So, I recently got diagnosed with ALS. I'll lose function of all my muscles in a manner of years. To me this is promising as it means I might have a better hope of keeping in touch with the world than just using my eyes to point to letters on a virtual keyboard:)
Amazing! A friend of mine has done his Ph.D. in exactly this field. He was shining a beam of light right THROUGH an opaque sheet of material (paper, I think) already a few years ago, and published about it in 2008. I think it's pretty much the same idea, from what I understand of it (but keep in mind, I chose the evil path of Business instead of Science, so I have no brain).
Anyway; on his page there's a much better explanation, with cute pictures and all that, of the same idea.
Google did not build Chrome to capture market share. They did not create it to launch a product or to circumvent adblock (duh).
They built it for a real strategic reason: to make sure the web remains usable and open. If Google hopes to serve web apps in the future, they depend on the quality of browsers, and the current browser architectures apparently don't satisfy them.
Changing Firefox wasn't an option and attacking IE is a mission with very little payoff for Google. So Google chose to inject their design principles into the market by creating a radically new, yet incomplete browser, and release it open source, so it gets adopted. If Microsoft steals this technology to make IE9 even better, Google's mission will have succeeded.
There's an Economist article which explains all this pretty good as well: link
Speaking from experience (I work in IT, I did an MBA, I chose the elective Business Ethics, I had to write an essay), my first guess is that your prof will tell you to be MORE SPECIFIC.
Do a google for, for instance, the Journal of Business Ethics ( http://www.springer.com/philosophy/ethics/journal/10551 ), and be surprised by the wealth of articles you'll already find about a really wide range of Ethics & IT topics. At the same time, once you have read the first few, you'll notice how immensely full of holes this area of research actually is. There's academic articles, for instance, about the morality of P2P File Sharing in Asia or the limitations that virtual personae should have with regards to knowing what they should remember about a given system. There's professors specialising in the combination of Business Ethics & IT; Jeroen van den Hoven (University of Delft) is the first one that jumps to mind for me.
So, if you wish to add something to this body of existing knowledge, you'd either go with something very specific (i.e. the behavior or a normal user when suddenly granted god access, on a tuesday afternoon, if he's exactly 42 years and two days old) and search what else has been written about your specific topic, OR you could do what your initial suggestion is, and give a high-level overview of a given topic. If you prefer the latter, the least that will probably be required is a quick overview of which topics are covered in research and which are currently barren. Summing up best practices or drawing up a directory of "hey, this is what slashdot users think" may be valuable, but only if you put it into a good context.
Hope this helps:-)
Re:With the introduction of AppleTV...
on
The Home Server Cometh
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
How can you tell if the iPhone will be a hit if it's at least five months away from entering the market?
There might be promise in WiFi providers, and its next-gen buddy, WiMax as an alternative to mobile cell-phones.
In Europe there already are companies that are rolling out dual-mode WiFi/GSM phones. Wifi on campus to cut out the costs of using a cellular networks, and integrating iPass unlimited WiFi access into the phone will knock out any cell-phone provider that isn't willig to drop its pants... I mean, rates. UMA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlicensed_Mobile_Ac cess/, don't know how to do links, sorry) will neatly accomodate smooth integration of the two - and from there it's a small step to WiMax'ing the entire continent into one big hotspot. Supposing that this new generation of hotspots will be as neutral as most WiFi-hotspot providers are today, you've found an alternative to these yucky cell-phone companies.
No it doesn't "closely mirror the technal functionality" of the internet. It may seem like it to the user, but cells are nothing like backbones. Technically there are few similarities.
This is arguable. Except for the bearer medium and the connection-oriented principle of phone-to-GGSN, 3G technologies like UMTS have a routed IP backbone at the core of it just like a "traditional data" network does.
Because a cell phone has a two inch screen. DUH.
I'm seeing loads of people on the subway and at the airport that use PDA's which function on cell-phone technology, and use this "two inch screen" to browse the 'net. In fact, while I was on safari in South Africa we kept track of the worldcup scores by using a GPRS-enabled PDA to browse to a website that provided us with the scores in real time. Keep in mind that this website was owned and operated by the cell phone operator since we apparently couldn't get to fifa.org. Web-on-the-go may have been useless a few years ago, but ever since European providers advertise with a picture of Google on their PDA's I think the world is ready for a mobile ebay/craigslist/etc.
