When I decided that my team needed better mouses and keyboards since I myself was noticing some hand strain, I put an order in to our system. Management approved the purchase and it was all fine. IT then blocked it saying that they supply our standard equipment from Dell and we shouldn't be ordering IT equipment separately
Sounds like IT is 100% right on this one. When you needed computer-related gear, why didn't you talk to IT at the start? Why are you doing separate purchases of equipment? There's a million and one good reasons that IT purchases should be going through IT.
It amazes me when people do this. You don't see individual departments hiring electricians to install more outlets or lighting when Bill in Accounting decides they need it. You don't see individual departments that are running out of space putting in purchase requests to hire contractors to build an extension onto the office, or renting out another office building across the street. WTF does everyone think it's perfectly okay to just up and order a bunch of iPads for everyone in their department, without bringing IT into the mix?
Most interesting is Fedora 17 automatically enabling it when appropriate hardware is connected, which should mean RHEL7/CentOS7 will, too.
your $50 tablet is actually a fully-fledged computing device.
Yes, but as a "thick-client" it's a brutally low-end and very limited device. As a thin client, it's a high-end workstation, with huge amounts of memory, unlimited storage, etc.
And if a big market ever developed for thin-clients, you can bet these same tablet manufacturers would come out with even cheaper, stripped-down devices that are only good enough to be used as a thin-client. At what price point would you say it's a good idea? $25? $15? $10?
This is the first time I see anyone arguing that market domination by brand X (in any market) is good because of the network effect.
Since there's no anti-competitive, lock-in or monopoly aspect to Cisco's dominance, you'd be hard-pressed to claim that it is harmful. I specifically pointed out that the hurdle to switching to some other vendor isn't very high, just that a mix of different network equipment is anti-productive, even if there's some up-front savings to be had.
The dominance of brand X is good because its products are so idiosyncratic that you need a lot of people to use it so that you could have a pool of people from which you could hire someone to manage it.
No. Cisco's products are no more idiosyncratic than any other networking gear. And there's no networking gear out there which you can buy and not need someone to manage.
I'm not sure what particular logical fallacy this is but I'm sure there is one.
No logical fallacy, just you playing dumb (or are you playing?).
It can work, just as shared networking can work (but doesn't always). A $50 7" tablet as a thin client would certainly work, and you certainly won't be able to get a decent computer + monitor for that price. The only question is how much the monthly fee for the service will be. If it's not significantly more than the cost of internet access, I could see plenty of people being interested in buying-in to the service.
How about every block of 8 apartments share a single computer, with just HDMI and USB cables going to each room? Then the cost of computer access for each is only the price of a monitor, and they'll get full-speed access to the GPU for gaming and video playback. That's undeniably more economical than everyone buying their own computer, though it's not quite a traditional "thin client" model.
How many Cisco certified people do you know that don't know anything about networking??
The CCNA was always an entry-level certification. Point me to a clueless CCNP or CCIE and I'll be surprised. Of course certification isn't a prereq for knowing what you're doing, either.
It's the brand name that makes them important and the brand name that makes these devices valuable.
There's definitely significant brand-name mark-up on their hardware, but that's NOT why Cisco is valuable. Cisco is dominant because of network effects... There are lots of people who know the Cisco ios CLI, and the intricacies of their specific product lines. This is in-part because Cisco is dominant, and it lends itself to more dominance, as saving a few hundred dollars on a switch isn't worth the retraining needed for your admin to learn to manage something different, or dealing with different support, billing, etc.
And to me the real killer is that networking is 99.999% about being protocol implementation faithful so ALL devices of all brands should do the same damned things.
Yes, and Windows and Linux can both serve web pages... Does that mean you'd just switch back and forth between them without a second thought? No, you'll stick with one or the other (whichever your IT staff is familiar with), until the benefits of the other become overwhelming, and are worth retraining or new hiring.
Cisco hardware only needs to stay inexpensive enough that it's not worth the hassle of using a different brand. If you've got a huge network, that's not the case, and a few percent savings will add up. But for smaller networks, the savings usually really isn't worth the hassle.
FWIW, I'm not a Cisco fan, but the business world isn't as irrational as you claim.
