You need to call their NOC, *NOT* tech support. Get their NOC number, which is according to my records, 650-556-5599. If that's not the NOC, you can get the NOC number from them.
Once you get to the NOC, make them create a trouble ticket, and get ready to use your "I'm NOT HAPPY WITH YOU" techniques. The ONLY way anything will be done about it is if you ride them. Hard. They probably have the TT from Tech Support, so have that number ready, and give it to them. Start riding them hard. Demand supervisors, etcetera. Remember, the NOC is going to be setup with a front line defense (NOC techs), second line defense (NOC NetEng, NOC Unix Admin, etc), third line defense (NetEng, Unix Admins), and finally supervisors. That's NOT how it's managed, but how it's going to progress. Escalate often. Just keep calling them.
That's the only way I've ever gotten anything done with Crack-Home or any other moronic overly large ISP. If they're big enough to have a NOC, then rest assured you'll only get things done if it gets to the NOC. The NOC will likely scream at Tech Support if they get TT's from them (I know we did when I worked in one) and generally have a fit, and ignore the ticket as much as possible. NOC and Tech Support typically do not get along.
Well, I figure since I've had to deal it with almost 100% of my career, I may as well toss out my $0.02USD.
Spam isn't as easy to stop as most of the 'tech savvy'/. readers claim, say, swear, or demand it is. First off, you have several types of spammers.
First off is your atypical newbie moron spammer, who gladly gives you all his correct information, gets online, and fires away, gets disconnected immediately, gets blacklisted.
Next you have the more technical spammer, who has an array of fake credit card numbers, false names, false addresses, and so on. He'll setup six or seven accounts on one ISP, usually something like AOL or UUnet, and bounce around with these accounts, spamming. On and off before they can catch him in the middle of it.
Third, you have the guy with a pile of lawyers working for him, that's going to negotiate and hardball his way into a contract with an ISP that lets him spam.
The only remaining spam-friendly ISP was AGIS. Why 'was'? That policy was changed due to something like 60%+ of their customers cancelling after the announcement. Remember Spamford Wallace? He was the guy they hooked up first, and he was the guy that lost them a lot of business. Companies blocked AGIS - my employer at the time filtered all of AGIS' netblocks immediately, to prevent incoming spam. Some providers, ie; PSInet, have negotiated contracts with 'big name' (aka LOTS of spam) firms that allow them to spam to their heart's content.
Now, you've got a spammer. We'll say your typical type 2. And you want to shut him down. Not that easy. Because you do NOT have a common factor, including where they're dialing in from, they can CONTINUE to abuse your service, and there's not much at ALL you can do about it till they slip up somehow, which most sales droids are NOT going to be aware of. They'll just keep bouncing around and evading. And if the ISP gets blackholed or filtered all over, they'll just jump ISPs entirely. These are the pricks that cause the most damage to ISPs. They usually also use the ISP's SMTP server - best thing you can do is to disconnect them the second you see it, and pray they don't have more accounts. I've had to deal with a couple of these in the past, and we had one guy sign up for *SIXTY* accounts in *ONE DAY*, all with different information. When we FINALLY figured out who it was, we were ONLY able to kill the accounts because we had relatively few (around 2,000) and knew when they were added.
Now, say you have someone who bought a leased line and ordered it up deliberately for spam. You can't prove it beforehand, and some of the software out there makes it incredibly hard to find the true source. You have to catch them in the act most of the time. And the best you can HOPE to do is to do a shut on their interface. That's assuming you don't have a legal department that you MUST consult before disconnecting a customer for a contract violation (ie; spamming) and who MUST sign off on the disconnect order - I had to deal with this before. In some of the larger shops, ie; UUnet, AOL, etcetera, you have to go to your legal group and get them to sign off on a disconnect, then you have to go to your engineering department, who may or may not have to schedule it as a change management, who may or may not have to get their managers to write off on it, who may or may not have to go further up the chain. In other words, typical corporate bull will typically tie up a spam disconnect for over a week. It's the cold reality. If you disconnect a customer who WASN'T spamming, they can and likely WILL nail you for breach of contract on a leased line, and that could cost your company MILLIONS. Legal wants proof, engineering wants time and to be left alone, management just wants the mess out of their hair. Plus the overworked abuse departments do not help, as most complaints go there. Where I worked, we had a two person abuse department, who typically had a three week turnaround on initial reply.
You have to take all these kind of things into account. I'm certainly not saying UUnet is doing a great job - they aren't - but they're doing the best they can. I'm not personally aware of any contracts UUnet has negotiated permitting spam, and they usually *do* disconnect a customer for spamming. Other providers are far worse. You can whine, scream, complain, and moan all you want, but spam is not going to go away overnight, and policies at these places don't get changed overnight, if at all. UUnet has their policies, as do most other providers, and the tech that ignores them and just unplugs that spammer is going to find himself out of work almost immediately.
A lot of the posters definitely need a good dose of reality, because this is how it is. It's not just unplug the guy. Maybe the Mom & Pop ISPs have that luxury with dialups, but the other ones? Not a chance. So you're just going to have to live with it. Build your own filter lists, update them, etcetera, and quit whining about these companies being unable to stop it immediatley. You want it fixed? You go get a job in management and fix it yourself. No amount of your screaming is going to change a thing.
=RISCy Business, who doesn't give a damn what you think. your company here.
I collect cars. Work on 'em, fix 'em, break 'em, and fix 'em again. I know the internal combustion engine all too well.
How does this car sound? Well hot DAMN, somebody FINALLY figured out something other than (gasoline, alcohol, nitromethane) to inject. Basically, this is a very interesting system that works. How well does it work? Time will tell.
But you could probably modify any engine in the world to do this.
Instead of creating compression through combustion, it's direct injection of compression, forcing the piston down, thusly turning the engine. The horsepower potenetial is nil, but it's an excellent economy design. And the kicker is that, despite what others have said, unless there is a genuine combustion cycle, there is no emissions outside of what you put in. If you put in clean air, clean air will come out, in this setup. The engine will probably be low maintenance as well - you don't have to worry as much about rings failing from carbon buildup, or piston failure from using too low an octane rating. Although I wonder if using pure O2 instead of air could cause detonation, heehee.;)
Sounds like the best idea I've seen in a good long while. Now all they have to do is figure out how to do it in a better looking car that's smaller, and I'll buy one!:)
Wherein this patent is applied for, herein defining a method of determining the relative coolness of a person using a system hereafter referred to as karma.
The mechanism uses a community made up mostly of clueless Linux zealots and anti-everything "rebels" to assign points to comments made by users, thereby raising or lowering their karma.
Next week: Sig11 applies for a patent on karma whoring and an AC sues, claiming it a violation of the karma limit patent!
3Dfx makes cards. nVidia does not - they simply make chips and sell them to manufacturers to make the card.
They both claim to be better than the other. Now, gee, am I the only one seeing atypical competition there?
3Dfx wants to innovate - ie; use a stagnant chipset for a base and make a better design. nVidia wants to go faster - ie; redesign every 6 to 12 months to milk out another 3FPS on systems that aren't already running into bus limitations.
Reguardless, I won't buy either. Why? Because they both claim OpenGL support. Now, I don't know about you folks, but seeing as I work in AutoCAD frequently, that means hardware support. Neither of them have it. ATI doesn't. #9 didn't. Why? Most of them view software as the future.
The mistake both nVidia and 3Dfx are making is that they're trying to take on the world when they don't have the staff, technology, or knowhow to do it. I've seen the Voodoo3, the Voodoo5, the TNT2, the GeForce MX, etcetera. The 2D quality, quite honestly, SUCKS. I've seen better 2D rendering in a blender. And I'm not talking a video blender, I'm talking the one in my kitchen. The refresh rates are for the most part inadequate for professional graphics work, the 2D image quality is abhorable at best, and considering I'm hitting bus limitations, I don't see how the extra 30FPS it's capable of in the chipset is going to help any.
I remember back about a year or two ago, I have a 3DLabs Permedia2 8M PCI card and the Voodoo had just come out. My friend snagged one, I scoffed. I said 'ha! My card already does all that stuff.' His 8M Voodoo continuously and routinely got smoked by my Permedia2 when it came to games. QuakeGL, Final Fantasy 7, etcetera. My Voodoo2's (2x 12M - for Unreal Tournament, there is no other option) combined with my #9 RevolutionIV 32M still are VERY hard pressed to beat the Permedia2 in any number of tests.
Now if you go read AnandTech sometime, you'll note that a lot of the cards these days - at least the gaming cards - are getting *OBSCENE* FPS rates. >70FPS. And when you pair the big names - nVidia, 3Dfx, Matrox, ATI, etc - up in, say, a pIII 733 or whatever it is, they ALL get the SAME RATE at 640x480x whatever depth. Why? The bus is full. Can't push any more data than that. And what are these companies doing about it?
3Dfx is adding an external powersupply for all the active cooling you're going to need just to run the Voodoo6 at normal speeds. nVidia is gleefully ignoring it and boasting a faster and bigger chip. ATI's touting more and more memory. Now, bear in mind, if the chipset doesn't use the memory for ZBuffering (mind you, not true ZBuffering), 64M of DDR SDRAM is doing you no good - 1800x1440 only needs around 14M or 16M IIRC. The companies are putting memory on the cards to make them look bigger, perhaps perform a bit better, and ignoring the core problems.
Quite frankly, I could care less whether or not 3Dfx is 'stagnating' or nVidia is 'amazing' or what have you. I need a card that works with and around bus limitations, that can do 2D and hardware OpenGL, that can do what I need. I don't buy mass marketed cards because unlike the Permedia2, which *was* mass marketed (Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro (PCI and AGP)) and an excellent card, today's cards are the equivalent of junk for me.
What do I use? Well, now instead of putting multiple cards in a single system, I'm stuck using top end cards. We're talking cards that cost more than your typical PC and more than a well configured laptop in some cases.
I just purchased, much against my desires but in tune with my *needs*, a $4,200 Wildcat 4210 graphics adapter. What is it? Dual pipeline. Dual head and a few more outputs. 90 Hz at 1824x1368. One AGP Pro 110 and two PCI connectors. All on a single card. That requires 110W of power. Wildcat was just bought by 3DLabs, the name in 'affordable' cards. (The Permedia3 is affordable, but not enough for what I do.) I was forced into spending more for a single video card than I spent on the entire system. ($2,935 for the curious. I reused the 18G SCSI-UW disks and controller.)
Now maybe some of you don't have this problem. Actually, I'm betting most of you don't. But for those of us who actually really *don't* do this for a living, per se, but need the hardware anyways (I use AutoCAD for various engine modification work on a very regular basis) are getting screwed by the dick wars between 3Dfx and company. It used to be that I could do just fine with a happy Permedia2 and AutoCAD R14. Then it was a #9 Revolution IV 32M. I went to go buy something with excellent 2D quality that could perform better than the #9 Revolution IV and found out that nothing does. If I want 2D, I have to go Matrox, which doesn't perform terribly well under AutoCAD R14 or AC2K. If I want real rendering performance, I have to go up to the professional cards, which I really didn't want to do. Now maybe the 4210 was overkill, but quite frankly, any of the cards is a pain to find and order. I could have probably gotten a 3DLabs Oxygen GVX420, but they also made the mistake of ignoring bus issues, and boom. The card ends up limited by the bus, performing really not all that much better than the other options. Just with ZBuffering and a $2300 pricetag. A single AGP/PCI combination (yes, two connectors, two PCBs) still runs into bus limits before the card hits its.
I don't know about you, but I really feel cheated.
Maybe I'll just put the Wildcat on eBay. Bidding starts at $1.
We all know they'll be at John Harvard's Pub and Brew House from End-Of-Lecture till Closing-And-Beyond! It's well known that all good brew issues forth from John Harvard's at Harvard Square unless imported from exotic places like Ireland and Germany and Canada.:)
If you have to ask what John Harvard's is, you are required to listen every episode of CarTalk start to finish, continuously. Especially since Dewey, Cheetham, and Howe is none too far from John Harvard's.
If I didn't have previous commitments (look for a metallic black 1987 Buick Grand National T-Type Intercooled BiTurbo with white pearl flames on I93 in excess of 120MPH) I might actually show up.
Maybe we should get Click and Clack to be the hecklers. }:)
Let's see. I've been a White Wolf player since, what, Vampire: the Masquerade came out? Yeah, about that time.
Let's see. I've been an active player since then. So that would make it close to 8 or 9 years, as I recall, seeing as V:tM came out in, what, '91?
I can safely say that, quite frankly, Jon is again reading into something that just isn't there. Trying to politicize and 'newsify' (is that even a word?) something that's been around since 1978 or so, seeing as that's when D&D First Edition came out.
For the record, I've been playing RPG's for about 11 years. I started with D&D 2nd edition in 1989 and have been consistently and constantly playing in various RPGs ever since, including but certainly not limited to and definitely not in order of preference, D&D, AD&D, Mage: the Ascention, Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Vampire: the Masquerade, Battletech, and various freeform RPGs.
To try and make this into something it is not is an insult to those of us who DO play RPGs. RPGs predate the Internet, and in reality, have very little to do with it in any way shape or form, beyond the fact that communities surrounding RPGs have formed on it.
Awakening? What is this bullshit? I mean, seriously, this is utter bullshit and not even yellow journalism. Yellow journalism involves actual JOURNALISM, which Katz is OBVIOUSLY incapable of.
Go fucking read - the same stuff is in EVERY White Wolf game. Why? To add an element of realism, gods forbid we should have anything but FANTASY in an RPG. If you were a supernatural being, do you REALLY think that it would be easy to just get whatever you wanted whenever you wanted it, and get away with it? It's not even feasable to have anything resembling an education without painstaking attention to faking things in the so-called "real" world in a situation like that, which is what White Wolf points out. Christ. Katz must be illiterate. He seems to have also not noticed that the so-called "awakening" as he has dubbed it in his so-called infinite genius (*choking back laughter*) is always the late teens, in most cases 17 or so. Why? Because it's totally impractical to do it any other way and have anything resembling a cultured character, much less educated.
