| Wednesday,
April 19, 2000 A DSL horror Story:
From: (name withheld pending final settlement)
Subj: DSL
Dear Dr. Pournelle:
I just completed (I hope) an horrendous experience
with DSL.
We tried to get Flashcom's DSL service at work.
I won't go into the Homeric tale of woe which was
the months long installation process.
Instead, I'll cut to the chase and say that one of
their technicians, configuring the router remotely, named the device with
a name which included the inside IP address of the router. If one puts the
outside IP address of the router into a web browser, one sees a login
screen with the name of the router "administration@xx.xx.xx.xx"
in close proximity to the external IP address of the router. This is of
course a stunning breach of security.
Needless to say, this demonstrates a breathtaking
level of incompetence on the part of Flashcom. We have informed them that
that our business relationship with them is at an end, and that we expect
no charges from them for any of their "services".
Cable modem providers get a bad rap, perhaps
deservedly so. This however is in a class by itself.
If you do get DSL be VERY careful of whom you pick
as a provider.
PS - The latest version of the Forte Agent
newsreader seems to work just fine.
Mr Pournelle,
I just had to write and complain about some issues I
have with your latest Byte column.
You (and every other columnist I seem to read) keep
bashing cable modems for what is really spurious reasons, each simply
repeating what the others have said. Nothing like a self replicating
rumor...
First, yes, each cable segments are shared. The more
people you put on them, the less bandwidth each person gets. Hey, you know
what - this is JUST LIKE ETHERNET. You know, the tried and true SHARED
Ethernet that we've been using for like 20 years now. And you know what
else - cable modems are almost as fast as 10Mb/s Ethernet. So that means
that if you'd put 40 people on an Ethernet segment with no significant
problems, the same goes for a cable modem segment. How many computers do
you run on your home network with little to no problems.
And the cable companies *KNOW* this. They know they
can't put too many people on a cable modem segment without degrading
everyones performance below even ADSL levels. So they usually DON'T. You
did put this in your column, but I don't think you stressed it enough.
And the REAL upshot is this: while at peak times,
each cable modem subscriber will get limited bandwidth, that bandwidth is
STILL as fast as most ADSL links. And at NON-PEAK times, the cable modem
subscriber CAN GO MUCH FASTER, while the ADSL subscriber is STILL STUCK AT
256kb/s (or 384 or whatever). Tell me: how often do you MAX out your
10Base-T Ethernet in your home, with ALL your computers.
Next, the limiting factor IN BOTH CASES (DSL &;
cable modem) is NOT the speed of the connection or whether or not it's
shared - it't the ISPs connection to the Internet, and the speed of the
Internet itself and the server your connecting to.
Let's say you actually manage to get ADSL installed
to your house. And you get service from your local ISP. Well, your local
ISP probably only has ONE T3 (or maybe several T1's) to one of the very
very congested Internet Network Attachment Points (NAPs). Or maybe to
another upstream provider, who also has limited connectivity. And you get
to share your 256K local link with the HUNDREDS or THOUSANDS of your ISPs
dialup customers. Guess what - your ISPs connection to the Internet is now
swamped, and you're getting, at best, 50kb/s. Why'd you go though the
hassle to get ADSL installed again (see below)?
Or would you rather connect to AT&;T Cable
Service (@Home) which has a nationwide ATM backbone network running at
155Mb/s, is connected to all the major NAPs, and has many private peering
agreement with the the other major Internet backbones, so they can avoid
the NAPs. I'm not saying all cable ISPs are this good, but most are just
as good as any *DSL ISP you're going to find.
Last week, I downloaded a 50MB file over my cable
modem. I SUSTAINED 2.3 Mb/s! This was at 9p.m. at night.
Now, I will be the *first* to admit that this was
not normal. The site I was downloading from was unloaded (a private unix
server), and I was only 8 hops away. But that is the point I'm making here
- unless your ISP has enough connections so that the majority of the
Internet is 10-15 hops away, through relatively uncongested links, you're
not going to see a significant performance increase going from an analog
modem to a *DSL line OR a cable modem.
