I certainly can. I'm glad to hear others say that, too. I thought it was just me.
We have an analogous problem in broadcasting -- everyone wants to use compressed formats to save space and upload/download time. Files are thrown all over the Web now. (I haven't seen a reel tape in years, though I think we still have an old reel-to-reel somewhere just in case. Political season coming up, after all.)
The problem is REALLY bad when you repeatedly encode. For example, our digital automation systems wants to compress files. Our studio to transmitter links (STLs) want to compress to save bandwidth. HD Radio compresses the SNOT out of the audio. Honestly... some of the crap that I hear on the radio now is so bad I don't know how anyone can listen to it. It swishes, it glitches, it swarms, it sounds brittle, it's awful.
I made a rule in our facilities a few years ago that if it wasn't at least 256 Kilobits, we wouldn't air it. This annoyed some people -- one guy had to dump and entire music library that he'd spent a week putting into the system -- but it was awful.
Maybe there's no point in 192/24 for kids listening to pirated music on $20 MP3 players, but I refuse to believe that most people can't hear the difference. Heck, I'm getting old and I'm half deaf nowadays, and I can immediately hear the difference. There's just no comparison.
Doood... just, dood. You originally posted this, word for word, elsewhere (http://www.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=1911&mid=10609989&pt=msg). Either you are a bug-eyed alien, a prankster, or a combination of the two.
For those who aren't in on the secret, you can look up "rotational velocidensity" -- on the Urban Dictionary. It is the supposed loss of bits in a file over a time, which is absolutely ludicrous. Digital is digital. It's ones and zeroes. Files stored digitally don't degrade, unless you're talking about media degradation (ex., CDs and DVDs can possibly suffer from loss of data over time).
Dood also talks about files "repairing themselves," which is somewhere south of ridiculous.
But enough of this. I fell for it and actually answered it.
It also changes over time. Years ago, Sprint had the best coverage at my remote transmitter sites. Now, Verizon does. Ergo, I am with Verizon, paying their (admittedly exorbitant) rates for the ability to make calls when I'm in the middle of nowhere.
It also changes with conditions. When the tornadoes came through here (Alabama) on April 27th last year, everyone's coverage was horrible for several weeks. Verizon's coverage didn't fully recover for MONTHS.
> you penalize the USERS of the (allegedly) badly designed GPS devices
I maintain a 50,000 watt AM and two 100,000 watt FMs, and we get interference complaints all the time. The only fair rule for EVERYONE involved is to say, "as long as I'm following the terms of my license, and I'm SURE that my transmitter isn't putting out unwanted products, there's nothing I can do."
I'm friendly; I offer tips and suggest filters; I help if I can. But there's really not much I can do if they have a cheap radio. Am I "penalizing" them for buying a $20 table radio from WalMart? I don't think so.
You say "allegedly," but believe me, some of the cheap Chinese junk (albeit with good-sounding American brand names) being sold now isn't worth the money to crush and melt it. I would be astonished if the same isn't true of GPS equipment.
Seems like a million years ago now that I left Windows 98 for Mandrake Linux running KDE 2. I was amazed at how good it was and how easily it installed. I still kept Windows around so that I could play games and deal with multimedia, but most of my work was done in Linux.
Then came KDE 3. I liked it. Then came KDE 4. I hated it. I tried Gnome 2, got used to it and decided I liked it. Then Gnome 3 came along and I almost gave up.
Instead of all of this "me, too!" stuff, and trying to emulate Android on the desktop, why not something really revolutionary? Here's just one example: most of us have lots of resolution and nice big monitors now. Why not a USEFUL 3D desktop? For example, opened windows can be scrolled into the background with the mouse wheel; just hover the wheel over it and a pop up reminds you what that particular window is, and if you want to bring it back to the foreground, scroll the mouse wheel the other way. Make it a true 3D desktop that lets me navigate through everything just like I'm strolling through a neighborhood.
No, instead, we get windows that fade in and out (when they don't hang my system -- I had to turn Plasma off) and other *extremely* useful innovations.
I've never understood. There are no rules, so why not just try something completely different? After all, one of the killer apps that made the original PC indispensable was a little program called Lotus 1 2 3 (showing my age now; for you kids, it was around LONG before Excel even existed).
Linux has a very, very, VERY good kernel. It's about time that it had a really, really revolutionary desktop, one that doesn't copy anything else, or try to be anything else, but one that simply revolutionizes how we work on these bloomin' little thingies called "pee cees."
Wow. Lots of people calling the OP names, here. But for those of you looking for work, there are jobs out there. You may have to think outside the box, but if you're good, you can find work. (Disclaimer: if you're in an area with a really tanked-up economy, you may have to move. I'm speaking in general. I'm also speaking more of administration, IT and support than I am of programming; that's a different animal.)
Example: walk into a growing local business and point out that you can make them more efficient, save them money and/or give them a better presence on the Web. They'll listen. Be ready to demonstrate your skills, and/or be willing to work at reduced pay for a "trial" period while they check you out.
Take my business (broadcasting). A decade and a half ago, we had digital audio workstations, but I was on a Compuserve dialup for Internet access. Very few people even had a computer. Now, we're all high speed, everything is audio over IP, everyone not only has a desktop PC, but also has a laptop, tablet or smartphone, and we (engineering) are expected to understand and work with them all. And we DO.
