Truth

But after HP integrates 3Com, they have the whole portfolio too. In fact, not a very good one since 3Com equipment is not exactly recognised as quality. Most importantly, the people who design networks and lay out strategy remember being completely shafted by 3Com in the early 2000’s and they haven’t forgotten.

( Source )

It's true. In the late '90s when we deployed CoreBuilder 3500, SuperStack 9300 and 3900 switches as edge devices, they worked as advertised. We still have some 3900 switches in service and really the only two reasons they are being retired is 1) they don't do POE and 2) in our experience 3Com legacy hardware support totally blows[1].

We had some disquiet when we saw the 4300 family be released, they appeared to be a step backwards in a lot of ways. The 4007 switch was a big heavy boat anchor. The 4005 was a pretty good switch and probably did well as routers in general, however we had one in a hardware developer's network and it had some interesting problems[2]. When we tried to scale up, the 4005's limitations started to become restrictive, and now we have almost no 3Com gear in our network save some basic 3900s.

Since then our experience with 3Com has been less than ideal -- one customer tried to use a 4500G switch as a core router, but its limits prevented that and it had a really weird way of doing ACLs. The step up, the 5500G, was weird in its own ways.

So yes, we remember. Now we buy Cisco for core services, with Linksys or Dell for the edge. And because Dells have 3-year warranties, and are cheap enough to buy two of, we just use cold-standby as our switch-failure coverage.

--

[1] : several years back, we had 24/7, four-hour onsite advance replacement coverage on a switch that was pretty important. It cost an unreal amount of money because the switch was getting on in years. So the switch dies, and the replacement switch fails to show up as per our contract. It turns out that 3Com had sold the support contract to a company which basically did nothing except collect our money. Eventually someone had to ship us a switch via air from Toronto. Four hour onsite? Ha, ha. That 3Com switch is gone now.

[2] : Their product did IP-failover. Problem is, the 4005 didn't update its arp cache if contradictory information was seen on the network, and it took ages for the cache entries to expire on their own. (I seem to also remember that you could set arp cache timeout manually, but the switch ignored those settings.) So when the failover happened was simulated, the IP was reachable in the lab but not across the 4005s' router. First time a bug we reported to a vendor triggered an entry in a firmware update release. Oh, and the telnet interface to the management brain kept dying too, so you could only talk to the switch through a serial connection.

Drugs: you're on them

See this Craigslist ad. This is for an unpaid internship. 10 hours a week, over two or three days a week, for three months. You need:

• a degree
• three years of experience
• Server 2K3 and Server 2k8 experience
• communications + problem sovling + documentation + capacity planning skills

In return, you get:

• Experience working in an 'exciting industry'
• Resume builder
• Recommendation letter

Are these guys on drugs? Three years experience, including Server and capacity planning experience, for an unpaid position?

"Degree + Experience == Unpaid Internship?"

I have two words for you: In Sane.

There are three positions, so my guess is they are trolling for three desperate people and then they will play "Survivor: Sysadmin" with them. Winner gets the job.

I'm almost tempted to apply just to find out who they are.

Stupid Questions

Philip Greenspun on business plans:

I said “Why can’t you show me all of the ways that your product creates value for people. Then, for each value that is generated, show me how you can turn some of that into revenue. Obviously you can’t capture 100 percent of the value that you generate because there would be no consumer surplus, but you can probably capture some. And if you’re not generating value to begin with, you won’t be able to get any revenue at all.”

This is why I didn't want anything to do with companies involved in the 'tech bubble' of '98-'01. If you can't tell me how you are going to make money, why should I invest?

Of course, I'm merely an unsophisticated investor, and therefore not the kind of person who understands these things.