He isn't hiding from the rape accusation* - he he hiding from the US
No, he SAYS he's hiding from the US. It's a good way to get sympathy from those whose help he needs to stay out of jail.
(He believes Sweden to be acting as their proxy),
No, again, he SAYS he believe that. Meanwhile, the conspiracy theorists were claiming he'd be extradited to the US the LAST TIME Sweden had him in custody, but it didn't happen then, and I see no rational reason to believe it will happen next time.
**Manning, kept in solitary confinement for years without trial, then being tried at a secret court in which he isn't permitted to see the evidence presented against him.
Military personnel face a different justice system than civilians. Asange never enlisted in the US Military, so if he steps foot in the US, he'd be tried by the regular courts, with all the rights we've come to expect.
If I believed the US were trying to extradite me in connection with a major leak, I'd be packing my bags and buying a train ticket as far as I could go by cash.
Actually, it's more likely you'd be wearing a tin-foil hat, drinking heavily, and living under an overpass.
Pushing more traffic into Verizon's network than you pull, means that Verizon's users are requesting data from you.
Umm, no it doesn't. We're not talking about last-mile links here, we're talking about backbone. If I'm Cogent, and I need to get traffic from San Francisco to New York, I can dump that on Verizon's network (or anyone else I'm peering with) and their network will dutifully forward the traffic all the way to NY. The end-point could be AT&T, Comcast, or even another Cogent customer, but dumping it on Verizon's network saves Cogent money, not having to utilize their own backbone.
And this is exactly what Cogent has been repeatedly accused of doing in the past, by pretty much EVERY TIER-1 ISP. Here's just a few examples:
When there is no real difference between the candidates offered, how do you protest?
You get involved in the process earlier. You don't wait until the general election, when there's only two candidates to choose from. Get involved in the primaries, when there are dozens of candidates to choose from. Find one you like, and support them with money, promotion to other voters, and/or personally volunteering to help their campaign.
Another option is to focus on local politics. While your vote might not make too much of a difference in the general presidential election, it is far more significant in votes for representatives in your local districts. And by influencing local politics, you influence national politics... Just look at the completely governmental deadlock cause by the tea-party extremists in the House of Representatives.
You can make a BIG difference in politics, but you can't expect much when your only contribution is just to show up to vote once every 4 years.
Except a terminal is generally nothing more than a castrated personal computer.
A terminal can be an EXTREMELY old and very low-end computer. Hell, it could even be a $50 tablet plus keyboard.
There's no question that shared building networking would be more economical. Consider the cost of each tenant buying a DSL or Cable modem, versus a single router for the building, and some cheap gigabit switches with CAT6 (or maybe even WiFi) to each apartment.
What's to stop it from landing smack on top of the wireless channel(s) I'm already using?
Sounds like you didn't comprehend a word of my previous post...
Most people use the wireless AP their ISP gives them. If you are, too, it won't be "landing on top of the wireless channel", it WILL BE the wireless channel you are using. To grand guest access, it will merely broadcast another SSID over your existing channel. No extra channels needed. No possibility of conflicts.
Find me ANY battery powered car that can go even half that, that doesn't take hours to recharge to the point it can do it again.
Umm, no... Why would I? Why do you feel the need to play dumb?
Right now, plug-in hybrids are the way to go if you must have only a single vehicle. You get a reasonable range on electricity, and it automatically switches over to gas when needed. You get a lower purchase price, while saving substantial money on fuel, and also helping to pay for development of future all-electric cars.
Right now, batteries are too expensive to be a fully viable replacement for combustion. They're getting close enough that they're more economical for some uses. But there's no question that they're improving very, very quickly. It's easy to see that EVs will replace conventional cars in the coming years. The fact that they aren't perfect RIGHT NOW means nothing.
it'll flood the neighborhood with even more 2.4 GHz clutter.
Lucky for you, it really won't. This is just a matter of having multiple SSIDs on the same wireless radio. Some home APs have "guest network" settings, and open firmware like OpenWRT gives you free-reign to create as many SSIDs and networks as you want, just like ethernet sub-interfaces, or perhaps more like VLANs. It's still only got the one radio, using just the one radio channel you were already using. But it's broadcasting two SSIDs, and the networks are completely independent. In short, no extra interference (unless you're counting greater utilization of those existing APs), just extra SSIDs piggy-backed on those same channels.
