The 40 hour work week

Before 1900 the average American worker worked more than 60 hours a week. A standard schedule was ten-hour days, six days a week. The only structural limits to working were lighting and religion. You stopped working when it was too dark to see or to go to church. It was exhausting. It was often fatal. —Collaborative Fund

The 40 hour work week is foremost a result of the physical limits of the human body—but we often fail to take into account the mental limits, as well. Why was working for more than 40 hours a week on a railroad dangerous? It was not just because people were physically tired, but also because they were mentally tired. The resulting discussion among coders has been rampant and widespread (see, for instance, here).

First, the focus on time and the length of the work week may be a little misdirected. We are still a world focused on physical presence as a proxy for accomplishing work. I know a lot of companies prefer to have people in the office—ironically, this is a big deal with most of the companies in the world that aim to bring networks, and network based services, to the masses. Continue reading

The Composable Systems Wave Is Rising

Hardware is, by its very nature, physical and therefore, unlike software or virtual hardware and software routines encoded by FPGAs, it is the one thing that cannot be easily changed. The dream of composable systems, which we have discussed in the past, is something that has been swirling around in the heads of system architects for more than a decade, and we are without question getting closer to realizing the dream of making the components of systems and the clusters that are created from them programmable like software.

The hyperscalers, of course, have been on the bleeding edge of …

The Composable Systems Wave Is Rising was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

IDG Contributor Network: Real world challenges between us and the Internet of Things

Many a blog line has been penned on the rich topic of the Internet of Things (IoT) but not much has been written about the real world challenges between our today and the many promises of the IoT tomorrow. Technology considerations can easily blind us “techies” to more mundane realities but, when you work as deeply in the Smart City space as I do, it is difficult to avoid them. In my opinion, the technology challenges surrounding the IoT are relatively small compared to the real world challenges that are perhaps not so obvious.Some say the IoT is now, but I don’t believe that! I believe we are on a journey, and the trajectory of every vertical industry to this destination will be carved somewhat uniquely and at its own necessary pace. Healthcare is often touted as a darling of the IoT, but the privacy, security and regulatory issues here might never be adequately solved in a way that will allow this sensitive data to be leveraged up significantly into any wider value creating ecosystem. The automotive and intelligent transportation verticals, on the other hand, look more promising to me in terms of fast tracking their way to the Continue reading

Worth Reading: pbgpp

pbgpp allows network operators to apply a wide range of filters, either on network layer (src IP, dst IP), but foremost BGP fields — for example, prefix, communities, or next hop. Filters are applied in two steps, improving analysis performance. Before parsing the BGP-specific fields in the captured packet, lower-layer packet header field filters (IP or MAC source or destination) are applied. Thus, we do not parse all packets, but only the matching ones. BGP-specific filters are applied subsequently after parsing. —APNIC

The post Worth Reading: pbgpp appeared first on rule 11 reader.

IDG Contributor Network: Top 5 InfoSec concerns for 2017

Cloudbleed, WannaCry, ransomware, hackers. Each and every day, it seems, the tech community wakes up to news of another attack on data security and privacy. As IT professionals, we spend our days working to the best of our knowledge and ability to keep company information secure. Some days, however, when news of new attacks hit, it can feel like we’ll never get ahead. As soon as we learn one method of protection, the hackers have invented a new workaround.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Top 5 InfoSec concerns for 2017

Cloudbleed, WannaCry, ransomware, hackers. Each and every day, it seems, the tech community wakes up to news of another attack on data security and privacy. As IT professionals, we spend our days working to the best of our knowledge and ability to keep company information secure. Some days, however, when news of new attacks hit, it can feel like we’ll never get ahead. As soon as we learn one method of protection, the hackers have invented a new workaround.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

60% off KANGORA 300 Lumens LED Tactical Mini Handheld Flashlights, Pack of 5 – Deal Alert

This mini LED Tactical Flashlight comes with a upscale box that can send as a gift and is powered by a single 3.7V AA battery or a 14500 Rechargeable (not included). Heavy duty, compact and tough as nails makes the KANGORA tactical torch perfect for hunting, camping or your next search and rescue mission. Its 300 Lumens LED produces an intense beam of light up to 600 feet. Right now the list price of $39.99 on this set of 5 flashlights is reduced 60% to just $15.95. See it on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

British Airways’ outage, like most data center outages, was caused by humans

An IT outage on May 27 that caused British Airways (BA) to cancel more than 400 flights and strand 75,000 passengers in one day was because of human error—and a simple one at that.An engineer had disconnected a power supply at a data center near London’s Heathrow airport, and when it was reconnected, it caused a surge of power that resulted in major damage, according to Willie Walsh, CEO of BA’s parent company IAG SA. Walsh made the comment to reporters in Mexico, and it was picked up by Bloomberg and other news outlets.+ Also on Network World: We’re learning the wrong lessons from airline IT outages + The engineer in question had been authorized to be on site and was part of a team working at the Heathrow data center hit by the power outage. The facility is managed by CBRE Works Solutions, a U.S. property services company.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

British Airways’ outage, like most data center outages, was caused by humans

An IT outage on May 27 that caused British Airways (BA) to cancel more than 400 flights and strand 75,000 passengers in one day was because of human error—and a simple one at that.An engineer had disconnected a power supply at a data center near London’s Heathrow airport, and when it was reconnected, it caused a surge of power that resulted in major damage, according to Willie Walsh, CEO of BA’s parent company IAG SA. Walsh made the comment to reporters in Mexico, and it was picked up by Bloomberg and other news outlets.+ Also on Network World: We’re learning the wrong lessons from airline IT outages + The engineer in question had been authorized to be on site and was part of a team working at the Heathrow data center hit by the power outage. The facility is managed by CBRE Works Solutions, a U.S. property services company.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

25% off SanDisk Ultra 256GB MicroSDXC UHS-I Card with Adapter – Deal Alert

Capture life at its fullest with the breakthrough capacity of this 256GB microSD card from SanDisk. 256GB means that you never have to worry about what to delete. It’s enough capacity to hold up to 24 hours of Full HD video. You can transfer up to 1,200 photos a minute when you’re ready to archive. Built to perform in harsh conditions, SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I Cards are waterproof, temperature-proof, shockproof, and X-ray proof. The 256GB microSD card is rated Class 10 for Full HD video recording performance and comes with an SD adapter and a 10-year limited warranty. The typical list price is currently discounted 25% from $200 down to $150. See this deal on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CCIE Continuing Education – Learn Your away To Recertification

It looks like one of the best (or worst) kept secrets about the CCIE has finally come to pass. This week, Cisco announced that there is a new program in place to recertify your CCIE without the need to continually retake the written exam. How is this going to measure up?

The Learning Train

The idea behind continual recertification is very simple. Rather than shut down what you’ve got going on every 18 months to spend time studying for an exam, Cisco is giving current CCIEs and CCDEs the option of applying credit from educational sessions toward recertifying their credentials.
This is very similar to the way that it works in for a doctor or a lawyer. There are courses that you can take that provide a certain number of “points” for a given class. When you accumulate 100 points in a two year span, you can apply those points to recertification.
The credits are good for a maximum of three years from the date earned. You can’t carry them over between recertification periods or bank them in case your certification expires. Once you use the points to recert, you start back up the treadmill again.

We’ll Do It Live!

Continue reading

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