Always give them 2 options, one of them to accept and one so bad that they have to refuse it. This creates the illusion of leadership and will make them feel important and valued.
Don't bring more then 2 options as everything will get muddled up.
As you said that it is a small company, see if you can have a quiet talk with the owner of the company, they might not actually be aware of the situation, nor of the danger.
Of course in a lot of cases a basic install of Ubuntu will allow someone to do their job. But keep in mind that it isn't in all of the cases.
Like many technological things (BGP and DNS comes to mind), caller id is trusting.
When you use *67 to block a caller id, the caller id is still sent, but with a privacy flag turned on so that the _end point_ equipment can conveniently not display it.
If I call into my Asterisk PBX on a SIP line with *67, the caller id will show up in the variable that holds the caller id, allowing me to do nice and wonderful things with it.
It won't show up on my Polycom phone, unless I explicitely set the privacy header of SIP to show the number.
There was a bug in ktorrent that cause an infinite loop when udp trackers were present in a torrent file, maybe you check if you have the latest version.
How a bout having a set of predefined buttons with a small bump so that the number 5 can easily be identified. The buttons could be placed in some sort of logical order, let's say in ascending numbers, 3 each row. We could also add * # Send and End as buttons.
It might look something like that: S E 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 * 0 #
What would really be cool and useful too is to make sure that when someone presses a button it also feels like its been pressed.
As an aside, a cool feature would be the cellphone speaker phone saying the number that was pressed as someone dialed. _That_ would be useful.
Actually this is much worse as your risk having the pipes connecting the house to the aqueduc burst.
The best way is to have a small thread of water running from a faucet, for both the hot and cold water taps. Depending on the layout of the plumbing there might be a need for 2 or 3 faucets to be running.
Well, that means that the sham treatment isn't so much of a sham.
The problem is in factoring all of the variables: - Depth of needle penetration (if at all) - Coating of the needle - Placement of the needle
There is a difference between putting a bunch of needles randomly on someone's body, vs just applying non-penetrating pressure at a few points using a needle.
Sham acupuncture, by definition, is sticking needles in randomly, but the body will tend to react to it, no matter where it is.
Re:The author is wrong about accupuncture
on
Trick or Treatment
·
· Score: 1
The problem is that one egg is much more easier to stop then some 20 million sperms.
Right now, all the current contraceptive for men, except condoms, affect sexual desire because they also cut down the testosterone production, which is why an alternative source of it is also needed.
As for the pill, there is also Depo Provera which is an injection every 12 week. Unfortunately they require regular bone densitometry tests as some women are vulnerable to bone loss while using it.
I've started about 7 years ago under similar circumstances.
Here is the advice I have to give you:
1. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. There are going to be a lot of fish out there, and quite a few of them are bad. Avoid them at all costs.
2. If it is too good to be true... get a signed contract.
3. Don't hesitate to fire a toxic customer which kills your motivation. They just drag you down and you'll be better of without them.
4. If a longtime customer has difficulty paying, work out a payment plan. If a new customer has difficulty paying, stop working for them until they pay all that is due (including unbilled time).
6. Keep track of all the time you spend with your customers, including just having IM conversations. While it may not be billable, it could point to you problem customers, eg those that talk a lot buy don't pay much.
7. Make your hourly time what you think you are worth. If you try to compete on cost you'll just wish you got a job again.
8. Make agreements that allow you to show case the work you did and use it as example whenever possible. This is going to be a major problem as you get experiences as a freelancer as a lot of companies don't want to let you use the work you did for them as part of your marketing.
9. Make backups.
10. Test your backups.
11. Use SSH keys instead of trying to remember a gajillion passwords.
12. Your long time customers are worth gold and will bring you much much more work then elance or other expert marketplaces.
13. Diversify, don't keep working for just 1 customer. At least have 4 "permanent" customers.
14. Some customers might ask for a discount if they commit to a certain number of hours per month, or they might want to enter into such an agreement. It does help to limit the fluctuations in monthly income, but you do have to be able to provide for all of your commitments.
