A very good point. My wife started her own small business and there are a number of expenses that start cropping up that you never expected. We haven't hit the lawyering yet, but she has spent money to join professional organizations, have a logo designed, website fees, business cards, we had to pay the town for a permit, she set up a checking account and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting.
We also decided to pay for a CPA, which has turned out to be awesome. The taxes are filed correctly, including deductions and we know what to set aside for paying taxes on the income. Which is cool because the tax code makes no sense and I certainly don't want to spend nights on it.
I got a used 3GS, put in a GoPhone SIM and that was about all she wrote. If you just want voice you need to pay ~7/month. You can add a texting plan if you want or pay a per-text rate. You can also add a data pack if you want -- you just need to change the APN, which takes all of two seconds.
You can do similar things with Android phones, plus you can use it on wifi, play Angry Birds, install PuTTY, etc.
In this life there are two kinds of problems: My problems and Somebody Else's Problems. If a company is going to make me join Google, I'll do it on their email account, keep it professional, and keep it all work-related. If Google wants to make a stink and my company wants to make a stink, then it sounds like they need to figure something out.
The company I work for is very clear about employees posting as official company representatives (for which they use certain accounts only) and posting something as yourself. We actually (gasp) have written social media guidelines and they provide all the account setup if you have to do this as part of your job.
Companies that aren't doing this and blurring the line between "official company communications channel" and "random employee posting official company news" are setting themselves up for a whole world of hurt, as are people who don't segregate their personal and work lives. The company runs into trouble when an employee generates a following and leaves (voluntarily, involuntarily or the company grows up and has a PR department), and the employee runs into trouble when they leave and can't break the tie to the company.
It's actually in both of their self-interests to keep these things separate, just as a good coder knows that it's good form not to set up dependencies when they are not strictly needed. They are going to come back to bite you sometime later, as good as the idea may seem now.
You just create a "work account". The same way I have a company email account, phone extension, business card. I've carried a pager or been "on call" for certain work-related things in the past.
There are likely other better things to make a big deal out of.
We bought an iPad 2 for my retired father (who had never "gotten" computers... ever) last year. Sure, it was pricey, but we knew that the whole "push the one button on the bottom if you get confused" would appeal to him, as well as the ease of use. And the one place to go get apps he would like (he's a big crossword fan). Also my parents live relatively close to an Apple Store, so when something wasn't working right, they got it working there.
Oh, the market is definitely finite. I get tired of hearing as something as the "Year of XX" or the "XX Killer". It's just silly to assume that it's a zero sum game all the time, and the whole "market share" thing really doesn't matter as much for certain markets with a lot of growth potential. Certainly for things like automobiles it's a larger concern, but for low-cost mobile computing devices there's still a lot of innovation going on.
As for "why would someone pay $600 for an iPad", I can recall working on UNIX workstation valued somewhere around $20K in the early 90's. I believe it's computing power has been well surpassed several times by now.. but the reason my employer purchased it was that it allowed them to virtually prototype and deliver products to market literally years faster than they used to do with 2D CAD, either electronic or hand-drawn. I also wonder what my Atari 2600 would cost relative to inflation now. So I guess the answer to your question is that people buy things because they perceive that the amount of money delivers good value for them, just like any other transaction in a capitalist society.
The article seems to presume that there is a static size for the amount of people who buy tablets. There isn't. As lower-cost entries enter the market, people who previously could not afford one will be able to buy one. So the market will grow, but it's also likely that Apple's overall sales will grow as the market grows. So, sure, Apple's "market share" may shrink, but it's not like Apple's going to make less money than they did before.
Also, there seems to be an assumption that people buy a tablet sorely based on cost. That is certainly part of how people buy something, but there are also metrics of quality, ease of use and also what you've got already. If you already have an iProduct, I'll bet people are a lot more attracted to the idea they can plug it into the iTunes that's already set up and have it work. Learning something new probably isn't a big driver, even if they save a hundred bucks. Apple could also drop prices on the iPad 2 when the 3 comes out, just as they have done with the iPhone when new generations have arrived, in order to compete with the lower end of the market.
Most likely a prepaid one. There's generally a minimum you need to prepay to keep a phone "alive", and it's generally on the terms of "you need so spend $XX for N months to keep your service active". So whatever one it is is likely prepaying 3, 6 or 12 months at a certain rate for a certain number of minutes.