On a consistent basis, I get 60kB/s == 480 kb/s on
the cable modem. If I open up more connections, I will often peak at
120KB/s (960 kb/s), implying that either my computer (Linux box -
unlikely), or the computer I'm talking to is limiting the connection
speed, NOT the pipe itself.
Finally, have you HEARD the horror stories of people
trying to get DSL installed? It frequently involves coordinating 2 or even
3 different companies, one of which is the telco, which doesn't seem to
want to provide this service unless it's with their ISP (and even then
they don't seem to want to provide it, judging by some of the fee
structures they initially put in place), and certainly not with a
competing ISP. Now, I'm not saying the cable companies, with them forcing
you to use their ISP is a good thing, but well, it works. I've had many
fewer problems with @Home than I did with my former dial-up ISP.
All in all, I think you and many of the other "pundants",
need to step back and re-think your cable modem bashing. Right now, the
cable companies are doing A LOT better job getting people hooked up with a
decent, low-cost service. And *DSL, if the phone companies ever get off
their monopoly butts long enough to actually start rolling it out, will
probably be no better, and will likely be significantly worse.
Pete Flugstad Sr. Software Consultant Icon Labs.
It's odd, how any reporting of a problem is called
'bashing' by someone who either works for a problem outfit, or has had a
good experience and cannot imagine a bad one.
As I said in my
column, I have no experience with cable modem. I have plenty with the
monopoly that furnishes my cable TV service, and on that basis I would be
reluctant to trust them with my Internet connection. I also know people
who signed up with cable modem and sent me enthusiastic email about how
wonderful it all is, then later sent messages saying how horrible it
became. I personally talked with a couple of cable company executives when
they first set up cable modem and asked about segmentation; the reply was
"What is that and why would we need it?" I am sure they have
learned better, but in my area decent cable modem segmentation is rare
enough that it gets mentioned on computer news shows like Jeff Levy when a
company says they've learned their lesson and are going to try it.
I write about what I know about. I am pleased to
discover that some places have good cable service, although hardly
astonished. Some cable companies may have learned how to do it,
although as observed in the column, the next difficulty could be their
connection to the backbone: once again many cable executives don't seem to
know that there can be a problem with that. Most ISP providers learn a lot
when they first set up. Some like Earthlink seem to learn fairly
quickly. Others don't. You have to decide which group your cable -- or DSL
-- provider will be in.
My point in writing about these matters is to
make my readers aware there can be problems, and to the best I can, what
their alternatives are. I clearly don't have experience with everything,
but I unlike some, I do try a lot of stuff: a motto here is "I do all
these silly things so you won't have to..."
And, yes, I have HEARD about DSL problems. I have
reported some of them. And I don't know what a pundant is; have I been
insulted? See below.
 > It's easier to see
Pamela Anderson Lee bare than Area 51...
Or so the government would prefer... :-)
-- Daniel C. Sobral (8-DCS) dcs@newsguy.com dcs@freebsd.org
dcs@there.is.no.such.thing.as.a.bsdconspiracy.net
GPL certainly doesn't meet Janis Joplin's definition
of freedom: "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to
lose."
Couple of suggestions for your
MP3/Real problem. Microsoft's Media Player will play MP3 files, although
it tries to "stream" them and play as they're downloading. If
you don't have a fast connection, that rarely works. What I do is I just
right click on the link, save the target, and download it as a regular
file. I can then play it at my leisure without being online.
As far as RealPlayer goes, I've got the free Version
7, and you can go into preferences and choose which file extensions you
want it to associate itself with. For some reason, this setting is on the
"Upgrade" tab of the Preferences Dialog box. I didn't test this,
so this is a guess, but to tell Real not to mess with MP3's it looks like
you'd have to click on "Auto Restore Settings..." to uncheck
MP3, then click "Re-associate" to fix it.
Glen Harness --------------------- http://www.racindeals.com
- Not just another racin' deal
Yes, I suspected something like that. I also find
I now have a big button called Net2Phone on my Start Menu in Windows 2000.