So, no net neutrality is a bad thing - I've felt this in my guts for a long time and this article gives me some very good arguments to articulate it (yes, I should have done my own thinking, but I'm lazy).
It's easy to understand WHY cell phone companies are doing this, though. Too much money was lost in creating a transparent, neutral internet; some companies and executives may have gotten rich but as an industry, global telecommunications has an appaling performance record.
Cell phone providers are one of the potential providers of the "next net" (depending on who will win the technology battle - the cell phone providers with 3g/4g, broadband providers with WiMax or whoever else can float a business model for some cool technology). So, the folks in strategy and marketing of Verizon/AT&T/ have figured that net neutrality is a bad thing 'coz they need to get some ROE on their investor's buck.
The question is - how are we as consumers (or better - potential entrepreneurs?) going to prevent this from happening? I'm not sure Joe Average is smart enough to understand he shouldn't be buying his UMTS minutes from a company that doesn't offer him a neutral service.
Well... I guess I am in the position to comment on this one. Depending on your viewpoint, I may be a corporate sell-out, a nerd without spine or just someone who goes where the challenge is.
I'm a CCIE, so I have at least some credibility in the tech department. I spent years working on some of the most interesting projects a CCIE could dream of - network planning, (re)design, troubleshooting, working with Cisco and other vendors to develop next generation features... Yeah, it was interesting and 98% tech-related. After a few years, though, I kind of lost interest. I found that the "next generation" complex system after BGP wasn't RPSLng but instead systems of people. Once you get the RFC, working with the system is simply a derivative. However, there's no RFC for "how companies work" - and there are so many more facets to understanding the system of how people work within a company than within even the most complex network. Maybe it's different if you program java, but for me, I found the interesting challenge elsewhere.
Most of us wonder why the heck our stupid managers make some of the decisions they do. Yes, maybe they are plain stupid. Maybe, though, "they" understand something that we do not - and I wasn't going to let the arrogance of "knowing better because I am a geek" tell me that managers are stupid. I wanted to find out what made them tick.
I am now enrolled in a part-time MBA program at a good institution (and recently recertified for two more years of CCIE-dom while doing it). I've had a job as a "pre-sales consultant" so I could begin to understand how this whole evil sales process actually takes place. I've always wondered why someone with money to spare would give it to someone who, to us geeks, obviously has so little brain as a sales guy.
No, the answer is not that people with money to spare are by definition stupid. The answer is not that sales people are necessarily shallow. The answer is not that earning money is evil. The answer from the IT department should not be "I READ YOUR EMAIL! FEAR ME!", as this is probably the best excuse I can think of to recommend outsourcing to the next CIO I meet.
I'm now at the point where I have taken up a relatively new concept within my company and can make it work partially because I understand the technological concepts underlying it AND because I can explain to companies why it is important for them to invest in my concept. This requires me to speak some of the lingo - and yes, I do talk about adding value to a company's core business processes with the use of our business solution. I talk about the benefits of RFID for supply chain management. I wear an expensive suit and describe the opportunity for growth in a certain market which can be enabled by this-or-that network solution. So, yes, the 'speak' is important if you want those who are likely to make decisions to hear you.
However, having said that, the 'catch' is that there is a lot of BS going around in the corporate-speak-world. If you discuss a routing protocol, there can be no dispute - in the end, look up the RFC or reproduce whatever you're trying to prove. Discussing a company's marketing strategy or trying to make a business case for unified messaging is a lot more shaky. There's no undisputable book or testlab to point to and say "look, you're wrong, see - that's not how it works!". I can quote the latest book or article I read about the latest trend in strategy. I blurt out page numbers of Harvard Business Review articles. This is not proof, though. The guy to which I am talking can always blurt out some Sloan Managment Review article which declares exactly the opposite. Or worse, he will pretend to know it better - and he just might. There's no way to prove it. Professors have been wrong - unlike a routing protocol, which just "is".