I got a used 3GS, added a GoPhone SIM card to it. If I want to be very cheap I can just pay for voice minutes, about $5. If I want data, I shell out $24. All you have to do is change the carrier APN, which takes 3 seconds. No jailbreaking or unlocking is required. I have no contract, and I generally use wifi at home or work.
I had a dumb phone for years for the same price while I carried an iPod too -- and I always forgot to charge the thing so it was well and truly a waste of monry. Now I have everything in one place, which is much easier and it's always charged so I can take the rare phone call or get a text when someone (usually my wife) needs to get in touch with me. Or I can call ahead if I'm running late for something. Plus I have games, traffic apps, a camera and so on.
I didn't mean outsourcing was the only solution. When we evaluate anything externally-developed, we look into the vendor's financial health, track record, number of employees and a number of other metrics. We generally also do a trial or pilot program. We apply similar decision criteria to open source solutions, as well. I guess what I'm getting at is that an organization should ask the same tough questions of an internally-developed application as they would for a commercial solution, and also make sure that "fairy dust optimism" is eliminated in the internal proposal (for instance, assuming that support, maintenance, testing and development of whatever is zero. It's not.)
1. Ask your user base what they want (they pay your salary:) ) 2. Look for Exchange hosting companies if you want to move it out. I would not be surprised to know there is some hosting company somewhere who specializes in dealing with law firms. 3. Make sure to have a lawyer review it:)
I work at a company that has a very high "we build it ourselves" ethic. This can be a great thing if you are actually spending time and energy on building the product you are shipping, as that does crazy things like create value for the company and generate revenues because you deliver the features people actually want. Revenues end up making profits. This pays my salary and ends up putting food on the table, paying the mortgage and keeps the house warm. YAY.
What doesn't do a darn thing for productivity and the generation of those features are competing version control systems, programming environments, poorly written/maintained tools, web pages that are barely comprehensible and business processes that make you want to jump out of the nearest window. For every new technology we have adopted over time, in many cases there was some piece of junk that someone had developed in a blitz over a weekend as a "temporary thing". They moved on to some thing else, and the temporary became five years when much better stuff came and went -- and we still did it The Way We Know.
I'm not saying that any internal wizardry should be avoided -- but really when you develop internal solutions you should know what you are getting into, and know how long you are going to put up with it, especially when the remainder of the world moves on -- and leaves you behind the times. Also be VERY wary of what's termed "the lottery problem" or the "hit by a bus" problem -- as in, when the guru who put together your super awesome sales lead processing database / application stack that's central to your company making money doesn't show up at work anymore, what are you going to do? When the desktop machine that's responsible for keeping track of your development metrics is re-imaged by mistake, what do you do then? When the world's best custom-designed project tracker heads for the bit bucket with all the plans in it, what next? Hopefully these kinds of things can be identified and the little projects that grow into business critical services will be properly supported, but I've seen it go the wrong way quite a few times.
Photos are one of the most treasured things in many families. Keep in mind it's highly unlikely Aunt Petunia is keeping great backups of her photos, and when it all goes south, you might be one of the family members who actually has a photo of a relative who has passed on that she wants to print when her hard drive gives up the ghost.
So it seems you are still far adrift. I'd seriously not spend another penny until you understand what you are really doing. Otherwise you could dump a serious pile of money on hardware that won't solve your problem... and I'll bet if you look at what was wrong or you didn't like with your old HPC setup, you'll get the answers to lots of your questions.
It seems odd that you got a grant for... something but you still are trying to "recoup costs". Also, I do understand you lost two key people, but you didn't need some sort of business case, schematic, problem statement, architecture diagram or grant proposal that you could use to figure out the answers to some of these questions? If someone granted you $M for doing research for something, then it seems that you should be concentrating on doing that research first -- and figuring out what to do with any slack time otherwise. Perhaps instead of trying to charge someone money you could find other groups that do similar research and give them time on your cluster as a gift?
As for real-world advice, keep in mind the "customers" of your cluster. I'm going to take a wild guess that they aren't geeks who want to play with Linux distros, they are likely researchers working on their research. It's also highly likely that they already know how to get their submissions into the cluster, analyze results, and so on -- they have a "workflow". Take care with disruptions to this workflow. Also, it might make a lot of sense to actually talk to the people who do this work and ask them their opinions on what they like and don't like about the existing setup -- which can be turned into requirements that can drive the spec for the remaining equipment. It's certainly going to give you a higher chance of success than asking Slashdot.. and you also have a golden opportunity to step up to fill a leadership void. That kind of thing gains you enormous credibility if you do it well.
