'Cultlike' Devotion: Apple Once Refused To Join Open Compute Project, So Their Entire Networking Team Quit (businessinsider.com)

mattydread23 writes: Great story about the Open Compute Project from Business Insider's Julie Bort here, including this fun tidbit: "'OCP has a cultlike following,' one person with knowledge of the situation told Business Insider. 'The whole industry, internet companies, vendors, and enterprises are monitoring OCP.' OCP aims to do for computer hardware what the Linux operating system did for software: make it 'open source' so anyone can take the designs for free and modify them, with contract manufacturers standing by to build them. In its six years, OCP has grown into a global entity, with board members from Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Intel, and Microsoft. In fact, there's a well-known story among OCP insiders that demonstrates this cultlike phenom. It involves Apple's networking team. This team was responsible for building a network at Apple that was so reliable, it never goes down. Not rarely -- never. Building a 100% reliable network to meet Apple's exacting standards was no easy task. So, instead of going it alone under Apple's secrecy, the Apple networking team wanted to participate in the revolution, contributing and receiving help. But when the Apple team asked to join OCP, Apple said 'no.' 'The whole team quit the same week,' this person told us."

Comments

odd---

[Anonymous Coward]

the cult-like Apple doesn't like competing cults?

Re:odd---

[Chris Mattern]

Apple only likes cults that worship buying their stuff.

Re:odd---

[Austerity Empowers]

the cult-like Apple doesn't like competing cults?

More like engineers are move devoted to their technology than to whomever happens to employ them at any given time. Particularly large, overbearing corporations that saddle them with a lot of rules and marketing idiots.

This is more a story about how technical people work than it is about Apple.

Re:odd---

[pmontra]

No cult likes competing cults. What's interesting is that the cult of OCP is stronger than the cult of Apple, that open wins against closed. It's comforting.

Re:odd---

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's genius engineers were building a 10000% reliable network. Not merely 100%, but 1000000%... with ten extra blades and electrolytes.

But the cult-like OCP wouldn't let them join.. booh.

Cult-like articles are cult-like

Re:odd---

[gtall]

A company only likes organizations that likes to buy its stuff. Wow! And you figured this out all by yourself?

Re:odd---

[jellomizer]

Don't forget to mention.
Who work in an area where they can easily find a job elsewhere.
I bet these guys had jobs ligned up before the "bravely" quit Apple.
Rarely a whole department will quit at the same time. If the job really sucks you will see a migration where people quit over the course of months. Because normally before you quit you need an other job.
Having Apple not join open compute sounds more liike the first intent to look elsewhere. Then the reason to quit.
I expect they all just got picked up by some companies they found out they were all quitting at the same time so they used that as the reason for their exit interview.

Re:odd---

[haruchai]

Don't forget to mention.
Who work in an area where they can easily find a job elsewhere.
I bet these guys had jobs ligned up before the "bravely" quit Apple.
Rarely a whole department will quit at the same time. If the job really sucks you will see a migration where people quit over the course of months. Because normally before you quit you need an other job.
Having Apple not join open compute sounds more liike the first intent to look elsewhere. Then the reason to quit.
I expect they all just got picked up by some companies they found out they were all quitting at the same time so they used that as the reason for their exit interview.

What they did was found a new company, SnapRoute - http://www.snaproute.com/our-s...

Re:odd---

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's also a story about technical people who have options. If Apple's standards for their network were so exacting and impressive, it is pretty unlikely that they had anyone just clinging to the job because they didn't have much hope of finding another one.

If you are already considered good enough with the existing tech that unemployment isn't a serious concern; and your current employer is specifically denying you the opportunity to be part of the cool new tech, why would that inspire you to stay with them?

You can get real hotshots, if the project is interesting and/or the money is good(or the stock options are risky but have the possibility of being really, really, good); and you can usually find people to work with a given system, no matter how legacy, weird, or unpleasant, if the money is good enough; and you can also get people who are unambitious and pretty easy to keep happy; but getting all of those simultaneously is much, much, less likely, if possible at all.

I don't doubt that Apple was able to hire a new networking team; they can certainly afford it; but telling people "No, it is going to be your job to maintain this legacy system and we aren't going to touch the cool new thing" is not exactly a motivational speech.

Re:odd---

[squiggleslash]

I bet these guys had jobs ligned up before the "bravely" quit Apple.

Giving the timings, and what they did next, I'm guessing not. Apple announces non-involvement in something they wanted to do. Within one week they've quit. No amount of enthusiasm in job hunting gets you a job lined up in that time, still less that results in all of you collectively deciding not to bother with the jobs, in favor of starting a new business.

More likely, they had money to invest and fall back on, and decided to start the new business together before all leaving. Technically that's a "job lined up", but not in the sense (contradicting TFA) you're talking about.

Re:odd---

[ultranova]

More like engineers are move devoted to their technology than to whomever happens to employ them at any given time.

Or their careers. Time spent becoming expert in a system that's not used anywhere else is time not spent becoming expert in stuff that might be needed in your next job. Getting locked in to your employer is very risky and has little if any benefit.

Re:odd---

[jellomizer]

The point was that they had some sort of exit plan ligned up. They just didn't quit in a huff. Because Apple did something they felt so strongly against that they needed to quit. But more to the fact, they had plans to move along. Apple decision just gave them an excuse to move forward.

Re:odd---

[RockDoctor]

More like engineers are move devoted to their technology than to whomever happens to employ them at any given time.

Hmmmm. So I need an effective enforcement ossifer? Simon, fancy a career change? Super-charged cattle-prod and residence in a country of convenient legislation tempting?

Probably a little more to it than that

[Anonymous Coward]

But it probably was as good a reason as any

Re:Probably a little more to it than that

[Narcocide]

Well, if true, some of them are probably reading this right now. Anybody care to elaborate guys? Also, did you end up managing to make any meaningful contributions to the OCP after that?

Re:Probably a little more to it than that

[Gumbercules!!]

In TFA it says they formed their own OCP inspired startup, SnapRoute.

Never Down

[speedplane]

This team was responsible for building a network at Apple that was so reliable it would never down. Not rarely — never.

Leave it to business insider to make ludicrous claims about network availability. If Apple's network had 99.99% uptime, and it would cost ten billion dollars to add another 9 to it, I'm pretty sure they'd rather pocket that money than spend it on more redundant switches/routers.

Re:Never Down

[Narcocide]

Really all you need is full redundancy. I doubt that costs 10 billion dollars unless the first network cost 10 billion dollars. Also remember that when you see numbers for network uptime listed in percentages, it's a completely fictional figure.

Re:Never Down

[cheater512]

Full redundancy still has outages, even significant ones.

In my experience the more layers of redundancies, the more edge cases you need to catch.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Power is a major consideration. You would need redundant onsite generators that can handle the whole campus at a minimum and two providers offsite. Effectively building redundant power stations and having enough extra coverage that if power went out from one provider you would still be up for the 30-40 minutes it takes to spin up a turbine.

That alone would cost more than the rest of the network infrastructure.

Also remember that when you see numbers for network uptime listed in percentages, it's a completely fictional figure.

No not at all. Service contracts generally stipulate a percentage and a timespan. 99.99% per week is much cheaper than 99.99% per year. This is basic network engineering. What is your profession?

Re:Never Down

[Narcocide]

Basic network engineering. You obviously are in marketing.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

If Apple's network had 50% uptime, and it would cost then 4 billion trillion dollars, I'm pretty sure they'd rather sell a new iPhone.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing basic about engineering. May I suggest getting your CCNA so you know what SLA uptime requirements are.

Re:Never Down

[sexconker]

No not at all. Service contracts generally stipulate a percentage and a timespan. 99.99% per week is much cheaper than 99.99% per year. This is basic network engineering. What is your profession?

WTF? I've never seen anything other than a percentage guarantee, a stipulation of whether or not that includes scheduled maintenance, and a table of what that amounts to in minutes per year.

Re:Never Down

[AK Marc]

Full redundancy has piles of single points of failure. I've seen a BGP flap take out a Fortune 100 company with N+1 redundancy that cost billions. Redundancy increases complexity, and there's always a point where the "redundancy enabling" technology becomes a single point of failure.

Re:Never Down

[AK Marc]

Basic networking. What's your redundancy? HSRP? What happens when someone spoofs your VIP/virtual MAC? Everything is down. I've seen large offices taken down becuase they used 192.168.1.1 as an important device, and someone plugged in a home router under their desk as an AP, causing a conflict that took down a "redundant" network.

Someone can always take it down. So, go for 802.1x on every port to combat that. Now, if you radius server has an issue, nobody can work. Brilliant. Redundancy and security reduce stability. Go back to networking 101. Even redundant SUPs in a chassis-based system have a single linked management. One wrong command in one of the SUPs and you can take down everything. Redundancy rarely survives user error, and makes it harder to bring it back up.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Hrm... Pull numbers out of your ass much? Or perhaps you'd like to cite something saying to get to 99.999% requires $10BN?

Re:Never Down

[A Commentor]

When I saw that quote, I called BS. NOTHING is 100%.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell does the Symbionese Liberation Army have to do with this?

Re:Never Down

[David_Hart]

Basic networking. What's your redundancy? HSRP? What happens when someone spoofs your VIP/virtual MAC? Everything is down. I've seen large offices taken down becuase they used 192.168.1.1 as an important device, and someone plugged in a home router under their desk as an AP, causing a conflict that took down a "redundant" network.

Someone can always take it down. So, go for 802.1x on every port to combat that. Now, if you radius server has an issue, nobody can work. Brilliant. Redundancy and security reduce stability. Go back to networking 101. Even redundant SUPs in a chassis-based system have a single linked management. One wrong command in one of the SUPs and you can take down everything. Redundancy rarely survives user error, and makes it harder to bring it back up.

Um, you do realize that there are networking technologies to protect the network from practically every scenario that you mentioned? Even your port security example falls flat on it's face because you would have redundant radius servers, etc.

And no, redundancy doesn't make things harder as long as it's implemented properly (i.e. you have a well documented primary path that's always used unless there is a problem in which case the network switches to a well defined backup path). As for redundant Sups, most large companies that need up-time have redundant hardware/chassis rather than relying on line cards in a single chassis. Removes the human error and hardware failure. Because you are right that the biggest problem is human error.

The key to any network implementation, same as any other IT service, is that you have experienced network engineers to architect the network, well defined standards, and good support engineers to run it and follow the standards.

Re:Never Down

[Gussington]

Um, you do realize that there are networking technologies to protect the network from practically every scenario that you mentioned?

There are no free lunches. You either have a simple network that could fail and is easy to understand and fix, or a complex network that could also fail but is a nightmare to understand and fix. The other big issue with the latter network, is the size and complexity makes upgrades and patching difficult and expensive, and if people leave it's difficult to bring them up to speed on how it works. The results is that it costs more to maintain than you would lose with a few hours downtime each year. So there is no such thing as a network that never goes down, you either have one that is cost effective or you don't.

Re:Never Down

[mwvdlee]

Marketing is 100% BS.