This is exactly why corporate BS'ers get away with BS'ing - and why it's so difficult for most of us with a technical background to work with a system that apparently allows tolerance for nonsense.
I also honestly believe that a company with a real long-term vision will understand what CSR means and will therefore act accordingly to it. Most Japan-based companies realise that there are 120 million Japanese on a small island, and that it doesn't take too much to upset the local eco-system. Factories and plants are almost by rule CO2-neutral. Couple this with the long-term vision that is inherent to the Japanese and you understand why Toyota was the first company to shoot for the "green car". It's not just caring about the environment - it's business. I have even been at seminars where consultants calculate the price of media coverage gained from "philantrophic" activities. Yes, these activities definately CAN have a good ROI.
However, I do think we have to realise that 98% of companies are active in CSR because it is a short-term economic response. Individuals are becoming slightly more moral, and they expect the same from the companies they are doing business with. Nike can't exploit little kids in far-off countries anymore, and since Brent Spar, Shell can't sink end-of-life drill platforms anymore (nevermind that the Shell scientists were actually right in this case...). Other companies have to follow until in ten years, CSR is a requirement and not a differentiator.
So, we therefore have to ask ourselves. Is Google buying $1.1b of brand equity - hoping to reclaim the "coolness" they lost over google.cn? Or does the $1.1b really spring from their true desire not to do evil? Yes, the effect will be the same. Their motives, however, are what determine if they would still act like this if there's no shareholder-driven imperative anymore.
I don't know about you, but when I think Windows, I think of those big glass things in the wall.
It's odd that when you're thinking "windows" you think of big glass things in the wall, but when you type, you feel the need to Capitalize those Big Glass Things in the wall:)
The image of Neo being plugged out is no evidence that it's a matrix in a matrix. Either it could be a deducted image or read from Neo's own mind.
Besides - a matrix in a matrix would be dull for at least two reasons:
1. You don't need a 2nd matrix - Instead of giving that.1% of rebels something to do, the Sentinel can easily kill the 'malfunctioning units' rather then unplugging them
2. It's been done in MIB, where it's a world in a world in a world. Please don't tell me that the Matrix is going this way.
Two good writers come to mind. I've named both of them because they evolve; other then, say, Orson Scott Card who just writes the same 4 books about 15 times, these guys grow from one stage into the next:
1. Neal Stephenson. "Snow Crash" and "The Diamond Age" are probably the only ones of his books that could be classified as "Science Fiction". They all succeed in mixing a number of themes into a reasonably good story. In the case of Snow Crash, he's trying to mix mythology with technocracy and linguism. In his last work, "Cryptonomicon", he's completely stepped off of SF and is proudly banging himself on the chest about the research he did into the WW2-history of cryptology (it's still a good book, though).
2. William Gibson. Writing mostly in trilogies (two so far), his most famous book being the first one of the first trilogy - Neuromancer. It's cyberbunk at its best, but over the books, he's turning into a stylist rather then a technogadget-loving society-critic (how's that for scrabble-words).
The Cisco CCIE practical exam has changed from an older 2-day format to a new 1-day format. The old format used to include troubleshooting - the new format is mainly all the configuration of the previous two days and more crammed into a mere 8 hours.
There was a _lot_ of discussion about the removal of troubleshooting. Speaking out of personal experience (I've done them both), you can test the skills you need to be a good troubleshooter just as well with giving you a very well thought-through exam as with giving you a broken network to fix.
For those of you interested - please see the Cisco Blueprint for an idea of what you need to study for just the qualification portion of this exam.
You can get really high scores in this game by finding the "bug": I'll keep the hint minimal, but if you push hard on his foot, and try to push it down and back into the stairs, there's a chance he'll get stuck for a few seconds... resulting in very high scores.
I was in exactly the same situation. Four years of "computer engineering", at a crappy university years behind the times, trying to teach me how to integrate software with hardware.
I was sick and tired of it by the end of year 1, even though all I had wanted as a kid was to do "something with computers". But after the first few years, I got so fed up with the way it was taught and the uselessness of the education that I had a severe case of antipathy against anything CS-related.