So, to the OP: first, sorry, but you WILL have to be willing to work with non-open source stuff. There are few opportunities for open source-only jobs. Sorry, but that's life, get over it. We have to look after a mish-mash that includes Windows, Macs and Open Source.
Speaking from the employer's perspective, I'm willing to pay a decent wage, but I've got to get value in return. (It ASTONISHES me the number of people who come looking for work who can't seem to grasp that.)
My assistant, Todd, came to us as the computer nerd from his local church. Since then, he has become one of our company's top people and I love him to death. More importantly, he has demonstrated -- repeatedly -- that he can save money for the company and justify his salary.
Ex.: the vendor wanted thousands of dollars to upgrade the old Novell servers on our audio network to Windows Server 2008. Todd and I did it ourselves (yes, working with WINDERS, ewwww) and saved the company a ton of money.
BUT... we use Open Source, too. A LOT. We get a lot of value from it. Example, Todd maintains a terminal server (based on Scientific Linux, i.e., a clone of RHEL) that allows us to use older PCs in the studios for employee Internet access. I maintain the company's mail server, Web server and a host of other stuff, all Open Source. It's a mix. Every job has what you like, and what you don't like. You learn to live with both.
And there are other bonuses: I still have the pictures of the first time Todd, the quintessential computer geek, had to crawl around at a transmitter site brazing copper ground straps. Priceless.:)
> It's clearly impossible for an optical telescope on the Earth to resolve any of the Apollo hardware on the Moon
Of course it is, and I didn't say otherwise. Maybe I should have been clearer. "Powerful telescope" would apply to one in Earth orbit, or better yet, one in orbit around the moon.
I would be very surprised if the Soviets didn't carefully check to confirm that the moon landings actually happened; if they hadn't, you can believe that they'd have raised a fuss about it, if no one else did.:)
I certainly found it "Interesting" and "Insightful." I, too, have done reverse engineering, and it's a gold-plated pain in the butt. He's dead right about that. The key point -- and one that I emphatically agree with -- is that when you're forced to reverse engineer, you're almost by default behind the curve.
Software can be copyrighted, but unlike most other copyrighted works, copies of the original aren't always available to the general public. With a book, periodical, or song, I could go to the US Library of Congress and see the original, copyrighted form of the work. Software is typically redacted (heavily) to protect "trade secrets."
I'm stuck with a completely-proprietary, Top Secret(tm) and otherwise obsfucated (with a nod to Matt Pietrek, and a bonus goes to anyone who remembers that one!) codec with HD Radio. It drives me crazy. I'd love to tinker with and improve the audio, but can't.
Even more annoying: the Program Associated Data (PAD) is a possible source of all sorts of innovation.... . but it's not worth the time and bother to reverse-engineer it to figure out how they do it now(*). I'm stuck waiting for iBiquity to decide to implement some of the ideas that we've asked for.
(*) - what makes this frustrating is that iBiquity has taken a publicly-available standard, ID3 tagging, and has adapted it for HD Radio. The original HD release simply "burst" dumb packets filled with ID3 tags via UDP. Now they've replaced it with a TCP connection, with handshaking... considerably more difficult to figure out.
> Corporations act as representatives of their shareholders. If you remove the rights for corporations to speak on their own > behalf, you are removing the collective 1st amendment rights of a whole lot of people. The same is true of labor unions.
I agree with that in principle, though I'm no great lover of large corporations at the moment. I guarantee you that any attempt to silence corporate voices, while allowing other collective voices to be heard, would immediately be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
The problem is deciding what is "acceptable" or "allowed" speech. Frankly, nothing has frightened me more in the past 10 years than the rise of the assertion that not all speech should be given the same protection. At the end of the day, most of it just looks like simply allowing those with whom you agree to speak, while aggressively silencing those who might disagree with you.
Simply put, if the government can silence corporations, they could do it to non-profit groups. If they could do it to non-profits, they could indeed silence unions. They could then silence churches, and civic clubs, and -- eventually -- even political parties that have been declared "subversive."
It's better to err on the side of maximum speech, while holding your nose when people with whom you disagree choose to exercise that right. (Or better yet, just don't listen to them.) (Or even better than that, find a voice for your point of view and make it heard.)
Or as one wise fellow once said, with his finger to his nose, "I'm all in favor of censorship... as long as *I* get to be the censor.":)
With Loser Pay embedded in the Constitution. (If you try to just do it via legislation, the courts will find some way around it.) The United States is the ONLY Western Democracy that doesn't follow the "English Rule" in litigation.
If the MPAA, the RIAA, and any other "AA" group wanted to sue you, they'd have to think twice if they knew that you could get attorney's fees from them if (when) you win. Right now, the primary reason why threats of litigation are so effective is because they KNOW that most people will be bankrupted by legal fees, even if they win in court.
Whew. I'm beginning to be amazed at the straight-laced, "we must do it this way because it's the proper and pure way to do it" mentality on the part of IPv6 Fanbois.
My (relatively) small internal network, BEING v4, uses precisely ZERO v6 traffic tunneling. ZERO.:)
(Whew again.)