Re:Never Down

[bloodhawk]

Full redundancy does not provide 5 9's, it takes a lot more than that, going from 4 9's to 5 9's is an insanely expensive task for just specific infrastructure, to do it for an entire network of a large enterprise would make a serious dent in Apples bank balance for very little return.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

I work with enterprise level networks and I also think he pulled it out of his arse, no way is he getting 99.999 or beyond for only 10 billion for a worldwide enterprise. We spent in excess of 150 million at just one Datacenter to take just one part of the Datacenters infrastructure from 99.99 to 99.999.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

if you consider five nines basic network engineering then obviously YOU are in marketing. five nines is incredibly expensive and difficult to engineer in a network of any significant size.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

> Really all you need is full redundancy.

You don't know what you are talking about.

Assume your single system has 99.9% reliability. The probability of it going bust for a given period of time is p=0.001.

Now you double it, and let's assume we don't add new modes of failure (a fairly steep assumption, since you gotta consolidate both halves, and thing hard about *new* single points of failure like routers, load balancers, yadda yadda. Plus niceties such as split-brain situations. Basically, a full redundant system is much more complex than twice a single system, with loads of places the devil can hide in now).

Under all those assumptions, the probability of *both* systems going bust for the same period of time is p*p = 0.00001. Now your reliability is 99.999. That's five-nines (high end, yes, but nothing out of this world).

Flight electronics for commercial planes has *three* systems.

Re:Never Down

[AK Marc]

And no, redundancy doesn't make things harder as long as it's implemented properly

"properly" by your definition is prohibitively expensive. Almost nobody does it. Realistic redundancy leaves lots of gaps and holes. And in many cases, active/standby is dangerous. HSRP, STP, and many other protocols are active/standby with errors in the standby allowing massive networking failures. And, of course, the protocol to manage that redundancy is a single point of failure. You could abandon HSRP to avoid that single point of failure, and instead have multiple gateways and every endpoint running a dynamic routing protocol but that just moves the single point of failure to whatever routing protocol you pick, and isn't generally done for a variety of very good reasons.

Nope, the simplest network is often more reliable than the rube goldberg redundant networks I've seen experts like yourself put together. KISS is one of the first rules, and the more you know, the more it matters. KISS. Anything else is expense for the sake of complexity.

Re:Never Down

[jellomizer]

99.99% means about 1 hour (52 minutes and 33.6 seconds) a year.
For your work place that may be good but Apple is needed by thousands of places and that down time may not be acceptable.

Re:Never Down

[stealth_finger]

What the hell does the Symbionese Liberation Army have to do with this?

Everything, they have a huge stake in Omni Consumer Products.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for a company that had one of their data centres divided into 5 zones, each zone had its own UPS and generator. The was a transfer switch between each zone so that if one zone's backup went down it would be supplied by the adjacent zone which had enough capacity for two zones. After about 5 years there was a major power outage with the local utility. The whole place went down. The investigation found that:

a. For the last 5 years management had decided not to do annual maintenance since we were "too busy";
b. The transfer switches were battery powered since they're supposed to work during a power outage;
c. The batteries are supposed to be replaced during annual maintenance;
d. The batteries have a useful life of 3-4 years;
e. If one zone goes down they all do; and
f. One zone didn't stay up due to a lack of annual maintenance.

I nearly sent them an energizer bunny but decided it might be a CLM.

Re:Never Down

[schitso]

Could you go into more detail about that failure? Sounds quite interesting.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand the first thing about adding that extra nine, do you?

Full redundancy gives you the nines they had. The next step requires crazy things like SPB, B.A.T.M.A.N.-adv, and the like. Full redundancy gives you fail-overs, but yet when you need a solid path, sometimes it's just not there with Spanning Tree Proto and the like- and a single redundant path can get you into tight binds with STP. It's why Radia Perlman, the inventor of STP invented Shortest Path Bridging.

Since you went where you did...I can be reasonably assured you don't know a thing about what you talked about and I can safely NOT hire you for this sort of job. Thank you for interviewing...

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

$10 Billion? I don't think it would be that high for 5 9's, but definitely well into the $Millions, potentially towards $1 BIllion depending on the scope of Apples network design and demands
- 5 9's, for the uninitiated, is a 99.999% uptime (5 9's...) requirement contractually agreed upon between client and vendor for a given purchased system and support agreement. For the math, that's only 5 minutes, 15 seconds of downtime in a year. Let that sink in...

5 9's, depending on the system you are talking about, isn't an out of the ordinary demand. I say this since where I work, we just went through the RFP process with almost a dozen vendors, and 5 9's was our minimum support uptime. If you couldn't meet that from that get go, you were dropped as a potential selection. Is 5 9's too much to ask in this day? Absolutely not, and here's my take as to why:
  - If you look at the full scale of your infrastructure at each step, and break out design, dependencies, fail-over, hardware/software implementation and support, we're 15-20 years into well established platform building at the enterprise level, for todays business needs. If the argument is, well, there is always bugs in product X , I'm going to start looking to other vendors. The 'bug' excuse is circa 2000, and should be laughed off the face of the earth. We aren't implementing Beta or Alpha R&D hardware/software into production. Who would/is, and for business applications. Are they insane? So bringing ANY new project to proposal, and to vendors for purchase and SLA's, there is no guarantee on incumbent, beyond what the C level's will push for.

So 5 9's as a default? Anyone who is spending more than 7 figures on any project should expect it at this point. If you aren't demanding that at your company, what exactly are you providing as guidance or technical input for whom you work? Or are you just the lowly Architect or SysAdmin who has to do the meat and potatoes, to get it all working.

Apple's request isn't out of the realm of possibility, however their walled garden at every turn, even down to the OCP support/initiative here, just shows again where their head is at, in the boardroom. Take note of them, next time you buy, have to support, and are asked about a recommendation. I certainly do.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Marketing is 100% BS.

They usually get the product name right.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

> KISS

That interacts with "Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.".

For instance, at my site I make use of UCARP to provide service redundancy for services that don't have an inbuilt master/slave failover mode, multiple WAPs to provide radio redundancy in the face of radar events and hardware failure, and multiple independent Internet uplinks (with link health detection and dynamic default route advertisement for IPv6 and on-router default route manipulation for IPv4).

> HSRP, STP, and many other protocols are active/standby with errors in the standby allowing massive networking failures.

Do you mean _this_ STP and its variants? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanning_Tree_Protocol

STP failures and flaps can cause outages, but requiring an admin to manually move patch cables and activate hardware almost always causes larger, longer outages.

Shit happens, but most standard network redundancy protocols are well thought-out and -when properly configured- work better than the alternative.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

If your contract doesn't mention over which timespan then the guarantee is worthless.
"Hey, you guaranteed 99.9999% availability, but it's been down for 1 week already!"
"Well, 1 week is less than 0.0001% over the 2 million year span for which we calculate the guaranteed availability!"
Yes, you probably wouldn't get away with that in court, but if it's a 5 year contract they certainly can argue that availability must be calculated over that whole 5 year span, which would probably allow for much longer downtime than you had intended - or put differently, if they are 10x worse than they promised (i.e. they basically are ruining you), it will take you 6 months to accumulate enough downtime to enable you to break the contract with them.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying that Apple doesn't have a BCP or DRP in place because their networks have 100% uptime? Surely not. It's not hard to do a web search to find area power outages that affected Apple. It's not cost effective to have redundant everything for every building. And even worse in a textbook world, you'd have a copy of Apple's networks/servers duplicated in another state/country so that a natural disaster couldn't knock you down. Another thing is with external providers and I doubt any of them promises 100% either a la Akamai DNS outage from Aug 8, 2011 that degraded access to the Apple website.

Good network engineers didn't stop a self-inflicted denial of service like from Mar 11, 2015.

Re:Never Down

[DuckDodgers]

Upthread someone linked to http://www.snaproute.com/our-s... (from post https://apple.slashdot.org/com... ) - and the writer there stated:

"It was thrilling—and terrifying. When even one percent of Apple’s traffic gets stalled, it’s front-page news. And all too often, we were dealing with problems our vendors had never contemplated, much less figured out. We began exploring radically new approaches, including a handful of supposedly open-sourced solutions so we could dive into the guts of our network ourselves—say, to look directly at the data coming off network processors. As much as we wanted these technologies to work, they didn’t. So we developed some of our own, including a provisioning tool for upgrading the software on thousands of switches without taking the network offline. If you haven’t heard, Apple likes to keep such internal accomplishments to itself, so I can’t share the results. Let’s just say we were able to accomplish in minutes what would have taken hours, days or even weeks. Slowly, our desire to share our ideas with the world began to overshadow the thrill and pride of working for Apple. My team and I left in 2015."

So if we're to believe that, then Apple was doing something like OCP internally, it worked well, and the reason the team quit was that Apple wouldn't let them share it.

Re:Never Down

[UnknownSoldier]

> I nearly sent them an energizer bunny ...

LOL.

> but decided it might be a CLM.

Ah, Career Limiting Maneuver -- yup, don't rub their faces in it.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

No not at all. Service contracts generally stipulate a percentage and a timespan. 99.99% per week is much cheaper than 99.99% per year. This is basic network engineering. What is your profession?

WTF? I've never seen anything other than a percentage guarantee, a stipulation of whether or not that includes scheduled maintenance, and a table of what that amounts to in minutes per year.

Then the time frame was one year.

Does no one on slashdot actually do network engineering? This is like talking to a crowd of IT profressionals that are flabbergasted and dismissive of these mythical "pointers" that everyone claims to have never seen.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

that just moves the single point of failure to whatever routing protocol you pick

That isn't how routing protocols work. At all. If, for some miraculous reason all update or advertisement packets stop being sent, the routing protocol is still independently running on every internetworking device independently of one another.

A routing protocol, by its nature, can't be a single point of failure in the same way that throwing a sponge in the ocean can't stop all of the waves in the world.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost of adding another 9 depends on the equipment. My LAN is comprised of a single WRTG54GS router and I experience about 4 nine's easily. That cost me $100 12 years ago.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

This. What the fuck happened to just stringing the appropriate amount of fiber/cable, having sufficient bandwidth, and enough switches (and proper topology) to handle the load? All of this complicated turn-key appliance shit that overpriced vendors sell techno-idiot managers just mucks everything up.

Re:Never Down

[AK Marc]

A routing protocol, by its nature, can't be a single point of failure

Yet, and improperly injected route can take down the entire network. Single Point of Failure.

Re:Never Down

[zlives]

i am only interested in their man-machine integration department. who cares about networking

Re: Never Down

[buchanmilne]

"What's your redundancy? HSRP? What happens when someone spoofs your VIP/virtual MAC? Everything is down. I've seen large offices taken down becuase they used 192.168.1.1 as an important device, and someone plugged in a home router under their desk as an AP, causing a conflict that took down a "redundant" network."

Why would you trunk your service VLANs to your user access switches?

You don't need to do 802.1x for distribution or server switches, you can just do port security (slightly higher admin overhead for ports on really important places). It might not prevent MAC spoofing being an issue, but surely you would physically secure switches which carry 'production' VLANs.

