I was an IT manager for some time - specialized in network design. I architected many large networks - built a global VOIP network, did a lot of stuff. And was really really good at managing the management (i.e. protecting my IT departments from the rediculous demands of most executive staff)
I then went on a sabatical (sp) for 4 months. I came back and had enough money to sit on my ass for a little longer... This was in the begining of 2001.
The market was HORRIBLE in the SF area, especially for IT managers. See, I spent a lot of time making sure my staff was happy - and I made surethat I had people doing what they loved to do - if one of my guys wanted to specialize in security - I sent him to security training - cisco? sun? whatever - i made sure they got the classes and access to the equipment. This was great for them - but for me it was really bad. I was separating myself from the depth of knowledge I was engendering in my staff. big mistake. (I dont regret making sure that my team had it good - I regret not taking advantage of it myself)
So - I was out of work for a year and a half. The only reason why i wasnt getting the jobs that I was interviewing for? well - after a year and a half - you forget a lot. The most important thing that you lose is your knowledge of exactly what is out there- what is new, what replaces what, what companies are "doing it" and which are about to croak. What new chipset is the best on pc motherboards? What is going on with memory these days? why is the price fluctuating again?
This type of knowledge of what is going on in the industry as a whole is imperative to keeping your skills up. If you take off time and just let the market move ahead while you're not looking - it can be so difficult to catch up.
Finally I got a job, I got really lucky getting a job that uses my architecture AND networking background. Now I design (physically) campus networks, and after a year and a half off - there was a lot I had to catch up on.
Make sure you read a lot about whats going on in the tech industry - and stay up on hardware.
I dont know about you - but i have no interest in the way dirk looks. Sure, it may be a nostalgia thing for some, but i am loking forward to seeing things that i ahvent seen, I am waiting for a new revolution in gameplay and graphics - I have *no* interest in a 2d character runnign around a 3D environment....
Like the other poster said - maybe for a dollar - maybe not even that much.
one inmportant thing to know is that it is not good for you to use soap on your body every time you shower.
you should actually use it more like twice a week. (a full body lather and scrub that is) even then it may be too much.
and you should rarely use harsh soaps on your face. I ahve a friend who is always buying "anti-oil this" and other crap products and special soaps for her face. She claims that she needs them because she has really oily skin. and that she needs to wash with it every day. She washes her face in the morning - and before she goes to bed. I told her that the reason she is so oily is because she is using that crap. That what happens is the soaps wash off the natural oils and bacteria that your skin is *supposed* to have on it. But since she uses this toxic stripping soap on her face all the time - it causes her skin to over oil in attempts to compensate. The only time she should actually use soap on her face and whole body is when its actually dirty.
For 99% of the time you can use a *hot* shower and a *hot* washcloth on your face and skin. This will get rid of most anything. you dont need to use soap on your face and body every time you get wet. its bad for you. the *only* reason they tell you to do this is to get you to buy worthless products.
The cosmetics industry is a sham. Those designer shampoo (hence the name) products you buy use about 3 cents worth of the standard detergent Sodium Lauryle Sulfate. (which some people think cuases cancer - I have no idea if it does, I just know it gives me dandruff so i stay away from it)
All the other ingredients in shampoos and conditioner are mostly garbage...
Anyway - the point is that you have bacteria on your skin that your body *needs* and you should not use soap very often. Just use hot steaming wash clothes to wash your face.
I have perfect skin, no oil and never any zits, and no BO. I almost never use soap. I use soap when I am actually DIRTY - like after paintball for example.
The bacteria on your skin and the oils you produce will typically be in balance - unless you are doing activities that cause a lot of sweating in a dirty environment - or you dont shower every single day - then you dont need soap.
