[Macpartners] Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" Update

[Alfred Essa]

Stephen,

Thank you for you putting things in perspective.  Show me the data. :)

I would also like to add a comment. IS&T¹s budget has been cut to the bone,
yet overall services have dramatically improved since Jerry¹s arrival. To
Jerry and his team: keep up the great work; we appreciate everything you are
doing. 

Al 


On 7/12/05 9:52 AM, "Stephen Dowdy" <sdowdy at MIT.EDU> wrote:

> I normally would not get involved in an e-mail thread like thisŠ but given
> that our office is directly involved with the computation of the overhead
> rate, I thought I would just offer a few numbers to educate folks on where all
> that F&A goes.  Overhead is now referred to as Facilities and Administration
> (F&A) and the following is the breakdown of the ³F² piece and the ³A² piece of
> F&A. 
>  
> Attached is a PDF file that illustrates the following:
>  
> Based on FY03 data, for every dollar we spend on research:
>  
> 69 cents goes to the direct cost of research.
> 31 cents goes to the F&A costs associated with research.
>  
> Of that 31 cents, the ³F² piece of F&A is broken down as:
>  
> 8 cents goes to operation and maintenance
> 3 cents goes towards equipment
> 4 cents goes towards utilities
> 5 cents goes towards buildings
> 2 cents goes towards libraries
>  
> That¹s a total of 22 cents of the 31 cents that directly supports the research
> endeavor here at MIT.  Surely your researches expect the buildings to have
> water, electricity, heat, air conditioning and expect the facilities to be
> maintained, the restrooms cleaned, the grass cut and the snow removed.  I also
> believe the researchers desire well run and well maintained libraries.
>  
> The remaining 9 cents of the overhead, goes towards the ³A² piece of F&A:
>  
> 4 cents to general administration (Dean¹s offices, Provost, President, etc)
> 1 cent to departmental administration (the budget to run the various DLCs on
> campus that enroll your students and process your payroll transactions)
> 2 cents to faculty (we pay the faculty salaries from institute funds even when
> they are working on federal research projects)
>  
> And the last 2 cents for all other administration which includes IS&T, OSP,
> Payroll, Controller¹s office, etc
>  
> So your ³hard earned money that [you] spend on the so called "MIT overhead"²
> really supports the research enterprise and isn¹t some simple slush fund that
> MIT taxes you with.  The federal government caps the ³A² portion of ³F&A² at
> 26% of the total equation that makes up our full F&A rate.  MIT is one of very
> few schools in the entire country that is below the 26% administrative cap on
> overhead which means we are more efficient and much more lean in central
> administrative costs that almost every other school in the nation.  As you can
> see from the numbers above, most of your overhead goes towards facilities (the
> ³F² piece) and the majority of the ³A² piece goes to the schools and
> departments to run them.
>  
> Finally, that 2 cents that must support OSP, IS&T, Payroll, Human Resources,
> Controller¹s office, etcŠ is proportioned according to the direct support of
> research that each office contributes. For example, about 92% of OSP supports
> research.  Therefore my office is highly recoverable and most of our costs are
> in that 2 cents.  IS&T hovers around 52-54% recoverable.   Other offices have
> different recovery rates that all get added into the big pie that constitutes
> that final 2 cents of F&A that we charge.  So for an office like IS&T, their
> remaining funds come form outside sources and in the form of tuition and other
> revenue.  IS&T supports the teaching endeavor as mush as the research endeavor
> of the institute and therefore their recovery reflects that fact.
>  
> Since we are below the regulatory administrative cap, you could argue to the
> Provost that you would like to pay more F&A to get more services from central
> administration.  I¹m sure Jerry Grochow would love to have his budget
> increased so that he could provide more services and you wouldn¹t have to wait
> over 2 months to get full support of Tiger.  Perhaps you should take your
> argument to Apple for releasing a OS upgrade that breaks so many applications.
> No one would hesitate to bash Microsoft if they released an new OS that causes
> so many problems.
>  
> Anyway, that¹s the F&A facts.
>  
>  
> 
> 
> From: Kuba Tatarkiewicz [mailto:tatarkie at lns.mit.edu]
> Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 6:34 PM
> To: Bill Cattey
> Cc: Gerald D Burke; Albert Willis; macpartners at MIT.EDU; itpartners at MIT.EDU;
> sw-release-announce at MIT.EDU; ed-tech at MIT.EDU; it-lead at MIT.EDU; itag at MIT.EDU;
> is&t at MIT.EDU; Jerry Grochow; Sean Thompson; J Maynard Gelinas
> Subject: Re: [Macpartners] Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" Update
>  
> 
> Dear Bill,
> 
>  
> 
> I appreciate you concerns and your comments.
> 
>  
> 
> However,  as the person responsible for computer user experience in the Lab, I
> can not relay on a good will. This is same with Mac OS X as it is with Linux.
> That's why we do have two full time Linux admins in the group who (I cross my
> fingers) keep our 200+ hosts secure and in a working condition. Well, they do
> much more: LNS is running on all desktops our own distribution of Scientific
> Linux (Red Hat distribution supported by CERN - unfortunately, we can not
> afford enterprise prices of Red Hat and MIT IST choose not to support Red Hat
> at levels that we need) with distributed computing CONDOR system. Our users
> are happy for the system, which translates into payments to our budget (read:
> our salaries).
> 
>  
> 
> I think that the last sentence of the previous paragraph tells all: I'd like
> to see real support for Mac OS X for our hard earned money that we spend on
> the so called "MIT overhead". Unfortunately, present situation does not
> justify our payments:  it is 2+ months since Tiger was introduced to the
> general public, several commercial applications have been already updated, but
> there's nothing on MIT IST Web site that our users can be interested in.
> 
>  
> 
> Sorry, but as we say in Poland, the hell is covered with good wills. What we
> really need are good actions.
> 
>  
> 
> Regards,
> 
>  
> 
> Kuba
> 
> 
> 
> I am sorry to hear that you gave up on IS&T support for Mac OS X.
> 
>  
> 
> You raise a question that deserves an answer: "Why does it seem like
> 
> IS&T is not testing until after a product ships?"
> 
>  
> 
> My personal experience is as Linux Platform Coordinator, but I believe
> 
> it is applicable to platforms like Mac OS X.
> 
>  
> 
> We *DO* test products before they come out -- as much early access as
> 
> vendors are willing to give us. Some vendors give us a lot of access.
> 
> Others don't give us much or any early access.  We negotiate as best we
> 
> can.
> 
>  
> 
> The issue that keeps a LOT of us in IS&T stressed is that after we have
> 
> tested the early versions of a product, the real version of the product
> 
> sometimes ships badly broken in some way.  The vendor thought it was a
> 
> trivial change, but it wasn't.  We have found that we have to run ALL
> 
> the testing we did on the early version AGAIN on the REAL version, and
> 
> that we often find nasty problems.
> 
>  
> 
> It is an unfortunate situation that, when the vendors ship new versions
> 
> of their products, they somehow fail for a non-trivial segment of the
> 
> MIT user community.  I appreciate how all you have seen is how long it
> 
> takes for us to qualify new software, and how in spite of that delay,
> 
> you still get bit by problems.
> 
>  
> 
> Although I am saddened by the prospect of IS&T losing the experience
> 
> from the users of your 50+ LNS systems, I can appreciate your viewpoint.
> 
> When you shrink the problem down from 1000 stakeholder to 50
> 
> stakeholder, the job of getting things to work for "everyone" is a lot
> 
> easier.
> 
>  
> 
> Before you walk away from us, I ask you please to consider the
> 
> possibility that we ARE working hard, and that we ARE remedying
> 
> problems, just not always in areas that are visible to you and your
> 
> smaller community.
> 
>  
> 
> Ultimately, IS&T can't do the whole job alone.  We need customers who
> 
> will try stuff out, and either confirm for us that all is well, or help
> 
> us get problems and solutions through to the vendors.
> 
>  
> 
> I hope that IS&T can be useful to you in the future.
> 
>  
> 
> -Bill Cattey
> 
> Linux Platform Coordinator
> 
>  
> 
> On Wed, 2005-06-22 at 22:32 -0400, Kuba Tatarkiewicz wrote:
> 
> 
> Dear All,
> 
>  
>  
> 
> ...
> 
> 
>  
> 
> Personally I gave up on MIT support for Mac OS X - I've got my own
> 
> copy of Tiger long time ago and it runs fine for me. I consider doing
> 
> same for 50+ Mac OS X users at Lab for Nuclear Science. We already
> 
> have several people with new Macs that successfully run Tiger.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> I am sorry, but I do not understand why time and time again commercial
> 
> software from major vendors is being "tested" when it is released, not
> 
> while in  beta. Are we at MIT or at some A&M?!
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Regards,
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Kuba
> 
> (former Apple evangelist & Friend of QT)
> 
>  
> 
> 
> hi al,
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> will is&t have a versions of 10.3 available for those new macs
> 
> that come with tiger? how will departments get this version?
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> can they format and go back to the older versions. i have three new
> 
> macs arriving and noticed they all will come with tiger.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> all use sap, and need certificates for stellar, and of course
> 
> kerberos. 
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> i have one already installed and not having a problem with
> 
> a kerberos version i downloaded from the software distribution
> 
> link, user in citrix for sap and some other MIT apps.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> do we take this up will Apple or does IS&T help get us a working
> 
> macos for Campus.
> 
>  
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>  
> 
>                thanks, jerry
> 
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>        thanks, jerry
>  
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> _______________________
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Kuba Tatarkiewicz Ph.D.
> 
>  
> 
> Assistant Director for Computer Services
> 
>  
> 
> MIT Lab for Nuclear Science
> 
>  
> 
> Phone 617 452 2430
> 
>  
> 
> Fax 617 258 6591
> 
>  
> 
> 24-030D MIT
> 
>  
> 
> 77 Massachusetts Avenue
> 
>  
> 
> Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
> 
>  
> 
> _______________________
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
>  
>  
> 
> _______________________
> 
>  
> 
> Kuba Tatarkiewicz Ph.D.
> 
> Assistant Director for Computer Services
> 
> MIT Lab for Nuclear Science
> 
> Phone 617 452 2430
> 
> Fax 617 258 6591
> 
> 24-030D MIT
> 
> 77 Massachusetts Avenue
> 
> Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
> 
> _______________________
> 
>  
> 


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