Somebody needs to send Katz to a proctologist for his rectal cranial inversion problem, apparently. I mean, christ, I've heard the bullshit in the past, but this is beyond bullshit and flat out insulting. Christ. Give Katz one iota of credibility for the Hellmouth bullshit and he runs with it and runs off with the profits from other people's suffering. This is beyond absurd.
What will it take to get Katz off slashdot? Fuck the checkbox - I don't want him spouting off any more bullshit for anyone to peruse. He obviously is incapable of decency, integrity, or intelligence. Where's natural selection when you need it? *sigh*
=RISCy Business
ORBS is a hostile system
on
MAPS vs. ORBS
·
· Score: 4
ORBS is not like MAPS. MAPS relies on submissions and actual proof. ORBS has a policy of 'blacklist all by default, if not, go out and hunt them down.'
In other words, ORBS is a hostile system, which will deliberately and intentionally probe your mail servers without provocation, without permission, and then blacklist you and refuse to remove you, whether or not you fix it or a problem really exists. I have had to deal with the assholes there before. They're worthless. Anyone who would respond to an email requesting to be removed as the blacklisted server is not a relay with the words, and I quote "use a real mail server" and calling the administrator an "idiot" repeatedly... well, draw your own conclusions.
ORBS also appears to either be utilizing systems outside of their network for scanning to evade the blocking that hundreds of ISPs use against them (which results in ORBS blackholing them). Possibly cracked, possibly legitimate. I don't know - all I know is that I have always treated ORBS as a hostile entity after I saw them attempting connections on a variety of ports to a mailserver. I've been keeping ACLs up to date to keep the assholes out since.
MAPS realistically *should* be blackholing ORBS, and likely DOES (I don't subscribe to MAPS, RBL, etc - I feel the methodology is flawed.) due to the fact that ORBS deliberately seeks out relays. I wouldn't put it past ORBS to be selling open relays, perhaps their entire black hole list, to spammers. They've proven to be those kind of people in the past, and still are.
Those of you looking to block ORBS, I'd recommend dropping all packets from the entire/24 that www.orbs.org is on, as well as i2bs.com, probably half or all of dN.net (Verislow's digitalNation), and anything that so much as looks like ORBS. Sure, you may lose some legitimate traffic, but miniscule at best. And the only way ORBS is going to get the hint that their methods and policies (or lack thereof and/or lax enforcement and/or personal problems/mental problems) are NOT welcome is if they suddenly find themselves shut out.
You have NO idea how refreshing it is to see intelligent replies. Especially the way/. is these days.;P
Yes, '98 is eons ago. When I spoke of H.323(v2), I did mean only the call routing/gateway functionality, which is UDP for the route *only*, and then uses TCP. This WAS an early version of both, however, so they may have changed it.
It didn't take me long to see that VoIP is years and years away from functional maturity. Really, the problem lies within the maturity, or lack thereof, of VoIP. The standards are not set in stone, interoperability is non-existant, transmission and recieving standards are non-existant. Manufacturers? Agree on gatekeeper applications? Please. Call accounting is typically done via Radius CDR[1]s, which is incredibly ineffecient and unnecessarily complicates accounting functions.
Honestly, I'm more of an Internet guy than a telecom guy, but I also got stuck managing and provisioning most of the network, as well as the in-house PBX systems, so I've got a good amount of knowledge about both. Either way, lying fiber only does so much good. As broadband expands, you're going to see that available bandwidth snapped up faster than they can bury it and light it, leaving little to no room for additional things, like VoIP and such.
I don't think VoIP will take off till the providers get the clue and start building private interconnecting networks between PSTN termination points and internal origination/PSTN origination (ie; for calling cards) points. And until full SS7 interconnect on all fronts is a reality, call routing will remain an unwieldy, bulky, unnecessarily complex and obscene task, which is best left undone. (You can't store the entire NPA-NXX tables for all the US, or even all of a single state, within any current hardware VoIP solution. They all require an external gatekeeper.)
VoIP is an immature system and far far from being production and carrier quality. Especially the PC-based solutions. Until people realize that you have to follow very strict network design and maintenance principles, it's going to remain that way, but those are just my thoughts and opinions. YMMV.
Good to see some intelligent discussion on/. once again - maybe it'll continue!:)
Voice over IP isn't something new. Been around since at least mid-1998. There's a reason - it's not good enough. I speak from experience. I was responsible for the deployment of a national VoIP network using a strictly hardware based solution. And it sucked. Flat out sucked. Going international to a single POP across the Atlantic was even worse, even with a PVC on PanAmSat.
Flat out, TCP is too unpredictable, and not enough solutions are carrier class. There are very stringent requirements for carrier-class quality. And TCP/IP is NOT carrier class. Oh, sure, you can claim it just by slapping on a -48V DC powersupply, but it's not carrier class till you can give *proven* 99.999% uptime, AKA Five-By-Nine(s). There is absolutely *no* VoIP solution that can do this.
Furthermore, MANY VoIP routing solutions are entirely dependent on the H.323 or H.323v2 pseudo-standard, which uses UDP - an inherently unreliable transport - to transmit and recieve call routing information on a per-system per-port level. H.323v2 is also bandwidth intensive. And I have yet to see a system that can interconnect H.323v2 with SS7, which is the absolute standard for all telephone call routing, as defined by Telcordia/BellCore. The Lucent 5ESS runs SS7 for routing, I shouldn't need to say any more than that. This may have changed in the time that I have been out of VoIP, but I doubt it.
In order to bring VoIP to carrier quality, basically, a new routable Layer 3 protocol with inherently reliable transports would have to be created, and all compression schemes would likely have to be eliminated. The compression inherently damages quality, well below acceptable levels for anything useful. Testing a 33.6k modem over a VoIP routed line resulted in 4800 connects at best. The compression causes gaps in conversation, and only increases with latency.
As latency increases, call route reliability decreases exponentially, due to H.323/H.323v2 utilizing UDP transport. Packets are dropped and not retransmitted, resulting in incomplete or lost call route instructions. Suddenly that call to Grandma in Houston, TX from your house in Boston, MA, can't be completed. And bandwidth is choked quickly. Two PRIs worth of circuits used for incoming/terminating VoIP calls will eat a full 6Mbit pipe quickly.
Cisco claims or claimed that the AS5300 equipped with Voice over IP blades had 5:1 audio compression with minimal quality loss. While people were understandable, gaps in the conversation were also very audible, from dropped packets or other inevitable network issues. At a supposedly 5:1 compression ratio for the data transmission, I saw a single call eat nearly half a megabit. A PRI is basically 24 voice channels versus 24 data channels. In effect, a T1's worth of voice channels, using digital format versus standard analog, allowing 24 channels to be carried over four pair copper.
To claim VoIP as carrier class is similar to claiming that a PC at the store is carrier class. Or that just because a system has a -48V DC powersupply, it is carrier class. As I said above - carrier class is defined by reliability, not just feature set. I honestly don't know whether or not any of Cisco's equipment qualifies as carrier class - for certain, in my experience, I would be very uneasy about slapping that label on their Voice over IP equipment.
Furthermore, as everyone gets 'hip' to VoIP, the market is becoming flooded with companies. And much like has happened with so-called 'e-tailers,' there's going to be a purging. Those with the real brains, the right technology, and get in at the right time might make it. Those that don't, don't. IMHO, the time to get in has already passed. It takes time to build a massive data network to begin with, much less research all the equipment available in order to find a reasonably reliable combination.
The PC solutions are no better. The quality is horrific at best, after seeing probably close to 90 different 'solutions' that were anything BUT. They are unreliable - the hardware-based solutions even moreso - and offer very very little quality, much less return on investment potential. I spent a lot of time at a PC trying to get one particular card to work and watched as the card itself gave up the ghost and shorted out itself, due to extremely poor manufacturing quality.
My recommendation? Abandon the idea and cut your losses while you're still ahead. There are other options out there with better profit potential that aren't reliant on a killer IPO performance. Maybe there'll be a maturing of VoIP technologies - maybe even a standardization (HA! Yeah RIGHT!) in the coming years, but now is not the time or place to try it.
I'm falling out of my chair laughing at his pompous incompetent attitude. This from someone who has to 'geek-ize' everything and proclaim himself a saviour of the geek, who gleefully takes every word they said on one topic and uses it in a book, without giving them any opprotunity to say they didn't want it, and without paying them, because it's 'so important' yadda yadda.
Bunch of overblown overhyped crap is what it is, reminiscient of AOL marketing. "With Jon Katz, it's easy to be a geek!" "The New Katz 5.0 - Now able to stereotype nerds as well!" Bah. Slashdot's fallen quite a distance.
Open this, open that, world is evil, geeks will rule all, interaction, the "information superhighway", data explosion, etcetera, ad infinitum. Does Katz's jaw ever stop spewing forth such cliche and ignorant crap? Can I bribe him into shutting up?
Ever since that Hellmouth crap, Katz has spewed nothing but eschewed self-important crap in line with whatever current moronic trend in networking/internet/stereotyping is. I'm getting damn sick of this crap wasting valuable bandwidth because one man can't get enough of himself, namely, Katz.
If Rob and Co. really have editorial control, then editorial Katz back to the 2-bit rags he used to write for - this isn't a man who belongs on the Internet, nor should be allowed near a word processor, obviously.
I've been an opponent of the two way breakup since day one, and not because I don't like Microsoft. I really do hope this gets moderated up so that people will perhaps see this.
Quite frankly, two companies is doing nothing. The 'applications group' definition is so blatantly ambiguous and vague that it's trivial for the applications group to say 'okay, we claim WebTV, all our cable company holdings, MSN, etcetera' and embed these kind of things within their applications, continuing to illegally support the applications side of the monopoly.
The OS group will likely compensate by raising prices - there is absolutely no clause whatsoever in the ruling against unfair pricing for consumers and OEMs. Microsoft is not forced to justify costs in any way, shape, or form.
The ruling also has a very severe loophole, which the OS group will be very quick to abuse. They know that in 10 years, if they don't win in appeals, they can get back together again. And they will. Now, what's this loophole? If you read over the ruling, Microsoft is not allowed to cause any "Middleware" to run at decreased performance levels or have difficulties with the OS, *EXCEPT* in the instance where they provide in writing a reason for this, and possible workarounds.
There are NO requirements for what the reasoning must be whatsoever, or restrictions on workarounds. So, in other words, they will DELIBERATELY collaborate WITHOUT collaborating. Microsoft will claim that Office was DESIGNED for Windows and the competitors did NOT so they are trying to 'catch up' or some such nonsense. Or they may just say 'because we feel like it' and list 'only write for OUR OS' as a workaround. There are nowhere NEAR enough preclusions and restrictions against abusing existing market share.
This ruling has more potential to cause HARM to consumers than anything else. It is VERY easy for the applications group to claim WebTV and abuse market share and marketing. There are so many ways for Microsoft's two groups to abuse this ruling *within the ruling's context* and get away with it.
I have ALWAYS advocated a three-way split. Operating Systems, Applications, and Other and Internet Holdings. In case you didn't know, Microsoft owns *MANY* Internet properties, which are tailored EXCLUSIVELY to Internet Explorer. With the applications group in control of these properties and Internet Explorer, they can continue to do this. They also own a cable company that operates near/in DC as well as WebTV. Allowing the applications group to maintain/retain control of these properties and refusing to force them to divest themselves of these properties and/or splitting these properties into a seperate group will give the applications group a painful advantage.
Assuming that the OS group does poorly, once the 10 years are up, the Applications group could merge with them again, or they could just build their own OS based on the OS group's code. There are no restrictions that will prevent Microsoft from regaining a monopoly within a month after the 10 year period has expired, much less a year. Once the 10 years are up, Microsoft will be back to their old ways.
Do you really think this is teaching Microsoft a lesson? They've probably been hiring managers and high level people like mad for weeks leading up to this. All they have done in court is posture and lie. They have known for weeks they would lose and are counting on appeal. They're ready for a split if it comes down to it, and if not, they can simply fire the extras. They won't move, either. To move would cost them all credibility.
Reguarding their stock, as a couple people have asked me, I am not an analyst, but I don't forsee their stock actually plummeting till they lose on appeal. Microsoft's cockiness, attitude, and general "we will get our way because we're the biggest thing America has going for it" (think about the tax revenue) seems to be contagious. Especially to investors. Combined with the sheer amount of shares within the company, this would tend to indicate low volume, maybe a sharp drop, but not a true freefall. Perhaps another point or two. However, Ballmer has damaged confidence and trust *SEVERELY* by filing to sell several million shares *BEFORE* the ruling was issued, as if knowing that the stock was going to plummet. This was released by the SEC today - they seem to be going out of their way, AND the DOJ (note how the ruling wasn't issued till AFTER close of the market?) to prevent a collapse in consumer confidence. Were consumer confidence in Microsoft to collapse, very VERY bad things could happen to the market, and with Microsoft's market cap and valuation, could trigger severe repercussions, in my opinion.
I don't forsee this being out of the courts for at least two years - Jackson had the option to expedite the case to the Supreme Court on appeal (IANAL, that's just how I understood it) and chose not to, indicating another force towards not destroying consumer confidence. Maybe they're counting on everyone forgetting while Microsoft waits on their appeals to be heard. I'm not sure - I don't work for the gov't, and IANAL.
Disclaimer:These are my views, not yours, not my employer's, etcetera, ad infinitum. Reproduction of this comment in whole or part is expressly prohibited without written or emailed consent. Emailed consent may be obtained by sending email to prj@nls.net. Absolutely no commercial reproduction is permitted without written consent, so much as is allowed by Slashdot and VA Linux, formerly Andover.Net's "comments are owned by the poster" policy. No, I'm not anal - I'm just sick of my quotes being stolen.;)
*ahem* I'm pretty familiar with the ArrowPoint line as a whole, and I am going to now soundly beat whoever designed this sorry excuse for a web farm over the head.
First off, the last I heard, the CS100 is discontinued. What moron bought used hardware? Secondly, the CS100 was replaced by the CS50 and CS150. So then some genius goes from a CS100 to a CS800, the 20Gbit backplane model.
Otay, yeah. That's intelligent network design at work. *sniggersnort* Apparently Andover can't find anyone willing to drive to Acton who has a clue. And what's really sad is that whether or not any of the Andoverians will admit it, they are in the same bloody building as ArrowPoint. I know - I was there a couple weeks ago.
