Tag Archives: Chicago

WHY CHICAGO AND ILLINOIS ARE FAILING: THE SHERIFF OF NOTTINGHAM MENTALITY

banner james carlini - Carlini's CornerBy James Carlini

Chicago is not setting the pace for building a solid Platform for Commerce and regional economic innovation for job creation. Then again, neither is Illinois. They are both caught up in a Vortex of Declining Mediocrity.”

You know your state is really messed up when all your relatives start talking about moving to other states.  At a recent family gathering, one cousin and a brother-in-law are talking about moving to Florida, another one to Las Vegas and another one to Idaho. Even the waitress at breakfast at Denny’s was talking about moving to Las Vegas for better opportunities.  Is anyone staying in Illinois? Continue reading

TRUMP TOWER IN CHICAGO: STICKS AND STONES WILL BREAK MY BONES

banner james carlini - Carlini's CornerBy James Carlini

It looks like Donald Trump is the “go-to” guy when the Chicago Media wants to create a controversy to cover up other more important city issues.

The whole controversy of Trump putting his name on his building is so petty and such a waste of precious media time it scares me to think what are the real stories journalists are not putting the spotlight on?

Donald Trump went through complex channels to get the name approved and no one had an issue then.  He also “contributed” to the Alderman’s campaign fund as well as to Rahm Emanuel’s campaign fund, so why wasn’t that reported as well when they complain about the name on the building? Continue reading

TERABIT SPEEDS. CHICAGO RFQ NOT EVEN CLOSE

banner james carlini - Carlini's CornerBy James Carlini

Terabit speeds are what we should be aiming for as a solid goal for any major metropolitan city’s backbone network infrastructure objective. If we really want them to be a leader in global broadband connectivity tomorrow, this is the bar to set today. If you set the bar that high, and only attain 50% of its goal, you still will be world-class.

Copyright 2014 - James Carlini - All rights reserved

Copyright 2014 – James Carlini – All rights reserved

Evidently, no one told that to those who developed and released the Chicago RFQ for “a gigabit or near-gigabit network”.

Chicago has just sent out an RFQ for Broadband Infrastructure Expansion (#122737) which asks for speeds that are obsolete.

Gigabit or near-gigabit? For a network that will not be operational for at least another 24 to 36 months?
This is obsolete before they send the first packet across.

An 800-acre business park in the Chicago suburbs that I discuss in my upcoming book and was an adviser to, installed 40 Gigabit per second (40Gbps) connectivity several years ago. It’s operational TODAY. Want to be competitive today? The going speed is 40Gbps moving to 100Gbps in a short timeframe.

In my book, I go around the world discussing examples of other next-generation business parks which offer 10Gbps, 20Gbps, or better network speeds serving their tenants.

Chicago’s statement, in its RFQ declaring

….to ensure that Chicago is prepared to meet the demands of a 21st century economy.

The City’s first step toward achieving affordable high-speed internet access for all Chicagoans will target seven Innovation Zones with gigabit-or near –gigabit -speed broadband and focus on providing immediate access to businesses, universities, and organizations located in these core industrial and commercial area

rings pretty hollow in comparison.

“Prepared to meet the demands of a 21st Century economy”?? With one gigabit OR LESS network speeds to end users? This is supposedly to get the city more competitive on the global economic stage?

Whoever is advising the city has no clue where the ‘state of the art” in network infrastructure is, or how fast it is going to the next plateau of network speeds.

Get me some Smartphones and I will show you how fast that bandwidth gets eaten up by those end-user devices which are quickly becoming the “device-of-choice” as the new edge technology.

Other parameters the Chicago RFQ highlights are laughable at best, and technologically unacceptable at worst. Here are some excerpts of it that I have a problem with:

Providing the resources necessary for Businesses, Universities and other organizations to succeed and thrive is necessary for Chicago to remain a global leader and pioneer. Availability of and access to an affordable high-speed broadband network is now a critical component of urban infrastructure, similar to electricity, water, and roadways.

