We are well aware of the many excellent procedures such as 6-s, Taguchi etc which contain many statistical tools and include these as well.

24/11/2004 11:30:37

There are corresponding facilities for creators of software to have it installed on the server, maintain and control access and earn an income stream from their product. This can augment the more usual licence model for selling software.

24/11/2004 11:24:18

In addition, this system promotes excellence in software and statistical approaches as well as clustered working with the statistician, client technical and other staff, other consultants and data clerks all working together on a common calculational platform accessible via a secure Internet link.

The customer buys only what they need - the consultancy service from the consultant and the software facilities from us - rather than paying for the data cleaning, regular running studies and excessive reporting that the customer won't read anyway.  Note that for commercial software, there may be support payments required by the licence owner that will need to be paid directly - or via our system - to be able to access the software.

Lastly there are value-added parts such as software and document downloads.  There is a separate user/password system to the administration section and individual user accounts on the server also have their own login/password pairs.

24/11/2004 00:02:46

A Windows facility being developed for Windows platformed applications in much the same way, although it will be more expensive to use.

29/11/2004 12:19:41

24/11/2004 11:37:09

24/11/2004 11:39:41

24/11/2004 11:42:17

24/11/2004 00:02:46

While the original target is industry, other client groups are very welcome.  If you want us to come and talk to you let us know.  We will also be implementing a recommendation system and an affiliate marketing scheme, both aimed at server registration.

24/11/2004 00:02:46

To some extent this is because salaries and status were very low in hospitals - at least in the UK - but also it is because the lone statistician cannot have the career interest and potential that s/he would enjoy in a critical-mass department or institution.  There need for leading-edge collaborative solutions is much the same as in industry.  There are many small medical and bio-science research companies springing up in science parks and the like that cannot afford to employ a full-time statistician directly and may not have access via their local university to a medical statistics department.  Equally they may not be able to afford some of the expensive software that may be required. 

Pharmaceuticals is another area - most statisticians in the pharma industry work in the clinical trials area required by the regulatory authorities.  But it is all very well to demonstrate the effectiveness of a research drug - you then have to make it in large quantities within closely prescribed limits for the research results to be valid – that is for the drug to work.  Manufacturing pharmaceutical products has the same problems as making light switches – with the advantage that it is very high value-added. 

Other areas of application are education and training where the server facilities may be used for demonstration and practice purposes.

24/11/2004 00:02:46

24/11/2004 00:02:46

24/11/2004 00:02:46

24/11/2004 00:02:46

As you move the mouse over the top row, the second row will alter. Those links that are live in the second row show as links - the links you can't use show as yellow text. For example, under Information all the sub-tabs are clickable but under Account (which refers to your account on the web site), only Registration and Classifications are clickable.

You don't click on the top row but the second row.

For some pages, a third row of links appears.

24/11/2004 11:56:40

Click on this and you will go to a page with a series of tabs at the top.  Please read the Instructions first but if you are really impatient, clicking on New User will take you to a screen that asks for various details.  Don't worry about the other pages yet - you can't access them anyway.

Fill out your details (we are registered with the Information Commissioner so your data is safe and won't be passed on).  The Username needs to be at least 5 characters long, starting with a letter and containing case-sensitive letters, numbers or the symbols dash (""-"") or underscore (""_"").  The maximum length is actually 40 characters which is enough for anyone - bear in mind that the server family name is only 5-10 characters long and the suggestion is to use your username.  The password needs to be between 5 and 15 case-sensitive alpha-numeric characters long.  The site will tell you if you have selected a name already used - eventually we will add a suggested name in such cases.

A contact email address also needs to be given and the country drop-down selected - it should detect where you are but it is not infallible.  We also add your preferred currency, a field for VAT number (this only affects non-UK EU institutions and we will check it) and a 'Search available' check box so you can remove yourself from the search index without having to delete or re-enter your detailts - you can change this whenever you want.

Once you press Submit and your information has been accepted, the site will consider you logged in and some of the page characteristics will change.  To log out, just click on the Logout tab on the top left and you will be logged out.

02/03/2005 13:38:42

24/11/2004 12:59:44

03/03/2005 11:33:59

24/11/2004 13:08:12

If you forget your UserName then enter a verified email address known to us in the User Name box and press User/Pwd?.  This will send your username to you and if you still can't remember your password, you will have to repeat the procedure.  It is obviously a bad idea to send username and password in the same email.

