Really, once you've seen one class A data center, you've seen them all. (CT: I've still never seen one. And they won't let us take pictures. Boo savvis.)
Have you ever asked if you could take photos of your own installation? Find a manager or someone somewhat in charge of the data center, and let them know you need to get photos for insurance reasons or backup plans. Or the slashdot FAQ.
I've never had a problem taking photos in data centers in Europe and New York, by asking permission each time. It's a great way to document your work for future service calls when you are thousands of kilometers distant and trying to tell the remote hands guys what to do. It would also be a good way to educate slashdotters who don't know how dreadfully boring server installations are.
the AC personally, I'm curious for how neatly the cabling is dressed
For a 100Mbit/sec commit on a GigE connection for a full internet feed, I've been getting quotes from California of around US$10-$16 per Mbit, depending on the data centre and provider. For a 1 Gbps commit, the price drops to around US$6/Mbit. Those are prices from sales droids without any attempt at negotiating a better price.
For a site like/., a 95th percentile bandwidth of 50 Mbps for the month would cost between US$500 and $800, less if the total commit for all of OSDN's traffic was much higher. Add in hosting costs estimated around US$2,500 per month for a cage with room for 6 racks and matching electricity and cooling, and you can calculate how much operating costs/. runs.
After that, you have to count up all the amazing 7 figure salaries of Rob and the gang who keep things running:-)
A little late to the thread to get modded up, but I didn't have time this morning to post my own BGP filtering route-maps to keep these malware ISPs out of my tables. AS41173 seems to be the only upstream ISP to 40989. These companies seem to be the same mysterious people, hoping to hide their identities and locations. The internet isn't that easily fooled, though.
If you look at the RIPE and whois records for all the parties involved, this is an ISP that popped up in June of last year, apparently dedicated to hosting malware sites. Look closely at addresses and dates. Fictitious Panamanian and UK addresses with an American phone number, claims of being in the Seychelles (English spelling), again with other American phone numbers.
Some nmap fingerprinting of their routing equipment shows this operation tends towards low budget. I've seen ISPs that were nothing more than a couple of university students who obtained an AS#, a prefix, found a BGP feed, and filled a rented a rack in a colo with some servers and a linux box running quagga. Seen from a looking glass, no difference from the big players. A good looking website regularly updated, proper whois and RIPE records, and it's very difficult for a potential client to know the ISP may go down during exams week.
This operation seems not much more than what a couple of kids with a little knowledge could put together. The prefixes fill various spamhaus and RBL lists. Doubtful that there are any legitimate clients on those networks. This operation is the malware gangs getting a little more hi-tech, running their own ISP by buying IP transit from companies known for never turning down business. They use C4L/NetSumo, a known no-questions-asked ISP who resell an MPLS service between London and Eastern Europe, probably Interoute's.
As for location, looking at various internal looking glasses, the prefixes seem to be hitting the internet in London then through a leased line with 70 mSec of delay, and in Prague with a sudden 20 mSec of delay. This certainly is not going through the Seychelles. My best guess would be a data centre in Russia, where bribes to local authorities gives them a certain level of immunity to lawful pursuits.
Any reasonable ISP hoping to protect their clients from this criminal malware gang would just filter those four AS#s from their main routing tables, and save themselves a world of hurt. Better yet would be to actively blackhole those prefixes. Sure, it might fly in the face of one perfect internet, but since there is no legal remedy, internet providers need to protect themselves. Good ISPs and hosting services already filter all kinds of bogus routing information, adding a known spam and malware operation to the list is just good practice.
The article is trying to highlight a long understood concern and uses a few valid point, but the supporting map doesn't look anything like reality. The map is clearly nothing more than a graphic showing voice traffic through the U.S. and England, and excludes all other international traffic. The situation is no where near as dire as the article tries to make it sound, take anything published in Wired with the same degree of confidence as a trashy tabloid.
Traffic in Europe bound for the U.S. and Asia-Pacific does pass through Atlantic facing countries like the UK, France and the Netherlands, but Inter-European traffic tends to pass through continental cities. Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam all pass more traffic than London, and the trend is to avoid the UK loop whenever possible. Europe is a fairly well connected mesh, the UK is out on one edge and routed around whenever possible.
As for Australia, very little fibre runs to it, and nothing runs through it. Telstra and the oh-so-corrupt government (all my Aussie mates are very pro-Oz, and very anti-government, I can only parrot what I've learned from them and my own limited experiences) have blocked quite a few undersea fibre projects that would have opened up some competition. Australia is a nice market, there have been quite a few attempts to get there via the Indian Ocean or South-East Asia, all died in the planning stages when the government insisted that Telstra have all control and all profits. Despite some internal competition, Telstra == Australia and vice-versa. The few non-Telstra circuits are still controlled and approved by Telstra, the ACCC has no jurisdiction over Telsta->International business.
There are no EU wide laws. There are directives, from which countries create their own versions as laws that meet local customs, historical precedent, and local lobbying/corruption influence.
There are strong anti-tying directives, to keep the american-style business model (microsoft, walmart) from damaging the economy here. France has consumer protection laws at least as strong as those in Germany, and most countries here have varying levels of enforcement. The UK has some of the weakest consumer protection laws, and with OfCom, no enforcement whatsoever.
I've been hearing more iPhone rumors this week, the biggest is T-Mobile has put their rollout plans on hold because they could not show the regulator the required unlocking function or unlocked phones. O2 in the UK is safe, because even though they will be violating laws there, the fines will be years down the road and only then a tiny percentage of the profits made.
There are no other populous countries in Europe where the iPhone could be sold without an unlocked version. Apple has really shot themselves in the head with this move. By locking themselves out of the largest GSM market in the world, they can't hope to achieve any kind of marketshare.
What ever happened to early/. UIDs? I recently dug up an old log book, and scrawled in a margin was my original/. login, UID=492. The email address is long gone, but I still have the password. I tried logging in, without any success. I also recently posted that I didn't care about low UIDs, but for a slashdot party here in Europe that could bring some outright respect. If the/. team trashed all the early accounts that seemed inactive, no worries, they're just bragging rights, I'd trade them for a good Trappist Beer.
From that same cleaning out of the obsolete computers (aren't they all, the moment we buy them?) I have also recovered several hard drives that were in a system that died in early 1998, which may hold much early/. stories in cache files. Actually the drives are fine, I made an image of each, they appear to be early ext2fs from a slackware system. 1 GigaByte SCSI drive images are not that big any more:-) October 10th is approaching pretty fast, so no counting on recovery before then.
it was certainly fun trying to write a user space context switch routine that has to be reentrant itself, not to mention trying to deal with priority inversion issues
I haven't worked in that field in some number of decades, but I'm going to have nightmares because of that phrase. You heartless Bastard, at least warn us that the path to madness lies within your post.
the AC sits here rocking back and forth, afraid to google what Tom Anderson's later works covered, but knowing I'm about to lose my weekend to this
There are already groups around Brussels sharpening their legal swords in anticipation of Apple dropping the ball on this. Apple is fully aware of consumer protection laws in Europe, as well as their partners. The competition commission just had their way with Micro$oft, a move that has emboldened them no end. They've tasted blood, and Apple+phone companies is too inviting a target for Apple to make any mis-steps.
O2 doesn't have much to worry about with their neutered OfCom, the most that can happen in Britian is a strongly worded letter a few years after the violation. The UK is mostly fucked because their regulator can't do their job.
