I'm sad to say it, but I think it's true. I was a hard core OS/2 user through OS/2 Warp (I think that was 2.1). It was very good, but when windows 95 came out and was more stable, plus had better application support, I couldn't see why I should continue using it. OS/2's windows compatibility only got worse over time.
Don't get me wrong, I wish OS/2 took over and we were all using it instead of windows, I think we'd be far better off.
Hopefully the linux world can learn something from that. If Microsoft ever gets the upper hand in the areas where Linux excels, it will be very bad for Linux. Not as bad as it was for OS/2 though, if for no other reason than the price of Linux.
You can use cygwin to develop mingw apps which don't use any of the cygwin runtime (they use the MS runtime dlls which are on all windows systems), and are thus freely distributable as commercial binaries.
I just today received an email from Qwest saying that I should switch over soon, but they were not going to discontinue service as of January 21 as they originally had stated. I wonder if that is because of problems with the switch, or if it's because people had complained.
By the way, the simplest way to avoid the issue is to do what I did and pay a little more for the business class service from Qwest. You can get static IP's and their TOS allowes web servers & stuff. They even let you control your reverse dns.
I guess I should have put a smiley face on that last comment, because I meant it as a sort of troll.
I have nothing against STL in general, but some compilers have had problems which caused the use of STL to make your program very very large. By bloat I mean large. But I use STL when I need it and again with a good compiler it's not a problem.
That has been true in the past, but with modern compilers (like gcc) you will get very similar code and only a slight increase in overhead (vtables) with C++ over C. Lots of people are using C++ in small embedded systems now.
Since I don't know you I hope you won't take this personally...it's just something to consider.
I started working in IT full time when I was 16 (I graduated from HS early). I felt I was being discriminated against because of my age a lot over the years, and I know many times I was right. Looking back however I realize I wasn't as experienced or mature as I thought, and while I think I was exceptionally good at my job, that lack of maturity and experience kept me from being promoted as I felt I deserved.
One thing I learned is that people will often tell you something like "the boss just doesn't like you because of xxxx" when really they don't want to tell you the truth, which is "you are too immature to work here". A few of my younger friends over the years got fired because they were simply too immature, but that's not what they were told. People don't want to hurt your feelings, so they sometimes tell you something that will hurt less, or is easier to say.
Ok, having said that...even if it is discrimination, all you can do is try to be mature about it. If they are going to treat you lousy, find another place to work. In my experience (I'm 29 now) some people can deal with a young person who is technically bright better than others. You will enjoy working with those people the most.
I've lost about 42 pounds since may, and it's been relatively easy. I'd recommend you keep it simple. Here are my 3 easy steps:
1. Figure out what your regular diet consists of, and look at the fat and caloric values. I for instance was eating fast food for lunch every day, but I was eating a burger and fries. I found that I could eat something just as filling with 1/3 - 1/2 the calories. I started my diet by switching to a chicken burger and something other than fries for a side, and instead of hitting mcdonalds for breakfast I did a bagel. Later I improved even more once I saw results (now I do a slimfast for breakfast and a veggie burrito for lunch).
2. Drink lots of water. When you feel hungry, drink water instead of a snack or soda if it's between meals. I drink several litres a day of water.
3. Regular (but doesn't have to be vigorous) exercise. I do a 30 minute work out 3 times a week (some weights and light cardio), and I go for a walk with my wife for about 20 minutes every night. It's not tough, and I'm sure it has made me much more healthy. I certainly feel better about myself.
The important thing is consistancy. I eat basically the same thing every day, so the odd day when I eat cheese fries or something I don't have to feel guilty, because I know my normal routine is good. If you start out by eating healthy six days out of the week you can look forward to the things you want on the 7th day, and you won't feel like you are depriving yourself. After a while I stopped wanting the unhealthy food and now the thought of eating a cheeseburger is not desirable.
Just because France is doing something doesn't mean that the US should do the same. We'd have serious problems if that was how we decided our future (by France's example).
Just try out http://www.spambouncer.org/ and you will have little to no spam problems. I've used it for 2 months now and it's succesfully filtered 700+ pieces of spam, only once flagging some mail from a friend (who used all BCC receipients), and only twice letting spam through.
The thing is that all the drivers are buggy and/or incomplete to the point that you can't just open up the OpenGL book and write code that works on any driver out there.