(but you should wash your hands with soap - even though the crappy detergents ruin your skin)
And you should avoid antibiotics like the plague - unless you actually have the plague, then they are a good thing (TM):)
(seriously - take these as rarely as ever possible)
OK - so we have had several stories in the past several weeks talking about WiFi this and that - and I have posted a few comments asking about wifi security. I would like some help from you guys - as it seems that there are several out there who really understand securing wifi networks. (I have written to both the sputnik (linuxcare) guys - and the locustworld.com guys - but have gotten no responses from either about security)
OOK - here is the scenario:
Imagine an ISP that is *only* wireless. They want to be a "community" ISP, want to offer only wireless wifi internet access, and want to charge for it a flat rate of 20/month. They have wireless APs covering several city blocks - or a whole city. with a physical tie at some city based colo. How do they protect the network - so that only paying customers can be authenticated and use the system?
What i have been thinking so far is that for signing up - you have to purchase/get/rent/whatever - the wireless card from the ISP. This cards MAC is in an ISP DB and its get authenticated. In addition - that MAC is tied back to a username password (or biometric) auth which then validates the user and opens up the port. Is it possible to have an ISP with such a system - that is not too overly paranoid secure - but not just a leech-net?
I think there are three very important things that should be considered when thinking about WiFi ISPs in general:
1. they should be put in place ASAP - even if they arent that secure yet.
2. we (the tech community at large) should fully support them, and pay 20/month for access.
3. wifi ISPs should offer free access to the system for city government - municipal services like fire depts, police, city engineering etc..
WHY? well because we have seen already how the big ass companies handle our bandwidth, our information, our trust and our money.
We should get a community monopoly on these systems as soon as possible. I nkow that I am *done* having any sort of qwest, global crossing, worldcom corrumpany in charge of my access.....
seriously - this is an important issue - and one where we ahve the advantage because these companies are A) almost bankrupt B) dont understand the technology C) typically slow to move on stuff like this. The only problem is that they traditionally have very deep pockets to buy things out.
But with Level 3 trying to buy up all the fiber runs it can - and absorb as many of the IP-traffic-assets as possible - they are looking to run 90% of the data routing market... but the WiFi last mile can and should be a community owned system.
Imagine if the model was changed so that a carrier would have to *pay the community* to be the access provider. If there were several million people in a city - and that city had its own WiFi network - and it was putting out bids for connections to the outside internet - you'd better believe the carriers would be putting down some fat bandwidth at reduced price for that level of market share.
We need to stop thinking so small, have some vision and take over the market and make it the way we want it.
I was watching this discovery channel documentary and there was this military type, jar-head cyber guard guy. He was standing there talking about how they monitor all the traffic on their networks, and keep a close eye out for any signatures of attack.
He was stressing how secret they keep all their information about their networks - that they dont let anyone know even their IP sets assigned to different networks, and that this information could help an attacker find out the machines they would need to attack.
The whole time he was talking about this - he was standing in front of a bunch of monitors, and the ones to the left of him was scrolling some sort of log and it was showing IPs to hostname mappings and some traceroutes as well. They were all in the really low IPs - and their hostnames were all.mil and *all* of it was easily readable by the viewer....
and i do not think it was something that was done on purpose and made to look like an accident. Not by the way these people were acting.
especially since they avoided filming any of the screens that people were working on.
Lets say I have DSL at my 5th floor apt. in downtown SF - i put a WiFi antennea up so I can roam to the cafe across the street - how do i keep any others off my network? cheaply?
Thats all well and fine... but what I want is a motherboard that has DUAL AGP slots. anyone know of any out there that have this.
When I worked at intel i wrote some departments requesting this, but didnt get very far...
here is an interesting concept for multi monitoring:
It would be interesting to have a single computer setup with different inputs and different monitor output. Each screen would have a privilage level, and all inputs would only be associated with their individual screen.
This would allow for a Kiosk to be setup in say a mall - with a single computer that has multiple screens, keyboards and mice attached. Each screen would have its own desktop - and could run a browser for example - but they would not interfere with eachother.
This would allow you to run all this off of one computer - thus saving costs.