5 GHz is not a panacea; it's astonishingly poor at penetrating walls,
It's very good at making its way AROUND walls, and it's also extremely good at penetrating windows, which is probably most relevant in this case. In my own testing, my AP has the same coverage radius outside my house, whether I use 2.4GHz or 5GHz.
I'm only staying on 2.4GHz because of two older 802.11g devices which are of course 2.4GHz-only. If I was in a denser area, maybe the benefits of 5GHz would be enough to justify replacing those old devices a bit more quickly.
Did you factor in the cost of generating that electricity at the station & pushing it through kilometers of copper before it even gets electricity to those cars?
Of course. EVs are still incredibly efficient. FAR more than ICEs.
Large power plants are at least twice the efficiency of small ICEs, and may be much better. Grid losses average about 7%, which isn't bad, but could use work.
And finally, hydro, wind, solar, etc., factor into grid power, but don't contribute anything to gasoline engines. EVs will keep getting lower and lower emmissions without owners changing a thing, while conventional vehicles will not.
Solar panels cost hundreds of dollars per sq meter. Cropland does not
Cropland doesn't generate electricity... And solar-thermal is much cheaper than PV panels, with the "panels" being simple mirrors. And it doesn't need anything as expensive as cropland... desert land is ideal.
Also biofuels are liquid and can be used as transportation fuel in affordable vehicles. Solar electricity cannot.
Yeah, that's something to worry about, once our electrical grid is 100% renewable (and not a moment before).
And you're wrong, anyhow. A plug-in Prius is a fairly inexpensive vehicle. A golf-cart or NEV is quite affordable. And besides, fully-electric vehicles are so much more efficient than internal combustion that we should strive to switch to them as quickly as humanly possible, not work on more strategies to prolong their wildly inefficient use. And if solar power reduces the demand for natural gas, that'll be ready for commercial transportation use, like locomotives (though overhead power lines are vastly better) and tractor-trailers.
you omit supported distros for HP and Dell. Go check your facts: HP for example has support for asianux and ubuntu and debian
Point me to the HP page that shows them. Proliant and PowerEdge support pages I looked up had exactly what I said, and no other Linux distros.
Serious companies have in-house support, they're not going to have a Red Rat choad reading from a script on the phone.
With such intelligent discourse, how can anyone disagree with you? *cough*
Hate to burst your bubble, but I'm sure I've worked for at least 5X as many "Serious companies" (with names you've heard of) as you have, and in senior-level positions. None of them puts any production systems on unsupported software, no matter how good their IT teams are. And really, they've got enough money that the price for RedHat is background noise, whereas their proprietary software runs about an order of magnitude more expensive.
My landline only has two ports... one in the kitchen and one in the master bedroom.
It's really not that difficult to install more phone jacks or other low-voltage wire drops in your home. In the best case, all you need is a bit of tape and some wire. In less common cases, you might need fish tape, a drill, and a saw if you don't have an existing box to reuse.
They even make combination jacks with various quantities of phone/coax/ethernet/etc., jacks, so you usually don't need to make any more holes in your walls. eg:
People will go through amazing contortions to get phone, TV, or data/internet service in different rooms of their home lacking in-wall wiring, when actually just running wiring wherever needed only takes a couple hours of effort.
And "landline" (or internet) phones are still waaaaay cheaper than cellular. Free, even.
You can find nearly free cell phones if you want... But almost nobody wants them... Just like land-line phones.
And land-line phone service is no longer cheaper than cellular in the US, perhaps with the exception of folks on the fringe coverage areas. In fact it can be considerably cheaper, starting at about $7/mo if you don't make many calls, and topping out at about $30/mo for an unlimited voice plan on any of several providers.
I prefer my lowfi Android Cricket connection. $65 per month that gives me unlimited US calls, text, sms, and specifically allows tethering(wifi or usb). It has a data transfer limit of only 1GB per month
Sounds like you're getting ripped off. I'm paying $40/mo with Boost Mobile (Sprint) and have similarly unlimited service, nation-wide coverage without roaming, and data was only just recently capped at 3.5GB/mo before throttling.
