Imagine this: The Pentagon offers to transport, arm, and fuel home-built drone aircraft to fly against Al Qaeda. Your aircraft must meet the following requirements:
On-board GPS
On-board video capability
Must be controlled via a soon-to-be-built wireless IP network in (let's say Somalia)
500-pound payload
From the comfort of your home, you can patrol your Pentagon-assigned territory, and engage targets as designated by the JSTARS targeting system.
I figure the Pentagon can probably turn a profit by charging fees as they provide what is essentially the world's most realistic flight simulator. As an added bonus, they could sell the TV rights to the on-board video. Wouldn't it be fun to watch "The World's Most Terrified Terrorists"? Imagine what the MIT folks could build for this mission!
I think the most ironic part of the whole idea is that it turns the tables on the bad guys. Under this scenario, their most terrfying time of day would be when school gets out in the US. "Oh no! Schools out! Everyone head for the caves!"
If you live in an underground concrete bunker (or set up the access point in your basement), I can see how coverage would be limited. Once you have walls and floors getting in the way, 802.11b is limited by those -- distance becomes irrelevant.
If you put an access point in a window, you should get 100 yards towards anything you can see from that window. With 4 strategically-located access points, you should be able to cover 100 yards North, South, East, and West. If you really want to hit a specific target, get a directional outdoor antenna. None of this is particularly difficult or expensive.
It just so happens that my nearest neighbors are probably beyond 802.11b range, but that's because I live in a forest. The average person in a single family suburban house can probably share with at least a few neighbors. In a high-rise apartment, hotel, or dorm, the coverage possibilities are vastly improved. The best way to provide coverage to a large building is from the outside, where you can get a direct shot to as many windows as possible.
I more-or-less pioneered 802.11b deployment at my company. Inside, we have somewhat limited coverage because of interior walls. Just as a joke, I took my laptop outside and started to continuously ping a server as I wandered through parking lots and other buildings on our campus. I was amazed to find just how much RF was leaking through the windows and how far I could go before I lost connectivity.
I think the broadband carriers are terrified about widespread deployment of wireless NAT-based connection sharing. In general, they seem to be really paranoid about anything that obscures their ability to understand how their customers are using the bandwidth (VPN for example). This latest ploy seems to revolve around extracting extra revenue from the people who are (A) unlikely to walk away and (B) potentially sharing their connections with friends & neighbors.
It could be worse. Given the freedom to do so, the ISPs will take each individual thing you can do on the Internet and establish some kind of monthly fee for doing it. I can imagine them charging for each open port, or for any protocol that you might want unblocked. It's part of their cable-TV mentality where they view the data on the Internet as theirs to sell, not merely as a distribution service. In the future, we will pay the ISP for basic connectivity, and then pay them again for the privilege of actually using it.
"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed," bin Laden said as the U.S. war on terrorism raged in Afghanistan. "The U.S. government will lead the American people in -- and the West in general -- into an unbearable hell and a choking life."
I think Osama has confused the U.S. Government with the RIAA. It's an easy mistake to make. One is a bunch of pompous asses, while the other is an organization dedicated to controlling our lives by eliminating freedom. As an American, I still get confused about which is which.
As a backup device, this might be interesting. Market it as a poor man's DLT drive, and it might sell. As I recall, there were numerous failed attempts to use analog VHS as data storage, but a digital approach could solve most of the problems.
If D-VHS is marketed as yet another example of digital media crippleware, it will be "coming soon to a landfill near you."
They must have done some kind of analysis where they estimate the cost of customers walking away vs. the enhanced revenue from additional fees. Given the robust sales of NAT devices, I think their analysis is way off. Then again, maybe this whole thing is a "troll for data" operation where you broadcast your intentions to see how much resistance there really is.
I remember the old days when @Home assigned one static IP per household, with no provision whatsoever for additional addresses. The tech. staff would say "There is a way to connect multiple computers, but we don't support it.", meaning "Set up Linux IP Masquerade -- we don't care, just don't ask us to fix it."
Of course the real problem with NAT is the 802.11b Wifi dilemma. In an apartement scenario, a single broadband subscriber can share with many neighbors, especially if they are light users (the kind the ISPs covet the most). I guess Comcast has figured this out and views it as a doomsday scenario.
The proper way to kill the anti-NAT practices is to see which ISP takes the lead and then boycott them into bankruptcy. After all, the service is not very useful without NAT, so walking away is not just the morally correct thing to do, it's almost a necessity anyway.
After getting all of these people onto the "wait list", watch them try to auction the names at renewal time instead of merely accepting a renewal payment from the existing owner. That way, when you buy a name you will eventually have to outbid everyone else just to keep it. Of course a dishonest registrar could put bogus people on the wait list and drive up the auction price with bogus bids. Hmmmmmm.
To me, the concept of offering a settlement has to at a minimum compensate the plaintiffs in a meaningful way. My interpretation of the M$ settlement offer was that they would donate mostly software (costing them nothing) to schools (not the plaintiffs), and PAY THE PLAINTIFF'S LEGAL FEES. This is interesting because the lawyers are probably expecting to get a percentage of the settlement, which is being offered by M$ as nothing for the plaintiffs -- meaning 30% of $0 for the laywers.
In my opinion, this is not much different than offering a bribe to the other side's lawyers to get their support in settling the case for peanuts. Would it be OK if the plaintiffs offered to pay M$ lawyers to persuade M$ to make a $5 billion cash settlement offer??? I think not.
M$ is not the only company that is allegedly trying to settle class action suits with charitable contributions & paying the plaintiff's attorneys. To me, this is a dubious practice that should be squashed.
Back in ancient times, there was ISDN (It Still Does Nothing). ISDN was deployed extensively in Europe, but there was a very slow rollout in the US. In the beginning, it was overpriced and offered speed that most people didn't need. Back in those days, people used terminal emulation, and 9600 bps was just fine. By the time anyone wanted 128K bps, ISDN was STILL overpriced, and dialup speed eventually hit 56K for a fraction of the cost & hassle.
Twenty years later, the telecom companies are only a little smarter. This time they know broadband has to be priced right to avoid "ISDN syndrome", but they will only commit the capital to deploy it where there is (1) a sizeable market, and (2) lack of competition. This leaves out huge sections of the country. As an added bonus, many of the prime customers live in areas with a low population density.
