Sex, Drugs & Unix

Sunday, May 30th

Commodity WiFi switches

As I predicted over 18 months ago, (and more recently here) WiFi switches just went commodity.

Linksys (now a division of Cisco Systems) representative presented several new products at the So. Cal. Wireless Users Group Thursday night.

Amoung other things, they presented Wireless the Linksys WET54GS5 Wireless Ethernet Switch. Its features include:

Managed Ethernet switch
Wireless supports virtual LANs (VLAN)
Supports up to 69 VLAN users
Each wireles suser gets a separate Subnetted IP address
Targeted release June 2004

I thought that Broadcom would release a package that made it easy to build a small-to-medium scale WiFi switch. They have all the requisite chips, and the software is relatively straightforward. Most of the WiFi switch startups are running Atheros-based designs, because Broadcom keeps the programing information about their 802.11 MAC+BB under wraps, but they could implement the requisite control structures themselves, and produce a 'kit' for the Taiwanese to clone.

Hell, for all I know, they have.

link

Jim on 05.30.04 @ 07:24 AM PST [link]

Thursday, May 27th

Two riders were approaching

Rumor has it that an increasing number of Spokane-based personnel are fleeing for the blamy shores of the south bay.

There must be some kind of way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief

Meanwhile, Don and his sidekick Val have split for Russia, in what can only be an obvious attempt to unload the nearly 700 units of negative margin, first-gen product. Look for a huge deal to be announced soon followed by a warehouse fire as those in V-land get increasingly desperate.

No reason to get excited
The thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke

Further leakage in V-land says that the last remaining captian of the previous regime will depart this Friday. This author suggests he was pushed. Perhaps if the stars line up, Eddie, Alex and Michael will take him back.

But you and I we've been through that
And this is not our place
So let us stop talking falsely now
The hour's getting late

Jim on 05.27.04 @ 12:45 AM PST [link]

Wednesday, May 26th

HTML O' the day

Paranoid much?

"It's pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and
dinner," said an intelligence source in Washington yesterday.
"Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the US for several
years through Chalabi."

Get licked!

Everything is outsize: the hair, the smell, the pull of a passing
squirrel, the grooming bills, the food intake and its inevitable
digestive exit, which can summon spectators like some kind of street
show.

Foreign ministers from seven nations, including five of the EU's
new countries, said a reference to the "Christian roots of
Europe" is a national priority in negotiations on the
constitution. But Spain, which had backed a mention of Christian
heritage, has switched sides after the recent change of
government, and yesterday backed France which guards its
long-established secular traditions jealously.

Play Again?

On at least three separate occasions, Opera has accused Microsoft
of deliberately breaking interoperability between its MSN Web portal
and various versions of the Opera browser--charges that the software
giant has repeatedly denied.

Google Inc. took in nearly $1 billion last year by selling ads
to firms eager to market their wares online to computer users.
But a number of major businesses in the United States and Europe
are crying foul, going after Google in court and alleging that
the search-engine juggernaut is profiting illegally by trading
on their names.

Kind of a love song. [Possibly offensive: AC, SSC]

Why phones are replacing cars.

Jim on 05.26.04 @ 07:35 AM PST [link]

Sunday, May 23rd

WiFi overhyped, sez Register

Cometa Networks, once the symbol of the Wi-Fi hotspot bubble, has ceased to trade, throwing into sharp relief the fact that public WLANs, for all their advantages, have been overhyped and given burdens of expectation that they could not reach. Not to mention that hotspots have largely failed to find a credible business model as they come under pressure from free services.
says El Reg here.

Yes, but who over-hyped it?
Montgomery Research
Ziff Davis
Hell, even Sifry was seduced.

Lets face it, Intel invested in Cometa to make it a stalking horse. First for the launch of Banias, and then for WiMax. In fact, strong rumors persisted that "Project Rainbow" was an Intel-led effort. Seems to me that AT&T dropped out about the time that CoMeta started singing the WiMax song.

Jim on 05.23.04 @ 10:33 AM PST [link]

Apocalypse Now Startup

I'm up late watching "Apocalypse Now Redux" on IFC. The restored "French plantation" sequence is on, and adds ghostly resonance to the war's (any war's) absurdity. .

It also parallels my Vivato experience like the well-crafted metaphor it is.

"Imagine getting on the Disneyland Jungle Safari ride in late October and falling asleep only to have a horrible heart attack-inducing nightmare where the boat continues past the Electric Light Parade and into the river Styx."