My first console was a 2600 and I played that thing to death with my friends. I played a lot of NES, too. I actually have a XBox 360 and a Wii in my house, and I've played a number of PC games over the years as well. I do still enjoy a good game, but my time is pretty taken up with work, family, house, fitness and friends at this point. If I get to play through three titles a year that's a pretty good year.
One of the best thing I did about eight years ago was to start playing pen and pencil RPGs again. Since I live in a climate where it's cold a lot, it's a great way to pass the time on the cold winter days with my friends. It's a great way to pass the time when the weather is really awful and you need to hang out and laugh a lot.
I also tried a hand at LARPing, too. That combines the geek with the outdoorsy part, adds in staying up till the wee hours and a whole pile of physical activity. Unfortunately it's also quite a time sink but I can see how people get into it. Depending on the game, I've seen people bring their kids and the kids have an absolute blast, although others have less of a "family" vibe.
I do enjoy powering on the Wii occasionally with my kids, but I'm just as happy to go outside when we can and have fun in the yard. We have enough of the year filled with crap weather that we can put off the video games and not miss them in the warmer months. We do get out in the cold, too, but there's definitely a lot higher barrier to entry when you have to put on three layers of clothes to go out!
If you are in a Debian shop, use Debian. If you are in a RedHat shop, use RedHat.
The main reason is that if you already have other large clusters running $distro then someone already figured out deployment, maintenance, package management, drivers and a hardware vendor. Picking up a new distro throws aside major piles of work that have already been done and gives you the pleasure of re-inventing the wheel.
I'm guessing you'd rather get your cluster up and running, doing Real Work, rather than spending a bunch of time getting user authentication working correctly. Especially when somebody already did that.
Also, keep in mind that you do things like go on vacation and get sick, so the other people who are intimately familiar with whatever you already have can help out (and you can help them, too)
MATLAB does not really care about your Linux distro. I run it on Debian all day long. So do all the other MATLAB users where I work, and there are whole pile of them.
PBS cares a lot. So much so that it's annoying. They cling to RH and SuSe like a retard to a popsicle. LSF is much better. Works fine pretty much wherever. Including Debian. Torque works wherever.
So are you a software developer or the IT guy? You say both. You don't know if people are contractors or not. Do you not talk with your co-workers?
Revenue does not equal "doing well". "Doing well" means making a profit, which means that revenues exceed expenses. It doesn't sound like you have a handle on that.
From what it sounds like, you are likely seen as "the hired help". If you want to get off the "hired help" roll, you should have a talk with the people who have the power to make it happen. They may tell you "no", so be prepared for it. But you'll never succeed if you don't take risks. Be prepared to give a detailed explanation as to why you deserve equity and what you have done to earn it. Also, be prepared to have to show that you are serious.
I was happy to hear that the new Stargate series was going to move away from the "SG" model of a small squad versus the universe. SG-1 was enjoyable, but Atlantis was definitely watered down and tired. SGU went off in a very different direction, and definitely showed that SyFy was trying to do the BSG thing again. The thing is, I had trouble getting into the characters and the show was lacking some of the fun camaraderie that existed in the earlier gate series. Sure, it's serious business out there on the Destiny and all, but I like a little levity in my Stargate.
I could see that they were going somewhere, but as my time becomes more constrained due to family/work/life, the bar I set for what I do in my scarce free time gets higher. Sadly, there wansn't enough compelling in SGU to keep me coming back for more.
You can use the existing wiring to pull the new stuff (If you don't have another use for it, of course), but really running some new Ethernet isn't so bad, get a long drill bit, some fishing tape and a helper. Also keep in mind that it's pretty easy to go through the wall and run the wire on the outside of the building in a lot of cases -- it's pretty easy to hide CAT5/6. Also you can get patch panels that give you a nice, clean, finished look and not a hack job.
Slashdot Mirror
A very good point. My wife started her own small business and there are a number of expenses that start cropping up that you never expected. We haven't hit the lawyering yet, but she has spent money to join professional organizations, have a logo designed, website fees, business cards, we had to pay the town for a permit, she set up a checking account and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting.
We also decided to pay for a CPA, which has turned out to be awesome. The taxes are filed correctly, including deductions and we know what to set aside for paying taxes on the income. Which is cool because the tax code makes no sense and I certainly don't want to spend nights on it.
