I must agree with you on stability. I installed Red Hat 6.0 + all the latest patches and Linux crashes hard every few hours. KDE is stable as a rock. I also run KDE on my Solaris Sun box and it is quite stable, although kwm from 1.1.1 won't work (I use kwm 1.1 and everything else 1.1.1).
Hopefully 1.1.2 will be at least as stable and have better support for Solaris.
Because there's more people searching Ebay for stuff than any of the other auctions. I recently put up an old Sun 3/50 computer on Ebay for $0.50, the cost for me to put it on Ebay) and was surprised to see the price jump to $46! If anyone's interested in what a Sun 3/50 is I have some info here.
I was ready to take it to the great computer recycling center in the sky. I guess one man's junk is another man's treasure.
This is an interesting discussion. Yesterday I was talking with our VP of engineering who came from SGI (where I think he worked on the IRIX OS). He had several interesting comments about SGI.
1. Most of the operating system engineers who worked on IRIX have left. SGI is turning to Linux out of desparation since so many of the people who are knowlegable about the internal workings of IRIX are gone. Apparently SGI's deal with Micro$oft did not go over well with their development team.
2. XFS will be a nightmare to make stable for Linux. XFS is not a clean file system like JFS, but contains a horrendous amount of complexity (read bloat), such as lots of multimedia support, special scheduling code, and so forth. It will be hard to separate the bloat from the core of the file system. Due to its complexity it will be very difficult to understand and make stable. It is likely that SGI is releasing it as open source since they don't know what else to do with it since all of the original developers left.
3. SGI's deal with Microsoft was a huge mistake. Any company that teams with Microsoft is doomed to failure. Microsoft used the deal to essentially kill OpenGL as a valid 3-D platform for Windows and replaced it with Direct-3D.
4. SGI's acquisition of Cray was a huge mistake. The folks at Cray and the Mips division clashed and essentially killed Mips. The Cray folks pushed for vector processing in the Mips processor, which was not a good match. The Mips people argued against this. The Cray team won. The reason is that Cray's bread and butter is their SIMD vector processing. Without it, Cray is nothing. The vector processing conflicted with the whole idea behind RISC, which is to keep things simple. Guess what happened to Mips?
It seems like everyone *except* Intel is 64 bit now. Even my company's router accelerator uses a couple of embedded Mips 64-bit processors in it. 64 bit is everywhere now except Intel (and I guess Mac).
I thought Ender's Game was OK, but the series degraded as it progressed. The whole virus deal proved that OSC knew nothing about biology and I really dislike it when an author starts suddenly inventing plot devices to get a character out of a sticky situation. It's too much like Star Trek where Geordi invents a Zed Transmorgifier to save the ship from Zarquon radiation or some such. I've noticed the same thing with OSC's other series as well. His first book is usually quite good, unfortunately it goes down hill from there.
I was just playing around with the new Windows based Sniffer software. What a load of crap. I'm trying to capture some DLC frames of my employer's trunking protocol and it won't give me hex dumps! Not only that, but it doesn't seem to work if I don't bind the adapter to a protocol which I don't want to do (our trunk doesn't like hosts on the trunk vlan). Give me the DOS version any day!
As of a year ago about 90% of the Sniffer sales included the special NIC card since that version came with the DOS version in addition to the Windows version. The Windows version is just too limited and not as easy to use.
I am afraid that you are mistaken. The Data General Sniffer (tm) running on top of DOS doesn't transmit any packets. It does not perform DNS lookups, respond to pings, arps, SYN, or anything. Likewise it does not introduce any latency into the network. All it does is sniff and analyze the data. It would be like trying to detect if someone put an oscilliscope probe onto a hub link. In other words, there is no way to detect it. Another technique is to use port mirroring on a switch. It isn't that hard to make a sniffer undetectable.
In other words, Anti-Sniff cannot detect a sniffer box unless it's running the less-popular Windows version of Sniffer.
At my last job at Adaptec we made the NIC cards used by Sniffer and my former boss worked in the Sniffer group at Data General. As a network developer I use a Sniffer all the time.
On my system Java is not too bad. I wrote some code which does some matrix operations in both C++ and Java. The Java was 30% slower than the C++, which is really pretty good. This was running on IBM's OS/2 Java 1.1.8 (which is *much* faster than MS Java). With the performance improvements I've seen with Java I suspect that Java will come close to C++ in performance within the next year or so. Running Hot Java 3.0 on OS/2 loads faster and feels faster than Netscape 4.61 for OS/2. Java's only 4 years old. Remember how C++ was at 4 years old?
I have one Sun 3/50 with mouse, keyboard, hard drives, tape drives, SCSI cables, and manuals if anyone wants a boat anchor. As far as I know it works. It even has a whopping 4MB of RAM and integrated 10Mbps Ethernet and reportedly there is a port of Linux to it. If nothing else, it has some cool LEDs on it.
