Please don't take this as a personal attack, but what the hell are you talking about?
Have we, the people of the US, not made it clear what our "value-add" is in the global internet commerce arena? (Or Global Commerce of any type?)
We're the CONSUMERS!
We have the highest per capita income, and spend to excess all over the place. We are the reason that most of you enjoy a trade surplus. When we are out of money, we will continue to buy things by borrowing still more money.
If you build your own DNS system, cutting yourselves off from US consumers, you'll only me limiting the amount of revenue that we can pump into your economies. Sure, you've banded under the umbrella of the EU, and you've streamlined your ability to buy and sell among yourselves, but divorcing yourselves from the spending power of American consumers makes bad business sense.
Ultimately, what Europe and the rest of the world are going to do about this "problem" is drop it, and mosey on to the next percieved crisis with their tail between their legs. If I'm wrong, I'll eat my hat (which will not be a hat that I've purchased from a European-owned business via their web portal, apparently).
I agree that Europeans are more open-minded than Americans, but I can get to every permissive/tasteless/purient website in Europe (or anywhere else) from the United States. There's plenty of things on the Internet that are patently offensive, but I can get to all of them if I choose.
Where does this fear of US controlled Internet censorship come from?
If the UN were to be entrusted with the care and feeding of DNS, nations that had a real interest in censorship (China, Middle Eastern states, etc.) would have a much greater opportunity to bend the Internet to their liking.
Let's have this conversation again after the US has a demonstrated track record of doing "the wrong thing" for the global Internet community.
Lastly, hasn't the US responded every time Europe has been in crisis? How about a little credit? It's this kind of petty bullshit that makes us so resistant to sharing in the management of critical infrastructure in the first place.
The real danger...
on
Zombie Lurch
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Here we have these people crying wolf. If these kind of events become routine, how will any of us know when the real zombie outbreaks occur?
We'll all have been lured into a false sense of security:
"Oh, those zombies? Don't worry about them. They're just pretending. Hey, look how realistic... That blood around their mouths, and the rotting flesh effects, they almost look real. BRAVO zombie immitators, Bravo. OUCH! THAT'S MY BRAIN YOU'RE EATING YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!"
But then it's too late.
I strongly discourage these events. The next time I see a zombie horde, I want to feel secure in the knowledge that it really is time to naplam the streets, and start taking head-shots at my formerly peaceful neighbors.
This is an interesting side-effect of promoting BGP "stability."
Many times, ISPs will nail-up routes (pointing a prefix to the null interface with an undesirable administrative distance, and routing traffic based on the dynamically learned, and more desirable, route) to prevent flapping.
This keeps the entry in the router's table in the event that they temporarily lose the connection to actual origin of the prefix, and prevents the router from having to issue a withdrawl to it's remaining neighbors.
The behavior you experienced would be the downside of this practice.
So many salient points to choose from... Where to start...
It's a good thing because:
It can rapidly harden an enterprise to a specific attack vector, preventing countless hours of isolating infected systems, and cleaning them individually.
Non-conforming systems can be granted access to the network in any manner that you choose: Non-conforming Windows systems can be put in a "dirty" or "quarantine" VLAN, with access just to the Internet, or to Virus Signature update servers. Other systems (Unix/Linux/etc.) can have a completely different policy, including full access.
You don't have to use it, but it's out there, and there's a lot of clueless organizations in the world that will benefit from it, and if they deploy it, that helps you too.
I wasn't aware that Cisco was getting eaten alive by anyone. Yes, they are moe expensive than most of their competition, but if you've ever dealt with the TAC (Cisco's Technical Assistance Center), it's a premium you don't mind paying.
As for them sucking, to each his own. I'll take Cisco over you any time.
First - Hearing people talking about Cisco, and other companies, drumming up hype so that they can start selling new-fangled IPv6 capable routers is getting old... The Cisco router you already have will do IPv6 today. It's a software change.
Second - Why do people seem to insist that by turning on the IPv6 website, somehow that will prevent people from accessing the IPv4 website? So many ways to address this: Enabling a second network stack on the existing host; Standing up an additional server to host the IPv6 version; putting a 4to6 gateway in front of the website...