24/11/2004 13:57:31

02/03/2005 13:47:58

1. Contact email address - this is the email address that you must use on registration and to which we send the Welcome message and anything else like the username or password should you forget them - it needs to be verified for the password and username reminders to work. This email address is never revealed to the public or available anywhere online.
2. The Forum email addresses are for Forum messages when you choose to have them also delivered to a mailbox. Again these are never revealed but to protect you from malicious registration you have to verify each such address.
3. You can also add an email address to your details. This address is available to the public but it is never shown on a page other than the final user details after a search or check has been requested and this can only be done when logged in. This is to reduce the possibility of email (and URL) farming.

03/12/2004 11:55:15

• There are forums (fora) aimed at various sectors and functions - if you think other forums are required, please let us know although this is no guarantee that we will set them up!
• There is a registration and search facility with sufficiently broad criteria to be able to cope with a large number of disciplines and applications areas.
• A specialist bureau service is available first with Unix but eventually a Windows service.
• We hope also to offer access for approved users to grid computing

We don't aim to add too many country-specific facilities - this begins to be far too complicated legally - but you are always welcome to work via the UK tax system if you like. We are sure that the UK government will be only too happy to take the money ...

03/12/2004 11:57:24

There are already quite a lot of classifications within each category but if you want to suggest some changes, let us know and we will add them to any revisions. The easiest way to do this is via one of the forums so that a discussion and hopefully consensus will arise.

24/11/2004 14:23:18

We start by defining the endpoints.

While all statisticians will know at least a tiny bit about all branches of statistics, there are some areas that they really know very little about.  Thus for example someone who is expert or better in classical analysis of variance or probability theory may know next to nothing about neural networks or web mining.  This latter is the None category - the statistician would not really know where to start although s/he may suggest an alternative technique.

On the other hand, there are those people who are global experts and to whose lectures we would all rush if we had the time and the air fare.  These are Gurus.

We wouldn't expect too many None's or too many Guru's on the data base.

Between them, there are Basic, Broad and Expert categories.  Basic knowledge means knowing sufficient to solve the problem perhaps after a little research, Broad knowledge means the the problem can be solved and put into context with little research and Expert knowledge means the problem can be solved rapidly and comprehensively without recourse to research except perhaps re-reading an article or two.

This might not seem sufficient resolution but in practice, to many industrial clients, even a Basic knowledge will be a bonus - how much of the time are you really just using high school maths?  The solution offered by someone with Basic knowledge - even though they may have to spend some time thinking - may be just as good as an Expert solution, particularly if they have Broad of Expert knowledge of the underlying processes.

You can enter or change your self-classification at any time so if, after reading this, you think you have not represented yourself fully or promoted yourself too much, you can revisit your details at any time.

24/11/2004 00:02:47

The classifications were the result of a degree of thinking, analysis and asking people for their ideas.  In the end, they can easily be extended but this approach has the benefit of making you think - whether you are a statistician or potential client.

24/11/2004 00:02:47

02/03/2005 13:52:36

24/11/2004 14:41:55

24/11/2004 14:32:31

24/11/2004 14:40:21

Some of these approaches have been developed specifically for the larger software producers but there is no reason why a small software company cannot use them. As with all software, as long as it runs natively on the operating system (Linux - although we will be offering a similar Windows-based facility), you can generate an income stream from it but if it is an add-in, then the better way will be to buy it and install it on your own system. This is particularly true for Excel add-ins as there is no way of accounting for use. We can always help by enabling the software to be downloaded and using our credit card system for payment - although we will of course have to make a small charge for this service. In both cases, the Product Management Area will enable a lot of control of the product. This requires a different user to be set up to administer products.

14/06/2005 10:18:56

05/05/2005 13:32:11

We will make a management account on the server available to you to handle the software itself but you will not be able to access anything else. In order to see how your software works in a user environment, you will need to have an ordinary server account, which you can access from here.

02/01/2007 21:31:35

While we aim to be as inexpensive as possible, if you want for example interactive graphics there is no way that we can offer seriously fast response because of latency.  Therefore potential customers can try out the system, even co-develop on our server, then install the software on their own computer.

