Then actually, you ARE a pretty big security risk.
You are the ONLY one who knows what's going on with the network security-wise. You could have them penetrated 10 ways to Sunday and they'd have to take your word for it that they're secure.
That's the first point. The second point is that you didn't get screwed over by a network security geek, you got screwed over by a salesman who makes money for some hot-shot CEO who pays a few network security geeks to do far more work than they should be handling. I just got myself fired from a job for "not fitting in". This meant that I had personal and professional objections to monitoring network connectivity, security, e-mail, webhosting, and VPN for some 150 customers and 4-500 sites at 50 hours a week as one of 6 people doing the job. Meanwhile, the 10 sales guys have a "Vice President" title hanging off their names, don't have a clue how to use a computer, and are promising the moon while the CEO rakes it in.
This situation is a real issue. Most of these companies are taking advantage of federal legislation requiring a certain level of security for a bank. And while it's not fair to you, you DO constitute a security risk as a sole security person. On the other hand, you also can't go back to your employer in a month and say, "Your security is full of holes now with this new provider, here let me show you." The bank's been swindled, you're unemployed, and an overworked staff just got more overworked. It's a lousy situation all around. The only thing you can do is move on.
Though I don't envy you trying to explain away getting fired as a security risk on your resume. That's probably the second-most unfair thing about the whole deal.
More to the point, for those of you who're system geeks that don't really look beyond your Ethernet card, it's 44.736Mbit/Sec EACH WAY. Meaning that If I'm doing a download at 40Mbit/Sec over a DS3 link, someone could upload from me at 40Mbit/Sec and not see any slowdown at all. (Left some wiggle room in there to get ACKs back.) The only way to really screw a DS3 link is to push 45Mbit/Sec in one direction, and even then the traffic should simply look like a slashdot effect, at worst.
This is, of course, completely irrelevant as to who caused it, but someone wasn't paying attention along the way as to which kind of link provides what amount of bandwidth.
Try a bit hard to follow the logic. Many parents think violence, and content glorifying violence -- including not only violent video games and movies, but also content like weapon advocacy, hobbyist sites-- is bad for their children; something they'd rather they not read/see. Plus obviously information regarding weaponry can be viewed as risky and harmful ("finding sites on Internet that describe how to build bombs") in general.
Um, have you actually BEEN to the NRA's website? You're confusing a political organization with a sales & review website. There's approximately two guns I could see on the main page just now, both of which are part of the NRA ILA seal drawing.
The fact remains that this is political favoritism on the part of a corporation. Part of the problem with this that they do NOT state this as such. I plan on teaching my children to shoot starting around age 4, and my wife agrees enthusiastically. Being able to visit the NRA website allows kids to participate in NRA youth programs there, which all emphasize saftey around firearms.
The NRA is a political organization. The only advantage to blocking it is purely political. Even a cursory glance at the site will tell you that.
Not only was the ultimate eBook reader out...
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· Score: 2, Interesting
... but due to sales, since it was an early starter, it's since been discontinued.
I'm talking about the REB1100. The successor to the original Rocket, precursor to Gemstar's now also discontinued travesty of a version, the GEB1150.
Why's the 1100 great? Lessee.
1. I routinely get 30+ hours of battery life out of it. It goes for days.
2. I can almost drive by the light of the backlight. I sure as hell could read a paper book with it as a light source, and it could be indirect when the brightness was cranked. (caveat, cranking the brightness like that will cut battery life to 10-15 hours tops.)
3. Weighs noticeably less than a hardcover, about the same as a thick paperback - think The Stand (unabridged). Unit is molded to fit fairly naturally in your hand, with the page advance button under your thumb, just as a curled-over paperback would.
4. Screen size is that of a normal paperback, give or take.
5. Could add your own content via USB port, and there's a project on Sourceforge for converting docs to Rocket's.rb format. (Gemstar killed this concept with the GEB1150)
Things it lacks: Could always do with more battery life (what can't?), was a black & white monochrome screen (GEB1150 did have greyscale 256, but...), and uses the now virtually defunct SmartMedia card for memory expansion - would've preferred Compact Flash. Could also use a bit more internal memory, as it only had 8 Megs - still enough for around 8,000 pages.
It's fairly durable, but the screens can crack on you if you drop it at the right angle. Mine's cracked in the corner (after 4 or 5 drops) but the crack isn't getting any worse, and there's a plastic sheet of some sort over it so nothing's getting in there either. What's more, the crack is around the non-active border, so it doesn't even affect reading/viewing.
You can find them on eBay, and I have stumbled across them as display models in a few stores, notably OfficeMax. I also found one in a Best Buy.
If anyone wants to build the ultimate eBook reader, that's a good place to start.
As for content, someone's already mentioned Baen. To note, last I checked they released in RTF, Mobipocket, Rocket, Microsoft, and plain-duck HTML. (The interface for HTML is nice as well; it will keep track of the paragraph you last had the mouse cursor hovering over in whichever chapter, I think by cookie, and when you close, then reload the main book page, it brings you directly to that point. It also has a chapter list in a frame, and allows you to set the font.)
I think I'd rather let a Science Fiction author do the in-depth argument for me.
http://www.baen.com/library/
Read the Introduction on the main page. Then read the Prime Palavers.
Books posted online, unencrypted, free for download, is akin to having 3 or 4 copies of a book in every library in America. Have you EVER heard of a massively successful author standing up and saying "No dammit! Libraries are NOT allowed to have copies of my books! Every one checked out is a lost sale!"
Nope. Never, ever going to happen. And all a library is is an information storehouse. Much like the 'net. A book in a library tends to be excellent PR - via word-of-mouth if nothing else - for an author. Freely available copies of books on the 'net does the same thing.
The financial facts about writing are somewhat true. Though, even a moderately successful author makes more in a year than I'm likely to see any time soon in the tech field. What those facts that Mr. Haldeman either doesn't know, chooses to ignore, or plain considers lies, is that authors who posted their material for free on the net see an increase in sales of those and other books, long after they normally wouldn't sell well at all. This is demonstrated fact. See the above site for details.
Not only do their other books increase in sales, but the books that were put out for free tend to as well.
This effect crosses publisher lines as well; Mercedes Lackey put up a couple of her Baen titles in the Free Library, and saw an increase in sales for books she'd published for a different company as well.
