let me start by saying you're right. according to every firmly established idea in network engineering, you are right. routers built from PC parts and linux or openBSD are based on new ideas that challenge the establishment. they are based on an idea that has yet to be proven right, or proven wrong.
When my wan interface or network interface dies at 2am I don't think anyone from the OSS community is going to have a parts depot within 4 hours to fix the problem.
the argument for routers made from commodity parts is that if your WAN interface is just a NIC, you could have a box of replacement cards sitting in box next to the router just in case. in that case, your fix happens 4 hours faster than the mightiest of depot logistics. in that scenario, an identical router built and configured and waiting in the wings is the only thing faster. it's easy to have hot spares when your boxes are $500 each, and not $2000. that's the argument, anyway. i've never seen a PC based router used outside of someone's house, but that's not to say they aren't out there in production somewhere.
I also don't see 24x7 tech support phone numbers manned by volunteers anytime soon. Vendors don't make the money on the hardware, they make it on services and support.
if what you are really paying for is support, why not buy/build cheap commodity stuff and pay for top notch support? while i don't personally know any open-source-router-gods-for-hire, there have to be some out there or there wouldn't be so many open source router projects.
if anything, using an open platform means you can choose a support plan from a vendor that is right for you, rather than settling for what you get when you buy a brand name. if you get mad at cisco for shipping yet another router with no IOS, where are you going to turn to? will foundry help you configure your empty cisco box? those magic serial config cables that cisco guys use can be tough to come by in an emergency, but a floppy disk, keyboard and a monitor are easy.
of course the community isn't going to answer the phone in the dead of night for free, but if your problem is common, the answer is probably sitting in an FAQ or a forum somewhere right now and you'll be able to find it faster than logging a ticket with a disembodied callcenter in another hemisphere. if it's not common, and does require heavy wizardry, paying the right person not only helps you, but can help the community as well.
in the end, which is a better value, a VAR that adds value to an expensive product, or a VAR that adds equal value to an inexpensive product?
i used to work on the helpdesk of a large manufaturer of insulation. they took two weeks to "test" MS patches before deploying them. i use the term test rather loosely, since the testing went something like this:
phase 1: "steve, install the new updates on your PC."
phase 2: "hey steve, did your PC blow up from those updates?"
phase 3: "hey steve, go ahead and roll out those updates to 10,000 PCs scattered across the continental united states."
they did the rollouts on monday as part of the users' login scripts. monday morning just happens to be when everyone is returning from vacations, or business trips, or delivering the world's most important report/proposal/presentation. everyone got 4 chances to cancel those updates before they were forced to install. so the monday after "patch tuesday" was called "crippled network monday" and if you do the math, 4 cancellations means the stragglers got updated on "force-it friday", when everyone was getting ready to go on vacations, business trips, and preparing to deliver the world's most important report/proposal/presentation.
see, that's why we need to fight the terrorists even harder. spend even more money, invade even more countries, torture even more prisoners, and give up even more rights. eventually we will either find or create a group of terrorists that we will succeed at tracking down and bringing to justice. we may have to invade iran, or syria, or venezuela, or even canada to do it. we may also have to change the term "terrorist" to mean "anyone who disagrees with the president". but eventaully we will find a group of "terrorists" and with any luck, they will have have weapons of mass destruction. when that day *finally* comes, *then* it will have all been worth it.
everyone will go to "over the internet" delivery of everything, it's a no brainer. it's cheaper to build out, cheaper to add new features, and cheaper to enter new markets. the unfortunate thing for the telco's and cable companies is that for new competitors it's cheaper to build out, cheaper to add new features, and cheaper to enter new markets, meaning that the incumbent carriers will be relegated to leveraging the only service they are able to provide: internet access. once the cableco's and telco's have to compete directly, the result is a race to the bottom, and no one wants that (except consumers, businesses, and local municipalities).
so in the minds of cableco's and telco's (and for the people that make equipment for cable and telco's) it's better to keep internet access a peripheral offering to either cable television service or telephone service, even though internet access is all anyone is really interested in. this is where municipal broadband, muni-wifi, wimax, and broadband over powerlines will have to make headway.
the telcos are so used to introducing new features and charging for them that they simply cannot conceive of a way to make money otherwise.
for example: want your phone number listed? pay to be listed. too many crank phone calls from being listed? pay for caller ID. Caller ID not helping you screen effectively? pay for our privacy manager service.
the last thing anyone (except the consumer) wants is a price war between similar competitive services. the telcos and cable co's want to keep their services as apples to oranges as possible.