Ayup.

The "lost" footage was not simply injected into the movie as it stands. The whole film was reedited from original raw stock. Walter Murch and Francis Ford Coppola took the dailies and rebuilt their empire from the ground up. A lot of the movie rings familiar. Scenes play like songs off an old Beach Boys' record. Even if you've never sat down and listened to Pet Sounds all the way through, you still know the words to "Wouldn't It Be Nice." There are items here that roll out like old favorites in a jukebox: Brando. Charlie Don't Surf. The Playboy Bunnies. Laurence Fishburne at 14. "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning." The "Die Walkure" raid. Even the film's turbulent production process is embedded in the common man's subconscious mind.

Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were goin' all the way. Kurtz got off the boat. He split from the whole fuckin' program.

and, as I wrote to Ken Biba once, when we were both still at Vivato:

Spokane. Shit. I'm still only in Spokane. Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in Texas. When I was home after my first month it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. When I was here, I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the Valley. I hardly said a word to my manager until I said yes to Saturn V.

I'm here a year now, waiting for a mission, getting softer. Every minute I stay in this shithole I get weaker, and every minute a programmer squats at his terminal in India or China getting stronger. Each time I look around, the walls move in a little tighter...

[Fade in to the Doors doing "The End"]

Everyone gets everything he wants; I wanted a mission, and for my sins they gave me Sandhawk. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I'd never want another.

I was going to the worst startup in the world, and I didn't even know it yet. Months of work, and thousands of hours of effort, only to be wasted by the REMF VCs at the hands of their new boy, Stalter.

I thought I was Willard, and turned out to be Kurtz.

"The horror..."

Jim on 05.23.04 @ 02:52 AM PST [link]

Tuesday, May 18th

Rich $alz broke his neck

Rich Salz,father of INN, and perhaps now more familiar to the blogging world, as Web services columnist at xml.com was involved in a car accident and suffered a broken neck

Rich is the person I count as my 'oldest friend on the net', since he sent me birthday greetings via email, (complete with an ASCII ART birthday cake), something like 19 years ago.

Oddly, I was thinking about him on May 11 (my birthday), and the accident happened May 12.

Best wishes and Godspeed, R$.

Jim

Jim on 05.18.04 @ 10:54 PM PST [link]

Cometa shuts down

Larry Brilliant is apparenlty 0 for 2 on public access WiFi.

First there was Airzone which died because the Li family pulled their investment back out just as Airzone was winning the SFO deal, and now Cometa, funded by AT&T, Intel and IBM is shutting its doors.

Questions abound. Who will pick-up Barnes and Nobel? (Likely T-mobile.)

What about the Toshiba hotspot acquistion?

Why did Nordstrom's get involved again? (The Nordstrom family was an early investor in Larry's Laptop Lane, which became Airzone before Wayport bought out the profitable locations, right before airtravel went to hell on 9/11.)

And why is it that Intel Capital has such a brown thumb when it comes to wifi? Cometa is dead. Blue Sockt's executives are bailing, I've covered Vivato's troubles extensively here. Telesym's VoIP phone for PDAs is now a commodity from Microsoft. Nomadix is on the ropes.
Jim on 05.18.04 @ 01:33 PM PST [link]

Sunday, May 16th

This is why VCs bring in the MBAs

The new CEO at one of my former companies is well-known for emotional pricing. He appears to not understand concepts like price points, the network effect, social capital, prospect theory, conjoint analysis, sustainable competitive advantage or porter analysis, but I can pretty much guarantee he recently became very, very familiar with price elasticity.

Those links and 20 minutes should give you a handle of why they're in trouble, but at this point it doesn't really matter. They've run an excel spreadsheet that says X users at Y price will mean mad cash... or at least a path out of the pit, showing them something like a bell curve with price points is voodoo to himafter he's seen that spreadsheet sum.

I pointed this out to him when he wanted to adjust price on a product that was actually moving. "Obviously", he said, "if they're selling that fast, they must be underpriced." So, he raised price, and sales stopped, except for the channels that already had a contract at the lower price. The situation lasted a mere six weeks, but the damage was done. The market for the product vaporized.

Now don't get me wrong... he might think he understands some of these things in a roundabout way: like I said, he knows where he wants to get... and I'm sure if he could think of a way, he would create vendor lock-in. He just has no clue about getting there, nor will he listen to other voices.

