Being a former employee of Global Crossing, (and not under any kind of NDA =) I can tell you they engineered their network to run at no higher than 50-60 percent capacity during peak utilization. Aggressive sales people have been known to oversell a pop, but the guys on the access planning team there run a tight ship, and have some of the best turnup techs in the business.
Ignore what you've seen in the news about GX, that's upper management bullshit. They still have a quality IP network with quality engineers. Overselling is a way to cut costs, but when you consider how much they paid for that network, it's still there, and it still has, for lack of a better term, a metric assload of capacity.
Incidentally, a good way to spot an oversold pop is to measure throughput and jitter from at least three to four hops out. This clears your pop and gets into backbone links. Another thing to keep an eye on is what those same 3-4 hop measurements do on days when the network is really sucking. Wild variations on your uplink or just beyond it are good indications of routers having a hard time handling network flaps, or are carrying saturated links.
Pay attention to your nearest backbone links. When you traceroute out, you'll see a handful of common pipes, all the time. Any given POP should have at least two egress paths, if not more for major metro areas.
Keep on eye on big media events, like the release of a Star Wars or LOTR trailer. Those days usually set records for network utilization, and are good days to eyeball performance.
Find a handful of hosts that sit just outside or on various peering points, and test to those. Get too far beyond the peers, and you start running into capacity issues on other networks. Test edge to edge, for what edges you know exist. Your ISP is only responsible for performance on their backbone.
Yes, I'm *that* billn.
Take a hint from the Phoenix LUG.
on
Mega-Geek March?
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· Score: 2
A similiar opportunity arose recently in Phoenix, with members of the Phoenix LUG community strategizing and attending. The number of attendees wasn't huge, but it got some attention. The fact that there was an appointed designate and that the community presented themselves well (ie, not as the teeming horde) went a long way toward promoting Open Source.
It may not have changed much in the short term, certainly, but it started both sides off on even footing, and that first impression was the most important one.
Won't happen. At least, not in the US. You wouldn't spot this until late in life, via behavioral observation. In order to catch it at a point where you can adapt to it, you'd have to do gene mapping as an infant child. The only way that works well is to make it compulsory or convince parents that it's a good idea.
For all our arrogance, Americans are some of the stupidest and fearful people on the planet. Thank you, pop culture.
So yet another thing for American's to use to absolve themselves of responsibility for screwing up. Whatever. I say bullshit.
Another way to look at these results is to say that certain people are genetically predisposed to react *more severely* to certain forms of stimuli and treatment at an early age where personality traits and reactions are *still forming*.
This does nothing to change the fact that parents use the TV, PS2, and Internet as babysitters, and then cry foul when Johnny can't read and/or has low self esteem, or Johnny gets in trouble for hacking pron sites because they've raised their child to believe everything has a reset switch and a save game option.
Your children can and will be used against you in a court of law.
I've got a pair of Cornea MP800's on my desk, 18.1 inch LCDs. Each is powered from an AC->DC adaptor that outputs 12v, 5A, at about 60W. Each one sports hardware mounting capabilities on the rear, which would lend well to a sturdy wall mount.
Actually, I think he's referring to something like a Particle Projection Cannon, or a Lightning Gun (high voltage discharge across an ionized path of air). Hellloo Battletech.
It's out of vogue because who says so? If it's no longer the fad, that means it's retro! Just like those of us who still love 80s music, so shall we carry on the tradition of remembering the days MS sucked.. hey, wait..
On some points, I'm inclined to agree with you, but. Us Americans are in a capitalist society, and profiteers will capitalize on anything to milk more money out of the masses. It's one thing for government to have access to data about me. In some cases, it's a necessery evil.
When it comes to advertising and marketers, I fall back to the basics: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Notably, that liberty part. Why should I have to waste my free time wading through ads I may not be interested in? If I'm paying all the costs to maintain my cell phone, why should anyone be freely allowed to send ads to it? What if I'm not interested in geophysically targeted marketing? Why should I have to turn my phone off to avoid it, when I may be expecting an important call, or an unexpected emergency call comes through?
Overall, I thought the article to be fairly bland, and frankly, rather alarmist.
I think you might be a little on the paranoid side. Were you the first person to report a motorcycle accident within the first few minutes of it happening? Dispatch operators tend to be in near proximity to each other, and likely have some form of information sharing, if not simply overhearing the call next to them.
For you paranoid people, what's to stop the ATM's from associating the bill numbers with you and then tracking your retail cash spending through your greenbacks' serial numbers?
Ever run a cash drawer? Unless you scan every bill that comes in and goes out, you'd have better luck tracking VD in a dance club.
Say I wander into a Cold Stone Creamery for a bowl of French Vanilla with blueberries. I pay with a 10. and get back a five and pitch the one in the tip jar because the girl behind the counter is cute. The guy in line behind me pays with a 20, and gets my 10 as part of his change.