Orange in France and T-Mobile in Germany will have to tread lightly. French and German regulators have some teeth, have shown a willingness to use them, and have a distinctly anti-american bias. Both of those countries have unlock requirements, and people there can buy an iPhone, cancel their contract at the end of 90 days, and are supposed to immediately obtain unlock codes. You can be certain that 91 days after the iPhone goes on sale, there will be people trying to get unlock codes. If the unlock procedure doesn't work smoothly, the regulators will have written complaints filed later that day. Once there are legally unlocked iPhones that can be used on any GSM carrier in any country, the floodgates will have been opened. The Doctrine of First Sale is alive and well defended in Europe.
Other regions, certainly scandiwegia, have even stronger consumer protection laws that could see Apple being forced to sell unlocked iPhones to non-phone company distributors. If Apple partners up with a phone company to offer the iPhone, the iPhone also has to be offered without a contract or being locked to a carrier. That is what I am holding out for, an unlocked and supported iPhone (preferably a second generation one) that I can swap my various GSM SIMs into as I travel from country to country.
The most interesting development to watch the first week of November when these iPhones go on sale will be the national lock code. O2, Orange and T-etvas all have systems in multiple European countries. I have several Orange SIMs for different countries, so if I buy my iPhone in France and put my French Orange SIM in it, it should work. The iPhone should continue to work when I go to England and put my UK Orange SIM in the iPhone. Carrier locks are acceptable to regulators, country locks (especially since all the major phone companies became multi-country) are right out. If Apple fucks up on this, expect such a major attack from regulators that they could see their entire product line yanked from sale until the courts get some satisfaction.
It will be interesting to see what other announcements will be made next week at the Apple Expo. Apple could derail all the regulator's threats by offering an unlocked, supported iPhone across Europe for a hefty price.
I once had UID 492, but left the job and the machine with the cookies that stored the UID. Sometime in 1998 I created my current account, not really caring one way or the other about being 48312. Sometimes when these low UID pissing matches come along, I'd like to participate, but it's not that big a deal. I was there when the site was called "Chips and Dips", and yes, my beard is now completely gray.
Recently while cleaning out some old boxes, I found the notebook where I recorded my original/. login, with the UID, username and password, and the email account I used at the time. I tried re-enabling the account, but clearly cmdrtaco waits for no man, and regularly purges the older accounts. You'll get over it.
Yep, you write something on/. and the bastards change what they are doing to prove you wrong. It seems that despite much press recently about the licensing agreement, Deezer is just some guys sharing their pirated MP3 collection while trying to claim legitimacy. Just hours after this story hit/. and I posted a few comments, others have pointed out all the flaws in the service. They are hosted at Free.fr, the second largest ISP in France, but they have no real business relationship with free except for paying for dedicated hosting service.
They dodged hefty fines and a possible jail term by signing an agreement with SACEM, but they still have to clean up their act and obtain the performance rights agreements from other rights groups. All they really did was change their domain name, and put out all the music they've downloaded with random quality.
All my information here comes from working peripherally around DG Competition, the European Commission's directorate that oversees all things to do with "free markets", monopolies, and the like. I also know a lot of francophone musicians.
SACEM... THE GOOD GUYS
Hardly.
The really bad.
SACEM was created under the Vichy regime in France in 1941, and headed up by a group of six wealthy supporters and close friends of some of the ministers of the Vichy government. I've almost Godwined this thread at this point, so I'll tread carefully. SACEM was to collect all royalties, but only distribute those royalties to artists who swore affirmation that they were of pure aryan descent. They were supposed to keep all the royalties from non-aryan artists, to compensate the Vichy government who was trying to counter the effects of non-pure music like jazz and swing. Being typical corrupt french bureaucrats, the monies never saw their way to the Vichy government, and at the end of the war the 6 heads of the SACEM escaped the hangmans noose by fleeing to Argentina, Monaco, and Canada. All were extremely wealthy at that point, and the two who were returned to stand trial were able to escape capital punishment by claiming to have kept all the monies from the Vichy government as an act of resistance and patriotism. SACEM was condemned to pay all the monies to the artists and their heirs, but didn't start to do so until 1968. The monies collected from 1941 to 1947 have never been paid to the artists or their heirs. The monies collected for non-aryan French, which includes Corsicans, Tahitians, Algerians, Blacks, Jews, Catalans was only partially paid from 1947 until 1968, when the heads of SACEM were replaced in a political scandal at the end of the de Gaul era. After 1968, SACEM started to live up to its role as protector of artists.
The bad.
SACEM has the de facto monopoly for collecting all monies on French territory for lyricists and composers, from every source possible. Radio stations, concert halls, bars, carnivals, advertising jingles and so on. No songwriter or lyricist can directly get paid from a rave DJ or radio station. All the money has to be collected by SACEM, who deduct administrative costs, then pass on the rest. Until they tangled with Daft Punk, who managed to get some of the rules changed, but the high court of France confirmed that the monopoly served the public interest and that competition would hurt both artists and society at large. It also makes sure artists don't cheat too much on their taxes.
The not so bad.
Daft Punk. Heroes to all French authors, composers, songwriters. Daft Punk was two excellent musicians who wrote all their own works, then sold the tracks directly to DJs for special performances at raves and large events. Since the music was good, radio stations started playing the music, paying standard rates to SACEM. Daft Punk had a string of top 10 hits across Europe in the mid '90s, and got their money from other country's rights management groups except for SACEM. SACEM wanted them to sign over all their rights, Daft Punk took them to court, fought hard all the way to the French equivalent of the Supreme Court, lost most of their arguments, but managed to win some changes in SACEM.
The Cour de Cassation reaffirmed that SACEM's main role was to protect authors, composers and lyricists, and that having multiple competing groups would weaken that role. But Daft Punk won the battles to keep some of their rights, such as internet broadcast, CD-ROM sales (not pressed CDs from labels, CD-ROMs of their live concerts) and a few other new technologies that a lumbering bureaucracy like SACEM is completely unable to keep up with.
Further missives from Brussels based on the Daft Punk ruling, amongst others, have opened up the possibility for copyleft and creative commons style licenses in France, where musicians can release their music for free and not have the SACEM collecting in their name (and then not passing on the mo
The site is hosted in France, where bandwidth is cheap and plentiful. They are supporting the load just fine over here. Getting traffic from New York to Minnesota is the more likely bottleneck rather than France to NY. OTOH, their servers seem to be completely overloaded under the slashdot effect, I think their massive press push has come back to bury them.
I suspect that since they just scored this licensing agreement after a long legal struggle under new french obligatory licensing laws, they haven't had time to upgrade their servers or get better load offset architecture in place. Paying lawyers who saved their asses probably is a high priority for them.
I need to clear up the trollish flamebaiting headline, as the SACEM is nothing like the RIAA. They are the only group that collects royalties for authors and songwriters in France, and by law most of the money collected has to be distributed, despite their legendary corruption and incompetence. The SACEM has been forced to provide licensing to anyone who wants it, and I think Deezer was one of the first test cases for internet distribution. By signing a deal with SACEM, Deezer can now play any and all French artists, and any other country's artists who register with SACEM. This doesn't cover performance royalties, which are separate, all the songs on Deezer are performed by the original author. Since the Wu-Tang Clan (who I just saw on the site to use as an example) has registered with SACEM, ODB and MethodMan will get quarterly or yearly royalty checks directly from SACEM. Bands covering other author's songs can't be played under this agreement, at least according to the French press covering this.
It remains to be seen if Deezer can make enough to cover the royalties they've negotiated with SACEM. They were really over a legal barrel and if they hadn't signed they risked prison time for piracy. They could be a dotbomb2.0 fizzle, since they haven't dropped all the extraneous vowels from their name.
I'm not going to get into this whole debate on network neutrality, especially in Europe, as I get paid money for my opinions on this subject. But I will talk about the BBC's network. The geeks behind the Beeb's network are a pretty good bunch, who promote all kinds of technology and FLOSS projects on a limited budget.