When a developer is making a game they end up doing tricks to get the best performance out of the most common cards. So what happens is the more prominent developers make contacts with the driver developers at the video card companies, who make specific changes to accomodate some feature or design that the game developer needs. This often works both ways, with the driver developers guiding the game developer on how to get better performance, etc.
The point is that 3d graphics are complicated enough to not make it as simple as having an API that performs the same on multiple games and cards. Both the game developers and the video card manufacturers are doing this stuff. I doubt you will see this changing in the near future. But I don't think it's a conspiracy.
I agree 100%. I'm very much against high taxes and big government, but I would be proud to pay more taxes if I knew they were being spent for actual scientific research and space exploration.
About the most I can do now is join the mars society. They have lofty goals, but as the previous poster said, we need to go to the moon again and build a base there.
I think he was way out of touch and not a good leader at all.
While he ran NASA he allowed a massive brain drain (good engineers going to commercial jobs), increased the bureaucracy and was very much against commercial opportunities.
Add it all up and it's huge lost opportunities for space exploration. He was against space tourism for one thing.
I hope NASA gets a new leader who actually wants to see scientific advancement and increased space exploration, not just empire building
Actually, no I didn't just read the press release and post my comments. I read the press release weeks ago when it came out, and I've actually got a few of these cards on order.
Your point about stepping down is true, my point though is if you look at the speed/range on a chart you will see that the only way you will get that 100mbps throughput is at 20feet with no multipath. Even 11mbps 802.11 will drop down to 2mbps very quickly.
So what's the point of worrying about 100+ megabit when you are actually only going to get a couple?
Still, like I said it's a good start. As you said the band is clearer. This card is only meant for early adopters and enginering people really. It's a preview of what's coming.
All others are mostly oems of one of the above vendors. I've found the Lucent Orinoco to be well supported under linux, but I think the Cisco Aironet 350 wins hands down.
It has great support under linux and windows (I've got the commercial product AiroPeek from wildpackets and the cisco is a nice sniffer with it). The latest linux cisco driver is supposed to do sniffing, but I haven't tried that yet.
If you pay a little more for the cisco with the antenna connectors you will be happy. Get a cheap mag-mount antenna and drive around the parking lots with airsnort for all sorts of fun.:)
The prism based nics are nice but support under linux isn't always as good as lucent and cisco. You can get sniffer mode working with the linux-wlan drivers if you apply the patch which I don't have the link for at the moment. I'll reply to my own message when I find it.
The bottom line is I'd buy cisco for nics. The prices are coming down. APs are another story.:)
I have just about every 802.11b card ever made sitting on my desk at work because I wrote an 802.11 stack for some hardware my company makes and I needed to test compatability. I've never seen what you are looking for though.
It doesn't surprise me since the RF part of 802.11 cards takes a lot of room, and there isn't room for an antenna and a dongle or rj45 connector. I'd reccomend you do what I've done...eject one card and plug the other in.:)
One of the challenges with a microwave signal in a office environment is to avoid the problems caused by reflections. The DSS system used by 802.11 is good at dealing with multipath, but I think even if you managed to get a stronger signal off a reflector like that, you the radios on the other side wouldn't be able to get a lock on the signal due to the huge multipath problem you introduced.
You are probably a lot better off using a very high gain antenna on the AP. The nice thing about high gain antennas is that it works both ways (tx and rx). You can pick up a +8db Omnidirectional antenna for a reasonable price and that will probably help you get through the walls a little better.
Sadly a lot of tcp implementations including some telnet implementations disable NAGLE, mainly because people don't understand why it is a good thing. Nagle is good for 99% of TCP applications, but it's the first thing many programmers disable when searching for a performance boost. *sigh*
Those people generally don't have to try to squeze performance out of a network.
I would think that unless you are a terribly slow typist that the NAGLE algorithm in TCP would defeat packet sniffing and analyzing the timing of the keystrokes.
For thos who are wondering what nagle is, it's an algorithm that helps TCP avoid sending a packet for every key stroke on telnet connections among other things.
At one point not too long ago I was able to find the 802.11 1997 standard pdf file on ieee's website for free. Their site isn't well organized and I can't find it again. As a member I was able to purchase the 1999 version as a pdf for about $180. Depending on what you need it for, you probably will find most of what you want to know from the book The IEEE 802.11 Handbook : A Designer's Companion, but even that's expensive for what you get (a small paperback).
I'd really like to see ieee give out free pdf for use in open source projects, but I seriously doubt that will ever happen.:(
Keep in mind WEP stands for "Wired Equivilancy Protocol" which means it's meant to be about as secure as physical ethernet cables.