Here in the US, the government doesn't make the telecom companies do anything they don't want to do. That means broadband is only going to be delivered in the most lucrative markets. None of this has anything to do with copyright issues.
My favorite quote from the article: "Many Linux projects in CAS and Depth accounts happen below the IT Manager/BDM level."
Back in the early days of Apache, I was one of those guys who deployed a "stealth" Linux box as a web server because nobody wanted to spend money on a concept that only a few people understood. "What is this web server and why do we need one?". A tough sell if you don't have anything to demonstrate. Corporate use of Linux got a big push from the "unbudgeted mandate" -- the need to provide specialized services in the absense of funding.
Today, I am an IT Manager, and I choose Linux by default unless I am unavoidably locked into M$ compatibility. In my experience, M$ products have proven to be costly, unreliable, and unsecure. I have Linux boxes in the US, Europe, and Asia. For the time being M$ rules the desktop, but that may change eventually. To me, Mr. Valentine's view of the world is somehow stuck in 1993.
I thought of that. In fact, that's what I would do if confronted with this situation. Then again, I would not be warning anyone, I would just do it. The only real drawback to this approach is the tedious manual effort that would be needed to make the subtle changes, and then mail out each message individually. To make it look like everyone is getting the message simultaneously, our M$ friend would have to disable his distribution list (so the "To: marketingdroids@microsoft.com" line fails), and then manually BCC each of the recipients so that each gets their unique copy of the message. That's alot of work when you consider how many marketing droids M$ probably has. It's not like M$ has a meaningful scripting language that would help expedite this task!
The memo mentions M$'s ability to track forwarding, which depends on the internal leaker using the M$ corporate Exchange server to do the leaking. No matter what Mr. Valentine's technical skill level might be, he would surely know that his message could be forwarded via a number of alternative means, some of them being really low-tech...
Print a hardcopy, then use ancient fax machine
Zip or PDF file with a password
Copy/paste into Hotmail
Post to Usenet via Google Groups
Graphic screenshots
PGP encrypted
[Fill in your favorite work-around here]
If he's a knowledgable guy, he knows that tracking the e-mail via Exchange has some serious limitations. Knowing this, why not try to control the problem by making an idle threat? IMHO, he's not necessarily stupid, he just doesn't have any great choices to make here.
"They don't posess the knowledge for real engineering work" Probably true, but what's the point? Aside from yourself, I don't think anyone in this discussion is an engineer, nor are they surgeons, accountants, firemen, or ballet dancers. I could be wrong on this, but the majority of people in this discussion seem to have a CS background.
The original topic was "Fast track to a CS degree". As I recall, the original poster was interesting in getting a CS degree with minimal time/money/effort. Some people questioned the value of doing this, while others claimed it was necessary to get promoted into management. This triggered a number of responses from people who were promoted into management without a degree.
No one suggested that it was a good idea to skip formal education entirely; IMHO the real issue is "Does it make sense to expend the time/money/effort to finish a degree when it involves taking courses that are loosely related or totally unrelated to your career?" Reasonable people disgree on this issue. Each individual has unique circumstances. Your actual mileage may vary.
BTW, the vast majority of CS grads will never use any of the hardcore "discrete math and calculus" that you mention. As someone who took those courses and then worked as an applications programmer, systems programmer, network manager, system manager, and database administrator, I'm still waiting to use that knowledge. Now that I'm in management, the odds of using it have dropped from almost zero to precisely zero. Only a small percentage of IT workers are crunching numbers; most are crunching data. I apologize in advance to the people who work with 3D graphics, simulators, and cryptography.
You brought up engineering out of the clear blue sky, so now it's up for discussion. It just so happens I have an uncle who worked as an engineer, designing jet engine parts for Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, from the 1950's to the 80's. If you have ever flown on a 747 then you have seen his work. He had no degree! How he got hired by a defense contractor without a degree is something I can't even begin to figure out, but the fact remains that he not only got hired, he managed to stay there for 35 years. I suspect he learned plenty of "crazy discrete math and the calculus loop" in college -- he simply refused do deal with gym class and foreign languages. Defense contractors in general and P&W in particular have a reputation for laying off lots of people whenever business is slow. Considering how many engineers [with degrees] they laid off, he must have been a very useful guy.
I don't mean to jump all over the issue of "degrees as the universal answer", but I have seen many of these messages that (IMHO) overstate what a degree can actually do for a career.
I merely attempt to bring some balance to those who think the lack of a degree is what keeps people from getting management positions. I can think of many things that are even bigger obstacles than the lack of a degree.
I tell everyone who wants to work in IT the same thing:
When IT jobs are available GET ONE. Experience counts. A lot. A soft IT market is NOT the time to be pursuing your first job after graduation. Why pay 4 years of tuition for the privilege of being unemployed? Just try to explain to a potential employer how you graduated 2 years ago and STILL have no experience. I know of plenty of people who graduated in the early 90's -- it sucked. On the other hand, I started working in the mid 80's.
Diversify: Hardware, Software, Networks, Databases. Do it all. Change jobs as necessary. Even better if you can shift jobs while at the same company. IT is a hobby disguised as a profession (or maybe the other way around).
Pursue a degree at your own pace, preferrably with your employer picking up the tab.
Except for item #3, I have followed my own advice. I have been lucky enough for long enough to think it's working.
I'm trying to offer constructive criticism; please interpret the message in the spirit in which it is intended...
To me, it looks like half the problem might be associated with legacy technology. If I turn your message into an unofficial resume, it looks like most of what you work on is old stuff. Either this is part of the problem, or maybe the presentation needs to focus on what employers might really want. I have lots of experience working with DECnet, Adabas, VAX/VMS and SNA gateways, but I don't tell anyone, because nobody cares. I also have lots of experience working with TCP/IP, Cisco IOS, SQL, HTML, PHP, Oracle, MSSQL, Apache, Solaris, and Linux, and I proclaim it loudly. Could it be as simple as a battle of the buzzwords?