Eric Flint's overriding premise is that each book downloaded is NOT, nor could ever realistically be considered as, a lost sale. The judge for a lost sale is whether or not the individual downloading the book would have bought it in the first place. As in, is capable of putting the money down for it AND intends to. If they don't, or can't, then it isn't a lost sale. 15-year-olds with no allowances and no job aren't likely to buy your book when it comes out. (He also adds that if they have the chance to read it, they very well may buy it, multiple times, when they are older.) And, in the case of an author who is unknown to the reader, it's a no-risk try of the author's material.
Personally, I'm a rather large Eric Flint fan. The only reason I considered reading any of his books is because he was co-authoring 1633 with Dave Weber. The only reason I've bought most of his books is because - despite being an absolutely rabid fan of Dave Weber's - 1632, the prequel to 1633, was available in the Free Library. Had it not been, I probably never would've bothered reading the series, and it's one of my favorites now.
What's more, I can download the HTML to a floppy or zip it to insignificant size and freely and legally distribute it to my friends to get them hooked on it as well. Lending books is a time-honored way for an author's readership to expand. Putting copies up for free is simply multiplicative.
It's instructive to note that most of the e-book newsgroups consider it exceptionally bad form to post a Baen e-book to the group unless it's already freely available. In this way, they're doing their part to encourage other publishers to release electronic, unencrypted formats and sell them for a reasonable price.
Too bad most publishers don't know how massive the "piracy" on newsgroups is; it might have an interesting effect on them.
First off, prior to the last book, Robert Stanton Pierre was an amply adequate example of a bad guy you hated to like. You want a war-hating liberal? Try out Cathy Mogntaine, late Countess of the Tor.
Anyone who thinks David stereotypes his characters, or lines them all up as black or white/good or bad needs to reread the series. Even Janacek at least thought he was doing the right things...
I would hate to sell like one cd and have 2 more unpaid for copies floating around. That's like giving away 2 apples for every one you sell! Kind of a sad business model...
Allow me to point out a few situations of reality for you here, because you're obviously living off in RIAA-Land.
First and foremost, CD sales were at a peak at exactly the same time that Napster was. RIAA killed Napster, and raised (artificially, at that) CD Prices at the same time. Suddenly, CD sales went through the floor. RIAA howled and screamed and pointed at their sales figures as "proof" that Napster was harmful. Riiiight...
Second, your assumption that, if you sell an apple, and because of that apple being turned into three apples magically and the other two given away, that you have lost two sales, is utter garbage. Why? Simple.
Odds are, the folks with those two magically duplicated apples most likely wouldn't have bought your album anyhow. One of them is a 14-year-old kid who gets beaten up by the school bully every day and rarely manages to hang on to enough cash to buy lunch. The other is someone who has only a passing interest in the genre, and so "steals" a copy of the apple to check it out. You didn't lose a sale, you've made a pair of sales for future albums if those two like it and someday can afford to get something.
It is *not* a sad business model, it's a pretty damned good one. It creates word of mouth advertising. "Man, SteveBee's Apple Stand has great apples, and he'll even give you a couple for free! Go check 'em out!"
There is nothing on this planet better for advertising than having folks get told by those they trust how good your product is. Eric Flint and virtually every other Baen Books author understands that. Check out The Baen Free Library and read the Prime Palavers some time. Their sales have increased from free books online, why wouldn't your sales increase from free music online?
This is the most insanely stupid concept...
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MS Passport and... Visa
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· Score: 3, Insightful
...that I think I've ever heard of.
I play Asheron's Call (only published by MS, not made by them, BTW.) They changed over their auth system about 8 months ago from the old kludgy Zone auth system to Passport, and it's been downhill ever since. Each game account requires a separate Passport account, and most of the people who are big into the game have at LEAST two accounts (I have 3, myself). There's some inflationary numbers on how many are using Passport for you.
Furthermore, there was a recent rash of folks getting their accounts hacked because folks don't understand password security, and had their Passport e-mail address listed in YaBB and UBB boards centered on the game, used the same password for those boards as they do for their Passport account, and an exploit was discovered allowing folks to actually retrieve that info from those BB packages. If this idea is similar to the concept of the MS Wallet - which I haven't heard anything out of in a while - it's going to be an utter and complete disaster. Credit card fraud will reach new all-time highs, banks will start to go under, cows will fall out of clear blue skies, chaos and destruction will reign, et al.
BUT.
Here's the trick. If it is NOT like Wallet, and your CC info is NOT stored within Passport, then what they're effectively doing is adding a password check to your credit card for online transactions. At least one company is already doing this (witness the "I am Emmit Smith" ads) and it's an incredibly good idea. You register your Passport account with the bank who provided your Credit Card, and in return, your card number becomes totally useless without a password for the purposes of online transactions.
I really don't think that it's such a hot idea to be using PASSPORT for this, but the concept, if the card number isn't stored online BY the password system, is a VERY good one.
Fortunately for me, my credit card is through Digital Federal Credit Union, and I don't think they're too likely to implement it without warning.
Perhaps it's to solve the most common reason why an RA will learn to despise the ground you walk on: Running out of your room real quick and having the locked door blow shut on you with your keys inside.
Believe it or not, people can carry a small pick set in their wallet, which they're far more likely to remember than their keys. (At least, I am.) Being able to get back into your dorm room at 4am because you have lockpicks and don't have to wake up the RA who has a 7:30am class the next day is pretty damned close to priceless.
LED flashlight is nice because the batteries will damned near last forever.
Another thing: when I download the kernel (as an end-user), why should I have to download Sparc, MIPS, IA64, PPC, etc. sources when all I need is x86? Maybe the kernel sources can be broken apart into individual architectures for the end users (obviously not for the kernel hackers).
I thought as you do, and about a year and a half ago - I think it was with 2.2.16, not sure - I tried removing the nonessential arch/* garbage, because at the time I was restricted to about 2.5 gigs total space on my system.
The kernel failed to compile in some pretty horrific ways.
Now, if that stuff is for the architecture specified ONLY, it should've done just fine. Apparently, though, somehow stuff for my i386 kernel needs to reference stuff from IA64 or Alpha or some such. I think that diverse kernel types based on Architecture - from a download perspective, at least - is a good idea, but it appears that there needs to be some code cleanup before it can happen.
He actually stated that the only shell-access account on the box is root. This means that the only way you can get a command prompt is if you're logged in as root. Theoretically, if you can exploit a CGI bug, you could execute/bin/sh and have a shell, but they've probably disallowed that.
The Dachstein images from the LEAF Project are set up similarly. Root is the only shell access, CGI/Web runs from another user.
My wife, for one. (And yes, she does read Slashdot. Ain't I lucky?)
For another, it was announced well in advance, and shown in the previews, that the basic plot has been altered. There was NO love interest mentioned in Fellowship, yet it's in the movie according to the previews I've seen.