The infrastructure must be capable of providing 99.9% availability, be resilient with low latency and jitter, and ensure that packets sent and received at the network edges are identical.

You ARE NOT going to “remain a global leader and pioneer” with reliability rates of only 99.9% availability.

Do you really believe large businesses like the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Boeing, or any of the banks are going to trust their mission critical applications on networks that are running with only a 99.9% reliability?

Most businesses with mission critical applications want the insurance of 99.995% to 99.999% availability rates. With enterprise-wide mission critical applications currently at one-out-of-three and quickly growing to one-out-of-two applications, who is going to want to use a 99.9% reliable network?

Maybe if we relate it to snow storms, Chicago might “get it”. Don’t ask for one ton of salt when you really need 1,024 tons to get businesses moving and competitive.

Something more visual? You look absolutely foolish chanting “we’re going to be Number one” from your two horsepower horse-and-buggy parked on the NASCAR track amongst the other 1,200-horsepowered cars lining up for the race.

That’s the problem when political leaders and their advisers are technologically Amish. Understand the technology, know how to apply it, and get someone who is not a cheerleader to tell you how you are perceived on the world’s racetrack of economic viability and sustainability.

CARLINI-ISM: When it comes to network speeds, you need to be the fastest to say you’re world class.
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Carlini’s visionary upcoming book, Location Location Connectivity will be available later this year.

COPYRIGHT 2014 – James Carlini

A TSUNAMI HITS DETROIT

banner james carlini - Carlini's CornerBy James Carlini

Do you hear that? It’s a crumbling sound reverberating across the country.

It’s the great wall of over-bloated government pensions starting to crumble in Detroit. The unions think they will stop the crumbling? I don’t think so. Continue reading

MUSEUMS: SETTING A FUTURE DIRECTION BY PRESERVING HISTORY

banner james carlini - Carlini's CornerBy James Carlini

Any civilization in the last 5,000 years can only be understood and measured by what we can read and discover about them.  If they did not keep track of their accomplishments and cultures, chances are, we would know very little about them and their achievements.

  •  If you do not know where you came from, do you really have a good idea of where you are headed?
  • How do you build upon the accomplishments of the past or avoid the mistakes of the past if you are unaware of them?

These seem to be good questions to ask people who do not have a good grasp of how this country started and developed throughout the last 200 years.  As was pointed out by one museum curator, those in the last generation (the Great generation of World War II) seemed to have more Continue reading

ILLINOIS PENSION REFORM: ROAD TO NOWHERE

banner james carlini - Carlini's CornerBy James Carlini

The latest attempts at putting Illinois back on the right road to fiscal solvency and promote a more enticing image to attract businesses should be accompanied by the song by the Talking Heads’ “We’re On a Road to Nowhere”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWtCittJyr0]
We’re on a road to nowhere….. After a 66% tax increase in state income tax, we are still billions of dollars behind in Continue reading

FLASH MOBS, FLASH ARRESTS: SMARTPHONE JUSTICE

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By James Carlini

Last weekend, Chicago’s Magnificent Mile experienced teen-age flash mobs (organized looting) creating disturbances and mayhem among people there who were trying to enjoy the downtown shopping district.

This has been going on for several years, but the Chicago media has filtered it out of their stories until Continue reading

CURBING DISCOURSE IS NOT AMERICAN

banner james carlini - Carlini's Corner

By James Carlini

Patrick Henry Stipple engraving by Leney, after Thomas Sully Published by J. Webster, 1817, Copyprint Prints and Photographs Division (LC-USZ62-4907) Library of Congress (134) “I may not agree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.”  Patrick Henry said this just before he said his more famous line, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

It is sometimes misattributed to Voltaire, but the reason I bring it up is because we are experiencing too many curbs to discourse in both the new media of blogs as well as our traditional TV and print media.

The average American wants to hear Continue reading