15. Be careful who you sub contract to. Their work will have a direct reflection on yours. If I have a new subcontractor I want to try out, I usually use him/her on a new customer. Always, in any case, handle ALL communications and billing between you and the subcontractors. This is even more true for your longtime customers as they will expect a certain quality to the work you do.
16. Make backups, again.
17. Make sure that the flat rate you pull out of your ass reflects the work that is requested. This is unfortunately not always possible, especially if you use Elance for leads. Make sure your hourly rate is in the profile and point it out to the customer if he ever wonders what it is.
18. Be careful in giving freebies. If you establish a pattern (like billing by the quarter hour), then customers will expect you to keep it.
19. Keep a separate facebook / myspace account for your customers. Don't post your recent party photos to it!
20. Keep accurate bookkeeping and pay your taxes. If the tax agency finds you making undeclared money they are going to wait a few years so that you dig yourself a rather large hole and charge you many years of penalties and interest on these penalties.
A few things you have to keep in mind about Canada.
Different provinces will have different regulations and systems when it comes to work, health care, education, taxes and driving laws. Cost of living will also vary depending on provinces.
Don't bother with recruiters much (send them your resume but keep it at that), they suck and usually won't bother dealing with you unless they have a position to fill immediately.
A lot of jobs are known through word of mouth, so try to link up with people.
"Canadian experience" is a bitch. Some employers will get stuck up on it. What will definitely help is anything that will show stability and dedication. You might have to get a lower "entry level" job to start with, however once you get it you'll be easily promoted higher up. And of course already holding a job will make you more employable.
On that line, keep your resume simple and only list the most recent things and the work experience that matters. 2 page max, preferably 1 page.
Trafic shaping and prioritization is as old as the Internet, and it's here to stay. Heck, it's even built into TCP: when the numeber of connections goes up, the average speed decreases. It's perfectly legitimate for the ISP to throttle protocols that are considered less important, or to cap the band of traffic hogs. Yes shaping and prioritization has been built in the IP protocol. However massive throttling where you only get 5% of what you pay for isn't.
What, you don't agree with the classification made by your ISP, that 90% of bittorent packets goes to/dev/null ? To bad, I guess you should have read the contract before signing it. And you can be sure the contract allows them aggressive traffic shaping, and stipulates just a maximum speed you are allowed to use, no minimal guarantees. Unless you are a business customer, and pay a premium for that guaranteed minimal bandwidth. Actually this is where you are totally wrong. It is important when any contract is signed, especially in Quebec, to have a meeting of the mind.
Clearly put, if ads tell you that you will be getting constant speeds and a "dedicated" (this is how Bell framed their DSL service vs the "shared" line of cable modems), then Bell has the obligation of providing it to their customers, no matter what the contract actually says.
Another reason why Bell is going to lose such a class action suite is that a contract has to be able to be understood by both parties for it to be a meeting of the minds. If a customer just signs on the line after finding the contract too hard to read more likely then not the contract will fail in court and the judge will rule based on the intentions of the customer. Also in cases where there are differences of interpretations, a judge is always required to rule in favor of the customer.
Anyways, even the fine print on Bell's websites at the time alluded to the maximum speed being dependent on the distance from the DSLAM. The traffic throttling is not the distance from the DSLAM.
I don't know why some think Net neutrality means everyone should be able to download at full speed 24/7 from bittorrent. What I understand by net neutrality, is that my ISP should not be allowed to make politically driven shaping, I.E. favor Metacafe over Youtube, or block access to Ron Paul's site because they negotiated a contract with it's political adversaries. Otherwise, if you don't like the service your ISP gives you, with a protocol you chose, you are free to renegotiate your contract, or switch to another provider. They are slowing down all bittorrent traffic in favour of their new pay per view DRM laden video scheme. For me that is a violation of net neutrality.
I do accept the concept of Intellectual Property, however I do not like the way things are horribly broken now.
The problem as I see it is that companies and a few racketeers want IP to be of unlimited length.
I think it should be treated more in line with actual property when it comes to time limits.
Just look at actual property around you. How much of it is over 10 year old? 20 year old ? 100 year old ?
Even most houses in America are not 100 year old, and even very old houses will have gone through many renovations so not much will still be at a 100 year old age.
