* Posts by Sheherazade

13 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Oct 2010

UK's Virgin Media celebrates the end of 2019 with a good, old fashioned TITSUP*

Sheherazade

Re: don't go with just one supplier

I am mere mortal, but I have two fiber runs to my home, through different entry points and ducts. And 200Mbps service costs 5 euros each. Yeah, I live in Bucharest, Romania.

One of the supplier is the former national telco, and they had their own ducts, which they did not share. The other suppliers use city-owned ducts, which run on different paths by design.

Internet access is the only well designed thing, however. Road congestion is worse than anywhere.

If you're going to exploit work's infrastructure to torrent, you better damn well know how to hide it

Sheherazade

Getting two 1Gig fiber drops at my home, for as little as 5 euros each, per month. Businesses usually get the same, starting at 10 euros. OK, if you want guaranteed bandwidth, BGP & stuff, it might cost ten times more (but still dirt cheap). Guess where I live?

To the subject: I can reliably piggy back DMVPN to the corporate US just to watch streaming content that is not available in my country. I would not do it, however.

If your broadband bill is too high consider moving to Idaho, they get the internet for free

Sheherazade

Move to Bucharest then. Terrible public services in general, but Internet is great. Get 1Gbps Internet service, uncapped, for as little as 7 euros per month, taxes included. Choice of three providers, typically. The municipality only owns the ducts, telcos own the fiber.

Ah, this military GPS system looks shoddy but expensive. Shall we try to break it?

Sheherazade

Re: wasting taxpayers' cash

Once I returned to IBM as a part time contractor for an international project in Japan. By IBM rules, I was only allowed to travel on the same flight as my full-time IBM colleague, and only stay at the same hotel. By the time my travel approval had arrived, it was only possible to book business class flight seat and executive floor room, in order to comply with the rule. Go figure my colleague's face.

Big Cable tells US government: Now's not the time to talk about internet speeds – just give us the money

Sheherazade

Re: No mystery

I live in Romania, where the most corrupted politicians in Europe also live. But we still have Gigabit fiber at home, for no more than 8 euros per month. And decent 4G speeds. Want to know why? Because we started from scratch, and without too much regulation.

Initially, the former national telco did not allow acces to local loops. And when it was forced to, it built distribution closets outside the central offices, which made local loops expensive to reach. So competition started to build fiber networks literally hanging from any poles they could rent. Yes, very ugly, but efficient. Competition was fierce, and we had at least one “neighbourhood” provider to choose from. Only helped by stronger regulation big names started to buy smaller competitors. Luckily, one of them had already grown big, and it is still hungry for market share.

4G? Of course cellular networks were regulated right from the beginning, but competition remained healthy. And people did not mind too much about having base stations right above their roofs (or in their yard). Rent was good enough incentive, because personal income was low. Then, when high speed wireless networks arrived, people already had a sense of high speed, and radio coverage had been good already.

PC rebooted every time user flushed the toilet

Sheherazade

A backbone microwave link started to drop for tens of seconds, but only during daytime. It turned out to be a crane, obstructing the line of sight.

NSA Prism: Why I'm boycotting US cloud tech - and you should too

Sheherazade

Re: Hello pot, this is kettle.

"many of them (especially border guards) take obvious and notable pleasure in making others suffer"

I remember when I first entered the US, having a 10-year B1 visa. It was after a 22-hour trip, at the end of which the border officer asked me: 'what is your profession?" - "computer network engineer" - "did you say chemical engineer?". And the same series of questions three times during the interview. It took them 1 hour to search in their databases for something, and he barely admitted me for few days, exactly until my return flight. Ah, I forgot to mention that I also had a 2-year old Pakistani business visa in my passport (as if I was dormant for two years following terrorism training).

Otherwise, being educated in a former communist country, I am trained to see the symptoms of a government watching intimately close on what their people are doing. As an individual, I can only defend myself by publishing no pictures, having no accounts on social networks, not using cloud based e-mail, and encrypting everything personal. But my kid will never understand.

Microsoft: 'To fill 6,000 jobs, we'll pay $10K per visa'

Sheherazade

Re: I highly doubt we need to import talent

I worked for IBM in the US for few weeks. Architects and project managers were Americans, but most of the remaing team members were Europeans, coming from another IBM offices. It seemed to me that US started to lack senior engineers when they outsourced junior jobs abroad. Therefore, there were no more juniors to grow.

Over 1,200 dot-word bids flood ICANN at $180k a pop

Sheherazade

Offer vs. Demand curve

There is a whole theory about where is the sweet pricing spot when launching a new product that actually has no competition (like a luxury item). It's just a matter of maximizing profit, not maximizing the number of sales. The cost does not even matter. And you just can not counterfeit their product. So, getting 1200 bids at 180k each is an amazingly good performance.

Airbus brews Scandium smackdown for carbon Dreamliner

Sheherazade

Hub-and-spoke

Hub-and-spoke is the model of all those companies moving goods around the world. It is not fast, but it is efficient, even if it might need as much as 5 segments combined to move a parcel from point A to point B. If I wanted faster service (airmail, fewer segments), I have to pay much more, but this is not the usual case. I guess it is the same with moving people around. And there are still many routes that will never go point to point, regardless the price, because of poor demand.

Don't bother with that degree, say IT pros

Sheherazade

Passion is key

I live in a society where all of my colleagues have a degree. So having a degree is not a differentiator.

However, ten years ago I had the chance to work with and learn from a truely genius network engineer. He studied Math for one year at University, but then he quit. He had a job since he was 17 and decided that University is a waste of time for him. When he was 20 (10 years ago), he got his first CCIE. He became the senior designer of an ISP network. At the age of 25, nobody wanted to promote him to a management position, because he did not have a degree. Then he finally opted for a no name University that gave him a degree in 2 years, just to satisfy the society. The truth is that we look for degrees as we look for an approval stamp. But there is no guarantee that the stamp really delivers. It is the passion and experience that does.

IATA: this iPad could BRING DOWN A PLANE

Sheherazade
WTF?

Fact

Fact: on every flight there are many passengers that just do not turn their phones off, because they ignore or do not understand the instructions, or because they are just too lazy. Airplane manufacturers and flight operators must be insane not to take this into account. How on Earth do they accept to let flight security on travelers? As if I told my users to be good (and save company expenses) instead of having proper security in place. So my bet is that until proven harmful, turning off electronic devices is just an extraordinary measure of precaution. Just like switching the lights off during the take off and landing.

French cops claimed to hold secret, illegal gypsy database

Sheherazade

Roma is not Romania

Some Roma folks do come from Romania, but they are not Romanians. They represent a different ethnic group. The trouble with Roma is that they do not want to work, they do not accept state education and generally they do not want to integrate. As a Romanian, I agree with the French authorities. What I do not agree is that continuous confusion: ah, their name is Roma, they come from Romania, so the entire Romania is inhabited by Roma. Romanians do not have any chance to defend themselves. I must speak English when I travel to Western Europe just to be treated courteously.