The only place where such tunneling will take place is OUTSIDE of my premises.
Ergo, should I ever bang up against it, all I would need is some translation/conversion method at my interface with The Tubes(tm).
(Pause)
I have to say, this entire thread has been an education in the "You MUST switch to IPv6 everywhere and right away!" mentality. I'll say that much. The arguments just assume that everyone will directly connect ever computer inside the premises directly to the Internet.
Even if we switch entirely to IPv6, I can assure you: that will NEVER happen in our facilities. Never, ever. We will ALWAYS isolate our internal networks from the rest of the world.
Why? Millions of routers -- many of which are built in to the DSL modems that litter the landscape -- have been doing NAT with IPv4 for years. This just isn't that deep and it's extremely mature technology.
Currently, it goes something like this:
1. My PC, on a "192" internal address, wants to go to Google. 2. DNS lookup, get IPv4 address for Google. 3. The request goes through the default gateway in the router. On the way out, the router records my "192" IP address, changes the source to its own (Internet-routable) one, tags with a unique port number, and sends it to Google. 4. Google's response comes back to my router. It looks up my "192" address with that unique port number and returns the response to my PC. I gets my web page, wipe hands on pants and repeat as needed.
All you have to do to translate IPv6 transparently is add a couple of steps and change the last two slightly.
1-1/2: Everyone's internal PC uses the router for DNS. (Many DHCP servers already set it this way by default, BTW.) 2-1/2: When the router looks up the actual IP address, if it's IPv6, the router stores the IPv6 number and returns a unique, but made-up, IPv4 address as the response to the requester. (Or, tags it with a unique port number. Whatever. Just some way to tag it.) 3: On the way out in this case, the router sees the unique tag, knows that I'm trying to get to Google. It changes the request to true-blue IPv6 with a port number (or some other tagging), then sends it to Google. 4: On the way back, the router notes the tag, sees that I made the request, and sends it back to my IPv4 PC. Once again, rinse and repeat as needed.
In other words, the router transparently handles all of that messy IPv6 stuff for me. If IPv6 is needed, it translates on the fly. That's just what I came up with off the top of my head. Someone smarter than me could easily refine this.
If I'm ever forced to do so, I'll write my own code, probably based on dnsmasq or some other open source DNS cacher. But I'm not going to go through the expense and headache of changing my entire internal IPv4 network just to satisfy the IPv6 "purists" when there's NO NEED FOR ME TO DO SO.
NO. I said "translate," and that's what I meant. (Part of the problem I've had when dealing with IPv6 Fanbois is that they think only inside their box and within their rules.)
Tunneling essentially refers to encapsulating (for example) an IPv4 stream with headers so that it can be sent over IPv6; at the other end, the additional headers are stripped off and viola, you have IPv4 again. You're not actually "translating" the IP addresses.
Look at it this way: inside my IPv4 network, I'm already using NAT. Someone browses to Google.com, the router NATs it out onto the Internet, brings the response back in, then returns it to the original requesting PC.
It would be *criminally* simple to add IPv6-to-4 translation to that. When my browser requests "somenewipv6site.com," (i.e., an IPv6-only site), the router/modem/whatever notes that its an IPv6 address. It does NAT stuff, send the request in IPv6 form, then translates back to IPv4 for the internal network.
Simple, quick, easy. I could do it by patching some code into a good caching DNS server. Dnsmasq could do it.
Ergo, it will only be a matter of time until little $100 "Blue Boxes" appear that will do just what I described. You enter the name of the site into your Web browser, mail client, or whatever, and the Magic Box(tm) takes care of the details for you. Your internal network can stay IPv4 until the heat death of the universe, if you so choose.
One last time: if I wanted to, I could choose not to even use TCP/IP internally. I could use something else entirely different. The fact that I probably wouldn't is beside the point.
Which is why I keep saying: forget about Republican or Democrat. Or if you insist, work the primaries to get sensible people nominated for November. That way, you can still vote for your choice of party, but feel like you're voting for something at least half-useful.
Senators are little more difficult, because they're statewide, but if you raise enough stink in your district, you'll be surprised what you can accomplish re: your Representative in the House.
One primary to watch here in Alabama is Spencer Bacchus'. I think he's going to be badly surprised and disappointed come primary time in a few months. There are a LOT of people angry in his district.:)
Personally, I don't care what label they wear, as long as they'll quit trying to do an end run around that "pesky" Bill of Rights-thing.
> But in order to access IPv6 content on the internet, your local devices are going to have v6 addresses anyway...
No they won't! That is completely incorrect. That's one of the most common misconceptions about IPv6. As I said above: it is entirely possible to have an internal network that doesn't even use TCP/IP at all. All you'd need is a *translation* mechanism at the gateway to the Internet.
That's what many people are doing right now when you use a paid wireless data plan -- for example, I can tether my Android to my laptop. The laptop is 100% IPv4; IPv6 is *disabled.* But my wireless network is IPv6. Not a problem, my smartphone translates everything for me and I don't even have to think about it.
My *ISP* is still IPv4 on its local network. Their backbone from ATT is still IPv4. They're tunneling and translating everything for us.