I dunno, I just can't bring myself to toss a computer into the trash... I wonder if it is recyclable?
I believe AT&T will be forced to open up access on tthe cable to other ISPs. As a current TCI/AT&T @Home user I hope this happens, since currently @Home is home of lost packets. It's gotten to the point where people in my city have organized against TCI @Home and dragged the city council into the fray. The city council will soon require a minimum set of standards for @Home due to the lousy performance and support of AT&T/TCI@Home. This is an ISP that can't keep their mail servers running and makes my 28.8 modem often look fast.
Anyone remember the old Standard Oil? It's happening all over again, except now instead of controlling the gas stations they also control the roads and the cars as well.
If Microsoft is allowed to continue, they will control the entire Internet. They will pay people to use MSN which will use Microsoft servers. Since Microsoft will control all the servers, they will control advertizing and can and will lock out possible competitors. Microsoft will evolve IM to try and kill Email as it currently works by integrating it into the OS and adding bloated features like voice and video.
AOL, Mindspring, Earthlink, Sprint, Pacbell, etc. will all get out of the ISP business since they cannot afford to offer 3 years of service at a loss. (3 years @ $10 = $360 - $400/PC - overhead costs = -$40+ per user)
All MS has to do is jack up the prices on their next version of the OS a bit and up the licensing fees for their office and development products.
2003: All IM traffic passes through Microsoft. For the CIA/FBI, life is easy. All major ISPs and most regional ISPs have shut their doors. Microsoft has invested heavily in ADSL and bought out @Home and now has all of that traffic going through MSN.
2004: Microsoft creates a whole new plug-and-play protocol for accessing MSN which is some totally bastardized version of TCP/IP, something between NetBEUI and IPv6 plus a ton of complicated bloated features. Microsoft's automatic update feature upgrades everyone's computer to use the new protocol. The growing Linux community loses Internet access and dies a quick death. Apple survives only because MS ports their stuff (alabeit quite buggy) to the Macintosh to try and stave off the Justice Department, which they have little fear of due to their $500 million in soft money contributions to the Republican party which now has the White House.
2005: M.S. purchases Cisco to support their proprietary protocol all over the Internet. Upgrades IOS to support the new protocols. All routers need a 512MB flash upgrade and a 1GB RAM upgrade. The IETF has disbanded.
2006: Script kiddy discovers master back door password to Microsoft routers and servers is "crashw~2" and tears down the entier Internet. All of the other script kiddies go through Microsoft's firewall and install the latest Back Orifice on Bill Gates' computer. All of Microsoft's backups are erased and all computers are re-flashed with a BIOS that refuses to load any Microsoft OS. Ironically, Linux, FreeBSD, and ancient versions of BEOS and OS/2 load just fine. Microsoft's stock drops to $0.01/share as there are multiple class action suits with over 1,000,000,000 people affected. Bill Gates can kiss his Presidential race goodbye.
2007: Linus Torvalds enters the US Presidential race with Alan Cox as VP in the newly formed "Open Party". Other major Linux developers, which ran a backup network using POTS modems, run for other government positions. The slogan is "Open Standards and Open Source". The world economy is in ruins due to all of the world's networks crashing.
2008: Linus wins by a landslide and the Open Party controls both houses of Congress
I predict that Microsoft will soon bundle instant messaging into their OS. They will "integrate" it and claim that it is inseparable from the operating system. It will use Microsoft's servers and use closed standards which are only supported on Windows (oh, and Macintosh so they arn't labled as a monopoly). If, through some miracle, they do use an "open standard" it will be Microsoft's interpretation which will differ significantly from the official standard with extensions like marquee and Active X.
As for the Internet service, does "cutting off the air supply" ring a bell? By paying computer retailers $400 per PC if the customer buys 3 years of MSN will effectively kill the ISP business with the exceptions being ADSL and cable modem, where Microsoft is already making large investments.
Microsoft now sees AOL as public enemy #1 much like they saw Netscape. Now expect to see Microsoft steamroll over AOL and everyone else by leveraging their OS dominance to control the Internet.
I guess they havn't noticed the DOJ trial or else they're betting on the Republicans winning the White House and are already making campaign contributions to that effect. After all, what's good for big business is good for the consumer, right?
Anyone remember the old Standard Oil? It's happening all over again, except now instead of controlling the gas stations they also control the roads and the cars as well.
If Microsoft is allowed to continue, they will control the entire Internet. They will pay people to use MSN which will use Microsoft servers. Since Microsoft will control all the servers, they will control advertizing and can and will lock out possible competitors. Microsoft will evolve IM to try and kill Email as it currently works by integrating it into the OS and adding bloated features like voice and video.