Even if you had a failure in one layer 2 domain, you surely have your critical services active-active across geographically redundant sites (using IP anycast if you can, or a geographic load balancer like F5s BigIP GTM) with 5-second or less failover, that share no single points of failure (e.g. multiple route reflectors, multiple peering points, multiple links to each multiple transit providers).

(And I'm not involved in networking in our team, I look after servers and applications).

Re:Never Down

[Cramer]

"UCARP" and "well thought out"??? Holy shit, what are you smoking!

All redundancy protocols are horrible. They're either old and full of holes (eg. STP), or new and designed by people who didn't learn shit from the old full-of-holes mechanisms. I guess you've never seen Cisco gear with "split brain" syndrome -- where both controllers are in active mode because they each think the other is dead and end up fighting over line cards (rebooting them)

Re:Never Down

[Cramer]

99.99% per week is much cheaper than 99.99% per year

No it isn't. 99.99% over a week is 60.48s, over a year is ~52x that. It's much harder to ensure a network has less than one minute of downtime over any given week than one hour over a year. Just because you didn't have an downtime last week doesn't mean you get to have 2 minutes this week.

SLAs tend to be much more specific, detailing exactly what "outside events" are beyond the contract -- the usual "acts of God" clause, and include maintenance periods. There may be sufficient room in one's contract to have 2 hours of downtime per month and still be called "five nines".

Re:Never Down

[Cramer]

My favorite failure comes courtesy of the local power company (CP&L) installation of backup power systems. A pair of 1.2MW generators with a make-before-break "glitchless" transfer between them. The day they tested it they turned that transfer switch into a puddle of copper and aluminum in a fraction of a second.

Re: Never Down

[AK Marc]

(And I'm not involved in networking in our team, I look after servers and applications).

Good, because 802.1x isn't MAC authentication, so MAC spoofing is unrelated to that topic. And your solution of active/active load balancers still leaves you with a single point of failure. Active/active, by definition, has a single configuration across the devices. So one typo on one device can take down both. Back to a single point of failure.

Re:Never Down

[AK Marc]

STP failures and flaps can cause outages, but requiring an admin to manually move patch cables and activate hardware almost always causes larger, longer outages.

Yes. But how often have you had an untouched cable fail? Maybe once in a lifetime career? How many times should you expect STP to take down a network? I've seen that happen many more times. Though, touched cables fail often. The barely-on connector that fails when you brush it getting to a power connection on an unrelated piece of gear. But, you are right there and prepared for it, so you can fix it before STP convergence time.

Re:Never Down

[speedplane]

Um, you do realize that there are networking technologies to protect the network from practically every scenario that you mentioned?

Four nines availability means that a network is down 52 minutes per year. Five nines means five minutes per year, less than a second a day. I'm sure few are actually timing it, but I highly doubt Apple is even achieving 4 nines with all of their services. Would anyone notice if iTunes is down for a few seconds a day?

Re: Never Down

[buchanmilne]

"Good, because 802.1x isn't MAC authentication, so MAC spoofing is unrelated to that topic. "

My mention of MAC spoofing was with reference to using port security instead of 802.1x (to avoid outages when your radius server is down).

"And your solution of active/active load balancers still leaves you with a single point of failure. Active/active, by definition, has a single configuration across the devices. So one typo on one device can take down both. Back to a single point of failure."

Active-active load balancers are one means of achieving active-active setups, IP anycast is another (more applicable to stateless services). Which one you use may depend on the application.

But this discussion started out about preventing failures due to equipment failure. If you employ idiots (who can't implement a GLBP change correctly the first time or test it on a non-customer affecting environment) then of course there is no way you can offer SLAs.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

You _know_ that this isn't about faulty cabling, but about faulty routers/switches/power supplies/power feeds (including the ever-popular "the cleaning lady unplugged the rack of equipment to run the floor buffer")/etc.

Hell, if the weak link in network reliability was _cabling_, _no_ network admin would have a full-time job.

Re:Never Down

[Anonymous Coward]

> I guess you've never seen ... "split brain" ...

Sing it with me (to the tune of "The Internet is for Porn") : "Distributed systems are _hard_.".

It might not be that "[a]ll redundancy protocols are horrible", but rather that most standard redundancy protocols do a reasonable job at solving a _hard_ problem, and people who don't understand the tradeoffs selected by the protocol developers expect a given protocol to work in situations where it wasn't designed to work.

Re:Never Down

[cwsumner]

Marketing is 100% BS.

Well... not 100%. Maybe 25% to 50%. But they -are- taught that lies are part of their job. 8-P

If the Engineers and Technicians didn't fill in the gaps, that no one even told them about, then the Marketeers would be in jail for fraud! ;-)

Re:Never Down

[AK Marc]

I thought it was about single points of failure. That's what I was talking about. That's the focus for network availability I generally see. People spending $10,000,000 to take a 99.999% uptime network to 99.99% and claiming victory.

In my experience, simpler is more reliable. Even when that gives up redundancy. The redundancy failure I saw last week was the secondary system failed, and nobody knew, until the primary system failed, and the backup failed to kick in. When you have one and only one system, you tend to maintain it better. No need with 10 redundant systems, and when 9 of them fails, nobody is looking.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

No you CAN'T. Don't even try.

Opportunists, not Cultists

[slacktide]

They did not quit because they had some sort of cultlike devotion. They quit because they recognized a business opportunity to "get in on the ground floor" and form a startup. "Instead, they founded a startup called SnapRoute, led by Jason Forrester, the former team leader. While Forrester declined to talk to us for this article, SnapRoute's website hints at the story. " Lord knows I've been tempted to leave my big ol' company to pursue similar ventures... Can never convince enough principles to join me. The lure of that pension plan (yes, still have one...) is too strong.

Re:Opportunists, not Cultists

[ooloorie]

Can never convince enough principles to join me.

Perhaps if didn't call them opportunists, they'd be more interested in joining you?

The lure of that pension plan (yes, still have one...) is too strong.

Which is why many people are starting to realize that 401k's are actually a better choice.

Re:Opportunists, not Cultists

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with being an opportunist?

Re:Opportunists, not Cultists

[Anonymous Coward]

Pension plans have a government-backed guarantee to pay, even if the employer goes belly-up.

401k's have no damn guarantees at all. You pick from only the funds your employer chooses for you, and if the don't do well too bad for you. Also, your employer can swap out the funds on you whether you want them to or not.

You get more freedom if you have a 401k rather than a pension precisely because the pension plan is the better deal..

Pensions have largely vanished not because employees rejected them, but because employers wanted to stop paying them, and instead wanted to force their employees to invest their savings in stocks that can ultimately circle back and benefit the employer. It was a double-win for the employers.

The flexible medical spending accounts are similar....rather than simply allowing these medical expenses as simple tax deductions, we force people to pre-allocate the money, and if they wind up having extra at the end of the year, the employer gets to keep it! It both drives people to splurge on allowed medical supplies that they don't need (at the end of the year), and allows employers to get some of their money back. All this to avoid a simple tax deduction, which would cost less and work better for everyone (except the employers, of course, who wouldn't benefit).

Re:Opportunists, not Cultists

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll see how guaranteed those pension guarantees are for. As Illinoisans will eventually find out.

Re:Opportunists, not Cultists

[slacktide]

Nothing wrong with being an opportunist. All successful corporations are, and in the economic system we live in, it is in our personal interest to do the same. Don't try to pretend that acting as an agent of an opportunistic cororporation is in any way morally superior to acting in your own best opportunistic interests. Also, my company provides BOTH a guaranteed both a guaranteed benefit pension plan, AND a 401K plan with matching up to the first 8%, AND heath care with no employee contibutions, so "life is good," and you might understand why my cow-orkers are reluctant to leave a pretty secure position to take a risk on greater potential reward outside the company (all hail the company).

Re:Opportunists, not Cultists

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not fair to all the other schmucks

Re:Opportunists, not Cultists

[DuckDodgers]

In theory pension plans have a government-backed guarantee. But in practice, pensions have been cut many times.

The thing to do with a 401k is change jobs. Then you can roll it over into an IRA, and invest it however you damn well please. It's not perfect, but it's the safest option we have.

Re:Opportunists, not Cultists

[ooloorie]

Nothing wrong with being an opportunist.

Well, I think there is plenty wrong with being an opportunist, and I have been able to take advantage of opportunities without sacrificing ethical principles.

Also, my company provides BOTH a guaranteed both a guaranteed benefit pension plan, AND a 401K plan

Well, and as you're discovering, it places shackles on you. You'd have more freedom to act if the pension plan was replaced by cash or stock grants.

Re:Opportunists, not Cultists

[Anonymous Coward]

Pension? You sure it's not the anti-competitive, NDA and other such agreements they signed with their previous employer?

Re:Reasonable

[DogDude]

We use Chinese made hardware because it works better than US made stuff (Cisco). If the Chinese gov't wants to spy on our business, they can have at it. It's worth it to us to have reliable equipment.

Been there, done that, got cancelled

[Anonymous Coward]

I was part of Apple's licensing software team twenty years ago---1996.

At the time, the Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP) was the big item, essentially the same as OCP. Standardize the API at a hardware-abstraction layer, and let everyone build compatible machines. The manufacturer would write the HAL (BIOS) and a variety of operating systems can run on the hardware. (At the time, it was MacOS, OS/2, Novell Netware, and a couple others I've forgotten.)

My question at the time was "How does Apple make any money when the platform becomes a commodity, and millions of units come into the market on barges from Chinese manufacturers?" Naturally, Apple would cease to sell computers. This was the OS-licensing situation in spades.

Steve Jobs cancelled Apple's participation in CHRP as well as all OS licensing, knowing that Apple makes most of its money selling the computer. IBM got out of the PC business when Dell and Gateway built PC-compatibles cheaper. Now they're starving as Acer and everyone else builds the platform.

Why would this be any different today than it was two decades ago?

Re:Been there, done that, got cancelled

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Hardware_Reference_Platform

Re:Been there, done that, got cancelled

[ZenShadow]

This might have been interesting if OCP was in anything even approaching the same space as CHRP used to be.

It isn't.

Re:Been there, done that, got cancelled

[ooloorie]

IBM got out of the PC business when Dell and Gateway built PC-compatibles cheaper. Now they're starving

No, they are not "starving". They got out of the PC business when it became a low margin business, a good decision.

Why would this be any different today than it was two decades ago?

Apple isn't selling server hardware anymore (they already failed in that market once).

As for Apple's desktops, they should get out of that market entirely because they won't be able to make the margins they are accustomed to in the future.

Re:Been there, done that, got cancelled

[Bing Tsher E]

They failed twice in the server market if you count the SE/30. But it wasn't even designed to be a server. Still, even today that hardware can run current NetBSD.

Re:Been there, done that, got cancelled

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

As for Apple's desktops, they should get out of that market entirely because they won't be able to make the margins they are accustomed to in the future.

Never underestimate the allure of a white case with rounded corners. To some.

Re: Been there, done that, got cancelled

[Anonymous Coward]

Because most of Apples money is made from. IDevices and their PCs are a loss leader?

