Microsoft price policy will raise a few eyebrows
With the Microsoft Server 2016 evaluation version now out, the company is bucking the typical IT trend by planning to make the new version a lot more expensive. Windows Server 12 users thinking about upgrading may be in for a number of pricing surprises. So if you’re planning to upgrade, start communicating with Microsoft now to get the best deal for your organisation, at least for the next three years.
The key item here is a new core-based licensing model replacing the current per-CPU one in place now. The latest server machines can run a lot of virtual machines, and most of them do this now on CPUs with around eight or more cores. With the licensing changes, Microsoft wants to essentially charge you for the power of your server, especially as the latest Xeon CPUs have lots of cores to charge for. The reason your organisation needs to get its ducks in a row now is that, unless you inform them otherwise, Microsoft will be defaulting to the assumption you are running 8 cores per processor and 16 cores per server for each enterprise and standard license you own. Start collecting that data now to reduce ongoing costs.
If you are a Windows 10 user, you may or may not be aware that Microsoft sends data from your machine back to Redmond’s home base using a telemetry service. If you go to Settings > Privacy > Feedback & Diagnostics, you can see your current setting under the “Send your device data to Microsoft” drop-down. By default, this is set to Full. I recommend Enhanced or Basic.
If you’re an Android user and not fond of the standard status bar, and don’t want to root your machine, then I recommend the Material Status Bar app. This allows you to customise and configure the usual Android status bar to show all kinds of useful items; you can also control the skin and colour. The only downside is the ads, which you can remove for $1.50 (52 baht) if you like the app. I’m a supporter of paying small amounts to app writers for their work.
The year is going fast, with no slowdown in the amount of data being acquired by hackers the world over. Recently it was Yahoo! that confirmed a huge data breach that exposed an estimated 500 million user accounts. So if you haven’t already, change your password right now. The breach occurred back in August, but rather than announce it right away, Yahoo! decided to hold back, while I presume hackers and those they sold the info to took advantage of the silence to get what they could while the getting was good. As readers can imagine, 500 million is not a trivial exposure, and there is already talk of potential lawsuits, regulatory issues and other items that will stifle the impending sale to Verizon — possibly the other reason it was all kept quiet. Also, if you had problems accessing Yahoo! Mail early last week, that was because, yes, it was down for a while.
The biggest non-story of the week was the hacking of Pippa Middleton’s iCloud account. A reminder: if it’s in the public domain, consider it open-source for everyone. The cloud has been hacked so many times and so often, they should call it a free-for-all data store. Even the name should be a clue as to how substantial electronic clouds are, something like a “data vault” at least inspires confidence.
If you were at the recent US presidential debate, you could be excused by being very annoyed at Hofstra University, where it was held. They charged $200 for a “secure wireless internet connection” to anyone who needed one. They were also actively making sure people were not making an unauthorised connection, such as to a phone hotspot. Not only did these expensive connections crash under the load, they could be deemed illegal.
This week’s nostalgia story is the recovery of what is thought to be the first example of computer-generated music from 1951, recovered by New Zealand researchers. The music was generated in Manchester, England, on the Ferranti Mark 1, the first commercially available computer, using the Hoot command that generated pitch-adjustable feedback to operators. The NZ team restored the tracks from an old acetate disc recording.
Finally, one of my pet peeves: printer cartridges. A while back, HP issued a firmware update for their printers that would brick what the printer identified as unofficial and refilled cartridges from Sept 13. This happened in March, so if you did install it, get a pre-March version and install that one instead. The upgrade was implemented to force people to buy the far more expensive HP cartridges. The update also caused some previously functional units to stop working, and blocked the whole of the third-party marketplace. I’m sure there are workarounds being developed as I type.