The other half of the problem is that the IT market is lousy right now, and you are competing with the low-cost labor, maybe even H1Bs. They all have degrees and they're cheap to hire. If you find yourself competing with recent grads or H1Bs, then you are losing based on cost, or the perceived salary requirements of a 44 year old vs. a 24 year old. A degree won't make you any younger or cheaper. I know of plenty of people with degrees who experience age discrimination, it still sucks no matter what.
As for having peers with less experience getting 20% higher salaries, that is quite possibly a function of when they were hired. During the upside of the IT job market, salaries for NEW employees escalate to keep pace with the market, but EXISTING employees are often taken for granted. Get hired in the wrong year, and you get screwed. I worked in state government, where everyone knew everyone else's salary. When mine was out of sync, I asked management to address the issue, offering to leave if they were unsuccessful. It worked (more than once), because the degree was never the real issue. Given the chance, the HR droids would have used the degree an excuse to do nothing, but the salary game is played by the removal of excuses, usually backed up by a willingness to pursue opportunities elsewhere. Those who are unwilling to quit are the ones whose salaries must be OK, according to HR. After all, whose responsiblity is it to read the salary surveys and find out if what you make is reasonable for what you do? With or without a degree, the only solution for an out-of-sync salary is a well-timed "fix it or else" attitude, with the appropriate, non-confrontational presentation.
At age 38, I've been lucky enough for long enough to the point where I think my career is on-track, despite my lack of a degree. What I fear most of all is getting locked into technology that goes out of style, leaving me behind as a techo-relic that nobody wants. A degree would not be all that helpful if I was perceived as an [expensive] COBOL/RPG/Y2K has-been.
I intend no criticism of your decision to pursue the degree -- it may actually work, especially if you can present it as a (real or perceived) modernization of your skills. I think the next step will be to find a way to avoid competing with the bottom of the food chain, because (A) you don't belong there, and (B) it sounds like you deserve a more senior position. I think if you were chasing the right posisions, you would not be encountering so many younger/cheaper people.
I jumped to numerous conclusions in the preparation of this message, and I apologize in advance for any that may be off-base, including but not limited to the distribution of unsolicited advice. Good luck.
I've been in the IT industry for 16 years now, the last 6 in management. I almost finished a degree in 1985, but the fact is I do not have one. My story is similar to yours -- get started, work your way up, do not accept unnecessary limitations. It's always encouraging to see that others occasionally follow this path.
I have hired people ranging from non-degree up to MSCS. Looking at the performance of the entire group, the degree people fit the "normal curve". Some good, some bad, most were at least adequate. The non-degree people were hired only when they could demonstrate superior skills. As it happens, those skills made them top performers when it was time to actually do the job. Of all the non-degree people I have hired, I have yet to be disappointed.
In my opinion, the degree is part of the selection criteria ONLY when ALL of the applicants are light on experience.
Some of the other posts are correct in that certain industries are militant about the degree requirement. Around here the common examples are government, insurance, defense, banking, and pharmaceuticals.
Case study #1: I once hired a guy whose only work experience was as a VCR repair technician. He was an engineering/computer hobbyist, whom I had known for years. He was an incredibly sharp guy, just a little unfocused. He was part of my staff for a few years, and then left to become a system manager for one of the largest banks in New England.
Case study #2: Same story, except this guy was an electrician who was doing mostly Cat.5 network wiring. He was on my staff for a few years, and is now the network manager for an state government agency with a very sophisticated WAN and LAN environment that includes numerous remote sites and thousands of PCs.
Case study #3: I knew another guy who earned an ASEE. He looked for a job and found nothing. He goes back for an AS in Data Processing. New job search, same result. He goes to another college and earns a BSCS. Still no job. Finally, he goes to college #3 and gets an MSCS, and EVENTUALLY, a job installing PCs and LANs in Georgia. We would still be driving a van full of PCs from Georgia to Alabama if I didn't hire him. Since then, he worked his way up through operations and became an Oracle DBA. He now works for a major pharmaceutical company, so things worked well for him too. Then again, if he never graduated from anywhere, I don't see how his life would be any different today, aside from possibly earning an additional 6 years of salary.
Let's face it, when the IT job market is cold, MOST applicants are going to get excuses instead of job offers. In such a tough market, you have to outwit, outplay, and outlast your competition, degree or not. In a hot IT market, the offers are out there, and exceptions are being made by employers, beyond what most people can possibly imagine.
Does the lack of a degree reduce my theoretical number of potential employers? YES, it does. However, I don't expect to get an offer from every interview. No one ever does. In my career, I have interviewed about 12 times and received 5 offers, for a hit rate of about 42%. Did I get "screened out" of several opportunities? Sure, but who cares? I only accepted 2 of the 5 offers, and I've been promoted 6 times by two employers during 16 years of uninterrupted employement. I don't let the degree become an obstacle, and every so often I find employers who agree with me. After all, I can only DO one job at a time, right? If I apply for ten jobs and I'm ranked #1 once and dead last for the other nine, that's a hell of a lot better than being ranked #2 all ten times, as described in case study #3 above.
In my opinion, things that don't make you a #1 choice are not all that useful. To me, the degree is what helps you reduce the number of reasons why an employer might NOT hire you, but it's not as valuble as adding a reason why they WOULD hire you. Think of yourself as a hiring manager. Can you imagine telling your boss something like "I hired Joe Smith because he has a degree." On the other hand, would you rather say "I hired Joe Smith because he has great experience." To me, one of those statements sounds much better than the other.
Punish the script kiddies? Why? Damage? What damage? A few million dollars here, a few million there, it's only money!
Let's get our priorities straight! Now that Sklyarov guy, there's a dangerous criminal! His ultra-dangerous Adobe-buster is cyber-terrorism at it's worst! That must be why Skylarov has spent more time in jail than all the script kiddies in the world combined. And people think our government doesn't have any sense of priority! Way to go DOJ!
I never said the free market solution would be quick or painless; in fact it will be neither. Given the number of people out there with programming skills, there will always be a substantial base of labor that will create knock-off products wherever the economic balance gets seriously out of hand. Example: At $500 per seat, M$ owns the desktop productivity market. But if they raise the price of Office XP to $5000 per seat, there WILL be competitors, and good ones at that. At that price, companies will be formed for the sole purpose of going after that market.
