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Panfilo posted:I had heard that Cisco doesn't even use all their office space in their massive campus anyway. Reminder that Cisco bought FlipCam and then poo poo all over the line because Well Everyone Has a Camera in their Celphone! And then GoPro ate their lunch because there was a niche that was now wide loving open. Another reminder is that Cisco thought that Skype/Google video Chat was way, way too low res, so their solution was to promote a multi-thousand dollar Videoconferencing Codec unit that was run through their own network, used expensive external cameras, required extensive IT tinkering to work, and would lose independent video control if a "master unit" was in the call. They later decided to do a free online version that would work on their backend. They're quite the visionaries.
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Aug 17, 2016 18:35
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And yet for so many years Cisco was the poster child for How To Do Acquisitions Right. I suspect it's trying to buy companies well outside their core competence, then putting their existing managers, the ones familiar with How It's Done Here, in overall charge of the new companies.
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Aug 17, 2016 18:58
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The Flip acquisition was the highest profile bit of a period where Cisco thought it needed to go consumer for some godawful reason. They basically bought it, realized there was actually no synergy with any of their other business units and no real go to market to build it into a business with enough revenue to care about, and killed it. Cisco as a consumer company basically died at the same time, and good riddance. As for this recent layoff, Cisco lays off at least 1 percent of its workforce every summer like clockwork. They're hiring continuously at the same time. I wouldn't read too much into it, and if the bubble pops it's probably not going to be crusty old networking hardware companies that go first.
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Aug 17, 2016 19:43
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Yeah 20% is a big deal but I don't map it to "the bubble bursting", either.
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Aug 17, 2016 20:00
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Baby Babbeh posted:The Flip acquisition was the highest profile bit of a period where Cisco thought it needed to go consumer for some godawful reason. They basically bought it, realized there was actually no synergy with any of their other business units and no real go to market to build it into a business with enough revenue to care about, and killed it. Cisco as a consumer company basically died at the same time, and good riddance. Ahem. Cisco totally sells to consumers. Such as the two dozen turbospergs in the world who want to maximise home network speeds to transfer porn to/from their NAS more quickly and efficiently by running Cat6 cable to/from a Cisco switch bought on Amazon.
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Aug 17, 2016 20:08
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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FilthyImp posted:Reminder that Cisco bought FlipCam and then poo poo all over the line because Well Everyone Has a Camera in their Celphone! And then GoPro ate their lunch because there was a niche that was now wide loving open. This is the mistake of everyone who thinks an expensive, cheap, or even free-but-slightly-tedious high quality solution can ever outcompete a barely adequate piece of crap solution that's free and doesn't require  to janitor.
suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Aug 17, 2016 |
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Aug 17, 2016 20:09
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Baby Babbeh posted:The Flip acquisition was the highest profile bit of a period where Cisco thought it needed to go consumer for some godawful reason. They basically bought it, realized there was actually no synergy with any of their other business units and no real go to market to build it into a business with enough revenue to care about, and killed it. Cisco as a consumer company basically died at the same time, and good riddance. This is different. Cisco made its cabbage for years by selling tons of new hardware, year after year, to the carriers. Billions worth. Now with SDN the spend is not only dramatically reduced, in a lot of cases, it isn't even going to Cisco. I was at a big customer of mine in NYC today, first question he asked was, how do we get into the uCPE world and away from Cisco. The change is coming so Cisco needs to change, and fast. They ought have bought some network virtualization startups instead of consumer nonsense
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Aug 17, 2016 21:24
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They did own Linksys at some point, which somehow made both more and less sense. They were in the same type of business, just on the consumer side, and had a pretty good reputation. But since they were kept as separate brands, nobody ever went "I love my Linksys router at home, we should go with Cisco for this data center" or vice versa.
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Aug 17, 2016 21:38
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Looks like the Cisco layoff is actually closer to a 7% reduction, in line with its normal summer purge. Agree that Cisco is pretty hosed long term, but it is in no way the most frothy part of the bubble now.
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Aug 18, 2016 06:37
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Tangentially related to this thread, Peter Thiel was successful in taking down gawker.com. Univision had the successful bid for the Gawker company, and explicitly excluded the gawker.com site from the acquisition. Univision will be focusing focusing on the other sites: Jezebel, Deadpool, and so on. Gawker was theoretically (Business Insider) worth $250 million in 2014, before the lawsuit. Not a unicorn, but a nice return for the backers (who have presumably long since sold out). Nick Denton says gawker.com will close down next week.