Yeah, there's a big hole in WEP, but in order to crack it the person would have to have a lot of equipment that isn't readily available, not to mention cryptoanalysis expertise. It would probably be a lot easier for them to break into your building and put a device on the network somewhere and capture packets.
It's not as if you can wander within range of a WEP protected network and just start sniffing. First off the NIC has to associate and authenticate with the AP to even get the packets past the MAC layer. You can turn access control on with most APs so you only allow certain MAC addresses. Even if they got past that layer they're going to not be able to sniff anything because the MAC chip in the card will discard anything it can't decrypt, even in promiscuous mode.
The only way they could sniff you out with 802.11 and WEP would be to have some custom hardware and software to bypass the MAC layer(or be able to rewrite the firmware for an existing card). Anyone who goes to these lengths are going to be able to get past your pysical security anyway.
That's just not true. Your employment is at will if you have no other contract backing it up, which means that you can leave at any time without any obligation, and they can let you go at any time without any reason (so long as they aren't breaking a law by discriminating against you) or obligation (other than what is provider for by law, such as COBRA in the US).
But you cannot be held to any non-compete agreement which you did not explicitly agree to. The only exception would be giving away trade secrets, which you can often be prevented from doing even if you don't work for a company.
The only defense is, upon receiving an offer, to ask for a copy of the employment agreement. Then use that to negotiate or base your decision to work. Don't let them spring it on you once you've already burned your bridges.
Absolutley!
I've always asked to see whatever contracts they want me to sign as well as the entire employee manual before I accept a job. I'm surprised how few people must ask for this because the HR departments always act like I'm from the moon or something -- but they always cooperate.
At this point you can negotiate changes in the contract & stuff if you need to.
As far as an existing employer trying to push a new contract on me -- I'd be gone before they knew what hit them. We're in too much demand to be treated like that!
There is no reason anyone in this industry (computer software/hardware) should have to agree to a blanket non-compete to get a good job.
The only compensation that would be worth signing for would be if you were going to get paid over 100% of your salary for the entire length of the time you couldn't compete.
In this industry we are often asked to sign confidentiality agreements, which are entirely different. We simply cannot divulge another companies secrets. That makes sense. But agreeing to not compete in the computer industry is ridiculous. Usually it's common in other industries because they are customer oriented (ie. most banks and insurance companies offer pretty much the same services, it's mainly a game of getting the customer base) and they don't want one person walking away with the customer base because they know the customers well.
So let's do ourselves a big collective favor and refuse to sign any non-compete agreements!
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I'm sad to say it, but I think it's true. I was a hard core OS/2 user through OS/2 Warp (I think that was 2.1). It was very good, but when windows 95 came out and was more stable, plus had better application support, I couldn't see why I should continue using it. OS/2's windows compatibility only got worse over time.
Don't get me wrong, I wish OS/2 took over and we were all using it instead of windows, I think we'd be far better off.
Hopefully the linux world can learn something from that. If Microsoft ever gets the upper hand in the areas where Linux excels, it will be very bad for Linux. Not as bad as it was for OS/2 though, if for no other reason than the price of Linux.
You can use cygwin to develop mingw apps which don't use any of the cygwin runtime (they use the MS runtime dlls which are on all windows systems), and are thus freely distributable as commercial binaries.
I just today received an email from Qwest saying that I should switch over soon, but they were not going to discontinue service as of January 21 as they originally had stated. I wonder if that is because of problems with the switch, or if it's because people had complained.
By the way, the simplest way to avoid the issue is to do what I did and pay a little more for the business class service from Qwest. You can get static IP's and their TOS allowes web servers & stuff. They even let you control your reverse dns.
I guess I should have put a smiley face on that last comment, because I meant it as a sort of troll.
I have nothing against STL in general, but some compilers have had problems which caused the use of STL to make your program very very large. By bloat I mean large. But I use STL when I need it and again with a good compiler it's not a problem.
That has been true in the past, but with modern compilers (like gcc) you will get very similar code and only a slight increase in overhead (vtables) with C++ over C. Lots of people are using C++ in small embedded systems now.
Real bloat comes from libraries like STL...
Since I don't know you I hope you won't take this personally...it's just something to consider.
