by ezs | Nov 4, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
Novell recently announced an interesting change to its product licensing:
Device Licenses
Customers will now have the option to license qualifying products by device for their organization.
This optional counting method is available on select “User” licensed products. To implement this option, customers can simply begin counting User-licensed products according to the number of devices utilizing the software functionality, rather than the number of users.
No conversion forms or documentation are required. However, customers should track device licensing counts and products internally for usage and audit purposes. Customers must declare their counting method to Novell or their partner up front, and must adhere to this method for audit and payment purposes. If the customer does not declare device licensing, user is assumed to be the default on all user-licensed products.
This is a change that was included in ZENworks 7 – it makes licensing a lot simpler for some organisations.
by ezs | Nov 3, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized, ZENworks
Wow. There has been a flurry of activity with ZENworks Server Management in the last month or so.
Martin Irwin in WorldWide Support built a set of CPKs to deploy ZENworks 6.5 SP2 across your infrastructure; he is now working on delivering this with the standalone CPK engine (think of this as a small part of the ZENworks Server Management subscriber agent) to all customers. That is way cool.
Peter Lambrechtsen in New Zealand has almost finalised a CPK (hopefully soon with the standalone engine) that will let you deploy ZENworks 7 in your network.
All very cool – and showing real savings for customers deploying ZENworks in an enterprise.
Centralised deployment, across hundreds of servers – in hours. Now that’s value.
by ezs | Nov 3, 2005 | evilzenscientist, fun stuff, travel, Uncategorized
McCarran Airport in Las Vegas has fast free wifi.
The JW Marriott Resort in Las Vegas has a voucher-based wifi implementation – but it only blocks ports 8 (http/https) – not anything else. So if you don’t mind not having web browsing you can – hypothetically – do email (GW, POP, IMAP, SMTP), other stuff (SSH, RDP) and also things like IM. Oh well.
by ezs | Nov 1, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
I’ve been using Zappos for a while – it’s a great example of how a web-based service can and should work.
Here are my positive pieces:
- if you know what you want – it’s really easy to find and buy a pair of shoes. Look at real shoes in a real shop; buy online. (Oh how traditional stores must hate that)
- if you want to look for something new – it’s nice and clean navigation to find what you want to compare. The images of the shoes look clear and realistic. That’s good.
- great shipping policy. Free shipping – I’m often ‘upgraded’ to 2 day priority at no cost. That’s just splendid.
- excellent returns policy. Print out the return label online; put it on the box; arrange pickup. No cost, no hassle. Compare this to other online stores (urg – Swatch are awful for this) where they issue an RMA then make you ship the product back. Or they ship you a return document. It’s all time and hassle.
- feedback on purchases. Just like any other successful site you can comment on the goods purchased (shoes – how much can you say about a pair?) and on the service itself.
- purchase history. I liked those shoes so much I’ll buy some more. Or you can view what you did purchase and look for similar things.
Overall Zappos is pretty splendid.
by ezs | Nov 1, 2005 | evilzenscientist, fun stuff, Uncategorized
[Edit – it’s not me in the gorilla suit – it’s Peter Worsnop – one of my colleagues!]
by ezs | Oct 31, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
I first heard Foreheads in a Fishtank in 2001 on John Peel. I got a tape of the albums from Andy. We saw them (the only people in the audience) at the Old Angel in Nottingham – they did requests…
I lost the tapes a long time ago. I’ve been hunting down a CD of ‘Yeah Baby Wow’ for years. I found a copy in good condition on eBay today. A steal at UKP3.50.
by ezs | Oct 31, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized, Utah
It’s been slow blogging this last week or so – it is the end of the fiscal year at Novell – and that’s been taking up a lot of my time.
There is fresh snow on the mountains – and it is freezing overnight in Utah – I’ll get some photos of the snow posted later today.
by ezs | Oct 25, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
I lost a blog server.
postmark.net were a free web-based email provider.
Their homepage tells a sobering tale:
Early last week, Postmark’s repositories of user mail and account information were lost to a serious hardware failure. The resulting damage left us unable to recover any useful data, and as such, Postmark.net is shutting down. In its stead, we recommend Google’s own Google Mail service, which offers superior storage and search capacities.
by ezs | Oct 25, 2005 | evilzenscientist, fun stuff, Uncategorized
This caught my eye – a local Salt Lake company 360 Electrical has a whole new take on the standard US power outlets:
Now that’s useful.
by ezs | Oct 22, 2005 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized
Typical isn’t it – you get on a plane and one of your serves dies.
My blog server decided to complain about the lack of attention last Sunday evening – just as I was getting on a flight to London. Cycling the power really didn’t help – it needed fsck on the filesystem.
Now I’m back it’s a lot happier.
Apologies for the lack of updates in the last week!
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