Anything out there like this? Obviously it has many parallels to mainframe computering - network appliances etc... but I am specifically talking about running a standard PC with multiple monitors and mice and keyboards - not some crippled specially designed hardware.
the problem is that its called price fixing. They charge that much for the chanels only because it forces you into other higher margin packages.
In my other post for example, I was told that the *only* way I could get HBO on my digital service was to get the 61.95 per month package. They told me I could *not* get just HBO added...
but now I find that they had other packages available. I told them that I was hearing different things from different reps - and that I wanted to see the prices in writing, and online. I was told that they dont do that - and that they online information just directs me to a phone number to call - which it did.
The only offering the have online is to sign up for their online *only* bill service - which means that you will not get a paperbill in the mail.
I signed up for HBO in september - I told them that i didnt want anything but to add HBO to my existing service. I was told that there was now way that I could get HBO unless I signed up for their Silver package - at 62 per month.
I asked what it came with and she listed all this other crap - i said that I didnt want any of that - that i just wanted HBO.
Then I called today about this law - and the fact that I just wanted HBO - and they quoted a range of other packages that are cheaper that had HBO. The girl said that they didnt have these packages in September which is why I wasnt offered. I told her to find out. Low and behold - these packages were available in september, they dont knwo why i was told otherwise - and that no they could not change the package and give me credit back retro-active.
the said that if you want HBo its 13.95/month + plus 12.55 for basic + 5.00 for the digital cable box rental.
this is all bullshit. I wanted to hit them in the face with a shovel.
In the end all i got was 10 off my bill for the next year.
This is why companies like intel have whole departments dedicated to getting people to write software that is optimized for whatever new features are available on a new processor.
When I worked there - we ran the DRG Game lab - which was for getting game developers to optimize their code to take advantage of new instructions etc on the latest processors.
This made the processors look better, any game that we tested that ran better on the processors after having the code optimized was pushed out with a big marketing hoopla and Intel would say "HEY! come look at our new machines - look how great X software title runs on the latest and greatest"
But the truth is that this was pretty much all fake - as rather than testingthe software on the exact same boxes that had just two different processors - the tests were done on boxes that had totally different configurations - although we never told anyone about that littel detail.
The only problem is how reliable these things will be. Its one thing to be able to pack shit-loads of data onto a tiny little spot - but its another thing to pack that same data on a spot thats going to hold it reliably without going bad or corrupting it.
This new hard drive enhancement has a precedence of being faulty after launch.
Slashdot Mirror
I totally agree with this!
I was an IT manager for some time - specialized in network design. I architected many large networks - built a global VOIP network, did a lot of stuff. And was really really good at managing the management (i.e. protecting my IT departments from the rediculous demands of most executive staff)
I then went on a sabatical (sp) for 4 months. I came back and had enough money to sit on my ass for a little longer... This was in the begining of 2001.
The market was HORRIBLE in the SF area, especially for IT managers. See, I spent a lot of time making sure my staff was happy - and I made surethat I had people doing what they loved to do - if one of my guys wanted to specialize in security - I sent him to security training - cisco? sun? whatever - i made sure they got the classes and access to the equipment. This was great for them - but for me it was really bad. I was separating myself from the depth of knowledge I was engendering in my staff. big mistake. (I dont regret making sure that my team had it good - I regret not taking advantage of it myself)
So - I was out of work for a year and a half. The only reason why i wasnt getting the jobs that I was interviewing for? well - after a year and a half - you forget a lot. The most important thing that you lose is your knowledge of exactly what is out there- what is new, what replaces what, what companies are "doing it" and which are about to croak. What new chipset is the best on pc motherboards? What is going on with memory these days? why is the price fluctuating again?
This type of knowledge of what is going on in the industry as a whole is imperative to keeping your skills up. If you take off time and just let the market move ahead while you're not looking - it can be so difficult to catch up.
Finally I got a job, I got really lucky getting a job that uses my architecture AND networking background. Now I design (physically) campus networks, and after a year and a half off - there was a lot I had to catch up on.