I started working in IT full time when I was 16 (I graduated from HS early). I felt I was being discriminated against because of my age a lot over the years, and I know many times I was right. Looking back however I realize I wasn't as experienced or mature as I thought, and while I think I was exceptionally good at my job, that lack of maturity and experience kept me from being promoted as I felt I deserved.
One thing I learned is that people will often tell you something like "the boss just doesn't like you because of xxxx" when really they don't want to tell you the truth, which is "you are too immature to work here". A few of my younger friends over the years got fired because they were simply too immature, but that's not what they were told. People don't want to hurt your feelings, so they sometimes tell you something that will hurt less, or is easier to say.
Ok, having said that...even if it is discrimination, all you can do is try to be mature about it. If they are going to treat you lousy, find another place to work. In my experience (I'm 29 now) some people can deal with a young person who is technically bright better than others. You will enjoy working with those people the most.
I've lost about 42 pounds since may, and it's been relatively easy. I'd recommend you keep it simple. Here are my 3 easy steps:
1. Figure out what your regular diet consists of, and look at the fat and caloric values. I for instance was eating fast food for lunch every day, but I was eating a burger and fries. I found that I could eat something just as filling with 1/3 - 1/2 the calories. I started my diet by switching to a chicken burger and something other than fries for a side, and instead of hitting mcdonalds for breakfast I did a bagel. Later I improved even more once I saw results (now I do a slimfast for breakfast and a veggie burrito for lunch).
2. Drink lots of water. When you feel hungry, drink water instead of a snack or soda if it's between meals. I drink several litres a day of water.
3. Regular (but doesn't have to be vigorous) exercise. I do a 30 minute work out 3 times a week (some weights and light cardio), and I go for a walk with my wife for about 20 minutes every night. It's not tough, and I'm sure it has made me much more healthy. I certainly feel better about myself.
The important thing is consistancy. I eat basically the same thing every day, so the odd day when I eat cheese fries or something I don't have to feel guilty, because I know my normal routine is good. If you start out by eating healthy six days out of the week you can look forward to the things you want on the 7th day, and you won't feel like you are depriving yourself. After a while I stopped wanting the unhealthy food and now the thought of eating a cheeseburger is not desirable.
As the headline says:
Just because France is doing something doesn't mean that the US should do the same. We'd have serious problems if that was how we decided our future (by France's example).
Just try out http://www.spambouncer.org/ and you will have little to no spam problems. I've used it for 2 months now and it's succesfully filtered 700+ pieces of spam, only once flagging some mail from a friend (who used all BCC receipients), and only twice letting spam through.
When a developer is making a game they end up doing tricks to get the best performance out of the most common cards. So what happens is the more prominent developers make contacts with the driver developers at the video card companies, who make specific changes to accomodate some feature or design that the game developer needs. This often works both ways, with the driver developers guiding the game developer on how to get better performance, etc.
The point is that 3d graphics are complicated enough to not make it as simple as having an API that performs the same on multiple games and cards. Both the game developers and the video card manufacturers are doing this stuff. I doubt you will see this changing in the near future. But I don't think it's a conspiracy.
About the most I can do now is join the mars society. They have lofty goals, but as the previous poster said, we need to go to the moon again and build a base there.
I think he was way out of touch and not a good leader at all.
While he ran NASA he allowed a massive brain drain (good engineers going to commercial jobs), increased the bureaucracy and was very much against commercial opportunities.
Add it all up and it's huge lost opportunities for space exploration. He was against space tourism for one thing.
I hope NASA gets a new leader who actually wants to see scientific advancement and increased space exploration, not just empire building
Actually, no I didn't just read the press release and post my comments. I read the press release weeks ago when it came out, and I've actually got a few of these cards on order.
Your point about stepping down is true, my point though is if you look at the speed/range on a chart you will see that the only way you will get that 100mbps throughput is at 20feet with no multipath. Even 11mbps 802.11 will drop down to 2mbps very quickly.
So what's the point of worrying about 100+ megabit when you are actually only going to get a couple?
Still, like I said it's a good start. As you said the band is clearer. This card is only meant for early adopters and enginering people really. It's a preview of what's coming.
All of 20 feet is going to be real useful!
Also, the 2x mode is proprietary so you won't be able to mix with other vendors cards.
But it's a good start.
There are basically 3 cards out there,
:)
:)
Lucent
Cisco
Prism
All others are mostly oems of one of the above vendors. I've found the Lucent Orinoco to be well supported under linux, but I think the Cisco Aironet 350 wins hands down.