I have no idea what this is selling

Side Effects

In a post that is more cranky-old-man-wanting-his-flying-car, Phil Greenspun mentions some unintended consequences:

[...] the nanny state required parents to move kids to the back seat to save them from the big bad airbag (a previous mandate from the government). Due to consumers not exhibiting the perfect memories that government bureaucrats depended on, now "vehicle-related heat deaths far outnumber fatalities caused by airbag injuries" (car ride tends to put baby to sleep; parent forgets that out-of-sight baby is in the car).

This is like explaining that infants fly free on airplanes, because even if they have to fly in an adult's lap they are statistically safer than they would be buckled up in a car seat in the back of the family minivan, just because the minivan is far more likely to be in an accident when measured per passenger-mile-traveled.

Candidacy 101

David Reevely of The Ottawa Citizen wants to help you run for municipal council.

Part one: know your job.

Part two: be for something, not just against something.

It is sad how this advice applies in general terms to federal and provincial candidates.

Manned Nasa Missions

Bad Astronomer blogger Phil Plait says America Needs A New Apollo Program.

Let's look at his arguments.

Spending on manned space programs means spending here on Earth. This is the counter-artument to the "we should spend money on Earth, not on space." To wit: a space program involves hiring lots of engineers and technicians (most of whom will work here on Earth), and buying lots of raw material (most of which will be sourced here on Earth), and generating economic activity (most of which... you get the idea).

The thing is: robotic programs have the same effect. Engineers, scientists, raw materials...

Technology Spinoffs. Most of the technology spinoffs come from technology-heavy missions, and the robotic missions use more technology to accomplish things other than merely keep the human alive. The example Mr. Plait uses:

But digital cameras owe their existence to Hubble; their light-sensitive chips can trace their lineage straight back to development of the detectors that went on board Hubble's first generation of cameras.

Hubble is... a robotic mission.

Achieving the impossible:I have to quote Mr. Plait again, since he says:

But in 1969 NASA looked to this unachievable destination and made it achievable.

The flip restatement of this is: because we can. Because it is there.

The thing of it is, if we are going to spend a lot of money on something, it had better have a purpose better than "because we can". Arguments like that get some countries to invade other countries.

National Glory:

In the late 1960s, our culture and our global reputation were crumbling. But for a few shining years we were the envy of the planet. And rightly so. We went to the Moon. NASA's manned and unmanned programs have done incredible things since then, extending our knowledge of the solar system and the Universe to places we couldn't fathom just decades ago.

..or in other words: New! Shiny! We are so much cooler than everyone else, and doing this will distract the rest of the world from noticing otherwise!

Conclusion

The problem with large, specific-target national efforts, is that once the target has been achieved the public at large loses interest in it. The original Apollo program is exhibit A for that argument.

The goal of space exploration is to increase our knowledge of the universe. When it comes to getting useful-science-per-dollar-spent, robotic missions are better than manned missions in almost every way.

And while manned missions (can) garner more media, national, and international attention, history shows that unless you can keep coming up with visually new and interesting things to do with those missions, the tax-paying public which underwrites these expeditions will question the value of continuing them.

There is also the increased exposure to risk with manned missions. The Apollo 1 fire was bad press. Challenger grounded the shuttle fleet for almost three years; Columbia's breakup grounded the fleet for two and a half.

Now, imagine if the Mars Polar Lander had been a manned mission.

But it wasn't, and Mars robotic programs continue to this day. Since that time the program focuses have been more on reliability than the "fail faster" philosophy that contributed to some of the failures.

There is also the technology argument. New technology costs more, both to design and to operate. Take for example what I believe is the best piece of technology to ever come from the manned space program: the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME). This is an engine, capable of lifting payloads to orbit, which is re-usable. It isn't a throwaway. If we are going to run routine manned missions to space, we need a robust technology -- and a reusable engine has to be robust.

Instead, Nasa wants to go back to throw-away rockets because they are cheaper to build and fire. So they want to do expensive programs -- but they want to do them cheaply.

I am not arguing against Nasa's existence. I just think that with the current level of technology, robotic missions are a better investment, both for the returns from those missions, as well as managing the risks facing them.