We could make it available for download and take a small commission, using our payment facilities and this means that you wouldn't need to take credit cards or have a merchant account.  Email us for details.

24/11/2004 00:02:47

24/11/2004 00:02:47

1. It may not be available on our platform.
2. There may be technical reasons why we can't mount it - for example the memory use may be non-standard and this may pose a security risk (although we could sandbox the program).
3. We may not know about it or have not thought about it so just drop us a line and we will see what the costs are - there are so many excellent software packages around.
4. The licence conditions may not allow us to mount it on a publicly available server so if you really need it, just pester their sales folk!
5. The costs may too high - some software is very expensive. In this case you may be able to share this with other users (put a message on the appropriate mailing list to look for sharers) and we can arrange to distribute the cost between you. It is also possible to set up a support payment system either directly with the software manufacturers or via our charging system, which can keep the upfront costs down. (see here for the commercial options)

24/11/2004 14:51:21

24/11/2004 00:02:47

05/05/2005 13:00:35

05/05/2005 13:01:04

24/11/2004 14:56:34

You can generate a number of accounts ab initio when you register but in addiition, the family manager or administrator (these terms are used interchangeably on this site) can add other users, create groups, join internal (ie within family) or external users to a group, apply for access to the software products available etc etc. This gives institutions or clustered working partnerships the economies of scale.

The family manager is the web user who has access to the Server Administration Area. Only he or she receives the monthly account and it is then their decision on how to process it.

Note that all administrative functions are carried out from the web site, not the Unix user but the family manager can insert files into the family directory and customise all logins by a .bashrc file that will be run by all users at login time.  All user directories are owned by the individual users (ie familyname.usersuffix) and are in the family group.  All group directories are owned by the family administrator and are also in the family group.

23/03/2005 15:16:22

Remember that the Server account users and passwords have nothing to do with the Web account or Server Administration and although you set up these passwords yourself, they will be date stamped so you must change it as soon as you log in.   You are required to change your Unix account passwords regularly anyway.   If you forget your Unix password, we cannot email it to you since we will not decrypt it from the password file (we use a strong password philosophy).   We can of course reset it for you to another new password, which again you must reset once you log in for the first time.

02/03/2005 15:43:01

As with other administrative changes, only the family manager can do this via this web site.

A group enables you to be able to share data around.  The data is still owned by one of the users - to whom the space is charged (although that is paid for from the family pot of course) - but according to the settings other users can read, write or execute files.  The accounting means that the running cost and bandwidth will still be charged to the user that runs the program - which is of course charged to the family acount.

02/03/2005 21:45:01

02/03/2005 21:43:47

02/03/2005 21:49:52

24/11/2004 15:11:34

24/11/2004 00:02:47

0. A restricted shell only for those that have become overdrawn and/or abused the system,
1. Initial level that allows you a single login per user, some restriction to the amount of space, computing time per process and computational power, access to compilers and to open source software,
2. Unrestricted logins and rather more space and power,
3. Limited access to commercial software subject to any support agreement,
4. Full access to commercial software subject to any support agreement,
5. Allows programs to migrate over the cluster when it becomes available,
6. Batch access to a grid facility when it becomes available,
7. Interactive access to a grid facility when it becomes available,
8. Both process migration over the cluster and batch access to a grid facility,
9. Both process migration over the cluster and interactive access to a grid facility,
10. and upwards have yet to be defined.

Note that software run under batch and over the cluster/grid will attract a discount so it will be worth getting to these levels once these facilities are available. Trust 4 and above really depend on the amount of money you spend and, where it is with a family account, the privilege will be given to all users in the family but may similarly be withdrawn if any one of the users abuses the system.

Note also that access to some software and facilities will require us to know who and where you are for legal reasons. There are formal restrictions on what hardware and sofware can be used for so we need to have some identity verification.

03/12/2004 12:24:56

24/11/2004 00:02:47

02/03/2005 21:50:27

1. a monthly charge
2. the background computing time
3. any program-specific computing time
4. IO and memory used for different programs
5. the disk space used and
6. the internet bandwidth used.

These are all linked to your family account and the group (not the user) under which the program is being run and of course the program itself.