The flipside: people who are on an IPv6 provider will be given a dynamic IPv6 address by their ISP. But the translation is done at the Internet gateway. The people inside that building don't know and don't care. They enter "google.com" in their Web browser and they get a search page.
Get this straight in your head. There is nothing that COMPELS anyone to use IPv6 in house IPv6 has some real benefits, and I certainly don't hate it. But I'm not going to spend thousands of dollars converting my internal systems when I DO NOT HAVE TO.
One of our morning talk show hosts -- who's about as conservative as they come -- devoted most of his program to SOPA and PIPA this morming. As a result, a lot of people who'd never heard of it are now very annoyed and are expressing their displeasure toward their Congress Critters.:)
Heh. Heh, heh.
I'm actually feeling pretty encouraged this morning. It has been a while since I felt that way.
Change that to "small-to-medium-sized network" and I might agree with you. Everyone talks about the "1% vs. the 99%"... well, that applies to networking, too. The vast, VAST majority of us only need IPv6 on the Internet. We are perfectly fine with IPv4 internally.
Now, if you have a big, multi-city network that is all tied together over the Public Tubes(tm) (with a nod to the late Sen Stevens), yeah, you need IPv6. But you are part of a very small minority. Don't make the mistake of assuming that because YOU need it, everyone else does. More importantly, don't give me the gimlet eye and scold me because I haven't switched in-house to something that I DO. NOT. NEED.
What is actually going to happen is, DLink, Linksys and the other usual suspects are going to produce $100 "interface/translator" boxes that will "speak" IPv6 where needed. Whenever I run into a situation where I just can't avoid IPv6, I'll throw something like that inline (or a Linux box with a good distro, for that matter -- I already do that all the time now).
The idea that everyone and everything, from your television to your printer to your average small office filled with PCs is going to immediately jump on the IPv6 bandwagon is just silly. It's not going to happen, not for a very long time to come.
We will make sure we're IPv6-ready on our Internet-facing Web and Mail servers, but in-house, we are in no hurry at all. Most of the equipment that we use is IPv4 -- even the stuff purchased in the past year. We have microwave data links between our studios and transmitters, for example, that are IPv4-only. Our audio-over-IP network is all IPv4. The manufacturers of this equipment have no plans to support IPv6 for some time to come, and it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace it. Ergo, it's not going to happen, especially not in this economy.
Internally, we'd have to do a "mixed" IPv4/IPv6 network and it's just not worth the expense and bother. If it works, don't fix it.
I just wrote an article for an industry trade magazine, and that's what I told my fellow broadcast engineers: looking toward the Internet, think IPv6. But when you turn around and look back in-house, it's your choice. If you can do it, go ahead; if not, don't worry about it and don't let anyone browbeat you over it. It's your decision.
Technically, you don't have to use TCP/IP in-house at all; you could use something completely different if you really wanted to. You'd need something to translate from your network to the Internet if you want outside access, but in house, you could do whatever you wanted.
That's admittedly not likely, but it's at least a possibility.
For the record, I know of only one location that sells E85 in this area. Doesn't mean there aren't others, but if there are, I haven't seen them.
One of the talk shows on our station is a good ol' boy who talks auto repair. He insists -- vehemently -- that ethanol lowers mileage so much that whatever you saved on emissions, you lose because you're burning more fuel as a result. The callers to that show seem to echo that sentiment.
I know in my own car (Nissan Altima, and I LOVE it), I seem to get a bit more mileage when I'm burning pure gasoline -- about 5% more.
YMMV (literally, in this case) and that's hardly scientific, but there you go.:)
> At a certain point having a "welfare state" might become cheaper overall.
We have cameras. We have alarms. The guy who jumped the fence in this case was aware of both. He wore a mask because of the camera, and like I said, he knew the response time and was in and out before the cops could get there.
The most cost-effective solution is to have the site monitored by cameras 24/7. But then you still have the problem of police response time.
Having a guard on site? That would work, but it's very expensive. For a marginal operation, it could literally drive them out of business.
The economy here in Birmingham isn't that bad, because our primary employer is healthcare and the service industry.
We still have tons and tons of copper and aluminum theft. When the thieves are caught, most of them are NOT crack heads, and they're not from lower-income families. Some of them are guys with regular jobs during the day. They do it to make extra money, because the scrap yards look the other way when they bring in the metal, and because they enjoy it.
> At a certain point having a "welfare state" might become cheaper overall.
Then how come all of those kids -- well-dressed, well looked after by the state, with free health care, and told from childhood that they're "just as good and just as important" as anyone else -- rioted in France and England? Why the image on London television of the teens cheering as they destroy shops and homes?
Just asking.
(What you're saying sounds good in theory, and I know that's being taught aggressively in sociology classes nowadays, but those of us who live in the real world, dealing with real people, know that it ain't quite that simple...)
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> If you can't hear the difference ...
I certainly can. I'm glad to hear others say that, too. I thought it was just me.
We have an analogous problem in broadcasting -- everyone wants to use compressed formats to save space and upload/download time. Files are thrown all over the Web now. (I haven't seen a reel tape in years, though I think we still have an old reel-to-reel somewhere just in case. Political season coming up, after all.)