Unless whatever bill I hand across the counter is scanned as I do it, and likewise, my change scanned as it comes back, how will [insert big brother of choice here] know I spent that 10 bucks on ice cream, and not next door at Fascinations, on a pack of condoms and some strawberry flavored lube?
"By the sound of your own report, you've not even discussed this (or tried to discuss this) with the Network Admin woman, and instead have gone straight to your boss. That, I'm afraid, is both foolish and rude. No two ways about it."
Slow down there, Mr. Manners. He did exactly what was right, from his position as a developer. He informed to the next level of HIS chain of command. That's exactly right for someone in his position. It would have actually been worse if he'd crossed the lines and went straight to Engineering. She'd have much more cause for complaint, then.
The problem lies in that the person in charge of 'network' engineering is a certified 'systems' engineer. I think it's safe to say that Microsoft doesn't place enough emphasis on network fundamentals when it comes to issuing MCSE certificates. Even exposing the network layers via the MS platform generally requires you to shell out some bucks for tools to do it.
Obviously you haven't seen all the cool extensions things like Outlook apply to the header space for things like layout and font control. I can hold 2000 emails in a standard unix mailbox where an Outlook server would store 100. (You pedantic types can eat me, it's a rough estimate, however true.)
A refurbished laptop would work excellent for this. Even an old one. Hell, I gotta 133mhz sitting here. Gimme 50 bucks for it. I'll even do the install.
Hm. No, I think I'll use it for a firewall. But you get the idea.
Make no mistake about it: Kevin Mitnick is a criminal, and a repeat offender.
The last time he got caught, it's because he was STUPID. He stole credit card info, and BRAGGED about it. He is not some innocent script kiddie who thought DoS attacks were harmless.
Before anyone gets off on a 'Free Kevin' rant, keep this at the forefront: He was tried, convicted, and put in jail on more than one occasion. He was released, and then violated his parole.
That said, "Fuck Kevin". Don't get your grassroots panties in a wad over some seemingly oppressive violation of his rights until you've read the entire mess of data on the matter.
LaserQuest only has one center in the LA area, in Fullerton, not too far from Disneyland. They've got some decent players there, but excessive pot smoking tends to slow their players down. LQ's national tournments have matches that'll have you wandering out of games feeling like you've run a marathon. It's rumoured the Denver teams even go running together during practice season.
Sad but true, we're big enough geeks we play laser tag competitively. There are some cool factors to consider: 1: There's centers all over the US and Europe. You can make a decent hobby out of travelling from center to center and beating down on other players. 2: Regional and National tournaments are in different centers each year, kinda like the Olympics. It's a great excuse for a couple trips out of town to drink with a crazy batch of folks. 3: You're shooting lasers at each other. How cool is THAT? The technical discussions about pack tech are interesting. LQ uses activator buttons made by the same company that made the nifty Java Rings that were floating around a few years back (Dallas Semiconductor). 4: It's a real sport. We can sit and shoot the shit about tournaments, team line ups, tactics, strategy, beer, chicks, whatever. Questers are an interesting batch of people. 5: A decent number of us players are geeks in the IT field. There's even a newsgroup, dedicated IRC server and a few team home pages floating around. (Email me if you're bored or interested). I'm a network engineer myself (unemployed, at that, hire me), I know one of the guys in Fullerton works for Blizzard. There's even a center in Silicon Valley, right across the street from an SGI office. 6: It's fairly cheap, compared to paintball. Most centers offer regular events for members (cheaper game play, as well), in addition to special holiday events. 7: If you have kids, you are instantly The Man for taking them. Beats the crap outta Barney themes for birthday parties. 8: Chicks dig guys with fast reflexes and physical coordination. =) If you've never seen someone dodge a beam of light, you will.
Heh. Springs just posted their NAC team recently. I'm team captain for Mesa this year, myself. =) I've only been to Springs once, for 2000 regionals. Were you there for that?
If you think there's no physical aspect to it, wander down for a member's night, or worse yet, a NAC team practice. NAC teams are faster and meaner than some paintball crews I'm seen. Any game you can walk out of dripping sweat with the rest of the players screaming your name, is a good one. Good quester's play like they have radar. They know what's going on around them at all times, and have some seriously quick reaction times.
Re:Not exactly outdoor, but out of the house
on
Geek Outdoor Hobbies?
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Slashdot Mirror
Being a former employee of Global Crossing, (and not under any kind of NDA =) I can tell you they engineered their network to run at no higher than 50-60 percent capacity during peak utilization. Aggressive sales people have been known to oversell a pop, but the guys on the access planning team there run a tight ship, and have some of the best turnup techs in the business.