Make sure you read a lot about whats going on in the tech industry - and stay up on hardware.
I dont know about you - but i have no interest in the way dirk looks. Sure, it may be a nostalgia thing for some, but i am loking forward to seeing things that i ahvent seen, I am waiting for a new revolution in gameplay and graphics - I have *no* interest in a 2d character runnign around a 3D environment....
Like the other poster said - maybe for a dollar - maybe not even that much.
thats a really interesting thought. Will there be such a thing as proprietary DNA? In this crazy time - I am sure there will be attemtps...
But i think that any DNA and Gene sequence, due to its very nature, should be public domain always - no matter what.
one inmportant thing to know is that it is not good for you to use soap on your body every time you shower.
:)
you should actually use it more like twice a week. (a full body lather and scrub that is) even then it may be too much.
and you should rarely use harsh soaps on your face. I ahve a friend who is always buying "anti-oil this" and other crap products and special soaps for her face. She claims that she needs them because she has really oily skin. and that she needs to wash with it every day. She washes her face in the morning - and before she goes to bed. I told her that the reason she is so oily is because she is using that crap. That what happens is the soaps wash off the natural oils and bacteria that your skin is *supposed* to have on it. But since she uses this toxic stripping soap on her face all the time - it causes her skin to over oil in attempts to compensate. The only time she should actually use soap on her face and whole body is when its actually dirty.
For 99% of the time you can use a *hot* shower and a *hot* washcloth on your face and skin. This will get rid of most anything. you dont need to use soap on your face and body every time you get wet. its bad for you. the *only* reason they tell you to do this is to get you to buy worthless products.
The cosmetics industry is a sham. Those designer shampoo (hence the name) products you buy use about 3 cents worth of the standard detergent Sodium Lauryle Sulfate. (which some people think cuases cancer - I have no idea if it does, I just know it gives me dandruff so i stay away from it)
All the other ingredients in shampoos and conditioner are mostly garbage...
Anyway - the point is that you have bacteria on your skin that your body *needs* and you should not use soap very often. Just use hot steaming wash clothes to wash your face.
I have perfect skin, no oil and never any zits, and no BO. I almost never use soap. I use soap when I am actually DIRTY - like after paintball for example.
The bacteria on your skin and the oils you produce will typically be in balance - unless you are doing activities that cause a lot of sweating in a dirty environment - or you dont shower every single day - then you dont need soap.
(but you should wash your hands with soap - even though the crappy detergents ruin your skin)
And you should avoid antibiotics like the plague - unless you actually have the plague, then they are a good thing (TM)
(seriously - take these as rarely as ever possible)
OK - so we have had several stories in the past several weeks talking about WiFi this and that - and I have posted a few comments asking about wifi security. I would like some help from you guys - as it seems that there are several out there who really understand securing wifi networks. (I have written to both the sputnik (linuxcare) guys - and the locustworld.com guys - but have gotten no responses from either about security)
OOK - here is the scenario:
Imagine an ISP that is *only* wireless. They want to be a "community" ISP, want to offer only wireless wifi internet access, and want to charge for it a flat rate of 20/month. They have wireless APs covering several city blocks - or a whole city. with a physical tie at some city based colo. How do they protect the network - so that only paying customers can be authenticated and use the system?
What i have been thinking so far is that for signing up - you have to purchase/get/rent/whatever - the wireless card from the ISP. This cards MAC is in an ISP DB and its get authenticated. In addition - that MAC is tied back to a username password (or biometric) auth which then validates the user and opens up the port. Is it possible to have an ISP with such a system - that is not too overly paranoid secure - but not just a leech-net?
I think there are three very important things that should be considered when thinking about WiFi ISPs in general:
1. they should be put in place ASAP - even if they arent that secure yet.
2. we (the tech community at large) should fully support them, and pay 20/month for access.
3. wifi ISPs should offer free access to the system for city government - municipal services like fire depts, police, city engineering etc..