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Aug 18, 2016 20:49
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Tangentially related to this thread, Peter Thiel was successful in taking down gawker.com. Univision had the successful bid for the Gawker company, and explicitly excluded the gawker.com site from the acquisition. Univision will be focusing focusing on the other sites: Jezebel, Deadpool, and so on. Gawker was theoretically (Business Insider) worth $250 million in 2014, before the lawsuit. Not a unicorn, but a nice return for the backers (who have presumably long since sold out). Nick Denton says gawker.com will close down next week. And nothing of value was lost
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Aug 18, 2016 21:15
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I wish they could take Gizmodo down with them. They've been little shits since that time they walked around CES with a Tvkiller remote and shut off a bunch of TVs for lulz.
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Aug 18, 2016 22:30
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FilthyImp posted:I wish they could take Gizmodo down with them. That honestly sounds like the sort of thing where it would have been funny were they not the kinds of assheads who'd just run it straight into the ground.
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Aug 18, 2016 23:05
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Cisco is dying outside of long haul datacenter poo poo. Good to see too, because they take such an antiquated engineering view of long haul networks.
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Aug 18, 2016 23:37
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Subjunctive posted:Backing up into a constrained space seems like the kind of thing a sensor-laden system with perfect sense of physics and geometry would be great at. The "driver" can effectively be at the rear of the trailer as well. Why do you think it would be harder than navigating the traffic to get there?
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Aug 19, 2016 00:42
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Can we talk about Latch, the more then likely super illegal door lock company. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...m_medium=social
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Aug 19, 2016 01:18
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A big issue with semi trucks is that you have the tractor and the trailer. It's straightforward for companies to replace tractors, but the trailer is often owned by a seperate company, and they can last a lot longer than tractors. Without a dedicated trailer it would be difficult to engineer a system to safely back into cramped areas, since blind spots are inevitable, and human drivers sometimes have to get out of the truck and assess the situation from different angles in order to back safely.
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Aug 19, 2016 01:42
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sbaldrick posted:Can we talk about Latch, the more then likely super illegal door lock company. I like how the company doesn't actively monitor comings and goings but passively logs them anyway. Also how residents are hypothetically able to disable camera recordings but they're sold as theft protection to landlords who can make keeping cameras on a condition for continuing to rent an apartment with them.
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Aug 19, 2016 01:57
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Keeshhound posted:That honestly sounds like the sort of thing where it would have been funny were they not the kinds of assheads who'd just run it straight into the ground. Yeah, where it turned from sort of amusing prank to assholery is when they started using it constantly during press conferences and press demos instead of sticking to randomly switching off floor demos.
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Aug 19, 2016 01:59
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A federal judge rejected a proposed class-action settlement between Uber and a group of its drivers that had sued them a few years back. The judge believed the proposed $100 million settlement does not nearly come close to being an accurate amount of what damages occurred. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/t...v=top-news&_r=0
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Aug 19, 2016 03:42
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Konstantin posted:A big issue with semi trucks is that you have the tractor and the trailer. It's straightforward for companies to replace tractors, but the trailer is often owned by a seperate company, and they can last a lot longer than tractors. Without a dedicated trailer it would be difficult to engineer a system to safely back into cramped areas, since blind spots are inevitable, and human drivers sometimes have to get out of the truck and assess the situation from different angles in order to back safely. This is why a company like Target or Supervalu could easily adopt the tech, but the agricultural industry probably won't. So many of the farmers around here still either own their own trailers, or rent different ones each year, and it's only to go from their silo to the elevator because railroads are where the infrastructure is at
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Aug 19, 2016 03:46
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Or ethanol plants I have a special hate for ag trucks because farmers drive like idiots and just destroy roads with them
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Aug 19, 2016 06:02
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CommieGIR posted:Cisco is dying outside of long haul datacenter poo poo. Good to see too, because they take such an antiquated engineering view of long haul networks. For non-network spergs, what is so antiquated about Cisco's vision of God's Own Network?