Expenses:
- Streaming music license fees
- Bandwidth
- Server
- Time
Income:
- Nada
Plan:
- Buy more bandwidth to serve more music.
Right now it looks like "expensive hobby". Which can be cool. But if you are expecting this to put dinner on the table, figure it out now.
I got a used 3GS, put in a GoPhone SIM and that was about all she wrote. If you just want voice you need to pay ~7/month. You can add a texting plan if you want or pay a per-text rate. You can also add a data pack if you want -- you just need to change the APN, which takes all of two seconds.
You can do similar things with Android phones, plus you can use it on wifi, play Angry Birds, install PuTTY, etc.
In this life there are two kinds of problems: My problems and Somebody Else's Problems. If a company is going to make me join Google, I'll do it on their email account, keep it professional, and keep it all work-related. If Google wants to make a stink and my company wants to make a stink, then it sounds like they need to figure something out.
The company I work for is very clear about employees posting as official company representatives (for which they use certain accounts only) and posting something as yourself. We actually (gasp) have written social media guidelines and they provide all the account setup if you have to do this as part of your job.
Companies that aren't doing this and blurring the line between "official company communications channel" and "random employee posting official company news" are setting themselves up for a whole world of hurt, as are people who don't segregate their personal and work lives. The company runs into trouble when an employee generates a following and leaves (voluntarily, involuntarily or the company grows up and has a PR department), and the employee runs into trouble when they leave and can't break the tie to the company.
It's actually in both of their self-interests to keep these things separate, just as a good coder knows that it's good form not to set up dependencies when they are not strictly needed. They are going to come back to bite you sometime later, as good as the idea may seem now.
You just create a "work account". The same way I have a company email account, phone extension, business card. I've carried a pager or been "on call" for certain work-related things in the past.
There are likely other better things to make a big deal out of.
We bought an iPad 2 for my retired father (who had never "gotten" computers ... ever) last year. Sure, it was pricey, but we knew that the whole "push the one button on the bottom if you get confused" would appeal to him, as well as the ease of use. And the one place to go get apps he would like (he's a big crossword fan). Also my parents live relatively close to an Apple Store, so when something wasn't working right, they got it working there.
Oh, the market is definitely finite. I get tired of hearing as something as the "Year of XX" or the "XX Killer". It's just silly to assume that it's a zero sum game all the time, and the whole "market share" thing really doesn't matter as much for certain markets with a lot of growth potential. Certainly for things like automobiles it's a larger concern, but for low-cost mobile computing devices there's still a lot of innovation going on.
As for "why would someone pay $600 for an iPad", I can recall working on UNIX workstation valued somewhere around $20K in the early 90's. I believe it's computing power has been well surpassed several times by now .. but the reason my employer purchased it was that it allowed them to virtually prototype and deliver products to market literally years faster than they used to do with 2D CAD, either electronic or hand-drawn. I also wonder what my Atari 2600 would cost relative to inflation now. So I guess the answer to your question is that people buy things because they perceive that the amount of money delivers good value for them, just like any other transaction in a capitalist society.
The article seems to presume that there is a static size for the amount of people who buy tablets. There isn't. As lower-cost entries enter the market, people who previously could not afford one will be able to buy one. So the market will grow, but it's also likely that Apple's overall sales will grow as the market grows. So, sure, Apple's "market share" may shrink, but it's not like Apple's going to make less money than they did before.
Also, there seems to be an assumption that people buy a tablet sorely based on cost. That is certainly part of how people buy something, but there are also metrics of quality, ease of use and also what you've got already. If you already have an iProduct, I'll bet people are a lot more attracted to the idea they can plug it into the iTunes that's already set up and have it work. Learning something new probably isn't a big driver, even if they save a hundred bucks. Apple could also drop prices on the iPad 2 when the 3 comes out, just as they have done with the iPhone when new generations have arrived, in order to compete with the lower end of the market.
Most likely a prepaid one. There's generally a minimum you need to prepay to keep a phone "alive", and it's generally on the terms of "you need so spend $XX for N months to keep your service active". So whatever one it is is likely prepaying 3, 6 or 12 months at a certain rate for a certain number of minutes.
I got a used 3GS, added a GoPhone SIM card to it. If I want to be very cheap I can just pay for voice minutes, about $5. If I want data, I shell out $24. All you have to do is change the carrier APN, which takes 3 seconds. No jailbreaking or unlocking is required. I have no contract, and I generally use wifi at home or work.
