Posts by dan1980

@AC

"Rubbish - Microsoft spent billions on getting their cutting edge hybrid microkernel architecture to scale . . ."

Absolutely. But the salient point is that it is THE SAME CODE whether it is running on 8 cores or on 12. If it's worth its salt, which you are presumably saying it is, then ti is adaptable to however many cores there are to utilise. Microsoft already changed their licensing with 2012 to represent that when they essentially renamed 'enterprise' as 'standard'.

Re: Define "core"

@Ken

Short answer: Microsoft want to have the battle largely won by the time those issues come to the fore.

Re: Oh Joy!

Without weighing in on the perennial Linux vs Microsoft cat fight, simply saying "just use X" is largely unhelpful. Remember that this is an article about changes to Microsoft and (most) people are commenting based on their experience and foreseen future with that same company.

You do people a disservice by assuming they are not aware of or have not investigated the alternatives.

@Paul

"APRA? Addiction Prevention and Recovery Administration (APRA) or American Professional Rodeo Association?"

What the hell are you talking about - are you intentionally trying to be combative? I am clearly Australian so (equally) clearly, I mean: the Australian Professional Rodeo Associate. Strewth/struth &c.

But no, for all those people unfortunate enough to live anywhere else, it stands for the "Australasian Performing Right Association". Which is kind of like the RIAA but not comprised entirely of c%$t lawyers and lobbyists. APRA do an excellent job of providing easy to understand licensing terms for business who, by-and-large, simply want to have the equivalent of the radio on in the background. They are responsive to users and, while they don't necessarily return as much value to rights holders as might be wished, they understand that the more expensive and the more complicated you make things, the less likely you are to have people complying.

Essentially, they are geared towards helping businesses play music compliantly and so they make sure that it is easy for them to do so. Having working in media and having been a member of the MEAA, I can honestly say that one of the biggest hurdles is not in intent or willingness to pay but the complication of compliance and APRA make it far easier than most. (Not that there aren't those who feel it's far from ideal.)

Re: Another tightening of the screw; just like Oracle

". . .but he should be careful, moving to the cloud doesn't mean to move to an MS cloud."

I don't think that matters all that much. What 'Cloud First' is really about - what it really means - it 'subscription first'.

That is what they desperately crave.

The idea that a customer could purchase a license once and then use that product long after a new version has been released seems to be offensive to them. MS, under Nadella, has the aspect of a spoilt child, insisting they get their way and that everyone must do what they say, when they say.

How dare people buy software and then continue to benefit from it without continuing to pay Microsoft for that beneficence? How disrespectful; how ungrateful!

Back to the specific change, however, both Azure and Amazon basically run as per-core licensing. It's difficult to disentangle but it seems clear that you pay licensing per core. But, while this works for smaller workloads, once you get higher, you might find that the increasing core count & power of processors means that you can do more with your Server Standard or especially Datacenter license for less.

Think about the current Xeon V3 parts, which are seeing 15% performance increase core-for-core on the previous V2 parts but now come with up to 18 cores and boast better multi-proc performance. Using the standard 2-proc license of Datacenter, that's a 50% increase in number of cores, each of which are more powerful than the last iteration - from just 18-months previous.

What that means in practice is that you may well be able to CUT YOUR MS SERVER LICENSING IN HALF. And that's just moving from the previous part - if you are running a 3-5 year refresh cycle, your older servers may will be on Sandy Bridge chips - maybe 4 or 6 core parts. You could conceivably - other resources allowing - consolidate 2 hosts, each running 4 x quad-core procs, into a single host running 2 x 16-core procs and STILL have cycles to spare. That's QUARTERING you MS licensing costs right there. Once you account for power and cooling and space, those fancy - and expensive - procs start paying for themselves.

That must be a scary proposition for Microsoft and this is their reaction to that but the their main goal is to charge per unit of usage, per unit of time. This licensing change is Microsoft trying to push that, not by making their prefered proposition inherently more attractive but by deliberately increasing the cost and attractiveness of the alternative - onsite, perpetual licenses.

And that's Microsoft right there.

Re: Another tightening of the screw; just like Oracle

The writing was on the wall LONG ago and people I spoke to at MS back when OpsMgr 2007 R2 was released all but admitted that that was the way it would go in the future when I asked them that direct question.

It's not surprising in the slightest but it is rather annoying, even if it won't have a great impact on me, because it's just one more step in their "Cloud First" commitment. They have looked at licensing for 'cloud' and chosen the model they believe best fits that, from their perspective and then for 'consistency' back-ported that to software running on local servers.

