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Comment Re:It's incredibly frustrating... (Score 1) 535

It is incredibly frustrating that this conversation is even happening. Why are our last mile providers just happy with just keeping up all...the...time? Why do we not have such an overkill of bandwidth from end to end, that having any conversation about saturation or limitations on usage is a laughable theoretical possibility? Someone did a cost study a decade or more ago about the argument for fiber to the desktop in buildings with many floors or campus type network spans. The biggest arguments were the distance of a fiber run vs. a copper run, the need for switches on every floor with copper vs. the need for aggregate fiber switches in one location on one floor, the cost of fiber switches and laptop/desktop fiber carbs vs built-in ethernet.

So, why not bring the fiber to every house, once and for all, and as a Federal infrastructure project? We didn't have have a power grid, or a phone exchange system, or an interstate highway system, but we progressed. Time to do it again, in a big way... If you are going to run one piece of fiber to a house, run TWO. Make them redundant carriers. If these companies want us to spend without concern, they need to put a nail in this bandwidth coffin sooner than later. I wish they would just get in the content delivery business only, and let other companies worry exclusively with getting fiber to our living rooms.

I just wish they would make the service and speed so good, that everyone would be at war about who provides the best content, serves the best games, has the best HD, the newest movies, etc... without having to worry about the bandwidth or speed aspect of it any longer.

Comment We'd Like to Thank! Our Pwn2own Platinum Sponsors (Score 1) 66

215 of The Patriot Act, The NSA, The CIA, The FBI, DHS and the following individuals who shall remain nameless. Without whose contributions, there would be no "ethical" paid hacking as a career, endless amounts of American civil liberties, no war on ter-r. Think any agencies will be doing some recruiting there?

Comment Re:Until you experience the speed ... (Score 1) 338

I would run into this all the time from our cabinet and cloud customers in Level3. The question or accusation was always the same. "How do I know I am getting a 100Mbps or a 1Gbps handoff from you guys?" "I just tested and I can only get X amount of bandwidth, just look at my Cacti graphs and you will see I am not getting the full amount I am paying for".

So after a short explanation of how a single connection to their server will never fill up the pipe, I would have them run the test, or I would login to their server and run the test for them, while having them monitor the Cacti graph. Cachefly and a few other CDNs have a 100mb.bin and 1000mb.bin files that are not compressible and are not affected by WAN accelerators, etc... So, the trick was to start clicking on the files for download to the server as fast as you could, and watch the pipe fill... most often, their RDP, or whatever remote solution they used, would get so lagged, they thought the server was dying. The files would finish downloading and the remote connection would be normal again.

Me: "What does Cacti show now?" Them: "Thanks, I am going to use that test on everything from now on, very cool". I would look at the Cacti graph afterwards and you see what you expect, a steep 90 degree hill of all green for a few minutes and then back to the 1-2Mbps sustained that they are used to seeing. There may be better ways, but I never had a customer argue with me after using this method and seeing the results in Cacti.

Comment Browsing From Inside A Level3 Datacenter (Score 3, Interesting) 338

As part of my job some years ago, I would routinely visit Level3 data centers across the US. We were a simple stub network, but where I usually plugged my laptop in, was only a hop a way from the Level3 core routers at each facility. Everything was gigabit, and very fast, but not as fast as you would think, being that close to the backbone. I had to use our own DNS servers for resolution, which were not available in every facility, and, page loads were fast, but you could tell you were always waiting on the web servers to deliver the content. Point: Sometimes raw speed is not where it is at. There is something to be said about an ISP having massive amounts of cache/caching servers and a speedy DNS infrastructure.

Comment Re:With a grain of salt (Score 1) 770

Texan Republican Politicians learn to speak out of both sides of their mouth simultaneously, at a young age. This should give you some idea of how completely over-run the TX political system is with right-wing fundamentalists. Nobody is willing to pick it up and run with it as a violation, because they are ALL on the same team. Wendy Davis and Leticia Van De Putte may get voted in, but that is a long-shot given how dug in the conservatives are. Ask Tesla motors what they believe about "Texas is open for business"... Typical Perry douchebaggery, and large campaign donations by the Auto Dealers Association. But hey, we have a liquor store, title loan and fast food restaurant on every corner.

Comment Re:Why should YOU care that TX education is fucked (Score 2) 770

Native Texan here, 42 years old, I can say this is 100% accurate and I am thoroughly disgusted with my state. They are not trying to remove the separation of church and state, they have obliterated it altogether. You may have to live here to understand how bad the far right-wing fundies have wormed their way in to every aspect of social life here in TX, but you won't have to live here for long to get it. Pushing the religious ideologies, through the use of law, is alive and well in TX. In 2010, lobbyists spent 43 million dollars on Ideological/single issues, and that is just what is accounted for. When I visit my dentist, they have a certain hygienist that thinks she is being coy, and without fail, pings me about my beliefs... best answer is no answer. Fortunately, you can spot a fundie pretty easy... they usually have anti-abortion and gospel radio bumper stickers, right beside a Jesus fish or two. Not only are these people on the board of education slowly deleting history, they are proud and smiling about it. They believe it is a real accomplishment that they have made for the citizens of Texas, and they absolutely understand the impact it has on the rest of the nations textbook purchases. I tried to find the picture that was snapped as they voted on a certain science textbook a few years ago, it was almost unanimous, and you could see the shit-eating grins on their faces. Just disgusting, and the ignorance runs rampant. Folks, their is a reason TX ranks 50th in a couple of key areas. Number of minimum wage jobs and number of citizens without health insurance.

Comment Encrypt The RAM? (Score 1) 222

Talking out my ass with a basic layman understanding, and no education to back it up, but here goes... Encrypt/decrypt what goes in/out of RAM? I have always thought a light sensor that uses the lighting of the room/wavelength/brightness as a means of generating random encryption keys would be useful. Or pull random info from your face moving around on a webcam, something that just can't be duplicated.

Comment Re:Which ones could they not identify? (Score 1) 61

I know this is bad form to reply to your own post. Answering some of my own questions, after catching something I missed reading the article the first pass. "The primers were unable to detect DNA from two groups of vertebrates in the tank: the turtles and the fish with cartilage in place of bones, such as rays and sharks." Sharks and turtles are pretty big ones to miss, I hope they get this worked out, it sounds really promising in coming up with real numbers about the health of our oceans species versus the current estimation methods.

Comment I Predict WitPro In His Future (Score 1) 135

Guaranteed, there are people trying to figure out how to give him a dirt-nap, or figuring out who they can pay to do it. With the sentencing delayed, it appears he is not through making lifelong enemies. I see some witness protection in his future, if not already to some degree (the monitored phone, computer, etc...) ...I am sure the feds would know instantly if something happened or he was on the move.

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