So now, what, we're supposed to be impressed now by an ineffecient web farm design, using excessive servers and used hardware? Let's look at EXODUS then.
Last time I dealt with Exodus is when I told them to either fix their routing or deal with a network I was in charge of basically slamming theirs into the ground with BGP because THEY couldn't configure BGP correctly.
Exodus' track record is one of incompetence, ignorance, rediculously poor customer service (Verio rated higher than Exodus.) and obscene ripoff scams. "Added Security" for only $5k+/month more. Which is simply 'oh, we'll put a PIX firewall in front of you' which is totally ineffective. The Cisco PIX+ firewall never made it past a 3Mbit flood in my personal benchmarks. It died. So Andover, soon to be VA Linux, is paying Exodus $1mil/year to take it up the ass without Vaseline.
Is Andover *DELIBERATELY* trying to scare VA Linux away from buying them? Only an idiot choses Exodus, because everyone's realized that Exodus is made up of scam artists and ripoff gurus. Is Andover trying to show VA Linux their technical staff is inept, when it obviously *isn't*? (Just absolutely godawful *DUMB* in an emergency, obviously. Or is that show too?)
So now Andover is wasting $1mil/year, slashdot is absolutely *GODAWFUL* slow now, as if it wasn't before, and we're supposed to be *IMPRESSED*!?
I'm still trying not to throw up at the mention of a 6509. To be blunt, the 6509 is the equivalent of Ascend. It's pure trash. Anyone who would WILLINGLY put their network's entire reliance on a 6509 should be killed out of *mercy*. Can't Andover afford a 7206 or 7206VXR after their wildly successful IPO!?
Y'know, there's nothing I hate more than technical companies that brag about their knowledgebase, but when push comes to shove, it's not there...
I swear, if my holdings suffer because of Andover's stupidity, I will be *very* angry.
(DISCLAIMER - I *AM* a VA Linux shareholder. You are goddamn right I am watching Andover with a VERY critical eye.)
Microsoft isn't going to open jack diddly squat. One, it's a delay tactic, so they can have a stronger appeal. Two, it's an appeal tactic. They can now whine "we offered this" and most judges will misinterpret this statement. Three, it's a purely misleading and confusing statement, intentionally.
"parts of the Windows operating system used by independent software companies to design their applications."
That means APIs. Not Windows. That means Microsoft's playing their little wording games as always. I only PRAY that the people who NEED to know this realize that this is all lies. Microsoft already provides somewhat open access to their APIs, in the form of code examples and detailed specifications, to indepenent application programmers. For a fee. Don't doubt for one second they'll continue to charge that fee. They're going to open it, maybe, yeah. And they're going to keep right on up with making money with it. Open doesn't mean free. Get over that braindead anachronistic method of thinking, including the part where you remove head from rectum, and realize that Microsoft's in it for the money, and they'll make money any way they can.
And I'm going back to bed.
=RISCy Business - o/~ Happy Burfday To Me, my insurance still costs an arm and a leg.. o/~
What it is and why Linux won't run on it.
on
Quad G4 Boards
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· Score: 3
Okay, first off, what is it?
This isn't a motherboard, it's not a PC, it's not some piece of trash laptop component. This is a very very powerful VME board. Industrial computing only - no, you can't afford the chassis to hold it. It's usually in the $20k+ range for a basic VME chassis able to handle this type of board, assuming I'm looking at my current pricing sheet. (I don't think it is, but it can't be that much cheaper.)
Now, it says it'll run VxWorks. Linux isn't on there. And I wouldn't waste my time - Linux won't work on it. Unless somebody's been REAL busy with the PPC tree, FORGET IT. PERIOD. END OF ARGUMENT HERE. Don't bother flaming me, I'll be more than happy to just delete it. LINUX DOES NOT RUN CORRECTLY ON SMP POWERPC AND HAS NOT FOR MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY VERSIONS. For a VERY long time, it wouldn't even run on two processors. And when it did, there was *exponential* performance degredation on multiple processor systems. And now you think that MAGICALLY you're going to use *FOUR* PowerPC 750's (NOT G3s) with Linux? If it wasn't Slashdot, I wouldn't believe the incompetence and idiocy of claiming to run Linux.
And as if THAT weren't enough reasons, did we mention that LINUX DOES NOT SUPPORT VME? Last I checked, Linux doesn't even support CompactPCI! And somehow you're going to just run Linux on this? Give me a goddamn break. LynxOS won't even run on this, unless they've added VME support. That's why it says "VxWorks" and not "Linux" and not "Windows." The fanatics need to get their heads out of their rectums and realize that every time they make some blanket statement crap like this, they only make an ass of themselves.
This board doesn't even have a controller - what, you're going to magically plug in a SCSI disk to the chipset directly? The board boots and runs off of NVRAM Flash. This isn't some cracked-up PC. This is INDUSTRIAL equipment. How do I know these things? Probably because I have a CompactPCI (similar to VME somewhat) system built out for engine and onboard computer diagnostics and tuning. How much did it cost? I lease for a reason. What's it run? Not Linux, that's for damn sure. It runs LynxOS for a reason - not only because Linux isn't fit for the job (shut your mouths, zealots. I don't see any powerband analysis software for Linux any time soon.) but because LynxOS is *designed* for things like this.
Guess I probably pissed a lot of people off. Good. Maybe those of you who were offended by my comments will shut up, get your heads out of the clouds, and come back to earth sometime this year. Linux is not the do-everything OS, and it never will be at this rate. With supporters that claim it can do anything without any proof to back it up, and claiming it incorrectly half the time, I don't see any profit for ANYONE from it anytime soon. RedHat's stock isn't trading at 26 for no reason at all.
With supporters like this, I think I'll support FreeBSD instead. At least they have some respectability left.
*smirk* I come from a corporate environment. Ethical or not, if legal okays it, then it's going to happen. More than once, we got calls at my former employer's NOC that were the FBI, the State Police, the local police, the Secret Service, or the INS on the other hand, with siezed company property.
Anonymous reporting's been around for ages. And the schools use it. Some of them responsibly, others irresponsibly. Before I dropped out, my high school introduced a 1-800 help line to report bullying, to get help if you were depressed, etcetera. I know for fact that before I dropped out, the most action they took off information from that line was suspending someone for two weeks for fighting, and sending a LOT of kids off to a special school for kids with drug problems.
Since then, there have been *THREE* deaths at this school. One of them, this weekend, hit me very hard. It was someone I knew. He was stabbed to death at a party, trying to break up a fight. I don't doubt for a second that people will abuse these things. My school was so afraid of me, just because I was the "quiet kid" who was "smart," that they actively sought ways to get rid of me. I was threatened with expulsion repeatedly. Unjustly, I might note. ("What, you're going to expell me because some idiot who can't turn on a PC says I hacked his Macintrash? Shall we get the family lawyer on the phone?")
A school district basically FORCED a friend of mine to drop out. They continually harassed him, suspended him, etcetera. At the ADMINISTRATIVE level. And he wasn't a behaviour problem. He was a quiet kid who wore a lot of black. And they took ESPECIAL effort to make his life hell. This shit has been going on for years. In fifth grade, mind you, I had to memorize the family lawyer's number and tell them to call him every time they sent me to the principal's office for a bullshit reason. To this day, I have kept contact with at LEAST two lawyers - a contract/patent lawyer or firm, and a general counsel who can at the least, refer me to the appropriate lawyer should the need arise.
Yeah, the "if we don't do it somebody else will" argument is bullshit. But it's also true. It's CHEAPER to run a voicemail system that just takes messages than to provide ACTUAL HELP. Actual HELP requires ACTUAL PEOPLE. And people require MONEY. Pinkerton's profit margin will be in excess of 50%, with an error margin I'd guesstimate at in excess of 90%. Statistics be damned - offer a fifth grader a computer if he reports fifty violent students, and he'll be on that phone day in and day out till he gets that computer. No effort required - just lie about some kid you don't like.
This is unethical in that this is just a 'tattletale' line. And Pinkerton will NOT hire people to make it a HELP line instead. Then they would LOSE money on it due to the scope of it. (I hope you Pinkerton fools are reading this.) They KNOW this. They don't have the balls to admit that they're in this EXCLUSIVELY for the money. They can yank away those prizes any damn time they want for any bullshit reason they want. So they don't have to actually give away ANYTHING! Imagine the profit margins THEN!
It's time the whole goddamn world wakes up and realizes that playing catchup and tattletale is not only fucking STUPID, but just EXACERBATING the problem. It's like making a pinprick in a finger, then pouring sulfuric acid over it, and adding yeast. Then add some infectious diseases (WAVE) and pretty soon the only solution left is to cut off the ARM. I won't have kids, if I ever do get married, because I will not raise kids in this environment. Not by a longshot.
Obviously Americans can't take care of their own kids, the government's got it's head so far up it's ass it can't figure out how to make reasonable and intelligent changes and desicions, and the corporations could care less so long as they can post higher earnings estimates. Makes me want to move somewhere like Sweden or Finland. Obviously, people are far more responsible over there.
I don't know about you folks, but I've had it with this bullshit. If nobody's going to take a stand and point out who's REALLY at fault - the parents, the schools, the society, and America as a whole - then it's only going to get worse, and people know it. They're still in denial though. So nothing will be done till it's too late. Bah. I'm not disillusioned - I'm realistic. And if this is the way America will be, then every American on the face of this planet is SCREWED.
I don't give a damn about this stupid little event. It's a Linux-centric bullshit marketing toy. Now, in case people didn't know, I've been using Linux for a little over 5 years. Maybe closer to 6. And I'm totally disillusioned with Linux at this point. Kernel bugs aren't getting fixed for many versions - critical ones in the NCR 53c8xx driver, mind you - and people don't seem to care.
I have to be in Boston to find a home. I'm going to be there later tonight. And on Friday, I'm going to be all over the damn Cambridge suburbs looking for a home. And then on Saturday, I'm going to be looking all over as well.
The ONLY chance you have of finding me at this Geek Pride crap is so that I can manage to get in and ask ESR when he's going to give Microsoft his "seal of approval," since it's always seemed to be available to the highest bidder. Maybe he'll be a little less cocky, seeing as VA Linux's stock price is pretty much FREEFALLING. (Fairly surprising, seeing as their financials are doing fairly well, and they just signed up some major customers.)
BAH! Geek Pride? Maybe I'll stop by just to see how many lusers show up...
Hey, how interesting! I just left an employer that did cablemodem service as well! I don't think you'll have a hard time figuring out who.
For those of you who think that's bad, look at this; my now former employer has rolled out DOCSIS in most of their locations (whereas @Home is way behind) and has converted probably 70% of the customer base to DOCSIS. There isn't buy versus lease - it's lease or go without. You don't like that, tough luck.
And if you wanted it, you had to have at least basic cable. Period. There was no 'Oh, just give me a cablemodem, I don't want cable.' On top of that, you would get nailed pretty damn hard for the install - mine, at employee discount, was $120. Figure that the cablemodems cost around $180 or so, at my best guess. And remove the employee discount - after the first month, the money is made back on the cablemodem, and now you're another cable subscriber, like it or not. But that's only covering the cost of the cablemodem and the install.
To purport that Netpliance could possibly hope to turn a profit off the ISP business is preposterous, to say the LEAST. ISPs lose more money every year than any other business I've seen. You know those $9.95/month unlimited ISPs? Ever wonder why it's slow and you get busy signals? Because they can't turn profit on that. That's why ISPs offer webhosting and such.
Figure that ISP XYZ in Sometown has 48 modems, and 200 subscribers, giving them roughly a 4:1 user to modem ratio - fairly good. However, ISP XYZ has had to invest ~$3000 in a router, ~$12000-45000 for a terminal server with those 48 modems, and probably costs of $1300/mo on a T1 to someone like UUnet, and another $13/mo per channel on each PRI (24 channels each). $9.95/mo doesn't cover even that $13/mo cost. Yeah, sure, they have four times the subscribers as lines, but take into account the initial investment as well.
Netpliance is presumably nationwide, meaning either they have 'extended' DIDs assigned to PRIs, meaning more than one number in more than one area code goes to one PRI, or they have equipment in every city. Figure a maximum of say, 250-300 dialup users on a T1 before you choke it to death. Assume they have a T1 in every city, and probably out of band management equipment as well. In other words, a complete POP in each city they service.
In the big cities, say New York, they've probably got two to four POPs to handle the anticipated customer base, as well as to cover all calling areas that they can. So, let's crunch the numbers.
Figure around 240 lines per city at a cost of $11/month per line. A terminal server around, say, $65,000 to handle the PRIs. Probably a Cisco 2610 - about $3000 there. Likely an external CSU/DSU for some silly reason - there's another $300-2500. Out of band management equipment like a 33.6k modem - ~$50 - a Cisco 2509 - ~$2100 - and an analogue line seperate from the PRIs - ~$40/mo. NOW attempt to figure in their servers, decentralized OR centralized, it's going to be somewhere in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, probably. Marketing, sales, etcetera.
In other words, they're just plain losing money. By the minute. It'll probably be seven or more years before they pull themselves out of debt, if not longer! Most ISPs, even something like this, only last two to three years before giving up due to the constant harassing of bill collectors. Then they either get bought, or just shut down. My guess would be that Netpliance is going the 'new business' route of trying to get bought out.
Think about it. What do THEY care if they have horrible PR, if they're looking to get bought out? Once they get bought out, they're no longer Netpliance - they're whoever is the highest bidder. The CEO/President/whatever walks off with a buttload of cash, more than his intial investment due to an existing customer base and such. A lot of customers probabl get screwed. The usual fallout from a 'merger.'
If you ask me, Netpliance is nothing more than another pathetic company trying to make themselves just attractive and popular enough to attract bidders, perhaps before IPO, and then get the hell out of dodge.
Yeah, you're damn right what they're doing is totally unethical. I don't doubt it was intentional slamming - which is against federal law in the US, it might be noted - in order to 'generate revenue' in a 'timely manner.' Hoping for at least some return on investment before trying to sell, would be my guess. Yeah, they'll say it's legal, and I wouldn't expect any customer service from them whatsoever, with those kinds of losses already taken, but that's the way things work these days.
