Here's an extended version of a post I made today, regarding who gets charged for unpredictable usage....

Half the problem here is that we bill for bandwidth in the wrong way. By billing on traffic, we open ourselves to exactly this sort of problem - it would be like billing for water consumption based on pressure (rather than volume).

In the case of network access, it makes far more sense to bill based on access - the size of the pipe, and if necessary the level it can burst to.

It seems strangely appropriate today to write a short entry about William Gibson, given his recent release of "Pattern Recognition".

Many comments in the discussion threads about his latest work criticise him, based on the fact that he isn't really a geek (and as such, why is he on Slashdot at all?). Or that he isn't a good enough writer to justify the attention (and besides, Snow Crash was much better).

Contract vs Permanent. Soldier vs Mercenary. GP vs Specialist. Tough decisions....

Not too long ago, I had to make a hasty decision of this kind - made redundant from a "permanent" position, I had to find a job, fast. Two options were available to me: permanent, salary-based employment, or contracted, hourly-rate employment.

On Slashdot recently, there was a discussion about Fortune's list of the "Top 100 Companies to Work For". Yay. As you'd expect, some of the big-name computer companies made the list - SGI, Microsoft, Intel...

The discussion thread was interesting though - lots of good points about the small sample set that the top 100 came from (less than 300). Criticism of the process used to choose that sample set. And the inevitable smart-arse comments about Microsoft being in the list.