To quote someone else who used to work there, "Its like the Internet never happened for him."

He's not the only one still there that thinks higher prices are the path to success. One of the founders used to beat on me that the price of the first product, which by any rational judgement has been a failure in the marketplace, was priced too low. Apparently, this is (or was) common practice at HP. He also enjoyed suggesting that I was ruining the company by directing it to compete with "commodity products". The thing is, everyone else in the space understands that the space has been commoditized. Those few who try to suggest that they have additional value are being destroyed.

This explains why less than 50% of the total manufacturing run has been sold. I anticipate that a warehouse full of these will soon catch fire, or otherwise be forced to evaporate.

Jim on 05.16.04 @ 07:25 PM PST [link]

linux: coming soon to a MAE near you

So the source code to IOS may have been released to the wild. Many think this bodes badly for the Internet, since Cisco routers are so pervasive throughout the network.

Personally, if its true, I think it means that we will soon see a lot more linux-on-Cisco-hardware.

Speaking of which, does anyone know where i can find a copy of CISH? (Update: I found it here.)

Jim
Jim on 05.16.04 @ 08:17 AM PST [link]

Saturday, May 8th

free wifi in hotels

A long time ago, Wayport had free WiFi in hotel lobbys. (See previous post.)

Now many chains, such as: Omni, Fairmont, http://www.wyndham.com/wbr/benefits/main.wnt?">Wyndham(which really is Wayport), Courtyard, Springhill Suites, Residence Inn and Towne Place Suites, Clarion Hotels and Comfort Suites. Microteland, the largest chain in the world, Best Western"all have free WiFi in the lobby. I see signs even here in the backwater of Spokane that declare, "Free high speed wireless Internet".

The only model that works in hospitality now is free-to-guest. WiFi is an ammenity. The other model of "gotta have it" in public places, pay toilets, didn't last long either.

This must be what drove Wayport to do the deal (which sources tell me is not in Wayport's favor) with McDonalds. But even now that Wayport has "won" McDonalds, LESSnetworks is out blowing free WiFi into coffee shops and other short-stay venues.

Free wins, hands down.
Jim on 05.08.04 @ 06:57 PM PST [link]

Friday, May 7th

Wayport, Musenki, Vivato, ...

Back when I was at Wayport, Brett Stewart came up with the idea (maybe 1999 or so) to locate APs on phone booths. I instigated a project (called the DSLAP (DSL AP)) with Northshore Circuit Design(also in Austin) to produce a linux-powered 802.11b AP based on the Motorola MPC855T (or 860, but I digress).

We got the board up (the designer eventually worked for me at Wayport) and running, but by then the VCs were all in a twist about things (this was during 2000 when the VC funds were collapsing), and gave Wayport a new CEO (Dave Vucina). At Wayport, we had deployed some (free!) wireless around town in non-traditional venues, such as Katz's deli. Quite honestly, I had plans to go out and place APs that would cost us around $300 each with no external DSL modem in armored boxes wherever I could find a phone (or payphone).

My dream was that there would be wireless at Rudy's and El Arroyo. This was all very much prior to the "community wireless" movement..

I also had plans to use a "mini DSLAM" in hotels with the DSLAPs on the ends of the cat0 wire (all that one can find in most hotels). Note that under my "reign" at Wayport, we had designed a full 100 port managed Ethernet switch that used either full 10/100 Ethernet or HPNA to communicate with a 5 port switch located in the room. The system was called "Everywire".

There are NEXT problems with running a WHOLE BUNCH of HPNA in a wire bundle, and ADSL (or even SDSL) would have fixed that. Note as well that the in-room devices cost around $130 each, so if we could have placed one AP for every 3 rooms, we would still be money ahead (perhaps every 2 rooms, since the labor cost of installing the room was so high.)

So re-engineering the line cards in the switch to be ADSL instead of Ethernet would have been really straight forward. In fact, this effort was underway, when I was forced to shut the project down due to (ahem) "change in business focus" at Wayport. Were it not for some intense pressure from several people, Wayport could have been a 100% wireless company back in 2000.

Note that when I shut it down, the DSLAP was up and running linux and full 802.11b. It was ready. We could even power it over a spare pair from the remote closet. I was still convinced of the viability of an AP that you *could change*, so I quit Wayport in April of 2001 to focus on a new company that some of you may have heard of, Musenki.