Gods, I hope they IPO so I can laugh my ass off at the people who are crazy enough to buy shares. Buying shares of AOL is one thing - AOL has profit and good revenues. This company has more money presumably 'invested' in equipment than Microsoft spends on a TV ad.
Certainly not a revolution of some sort. A revolution requires something different, something new. X-box isn't - it's a PC with a lot of proprietary hardware, a questionable release date, technology that will be outdate by the release date, and what will eventually turn out to be massive problems.
X-box is just another PC, priced more attractively in order to chain more people to Windows. It's all fairly standard, albeit made proprietary, components you could buy from your favourite computer store. Things like the CPU, the drive, the NIC, etcetera. Wrap it around some crazy motherboard and you're good to go.
And none of this technology is even mind blowing - hell, it's mostly LAUGHABLE for a 2001 release date. A 600MHz x86 processor? 64M of *UNIFIED* memory? (Which means memory is stolen from the CPU for the video card - my laptop has it.) It's a freaking PC for crying out loud!
WHY is everyone going nutso over it, besides the fact that Microsoft is trying to claim it as a console? Give me a BREAK! It's nothing more than a PC. I'm not impressed.
And people are going wacky for it WHY? It's not even all that impressive - so much less so if you look at it's planned release date.
Microsoft only announced it to work to kill Sony, Sega, and Nintendo's business. And maybe they did get Nintendo, since they haven't caught up to PSX2 and Dreamcast yet. But then again, obviously neither has Microsoft. This is just some hohum gamer PC that will be so outdated in 2001, assuming Microsoft doesn't play change the specs or buy the competition, that very few people will want it save for the Microsoft name.
You all have fun with your PCs, I'm going to buy a PSX2 and not waste my money on a faux console.
No, POWER and PowerPC are not finally merging, nor do I think they ever will. The POWER architecture, however, since the POWER3, has fully supported the PowerPC instruction set in 32 and 64 bit implementations.
Yeah, IBM and Motorola are in bed again. But it's been on again off again for years now. Don't count on it bein a final merging of the two architectures.
The following opinions are mine, and reflect absolutely noone else's except coincidentally. Especially those corporate entities that would like to sue me.;)
Anyways, yeah. I put in for my AtLarge membership. Why? I'm a longtime member of the internet community. I hold several domain names. I'm currently the DNS admin for waaaaaaaaaaaay too many domains. It's my responsibility more than my desire, to join as an at large member of ICANN.
However, this also opens the door for people who do NOT hold domains, who are only on the internet because they want to 'MAKE MOUNEY FAST' and things like that. ICANN is sending all PINs for at large membership accounts via USPS "snail mail". That's not much protection. I can honestly forsee problems.
What scares me most is that there will become splinter groups in the at large membership community - groups that want spam, groups that want a total abolishment of copyrights, groups that want businesses given preference in all domain related matters.
It may or may not be an actual overall sampling of the internet community in this at large community. Instead, we may end up with so many splinter and special interest groups that nothing changes. ICANN seems to be trying to change their administration structure somewhat - to involve more of the people that their desicions affect. And I commend that. Wholeheartedly. That's been my biggest gripe about domain name systems and IP allocations for the past 6 years - there's no involvement with the people who have to put up with the desicions except when it's time to pay those bills.
The problem is that they are not looking at the possibilities and ramifications of an open at large membership system, though. There are not enough requirements. And some of the requirements are somewhat silly. You must be at least 16 years of age - why? Legally binding age for contracts is 18, and I saw no contracts when I signed up for my membership. And I have talked to 15 year olds who are doing consulting that have some fairly intelligent input on a variety of things relating to the internet. They do not require that you hold a domain name, as far as I can tell, to sign up for membership. That shouldn't be the only question - ICANN is also working with ARIN/APNIC/etc to oversee allocation of IP addresses. I'm overseeing DNS for over 200,000 IP addresses right now. (Yes, that number is correct and genuine.) And that's just the public ARIN allocated addresses.
However, only time will tell, I suppose. However, I suspect that every big business in the world is signing up for atlarge membership right now, so they can get their voices heard. And they'll try throwing around money too. I only hope that's not what happens, and we do get a genuine sampling of the people that really make the internet work.
ObLegalese: Go ahead and sue me. I'm sure I'd make a great charity case. These are my opinions. If you want to quote me, PLEASE email me before doing so!
Nobody has it like us SysAdmins. 30 hour weeks, telecommuting, and one of thie highest pay rates in the industry.
BULLSHIT!
My job title is "Unix Technician" - my job duties are those of an overworked SysAdmin. Over 100 unix systems I'm reponsible for. I'm paid about three or four grand more than a McDonald's manager - that's by annual salary, mind you - and they have a better benefits package. (Pick one coverage: Dental, General.)
I'm probably in the office about 50 hours a week - legally, after 44 hours, they have to pay me overtime, even though I'm salaried. They have refused to pay the due overtime. Most state laws dictate that after 44 hours, salaried or not, you are due overtime, unless you are scheduled for more hours. I'm scheduled for 38 hours.
I'm also on call. I haven't slept at all the past two weekends because I worked through them, at home. Yes, I worked through them. Both days. Paged at 9p, 11p, 12a, 1a, 3a, 4a, 6a, 9a, 11a, 2p, 5p, 7p, 10p on Friday and Saturday. Paged at 12a, 1a, 2a, 3a, 4a, 5a, 7a, 9a, 1p, 3p, 5p, 6p, 7p, 8p, 9p, 11p on Sunday. At 11:30p, I simply ripped the battery out of my pager, so I could sleep. Then I was summarily yelled at for trying to put my own health before The Company. Now, excuse me, but this is a Fortune 1000 company. And they refuse to hire more underpaid "Unix Techs." So I am supposed to risk my health, my life, and my sanity for them so they can save a few bucks.
This isn't the FIRST time I've been though this - my last job was for an incompetent startup. There, I had all the sysadmin responsibilties, as well as Network Engineering and Adminstrator responsibilities for well over 150 routers, access servers, and switches in the field. And they paged me just as much.
I don't know about any of you, but I am seriously considering changing fields - I have NEVER worked for a company that does not abuse, destroy, demoralize, and then threaten to FIRE their SysAdmins because they'd like to put their health before some idiot who can't remember to type his password.
I am ALL too often paged UNNECESSARILY - I'm paged when a SINGLE customer in a 15,000 customer system, can't get his email because tech support can't fucking troubleshoot. I'm paged when tech support can't figure out their OWN password. I'm paged when someone at the NOC thinks that one of the servers is a little slow because it's a workstation trying to handle 20,000+ customers with an average email box size of 5MB!
I don't know about any of you, but this is total bullshit. You know what my employer's response to me starting or joining a union was? "We'll fire you on the spot." Now, I'm pretty sure that's flat out illegal, but I have NO intentions whatsoever of staying with an employer with an attitude like that.
IMO, the time has come to show these managers and supervisors who think they know their shit because they can 'cd ~' or 'rm -rf ~luser/public_html' that we are NOT their personal playthings. And the employers while we're at it. The conditions many of us are forced to work under are flat out INTOLERABLE and INHUMAN. I believe we must form a more coherent and cohesive union - even moreso than SAGE - or things won't get any better. (Interested in helping? email me.)
Somebody needs to remove the government's head from it's ass so that they can see that the employers could care less how much employees are doing from home or on the road - and thusly refusing compensation - and how many hours they're really working. Hell, most SALARIED employees aren't required to keep timesheets or anything. We're the only ones who can stop this, and until we start working to do so, it's only going to get worse.
See ObLegalese at top.. my opinions. Email for permission to quote. Not words of employer or union or anybody but me. Don't like it, deal with it.
You're about to hear it straight from the horses mouth, folks. Straight from a SysAdmin on the front lines!
Uhm. Problems? What problems? Houston, we have a problem? Wait, no, yes, er, maybe?
Well, save for probably 30-50 pieces of workstations and Axil hardware, everything's passed the preliminary tests.
I can unofficially (IANACSP[1]) say that our network is 100% ready as far as the data side goes.
We officially have 4 hours as of 4 minutes ago till the Trial By Fire, and we have an 'example' system - an Axil 320 - to see what actually happens - it's set to EST so it's one of the first to blow up - also about 5 minutes fast.
From what I have heard from other locations and other companies, everything looks good to go. Some telcos, mostly cellphone companies and LD companies, are afraid of the load. But, all I can say is that it looks like a big NOTHING.
That's right. Y2k is the big NOTHING.
I hope everyone has a safe and happy new year, and remember to check your beer for Y2k compliance before drinking!;)
[1] I Am Not A Corporate SpokesPerson(tm). If you would like to quote me, please EMAIL ME FIRST. EMAIL ME HERE first, actually.;)
Well, I don't know about you folks, but I'm pretty much ready for Y2k. I did my shopping last week. What'd I buy?
* 1,500 rounds of.22 hollowpoint ammunition * 250 shells for 18ga shotgun * 250 shells for 12ga shotgun * Equipment for cleaning rifle scopes * Gun cleaning equipment * 30 cans of tunafish * 10 jars of peanut butter * 10 jars of jelly * 6 loaves of bread * plenty of bread making supplies * 240 12oz. cans of pop * 2 tons of bituminous coal for the coal heater
So let's justify it!
.22 Ammunition - Hunting for poli, er, uh, food. 18ga Ammo - Hunting for mili, er, ah, food. 12ga Ammo - Hunting for riot, er, um, food. Scope Cleaning - Hunting for.. er.. nevermind:) Gun Cleaning - You know what. Tunafish - Gotta eat! PB & J - Gotta eat! Bread - Gotta eat the rest on something!;) Bread making - Well, if we run out of sliced...;) Pop - We're very very thirsty. *grin* Coal - Well, er, we usually buy that much coal.. just not that often.;)
So, who wants to go riot, er, hunting for.. supplies and.. uh.. food with me? }:)
What's in a name? A lot these days, thanks to hype.
Beyond that? Really not all that much in most cases. Agilent's an HP spinoff. Ascend's a dismal failure that was bought by Lucent which was broken off from AT&T. But what about slashdot? No history, save for chips&dip. Freshmeat? History? What history?
linuxninja.com? What's that for? Some new karate studio that runs their finances on Linux?
I don't know about all of you, but I'm about ready to get AWAY from Linux. Why? Partly so I can honestly say 'no, I don't run it,' thusly deflecting in excess of 50 outright STUPID questions a day. Why else?
Probably because most of all, development has been cheapened. Greatly. I look at the codebase daily - not ac, not any silly fragmented tree - the codebase Linus okays. 2.4 by the end of Q1 2000? Does anyone reading this even have any clue whatsoever of how long the world ran 1.2.13 as stable and 1.3.x as unstable? I'm going to have to guess not, seeing as everyone is hyped up about 2.4.
Look, flat out, there isn't enough real changes to warrant a 2.4.x versioning. Period. And the development is so rushed and frenetic, it makes me physically ill to look at the i386 tree some days. It's rediculous. I see code without any bug checking, with typos, with just generic brokenness all over.
I'm not saying Linux isn't stable; it definitely is. But things are going too fast, being too rushed. Whether or not technology is going fast, things like OS development just aren't meant to go fast. Linux simply will begin to fail at attempts to become a mature OS if such frenetic development continues.
The distributions aren't helping either. I'm starting to lose faith in even Debian. Everyone's rushing to egcs AKA gcc 2.9x.x ad infinitum. glibc 2.1 is now the norm, even though it *should* be glibc 3.x due to the fact that it's not back-compatible in the *least* with 2.0x. It's breaking kernel compiles with bad asm in the code, or bad asm generation by egcs.
As much as I hate to say it, Windows is a mature OS in many ways. No, not Win95 itself, but it's core, MS-DOS. (Whether or not MS will admit it.) MS-DOS was originally developed over 10 years ago. In 10 years, it has had a slow but steady development tree (ignoring the 6.0/6.2/6.21/6.22 fiasco) and is actually reasonably stable. (It's the GUI itself that is unstable.) Linux is now attempting to forego all conventional wisdom even *further* and simply rush development. That's what happened with the Windows 95 GUI, in case you all forgot.
Now, look at XFree86. XFree86 has many servers that I would bet my life on - especially the SVGA server - and they have followed a very controlled development schedule. New servers don't go in till they've been debugged, and they don't go in till the next minor.sub version; ie, 3.3.4 to 3.3.5 would allow servers to be added. (Now this is what I've heard and seen - XF86's policies may differ in actuality.)
We don't have anything to warrant a 2.4 kernel. I'm sorry, we just don't. I've talked back to people like Linus before, and told them they're wrong. And I'm doing so right now. To go to 2.4 is wrong. Period. Flat out wrong. To claim Linux already as a mature OS is wrong. Linux is based loosely around what is arguably the most mature OS class to ever exist - Unix. AIX is a mature OS. HP-UX is a mature OS. Solaris is NOT a mature OS. Linux is NOT a mature OS.
I'm not saying Linux isn't stable - it is. It's very stable. For certain tasks, I'd certainly bet my life on Linux. But it's not mature by any stretch of the imagination. Some of it's core components - binutils, etc - are certainly mature. That doesn't necessarily make an OS mature.
I'm taking any news on Linux with a grain of salt anymore. Yes, I got in on the VA Linux IPO. Yes, I made a very respectable amount of money - a superb return on investment - and I think RedHat is grossly overvaluated. But nonetheless, Linux has turned into a hype circus. With 2.4 being rushed, distributions moving to things that I wouldn't dare trust even half as much as a Windows box, and so on, I'm scared. I'm very scared.
I've been using Linux a good number of years. Throughout those years, things have gone faster and faster, and I see things spiralling out of control. Now maybe it's just me, but I'd hate to see Linux fall over it's own feet as it tries to be the first to the 'mature OS' finish line, or any finish line for that matter.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, first off, you're doing it wrong.
You need to call their NOC, *NOT* tech support. Get their NOC number, which is according to my records, 650-556-5599. If that's not the NOC, you can get the NOC number from them.