As for Monsanto and their seeds, I find it ridiculous that farmers that don't even want the Monsanto seeds get stuck with them because of their robustness then they get sued for IP theft.
It would be the same as me taking a bag full of "manure" spreading it around with an air circulation device then suing you for getting in the way of the flying "manure".
A good connection to the Internet and a way to connect to your subscribers.
The reason why so many smaller ISPs are in trouble is that they could not invest in their own DSLAMS as Bell has been quick build new cabinets, which are not required to be unbundled.
The exchange connects to cabinets which connects to people's houses. However the law only forces the exchanges to be unbundled (what a nice loophole). Also cabinets will reach much fewer people then exchanges.
On the other hand, a link between a cabinet and an exchange can be fiber, while between the cabinet and the customers can still be copper, reducing the reliance on copper.
Unfortunately, fiber can't carry a DSL signal.
Also here in Montreal, the only viable broadband alternative is Videotron (owned by Quebecor) which is the only major Canadian ISP not to fight requests for subscriber's information.
Videotron even stated publicly that they would comply with any request for subscriber info.
You could also ditch Bell and go with a different ISP, at least with that Bell would get less money from you.
I've already canceled 1 phone line and 1 adsl service with a different ISP. Once my Bell ExpressVu contract runs out, that too will go.
My customer had a 500$ Thawte certificate at the beginning which entailed a very lengthy and complicated verification process. I still remember how annoyed he was to having to fill out all of the paperwork they required to get the cert.
We then switched to rapidssl until it got bought by Geotrust. It still required a phone verification but that was much less annoying.
When it comes around to renewing it, we'll go with GoDaddy, if only because it's cheaper.
As a side note, as with a lot of things related to godaddy, retailmenot.com has a lot of coupons to get a rebate on the list price.
Slashdot Mirror
Always give them 2 options, one of them to accept and one so bad that they have to refuse it. This creates the illusion of leadership and will make them feel important and valued.
Don't bring more then 2 options as everything will get muddled up.
As you said that it is a small company, see if you can have a quiet talk with the owner of the company, they might not actually be aware of the situation, nor of the danger.
Of course in a lot of cases a basic install of Ubuntu will allow someone to do their job. But keep in mind that it isn't in all of the cases.
Like many technological things (BGP and DNS comes to mind), caller id is trusting.
When you use *67 to block a caller id, the caller id is still sent, but with a privacy flag turned on so that the _end point_ equipment can conveniently not display it.
If I call into my Asterisk PBX on a SIP line with *67, the caller id will show up in the variable that holds the caller id, allowing me to do nice and wonderful things with it.
It won't show up on my Polycom phone, unless I explicitely set the privacy header of SIP to show the number.
I wouldn't know, it's a picture I found on the internet.
I got affected by that outage and it was somewhat annoying. It seems like Cogent was affected and also some, but not all, of my colocation services.
http://www.sigbjorn.org/funstuff/images/ios_sucks.jpg pretty much sums up how I feel.
It's always reassuring that when hardware manufacturers merge they manage to keep the worst of both companies.
My next batch of drives will be Samsung, the previous 2 I bought (20gb each) are still working.
There was a bug in ktorrent that cause an infinite loop when udp trackers were present in a torrent file, maybe you check if you have the latest version.
Yeah exactly ;-)
I was actually being very tongue in cheek.
As for the dtmf, I meant something a bit more user friendly, like having a digitized voice that would say it blind people.
It's not like cellphones require dtmf to dial out...
How a bout having a set of predefined buttons with a small bump so that the number 5 can easily be identified. The buttons could be placed in some sort of logical order, let's say in ascending numbers, 3 each row. We could also add * # Send and End as buttons.
It might look something like that:
S E
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
* 0 #
What would really be cool and useful too is to make sure that when someone presses a button it also feels like its been pressed.
As an aside, a cool feature would be the cellphone speaker phone saying the number that was pressed as someone dialed. _That_ would be useful.
I just wonder how many Rs are needed to make it a non problem...
Actually this is much worse as your risk having the pipes connecting the house to the aqueduc burst.
The best way is to have a small thread of water running from a faucet, for both the hot and cold water taps. Depending on the layout of the plumbing there might be a need for 2 or 3 faucets to be running.