I had a dumb phone for years for the same price while I carried an iPod too -- and I always forgot to charge the thing so it was well and truly a waste of monry. Now I have everything in one place, which is much easier and it's always charged so I can take the rare phone call or get a text when someone (usually my wife) needs to get in touch with me. Or I can call ahead if I'm running late for something. Plus I have games, traffic apps, a camera and so on.
I didn't mean outsourcing was the only solution. When we evaluate anything externally-developed, we look into the vendor's financial health, track record, number of employees and a number of other metrics. We generally also do a trial or pilot program. We apply similar decision criteria to open source solutions, as well. I guess what I'm getting at is that an organization should ask the same tough questions of an internally-developed application as they would for a commercial solution, and also make sure that "fairy dust optimism" is eliminated in the internal proposal (for instance, assuming that support, maintenance, testing and development of whatever is zero. It's not.)
1. Ask your user base what they want (they pay your salary :) ) :)
2. Look for Exchange hosting companies if you want to move it out. I would not be surprised to know there is some hosting company somewhere who specializes in dealing with law firms.
3. Make sure to have a lawyer review it
I work at a company that has a very high "we build it ourselves" ethic. This can be a great thing if you are actually spending time and energy on building the product you are shipping, as that does crazy things like create value for the company and generate revenues because you deliver the features people actually want. Revenues end up making profits. This pays my salary and ends up putting food on the table, paying the mortgage and keeps the house warm. YAY.
What doesn't do a darn thing for productivity and the generation of those features are competing version control systems, programming environments, poorly written/maintained tools, web pages that are barely comprehensible and business processes that make you want to jump out of the nearest window. For every new technology we have adopted over time, in many cases there was some piece of junk that someone had developed in a blitz over a weekend as a "temporary thing". They moved on to some thing else, and the temporary became five years when much better stuff came and went -- and we still did it The Way We Know.
I'm not saying that any internal wizardry should be avoided -- but really when you develop internal solutions you should know what you are getting into, and know how long you are going to put up with it, especially when the remainder of the world moves on -- and leaves you behind the times. Also be VERY wary of what's termed "the lottery problem" or the "hit by a bus" problem -- as in, when the guru who put together your super awesome sales lead processing database / application stack that's central to your company making money doesn't show up at work anymore, what are you going to do? When the desktop machine that's responsible for keeping track of your development metrics is re-imaged by mistake, what do you do then? When the world's best custom-designed project tracker heads for the bit bucket with all the plans in it, what next? Hopefully these kinds of things can be identified and the little projects that grow into business critical services will be properly supported, but I've seen it go the wrong way quite a few times.
Photos are one of the most treasured things in many families. Keep in mind it's highly unlikely Aunt Petunia is keeping great backups of her photos, and when it all goes south, you might be one of the family members who actually has a photo of a relative who has passed on that she wants to print when her hard drive gives up the ghost.
From Cleve Moler's "The Origins of MATLAB" --
"In the late 1970s, following Wirth’s methodology, I used Fortran and portions of LINPACK and EISPACK to develop the first version of MATLAB."
http://www.mathworks.com/company/newsletters/news_notes/clevescorner/dec04.html
So it seems you are still far adrift. I'd seriously not spend another penny until you understand what you are really doing. Otherwise you could dump a serious pile of money on hardware that won't solve your problem ... and I'll bet if you look at what was wrong or you didn't like with your old HPC setup, you'll get the answers to lots of your questions.
It seems odd that you got a grant for ... something but you still are trying to "recoup costs". Also, I do understand you lost two key people, but you didn't need some sort of business case, schematic, problem statement, architecture diagram or grant proposal that you could use to figure out the answers to some of these questions? If someone granted you $M for doing research for something, then it seems that you should be concentrating on doing that research first -- and figuring out what to do with any slack time otherwise. Perhaps instead of trying to charge someone money you could find other groups that do similar research and give them time on your cluster as a gift?
As for real-world advice, keep in mind the "customers" of your cluster. I'm going to take a wild guess that they aren't geeks who want to play with Linux distros, they are likely researchers working on their research. It's also highly likely that they already know how to get their submissions into the cluster, analyze results, and so on -- they have a "workflow". Take care with disruptions to this workflow. Also, it might make a lot of sense to actually talk to the people who do this work and ask them their opinions on what they like and don't like about the existing setup -- which can be turned into requirements that can drive the spec for the remaining equipment. It's certainly going to give you a higher chance of success than asking Slashdot .. and you also have a golden opportunity to step up to fill a leadership void. That kind of thing gains you enormous credibility if you do it well.
