More Zonkyness

Author: Mike Meredith

  • HP To Stop Making PCs? Is This Wise?

    According to the site where I usually get my news, there are two articles today … one reporting on HP supposedly spinning off the PC business, and another reporting on Lenovo’s bosses patting themselves on their back for buying IBM’s PC business a few years ago. The interesting thing about these two stories is that HP may be making the same mistake that IBM has previously made.

    It may not appear at first glance to be a mistake – IBM and now perhaps HP are ditching a very low margin business because their core area of profitability is in business software and services with much higher margins. But is it a sensible decision ?

    One of the advantages of selling pieces of tin that ordinary people have a chance of encountering when they are looking for a new desktop PC or laptop, is that your name is “out there”. Ordinary people will know your name, and know what business you are in – just the kind of publicity that an obscure company selling business software would love – how many people in the street know who Oracle are ? Or Autonomy ?

  • The Downs Near Shoreham-by-Sea

    #1 (Flying Over) The Valley

    Flying Over The Valley

    #2 Hill Fields

    Hill Fields

    #3: Shadows Of The Sky

    Shadows Of The Sky

  • Operating System Patches As Preventative Maintenance

    It is often the case that people are reluctant to apply operating system patches to servers for two core reasons :-

    1. Applying patches often means an interruption to service, and arranging an appropriate outage can sometimes be difficult.
    2. There is a risk in applying patches that they may break something that previously worked.

    Both concerns are legitimate, but what is less often observed is that an unpatched server may appear to be working but to an extent is already broken – the patches are released to fix broken servers.

    If we look at car maintenance, we are used to the idea that we take our cars for preventative maintenance – it is called a service. Almost everyone with a new car will routinely take it along at regular intervals for a service to reduce the risk that it will break unexpectedly. Those with older cars frequently accept that their car will unexpected break and they will have to cope with that when it occurs.

    Or in other words we apply preventative maintenance to cars, deliberately taking them out of service (you can’t use a car when it is in the garage getting services) so as to exchange a scheduled period of unavailability for reducing the risk of an unexpected unavailability.

    It should be the same for operating system patches.

  • London Riots

    On the third night of rioting in London, the most immediate reaction of every sensible person is to condem the violence as mindless thuggery. Or more cynically, not quite mindless thuggery designed to allow those who are so inclined to loot shops.

    Which is quite right of course. Nothing excuses this sort of violence.

    The interesting thing about the reactions of politicians is that the right-wing politicians do nothing more than condem the violence, whereas the left-wing politicians in addition to condemning the violence, also point out the economic situation is leading to a generation of young people who are frustrated with their situation who see no hope of a normal life. Or in other words right wingers are content with a simple minded answer, whereas the left-wingers are at least trying to look a little deeper.

    That doesn’t excuse rioting of course, and you’ll find that most young people weren’t rioting. Not even most of the most deprived young people. The rioters themselves, would in normal circumstances be kept busy with paying jobs giving them enough money to entertain themselves without rioting.

    With the present economy, there are too many young people who have no job, see no chance of getting a job, and see the government cuts take away opportunities for education which may in the end lead to a job. And in a city like London where every young person can see the incredibly wealthy around, must lead to incredible frustration.

    Of course doing anything to make the rioter’s lives easier is something that grates. But what about making the lives of all the young people who didn’t riot better ?

  • Twenty Years Since “Nevermind”

    It is not often I think how old an album is; to me a great album just is whether it is young or old, but I got reminded recently that Nirvana’s Nevermind album is coming up to 20 years old. When it was first released, I was in two places that stopped me from appreciating the album properly.

    Firstly I was too old … even being in my early 20s to fully appreciate the impact of those filled with the rage of the misfit. Secondly I was not really listening to music – in particular new music – during that period because, well frankly most of it seemed like crap to me. But it gradually crept up on me – tracks from the album kept being played in the unlikeliest places, and I eventually got a copy to listen to properly.

    Of course “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was played too often especially in the “unlikely” places, which is why I’ve chosen “Come As You Are” although I could have chosen many others.

    It is interesting reading about the feelings of those who had their “rage of the misfit” moments listening to Nirvana. They would have you believe that this was a special moment in the history of the music industry and teenagers were in the middle of some kind of ‘special moment’. Well, they’re entitled to their belief but as you can guess I think they’re pretty much totally wrong.

    That’s not to say Nirvana wasn’t a special band, and Kurt Cobain wasn’t a special person. They (and he) were.

    Firstly the music industry are always keen to pick up on any bands that are appealing to a significant demographic (i.e. making money). Sure they’re also manufacturing bands that have about as musical merit as the sounds effects I make in a boring bath. Sure you can point to individual instances where bands that have later become popular were ignored by the “industry”, although when you look closer it turns out they were ignored by particularly dumb individuals who even the music industry doesn’t like.

    Not that I think the music industry is good mind you, but hit them with a 2×4 made out of dollar bills, and they’ll get the point … eventually.

    Secondly there seems to be some sort of idea floating around that post Reagon teenagers were somehow “special”. Bullshit. All the best teenagers rage against the conformity of the small town and small thinking. It’s part of growing up for anyone who is inclined to shout “Fuck You” at the establishment. If they’re lucky such teenagers find a contemporary kind of music that appeals to them; if they’re not so lucky, they tend to find something from the past. But either way there’s music there.

    It’s easy to look at someone from a different generation and think that they’re so different. I tend to look and see the similarities … well if they share the rage of the misfit of course!