I got one of these phones a few weeks ago (Hail Europe!) and Nokia provides SyncML sofware on their CD,
As a Java app? That's kinda cool. The early release versions that were reviewed had CDs in Chinese, so it was kinda easy to overlook. We'll see if Apple decides to add support for it to iSync.
Personally, I use MobileSync with my T68i and sync between Entourage and my phone. That is really nice and will make it hard to get a non SE phone next, although I dislike the T610/T616 because they're triband and not quadband. I have hope for Moto's V600.
This phone doesn't support SyncML, so the chances of you syncing with your Mac anytime soon are slim. Nokia does provide PC software to allow syncing with your Windows PC, though.
And as for Bluetooth, once again Nokia has failed to implement the headset profile, although it does support the newer handsfree profile. I can't seem to find any details on the differences between the two but what it does mean for sure is that of the current Bluetooth headsets available, only the SonyEricson HBH-60 and the soon-to-arrive Nokia HDW-2 support that profile. Nokia is known for their poor and buggy Bluetooth support (they must hate that their rival Ericsson invented it) and they do seem to try the "embrace and extend" scheme once in a while - they want you to buy their Bluetooth device and not someone else's. They've used the headset profile in the 6310i, but that's it for the US market.
It's hard not to support SonyEricsson (especially the Ericsson part) when they've made Bluetooth a licensed standard, and when they put things like SyncML, an open syncing standard, on their phones. And don't forget the SonyEricsson Clicker which is just plain cool.
So the prosecutor was concerned about Mitnick's lack of remorse? While I cannot condone Mitnick's actions at all, I have to wonder how easy it would be to show remorse when the legal is being used abused against you. If there had been a speedy and fair trial that would be one thing, but given all that happened in this case I know that by the time the actual trial came about my anger would get in the way. I'm not saying that's ok, I'm just guessing at what my own reactions might be.
Winkler might want to look at the message that HP is sending by hiring the Getto Hackers and not hiring Mitnick. To me that message is "Hacking is ok if you don't get caught." I suppose it might be a valid viewpoint (in football it isn't holding if the ref doesn't call it) but to me that seems like the wrong thing to say for someone who is trying to take the moral high ground.
I actually paid for OmniWeb way before Safari came out. And OmniWeb still does some things better than Safari, such as bookmark management. I haven't moved my bookmarks over 'cuz I think OmniWeb does it better...and I haven't found an easy way to do it.:-)
And I still have IE, I'm afraid. Some websites still work correctly with IE when they bork on OmniWeb or Safari. For example, the help system with TaxCut borks with Safari, but works with IE. (At least when loading.) For some reason IE handles wierd javascript and such (like some chats I used) better than anything.
My main confusion is that the title of "network engineer" has somehow come to mean "Windows admin that might know what a packet is". I look through job listings trying to find a pure networking gig (where I have very little to do with the nature of the packets going over the network...I just make sure they get from point A to point B) and it seems the title of Network Engineer now involves Active Directory. I suppose I should learn that stuff, but I'd rather stick to networks....
You think this isn't happening? The T68i already has a feature under the SMS menu that says "Area info"...supposedly you get info like traffic and such (if supported by your provider). Then on an MMS demo somewhere on Ericsson's website their two cool kids are hanging out in the park and they get MMS spam on their phones with an instant coupon for snowcones in the park. I figure location based SMS/MMS spam is only about 1 year away from happening...fortuantely it appears that most phones make you "opt-in", but if it starts making money I'm sure that'll change...
"Please be aware that Office Depot is immediately requiring all products that connect to a Personal Computer and Notebook Computer must pass these Designed for Windows XP logo requirements to be considered for retail distribution through our stores."
This is more than a little nuts...why in the world should a mouse, or a printer, or a scanner, or an ethernet cable be "Designed for Windows XP"? And does this mean that my Powerbook isn't a notebook computer, or that they won't sell Mac hard and software since it isn't "Designed for Windows XP"? It *is* a little creepy...
Ti coming out with a single-chip Bluetooth solution is a Good Thing. I remember seeing more than one article saying that if they squeeze Bluetooth onto a single chip it would drive prices down, which would hopefully lead to more BT enabled devices. The chips would be cheaper and it would be easier to put on a device.