My first console was a 2600 and I played that thing to death with my friends. I played a lot of NES, too. I actually have a XBox 360 and a Wii in my house, and I've played a number of PC games over the years as well. I do still enjoy a good game, but my time is pretty taken up with work, family, house, fitness and friends at this point. If I get to play through three titles a year that's a pretty good year.
One of the best thing I did about eight years ago was to start playing pen and pencil RPGs again. Since I live in a climate where it's cold a lot, it's a great way to pass the time on the cold winter days with my friends. It's a great way to pass the time when the weather is really awful and you need to hang out and laugh a lot.
I also tried a hand at LARPing, too. That combines the geek with the outdoorsy part, adds in staying up till the wee hours and a whole pile of physical activity. Unfortunately it's also quite a time sink but I can see how people get into it. Depending on the game, I've seen people bring their kids and the kids have an absolute blast, although others have less of a "family" vibe.
I do enjoy powering on the Wii occasionally with my kids, but I'm just as happy to go outside when we can and have fun in the yard. We have enough of the year filled with crap weather that we can put off the video games and not miss them in the warmer months. We do get out in the cold, too, but there's definitely a lot higher barrier to entry when you have to put on three layers of clothes to go out!
It's not on the PC, but it's pretty cheap.
You can quest together on occasion.
It's generally not scary.
If you are in a Debian shop, use Debian.
If you are in a RedHat shop, use RedHat.
The main reason is that if you already have other large clusters running $distro then someone already figured out deployment, maintenance, package management, drivers and a hardware vendor. Picking up a new distro throws aside major piles of work that have already been done and gives you the pleasure of re-inventing the wheel.
I'm guessing you'd rather get your cluster up and running, doing Real Work, rather than spending a bunch of time getting user authentication working correctly. Especially when somebody already did that.
Also, keep in mind that you do things like go on vacation and get sick, so the other people who are intimately familiar with whatever you already have can help out (and you can help them, too)
MATLAB does not really care about your Linux distro. I run it on Debian all day long. So do all the other MATLAB users where I work, and there are whole pile of them.
PBS cares a lot. So much so that it's annoying. They cling to RH and SuSe like a retard to a popsicle.
LSF is much better. Works fine pretty much wherever. Including Debian.
Torque works wherever.
I agree that apt-get rules.
So are you a software developer or the IT guy? You say both. You don't know if people are contractors or not. Do you not talk with your co-workers?
Revenue does not equal "doing well". "Doing well" means making a profit, which means that revenues exceed expenses. It doesn't sound like you have a handle on that.
From what it sounds like, you are likely seen as "the hired help". If you want to get off the "hired help" roll, you should have a talk with the people who have the power to make it happen. They may tell you "no", so be prepared for it. But you'll never succeed if you don't take risks. Be prepared to give a detailed explanation as to why you deserve equity and what you have done to earn it. Also, be prepared to have to show that you are serious.
I was happy to hear that the new Stargate series was going to move away from the "SG" model of a small squad versus the universe. SG-1 was enjoyable, but Atlantis was definitely watered down and tired. SGU went off in a very different direction, and definitely showed that SyFy was trying to do the BSG thing again. The thing is, I had trouble getting into the characters and the show was lacking some of the fun camaraderie that existed in the earlier gate series. Sure, it's serious business out there on the Destiny and all, but I like a little levity in my Stargate.
I could see that they were going somewhere, but as my time becomes more constrained due to family/work/life, the bar I set for what I do in my scarce free time gets higher. Sadly, there wansn't enough compelling in SGU to keep me coming back for more.
Complete with a "BOV Valve"
http://www.akamoto.co.uk/dump-valve.asp
If someone Googled something in 1996 they would have access to time travel. Just sayin ...
You can use the existing wiring to pull the new stuff (If you don't have another use for it, of course), but really running some new Ethernet isn't so bad, get a long drill bit, some fishing tape and a helper. Also keep in mind that it's pretty easy to go through the wall and run the wire on the outside of the building in a lot of cases -- it's pretty easy to hide CAT5/6. Also you can get patch panels that give you a nice, clean, finished look and not a hack job.