It's true they don't explicitly allow tethering, but it's a simple matter to install an app for that, and it works fine.
Because they got blindsided by Boeing. Boeing was publicly showing off their "SST" designs and hinting at a new supersized 747.
If Airbus' market strategy is to just copy what Boeing is doing (rather than doing actual market research themselves), then they deserve to lose, badly.
It's one thing to have CHEAP knock-offs come along later, but Airbus can't manage that, so you're just talking about equally expensive imitations.
If all goes according to plan the A350 is going to launch two years after the 787. So not that bad IMO.
You can't compare actual delivery dates with projected delivery dates. The 787 was delayed by years, but it's out there now. There's even more reason to believe Airbus is vastly over-promising on it's A350 timeline, like Boeing did before it. In particular, to fool clueless people like yourself so they don't look like they're playing catch-up quite so much.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like IT is 100% right on this one. When you needed computer-related gear, why didn't you talk to IT at the start? Why are you doing separate purchases of equipment? There's a million and one good reasons that IT purchases should be going through IT.
It amazes me when people do this. You don't see individual departments hiring electricians to install more outlets or lighting when Bill in Accounting decides they need it. You don't see individual departments that are running out of space putting in purchase requests to hire contractors to build an extension onto the office, or renting out another office building across the street. WTF does everyone think it's perfectly okay to just up and order a bunch of iPads for everyone in their department, without bringing IT into the mix?
For the N-th time... YES. Go do your own damn research, instead of bitching and IMPLYING wrong info.
It has been viable for over a decade. Plenty of groups have done it:
http://linuxgazette.net/124/smith.html
And Microsoft is jumping on the bandwagon:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/multipoint/
See the Wiki for more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiseat_configuration
Most interesting is Fedora 17 automatically enabling it when appropriate hardware is connected, which should mean RHEL7/CentOS7 will, too.
Yes, but as a "thick-client" it's a brutally low-end and very limited device. As a thin client, it's a high-end workstation, with huge amounts of memory, unlimited storage, etc.
And if a big market ever developed for thin-clients, you can bet these same tablet manufacturers would come out with even cheaper, stripped-down devices that are only good enough to be used as a thin-client. At what price point would you say it's a good idea? $25? $15? $10?
Since there's no anti-competitive, lock-in or monopoly aspect to Cisco's dominance, you'd be hard-pressed to claim that it is harmful. I specifically pointed out that the hurdle to switching to some other vendor isn't very high, just that a mix of different network equipment is anti-productive, even if there's some up-front savings to be had.
No. Cisco's products are no more idiosyncratic than any other networking gear. And there's no networking gear out there which you can buy and not need someone to manage.
No logical fallacy, just you playing dumb (or are you playing?).
It can work, just as shared networking can work (but doesn't always). A $50 7" tablet as a thin client would certainly work, and you certainly won't be able to get a decent computer + monitor for that price. The only question is how much the monthly fee for the service will be. If it's not significantly more than the cost of internet access, I could see plenty of people being interested in buying-in to the service.
How about every block of 8 apartments share a single computer, with just HDMI and USB cables going to each room? Then the cost of computer access for each is only the price of a monitor, and they'll get full-speed access to the GPU for gaming and video playback. That's undeniably more economical than everyone buying their own computer, though it's not quite a traditional "thin client" model.
The CCNA was always an entry-level certification. Point me to a clueless CCNP or CCIE and I'll be surprised. Of course certification isn't a prereq for knowing what you're doing, either.
There's definitely significant brand-name mark-up on their hardware, but that's NOT why Cisco is valuable. Cisco is dominant because of network effects... There are lots of people who know the Cisco ios CLI, and the intricacies of their specific product lines. This is in-part because Cisco is dominant, and it lends itself to more dominance, as saving a few hundred dollars on a switch isn't worth the retraining needed for your admin to learn to manage something different, or dealing with different support, billing, etc.
Yes, and Windows and Linux can both serve web pages... Does that mean you'd just switch back and forth between them without a second thought? No, you'll stick with one or the other (whichever your IT staff is familiar with), until the benefits of the other become overwhelming, and are worth retraining or new hiring.
