I fully believe that if the city didn't want to have the vehicle movement held hostage, they should NOT have signed the contract. It's now the City of Hoboken's liability. I hope the voters figure out the stupidity of the mayor's staff, and whomever the city's counsel is and act accordingly.
This is not rocket science, nor is it tough law. Pay the bill or the software, that your operation depends on (just like your freaking light bill) goes dead. Whatever you've done that depends on the software (or your freaking light bill) no longer works, and you're liable for what no longer works, or subsequently (actually consequentially) relies on that fact.
So be prepared to pay, or be denied use of it. Pretty darn simple. I applaud them. The taxpayers should act accordingly. The vehicle owners should, too. The person that signed the deal ought to pay the bill or be prepared to justify why not in a method that satisfies all parties. These are business processes. Stop one, and the entire chain becomes corrupted and ceases to function. So they SHOULD PAY THE BILL. Whew. I'm ok now.
A legal phrase is often used, "in lieu of liquidated damages" that applies there directly.
Don't do the deal if you don't want things to stop freaking cold as frozen carbon dioxide should you decide not to pay. This gives me an exercise-able lean on what you do. I think it's a great thing. Don't like it?
Then don't blow your integrity by purposefully not honoring the contract.
This is very simple. The city shouldn't have signed the deal, in my estimation. And I 100% sympathize with the developers. It's not extortion- it's an inured obligation. There is a huge difference. The ends-justify-the-means is bad policy and poor integrity. It's also cowardly.
Because that's what the deal was. NOT paying is theft.
I can't tell you the number of jobs we've done where we didn't get paid. Some required litigation. Others required logic bombs. When they litigated, we've won 100% of the cases, and counterclaimed for legal fees and won 100% of those, too. I don't like litigation. It sucks. So does NOT PAYING YOUR LEGAL OBLIGATIONS.
We get paid for what we do. We get to PICK OUR OWN CHARITIES. And we do charity work, about 4% of what we do each year goes to 501c(3) and 501c(6). We picked them, and they like us. That's how it works.
Like the garage itself, this software company has costs, too. There are wages, benefits, a building, taxes, and everything else that a business needs to survive.
It matters not if the city can afford it-- they agreed to it, then threw the guys out. Now it's a matter for civil litigation.
Who needs to be responsible for this gaffe? The city attorneys. I'll be I know what law school they went to, too.
Consider the recasting of things like the Darwin/kernel source back to something similar to OSS, the virtualization bits, easier to use Leopard, and so on.
Jobs isn't the techno leader in the industry, just like Gates isn't (he's the best follower).
The innovation that comes from Apple happens in fits and spurts, mostly to augment the fall buying season. I think there's more up their sleeves.
Like it had little compatibility with other apps, had memory and file limitations, and had an ugly GUI.
Maybe OSS'ing it might improve it, but by the post, you'd think the Rapture was upon us. It's not. This code will take a lot of work to make right, It was developed in an era where code wasn't checked much for array bounds, and if memory served (I used it and kind of liked it) it had little code for large files (pics and video) and had no knowledge of a number of varying kinds of file types for linking, importation, or even simple access.
And so, although it had some cute features and reasonable speed, we through out hundreds of licenses. Pity. But it's going to take a lot of freaking work to make it useful again.
What incredible hubris to believe that Microsoft's cadre of bounds-checking idiots could write their way out of a wet paper bag. Sure, Microsoft tests code. And we've found enormous root-rendering bugs in it. One of them is published.
This is all PR. And the NSA thing was a joke, dude. See my other reply: most of the people that go to BH and DefCon are NOT coders, but will probably try it. Some are very clever. A few have hacked/. and are on their way to try to F me up personally for sliming them. Most of them, however, are security officers or functionaries in various corps that are there because they're paranoid, not because they like the 115F Las Vegas Sun. And a few are nice people, good coders, good hackers and bretheren. Most are not. That's why CMP bought DefCon.