AOL, Mindspring, Earthlink, Sprint, Pacbell, etc. will all get out of the ISP business since they cannot afford to offer 3 years of service at a loss. (3 years @ $10 = $360 - $400/PC - overhead costs = -$40+ per user)
All MS has to do is jack up the prices on their next version of the OS a bit and up the licensing fees for their office and development products.
2003: All IM traffic passes through Microsoft. For the CIA/FBI, life is easy. All major ISPs and most regional ISPs have shut their doors. Microsoft has invested heavily in ADSL and bought out @Home and now has all of that traffic going through MSN.
2004: Microsoft creates a whole new plug-and-play protocol for accessing MSN which is some totally bastardized version of TCP/IP, something between NetBEUI and IPv6 plus a ton of complicated bloated features. Microsoft's automatic update feature upgrades everyone's computer to use the new protocol. The growing Linux community loses Internet access and dies a quick death. Apple survives only because MS ports their stuff (alabeit quite buggy) to the Macintosh to try and stave off the Justice Department, which they have little fear of due to their $500 million in soft money contributions to the Republican party which now has the White House.
2005: M.S. purchases Cisco to support their proprietary protocol all over the Internet. Upgrades IOS to support the new protocols. All routers need a 512MB flash upgrade and a 1GB RAM upgrade. The IETF has disbanded.
2006: Script kiddy discovers master back door password to Microsoft routers and servers is "crashw~2" and tears down the entier Internet. All of the other script kiddies go through Microsoft's firewall and install the latest Back Orifice on Bill Gates' computer. All of Microsoft's backups are erased and all computers are re-flashed with a BIOS that refuses to load any Microsoft OS. Ironically, Linux, FreeBSD, and ancient versions of BEOS and OS/2 load just fine. Microsoft's stock drops to $0.01/share as there are multiple class action suits with over 1,000,000,000 people affected. Bill Gates can kiss his Presidential race goodbye.
2007: Linus Torvalds enters the US Presidential race with Alan Cox as VP in the newly formed "Open Party". Other major Linux developers, which ran a backup network using POTS modems, run for other government positions. The slogan is "Open Standards and Open Source". The world economy is in ruins due to all of the world's networks crashing.
2008: Linus wins by a landslide and the Open Party controls both houses of Congress
You havn't done much interviewing lately have you? I work in SV at a networking company. Finding qualified people with the right skills is almost impossible. We have to compete with companies like Cisco, 3COM, Bay, Lucent, and so on for programmers with embedded or networking experience.
If you drop by and have the skills, you're hired. End of story. If you don't have the skills, turn around and walk back out that door.
I am quite disappointed that most of the candidates I interview can't pass a fairly simple programming test (which I borrowed from Cisco).
At my company, for example, an MFC programmer won't do since they probably don't have the necessary embedded and/or networking skills.
My company is hiring and we're having a hell of a time finding qualified candidates.
It depends on what you do, how good you are, and if you switch jobs.
At least in SV you'd probably start at a minimum of 50K/year.
I started at 38K/year 5 years ago. My salary rose very fast after I demonstrated that I had the skills. If all you do is hack together web sites you'll make one salary. If your skills are more valuable (i.e. know how to write computer networking code, embedded, device drivers, etc.) you will make a lot more.
I worked for a major company in the valley (which was listed yesterday in the benifits article). Most of the people in my group were Indian or from Pakistan. Several people in my group were working on their green cards. Those who got them left the company. I feel sorry for the one who had to stay at the company after 95% of the group was layed off. He now must work like a slave until he gets that green card (where I expect him to tell the company where to shove the job).
About half of the group were consultants from Wipro, an Indian contracting firm. Those who got the chance jumped ship to other companies who could sponsor them for a green card (i.e. Cisco, 3Com, etc.).
At my current company we had 3 Indian consultants who recently quit because of problems with the consulting company. Due to our contract with the contracting firm we could not hire them full-time. They were excellent engineers and were treated like full-time engineers. From what I have been told, a significant portion of an H-1 engineer's salary goes to the contracting house, which is associated with the Indian government. It is often just as expensive, or even more expensive, to hire an H-1 engineer than a full-time employee. Sometimes there's no choice. It depends on the company as to how the contractors are treated. Some are treated very well, others are not. As for the pay, it is negotiated between the company and the contracting house, and the contractor often has very little say.
Right now we are looking for full-time engineers with networking experience. Most of the candidates I have interviewed have been major disappointments. Most do not have basic C programming skills which are necessary in an embedded environment.
The Indians I have worked with have proven to be highly talented and very hard working (both those with H-1's and those who've gained their citizenship). I think part of the problem is that there ARE NOT enough American born engineers with the right skills. Large companies like Cisco seem to suck up a huge percentage of networking engineers, and our colleges are not spitting out enough qualified computer engineer/science graduates. I've interviewed some of the recent grads. Some don't know big-O notation or the difference between a linked list and a binary tree, which is pathetic.