Ignore what you've seen in the news about GX, that's upper management bullshit. They still have a quality IP network with quality engineers. Overselling is a way to cut costs, but when you consider how much they paid for that network, it's still there, and it still has, for lack of a better term, a metric assload of capacity.
Incidentally, a good way to spot an oversold pop is to measure throughput and jitter from at least three to four hops out. This clears your pop and gets into backbone links. Another thing to keep an eye on is what those same 3-4 hop measurements do on days when the network is really sucking. Wild variations on your uplink or just beyond it are good indications of routers having a hard time handling network flaps, or are carrying saturated links.
Pay attention to your nearest backbone links. When you traceroute out, you'll see a handful of common pipes, all the time. Any given POP should have at least two egress paths, if not more for major metro areas.
Keep on eye on big media events, like the release of a Star Wars or LOTR trailer. Those days usually set records for network utilization, and are good days to eyeball performance.
Find a handful of hosts that sit just outside or on various peering points, and test to those. Get too far beyond the peers, and you start running into capacity issues on other networks. Test edge to edge, for what edges you know exist. Your ISP is only responsible for performance on their backbone.
Yes, I'm *that* billn.
A similiar opportunity arose recently in Phoenix, with members of the Phoenix LUG community strategizing and attending. The number of attendees wasn't huge, but it got some attention. The fact that there was an appointed designate and that the community presented themselves well (ie, not as the teeming horde) went a long way toward promoting Open Source.
It may not have changed much in the short term, certainly, but it started both sides off on even footing, and that first impression was the most important one.
Won't happen. At least, not in the US. You wouldn't spot this until late in life, via behavioral observation. In order to catch it at a point where you can adapt to it, you'd have to do gene mapping as an infant child. The only way that works well is to make it compulsory or convince parents that it's a good idea.
For all our arrogance, Americans are some of the stupidest and fearful people on the planet. Thank you, pop culture.
So yet another thing for American's to use to absolve themselves of responsibility for screwing up. Whatever. I say bullshit.
Another way to look at these results is to say that certain people are genetically predisposed to react *more severely* to certain forms of stimuli and treatment at an early age where personality traits and reactions are *still forming*.
This does nothing to change the fact that parents use the TV, PS2, and Internet as babysitters, and then cry foul when Johnny can't read and/or has low self esteem, or Johnny gets in trouble for hacking pron sites because they've raised their child to believe everything has a reset switch and a save game option.
Your children can and will be used against you in a court of law.
See, what they need is a nice digital projecter. Leave the computer inside, but output the screen contents across the sail for easy viewing.
I've got a pair of Cornea MP800's on my desk, 18.1 inch LCDs. Each is powered from an AC->DC adaptor that outputs 12v, 5A, at about 60W. Each one sports hardware mounting capabilities on the rear, which would lend well to a sturdy wall mount.
More info here: http://www.cctvproducts.com/cormplcdtft1.html
Yer an Anonymous Coward, you'll take it and LIKE it. Besides, it doesn't affect you, now, does it?
Actually, I think he's referring to something like a Particle Projection Cannon, or a Lightning Gun (high voltage discharge across an ionized path of air). Hellloo Battletech.
It's out of vogue because who says so? If it's no longer the fad, that means it's retro! Just like those of us who still love 80s music, so shall we carry on the tradition of remembering the days MS sucked.. hey, wait..
Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. At least he's got a pair big enough to put his name to his post. =)
On some points, I'm inclined to agree with you, but. Us Americans are in a capitalist society, and profiteers will capitalize on anything to milk more money out of the masses. It's one thing for government to have access to data about me. In some cases, it's a necessery evil.
When it comes to advertising and marketers, I fall back to the basics: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Notably, that liberty part. Why should I have to waste my free time wading through ads I may not be interested in? If I'm paying all the costs to maintain my cell phone, why should anyone be freely allowed to send ads to it? What if I'm not interested in geophysically targeted marketing? Why should I have to turn my phone off to avoid it, when I may be expecting an important call, or an unexpected emergency call comes through?
Overall, I thought the article to be fairly bland, and frankly, rather alarmist.
I think you might be a little on the paranoid side. Were you the first person to report a motorcycle accident within the first few minutes of it happening? Dispatch operators tend to be in near proximity to each other, and likely have some form of information sharing, if not simply overhearing the call next to them.
For you paranoid people, what's to stop the ATM's from associating the bill numbers with you and then tracking your retail cash spending through your greenbacks' serial numbers?
Ever run a cash drawer? Unless you scan every bill that comes in and goes out, you'd have better luck tracking VD in a dance club.
Say I wander into a Cold Stone Creamery for a bowl of French Vanilla with blueberries. I pay with a 10. and get back a five and pitch the one in the tip jar because the girl behind the counter is cute. The guy in line behind me pays with a 20, and gets my 10 as part of his change.