Well, that means that the sham treatment isn't so much of a sham.
The problem is in factoring all of the variables:
- Depth of needle penetration (if at all)
- Coating of the needle
- Placement of the needle
There is a difference between putting a bunch of needles randomly on someone's body, vs just applying non-penetrating pressure at a few points using a needle.
Sham acupuncture, by definition, is sticking needles in randomly, but the body will tend to react to it, no matter where it is.
The problem is that one egg is much more easier to stop then some 20 million sperms.
Right now, all the current contraceptive for men, except condoms, affect sexual desire because they also cut down the testosterone production, which is why an alternative source of it is also needed.
As for the pill, there is also Depo Provera which is an injection every 12 week. Unfortunately they require regular bone densitometry tests as some women are vulnerable to bone loss while using it.
I've started about 7 years ago under similar circumstances.
Here is the advice I have to give you:
1. If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. There are going to be a lot of fish out there, and quite a few of them are bad. Avoid them at all costs.
2. If it is too good to be true... get a signed contract.
3. Don't hesitate to fire a toxic customer which kills your motivation. They just drag you down and you'll be better of without them.
4. If a longtime customer has difficulty paying, work out a payment plan. If a new customer has difficulty paying, stop working for them until they pay all that is due (including unbilled time).
5. Use a CRM (hint http://www.maximumcrm.com/ ) to keep track of your customers.
6. Keep track of all the time you spend with your customers, including just having IM conversations. While it may not be billable, it could point to you problem customers, eg those that talk a lot buy don't pay much.
7. Make your hourly time what you think you are worth. If you try to compete on cost you'll just wish you got a job again.
8. Make agreements that allow you to show case the work you did and use it as example whenever possible. This is going to be a major problem as you get experiences as a freelancer as a lot of companies don't want to let you use the work you did for them as part of your marketing.
9. Make backups.
10. Test your backups.
11. Use SSH keys instead of trying to remember a gajillion passwords.
12. Your long time customers are worth gold and will bring you much much more work then elance or other expert marketplaces.
13. Diversify, don't keep working for just 1 customer. At least have 4 "permanent" customers.
14. Some customers might ask for a discount if they commit to a certain number of hours per month, or they might want to enter into such an agreement. It does help to limit the fluctuations in monthly income, but you do have to be able to provide for all of your commitments.
15. Be careful who you sub contract to. Their work will have a direct reflection on yours. If I have a new subcontractor I want to try out, I usually use him/her on a new customer. Always, in any case, handle ALL communications and billing between you and the subcontractors. This is even more true for your longtime customers as they will expect a certain quality to the work you do.
16. Make backups, again.
17. Make sure that the flat rate you pull out of your ass reflects the work that is requested. This is unfortunately not always possible, especially if you use Elance for leads. Make sure your hourly rate is in the profile and point it out to the customer if he ever wonders what it is.
18. Be careful in giving freebies. If you establish a pattern (like billing by the quarter hour), then customers will expect you to keep it.
19. Keep a separate facebook / myspace account for your customers. Don't post your recent party photos to it!
20. Keep accurate bookkeeping and pay your taxes. If the tax agency finds you making undeclared money they are going to wait a few years so that you dig yourself a rather large hole and charge you many years of penalties and interest on these penalties.
enough said
I wonder if doing
ifconfig ppp0 mtu 73
Would bypass that shaping?
A few things you have to keep in mind about Canada.
Different provinces will have different regulations and systems when it comes to work, health care, education, taxes and driving laws. Cost of living will also vary depending on provinces.
Don't bother with recruiters much (send them your resume but keep it at that), they suck and usually won't bother dealing with you unless they have a position to fill immediately.
A lot of jobs are known through word of mouth, so try to link up with people.
"Canadian experience" is a bitch. Some employers will get stuck up on it. What will definitely help is anything that will show stability and dedication. You might have to get a lower "entry level" job to start with, however once you get it you'll be easily promoted higher up. And of course already holding a job will make you more employable.
On that line, keep your resume simple and only list the most recent things and the work experience that matters. 2 page max, preferably 1 page.
