My place of work is currently under a distributed hack DOS. Combined with the abnormal traffic caused by the Gaobot virus’s timer going off, our Internet connection is about comparable to what you would have seen on an ARC NET setup circa early 80’s. Token ring would be screaming fast compared to the bandwidth available at the moment. Total net effect: several hundred million dollars worth of technology not working because everything bottlenecks through 2 PIX Boxes, a stupid-human Sun backbone combined with a CISCO firewall.
For those who are not techies in the audience, let me give you an example you will more probably be able to relate to.
Go spend $70k on a nice luxury car. Trick it out with another $50k or so of custom gear. Now, you can take it out and drive it whenever and wherever you want, but, when you do, you can never exceed the pace of the 12 year old boy on a Ross bike with training wheels pedaling uphill just ahead of you.
I was told briefly several months ago that my security suggestion was tabled “due to a definititive lack of expertise in the area of enterprise Internet security”. My plan was conservatively budgeted at about a 140k$ outlay initially, with a 12-14k$/annual TCO. These numbers may seem scary, they are paltry compared to some of the expenditures around here.
So, now, my work life is a parody of a Optimum Online commercial, and our layer 7 switch, which was the decided solution to dealing with these issues after my proposal went down, is sitting there routing nothing, because nothing can get to it.
Frustrating, no?
In other news, I haven’t said a thing about reading lately. I finished Life of Pi, House of Leaves, a few Stephen King books, and am currently working on the first installment of Zecharia Sitchin’s Earth Chronicles. While the stuff is an enjoyable enough read as quasi-fiction, the fact that not only does he mean it to be nonfiction, but that people believe this stuff in their heart-of-hearts is kinda disturbing. I think Harold Hill co-authored it.
Tonight I sell my car. I do so with none of the melancholy or nostalgia which