Even a monopoly does not operate in a vacuum. IBM once thought they had everyone locked into mainframes. Where is their big iron monopoly now?
I used to think that software patents would be the industry's way of stifling competition. But if you let the patent scenario play through to it's logical conclusion, it will become impossible to write ANYTHING without violating someone's patent. Once the patent holders get tired of suing each other, common sense will prevail.
I saw we let the software industry lobby do what they will do anyway, and assume that they will stick us with useless drivel like DMCA and SSSCA. The government is not going to provide meaningful relief to software consumers anytime soon. Hell, they won't even pursue meaningful corrective action against Microsoft.
If I can outperform my competitors when it comes to adopting an IT strategy that defends my business against monopoly lock-in and price gouging, then my competitors incur a higher cost than I do -- good for me. This may not be fair, but I am prepared to compete on this level. Is there any real alternative?
Once upon a time, software was primitive (PC, mainframe, makes no difference). Constant bugfixes and new/improved versions were a fact of life. No one ever thought the software companies were doing this just forose things would be free. In the PC world, you bought the base product once at full price and subsequent upgrades at a discount. In the mainframe world, you bought the product once and then paid 20% annually for "maintenance", which was essentially a subscription for any patches, new versions, and phone support. In this scenario, software companies had work to do, and a customer base willing to pay for it.
Then software "matured". Fewer bugs, more features than most people needed, not much of an incentive to keep upgrading. Y2K and excessive hardware/software costs put alot of mainframe systems into "legacy/do not upgrade" status. The few vendors who had mission-critical mainframe products really "milked" the customer base with whopper fees. Ask some of the IBM big-iron customers about CA (or IBM for that matter). It didn't take long for customers to revolt.
Today, we see this in the PC world. Many people are jumping off the upgrade bandwagon because they see insufficient benefits to justify the cost. Microsoft is a perfect example: they have a diminishing upgrade rate with each new release of Office. Why? Because the product is mature -- each new release is only a little better than the one before, and the customers are not really clamoring for new features.
Companies that have mission-critical PC products will no doubt use restrictive licensing to assure a revenue stream even if there isn't much of a demand for upgrades and bugfixes -- hence "Software Assurance (tm)" from Microsoft.
It always was and still is the responsiblity of the customer to figure out how to avoid getting painted into a corner and "milked". Look for competitive vendors, be willing to migrate to new products, consider open source alternatives. Plan an escape path for everything you do. The alternative is to get "milked" as a cash cow.
These cable clowns won't give up until they turn broadband into a product that nobody wants. Why not get it over with and block ALL the ports? For $39.95/month you get port 80 unblocked. Then they could have a list price for any other port you might want unblocked. That would achieve their objective of bandwidth conservation, as well as reduced calls to the help desk! I would think it would be fairly easy to support a network if all the data were eliminated.
If some data still remains on the network after phase one of the plan, they move on to phase two, where you pay per hop. At the basic rate of $39.95, the maximum hop count is five. If you pay for "expanded basic" it goes to ten, and "business class" is unlimited (at least for the first three months)!
These guys would license the number of mouseclicks and keystrokes if they thought anyone would pay. I think it's all part of a huge conspiracy to make dialup service more attractive.
All joking aside, the real issue with VPN has nothing whatsoever to do with bandwidth. It is more about controlling the availability of ports and access to IP addresses that might otherwise be blocked. Carried to it's logical conclusion, you get a few people with commercial high speed connections and unrestricted access -- then a few thousand cable customers using VPN to circumvent access restrictions by the cable company. It still has nothing to do with bandwidth, because in an unrestricted environment this type of VPN would be unnecessary -- you would still have the same packets going to the same destination (probaby via a more efficient route).
If these guys have any brains, they are fearful of a P2P like utility that might facilitate the exchange of quasi-public VPN logons, which would create a "Massive Rogue Virtual Network" (MRVN). In the pefect nightmare scenario, we throw in a bunch of house-to-house 802.11b users that eventually hit a residential cable modem "gateway" that allows entry to the MRVN world. Of course, all of this could be solved with reasonable pricing and fewer restrictions, but they're not that smart.
I have just about had it with their incessant "dumbing down" of the service. As time goes by, broadband costs more and more while it delivers less and less.
The M$ patent on DRM could be a blessing in disguise. After all, there isn't going to be a Linux version of their DRM technology. This means there will always be a substantial community of non-DRM computer users.
Even if M$ releases DRM-related products for Linux, they will get lobotomized and/or hacked in less than a week. Let them build as much silliness as they like into Windoze. Has M$ EVER released a highly secure, platform-indepenent product?
"Number Unavailable" on the caller ID is as good as a blacklist -- actually better. The last thing I would want is for the teletrash calls to blend in with the legitimate ones.
I rigged up my CID-friendly modem to ATA immediately on "Number Unavailable", and ignore everything else. Whenever I hear a second ring, I know the modem is letting the call go through. It's great fun to hear one ring and then -- nothing!
Best of all is a statewide DNC list. Here in Connecticut, it has hit the Teleban like a "bunker buster". So much so that my CID trick is now shelfware. A mandatory national DNC list with whopper fines would solve the problem instantly.
Spam is no joke when consider that in some parts of the world, Internet service is pricey and there is no such thing as a flat rate. If you paid per MB or per minute of connect time, you would "get it" for sure. As the U.S. concept of "unlimited" internet service gets less and less "unlimited", the spam issue will only get hotter.
Personally, I have a zero tolerance policy -- I trace the headers and file complaints. No exceptions. I managed to get one spam website TOS'ed off 3 ISPs, as well as a direct hit on their DNS capability, just by recycling the same message headers as the spammers got booted from one ISP to the next. I find that complaint messages work better when I have a meaningless bunch of keywords at the bottom. Wonderful things like DMCA, copyright, infringement, litigation, trademark, liability, etc.
On to the telemarketers. If you live in a state that has a manadatory "do not call" list, get on it. Otherwise, write to your state rep. and lobby for one. I live in Connecticut, where the DNC list has hit the telemarketers like a "bunker buster".
Then we have the junk mail. That gets stuffed back into the "business reply envelope" and returned at the sender's expense. I heard someone suggest keeping a supply of junk mail on hand at all times, so as to overstuff whatever business reply envelopes you might receive. I pay for trash removal. The people who send me this junk can pay to take it away, not me.