I do understand that this consistency can make things simpler for people moving workloads around but the goal for MS is to make sure that on-site licensing is not simpler or cheaper than cloud and they are doing that, as with everything else, not by improving or discounting the cloud side but by crippling or increasing the price for onsite installations.

Of special note is that there is no configuration in which the price goes down. What a crock of s$#t. That makes this purely, 100% a money-grab. It has absolutely ZERO benefit to the customer because at BEST you pay the same.

Given that the BASE license is the same, effectively, this is not a change to the licensing structure so much as a pure add-on charge for something that you currently get as part of your license.

But it's not even a feature - there's no code here that had to be written specially to enable Microsoft software to run on more than 16 cores - that's part of it already and needed to run efficiently on more than 1 core. It's not as though something magical happens once you get to 18 cores that suddenly you have to bring some new programming to the table so there's no extra cost - in any sense - for Microsoft when your server goes from using 12 to 20 cores.

Oracle was mentioned but at least Oracle, for all their gougin doesn't have a minimum core count.

@Big John

Sure, but that's based on the number of people you are broadcasting the music to and the context - one could almost say the 'features' of the playback. I.e. it costs more if the music is integral to a specific class, like Zumba or whatever, but the charge is still based on the number of listeners.

Importantly, no tarif paid to APRA concerns the physical size of the gym or the facilities you have in it or how many rooms the music is playing in and certainly not how loud the music is or what equipment you are playing it back on. All that matters is the number of members you have.

I.e. it's a CAL.

The got it through IBM who got it through BLADE. It's their 'Rackswitch' line.

Re: Personally...

I like HP too, but part of that is that in Australia we get screwed around on pricing a lot so sometimes equipment that might be worth the extra spend in North America is less justifiable here as the extra cash can be rather a lot extra.

Dell actually go up a lot in my estimation for good channel pricing in Australia but time will tell how they stack up. (Anyone?)

The problem with ALL those three vendors mentioned in your post: Dell, HP and Cisco, is that they have all BOUGHT entire lines of switches and are at various stages of integrating them into their range and ecosystem. Cisco is the best here, I believe.

I saw this recently when I hastily grabbed some new relatively-basic HP switches only to find that, while the features were fine, the management was just utterly at odds with any HP or 3COM I had used before.

The insane mixture of Procurve/Provision/Comware/3Com and differing levels of CLI usability is just f$#king painful and their attempts at integration actually seem to make things WORSE. But, still I find them the to be stable and reliable for largely static deployments - once they are setup.

But that's the world of large players acquiring product lines and feature-sets ready-made that nearly defines modern IT.

One one hand, it can be good for a customer as you can stay with your vendor and still get a full range of products backed by a single point of support. Unfortunately, you still often end up with a bunch of, essentially different switch architectures and management styles.

I like the ability to copy-paste the config of an IOS switch to an NX-OS with only a few changes in most instances and I like the fact that almost all the knowledge I have about Cisco switches from last generation will be useful for deploying Cisco switches of next generation.

Re: Cisco

Just by way of explanation of the Supermicro comment - the two listed vendors in Australia are one group that rebadge SM servers as custom parts and another that provides "end-to-end ICT Services to ensure you achieve your Business Outcomes". Why 'Business Outcomes' is capitalised is unclear.

The former appears to sell it's own configurations, while the latter appears to provide the equipment as part of a full deployment, rather than to others who would use them to install themselves.

So no SM for us here.

Re: If it walks like a Duck, etc.......

@Uncle Ron

See my very long-winded post above but the monopolies were not "granted". FRANCHISES were granted to lay cable but those are NOT monopolies. It may be a subtle point and it may look the same to the consumer but legally this is distinct and, when we're talking about regulations and court challenges, such distinctions matter a lot.

Yes, you will pay more - that's what almost invariably happens when monopolies form - but that does not mean such behaviour automatically breaches the regulations in place as interpreted and applied by the FCC.

Which is why the statute (the Telecommunications Act) needs to be amended so this isn't just up to interpretations that come down to a 3-2 vote. It should be clear EXACTLY what is required of the providers and EXACTLY what is prohibited. Until that happens, they will continue to find ways to wring as much money out of everyone as they can.

Hell, they'll do that regardless but the point is that the law needs to set stricter limits on what they "can" do to get that money.

@Uncle Ron

"Chartered"?

I get what you're saying but the implication is that government gave some kind of express permissions for these companies to become monopolies.

I agree that they are - in effect - monopolies and I thoroughly agree that this has resulted in poor services for the majority of people. Look at any post of mine from any of the previous 'net neutrality' articles and you will see that pretty clearly.