I have no idea what this is, what it does or where it came from. It is
dated 4/02 so I presume it did not gravitate in from REAL AUDIO, and I'll
have to dig to see where it did come from. But I don't even know
what it does...
I'll have to dig into this more. Thanks.
AND
You wrote:
>>THERE MUST BE AN ALTERNATIVE to this madness. Microsoft was
never this arrogant. Perhaps a Microsoft product? ANYTHING that will let
me just download the Techweb radio broadcasts -- in background until
downloaded is fine -- and then play them.
The alternative is simple. Trash Real Audio from
your system. Download the .mp3 file and play it in one of many freely
available mp3 players. I use Syntrillium's CoolEdit 2000 (more than just a
player but works fine as one), which you can download from http://www.syntrillium.com/load.htm
The answer to arrogance such as Real Audio's is to
stay away from their product. If enough people do it, maybe (or maybe not,
arrogance does wear blinders) they'll get the message.
As to the TerraServer..... as well you can imagine
it must be overwhelmed by service requests particularly since the Area 51
announcement. Ever since its inception I've had a lot of trouble accessing
it. Only patience and perseverance brought any results.
"The meek shall inherit the Earth. The rest of
us will go to the stars." Omni magazine, ca 1980. Author escapes me.
Thanks. I'll try that.
The motto was from the old L5 Society, and it's
true. I may or may not have been the one who thought it up the first time,
but I probably wasn't. I certainly said it often enough in those days.
Fred Osborne was the one who said "It is the historic mission of the
military to open roads to the new frontier and protect the early
settlers," and that's still true too.
FREE FIND: Indexing. This is a different service
from ATOMZ and I solicit comments.
They also suggest I put in the following:
Site Map
What's New
Search
Comments welcome. See Below.
For those having trouble getting onto
the terraserver site due to "too many users,"
somewhat-larger-than-thumbnails are available at the Federation of American
Scientists (FAS) site, http://www.fas.org
Here is an interesting quotation from the FAS
website:
"FAS ordered an IKONOS 1-meter resolution image
of Area-51 in mid-February 2000. As of mid-April 2000 SpaceImaging says
that the request remains "in collection" and has offered a
variety of explanations as to why it has taken over two months not to
collect imagery. "
*******************************
Just because you're paranoid doesn't
mean they're NOT out to get you... *******************************
Steven Dunn
Thank you.
> I hear that a New York pediatrician his given
a diagnosis > of Elian's home life (negative) and of how he would be better
> off with his father. While all of us may have opinions on that > -- I'm
of mixed emotions myself, since there is a lot unclear > here -- I don't see
how being a pediatrician who has never met > the boy, his US family, or his
father, gives one the right to > authoritative opinions to be carried by the
news media and > released by the US government. >
Heh, perhaps you haven't read Drudge recently... but
the aptly named Dr. Redlener is a Clintonista going all the way back to
1992, when he chaired the health and science subcommittee of the
Clinton-Gore election committee. In 1994, he served on Hillary's secret
"health-alliance" task force, where he agitated for a universal
health-care plan eerily similar to that in Cuba and other Communist
countries. He was involved in the Travel-Office firings (another Hillary
project), his name popping up in Bruce Lindsey's depo.
The Admirable Redlener is quite clearly a Clinton
crony, in particular, a Hillary Op. That his puissant clairvoyance allows
him to peer all the way from the residence quarters of the White House
into Lazaro Gonzales's living room should come as no shock; nor should the
crush of newsies prostrating themselves before an "unbiased
expert" willing to play so perfectly into The Story. --
Dafydd ab Hugh
Never attribute to stupidity what can satisfactorily
be explained by malice. The truly powerful are rarely stupid.
Thanks. But see below.
