Posts by Mikerahl 13 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Oct 2014
One problem I did find with Cisco lately is they've paired their IOS XE switch with a wireless controller that has a web interface, and clients want to be able to use said web interface. I think it's the 9500 series switch. Mind you, there is no justification for a wireless controller to be internet facing in the first place; if you're going to buy a $20k+ switch and add that controller, you should be securing it behind a proper firewall. And lock down the management access via ACLs.
My fun nightmare involved an OS upgrade, Cisco Nexus 7710 and the "alpha version" (they didn't call it but I sure as heck did) of Overlay Transport Virtualization. Combined with relatively new Cisco firewalls on a newer OS (read bugs not yet known) in cluster mode which was known to have "interesting problems". Said firewalls and switches ran their traffic over PIM between 2 data centers in 2 geographic locations. OTV allowed the customer to span layer 2 over layer 3 so they wouldn't have to readdress servers if they moved between data centers. Great idea in theory. Main issues came up when, for example, the "bit flipped" on the firewall without warning so that the firewall on the other data center suddenly became the master and voice traffic went from a 2 hop journey to the voice servers, to 30 hops. Surprisingly, voice doesn't work well when you suddenly introduce 28 extra hops and 150-200ms of additional latency without warning and the client had many other time sensitive applications. It took us a year to stabilize the environment after Cisco finally released a patch. Then we needed to do a code update to patch vulnerabilities on the nexus switches. The code upgrade took 4 hours and took 30 extra hours to find out why one of the VDCs was reporting that traffic was flowing through assigned interfaces but, in fact, traffic was not (sniffers proved that which were loads of fun to connect, given all the ports were fiber modules). Overall, my 70 hour software upgrade weekend, coupled with the often 90 hour weeks for a year for each person on the team, correcting all the problems, was such a fun experience.
I would be curious to see if this survey was performed while schools were shut down, parents had to manage their kids and zoom classes at the same time, and everyone was living in fear of dying of a dangerous virus. Take those out of the equation and survey people post-pandemic where fear is less and schools are open, and then let's see whether productivity declines or improves.
If a country engages in war, proxy or otherwise, everything it owns is a legitimate target. Meaning all civilian and military infrastructure. The only way to avoid that is to not engage in the conflict. So yes, since the US and Europe have chosen to arm Ukraine, train their soldiers and get involved in the conflict (beyond humanitarian aid), all their civilian infrastructure is a perfectly reasonable target for the Russian military. As it would be equally valid for NATO, should it decide to, to completely flatten Moscow, civilian and military assets alike. The concept of "war crimes" is absurd. Civilian infrastructure is used to fund and provide resources for the military effort, it absolutely should be targeted and destroyed completely. Terror is a perfectly reasonable approach to war.
The issue is that Apple specifically prevents alternate software sales options on their platform. Given how much of the tablet market and phone market (and how much of the profitable ends of those markets) Apple controls, it could easily be viewed as antitrust. If Apple wants to make sure it doesn't get harmed by this, it has only to allow any and all other app stores anyone might want to open.
I think common sense would be more if the entire concept of the "taxi license" was eliminated and replaced by a simple driver's license in the same model as a truck driver license, which would be provided at cost to those who pass the requisite exams (same as a trucker, bus driver, etc.). Take the entire management of such licenses away from the cities (they don't get to manage trucks either). If someone wants to drive a taxi, they can drive a taxi. No limits, no "cartels", just get your license and you can drive.
Here's a thought. How about removing all regulation from telecommunications? Including all limitations placed on radio waves (possibly exempting a few frequencies reserved for police and the military), and any right of way to use people's backyards (forcing telcos to pay for everyone's land they want to use, individually), requiring them to pay for any use of public land, municipality by municipality, Perhaps when their networks cease to function, they'll see a value to regulation?
And the solution any government (outside of North America) would be equally appropriate, simply advise the company that they are welcome to sell their products somewhere else. No significant numbers of employees locally should automatically mean a complete ban on all sales of all products by that company. And that means employees right up the chain. They want to move their production to Asia? No problem, please feel free to stop selling anything made there here.
One option that might help in such cases is to adopt rules like in Quebec, where each side must pay their full legal costs regardless of who wins (i.e., the court cannot award costs of lawyers). Also in Quebec, taking contingency is generally not permitted. Mind you in the States, I doubt this would ever happen, and it has its own flaws, but at a minimum, requiring that each side pay for their lawyers (no contingency) for any patent case might be appropriate
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