I work for a SV startup. The perks here are: Free soft drinks Free lunch twice a week (good food too) Excellent medical and dental benifits, 401K, flextime, stock options, and so forth.
Larger companies will offer reimbursement for education (Adaptec did this when I worked there). Adaptec, for example, has a store in the cafeteria where most of their products are available, as well as dry cleaning, flower shop, various tickets (at a discount) and so on. Also if the team is working late dinner is payed for by the company.
Many SV companies are desparate to find and keep good engineers since they can be difficult to get. I've been interviewing candidates at my company and unfortunately many of them are not qualified for the positions available, even junior positions. You wouldn't believe how many fail some basic C programming questions. I've interviewed college grads who don't know Big-O notation or the difference between a binary tree and a linked list.
Even though the larger companies may offer more perks, often the small companies have a better environment (IMO). After leaving Adaptec for FlowWise I have no regrets. There's no more politics or power struggles and other things going on as is common at a number of large companies.
It is a fitting end, considering how much has been learned from his discovery of the comet that impacted on Jupiter. His discovery eliminated any doubt as to what would happen to the Earth if a comet or large asteroid shoul impact. What better than to be part of another impact which could potentially change our future with respect to the moon.
Hmmm. I run an AMD K6-2 400 running the OS/2 client and I crank out a block about once every 16 hours. In fact, it's about the same as on our Sun UltraSpark 60 at work.
Go ahead and slow things down Cisco. The more you do the better my employer's product does (my employer, FlowWise Networks, makes a router accelerator which will offload virtually all of the traffic off of a router and switch it at wire speed with zero configuration. It's fun to watch a router go from a limit of 300K packets per second to 3 million packets per second in just a few seconds. Oh, and there's no rate limiting either.
I actually have the 3000 with the backpack. I took it on a rafting trip. What was cool was that I could disconnect the hose from the backpack and just stick it in the water for "instant refill" and unlimited ammo. The thing is basically a giant syringe with a hose to a backpack that moves a *LOT* of water. Unfortunately the backpack empties too fast (since it moves so much water).
We are in debt. We pay huge amounts of interest on that debt. Why the hell arn't our congress critters looking at paying off our debt rather than lowering taxes? If we pay off the debt we'll have a lot more money for other things AND be able to lower taxes.
It's like someone who is finally able to start keeping up with the interest payments on their credit cards saying that they'll only pay the minimum balance and hence remain in debt for the rest of their lives.
I think our congress critters flunked high school economics.
Yeah, taxes may be high, but the economy is strong. Let's face it, the tax cuts help the rich much more than the poor since the poor don't pay taxes.
Where is the Linux "lockup" command? Also, can anyone go and remotely reboot a Linux system, crash it, format the drive, cd / ; rm -rf *, etc? Only if you are root. As BO is usually installed as a trojan horse, it typically has no security against the script kiddies and can access anything that root on Linux can access. On some of the security news groups I've seen numerous people post about how they lost everything due to some script kiddie deleting everything on their systems.
Linux has the advantage in that it is much more immune to trojan horses than Win 9x since only files writable by the user can be wiped out. Of course, other files like/etc/passwd can be downloaded by a trojan and analyzed by the cracker. Also, let's face it, most home Linux users arn't that familiar with security and probably don't worry about it.
Having BO on a system (if installed via trojan horse with no security) is like leaving your Linux box on the Internet with FTP and telnet access enabled and a root password of "password" or "root".
BO2K may have legitimate uses, but it seems to be most widely used for breaking into other computers or causing trouble. I'm running a Perl script called booby (available at http://members.home.com/lazyx/booby. This script simulates a BO infected system and logs all activity. BO seems to be a favorite for script kiddies. As a cable modem user I see a lot of BO activity. Here's some recent log entries (IP address and host name have been X-ed out):
As you can see, no useful tool would have commands like "lockup". I have seen more malicious attempts than this as well, such as one person who often launches DOS ping attacks against other users from BO infected machines.
As much as I hate Micro$loth, I must agree with them on this one. If there were a BO without all of the malicious features then perhapse it would be taken seriously, but with the stealth features and the crash features I think it's main purpose is fairly clear (at least to the script kiddies).
I have had more problems with UPS and Fed-Ex. Sure, maybe they will insure the package (if USPS doesn't), but it's a lot less convienient.
UPS stinks. They're slow. They're expensive. FedEx is also expensive.
The USPS is available to everyone. They have more offices than UPS or FedEx. The USPS is also highly effecient at what they do (heck, they run Linux). My letters usually get to their destination within two days for $0.33. That's anywhere in the country. I'm impressed if a company can send a letter from Hawaii to Maine for $0.33 and still be profitable.
When purchasing on-line, I usually choose the USPS. They are faster and cheaper than UPS. For expensive items I'll use Fed-Ex or UPS, but for most stuff the USPS is great.