Initially only the monthly charge will be applied but eventually the two process accounting systems will be used to measure both background accounting and the use of particular programs.  The background charge is in case a user tries to avoid paying for expensive programs so don't try and solve your problems using a bash script or it will cost a fortune!  On the other hand, you are free to create bespoke programs - we have implementations of most computing languages.

Some programs have a specific charging rate for the time and memory used so that we can either recover the licence cost or more likely pass this on to the software owner - this all depends on the arrangements we have.  In some cases, you will be charged directly by the software owner.  Some programs also have a support requirement where your user needs to be specifically enabled with an individual agreement with the software producer.  Depending on the software, this will either be handled directly by the software owner or charged via our billing system.

All these are put together so that your bill can be prepared and sent to you.  This will be done on a monthly basis and includes all instances that we have of the various programs you have used and their associated charges in terms of our units.

24/11/2004 15:27:43

26/05/2005 18:50:54

24/11/2004 00:02:47

Translating into the overnight spot price, we are able to tell you immediately how many units you will get, which gives you the best deal particularly as it saves all bank charges. The exchange rate given is the geometric mean of the buy and sell rates that WorldPay charge us. Some products - particularly downloadable software - may require settlement in a particular currency but otherwise you will have the opportunity to select a currency at the time of purchase. Other currencies will be charged via your credit card in £ in the usual way. We will keep this under continuous review and should it become clear that there is a substantial customer base in other currencies, we will add that currency to our list. We are keenly aware that currency exchange costs - particularly via credit cards - can exceed currency fluctuations.

Note that EU users will have VAT added unless they can furnish a valid VAT (TVA, IVA etc) number. We will check this with the europa.eu.int website and if the number does not correspond we will email you and treat any payment as inclusive of (UK) VAT, reducing the account balance appropriately, while the situation is being clarified. The current UK rate of 17.5% will be applied to all UK residents and businesses and all EU residents and businesses that are not registered. Since July 1st 2003 the place of supply for electronically delivered services is in the user's country (there are a lot of definitions but that is the usual interpretation) but charged at the UK rate.

04/04/2005 10:02:03

26/05/2005 18:51:52

24/11/2004 00:02:47

Overdrafts are generally arranged for a short period of time pending the clearance of funds and are at our discretion. If your account exceeds the hard limit, you will not be allowed to log in until this overdraft is reduced below the hard limit. Note that the balance as reported via this web site and that is checked at login time is from calculations done every night so it is as well to keep the account in sufficient balance for a day's operations. We have a command that can be used by the family administrator to give an up-to-date estimate of the time used but this will not include all aspects of the consumption.

In addition to these limits, you can subject to our agreement have an account which is essentially a additional 0% overdraft facility that is cleared each month. If your main facility becomes overdrawn, in order to minimise costs we will draw resources from your credit account facility subject to the minimum numbers of units that is pre-set. The overdraft rate applied to a credit account facility once the line of credit has been exhausted will be more onerous than banking overdrafts to persuade you to settle the account promptly.

18/04/2005 10:55:09

12/04/2005 12:04:17

An account is effectively a separate zero-cost overdraft facility that we will bill every month - a facility from which you can transfer resources as you need. The monthly bill is for what has been requested - if you have not used the facilities they are left as a credit much as if you had paid by credit card or cheque.

We expect the bill to be settled with 30 days, which is the recommendation for dealing with small businesses from the Confederation of British Industry. Some larger businesses may find this difficult but we don't see why prompt payers should subsidise inefficiency - or procrastination to protect cash-flow. We see no reason at all why a payment cannot be scheduled within in a properly run finance department.

If the bill is not settled within that time, the corresponding overdraft rate will apply from the day 1 on the whole invoice and if it is not settled within 60 days, all users will be locked until it is settled and account facilities may be withdrawn. Note that these are automatic procedures coded into the accounting system. Interest charges will be added to the account even if there is credit in units or users. Apart from the case of late payment, overdrafts will be charged from the date when the excess first occurred.

