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Did a Chinese Hack Kill Nortel?

bloomberg.com

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Re: Did a Chinese Hack Kill Nortel?

#131

Post by refurb »

close04 wrote: post #95
refurb wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the article did a decent job of explaining that. Nortel without the IP theft was certainly on shaky ground. It sounds like the IP gave Huawei an opportunity to catch up more quickly and with Chinese govt cash, pull the rug out from under Nortel.

> the article did a decent job of explaining I'll take this with a grain of salt. To this day Bloomberg still stands by its "The Big Hack" article (Supermicro, Amazon, and Apple being hacked with the tiny Chinese chip), containing claims that have been thoroughly refuted (and ridiculed) since then, and about which even their own sources were very incredulous. The CEO of Apple called it "100 percent a lie", which is a…

Yeah, that same article was top of mind when reading this article.

It's a little hand-wavy I'll admit. The article makes accusations that they don't back up very well.

That said, I thought it was a decent attempt to be somewhat balanced.

Re: Did a Chinese Hack Kill Nortel?

#132

Post by magicnubs »

blackrock wrote: post #106
api wrote: post #17

There's a lot here beyond just the hacking. Huawei was able to grow so insanely fast because they had access to a blank check and endless credit from the Chinese government. Nortel and others meanwhile had to finance things themselves. Private companies cannot compete with governments. Governments, especially those with sovereign currencies, can do things that private companies simply cannot do and have pockets far d…

This sounds like a more plausible explanation for why Huawei succeeded. Simply because of unlimited support and funding from the China central government, in order to get independent technology Research and Development. And plus, the financing for foreign countries, is also super important. There was talk about some African nations, only interested in buying Chinese products, simply because the Chinese provided favor…

For this reason, I wonder if near-zero interest rates and corporate bond purchasing will ever end in the US. If it continues, isn't it kind of like the government supporting these large US corporations in the similar way? Encouraging them to take any contract or spend on any investment that returns more than 0% in interest?

I'm not saying this would be "good" or "bad". I imagine it would be bad for smaller companies, but good for larger ones, maybe good for American competitiveness in world commerce (for a while) but could be bad in the long run because we'd be committing to a race-to-the-bottom price war with a competitor who has a lower bottom price than we do.

Re: Did a Chinese Hack Kill Nortel?

#133

Post by TwoNineFive »

Ehh... I'll bite.

I worked at Global Crossing in the late 90s and early 2000s as an engineer. I was a Primenet employee.

We got Huawei gear in to evaluate. Virtually everything they made was based on IP theft. Their routers literally had "Cisco Systems" strings all over the image files. It was blatant.

The PLA were constantly trying to break into our systems. We knew it. We talked about it. It wasn't a secret.

This is a difficult subject that I don't talk about with other people, in persona or otherwise. The conversation almost always quickly goes stupid in one of two ways: The person I'm talking to instantly goes nationalist one way or the other, or they just don't seem to have the IQ to grasp the issue. Having a rational conversation about the topic of what the US government and as private citizens/companies do about blatant Chinese aggression feels impossible.

As for online, the 50 Cent party quickly shows up en-mass with the typical FUD, bullying, distracting jokes, pearl clutching, and so on.

Re: Did a Chinese Hack Kill Nortel?

#134

Post by kjs3 »

hylaride wrote: post #26
sandworm101 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I read it. I also lived with Nortel gear during this timeframe. They were not great at much of anything. They were more often the only game in town, and they knew it. Canadian schools and government agencies bought their gear because it was canadian not because it was any good. Those touchscreen tablet controller things? Does anyone remember how bad touchscreens were in those days? Give me a blackberry with a mec…

Most of that gear was likely bay networks kit, which was actually acquired by Nortel. I don’t disagree that it was crap, but it was cheaper than Cisco. I grew up in the Ottawa area in the 1990s and my parents were in the tech scene there; the Copelands were rich and eccentric (and odd), but that’s no different than Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, or Steve Jobs. My point isn’t that Nortel didn’t put out shit products, every…

The Bay Network switches were pretty good, actually. Well, not so much the Centillion...but the Baystacks were ok. It was the routers that they got from Wellfleet through the Bay acquisition that were wildly out of date with the worst management software ever written (Site Manager). They were still trying to push BCN/ARNs after everyone else (least of all Cisco) had introduced 3-4 new generations. And Site Manager was awful...seriously.

Err...eccentric and odd mean the same thing.

Re: Did a Chinese Hack Kill Nortel?

#135

Post by valuearb »

vaxman wrote: post #101
valuearb wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing should be forced into Chapter 11 so new ownership with clean hands can fix them. That’s the whole reason we have a bankruptcy code.

“You can’t handle the truth!” Second favorite Nicholson quote, but so true. Seriously, Boeing will internally deal with what happened. Need proof? Ever wonder what happened to say, Rockwell International (most famous for Apollo and Space Shuttle)? Yeah, you should’a bought Boeing at $30. ((Doh!))

I’m just glad I didn’t buy Boeing at $390.

Edit: Wow I’m even more glad I didn’t buy Boeing when it bought Rockwell. That’s 24 years of only 5.5% a year compounded.

Re: Did a Chinese Hack Kill Nortel?

#136

Post by vaxman »

dctoedt wrote: post #112
vaxman wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..and it is illegal to attempt. As someone who lived it (being younger than young and older than most), the whole notion of young hardware (or software) engineers being somehow “better” stems from (IMNSHO) two factors: 1) their naivety in being willing to sacrifice personal life so they can be more “productive,” often at a lower cost of labor —-if you call that type of output “product” because: 2) tech had progressed…

Friendly correction: It's rank and file (not in file). https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rank%20and%20file

I blame auto-correct

Re: Did a Chinese Hack Kill Nortel?

#137

Post by vaxman »

blueblisters wrote: post #115
vaxman wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..and it is illegal to attempt. As someone who lived it (being younger than young and older than most), the whole notion of young hardware (or software) engineers being somehow “better” stems from (IMNSHO) two factors: 1) their naivety in being willing to sacrifice personal life so they can be more “productive,” often at a lower cost of labor —-if you call that type of output “product” because: 2) tech had progressed…

I don't know a lot of this sounds like reverse ageism. Facebook was built entirely on young, talented engineers who could perhaps scale out software better than "experienced" developers. Same goes for a lot of Google products. The barrier of entry for software development is much lower and you can pretty much hit the ground running with a few good math and algorithms courses and good internships. You can become a goo…

No rational person that has lived through age discrimination would engage in any kind of ageism and again, my career spans over 40 years. (How many people my age in the Fortune 500 company 40 years ago? ZERO! Maybe down in mailroom or something, but they weren't even allowed in the tech areas so I would have to assume.) I also strongly disagree with your assertion that Google has "young" engineers developing "a lot of Google products", at least in the sense that they are doing so without guidance from experienced engineers. As far as Facebook, I don't find their stuff very interesting (though I thank them for helping to all but destroy HP with their open hardware) --it's a website with a big power bill and a non-ACID database, right?
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