The car-starter situation is nothing new. For quite a while, the car manufacturers have been making it harder to build knock-off parts, while simultaneously preserving installation revenue for the dealers. Funky tools, fasteners, threads, anything to discourage the non-dealer mechanic or the knock-off manufacturer. Standardization encourages dealer avoidance, hacking, cloning and (in the case of cars) theft. Cars with lots of interchangeable parts are popular with the "chop shops".
To be fair about it, Honda had a big problem with theft. It's no secret that the engine computer is the final frontier of anti-theft technology. How can anyone critize Honda for addressing the problem?
Car hacking is not dead, but it requires more ingenuity than it used to. I remember the old days when I upgraded my home computer by soldering additional memory chips on top of the onboard memory. Just because I can't do that with a modern motherboard, does that make it "unhackable"?
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Imagine this: The Pentagon offers to transport, arm, and fuel home-built drone aircraft to fly against Al Qaeda. Your aircraft must meet the following requirements:
- On-board GPS
- On-board video capability
- Must be controlled via a soon-to-be-built wireless IP network in (let's say Somalia)
- 500-pound payload
From the comfort of your home, you can patrol your Pentagon-assigned territory, and engage targets as designated by the JSTARS targeting system.I figure the Pentagon can probably turn a profit by charging fees as they provide what is essentially the world's most realistic flight simulator. As an added bonus, they could sell the TV rights to the on-board video. Wouldn't it be fun to watch "The World's Most Terrified Terrorists"? Imagine what the MIT folks could build for this mission!
I think the most ironic part of the whole idea is that it turns the tables on the bad guys. Under this scenario, their most terrfying time of day would be when school gets out in the US. "Oh no! Schools out! Everyone head for the caves!"
What a neat application for embedded Linux.
If you live in an underground concrete bunker (or set up the access point in your basement), I can see how coverage would be limited. Once you have walls and floors getting in the way, 802.11b is limited by those -- distance becomes irrelevant.
If you put an access point in a window, you should get 100 yards towards anything you can see from that window. With 4 strategically-located access points, you should be able to cover 100 yards North, South, East, and West. If you really want to hit a specific target, get a directional outdoor antenna. None of this is particularly difficult or expensive.
It just so happens that my nearest neighbors are probably beyond 802.11b range, but that's because I live in a forest. The average person in a single family suburban house can probably share with at least a few neighbors. In a high-rise apartment, hotel, or dorm, the coverage possibilities are vastly improved. The best way to provide coverage to a large building is from the outside, where you can get a direct shot to as many windows as possible.
I more-or-less pioneered 802.11b deployment at my company. Inside, we have somewhat limited coverage because of interior walls. Just as a joke, I took my laptop outside and started to continuously ping a server as I wandered through parking lots and other buildings on our campus. I was amazed to find just how much RF was leaking through the windows and how far I could go before I lost connectivity.
I think the broadband carriers are terrified about widespread deployment of wireless NAT-based connection sharing. In general, they seem to be really paranoid about anything that obscures their ability to understand how their customers are using the bandwidth (VPN for example). This latest ploy seems to revolve around extracting extra revenue from the people who are (A) unlikely to walk away and (B) potentially sharing their connections with friends & neighbors.
It could be worse. Given the freedom to do so, the ISPs will take each individual thing you can do on the Internet and establish some kind of monthly fee for doing it. I can imagine them charging for each open port, or for any protocol that you might want unblocked. It's part of their cable-TV mentality where they view the data on the Internet as theirs to sell, not merely as a distribution service. In the future, we will pay the ISP for basic connectivity, and then pay them again for the privilege of actually using it.
"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed," bin Laden said as the U.S. war on terrorism raged in Afghanistan. "The U.S. government will lead the American people in -- and the West in general -- into an unbearable hell and a choking life."
I think Osama has confused the U.S. Government with the RIAA. It's an easy mistake to make. One is a bunch of pompous asses, while the other is an organization dedicated to controlling our lives by eliminating freedom. As an American, I still get confused about which is which.
If D-VHS is marketed as yet another example of digital media crippleware, it will be "coming soon to a landfill near you."
They must have done some kind of analysis where they estimate the cost of customers walking away vs. the enhanced revenue from additional fees. Given the robust sales of NAT devices, I think their analysis is way off. Then again, maybe this whole thing is a "troll for data" operation where you broadcast your intentions to see how much resistance there really is.
I remember the old days when @Home assigned one static IP per household, with no provision whatsoever for additional addresses. The tech. staff would say "There is a way to connect multiple computers, but we don't support it.", meaning "Set up Linux IP Masquerade -- we don't care, just don't ask us to fix it."
Of course the real problem with NAT is the 802.11b Wifi dilemma. In an apartement scenario, a single broadband subscriber can share with many neighbors, especially if they are light users (the kind the ISPs covet the most). I guess Comcast has figured this out and views it as a doomsday scenario.
The proper way to kill the anti-NAT practices is to see which ISP takes the lead and then boycott them into bankruptcy. After all, the service is not very useful without NAT, so walking away is not just the morally correct thing to do, it's almost a necessity anyway.
After getting all of these people onto the "wait list", watch them try to auction the names at renewal time instead of merely accepting a renewal payment from the existing owner. That way, when you buy a name you will eventually have to outbid everyone else just to keep it. Of course a dishonest registrar could put bogus people on the wait list and drive up the auction price with bogus bids. Hmmmmmm.
In my opinion, this is not much different than offering a bribe to the other side's lawyers to get their support in settling the case for peanuts. Would it be OK if the plaintiffs offered to pay M$ lawyers to persuade M$ to make a $5 billion cash settlement offer??? I think not.
M$ is not the only company that is allegedly trying to settle class action suits with charitable contributions & paying the plaintiff's attorneys. To me, this is a dubious practice that should be squashed.
Back in ancient times, there was ISDN (It Still Does Nothing). ISDN was deployed extensively in Europe, but there was a very slow rollout in the US. In the beginning, it was overpriced and offered speed that most people didn't need. Back in those days, people used terminal emulation, and 9600 bps was just fine. By the time anyone wanted 128K bps, ISDN was STILL overpriced, and dialup speed eventually hit 56K for a fraction of the cost & hassle.