The BBC have a number of well designed hosting centres to spread around their network usage, and a reasonable number of interconnections to help distribute their traffic for cheap. From their two AS numbers, 2818 and 31459, they have IPv4, v6, and multicast versions of their feeds. They have built out a fairly comprehensive distribution network using their own leased lines, multiple 10Gig Ethernet connections to both carriers and popular peering points around Europe and North America.
Any ISP selling broadband should be present at places like the AmsIX or LoNAP, where they can get a peering with the BBC for no charge. This means not paying for transit charges for the content. The BBC even has multicast streams available, for ISPs clued enough to actually make use of it (which is very few, unfortunately. BT is almost violently opposed to the idea, calling it a direct threat to the monarchy at times).
Any ISP, especially those in Britain, who will have a large number of viewers could set up private peerings at quite a few of the internet hotels spread all over the UK. There must be at least 25 locations where the BBC has internet peering capability. All the major ISPs in Britain like BT and NTL already have private peerings with the BBC.
The BBC only pays for their own interfaces on their own equipment, it is up to the ISPs to add their own capacity on their own kit, not exactly a cheap proposition. 10 GigE interfaces on 6500s or RX16s aren't playthings.
Therein lies the rub. This band of borderline criminal ISPs have tried to create an illegal conspiracy to force the Beeb to pay not only for their equipment upgrades, but also to pay for all the traffic from the BBCs network into their own. BT wants to charge for traffic in both directions, rather than the peak of whichever flow is highest. Ofcom should slap this down, but they are currently fighting the battle to stay relevant and have dropped all other cases before them.
There are moves afoot within the Tory party to destroy OfCom, because even with their very limited powers they've managed to keep BT slightly more honest than an all out unregulated lawless monopoly. Graft and corruption aren't limited to the U.S. political scene.
In my long and varied professional life, I've met a few people so dedicated to one facet of technology they could be called foo geeks. Compiler geeks. Time geeks. Kernel geeks.
Then, on a hajj to Cupertino, I met some of the people on the Terminal.app team, first time I ever encountered terminal geeks. They knew more about the vagaries of escape codes, character sets, and still managed to make term.app one of the slickest cocoa apps around. Plus it integrates nicely with applescript/automator, so with a script and a little SSH+pre-installed keys magic I can open a bunch of terminals that log into remote systems each with a distinct look. As a security geek, it's wonderfully dangerous.
In 10.5, term.app adds tabs and a few other nice features, like better unicode non-ascii support and alternate character sets.
Multicast packets are routable, if the upstream routers support dealing with multicast packets correctly.
mDNS/bonjour/zeroconf detects if a packet has crossed a router by setting the originating TTL to 255. If a multicast packet crosses a router, the TTL is supposed to be decremented, and zeroconf is supposed to ignore the packet as it is no longer considered local. Many suppositions there, as implementations vary.
Worse, starting with a TTL of 255 means that the packets will be able to go anywhere on the internet where multicast packets can get routed. Better protected carriers will drop multicast packets with TTLs greater than 64 or 128, specifically to limit mDNS/zeroconf traffic while allowing reasonable traffic to flow. Most ISPs don't have the technical competence to deal with multicast, so they just block it, which will limit any spread of an mDNS worm.
However, just because mDNS/zeroconf will ignore packets with TTL less that 255, doesn't mean that a buffer overflow bug isn't being treated by the protocol stack. Take a wait and see attitude on this disclosure, as it appears to be an extortion attempt rather than something from legitimate sources.
Over the long term, a CS degree will serve you better than an IT certificate. If you want to be the guy designing new protocols or designing new computers, follow CS (or Electrical Engineering). If you want to be the guy configuring routers and swapping hard drives, reaching your maximum potential a few years out of school with no further advancement, go for IT.
IT guys can jump from job to job much easier, because IT jobs are almost McJobs at this point. But if you value having a longer career, stick with the more solid CS or EE degrees.
Whenever I'm working with people on complex projects, I can tell who took the time to complete an advanced degree, and who took the easy route with IT certificates. The people with more education will react differently when faced with an unknown, they can draw on a much broader base of knowledge picked up in Uni. IT guys who learned in an accelerated Vo-Tech school will hit the manuals hoping the manufacturer solved the problem for them and there is some hidden command to make things work.
If you have the marks to get into a good 4 or 5 year CS or EE program, jump at the opportunity. While in a longer program, you can always pick up a few IT certs during your internships or work experience programs the last two years of school. You'll then be just as employable out of Uni as the IT guys, but in the long run your background will take you much further.
Those that employ Hammer-Engineers and Screwdriver-Engineers, as opposed to those who employ carpenters.
Snarfed, with thanks.
I saw this analogy this morning and was able to use it in a meeting a few hours later. Not that it made any difference to the client, who has taken clue resistance to an art form. They didn't just want a hammer-engineer, they were upset they couldn't find a dozen yellow-handled-2.3Kg-hammer-engineering-specialist s with 20 years of experience building houses in exactly one day. Assholes!
I'll probably use your phrase more often in the future.
You don't really know what a true Jack of All Trades is, if you think there is one for IT. IT is only one trade.
In the IT world, the job title with a wide range of IT skills as you described is called a Systems Administrator. If you have some networking and telecoms experience on top of that, you can call yourself a Network Administrator. This is what corporations, large and small, hire. When larger companies need a specialist to perform a highly complicated job, say setting up a new windoze AD domain, they find someone who can do that job internally and task them with it. Small shops have JoATs out of necessity, but there is no real job growth, adventure, or chance to make it big. Your best bet is to network and find some startup with potential, as everyone at the startup will be performing every necessary job because they can't afford specialists.
I've met some Jacks of All Trades in my life, and they had one thing in common, they were willing to work in remote locations and they had one extremely valuable skill on top of the breadth of other skills. Ex-military for the most part, having learned a few extreme skills during their hitch, then combining those skills with many others. Deep sea underwater construction, land mine clearance, petroleum exploration, or supporting relief missions in trouble spots.
For a true Jack, IT (all of IT combined) is just one trade. Everything from compiling kernels, rebuilding power supplies, setting up satellite communication networks, fixing email servers, twiddling databases, configuring routers are all rolled up as just a single skill, a bullet point in a long list of other trades. When they are in a remote location and faced with technical problems, they overcome and move on. No corporation with an IT department ever needs someone like that.
In addition to IT skills, add to that a whole bunch of real world skills.
Be a pilot, able to fly both fixed and rotary wing craft. Be able to file international flight plans, deal with airport and fueling fees, and negotiate customs at airports. Many organisations want aircraft repair skills as well, for jobs far from civilization.
Drive a truck, one of the big ones for hauling 40 tonnes of goods, and the ability to get the truck across national borders. Diesel repair skills go along with that.
Welding seems to be a necessary skill for every JoAT I've met, along with some basic metalworking, carpentry, and electrical. 19" racks may be plentiful and in good repair in data centres where you work, but in the field you probably have to lash up a rack and cooling systems from the materials at hand.
Press relations, diplomacy, accounting, and a whole host of other trades that will allow you to work autonomously are necessary.
On top of all these other skills, every Jack I've ever known (and a few Jills), had one extreme specialisation. Doctors and nurses, ordinance disposal, undersea welding; each one required a tremendous amount of specialised learning, usually at the beginning of their career. They then added onto that base many other skills necessary for jobs that take them far from cubicle farms and obnoxious managers.
The myth of a Jack of All Trades also being limited to Master of None possibly stems from some hack Sci-Fi writer in the early 1980s, and just doesn't exist. If you don't have one skill completely in depth, abandon any hope of ever being hired for your breadth of skills.