I have no idea if any of this is true.

Re:Been there, done that, got cancelled

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

They may be "starving" on the consumer side, but they have little viable competition (when you include enterprise-level support) for their enterprise-level server hardware. There is only like half a dozen real players in that market, even fewer with US-based support staff. My Dell support for my servers is in my state, and support for my SAN is only a state away. When I needed "global support", I quickly get connected to a bi-lingual rep. They've saved my ass a few times just this year lol.

Re:Been there, done that, got cancelled

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

The only redeeming feature of Apple's hardware is the color-matching video set-ups for publishing / marketing people. Other than that, they don't even use Xeons anymore in most of the desktops, but still charge Xeon prices.

Re:Been there, done that, got cancelled

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apple isn't selling server hardware anymore (they already failed in that market once)."

They failed at that a lot more than once:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Timeline_of_Macintosh_servers

Re:Been there, done that, got cancelled

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This is why most of the people involved with OCP are either companies that buy enormous amounts of server capacity; or suppliers who fear that they'll be discarded entirely if they don't participate.

CHRP cut directly against Apple's business of selling computers. OCP is gunning for servers and switches. Apple sells neither; but buys a lot of both given how much 'cloud' they are serving up these days.

Clearly they decided that it wasn't in their interests to participate(whether because they'd rather do it in house; or just because their margins allow them to sit back and adopt anything interesting once it matures); but OCP doesn't directly cannibalize Apple's business in the way CHRP did.

Re:Been there, done that, got cancelled

[Anonymous Coward]

And today the computer unit at Apple is dwarfed by consumer electronics.

Biggest buyers are iOS app devs and "artists", the same that sustained them through the 90s.

Re:Been there, done that, got cancelled

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple isn't selling server hardware anymore

Sure they are:

https://www.mythic-beasts.com/...

Re:Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

Cisco buys from the Chinese. All the best stuff is made in China

My network has 100% uptime. 2-0 team is undefeated

[raymorris]

100% uptime means the network wasn't down in time period you're talking about. My network has 100% uptime this week.
Maybe last year I had crappy up time, but this year my network doesn't go down (hasn't gone down).

I enjoy the first few weeks of football season because my team is always undefeated, at least until the end of the first game.

Actually 100% uptime even over a long period isn't THAT difficult - heteregenous reduncancy pretty much does the trick. That's heterogenous, not homogenous. In other words, you have redundancy for everything, but not by having two of the exact same things. You have a pair of connections (or sets of connections) to the outside world - a metro ethernet connection from one provider, and a direct MPLS connection from another. A Cisco router in the metroE and a Juniper on the MPLS.

  It's extremely unlikely that both providers will go down at the same time. It's extremely unlikely that both the Cisco (or pair of Ciscos) and the pair of Junipers will crap out simultaneously.

Re:My network has 100% uptime. 2-0 team is undefea

[plover]

  It's extremely unlikely that both providers will go down at the same time. It's extremely unlikely that both the Cisco (or pair of Ciscos) and the pair of Junipers will crap out simultaneously.

...says the guy who has obviously never run a Juniper. :-)

Apple makes stupid hardware decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were an apple hardware engineer I'd quit too. Clearly a company that's selling 3-4 year old technology as a new "top spec" computer doesn't value their hardware wing.

Don't get me started on the fact that their only laptop with a network adapter is 4+ years old...

Re:Apple makes stupid hardware decisions

[swalve]

That's just courageous. Someone will invent gigabit wireless.

Re: Apple makes stupid hardware decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

Which will only work with Apple built or certified devices.

Re:Apple makes stupid hardware decisions

[Noah Haders]

apple is releasing a new computer line in 2 weeks.

Re:Apple makes stupid hardware decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly a company that's selling 3-4 year old technology as a new "top spec" computer doesn't value their hardware wing.

What? Being an engineer, especially one working on consumer products, isn't about making the newest and most powerful device, but about what you can achieve while minimizing resources and meeting goals. In this case that means minimizing costs while making a product people will buy. Doing that with outdated hardware with new hardware prices amounts to a success for the business. How they relate to their engineers is going to be hidden, as they could easily value them and be happy at how much cost reduction they are achieving, regardless of how old the tech is.

Re:Apple makes stupid hardware decisions

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

" Someone will invent gigabit wireless."

Dell has been shipping "wigig" docks since at least 2013
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wigi...

I used one last week with a new dell laptop. They have a range of only a few feet, but they do work and can share screens and network and all that over it. In fact the one i was using is second generation. Its an intel technology.

http://www.dell.com/support/ar...

Re:Apple makes stupid hardware decisions

[DuckDodgers]

At least in my experience, 802.11ac bandwidth drops off so rapidly with distance that if you want the advertised speed you could be using a 10 foot cat5e cable anyway.

To be fair, 802.11b is just 17 years old and couldn't beat 11 Mb/s anywhere. So the fact that 802.11ac can reach 1300 Mb/s anywhere and 802.11ad (WiGig) can do 7 Gb/s is amazing. But if I had a chance to redo my networking decisions from last year I would have saved $250 for an 802.11ac router and just bought a gigabit switch and kept using my ancient WRT54GL for everything else.

Re:Apple makes stupid hardware decisions

[DuckDodgers]

Agreed. Further, the biggest difference most people are going to notice from a 2011 Macbook and one today would be any improvements to display resolution. The latest Intel chips are faster, but not so much faster that you'll notice unless you take detailed benchmarks.

Re:Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

We use Chinese made hardware because it works better than US made stuff (Cisco)

Aww, that's cute. You think Cisco hardware is made in the USA???

Lol. Cisco builds almost nothing in the US and A.

Re:My network has 100% uptime. 2-0 team is undefea

[Anonymous Coward]

My network has 100% uptime

so does mi

Re: After ripping BSD they deserve it

[BlackSabbath]

> After ripping BSD

*facepalm*

Re:Reasonable

[Killall -9 Bash]

It's more about the firmware.

Do I buy a Chinese brand, which I'm 99% sure has Chinese government back doors, or do I buy Cisco, which I'm 100% sure has a complete NSA spyware suite installed?

Re:After ripping BSD they deserve it

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's Mach kernel was originally designed to replace the BSD kernel. Also parts of it are open source.

But thanks for the irrational Apple hate.

Oh, you might also look up the word "cult" and realize that millions of Apple's customers do not belong in that definition.

Re:Reasonable

[93 Escort Wagon]

Cisco buys from the Chinese. All the best stuff is made in China

All the worst stuff too.

You can't protect against everything.

[techno-vampire]

It's nice to talk about 100% uptime, but you can't protect your network from everything. As an example, what do you do if/when there's another Carrington Event and much of the power grid goes out? Yes, some of the backbone will still be working and you have backup power, but how much and how long will it last? Even if your data centers are hardened enough to keep the flare from frying your servers and routers, all you can do is hope that the electric grid comes back before your generators run out of fuel because if they do, you're going down no matter how good your plan is. And, as you can only stockpile a finite quantity of fuel, you can't guarantee staying up until the power's back. Yes, that's not the only disaster that could bring Apple and Google down, but most of the others are man made, and I wanted to show that even a natural disaster (or Act of God if you prefer) can overwhelm the best laid plans of mice or men.

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[khallow]

Well, everything doesn't happen. Another Carrington Event which didn't happen, let us note, during the time in question, would still be less than everything and would be something that they could deal with, even if it did cause an outage.

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[techno-vampire]

I used the Carrington Event as an example because its effects were so spectacular, and its effect on the modern power/communications grid (and the computers that run it) could be equally wide spread. Take your pick of any kind of disaster that brings down a major portion of the grid and the result's the same: the data centers only stay up until their reserves of generator fuel runs out.

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything can happen, which means you can never get 100%. Not even humanity's survival is 100%. 100% only works with marketing, not science.

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[Noah Haders]

humanity's survival rate is 0% historically.

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[David_Hart]

I used the Carrington Event as an example because its effects were so spectacular, and its effect on the modern power/communications grid (and the computers that run it) could be equally wide spread. Take your pick of any kind of disaster that brings down a major portion of the grid and the result's the same: the data centers only stay up until their reserves of generator fuel runs out.

Multiple data centers in multiple regions will keep the corporate lights on... There... solved that for you... next... (grin)

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[hawguy]

humanity's survival rate is 0% historically.

I just checked your figures and you're mistaken -- as of this moment, humanity's survival rate is 100%.

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[Gussington]

As Gary Johnson said, the Earth will eventually be consumed by the sun and humanity will perish, so why should we care about global warming?

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[Cochonou]

Probably nothing would happen, according to recent research.

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[Gavagai80]

Actually more like 6% so far.

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[techno-vampire]

I take it that you didn't follow the link I gave. If you had, you'd have learned that the effects were observed all around the world, in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Enslave the lower-level employees to run the man-powered generator wheel? A true Carrington Event level disaster will fry most IC parts, and has a high chance of setting back the entire human civilization by a century or so. Fuel for the data center will be the last of your concerns...

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[techno-vampire]

Notice that I specified, " Even if your data centers are hardened enough to keep the flare from frying your servers and routers..." to point out that your equipment doesn't have a good chance of surviving such an event, but I was trying to make the point that even if the machines are still functional there's a limit to how long they'll stay up if the power's down.

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[Anonymous Coward]

A true Carrington Event level disaster will fry most IC parts, and has a high chance of setting back the entire human civilization by a century or so

Not even close. Geomagnetic storms, including the original Carrignton event, involve very slow changing magnet fields (10s of minutes to hours) over very large areas. The source of any damage (on Earth at least) comes from induced voltages, which depends on the rate change of the magnetic field and the area of the circuit of interest. You can work out the numbers, and find that the effect it will have on something small like a cell phone would be less than walking past a fridge magnet. Even a house sized circuit would struggle to produce significant effects, as a change of a couple microtesla of field strength over 10 minutes (on the fast side) would only induce more than a microvolt of voltage if you had multiple loops of unpaired wire around your house. The area within any paired wire is much, much smaller.

The only place such events can cause issues, due to the very small the rate change of the magnetic field, is by having lots of area. This is where power systems and old fashion communication systems are involved, because they can involve networks over very larger areas and can involve return paths through ground which is susceptible to ground currents in large systems. Modern communication based on fiber or twisted pair conductors would see no direct effect, and issues would just come down to what the power systems do. Even with the power systems, it comes down to having DC breakers installed in the right place, something already demonstrated to protect equipment just fine in past storms (a bigger storm wouldn't change that).

So no, such an even has nothing to do with destroying ICs or sending human civilization into some pre-electronic age. The only long term concern is what would happen to large power systems where corners have been cut and a potential mess for satellites, which is certainly capable of causing massive economic damage without becoming a prepper fantasy. Otherwise, there would just be a short term power and satellite communication interruption.

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[_Sharp'r_]

as you can only stockpile a finite quantity of fuel, you can't guarantee staying up until the power's back

You only need to store enough fuel to last until your first contracted for tanker truck shows up. Typically two weeks of on-site diesel is more than plenty, as long as you have a good enough contract specifying ongoing deliveries in case of an emergency. In that situation, you can keep things running for as long as your generator equipment doesn't fail from use...hopefully you count that in months or even years.