But that does not mean that the government "granted" them their monopolies, which would amount to what is known as a LEGAL monopoly. This is just not the case. And yes, I understand the idea of franchise fees but these are local and they do not establish legal monopolies.

The end result is a de facto monopoly but that is a different thing. It's a subtle difference from a consumer point of view and I thoroughly believe that in the case of telecommunications providers it is a terrible thing for the consumer, but the point is that it is NOT a legal monopoly "granted" by the government.

The problem for consumers, however, is that it doesn't really matter how the monopoly came about - the effect is largely the same. That's why it's called a 'de facto monopoly' - because that's what 'de facto' means: something that exists and is a fact but was not actually established or authorised by a law. Just like a de facto relationship, which is in effect just like a marriage (religious concerns aside) but not established by law, which marriages are (hence the registering part).

So, while the government has not expressly authorised and "chartered" these companies to setup monopolies, they have in effect allowed them to become that. The FCC is a key reason that this has been allowed to happen due to its original decision to classify cable broadband providers solely as "information services providers". The technical justification (which I don't agree with) was that the "information services" they provide are deeply entwined with the communications services that those communications service in effect become something different that no longer can be classified as such. The reason for making this decision - or at least their publicly-stated reason - was to encourage competition because they thought that regulating them under Title II would stifle innovation and investment.

One almost has to laugh at their naïveté but of course the US government has a history of being very friendly to monopolistic interests, which leads them to de-regulate and thus allow for the creation of these de facto monopolies. Indeed de-regulation was a specific, stated goal of the 1996 amendment! (And that was the Clinton government so it's certainly not a one-sided thing.)

Personally, I think that the Telecommunication Act needs to be amended again to fully and explicitly address the unique position of cable internet providers and set up a strong regulatory framework on the transmission network. Without suggesting that it would be an easy sell or easy to actually implement, I would say that they should be actually split as Telstra was in Australia - wholesale and retail.

The effect would be that Comcast could continue to offer what they are proposing - quota-free TV service with their Internet plans. BUT, that service would be run over the cable of a separate company - Comcast Telecommunications or whatever - that was legally required to sell access to that transmission medium on a completely non-discriminatory basis.

I.e. If the wholesale provider charges the retail provider (Xfinity or whatever) $x per Gb then it must alos offer that price to every other retail provider. Thus, those other providers can offer a similar service if they want without being charged more for the use of the line itself.

But that is NOT the way it is current set out. The hope, of course, is that this case may prompt such a change when it is realised that until such regulation is in place, the ISPs will continue to do whatever they can to achieve thier monopolistic ends.

Re: That's the point

@Dadmin

You have made the most salient point yet: "what's to stop [them]"?

The answer is: not the current regulations as explained by the FCC. If such behaviour is to be prohibited then new laws need to be made that are far more explicit and clear because one crucial fact seems to be overlooked which is that the 'net neutrality' rulings have not changed the plain language of the statute. All they are is a decision by the FCC on how they will breakdown the services of ISPs, how they will classify those services and what their interpretation is of what that all means.

The law - the Act - is unchanged so if clarity and strong regulation is desired, it has to come from Congress in the form of an updated Act.

@Uncle Ron

First, what I meant and have repeated through all my posts is "from a net neutrality stand point".

Second, these companies were never "granted" monopolies - as though this was some special privilege that the government bestows upon worthy candidates; they became that because the government simply didn't stop them.

And AGAIN, regardless of whether this move is good or bad, I can't see how it falls foul of the interpretations of the FCC. "It'll be bad for the consumer" AKA "Comcast is a big meanie" does not change anything in that regard.

12 downvotes (and likely counting) for my posts laying this out and not one of those people has provided anything in response beyond "I don't like what they're doing" - not one explanation of why my analysis is incorrect.

Your whole argument is: "they shouldn't be allowed" to do this, and I am not saying that I disagree with you, but on what basis does "IT'S WRONG" qualify as a reason why their behaviour breaches the regulations as they have been explained by the FCC?.

Is Comcast "blocking" legal traffic? Are they "throttling" it traffic? Are they creating "fast lanes"?

Because these are the FCC's own explanation of what ISP's are not allowed to do.

I thank you for actually replying because I am constantly amazed at the way supposedly intelligent people just madly click a button but don't have the decency to actually explain why.

Your position that Comcast "shouldn't" own content services is well and good and I even agree that these should be legally distinct such as happened with Telstra being split to wholesale and retail in Australia. But, Comcast DOES own NBC, they DO own Universal Studios and the ARE ALLOWED to "put up a movie service that competes with Netflix". That's the reality and the question that must be argued right now is whether their practices are counter to the FCC's rulings.