Twenty years later, the telecom companies are only a little smarter. This time they know broadband has to be priced right to avoid "ISDN syndrome", but they will only commit the capital to deploy it where there is (1) a sizeable market, and (2) lack of competition. This leaves out huge sections of the country. As an added bonus, many of the prime customers live in areas with a low population density.
Here in the US, the government doesn't make the telecom companies do anything they don't want to do. That means broadband is only going to be delivered in the most lucrative markets. None of this has anything to do with copyright issues.
My favorite quote from the article: "Many Linux projects in CAS and Depth accounts happen below the IT Manager/BDM level."
Back in the early days of Apache, I was one of those guys who deployed a "stealth" Linux box as a web server because nobody wanted to spend money on a concept that only a few people understood. "What is this web server and why do we need one?". A tough sell if you don't have anything to demonstrate. Corporate use of Linux got a big push from the "unbudgeted mandate" -- the need to provide specialized services in the absense of funding.
Today, I am an IT Manager, and I choose Linux by default unless I am unavoidably locked into M$ compatibility. In my experience, M$ products have proven to be costly, unreliable, and unsecure. I have Linux boxes in the US, Europe, and Asia. For the time being M$ rules the desktop, but that may change eventually. To me, Mr. Valentine's view of the world is somehow stuck in 1993.
I thought of that. In fact, that's what I would do if confronted with this situation. Then again, I would not be warning anyone, I would just do it. The only real drawback to this approach is the tedious manual effort that would be needed to make the subtle changes, and then mail out each message individually. To make it look like everyone is getting the message simultaneously, our M$ friend would have to disable his distribution list (so the "To: marketingdroids@microsoft.com" line fails), and then manually BCC each of the recipients so that each gets their unique copy of the message. That's alot of work when you consider how many marketing droids M$ probably has. It's not like M$ has a meaningful scripting language that would help expedite this task!
If he's a knowledgable guy, he knows that tracking the e-mail via Exchange has some serious limitations. Knowing this, why not try to control the problem by making an idle threat? IMHO, he's not necessarily stupid, he just doesn't have any great choices to make here.
"They don't posess the knowledge for real engineering work" Probably true, but what's the point? Aside from yourself, I don't think anyone in this discussion is an engineer, nor are they surgeons, accountants, firemen, or ballet dancers. I could be wrong on this, but the majority of people in this discussion seem to have a CS background.
The original topic was "Fast track to a CS degree". As I recall, the original poster was interesting in getting a CS degree with minimal time/money/effort. Some people questioned the value of doing this, while others claimed it was necessary to get promoted into management. This triggered a number of responses from people who were promoted into management without a degree.
No one suggested that it was a good idea to skip formal education entirely; IMHO the real issue is "Does it make sense to expend the time/money/effort to finish a degree when it involves taking courses that are loosely related or totally unrelated to your career?" Reasonable people disgree on this issue. Each individual has unique circumstances. Your actual mileage may vary.
BTW, the vast majority of CS grads will never use any of the hardcore "discrete math and calculus" that you mention. As someone who took those courses and then worked as an applications programmer, systems programmer, network manager, system manager, and database administrator, I'm still waiting to use that knowledge. Now that I'm in management, the odds of using it have dropped from almost zero to precisely zero. Only a small percentage of IT workers are crunching numbers; most are crunching data. I apologize in advance to the people who work with 3D graphics, simulators, and cryptography.
You brought up engineering out of the clear blue sky, so now it's up for discussion. It just so happens I have an uncle who worked as an engineer, designing jet engine parts for Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, from the 1950's to the 80's. If you have ever flown on a 747 then you have seen his work. He had no degree! How he got hired by a defense contractor without a degree is something I can't even begin to figure out, but the fact remains that he not only got hired, he managed to stay there for 35 years. I suspect he learned plenty of "crazy discrete math and the calculus loop" in college -- he simply refused do deal with gym class and foreign languages. Defense contractors in general and P&W in particular have a reputation for laying off lots of people whenever business is slow. Considering how many engineers [with degrees] they laid off, he must have been a very useful guy.
I merely attempt to bring some balance to those who think the lack of a degree is what keeps people from getting management positions. I can think of many things that are even bigger obstacles than the lack of a degree.
I tell everyone who wants to work in IT the same thing:
Except for item #3, I have followed my own advice. I have been lucky enough for long enough to think it's working.
I'm trying to offer constructive criticism; please interpret the message in the spirit in which it is intended...
To me, it looks like half the problem might be associated with legacy technology. If I turn your message into an unofficial resume, it looks like most of what you work on is old stuff. Either this is part of the problem, or maybe the presentation needs to focus on what employers might really want. I have lots of experience working with DECnet, Adabas, VAX/VMS and SNA gateways, but I don't tell anyone, because nobody cares. I also have lots of experience working with TCP/IP, Cisco IOS, SQL, HTML, PHP, Oracle, MSSQL, Apache, Solaris, and Linux, and I proclaim it loudly. Could it be as simple as a battle of the buzzwords?
The other half of the problem is that the IT market is lousy right now, and you are competing with the low-cost labor, maybe even H1Bs. They all have degrees and they're cheap to hire. If you find yourself competing with recent grads or H1Bs, then you are losing based on cost, or the perceived salary requirements of a 44 year old vs. a 24 year old. A degree won't make you any younger or cheaper. I know of plenty of people with degrees who experience age discrimination, it still sucks no matter what.
As for having peers with less experience getting 20% higher salaries, that is quite possibly a function of when they were hired. During the upside of the IT job market, salaries for NEW employees escalate to keep pace with the market, but EXISTING employees are often taken for granted. Get hired in the wrong year, and you get screwed. I worked in state government, where everyone knew everyone else's salary. When mine was out of sync, I asked management to address the issue, offering to leave if they were unsuccessful. It worked (more than once), because the degree was never the real issue. Given the chance, the HR droids would have used the degree an excuse to do nothing, but the salary game is played by the removal of excuses, usually backed up by a willingness to pursue opportunities elsewhere. Those who are unwilling to quit are the ones whose salaries must be OK, according to HR. After all, whose responsiblity is it to read the salary surveys and find out if what you make is reasonable for what you do? With or without a degree, the only solution for an out-of-sync salary is a well-timed "fix it or else" attitude, with the appropriate, non-confrontational presentation.
