since I don't use the awful RIM browser. I use Opera, which is faster, better and uses Google as the default.

Ballmer says Big Blue hands in too few pies

Taking care of shareholders

OK, Steve, let's talk about who is doing the most for shareholders. In the last five years, IBM share are up 40% and MS shares are down 10%--after spending about $80B of shareholder money on stock buybacks. IBM borrowed $11B to buy back shares.Total dividends about the same over the period. Which company would you bet on?