You're of the mistaken belief that all the people that go to BH and DefCon are genius, code-cracking hackers. They're not. Instead, you get a whole bunch of wannabees and lots of security officers that are scared shitless of their next attack.
So MS gets to tease these guys, make them think that they're tough stuff, and it's all hilarious. Sorry you didn't catch that.
Half these guys will discover that Vista has not one WGA-like heartbeat responder, but several. Trace the protocols. I did.
Consider: Microsoft gets to ride free hacks this time-->before the OS gets released. All that nice work, and they don't spend a dime. Interesting also because the release they gave out isn't a 'community-style' release. It makes one wonder if there's a 'Vista-call-home' component to it, too. Might be nice to know which of the coders actually tried to boot the thing, and then note their IP for future reference (or maybe to turn over to the NSA).
Still, with many noted reviewers in full belief that it's swiss cheese, it ought to be fun to see who eats it with crackers.
Social security implies that there is a civic cause that captures those that need help. What kind of help varies from place to place and culture.
If you vandalize, you steal.
If you steal data, it's theft.
If you produce processes that damage data, then it's irresponsible.
All these and more are the crux of damage ITFA.
Gandhi's path to nonviolence and shaking off the British used persuasive mechanisms to bring about change. Shaking off a colonial power is an admirable objective.
Examine for a moment, the basis for income: you can be a capitalist, or a wage slave, or produce your own resources and barter them. There are few other options beyond simple self-sufficiency.
In the case of being a capitalist, you make capital work for you, increasing both capital, while taking profits and using them for sustenance.
In the case of being a wage slave, someone else is the capitalist, and you're contributing labor to them in exchange for wages.
In the case of bartering, no currency is used, save that the currency is the value of labor and other tangible/intangible items that are traded for needed items.
In the case of the self-sufficient (wholly so), interactions are nominal at best. No investments are made, no wages earned, nothing bartered, just a plot of ground ostensibly to grow things on and make things from what's grown in one way or another.
Given these cases, social constructs become inevitable and desirable. The loyalty you imply to an employer is that you won't steal or harm his items, just as you wouldn't do the same to others. Call it the golden rule. If your employer outsources jobs, that's a decision made on the merits of capital/profits conservation and perhaps (or not) a wise one for the employer. The wage slave then must find a new master.
The definition of integrity: Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code.
It also means that there is no differentiation between people. If you don't murder, you don't just not murder people you don't like. Instead, you don't murder anyone or let someone else do that in your stead, or while you stand aside and merely look on at the killing.
So a squishy morality lets people damage their employer's items. I've worked for others for 20 years, and was a wage slave. But no matter how ugly, bad, mistreating, or whatever I thought about my employers (and I did), it was not an excuse to lose my integrity, and stoop to their basis of evil. You need to know about the relationships you get into. Sometimes it's difficult to judge in an interview. But the course of action is very simple: you have a bargain that you made, and you either live up to it or leave. I had to live up to numerous unfair bargains, and I endeavor not to put people into such a bind. Unbalanced? Seemingly. In the end, the best revenge is living well.
What you suggest is both onerous and immoral. I RTFA, and it was a lightweight 101.
The response/parent suggested that misbehavior was justified when management does bad things. It's not. And it never will be in a civilized society. That's why we're civilized and not unconstrained to do what we want.
Is it human nature to be vandals and thieves? Yes. And murderers and rapists, too.
If an employer does bad things to you, leave. Nothing chains you to them-- although people try to rationalize all sorts of bad behavior based on their belief that somehow the world owes them a living, and in their world, this employer specifically. It doesn't.
Treatment isn't a relevant defense against theft, damage, and so on. If you're not treated well, then either find a way to get treated better or leave.
This isn't a world where the ends justify the means (sorry Bush Administration).
Yes, business practices suck. But it doesn't justify boorish and/or illegal behavior. Then you're stooping as low as they are.
It's like the adage where if you believe in an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, everyone will need dentures and seeing-eye dogs.