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Aug 19, 2016 09:08
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blowfish posted:For non-network spergs, what is so antiquated about Cisco's vision of God's Own Network? The non spergy (or less spergy) version is that Cisco's vision is based around hardware. hardware that is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but 2 years from now is terrible and you need to replace it right now because I gotta sell something. The kept their customers in constant upgrade cycles, and every time they came up with a new feature, it required a hardware upgrade. The new vision of how to do this is based on commodity hardware, with software doing the network functionality. Software that is much more flexible than hardware, and from a cost perspective, a tiny fraction of what hardware costs. Here's a pretty good article about the move, and how it's saving AT&T, who was/is on of Cisco's biggest customers, a ton of dough, even in the early rollout http://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/at-t-cto-capex-it-s-certainly-not-going-up-it-s-certainly-going-down
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Aug 19, 2016 13:40
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gobbagool posted:The non spergy (or less spergy) version is that Cisco's vision is based around hardware. hardware that is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but 2 years from now is terrible and you need to replace it right now because I gotta sell something. The kept their customers in constant upgrade cycles, and every time they came up with a new feature, it required a hardware upgrade. The new vision of how to do this is based on commodity hardware, with software doing the network functionality. Software that is much more flexible than hardware, and from a cost perspective, a tiny fraction of what hardware costs. Here's a pretty good article about the move, and how it's saving AT&T, who was/is on of Cisco's biggest customers, a ton of dough, even in the early rollout It also doesn't help that Cisco is dramatically more expensive than competitors, and the only advantages you get require your networks to be all or almost all Cisco devices. The first time I saw pricing differences between Brocade (then Foundary) and Cisco for data switches I thought it was a typo. And if you use open standards stuff both of them work equally well together. And there are a number of vendors out there with 80% quality for very large discounts.
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Aug 19, 2016 13:48
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cheese posted:What if the self driving truck spots a safety flaw with its cameras and refuses to dock in a bay that a human driver would just go "gently caress it" and make it happen? It might be less that the computer CAN'T do something and more that its required to have safety protocols that make working in an imperfect world more difficult. Because, as someone else said, the first time one of these trucks fucks up and people die (especially if it is because of some flaw that a human driver would have been unlikely to make), House members are going to go on the cable news networks and demand safety for our children. I don't think there are any errors that a truck driver at the end of a journey isn't likely to make, but you're saying "what if you train it to not do what you want it to do?" I suspect in that case one of the warehouse staff goes and remedies the issue, or the truck is sent to another dock, or an override is issued. If that's the reason that computers are going to have trouble parking trucks, things are going to be pretty smooth indeed. You don't have to utterly remove humans from supervisory roles in order to take advantage of transport automation.
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Aug 19, 2016 13:52
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rkajdi posted:It also doesn't help that Cisco is dramatically more expensive than competitors, and the only advantages you get require your networks to be all or almost all Cisco devices. The first time I saw pricing differences between Brocade (then Foundary) and Cisco for data switches I thought it was a typo. And if you use open standards stuff both of them work equally well together. And there are a number of vendors out there with 80% quality for very large discounts. That's a good point. The first time I priced a juniper solution that was competitive tech to Cisco, it was literally 1/4 the price.
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Aug 19, 2016 14:41
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gobbagool posted:That's a good point. The first time I priced a juniper solution that was competitive tech to Cisco, it was literally 1/4 the price. I also don't see going software heavy as being a winner for them either. When I was tasked with implementing MPLS on a fairly large network, it was more cost effective to replace all the data switches than to buy the software license to use MPLS on the existing Cisco switches. Cisco is just a bloated dinosaur of a company, and charges prices that are completely out of line with their competition.
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Aug 19, 2016 14:52
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Subjunctive posted:I don't think there are any errors that a truck driver at the end of a journey isn't likely to make, but you're saying "what if you train it to not do what you want it to do?" I suspect in that case one of the warehouse staff goes and remedies the issue, or the truck is sent to another dock, or an override is issued. If that's the reason that computers are going to have trouble parking trucks, things are going to be pretty smooth indeed. You don't have to utterly remove humans from supervisory roles in order to take advantage of transport automation. Yeah, at the very least the first several generations are going to retain a human operable interface, so it'll be less "gently caress, the dock is uneven, ENGAGE SYSTEM LOCKDOWN UNTIL PROBLEM IS SOLVED" and more "cannot find path to destination, please assign a human driver to take over."