Then my first internship. Bay Networks. For some freakish reason it was a networking assignment, not in the line of computer science 'pur sang' or even computer science. I learned the wonderful world of IP, routing, switching, ATM, Ethernet, Token Ring, , all the beautiful stuff that didn't have their roots in CS as much as being an alongside part of it. At least, that's the way it was viewed in that world. And because of that, I liked it.
My education turned out to be less and less useless as I got on with my career in networking. I managed to get a graduation position and finished my degree - probably the wisest and most relieving move I made during my career. Not even obtaining my CCIE (hopefully, soon, if the fsck'ing proctor will be reasonable this time) will be as good as that was. And although the education hasn't got much to do with my current job (network consultant/engineer), I keep on finding out that in fact those years were not totally useless.
I have no use for the skill of knowing how a C-compiler works. The practice I had in tracking a bug in a pile of code, though, helps me in finding errors in a network now. I never make a calculation using the Calculus and other kinds of maths I had any more. I do, however, make use of the ways they forced me to think while teaching me those subjects.
So, in short: The education will be good for loads of other stuff then just hacking code. Nowadays, I'm doing the l33t3st stuff (in my opinion, anyways) with my job and loving it (and, yes, making the big-ass salary). It's all I hoped to do, in spite and because of the fact that it is NOT computer-science. And if you want to invent a new wheel: Write an RFC! You'll just need the experience first:-)
I've dealt with Cisco Support on quite a number of times and issues... and I have to say: it varies greatly from time to time.
On one occasion, I had everyone but Sam Hilabi himself on the phone when I was strugging with a relatively simple BGP issue.
On one other occasion, it took them a week to get back to my initial call, only then to figure out they needed a deeper expert when I was stuck with an ATM-QoS-question.
Asking for access to your network equipment (remote login, etc) is common - it's their most secure way of verifying your current situation. Proposing and acting out changes is completely alien to me, however.
Just my $0.02...
Slashdot Mirror
So, I recently got diagnosed with ALS. I'll lose function of all my muscles in a manner of years. To me this is promising as it means I might have a better hope of keeping in touch with the world than just using my eyes to point to letters on a virtual keyboard :)
Amazing! A friend of mine has done his Ph.D. in exactly this field. He was shining a beam of light right THROUGH an opaque sheet of material (paper, I think) already a few years ago, and published about it in 2008. I think it's pretty much the same idea, from what I understand of it (but keep in mind, I chose the evil path of Business instead of Science, so I have no brain).
Anyway; on his page there's a much better explanation, with cute pictures and all that, of the same idea.
It's kind of difficult for TPB to claim that they were not aware of the lawsuit if they already started to counter-sue a week ago.
Read about it here
Google did not build Chrome to capture market share. They did not create it to launch a product or to circumvent adblock (duh).
They built it for a real strategic reason: to make sure the web remains usable and open. If Google hopes to serve web apps in the future, they depend on the quality of browsers, and the current browser architectures apparently don't satisfy them.
Changing Firefox wasn't an option and attacking IE is a mission with very little payoff for Google. So Google chose to inject their design principles into the market by creating a radically new, yet incomplete browser, and release it open source, so it gets adopted. If Microsoft steals this technology to make IE9 even better, Google's mission will have succeeded.
There's an Economist article which explains all this pretty good as well:
link
Hello,
:-)
Speaking from experience (I work in IT, I did an MBA, I chose the elective Business Ethics, I had to write an essay), my first guess is that your prof will tell you to be MORE SPECIFIC.
Do a google for, for instance, the Journal of Business Ethics ( http://www.springer.com/philosophy/ethics/journal/10551 ), and be surprised by the wealth of articles you'll already find about a really wide range of Ethics & IT topics. At the same time, once you have read the first few, you'll notice how immensely full of holes this area of research actually is. There's academic articles, for instance, about the morality of P2P File Sharing in Asia or the limitations that virtual personae should have with regards to knowing what they should remember about a given system. There's professors specialising in the combination of Business Ethics & IT; Jeroen van den Hoven (University of Delft) is the first one that jumps to mind for me.