The problem is REALLY bad when you repeatedly encode. For example, our digital automation systems wants to compress files. Our studio to transmitter links (STLs) want to compress to save bandwidth. HD Radio compresses the SNOT out of the audio. Honestly ... some of the crap that I hear on the radio now is so bad I don't know how anyone can listen to it. It swishes, it glitches, it swarms, it sounds brittle, it's awful.
I made a rule in our facilities a few years ago that if it wasn't at least 256 Kilobits, we wouldn't air it. This annoyed some people -- one guy had to dump and entire music library that he'd spent a week putting into the system -- but it was awful.
Maybe there's no point in 192/24 for kids listening to pirated music on $20 MP3 players, but I refuse to believe that most people can't hear the difference. Heck, I'm getting old and I'm half deaf nowadays, and I can immediately hear the difference. There's just no comparison.
Doood ... just, dood. You originally posted this, word for word, elsewhere (http://www.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=1911&mid=10609989&pt=msg). Either you are a bug-eyed alien, a prankster, or a combination of the two.
For those who aren't in on the secret, you can look up "rotational velocidensity" -- on the Urban Dictionary. It is the supposed loss of bits in a file over a time, which is absolutely ludicrous. Digital is digital. It's ones and zeroes. Files stored digitally don't degrade, unless you're talking about media degradation (ex., CDs and DVDs can possibly suffer from loss of data over time).
Dood also talks about files "repairing themselves," which is somewhere south of ridiculous.
But enough of this. I fell for it and actually answered it.
("Digital dust." Heh.)
> It really depends on where you live.
This. This is the bottom line.
It also changes over time. Years ago, Sprint had the best coverage at my remote transmitter sites. Now, Verizon does. Ergo, I am with Verizon, paying their (admittedly exorbitant) rates for the ability to make calls when I'm in the middle of nowhere.
It also changes with conditions. When the tornadoes came through here (Alabama) on April 27th last year, everyone's coverage was horrible for several weeks. Verizon's coverage didn't fully recover for MONTHS.
"Dwarf" is such a demeaning term. I prefer to think of them as "valid souls with a high degree of vertical challenge."
Not sure how you apply that to a planet, though.
> you penalize the USERS of the (allegedly) badly designed GPS devices
I maintain a 50,000 watt AM and two 100,000 watt FMs, and we get interference complaints all the time. The only fair rule for EVERYONE involved is to say, "as long as I'm following the terms of my license, and I'm SURE that my transmitter isn't putting out unwanted products, there's nothing I can do."
I'm friendly; I offer tips and suggest filters; I help if I can. But there's really not much I can do if they have a cheap radio. Am I "penalizing" them for buying a $20 table radio from WalMart? I don't think so.
You say "allegedly," but believe me, some of the cheap Chinese junk (albeit with good-sounding American brand names) being sold now isn't worth the money to crush and melt it. I would be astonished if the same isn't true of GPS equipment.
Seems like a million years ago now that I left Windows 98 for Mandrake Linux running KDE 2. I was amazed at how good it was and how easily it installed. I still kept Windows around so that I could play games and deal with multimedia, but most of my work was done in Linux.
Then came KDE 3. I liked it. Then came KDE 4. I hated it. I tried Gnome 2, got used to it and decided I liked it. Then Gnome 3 came along and I almost gave up.
Instead of all of this "me, too!" stuff, and trying to emulate Android on the desktop, why not something really revolutionary? Here's just one example: most of us have lots of resolution and nice big monitors now. Why not a USEFUL 3D desktop? For example, opened windows can be scrolled into the background with the mouse wheel; just hover the wheel over it and a pop up reminds you what that particular window is, and if you want to bring it back to the foreground, scroll the mouse wheel the other way. Make it a true 3D desktop that lets me navigate through everything just like I'm strolling through a neighborhood.
No, instead, we get windows that fade in and out (when they don't hang my system -- I had to turn Plasma off) and other *extremely* useful innovations.
I've never understood. There are no rules, so why not just try something completely different? After all, one of the killer apps that made the original PC indispensable was a little program called Lotus 1 2 3 (showing my age now; for you kids, it was around LONG before Excel even existed).
Linux has a very, very, VERY good kernel. It's about time that it had a really, really revolutionary desktop, one that doesn't copy anything else, or try to be anything else, but one that simply revolutionizes how we work on these bloomin' little thingies called "pee cees."
Wow. Lots of people calling the OP names, here. But for those of you looking for work, there are jobs out there. You may have to think outside the box, but if you're good, you can find work. (Disclaimer: if you're in an area with a really tanked-up economy, you may have to move. I'm speaking in general. I'm also speaking more of administration, IT and support than I am of programming; that's a different animal.)
Example: walk into a growing local business and point out that you can make them more efficient, save them money and/or give them a better presence on the Web. They'll listen. Be ready to demonstrate your skills, and/or be willing to work at reduced pay for a "trial" period while they check you out.
Take my business (broadcasting). A decade and a half ago, we had digital audio workstations, but I was on a Compuserve dialup for Internet access. Very few people even had a computer. Now, we're all high speed, everything is audio over IP, everyone not only has a desktop PC, but also has a laptop, tablet or smartphone, and we (engineering) are expected to understand and work with them all. And we DO.