But really, the typical solution is that you have data centers all over the country. Unless the whole country gets destroyed (in which case you likely have bigger problems), even if you lose multiple data centers (usually for something like a fiery chemical train crash in a tunnel which destroys most major fiber provider's networks all at one and slams their surviving network - been, there, gone through that, whole east coast was off the internet for a couple of days), you're fine.

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[Anonymous Coward]

This comes up again and again here on Slashdot, where people can't tell the difference between a nuclear EMP and space weather effects. The dangerous to IC part of a nuclear EMP has a rise time of ~10 ns. There is an over ten orders of magnitude difference in the timescales involved. The solar storm won't even propagate from the power grid into your house, as it is too slow for the step down transformers feeding your house and local grid, so things plugged into your wall socket are as safe as they would be in any other black out or brown out.

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[techno-vampire]

But really, the typical solution is that you have data centers all over the country.

This is why I specified a world-wide disaster. Yes, the probability is very, very low, but the point I was making was that there's no way to be sure that you'll never be brought down no matter what happens.

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[Noah Haders]

+1 accurate!

Re:You can't protect against everything.

[Anonymous Coward]

But it takes infinite time for EVERYTHING to happen, and you can never REACH infinite time passed, therefore during any finite period, it is ENTIRELY possible to protect from EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED.

Your (and your co-conspirators trying to ape knowledge by pretending pessimism) are falling foul of using indefinite time and definite time interchangeably without delineating the difference, and therefore your conclusions are faulty.

Re: After ripping BSD they deserve it

[Anonymous Coward]

Originally was but now is not. Keep apologizing and making excuses. Apple used OSS to get their train rolling and now they don't give back. Typical.

YOU HAVE TWENTY SECONDS TO COMPLY

[Anonymous Coward]

OCP should just stick to robots that shoot people. It's what they do best.

Re: After ripping BSD they deserve it

[Anonymous Coward]

More respect than Microsoft, I'd argue.

Come on...

[somenickname]

I have friends that work for Apple, Google, Oracle, whatever. And I have friends that have quit en-masse from those companies. They almost always quit because they went from a cool startup to a tiny cog in a gigantic machine. These gigantic internet companies consume smaller companies and spit out all the parts they don't like. In many cases, that's most parts.

This is not an Apple problem, it's an industry and maybe even a societal problem. I don't even think it's possible to get a good job, get an A+ rating for every performance review ever, and expect to stay at that job for 5+ years. After 10 years, you are too expensive to keep around.

It's a race to the bottom. Throw enough cheap shit at the wall and you'll eventually meet your short term profit goals but, damn, that's a lot of shit to clean off the walls. In fact, you may not be able to clean it all off.

Greetings, Humans. The machine churns. I'd like to introduce you to the grinding wheel...

Re:Come on...

[Required Snark]

You want to know why software never really gets better? It's because "old timers" are deliberately flushed from the system, so there is no institutional memory. Over time the same mistakes get made over and over again because no one remembers what happened the last time.

This is not the same as hardware, because in real engineering work there are people who have a long time track record. (The phrase Software Engineering is an oxymoron.) Unfortunately the same short sighted behavior is starting to invade some engineering disciplines, so they will end up producing crap as well.

Re:Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

The same mistakes don't just get made over and over again; the mistakes get made into patterns, and the patterns get rolled up into frameworks, and coders use frameworks because they don't even know how to code anything from scratch. The last time I told a guy I still write plain ordinary JavaScript with no frameworks at all, he called me "an old-skool autistic nerd."

Re:Come on...

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

These gigantic internet companies consume smaller companies and spit out all the parts they don't like. In many cases, that's most parts.

Yes.

I have an axiom that goes something like this: "If it takes 'N' people to create and sell a widget, then that widget has no business being owned by a company with 100*N employees. That way lies disappointment."

It happens over and over. Little company makes something cool. Big company buys the shiny little company for "diversification". Big company shits on it all.

Re:Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet he thinks not watching star trek makes him not a nerd.

Re:Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet he thinks not watching TV makes him trendy.

ftfy

Re:Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm so glad I'm not the only one having dealt with this. I still much prefer doing things from scratch. I'd even rather find/buy a snippet of code versus using a framework.

Re:Come on...

[Gussington]

You want to know why software never really gets better? It's because "old timers" are deliberately flushed from the system, so there is no institutional memory.

Um, software does get better, it's why most of us prefer new software to old software. And it gets better precisely because young people with new ideas find better ways to do things.
Out of interest, if Software is getting worse, when was it exactly that you think software peaked? It didn't just so happen to be when you we're younger per chance? And you don't find that a huge co-incidence at all?

Re:Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

You want to know why software never really gets better? It's because "old timers" are deliberately flushed from the system, so there is no institutional memory.

Um, software does get better, it's why most of us prefer new software to old software. And it gets better precisely because young people with new ideas find better ways to do things.

Out of interest, if Software is getting worse, when was it exactly that you think software peaked? It didn't just so happen to be when you we're younger per chance? And you don't find that a huge co-incidence at all?

If you think computer aided productivity gains haven't peaked, then by all means go invest in your money in startups that make business and productivity software. You won't do it.

So if overall productivity is NOT increasing, then what are we getting with software that gets more complex every year? Well, you're creating more IT jobs, I'll give you that, but better software?

Re:Come on...

[Voyager529]

The definition of the term "better" is the key here. In broad terms, a product is "better" if it more closely meets the needs of the person or organization than what was previously being used.

One thing that comes to mind that made old software "better" was how much smaller it was. The oldest Microsoft Office ISO I have immediately available is 2003 Professional. It's 410MB for, if memory serves, everything including Access and Frontpage. The Office 2016 Professional installer is 2.4GB, and doesn't allow for any installation customization unless you use the volume licensed editions. There are certainly improvements (>1 million rows in Excel, multiple Exchange server support in Outlook, sparklines, and better PDF support and WordArt in Word), but a sixfold upshot in installer size? Those don't align. A kitchen-sink installation of the current version of Winamp is about 50MB - a number that is incredibly bloated by 2.91's 26MB full install, but a bargain compared to the 200-300MB required by iTunes. Then, there is the train wreck that are HP printer drivers...

Older software was much more frugal with its system resource usage. Today's software couldn't care less. Whether the increase in user friendliness really justifies the much larger increase in application size is an exercise left to the reader - there are plenty of examples in either direction. Install size is just one example. The increased requirement of an internet connection is a point of contention for me. The mass migration to "cloud applications" that are indefinitely rented, but never owned, isn't something I'm generally a fan of. The increase in telemetry and decrease in customization options are two things that I find are not things from which I benefit. There is a reason why OldVersion.com is a thing - because newer is not always better.

Re:Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

These gigantic internet companies consume smaller companies and spit out all the parts they don't like. In many cases, that's most parts.

That's because the real reason they bought the small company was to eliminate a potential competitor before it could grow and became troublesome. Buying out the competition and shutting them down. It's a time honored tradition of American business.

Re:Come on...

[LinuxIsGarbage]

I agree on software footprint / resources.

The other thing I wonder about is continual refactoring of UI.
-CLI
-Desktop GUI
-Touch GUI

Those are three distinct usage modes that the UI has to be refactored for an app to go between them. I'm not talking about that.

But every time I update apps on my phone, usually they change the UI for no apparent reason other than trying to mimic the latest Android release "lets make them flat ugly colours this time!"

Chrome changes UI at random too "Lets make the 'hamburger menu' three dots now instead of three lines!"

Firefox: Self explanatory.

Apps, programs, and websites keep feeling the need to redesign their UI, usually without any real improvement to user experience.

Re:Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it doesn't necessarily get better (and the original post did not say that it gets worse). It gets more competent perhaps, and capable of doing more. But mistakes get repeated.Partly this is because much of the knowledge of the original mistake and its resolution is only in individual memories, and never get codified, let alone taught to newbies.

Outside the new fields of IT and computing, in long established fields such as the building trades, agriculture, road construction, there are whole arrays of mistakes that get repeated over and over again through the generations, because it is only held in individual memory. Some of this repetition is documented.They become even more common nowadays as technology allows 'magic' fixes.

Re:Come on...

[colinwb]

"There are certainly improvements (>1 million rows in Excel"
Encouraging people to use a spreadsheet for large amounts of data (or anything else!) is *not* an improvement!

Re:Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like someone who supports the Windows OS development. Software is getting better!

Re:Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. My previous employer is currently working on a new generation of products, using yet another networking stack. But they seem to have forgotten what happened the last 2 generations. They'd build the thing so that only one application could use the stack at a time (they sell dedicated boxes, right?) Then the people running applications on desktops, etc. would want to run, gasp, 2 applications or even more. And they'd hack in some stuff that never really worked.

And they're doing it again.

Re:Come on...

[afidel]

This is not an Apple problem, it's an industry and maybe even a societal problem. I don't even think it's possible to get a good job, get an A+ rating for every performance review ever, and expect to stay at that job for 5+ years. After 10 years, you are too expensive to keep around.

Lol, just left one job after 10 years, not because I was too expensive but because the new company had more resources to spend and could offer me significantly more. The average seniority at the new company for IT workers is 17 years and not a month goes by that our Office of ~700 people doesn't have an announcement for someone celebrating their 25 or 30 year anniversary. You just need to develop valuable skills, expertise, and a proven track record and there WILL be someone willing to hire you. Any time I've gone looking for top tier talent for a specific area of expertise the number of qualified respondents has been very low because the majority of people with the applicable skills are generally already gainfully employed, the unemployment rate for the last few IT focused surveys I've seen results from were under 3% which is an incredibly tight market. If you're IT, not entry level, and having trouble finding employment it's either something with your local market (and you're not willing to relocate) or you've done something very wrong with your career.

Re:Come on...

[DuckDodgers]

To be fair or maybe a little generous to the corporate overlords, there is a problem on the developer side too. Most software is in maintenance mode. Maintaining some giant ugly thing someone else built is an essential service, but it's not as much fun as building something new with the hottest... whatever. So many developers who could be doing excellent work quit because starting something new is more exciting.

Re:Come on...

[iampiti]

Agree on the continuous UI redesign: Most of the time it bring the user no benefits. It's just different following the trend of the moment. Now it's all about flat, huge amounts of whitespace and monochrome icons. Ah, and forcing touch UIs everywhere making people who use them with a kb and mouse suffer a substandard UI, certainly worse than the old UIs which were designed to the strengths of kb and mouse.

Re:Come on...

[UnknownSoldier]

I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry at just how true that it ... :-/

I'm reminded of a phrase from Murphy's Computer Laws:

WEINBERG'S LAW:
If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs,
then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

Re:Come on...

[Gussington]

One thing that comes to mind that made old software "better" was how much smaller it was. The oldest Microsoft Office ISO I have immediately available is 2003 Professional. It's 410MB for, if memory serves, everything including Access and Frontpage. The Office 2016 Professional installer is 2.4GB...

