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Posted: **Thu Jan 08, 2015 10:50 am**

I used to work for the local power company. When I started they gave me a 5 year old desktop that literally could not run my development software.

Me: Uh, I can't run my software for development.
Mgr: What do you need?
Me: A new machine, with X/Y specs.
Mgr: I can double your RAM?
Me: Uh...

About 1 month later they did finally get me a new machine. But, man... it was clawing and clawing to get anything in that environment.

Posted: **Thu Jan 08, 2015 10:51 am**

That sounds like any typical business, to me. No one wants to spend money.

Posted: **Thu Jan 08, 2015 11:01 am**

My company is an enigma. I got very lucky in my job search 10 years ago.

Posted: **Thu Jan 08, 2015 11:03 am**

GORDON wrote:That sounds like any typical business, to me. No one wants to spend money.

It was not the case at the dot-com I worked at immediately before. Nor was it the case at the unregulated division of that utility to which I transferred after 2 hours. Nor has it been the case at the current company I've been at for 5.5 years. (You need 100k for servers? OK!)

Posted: **Thu Jan 08, 2015 11:10 am**

Utility companies are almost a government bureaucracy. In some cases they actually are part of the local government. Best case they are arm in arm with them. By the time the paperwork goes through to buy new technology, it's almost obsolete when you unbox it.

Posted: **Thu Jan 08, 2015 12:26 pm**

Ok, I take it back, companies love spending money on cost centers.

Posted: **Thu Jan 08, 2015 12:39 pm**

GORDON wrote:Ok, I take it back, companies love spending money on cost centers.

I don't work in IT. I'm software development.

Posted: **Thu Jan 08, 2015 1:06 pm**

GORDON wrote:Ok, I take it back, companies love spending money on cost centers.

Nobody loves it, but some realize the importance more than others.

I think the business world is slowly realizing that departments like IT need more funding and aren't a luxury. Mine certainly has come to that conclusion.

Hell, my company president stood up at the last company meeting and told everyone that they need to understand that not a single task can be done without IT. That was amazingly refreshing.

Posted: **Thu Jan 08, 2015 1:24 pm**

GORDON wrote:Ok, I take it back, companies love spending money on cost centers.

It's not a matter of loving to spend the money. It's generally a question of how long does it take the request to go through. In Catt's example, I'd bet money his supervisor could approve the memory upgrade on his machine, but replacing the machine would require paperwork to be submitted by him and go through at least two more levels of management before they would okay it. Then it would take however much longer for the business side to create the purchase order and then it had to work its way back down.

Institutions with huge bureaucracies aren't slow to upgrade because they like spending money less. They're slow to upgrade because it's a monumental pain in the ass and takes forever.

Posted: **Thu Jan 08, 2015 1:25 pm**

Leisher wrote:Hell, my company president stood up at the last company meeting and told everyone that they need to understand that not a single task can be done without IT. That was amazingly refreshing.

That's when you stand up and say, "Sir, I'd like to discuss my salary."

Posted: **Thu Jan 08, 2015 1:31 pm**

Yeah, our new CEO in particular is more attuned to that. I did a presentation for him a few weeks ago about our new data analytics (hadoop-based) cluster and the types of data and analysis it will enable for the future, and he really got it. And he understood how transformational it could be for multiple pieces of our business. The checkbook was opened.

Posted: **Tue Feb 17, 2015 2:50 pm**

AT&T caves.

Today, AT&T has announced it will invest in higher speeds in Kansas City–the first town with Google Fiber, a strong competitor.

But this is absolutely a temper-tantrum by AT&T. Regardless of how the law ends up they'll be able to make a good profit on their infrastructure if they build it. But a reasonable profit is not good enough; they want to be able to ass-rape some customers in the process and if they don't get to do that then whaa whaa whaa.

Posted: **Tue Feb 17, 2015 3:32 pm**

I hates the AT&T right now.

Posted: **Thu Feb 26, 2015 1:38 pm**

Passed today 3-2.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler saying the policy will ensure "that no one — whether government or corporate — should control free open access to the Internet."

That sounds great, so why are the Republicans fighting this measure?

The dissenting votes came from Michael O'Rielly and Ajut Pai, Republicans who warned that the FCC was overstepping its authority and interfering in commerce to solve a problem that doesn't exist. They also complained that the measure's 300-plus pages weren't publicly released or openly debated.

Oh. Ok, that's troubling, but maybe it's not so bad.

Thursday's vote comes after Commissioners Michael O'Rielly and Ajut Pai asked that the FCC "immediately release the 332-page Internet regulation plan publicly and allow the American people a reasonable period of not less than 30 days to carefully study it."

That request was denied

This doesn't bode well.

Posted: **Thu Feb 26, 2015 1:46 pm**

Transparency.

Posted: **Thu Feb 26, 2015 1:53 pm**

I hope all these pro net neutrality sheep enjoy their Netflix and Facebook and Youtube and Google because they will never have a competitor. Ever again. Now that the FCC is in control the same thing will happen to any upstart that happened to Edward Howard Armstrong with the FM radio. Another RCA will lobby the politicians and the FCC to put in place new regulations that will squash anyone that may challenge their position.

They were warned, but replied with, "But my Netflix! My Youtube! My Facebook! My.... precious..."

We all like to think we're Frodos and Samwises, but in reality a whole lot of us are Gollums. They really don't care of the ramifications of the corruption they're opening the door to as long as they have their pretty trinkets.

Posted: **Thu Feb 26, 2015 2:08 pm**

The problem with 300 pages of rulings + however many thousands of rules that turns into, is that it's a barrier to entry for all small providers. It just makes the monopolies more entrenched.

This will not make things better, but just give us new problems.

Posted: **Thu Feb 26, 2015 2:33 pm**

This ruling goes against what the telecoms wanted... is this correct?

Posted: **Thu Feb 26, 2015 2:42 pm**

Yes. But now that they have them, they'll use them to their advantage to crush their smaller competition with smaller pockets with the full force of the federal government.

Now that all packets are to be treated equally, I suspect that the cable companies will soon unbundle their TV digital networks from the Internet. Otherwise we're going to start seeing buffering on regular TV if they can't prioritize traffic.

Putting the FCC in charge of a large complex network like the Internet is like putting a 3 year old in charge of a nuclear reactor and expecting it not to melt down. And sadly, most of the people making comments on this stuff are completely ignorant of how networks work. And I'm including a lot of people in the tech industry that seem to think that because they can hook up a broadband modem at home they understand network architecture.

Posted: **Thu Feb 26, 2015 2:55 pm**

I'm not sure what to think about it.

If the average person's knowledge of network architecture is an F, then my knowledge is an F+. All I know for sure is:

- The telecoms have been given a broadband-internet-monopoly over most American markets.
- Telecoms have been given billions to improve infrastructure.
- The biggest internet provider in the country is also voted the most hated business in the country, year after year.
- America has the slowest internet among all developed countries.

With those facts, I can conclude the telecoms are either incompetent... not likely... or just have priorities that don't really have my best interests in mind, and I don't have any alternatives if I want broadband.

So if the telecoms are opposing this ruling, I can't help but think that overall, it is most likely to be good for me since the telecoms are apparently providing me the bare minimum that they can get away with, and when I read how they wanted to throttle this or that service, it was so they could use the law to legally give me even less quality for the same dollars. That is just my impression.

I admitted from the beginning that this was a confusing issue for me. Of some thread. I forget.

300+ pages of secret regulations does not bode well, though. You only need one page for, "Hands off the internet." That's obviously not repeated over and over for 300 pages.

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