I hope that's the case. Just having my Powerbook talk to my T68 is handy...I'll get a headset eventually, and throw in a BT enable PDA and it's all good. In theory you could dial your phone from the PDA, speak on the headset, and never take the phone out of your pocket. And as nice as syncing my phone's phonebook with my PIM it will never be as nice as being able to dial from the PDA. Oh, and it would mean I could write an app to have my PDA notify me when my phone gets a page, since the SMS notification on the T68 is it's biggest flaw (at least to me).
If they want to monitor the garment in their shipping system and store that's fine, but I hope they remove the tag after purchase...otherwise they're sitting there with someone's credit card number and some sort of tracking device and that means all of a sudden someone's trip through the mall is like an episode of the Crocodile Hunter where they track the habits of some migratory animal. I'm not quite sure I trust them to not abuse this technology.
The new phone appears to be nice, but it's only triband. According to this story (with pictures), the T610 will be sold in Europe and supports GSM at 900, 1800, and 19000 Mhz. The T616, which will be sold in North America, drops the 900Mhz support and supports 850, 1800, and 1900Mhz. So while technically it is a world phone it is missing 900Mhz which is the most used frequency for GSM world wide. It also provides the better coverage (verses 1800Mhz) and penitrates buldings better - one of the hoped for advantages of GSM800 (850Mhz) in the US.
My biggest complaint with the T68i is the SMS alert tone - it totally sucks. And I like to use my phone as a pager, but I can't trust it to wake me up. Given the number of changes we've seen with T68 firmware revisions I had hopes they would fix this, but with the release of this phone I doubt they will. The interaction of Apple's address book with SMS is hopefully...I might just write something to play a loud file when I get an SMS. Or maybe when I get a BT-enabled PDA it will have something.
I have high hopes for Motorola's V600, which will appears to do everything the T610 does and is quadband. However syncing isn't mentioned, which I am a big fan of. I know some friends who have had bad luck with Motorola phones, but I had good luck (quality wise) with my v3682. This phone seems to be a good replacement for that - it's a nice silver color (didn't like the dark plastic of the V60) and is a bit more streamlined than the squarish T720.
I wasn't thinking I'd use BT for more than a headset (which is cool on it's own), but with the Mac it's really nice. Sending SMS messages from apple's Address Book is nice if you're in the office, although I don't use their Address Book since I don't use Mail.app. For those of us that use Entourage, however, there is MobileSync which does the same thing as iSync does but with Entourage. This is from the same guy who wrote the BT clicker program and the client program that makes getting files to the T68i very easy.
One advantage to all this that may get overlooked is that if I were to loose my phone and had to get a replacement T68i then all of the data from the phone (pictures, ringtones, numbers) would be back on there in 5 minutes. And if my next phone supports SyncML (which it almost will have to) it'll make upgrading fairly painless.
One interesting thing to note: Overture was one of the big customers of Inktomi search. Inktomi was making a lot of money from Overture's business. Plenty of folks thought that they would probably buy Inktomi since Inktomi was dying.
However, Yahoo ended up with Inktomi. So clearly Overture, a company who made money mainly because they didn't own much hardware - they were marketing and sales - now found their search engine owned by another company. Overture may be buying up search engines to avoid the fact that Yahoo doesn't need to let them do business with the organization formerly known as Inktomi, especially since Yahoo is an Overture customer.
2 words: Peta Wilson. This is her first big role since La Femme Nikita, and for those of us who are Nikita fans we are very excited to see her on the big screen. Yeah, it's not a Nikita movie (since there was already one with different people:-) but it'll do.
On my world-band cellphone I input all numbers as +1-234-5678. That way, when I get to the UK I can still dial straight from my phonebook. And most people don't even know the US country code is 1...
I work at a fab now (that shall remain nameless), and one of the nastiest liquids we have around here is HF (Hydrofluoric acid). The stuff has a NASTY desire for the calcium in your bones.