Why do you care? If I have a 2TB HDD then 400MB or 2.4GB is equally trivial. Same goes for RAM.
I'd much rather have features than save disk or RAM space that cost peanuts to upgrade.

Re:Come on...

[Gussington]

Apps, programs, and websites keep feeling the need to redesign their UI, usually without any real improvement to user experience.

That's debatable. The Office 2007 Ribbon was probably one of the most controversial UI changes ever, and I hated it too when it landed. But after years of using it (and 2010, 2013 etc) going back to 2003 seem archaic.
Having said that Win8 was a disaster, however it did lead to Win10 which I think is the best Windows yet.
You also have to remember that change always feels bad initially, because it forces you to do things differently. But most of the time these actually do result in improvements if you give it a chance. This is why young people tend to be more progressive than old people. Because we get set in our ways and resist change, even if the change is actually better.

Re:Come on...

[somenickname]

The phrase Software Engineering is an oxymoron.

I'm a Software Engineer and I agree with this statement 110%. I call myself a Software Engineer because that's the job title I usually have. The level of "engineering" that actually occurs in the software industry is laughable.

Unfortunately the same short sighted behavior is starting to invade some engineering disciplines, so they will end up producing crap as well.

This scares the shit out of me.

Re:Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that they don't remember the mistakes, it's that they are content making them over again if they can wield enough market dominance to preclude all competition.

Re:Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

> The phrase Software Engineering is an oxymoron.

Why? Because software can't be engineered, or engineers can't write software?

Think carefully. All it takes is a single counter-example to refute your asinine assertion.

Re:Come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, software does get better, it's why most of us prefer new software to old software. And it gets better precisely because young people with new ideas find better ways to do things.

Many of the features of KDE and Gnome have resulted in an user experience that is not as good as Windows XP had. That's not to say that Windows XP was good - there were lots of bad things. But a lot of software certainly isn't getting "better" - and it is generally younger folks that don't understand how other people actually use computers that are to blame. It's a huge problem for the open source movement, where so many of the people that have time to contribute are young - and many projects are lacking in oversight.

We have similar issues with Windows, think "ribbon". A lot of stuff that was easy for a person with good computer skills to find - even if they didn't know how to use a specific program - has been hidden: many features that could be quickly found in the old days now require an Internet search. Not a great thing if you want a secure system, which means being disconnected from the Internet. A good engineer might have allowed people to use a ribbon without forcing it down their throats.

There is a tendency for the young to assume that their worldview and experience are identical to those of everybody else, or if there are differences, the other folks are inferior and their views should be disregarded. It's a lot like racism, but age-based. Our societal trend towards over-specialization reinforces this natural tendency, and makes curing the disease take more years than would otherwise be needed - one reason why doing a dual major helps make one a better person over the long term, a commitment to lifetime learning is even better.

This isn't just a problem with open source projects. It can be even worse in closed source projects. In companies with bad management - such as Microsoft - this tendency gets further amplified, leading to really bad decisions in the guise of "new and improved". It's not an accident that so many releases of Windows have been plagued with easily avoidable problems in the user experience (easily avoidable from the perspective of a competent experienced engineer, not so-easily avoidable from somebody that is young, less experienced, and less well informed about the world they live in).

We probably should have open-sourced Windows long ago, using the "eminent domain" idea, since an operating system that so many people use is a lot like the Interstate Highway system and should not be privately controlled. If they want "Intellectual Property" to be a basis for legal constructs such as patent and copyright, then the other concepts of property law should also apply. There would still be problems, but the scale of the problems would be a lot more manageable - and people (young or otherwise) that wanted to come up with improvements would be able to more readily propose them - and understand what would be involved to implement them. There's also the issue of long term public oversight over business - a fundamental right, and something that has been ignored for a long time by businesses able to buy politicians.

As far as preferring new software to old, you might want to reflect that the core of Linux - especially the command line which most of us use daily and "prefer" - is essentially Unix, which is software from the 1970's. The same applies to the infrastructure underlying Mac OS X. There have been some improvements over the years (e.g. BASH versus sh) but the basic ideas are quite old - certainly older than the "new and improved" stuff that makes up so much of the Windows OS.

Re:Come on...

[LinuxIsGarbage]

My issue is with the flavor of the month, particularly on mobile apps and websites. I don't know why there is a drive to re-design the UI every 6 months.

I agree on Ribbon. After getting used to it at my previous job (which really didn't take that long), it felt like a step back when I started at a company that still used Office XP, and it was funny in 2012 to hear the same complaints from 2007 when we moved to Office 2010, though the complaints went away within a few months. While I understand the desire to customize, most of the time Office 2003 ends up looking like this as toolbars get randomly dragged around and random addons get installed. I also can't stand Office 2003's random auto-collapsing menubar as it usually hides the items I'm looking for (though on my computer I always disabled that functionality). With Ribbon in the overwhelming cases buttons don't move so you can sit at a different user's computer and everything is where it should be. They also well implemented hotkeys (ALT+ hotkeys are virtually unchanged from Office 2003).

Microsoft's implementation of Ribbon looks like it's well researched based on most commonly used items before implementation. Outlook wasn't "ribbonized" in 2007, they waited till 2010. Windows explorer wasn't "Ribbonized" until Windows 8. Ribbon automatically compacts itself as the horizontal resolution is decreased. With previous versions of office, toolbars would randomly reorganize themselves and take more vertical resolution. Contrary to popular belief, ribbon takes the same amount of vertical resolution as the default toolbar configuration + menu bar in Office 2003, not more. Ribbon also can collapse (through the "^" on the far right, by double clicking the tab titles, or pressing Ctrl+F1), and will take even less vertical space than 2003, which is dandy when trying to collaborate on a high density spreadsheet on a 1024x768 projector.

I have seen terrible third party implementations of Ribbon, but I think Microsoft has done their homework. They have also learned from their mistakes. When they released 2007, they offered the "Quick Access Toolbar" as a compromise to complete customization. In Office 2010 they moved from the Office "Orb" (trying to mirror the Start button) that people thought was a decoration , to the "File" tab. They also added more customization ability. After Office 2013 with the ALL CAPITAL TABS, and the jarring full screen FILE menu this is questionable.

That said overall Office Ribbon has been fairly consistent since 2007. So if you haven't adjusted after 9 years, I should probably get off your lawn.

Windows 8 I agree the start menu was a disaster. Very jarring for a desktop user to go to the full screen start screen. All start menu folder structure was also lost. Classic shell made short work of that, though it shouldn't require a third party app. Settings are also a disaster. Half are desktop based control panels, have are slide in Metro style menus. Very inconsistent. To their credit the Win+X menu is a nice nod to power users.

Windows 10 replaced the jarring full screen start screen with a mini start screen that still lost the folder structure, has the search feature that was there since Vista (though faster in third party apps like Launchy), and tries to push annoying live content. Windows 10 also still has jarring desktop vs Metro configuration menus, plus the fact that you give up all control of your computer.

Re:Come on...

[Voyager529]

One thing that comes to mind that made old software "better" was how much smaller it was. The oldest Microsoft Office ISO I have immediately available is 2003 Professional. It's 410MB for, if memory serves, everything including Access and Frontpage. The Office 2016 Professional installer is 2.4GB...

Why do you care? If I have a 2TB HDD then 400MB or 2.4GB is equally trivial. Same goes for RAM.

I'd much rather have features than save disk or RAM space that cost peanuts to upgrade.

For one program? No. The problem comes when *everyone* starts thinking that way. Applications use more and more RAM because "It's cheap" and "everyone has plenty". Nobody optimizing means that multitasking becomes needlessly more difficult. Applications use more and more hard drive space because "everyone has plenty". Everyone using twice as much disk space as they could if users were shown a real custom installer menu or simply optimizing their usage means that I *need* a larger hard disk to fit the same amount of personal data.

Optimized applications show that the developers value my resources.

Re:Come on...

[Voyager529]

"There are certainly improvements (>1 million rows in Excel"

Encouraging people to use a spreadsheet for large amounts of data (or anything else!) is *not* an improvement!

Yes, but the alternatives are awkward. Obviously, that much data belongs in a database for actual-storage, but how does one implement that for end users?

"Use Access!"
Well, Access is only a part of the professional versions of Office now, and it's twice as expensive. Therefore, most users don't have Access.

"Use LibreOffice Base!"
The closest thing to an actual-answer, but there's still a solid learning curve there, as well as import problems.

"Use MariaDB!"
So, now end users need to learn how to use command line SQL?

"Use MariaDB and phpMyAdmin!"
So, now end users need a full LAMP stack?

"SQL Server Express and ODBC!"
smh...

Yes, Excel is a very crude application for database functions. It's also ubiquitous, and for relatively simple things like averaging a single column in half a million rows, spending hours getting that data into a database to then process it back in Excel is an absurd notion.

Re:Come on...

[Gussington]

For one program? No. The problem comes when *everyone* starts thinking that way. Applications use more and more RAM because "It's cheap" and "everyone has plenty". Nobody optimizing means that multitasking becomes needlessly more difficult.

Again why is this a problem? Storage and RAM is so cheap is cost more in my time to write this response than to buy more. In fact you could argue it's less efficient because optimising code takes more developer time, and adds time and cost to project delivery. Given the choice of a 1GB app delivered now, or an 800MB app delivered 3 months late and 20% over budget, I'll take the former every time.

ah, the good old days, such nostalgia

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when entire teams would quit because the bosses canceled the weekly Quake deathmatch due to productivity concerns. Back then it was easy to get a new job the same week, because technical people were in high demand.

Wait, this isn't a story about the 1990s?

They did the autolayoff thing to themselves? Post-Recession? What were they thinking??

Re: After ripping BSD they deserve it

[Anonymous Coward]

http://opensource.apple.com

Also, the one of the best things to ever happen to Linux and the open source OSes was Apple taking ownership of CUPS and making it usable.

Apple is like the garden of eden

[Anonymous Coward]

They want everyone to take a byte but you're not allowed to leaf.

Re:Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

Flextronics was building a lot product for them, especially the Austin, TX plant. Disclaimer, I worked there when it Texas Instruments CMS and Solectron Texas.

They lost me at Goldman Sachs

[plopez]

If Goldman Sachs is involved I am very suspicious. They are never to be trusted.

Re:They lost me at Goldman Sachs

[Hadlock]

There's at least two reasons here why GS would be interested:
 
1. High frequency trading, if you control the software and make it as fast as possible, then all that is left is the networking between you and the exchange. Controlling the networking is the next step, this is total control, total integration
2. Limit backdoors; if you own the system totally and completely, you can nearly guarantee your system has no backdoors from state actors.
 
If you're as big as GS, you definitely don't want to own any american made networking hardware, and building it from the ground up is a cheap hedge against whatever lawsuits come down the line

Re:They lost me at Goldman Sachs

[Anonymous Coward]

well, this one lost me with the reddit-esque headline.. just completely reeks of a 7th repost in /r/todayilearned

Re:They lost me at Goldman Sachs

[Anonymous Coward]

Not as much as microsoft regarding anything reliable...