When I was out doing Musenki, I spread the idea at several conferences (Eye For Wireless, 802.11 Planet, etc.) that pay phones were one of the logical places from which to light the world. The operator of the pay phone already has a relationship with the venue owner to supply telecommunications services. Hotels and Airports have their hands in the pockets of anyone who attempts to cross the threshold of their venue(s) with a new service or store. Thus, the pay phone operators (COCOTS and ILECS), who had a business that was dying at the hands of cell phones, would have a new (ahem) revenue opportunity.

Kem McClelland wanted to be sure that we (at Musenki) didn't pursue any idea that had been hatched at Wayport, so we didn't do the DSLAP. Instead we focused on powerful, linux-powerd APs, using MPC8245/MPC8241 CPus and miniPCI cards instead of the MPC855T and a PCMCIA card. Once again, we got the hardware and software all up and working before it became obvious that the partnership (which involved Kem and Brad Martin (who owns 1/2 of Northshore) had fractured, and Kem and Brad refused to "allow" the corporation to proceed with any production without outside funding. This is why Musenki failed.

I'm sure they had their reasons, but it was completely disheartening for me, so I decided to look for a job, and found one at Vivato. Vivato went through its own VC hell, and replaced the CEO with someone I decided I couldn't work with, so I resigned and now I work at Netgate with my lovely wife (who was unmentioned above, but was Musenki's first employee, back when it was known as wild*bliw.)

Jim on 05.07.04 @ 12:15 AM PST [link]

Tuesday, May 4th

WiFi switch shakeout/shakedown underway

Fucked Company has the following reported fucks:

ReefEdge fucked

Vivato appears to be in serial layoff mode, but see below.

Aruba, Vernier, Trapeeze, Symbol and Airespace all have rumors posted, but I'm not in the mood to pay to see these.

Bandspeed doesn't rate at FC, but they're fucked anyway, since I've never seen these CEO transitions go well, and this is #3 for them. Moreover, their claimed "SDMA" is complete hype. I know one of their BoD members from way back when he and I were in charge of the IT and Engineering infrastructure at Convex, and several people who work there. This stinker can't last.

All of these companies will be gone in less than a year now that Cisco has launched its own WiFi switch. Extreme and Symbol will pickup any customer that doesn't want to buy Cisco's solution.

And finally Proxim has managed to avoid any mention, even though the stock continues to tank. Proxim is slated to ship a WiFi switch in July, though a half-dozen of their software team has fled to Vivato, who continues to outsource at least twelve would-otherwise-be-US-based positions to India.

Rumors say that few of the new crew don't know much about anything, and refuse to move to Spokane, which leads to a fractured development team. I predict utter disaster. Time will tell if the 802.11g switch, rumored to be introduced at N+I, will ship anytime soon.

Proxim and Extreme appear to be coupled in a stock slide. The same chart shows that Cisco and Symbol appear to be on a slow climb. Symbol, of course, has a huge play in barcode, which will save it from the high seas of the WiFi space.
Jim on 05.04.04 @ 12:01 PM PST [link]

HTML O' the day

I guess he found out how deep his rabbit hole goes.

"He had the wool over his eyes, he couldn't have survived very much longer up there."

All appliances should be shut off, including the pilot light on gas heaters. And one can is more than enough for a 600-square-foot home.

The stories of our lives.

Inventions for anybody with the funds to play Spy vs. Spy.

Don't forget to dial in.

Salt water freezes when only a few degrees colder than fresh water.

We're not evil; we're also not stupid: Much has been made of Google's forthcoming auction-style IPO, and the promises of a system that attempts to put individual investors on a level playing field with large mutual funds and institutional investors. Should the auction function as intended, it will wrest virtually all control away from the IPO's underwriters, and make it difficult for speculators to sell out early for a quick profit.

We think of it as technology facilitating serendipity. As to if anyone is going to get laid from it, all I can say is that our engineers are working day and night to make this happen.

Human clinical trials within 2 years.

The fences didn't stop us, the tennis matches stopped when the nuns detected us and initiated interdiction.

Jim on 05.04.04 @ 01:45 AM PST [link]

Monday, May 3rd

Window considered harmful (redux)

This off the NANOG list:

From: Sean Donelan
Date: Mon May 03 22:10:09 2004

On Mon, 3 May 2004, Rob Thomas wrote:
> ] Just because a machine has a bot/worm/virus that didn't come with a
> ] rootkit, doesn't mean that someone else hasn't had their way with it.
>
> Agreed.