If they are NOT, and I believe they aren't, then the discussion can turn to the concerns you put forward, which are not concerns based on existing regulation but instead your own view on what the regulation should be. And that's fair enough but doesn't impact this case right now.

Re: Loophole Schmoophole

Mark

"I guess it depends on who's interpreting the things."

The answer to that is simple: the FCC. And the reason is that the Supreme Court has ruled that the FCC, as the agency tasked with enforcement of the statute (The Telecommunications Act), has the authority to interpret it.

I can't say how the FCC will decide this particular situation but their own interpretation of what applying Title II to the "broadband Internet access" portion of ISPs' offerings means is: no blocking, no throttling, no paid prioritisation; the last of which the FCC clarifies as "no fast lanes".

I can see Comcast's practices as something that could very well make things worse for customers as a whole but I can't see that they actually run counter to what the FCC has explained their decisions to mean. I would suggest that if the FCC does mean to prohibit such practices then it's probably time - past time - for them to petition congress to re-write the Act.

While it seems not to matter to folks who read here, All I am saying is that the effect of applying Title II to ISPs is that they cannot prioritise or discriminate in their transmission of traffic.

The most important thing to note is that ISPs are not being classified directly as common carriers because it has always been accepted that they most definitely provide "information services". The question around 'Net Neutrality' was whether the part of their service that involved transmitting bits from on place to another should be considered separately from their other services and classified as a "telecommunications service", such that ISP offer two services: telecommunications services and information services.

So, the non-discrimination requirement only applies to the TRANSMISSION of bits back and forward along the communication medium, not how they decide to count the "information services" - which their streaming TV service mostly definitely is - they provide over the top.

Of course I am not a lawyer and one problem with the Act is that it is a bit too vague - which is why the whole 'are they or aren't they' debate was possible in the first place.

This vagueness means that, as per Chevron (which I have mentioned before,) the FCC has the authority - confirmed by the Supreme Court - to interpret the Act in their role as the government agency created by that same Act for the purpose of enforcing it. That's the whole 'Net Neutrality' issue in a nutshell: the FCC interpreted it one way (classifying ISPs solely as "information service" providers") to start with and then decided that, as the nature of these providers had changed over time, they should re-interpret and re-classify (differentiating between the various services offered and classifying them separately).

The FCC then, really, are the arbiters of what the legislation means so it is important to understand what they have decided. Specifically, it's worth noting that the part that they have decided is a "telecommunications service" is what they refer to as "broadband Internet access". (My emphasis.)

Even more important is to note the FCC's explanation of what, exactly, their interpretation of the Act precludes ISP's from doing. They call these rules their "three bright lines":

• No blocking (of lawful content)
• No throttling
• No paid prioritization

Clearly the first two are easy and Comcast cannot be said to be breaking these - no matter how much one hates them. So, it must be the third so let's, again, look at exactly what how the FCC view their rule against "paid prioritization" and the language they use is: "no fast lanes".

At no point do they talk about how data consumption must be counted, let alone specifically prohibit providers from deciding not to charge for a given volume of data linked to a certain service.

So you can argue that the behaviour Comcast are engaging in is anti-competitive and you can argue that Comcast are an evil company that actively seeks to squeeze money out of customers however they can. And many would agree.

But, if you want to argue that their new practice of not counting data from their own services falls foul of the law as it is and the interpretation of that law as the FCC have publicly stated - not as you think it should be or as you think it should be interpreted - then I'd like to see how you reach that conclusion.

Because what I am saying and that people seem to knee-jerk reaching for the downvote icon is simply that what Comcast is doing should not breach the decision of the FCC that ISPs cannot BLOCK, THROTTLE or PRIORITIZE.

Far too often in these forums it seems that people confuse disliking a companies practices with those practices being illegal or, on the opposite side, confuse an analysis of the legality of those practices with support for them.

Re: That's the point

@Gene Cash

But if you purchased multiple services from your ISP, would you expect them to offer a discount? I think most people would and that's why bundles and package deals exist.

Re: Loophole Schmoophole

@brainbone

I agree 100% with everything in your post.

BUT, while it is indeed "anti-competitive" and thoroughly "not a very good thing for the consumer", the question is: does it fall foul of net neutrality?

They are using their (effective) monopoly to essentially offer a better price rather than a better service.

As a follow-up, think of package deals, as the author mentions.

What if Comcast had the following offerings:

• Internet access with 300GB allowance: $60/mo
• Internet access with 500GB allowance: $90/mo
• Internet access + TV service with 500GB allowance: $90/mo

Is there anything wrong with that so far as neutrality is concerned? I've just used some rough prices but clearly what they would be doing there is offering a free 200GB/mo upgrade if you purchase the add-on TV service. Why shouldn't they be able to offer extras in a bundle? how is that any different than what the author explains they all do now with normal cable TV services?