Once you get to the NOC, make them create a trouble ticket, and get ready to use your "I'm NOT HAPPY WITH YOU" techniques. The ONLY way anything will be done about it is if you ride them. Hard. They probably have the TT from Tech Support, so have that number ready, and give it to them. Start riding them hard. Demand supervisors, etcetera. Remember, the NOC is going to be setup with a front line defense (NOC techs), second line defense (NOC NetEng, NOC Unix Admin, etc), third line defense (NetEng, Unix Admins), and finally supervisors. That's NOT how it's managed, but how it's going to progress. Escalate often. Just keep calling them.
That's the only way I've ever gotten anything done with Crack-Home or any other moronic overly large ISP. If they're big enough to have a NOC, then rest assured you'll only get things done if it gets to the NOC. The NOC will likely scream at Tech Support if they get TT's from them (I know we did when I worked in one) and generally have a fit, and ignore the ticket as much as possible. NOC and Tech Support typically do not get along.
Hope this helps, and good luck.
your company here.
Well, I figure since I've had to deal it with almost 100% of my career, I may as well toss out my $0.02USD.
/. readers claim, say, swear, or demand it is. First off, you have several types of spammers.
Spam isn't as easy to stop as most of the 'tech savvy'
First off is your atypical newbie moron spammer, who gladly gives you all his correct information, gets online, and fires away, gets disconnected immediately, gets blacklisted.
Next you have the more technical spammer, who has an array of fake credit card numbers, false names, false addresses, and so on. He'll setup six or seven accounts on one ISP, usually something like AOL or UUnet, and bounce around with these accounts, spamming. On and off before they can catch him in the middle of it.
Third, you have the guy with a pile of lawyers working for him, that's going to negotiate and hardball his way into a contract with an ISP that lets him spam.
The only remaining spam-friendly ISP was AGIS. Why 'was'? That policy was changed due to something like 60%+ of their customers cancelling after the announcement. Remember Spamford Wallace? He was the guy they hooked up first, and he was the guy that lost them a lot of business. Companies blocked AGIS - my employer at the time filtered all of AGIS' netblocks immediately, to prevent incoming spam. Some providers, ie; PSInet, have negotiated contracts with 'big name' (aka LOTS of spam) firms that allow them to spam to their heart's content.
Now, you've got a spammer. We'll say your typical type 2. And you want to shut him down. Not that easy. Because you do NOT have a common factor, including where they're dialing in from, they can CONTINUE to abuse your service, and there's not much at ALL you can do about it till they slip up somehow, which most sales droids are NOT going to be aware of. They'll just keep bouncing around and evading. And if the ISP gets blackholed or filtered all over, they'll just jump ISPs entirely. These are the pricks that cause the most damage to ISPs. They usually also use the ISP's SMTP server - best thing you can do is to disconnect them the second you see it, and pray they don't have more accounts. I've had to deal with a couple of these in the past, and we had one guy sign up for *SIXTY* accounts in *ONE DAY*, all with different information. When we FINALLY figured out who it was, we were ONLY able to kill the accounts because we had relatively few (around 2,000) and knew when they were added.
Now, say you have someone who bought a leased line and ordered it up deliberately for spam. You can't prove it beforehand, and some of the software out there makes it incredibly hard to find the true source. You have to catch them in the act most of the time. And the best you can HOPE to do is to do a shut on their interface. That's assuming you don't have a legal department that you MUST consult before disconnecting a customer for a contract violation (ie; spamming) and who MUST sign off on the disconnect order - I had to deal with this before. In some of the larger shops, ie; UUnet, AOL, etcetera, you have to go to your legal group and get them to sign off on a disconnect, then you have to go to your engineering department, who may or may not have to schedule it as a change management, who may or may not have to get their managers to write off on it, who may or may not have to go further up the chain. In other words, typical corporate bull will typically tie up a spam disconnect for over a week. It's the cold reality. If you disconnect a customer who WASN'T spamming, they can and likely WILL nail you for breach of contract on a leased line, and that could cost your company MILLIONS. Legal wants proof, engineering wants time and to be left alone, management just wants the mess out of their hair. Plus the overworked abuse departments do not help, as most complaints go there. Where I worked, we had a two person abuse department, who typically had a three week turnaround on initial reply.
You have to take all these kind of things into account. I'm certainly not saying UUnet is doing a great job - they aren't - but they're doing the best they can. I'm not personally aware of any contracts UUnet has negotiated permitting spam, and they usually *do* disconnect a customer for spamming. Other providers are far worse. You can whine, scream, complain, and moan all you want, but spam is not going to go away overnight, and policies at these places don't get changed overnight, if at all. UUnet has their policies, as do most other providers, and the tech that ignores them and just unplugs that spammer is going to find himself out of work almost immediately.
A lot of the posters definitely need a good dose of reality, because this is how it is. It's not just unplug the guy. Maybe the Mom & Pop ISPs have that luxury with dialups, but the other ones? Not a chance. So you're just going to have to live with it. Build your own filter lists, update them, etcetera, and quit whining about these companies being unable to stop it immediatley. You want it fixed? You go get a job in management and fix it yourself. No amount of your screaming is going to change a thing.
=RISCy Business, who doesn't give a damn what you think.
your company here.
I collect cars. Work on 'em, fix 'em, break 'em, and fix 'em again. I know the internal combustion engine all too well.
;)
:)
How does this car sound? Well hot DAMN, somebody FINALLY figured out something other than (gasoline, alcohol, nitromethane) to inject. Basically, this is a very interesting system that works. How well does it work? Time will tell.
But you could probably modify any engine in the world to do this.
Instead of creating compression through combustion, it's direct injection of compression, forcing the piston down, thusly turning the engine. The horsepower potenetial is nil, but it's an excellent economy design. And the kicker is that, despite what others have said, unless there is a genuine combustion cycle, there is no emissions outside of what you put in. If you put in clean air, clean air will come out, in this setup. The engine will probably be low maintenance as well - you don't have to worry as much about rings failing from carbon buildup, or piston failure from using too low an octane rating. Although I wonder if using pure O2 instead of air could cause detonation, heehee.
Sounds like the best idea I've seen in a good long while. Now all they have to do is figure out how to do it in a better looking car that's smaller, and I'll buy one!
=RISCy Business
your company here.
Applied for by Hemos, et al.
Wherein this patent is applied for, herein defining a method of determining the relative coolness of a person using a system hereafter referred to as karma.
The mechanism uses a community made up mostly of clueless Linux zealots and anti-everything "rebels" to assign points to comments made by users, thereby raising or lowering their karma.
Next week: Sig11 applies for a patent on karma whoring and an AC sues, claiming it a violation of the karma limit patent!
=RISCy Business
your company here.
Well, they're both making chipsets. Wow.
3Dfx makes cards. nVidia does not - they simply make chips and sell them to manufacturers to make the card.
They both claim to be better than the other. Now, gee, am I the only one seeing atypical competition there?
3Dfx wants to innovate - ie; use a stagnant chipset for a base and make a better design. nVidia wants to go faster - ie; redesign every 6 to 12 months to milk out another 3FPS on systems that aren't already running into bus limitations.
Reguardless, I won't buy either. Why? Because they both claim OpenGL support. Now, I don't know about you folks, but seeing as I work in AutoCAD frequently, that means hardware support. Neither of them have it. ATI doesn't. #9 didn't. Why? Most of them view software as the future.
The mistake both nVidia and 3Dfx are making is that they're trying to take on the world when they don't have the staff, technology, or knowhow to do it. I've seen the Voodoo3, the Voodoo5, the TNT2, the GeForce MX, etcetera. The 2D quality, quite honestly, SUCKS. I've seen better 2D rendering in a blender. And I'm not talking a video blender, I'm talking the one in my kitchen. The refresh rates are for the most part inadequate for professional graphics work, the 2D image quality is abhorable at best, and considering I'm hitting bus limitations, I don't see how the extra 30FPS it's capable of in the chipset is going to help any.
I remember back about a year or two ago, I have a 3DLabs Permedia2 8M PCI card and the Voodoo had just come out. My friend snagged one, I scoffed. I said 'ha! My card already does all that stuff.' His 8M Voodoo continuously and routinely got smoked by my Permedia2 when it came to games. QuakeGL, Final Fantasy 7, etcetera. My Voodoo2's (2x 12M - for Unreal Tournament, there is no other option) combined with my #9 RevolutionIV 32M still are VERY hard pressed to beat the Permedia2 in any number of tests.
Now if you go read AnandTech sometime, you'll note that a lot of the cards these days - at least the gaming cards - are getting *OBSCENE* FPS rates. >70FPS. And when you pair the big names - nVidia, 3Dfx, Matrox, ATI, etc - up in, say, a pIII 733 or whatever it is, they ALL get the SAME RATE at 640x480x whatever depth. Why? The bus is full. Can't push any more data than that. And what are these companies doing about it?
3Dfx is adding an external powersupply for all the active cooling you're going to need just to run the Voodoo6 at normal speeds. nVidia is gleefully ignoring it and boasting a faster and bigger chip. ATI's touting more and more memory. Now, bear in mind, if the chipset doesn't use the memory for ZBuffering (mind you, not true ZBuffering), 64M of DDR SDRAM is doing you no good - 1800x1440 only needs around 14M or 16M IIRC. The companies are putting memory on the cards to make them look bigger, perhaps perform a bit better, and ignoring the core problems.
Quite frankly, I could care less whether or not 3Dfx is 'stagnating' or nVidia is 'amazing' or what have you. I need a card that works with and around bus limitations, that can do 2D and hardware OpenGL, that can do what I need. I don't buy mass marketed cards because unlike the Permedia2, which *was* mass marketed (Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro (PCI and AGP)) and an excellent card, today's cards are the equivalent of junk for me.
What do I use? Well, now instead of putting multiple cards in a single system, I'm stuck using top end cards. We're talking cards that cost more than your typical PC and more than a well configured laptop in some cases.
I just purchased, much against my desires but in tune with my *needs*, a $4,200 Wildcat 4210 graphics adapter. What is it? Dual pipeline. Dual head and a few more outputs. 90 Hz at 1824x1368. One AGP Pro 110 and two PCI connectors. All on a single card. That requires 110W of power. Wildcat was just bought by 3DLabs, the name in 'affordable' cards. (The Permedia3 is affordable, but not enough for what I do.) I was forced into spending more for a single video card than I spent on the entire system. ($2,935 for the curious. I reused the 18G SCSI-UW disks and controller.)
Now maybe some of you don't have this problem. Actually, I'm betting most of you don't. But for those of us who actually really *don't* do this for a living, per se, but need the hardware anyways (I use AutoCAD for various engine modification work on a very regular basis) are getting screwed by the dick wars between 3Dfx and company. It used to be that I could do just fine with a happy Permedia2 and AutoCAD R14. Then it was a #9 Revolution IV 32M. I went to go buy something with excellent 2D quality that could perform better than the #9 Revolution IV and found out that nothing does. If I want 2D, I have to go Matrox, which doesn't perform terribly well under AutoCAD R14 or AC2K. If I want real rendering performance, I have to go up to the professional cards, which I really didn't want to do. Now maybe the 4210 was overkill, but quite frankly, any of the cards is a pain to find and order. I could have probably gotten a 3DLabs Oxygen GVX420, but they also made the mistake of ignoring bus issues, and boom. The card ends up limited by the bus, performing really not all that much better than the other options. Just with ZBuffering and a $2300 pricetag. A single AGP/PCI combination (yes, two connectors, two PCBs) still runs into bus limits before the card hits its.
I don't know about you, but I really feel cheated.
Maybe I'll just put the Wildcat on eBay. Bidding starts at $1.
=RISCy Business
BULLSHIT!!
:)
We all know they'll be at John Harvard's Pub and Brew House from End-Of-Lecture till Closing-And-Beyond! It's well known that all good brew issues forth from John Harvard's at Harvard Square unless imported from exotic places like Ireland and Germany and Canada.
If you have to ask what John Harvard's is, you are required to listen every episode of CarTalk start to finish, continuously. Especially since Dewey, Cheetham, and Howe is none too far from John Harvard's.
If I didn't have previous commitments (look for a metallic black 1987 Buick Grand National T-Type Intercooled BiTurbo with white pearl flames on I93 in excess of 120MPH) I might actually show up.
Maybe we should get Click and Clack to be the hecklers. }:)
=RISCy Business
Let's see. I've been a White Wolf player since, what, Vampire: the Masquerade came out? Yeah, about that time.
Let's see. I've been an active player since then. So that would make it close to 8 or 9 years, as I recall, seeing as V:tM came out in, what, '91?
I can safely say that, quite frankly, Jon is again reading into something that just isn't there. Trying to politicize and 'newsify' (is that even a word?) something that's been around since 1978 or so, seeing as that's when D&D First Edition came out.
For the record, I've been playing RPG's for about 11 years. I started with D&D 2nd edition in 1989 and have been consistently and constantly playing in various RPGs ever since, including but certainly not limited to and definitely not in order of preference, D&D, AD&D, Mage: the Ascention, Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Vampire: the Masquerade, Battletech, and various freeform RPGs.
To try and make this into something it is not is an insult to those of us who DO play RPGs. RPGs predate the Internet, and in reality, have very little to do with it in any way shape or form, beyond the fact that communities surrounding RPGs have formed on it.
Awakening? What is this bullshit? I mean, seriously, this is utter bullshit and not even yellow journalism. Yellow journalism involves actual JOURNALISM, which Katz is OBVIOUSLY incapable of.
Go fucking read - the same stuff is in EVERY White Wolf game. Why? To add an element of realism , gods forbid we should have anything but FANTASY in an RPG. If you were a supernatural being, do you REALLY think that it would be easy to just get whatever you wanted whenever you wanted it, and get away with it? It's not even feasable to have anything resembling an education without painstaking attention to faking things in the so-called "real" world in a situation like that, which is what White Wolf points out. Christ. Katz must be illiterate. He seems to have also not noticed that the so-called "awakening" as he has dubbed it in his so-called infinite genius (*choking back laughter*) is always the late teens, in most cases 17 or so. Why? Because it's totally impractical to do it any other way and have anything resembling a cultured character, much less educated.
Somebody needs to send Katz to a proctologist for his rectal cranial inversion problem, apparently. I mean, christ, I've heard the bullshit in the past, but this is beyond bullshit and flat out insulting. Christ. Give Katz one iota of credibility for the Hellmouth bullshit and he runs with it and runs off with the profits from other people's suffering. This is beyond absurd.