WHY? well because we have seen already how the big ass companies handle our bandwidth, our information, our trust and our money.
We should get a community monopoly on these systems as soon as possible. I nkow that I am *done* having any sort of qwest, global crossing, worldcom corrumpany in charge of my access.....
seriously - this is an important issue - and one where we ahve the advantage because these companies are A) almost bankrupt B) dont understand the technology C) typically slow to move on stuff like this. The only problem is that they traditionally have very deep pockets to buy things out.
But with Level 3 trying to buy up all the fiber runs it can - and absorb as many of the IP-traffic-assets as possible - they are looking to run 90% of the data routing market... but the WiFi last mile can and should be a community owned system.
Imagine if the model was changed so that a carrier would have to *pay the community* to be the access provider. If there were several million people in a city - and that city had its own WiFi network - and it was putting out bids for connections to the outside internet - you'd better believe the carriers would be putting down some fat bandwidth at reduced price for that level of market share.
We need to stop thinking so small, have some vision and take over the market and make it the way we want it.
military cyber-guards.
.mil and *all* of it was easily readable by the viewer....
I was watching this discovery channel documentary and there was this military type, jar-head cyber guard guy. He was standing there talking about how they monitor all the traffic on their networks, and keep a close eye out for any signatures of attack.
He was stressing how secret they keep all their information about their networks - that they dont let anyone know even their IP sets assigned to different networks, and that this information could help an attacker find out the machines they would need to attack.
The whole time he was talking about this - he was standing in front of a bunch of monitors, and the ones to the left of him was scrolling some sort of log and it was showing IPs to hostname mappings and some traceroutes as well. They were all in the really low IPs - and their hostnames were all
and i do not think it was something that was done on purpose and made to look like an accident. Not by the way these people were acting.
especially since they avoided filming any of the screens that people were working on.
So I am not too surprised.
thats because you're not trying to come through the back door with an OC-192.
so how do you actually secure the WiFi network.
Lets say I have DSL at my 5th floor apt. in downtown SF - i put a WiFi antennea up so I can roam to the cafe across the street - how do i keep any others off my network? cheaply?
these things still look cool. I have always liked how SGI boxes look....
I would love to see an SGI server case designed by HR Geiger.
ya but does it ahve an external power adapter you plug into the wall - or a battery on it?
Try moving to another machine with 2GB still alive on this thing...
Although a really good application for this would be that guy running the game cluster - or any game for that matter.
Run the whole game in the ram drive, everything, including the movies. Talk about speed.
And thats just in his "Love Den"!!
really? why did they leave mirrors up there? why do people bounce lasers off of them?
Isnt this the story of the Movie The Ring?
Thats all well and fine... but what I want is a motherboard that has DUAL AGP slots. anyone know of any out there that have this.
When I worked at intel i wrote some departments requesting this, but didnt get very far...
here is an interesting concept for multi monitoring:
It would be interesting to have a single computer setup with different inputs and different monitor output. Each screen would have a privilage level, and all inputs would only be associated with their individual screen.
This would allow for a Kiosk to be setup in say a mall - with a single computer that has multiple screens, keyboards and mice attached. Each screen would have its own desktop - and could run a browser for example - but they would not interfere with eachother.
This would allow you to run all this off of one computer - thus saving costs.
Anything out there like this? Obviously it has many parallels to mainframe computering - network appliances etc... but I am specifically talking about running a standard PC with multiple monitors and mice and keyboards - not some crippled specially designed hardware.
the problem is that its called price fixing. They charge that much for the chanels only because it forces you into other higher margin packages.
In my other post for example, I was told that the *only* way I could get HBO on my digital service was to get the 61.95 per month package. They told me I could *not* get just HBO added...
but now I find that they had other packages available. I told them that I was hearing different things from different reps - and that I wanted to see the prices in writing, and online. I was told that they dont do that - and that they online information just directs me to a phone number to call - which it did.