So, to the OP: first, sorry, but you WILL have to be willing to work with non-open source stuff. There are few opportunities for open source-only jobs. Sorry, but that's life, get over it. We have to look after a mish-mash that includes Windows, Macs and Open Source.
Speaking from the employer's perspective, I'm willing to pay a decent wage, but I've got to get value in return. (It ASTONISHES me the number of people who come looking for work who can't seem to grasp that.)
My assistant, Todd, came to us as the computer nerd from his local church. Since then, he has become one of our company's top people and I love him to death. More importantly, he has demonstrated -- repeatedly -- that he can save money for the company and justify his salary.
Ex.: the vendor wanted thousands of dollars to upgrade the old Novell servers on our audio network to Windows Server 2008. Todd and I did it ourselves (yes, working with WINDERS, ewwww) and saved the company a ton of money.
BUT ... we use Open Source, too. A LOT. We get a lot of value from it. Example, Todd maintains a terminal server (based on Scientific Linux, i.e., a clone of RHEL) that allows us to use older PCs in the studios for employee Internet access. I maintain the company's mail server, Web server and a host of other stuff, all Open Source. It's a mix. Every job has what you like, and what you don't like. You learn to live with both.
And there are other bonuses: I still have the pictures of the first time Todd, the quintessential computer geek, had to crawl around at a transmitter site brazing copper ground straps. Priceless. :)
> It's clearly impossible for an optical telescope on the Earth to resolve any of the Apollo hardware on the Moon
Of course it is, and I didn't say otherwise. Maybe I should have been clearer. "Powerful telescope" would apply to one in Earth orbit, or better yet, one in orbit around the moon.
I would be very surprised if the Soviets didn't carefully check to confirm that the moon landings actually happened; if they hadn't, you can believe that they'd have raised a fuss about it, if no one else did. :)
It isn't ironic, it's sad, that 40 years later, there are people who honestly believe that the moon landings were faked.
The fact that you can see the landing site with a powerful telescope apparently isn't good enough for some people.
-- Stephen
> Why mod this up?
I certainly found it "Interesting" and "Insightful." I, too, have done reverse engineering, and it's a gold-plated pain in the butt. He's dead right about that. The key point -- and one that I emphatically agree with -- is that when you're forced to reverse engineer, you're almost by default behind the curve.
Software can be copyrighted, but unlike most other copyrighted works, copies of the original aren't always available to the general public. With a book, periodical, or song, I could go to the US Library of Congress and see the original, copyrighted form of the work. Software is typically redacted (heavily) to protect "trade secrets."
I'm stuck with a completely-proprietary, Top Secret(tm) and otherwise obsfucated (with a nod to Matt Pietrek, and a bonus goes to anyone who remembers that one!) codec with HD Radio. It drives me crazy. I'd love to tinker with and improve the audio, but can't.
Even more annoying: the Program Associated Data (PAD) is a possible source of all sorts of innovation .. .. . but it's not worth the time and bother to reverse-engineer it to figure out how they do it now(*). I'm stuck waiting for iBiquity to decide to implement some of the ideas that we've asked for.
(*) - what makes this frustrating is that iBiquity has taken a publicly-available standard, ID3 tagging, and has adapted it for HD Radio. The original HD release simply "burst" dumb packets filled with ID3 tags via UDP. Now they've replaced it with a TCP connection, with handshaking ... considerably more difficult to figure out.
> Corporations act as representatives of their shareholders. If you remove the rights for corporations to speak on their own
> behalf, you are removing the collective 1st amendment rights of a whole lot of people. The same is true of labor unions.
I agree with that in principle, though I'm no great lover of large corporations at the moment. I guarantee you that any attempt to silence corporate voices, while allowing other collective voices to be heard, would immediately be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
The problem is deciding what is "acceptable" or "allowed" speech. Frankly, nothing has frightened me more in the past 10 years than the rise of the assertion that not all speech should be given the same protection. At the end of the day, most of it just looks like simply allowing those with whom you agree to speak, while aggressively silencing those who might disagree with you.
Simply put, if the government can silence corporations, they could do it to non-profit groups. If they could do it to non-profits, they could indeed silence unions. They could then silence churches, and civic clubs, and -- eventually -- even political parties that have been declared "subversive."
It's better to err on the side of maximum speech, while holding your nose when people with whom you disagree choose to exercise that right. (Or better yet, just don't listen to them.) (Or even better than that, find a voice for your point of view and make it heard.)
Or as one wise fellow once said, with his finger to his nose, "I'm all in favor of censorship ... as long as *I* get to be the censor." :)
With Loser Pay embedded in the Constitution. (If you try to just do it via legislation, the courts will find some way around it.) The United States is the ONLY Western Democracy that doesn't follow the "English Rule" in litigation.
If the MPAA, the RIAA, and any other "AA" group wanted to sue you, they'd have to think twice if they knew that you could get attorney's fees from them if (when) you win. Right now, the primary reason why threats of litigation are so effective is because they KNOW that most people will be bankrupted by legal fees, even if they win in court.
> v4 security devices don't understand what's happening with v6 traffic tunneling
Whew. I'm beginning to be amazed at the straight-laced, "we must do it this way because it's the proper and pure way to do it" mentality on the part of IPv6 Fanbois.