Cisco hardware only needs to stay inexpensive enough that it's not worth the hassle of using a different brand. If you've got a huge network, that's not the case, and a few percent savings will add up. But for smaller networks, the savings usually really isn't worth the hassle.
FWIW, I'm not a Cisco fan, but the business world isn't as irrational as you claim.
LOL!
You forgot to click the "Post Anonymously" check-box. The internet is hard...
No, he SAYS he's hiding from the US. It's a good way to get sympathy from those whose help he needs to stay out of jail.
No, again, he SAYS he believe that. Meanwhile, the conspiracy theorists were claiming he'd be extradited to the US the LAST TIME Sweden had him in custody, but it didn't happen then, and I see no rational reason to believe it will happen next time.
Military personnel face a different justice system than civilians. Asange never enlisted in the US Military, so if he steps foot in the US, he'd be tried by the regular courts, with all the rights we've come to expect.
Actually, it's more likely you'd be wearing a tin-foil hat, drinking heavily, and living under an overpass.
Umm, no it doesn't. We're not talking about last-mile links here, we're talking about backbone. If I'm Cogent, and I need to get traffic from San Francisco to New York, I can dump that on Verizon's network (or anyone else I'm peering with) and their network will dutifully forward the traffic all the way to NY. The end-point could be AT&T, Comcast, or even another Cogent customer, but dumping it on Verizon's network saves Cogent money, not having to utilize their own backbone.
And this is exactly what Cogent has been repeatedly accused of doing in the past, by pretty much EVERY TIER-1 ISP. Here's just a few examples:
https://secure.dslreports.com/shownews/92749
https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/31/peering-dispute-between-cogent-sprint/
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/level-3-issues-statement-concerning-internet-peering-and-cogent-communications-55014572.html
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/10/22/peering-disputes-migrate-to-ipv6/
http://www.cybertelecom.org/industry/cogent.htm
You get involved in the process earlier. You don't wait until the general election, when there's only two candidates to choose from. Get involved in the primaries, when there are dozens of candidates to choose from. Find one you like, and support them with money, promotion to other voters, and/or personally volunteering to help their campaign.
Another option is to focus on local politics. While your vote might not make too much of a difference in the general presidential election, it is far more significant in votes for representatives in your local districts. And by influencing local politics, you influence national politics... Just look at the completely governmental deadlock cause by the tea-party extremists in the House of Representatives.
You can make a BIG difference in politics, but you can't expect much when your only contribution is just to show up to vote once every 4 years.
A terminal can be an EXTREMELY old and very low-end computer. Hell, it could even be a $50 tablet plus keyboard.
There's no question that shared building networking would be more economical. Consider the cost of each tenant buying a DSL or Cable modem, versus a single router for the building, and some cheap gigabit switches with CAT6 (or maybe even WiFi) to each apartment.
The Federal Government and FCC says they will. So... yes they will.
See the 1996 Telecom law, Section 629.
Sounds like you didn't comprehend a word of my previous post...
Most people use the wireless AP their ISP gives them. If you are, too, it won't be "landing on top of the wireless channel", it WILL BE the wireless channel you are using. To grand guest access, it will merely broadcast another SSID over your existing channel. No extra channels needed. No possibility of conflicts.
Umm, no... Why would I? Why do you feel the need to play dumb?
Right now, plug-in hybrids are the way to go if you must have only a single vehicle. You get a reasonable range on electricity, and it automatically switches over to gas when needed. You get a lower purchase price, while saving substantial money on fuel, and also helping to pay for development of future all-electric cars.
Right now, batteries are too expensive to be a fully viable replacement for combustion. They're getting close enough that they're more economical for some uses. But there's no question that they're improving very, very quickly. It's easy to see that EVs will replace conventional cars in the coming years. The fact that they aren't perfect RIGHT NOW means nothing.
Lucky for you, it really won't. This is just a matter of having multiple SSIDs on the same wireless radio. Some home APs have "guest network" settings, and open firmware like OpenWRT gives you free-reign to create as many SSIDs and networks as you want, just like ethernet sub-interfaces, or perhaps more like VLANs. It's still only got the one radio, using just the one radio channel you were already using. But it's broadcasting two SSIDs, and the networks are completely independent. In short, no extra interference (unless you're counting greater utilization of those existing APs), just extra SSIDs piggy-backed on those same channels.