So, if you wish to add something to this body of existing knowledge, you'd either go with something very specific (i.e. the behavior or a normal user when suddenly granted god access, on a tuesday afternoon, if he's exactly 42 years and two days old) and search what else has been written about your specific topic, OR you could do what your initial suggestion is, and give a high-level overview of a given topic. If you prefer the latter, the least that will probably be required is a quick overview of which topics are covered in research and which are currently barren. Summing up best practices or drawing up a directory of "hey, this is what slashdot users think" may be valuable, but only if you put it into a good context.
Hope this helps
How can you tell if the iPhone will be a hit if it's at least five months away from entering the market?
There might be promise in WiFi providers, and its next-gen buddy, WiMax as an alternative to mobile cell-phones. In Europe there already are companies that are rolling out dual-mode WiFi/GSM phones. Wifi on campus to cut out the costs of using a cellular networks, and integrating iPass unlimited WiFi access into the phone will knock out any cell-phone provider that isn't willig to drop its pants... I mean, rates. UMA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlicensed_Mobile_Ac cess/, don't know how to do links, sorry) will neatly accomodate smooth integration of the two - and from there it's a small step to WiMax'ing the entire continent into one big hotspot. Supposing that this new generation of hotspots will be as neutral as most WiFi-hotspot providers are today, you've found an alternative to these yucky cell-phone companies.
So, no net neutrality is a bad thing - I've felt this in my guts for a long time and this article gives me some very good arguments to articulate it (yes, I should have done my own thinking, but I'm lazy).
It's easy to understand WHY cell phone companies are doing this, though. Too much money was lost in creating a transparent, neutral internet; some companies and executives may have gotten rich but as an industry, global telecommunications has an appaling performance record.
Cell phone providers are one of the potential providers of the "next net" (depending on who will win the technology battle - the cell phone providers with 3g/4g, broadband providers with WiMax or whoever else can float a business model for some cool technology). So, the folks in strategy and marketing of Verizon/AT&T/ have figured that net neutrality is a bad thing 'coz they need to get some ROE on their investor's buck.
The question is - how are we as consumers (or better - potential entrepreneurs?) going to prevent this from happening? I'm not sure Joe Average is smart enough to understand he shouldn't be buying his UMTS minutes from a company that doesn't offer him a neutral service.
Well... I guess I am in the position to comment on this one. Depending on your viewpoint, I may be a corporate sell-out, a nerd without spine or just someone who goes where the challenge is.
I'm a CCIE, so I have at least some credibility in the tech department. I spent years working on some of the most interesting projects a CCIE could dream of - network planning, (re)design, troubleshooting, working with Cisco and other vendors to develop next generation features... Yeah, it was interesting and 98% tech-related. After a few years, though, I kind of lost interest. I found that the "next generation" complex system after BGP wasn't RPSLng but instead systems of people. Once you get the RFC, working with the system is simply a derivative. However, there's no RFC for "how companies work" - and there are so many more facets to understanding the system of how people work within a company than within even the most complex network. Maybe it's different if you program java, but for me, I found the interesting challenge elsewhere.
Most of us wonder why the heck our stupid managers make some of the decisions they do. Yes, maybe they are plain stupid. Maybe, though, "they" understand something that we do not - and I wasn't going to let the arrogance of "knowing better because I am a geek" tell me that managers are stupid. I wanted to find out what made them tick.
I am now enrolled in a part-time MBA program at a good institution (and recently recertified for two more years of CCIE-dom while doing it). I've had a job as a "pre-sales consultant" so I could begin to understand how this whole evil sales process actually takes place. I've always wondered why someone with money to spare would give it to someone who, to us geeks, obviously has so little brain as a sales guy.
No, the answer is not that people with money to spare are by definition stupid. The answer is not that sales people are necessarily shallow. The answer is not that earning money is evil. The answer from the IT department should not be "I READ YOUR EMAIL! FEAR ME!", as this is probably the best excuse I can think of to recommend outsourcing to the next CIO I meet.