My (relatively) small internal network, BEING v4, uses precisely ZERO v6 traffic tunneling. ZERO. :)
(Whew again.)
The only place where such tunneling will take place is OUTSIDE of my premises.
Ergo, should I ever bang up against it, all I would need is some translation/conversion method at my interface with The Tubes(tm).
(Pause)
I have to say, this entire thread has been an education in the "You MUST switch to IPv6 everywhere and right away!" mentality. I'll say that much. The arguments just assume that everyone will directly connect ever computer inside the premises directly to the Internet.
Even if we switch entirely to IPv6, I can assure you: that will NEVER happen in our facilities. Never, ever. We will ALWAYS isolate our internal networks from the rest of the world.
> Sounds prone to break
Why? Millions of routers -- many of which are built in to the DSL modems that litter the landscape -- have been doing NAT with IPv4 for years. This just isn't that deep and it's extremely mature technology.
Currently, it goes something like this:
1. My PC, on a "192" internal address, wants to go to Google.
2. DNS lookup, get IPv4 address for Google.
3. The request goes through the default gateway in the router. On the way out, the router records my "192" IP address, changes the source to its own (Internet-routable) one, tags with a unique port number, and sends it to Google.
4. Google's response comes back to my router. It looks up my "192" address with that unique port number and returns the response to my PC. I gets my web page, wipe hands on pants and repeat as needed.
All you have to do to translate IPv6 transparently is add a couple of steps and change the last two slightly.
1-1/2: Everyone's internal PC uses the router for DNS. (Many DHCP servers already set it this way by default, BTW.)
2-1/2: When the router looks up the actual IP address, if it's IPv6, the router stores the IPv6 number and returns a unique, but made-up, IPv4 address as the response to the requester. (Or, tags it with a unique port number. Whatever. Just some way to tag it.)
3: On the way out in this case, the router sees the unique tag, knows that I'm trying to get to Google. It changes the request to true-blue IPv6 with a port number (or some other tagging), then sends it to Google.
4: On the way back, the router notes the tag, sees that I made the request, and sends it back to my IPv4 PC. Once again, rinse and repeat as needed.
In other words, the router transparently handles all of that messy IPv6 stuff for me. If IPv6 is needed, it translates on the fly. That's just what I came up with off the top of my head. Someone smarter than me could easily refine this.
If I'm ever forced to do so, I'll write my own code, probably based on dnsmasq or some other open source DNS cacher. But I'm not going to go through the expense and headache of changing my entire internal IPv4 network just to satisfy the IPv6 "purists" when there's NO NEED FOR ME TO DO SO.
To repeat: this just is NOT that deep.
> tunneling ...
NO. I said "translate," and that's what I meant. (Part of the problem I've had when dealing with IPv6 Fanbois is that they think only inside their box and within their rules.)
Tunneling essentially refers to encapsulating (for example) an IPv4 stream with headers so that it can be sent over IPv6; at the other end, the additional headers are stripped off and viola, you have IPv4 again. You're not actually "translating" the IP addresses.
Look at it this way: inside my IPv4 network, I'm already using NAT. Someone browses to Google.com, the router NATs it out onto the Internet, brings the response back in, then returns it to the original requesting PC.
It would be *criminally* simple to add IPv6-to-4 translation to that. When my browser requests "somenewipv6site.com," (i.e., an IPv6-only site), the router/modem/whatever notes that its an IPv6 address. It does NAT stuff, send the request in IPv6 form, then translates back to IPv4 for the internal network.
Simple, quick, easy. I could do it by patching some code into a good caching DNS server. Dnsmasq could do it.
Ergo, it will only be a matter of time until little $100 "Blue Boxes" appear that will do just what I described. You enter the name of the site into your Web browser, mail client, or whatever, and the Magic Box(tm) takes care of the details for you. Your internal network can stay IPv4 until the heat death of the universe, if you so choose.
One last time: if I wanted to, I could choose not to even use TCP/IP internally. I could use something else entirely different. The fact that I probably wouldn't is beside the point.
> The old divisions
Which is why I keep saying: forget about Republican or Democrat. Or if you insist, work the primaries to get sensible people nominated for November. That way, you can still vote for your choice of party, but feel like you're voting for something at least half-useful.
Senators are little more difficult, because they're statewide, but if you raise enough stink in your district, you'll be surprised what you can accomplish re: your Representative in the House.
One primary to watch here in Alabama is Spencer Bacchus'. I think he's going to be badly surprised and disappointed come primary time in a few months. There are a LOT of people angry in his district. :)
Personally, I don't care what label they wear, as long as they'll quit trying to do an end run around that "pesky" Bill of Rights-thing.
> But in order to access IPv6 content on the internet, your local devices are going to have v6 addresses anyway ...
No they won't! That is completely incorrect. That's one of the most common misconceptions about IPv6. As I said above: it is entirely possible to have an internal network that doesn't even use TCP/IP at all. All you'd need is a *translation* mechanism at the gateway to the Internet.