Unless whatever bill I hand across the counter is scanned as I do it, and likewise, my change scanned as it comes back, how will [insert big brother of choice here] know I spent that 10 bucks on ice cream, and not next door at Fascinations, on a pack of condoms and some strawberry flavored lube?
"By the sound of your own report, you've not even discussed this (or tried to discuss this) with the Network Admin woman, and instead have gone straight to your boss. That, I'm afraid, is both foolish and rude. No two ways about it."
Slow down there, Mr. Manners. He did exactly what was right, from his position as a developer. He informed to the next level of HIS chain of command. That's exactly right for someone in his position. It would have actually been worse if he'd crossed the lines and went straight to Engineering. She'd have much more cause for complaint, then.
The problem lies in that the person in charge of 'network' engineering is a certified 'systems' engineer. I think it's safe to say that Microsoft doesn't place enough emphasis on network fundamentals when it comes to issuing MCSE certificates. Even exposing the network layers via the MS platform generally requires you to shell out some bucks for tools to do it.
I'm not playing your Microsoft server mind games!
Obviously you haven't seen all the cool extensions things like Outlook apply to the header space for things like layout and font control. I can hold 2000 emails in a standard unix mailbox where an Outlook server would store 100. (You pedantic types can eat me, it's a rough estimate, however true.)
No fancy serial port crap. No goofy controllers.
Crontab.
mpg123.
Appropriate sound card drivers.
A decently loud speaker setup.
A refurbished laptop would work excellent for this. Even an old one. Hell, I gotta 133mhz sitting here. Gimme 50 bucks for it. I'll even do the install.
Hm. No, I think I'll use it for a firewall. But you get the idea.
Is it possible he might have waived that right? Or under some circumstance of state or federal law, as a repeat offender, it didn't apply?
Make no mistake about it: Kevin Mitnick is a criminal, and a repeat offender.
The last time he got caught, it's because he was STUPID. He stole credit card info, and BRAGGED about it. He is not some innocent script kiddie who thought DoS attacks were harmless.
Before anyone gets off on a 'Free Kevin' rant, keep this at the forefront: He was tried, convicted, and put in jail on more than one occasion. He was released, and then violated his parole.
That said, "Fuck Kevin". Don't get your grassroots panties in a wad over some seemingly oppressive violation of his rights until you've read the entire mess of data on the matter.
Oh man. I don't wanna move to California, but I bet I could clean house in that kind of environment. =D
LaserQuest only has one center in the LA area, in Fullerton, not too far from Disneyland. They've got some decent players there, but excessive pot smoking tends to slow their players down. LQ's national tournments have matches that'll have you wandering out of games feeling like you've run a marathon. It's rumoured the Denver teams even go running together during practice season.
Sad but true, we're big enough geeks we play laser tag competitively. There are some cool factors to consider:
1: There's centers all over the US and Europe. You can make a decent hobby out of travelling from center to center and beating down on other players.
2: Regional and National tournaments are in different centers each year, kinda like the Olympics. It's a great excuse for a couple trips out of town to drink with a crazy batch of folks.
3: You're shooting lasers at each other. How cool is THAT? The technical discussions about pack tech are interesting. LQ uses activator buttons made by the same company that made the nifty Java Rings that were floating around a few years back (Dallas Semiconductor).
4: It's a real sport. We can sit and shoot the shit about tournaments, team line ups, tactics, strategy, beer, chicks, whatever. Questers are an interesting batch of people.
5: A decent number of us players are geeks in the IT field. There's even a newsgroup, dedicated IRC server and a few team home pages floating around. (Email me if you're bored or interested). I'm a network engineer myself (unemployed, at that, hire me), I know one of the guys in Fullerton works for Blizzard. There's even a center in Silicon Valley, right across the street from an SGI office.
6: It's fairly cheap, compared to paintball. Most centers offer regular events for members (cheaper game play, as well), in addition to special holiday events.
7: If you have kids, you are instantly The Man for taking them. Beats the crap outta Barney themes for birthday parties.
8: Chicks dig guys with fast reflexes and physical coordination. =) If you've never seen someone dodge a beam of light, you will.
Heh. Springs just posted their NAC team recently. I'm team captain for Mesa this year, myself. =) I've only been to Springs once, for 2000 regionals. Were you there for that?
If you think there's no physical aspect to it, wander down for a member's night, or worse yet, a NAC team practice. NAC teams are faster and meaner than some paintball crews I'm seen. Any game you can walk out of dripping sweat with the rest of the players screaming your name, is a good one. Good quester's play like they have radar. They know what's going on around them at all times, and have some seriously quick reaction times.
Wow. My own first post. =D
Laser Tag. LaserQuest, to be specific. Good cardio, lotta fun. Ranks up there with paintball on my list of favorites.