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Aug 19, 2016 14:57
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Keeshhound posted:Yeah, at the very least the first several generations are going to retain a human operable interface, so it'll be less "gently caress, the dock is uneven, ENGAGE SYSTEM LOCKDOWN UNTIL PROBLEM IS SOLVED" and more "cannot find path to destination, please assign a human driver to take over." That failure rate is going to be pretty critical. If you're having to assign someone to babysit the machine and occasionally take over for the machine, there's not really a benefit to buy something with a few thousand dollar premium unless it's literally the only thing on the market. You can train any idiot to back up a truck, and it's going to be a lot cheaper than buying an automated system and having someone nearby in case the system fucks up.
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Aug 19, 2016 15:04
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computer parts posted:That failure rate is going to be pretty critical. If you're having to assign someone to babysit the machine and occasionally take over for the machine, there's not really a benefit to buy something with a few thousand dollar premium unless it's literally the only thing on the market. Right, but you probably just end up with a guy on staff that can back the truck up at each end of the trip, and the truck travels the intervening distance on its own. Still a substantial savings in money over hiring a dedicated driver.
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Aug 19, 2016 15:19
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The big problem is that AFAIK no current cloud-based map is 100% reliable. Those automated trucks are going to be driving down roads that are too small for trucks (a big problem in England, a problem in residential neighborhoods everywhere), driving under bridges that are too short for the truck, driving into ponds... Blindly trusting GPS is a significant problem for human drivers, especially human truck drivers who have never driven a route before. It's going to be more of a disaster for trucks, which can't recognize signage saying they're in the wrong place. I can see automated trucks making much more sense for short hauls in high-density areas where humans can preplot a set of "do not go here" zones and roads.
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Aug 19, 2016 15:19
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Dirk the Average posted:Right, but you probably just end up with a guy on staff that can back the truck up at each end of the trip, and the truck travels the intervening distance on its own. Still a substantial savings in money over hiring a dedicated driver. Why would it be? Presumably the guy is still in the cab for the duration of the trip, so you're still paying him for his time. Which is what you're paying him for anyway. Again - any idiot can be trained to drive a truck.
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Aug 19, 2016 15:22
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or standard routes between big cities, because you only need a few approved routes (basically just in case one of them is blocked) to the nearest highway and you're done.
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Aug 19, 2016 15:24
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computer parts posted:Why would it be? Presumably the guy is still in the cab for the duration of the trip, so you're still paying him for his time. Which is what you're paying him for anyway. Again - any idiot can be trained to drive a truck. Obviously they'll need babysitters for a while, but once the technology is proven to the point that people are comfortable with it I don't see a reason why they wouldn't phase out the oversight on the trips themselves, even if they have to keep a human on site to park.
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Aug 19, 2016 15:27
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computer parts posted:That failure rate is going to be pretty critical. If you're having to assign someone to babysit the machine and occasionally take over for the machine, there's not really a benefit to buy something with a few thousand dollar premium unless it's literally the only thing on the market. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if the docking is a later part to be automated. Having the trucks get from point to point and shuffle themselves in the holding area would be enough of a win. blowfish posted:or standard routes between big cities, because you only need a few approved routes (basically just in case one of them is blocked) to the nearest highway and you're done. yeah, someone will sell the data based on people driving back and forth with sensor rigs and whatnot, like a diet version of the pre-scanning that Google does for their cars.
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Aug 19, 2016 15:40
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E: double post whoops
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Aug 19, 2016 15:42
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computer parts posted:Why would it be? Presumably the guy is still in the cab for the duration of the trip, so you're still paying him for his time. Which is what you're paying him for anyway. Again - any idiot can be trained to drive a truck. I'm proposing nobody in the cab. The drivers would be on site where the loading and unloading takes place and would only deal with the last few hundred feet of transit and otherwise would function as a standard shipping/warehouse worker. Also, there's no reason that an automated trucking system couldn't use preplanned routes. Plot out acceptable routes beforehand and then have the truck follow those routes.
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Aug 19, 2016 16:03
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blowfish posted:or standard routes between big cities, because you only need a few approved routes (basically just in case one of them is blocked) to the nearest highway and you're done. I can see nothing that could possibly go wrong here.
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Aug 19, 2016 16:04
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Whatever the state of self-driving technology, the legal poo poo is going to take decades to work out. That, alone, will delay adoption of self-driving anything for 10-20 years. Companies right now are happy to have a few cars playing around on streets and whatever because the total risk is pretty small. I don't think Uber is going to jump at the chance to be responsible for thousands of cars driving around.
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Aug 19, 2016 16:31
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