The Departed = A+

Let’s face it, most of the time when a lot of popular actors are thrown together in a film by a renown director it’s an attempt to achieve greatness and the media hype that’s initially generated is quickly replaced by bad reviews. I thought this might be the case for The Departed when I saw the first commercial for it. But I still wanted to see it. Not because of Nicholson but because of my favorite actors of my generation: Damon, Wahlberg and DeCaprio. Then I saw the reviews after it’s opening weekend. I was floored. You mean it’s actually a good movie too, I thought?

So I mortgaged my house, put Amy in the truck and went to pay my ransom at the North Hills theater last night. Man, I’d have paid $100. I was getting worried. The best movie I’ve seen in the last two years was unexpectedly “Unite 93”. I was beginning to lose hope in Cinema ever being creative or original again. Martin Scorcese could die tomorrow and he’d never have to worry if he made his best movie possible. This story and the acting are incredible. Now, if you’re one of these people eagerly entertained by low-ball Sci-Fi garbage, the likes of Tim Burton’s weirdo crap, or “dark” comic movies like Batman Forever (which wasn’t bad) you won’t gush over the highly intense dialog in a Scorsese film. But if your down with Goodfella’s, buckle your seat belt.

The most surprising role and acting in the movie came from Wahlberg. I knew he’s been coming into his own as a great actor. Now he’s freakin’ A list. Cruise and Hanks are old news now. If you thought of DeCaprio and Walhberg as over-rated fantasies of mid-80’s boy band worshipers, times up. They will set records for demand in Hollywood after this. I mean hell, in this movie they shove in your face the fact they can act. Damon rocks too, but of course he’s a little more established than Wahlberg and believable than Decaprio in hard-core leads (until now). Still he does not disappoint for a minute.

I’ve often said the one thing that makes acting great is when you forget the actor. You don’t recognize Decaprio but instead only know Billy Costigan, the under cover cop in over his head. These guys are bringing back acting skills not seen in decades for this film. They had to use actual drama in this incredible dialog to pull this film off. This is not a movie about pretty faces and action scenes (queue Tom Cruise). Martin Sheen is even impressive. The only thing that negatively effects the film is Nicholson. He can’t check his ego at the door. But at least he seemed crazy enough for me to buy him as a homicidal gang leader.

I can’t just leave it at recommending this movie. If you’re a gangster movie fan at all it’s your responsibility to see it. And someone’s going to have to pull of one hell of a film to beat it come Oscar time. Apparently I’m not alone in this opinion with back to back record weekends at the box office.

I’m diggin’ IE7 and Google Office

I was surprised by IE 7.  I did not expect anything great because I’ve always found IE behind Firefox in security and features.  And I’ve always hated developing sites for IE in Dreamweaver because of the way it treats development standards and CSS tags.  But working in a MS environment with Exchange 2003 and Outlook Web Access the use of IE has clear advantages in the functionality of OWA.

I also tried out Google Office this week.  All I can say is now I officially have little reason to close my browser with the exception of Trillian.  I firmly believe that by 2015 the icon driven OS desktop as we know it will be a thing of the past.  It may still be there in looks but it’s all going to be on a TCP/UDP port highway with modifications for legacy app support.  So to will your entertainment stream to you this way. 

This week I saw an article on Slashdot where some who’s-who know it all CFO was predicting the coming demise of data centers as ASICs and memory grow smaller.  BS I say.  We’re going to have higher demand for warehouses of digital data than ever before in the near future.  Even if the storage devices shrink we’re not going to put every episode of Gilligan’s Island at 1280×1024 or higher resolution on a memory stick.  It’s going to take redunant storage arrays of some kind even if it’s on battery backed flash drives.  It will only take one rack of storage instead of ten to house all the bad 80’s movies I want to watch on my fiber from the curb.  The CEO of Pack-Rat, Bob Poirier, already has fiber to his house from Verizon.  Then again he also lives right down the street from Steve Case.  Mabey that’s why he has all that AOL BS on his laptop?

Connor’s BIG number 3!!!

I posted some more photos on flickr of all the kids at the party. Connor got a ton of toys. If it wasn’t for the playroom I’d be boycotting Christmas.

As I was creating this post I realized it’s been almost 20 entries since I’ve included a photo. Flickr makes it a little easier so I’ll start to include more from now on.