IPv6 is coming. It's going to be a difficult transition, but the sooner it happens, the better for us all. Doing it sooner means less "transition work," because the installed base continues to swell.
Actually, of late, you make a dollar by getting a DirecTivo. They list for $99 at most retailers, but DirecTV has been giving a $100 rebate.
If you have *ANY* non-DVR DirecTV receivers in your house, swap them out for the Tivo units. Even if you don't want to go through the hassle of running two drops to each location, enabling both tuners, you still come out way ahead.
Walking home, you catch a child molester in the act, and you send him home, having brought an end to this incident. The following day, you catch the same child molester in the act again, and you send him home, having brought an end to the incident. The following day, you catch the same child molester in the act again...
You are convinced that left to his own devices, this child molester will continue to have his way with the children in your neighborhood.
Assume that "the state" will not intervene. You choose to kill him, rather than let him continue to terrorize the children in your neighborhood.
Are you a bad or evil person, or are you protecting the innocent children in your neighborhood, even though the action itself generally runs counter to your character?
How about a more timely and realistic example: You're stranded in the New Orleans Superdome in the aftermath of a Hurricane, and a group of men has dragged a screaming woman into the flithy public restroom to gang-rape her.
There are no authorities in the area, but there are a number of other able bodied men nearby.
If you don't intervene, the woman will certainly continue to be raped, and will likely be killed. If you and the other men nearby get involved, there will certainly be a fight, and you may even have to kill some of the aggressors.
If you intervene, and kill a man in the process, are you a bad person?
If you do nothing, refraining to resort to the violence that would have been necessary in this situation, does that make you a good person?
Ender's Game may not be your favorite novel; in fact, you may not even like it.
The themes expressed, however, are important and compelling. Forget the strawman Hitler argument. How plain can the differences between Ender and Hitler be made? Ender committed atrocious acts with no knowledge of their effects. For Hitler, the same cannot be said...
Did you know that Ender's Game is on the Marine Corps' recommended reading list for Junior elisted personnel? At first glance, you might think it is because of the various strategic approaches that Ender is forced to employ, but that's just the surface.
The reality is that the underlying theme of the book, that intent makes makes all the difference in measuring good and evil, that an otherwise "good" person may be obligated to commit horrible deeds in the name of the greater good... That's the message that matters, because that's the position that our people in uniform have routinely found themselves in throughout our history.
Pacifism is the default posture for most people. There's not a person in the service that would prefer to be at war, rather than at peace. None of you would rather fight with someone rather than peacefully co-exist. Still, in the face of aggression, there comes a point where action must be taken, and that aggression must be checked.
The morality of intent is what allows people to do the terrible things that sometimes must be done in all of our names, and live with themselves afterward.
I don't know anything about this specific story, but I can tell you that violence and mischief were not limited to "a few isolated cases." My sister-in-law is a Captain in the Broward County Fire Department, in South Florida. She was in New Orleans when Katrina hit, and for several days afterward (She'd been in town for an EMS conference, and was stranded when they shut down the airport), and the stories are harrowing.
But I'm not here to comment on this specifically. I'm calling you out. You're a classic apologist, always ready to defend sub-human behavior, deflecting blame toward faceless oppressors, or social injustice. I've read most of the posts you made earlier this month immediately following Hurricane Katrina, and the recurring theme is that the poor, helpless, New Orleans underclass are not to blame for their lot in life.
Here's a surprise: I'm going to agree with you, but before you get your hopes up, it's not for the reasons you might think.
You're right that the urban underclass in New Orleans (Nationwide for that matter) are victims of a form of oppression. They are the victims of an institutionally created helplessness. The "social safety net" that catches people when they fall can also be used in reverse, preventing them from coming up again. It's quite simple to do:
Take the stigma out of being destitute by taking the charity function out of the hands of the local community, and replace it with faceless, nameless, no-strings-attached assistance at the Federal level...
Ensure that people that won't take care of themselves are provided with the means of survival for an indefinite period of time, including food, shelter, and money...
Foster the notion that it's ok to be impoverished, that it isn't the fault of the impoverished, and that "the system" will provide...