16/04/2005 18:10:40

Money can also be sent by inter-bank transfer to one of the following account numbers:

Account name Quantex Research Ltd Bank National Westminster Bank plc Bank address 23 Stamford New Road Altrincham Cheshire WA14 1DB United Kingdom SWIFT BIC NWBK GB 2L IBAN Sterling GB68 NWBK 5161 1112 6740 01 IBAN Euros GB28 NWBK 6072 0273 5034 52 IBAN US Dollars GB41 NWBK 6073 0173 5034 44

as appropriate. Please set the invoice number as the message. Note that we expect to receive the money exactly as in the invoice so you will need to indicate that all the bank charges will be paid by you. This is because, unlike credit cards, we have some checking to do that takes time, It may be cheaper for you to pay by credit card but we do not take credit card payments to settle monthly accounts - account holders will already have had a credit period that can be as much as 60 days from the initial charge.

13/04/2007 13:20:16

24/11/2004 00:02:47

12/04/2005 12:07:22

07/08/2005 19:58:24

07/08/2005 20:56:33

07/08/2005 20:03:45

1. Unix security is often criticised but by adopting a suitable directory architecture and permissions, proper control may be exercised - many Unix systems are installed without this consideration.  The standard Unix Discretionary Access Control thus enables basic control of the user files.  As the family administrator owns the family directory, s/he can easily change these levels and can install a family-wide .bashrc file if required that can set a suitable umask.
2. Additional access both to users within the family and to external users can be controlled by group membership and corresponding access controls - again part of standard Unix DAC.
3. Access control outside user or group level or of different restrictions within these levels can be augmented by using POSIX ACLs and the commands getfacl and setfacl enable setting of very fine grained controls on a user-by-user basis.
4. Finally to protect the system, we use the grsecurity2 patches - in fact we are a sponsor of grsecurity.  This means that from a sysadmin point of view we can control who uses what and from a user point of view, only certain parts of the system are visible.  This system uses role-based ACLs and locks out unnecesary visibility of the system completely.

No computer system can guarantee security although we make every effort to install the latest patches.  Of course you must specifically permit other users to access your data - if you have sensitive information then please anonymise it if at all possible.  We change passwords regularly and apply all proper sysadmin routines to reduce to a minimum security risk.  Any user found abusing the system in any way will have their account suspended while investigation takes place.

In addition, for low Trust levels and also for some programs that cannot be run within grsecurity because they violate some of the standards, we will execute everything within a sandbox.  This means that you actually run your own kernel which protects the memory.

02/03/2005 16:14:20

08/05/2005 18:07:03

08/05/2005 18:02:30

08/05/2005 18:05:39

The charges are available on request and are very reasonable - we have seen commercial systems that charge over 10 times our charges with the only 'benefit' of you being able to do it from your desktop machine. We regard that as a possible security threat in itself to allow automatic access.

We use the robotic tape backup system at Manchester University - there are no bandwidth costs involved other than that used to upload any file onto the system but we charge per Gb-year. Note that this is entirely under the user control - by default we do not back up any user files at all to tape.

05/05/2005 12:47:59

02/03/2005 16:20:34

02/03/2005 16:19:17

02/03/2005 16:20:07

23/03/2005 14:15:50

23/03/2005 14:17:27

23/03/2005 14:21:44

23/03/2005 14:25:03

23/03/2005 14:52:30

23/03/2005 14:57:32

1. You need to set a session name - this can be anything you want.
2. The host you connect to is unix.statistics-server.net on port 22.
3. Set the internet connection type as appropriate.
4. The NX client service you want is Unix - the Windows and VNC drop downs refer to connection using Windows Terminal Service and VNC (Virtual Network Computing).
5. Set the next box to Custom as we don't run KDE, Gnome or CDE.
6. Click the Setting box and enter the word xterm under "Run the following command".
7. Click on Floating window and leave the Disable taint alone.
8. Click OK to return to the wizard.
9. Check the Enable SSL encryption of all traffic box.
10. It is worth saving your password and making an icon on your desktop if your machine is secure.

25/03/2005 11:16:18

31/05/2005 16:12:17

However, there is now an experimental NX native client plugin for Mozilla and Firefox on Linux and Windows called moznx that you can try.  This can be found at home.nc.rr.com/moznx. Instructions are on that site and we have installed the appropriate software. To connect, go to unix.statistics-server.net/cgi-bin/connect.pl. Let us know how you get on.

25/03/2005 11:38:37

23/03/2005 15:08:09

24/11/2004 15:55:15

14/06/2005 10:21:56

24/11/2004 00:02:47

04/04/2005 10:36:17

02/03/2005 21:40:46