Yeah, that's the one that put the fear of God in to me. Not only does it mess up the calcium in your bones, but it also messes up the calcium in your heart tissue, And it takes just a relatively tiny amount on your skin to croak you...or at least that's what I saw on ER...
I think it's clear that someday phones will someday just be networked devices, and that the "cell phones" will be just be wireless devices that do VoIP (and probably data), and my laptop will be a wireless device that does data (and maybe VoIP too). I just feel like the abundance of standards is gonna make it happen later rather than sooner. Although even if the standards made it happen tomorrow, it will take some time for the convergence folks to bring the phones and PDAs together.
I once did a gig at someone who manufactured fab equipment, and we all had to take this 3-day safety course, even those of us just working in the server room. And mostly it was 3-days of "This is chemical [insert name here] and it will kill you in [insert time here]. The way you will horribly die is [insert pain here]. So be careful." They made it sound like the room was full of gas that would eat you alive like that stuff from The Rock.
Intel may have tried to make the guys in the bunny suits cute, but after learning some of the dangerous stuff they're around I came to respect them for sure.
As an anime fan since the late 80s, I had been aware of doujinshi, but it was not until my trips to Tokyo that I truly began to comprehend it. What I observed was:
1) Doujinshi is not allways "copycat". There are some small fan-run books that are called doujinshi (and sold at Comic Market) that are totally original.
2) A lot of it is about porn. And about seeing your favorite anime character violated, often by tenticles. Yes, there are some original "fanfic" type stories...but there is also a lot of Sailor Moon meets Urotsukudoji. I couldn't believe the things they were doing to poor Ami-chan!
3) The Japanese are a lot more liberal about their hand-drawn porn than we are. The yaoi (boy-boy) stuff is right there with the girl-girl stuff. Women in Japan appear to be as open about liking boy-boy as men are about girl-girl. Porn is just porn.
4) Doujinshi is where folks seem to start. First you make a doujinshi of a magical girls series you like. Then you make your own magical girl. Then you decide if you really want to be a manga-ka and start trying to make a name for yourself. If you get lucky you might get in one of the anthologies - the collections put out weekly or monthly the size of small phonebooks.
Shopping for this stuff in Japan is quite fun. My best friend came with me on one of my business trips, and I came back to the hotel after the first day and he'd already scored. In fact he got me a doujinshi of my favorite Sailor Senshi getting violated several ways.
If you're in Japan and want to go shopping for anime, porn, or even animated porn, you have to go to Akihabara. The most magical place on earth. Not just tons of electronics, but tons of small bookstores. I highly recommend Cheap Bastard's Tokyo Anime Shopping Guide - it will take you on a tour through Akihabara that you will not forget. (But if you're gonna print it out at work, make sure to get it before anyone else does. You wouldn't want your boss to think you're going to Japan to shop for porn.)
The people calling for more H1Bs didn't want better labor, they wanted CHEAPER labor. You're implying that labor from outside of the country as being inherently better than American labor, which is rather racist. But they certainly are willing to accept less money in exchange for being a slave.
H1Bs are based on the idea that there are no qualified citizens to fill the position. Yes, a foreign worker might be better educated or might not, but the H1B system is supposed to insure that a visaed worker doesn't displace a citizen or resident alien. And various sources, such as Norm Matloff have shown that there really never was a shortage, just that that software industry enjoyed cheap slaves who couldn't easily hop countries.
I personally think that if India's education system is so great, then folks there should start their own companies and develop their own products. But I think that that American companies exporting tech jobs is bad for the US. And if you think that is racist, then you're wrong. I don't care if they're exporting them to China, Ethiopia, India, Mexico, or Ireland - they should keep them inside the US.
While SGI supporting linux on IA32 and IA64 platforms, they're still developing Irix for their MIPS platform. No reason not to, it's still a pretty robust OS.
So, if the Starbucks a few blocks over installs this, is it going to stomp all over my home network? I mean a WiFi hotspot with a 4 mile radius is great, but hopefully wouldn't affect home users. That'd be like some new cellular tower killing my cordless phone...certainly not appreciated.