It's very good at making its way AROUND walls, and it's also extremely good at penetrating windows, which is probably most relevant in this case. In my own testing, my AP has the same coverage radius outside my house, whether I use 2.4GHz or 5GHz.
I'm only staying on 2.4GHz because of two older 802.11g devices which are of course 2.4GHz-only. If I was in a denser area, maybe the benefits of 5GHz would be enough to justify replacing those old devices a bit more quickly.
Of course. EVs are still incredibly efficient. FAR more than ICEs.
Large power plants are at least twice the efficiency of small ICEs, and may be much better. Grid losses average about 7%, which isn't bad, but could use work.
And finally, hydro, wind, solar, etc., factor into grid power, but don't contribute anything to gasoline engines. EVs will keep getting lower and lower emmissions without owners changing a thing, while conventional vehicles will not.
Cropland doesn't generate electricity... And solar-thermal is much cheaper than PV panels, with the "panels" being simple mirrors. And it doesn't need anything as expensive as cropland... desert land is ideal.
Yeah, that's something to worry about, once our electrical grid is 100% renewable (and not a moment before).
And you're wrong, anyhow. A plug-in Prius is a fairly inexpensive vehicle. A golf-cart or NEV is quite affordable. And besides, fully-electric vehicles are so much more efficient than internal combustion that we should strive to switch to them as quickly as humanly possible, not work on more strategies to prolong their wildly inefficient use. And if solar power reduces the demand for natural gas, that'll be ready for commercial transportation use, like locomotives (though overhead power lines are vastly better) and tractor-trailers.
Point me to the HP page that shows them. Proliant and PowerEdge support pages I looked up had exactly what I said, and no other Linux distros.
With such intelligent discourse, how can anyone disagree with you? *cough*
Hate to burst your bubble, but I'm sure I've worked for at least 5X as many "Serious companies" (with names you've heard of) as you have, and in senior-level positions. None of them puts any production systems on unsupported software, no matter how good their IT teams are. And really, they've got enough money that the price for RedHat is background noise, whereas their proprietary software runs about an order of magnitude more expensive.
Is internet service free, now?
It's really not that difficult to install more phone jacks or other low-voltage wire drops in your home. In the best case, all you need is a bit of tape and some wire. In less common cases, you might need fish tape, a drill, and a saw if you don't have an existing box to reuse.
They even make combination jacks with various quantities of phone/coax/ethernet/etc., jacks, so you usually don't need to make any more holes in your walls. eg:
http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp?p=pvcwp40whthf
People will go through amazing contortions to get phone, TV, or data/internet service in different rooms of their home lacking in-wall wiring, when actually just running wiring wherever needed only takes a couple hours of effort.
You can find nearly free cell phones if you want... But almost nobody wants them... Just like land-line phones.
And land-line phone service is no longer cheaper than cellular in the US, perhaps with the exception of folks on the fringe coverage areas. In fact it can be considerably cheaper, starting at about $7/mo if you don't make many calls, and topping out at about $30/mo for an unlimited voice plan on any of several providers.
Sounds like you're getting ripped off. I'm paying $40/mo with Boost Mobile (Sprint) and have similarly unlimited service, nation-wide coverage without roaming, and data was only just recently capped at 3.5GB/mo before throttling.
It's true they don't explicitly allow tethering, but it's a simple matter to install an app for that, and it works fine.
Don't most airlines PAINT their planes before flying them? Why are these composite materials getting practically ANY exposure to UV rays?
If Airbus' market strategy is to just copy what Boeing is doing (rather than doing actual market research themselves), then they deserve to lose, badly.
It's one thing to have CHEAP knock-offs come along later, but Airbus can't manage that, so you're just talking about equally expensive imitations.
You can't compare actual delivery dates with projected delivery dates. The 787 was delayed by years, but it's out there now. There's even more reason to believe Airbus is vastly over-promising on it's A350 timeline, like Boeing did before it. In particular, to fool clueless people like yourself so they don't look like they're playing catch-up quite so much.