At age 38, I've been lucky enough for long enough to the point where I think my career is on-track, despite my lack of a degree. What I fear most of all is getting locked into technology that goes out of style, leaving me behind as a techo-relic that nobody wants. A degree would not be all that helpful if I was perceived as an [expensive] COBOL/RPG/Y2K has-been.
I intend no criticism of your decision to pursue the degree -- it may actually work, especially if you can present it as a (real or perceived) modernization of your skills. I think the next step will be to find a way to avoid competing with the bottom of the food chain, because (A) you don't belong there, and (B) it sounds like you deserve a more senior position. I think if you were chasing the right posisions, you would not be encountering so many younger/cheaper people.
I jumped to numerous conclusions in the preparation of this message, and I apologize in advance for any that may be off-base, including but not limited to the distribution of unsolicited advice. Good luck.
I've been in the IT industry for 16 years now, the last 6 in management. I almost finished a degree in 1985, but the fact is I do not have one. My story is similar to yours -- get started, work your way up, do not accept unnecessary limitations. It's always encouraging to see that others occasionally follow this path.
I have hired people ranging from non-degree up to MSCS. Looking at the performance of the entire group, the degree people fit the "normal curve". Some good, some bad, most were at least adequate. The non-degree people were hired only when they could demonstrate superior skills. As it happens, those skills made them top performers when it was time to actually do the job. Of all the non-degree people I have hired, I have yet to be disappointed.
In my opinion, the degree is part of the selection criteria ONLY when ALL of the applicants are light on experience.
Some of the other posts are correct in that certain industries are militant about the degree requirement. Around here the common examples are government, insurance, defense, banking, and pharmaceuticals.
Case study #1: I once hired a guy whose only work experience was as a VCR repair technician. He was an engineering/computer hobbyist, whom I had known for years. He was an incredibly sharp guy, just a little unfocused. He was part of my staff for a few years, and then left to become a system manager for one of the largest banks in New England.
Case study #2: Same story, except this guy was an electrician who was doing mostly Cat.5 network wiring. He was on my staff for a few years, and is now the network manager for an state government agency with a very sophisticated WAN and LAN environment that includes numerous remote sites and thousands of PCs.
Case study #3: I knew another guy who earned an ASEE. He looked for a job and found nothing. He goes back for an AS in Data Processing. New job search, same result. He goes to another college and earns a BSCS. Still no job. Finally, he goes to college #3 and gets an MSCS, and EVENTUALLY, a job installing PCs and LANs in Georgia. We would still be driving a van full of PCs from Georgia to Alabama if I didn't hire him. Since then, he worked his way up through operations and became an Oracle DBA. He now works for a major pharmaceutical company, so things worked well for him too. Then again, if he never graduated from anywhere, I don't see how his life would be any different today, aside from possibly earning an additional 6 years of salary.
Let's face it, when the IT job market is cold, MOST applicants are going to get excuses instead of job offers. In such a tough market, you have to outwit, outplay, and outlast your competition, degree or not. In a hot IT market, the offers are out there, and exceptions are being made by employers, beyond what most people can possibly imagine.
Does the lack of a degree reduce my theoretical number of potential employers? YES, it does. However, I don't expect to get an offer from every interview. No one ever does. In my career, I have interviewed about 12 times and received 5 offers, for a hit rate of about 42%. Did I get "screened out" of several opportunities? Sure, but who cares? I only accepted 2 of the 5 offers, and I've been promoted 6 times by two employers during 16 years of uninterrupted employement. I don't let the degree become an obstacle, and every so often I find employers who agree with me. After all, I can only DO one job at a time, right? If I apply for ten jobs and I'm ranked #1 once and dead last for the other nine, that's a hell of a lot better than being ranked #2 all ten times, as described in case study #3 above.
In my opinion, things that don't make you a #1 choice are not all that useful. To me, the degree is what helps you reduce the number of reasons why an employer might NOT hire you, but it's not as valuble as adding a reason why they WOULD hire you. Think of yourself as a hiring manager. Can you imagine telling your boss something like "I hired Joe Smith because he has a degree." On the other hand, would you rather say "I hired Joe Smith because he has great experience." To me, one of those statements sounds much better than the other.
Punish the script kiddies? Why? Damage? What damage? A few million dollars here, a few million there, it's only money!
Let's get our priorities straight! Now that Sklyarov guy, there's a dangerous criminal! His ultra-dangerous Adobe-buster is cyber-terrorism at it's worst! That must be why Skylarov has spent more time in jail than all the script kiddies in the world combined. And people think our government doesn't have any sense of priority! Way to go DOJ!
If they really dumb it down as much as they can, then YES I will go back to dialup, so will you. In fact, if AT&T bans VPN, I'm outta here.
I never said the free market solution would be quick or painless; in fact it will be neither. Given the number of people out there with programming skills, there will always be a substantial base of labor that will create knock-off products wherever the economic balance gets seriously out of hand. Example: At $500 per seat, M$ owns the desktop productivity market. But if they raise the price of Office XP to $5000 per seat, there WILL be competitors, and good ones at that. At that price, companies will be formed for the sole purpose of going after that market.
Even a monopoly does not operate in a vacuum. IBM once thought they had everyone locked into mainframes. Where is their big iron monopoly now?
I used to think that software patents would be the industry's way of stifling competition. But if you let the patent scenario play through to it's logical conclusion, it will become impossible to write ANYTHING without violating someone's patent. Once the patent holders get tired of suing each other, common sense will prevail.
I saw we let the software industry lobby do what they will do anyway, and assume that they will stick us with useless drivel like DMCA and SSSCA. The government is not going to provide meaningful relief to software consumers anytime soon. Hell, they won't even pursue meaningful corrective action against Microsoft.
If I can outperform my competitors when it comes to adopting an IT strategy that defends my business against monopoly lock-in and price gouging, then my competitors incur a higher cost than I do -- good for me. This may not be fair, but I am prepared to compete on this level. Is there any real alternative?