Jerry, I've stumbled across a source for
wireless/mobile computing equipment. I was in our mail room and noticed a
catalog in the recycle bin. What i found was a Mobile Planet catalog http://www.mobileplanet.com/
. It is the only catalog I've seen with page after page of products
exclusively aimed at the mobile office and wireless computing. There is a
huge selection of products including PDAs, laptops, sub laptops, wireless
modems, cell phones and every imaginable kind of adapter, charger,
presentation product, printers, scanners, folding keyboards and on and
on........... Not the absolute best prices in the world but it's all in
one place and some of these products I didn't even know existed!
Amazing.........
Regards, gene
Yes, I bought some stuff from them. Pleasant
experience. No problems. Lots of stuff...
This is long, and rambling, but
worth the read.
http://www.wagoneers.com/pages/RocketCar/rockit.html
Roland Dobbins <mordant@gothik.org> //
818.535.5024 voice
One of the surest signs of the philistine is his
reverence for the superior tastes of those who put him down.
-- Pauline Kael
It is indeed worth the read although I skimmed parts.
(There's a whole series of these pictures at the
indicated site, and don't miss the animated one that you get only if you
go to the afterword...)
Re: That Psychiatrist
You don't have to be a psychiatrist to appreciate
the meaning of the fact that the video of Elián was made at 1 a.m., do
you?
JULES SIEGEL Apdo. 1764 Cancun Q. Roo 77501 http://bookarts.webjump.com
TEL [52-98] 883-3629
No, and I don't have to be a psychologist to
appreciate the fact that public diagnosis borders on the unethical, and
public diagnosis given without having met the patient may well have
crossed that border. My natural proclivity is to hand the kid to the
nearest blood relative who isn't disqualified for some reason or another.
The more hijinks like this psychiatric diagnosis, and the secret policemen
not allowing the grandmothers out of their sight at the nun's house, and
all the rest have had the opposite effect than that intended: I began with
the view that the state has too much power, and families ought to be
deferred to. The father is the Paterfamilias and that should be
enough. Now, as we hear more, it all seems less clear to me; and the
frantic efforts of the US Administration headed by a man no one believes
no matter what he says, and speaking through a woman who has been
thoroughly compromised in the matter of appointing special prosecutors and
who seems to believe she Chief Counsel to the President rather than the
Attorney General of the United States of America, have not been
reassuring.
In the old English legal system there was a
Petition of Right: it asked that the King allow justice, not political
solution, to a dispute. In the Norman system it was the right of any
freeman to shout Haro! and ask for justice. The King did not have to grant
the petition, but if he did: if he said "Let Right Be Done,"
then the matter was removed to a Court of Equity to be decided according
to principles of law and fair play. One could wish we had something
of this sort today. Both the father and the grand-uncle could cry Haro!
and petition for right. But that is not likely to happen.
I know enough about child psychology to be able
to get a kid that age to say anything, including to remember being visited
by people who don't exist; having seen some of the horrors perpetrated by
well-meaning child welfare workers in child abuse cases, where the kids
are given artificial memories of being abused by their relatives and
friends, I am not unhappy that the Miami relatives have not turned the boy
over to "professionals" and in fact the presence of that team of
government psychologists who went down to get him would have been enough
to convince me to keep the boy.
(Incidentally, if you want to do the
experiment, it's easy enough for parents to implant a memory in their own
child; make it harmless, "don't you remember the time you were lost
for an hour in a big mall, and the policeman gave you an icecream?"
but I warn you, after the experiment it will be difficult to get the
memory OUT again, and if you try you lose some trust.)
I am not surprised that they've brought in an
apparatchik to "diagnose" the boy. Denouncing that tactic is not
the same as approving everything the Miami relatives have done. And that's
the problem, isn't it? We can't know what they did. We can know that the
apparatchik psychiatrist has never met the kid.
Of course, your literate, but slightly overwrought,
correspondant meant 'pundit'. Do you really not think of yourself as one?
That's interesting...
A quick check <http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?db=*&;term=pundit&;x=13&;y=11>
doesn't seem to indicate any disrespect in the term...
Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff The Suncoast Freenet Tampa Bay, Florida
http://baylink.pitas.com
I have to confess I knew what he was saying, and
I was merely having a bit of fun at his expense. I shouldn't have, I
suppose. Jonathan Sacks once wanted me to take over Dvorak's back page
column at Infoworld and 'become the only pundit in the computer field',
but that didn't happen and it was just as well; not that Dvorak couldn't
have found another slot and indeed he did not too long after that. So I
sort of know what a "pundit" is, and I suppose John and I are a
pair of them...
Subject: Try http://www.terraserver.microsoft.com
Hi Jerry, The subject speaks for itself. I haven't
yet checked for Area 51 pictures, as I'm not sure of its exact geographic
location, and Terraserver doesn't recognize Groom Dry Lake.
Cheers, Rod Schaffter
If anyone finds it through there please send the
URL. Thanks.
I saw your request about Microsoft Terraserver and
not being able to access it. Something's changed. About two or so weeks
ago, I used http://terraserver.microsoft.com
to look at the Las Vegas area, specifically the Circus Circus site. It was
in preparation for my annual trip to the NAB Convention. I was able to
look at aerial shots from 1996 in good detail. When I went there today,
all that was available were apparent scans of the USGS topographic maps. I
will leave speculation as to the reason to others..
-c-
Ah, but see below.
Spurred by Bob's and your
test of FreeFind, I signed up for two of the domains I administer, LeufOrg
and RaotaryDoctorBank. Both contain numerous text pages of varying
reference value, and especially the latter with online versions of eight
years worth of newletter articles has badly needed a good local search.
Bottom line. I was impressed. Good to their hype,
within ten minutes, I had a fully functional engine on the site and the
site indexed. The search results seem very good in terms of relevance.
/ Bo -- "Bo Leuf" <bo@leuf.com> Leuf
fc3 Consultancy http://www.leuf.com/
THANKS!
I think this is stark enough to
need no immediate comment. First he quotes my previous
comment. Read that, then continue:
The answer is of course "it depends".
Should we treat American citizens at least as well as we treat anyone
else? Yes. Absolutely.
OTOH, should we protect Americans from having to
compete with the rest of the world? I say no.
I read an interesting article in the WSJ on Friday
April 7. It was about the workers at a manufacturing plant, and
generational differences. One of the things that really struck me was an
older worker complaining about the company offered training classes. He
said that he'd taken a manufacturing job because he didn't like school,
and didn't see why anyone should be expecting him to go to classes and
learn new things now. If we are supposed to feel any sympathy for this
person, or anyone like him, I cannot imagine why. If you want the benefits
of the new economy, you need to join it. 150 years ago, there were parts
of the US where you could make a living as a fur trapper. you can't do
that here anymore, and anyone who lived now at the level those trappers
lived at would be considered horribly poor. Times change. The US is
getting richer. One of the big reasons it's getting richer is because of
information technology. If you want to enjoy those riches, why shouldn't
it be necessary to be part of what makes them possible?
As for living conditions, last year I spent some
time on a consultants news group. There were a bunch of people there
whining about H1-B visas, and how they were letting in people who were
driving rates way down, because they were willing to live in cramped
conditions that most Americans wouldn't take.
Where do we draw the line? What I believe is this:
if you want to get paid more than the (foreign) competition, then you'd
better do work that is worth more than that of the competition. Where you
were born, or where you live now, doesn't matter to me. What your work is
worth does.
I live in Sunnyvale, CA, an area that has some of
the highest costs of living of anywhere in the world (according to a USA
Today article on 4/7, there were _4_ unsold new houses in Santa Clara
_County_ (no, the number's not a typo). In the last 2 months I've seen two
nearby 3 bedroom (~1800 square feet) houses go for over $640,000, each.
You can imagine what rents are like. You can also imagine how much I have
to charge my clients just to be able to afford to live here. Should I
start lobbying the county government to pass laws keeping high-paying
contract programming jobs in the county, instead of letting companies
contract with other Americans who live in lower cost areas? No? I didn't
think so. But why should I care less about a fellow programmer living 1
mile from me, than I do about a factory worker living in the Midwest? If
that programmer doesn't deserve wage protection (and he doesn't), why does
teh factory worker deserve it? Hell, my youngest brother is thinking about
getting involved with a company that hires Russian programmers (living in
Russia) and markets their services to US companies. I think it's great,
and wish him well. But if you're going to "protect" American
factory workers from Mexicans, is there any reason why you shouldn't also
"protect" American programmers from Russian ones?