1) I can do it myself, why the hell do I need RH when they're expensive; Ubuntu is a convenient Sarge; SUSE/OpenSUSE, Fedora, ad infinitum do very well, thank you, then 2) I'm rolling out massive applications and my management says I need a commercial distro because they don't want a perceived house of cards and 3) I learned Active Directory, Please Don't Hurt Me and what is that grep crap all about?
#2 is a very powerful persuader. Ubuntu isn't as catchy, nor is it really marketed very well. What's inside is without a doubt very nice. But it's not going to easily gnaw away the suit-and-ties marketshare that RH has. Sorry.
Ubuntu is very nice. But it's server edition doesn't have the sanction of the interest of the rest of the world. Indeed for better or worse, RH has the attention of many entities, ranging from Oracle to IBM.
And to say that Ubuntu's server must be excellent because its desktop-focused distros are is like saying that Ford's trucks must be great because their cars are cool. Outwardly, it would appear that could be the case, but in reality market forces are completely different in cars and truck markets, just like they are in server and desktop distribution.
Ubuntu has done a rational job (and still incomplete) of making a viable desktop-focused OS. Yes, admins use it. Yes, they tend to use in one place (desktop) what they know for another application-- the server. Yet Ubuntu isn't that far away from RH. And the number of admins using strictly Linux is still very small, although growing a bit each day.
Summary: the lines don't join together in the logic. Yes, Ubuntu is cool, but it in no way spells the end of RH and it's juvenile to think so.
It seems quite egotistical for the NYT to run the same ground that countless science fiction authors have-- and many of them did a better job, IMHO.
Forget the Times. Instead, go read Azimov, Niven, Heinlein, or a thousand others that did a better job. Maybe the NYT is getting closer to using that odd "World War III" phrase that the orthodox Christians are trying to sell.
Ok, I'm likely to get modded as a troll. Please consider before you do that: somebody actually paid good money to put this into print in the Times, and Sci Fi authors at best, got about a nickel a word.
Introduction: How to Steal Back the Market from Apple - i Getting Smart: Our new user interface needs some magic and copies Aqua -1 Making Titanium-looking cases from inexpensive aluminum -2 Preventing dual-boot -3 Wacky driver troubleshooting -4 Thwarting competing anti-virus makers-5 Understanding why we have so many versions of the same thing, and how to sell it -6 Learning how to shave like Steve Jobs -7 Appendix A: Stock options manual for new employees Appendix B: Using your wife's PR company to kill everyone's love for you Appendix C: Why Longhorn isn't a cheese
Simon can complain all he wants, but we've had profound difficulties making their virtualization scheme work. It looks so tasty on paper, and yet Xen-modified kernels are unstable and feeble.
The VMWare pressure, however, doesn't help. EMC/VMWare has a killer cadre of coders. They're very good and well paid, and can shift quickly to keep ahead of the market. Yes, it's largely NOT free open source software. Ok, it's free in some cases, but not OSS.
Am I asking them not to beat up on Xen? Yes. It still needs to cook before it's going to be ready for prime time use. Until then, it's premature.
Nah, can't use 'em. It's like Gates saying you can't use more than 256K of DRAM for your little PC XT.
Bullhockey.
The world of virtualization for servers and for task elasticity is here and now, and AMD has figured out how to own it. Intel still can't shed heat and it's killing them.
So, they diss the need (so nice that their Itanium is doing well), and hump the competition. Sun has an 8-core that's reasonably fast for a low-speed RISC cpu. AMD is miles ahead, too. Why not make excuses to keep the stock price high?
CPU measurements in terms of vClock were completely mangled by Intel. Now they're dissing cores without understanding what's happening in server virtualization and internal clustering. Sigh.
It would be nice to have need for internal routers for many of the tasks that people think they need routers for. Yes, a fatuous ARP table is a beautiful thing if the router can deal with other things. There's a tremendous amount of power in pushing the routing/bridging strength to the edge, and keeping the height low on the hierarchical models; it's more manageable.