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I must agree with you on stability.
I installed Red Hat 6.0 + all the latest patches and Linux crashes hard every few hours. KDE is stable as a rock. I also run KDE on my Solaris Sun box and it is quite stable, although kwm from 1.1.1 won't work (I use kwm 1.1 and everything else 1.1.1).
Hopefully 1.1.2 will be at least as stable and have better support for Solaris.
Because there's more people searching Ebay for
stuff than any of the other auctions. I recently
put up an old Sun 3/50 computer on Ebay for $0.50,
the cost for me to put it on Ebay) and was surprised to see the price jump to $46! If anyone's interested in what a Sun 3/50 is I have some info here.
I was ready to take it to the great computer recycling center in the sky. I guess one man's junk is another man's treasure.
This is an interesting discussion.
Yesterday I was talking with our VP of engineering who came from SGI (where I think he worked on the IRIX OS). He had several interesting comments about SGI.
1. Most of the operating system engineers who worked on IRIX have left. SGI is turning to Linux out of desparation since so many of the people who are knowlegable about the internal workings of IRIX are gone. Apparently SGI's deal with Micro$oft did not go over well with their development team.
2. XFS will be a nightmare to make stable for Linux. XFS is not a clean file system like JFS, but contains a horrendous amount of complexity (read bloat), such as lots of multimedia support, special scheduling code, and so forth. It will be hard to separate the bloat from the core of the file system. Due to its complexity it will be very difficult to understand and make stable. It is likely that SGI is releasing it as open source since they don't know what else to do with it since all of the original developers left.
3. SGI's deal with Microsoft was a huge mistake. Any company that teams with Microsoft is doomed to failure. Microsoft used the deal to essentially kill OpenGL as a valid 3-D platform for Windows and replaced it with Direct-3D.
4. SGI's acquisition of Cray was a huge mistake. The folks at Cray and the Mips division clashed and essentially killed Mips. The Cray folks pushed for vector processing in the Mips processor, which was not a good match. The Mips people argued against this. The Cray team won. The reason is that Cray's bread and butter is their SIMD vector processing. Without it, Cray is nothing. The vector processing conflicted with the whole idea behind RISC, which is to keep things simple. Guess what happened to Mips?
It seems like everyone *except* Intel is 64 bit now. Even my company's router accelerator uses a couple of embedded Mips 64-bit processors in it. 64 bit is everywhere now except Intel (and I guess Mac).
I thought Ender's Game was OK, but the series degraded as it progressed. The whole virus deal proved that OSC knew nothing about biology and I really dislike it when an author starts suddenly inventing plot devices to get a character out of a sticky situation. It's too much like Star Trek where Geordi invents a Zed Transmorgifier to save the ship from Zarquon radiation or some such. I've noticed the same thing with OSC's other series as well. His first book is usually quite good, unfortunately it goes down hill from there.
I was just playing around with the new Windows based Sniffer software. What a load of crap. I'm trying to capture some DLC frames of my employer's trunking protocol and it won't give me hex dumps! Not only that, but it doesn't seem to work if I don't bind the adapter to a protocol which I don't want to do (our trunk doesn't like hosts on the trunk vlan). Give me the DOS version any day!
As of a year ago about 90% of the Sniffer sales included the special NIC card since that version came with the DOS version in addition to the Windows version. The Windows version is just too limited and not as easy to use.
I am afraid that you are mistaken. The Data General Sniffer (tm) running on top of DOS doesn't transmit any packets. It does not perform DNS lookups, respond to pings, arps, SYN, or anything. Likewise it does not introduce any latency into the network. All it does is sniff and analyze the data. It would be like trying to detect if someone put an oscilliscope probe onto a hub link. In other words, there is no way to detect it. Another technique is to use port mirroring on a switch. It isn't that hard to make a sniffer undetectable.
In other words, Anti-Sniff cannot detect a sniffer box unless it's running the less-popular Windows version of Sniffer.
At my last job at Adaptec we made the NIC cards used by Sniffer and my former boss worked in the Sniffer group at Data General. As a network developer I use a Sniffer all the time.
Sniffer is a trademark of Data General.
On my system Java is not too bad. I wrote some code which does some matrix operations in both C++ and Java. The Java was 30% slower than the C++, which is really pretty good. This was running on IBM's OS/2 Java 1.1.8 (which is *much* faster than MS Java). With the performance improvements I've seen with Java I suspect that Java will come close to C++ in performance within the next year or so. Running Hot Java 3.0 on OS/2 loads faster and feels faster than Netscape 4.61 for OS/2. Java's only 4 years old. Remember how C++ was at 4 years old?
I have one Sun 3/50 with mouse, keyboard, hard drives, tape drives, SCSI cables, and manuals if anyone wants a boat anchor. As far as I know it works. It even has a whopping 4MB of RAM and integrated 10Mbps Ethernet and reportedly there is a port of Linux to it. If nothing else, it has some cool LEDs on it.