Re:They lost me at Goldman Sachs

[Anonymous Coward]

They are not that bad. I heard they built an investment scheme where real estate prices never went down. Not rarely -- never.

Invented already.

[Anonymous Coward]

However, it will allow you to hit your data caps in about 10 seconds. isn't that fun?

anyways, if apple wanted a network that never goes down, were they prepared to build their own cables and wireless backups to every place they want to connect to?

or willing it to be total shite as far as performance goes?

Re:Invented already.

[Maritz]

Oh it stands to reason they'd drop that nasty old-fashioned RJ45 or SFP+ connector and bring in something revolutionary and Apple-proprietary.

Church of the SubGenious?

[flyingfsck]

All hail Bob! All hail Bob! https://youtu.be/Qt9MP70ODNw http://www.subgenius.com/

Re: After ripping BSD they deserve it

[narcc]

Credit where credit is due.

It still sucks though. Just not as much.

Re: After ripping BSD they deserve it

[jalet]

It depends...

Re:After ripping BSD they deserve it

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't steal what is freely given.

Re: After ripping BSD they deserve it

[Anonymous Coward]

so tell us more about OSX Darwin and taking existing open source projects and making them closed source while simultaneously benefiting from functionality implemented by users

This has gone on a long time and the url you posted is a token gesture at best.

Jobs knew he was stealing peoples' code and charging for it and was fine with it provided they didn't know about it or threaten him with pesky GPL violations. His reactions to being told he couldn't have someone else's code exclusively for free are famous among the former open source apple kernel community, when there was such a thing.

Re:My network has 100% uptime. 2-0 team is undefea

[I'm New Around Here]

My network has 100% uptime

so does mi

Ahh, Slashdot humor. It never fails to serve.

Re: After ripping BSD they deserve it

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD license most definitely does not require any giving back by developers deriving works from said licensed sources.

Re: My network has 100% uptime. 2-0 team is undefe

[Anonymous Coward]

You are obviously not a Browns fan.

Re:Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, just all the stuff. Monopoly rights are not sufficient to support an economy, but we can pretend until it collapses.

Never, eh?

[Khyber]

Bet I could just walk onto campus and their wireless portion would cease working.

Hello 2.4 GHz HPF EMF device. Easily built for less than $10 if you know how to make the tank circuits yourself.

Re:Never, eh?

[Maritz]

Bet I could just walk onto campus and their wireless portion would cease working.

Hello 2.4 GHz HPF EMF device. Easily built for less than $10 if you know how to make the tank circuits yourself.

Considering all the scary charges you'd get hit with, seems like you should just bring a hand grenade.

Re:Never, eh?

[Khyber]

You assume anyone can pinpoint such a signal when it's bouncing off of buildings.

Try again when you understand the basic physics behind radio signals.

Re:Never, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

But the bounces loose power - so as long as it is powered you will eventually be identified.

Additionally, you posted on the internet with your account name.. I'm not saying the NSA is listening - but serioulsy?

Hehe, saw that coming.

[Anonymous Coward]

The time of my life I was largely pro Apple, I was warned away from joining Apple, because I thought objectively about Apple. It was explained to me that was the kiss of death.

Re:After ripping BSD they deserve it

[pmontra]

The BSD license explicitly allows ripping, it's the whole point of it. If you publish source using BSD or MIT or similar licenses you should expect and like to be ripped off. Let's say you're very altruistic or you have some plan for profiting by it. If you don't like that, go for GPL.

Re: My network has 100% uptime. 2-0 team is undefe

[Anonymous Coward]

100% uptime can be easy to deliver, but is effectively impossible to guarantee contractually.

Re: After ripping BSD they deserve it

[Anonymous Coward]

Usable in an avahi type of way. Yep thanks apple. Now we just have to add back the stuff they busily rip out. I'll take the cups before they got hold of it thanks. Too many 'brave' corporations paying developers to work on open source projects, rather than paying open source developers to work on their own projects.

They violated Apple's first commandment

[Opportunist]

Thou shalt not have any cults next to me!

Re:After ripping BSD they deserve it

[lucm]

Oh, you might also look up the word "cult" and realize that millions of Apple's customers do not belong in that definition.

This is correct. Only a minority is part of the cult; the others are fashion victims and/or phonies.

Who is Cult like?

[Martin S.]

I mostly see cult like devotion from Apple aficionados, who's typical answer to question "Why did you choose iPhone" typical boils down to "because Apple".

Re:Who is Cult like?

[macs4all]

I mostly see cult like devotion from Apple aficionados, who's typical answer to question "Why did you choose iPhone" typical boils down to "because Apple".

Are you serious?

I can boil down my choice of iPhone in two words (and I'm REALLY not trolling!) :

"Because Android".

Re:Who is Cult like?

[Anonymous Coward]

nice trolling

Re:After ripping BSD they deserve it

[gustygolf]

If you publish source using BSD or MIT or similar licenses you should expect and like to be ripped off.

In fact, you should probably be proud that someone found use for your code.

Shameless opportunists being refused a free ride

[cbraescu1]

There was nothing "cult-like".

The networking team at Apple understood there could be a huge business opportunity to build a business over stock OCP, so they thought Apple should pay their bills while they are learning OCP and iterate various ideas. Understanding that Apple won't pay for their OCP education, the team chose to keep going on their predetermined course.

Since Apple anyway joined OCP later on, it's possible they used this situation to weed out the opportunists who tried to ride Apple for their own further goals.

BI blocks ad blocker users

[jeillah]

Wish I could read the article but since Business Insider decided to prevent users of ad blockers from viewing their pages I guess I can't. Even whitelisting doesn't seem to work. So I guess BI can suck it, I will find my news elsewhere...

Re: BI blocks ad blocker users

[Anonymous Coward]

Inspect the source, find the overlay, change the CSS to display:none;

Good to go.

Re:Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

All the worst stuff too.

You get what you ask and pay for (assuming you keep an eye on your partners, lest you want to end up with shitty capacitors blooming left and right).

Re:After ripping BSD they deserve it

[haruchai]

Oh, you might also look up the word "cult" and realize that millions of Apple's customers do not belong in that definition.

So what? Many millions do

Re:Reasonable

[houghi]

I think we are at a point that it is better that the Chinese read our data than the US.

Re: After ripping BSD they deserve it

[Anonymous Coward]

So? You don't support FOSS at all either and spend your days stealing other people's software from pirate sites. You then turn around and sell it for personal profit and fraud.

If you don't care, why expect Apple or anyone else to care? You're obviously cool with apples actions by the fact you do the same things.

Re: After ripping BSD they deserve it

[bn-7bc]

They compiled with the relevant licenses (or we would probably have heard about it somehow) which is all they here obliged to do, should yhey have done more? Perhaps but can we really fault a publicly traded company for not doing more than required (minimising costs)?

You work for Delta

[DarthVain]

Reminds me of the Delta airlines story of a few months ago. They had similar systems, yet the whole thing went down shutting Delta down for a couple days. I believe the investigation found similar results with Management making decisions that ultimately compromised the system, where a backup generator catching fire essentially took it all down...

Writing on the wall

[DarthVain]

I expect it was less a "Cult" and more about being set up for failure.

Being asked to do something unrealistic, then on analysis coming up with the best option, then being told by Management to do something else, the team probably looked at the situation, realized they were being set up for eventual failure and rather than following through to the enviable conclusion decided to cut their losses and start looking for more rewarding work elsewhere.

In the end it was likely known that Management would throw them under the bus eventually and rather than being briefly associated with a failed project and tarnished reputations a better option was to simply move on.

Re:Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

Fun fact, the business and where the components are made or designed have very little to do with each other.

When IBM was doing x86, hardware development was split between Taiwan and US, firmware development pulled in China. All of it worldwide was fully manufactured in China (except some token assembly for clients that demanded it).

When it went to Lenovo, hardware development did get China in the mix, but some of the China software/firmware development moved to Brazil. Manufacturing for the western hemisphere actually moved to the western hemisphere (a lot more efficient to do overland shipping than *always* having to put things on boats or planes).

Open Compute is a nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

For Linux and other successful open source projects, there are two critical factors, openness and consensus. People discuss and generally move in a unified direction, even if not everyone is in perfect agreement.

OCP is plagued by every member thinking they know so much better than everyone else, they don't drive toward consensus. When Microsoft joined, they borught a completely different set of designs, not even fitting the same *rack* as facebook's design. OCP vendors upon hearing the news would briefly hope that meant they could get mileage out of all the work they did to support Facebook by selling that stuff to MS, before having those hopes dashed in learning they couldn't reuse a single damn thing.

The closest thing to a 'standard' is the OCP mezz card. They have the same connector and pinout. However, there are four incompatible layouts depending on the whim of the company deciding what *they* thought would be important. This could have been a golden opportunity, since the PCIe standard has not bothered with an improved, datacenter appropriate design in ages.

It leaves a particularly bad taste in the mouth of vendors, as these clients abuse their suppliers worse than WalMart abuses their vendors. They live it up as vendor after vendor opts to lose money under the mistaken impression they are buying loyalty, when these companies don't give a rats ass.

Who is it that's being a "Cult" here?

[macs4all]

I really don't get this story, honestly.

Is Apple being a "Cult" for wishing to protect possibly marketable trade secrets that were created by its employees on the company's dime?

Is OCP (didn't they buy-up Detroit?) being a "Cult" for engendering a sense of "loyalty" to an ideological position on technology?

Are the ex-Apple Developers being a "Cult" for expressing solidarity, even if it costs them their jobs?

None of those seem to fit the definition of "Cult-like" behavior.

Trust Your Engineers...

[EndlessNameless]

The company wants a network that never goes down---a very challenging project.

Then it prohibits the engineers from implementing the solution they chose.

So management is demanding a high-grade service and refusing the method chosen by their experts? I assume the engineering team would also be blamed when the service failed to perform as expected.

I would quit too. You don't get to ignore a consensus of experts and then hold them accountable for result. If they're skilled enough that you ought to be listening to them, they can find something better when you treat them like wage slaves.

stupid managers making clueless requirements

[JustNiz]

>> building a network at Apple that was so reliable, it never goes down. Not rarely -- never.

Thats logically impossible. No matter how many layers of failover and backup systems you have, each unavoidably has some probability of themselves failing. Even if VERY small, its still not never.

Re:stupid managers making clueless requirements

[HiThere]

First thought:
Not really true, but it could go into a mode where it only operated in a VERY degraded state....like no external connectivity.

Second thought:
And I guess even that could fail if, say, the power went out, so I guess you're right after all.

The problem here is that "network failure" isn't well defined. Computer failure is, though, so if all the computers that ran the software went down, the network would have clearly failed. I'm sure they meant something different, but they don't seem to have been explicit about what they meant. (Betcha that "never goes down" came out of marketing, and they didn't know, or care, exactly what they meant.)

Re:After ripping BSD they deserve it

[DuckDodgers]

You're not being fair and you know it. Most of the public, through no fault of their own, is not educated in the value of software freedom. So they take walled gardens and digital rights management as a given. Now consider the difference between an iPhone and a Macbook versus a Samsung Galaxy S-something and a high end Dell laptop.