But the little stupid brouters (GBE switches at this rate) are really nice. Add in some nice filtration tables to keep 0wn3d machines off the backbone and life is good. So the eBay cost is dirt for a Linksys, or by a DLink or Netgear or SMC or who cares programmable router. For 1/10th of the effort required to get this other stuff compiled and stable, you can take what's already there and have lunch instead of debugging maniacal routing code that's trying to be stapled into a 1U.
Yes, it's nice to exercise code. A nice $1K router can be had for about $45 in the form of a Linksys home router with some nice kits put on them. Not the fastest, but if you're connecting to a GBE or fiber connection, then you need some speed. All else has as the least common denominator-- the mating link speed. This is usually something ugly like several Ts or at most a DS3. Few orgs get nice fast connection speeds so one is gilding the lilly to think otherwise.
It's true that there are a few machines-- in 1U form factors-- with PCI-X. But CPU doesn't get you there. Bus clock and tight driver integration with the kernel space gets you there.... unless you want just a Saturday Night Special sort of router.
1) it takes an RTOS to make things work well. You can grind all the driver code you want, but an RTOS foundation is required with lots of cache 2) only PCI-X bus gets close, and most 1Us don't have it. That gives you a real ceiling in terms of port-port throughput; don't kid yourself 3) the algorithms needed to maintain cross-bar speed are gruesome. You don't find this kind of code in anything but sledge-hammered C and assembler, and code that only a mother (and an embedded systems engineer) could love. There is very little forgiveness here.
Yes, a 1U can make a decent router. But don't kid yourself into believing that you can beat F5, Cisco, Alcatel, etc.
You can certainly embarrass them, but on the high end, it doesn't work.
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I fully believe that if the city didn't want to have the vehicle movement held hostage, they should NOT have signed the contract. It's now the City of Hoboken's liability. I hope the voters figure out the stupidity of the mayor's staff, and whomever the city's counsel is and act accordingly.
This is not rocket science, nor is it tough law. Pay the bill or the software, that your operation depends on (just like your freaking light bill) goes dead. Whatever you've done that depends on the software (or your freaking light bill) no longer works, and you're liable for what no longer works, or subsequently (actually consequentially) relies on that fact.
So be prepared to pay, or be denied use of it. Pretty darn simple. I applaud them. The taxpayers should act accordingly. The vehicle owners should, too. The person that signed the deal ought to pay the bill or be prepared to justify why not in a method that satisfies all parties. These are business processes. Stop one, and the entire chain becomes corrupted and ceases to function. So they SHOULD PAY THE BILL. Whew. I'm ok now.
A legal phrase is often used, "in lieu of liquidated damages" that applies there directly.
Don't do the deal if you don't want things to stop freaking cold as frozen carbon dioxide should you decide not to pay. This gives me an exercise-able lean on what you do. I think it's a great thing. Don't like it?
Then don't blow your integrity by purposefully not honoring the contract.
This is very simple. The city shouldn't have signed the deal, in my estimation. And I 100% sympathize with the developers. It's not extortion- it's an inured obligation. There is a huge difference. The ends-justify-the-means is bad policy and poor integrity. It's also cowardly.
Because that's what the deal was. NOT paying is theft.
I can't tell you the number of jobs we've done where we didn't get paid. Some required litigation. Others required logic bombs. When they litigated, we've won 100% of the cases, and counterclaimed for legal fees and won 100% of those, too. I don't like litigation. It sucks. So does NOT PAYING YOUR LEGAL OBLIGATIONS.
We get paid for what we do. We get to PICK OUR OWN CHARITIES. And we do charity work, about 4% of what we do each year goes to 501c(3) and 501c(6). We picked them, and they like us. That's how it works.
You get what you negotiate.
Like the garage itself, this software company has costs, too. There are wages, benefits, a building, taxes, and everything else that a business needs to survive.
It matters not if the city can afford it-- they agreed to it, then threw the guys out. Now it's a matter for civil litigation.
Who needs to be responsible for this gaffe? The city attorneys. I'll be I know what law school they went to, too.