I dunno, I just can't bring myself to toss a computer into the trash... I wonder if it is recyclable?
I believe AT&T will be forced to open up access on tthe cable to other ISPs. As a current TCI/AT&T @Home user I hope this happens, since currently @Home is home of lost packets. It's gotten to the point where people in my city have organized against TCI @Home and dragged the city council into the fray. The city council will soon require a minimum set of standards for @Home due to the lousy performance and support of AT&T/TCI@Home. This is an ISP that can't keep their mail servers running and makes my 28.8 modem often look fast.
Anyone remember the old Standard Oil? It's happening all over again, except now instead of controlling the gas stations they also control the roads and the cars as well.
If Microsoft is allowed to continue, they will control the entire Internet. They will pay people to use MSN which will use Microsoft servers. Since Microsoft will control all the servers, they will control advertizing and can and will lock out possible competitors. Microsoft will evolve IM to try and kill Email as it currently works by integrating it into the OS and adding bloated features like voice and video.
AOL, Mindspring, Earthlink, Sprint, Pacbell, etc. will all get out of the ISP business since they cannot afford to offer 3 years of service at a loss. (3 years @ $10 = $360 - $400/PC - overhead costs = -$40+ per user)
All MS has to do is jack up the prices on their next version of the OS a bit and up the licensing fees for their office and development products.
2003: All IM traffic passes through Microsoft. For the CIA/FBI, life is easy. All major ISPs and most regional ISPs have shut their doors. Microsoft has invested heavily in ADSL and bought out @Home and now has all of that traffic going through MSN.
2004: Microsoft creates a whole new plug-and-play protocol for accessing MSN which is some totally bastardized version of TCP/IP, something between NetBEUI and IPv6 plus a ton of complicated bloated features. Microsoft's automatic update feature upgrades everyone's computer to use the new protocol. The growing Linux community loses Internet access and dies a quick death. Apple survives only because MS ports their stuff (alabeit quite buggy) to the Macintosh to try and stave off the Justice Department, which they have little fear of due to their $500 million in soft money contributions to the Republican party which now has the White House.
2005: M.S. purchases Cisco to support their proprietary protocol all over the Internet. Upgrades IOS to support the new protocols. All routers need a 512MB flash upgrade and a 1GB RAM upgrade. The IETF has disbanded.
2006: Script kiddy discovers master back door password to Microsoft routers and servers is "crashw~2" and tears down the entier Internet.
All of the other script kiddies go through Microsoft's firewall and install the latest Back Orifice on Bill Gates' computer. All of Microsoft's backups are erased and all computers are re-flashed with a BIOS that refuses to load any Microsoft OS. Ironically, Linux, FreeBSD, and ancient versions of BEOS and OS/2 load just fine.
Microsoft's stock drops to $0.01/share as there are multiple class action suits with over 1,000,000,000 people affected. Bill Gates can kiss his Presidential race goodbye.
2007: Linus Torvalds enters the US Presidential race with Alan Cox as VP in the newly formed "Open Party". Other major Linux developers, which ran a backup network using POTS modems, run for other government positions. The slogan is "Open Standards and Open Source". The world economy is in ruins due to all of the world's networks crashing.
2008: Linus wins by a landslide and the Open Party controls both houses of Congress
I predict that Microsoft will soon bundle instant messaging into their OS. They will "integrate" it and claim that it is inseparable from the operating system. It will use Microsoft's servers and use closed standards which are only supported on Windows (oh, and Macintosh so they arn't labled as a monopoly). If, through some miracle, they do use an "open standard" it will be Microsoft's interpretation which will differ significantly from the official standard with extensions like marquee and Active X.
As for the Internet service, does "cutting off the air supply" ring a bell? By paying computer retailers $400 per PC if the customer buys 3 years of MSN will effectively kill the ISP business with the exceptions being ADSL and cable modem, where Microsoft is already making large investments.
Microsoft now sees AOL as public enemy #1 much like they saw Netscape. Now expect to see Microsoft steamroll over AOL and everyone else by leveraging their OS dominance to control the Internet.
I guess they havn't noticed the DOJ trial or else they're betting on the Republicans winning the White House and are already making campaign contributions to that effect. After all, what's good for big business is good for the consumer, right?
Anyone remember the old Standard Oil? It's happening all over again, except now instead of controlling the gas stations they also control the roads and the cars as well.
If Microsoft is allowed to continue, they will control the entire Internet. They will pay people to use MSN which will use Microsoft servers. Since Microsoft will control all the servers, they will control advertizing and can and will lock out possible competitors. Microsoft will evolve IM to try and kill Email as it currently works by integrating it into the OS and adding bloated features like voice and video.