The "spawl" trilogy is Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive. The "bridge" trilogy is Virtual Light, Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties. The SF Bay Bridge features significantly in Virtual Light and ATP, and Idoru takes place in the same "universe". Yes, Gibson has written more than 3 books...
You know, when when I first read some of the semi-near future cyberpunk stuff (like SnowCrash and Gibson's "bridge trilogy"), I thought the way the future was being portrayed was simply taking things to an absurd level with excessive litigation and examples of corporate bad-citizenship. Now everywhere I turn it seems like the predictions are spot on and the bleak realities that we read as fiction are slowly becoming truth. As much as I like SciFi that paints the future as full of Shiney Happy People, I think the reality is that we'll all end up living on a bridge or in subway tunnels someday...
I'd much rather use some nice Extreme Networks (or founrdy or whatever) Layer 3 switching equipment at the core and turn off spanning tree. Use tagged VLANS from the closets to the core and voila no need for spanning tree...
Guess what, you'd be using STP in that case too. The only reason you can turn STP off is if you are 100% sure there will not be any redundant paths in your layer two network. If you force spanning tree off and then have any redundant links then the first unknown MAC address or broadcast frame will cause your network will melt down in a broadcast storm.
I'm not even sure how much Layer 3 switching equipment Cisco has; not much at all from my talking around in the past.
Every 6500 with an MSFC or 5500 with an RSM (oooh, scary...my old company still had a 6500 MSM somewhere...) is a "layer 3 switch". In other words, Cisco has a lot of layer 3 switches.
It sounds like you don't quite know what layer 3 switching is...it's also called routing. And it's not the magic solution to this problem, there are still layer 2 issues to be dealt with.
implemented a fully switched, beautifully layed out network with redundant links
And I'll bet a fair amount of money that yes, you are running spanning tree. Cisco implements standardizes protocols pretty well. It's things like CEF that bite you in the ass.
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I got one of these phones a few weeks ago (Hail Europe!) and Nokia provides SyncML sofware on their CD,
As a Java app? That's kinda cool. The early release versions that were reviewed had CDs in Chinese, so it was kinda easy to overlook. We'll see if Apple decides to add support for it to iSync.
Personally, I use MobileSync with my T68i and sync between Entourage and my phone. That is really nice and will make it hard to get a non SE phone next, although I dislike the T610/T616 because they're triband and not quadband. I have hope for Moto's V600.
This phone doesn't support SyncML, so the chances of you syncing with your Mac anytime soon are slim. Nokia does provide PC software to allow syncing with your Windows PC, though.
And as for Bluetooth, once again Nokia has failed to implement the headset profile, although it does support the newer handsfree profile. I can't seem to find any details on the differences between the two but what it does mean for sure is that of the current Bluetooth headsets available, only the SonyEricson HBH-60 and the soon-to-arrive Nokia HDW-2 support that profile. Nokia is known for their poor and buggy Bluetooth support (they must hate that their rival Ericsson invented it) and they do seem to try the "embrace and extend" scheme once in a while - they want you to buy their Bluetooth device and not someone else's. They've used the headset profile in the 6310i, but that's it for the US market.
It's hard not to support SonyEricsson (especially the Ericsson part) when they've made Bluetooth a licensed standard, and when they put things like SyncML, an open syncing standard, on their phones. And don't forget the SonyEricsson Clicker which is just plain cool.
A good review of the 3650 is here.
So the prosecutor was concerned about Mitnick's lack of remorse? While I cannot condone Mitnick's actions at all, I have to wonder how easy it would be to show remorse when the legal is being used abused against you. If there had been a speedy and fair trial that would be one thing, but given all that happened in this case I know that by the time the actual trial came about my anger would get in the way. I'm not saying that's ok, I'm just guessing at what my own reactions might be.
Winkler might want to look at the message that HP is sending by hiring the Getto Hackers and not hiring Mitnick. To me that message is "Hacking is ok if you don't get caught." I suppose it might be a valid viewpoint (in football it isn't holding if the ref doesn't call it) but to me that seems like the wrong thing to say for someone who is trying to take the moral high ground.