We’re so happy he’s going to have a little brother or sister by April of next year! We won’t know if it’s a boy or a girl for another few weeks but we already know it’s Logan. Connor really likes the name and has already learned it. Since the name can go either way we’ll stick with it. We’re still working on middle names but we think Rider might be good for a boy (Amy’s mom’s last name). And maybe Marie for a girl? Or Mary after my sister. We’re open to suggestions.

Headline News “money saving suggestions” in face of inflation…

This story that ran this morning, Sept. 24th began “is the money running out before the end of the month?” and continued with these suggestions from “The Home Network” to save on your monthly bills:

“Put a good layer of mulch around you shrubs and flowers to hold in moisture and control weeds. This will prevent having to make as many calls to your landscaper or gardener”.

What a great idea. The key to my financial future. Everyone reduce your calls to your gardener and landscaper. What? You don’t have one? Oh wait. Neither do I.

Their next suggestion: replace your toilet if it was put in before 1992 because it will use less water per flush. Not a bad suggestion but I’ve got a similar solution my grandmother showed me years ago: put two bricks in the tank. Replace liquid volume with solid volume. Last time I checked bricks cost less than toilets.

And my favorite suggestion: buy a new, more efficient front loading washer and dryer. According to Sears this money saving venture will only cost you $1500 minimum. That’s over 10 months of power bills for me. Thanks but I think I’ll stick with the $30 extra on my power bill each month as punishment for having my old inefficient models. A 50 month return on investment would make any accountant cringe. Besides, if you’re “money is running out before the end of the month” I doubt the best money saving idea is running up more credit card debt for a fancy-dancy, sparkely-new washing machine.

Who are the overpaid idiots that came up with these suggestions? I wonder if they have any “money saving tips” that don’t involve spending lots of money?

Hardware and Software cost analysis of Thin Client Computing

For over ten years there has been on-going internal discussion in corporate IT departments surrounding the cost benefit to organizations of deploying a centrally managed thin-client hardware topology verses “fat client” or locally installed applications on PC’s. There was a time, about seven or eight years ago, when the argument against thin clients from a cost perspective was a futile endeavor. During this era of the late 90’s the cost of a PC was decreasing but a quality business class system ran $900 or more without a monitor.

Now with a solid, business class workstation priced at $700 or less, with a flat panel LCD display and Windows XP Pro, the cost benefit of a thin client environment must be weighed by factors that were considered unbeatable at the dawn of thin client computing. Some of these include: centralized administration, ease of deployment, license manageability and remote user access. Currently a thin client deployment using Microsoft RDP and Citrix components are far from being less expensive than the cost of a PC. I include Citrix in the equation verses standard Microsoft RDP because of the security, stability and flexibility ICA adds to the environment, such as the ability to publish individual instances of applications verses the entire desktop and the ability to overcome notorious printing issues.

One of the key costs of a Microsoft thin client deployment is the cost of running Windows 200x Terminal Server in “Application mode”. Once a Windows server is converted from “Administrative mode” each device or user that connects to the system will require a “Device” or “User” CAL (Client Access License). There’s a big difference in the two that must be taken into consideration when making the purchase from a Microsoft license reseller and setting up the terminal server. Here’s the difference:

  • A Microsoft Terminal Server “User” CAL means that each domain user account that connects to a terminal server instance will permanently use a CAL. The user account can use this CAL to access any MS Terminal Server instance. This CAL can only be released from it’s bind to the user account via a call to Microsoft Licensing Support and usually only twice per CAL according to MS policy.
  • A Terminal Server “Device” CAL is one that permanently ties itself to a specific workstation or hardware device (i.e. thin-client) by binding to the MAC address of the network adapter for that device. The device can use this CAL to access any MS Terminal Server instance. This CAL can only be released from it’s bind to the device via a call to Microsoft Licensing Support and usually only twice per CAL according to MS policy.

A ideal example of when to use per Device CAL’s would be in a call center environment. Several different users will sit down to the same workstations on multiple shifts. With three shifts you would have to invest in three times as many user CAL’s as Device. Alternatively a good use of per User CAL’s is for remote users of applications who may not always use the same device to access the terminal server environment.

The cost of a User CAL and Device CAL are the same. Since they tie themselves to the user account or device accessing a terminal server they are termed “non-concurrent” licenses. Generally these run approx. $70 per user for a small to medium business depending upon your relationship with your license reseller. I will not include the cost of the server OS itself because it will be assumed that a Microsoft 200x server will be in the environment regardless or architecture. However a terminal server will be more expensive than a standard file and print server due to hardware requirements. A difference of around $2000 on average.