Consider the recasting of things like the Darwin/kernel source back to something similar to OSS, the virtualization bits, easier to use Leopard, and so on.
Jobs isn't the techno leader in the industry, just like Gates isn't (he's the best follower).
The innovation that comes from Apple happens in fits and spurts, mostly to augment the fall buying season. I think there's more up their sleeves.
And so, a yawner from Jobs is insignificant.
Like it had little compatibility with other apps, had memory and file limitations, and had an ugly GUI.
Maybe OSS'ing it might improve it, but by the post, you'd think the Rapture was upon us. It's not. This code will take a lot of work to make right, It was developed in an era where code wasn't checked much for array bounds, and if memory served (I used it and kind of liked it) it had little code for large files (pics and video) and had no knowledge of a number of varying kinds of file types for linking, importation, or even simple access.
And so, although it had some cute features and reasonable speed, we through out hundreds of licenses. Pity. But it's going to take a lot of freaking work to make it useful again.
and probably never did.
/. and are on their way to try to F me up personally for sliming them. Most of them, however, are security officers or functionaries in various corps that are there because they're paranoid, not because they like the 115F Las Vegas Sun. And a few are nice people, good coders, good hackers and bretheren. Most are not. That's why CMP bought DefCon.
What incredible hubris to believe that Microsoft's cadre of bounds-checking idiots could write their way out of a wet paper bag. Sure, Microsoft tests code. And we've found enormous root-rendering bugs in it. One of them is published.
This is all PR. And the NSA thing was a joke, dude. See my other reply: most of the people that go to BH and DefCon are NOT coders, but will probably try it. Some are very clever. A few have hacked
You're of the mistaken belief that all the people that go to BH and DefCon are genius, code-cracking hackers. They're not. Instead, you get a whole bunch of wannabees and lots of security officers that are scared shitless of their next attack.
So MS gets to tease these guys, make them think that they're tough stuff, and it's all hilarious. Sorry you didn't catch that.
Half these guys will discover that Vista has not one WGA-like heartbeat responder, but several. Trace the protocols. I did.
Consider: Microsoft gets to ride free hacks this time-->before the OS gets released. All that nice work, and they don't spend a dime. Interesting also because the release they gave out isn't a 'community-style' release. It makes one wonder if there's a 'Vista-call-home' component to it, too. Might be nice to know which of the coders actually tried to boot the thing, and then note their IP for future reference (or maybe to turn over to the NSA).
Still, with many noted reviewers in full belief that it's swiss cheese, it ought to be fun to see who eats it with crackers.
If the release slips, we don't care.
Really. We don't care: because it better freaking work when it arrives. Until then, do what needs to be done, Microsoft, lest thy name become Mudsoft.
Social security implies that there is a civic cause that captures those that need help. What kind of help varies from place to place and culture.
If you vandalize, you steal.
If you steal data, it's theft.
If you produce processes that damage data, then it's irresponsible.
All these and more are the crux of damage ITFA.
Gandhi's path to nonviolence and shaking off the British used persuasive mechanisms to bring about change. Shaking off a colonial power is an admirable objective.
Examine for a moment, the basis for income: you can be a capitalist, or a wage slave, or produce your own resources and barter them. There are few other options beyond simple self-sufficiency.
In the case of being a capitalist, you make capital work for you, increasing both capital, while taking profits and using them for sustenance.
In the case of being a wage slave, someone else is the capitalist, and you're contributing labor to them in exchange for wages.
In the case of bartering, no currency is used, save that the currency is the value of labor and other tangible/intangible items that are traded for needed items.
In the case of the self-sufficient (wholly so), interactions are nominal at best. No investments are made, no wages earned, nothing bartered, just a plot of ground ostensibly to grow things on and make things from what's grown in one way or another.
Given these cases, social constructs become inevitable and desirable. The loyalty you imply to an employer is that you won't steal or harm his items, just as you wouldn't do the same to others. Call it the golden rule. If your employer outsources jobs, that's a decision made on the merits of capital/profits conservation and perhaps (or not) a wise one for the employer. The wage slave then must find a new master.