Spread the word that the deck is stacked against them, that dark forces are conspiring to keep them down, and that the deficit presented by their environment renders any effort they make wasted, so it's better not to try...
It's almost Orwellian... Take away the people's desire to provide for themselves, and before long, you'll have taken away their ability to provide for themselves.
Here's a true story from the New Orleans airport:
The National Guard showed up with a truck loaded with palettes of bottled water, which I'm sure came as quite a relief to the people that sought shelter there, and had been without anything to eat or drink for days. The guy that was driving the truck parked it, and left to attend something else. An able-bodied middle-aged woman (not an elderly woman... not a sick woman...), seeing the truck full of bottled water, stood around, waiting... And waiting... And waiting...
She started yelling for someone to give her some of the water. "Why isn't someone handing out the water?!" and "I'm thirsty, I need some water!" and "Who is gonna pass out this water?!"
After a few minutes of shouting, a couple of other evacuees came upon the scene, rounded up a couple of more people, and started unloading the truck, and passing out water to the people in the area.
This is a first person account. The point of the story is that we are talking about people that have been so conditioned to having everything done for them, having their every basic human need provided to them, that it never occurred to this particular woman that she could walk over to the truck, and get herself a bottle of water.
That's the problem faced by America's poor. It never occurs to them that they have the ability to better their own circumstances, because they've never had to rely on themselves for anything. That's the big conspiracy. That's the form the oppression takes.
The chaos in New Orleans? An inevitable occurrence... When a group of people that large, all of which are completely dependant upon others to provide their means of survival, are suddenly cut off from their lifeline, you'd better believe that civilization will come to a screeching halt.
Socialism, in all its many splendid forms, ensures it.
They didn't cover nuclear, since it isn't an option in the current political climate.
And that's a shame, because if the US hopes to achieve any kind of realistic energy independence, nuclear power holds the key. It's the cleanest, most efficient energy source we have available. The advances in reactor design have eliminated any perceived "disaster possibilities," and dramatically reduced the amount of waste product.
For starters, you want the printer to be as close to the users as possible. If your printers are in a different VLAN from the users, and the local switch isn't Layer-3 aware, you'll have to send all of the traffic from the local switch up to the distribution layer of the network (perhaps even higher, to where there is a Layer-3 device (a router)), so that it can be directed to the correct VLAN, and then sent back down the same trunk link back to the local switch.
You are saturating the bandwidth of the shared uplink from the access layer switch to the distribution layer switch, as all of that traffic hits that connection twice.
This may be unavoidable, as most enterprises utilize print servers, and this traffic hairpinning is going to occur regardless. For small enterprises, however, people should be using direct IP printing, and the printer should be a member of the same VLANs as the users that utilize them.
This is simply good practice. (Though bandwidth is so cheap, it will often mask any downside to poor design, so the point may very well be moot.)
You can either use a physical port for a seperate router, or you can employ Layer-3 switching, which has the routing functionality built into the switch.
If your router supports trunking on its ethernet ports, you can do what's called "routing on a stick," creating logical channels off the physical router port, so the router can have a presence in each VLAN, though it only occupies on physical switch port.
You definately need a Layer-3 device to support inter-Vlan traffic. That's the point of VLANs.
This "Ask Slashdot" was a thinly veiled license to troll. Any given Slashdotter is most likely either a)hostile to college degrees, or b)hostile to career certifications.
Me? I have little use for those with what I like to call "fancy book-learnin'," but to each his own.
Wanna bet? Lots of paper CCIE's out there. Cisco recently dumbed down the lab portion, making it quite possible to get your butt into a two week cram class and then pass the lab. Yes, you have to sharp to do it and probably have some experience, but the CCIE is not what it once was.
Have you passed it? Because I have, and if you think the lab was "dumbed down" when they went from the two day format to the one day format, you're sadly mistaken.
They took out the troubleshooting section, which everyone that faced it agrees was the "easy" portion of the two day exam. They also eliminated the initial setup portion, which was comprised of applying the IP addresses to all of the equipment in the pod (the other "easy" portion). Most considered each of these sections to be free points.
They they took all of the configuration tasks that used to be spread out over the first day, and the second morning, and they crammed it all into one day.