see disclaimer about gross over simplification. the terms "democracy" and "republic" are seriously overloaded terms, and in political philosophy (i.e. "democracy" by socrates, and "the republic" by plato) they are central ideas. political philosophy and government are not the same thing, even though they use many of the same terms. i admit it's been a few years since college, so i may have the terminologies confused.
this is grossly over simplified, but this is a slashdot post, not a dissertation...
there are essentailly two extremes of government, government for the good of the state (fascism) and government for the good of the people (communism). these two types are represented by the classical philosophies of the republic, and democracy.
the founding fathers believed that those two extremes are flawed and our consitution was founded on the idea of a "moderate" government called the "democratic republic".
the central philosophy is that the government should work for the good of the state AND for the good of the people. often times, those two goals are at odds with eachother and the result is not a "happy medium" but more of series of backlashes.
one by product of this philosophy is that the populace sees both communists and fascists as enemies, and looks to attribute either aspect to groups perceived as a threat.
the term "islamofascist" is a simple way of saying "we feel threatened by islamic extremists because they remind us of fascists". obviously, militant islamic extremism is not a state, and does not govern for the good of that state. americans often use those terms to describe or ridicule groups or philisophies. terms like "grammar-nazi" or "fashionista" are common in american editorial writing.
you internet hippies with your youspaces and your mytubes... why don't you just let anyone put any freakin thing they want up there? and let other folks see it for free? video media is media of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations. you, sir, are not a corporation! this great united states was built on money and control. why do you hate america? next thing you know there will be videos on the intertubes blaming the government for 9/11, or saying that al qaeda doesn't really exist, and comedians making fun of the president to his face. it'll be hell on earth i tells ya! hell on earth!
dude, there white men's clubs on every corner of every street of every city, they're called "banks".
there's one in every corporation, it's called the "board of directors" or in some cases the "IT department".
american cities have white rallies all the time. in the north they are called "hockey games" and in the south it's called "NASCAR"
if you want more information on the "white power" program in your community, just pick up the phone, dial 911, and ask to be transferred to the "police department".
i think the last two harry potter films couldn't stand alone since they left so much of the story out, the prisoner of azkhaban specifically. i have no idea how anyone who hasn't read those two books can make heads or tails of the plots on those two films. unless they make the order of the phoenix 5 hours long, i have no idea how they are going to tell that story without leaving out huge portions of the story. i think the producers for the goblet of fire and prisoner of azkabahn should have taken a page from jackson's book and released extended editions on DVD.
i have read a few places that the RIAA doesn't make enough on these lawsuits to cover the costs of filing the suits in the first place. do you think that this is simply a means of instilling fear into people? or possibly a means of causing the masses to equate file sharing with theft?
everyone *should* protect their privacy because everyone is doing something that someone could consider "wrong".
if more people took steps to protect themselves then protecting yourself wouldn't carry the stigma that it currently carries.
no matter who you are or what you do, there is *someone* out there who will think you are doing something wrong. the less everyone knows about you, the easier it will be to get through the day.
examples:
1) if your boss/co-workers are not religious and you are, then your "inspiration of the day" and WWJD surfing could be considered wrong even though it's harmless in the legal sense. the same could be said for secular people in a religious setting.
2) if you are in to [instert ethinicity here] power, your parents/spouse/employer/local govt. may not approve and you would naturally want to protect yourself. in the united states, you could be mistaken for a terrorist.
the question isn't whether or not you are doing something wrong, because we are all doing something wrong according someone else's moral compass.
the questions is why aren't you doing more to protect yourself?
how many times has your company been poised to make a "big announcement" that ends up being little more than an offcial confirmation of stuff that the company rumor mill has been circulating?
not that i think company rumor mills are bad, or that CEOs need to start spying, but i would imagine it's a big bark up the ass of those corporate officer types that want to tell the peasants something they don't already know.
Slashdot Mirror
there's also an aids problem in africa. i'll bet illegal file sharing is cuasing that too. and global warming.
let me start by saying you're right. according to every firmly established idea in network engineering, you are right. routers built from PC parts and linux or openBSD are based on new ideas that challenge the establishment. they are based on an idea that has yet to be proven right, or proven wrong.
When my wan interface or network interface dies at 2am I don't think anyone from the OSS community is going to have a parts depot within 4 hours to fix the problem.
the argument for routers made from commodity parts is that if your WAN interface is just a NIC, you could have a box of replacement cards sitting in box next to the router just in case. in that case, your fix happens 4 hours faster than the mightiest of depot logistics. in that scenario, an identical router built and configured and waiting in the wings is the only thing faster. it's easy to have hot spares when your boxes are $500 each, and not $2000. that's the argument, anyway. i've never seen a PC based router used outside of someone's house, but that's not to say they aren't out there in production somewhere.