The definition of integrity: Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code.
It also means that there is no differentiation between people. If you don't murder, you don't just not murder people you don't like. Instead, you don't murder anyone or let someone else do that in your stead, or while you stand aside and merely look on at the killing.
So a squishy morality lets people damage their employer's items. I've worked for others for 20 years, and was a wage slave. But no matter how ugly, bad, mistreating, or whatever I thought about my employers (and I did), it was not an excuse to lose my integrity, and stoop to their basis of evil. You need to know about the relationships you get into. Sometimes it's difficult to judge in an interview. But the course of action is very simple: you have a bargain that you made, and you either live up to it or leave. I had to live up to numerous unfair bargains, and I endeavor not to put people into such a bind. Unbalanced? Seemingly. In the end, the best revenge is living well.
What you suggest is both onerous and immoral. I RTFA, and it was a lightweight 101.
The response/parent suggested that misbehavior was justified when management does bad things. It's not. And it never will be in a civilized society. That's why we're civilized and not unconstrained to do what we want.
Is it human nature to be vandals and thieves? Yes. And murderers and rapists, too.
If an employer does bad things to you, leave. Nothing chains you to them-- although people try to rationalize all sorts of bad behavior based on their belief that somehow the world owes them a living, and in their world, this employer specifically. It doesn't.
Treatment isn't a relevant defense against theft, damage, and so on. If you're not treated well, then either find a way to get treated better or leave.
This isn't a world where the ends justify the means (sorry Bush Administration).
Yes, business practices suck. But it doesn't justify boorish and/or illegal behavior. Then you're stooping as low as they are.
It's like the adage where if you believe in an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, everyone will need dentures and seeing-eye dogs.
It's going to be a still further uphill climb.
I see three camps:
1) I can do it myself, why the hell do I need RH when they're expensive; Ubuntu is a convenient Sarge; SUSE/OpenSUSE, Fedora, ad infinitum do very well, thank you, then
2) I'm rolling out massive applications and my management says I need a commercial distro because they don't want a perceived house of cards and
3) I learned Active Directory, Please Don't Hurt Me and what is that grep crap all about?
#2 is a very powerful persuader. Ubuntu isn't as catchy, nor is it really marketed very well. What's inside is without a doubt very nice. But it's not going to easily gnaw away the suit-and-ties marketshare that RH has. Sorry.
They're the new Sun anti-Christ-- RH is. It used to be Microsoft. But it's hard to sue an OSS maker.
Oops-- sorry, forgot about SCO.
Ubuntu is very nice. But it's server edition doesn't have the sanction of the interest of the rest of the world. Indeed for better or worse, RH has the attention of many entities, ranging from Oracle to IBM.
And to say that Ubuntu's server must be excellent because its desktop-focused distros are is like saying that Ford's trucks must be great because their cars are cool. Outwardly, it would appear that could be the case, but in reality market forces are completely different in cars and truck markets, just like they are in server and desktop distribution.
Ubuntu has done a rational job (and still incomplete) of making a viable desktop-focused OS. Yes, admins use it. Yes, they tend to use in one place (desktop) what they know for another application-- the server. Yet Ubuntu isn't that far away from RH. And the number of admins using strictly Linux is still very small, although growing a bit each day.
Summary: the lines don't join together in the logic. Yes, Ubuntu is cool, but it in no way spells the end of RH and it's juvenile to think so.
It seems quite egotistical for the NYT to run the same ground that countless science fiction authors have-- and many of them did a better job, IMHO.
Forget the Times. Instead, go read Azimov, Niven, Heinlein, or a thousand others that did a better job. Maybe the NYT is getting closer to using that odd "World War III" phrase that the orthodox Christians are trying to sell.
Ok, I'm likely to get modded as a troll. Please consider before you do that: somebody actually paid good money to put this into print in the Times, and Sci Fi authors at best, got about a nickel a word.