That's what many people are doing right now when you use a paid wireless data plan -- for example, I can tether my Android to my laptop. The laptop is 100% IPv4; IPv6 is *disabled.* But my wireless network is IPv6. Not a problem, my smartphone translates everything for me and I don't even have to think about it.
My *ISP* is still IPv4 on its local network. Their backbone from ATT is still IPv4. They're tunneling and translating everything for us.
The flipside: people who are on an IPv6 provider will be given a dynamic IPv6 address by their ISP. But the translation is done at the Internet gateway. The people inside that building don't know and don't care. They enter "google.com" in their Web browser and they get a search page.
Get this straight in your head. There is nothing that COMPELS anyone to use IPv6 in house IPv6 has some real benefits, and I certainly don't hate it. But I'm not going to spend thousands of dollars converting my internal systems when I DO NOT HAVE TO.
One of our morning talk show hosts -- who's about as conservative as they come -- devoted most of his program to SOPA and PIPA this morming. As a result, a lot of people who'd never heard of it are now very annoyed and are expressing their displeasure toward their Congress Critters. :)
Heh. Heh, heh.
I'm actually feeling pretty encouraged this morning. It has been a while since I felt that way.
> For a *home network* you're correct ...
Change that to "small-to-medium-sized network" and I might agree with you. Everyone talks about the "1% vs. the 99%" ... well, that applies to networking, too. The vast, VAST majority of us only need IPv6 on the Internet. We are perfectly fine with IPv4 internally.
Now, if you have a big, multi-city network that is all tied together over the Public Tubes(tm) (with a nod to the late Sen Stevens), yeah, you need IPv6. But you are part of a very small minority. Don't make the mistake of assuming that because YOU need it, everyone else does. More importantly, don't give me the gimlet eye and scold me because I haven't switched in-house to something that I DO. NOT. NEED.
What is actually going to happen is, DLink, Linksys and the other usual suspects are going to produce $100 "interface/translator" boxes that will "speak" IPv6 where needed. Whenever I run into a situation where I just can't avoid IPv6, I'll throw something like that inline (or a Linux box with a good distro, for that matter -- I already do that all the time now).
The idea that everyone and everything, from your television to your printer to your average small office filled with PCs is going to immediately jump on the IPv6 bandwagon is just silly. It's not going to happen, not for a very long time to come.
We will make sure we're IPv6-ready on our Internet-facing Web and Mail servers, but in-house, we are in no hurry at all. Most of the equipment that we use is IPv4 -- even the stuff purchased in the past year. We have microwave data links between our studios and transmitters, for example, that are IPv4-only. Our audio-over-IP network is all IPv4. The manufacturers of this equipment have no plans to support IPv6 for some time to come, and it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace it. Ergo, it's not going to happen, especially not in this economy.
Internally, we'd have to do a "mixed" IPv4/IPv6 network and it's just not worth the expense and bother. If it works, don't fix it.
I just wrote an article for an industry trade magazine, and that's what I told my fellow broadcast engineers: looking toward the Internet, think IPv6. But when you turn around and look back in-house, it's your choice. If you can do it, go ahead; if not, don't worry about it and don't let anyone browbeat you over it. It's your decision.
Technically, you don't have to use TCP/IP in-house at all; you could use something completely different if you really wanted to. You'd need something to translate from your network to the Internet if you want outside access, but in house, you could do whatever you wanted.
That's admittedly not likely, but it's at least a possibility.
For the record, I know of only one location that sells E85 in this area. Doesn't mean there aren't others, but if there are, I haven't seen them.
One of the talk shows on our station is a good ol' boy who talks auto repair. He insists -- vehemently -- that ethanol lowers mileage so much that whatever you saved on emissions, you lose because you're burning more fuel as a result. The callers to that show seem to echo that sentiment.
I know in my own car (Nissan Altima, and I LOVE it), I seem to get a bit more mileage when I'm burning pure gasoline -- about 5% more.
YMMV (literally, in this case) and that's hardly scientific, but there you go. :)
Around here, very few of the known thieves are meth heads. That's a stereotype.
> At a certain point having a "welfare state" might become cheaper overall.
We have cameras. We have alarms. The guy who jumped the fence in this case was aware of both. He wore a mask because of the camera, and like I said, he knew the response time and was in and out before the cops could get there.
The most cost-effective solution is to have the site monitored by cameras 24/7. But then you still have the problem of police response time.
Having a guard on site? That would work, but it's very expensive. For a marginal operation, it could literally drive them out of business.
The economy here in Birmingham isn't that bad, because our primary employer is healthcare and the service industry.
We still have tons and tons of copper and aluminum theft. When the thieves are caught, most of them are NOT crack heads, and they're not from lower-income families. Some of them are guys with regular jobs during the day. They do it to make extra money, because the scrap yards look the other way when they bring in the metal, and because they enjoy it.
> At a certain point having a "welfare state" might become cheaper overall.
Then how come all of those kids -- well-dressed, well looked after by the state, with free health care, and told from childhood that they're "just as good and just as important" as anyone else -- rioted in France and England? Why the image on London television of the teens cheering as they destroy shops and homes?
Just asking.
(What you're saying sounds good in theory, and I know that's being taught aggressively in sociology classes nowadays, but those of us who live in the real world, dealing with real people, know that it ain't quite that simple ...)