On top of the required Microsoft licensing there are the required Citrix Presentation server licenses. Unlike the Microsoft licenses Citrix licenses are “concurrent”, meaning they do not tie to users or devices. They are pooled on a licensing server and checked out each time a user logs in to a Citrix server or “Farm”, which is a group of MS terminal servers running Citrix in a load balanced configuration for application scalability. Each Citrix license (not termed a CAL) currently costs approx. $220 per user for the standard edition of Citrix Presentation server 4.0 and $400 per user for the advanced edition which supports the load balancing scalability feature. The standard edition only supports the connection of users to one Citrix terminal server instance. One modern server with two processors and 2Gb of memory minimum can support up to 30 concurrent users (15 per processor by Citrix long running standards).For the sake of this cost analysis I will assume 30 Citrix users. I am not going to assume corporate application licensing costs or compatibility with a thin client environment because the variables are too numerous. It would be up to experienced administrators to make this assessment on an individual basis.

Total Cost Breakdown:

$320 x 30 = $9600 – ICA compatible thin client device from Wyse or HP.

$120 x 30 = $3600 – 17″ flat panel LCD monitors

$70 x 30 = $2100 – Per User or Device Terminal Server CAL’s.

$220 x 30 = $6600 – Concurrent “standard” Citrix Presentation Server 4.0 licenses.

$2000 – Additional server hardware cost for multi-session thin client support.

Approximate total for Citrix ICA thin client deployment = $27500.00 or $916.66 per user.

Approximate total for Workstation deployment = $21000.00 or $700 per user.

Clearly the base cost of hardware and OS licensing is no longer the primary benefit in selecting a thin client environment. But when additional factors, such as less desktop hardware support, are taken into consideration there are many benefits to a thin client environment including those I mentioned earlier. By no means does the falling prices of PC’s mean the end of remote application deployment. In fact I think it just means that now we’ll be able to have the best of both worlds as the PC’s replace the thin client hardware devices and remote application technologies take hold to provide reliability and ease of administration through centralized management.

And to those who think I’m forgetting to take network connectivity into consideration as a reliability factor I will only remind you that almost all corporate applications in use today require access to network files or SQL data to function any way. So never, under any circumstances, regard network reliability as anything less than an absolute necessity.

Get to the top.

Since I’ve been contacted by so many other Todd Singleton’s who’ve found my site, I wonder if I can get /chronicle to the top of the Google index when a search is performed for Todd Singleton. It worked for Matt Lemke when he repeated his name in a post over five times.  But there are a lot more guys named Todd Singleton than Lemke.

A Diebold voting machine can be opened by a hotel mini-bar key.

No one dares ask me what I think about corporate “sponsored” voting machines which were handed to contractors by the most corrupt of Neocons. Not unless they want a 30 minute lecture on individual vote accountability. But this is a security test anyone can understand. A common key that can be bought almost anywhere on-line can open the most security sensitive part of a Diebold voting machine where the memory card is located.

Your vote does count. As many times as Diebold wants it to for their candidates. I particularly like one readers response:

“At least the minibar has a paper record of what you’ve taken out.”
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1064

Beating Up Telco Robots.

Lately I’ve had to call several telecommunications companies such as Verizon and SBC/ATT. These companies have decided it would be a good idea to provide their customers with a more personal feel by having us talk to automated attendants using voice prompts as opposed to dialing in menu options. So now I’m made to feel like a fool while verbally repeating back options to a computer such as “support” or “billing” while everyone in earshot can detect pure anger in my tone.

The geniuses that determined this would save money as a way to put a voice on the line without the overhead of actually paying a human should be sent to work in an Indian call center for life. A fitting punishment since that’s the only real voice we stand a chance of getting on the line. Now that “they” have figured out that the only thing cheaper than outsourcing to India is a talking computer we must expect this proliferate. People being replaced by shell scripts is becoming reality.

So here’s what I’m doing to beat the robots: nothing. I hit the mute button on my phone immediately when I hear the first voice prompt and wait. Inevitably the robot will tell me several times “I’m sorry, I did not understand your last response. If you’re calling about tech support, please say support.” Still I remain silent in the face of the tormenting auto attendant. Sooner or later a human is forced to answer the phone. Usually there’s no way for them to send me back to “the voice” even though I know they want to. Muuwaaahaha…. I win. They spend money on a human to provide support. I encourage this tactic for everyone facing the insult of answering to a computer.