If you want a job where your JoAT skills can help, you have to move completely outside of corporate IT life. Look at Medecins Sans Frontiers for an idea of what a real life JoAT needs to know. They often need support personnel for their medical missions, volunteers with a stipend. They won't even consider you without IT skills, radio communications, truck driving, repair of medical equipment, multiple languages, and a knowledge of security in hostile environments. You can learn some of it as you grow into the role, every ex-MSFer I've known swears it was
I had a googleChat call this morning from a friend in New Jersey, whose only internet access is through an EDGE AT&T mobile phone. It was the first time we were able to get video working, albeit with a huge amount of delay. He had just noticed his speeds went from 20-50kbps to around 200kbps, and latency had dropped from 500 mSec to around 200 mSec.
So this Apple partnership has had a positive outcome for all AT&T customers, but it also highlights their network was artificially crippled up until yesterday. The NJ PUC will almost certainly get a written complaint about capping a service sold as being capable of much higher rates. AT&T had put in writing that his problems were entirely with his phone, and there were no other complaints from anyone in the Manhattan/northNJ area.
This was a spirited discussion, although Kneuer intentionally missed the point about the un-auctioned 2.4GHz band. Knowing enough (far too many, really) economists, this is a fairly common tactic, to provide responses that completely miss the point and allow you to repeat your opinion ad infinitum ad nauseum. The current slang for this seems to be "talking point". Kneuer knows that the 2.4GHz wifi market is booming because of lack of regulation (I'm talking forcing a particular modulation scheme or licensing, not FCC/ART/TUV limits on power and antennas), but he can't admit it, so he re-iterates his "talking point" about not regulating the monopolies. I'm pretty sure this was quite intentional, Kneuer was a lobbyist far too long for that to have been a mis-understanding.
the 700 MHz band, by nature of its frequency, can readily be a more long-distance transmission medium than 2.4 GHz spectrum could ever hope to be (Watt for Watt)
700 MHz can go longer distances, and is less vulnerable to the line-of-sight problems of the microwave frequencies of WiFi, but that is not what makes it interesting. 700 MHz can penetrate walls, windows, trees, and other structures with greater ease than higher frequencies. This means that municipal 700 MHz WiFi/WiMax local distribution could become a reality, one antenna covering a few hundred houses within a 500 meter radius would not require external boxes for each house as with the current 2.4GHz WiFi setups. Although the 65 MHz bandwidth being talked about in the speech would only be enough for 10-12 WiMax channels with a maximum throughput of 6 Mbps each.
The 2.4 GHz band was chosen because it is completely unusable for longer distance communications. Water vapor absorbs too much energy, so concrete, brick, trees, rain, fog, all block 2.4 GHz signals, and degrade 5.4-5.8 GHz signals. The worst absorption comes at 22 and 60 GHz.
The WRC/ITU-R hasn't discussed opening a new worldwide band, the 700 MHz spectrum would be for the U.S. market only. There would be no economies of scale with only the U.S. market for cheap wireless gadgets. The U.S. only accounts for about 10% of the worldwide electronic gadget market. Here in ETSIland, any reclaimed spectrum would be different for each country.
This is the main reason WiMax has the ability to run on any frequency, because there isn't going to be another worldwide lightly regulated band like 2.4 GHz for the foreseeable future. The WARC (predecessor to the ITU-R/WRC) first proposed the 2.4 GHz band be opened up for general public use worldwide in 1979, after almost a decade of committee wrangling. Once the band was decided (because 2.4 GHz is the most useless band in the spectrum for a whole range of technical/physical reasons), it still took from 1979 to 1993 to agree to push national regulators to free up the band from existing licenses, most countries had it reserved for military use or it was unused. Just opening up the band as unlicensed created whole industries like cordless phones, baby monitors, with WiFi coming along much later.
My conclusions:... There's money to be had for the US government in them thar spectrum
Governments aren't concerned about the revenues an auction would bring in, small change compared to the money to be earned from sales tax revenues and new industries from something like WiFi. This is all about protecting the revenues of the incumbent duopolies that have taken over the American market. If the government holds an auction, an incumbent can grab and hold the spectrum, preventing any "free market" competition, and forcing U.S. citizens to pay obscene amounts of money if they want access to the internet. The government limits access for physical media, granting right-of-way easements for fiber/cable/copper phone lines, which create an artificial scarcity and keeps profit margins healthy. Licensing spectrum to one auction winner also creates scarcity, and keeps any competitors from innovating. Look at the innovation in the 2.4 GHz space to see what happens without auctions or licensing, but Kneuer is paid to ignore that.
Do you want a serious answer? Well, I'm going to write one anyways.
There are basically two kinds of guys in the internet porn industry. The serious pornographers who can convince all the scarily slutty women to get dirty for a small amount of cash, and the webhosting guys who realise they need some higher margin content to pay the bills.
The pornographers don't particularly have much technical skills, at least not for setting up websites and payment processing schemes. They may have tremendous photoshop skills, because the women they shoot tend to have a heinous amount of scars, tattoos and piercings. The porn producers are always looking for ways to set up web sites to make money, but they tend to not have much money to invest in development.
The website guys are the ones who have built up a business with a few hundred or thousand web servers, with all kinds of low margin mom-and-pop static websites. They can code in Ruby or PHP, but can't really live off margins of a few euros per month per site or a few thousand euros for web design job. After a year or two, they come to the realisation they're not really earning the big money like founding a new google. That is the point when they put their morals aside and decide they could really make some good money from building porn websites. What they are missing is social skills to convince women to fuck for money in front of a camera.
Put the two sides together, and you have a fairly good model of the online porn industry today. The "intentional pornographers" make the content, the "accidental pornographers" make and run the sites. The buzzword is "Ecosystem"
You need to go try a macbook pro some time. The right-click function by placing two fingers anywhere on the trackpad at the same time is quite useful. Better than any two button mouse, IMNSHO.
I had used the MBP trackpad with two finger input for about 30 seconds when I realised I could never go back to the old ways. One finger for moving the cursor around like normal, two fingers for scrolling (horizontal as well as vertical). Only one finger or none on the trackpad with the mouse button is a left click (or drag), two fingers on the track pad is a right click. If you right click and it brings up a large menu, keeping two fingers on the track pad makes you scroll through the list like with a scroll wheel, lifting one finger means you go right back to a regular cursor to select in that right-click popup.
It sounds a bit complicated, but it literally takes seconds to figure out what is going on.
Now, whenever I'm on an older mac or any wintel laptop, I really miss the MBP trackpad. It's a major step backwards.
Google for 'sparc ide dma problem' and see how many hits you get
I don't have to google for that, hell, there are probably a few of my own rants in there. I lived that nightmare a long, long time ago. You've opened some old wounds I thought were closed for good.
Sun's solution, eventually? There was a patch in Solaris 8 and early releases of 9 that would disable DMA on ultra5&10 models, which made an already slow machine much slower if there was any disk I/O. Somewhere around the 3rd or 4th release of Sol9, they just put the patch into the system files, and wiped out any possibility of DMA. Don't think of using any ultra as a file server or for any task that might need the disk. If you can cache it all in memory, then those little machines still run fine.
So don't blame Apple because a chip provider screwed everyone over who used their cheapest part. The first batches of those chips didn't have DMA problems, but all the main runs weren't QA'ed except by end users.
Slashdot Mirror
Really, once you've seen one class A data center, you've seen them all. (CT: I've still never seen one. And they won't let us take pictures. Boo savvis.)
Have you ever asked if you could take photos of your own installation? Find a manager or someone somewhat in charge of the data center, and let them know you need to get photos for insurance reasons or backup plans. Or the slashdot FAQ.