THAT is why spoilers are kept out, and why they should be. I haven't seen it yet. And I just simply cannot wait much longer to see it...
Warlock translates from gaelic (If I remember correctly) as Oathbreaker. So no, Warlock being a male witch is a falsehood that superstitious Christians made popular. Witch is Witch, regardless of gender, unless you follow the word back to it's roots, and then you have Wicca and Wicce to determine gender.
The unfortunate problem with this is Middle to Upper Management. You see, I was in a position to seriously improve productivity between two UNIX boxen, one running Debian - Slink, no less, although heavily upgraded before I got a chance to play with it - and a FreeBSD box.
Now, I was one of the admin team members for the FreeBSD box, and by default, one of the local guys who knew enough about that Slink box to actually do something useful with it. (Usually this consisted of finding out that NetCool wasn't running because of something server-side, not something local.)
Problem: Slink box owned by another department using a hacked and crappy version of SSH (not OpenSSH) that supported SecurID. This version wouldn't allow you to log in to the FreeBSD box, which was running OpenSSH. Shell access from the Slink box wasn't viable to a number of locations, so we needed to get to the FreeBSD box, which had access.
Solution: Install OpenSSH client in the home directory for the department account on the Slink box. Set up an Alias in the.bashrc to have the command "freebsd " execute "/home/department/usr-bin/ssh freebsd.domain.com -l " and suddenly everyone's happy, right?
Well, I was fortunate to have a decent management team above me, so they only went through it with a fine tooth comb looking to make sure I hadn't screwed the department over by "exceeding my authority" on another department's box. Note that this was after being told by management to actually set something up so it would work; I think they expected me to do something on the FreeBSD side, but I couldn't.
The point of this all is that better coders and more robust admin programs don't mean jack diddly-squatwhen you get right down to it. Management doesn't work well on technical issues outside the department level, so incompatibilities in methods and base concepts differ too radically to allow for one or two guys per shift to admin every box in every department for, say, a national ISP, with the use of some clever apps.
And this doesn't even begin to cover the concept that someone needs to be on site for every server farm you've got.
I don't think that we're in danger of having too many sysadmins any time soon, personally.
Heh. Don't suppose you've got a job for someone out Massachussetts way, eh?
That's precisely what my former boss was looking for when he interviewed me. I got lucky, because your (and his) type of interview style is very rare - so far as I can see - in the industry. Those are the things that give good people with poor educational backgrounds a break.
As for becoming a sysadmin, if you're in an organization, just make enough quiet noise that you know plenty about UNIX in general and whatever flavors you normally use in particular, and someone will notice eventually.
Trying to come in from the outside is another story. Doing it while switching from a totally nontechnical field is difficult, but your age may actually play into your hands on that. Generally, older people are automatically assumed to have settled down a bit, and will seriously consider what they're doing before making a major move such as this.
I wish I had more advice for ya, but I don't. Actually, I'm in a similar boat; I want a position as a UNIX admin, and don't know how to translate from a Network Support guy with part-time admin duties to a full time junior admin.
Wow. Two comments saying essentially the same thing one after the other. Guess that was just wierd. Even quoted the same document, though at different sources.
No, what he's saying is that if it wasn't for him and his drive to convince IBM that they should let people make PC clones, Linux would never have happened, and the FSF would most likely still be twiddling it's thumbs looking for a decent kernel to run their not-Unix. Which is true.
Boy, I can see the flamethrowers firing up now.
I hate to tell you folks, but while the man's no saint, Gates does not spend every waking moment trying to twist words and warp minds. If it was NOT for the fact that Microsoft didn't want to rely solely on IBM for a hardware platform and PUSHED them to say, "Hey, this hardware's gotta be opened up so others can duplicate and we can get a competitive free market going", then Linux wouldn't exist. Why? Linus sat down to write a UNIX kernel for his 386. Not his Mac, not is SparcStation, his 386. Other people ported it to other platforms after he set the foundation on x86.
While you're pondering that, try grasping that Linus would've had a hell of a hard time doing it without Richard Stallman and gcc.
So, to borrow a line from an essay by Neal Stephenson, which I highly recommend to anyone as a good perspective on the OS Wars and how they came about (The essay is In the Beginning was the Command Line);
"Microsoft refused to go into the hardware business, insisted on making its software run on hardware that anyone could build, and thereby created the market conditions that allowed hardware prices to plummet. In trying to understand the Linux phenomenon, then, we have to look not to a single innovator but to a sort of bizarre Trinity: Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Bill Gates. Take away any of these three and Linux would not exist. "
THAT is what Bill Gates was saying, perhaps laid out in terms that you can read without seeing a corporate spin on it.
Life's rough, but without Bill Gates and Microsoft, there would have been nothing for Linux to be built on.
Been reading the comments here, and it's almost a psychological cross-section of Slashdot Readers. The people who're disappointed but sticking it out are telling you to tough it out and just try and make the best of it. The people who like their jobs or who handled their issues to their own satisfaction are telling you to experiment, take time off, or whatever.
One thing's the same though. Whatever you do, finish college. Going back is the hardest thing you can do; I've tried it twice - about to go for a third. One way or another, it will help show that you've got the ability to finish what you started.
Now, as for how to make it fun again? That's tricky. If you haven't done any independent coding, that's one way to make it fun. Another is to take a break from it - say, don't touch a computer over winter break or some such - and come back to it when you itch for it.
Overall though, I've only seen one comment that suggests something that's frequently overlooked: Talk to the Career Counselors. They work for a college, and they deal with the kinds of people who change tracks constantly. They're probably going to give you an idea or three about how to handle this crisis. (It is a crisis, too; burnout is never a pleasant thing.)
Furthermore, there's something else you can do. Stop worrying about what to do once you're done with college. Let the school's placement department work on that for you. As always, mixing your degree with another hobby is a good idea if possible. The market's oh-so-slowly starting to rebound, and programmers are always needed in some way, shape or form.
If you've still got time to change your course structure around, I suggest taking some serious fluff courses, on something totally unrelated to coding, or even CS in general. Basket Weaving 101 is the perfect type; you want something that keeps your hands busy and your mind free to wander. The more free time you can make for your mind, the better off you are.
Yes, but I think that the overwhelming difference here lies in the current status of the project.
A year ago - heck, even as little as 6 months ago! - Mozilla was sluggish to terrible. The only reason people were using it was because it did a much better job out the gate of handling fonts and images. But the reason for that was simple, and oft-stated by the Mozilla folks.
Debugging code.