What will it take to get Katz off slashdot? Fuck the checkbox - I don't want him spouting off any more bullshit for anyone to peruse. He obviously is incapable of decency, integrity, or intelligence. Where's natural selection when you need it? *sigh*
=RISCy Business
ORBS is not like MAPS. MAPS relies on submissions and actual proof. ORBS has a policy of 'blacklist all by default, if not, go out and hunt them down.'
/24 that www.orbs.org is on, as well as i2bs.com, probably half or all of dN.net (Verislow's digitalNation), and anything that so much as looks like ORBS. Sure, you may lose some legitimate traffic, but miniscule at best. And the only way ORBS is going to get the hint that their methods and policies (or lack thereof and/or lax enforcement and/or personal problems/mental problems) are NOT welcome is if they suddenly find themselves shut out.
In other words, ORBS is a hostile system, which will deliberately and intentionally probe your mail servers without provocation, without permission, and then blacklist you and refuse to remove you, whether or not you fix it or a problem really exists. I have had to deal with the assholes there before. They're worthless. Anyone who would respond to an email requesting to be removed as the blacklisted server is not a relay with the words, and I quote "use a real mail server" and calling the administrator an "idiot" repeatedly... well, draw your own conclusions.
ORBS also appears to either be utilizing systems outside of their network for scanning to evade the blocking that hundreds of ISPs use against them (which results in ORBS blackholing them). Possibly cracked, possibly legitimate. I don't know - all I know is that I have always treated ORBS as a hostile entity after I saw them attempting connections on a variety of ports to a mailserver. I've been keeping ACLs up to date to keep the assholes out since.
MAPS realistically *should* be blackholing ORBS, and likely DOES (I don't subscribe to MAPS, RBL, etc - I feel the methodology is flawed.) due to the fact that ORBS deliberately seeks out relays. I wouldn't put it past ORBS to be selling open relays, perhaps their entire black hole list, to spammers. They've proven to be those kind of people in the past, and still are.
Those of you looking to block ORBS, I'd recommend dropping all packets from the entire
=RISCy Business
You have NO idea how refreshing it is to see intelligent replies. Especially the way /. is these days. ;P
/. once again - maybe it'll continue! :)
Yes, '98 is eons ago. When I spoke of H.323(v2), I did mean only the call routing/gateway functionality, which is UDP for the route *only*, and then uses TCP. This WAS an early version of both, however, so they may have changed it.
It didn't take me long to see that VoIP is years and years away from functional maturity. Really, the problem lies within the maturity, or lack thereof, of VoIP. The standards are not set in stone, interoperability is non-existant, transmission and recieving standards are non-existant. Manufacturers? Agree on gatekeeper applications? Please. Call accounting is typically done via Radius CDR[1]s, which is incredibly ineffecient and unnecessarily complicates accounting functions.
Honestly, I'm more of an Internet guy than a telecom guy, but I also got stuck managing and provisioning most of the network, as well as the in-house PBX systems, so I've got a good amount of knowledge about both. Either way, lying fiber only does so much good. As broadband expands, you're going to see that available bandwidth snapped up faster than they can bury it and light it, leaving little to no room for additional things, like VoIP and such.
I don't think VoIP will take off till the providers get the clue and start building private interconnecting networks between PSTN termination points and internal origination/PSTN origination (ie; for calling cards) points. And until full SS7 interconnect on all fronts is a reality, call routing will remain an unwieldy, bulky, unnecessarily complex and obscene task, which is best left undone. (You can't store the entire NPA-NXX tables for all the US, or even all of a single state, within any current hardware VoIP solution. They all require an external gatekeeper.)
VoIP is an immature system and far far from being production and carrier quality. Especially the PC-based solutions. Until people realize that you have to follow very strict network design and maintenance principles, it's going to remain that way, but those are just my thoughts and opinions. YMMV.
Good to see some intelligent discussion on
[1] Call Detail Records
=RISCy Business
Voice over IP isn't something new. Been around since at least mid-1998. There's a reason - it's not good enough. I speak from experience. I was responsible for the deployment of a national VoIP network using a strictly hardware based solution. And it sucked. Flat out sucked. Going international to a single POP across the Atlantic was even worse, even with a PVC on PanAmSat.
Flat out, TCP is too unpredictable, and not enough solutions are carrier class. There are very stringent requirements for carrier-class quality. And TCP/IP is NOT carrier class. Oh, sure, you can claim it just by slapping on a -48V DC powersupply, but it's not carrier class till you can give *proven* 99.999% uptime, AKA Five-By-Nine(s). There is absolutely *no* VoIP solution that can do this.
Furthermore, MANY VoIP routing solutions are entirely dependent on the H.323 or H.323v2 pseudo-standard, which uses UDP - an inherently unreliable transport - to transmit and recieve call routing information on a per-system per-port level. H.323v2 is also bandwidth intensive. And I have yet to see a system that can interconnect H.323v2 with SS7, which is the absolute standard for all telephone call routing, as defined by Telcordia/BellCore. The Lucent 5ESS runs SS7 for routing, I shouldn't need to say any more than that. This may have changed in the time that I have been out of VoIP, but I doubt it.
In order to bring VoIP to carrier quality, basically, a new routable Layer 3 protocol with inherently reliable transports would have to be created, and all compression schemes would likely have to be eliminated. The compression inherently damages quality, well below acceptable levels for anything useful. Testing a 33.6k modem over a VoIP routed line resulted in 4800 connects at best. The compression causes gaps in conversation, and only increases with latency.
As latency increases, call route reliability decreases exponentially, due to H.323/H.323v2 utilizing UDP transport. Packets are dropped and not retransmitted, resulting in incomplete or lost call route instructions. Suddenly that call to Grandma in Houston, TX from your house in Boston, MA, can't be completed. And bandwidth is choked quickly. Two PRIs worth of circuits used for incoming/terminating VoIP calls will eat a full 6Mbit pipe quickly.
Cisco claims or claimed that the AS5300 equipped with Voice over IP blades had 5:1 audio compression with minimal quality loss. While people were understandable, gaps in the conversation were also very audible, from dropped packets or other inevitable network issues. At a supposedly 5:1 compression ratio for the data transmission, I saw a single call eat nearly half a megabit. A PRI is basically 24 voice channels versus 24 data channels. In effect, a T1's worth of voice channels, using digital format versus standard analog, allowing 24 channels to be carried over four pair copper.
To claim VoIP as carrier class is similar to claiming that a PC at the store is carrier class. Or that just because a system has a -48V DC powersupply, it is carrier class. As I said above - carrier class is defined by reliability, not just feature set. I honestly don't know whether or not any of Cisco's equipment qualifies as carrier class - for certain, in my experience, I would be very uneasy about slapping that label on their Voice over IP equipment.
Furthermore, as everyone gets 'hip' to VoIP, the market is becoming flooded with companies. And much like has happened with so-called 'e-tailers,' there's going to be a purging. Those with the real brains, the right technology, and get in at the right time might make it. Those that don't, don't. IMHO, the time to get in has already passed. It takes time to build a massive data network to begin with, much less research all the equipment available in order to find a reasonably reliable combination.
The PC solutions are no better. The quality is horrific at best, after seeing probably close to 90 different 'solutions' that were anything BUT. They are unreliable - the hardware-based solutions even moreso - and offer very very little quality, much less return on investment potential. I spent a lot of time at a PC trying to get one particular card to work and watched as the card itself gave up the ghost and shorted out itself, due to extremely poor manufacturing quality.
My recommendation? Abandon the idea and cut your losses while you're still ahead. There are other options out there with better profit potential that aren't reliant on a killer IPO performance. Maybe there'll be a maturing of VoIP technologies - maybe even a standardization (HA! Yeah RIGHT!) in the coming years, but now is not the time or place to try it.
=RISCy Business
Please. Make it stop. Katz is going too damn far.
I'm falling out of my chair laughing at his pompous incompetent attitude. This from someone who has to 'geek-ize' everything and proclaim himself a saviour of the geek, who gleefully takes every word they said on one topic and uses it in a book, without giving them any opprotunity to say they didn't want it, and without paying them, because it's 'so important' yadda yadda.
Bunch of overblown overhyped crap is what it is, reminiscient of AOL marketing. "With Jon Katz, it's easy to be a geek!" "The New Katz 5.0 - Now able to stereotype nerds as well!" Bah. Slashdot's fallen quite a distance.
Open this, open that, world is evil, geeks will rule all, interaction, the "information superhighway", data explosion, etcetera, ad infinitum. Does Katz's jaw ever stop spewing forth such cliche and ignorant crap? Can I bribe him into shutting up?
Ever since that Hellmouth crap, Katz has spewed nothing but eschewed self-important crap in line with whatever current moronic trend in networking/internet/stereotyping is. I'm getting damn sick of this crap wasting valuable bandwidth because one man can't get enough of himself, namely, Katz.
If Rob and Co. really have editorial control, then editorial Katz back to the 2-bit rags he used to write for - this isn't a man who belongs on the Internet, nor should be allowed near a word processor, obviously.
=RISCy Business - flames not bothered with
I've been an opponent of the two way breakup since day one, and not because I don't like Microsoft. I really do hope this gets moderated up so that people will perhaps see this.
;)
Quite frankly, two companies is doing nothing. The 'applications group' definition is so blatantly ambiguous and vague that it's trivial for the applications group to say 'okay, we claim WebTV, all our cable company holdings, MSN, etcetera' and embed these kind of things within their applications, continuing to illegally support the applications side of the monopoly.
The OS group will likely compensate by raising prices - there is absolutely no clause whatsoever in the ruling against unfair pricing for consumers and OEMs. Microsoft is not forced to justify costs in any way, shape, or form.
The ruling also has a very severe loophole, which the OS group will be very quick to abuse. They know that in 10 years, if they don't win in appeals, they can get back together again. And they will. Now, what's this loophole? If you read over the ruling, Microsoft is not allowed to cause any "Middleware" to run at decreased performance levels or have difficulties with the OS, *EXCEPT* in the instance where they provide in writing a reason for this, and possible workarounds.
There are NO requirements for what the reasoning must be whatsoever, or restrictions on workarounds. So, in other words, they will DELIBERATELY collaborate WITHOUT collaborating. Microsoft will claim that Office was DESIGNED for Windows and the competitors did NOT so they are trying to 'catch up' or some such nonsense. Or they may just say 'because we feel like it' and list 'only write for OUR OS' as a workaround. There are nowhere NEAR enough preclusions and restrictions against abusing existing market share.
This ruling has more potential to cause HARM to consumers than anything else. It is VERY easy for the applications group to claim WebTV and abuse market share and marketing. There are so many ways for Microsoft's two groups to abuse this ruling *within the ruling's context* and get away with it.
I have ALWAYS advocated a three-way split. Operating Systems, Applications, and Other and Internet Holdings. In case you didn't know, Microsoft owns *MANY* Internet properties, which are tailored EXCLUSIVELY to Internet Explorer. With the applications group in control of these properties and Internet Explorer, they can continue to do this. They also own a cable company that operates near/in DC as well as WebTV. Allowing the applications group to maintain/retain control of these properties and refusing to force them to divest themselves of these properties and/or splitting these properties into a seperate group will give the applications group a painful advantage.
Assuming that the OS group does poorly, once the 10 years are up, the Applications group could merge with them again, or they could just build their own OS based on the OS group's code. There are no restrictions that will prevent Microsoft from regaining a monopoly within a month after the 10 year period has expired, much less a year. Once the 10 years are up, Microsoft will be back to their old ways.
Do you really think this is teaching Microsoft a lesson? They've probably been hiring managers and high level people like mad for weeks leading up to this. All they have done in court is posture and lie. They have known for weeks they would lose and are counting on appeal. They're ready for a split if it comes down to it, and if not, they can simply fire the extras. They won't move, either. To move would cost them all credibility.
Reguarding their stock, as a couple people have asked me, I am not an analyst, but I don't forsee their stock actually plummeting till they lose on appeal. Microsoft's cockiness, attitude, and general "we will get our way because we're the biggest thing America has going for it" (think about the tax revenue) seems to be contagious. Especially to investors. Combined with the sheer amount of shares within the company, this would tend to indicate low volume, maybe a sharp drop, but not a true freefall. Perhaps another point or two. However, Ballmer has damaged confidence and trust *SEVERELY* by filing to sell several million shares *BEFORE* the ruling was issued, as if knowing that the stock was going to plummet. This was released by the SEC today - they seem to be going out of their way, AND the DOJ (note how the ruling wasn't issued till AFTER close of the market?) to prevent a collapse in consumer confidence. Were consumer confidence in Microsoft to collapse, very VERY bad things could happen to the market, and with Microsoft's market cap and valuation, could trigger severe repercussions, in my opinion.
I don't forsee this being out of the courts for at least two years - Jackson had the option to expedite the case to the Supreme Court on appeal (IANAL, that's just how I understood it) and chose not to, indicating another force towards not destroying consumer confidence. Maybe they're counting on everyone forgetting while Microsoft waits on their appeals to be heard. I'm not sure - I don't work for the gov't, and IANAL.
Disclaimer: These are my views, not yours, not my employer's, etcetera, ad infinitum. Reproduction of this comment in whole or part is expressly prohibited without written or emailed consent. Emailed consent may be obtained by sending email to prj@nls.net. Absolutely no commercial reproduction is permitted without written consent, so much as is allowed by Slashdot and VA Linux, formerly Andover.Net's "comments are owned by the poster" policy. No, I'm not anal - I'm just sick of my quotes being stolen.
=RISCy Business
*ahem* I'm pretty familiar with the ArrowPoint line as a whole, and I am going to now soundly beat whoever designed this sorry excuse for a web farm over the head.
First off, the last I heard, the CS100 is discontinued. What moron bought used hardware? Secondly, the CS100 was replaced by the CS50 and CS150. So then some genius goes from a CS100 to a CS800, the 20Gbit backplane model.
Otay, yeah. That's intelligent network design at work. *sniggersnort* Apparently Andover can't find anyone willing to drive to Acton who has a clue. And what's really sad is that whether or not any of the Andoverians will admit it, they are in the same bloody building as ArrowPoint. I know - I was there a couple weeks ago.