Once upon a time, software was primitive (PC, mainframe, makes no difference). Constant bugfixes and new/improved versions were a fact of life. No one ever thought the software companies were doing this just forose things would be free. In the PC world, you bought the base product once at full price and subsequent upgrades at a discount. In the mainframe world, you bought the product once and then paid 20% annually for "maintenance", which was essentially a subscription for any patches, new versions, and phone support. In this scenario, software companies had work to do, and a customer base willing to pay for it.
Then software "matured". Fewer bugs, more features than most people needed, not much of an incentive to keep upgrading. Y2K and excessive hardware/software costs put alot of mainframe systems into "legacy/do not upgrade" status. The few vendors who had mission-critical mainframe products really "milked" the customer base with whopper fees. Ask some of the IBM big-iron customers about CA (or IBM for that matter). It didn't take long for customers to revolt.
Today, we see this in the PC world. Many people are jumping off the upgrade bandwagon because they see insufficient benefits to justify the cost. Microsoft is a perfect example: they have a diminishing upgrade rate with each new release of Office. Why? Because the product is mature -- each new release is only a little better than the one before, and the customers are not really clamoring for new features.
Companies that have mission-critical PC products will no doubt use restrictive licensing to assure a revenue stream even if there isn't much of a demand for upgrades and bugfixes -- hence "Software Assurance (tm)" from Microsoft.
It always was and still is the responsiblity of the customer to figure out how to avoid getting painted into a corner and "milked". Look for competitive vendors, be willing to migrate to new products, consider open source alternatives. Plan an escape path for everything you do. The alternative is to get "milked" as a cash cow.
These cable clowns won't give up until they turn broadband into a product that nobody wants. Why not get it over with and block ALL the ports? For $39.95/month you get port 80 unblocked. Then they could have a list price for any other port you might want unblocked. That would achieve their objective of bandwidth conservation, as well as reduced calls to the help desk! I would think it would be fairly easy to support a network if all the data were eliminated.
If some data still remains on the network after phase one of the plan, they move on to phase two, where you pay per hop. At the basic rate of $39.95, the maximum hop count is five. If you pay for "expanded basic" it goes to ten, and "business class" is unlimited (at least for the first three months)!
These guys would license the number of mouseclicks and keystrokes if they thought anyone would pay. I think it's all part of a huge conspiracy to make dialup service more attractive.
All joking aside, the real issue with VPN has nothing whatsoever to do with bandwidth. It is more about controlling the availability of ports and access to IP addresses that might otherwise be blocked. Carried to it's logical conclusion, you get a few people with commercial high speed connections and unrestricted access -- then a few thousand cable customers using VPN to circumvent access restrictions by the cable company. It still has nothing to do with bandwidth, because in an unrestricted environment this type of VPN would be unnecessary -- you would still have the same packets going to the same destination (probaby via a more efficient route).
If these guys have any brains, they are fearful of a P2P like utility that might facilitate the exchange of quasi-public VPN logons, which would create a "Massive Rogue Virtual Network" (MRVN). In the pefect nightmare scenario, we throw in a bunch of house-to-house 802.11b users that eventually hit a residential cable modem "gateway" that allows entry to the MRVN world. Of course, all of this could be solved with reasonable pricing and fewer restrictions, but they're not that smart.
I have just about had it with their incessant "dumbing down" of the service. As time goes by, broadband costs more and more while it delivers less and less.
The M$ patent on DRM could be a blessing in disguise. After all, there isn't going to be a Linux version of their DRM technology. This means there will always be a substantial community of non-DRM computer users.
Even if M$ releases DRM-related products for Linux, they will get lobotomized and/or hacked in less than a week. Let them build as much silliness as they like into Windoze. Has M$ EVER released a highly secure, platform-indepenent product?
"Number Unavailable" on the caller ID is as good as a blacklist -- actually better. The last thing I would want is for the teletrash calls to blend in with the legitimate ones.
I rigged up my CID-friendly modem to ATA immediately on "Number Unavailable", and ignore everything else. Whenever I hear a second ring, I know the modem is letting the call go through. It's great fun to hear one ring and then -- nothing!
Best of all is a statewide DNC list. Here in Connecticut, it has hit the Teleban like a "bunker buster". So much so that my CID trick is now shelfware. A mandatory national DNC list with whopper fines would solve the problem instantly.
Spam is no joke when consider that in some parts of the world, Internet service is pricey and there is no such thing as a flat rate. If you paid per MB or per minute of connect time, you would "get it" for sure. As the U.S. concept of "unlimited" internet service gets less and less "unlimited", the spam issue will only get hotter.
Personally, I have a zero tolerance policy -- I trace the headers and file complaints. No exceptions. I managed to get one spam website TOS'ed off 3 ISPs, as well as a direct hit on their DNS capability, just by recycling the same message headers as the spammers got booted from one ISP to the next. I find that complaint messages work better when I have a meaningless bunch of keywords at the bottom. Wonderful things like DMCA, copyright, infringement, litigation, trademark, liability, etc.
On to the telemarketers. If you live in a state that has a manadatory "do not call" list, get on it. Otherwise, write to your state rep. and lobby for one. I live in Connecticut, where the DNC list has hit the telemarketers like a "bunker buster".
Then we have the junk mail. That gets stuffed back into the "business reply envelope" and returned at the sender's expense. I heard someone suggest keeping a supply of junk mail on hand at all times, so as to overstuff whatever business reply envelopes you might receive. I pay for trash removal. The people who send me this junk can pay to take it away, not me.
The car-starter situation is nothing new. For quite a while, the car manufacturers have been making it harder to build knock-off parts, while simultaneously preserving installation revenue for the dealers. Funky tools, fasteners, threads, anything to discourage the non-dealer mechanic or the knock-off manufacturer. Standardization encourages dealer avoidance, hacking, cloning and (in the case of cars) theft. Cars with lots of interchangeable parts are popular with the "chop shops".
To be fair about it, Honda had a big problem with theft. It's no secret that the engine computer is the final frontier of anti-theft technology. How can anyone critize Honda for addressing the problem?
Car hacking is not dead, but it requires more ingenuity than it used to. I remember the old days when I upgraded my home computer by soldering additional memory chips on top of the onboard memory. Just because I can't do that with a modern motherboard, does that make it "unhackable"?