I actually paid for OmniWeb way before Safari came out. And OmniWeb still does some things better than Safari, such as bookmark management. I haven't moved my bookmarks over 'cuz I think OmniWeb does it better...and I haven't found an easy way to do it. :-)
And I still have IE, I'm afraid. Some websites still work correctly with IE when they bork on OmniWeb or Safari. For example, the help system with TaxCut borks with Safari, but works with IE. (At least when loading.) For some reason IE handles wierd javascript and such (like some chats I used) better than anything.
My main confusion is that the title of "network engineer" has somehow come to mean "Windows admin that might know what a packet is". I look through job listings trying to find a pure networking gig (where I have very little to do with the nature of the packets going over the network...I just make sure they get from point A to point B) and it seems the title of Network Engineer now involves Active Directory. I suppose I should learn that stuff, but I'd rather stick to networks....
You think this isn't happening? The T68i already has a feature under the SMS menu that says "Area info"...supposedly you get info like traffic and such (if supported by your provider). Then on an MMS demo somewhere on Ericsson's website their two cool kids are hanging out in the park and they get MMS spam on their phones with an instant coupon for snowcones in the park. I figure location based SMS/MMS spam is only about 1 year away from happening...fortuantely it appears that most phones make you "opt-in", but if it starts making money I'm sure that'll change...
From the memo quoted in the article:
"Please be aware that Office Depot is immediately requiring all products that connect to a Personal Computer and Notebook Computer must pass these Designed for Windows XP logo requirements to be considered for retail distribution through our stores."
This is more than a little nuts...why in the world should a mouse, or a printer, or a scanner, or an ethernet cable be "Designed for Windows XP"? And does this mean that my Powerbook isn't a notebook computer, or that they won't sell Mac hard and software since it isn't "Designed for Windows XP"? It *is* a little creepy...
Not at this time. The Apple BT software doesn't support the headset profile. I don't know if it's possible for it to do so.
Ti coming out with a single-chip Bluetooth solution is a Good Thing. I remember seeing more than one article saying that if they squeeze Bluetooth onto a single chip it would drive prices down, which would hopefully lead to more BT enabled devices. The chips would be cheaper and it would be easier to put on a device.
I hope that's the case. Just having my Powerbook talk to my T68 is handy...I'll get a headset eventually, and throw in a BT enable PDA and it's all good. In theory you could dial your phone from the PDA, speak on the headset, and never take the phone out of your pocket. And as nice as syncing my phone's phonebook with my PIM it will never be as nice as being able to dial from the PDA. Oh, and it would mean I could write an app to have my PDA notify me when my phone gets a page, since the SMS notification on the T68 is it's biggest flaw (at least to me).
If they want to monitor the garment in their shipping system and store that's fine, but I hope they remove the tag after purchase...otherwise they're sitting there with someone's credit card number and some sort of tracking device and that means all of a sudden someone's trip through the mall is like an episode of the Crocodile Hunter where they track the habits of some migratory animal. I'm not quite sure I trust them to not abuse this technology.
The new phone appears to be nice, but it's only triband. According to this story (with pictures), the T610 will be sold in Europe and supports GSM at 900, 1800, and 19000 Mhz. The T616, which will be sold in North America, drops the 900Mhz support and supports 850, 1800, and 1900Mhz. So while technically it is a world phone it is missing 900Mhz which is the most used frequency for GSM world wide. It also provides the better coverage (verses 1800Mhz) and penitrates buldings better - one of the hoped for advantages of GSM800 (850Mhz) in the US.
My biggest complaint with the T68i is the SMS alert tone - it totally sucks. And I like to use my phone as a pager, but I can't trust it to wake me up. Given the number of changes we've seen with T68 firmware revisions I had hopes they would fix this, but with the release of this phone I doubt they will. The interaction of Apple's address book with SMS is hopefully...I might just write something to play a loud file when I get an SMS. Or maybe when I get a BT-enabled PDA it will have something.
I have high hopes for Motorola's V600, which will appears to do everything the T610 does and is quadband. However syncing isn't mentioned, which I am a big fan of. I know some friends who have had bad luck with Motorola phones, but I had good luck (quality wise) with my v3682. This phone seems to be a good replacement for that - it's a nice silver color (didn't like the dark plastic of the V60) and is a bit more streamlined than the squarish T720.