I've never had a problem taking photos in data centers in Europe and New York, by asking permission each time. It's a great way to document your work for future service calls when you are thousands of kilometers distant and trying to tell the remote hands guys what to do. It would also be a good way to educate slashdotters who don't know how dreadfully boring server installations are.
the AC
personally, I'm curious for how neatly the cabling is dressed
For a 100Mbit/sec commit on a GigE connection for a full internet feed, I've been getting quotes from California of around US$10-$16 per Mbit, depending on the data centre and provider. For a 1 Gbps commit, the price drops to around US$6/Mbit. Those are prices from sales droids without any attempt at negotiating a better price.
/., a 95th percentile bandwidth of 50 Mbps for the month would cost between US$500 and $800, less if the total commit for all of OSDN's traffic was much higher. Add in hosting costs estimated around US$2,500 per month for a cage with room for 6 racks and matching electricity and cooling, and you can calculate how much operating costs /. runs.
:-)
For a site like
After that, you have to count up all the amazing 7 figure salaries of Rob and the gang who keep things running
the AC
A little late to the thread to get modded up, but I didn't have time this morning to post my own BGP filtering route-maps to keep these malware ISPs out of my tables. AS41173 seems to be the only upstream ISP to 40989. These companies seem to be the same mysterious people, hoping to hide their identities and locations. The internet isn't that easily fooled, though.
If you look at the RIPE and whois records for all the parties involved, this is an ISP that popped up in June of last year, apparently dedicated to hosting malware sites. Look closely at addresses and dates. Fictitious Panamanian and UK addresses with an American phone number, claims of being in the Seychelles (English spelling), again with other American phone numbers.
Some nmap fingerprinting of their routing equipment shows this operation tends towards low budget. I've seen ISPs that were nothing more than a couple of university students who obtained an AS#, a prefix, found a BGP feed, and filled a rented a rack in a colo with some servers and a linux box running quagga. Seen from a looking glass, no difference from the big players. A good looking website regularly updated, proper whois and RIPE records, and it's very difficult for a potential client to know the ISP may go down during exams week.
This operation seems not much more than what a couple of kids with a little knowledge could put together. The prefixes fill various spamhaus and RBL lists. Doubtful that there are any legitimate clients on those networks. This operation is the malware gangs getting a little more hi-tech, running their own ISP by buying IP transit from companies known for never turning down business. They use C4L/NetSumo, a known no-questions-asked ISP who resell an MPLS service between London and Eastern Europe, probably Interoute's.
As for location, looking at various internal looking glasses, the prefixes seem to be hitting the internet in London then through a leased line with 70 mSec of delay, and in Prague with a sudden 20 mSec of delay. This certainly is not going through the Seychelles. My best guess would be a data centre in Russia, where bribes to local authorities gives them a certain level of immunity to lawful pursuits.
Any reasonable ISP hoping to protect their clients from this criminal malware gang would just filter those four AS#s from their main routing tables, and save themselves a world of hurt. Better yet would be to actively blackhole those prefixes. Sure, it might fly in the face of one perfect internet, but since there is no legal remedy, internet providers need to protect themselves. Good ISPs and hosting services already filter all kinds of bogus routing information, adding a known spam and malware operation to the list is just good practice.
the AC
The article is trying to highlight a long understood concern and uses a few valid point, but the supporting map doesn't look anything like reality. The map is clearly nothing more than a graphic showing voice traffic through the U.S. and England, and excludes all other international traffic. The situation is no where near as dire as the article tries to make it sound, take anything published in Wired with the same degree of confidence as a trashy tabloid.
Traffic in Europe bound for the U.S. and Asia-Pacific does pass through Atlantic facing countries like the UK, France and the Netherlands, but Inter-European traffic tends to pass through continental cities. Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam all pass more traffic than London, and the trend is to avoid the UK loop whenever possible. Europe is a fairly well connected mesh, the UK is out on one edge and routed around whenever possible.
As for Australia, very little fibre runs to it, and nothing runs through it. Telstra and the oh-so-corrupt government (all my Aussie mates are very pro-Oz, and very anti-government, I can only parrot what I've learned from them and my own limited experiences) have blocked quite a few undersea fibre projects that would have opened up some competition. Australia is a nice market, there have been quite a few attempts to get there via the Indian Ocean or South-East Asia, all died in the planning stages when the government insisted that Telstra have all control and all profits. Despite some internal competition, Telstra == Australia and vice-versa. The few non-Telstra circuits are still controlled and approved by Telstra, the ACCC has no jurisdiction over Telsta->International business.
the AC
There are no EU wide laws. There are directives, from which countries create their own versions as laws that meet local customs, historical precedent, and local lobbying/corruption influence.
There are strong anti-tying directives, to keep the american-style business model (microsoft, walmart) from damaging the economy here. France has consumer protection laws at least as strong as those in Germany, and most countries here have varying levels of enforcement. The UK has some of the weakest consumer protection laws, and with OfCom, no enforcement whatsoever.
I've been hearing more iPhone rumors this week, the biggest is T-Mobile has put their rollout plans on hold because they could not show the regulator the required unlocking function or unlocked phones. O2 in the UK is safe, because even though they will be violating laws there, the fines will be years down the road and only then a tiny percentage of the profits made.
There are no other populous countries in Europe where the iPhone could be sold without an unlocked version. Apple has really shot themselves in the head with this move. By locking themselves out of the largest GSM market in the world, they can't hope to achieve any kind of marketshare.
the AC
What ever happened to early /. UIDs? I recently dug up an old log book, and scrawled in a margin was my original /. login, UID=492. The email address is long gone, but I still have the password. I tried logging in, without any success. I also recently posted that I didn't care about low UIDs, but for a slashdot party here in Europe that could bring some outright respect. If the /. team trashed all the early accounts that seemed inactive, no worries, they're just bragging rights, I'd trade them for a good Trappist Beer.
/. stories in cache files. Actually the drives are fine, I made an image of each, they appear to be early ext2fs from a slackware system. 1 GigaByte SCSI drive images are not that big any more :-) October 10th is approaching pretty fast, so no counting on recovery before then.
From that same cleaning out of the obsolete computers (aren't they all, the moment we buy them?) I have also recovered several hard drives that were in a system that died in early 1998, which may hold much early
the AC
it was certainly fun trying to write a user space context switch routine that has to be reentrant itself, not to mention trying to deal with priority inversion issues
I haven't worked in that field in some number of decades, but I'm going to have nightmares because of that phrase. You heartless Bastard, at least warn us that the path to madness lies within your post.
the AC
sits here rocking back and forth, afraid to google what Tom Anderson's later works covered, but knowing I'm about to lose my weekend to this
There are already groups around Brussels sharpening their legal swords in anticipation of Apple dropping the ball on this. Apple is fully aware of consumer protection laws in Europe, as well as their partners. The competition commission just had their way with Micro$oft, a move that has emboldened them no end. They've tasted blood, and Apple+phone companies is too inviting a target for Apple to make any mis-steps.
O2 doesn't have much to worry about with their neutered OfCom, the most that can happen in Britian is a strongly worded letter a few years after the violation. The UK is mostly fucked because their regulator can't do their job.
Orange in France and T-Mobile in Germany will have to tread lightly. French and German regulators have some teeth, have shown a willingness to use them, and have a distinctly anti-american bias. Both of those countries have unlock requirements, and people there can buy an iPhone, cancel their contract at the end of 90 days, and are supposed to immediately obtain unlock codes. You can be certain that 91 days after the iPhone goes on sale, there will be people trying to get unlock codes. If the unlock procedure doesn't work smoothly, the regulators will have written complaints filed later that day. Once there are legally unlocked iPhones that can be used on any GSM carrier in any country, the floodgates will have been opened. The Doctrine of First Sale is alive and well defended in Europe.