Introduction: How to Steal Back the Market from Apple - i
Getting Smart: Our new user interface needs some magic and copies Aqua -1
Making Titanium-looking cases from inexpensive aluminum -2
Preventing dual-boot -3
Wacky driver troubleshooting -4
Thwarting competing anti-virus makers-5
Understanding why we have so many versions of the same thing, and how to sell it -6
Learning how to shave like Steve Jobs -7
Appendix A: Stock options manual for new employees
Appendix B: Using your wife's PR company to kill everyone's love for you
Appendix C: Why Longhorn isn't a cheese
Simon can complain all he wants, but we've had profound difficulties making their virtualization scheme work. It looks so tasty on paper, and yet Xen-modified kernels are unstable and feeble.
The VMWare pressure, however, doesn't help. EMC/VMWare has a killer cadre of coders. They're very good and well paid, and can shift quickly to keep ahead of the market. Yes, it's largely NOT free open source software. Ok, it's free in some cases, but not OSS.
Am I asking them not to beat up on Xen? Yes. It still needs to cook before it's going to be ready for prime time use. Until then, it's premature.
Nah, can't use 'em. It's like Gates saying you can't use more than 256K of DRAM for your little PC XT.
Bullhockey.
The world of virtualization for servers and for task elasticity is here and now, and AMD has figured out how to own it. Intel still can't shed heat and it's killing them.
So, they diss the need (so nice that their Itanium is doing well), and hump the competition. Sun has an 8-core that's reasonably fast for a low-speed RISC cpu. AMD is miles ahead, too. Why not make excuses to keep the stock price high?
CPU measurements in terms of vClock were completely mangled by Intel. Now they're dissing cores without understanding what's happening in server virtualization and internal clustering. Sigh.
Did I say IPV6? Shame on me.
It would be nice to have need for internal routers for many of the tasks that people think they need routers for. Yes, a fatuous ARP table is a beautiful thing if the router can deal with other things. There's a tremendous amount of power in pushing the routing/bridging strength to the edge, and keeping the height low on the hierarchical models; it's more manageable.
But the little stupid brouters (GBE switches at this rate) are really nice. Add in some nice filtration tables to keep 0wn3d machines off the backbone and life is good. So the eBay cost is dirt for a Linksys, or by a DLink or Netgear or SMC or who cares programmable router. For 1/10th of the effort required to get this other stuff compiled and stable, you can take what's already there and have lunch instead of debugging maniacal routing code that's trying to be stapled into a 1U.
I love fast buses.
Now let's write drivers for the cards that we'll plop inside of them, and do all the other good stuff to make 'em work.
Soon.
Yes, it's nice to exercise code. A nice $1K router can be had for about $45 in the form of a Linksys home router with some nice kits put on them. Not the fastest, but if you're connecting to a GBE or fiber connection, then you need some speed. All else has as the least common denominator-- the mating link speed. This is usually something ugly like several Ts or at most a DS3. Few orgs get nice fast connection speeds so one is gilding the lilly to think otherwise.
It's true that there are a few machines-- in 1U form factors-- with PCI-X. But CPU doesn't get you there. Bus clock and tight driver integration with the kernel space gets you there.... unless you want just a Saturday Night Special sort of router.
We agree on the 'not ready for prime time' part.
Here's why:
1) it takes an RTOS to make things work well. You can grind all the driver code you want, but an RTOS foundation is required with lots of cache
2) only PCI-X bus gets close, and most 1Us don't have it. That gives you a real ceiling in terms of port-port throughput; don't kid yourself
3) the algorithms needed to maintain cross-bar speed are gruesome. You don't find this kind of code in anything but sledge-hammered C and assembler, and code that only a mother (and an embedded systems engineer) could love. There is very little forgiveness here.
Yes, a 1U can make a decent router. But don't kid yourself into believing that you can beat F5, Cisco, Alcatel, etc.
You can certainly embarrass them, but on the high end, it doesn't work.