I also don't see 24x7 tech support phone numbers manned by volunteers anytime soon. Vendors don't make the money on the hardware, they make it on services and support.
if what you are really paying for is support, why not buy/build cheap commodity stuff and pay for top notch support? while i don't personally know any open-source-router-gods-for-hire, there have to be some out there or there wouldn't be so many open source router projects.
if anything, using an open platform means you can choose a support plan from a vendor that is right for you, rather than settling for what you get when you buy a brand name. if you get mad at cisco for shipping yet another router with no IOS, where are you going to turn to? will foundry help you configure your empty cisco box? those magic serial config cables that cisco guys use can be tough to come by in an emergency, but a floppy disk, keyboard and a monitor are easy.
of course the community isn't going to answer the phone in the dead of night for free, but if your problem is common, the answer is probably sitting in an FAQ or a forum somewhere right now and you'll be able to find it faster than logging a ticket with a disembodied callcenter in another hemisphere. if it's not common, and does require heavy wizardry, paying the right person not only helps you, but can help the community as well.
in the end, which is a better value, a VAR that adds value to an expensive product, or a VAR that adds equal value to an inexpensive product?
[humor type="sarcastic"]
i thought all you open source guys were members of the communist party.
[/humor]
i used to work on the helpdesk of a large manufaturer of insulation. they took two weeks to "test" MS patches before deploying them. i use the term test rather loosely, since the testing went something like this:
- phase 1: "steve, install the new updates on your PC."
- phase 2: "hey steve, did your PC blow up from those updates?"
- phase 3: "hey steve, go ahead and roll out those updates to 10,000 PCs scattered across the continental united states."
they did the rollouts on monday as part of the users' login scripts. monday morning just happens to be when everyone is returning from vacations, or business trips, or delivering the world's most important report/proposal/presentation. everyone got 4 chances to cancel those updates before they were forced to install. so the monday after "patch tuesday" was called "crippled network monday" and if you do the math, 4 cancellations means the stragglers got updated on "force-it friday", when everyone was getting ready to go on vacations, business trips, and preparing to deliver the world's most important report/proposal/presentation.see, that's why we need to fight the terrorists even harder. spend even more money, invade even more countries, torture even more prisoners, and give up even more rights. eventually we will either find or create a group of terrorists that we will succeed at tracking down and bringing to justice. we may have to invade iran, or syria, or venezuela, or even canada to do it. we may also have to change the term "terrorist" to mean "anyone who disagrees with the president". but eventaully we will find a group of "terrorists" and with any luck, they will have have weapons of mass destruction. when that day *finally* comes, *then* it will have all been worth it.
everyone will go to "over the internet" delivery of everything, it's a no brainer. it's cheaper to build out, cheaper to add new features, and cheaper to enter new markets. the unfortunate thing for the telco's and cable companies is that for new competitors it's cheaper to build out, cheaper to add new features, and cheaper to enter new markets, meaning that the incumbent carriers will be relegated to leveraging the only service they are able to provide: internet access. once the cableco's and telco's have to compete directly, the result is a race to the bottom, and no one wants that (except consumers, businesses, and local municipalities).
so in the minds of cableco's and telco's (and for the people that make equipment for cable and telco's) it's better to keep internet access a peripheral offering to either cable television service or telephone service, even though internet access is all anyone is really interested in. this is where municipal broadband, muni-wifi, wimax, and broadband over powerlines will have to make headway.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
no, the coin-operated senate commerce comittee ddesigned it. three guesses who puts the coins in :-)
the telcos are so used to introducing new features and charging for them that they simply cannot conceive of a way to make money otherwise.
for example: want your phone number listed? pay to be listed. too many crank phone calls from being listed? pay for caller ID. Caller ID not helping you screen effectively? pay for our privacy manager service.
the last thing anyone (except the consumer) wants is a price war between similar competitive services. the telcos and cable co's want to keep their services as apples to oranges as possible.