Other regions, certainly scandiwegia, have even stronger consumer protection laws that could see Apple being forced to sell unlocked iPhones to non-phone company distributors. If Apple partners up with a phone company to offer the iPhone, the iPhone also has to be offered without a contract or being locked to a carrier. That is what I am holding out for, an unlocked and supported iPhone (preferably a second generation one) that I can swap my various GSM SIMs into as I travel from country to country.
The most interesting development to watch the first week of November when these iPhones go on sale will be the national lock code. O2, Orange and T-etvas all have systems in multiple European countries. I have several Orange SIMs for different countries, so if I buy my iPhone in France and put my French Orange SIM in it, it should work. The iPhone should continue to work when I go to England and put my UK Orange SIM in the iPhone. Carrier locks are acceptable to regulators, country locks (especially since all the major phone companies became multi-country) are right out. If Apple fucks up on this, expect such a major attack from regulators that they could see their entire product line yanked from sale until the courts get some satisfaction.
It will be interesting to see what other announcements will be made next week at the Apple Expo. Apple could derail all the regulator's threats by offering an unlocked, supported iPhone across Europe for a hefty price.
the AC
I once had UID 492, but left the job and the machine with the cookies that stored the UID. Sometime in 1998 I created my current account, not really caring one way or the other about being 48312. Sometimes when these low UID pissing matches come along, I'd like to participate, but it's not that big a deal. I was there when the site was called "Chips and Dips", and yes, my beard is now completely gray.
/. login, with the UID, username and password, and the email account I used at the time. I tried re-enabling the account, but clearly cmdrtaco waits for no man, and regularly purges the older accounts. You'll get over it.
Recently while cleaning out some old boxes, I found the notebook where I recorded my original
the AC, UID 48312
Yep, you write something on /. and the bastards change what they are doing to prove you wrong. It seems that despite much press recently about the licensing agreement, Deezer is just some guys sharing their pirated MP3 collection while trying to claim legitimacy. Just hours after this story hit /. and I posted a few comments, others have pointed out all the flaws in the service. They are hosted at Free.fr, the second largest ISP in France, but they have no real business relationship with free except for paying for dedicated hosting service.
They dodged hefty fines and a possible jail term by signing an agreement with SACEM, but they still have to clean up their act and obtain the performance rights agreements from other rights groups. All they really did was change their domain name, and put out all the music they've downloaded with random quality.
the AC
All my information here comes from working peripherally around DG Competition, the European Commission's directorate that oversees all things to do with "free markets", monopolies, and the like. I also know a lot of francophone musicians.
... THE GOOD GUYS
SACEM
Hardly.
The really bad.
SACEM was created under the Vichy regime in France in 1941, and headed up by a group of six wealthy supporters and close friends of some of the ministers of the Vichy government. I've almost Godwined this thread at this point, so I'll tread carefully. SACEM was to collect all royalties, but only distribute those royalties to artists who swore affirmation that they were of pure aryan descent. They were supposed to keep all the royalties from non-aryan artists, to compensate the Vichy government who was trying to counter the effects of non-pure music like jazz and swing. Being typical corrupt french bureaucrats, the monies never saw their way to the Vichy government, and at the end of the war the 6 heads of the SACEM escaped the hangmans noose by fleeing to Argentina, Monaco, and Canada. All were extremely wealthy at that point, and the two who were returned to stand trial were able to escape capital punishment by claiming to have kept all the monies from the Vichy government as an act of resistance and patriotism. SACEM was condemned to pay all the monies to the artists and their heirs, but didn't start to do so until 1968. The monies collected from 1941 to 1947 have never been paid to the artists or their heirs. The monies collected for non-aryan French, which includes Corsicans, Tahitians, Algerians, Blacks, Jews, Catalans was only partially paid from 1947 until 1968, when the heads of SACEM were replaced in a political scandal at the end of the de Gaul era. After 1968, SACEM started to live up to its role as protector of artists.
The bad.
SACEM has the de facto monopoly for collecting all monies on French territory for lyricists and composers, from every source possible. Radio stations, concert halls, bars, carnivals, advertising jingles and so on. No songwriter or lyricist can directly get paid from a rave DJ or radio station. All the money has to be collected by SACEM, who deduct administrative costs, then pass on the rest. Until they tangled with Daft Punk, who managed to get some of the rules changed, but the high court of France confirmed that the monopoly served the public interest and that competition would hurt both artists and society at large. It also makes sure artists don't cheat too much on their taxes.
The not so bad.
Daft Punk. Heroes to all French authors, composers, songwriters. Daft Punk was two excellent musicians who wrote all their own works, then sold the tracks directly to DJs for special performances at raves and large events. Since the music was good, radio stations started playing the music, paying standard rates to SACEM. Daft Punk had a string of top 10 hits across Europe in the mid '90s, and got their money from other country's rights management groups except for SACEM. SACEM wanted them to sign over all their rights, Daft Punk took them to court, fought hard all the way to the French equivalent of the Supreme Court, lost most of their arguments, but managed to win some changes in SACEM.
The Cour de Cassation reaffirmed that SACEM's main role was to protect authors, composers and lyricists, and that having multiple competing groups would weaken that role. But Daft Punk won the battles to keep some of their rights, such as internet broadcast, CD-ROM sales (not pressed CDs from labels, CD-ROMs of their live concerts) and a few other new technologies that a lumbering bureaucracy like SACEM is completely unable to keep up with.
Further missives from Brussels based on the Daft Punk ruling, amongst others, have opened up the possibility for copyleft and creative commons style licenses in France, where musicians can release their music for free and not have the SACEM collecting in their name (and then not passing on the mo
The site is hosted in France, where bandwidth is cheap and plentiful. They are supporting the load just fine over here. Getting traffic from New York to Minnesota is the more likely bottleneck rather than France to NY. OTOH, their servers seem to be completely overloaded under the slashdot effect, I think their massive press push has come back to bury them.
I suspect that since they just scored this licensing agreement after a long legal struggle under new french obligatory licensing laws, they haven't had time to upgrade their servers or get better load offset architecture in place. Paying lawyers who saved their asses probably is a high priority for them.
I need to clear up the trollish flamebaiting headline, as the SACEM is nothing like the RIAA. They are the only group that collects royalties for authors and songwriters in France, and by law most of the money collected has to be distributed, despite their legendary corruption and incompetence. The SACEM has been forced to provide licensing to anyone who wants it, and I think Deezer was one of the first test cases for internet distribution. By signing a deal with SACEM, Deezer can now play any and all French artists, and any other country's artists who register with SACEM. This doesn't cover performance royalties, which are separate, all the songs on Deezer are performed by the original author. Since the Wu-Tang Clan (who I just saw on the site to use as an example) has registered with SACEM, ODB and MethodMan will get quarterly or yearly royalty checks directly from SACEM. Bands covering other author's songs can't be played under this agreement, at least according to the French press covering this.
It remains to be seen if Deezer can make enough to cover the royalties they've negotiated with SACEM. They were really over a legal barrel and if they hadn't signed they risked prison time for piracy. They could be a dotbomb2.0 fizzle, since they haven't dropped all the extraneous vowels from their name.
the AC
I'm not going to get into this whole debate on network neutrality, especially in Europe, as I get paid money for my opinions on this subject. But I will talk about the BBC's network. The geeks behind the Beeb's network are a pretty good bunch, who promote all kinds of technology and FLOSS projects on a limited budget.