Now it's true that upon completion, some CCIEs are better than others... This is where career experience comes in. Likewise, the CCIE program does not teach any network design principles, so a lot of times, you get a guy that knows how to configure every trick in the book, and builds ridiculously complex, poorly designed, but functioning networks. There are also cases where a person can go from networking neophyte to CCIE in six months, but it takes a lot of work. Some people have the aptitude, and others don't.
Were I you, I'd stick to commenting on things I'd personally experienced, rather than lobbing your ill-informed opinions around concerning things you don't know anything about.
Now to answer the original question, is it worth it? I can tell you that with a CCIE and 8 years of experience (even with no college), you qualify as a "Technical Expert" in government contracting, for which the hourly billing rate to the federal government is in the neighborhood of $160/hr, depending on the rates the contractor has negotiated with GSA. You can expect a reasonable portion of that billing rate as salary (Between 50-70%, again, depending on the contractor).
If you're me, it doesn't take a lot of thinking to determine that it's totally worth it.
Other IT certifications don't command that same salaries, nor do they convey the same sense of "expertise." Are those certifications worth it? That's a subjective assessment.
If you're making $30k/yr in IT without any certifications, then I'd say it'd probably be worth your time to get your MCSE, or some other certification. They'll carry you to somewhere between $45k - $60k, maybe more. One of my former co-workers managed to land a $120k/year job with an MCSE and Citrix certification... There's obviously some salesmanship involved, but it is possible.
I disagree with the assertion that though expensive, the evening at the movie theater is enjoyable.
I don't find it enjoyable at all.
Some hasty points:
Crowded - There are too many people, many of which don't seem to have the self-control required to remain quiet for 90+ minutes
Undisciplined Children - If I allowed my kids to act the way most other kids seem to act, I'd expect the rest of you to be complaining about my parenting skills too.
Cleanliness - Even the best maintained movie theater has sticky floors, and stained seating.
Prices - Unless you like going to the movie by yourself, you're in for at least $20 before you get through the front doors. Want a snack or something to drink? Keep the meter running. Now factor in the added costs of taking a family of four.
Disruptions - I'll never enjoy having to get out of the way of someone trying to get past on their way to the bathroom, or the snackbar. Not to mention that usually, my own kids need to use the bathroom. My wife hasn't seen a movie at a theater from start-to-finish since our first child was born 11 years ago.
The home theater experience is superior in so many ways... And you're way off-base on the Plasma TV expense issue. Sure, you can drop a couple of grand on a good viewing platform for the house, but if you track the expense of going to the theater for the average family of four, you can absorb the cost of that HDTV within a year or two.
It may take a little longer if you are buying DVDs, like I do, but buying a DVD is still cheaper than taking a family of four to the theater, and at the end of it, I still have the movie. It can be viewed repeatedly, or shared with friends...
My $20 has bought me a durable good. What do you have to hold onto once the trailing credits roll in the theater?
This is flawed thinking, and if Apple chose to go this route, then Apple will be making a tremendous error in judgement.
You are correct that today Apple is a hardware company, but part of that is tied to the notion that they had to produce an OS just to move their hardware because it was essentially the only OS in town (BSD/Linux/BeOS notwithstanding).
If Apple wisely started selling two versions of OSX, one tailored for Apple hardware at a lower price, and an OpenOSX version for all Intel machines (and a correspondingly marked up price), Apple's revenue stream would shift quickly from Hardware sales to OS/Software sales.
An OSX that ran on any Intel box would be gobbled up by the masses, would likely start coming pre-installed by OEMs, and while boosting Apple's bottom line, would stand in direct opposition to Windows/Microsoft.
It would be a revolution in personal computing, completly shifting the balance of power, or restoring the balance at a minumum.
Slashdot Mirror
Have we, the people of the US, not made it clear what our "value-add" is in the global internet commerce arena? (Or Global Commerce of any type?)
We're the CONSUMERS!
We have the highest per capita income, and spend to excess all over the place. We are the reason that most of you enjoy a trade surplus. When we are out of money, we will continue to buy things by borrowing still more money.