Mozilla was still new enough and untried enough that every build they did had debugging code all over the place, so that when the Lizard died, they could get an accurate autopsy right away. And they hadn't even BOTHERED with speed optimizations. As they steadily creep closer to 1.0 - and this is really only since they hit.9 or so that it's become more true - they've been pulling the debugging code and starting to optimize for speed. The difference in performance is incredible, and I've had at least two people tell me that they've gotten better results on unofficial page-loading benchmarks from Mozilla than IE under Win32.
Nautilus, on the other hand, is a shipped product. Sure, no program is ever really ready, it just gets released; that doesn't change the fact that the debug code should be out and the speed optimizations should be in.
If I had to take a guess, I'd imagine that the performance hits Nautilus takes are from trying to be too user-friendly while maintaining a Kitchen-sink toolset.
IANACoder, but that's one of the reasons I don't bother with Nautilus.
Well, that and the fact that Xterm works just fine for my file manager. =)
I'd imagine that either OSPF, or possibly BGP, would work just fine for this sort of thing. The problem is, you need a REAL router to do these things, not one of those $200 USD Router-In-A-Box jobbies that you can pick up from D-Link or Linksys. And even then, you're not going to be able to do that over DSL or Cable, because I don't know of ANY ISP that will provide a BGP table over those connection types.
More likely would be some sort of setup where their would be a central node that those gateways would report to, and the routers at those gateways would report throughput for their links back to the central node. That node would then distribute that bandwidth as equally as possible on a per-request basis.
This basically would be just like setting up any kind of NAT-based network with more than two connects to the internet, but without the benefit of BGP to help things along. It's possible, but sticky.
There's also the subject of the real routers. Netopias won't cut it here either; you'd almost have to have a Cisco. Alternately, you could set up Linux boxen to serve as your router; Zebra is supposedly pretty far along, and would work for internal traffic distribution. There's also LEAF and LRP, two closely related projects for doing a single-floppy router/firewall/NAT device. Find them at:
It'd take a lot of effort, but if you happen to live in a high-geek-ratio neighborhood and you can share the implementation efforts across other shoulders, it should be easy enough.
I hate the idea of copy-protected CDs (and personally I will not buy them) but I have a feeling we won't have a choice. Boycotting them won't work (try boycotting any chain, etc) it is HIGHLY unlikely that numbers of bought CDs will drop in any significant amount. (Just as they haven't dropped due to Napster, Gnutella, whatever).
Actually....
So quickly we forget the details. It's kinda sad in a way.
I remember seeing something on CNN in early 2000 right when the Napster lawsuits were filed and/or aired to the general public as a whole. The news went something like this:
"The RIAA has filed a lawsuit against Napster, the online music-sharing service, due to it's ability to facilitate piracy of music and potential to cripple sales.
"In other news, CD sales this quarter are up almost 20%, a near-record quarter for the music industry."
The teeny little smirk of irony that the guy let slip through spoke volumes for those that saw it.
Very shortly afterwards, hundreds of people started boycotting the RIAA by refusing to purchase CDs released by RIAA member labels. Everyone was outraged by the total ridiculousness of the charges in the lawsuit and by God they were going to DO something about it!
And you know what? It worked. Unfortunately, because it was such a grassroots and spontaneous choice by hundreds and even thousands of individuals, nobody bothered to tell the MEDIA that people were boycotting the RIAA. And so it backfired on us.
Whatsernutz, the RIAA's Head Hatchetwoman... er... spokeswoman, that is, pointed to CD sales in 2001 being down even further than usual to points much lower than in the past two to three years as proof that Napster and other music-sharing services ARE hurting the industry. Never mind the fact that the major player - Napster - has been stopped cold, with no way to trade anything over it. Never mind that online music piracy has been reduced, effectively, to that of pre-Napster levels. CD sales are slipping. They know why, and can even truthfully say that it's because of Napster. They just haven't bothered to tell anyone that, hey, it's because we SUED Napster that they're slipping. The cause is Napster, but not in the way that they want everyone to think.
And nobody's bothered to point this out to the Media, the courts, or the world at large.
So you say that it's highly unlikely that a boycott would do any good. I say that you're right, but not for the same reasons. Boycotts are USELESS if the public isn't made aware of them. The number of CDs purchased in the past year HAS dropped significantly, and as of right now, it's only filling their ammo bins. We need someone to step up and tell people that the reason CD sales are slipping is because the people who buy the majority of music aren't buying anymore in protest. And it needs to be someone famous - or at least vaguely well-known - and respected.
Guy, you haven't been in a Barnes & Noble or a Borders in recent memory, have you?
The SMALLEST of those stores contains massive amounts of books, from unknown or little-known authors, on hundreds and thousands of subjects. The Top-20 "Superstar" list you refer to is called the New York Times' Best SELLER list.
Say it again with me. BEST SELLER. That's right. They get advertised because thousands of people are buying them already! So blows the hole in your superstar theorem. If you'd like further proof, go to Baen.com and check out the Baen Free Library. I could recommend the authors, but what's the point? They're placing stuff up for free.
Music? Hrm. I've got some 206 songs on two CD-ROMs kicking around my apartment somewhere from the mp3.com promotions. They don't include a single superstar song on there. Everyone knows about mp3.com from their days in court.
Let's face it. Simple fact of the matter is, there's no big corporate superstar business model. They'll drop today's superstar like a sack and build a new one in a heartbeat. They just respond to the mob. Simple mathematics will tell you that there's thousands more artists out there now than there were a hundred years ago, because we haven't bred the arts out of our race.
Not only did they say that, but later in the article, they say "Well if we do it the MAST way, instead of the JET way, then we can see this."
Uh-huh.
So they show us some snazzy snapshots, say it's a donut-shaped field that is small and can hold hot gas, and in 20 years your home will be powered by it!
Anyone want a link to a decent site explaining the technical details of how these fields work?
Speaking as a Routing Engineer, I'll say straight up:
ANY school that has more than 1500 students per semester should have at least a full DS-3, if not two. Redundant links are even better. Sure, this gets to be a headache, but BGP on the outbound side and a few 45Mbit links or higher can solve a lot of other headaches. My sister goes to George Washington University, and they've got redundant links there, one of which runs to the ISP I work at. The one to us is a rate-limited OC-3, so they can triple their bandwidth with a few configuration changes (and about a week's worth of paperwork for the billing.)
Especially now, with government-sponsored breaks for schools to get bandwidth, there's little or no reason to not have a few circuits, as well as backup links. Saves a lot of headache in the long run, assuming the school can afford it. Smart firewalling can go a long ways too. Reason those DS-3s got maxed is you've got 3500 students all trying to do stuff, giving them each a total bandwidth of 25Kbit/sec. Yep. a 33.6 modem would be faster.