I thought America was supposed to be better than other countries since it allows any ideas to participate in the democratic process.
nah, america is better than other countries because we god loves us and hates everyone else. that's why is says "god bless america" in the bible.
once the piracy problem has been dealt with, here are some other ventures that media companies want to get into:
see disclaimer about gross over simplification. the terms "democracy" and "republic" are seriously overloaded terms, and in political philosophy (i.e. "democracy" by socrates, and "the republic" by plato) they are central ideas. political philosophy and government are not the same thing, even though they use many of the same terms. i admit it's been a few years since college, so i may have the terminologies confused.
this is grossly over simplified, but this is a slashdot post, not a dissertation...
there are essentailly two extremes of government, government for the good of the state (fascism) and government for the good of the people (communism). these two types are represented by the classical philosophies of the republic, and democracy.
the founding fathers believed that those two extremes are flawed and our consitution was founded on the idea of a "moderate" government called the "democratic republic".
the central philosophy is that the government should work for the good of the state AND for the good of the people. often times, those two goals are at odds with eachother and the result is not a "happy medium" but more of series of backlashes.
one by product of this philosophy is that the populace sees both communists and fascists as enemies, and looks to attribute either aspect to groups perceived as a threat.
the term "islamofascist" is a simple way of saying "we feel threatened by islamic extremists because they remind us of fascists". obviously, militant islamic extremism is not a state, and does not govern for the good of that state. americans often use those terms to describe or ridicule groups or philisophies. terms like "grammar-nazi" or "fashionista" are common in american editorial writing.
you internet hippies with your youspaces and your mytubes... why don't you just let anyone put any freakin thing they want up there? and let other folks see it for free? video media is media of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations. you, sir, are not a corporation! this great united states was built on money and control. why do you hate america? next thing you know there will be videos on the intertubes blaming the government for 9/11, or saying that al qaeda doesn't really exist, and comedians making fun of the president to his face. it'll be hell on earth i tells ya! hell on earth!
is not the first hydrogen powered car, but the first hydrogen powered car accident.
i went to a little redneck school in rural southwestern ohio and there was a copy of mein kampf in my highschool library.
Besides, even when something is illegal, it does not mean that something is not a right thing to do.
amen brother, lets go to boston and throw a bunch of AAC's in the harbor!!
to paraphrase tyler durden from "fightclub":
after dungeons and dragons, playing computer RPGs is like masturbating when you could be having great sex.
dude, there white men's clubs on every corner of every street of every city, they're called "banks".
there's one in every corporation, it's called the "board of directors" or in some cases the "IT department".
american cities have white rallies all the time. in the north they are called "hockey games" and in the south it's called "NASCAR"
if you want more information on the "white power" program in your community, just pick up the phone, dial 911, and ask to be transferred to the "police department".
i think the last two harry potter films couldn't stand alone since they left so much of the story out, the prisoner of azkhaban specifically. i have no idea how anyone who hasn't read those two books can make heads or tails of the plots on those two films. unless they make the order of the phoenix 5 hours long, i have no idea how they are going to tell that story without leaving out huge portions of the story. i think the producers for the goblet of fire and prisoner of azkabahn should have taken a page from jackson's book and released extended editions on DVD.
i have read a few places that the RIAA doesn't make enough on these lawsuits to cover the costs of filing the suits in the first place. do you think that this is simply a means of instilling fear into people? or possibly a means of causing the masses to equate file sharing with theft?
everyone *should* protect their privacy because everyone is doing something that someone could consider "wrong".
if more people took steps to protect themselves then protecting yourself wouldn't carry the stigma that it currently carries.
no matter who you are or what you do, there is *someone* out there who will think you are doing something wrong. the less everyone knows about you, the easier it will be to get through the day.
examples:
1) if your boss/co-workers are not religious and you are, then your "inspiration of the day" and WWJD surfing could be considered wrong even though it's harmless in the legal sense. the same could be said for secular people in a religious setting.
2) if you are in to [instert ethinicity here] power, your parents/spouse/employer/local govt. may not approve and you would naturally want to protect yourself. in the united states, you could be mistaken for a terrorist.
the question isn't whether or not you are doing something wrong, because we are all doing something wrong according someone else's moral compass.
the questions is why aren't you doing more to protect yourself?
way to go grandpa!!! i'll bet you and george washington loved "mix tapes" when you were in the civil war!!!
just kidding, i used to make mixtapes to play in my car because it had a tape player in it, back in the old days when shifting formats was "fair use".
how many times has your company been poised to make a "big announcement" that ends up being little more than an offcial confirmation of stuff that the company rumor mill has been circulating?
not that i think company rumor mills are bad, or that CEOs need to start spying, but i would imagine it's a big bark up the ass of those corporate officer types that want to tell the peasants something they don't already know.
cuz neural network processing sounds really cool... like those evil computers in terminator.