The only offering the have online is to sign up for their online *only* bill service - which means that you will not get a paperbill in the mail.
I want to hurt these monopolistic mobs bastards.
I jsut got off the phone with AT&T digital cable.
These people are criminals.
I signed up for HBO in september - I told them that i didnt want anything but to add HBO to my existing service. I was told that there was now way that I could get HBO unless I signed up for their Silver package - at 62 per month.
I asked what it came with and she listed all this other crap - i said that I didnt want any of that - that i just wanted HBO.
Then I called today about this law - and the fact that I just wanted HBO - and they quoted a range of other packages that are cheaper that had HBO. The girl said that they didnt have these packages in September which is why I wasnt offered. I told her to find out. Low and behold - these packages were available in september, they dont knwo why i was told otherwise - and that no they could not change the package and give me credit back retro-active.
the said that if you want HBo its 13.95/month + plus 12.55 for basic + 5.00 for the digital cable box rental.
this is all bullshit. I wanted to hit them in the face with a shovel.
In the end all i got was 10 off my bill for the next year.
but I think Ill just cancel all together.
This is why companies like intel have whole departments dedicated to getting people to write software that is optimized for whatever new features are available on a new processor.
When I worked there - we ran the DRG Game lab - which was for getting game developers to optimize their code to take advantage of new instructions etc on the latest processors.
This made the processors look better, any game that we tested that ran better on the processors after having the code optimized was pushed out with a big marketing hoopla and Intel would say "HEY! come look at our new machines - look how great X software title runs on the latest and greatest"
But the truth is that this was pretty much all fake - as rather than testingthe software on the exact same boxes that had just two different processors - the tests were done on boxes that had totally different configurations - although we never told anyone about that littel detail.
The only problem is how reliable these things will be. Its one thing to be able to pack shit-loads of data onto a tiny little spot - but its another thing to pack that same data on a spot thats going to hold it reliably without going bad or corrupting it.
This new hard drive enhancement has a precedence of being faulty after launch.
why? will he really get that mad knowing that your watching porn behind his back?
.... well I'd say itll be a long time - I have never even heard of elliptic curve security - and i am sure many others havent as well
thats what i thought too - and with jennifer lopez' name on it.
Another cool use for things like this would be Bugs. You know - the cloak and dagger type.
I love these devices (usb key-chain storage)
I think they are fantastic - and cant wait till they get even more features backed into that little package...
Well we know what happened last time the Germans and Japanese decided to do something together....
and dont even get me started aboutthe French!
kernal panic - recursive loop!!
Computer-Geek:
... ?
... and a Palm?
Oh, I'm a computer-geek and I'm OK,
I code all night and I troll all day.
PHBs:
He's a lumberjack and he's OK,
He codes all night and he trolls all day.
Computer-Geek: (sings)
I code new bugs, I drink my jolt,
I go to the lava-try.
On Wednesdays I go fragging,
And have SCSI drives for speed.
PHBs: (sing)
He codes new bugs, he drinks his jolt,
He goes to the lava-try.
On Wednesdays he goes fragging,
And has SCSI drives for speed.
Computer-Geek/PHBs: (sing)
I'm/He's a Computer-geek and I'm/he's OK,
I/He code/codes all night and I/he
sleep/sleeps all day.
Computer-geek: (sings)
I code new features, I get first post,
I like to browse for porn.
I chat on EFnet as a girl,
And search the personals.
PHBs: (sing)
He codes new features, he skips and jumps,
He likes to browse for porn.
He chats of EFnet as a girl?,
And searches the personals
Computer-Geek/PHBs: (sing)
I'm/He's a Computer-geek and I'm/he's OK,
I/He code/codes all night and I/he
sleep/sleeps all day.
Computer-geek: (sings)
I troll slashdot, I wear three phones,
an Ipod and a Palm.
I wish I had some hot grits,
and insightful Karma mods!
PHBs: (sing)
He trolls Slashdot, he wears three phones,
an Ipod