I'm now at the point where I have taken up a relatively new concept within my company and can make it work partially because I understand the technological concepts underlying it AND because I can explain to companies why it is important for them to invest in my concept. This requires me to speak some of the lingo - and yes, I do talk about adding value to a company's core business processes with the use of our business solution. I talk about the benefits of RFID for supply chain management. I wear an expensive suit and describe the opportunity for growth in a certain market which can be enabled by this-or-that network solution. So, yes, the 'speak' is important if you want those who are likely to make decisions to hear you.
However, having said that, the 'catch' is that there is a lot of BS going around in the corporate-speak-world. If you discuss a routing protocol, there can be no dispute - in the end, look up the RFC or reproduce whatever you're trying to prove. Discussing a company's marketing strategy or trying to make a business case for unified messaging is a lot more shaky. There's no undisputable book or testlab to point to and say "look, you're wrong, see - that's not how it works!". I can quote the latest book or article I read about the latest trend in strategy. I blurt out page numbers of Harvard Business Review articles. This is not proof, though. The guy to which I am talking can always blurt out some Sloan Managment Review article which declares exactly the opposite. Or worse, he will pretend to know it better - and he just might. There's no way to prove it. Professors have been wrong - unlike a routing protocol, which just "is".
This is exactly why corporate BS'ers get away with BS'ing - and why it's so difficult for most of us with a technical background to work with a system that apparently allows tolerance for nonsense.
I am a huge fan of companies becoming involved in charity. The practice is mostly dubbed "corporate social responsibility" nowadays - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_social_resp onsibility
I also honestly believe that a company with a real long-term vision will understand what CSR means and will therefore act accordingly to it. Most Japan-based companies realise that there are 120 million Japanese on a small island, and that it doesn't take too much to upset the local eco-system. Factories and plants are almost by rule CO2-neutral. Couple this with the long-term vision that is inherent to the Japanese and you understand why Toyota was the first company to shoot for the "green car". It's not just caring about the environment - it's business. I have even been at seminars where consultants calculate the price of media coverage gained from "philantrophic" activities. Yes, these activities definately CAN have a good ROI.
However, I do think we have to realise that 98% of companies are active in CSR because it is a short-term economic response. Individuals are becoming slightly more moral, and they expect the same from the companies they are doing business with. Nike can't exploit little kids in far-off countries anymore, and
since Brent Spar, Shell can't sink end-of-life drill platforms anymore (nevermind that the Shell scientists were actually right in this case...). Other companies have to follow until in ten years, CSR is a requirement and not a differentiator.
So, we therefore have to ask ourselves. Is Google buying $1.1b of brand equity - hoping to reclaim the "coolness" they lost over google.cn? Or does the $1.1b really spring from their true desire not to do evil? Yes, the effect will be the same. Their motives, however, are what determine if they would still act like this if there's no shareholder-driven imperative anymore.
It's odd that when you're thinking "windows" you think of big glass things in the wall, but when you type, you feel the need to Capitalize those Big Glass Things in the wall :)
Sure they can. Have you never heard of duct tape?
Why rebuild it. It WILL happen again. Spend the money to relocate the people and I would happily watch my tax money being spent.
My God! We'd better start relocating all of The Netherlands, quickly!
So,can anyone tell me how I am going to get my downloaded MP3's or iTunes or whatever... to play on my favorite medium:
;-)
My record player?
The image of Neo being plugged out is no evidence that it's a matrix in a matrix. Either it could be a deducted image or read from Neo's own mind.
.1% of rebels something to do, the Sentinel can easily kill the 'malfunctioning units' rather then unplugging them
Besides - a matrix in a matrix would be dull for at least two reasons:
1. You don't need a 2nd matrix - Instead of giving that
2. It's been done in MIB, where it's a world in a world in a world. Please don't tell me that the Matrix is going this way.
Heh - that's just quoted directly from Tanenbaum's book... "never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck with video tapes".
oh well...