The BBC have a number of well designed hosting centres to spread around their network usage, and a reasonable number of interconnections to help distribute their traffic for cheap. From their two AS numbers, 2818 and 31459, they have IPv4, v6, and multicast versions of their feeds. They have built out a fairly comprehensive distribution network using their own leased lines, multiple 10Gig Ethernet connections to both carriers and popular peering points around Europe and North America.
Any ISP selling broadband should be present at places like the AmsIX or LoNAP, where they can get a peering with the BBC for no charge. This means not paying for transit charges for the content. The BBC even has multicast streams available, for ISPs clued enough to actually make use of it (which is very few, unfortunately. BT is almost violently opposed to the idea, calling it a direct threat to the monarchy at times).
Any ISP, especially those in Britain, who will have a large number of viewers could set up private peerings at quite a few of the internet hotels spread all over the UK. There must be at least 25 locations where the BBC has internet peering capability. All the major ISPs in Britain like BT and NTL already have private peerings with the BBC.
The BBC only pays for their own interfaces on their own equipment, it is up to the ISPs to add their own capacity on their own kit, not exactly a cheap proposition. 10 GigE interfaces on 6500s or RX16s aren't playthings.
Therein lies the rub. This band of borderline criminal ISPs have tried to create an illegal conspiracy to force the Beeb to pay not only for their equipment upgrades, but also to pay for all the traffic from the BBCs network into their own. BT wants to charge for traffic in both directions, rather than the peak of whichever flow is highest. Ofcom should slap this down, but they are currently fighting the battle to stay relevant and have dropped all other cases before them.
There are moves afoot within the Tory party to destroy OfCom, because even with their very limited powers they've managed to keep BT slightly more honest than an all out unregulated lawless monopoly. Graft and corruption aren't limited to the U.S. political scene.
the AC
In my long and varied professional life, I've met a few people so dedicated to one facet of technology they could be called foo geeks. Compiler geeks. Time geeks. Kernel geeks.
Then, on a hajj to Cupertino, I met some of the people on the Terminal.app team, first time I ever encountered terminal geeks. They knew more about the vagaries of escape codes, character sets, and still managed to make term.app one of the slickest cocoa apps around. Plus it integrates nicely with applescript/automator, so with a script and a little SSH+pre-installed keys magic I can open a bunch of terminals that log into remote systems each with a distinct look. As a security geek, it's wonderfully dangerous.
In 10.5, term.app adds tabs and a few other nice features, like better unicode non-ascii support and alternate character sets.
the AC
7.3% of the population is working directly for the state government!
Quoi? Ohio est maintenant dans France? Ils suivent la modele de la France? Ca reste toujours une espoir pour les americains
the AC
Do I know you? Do we work in the same circus^Woffice?
If not, then my worst suspicions are confirmed, screwed up cabling plans exist everywhere.
the AC
my monomode fibre from home to datacentre is 38Kms, 100GigE will soon be mine
Multicast packets are routable, if the upstream routers support dealing with multicast packets correctly.
mDNS/bonjour/zeroconf detects if a packet has crossed a router by setting the originating TTL to 255. If a multicast packet crosses a router, the TTL is supposed to be decremented, and zeroconf is supposed to ignore the packet as it is no longer considered local. Many suppositions there, as implementations vary.
Worse, starting with a TTL of 255 means that the packets will be able to go anywhere on the internet where multicast packets can get routed. Better protected carriers will drop multicast packets with TTLs greater than 64 or 128, specifically to limit mDNS/zeroconf traffic while allowing reasonable traffic to flow. Most ISPs don't have the technical competence to deal with multicast, so they just block it, which will limit any spread of an mDNS worm.
However, just because mDNS/zeroconf will ignore packets with TTL less that 255, doesn't mean that a buffer overflow bug isn't being treated by the protocol stack. Take a wait and see attitude on this disclosure, as it appears to be an extortion attempt rather than something from legitimate sources.
the AC
Over the long term, a CS degree will serve you better than an IT certificate. If you want to be the guy designing new protocols or designing new computers, follow CS (or Electrical Engineering). If you want to be the guy configuring routers and swapping hard drives, reaching your maximum potential a few years out of school with no further advancement, go for IT.
IT guys can jump from job to job much easier, because IT jobs are almost McJobs at this point. But if you value having a longer career, stick with the more solid CS or EE degrees.
Whenever I'm working with people on complex projects, I can tell who took the time to complete an advanced degree, and who took the easy route with IT certificates. The people with more education will react differently when faced with an unknown, they can draw on a much broader base of knowledge picked up in Uni. IT guys who learned in an accelerated Vo-Tech school will hit the manuals hoping the manufacturer solved the problem for them and there is some hidden command to make things work.
If you have the marks to get into a good 4 or 5 year CS or EE program, jump at the opportunity. While in a longer program, you can always pick up a few IT certs during your internships or work experience programs the last two years of school. You'll then be just as employable out of Uni as the IT guys, but in the long run your background will take you much further.
the AC
Those that employ Hammer-Engineers and Screwdriver-Engineers, as opposed to those who employ carpenters.
t s with 20 years of experience building houses in exactly one day. Assholes!
Snarfed, with thanks.
I saw this analogy this morning and was able to use it in a meeting a few hours later. Not that it made any difference to the client, who has taken clue resistance to an art form. They didn't just want a hammer-engineer, they were upset they couldn't find a dozen yellow-handled-2.3Kg-hammer-engineering-specialis
I'll probably use your phrase more often in the future.
The rest of your post was pretty good, too.
the AC
You don't really know what a true Jack of All Trades is, if you think there is one for IT. IT is only one trade.
In the IT world, the job title with a wide range of IT skills as you described is called a Systems Administrator. If you have some networking and telecoms experience on top of that, you can call yourself a Network Administrator. This is what corporations, large and small, hire. When larger companies need a specialist to perform a highly complicated job, say setting up a new windoze AD domain, they find someone who can do that job internally and task them with it. Small shops have JoATs out of necessity, but there is no real job growth, adventure, or chance to make it big. Your best bet is to network and find some startup with potential, as everyone at the startup will be performing every necessary job because they can't afford specialists.
I've met some Jacks of All Trades in my life, and they had one thing in common, they were willing to work in remote locations and they had one extremely valuable skill on top of the breadth of other skills. Ex-military for the most part, having learned a few extreme skills during their hitch, then combining those skills with many others. Deep sea underwater construction, land mine clearance, petroleum exploration, or supporting relief missions in trouble spots.
For a true Jack, IT (all of IT combined) is just one trade. Everything from compiling kernels, rebuilding power supplies, setting up satellite communication networks, fixing email servers, twiddling databases, configuring routers are all rolled up as just a single skill, a bullet point in a long list of other trades. When they are in a remote location and faced with technical problems, they overcome and move on. No corporation with an IT department ever needs someone like that.
In addition to IT skills, add to that a whole bunch of real world skills.
Be a pilot, able to fly both fixed and rotary wing craft. Be able to file international flight plans, deal with airport and fueling fees, and negotiate customs at airports. Many organisations want aircraft repair skills as well, for jobs far from civilization.
Drive a truck, one of the big ones for hauling 40 tonnes of goods, and the ability to get the truck across national borders. Diesel repair skills go along with that.
Welding seems to be a necessary skill for every JoAT I've met, along with some basic metalworking, carpentry, and electrical. 19" racks may be plentiful and in good repair in data centres where you work, but in the field you probably have to lash up a rack and cooling systems from the materials at hand.
Press relations, diplomacy, accounting, and a whole host of other trades that will allow you to work autonomously are necessary.
On top of all these other skills, every Jack I've ever known (and a few Jills), had one extreme specialisation. Doctors and nurses, ordinance disposal, undersea welding; each one required a tremendous amount of specialised learning, usually at the beginning of their career. They then added onto that base many other skills necessary for jobs that take them far from cubicle farms and obnoxious managers.