I wasn't thinking I'd use BT for more than a headset (which is cool on it's own), but with the Mac it's really nice. Sending SMS messages from apple's Address Book is nice if you're in the office, although I don't use their Address Book since I don't use Mail.app. For those of us that use Entourage, however, there is MobileSync which does the same thing as iSync does but with Entourage. This is from the same guy who wrote the BT clicker program and the client program that makes getting files to the T68i very easy.
One advantage to all this that may get overlooked is that if I were to loose my phone and had to get a replacement T68i then all of the data from the phone (pictures, ringtones, numbers) would be back on there in 5 minutes. And if my next phone supports SyncML (which it almost will have to) it'll make upgrading fairly painless.
One interesting thing to note: Overture was one of the big customers of Inktomi search. Inktomi was making a lot of money from Overture's business. Plenty of folks thought that they would probably buy Inktomi since Inktomi was dying.
However, Yahoo ended up with Inktomi. So clearly Overture, a company who made money mainly because they didn't own much hardware - they were marketing and sales - now found their search engine owned by another company. Overture may be buying up search engines to avoid the fact that Yahoo doesn't need to let them do business with the organization formerly known as Inktomi, especially since Yahoo is an Overture customer.
2 words: Peta Wilson. This is her first big role since La Femme Nikita, and for those of us who are Nikita fans we are very excited to see her on the big screen. Yeah, it's not a Nikita movie (since there was already one with different people :-) but it'll do.
On my world-band cellphone I input all numbers as +1-234-5678. That way, when I get to the UK I can still dial straight from my phonebook. And most people don't even know the US country code is 1...
I work at a fab now (that shall remain nameless), and one of the nastiest liquids we have around here is HF (Hydrofluoric acid). The stuff has a NASTY desire for the calcium in your bones.
Yeah, that's the one that put the fear of God in to me. Not only does it mess up the calcium in your bones, but it also messes up the calcium in your heart tissue, And it takes just a relatively tiny amount on your skin to croak you...or at least that's what I saw on ER...
3 days? That's it? When I worked for TI it was a full week... and you had to retake the course yearly
Well, this was the class for folks who wouldn't be on the fab floor - and they still had to tell us all about that death stuff!
The one cool thing was that I learned how to read those diamond signs with the red, yellow, and blue. That's pretty cool.
I think it's clear that someday phones will someday just be networked devices, and that the "cell phones" will be just be wireless devices that do VoIP (and probably data), and my laptop will be a wireless device that does data (and maybe VoIP too). I just feel like the abundance of standards is gonna make it happen later rather than sooner. Although even if the standards made it happen tomorrow, it will take some time for the convergence folks to bring the phones and PDAs together.
I once did a gig at someone who manufactured fab equipment, and we all had to take this 3-day safety course, even those of us just working in the server room. And mostly it was 3-days of "This is chemical [insert name here] and it will kill you in [insert time here]. The way you will horribly die is [insert pain here]. So be careful." They made it sound like the room was full of gas that would eat you alive like that stuff from The Rock.
Intel may have tried to make the guys in the bunny suits cute, but after learning some of the dangerous stuff they're around I came to respect them for sure.
As an anime fan since the late 80s, I had been aware of doujinshi, but it was not until my trips to Tokyo that I truly began to comprehend it. What I observed was:
1) Doujinshi is not allways "copycat". There are some small
fan-run books that are called doujinshi (and sold at Comic Market) that are totally original.
2) A lot of it is about porn. And about seeing your favorite anime character violated, often by tenticles. Yes, there are some original "fanfic" type stories...but there is also a lot of Sailor Moon meets Urotsukudoji. I couldn't believe the things they were doing to poor Ami-chan!
3) The Japanese are a lot more liberal about their hand-drawn porn than we are. The yaoi (boy-boy) stuff is right there with the girl-girl stuff. Women in Japan appear to be as open about liking boy-boy as men are about girl-girl. Porn is just porn.