An American who was willing to live a 50's lifestyle
(small B&;W tv, no cable, no computer, small place to live without many
conveniences) could probably do it on a manufacturing job. Most people
don't want that, they want the richer modern lifestyle. That's fine. But
why isn't it fair to expect them to succeed the modern way if they want
that modern life?
My only question in return is, does the
government of the United States owe an obligation to the people of the
United States, or is the obligation to the New World Order?
As to why anyone should prefer to help his
neighbor rather than a stranger, I fear I have no strictly logical answer,
and the poetic one begins "Breathes there a man with soul so
dead..." Which I suspect is not taught in schools today.
If an Internationalist Party runs and wins, that
is fine. I had not realized that had happened yet. And perhaps ignoring
those on the left side of the bell curve and exporting their jobs will
have a good result. Perhaps.
Dr.Pournelle,
I was reading your anguish with real audio, I have
RealPlayer installed and used it to listen to the broadcast without any
problems. RealPlayer was a free download. (http://www.real.com/) I am
using RealPlayer version 6.0.8.122 if this is any help.
I use a regular 56k modem.
The following is the URL that RealPlayer displayed
during the broadcast.
http://media.cmpnet.com/radio/byte/thisweek.ram
This will start up RealPlayer on my system, so I am
not sure if this will be of any help to you.
Mark Gallicchio Datastream Systems, Inc. PSG-Woodbridge
Enterprise Consultant
Well I tried again, and it worked, in that there
were a few hesitations and glitches; but I still can't just download the
file and play it later. RealPlayer works as a PLAYER, it's that blasted
"realtime" on line that I hate. I don't mind downloading to
listen later. I don't mind if I have a larger buffer. But If there's a way
to make it work smoother I don't know it.
Dr. Pournelle, It seems that
you, and several of your correspondents, have made the common mistake (as
I did) of confusing terraserver.com with terraserver.microsoft.com . They
are two different companies. Terraserver.com charges for downloads and
Microsoft uses public domain images (Corona, Landsat, etc). Also,
terraserver.com is reporting that they were hit with a DoS attack. Or,
possibly, they were just slashdotted.
Interesting piece on Waco at Salon.com today.
Kit Case kitcase@netutah.com
Ah, I was indeed unaware of the difference.
Thanks!
This was sent to me by email. I had read it and neglected to comment
when I read the book. I think it's fair use:
In Bill Gates' new book Business @ The Speed of
Thought, he lays out 11 rules that students do not learn in high school or
college, but should. He argues that our feel-good, politically correct
teachings have created a generation of kids with no concept of reality who
are set up for failure in the real world.
RULE 1 - Life is not fair; get used to it.
RULE 2 - The world won't care about your
self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you
feel good about yourself.
RULE 3 - You will NOT make 40 thousand dollars a
year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car
phone, until you earn both a high school and college degree.
RULE 4 - If you think your teacher is tough, wait
till you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.
RULE 5- Flipping burgers is not beneath your
dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flippin, they
called it opportunity.
RULE 6 - If you mess up, it's not your parents'
fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
RULE 7 - Before you were born, your parents weren't
as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills;
cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So
before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents'
generation, try "delousing" the clothes in your own room.
RULE 8 - Your school may have done away with winners
and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing
grades; they will let you try as many times as you want to get the right
answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real
life.
RULE 9 - Life is not divided into semesters. You
don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you
find yourself. Do that on your own time.
RULE 10 - Television is NOT real life. In real life
people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to their jobs.
RULE 11 - Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end
up working for one.
Text by Bill Gates. Sent along by Colonel Haynes.
TOP
|
CLICK HERE for
a Special Request. 