It has great support under linux and windows (I've got the commercial product AiroPeek from wildpackets and the cisco is a nice sniffer with it). The latest linux cisco driver is supposed to do sniffing, but I haven't tried that yet.
If you pay a little more for the cisco with the antenna connectors you will be happy. Get a cheap mag-mount antenna and drive around the parking lots with airsnort for all sorts of fun.
The prism based nics are nice but support under linux isn't always as good as lucent and cisco. You can get sniffer mode working with the linux-wlan drivers if you apply the patch which I don't have the link for at the moment. I'll reply to my own message when I find it.
The bottom line is I'd buy cisco for nics. The prices are coming down. APs are another story.
I have just about every 802.11b card ever made sitting on my desk at work because I wrote an 802.11 stack for some hardware my company makes and I needed to test compatability. I've never seen what you are looking for though.
:)
It doesn't surprise me since the RF part of 802.11 cards takes a lot of room, and there isn't room for an antenna and a dongle or rj45 connector. I'd reccomend you do what I've done...eject one card and plug the other in.
One of the challenges with a microwave signal in a office environment is to avoid the problems caused by reflections. The DSS system used by 802.11 is good at dealing with multipath, but I think even if you managed to get a stronger signal off a reflector like that, you the radios on the other side wouldn't be able to get a lock on the signal due to the huge multipath problem you introduced.
You are probably a lot better off using a very high gain antenna on the AP. The nice thing about high gain antennas is that it works both ways (tx and rx). You can pick up a +8db Omnidirectional antenna for a reasonable price and that will probably help you get through the walls a little better.
Sadly a lot of tcp implementations including some telnet implementations disable NAGLE, mainly because people don't understand why it is a good thing. Nagle is good for 99% of TCP applications, but it's the first thing many programmers disable when searching for a performance boost. *sigh*
Those people generally don't have to try to squeze performance out of a network.
I would think that unless you are a terribly slow typist that the NAGLE algorithm in TCP would defeat packet sniffing and analyzing the timing of the keystrokes.
For thos who are wondering what nagle is, it's an algorithm that helps TCP avoid sending a packet for every key stroke on telnet connections among other things.
I'd really like to see ieee give out free pdf for use in open source projects, but I seriously doubt that will ever happen. :(
Yeah, there's a big hole in WEP, but in order to crack it the person would have to have a lot of equipment that isn't readily available, not to mention cryptoanalysis expertise. It would probably be a lot easier for them to break into your building and put a device on the network somewhere and capture packets.
It's not as if you can wander within range of a WEP protected network and just start sniffing. First off the NIC has to associate and authenticate with the AP to even get the packets past the MAC layer. You can turn access control on with most APs so you only allow certain MAC addresses. Even if they got past that layer they're going to not be able to sniff anything because the MAC chip in the card will discard anything it can't decrypt, even in promiscuous mode.
The only way they could sniff you out with 802.11 and WEP would be to have some custom hardware and software to bypass the MAC layer(or be able to rewrite the firmware for an existing card). Anyone who goes to these lengths are going to be able to get past your pysical security anyway.
That's just not true. Your employment is at will if you have no other contract backing it up, which means that you can leave at any time without any obligation, and they can let you go at any time without any reason (so long as they aren't breaking a law by discriminating against you) or obligation (other than what is provider for by law, such as COBRA in the US).
But you cannot be held to any non-compete agreement which you did not explicitly agree to. The only exception would be giving away trade secrets, which you can often be prevented from doing even if you don't work for a company.
Absolutley!
I've always asked to see whatever contracts they want me to sign as well as the entire employee manual before I accept a job. I'm surprised how few people must ask for this because the HR departments always act like I'm from the moon or something -- but they always cooperate.
At this point you can negotiate changes in the contract & stuff if you need to.
As far as an existing employer trying to push a new contract on me -- I'd be gone before they knew what hit them. We're in too much demand to be treated like that!
The only compensation that would be worth signing for would be if you were going to get paid over 100% of your salary for the entire length of the time you couldn't compete.
In this industry we are often asked to sign confidentiality agreements, which are entirely different. We simply cannot divulge another companies secrets. That makes sense. But agreeing to not compete in the computer industry is ridiculous. Usually it's common in other industries because they are customer oriented (ie. most banks and insurance companies offer pretty much the same services, it's mainly a game of getting the customer base) and they don't want one person walking away with the customer base because they know the customers well.
So let's do ourselves a big collective favor and refuse to sign any non-compete agreements!