First, Apple does have an edge in aesthetics in the judgment of most people. If that didn't matter, we Linux enthusiasts would be merrily running FVWM and Blackbox.
The iPhone is likely to get software updates and security updates from Apple much longer than the Android device. Software updates for the Macbook might only be for four or five years, while Windows 13 will probably run on the Dell. The new Apple operating systems are cheap, too.
And Apple support might charge through the nose, but it's fast and efficient. If you have to call Dell support, it's probably less painful to just light yourself on fire and be done with it.

Android and Windows own most of their respective consumer markets because the great majority of smart phone and laptop shoppers can't budget the iPhone and a $1000 machine. But for people who can afford high end devices, Apple is not a waste of money only pursued by fashion victims and phonies.

Re:After ripping BSD they deserve it

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how this is the same Slashdot that excoriates Disney for appropriating freely provided legendary stories and characters for massive corporate profit.

The context has changed. Anyone freely contributing to BSD now is a tool--that doesn't mean people who did in the past were anticipating this circumstance.

Re: After ripping BSD they deserve it

[unixisc]

Not just that, Apple has employed quite a few FreeBSD devs, so contributes to FOSS in a pretty major way. I do wish the Quartz spec was open sourced, if not the code.

Re: After ripping BSD they deserve it

[unixisc]

Apple never touched GPL stuff. They went w/ BSD from the beginning. And they had plenty of experience on those issues, since they inherited NEXT and its OS, which itself was taken from Mach 2.5 and BSD.

BlackBox can actually look pretty neat ...

[Qbertino]

If that didn't matter, we Linux enthusiasts would be merrily running FVWM and Blackbox.

BlackBox can actually look pretty neat, if themed correctly.

Re: BlackBox can actually look pretty neat ...

[DuckDodgers]

I picked some of the older desktop environments as an example. I meant no disrespect to the Blackbox developers or users. It might be pretty cool. I just remember that it's relatively old. I used FVWM fifteen years ago, give or take, and it was functional but not pretty.

Re: BlackBox can actually look pretty neat ...

[lucm]

Well, not to burst your iBubble but OSX today looks like KDE in 2003.

You talk about nicer design and such, but for the most part that's biased bullshit. Have you seen high end Asus ultrabooks for instance?Put that next to a Macbook and immediately you can see it's not even in the same league. Macbook are more in the Chromebook market; a flimsy proprietary gadget that works ok as long as you don't mind the very limited choice of software.

Get real.

Re: BlackBox can actually look pretty neat ...

[Lotus456]

Well, not to burst your iBubble but OSX today looks like KDE in 2003.

Wait, whut?

Do you really mean to say that Sierra looks like this to you?

Okay... They both have windows with title bars at the top. And some icons that stick to the bottom of the screen. Other than that, not much resemblance.

Please tell me you don't design GUIs as part of your job!

Re: BlackBox can actually look pretty neat ...

[DuckDodgers]

I don't own any iBubble products, thanks. I have Ubuntu 14.04 on my work laptop - it's the only version supported by my employer's VPN provider, Elementary OS on my desktop, and Ubuntu MATE on the desktop my kids use, and last year I was using KDE Plasma.

But when I look at the screens of my colleagues' Macbooks, sorry but they do look better even than the nicest KDE Plasma layout. We can hate Apple for their walled gardens and patent lawsuits and other proprietary bullshit, but Macbooks are not "flimsy proprietary gadgets" that look like a thirteen year old version of KDE.

Re: BlackBox can actually look pretty neat ...

[lucm]

Post a screenshot url and let's see.

Re: BlackBox can actually look pretty neat ...

[lucm]

I'm not sure what is Sierra, but this is the 2015 version of OSX and yes it's pretty much as sophisticated as KDE in 2003.

http://a5.mzstatic.com/us/r30/...

Sure in KDE there's the "Start" menu, and you're also allowed to have non-blurry fonts, but besides that it's very similar.

Of course according to you one has to be a GUI designer to appreciate the magnificent visual engineering of Apple so we'll never see eye to eye, but here's the thing: even the default GUI in Ubuntu (Unity) looks better than OSX.

Re: BlackBox can actually look pretty neat ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not going to argue over which one looks better (I think Unity looks like ass) but you said it "looks like" KDE 2003 when it clearly doesn't.

KDE looks like someone tried to paste OS X chrome onto WinXP functionality. Dated 'brushed metal' aside, KDE looks positively clunky compared to the contemporary Panther desktop.

Re: BlackBox can actually look pretty neat ...

[lucm]

Funny enough, this panther screenshot is for the most part identical to the latest OSX. We all know nothing has changed on the Macbook hardwarw in years, but clearly nothing has changed in the GUI either.

Re: BlackBox can actually look pretty neat ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that what KDE/Gnome users are aggrieved about? Inconsistency between versions and changes that are not improvements?

Consistency is one of the principles Apple established in their Human Interface Guidelines from the very beginning. If you keep things consistent, users aren't constantly befuddled by things working differently than they're used to. They can rely on spatial positioning and muscle memory to work efficiently. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Also funny enough, a lot of die-hard Mac users complained about the interface in Mac OS X because it broke several of the principles in the guidelines and was too different from the classic Mac experience. Once they got used to it, Apple mercifully left the basic features intact and people got over it. Then they introduced crap like Exposé and trackpad gestures, leaving people wondering why the hell their windows suddenly flew off the screen. Stupid.

Re: BlackBox can actually look pretty neat ...

[Lotus456]

Sure in KDE there's the "Start" menu, and you're also allowed to have non-blurry fonts, but besides that it's very similar.

No, it really isn't. Doesn't look like it, doesn't act like it, except in the very coarsest details.

Re: BlackBox can actually look pretty neat ...

[lucm]

Well at least we're on the same page on this. The OSX look hasn't evolved in over ten years, just like the hardware, Apple makes minuscule changes and people keep paying for the same old dated technology.

It's a free country so it's ok to throw your money out the window, knock yourself out; keep buying their overpriced PC clones that run a watered down Unix clone, but at least don't try to spin this business model of recycling customers and products as if it was a magnificent achievement of engineering. Apple is not a technology company, it's a marketing company.

As for Linux there is a user base that likes to have their system setup their way and never change it, and there's also people who love living on the edge. That's why there's LTS releases and why some people will keep using the same Blackbox interface for 15 years or more (which by he way can be themes and customized to no end and can look pretty sci-fi compared to OOTB). And that's why there's also rolling releases and constant forks and spinoffs (like Cinnamon) and heavily redesigned GUI and GUIs meant to have the same look & feel as Windows or Mac. It's the beauty of the eclectic Linux ecosystem.

What exactly do you gain by buying Apple instead of a generic PC running Linux? Nothing; you have less software options, less customization options, you have planned obsolescence enforced by the vendor as well as by the customers (who wants to prance around at Starbucks with an iPhone 4 or with an old iPad?). And you can't even count on the cool factor anymore because the brand is a has-been heading the way of Blackberry or Palm.

Re: BlackBox can actually look pretty neat ...

[Anonymous Coward]

> The OSX look hasn't evolved in over ten years

It has, it's just not a huge overhaul every release. The new features are carefully integrated (misguided as some may be) not haphazardly slapped on.

> Apple makes minuscule changes and people keep paying for the same old dated technology.

Here, I agree - but they pay for it because it has value for them. Ever since Leopard, Apple has been trying to justify upgrades with features that aren't very compelling. I'd prefer it if they focused their efforts on backward compatibility and kept all that old software working.

> keep buying their overpriced PC clones that run a watered down Unix clone

It's not a "watered-down Unix clone," it is a descendant of BSD through NeXT and Mach. It's meets the Single Unix Specification. It IS Unix.

> Apple is not a technology company, it's a marketing company.

Actually, they're a solutions company. Their solutions depend on both hardware and software (and Cloud) but that's their core business.

> It's the beauty of the eclectic Linux ecosystem.

What you call "beauty," most users call chaos. KDE didn't do anything that hadn't been done already in Windows or OS X, but they did make it insanely configurable. For your average user who isn't a tinkerer, who just wants to get work done, that's a curse, not a blessing.

> What exactly do you gain by buying Apple instead of a generic PC running Linux? Nothing; you have less software options

News flash: you can run Linux apps on Mac OS X. Some through ports packaging, others through emulation and VMs. Plus I can dual-boot or triple boot Linux with Mac OS X and Windows, so there's pretty much nothing I can't run (except Classic Mac apps -- d'oh!).

Oh I see

[kuzb]

OCP aims to do for computer hardware what the Linux operating system

turn it in to a mess of competing standards that have no consistency?

Re:After ripping BSD they deserve it

[Areyoukiddingme]

Funny how this is the same Slashdot that excoriates Disney for appropriating freely provided legendary stories and characters for massive corporate profit.

Mostly because Disney then sics their lawyers on anyone trying to do their own retelling, even when they try not to resemble Disney's rendition of the characters. You have to try really really hard not to resemble Disney's rendition, and even then you're still at risk.

It's not so much that Disney likes to plunder the public domain. It's that Disney likes to plunder the public domain, then try to prevent anyone else from doing the same, both by suing people who use the same public domain stories and by trying to make sure nothing else ever becomes public domain ever again. (Pulling up the ladder behind them.)

Re:After ripping BSD they deserve it

[lucm]

But for people who can afford high end devices, Apple is not a waste of money only pursued by fashion victims and phonies

Do you even realize how smug this sounds? Here's a reality check for you: no matter the income of the buyer, Apple products are a waste of money because they're not worth the price tag. There's plenty of other products with that kind of bad value for the money; Range Rovers for instance. Doesn't make it any better than paying $20 for a cheeseburger at Mikee Dees.

As for fashion victims, here's a true story. Friend of mine told me she wanted a new laptop and was considering a Macbook. I told her about the limitations, the obsolete hardware, the bad manufacturing, the horrible work conditions of the production line workers, the ridiculous price tag for what she would actually get. She said she understood but would stil buy one because that's what everybody else was using in her yoga class. How many of Apple customers make this kind of decisions? Hint: a lot.

Re:Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more about the turtles all the way down.

Re:After ripping BSD they deserve it

[Anonymous Coward]

Macs aren't expensive if you use your computer to make money.

If you just use your computer for gaming or dicking around on the net, then the price of a Mac is probably not worth it.

Re: After ripping BSD they deserve it

[stoatwblr]

And then unusable. Seriously, every change made recently has rendered CUPS less and less compatible with existing systems.

Re:After ripping BSD they deserve it

[lucm]

What money can you make on a Mac that cannot be made on a non-Mac? Are you talking about the constantly shrinking ios app market, fhe gold rush that ended up not being profitable for the vast majority of developers?

Re: After ripping BSD they deserve it

[shutdown -p now]

Apple never touched GPL stuff.

Guess why parts of WebKit are still LGPL?

Re:After ripping BSD they deserve it

[Anonymous Coward]

I do graphical work for print and Web, and despite the gains Windows has made in that arena, I use a Mac because it's much more pleasant and saves me time.