So it turns out that he really IS lamenting his lost bandwidth. =)
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Then actually, you ARE a pretty big security risk.
You are the ONLY one who knows what's going on with the network security-wise. You could have them penetrated 10 ways to Sunday and they'd have to take your word for it that they're secure.
That's the first point. The second point is that you didn't get screwed over by a network security geek, you got screwed over by a salesman who makes money for some hot-shot CEO who pays a few network security geeks to do far more work than they should be handling. I just got myself fired from a job for "not fitting in". This meant that I had personal and professional objections to monitoring network connectivity, security, e-mail, webhosting, and VPN for some 150 customers and 4-500 sites at 50 hours a week as one of 6 people doing the job. Meanwhile, the 10 sales guys have a "Vice President" title hanging off their names, don't have a clue how to use a computer, and are promising the moon while the CEO rakes it in.
This situation is a real issue. Most of these companies are taking advantage of federal legislation requiring a certain level of security for a bank. And while it's not fair to you, you DO constitute a security risk as a sole security person. On the other hand, you also can't go back to your employer in a month and say, "Your security is full of holes now with this new provider, here let me show you." The bank's been swindled, you're unemployed, and an overworked staff just got more overworked. It's a lousy situation all around. The only thing you can do is move on.
Though I don't envy you trying to explain away getting fired as a security risk on your resume. That's probably the second-most unfair thing about the whole deal.
More to the point, for those of you who're system geeks that don't really look beyond your Ethernet card, it's 44.736Mbit/Sec EACH WAY. Meaning that If I'm doing a download at 40Mbit/Sec over a DS3 link, someone could upload from me at 40Mbit/Sec and not see any slowdown at all. (Left some wiggle room in there to get ACKs back.) The only way to really screw a DS3 link is to push 45Mbit/Sec in one direction, and even then the traffic should simply look like a slashdot effect, at worst.
This is, of course, completely irrelevant as to who caused it, but someone wasn't paying attention along the way as to which kind of link provides what amount of bandwidth.
Try a bit hard to follow the logic. Many parents think violence, and content glorifying violence -- including not only violent video games and movies, but also content like weapon advocacy, hobbyist sites-- is bad for their children; something they'd rather they not read/see. Plus obviously information regarding weaponry can be viewed as risky and harmful ("finding sites on Internet that describe how to build bombs") in general.
Um, have you actually BEEN to the NRA's website? You're confusing a political organization with a sales & review website. There's approximately two guns I could see on the main page just now, both of which are part of the NRA ILA seal drawing.
The fact remains that this is political favoritism on the part of a corporation. Part of the problem with this that they do NOT state this as such. I plan on teaching my children to shoot starting around age 4, and my wife agrees enthusiastically. Being able to visit the NRA website allows kids to participate in NRA youth programs there, which all emphasize saftey around firearms.
The NRA is a political organization. The only advantage to blocking it is purely political. Even a cursory glance at the site will tell you that.
... but due to sales, since it was an early starter, it's since been discontinued.
.rb format. (Gemstar killed this concept with the GEB1150)
I'm talking about the REB1100. The successor to the original Rocket, precursor to Gemstar's now also discontinued travesty of a version, the GEB1150.
Why's the 1100 great? Lessee.
1. I routinely get 30+ hours of battery life out of it. It goes for days.
2. I can almost drive by the light of the backlight. I sure as hell could read a paper book with it as a light source, and it could be indirect when the brightness was cranked. (caveat, cranking the brightness like that will cut battery life to 10-15 hours tops.)
3. Weighs noticeably less than a hardcover, about the same as a thick paperback - think The Stand (unabridged). Unit is molded to fit fairly naturally in your hand, with the page advance button under your thumb, just as a curled-over paperback would.
4. Screen size is that of a normal paperback, give or take.
5. Could add your own content via USB port, and there's a project on Sourceforge for converting docs to Rocket's
Things it lacks: Could always do with more battery life (what can't?), was a black & white monochrome screen (GEB1150 did have greyscale 256, but...), and uses the now virtually defunct SmartMedia card for memory expansion - would've preferred Compact Flash. Could also use a bit more internal memory, as it only had 8 Megs - still enough for around 8,000 pages.
It's fairly durable, but the screens can crack on you if you drop it at the right angle. Mine's cracked in the corner (after 4 or 5 drops) but the crack isn't getting any worse, and there's a plastic sheet of some sort over it so nothing's getting in there either. What's more, the crack is around the non-active border, so it doesn't even affect reading/viewing.
You can find them on eBay, and I have stumbled across them as display models in a few stores, notably OfficeMax. I also found one in a Best Buy.
If anyone wants to build the ultimate eBook reader, that's a good place to start.
As for content, someone's already mentioned Baen. To note, last I checked they released in RTF, Mobipocket, Rocket, Microsoft, and plain-duck HTML. (The interface for HTML is nice as well; it will keep track of the paragraph you last had the mouse cursor hovering over in whichever chapter, I think by cookie, and when you close, then reload the main book page, it brings you directly to that point. It also has a chapter list in a frame, and allows you to set the font.)
I think I'd rather let a Science Fiction author do the in-depth argument for me.
http://www.baen.com/library/
Read the Introduction on the main page. Then read the Prime Palavers.
Books posted online, unencrypted, free for download, is akin to having 3 or 4 copies of a book in every library in America. Have you EVER heard of a massively successful author standing up and saying "No dammit! Libraries are NOT allowed to have copies of my books! Every one checked out is a lost sale!"
Nope. Never, ever going to happen. And all a library is is an information storehouse. Much like the 'net. A book in a library tends to be excellent PR - via word-of-mouth if nothing else - for an author. Freely available copies of books on the 'net does the same thing.
The financial facts about writing are somewhat true. Though, even a moderately successful author makes more in a year than I'm likely to see any time soon in the tech field. What those facts that Mr. Haldeman either doesn't know, chooses to ignore, or plain considers lies, is that authors who posted their material for free on the net see an increase in sales of those and other books, long after they normally wouldn't sell well at all. This is demonstrated fact. See the above site for details.
Not only do their other books increase in sales, but the books that were put out for free tend to as well.
This effect crosses publisher lines as well; Mercedes Lackey put up a couple of her Baen titles in the Free Library, and saw an increase in sales for books she'd published for a different company as well.