You should check http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/ it will give you an idea of services from the federal government.
Clearly put, if ads tell you that you will be getting constant speeds and a "dedicated" (this is how Bell framed their DSL service vs the "shared" line of cable modems), then Bell has the obligation of providing it to their customers, no matter what the contract actually says.
Another reason why Bell is going to lose such a class action suite is that a contract has to be able to be understood by both parties for it to be a meeting of the minds. If a customer just signs on the line after finding the contract too hard to read more likely then not the contract will fail in court and the judge will rule based on the intentions of the customer. Also in cases where there are differences of interpretations, a judge is always required to rule in favor of the customer.
Anyways, even the fine print on Bell's websites at the time alluded to the maximum speed being dependent on the distance from the DSLAM. The traffic throttling is not the distance from the DSLAM. I don't know why some think Net neutrality means everyone should be able to download at full speed 24/7 from bittorrent. What I understand by net neutrality, is that my ISP should not be allowed to make politically driven shaping, I.E. favor Metacafe over Youtube, or block access to Ron Paul's site because they negotiated a contract with it's political adversaries. Otherwise, if you don't like the service your ISP gives you, with a protocol you chose, you are free to renegotiate your contract, or switch to another provider. They are slowing down all bittorrent traffic in favour of their new pay per view DRM laden video scheme. For me that is a violation of net neutrality.
Colba net only has their DSLAMs for ADSL2, not normal ADSL.
And the geographic coverage isn't that great for ADSL2 in Montreal (where Colba is).
You mean like the TOS bits in IP packets?
http://www.rhyshaden.com/ipdgram.htm
I do accept the concept of Intellectual Property, however I do not like the way things are horribly broken now.
The problem as I see it is that companies and a few racketeers want IP to be of unlimited length.
I think it should be treated more in line with actual property when it comes to time limits.
Just look at actual property around you. How much of it is over 10 year old? 20 year old ? 100 year old ?
Even most houses in America are not 100 year old, and even very old houses will have gone through many renovations so not much will still be at a 100 year old age.
As for Monsanto and their seeds, I find it ridiculous that farmers that don't even want the Monsanto seeds get stuck with them because of their robustness then they get sued for IP theft.
It would be the same as me taking a bag full of "manure" spreading it around with an air circulation device then suing you for getting in the way of the flying "manure".
I called them, unfortunately ADSL2+ is only available in certain regions between highways 40 and 20.
The rest of the ADSL is dependant on Bell, and they "Cannot guarantee any download speed anymore"
As I'm actually in Laval...
A good connection to the Internet and a way to connect to your subscribers.
The reason why so many smaller ISPs are in trouble is that they could not invest in their own DSLAMS as Bell has been quick build new cabinets, which are not required to be unbundled.
The exchange connects to cabinets which connects to people's houses. However the law only forces the exchanges to be unbundled (what a nice loophole). Also cabinets will reach much fewer people then exchanges.
On the other hand, a link between a cabinet and an exchange can be fiber, while between the cabinet and the customers can still be copper, reducing the reliance on copper.
Unfortunately, fiber can't carry a DSL signal.
Also here in Montreal, the only viable broadband alternative is Videotron (owned by Quebecor) which is the only major Canadian ISP not to fight requests for subscriber's information.
Videotron even stated publicly that they would comply with any request for subscriber info.
You could also ditch Bell and go with a different ISP, at least with that Bell would get less money from you.
I've already canceled 1 phone line and 1 adsl service with a different ISP. Once my Bell ExpressVu contract runs out, that too will go.
Anyone remember old time dial up BBS?
Where you could get files from the other side of the world in less then a week.
All I hope is that one day Stephane Dion gets a spine, or be replaced.
My customer had a 500$ Thawte certificate at the beginning which entailed a very lengthy and complicated verification process. I still remember how annoyed he was to having to fill out all of the paperwork they required to get the cert.
We then switched to rapidssl until it got bought by Geotrust. It still required a phone verification but that was much less annoying.
When it comes around to renewing it, we'll go with GoDaddy, if only because it's cheaper.
As a side note, as with a lot of things related to godaddy, retailmenot.com has a lot of coupons to get a rebate on the list price.