Posts by plpl

Popeye cancels a Japan trip...

Funny... as the situation seems to get better in Fukushima, we begin to see people explaining that the situation has always been excessively exagerated, and that "the people who really know what thay're talking about" have always known it... (but they kept it a secret)

So, what did we really see ?

On the first day of the Fukushima accident, Anne Lauvergeon, Areva boss, went on TV to explain that it was just a minor problem, there was nothing to worry about, nuclear plants are super safe (and especially the brand new Areva's EPR...)

In the same time Areva brought back 40 german employees from Fukushima to Europe in emergency (people really aware of the situation know that it's because they ran out of beer)

2 days later, the same Anne Lauvergeon, propably intoxicated by tabloids and pub-chitchat, appeared on TV with a gloomy face to explain that the situation was really bad and you could not rule out a Chernobyl-like accident.

Same happened on the japanese side : japanese government and Tepco execs first seem confident... Then on monday evening i saw them on TV, with grey faces, explaining that the situation was critical, they did their best but asked for help.

But once again, those people probably lacked information and proper feedback by el reg's top scientists.

etc.

Seriously, who cares about the 4 or 5 or 6 level of the accident ?

The fact is we were pretty close to a major accident. It looks like it will be avoided (good for japanese people). But :

- just as i am writing this post, a suspect grey smoke comes from reactor 3. Probably a barbecue problem....

- aera around the plant is now contaminated (that's what you get when you have to leak radioactive vapor to avoid exessive pressure). Good for me i don't live there so i won't have to deal with Iodine and cesium stuffed milk and spinach in the months or years to come. Same for tap water : ok, maybe the dose won't immediately turn you into dust but the fact is that is simply should not be there and will increase cancer risk.

- Japan will have to deal with a nice concrete covered contaminated out of order nuclear-plant that will remains there for ages, hoping it never leaks.

So please, maybe and propably some people overreacted, but try to have a bit of decency...

Ha Ha Ha (to F. Karno)

Dear Fred, you truly are funny.

It looks like you are one of those guys who still don't get the subtle difference between access network and backbone network.

In that very case, by allowing more bandwith on the access side, while backbone problems are not solved, FTTH would just worsen the situation...

Everybody wants its car pimped with the 22" golden rims, but nobody cares if the engine can make it turn...

luxury

@shaggydoggy

It's not only a question of monney (well, it is eventually...)

LVMH is a luxury brand. And luxuary means it's expensive, not available everywhere, and not mass produced.

Luxury brand wants to closely control the whole supply chain. And if you can get your fancy Louis Vuitton bag in any shop, the brand will be considered cheap and will lose its luxury appeal.

Just a question of image....

You know, Louis Vuitton luggage is not that top quality. It's good quality but nothing more. BUT it has the luxury image which makes it worth the monney.

Nice, huh ?

Paris, beacuse like LV bags, she is not top quality but just luxury and her image is part of the product.

Carpets

@AC : TeleHouse is the champion of Datacenters located inside of big cities (they have two inside of Paris)

Since surface there is really expensive, the price is really expensive too.

For such price you should expect carpets and a jacuzzi for deployment workers to nurse their sore back.

Of course you can move your equipments to less pricey datacenters in the far far suburbs but they lack glamour and it's less easy to have journalists shoot impressive pictures of the CEO in front of racks full of blinking computers.

Paris H., because the TH1 datacenter in Paris is pretty close to several nightclubs.

networking

Considering AOL is leaving the networkinging business, it could sell the ATDN network to google.

So Google would have its own worldwide tier-one backbone.

on Sale

i see this as the first step before a sale of the remaining networking activities.

Especially, AOL owns one of the biggest worldwide backbones (ATDN). And it's a Tier-One backbone, very classy... This probably has some value.

bandwidth

@ross : to precise a few things :

ISPs pay for peak usage: this determines the size of the core network and the bill for transit carriers.

Unfortunately, everyone wants to use it's internet access at the same time (roughly between 6pm and 10pm).

And that's why ISPs tend to block P2P during peak hours to minimize this network peak. So max download/upload is not really relevant since it's not really how much but when.

@jon : how funny, if everybody starts downloading 5Mbit/s at the same time, there will be no ISPs and no internet any more. Unless you are willing to pay a few thousand pounds a month. Anyway, i'm not sure such a network is just technically feasable with today's equipments.

Btw, ISPs size their infrastructures for let's say a 50kbyte/s (400kbit/s) average usage per user.

With new usages coming (more youtube, more google tv, etc.), ISPs'future and business model is going to be quite interesting....