The myth of a Jack of All Trades also being limited to Master of None possibly stems from some hack Sci-Fi writer in the early 1980s, and just doesn't exist. If you don't have one skill completely in depth, abandon any hope of ever being hired for your breadth of skills.
If you want a job where your JoAT skills can help, you have to move completely outside of corporate IT life. Look at Medecins Sans Frontiers for an idea of what a real life JoAT needs to know. They often need support personnel for their medical missions, volunteers with a stipend. They won't even consider you without IT skills, radio communications, truck driving, repair of medical equipment, multiple languages, and a knowledge of security in hostile environments. You can learn some of it as you grow into the role, every ex-MSFer I've known swears it was
I had a googleChat call this morning from a friend in New Jersey, whose only internet access is through an EDGE AT&T mobile phone. It was the first time we were able to get video working, albeit with a huge amount of delay. He had just noticed his speeds went from 20-50kbps to around 200kbps, and latency had dropped from 500 mSec to around 200 mSec.
So this Apple partnership has had a positive outcome for all AT&T customers, but it also highlights their network was artificially crippled up until yesterday. The NJ PUC will almost certainly get a written complaint about capping a service sold as being capable of much higher rates. AT&T had put in writing that his problems were entirely with his phone, and there were no other complaints from anyone in the Manhattan/northNJ area.
the AC
This was a spirited discussion, although Kneuer intentionally missed the point about the un-auctioned 2.4GHz band. Knowing enough (far too many, really) economists, this is a fairly common tactic, to provide responses that completely miss the point and allow you to repeat your opinion ad infinitum ad nauseum. The current slang for this seems to be "talking point". Kneuer knows that the 2.4GHz wifi market is booming because of lack of regulation (I'm talking forcing a particular modulation scheme or licensing, not FCC/ART/TUV limits on power and antennas), but he can't admit it, so he re-iterates his "talking point" about not regulating the monopolies. I'm pretty sure this was quite intentional, Kneuer was a lobbyist far too long for that to have been a mis-understanding.
the 700 MHz band, by nature of its frequency, can readily be a more long-distance transmission medium than 2.4 GHz spectrum could ever hope to be (Watt for Watt)
700 MHz can go longer distances, and is less vulnerable to the line-of-sight problems of the microwave frequencies of WiFi, but that is not what makes it interesting. 700 MHz can penetrate walls, windows, trees, and other structures with greater ease than higher frequencies. This means that municipal 700 MHz WiFi/WiMax local distribution could become a reality, one antenna covering a few hundred houses within a 500 meter radius would not require external boxes for each house as with the current 2.4GHz WiFi setups. Although the 65 MHz bandwidth being talked about in the speech would only be enough for 10-12 WiMax channels with a maximum throughput of 6 Mbps each.
The 2.4 GHz band was chosen because it is completely unusable for longer distance communications. Water vapor absorbs too much energy, so concrete, brick, trees, rain, fog, all block 2.4 GHz signals, and degrade 5.4-5.8 GHz signals. The worst absorption comes at 22 and 60 GHz.
The WRC/ITU-R hasn't discussed opening a new worldwide band, the 700 MHz spectrum would be for the U.S. market only. There would be no economies of scale with only the U.S. market for cheap wireless gadgets. The U.S. only accounts for about 10% of the worldwide electronic gadget market. Here in ETSIland, any reclaimed spectrum would be different for each country.
This is the main reason WiMax has the ability to run on any frequency, because there isn't going to be another worldwide lightly regulated band like 2.4 GHz for the foreseeable future. The WARC (predecessor to the ITU-R/WRC) first proposed the 2.4 GHz band be opened up for general public use worldwide in 1979, after almost a decade of committee wrangling. Once the band was decided (because 2.4 GHz is the most useless band in the spectrum for a whole range of technical/physical reasons), it still took from 1979 to 1993 to agree to push national regulators to free up the band from existing licenses, most countries had it reserved for military use or it was unused. Just opening up the band as unlicensed created whole industries like cordless phones, baby monitors, with WiFi coming along much later.
My conclusions:... There's money to be had for the US government in them thar spectrum
Governments aren't concerned about the revenues an auction would bring in, small change compared to the money to be earned from sales tax revenues and new industries from something like WiFi. This is all about protecting the revenues of the incumbent duopolies that have taken over the American market. If the government holds an auction, an incumbent can grab and hold the spectrum, preventing any "free market" competition, and forcing U.S. citizens to pay obscene amounts of money if they want access to the internet. The government limits access for physical media, granting right-of-way easements for fiber/cable/copper phone lines, which create an artificial scarcity and keeps profit margins healthy. Licensing spectrum to one auction winner also creates scarcity, and keeps any competitors from innovating. Look at the innovation in the 2.4 GHz space to see what happens without auctions or licensing, but Kneuer is paid to ignore that.
the AC
Do you want a serious answer? Well, I'm going to write one anyways.
There are basically two kinds of guys in the internet porn industry. The serious pornographers who can convince all the scarily slutty women to get dirty for a small amount of cash, and the webhosting guys who realise they need some higher margin content to pay the bills.
The pornographers don't particularly have much technical skills, at least not for setting up websites and payment processing schemes. They may have tremendous photoshop skills, because the women they shoot tend to have a heinous amount of scars, tattoos and piercings. The porn producers are always looking for ways to set up web sites to make money, but they tend to not have much money to invest in development.
The website guys are the ones who have built up a business with a few hundred or thousand web servers, with all kinds of low margin mom-and-pop static websites. They can code in Ruby or PHP, but can't really live off margins of a few euros per month per site or a few thousand euros for web design job. After a year or two, they come to the realisation they're not really earning the big money like founding a new google. That is the point when they put their morals aside and decide they could really make some good money from building porn websites. What they are missing is social skills to convince women to fuck for money in front of a camera.
Put the two sides together, and you have a fairly good model of the online porn industry today. The "intentional pornographers" make the content, the "accidental pornographers" make and run the sites. The buzzword is "Ecosystem"
the AC
You need to go try a macbook pro some time. The right-click function by placing two fingers anywhere on the trackpad at the same time is quite useful. Better than any two button mouse, IMNSHO.
I had used the MBP trackpad with two finger input for about 30 seconds when I realised I could never go back to the old ways. One finger for moving the cursor around like normal, two fingers for scrolling (horizontal as well as vertical). Only one finger or none on the trackpad with the mouse button is a left click (or drag), two fingers on the track pad is a right click. If you right click and it brings up a large menu, keeping two fingers on the track pad makes you scroll through the list like with a scroll wheel, lifting one finger means you go right back to a regular cursor to select in that right-click popup.
It sounds a bit complicated, but it literally takes seconds to figure out what is going on.
Now, whenever I'm on an older mac or any wintel laptop, I really miss the MBP trackpad. It's a major step backwards.
the AC
Google for 'sparc ide dma problem' and see how many hits you get
I don't have to google for that, hell, there are probably a few of my own rants in there. I lived that nightmare a long, long time ago. You've opened some old wounds I thought were closed for good.
Sun's solution, eventually? There was a patch in Solaris 8 and early releases of 9 that would disable DMA on ultra5&10 models, which made an already slow machine much slower if there was any disk I/O. Somewhere around the 3rd or 4th release of Sol9, they just put the patch into the system files, and wiped out any possibility of DMA. Don't think of using any ultra as a file server or for any task that might need the disk. If you can cache it all in memory, then those little machines still run fine.
So don't blame Apple because a chip provider screwed everyone over who used their cheapest part. The first batches of those chips didn't have DMA problems, but all the main runs weren't QA'ed except by end users.
the AC