As long as they aren't making their services available FASTER than others, the experience that users will have is the same so the question is one of whether they will go for a cheaper package deal from one provider or spend more but be able to pick each service from whichever provider they want.

I did that the other day when I bought a new suit - the store offered to throw in a new shirt and tie for $80 but I preferred some shirts I saw in another shop so I bought a shirt from there for ~$100 and a tie from another store for $50.

The last place I bought a guitar from does a full setup for free when you buy with them - something that costs ~$100 otherwise and he could do that because they offer both those services - guitar sales and guitar setups - in the one place so they can bundle them up as a differentiator.

Perhaps a better analogy would be holiday package deals where you have to fly a specific airline, stay in a specific hotel and go on a specific tour and then a specific cruise and then another specific flight and another specific hotel and so on.

My point is that we accept the mechanics of package deals everywhere and no one baulks at this because it seems perfectly normal that companies should 'sweeten the deal' in an attempt to entice you to spend more money with them. In fact, we expect it and some people will negotiate with retailers or sales people by asking for a discount if they buy more - something I did when I bought my last TV. I said to the sales chap: I'm also looking for a new Blu-Ray player, a set-top box for a second PC and some headphones: what can you do? Ended up essentially getting the headphones for free as the total cost was less than the TV + the two boxes would have been separately, though they didn't stock the brand I originally wanted so I had to settle for a different pair.

It's important that neither the headphones nor the Blu-Ray player or STB worked any better because I bought them from the one provider - it was just cheaper that way. And, in getting that cheaper price, I accepted that I could have bought EXACTLY what I wanted had I bought the components separately but I chose to settle for something else because the price was good.

I fully appreciate that the monopoly-like situation they are in means that these practices can have an big impact on competition but that's they whole point of a monopoly so if the Government doesn't want the effects of a monopoly, then they should work to break those monopolies instead of allowing mergers and buy-outs so that the people are left with a choice of Comcast or Comcast.

Re: I'm wondering

@AC

"if someone's using your WiFi without permission - which iirc was the purpose of the upside-down-ternet? - then they've committed the unauthorised use and intrusion, not you? THe disconnect thing is cleaner, yes, but you aren't tampering with authorised user's data ....."

Well yes, but that's common sense speaking.

And indeed there might be no harm attributable to someone dealing with unauthorised access this way BUT, I would never do this because it would open a (small) potential legal liability. Not in disrupting someones service but in you potentially being responsible for what those people access and do over your connection.

Consider that a key claim of the plaintiff's in the MPAA Roadshow vs iiNet case was that iiNet was responsible for any illegal actions of the people using their network because they had the visibility to identify offending traffic and the power to stop it.

If you had a claim against you for, say sharing copyrighted content over you connection, your ability to assert that you are not liable due to the infringement being conducted by an unauthorised person utilising your connection would be likely be hampered if it was shown that you not only had mechanisms in place to control access to the connection but that some of those mechanisms were put in place specifically to detect and affect unauthorised users and traffic.

Maybe you would still be successful in that argument but I would think it would be a much harder sell!

Re: Look for the union label!

@Big John

Huh?

This article read as nearly 100% neutral to me. The 'nearly' part refers to the word 'spied' in the title though one can almost write that off as a simple attempt to make the article more click-able.

I am pretty left-of-centre and support the idea of unions - in principle* - but this article was so neutral, it has me utterly unperturbed by Walmart's actions.

Personally, I find the idea of monitoring your employee's social media comments to be a little unsavoury as a rule but it is very much public information and I think companies are within their rights to do so in order to protect their interests, which is what they have done here.

I detected no note of judgement suggesting anything else.

* - Though I do not belong to any union, nor have I ever directly engaged with one. I find that unions are an important part of the concept of free-enterprise because there's no reason why employees shouldn't be allowed to act en masse, so long as it's legal of course. But unions, of course, use that power to ill-effect and in doing so, become just much a problem as whatever it was they were trying to combat/stand-up against. A diversion, sorry.

Re: don't blame him

@Valeyard.

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/cobwebs

Re: Yeah but

And, for the record, I am drinking beer and I do have the (step) ladder out. I am not sure these two things go together but that's the beauty of beer, I suppose.

Re: Yeah but

Okay - follow-up . . .

I literally have over a dozen baby huntsman spiders in my bathroom. I have no idea what to do on account of the fact that I don't want to kill them but they are very skittish and their small size makes them difficult to corral.