Two good writers come to mind. I've named both of them because they evolve; other then, say, Orson Scott Card who just writes the same 4 books about 15 times, these guys grow from one stage into the next:
1. Neal Stephenson. "Snow Crash" and "The Diamond Age" are probably the only ones of his books that could be classified as "Science Fiction". They all succeed in mixing a number of themes into a reasonably good story. In the case of Snow Crash, he's trying to mix mythology with technocracy and linguism. In his last work, "Cryptonomicon", he's completely stepped off of SF and is proudly banging himself on the chest about the research he did into the WW2-history of cryptology (it's still a good book, though).
2. William Gibson. Writing mostly in trilogies (two so far), his most famous book being the first one of the first trilogy - Neuromancer. It's cyberbunk at its best, but over the books, he's turning into a stylist rather then a technogadget-loving society-critic (how's that for scrabble-words).
The Cisco CCIE practical exam has changed from an older 2-day format to a new 1-day format. The old format used to include troubleshooting - the new format is mainly all the configuration of the previous two days and more crammed into a mere 8 hours.
There was a _lot_ of discussion about the removal of troubleshooting. Speaking out of personal experience (I've done them both), you can test the skills you need to be a good troubleshooter just as well with giving you a very well thought-through exam as with giving you a broken network to fix.
For those of you interested - please see the Cisco Blueprint for an idea of what you need to study for just the qualification portion of this exam.
You can get really high scores in this game by finding the "bug": I'll keep the hint minimal, but if you push hard on his foot, and try to push it down and back into the stairs, there's a chance he'll get stuck for a few seconds... resulting in very high scores.
We've got a guy with three of them in our company... (although, admittedly, he's got R&S, ISP-Dial and Design (he's one of the 4 Design-CCIE's))
That makes my "one" CCIE seem kinda irrelevant *sob*.
And... here
I was in exactly the same situation. Four years of "computer engineering", at a crappy university years behind the times, trying to teach me how to integrate software with hardware.
:-)
I was sick and tired of it by the end of year 1, even though all I had wanted as a kid was to do "something with computers". But after the first few years, I got so fed up with the way it was taught and the uselessness of the education that I had a severe case of antipathy against anything CS-related.
Then my first internship. Bay Networks. For some freakish reason it was a networking assignment, not in the line of computer science 'pur sang' or even computer science. I learned the wonderful world of IP, routing, switching, ATM, Ethernet, Token Ring, , all the beautiful stuff that didn't have their roots in CS as much as being an alongside part of it. At least, that's the way it was viewed in that world. And because of that, I liked it.
My education turned out to be less and less useless as I got on with my career in networking. I managed to get a graduation position and finished my degree - probably the wisest and most relieving move I made during my career. Not even obtaining my CCIE (hopefully, soon, if the fsck'ing proctor will be reasonable this time) will be as good as that was. And although the education hasn't got much to do with my current job (network consultant/engineer), I keep on finding out that in fact those years were not totally useless.
I have no use for the skill of knowing how a C-compiler works. The practice I had in tracking a bug in a pile of code, though, helps me in finding errors in a network now. I never make a calculation using the Calculus and other kinds of maths I had any more. I do, however, make use of the ways they forced me to think while teaching me those subjects.
So, in short: The education will be good for loads of other stuff then just hacking code. Nowadays, I'm doing the l33t3st stuff (in my opinion, anyways) with my job and loving it (and, yes, making the big-ass salary). It's all I hoped to do, in spite and because of the fact that it is NOT computer-science. And if you want to invent a new wheel: Write an RFC! You'll just need the experience first
> (we have 4 T-1's...some ask why don't you go with a OC-3? 4 T-1's are probably cheaper and provide redundancy...nuff said).
:-)
ehr... 4 T1's = 4 x 1.544 Mbit. (=6.176Mbit... der)
1 OC-3 = 155.52 Mbit.
Not really similar, eh
I've dealt with Cisco Support on quite a number of times and issues... and I have to say: it varies greatly from time to time. On one occasion, I had everyone but Sam Hilabi himself on the phone when I was strugging with a relatively simple BGP issue. On one other occasion, it took them a week to get back to my initial call, only then to figure out they needed a deeper expert when I was stuck with an ATM-QoS-question. Asking for access to your network equipment (remote login, etc) is common - it's their most secure way of verifying your current situation. Proposing and acting out changes is completely alien to me, however. Just my $0.02...