AOL, Mindspring, Earthlink, Sprint, Pacbell, etc. will all get out of the ISP business since they cannot afford to offer 3 years of service at a loss. (3 years @ $10 = $360 - $400/PC - overhead costs = -$40+ per user)
All MS has to do is jack up the prices on their next version of the OS a bit and up the licensing fees for their office and development products.
2003: All IM traffic passes through Microsoft. For the CIA/FBI, life is easy. All major ISPs and most regional ISPs have shut their doors. Microsoft has invested heavily in ADSL and bought out @Home and now has all of that traffic going through MSN.
2004: Microsoft creates a whole new plug-and-play protocol for accessing MSN which is some totally bastardized version of TCP/IP, something between NetBEUI and IPv6 plus a ton of complicated bloated features. Microsoft's automatic update feature upgrades everyone's computer to use the new protocol. The growing Linux community loses Internet access and dies a quick death. Apple survives only because MS ports their stuff (alabeit quite buggy) to the Macintosh to try and stave off the Justice Department, which they have little fear of due to their $500 million in soft money contributions to the Republican party which now has the White House.
2005: M.S. purchases Cisco to support their proprietary protocol all over the Internet. Upgrades IOS to support the new protocols. All routers need a 512MB flash upgrade and a 1GB RAM upgrade. The IETF has disbanded.
2006: Script kiddy discovers master back door password to Microsoft routers and servers is "crashw~2" and tears down the entier Internet.
All of the other script kiddies go through Microsoft's firewall and install the latest Back Orifice on Bill Gates' computer. All of Microsoft's backups are erased and all computers are re-flashed with a BIOS that refuses to load any Microsoft OS. Ironically, Linux, FreeBSD, and ancient versions of BEOS and OS/2 load just fine.
Microsoft's stock drops to $0.01/share as there are multiple class action suits with over 1,000,000,000 people affected. Bill Gates can kiss his Presidential race goodbye.
2007: Linus Torvalds enters the US Presidential race with Alan Cox as VP in the newly formed "Open Party". Other major Linux developers, which ran a backup network using POTS modems, run for other government positions. The slogan is "Open Standards and Open Source". The world economy is in ruins due to all of the world's networks crashing.
2008: Linus wins by a landslide and the Open Party controls both houses of Congress
You havn't done much interviewing lately have you? I work in SV at a networking company. Finding qualified people with the right skills is almost impossible. We have to compete with companies like Cisco, 3COM, Bay, Lucent, and so on for programmers with embedded or networking experience.
If you drop by and have the skills, you're hired. End of story. If you don't have the skills, turn around and walk back out that door.
I am quite disappointed that most of the candidates I interview can't pass a fairly simple programming test (which I borrowed from Cisco).
At my company, for example, an MFC programmer won't do since they probably don't have the necessary embedded and/or networking skills.
My company is hiring and we're having a hell of a time finding qualified candidates.
It depends on what you do, how good you are, and if you switch jobs.
At least in SV you'd probably start at a minimum of 50K/year.
I started at 38K/year 5 years ago. My salary rose very fast after I demonstrated that I had the skills. If all you do is hack together web sites you'll make one salary. If your skills are more valuable (i.e. know how to write computer networking code, embedded, device drivers, etc.) you will make a lot more.
My experience with the H-1 employees is that their English is better than mine (I am native born). Yes, they have an accent, but one gets used to it.
I worked for a major company in the valley (which was listed yesterday in the benifits article). Most of the people in my group were Indian or from Pakistan. Several people in my group were working on their green cards. Those who got them left the company. I feel sorry for the one who had to stay at the company after 95% of the group was layed off. He now must work like a slave until he gets that green card (where I expect him to tell the company where to shove the job).
About half of the group were consultants from Wipro, an Indian contracting firm. Those who got the chance jumped ship to other companies who could sponsor them for a green card (i.e. Cisco, 3Com, etc.).
At my current company we had 3 Indian consultants who recently quit because of problems with the consulting company. Due to our contract with the contracting firm we could not hire them full-time. They were excellent engineers and were treated like full-time engineers. From what I have been told, a significant portion of an H-1 engineer's salary goes to the contracting house, which is associated with the Indian government. It is often just as expensive, or even more expensive, to hire an H-1 engineer than a full-time employee. Sometimes there's no choice. It depends on the company as to how the contractors are treated. Some are treated very well, others are not. As for the pay, it is negotiated between the company and the contracting house, and the contractor often has very little say.
Right now we are looking for full-time engineers with networking experience. Most of the candidates I have interviewed have been major disappointments. Most do not have basic C programming skills which are necessary in an embedded environment.