So now, what, we're supposed to be impressed now by an ineffecient web farm design, using excessive servers and used hardware? Let's look at EXODUS then.
Last time I dealt with Exodus is when I told them to either fix their routing or deal with a network I was in charge of basically slamming theirs into the ground with BGP because THEY couldn't configure BGP correctly.
Exodus' track record is one of incompetence, ignorance, rediculously poor customer service (Verio rated higher than Exodus.) and obscene ripoff scams. "Added Security" for only $5k+/month more. Which is simply 'oh, we'll put a PIX firewall in front of you' which is totally ineffective. The Cisco PIX+ firewall never made it past a 3Mbit flood in my personal benchmarks. It died. So Andover, soon to be VA Linux, is paying Exodus $1mil/year to take it up the ass without Vaseline.
Is Andover *DELIBERATELY* trying to scare VA Linux away from buying them? Only an idiot choses Exodus, because everyone's realized that Exodus is made up of scam artists and ripoff gurus. Is Andover trying to show VA Linux their technical staff is inept, when it obviously *isn't*? (Just absolutely godawful *DUMB* in an emergency, obviously. Or is that show too?)
So now Andover is wasting $1mil/year, slashdot is absolutely *GODAWFUL* slow now, as if it wasn't before, and we're supposed to be *IMPRESSED*!?
I'm still trying not to throw up at the mention of a 6509. To be blunt, the 6509 is the equivalent of Ascend. It's pure trash. Anyone who would WILLINGLY put their network's entire reliance on a 6509 should be killed out of *mercy*. Can't Andover afford a 7206 or 7206VXR after their wildly successful IPO!?
Y'know, there's nothing I hate more than technical companies that brag about their knowledgebase, but when push comes to shove, it's not there...
I swear, if my holdings suffer because of Andover's stupidity, I will be *very* angry.
(DISCLAIMER - I *AM* a VA Linux shareholder. You are goddamn right I am watching Andover with a VERY critical eye.)
Take the time to actually read it.
Microsoft isn't going to open jack diddly squat. One, it's a delay tactic, so they can have a stronger appeal. Two, it's an appeal tactic. They can now whine "we offered this" and most judges will misinterpret this statement. Three, it's a purely misleading and confusing statement, intentionally.
"parts of the Windows operating system used by independent software companies to design their applications."
That means APIs. Not Windows. That means Microsoft's playing their little wording games as always. I only PRAY that the people who NEED to know this realize that this is all lies. Microsoft already provides somewhat open access to their APIs, in the form of code examples and detailed specifications, to indepenent application programmers. For a fee. Don't doubt for one second they'll continue to charge that fee. They're going to open it, maybe, yeah. And they're going to keep right on up with making money with it. Open doesn't mean free. Get over that braindead anachronistic method of thinking, including the part where you remove head from rectum, and realize that Microsoft's in it for the money, and they'll make money any way they can.
And I'm going back to bed.
=RISCy Business - o/~ Happy Burfday To Me, my insurance still costs an arm and a leg.. o/~
Okay, first off, what is it?
This isn't a motherboard, it's not a PC, it's not some piece of trash laptop component. This is a very very powerful VME board. Industrial computing only - no, you can't afford the chassis to hold it. It's usually in the $20k+ range for a basic VME chassis able to handle this type of board, assuming I'm looking at my current pricing sheet. (I don't think it is, but it can't be that much cheaper.)
Now, it says it'll run VxWorks. Linux isn't on there. And I wouldn't waste my time - Linux won't work on it. Unless somebody's been REAL busy with the PPC tree, FORGET IT. PERIOD. END OF ARGUMENT HERE. Don't bother flaming me, I'll be more than happy to just delete it. LINUX DOES NOT RUN CORRECTLY ON SMP POWERPC AND HAS NOT FOR MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY MANY VERSIONS. For a VERY long time, it wouldn't even run on two processors. And when it did, there was *exponential* performance degredation on multiple processor systems. And now you think that MAGICALLY you're going to use *FOUR* PowerPC 750's (NOT G3s) with Linux? If it wasn't Slashdot, I wouldn't believe the incompetence and idiocy of claiming to run Linux.
And as if THAT weren't enough reasons, did we mention that LINUX DOES NOT SUPPORT VME? Last I checked, Linux doesn't even support CompactPCI! And somehow you're going to just run Linux on this? Give me a goddamn break. LynxOS won't even run on this, unless they've added VME support. That's why it says "VxWorks" and not "Linux" and not "Windows." The fanatics need to get their heads out of their rectums and realize that every time they make some blanket statement crap like this, they only make an ass of themselves.
This board doesn't even have a controller - what, you're going to magically plug in a SCSI disk to the chipset directly? The board boots and runs off of NVRAM Flash. This isn't some cracked-up PC. This is INDUSTRIAL equipment. How do I know these things? Probably because I have a CompactPCI (similar to VME somewhat) system built out for engine and onboard computer diagnostics and tuning. How much did it cost? I lease for a reason. What's it run? Not Linux, that's for damn sure. It runs LynxOS for a reason - not only because Linux isn't fit for the job (shut your mouths, zealots. I don't see any powerband analysis software for Linux any time soon.) but because LynxOS is *designed* for things like this.
Guess I probably pissed a lot of people off. Good. Maybe those of you who were offended by my comments will shut up, get your heads out of the clouds, and come back to earth sometime this year. Linux is not the do-everything OS, and it never will be at this rate. With supporters that claim it can do anything without any proof to back it up, and claiming it incorrectly half the time, I don't see any profit for ANYONE from it anytime soon. RedHat's stock isn't trading at 26 for no reason at all.
With supporters like this, I think I'll support FreeBSD instead. At least they have some respectability left.
=RISCy Business
*smirk* I come from a corporate environment. Ethical or not, if legal okays it, then it's going to happen. More than once, we got calls at my former employer's NOC that were the FBI, the State Police, the local police, the Secret Service, or the INS on the other hand, with siezed company property.
Anonymous reporting's been around for ages. And the schools use it. Some of them responsibly, others irresponsibly. Before I dropped out, my high school introduced a 1-800 help line to report bullying, to get help if you were depressed, etcetera. I know for fact that before I dropped out, the most action they took off information from that line was suspending someone for two weeks for fighting, and sending a LOT of kids off to a special school for kids with drug problems.
Since then, there have been *THREE* deaths at this school. One of them, this weekend, hit me very hard. It was someone I knew. He was stabbed to death at a party, trying to break up a fight. I don't doubt for a second that people will abuse these things. My school was so afraid of me, just because I was the "quiet kid" who was "smart," that they actively sought ways to get rid of me. I was threatened with expulsion repeatedly. Unjustly, I might note. ("What, you're going to expell me because some idiot who can't turn on a PC says I hacked his Macintrash? Shall we get the family lawyer on the phone?")
A school district basically FORCED a friend of mine to drop out. They continually harassed him, suspended him, etcetera. At the ADMINISTRATIVE level. And he wasn't a behaviour problem. He was a quiet kid who wore a lot of black. And they took ESPECIAL effort to make his life hell. This shit has been going on for years. In fifth grade, mind you, I had to memorize the family lawyer's number and tell them to call him every time they sent me to the principal's office for a bullshit reason. To this day, I have kept contact with at LEAST two lawyers - a contract/patent lawyer or firm, and a general counsel who can at the least, refer me to the appropriate lawyer should the need arise.
Yeah, the "if we don't do it somebody else will" argument is bullshit. But it's also true. It's CHEAPER to run a voicemail system that just takes messages than to provide ACTUAL HELP. Actual HELP requires ACTUAL PEOPLE. And people require MONEY. Pinkerton's profit margin will be in excess of 50%, with an error margin I'd guesstimate at in excess of 90%. Statistics be damned - offer a fifth grader a computer if he reports fifty violent students, and he'll be on that phone day in and day out till he gets that computer. No effort required - just lie about some kid you don't like.
This is unethical in that this is just a 'tattletale' line. And Pinkerton will NOT hire people to make it a HELP line instead. Then they would LOSE money on it due to the scope of it. (I hope you Pinkerton fools are reading this.) They KNOW this. They don't have the balls to admit that they're in this EXCLUSIVELY for the money. They can yank away those prizes any damn time they want for any bullshit reason they want. So they don't have to actually give away ANYTHING! Imagine the profit margins THEN!
It's time the whole goddamn world wakes up and realizes that playing catchup and tattletale is not only fucking STUPID, but just EXACERBATING the problem. It's like making a pinprick in a finger, then pouring sulfuric acid over it, and adding yeast. Then add some infectious diseases (WAVE) and pretty soon the only solution left is to cut off the ARM. I won't have kids, if I ever do get married, because I will not raise kids in this environment. Not by a longshot.
Obviously Americans can't take care of their own kids, the government's got it's head so far up it's ass it can't figure out how to make reasonable and intelligent changes and desicions, and the corporations could care less so long as they can post higher earnings estimates. Makes me want to move somewhere like Sweden or Finland. Obviously, people are far more responsible over there.
I don't know about you folks, but I've had it with this bullshit. If nobody's going to take a stand and point out who's REALLY at fault - the parents, the schools, the society, and America as a whole - then it's only going to get worse, and people know it. They're still in denial though. So nothing will be done till it's too late. Bah. I'm not disillusioned - I'm realistic. And if this is the way America will be, then every American on the face of this planet is SCREWED.
*steps down off soap box*
=RISCy Business email here
...but only because I have to find a home.
I don't give a damn about this stupid little event. It's a Linux-centric bullshit marketing toy. Now, in case people didn't know, I've been using Linux for a little over 5 years. Maybe closer to 6. And I'm totally disillusioned with Linux at this point. Kernel bugs aren't getting fixed for many versions - critical ones in the NCR 53c8xx driver, mind you - and people don't seem to care.
I have to be in Boston to find a home. I'm going to be there later tonight. And on Friday, I'm going to be all over the damn Cambridge suburbs looking for a home. And then on Saturday, I'm going to be looking all over as well.
The ONLY chance you have of finding me at this Geek Pride crap is so that I can manage to get in and ask ESR when he's going to give Microsoft his "seal of approval," since it's always seemed to be available to the highest bidder. Maybe he'll be a little less cocky, seeing as VA Linux's stock price is pretty much FREEFALLING. (Fairly surprising, seeing as their financials are doing fairly well, and they just signed up some major customers.)
BAH! Geek Pride? Maybe I'll stop by just to see how many lusers show up...
=RISCy Business
Hey, how interesting! I just left an employer that did cablemodem service as well! I don't think you'll have a hard time figuring out who.
For those of you who think that's bad, look at this; my now former employer has rolled out DOCSIS in most of their locations (whereas @Home is way behind) and has converted probably 70% of the customer base to DOCSIS. There isn't buy versus lease - it's lease or go without. You don't like that, tough luck.
And if you wanted it, you had to have at least basic cable. Period. There was no 'Oh, just give me a cablemodem, I don't want cable.' On top of that, you would get nailed pretty damn hard for the install - mine, at employee discount, was $120. Figure that the cablemodems cost around $180 or so, at my best guess. And remove the employee discount - after the first month, the money is made back on the cablemodem, and now you're another cable subscriber, like it or not. But that's only covering the cost of the cablemodem and the install.
To purport that Netpliance could possibly hope to turn a profit off the ISP business is preposterous, to say the LEAST. ISPs lose more money every year than any other business I've seen. You know those $9.95/month unlimited ISPs? Ever wonder why it's slow and you get busy signals? Because they can't turn profit on that. That's why ISPs offer webhosting and such.
Figure that ISP XYZ in Sometown has 48 modems, and 200 subscribers, giving them roughly a 4:1 user to modem ratio - fairly good. However, ISP XYZ has had to invest ~$3000 in a router, ~$12000-45000 for a terminal server with those 48 modems, and probably costs of $1300/mo on a T1 to someone like UUnet, and another $13/mo per channel on each PRI (24 channels each). $9.95/mo doesn't cover even that $13/mo cost. Yeah, sure, they have four times the subscribers as lines, but take into account the initial investment as well.
Netpliance is presumably nationwide, meaning either they have 'extended' DIDs assigned to PRIs, meaning more than one number in more than one area code goes to one PRI, or they have equipment in every city. Figure a maximum of say, 250-300 dialup users on a T1 before you choke it to death. Assume they have a T1 in every city, and probably out of band management equipment as well. In other words, a complete POP in each city they service.
In the big cities, say New York, they've probably got two to four POPs to handle the anticipated customer base, as well as to cover all calling areas that they can. So, let's crunch the numbers.
Figure around 240 lines per city at a cost of $11/month per line. A terminal server around, say, $65,000 to handle the PRIs. Probably a Cisco 2610 - about $3000 there. Likely an external CSU/DSU for some silly reason - there's another $300-2500. Out of band management equipment like a 33.6k modem - ~$50 - a Cisco 2509 - ~$2100 - and an analogue line seperate from the PRIs - ~$40/mo. NOW attempt to figure in their servers, decentralized OR centralized, it's going to be somewhere in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, probably. Marketing, sales, etcetera.
In other words, they're just plain losing money. By the minute. It'll probably be seven or more years before they pull themselves out of debt, if not longer! Most ISPs, even something like this, only last two to three years before giving up due to the constant harassing of bill collectors. Then they either get bought, or just shut down. My guess would be that Netpliance is going the 'new business' route of trying to get bought out.
Think about it. What do THEY care if they have horrible PR, if they're looking to get bought out? Once they get bought out, they're no longer Netpliance - they're whoever is the highest bidder. The CEO/President/whatever walks off with a buttload of cash, more than his intial investment due to an existing customer base and such. A lot of customers probabl get screwed. The usual fallout from a 'merger.'
If you ask me, Netpliance is nothing more than another pathetic company trying to make themselves just attractive and popular enough to attract bidders, perhaps before IPO, and then get the hell out of dodge.
Yeah, you're damn right what they're doing is totally unethical. I don't doubt it was intentional slamming - which is against federal law in the US, it might be noted - in order to 'generate revenue' in a 'timely manner.' Hoping for at least some return on investment before trying to sell, would be my guess. Yeah, they'll say it's legal, and I wouldn't expect any customer service from them whatsoever, with those kinds of losses already taken, but that's the way things work these days.