If you build your own DNS system, cutting yourselves off from US consumers, you'll only me limiting the amount of revenue that we can pump into your economies. Sure, you've banded under the umbrella of the EU, and you've streamlined your ability to buy and sell among yourselves, but divorcing yourselves from the spending power of American consumers makes bad business sense.
Ultimately, what Europe and the rest of the world are going to do about this "problem" is drop it, and mosey on to the next percieved crisis with their tail between their legs. If I'm wrong, I'll eat my hat (which will not be a hat that I've purchased from a European-owned business via their web portal, apparently).
Where does this fear of US controlled Internet censorship come from?
If the UN were to be entrusted with the care and feeding of DNS, nations that had a real interest in censorship (China, Middle Eastern states, etc.) would have a much greater opportunity to bend the Internet to their liking.
Let's have this conversation again after the US has a demonstrated track record of doing "the wrong thing" for the global Internet community.
Lastly, hasn't the US responded every time Europe has been in crisis? How about a little credit? It's this kind of petty bullshit that makes us so resistant to sharing in the management of critical infrastructure in the first place.
What does MTV have to do with music?
We'll all have been lured into a false sense of security:
"Oh, those zombies? Don't worry about them. They're just pretending. Hey, look how realistic... That blood around their mouths, and the rotting flesh effects, they almost look real. BRAVO zombie immitators, Bravo. OUCH! THAT'S MY BRAIN YOU'RE EATING YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!"
But then it's too late.
I strongly discourage these events. The next time I see a zombie horde, I want to feel secure in the knowledge that it really is time to naplam the streets, and start taking head-shots at my formerly peaceful neighbors.
Many times, ISPs will nail-up routes (pointing a prefix to the null interface with an undesirable administrative distance, and routing traffic based on the dynamically learned, and more desirable, route) to prevent flapping.
This keeps the entry in the router's table in the event that they temporarily lose the connection to actual origin of the prefix, and prevents the router from having to issue a withdrawl to it's remaining neighbors.
The behavior you experienced would be the downside of this practice.
I realize that this isn't really the topic, but Cisco produces a Linux version of their VPN client . Just download it from their site.
It's a good thing because:
I wasn't aware that Cisco was getting eaten alive by anyone. Yes, they are moe expensive than most of their competition, but if you've ever dealt with the TAC (Cisco's Technical Assistance Center), it's a premium you don't mind paying.
As for them sucking, to each his own. I'll take Cisco over you any time.
First - Hearing people talking about Cisco, and other companies, drumming up hype so that they can start selling new-fangled IPv6 capable routers is getting old... The Cisco router you already have will do IPv6 today. It's a software change.
Second - Why do people seem to insist that by turning on the IPv6 website, somehow that will prevent people from accessing the IPv4 website? So many ways to address this: Enabling a second network stack on the existing host; Standing up an additional server to host the IPv6 version; putting a 4to6 gateway in front of the website...
IPv6 is coming. It's going to be a difficult transition, but the sooner it happens, the better for us all. Doing it sooner means less "transition work," because the installed base continues to swell.
Actually, of late, you make a dollar by getting a DirecTivo. They list for $99 at most retailers, but DirecTV has been giving a $100 rebate.
If you have *ANY* non-DVR DirecTV receivers in your house, swap them out for the Tivo units. Even if you don't want to go through the hassle of running two drops to each location, enabling both tuners, you still come out way ahead.
You are convinced that left to his own devices, this child molester will continue to have his way with the children in your neighborhood.
Assume that "the state" will not intervene. You choose to kill him, rather than let him continue to terrorize the children in your neighborhood.
Are you a bad or evil person, or are you protecting the innocent children in your neighborhood, even though the action itself generally runs counter to your character?
How about a more timely and realistic example: You're stranded in the New Orleans Superdome in the aftermath of a Hurricane, and a group of men has dragged a screaming woman into the flithy public restroom to gang-rape her.
There are no authorities in the area, but there are a number of other able bodied men nearby.
If you don't intervene, the woman will certainly continue to be raped, and will likely be killed. If you and the other men nearby get involved, there will certainly be a fight, and you may even have to kill some of the aggressors.
If you intervene, and kill a man in the process, are you a bad person?