Eric Flint's overriding premise is that each book downloaded is NOT, nor could ever realistically be considered as, a lost sale. The judge for a lost sale is whether or not the individual downloading the book would have bought it in the first place. As in, is capable of putting the money down for it AND intends to. If they don't, or can't, then it isn't a lost sale. 15-year-olds with no allowances and no job aren't likely to buy your book when it comes out. (He also adds that if they have the chance to read it, they very well may buy it, multiple times, when they are older.) And, in the case of an author who is unknown to the reader, it's a no-risk try of the author's material.
Personally, I'm a rather large Eric Flint fan. The only reason I considered reading any of his books is because he was co-authoring 1633 with Dave Weber. The only reason I've bought most of his books is because - despite being an absolutely rabid fan of Dave Weber's - 1632, the prequel to 1633, was available in the Free Library. Had it not been, I probably never would've bothered reading the series, and it's one of my favorites now.
What's more, I can download the HTML to a floppy or zip it to insignificant size and freely and legally distribute it to my friends to get them hooked on it as well. Lending books is a time-honored way for an author's readership to expand. Putting copies up for free is simply multiplicative.
It's instructive to note that most of the e-book newsgroups consider it exceptionally bad form to post a Baen e-book to the group unless it's already freely available. In this way, they're doing their part to encourage other publishers to release electronic, unencrypted formats and sell them for a reasonable price.
Too bad most publishers don't know how massive the "piracy" on newsgroups is; it might have an interesting effect on them.
Tiger, I gotta wonder which book you're reading.
First off, prior to the last book, Robert Stanton Pierre was an amply adequate example of a bad guy you hated to like. You want a war-hating liberal? Try out Cathy Mogntaine, late Countess of the Tor.
Anyone who thinks David stereotypes his characters, or lines them all up as black or white/good or bad needs to reread the series. Even Janacek at least thought he was doing the right things...
I would hate to sell like one cd and have 2 more unpaid for copies floating around. That's like giving away 2 apples for every one you sell! Kind of a sad business model...
Allow me to point out a few situations of reality for you here, because you're obviously living off in RIAA-Land.
First and foremost, CD sales were at a peak at exactly the same time that Napster was. RIAA killed Napster, and raised (artificially, at that) CD Prices at the same time. Suddenly, CD sales went through the floor. RIAA howled and screamed and pointed at their sales figures as "proof" that Napster was harmful. Riiiight...
Second, your assumption that, if you sell an apple, and because of that apple being turned into three apples magically and the other two given away, that you have lost two sales, is utter garbage. Why? Simple.
Odds are, the folks with those two magically duplicated apples most likely wouldn't have bought your album anyhow. One of them is a 14-year-old kid who gets beaten up by the school bully every day and rarely manages to hang on to enough cash to buy lunch. The other is someone who has only a passing interest in the genre, and so "steals" a copy of the apple to check it out. You didn't lose a sale, you've made a pair of sales for future albums if those two like it and someday can afford to get something.
It is *not* a sad business model, it's a pretty damned good one. It creates word of mouth advertising. "Man, SteveBee's Apple Stand has great apples, and he'll even give you a couple for free! Go check 'em out!"
There is nothing on this planet better for advertising than having folks get told by those they trust how good your product is. Eric Flint and virtually every other Baen Books author understands that. Check out The Baen Free Library and read the Prime Palavers some time. Their sales have increased from free books online, why wouldn't your sales increase from free music online?
...that I think I've ever heard of.
I play Asheron's Call (only published by MS, not made by them, BTW.) They changed over their auth system about 8 months ago from the old kludgy Zone auth system to Passport, and it's been downhill ever since. Each game account requires a separate Passport account, and most of the people who are big into the game have at LEAST two accounts (I have 3, myself). There's some inflationary numbers on how many are using Passport for you.
Furthermore, there was a recent rash of folks getting their accounts hacked because folks don't understand password security, and had their Passport e-mail address listed in YaBB and UBB boards centered on the game, used the same password for those boards as they do for their Passport account, and an exploit was discovered allowing folks to actually retrieve that info from those BB packages. If this idea is similar to the concept of the MS Wallet - which I haven't heard anything out of in a while - it's going to be an utter and complete disaster. Credit card fraud will reach new all-time highs, banks will start to go under, cows will fall out of clear blue skies, chaos and destruction will reign, et al.
BUT.
Here's the trick. If it is NOT like Wallet, and your CC info is NOT stored within Passport, then what they're effectively doing is adding a password check to your credit card for online transactions. At least one company is already doing this (witness the "I am Emmit Smith" ads) and it's an incredibly good idea. You register your Passport account with the bank who provided your Credit Card, and in return, your card number becomes totally useless without a password for the purposes of online transactions.
I really don't think that it's such a hot idea to be using PASSPORT for this, but the concept, if the card number isn't stored online BY the password system, is a VERY good one.
Fortunately for me, my credit card is through Digital Federal Credit Union, and I don't think they're too likely to implement it without warning.
Perhaps it's to solve the most common reason why an RA will learn to despise the ground you walk on: Running out of your room real quick and having the locked door blow shut on you with your keys inside.
Believe it or not, people can carry a small pick set in their wallet, which they're far more likely to remember than their keys. (At least, I am.) Being able to get back into your dorm room at 4am because you have lockpicks and don't have to wake up the RA who has a 7:30am class the next day is pretty damned close to priceless.
LED flashlight is nice because the batteries will damned near last forever.
Another thing: when I download the kernel (as an end-user), why should I have to download Sparc, MIPS, IA64, PPC, etc. sources when all I need is x86? Maybe the kernel sources can be broken apart into individual architectures for the end users (obviously not for the kernel hackers).
I thought as you do, and about a year and a half ago - I think it was with 2.2.16, not sure - I tried removing the nonessential arch/* garbage, because at the time I was restricted to about 2.5 gigs total space on my system.
The kernel failed to compile in some pretty horrific ways.
Now, if that stuff is for the architecture specified ONLY, it should've done just fine. Apparently, though, somehow stuff for my i386 kernel needs to reference stuff from IA64 or Alpha or some such. I think that diverse kernel types based on Architecture - from a download perspective, at least - is a good idea, but it appears that there needs to be some code cleanup before it can happen.
He actually stated that the only shell-access account on the box is root. This means that the only way you can get a command prompt is if you're logged in as root. Theoretically, if you can exploit a CGI bug, you could execute /bin/sh and have a shell, but they've probably disallowed that.
The Dachstein images from the LEAF Project are set up similarly. Root is the only shell access, CGI/Web runs from another user.
My wife, for one. (And yes, she does read Slashdot. Ain't I lucky?)