Gods, I hope they IPO so I can laugh my ass off at the people who are crazy enough to buy shares. Buying shares of AOL is one thing - AOL has profit and good revenues. This company has more money presumably 'invested' in equipment than Microsoft spends on a TV ad.
Some people just never learn...
=RISCy Business
What is the X-Box?
Certainly not a revolution of some sort. A revolution requires something different, something new. X-box isn't - it's a PC with a lot of proprietary hardware, a questionable release date, technology that will be outdate by the release date, and what will eventually turn out to be massive problems.
X-box is just another PC, priced more attractively in order to chain more people to Windows. It's all fairly standard, albeit made proprietary, components you could buy from your favourite computer store. Things like the CPU, the drive, the NIC, etcetera. Wrap it around some crazy motherboard and you're good to go.
And none of this technology is even mind blowing - hell, it's mostly LAUGHABLE for a 2001 release date. A 600MHz x86 processor? 64M of *UNIFIED* memory? (Which means memory is stolen from the CPU for the video card - my laptop has it.) It's a freaking PC for crying out loud!
WHY is everyone going nutso over it, besides the fact that Microsoft is trying to claim it as a console? Give me a BREAK! It's nothing more than a PC. I'm not impressed.
And people are going wacky for it WHY? It's not even all that impressive - so much less so if you look at it's planned release date.
Microsoft only announced it to work to kill Sony, Sega, and Nintendo's business. And maybe they did get Nintendo, since they haven't caught up to PSX2 and Dreamcast yet. But then again, obviously neither has Microsoft. This is just some hohum gamer PC that will be so outdated in 2001, assuming Microsoft doesn't play change the specs or buy the competition, that very few people will want it save for the Microsoft name.
You all have fun with your PCs, I'm going to buy a PSX2 and not waste my money on a faux console.
=RISCy Business
No, POWER and PowerPC are not finally merging, nor do I think they ever will. The POWER architecture, however, since the POWER3, has fully supported the PowerPC instruction set in 32 and 64 bit implementations.
Yeah, IBM and Motorola are in bed again. But it's been on again off again for years now. Don't count on it bein a final merging of the two architectures.
=RISCy Business
The following opinions are mine, and reflect absolutely noone else's except coincidentally. Especially those corporate entities that would like to sue me. ;)
Anyways, yeah. I put in for my AtLarge membership. Why? I'm a longtime member of the internet community. I hold several domain names. I'm currently the DNS admin for waaaaaaaaaaaay too many domains. It's my responsibility more than my desire, to join as an at large member of ICANN.
However, this also opens the door for people who do NOT hold domains, who are only on the internet because they want to 'MAKE MOUNEY FAST' and things like that. ICANN is sending all PINs for at large membership accounts via USPS "snail mail". That's not much protection. I can honestly forsee problems.
What scares me most is that there will become splinter groups in the at large membership community - groups that want spam, groups that want a total abolishment of copyrights, groups that want businesses given preference in all domain related matters.
It may or may not be an actual overall sampling of the internet community in this at large community. Instead, we may end up with so many splinter and special interest groups that nothing changes.
ICANN seems to be trying to change their administration structure somewhat - to involve more of the people that their desicions affect. And I commend that. Wholeheartedly. That's been my biggest gripe about domain name systems and IP allocations for the past 6 years - there's no involvement with the people who have to put up with the desicions except when it's time to pay those bills.
The problem is that they are not looking at the possibilities and ramifications of an open at large membership system, though. There are not enough requirements. And some of the requirements are somewhat silly. You must be at least 16 years of age - why? Legally binding age for contracts is 18, and I saw no contracts when I signed up for my membership. And I have talked to 15 year olds who are doing consulting that have some fairly intelligent input on a variety of things relating to the internet. They do not require that you hold a domain name, as far as I can tell, to sign up for membership. That shouldn't be the only question - ICANN is also working with ARIN/APNIC/etc to oversee allocation of IP addresses. I'm overseeing DNS for over 200,000 IP addresses right now. (Yes, that number is correct and genuine.) And that's just the public ARIN allocated addresses.
However, only time will tell, I suppose. However, I suspect that every big business in the world is signing up for atlarge membership right now, so they can get their voices heard. And they'll try throwing around money too. I only hope that's not what happens, and we do get a genuine sampling of the people that really make the internet work.
=RISCy Business
ObLegalese: Go ahead and sue me. I'm sure I'd make a great charity case. These are my opinions. If you want to quote me, PLEASE email me before doing so!
Nobody has it like us SysAdmins. 30 hour weeks, telecommuting, and one of thie highest pay rates in the industry.
BULLSHIT!
My job title is "Unix Technician" - my job duties are those of an overworked SysAdmin. Over 100 unix systems I'm reponsible for. I'm paid about three or four grand more than a McDonald's manager - that's by annual salary, mind you - and they have a better benefits package. (Pick one coverage: Dental, General.)
I'm probably in the office about 50 hours a week - legally, after 44 hours, they have to pay me overtime, even though I'm salaried. They have refused to pay the due overtime. Most state laws dictate that after 44 hours, salaried or not, you are due overtime, unless you are scheduled for more hours. I'm scheduled for 38 hours.
I'm also on call. I haven't slept at all the past two weekends because I worked through them, at home. Yes, I worked through them. Both days. Paged at 9p, 11p, 12a, 1a, 3a, 4a, 6a, 9a, 11a, 2p, 5p, 7p, 10p on Friday and Saturday. Paged at 12a, 1a, 2a, 3a, 4a, 5a, 7a, 9a, 1p, 3p, 5p, 6p, 7p, 8p, 9p, 11p on Sunday. At 11:30p, I simply ripped the battery out of my pager, so I could sleep. Then I was summarily yelled at for trying to put my own health before The Company. Now, excuse me, but this is a Fortune 1000 company. And they refuse to hire more underpaid "Unix Techs." So I am supposed to risk my health, my life, and my sanity for them so they can save a few bucks.
This isn't the FIRST time I've been though this - my last job was for an incompetent startup. There, I had all the sysadmin responsibilties, as well as Network Engineering and Adminstrator responsibilities for well over 150 routers, access servers, and switches in the field. And they paged me just as much.
I don't know about any of you, but I am seriously considering changing fields - I have NEVER worked for a company that does not abuse, destroy, demoralize, and then threaten to FIRE their SysAdmins because they'd like to put their health before some idiot who can't remember to type his password.
I am ALL too often paged UNNECESSARILY - I'm paged when a SINGLE customer in a 15,000 customer system, can't get his email because tech support can't fucking troubleshoot. I'm paged when tech support can't figure out their OWN password. I'm paged when someone at the NOC thinks that one of the servers is a little slow because it's a workstation trying to handle 20,000+ customers with an average email box size of 5MB!
I don't know about any of you, but this is total bullshit. You know what my employer's response to me starting or joining a union was? "We'll fire you on the spot." Now, I'm pretty sure that's flat out illegal, but I have NO intentions whatsoever of staying with an employer with an attitude like that.
IMO, the time has come to show these managers and supervisors who think they know their shit because they can 'cd ~' or 'rm -rf ~luser/public_html' that we are NOT their personal playthings. And the employers while we're at it. The conditions many of us are forced to work under are flat out INTOLERABLE and INHUMAN. I believe we must form a more coherent and cohesive union - even moreso than SAGE - or things won't get any better. (Interested in helping? email me.)
Somebody needs to remove the government's head from it's ass so that they can see that the employers could care less how much employees are doing from home or on the road - and thusly refusing compensation - and how many hours they're really working. Hell, most SALARIED employees aren't required to keep timesheets or anything. We're the only ones who can stop this, and until we start working to do so, it's only going to get worse.
See ObLegalese at top.. my opinions. Email for permission to quote. Not words of employer or union or anybody but me. Don't like it, deal with it.
=RISCy Business
You're about to hear it straight from the horses mouth, folks. Straight from a SysAdmin on the front lines!
;)
;)
Uhm. Problems? What problems? Houston, we have a problem? Wait, no, yes, er, maybe?
Well, save for probably 30-50 pieces of workstations and Axil hardware, everything's passed the preliminary tests.
I can unofficially (IANACSP[1]) say that our network is 100% ready as far as the data side goes.
We officially have 4 hours as of 4 minutes ago till the Trial By Fire, and we have an 'example' system - an Axil 320 - to see what actually happens - it's set to EST so it's one of the first to blow up - also about 5 minutes fast.
From what I have heard from other locations and other companies, everything looks good to go. Some telcos, mostly cellphone companies and LD companies, are afraid of the load. But, all I can say is that it looks like a big NOTHING.
That's right. Y2k is the big NOTHING.
I hope everyone has a safe and happy new year, and remember to check your beer for Y2k compliance before drinking!
[1] I Am Not A Corporate SpokesPerson(tm).
If you would like to quote me, please EMAIL ME FIRST. EMAIL ME HERE first, actually.
=RISCy Business
Well, I don't know about you folks, but I'm pretty much ready for Y2k. I did my shopping last week. What'd I buy?
.22 hollowpoint ammunition
:) ;) ;) ;)
* 1,500 rounds of
* 250 shells for 18ga shotgun
* 250 shells for 12ga shotgun
* Equipment for cleaning rifle scopes
* Gun cleaning equipment
* 30 cans of tunafish
* 10 jars of peanut butter
* 10 jars of jelly
* 6 loaves of bread
* plenty of bread making supplies
* 240 12oz. cans of pop
* 2 tons of bituminous coal for the coal heater
So let's justify it!
.22 Ammunition - Hunting for poli, er, uh, food.
18ga Ammo - Hunting for mili, er, ah, food.
12ga Ammo - Hunting for riot, er, um, food.
Scope Cleaning - Hunting for.. er.. nevermind
Gun Cleaning - You know what.
Tunafish - Gotta eat!
PB & J - Gotta eat!
Bread - Gotta eat the rest on something!
Bread making - Well, if we run out of sliced...
Pop - We're very very thirsty. *grin*
Coal - Well, er, we usually buy that much coal.. just not that often.
So, who wants to go riot, er, hunting for.. supplies and.. uh.. food with me? }:)
=RISCy Business
What's in a name? A lot these days, thanks to hype.
Beyond that? Really not all that much in most cases. Agilent's an HP spinoff. Ascend's a dismal failure that was bought by Lucent which was broken off from AT&T. But what about slashdot? No history, save for chips&dip. Freshmeat? History? What history?
linuxninja.com? What's that for? Some new karate studio that runs their finances on Linux?
I don't know about all of you, but I'm about ready to get AWAY from Linux. Why? Partly so I can honestly say 'no, I don't run it,' thusly deflecting in excess of 50 outright STUPID questions a day. Why else?
Probably because most of all, development has been cheapened. Greatly. I look at the codebase daily - not ac, not any silly fragmented tree - the codebase Linus okays. 2.4 by the end of Q1 2000? Does anyone reading this even have any clue whatsoever of how long the world ran 1.2.13 as stable and 1.3.x as unstable? I'm going to have to guess not, seeing as everyone is hyped up about 2.4.
Look, flat out, there isn't enough real changes to warrant a 2.4.x versioning. Period. And the development is so rushed and frenetic, it makes me physically ill to look at the i386 tree some days. It's rediculous. I see code without any bug checking, with typos, with just generic brokenness all over.
I'm not saying Linux isn't stable; it definitely is. But things are going too fast, being too rushed. Whether or not technology is going fast, things like OS development just aren't meant to go fast. Linux simply will begin to fail at attempts to become a mature OS if such frenetic development continues.
The distributions aren't helping either. I'm starting to lose faith in even Debian. Everyone's rushing to egcs AKA gcc 2.9x.x ad infinitum. glibc 2.1 is now the norm, even though it *should* be glibc 3.x due to the fact that it's not back-compatible in the *least* with 2.0x. It's breaking kernel compiles with bad asm in the code, or bad asm generation by egcs.
As much as I hate to say it, Windows is a mature OS in many ways. No, not Win95 itself, but it's core, MS-DOS. (Whether or not MS will admit it.) MS-DOS was originally developed over 10 years ago. In 10 years, it has had a slow but steady development tree (ignoring the 6.0/6.2/6.21/6.22 fiasco) and is actually reasonably stable. (It's the GUI itself that is unstable.) Linux is now attempting to forego all conventional wisdom even *further* and simply rush development. That's what happened with the Windows 95 GUI, in case you all forgot.
Now, look at XFree86. XFree86 has many servers that I would bet my life on - especially the SVGA server - and they have followed a very controlled development schedule. New servers don't go in till they've been debugged, and they don't go in till the next minor.sub version; ie, 3.3.4 to 3.3.5 would allow servers to be added. (Now this is what I've heard and seen - XF86's policies may differ in actuality.)
We don't have anything to warrant a 2.4 kernel. I'm sorry, we just don't. I've talked back to people like Linus before, and told them they're wrong. And I'm doing so right now. To go to 2.4 is wrong. Period. Flat out wrong. To claim Linux already as a mature OS is wrong. Linux is based loosely around what is arguably the most mature OS class to ever exist - Unix. AIX is a mature OS. HP-UX is a mature OS. Solaris is NOT a mature OS. Linux is NOT a mature OS.
I'm not saying Linux isn't stable - it is. It's very stable. For certain tasks, I'd certainly bet my life on Linux. But it's not mature by any stretch of the imagination. Some of it's core components - binutils, etc - are certainly mature. That doesn't necessarily make an OS mature.
I'm taking any news on Linux with a grain of salt anymore. Yes, I got in on the VA Linux IPO. Yes, I made a very respectable amount of money - a superb return on investment - and I think RedHat is grossly overvaluated. But nonetheless, Linux has turned into a hype circus. With 2.4 being rushed, distributions moving to things that I wouldn't dare trust even half as much as a Windows box, and so on, I'm scared. I'm very scared.
I've been using Linux a good number of years. Throughout those years, things have gone faster and faster, and I see things spiralling out of control. Now maybe it's just me, but I'd hate to see Linux fall over it's own feet as it tries to be the first to the 'mature OS' finish line, or any finish line for that matter.
Just my $0.02USD.
=RISCy Business