If you do nothing, refraining to resort to the violence that would have been necessary in this situation, does that make you a good person?
Ender's Game may not be your favorite novel; in fact, you may not even like it.
The themes expressed, however, are important and compelling. Forget the strawman Hitler argument. How plain can the differences between Ender and Hitler be made? Ender committed atrocious acts with no knowledge of their effects. For Hitler, the same cannot be said...
Did you know that Ender's Game is on the Marine Corps' recommended reading list for Junior elisted personnel? At first glance, you might think it is because of the various strategic approaches that Ender is forced to employ, but that's just the surface.
The reality is that the underlying theme of the book, that intent makes makes all the difference in measuring good and evil, that an otherwise "good" person may be obligated to commit horrible deeds in the name of the greater good... That's the message that matters, because that's the position that our people in uniform have routinely found themselves in throughout our history.
Pacifism is the default posture for most people. There's not a person in the service that would prefer to be at war, rather than at peace. None of you would rather fight with someone rather than peacefully co-exist. Still, in the face of aggression, there comes a point where action must be taken, and that aggression must be checked.
The morality of intent is what allows people to do the terrible things that sometimes must be done in all of our names, and live with themselves afterward.
Other than Firefox?
But I'm not here to comment on this specifically. I'm calling you out. You're a classic apologist, always ready to defend sub-human behavior, deflecting blame toward faceless oppressors, or social injustice. I've read most of the posts you made earlier this month immediately following Hurricane Katrina, and the recurring theme is that the poor, helpless, New Orleans underclass are not to blame for their lot in life.
Here's a surprise: I'm going to agree with you, but before you get your hopes up, it's not for the reasons you might think.
You're right that the urban underclass in New Orleans (Nationwide for that matter) are victims of a form of oppression. They are the victims of an institutionally created helplessness. The "social safety net" that catches people when they fall can also be used in reverse, preventing them from coming up again. It's quite simple to do:
It's almost Orwellian... Take away the people's desire to provide for themselves, and before long, you'll have taken away their ability to provide for themselves.Here's a true story from the New Orleans airport:
This is a first person account. The point of the story is that we are talking about people that have been so conditioned to having everything done for them, having their every basic human need provided to them, that it never occurred to this particular woman that she could walk over to the truck, and get herself a bottle of water.That's the problem faced by America's poor. It never occurs to them that they have the ability to better their own circumstances, because they've never had to rely on themselves for anything. That's the big conspiracy. That's the form the oppression takes.
The chaos in New Orleans? An inevitable occurrence... When a group of people that large, all of which are completely dependant upon others to provide their means of survival, are suddenly cut off from their lifeline, you'd better believe that civilization will come to a screeching halt.
Socialism, in all its many splendid forms, ensures it.
The article doesn't mention the technology that these new plants will utilize. I certainly hope they're planning on pebble-bed...
For starters, you want the printer to be as close to the users as possible. If your printers are in a different VLAN from the users, and the local switch isn't Layer-3 aware, you'll have to send all of the traffic from the local switch up to the distribution layer of the network (perhaps even higher, to where there is a Layer-3 device (a router)), so that it can be directed to the correct VLAN, and then sent back down the same trunk link back to the local switch.
You are saturating the bandwidth of the shared uplink from the access layer switch to the distribution layer switch, as all of that traffic hits that connection twice.
This may be unavoidable, as most enterprises utilize print servers, and this traffic hairpinning is going to occur regardless. For small enterprises, however, people should be using direct IP printing, and the printer should be a member of the same VLANs as the users that utilize them.
This is simply good practice. (Though bandwidth is so cheap, it will often mask any downside to poor design, so the point may very well be moot.)
If your router supports trunking on its ethernet ports, you can do what's called "routing on a stick," creating logical channels off the physical router port, so the router can have a presence in each VLAN, though it only occupies on physical switch port.
You definately need a Layer-3 device to support inter-Vlan traffic. That's the point of VLANs.
This is part of the "Visio Enterprise Edition."
Additionally, maybe it's time we stopped building homes out of sticks.
Me? I have little use for those with what I like to call "fancy book-learnin'," but to each his own.