For another, it was announced well in advance, and shown in the previews, that the basic plot has been altered. There was NO love interest mentioned in Fellowship, yet it's in the movie according to the previews I've seen.
THAT is why spoilers are kept out, and why they should be. I haven't seen it yet. And I just simply cannot wait much longer to see it...
Warlock translates from gaelic (If I remember correctly) as Oathbreaker. So no, Warlock being a male witch is a falsehood that superstitious Christians made popular. Witch is Witch, regardless of gender, unless you follow the word back to it's roots, and then you have Wicca and Wicce to determine gender.
Novel concept.
.bashrc to have the command "freebsd " execute "/home/department/usr-bin/ssh freebsd.domain.com -l " and suddenly everyone's happy, right?
The unfortunate problem with this is Middle to Upper Management. You see, I was in a position to seriously improve productivity between two UNIX boxen, one running Debian - Slink, no less, although heavily upgraded before I got a chance to play with it - and a FreeBSD box.
Now, I was one of the admin team members for the FreeBSD box, and by default, one of the local guys who knew enough about that Slink box to actually do something useful with it. (Usually this consisted of finding out that NetCool wasn't running because of something server-side, not something local.)
Problem: Slink box owned by another department using a hacked and crappy version of SSH (not OpenSSH) that supported SecurID. This version wouldn't allow you to log in to the FreeBSD box, which was running OpenSSH. Shell access from the Slink box wasn't viable to a number of locations, so we needed to get to the FreeBSD box, which had access.
Solution: Install OpenSSH client in the home directory for the department account on the Slink box. Set up an Alias in the
Well, I was fortunate to have a decent management team above me, so they only went through it with a fine tooth comb looking to make sure I hadn't screwed the department over by "exceeding my authority" on another department's box. Note that this was after being told by management to actually set something up so it would work; I think they expected me to do something on the FreeBSD side, but I couldn't.
The point of this all is that better coders and more robust admin programs don't mean jack diddly-squatwhen you get right down to it. Management doesn't work well on technical issues outside the department level, so incompatibilities in methods and base concepts differ too radically to allow for one or two guys per shift to admin every box in every department for, say, a national ISP, with the use of some clever apps.
And this doesn't even begin to cover the concept that someone needs to be on site for every server farm you've got.
I don't think that we're in danger of having too many sysadmins any time soon, personally.
Heh. Don't suppose you've got a job for someone out Massachussetts way, eh?
That's precisely what my former boss was looking for when he interviewed me. I got lucky, because your (and his) type of interview style is very rare - so far as I can see - in the industry. Those are the things that give good people with poor educational backgrounds a break.
As for becoming a sysadmin, if you're in an organization, just make enough quiet noise that you know plenty about UNIX in general and whatever flavors you normally use in particular, and someone will notice eventually.
Trying to come in from the outside is another story. Doing it while switching from a totally nontechnical field is difficult, but your age may actually play into your hands on that. Generally, older people are automatically assumed to have settled down a bit, and will seriously consider what they're doing before making a major move such as this.
I wish I had more advice for ya, but I don't. Actually, I'm in a similar boat; I want a position as a UNIX admin, and don't know how to translate from a Network Support guy with part-time admin duties to a full time junior admin.
Wow. Two comments saying essentially the same thing one after the other. Guess that was just wierd. Even quoted the same document, though at different sources.
Boy, I can see the flamethrowers firing up now.
I hate to tell you folks, but while the man's no saint, Gates does not spend every waking moment trying to twist words and warp minds. If it was NOT for the fact that Microsoft didn't want to rely solely on IBM for a hardware platform and PUSHED them to say, "Hey, this hardware's gotta be opened up so others can duplicate and we can get a competitive free market going", then Linux wouldn't exist. Why? Linus sat down to write a UNIX kernel for his 386. Not his Mac, not is SparcStation, his 386. Other people ported it to other platforms after he set the foundation on x86.
While you're pondering that, try grasping that Linus would've had a hell of a hard time doing it without Richard Stallman and gcc.
So, to borrow a line from an essay by Neal Stephenson, which I highly recommend to anyone as a good perspective on the OS Wars and how they came about (The essay is In the Beginning was the Command Line);
THAT is what Bill Gates was saying, perhaps laid out in terms that you can read without seeing a corporate spin on it.
Life's rough, but without Bill Gates and Microsoft, there would have been nothing for Linux to be built on.
Been reading the comments here, and it's almost a psychological cross-section of Slashdot Readers. The people who're disappointed but sticking it out are telling you to tough it out and just try and make the best of it. The people who like their jobs or who handled their issues to their own satisfaction are telling you to experiment, take time off, or whatever.
One thing's the same though. Whatever you do, finish college. Going back is the hardest thing you can do; I've tried it twice - about to go for a third. One way or another, it will help show that you've got the ability to finish what you started.
Now, as for how to make it fun again? That's tricky. If you haven't done any independent coding, that's one way to make it fun. Another is to take a break from it - say, don't touch a computer over winter break or some such - and come back to it when you itch for it.
Overall though, I've only seen one comment that suggests something that's frequently overlooked: Talk to the Career Counselors. They work for a college, and they deal with the kinds of people who change tracks constantly. They're probably going to give you an idea or three about how to handle this crisis. (It is a crisis, too; burnout is never a pleasant thing.)
Furthermore, there's something else you can do. Stop worrying about what to do once you're done with college. Let the school's placement department work on that for you. As always, mixing your degree with another hobby is a good idea if possible. The market's oh-so-slowly starting to rebound, and programmers are always needed in some way, shape or form.
If you've still got time to change your course structure around, I suggest taking some serious fluff courses, on something totally unrelated to coding, or even CS in general. Basket Weaving 101 is the perfect type; you want something that keeps your hands busy and your mind free to wander. The more free time you can make for your mind, the better off you are.
Good luck to you.
Yes, but I think that the overwhelming difference here lies in the current status of the project.
.9 or so that it's become more true - they've been pulling the debugging code and starting to optimize for speed. The difference in performance is incredible, and I've had at least two people tell me that they've gotten better results on unofficial page-loading benchmarks from Mozilla than IE under Win32.
A year ago - heck, even as little as 6 months ago! - Mozilla was sluggish to terrible. The only reason people were using it was because it did a much better job out the gate of handling fonts and images. But the reason for that was simple, and oft-stated by the Mozilla folks.
Debugging code.