The Indians I have worked with have proven to be highly talented and very hard working (both those with H-1's and those who've gained their citizenship). I think part of the problem is that there ARE NOT enough American born engineers with the right skills. Large companies like Cisco seem to suck up a huge percentage of networking engineers, and our colleges are not spitting out enough qualified computer engineer/science graduates. I've interviewed some of the recent grads. Some don't know big-O notation or the difference between a linked list and a binary tree, which is pathetic.
I work for a SV startup. The perks here are:
Free soft drinks
Free lunch twice a week (good food too)
Excellent medical and dental benifits, 401K, flextime, stock options, and so forth.
Larger companies will offer reimbursement for education (Adaptec did this when I worked there). Adaptec, for example, has a store in the cafeteria where most of their products are available, as well as dry cleaning, flower shop, various tickets (at a discount) and so on. Also if the team is working late dinner is payed for by the company.
Many SV companies are desparate to find and keep good engineers since they can be difficult to get. I've been interviewing candidates at my company and unfortunately many of them are not qualified for the positions available, even junior positions. You wouldn't believe how many fail some basic C programming questions. I've interviewed college grads who don't know Big-O notation or the difference between a binary tree and a linked list.
Even though the larger companies may offer more perks, often the small companies have a better environment (IMO). After leaving Adaptec for FlowWise I have no regrets. There's no more politics or power struggles and other things going on as is common at a number of large companies.
BTW, as you can guess, we're hiring.
-Aaron
http://www.flowwise.com
It is a fitting end, considering how much has been learned from his discovery of the comet that impacted on Jupiter. His discovery eliminated any doubt as to what would happen to the Earth if a comet or large asteroid shoul impact. What better than to be part of another impact which could potentially change our future with respect to the moon.
Hmmm. I run an AMD K6-2 400 running the OS/2 client and I crank out a block about once every 16 hours. In fact, it's about the same as on our Sun UltraSpark 60 at work.
-Aaron
Go ahead and slow things down Cisco. The more you do the better my employer's product does (my employer, FlowWise Networks, makes a router accelerator which will offload virtually all of the traffic off of a router and switch it at wire speed with zero configuration. It's fun to watch a router go from a limit of 300K packets per second to 3 million packets per second in just a few seconds. Oh, and there's no rate limiting either.
I actually have the 3000 with the backpack. I took it on a rafting trip. What was cool was that I could disconnect the hose from the backpack and just stick it in the water for "instant refill" and unlimited ammo. The thing is basically a giant syringe with a hose to a backpack that moves a *LOT* of water. Unfortunately the backpack empties too fast (since it moves so much water).
We are in debt. We pay huge amounts of interest on that debt. Why the hell arn't our congress critters looking at paying off our debt rather than lowering taxes? If we pay off the debt we'll have a lot more money for other things AND be able to lower taxes.
It's like someone who is finally able to start keeping up with the interest payments on their credit cards saying that they'll only pay the minimum balance and hence remain in debt for the rest of their lives.
I think our congress critters flunked high school economics.
Yeah, taxes may be high, but the economy is strong. Let's face it, the tax cuts help the rich much more than the poor since the poor don't pay taxes.
Where is the Linux "lockup" command? Also, can anyone go and remotely reboot a Linux system, crash it, format the drive, cd / ; rm -rf *, etc? Only if you are root. As BO is usually installed as a trojan horse, it typically has no security against the script kiddies and can access anything that root on Linux can access. On some of the security news groups I've seen numerous people post about how they lost everything due to some script kiddie deleting everything on their systems.
/etc/passwd can be downloaded by a trojan and analyzed by the cracker. Also, let's face it, most home Linux users arn't that familiar with security and probably don't worry about it.
Linux has the advantage in that it is much more immune to trojan horses than Win 9x since only files writable by the user can be wiped out. Of course, other files like
Having BO on a system (if installed via trojan horse with no security) is like leaving your Linux box on the Internet with FTP and telnet access enabled and a root password of "password" or "root".
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As you can see, no useful tool would have commands like "lockup". I have seen more malicious attempts than this as well, such as one person who often launches DOS ping attacks against other users from BO infected machines.
As much as I hate Micro$loth, I must agree with them on this one. If there were a BO without all of the malicious features then perhapse it would be taken seriously, but with the stealth features and the crash features I think it's main purpose is fairly clear (at least to the script kiddies).
I have had more problems with UPS and Fed-Ex. Sure, maybe they will insure the package (if USPS doesn't), but it's a lot less convienient.
UPS stinks. They're slow. They're expensive.
FedEx is also expensive.
The USPS is available to everyone. They have more offices than UPS or FedEx. The USPS is also highly effecient at what they do (heck, they run Linux). My letters usually get to their destination within two days for $0.33. That's anywhere in the country. I'm impressed if a company can send a letter from Hawaii to Maine for $0.33 and still be profitable.
When purchasing on-line, I usually choose the USPS. They are faster and cheaper than UPS. For expensive items I'll use Fed-Ex or UPS, but for most stuff the USPS is great.