4) Doujinshi is where folks seem to start. First you make a doujinshi of a magical girls series you like. Then you make your own magical girl. Then you decide if you really want to be a manga-ka and start trying to make a name for yourself. If you get lucky you might get in one of the anthologies - the collections put out weekly or monthly the size of small phonebooks.
Shopping for this stuff in Japan is quite fun. My best friend came with me on one of my business trips, and I came back to the hotel after the first day and he'd already scored. In fact he got me a doujinshi of my favorite Sailor Senshi getting violated several ways.
If you're in Japan and want to go shopping for anime, porn, or even animated porn, you have to go to Akihabara. The most magical place on earth. Not just tons of electronics, but tons of small bookstores. I highly recommend Cheap Bastard's Tokyo Anime Shopping Guide - it will take you on a tour through Akihabara that you will not forget. (But if you're gonna print it out at work, make sure to get it before anyone else does. You wouldn't want your boss to think you're going to Japan to shop for porn.)
The people calling for more H1Bs didn't want better labor, they wanted CHEAPER labor. You're implying that labor from outside of the country as being inherently better than American labor, which is rather racist. But they certainly are willing to accept less money in exchange for being a slave.
H1Bs are based on the idea that there are no qualified citizens to fill the position. Yes, a foreign worker might be better educated or might not, but the H1B system is supposed to insure that a visaed worker doesn't displace a citizen or resident alien. And various sources, such as Norm Matloff have shown that there really never was a shortage, just that that software industry enjoyed cheap slaves who couldn't easily hop countries.
I personally think that if India's education system is so great, then folks there should start their own companies and develop their own products. But I think that that American companies exporting tech jobs is bad for the US. And if you think that is racist, then you're wrong. I don't care if they're exporting them to China, Ethiopia, India, Mexico, or Ireland - they should keep them inside the US.
While SGI supporting linux on IA32 and IA64 platforms, they're still developing Irix for their MIPS platform. No reason not to, it's still a pretty robust OS.
So, if the Starbucks a few blocks over installs this, is it going to stomp all over my home network? I mean a WiFi hotspot with a 4 mile radius is great, but hopefully wouldn't affect home users. That'd be like some new cellular tower killing my cordless phone...certainly not appreciated.
The "spawl" trilogy is Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive. The "bridge" trilogy is Virtual Light, Idoru, and All Tomorrow's Parties. The SF Bay Bridge features significantly in Virtual Light and ATP, and Idoru takes place in the same "universe". Yes, Gibson has written more than 3 books...
You know, when when I first read some of the semi-near future cyberpunk stuff (like SnowCrash and Gibson's "bridge trilogy"), I thought the way the future was being portrayed was simply taking things to an absurd level with excessive litigation and examples of corporate bad-citizenship. Now everywhere I turn it seems like the predictions are spot on and the bleak realities that we read as fiction are slowly becoming truth. As much as I like SciFi that paints the future as full of Shiney Happy People, I think the reality is that we'll all end up living on a bridge or in subway tunnels someday...
I'd much rather use some nice Extreme Networks (or founrdy or whatever) Layer 3 switching equipment at the core and turn off spanning tree. Use tagged VLANS from the closets to the core and voila no need for spanning tree...
Guess what, you'd be using STP in that case too. The only reason you can turn STP off is if you are 100% sure there will not be any redundant paths in your layer two network. If you force spanning tree off and then have any redundant links then the first unknown MAC address or broadcast frame will cause your network will melt down in a broadcast storm.
I'm not even sure how much Layer 3 switching equipment Cisco has; not much at all from my talking around in the past.
Every 6500 with an MSFC or 5500 with an RSM (oooh, scary...my old company still had a 6500 MSM somewhere...) is a "layer 3 switch". In other words, Cisco has a lot of layer 3 switches.
It sounds like you don't quite know what layer 3 switching is...it's also called routing. And it's not the magic solution to this problem, there are still layer 2 issues to be dealt with.
implemented a fully switched, beautifully layed out network with redundant links
And I'll bet a fair amount of money that yes, you are running spanning tree. Cisco implements standardizes protocols pretty well. It's things like CEF that bite you in the ass.