Ba-dum-dum!
They took out the troubleshooting section, which everyone that faced it agrees was the "easy" portion of the two day exam. They also eliminated the initial setup portion, which was comprised of applying the IP addresses to all of the equipment in the pod (the other "easy" portion). Most considered each of these sections to be free points.
They they took all of the configuration tasks that used to be spread out over the first day, and the second morning, and they crammed it all into one day.
Now it's true that upon completion, some CCIEs are better than others... This is where career experience comes in. Likewise, the CCIE program does not teach any network design principles, so a lot of times, you get a guy that knows how to configure every trick in the book, and builds ridiculously complex, poorly designed, but functioning networks. There are also cases where a person can go from networking neophyte to CCIE in six months, but it takes a lot of work. Some people have the aptitude, and others don't.
Were I you, I'd stick to commenting on things I'd personally experienced, rather than lobbing your ill-informed opinions around concerning things you don't know anything about.
Now to answer the original question, is it worth it? I can tell you that with a CCIE and 8 years of experience (even with no college), you qualify as a "Technical Expert" in government contracting, for which the hourly billing rate to the federal government is in the neighborhood of $160/hr, depending on the rates the contractor has negotiated with GSA. You can expect a reasonable portion of that billing rate as salary (Between 50-70%, again, depending on the contractor).
If you're me, it doesn't take a lot of thinking to determine that it's totally worth it.
Other IT certifications don't command that same salaries, nor do they convey the same sense of "expertise." Are those certifications worth it? That's a subjective assessment.
If you're making $30k/yr in IT without any certifications, then I'd say it'd probably be worth your time to get your MCSE, or some other certification. They'll carry you to somewhere between $45k - $60k, maybe more. One of my former co-workers managed to land a $120k/year job with an MCSE and Citrix certification... There's obviously some salesmanship involved, but it is possible.
I disagree with the assertion that though expensive, the evening at the movie theater is enjoyable.
I don't find it enjoyable at all.
Some hasty points:
- Crowded - There are too many people, many of which don't seem to have the self-control required to remain quiet for 90+ minutes
- Undisciplined Children - If I allowed my kids to act the way most other kids seem to act, I'd expect the rest of you to be complaining about my parenting skills too.
- Cleanliness - Even the best maintained movie theater has sticky floors, and stained seating.
- Prices - Unless you like going to the movie by yourself, you're in for at least $20 before you get through the front doors. Want a snack or something to drink? Keep the meter running. Now factor in the added costs of taking a family of four.
- Disruptions - I'll never enjoy having to get out of the way of someone trying to get past on their way to the bathroom, or the snackbar. Not to mention that usually, my own kids need to use the bathroom. My wife hasn't seen a movie at a theater from start-to-finish since our first child was born 11 years ago.
The home theater experience is superior in so many ways... And you're way off-base on the Plasma TV expense issue. Sure, you can drop a couple of grand on a good viewing platform for the house, but if you track the expense of going to the theater for the average family of four, you can absorb the cost of that HDTV within a year or two.It may take a little longer if you are buying DVDs, like I do, but buying a DVD is still cheaper than taking a family of four to the theater, and at the end of it, I still have the movie. It can be viewed repeatedly, or shared with friends...
My $20 has bought me a durable good. What do you have to hold onto once the trailing credits roll in the theater?
You are correct that today Apple is a hardware company, but part of that is tied to the notion that they had to produce an OS just to move their hardware because it was essentially the only OS in town (BSD/Linux/BeOS notwithstanding).
If Apple wisely started selling two versions of OSX, one tailored for Apple hardware at a lower price, and an OpenOSX version for all Intel machines (and a correspondingly marked up price), Apple's revenue stream would shift quickly from Hardware sales to OS/Software sales.
An OSX that ran on any Intel box would be gobbled up by the masses, would likely start coming pre-installed by OEMs, and while boosting Apple's bottom line, would stand in direct opposition to Windows/Microsoft.
It would be a revolution in personal computing, completly shifting the balance of power, or restoring the balance at a minumum.
In fact, R2's memory is never wiped throughout the entire story. He's the narrator, the only witness to all events of the timeline.