Won't help. What's the first thing people do after re-installing
the operating system (still have all the original CDs and keys and
product activation codes and and and)?

Connect to the Internet to download the patches. Time to download patches
60+ minutes. Time to infection 5 minutes. Patches are Microsoft's
intellectual property and can not be distributed by anyone without
Microsoft's permission.

Ok, so you order Microsoft's patch CD. Unfortunately it only includes
patches through October 2003.

Microsoft is selling over 10 million Windows licenses every month.
Patches not included.

Jim on 05.03.04 @ 11:50 PM PST [link]

Germany plans to fine brothels with no apprentices

The legislation drafted by the Social Democrats and their Greens
coalition partners will fine companies that do not have one
apprentice for every 15 workers.

link
Jim on 05.03.04 @ 11:00 AM PST [link]

Secret Decoder Ring

Here's a message out to all my former co-inmates at the assylum.

Seems that der commadant has a past history of stirring the shit like a highly punctual manner. So says someone whow was there.

See if you can notice him blowing up about every three weeks about something, typically something non-important (though he will make it so.) Seems to fit, from what I recall. Keeps the organization off-balance, which keeps anyone from focusing on how bad things are becoming. Anticipate that the pressure will build as his predictions begin to fail. Anyone done inventory lately?

And keep those love letters coming.
Jim on 05.03.04 @ 10:30 AM PST [link]

Sunday, May 2nd

Waiting for the other shoe to drop

Some guys I know may have just developed the last link in a worldwide, free VoIP system.

E164.org provides DNS glue between POTS numbers and VoIP systems on the Internet. They provide either 100 "free" numbers out of the unused 822 country range, or ''verified'' mapping for real telephone numbers. The system provides both "real" telephone and "free" number mapping to any Voice over IP address of your choosing. Presently they support a single IAX, SIP and H323 entry, with multiple entries and many more types soon.

This allows people to dial regular telephone numbers instead of yet another "free" voip address, and have the call switched over the Internet to an IAX/SIP or H323 service. A person or community PBX,
using software such as Asterisk or
SER (SIP Express Router), could setup a dial plan that first tried the ENUM root for an Internet path, and fall back to a traditional PSTN route. Examples of this sort of Least Cost Routing are on the website.

This allows businesses and people to make and receive telephone calls over the Internet and Internet style networks. Unlike other systems, your calls can be switched directly to the person you are calling instead of passing all of your calls through a single service provider. This means that congestion from busy services is reduced, providing a more reliable voice connection.

This is not a VoIP gateway like Free World Dialup. Calls can be Point to Point between the caller and calling party's system, therefore this system does not introduce congestion issues like many "broadband phone" services out there today.

This system only requires a hostname to route phone numbers to, you can move around by simply updating a dynamic DNS service. This would be great for using an 802.11 VoIP/SIP handset in hotspots. Someday NoCat is going to grow up and provide NAT traversal services (without the c(r)aptive portal) for SIP phones.

Jim on 05.02.04 @ 11:40 PM PST [link]

BMC sucks in Marimba

Says here that BMC is buying Marimba for $239m.

Marimba, of course, was the former home of everyone's favorite Girl Geek, Kim Polese. Joi Ito recently spoke with the gal who renamed Oak as Java, and she said the buzz is back.
Jim on 05.02.04 @ 10:10 AM PST [link]

50,000+ machines @ Google?

Here's a great back-of-the-envelope calculation by Tristan Louis of just how many servers are in the Google farm using their hardware expenditures from Google's S-1 filing.

Update: They're over 100K, apparently.
Jim on 05.02.04 @ 09:28 AM PST [link]

chicks, VoIP and unix

Nothing here in dis 'blog about sex, yet. I'm happily married (if you're married, you know how these things go, some days its "yeah" and others its "yeah, but"), for fourteen years now, and I don't know how she puts up with me.

Still, we have a 6 year-old, named "Hunter Speed", and yes, he is named after the great Gonzo one.

But still, while dragging through Orkut this morning I stumbled onto "Sex, Drugs and Unix" as an Orkut group, and there was a pretty little blonde girl in the group, who, if her description (and website) are to be believed, likes to take it in the ass.

She seems to be hooked into Asterisk as well... but (and there is always a bug), she seems to drink Budwiser tall boys.

Hot cum-covered VoIP phone sex, anywone?
Jim on 05.02.04 @ 08:42 AM PST [link]

May 2004
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31