Mozilla was still new enough and untried enough that every build they did had debugging code all over the place, so that when the Lizard died, they could get an accurate autopsy right away. And they hadn't even BOTHERED with speed optimizations. As they steadily creep closer to 1.0 - and this is really only since they hit
Nautilus, on the other hand, is a shipped product. Sure, no program is ever really ready, it just gets released; that doesn't change the fact that the debug code should be out and the speed optimizations should be in.
If I had to take a guess, I'd imagine that the performance hits Nautilus takes are from trying to be too user-friendly while maintaining a Kitchen-sink toolset.
IANACoder, but that's one of the reasons I don't bother with Nautilus.
Well, that and the fact that Xterm works just fine for my file manager. =)
I'd imagine that either OSPF, or possibly BGP, would work just fine for this sort of thing. The problem is, you need a REAL router to do these things, not one of those $200 USD Router-In-A-Box jobbies that you can pick up from D-Link or Linksys. And even then, you're not going to be able to do that over DSL or Cable, because I don't know of ANY ISP that will provide a BGP table over those connection types.
More likely would be some sort of setup where their would be a central node that those gateways would report to, and the routers at those gateways would report throughput for their links back to the central node. That node would then distribute that bandwidth as equally as possible on a per-request basis.
This basically would be just like setting up any kind of NAT-based network with more than two connects to the internet, but without the benefit of BGP to help things along. It's possible, but sticky.
There's also the subject of the real routers. Netopias won't cut it here either; you'd almost have to have a Cisco. Alternately, you could set up Linux boxen to serve as your router; Zebra is supposedly pretty far along, and would work for internal traffic distribution. There's also LEAF and LRP, two closely related projects for doing a single-floppy router/firewall/NAT device. Find them at:
The LEAF Site
Or:
The LRP Site
It'd take a lot of effort, but if you happen to live in a high-geek-ratio neighborhood and you can share the implementation efforts across other shoulders, it should be easy enough.
I hate the idea of copy-protected CDs (and personally I will not buy them) but I have a feeling we won't have a choice. Boycotting them won't work (try boycotting any chain, etc) it is HIGHLY unlikely that numbers of bought CDs will drop in any significant amount. (Just as they haven't dropped due to Napster, Gnutella, whatever).
Actually....
So quickly we forget the details. It's kinda sad in a way.
I remember seeing something on CNN in early 2000 right when the Napster lawsuits were filed and/or aired to the general public as a whole. The news went something like this:
"The RIAA has filed a lawsuit against Napster, the online music-sharing service, due to it's ability to facilitate piracy of music and potential to cripple sales.
"In other news, CD sales this quarter are up almost 20%, a near-record quarter for the music industry."
The teeny little smirk of irony that the guy let slip through spoke volumes for those that saw it.
Very shortly afterwards, hundreds of people started boycotting the RIAA by refusing to purchase CDs released by RIAA member labels. Everyone was outraged by the total ridiculousness of the charges in the lawsuit and by God they were going to DO something about it!
And you know what? It worked. Unfortunately, because it was such a grassroots and spontaneous choice by hundreds and even thousands of individuals, nobody bothered to tell the MEDIA that people were boycotting the RIAA. And so it backfired on us.
Whatsernutz, the RIAA's Head Hatchetwoman... er... spokeswoman, that is, pointed to CD sales in 2001 being down even further than usual to points much lower than in the past two to three years as proof that Napster and other music-sharing services ARE hurting the industry. Never mind the fact that the major player - Napster - has been stopped cold, with no way to trade anything over it. Never mind that online music piracy has been reduced, effectively, to that of pre-Napster levels. CD sales are slipping. They know why, and can even truthfully say that it's because of Napster. They just haven't bothered to tell anyone that, hey, it's because we SUED Napster that they're slipping. The cause is Napster, but not in the way that they want everyone to think.
And nobody's bothered to point this out to the Media, the courts, or the world at large.
So you say that it's highly unlikely that a boycott would do any good. I say that you're right, but not for the same reasons. Boycotts are USELESS if the public isn't made aware of them. The number of CDs purchased in the past year HAS dropped significantly, and as of right now, it's only filling their ammo bins. We need someone to step up and tell people that the reason CD sales are slipping is because the people who buy the majority of music aren't buying anymore in protest. And it needs to be someone famous - or at least vaguely well-known - and respected.
Just some food for thought for all of ya.
Guy, you haven't been in a Barnes & Noble or a Borders in recent memory, have you?
The SMALLEST of those stores contains massive amounts of books, from unknown or little-known authors, on hundreds and thousands of subjects. The Top-20 "Superstar" list you refer to is called the New York Times' Best SELLER list.
Say it again with me. BEST SELLER. That's right. They get advertised because thousands of people are buying them already! So blows the hole in your superstar theorem. If you'd like further proof, go to Baen.com and check out the Baen Free Library. I could recommend the authors, but what's the point? They're placing stuff up for free.
Music? Hrm. I've got some 206 songs on two CD-ROMs kicking around my apartment somewhere from the mp3.com promotions. They don't include a single superstar song on there. Everyone knows about mp3.com from their days in court.
Let's face it. Simple fact of the matter is, there's no big corporate superstar business model. They'll drop today's superstar like a sack and build a new one in a heartbeat. They just respond to the mob. Simple mathematics will tell you that there's thousands more artists out there now than there were a hundred years ago, because we haven't bred the arts out of our race.
Not only did they say that, but later in the article, they say "Well if we do it the MAST way, instead of the JET way, then we can see this."
Uh-huh.
So they show us some snazzy snapshots, say it's a donut-shaped field that is small and can hold hot gas, and in 20 years your home will be powered by it!
Anyone want a link to a decent site explaining the technical details of how these fields work?
Try here then.
That's the homepage for the reactor. If there's not tech details there, it's still a pipe dream.
ANY school that has more than 1500 students per semester should have at least a full DS-3, if not two. Redundant links are even better. Sure, this gets to be a headache, but BGP on the outbound side and a few 45Mbit links or higher can solve a lot of other headaches. My sister goes to George Washington University, and they've got redundant links there, one of which runs to the ISP I work at. The one to us is a rate-limited OC-3, so they can triple their bandwidth with a few configuration changes (and about a week's worth of paperwork for the billing.)
Especially now, with government-sponsored breaks for schools to get bandwidth, there's little or no reason to not have a few circuits, as well as backup links. Saves a lot of headache in the long run, assuming the school can afford it. Smart firewalling can go a long ways too. Reason those DS-3s got maxed is you've got 3500 students all trying to do stuff, giving them each a total bandwidth of 25Kbit/sec. Yep. a 33.6 modem would be faster.
So it turns out that he really IS lamenting his lost bandwidth. =)