I don't see products like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc being ported to Linux, well, because Linux folk just won't buy them. If it's not free, then people complain that it costs. If it is free, then they complain that it's not open source, if it is open source, then they complain they aren't doing it right. We've seen it time and time again...
As far as competing with Microsoft, personally, I think this is the best time TO compete with them. They are in a situation where they are spread dangerously thin, don't have a working business model to move them forward in the next 5 years, and their popularity is teetering.
While I don't work for a call center, my office computer does take an average of 10 - 15 minutes to boot up. Crappy networking, crappy filer, and a poor setup causes my 500MB profile to go across the network, at the same time that everybody else is logging in too. I hit the power button at 8am, get my login prompt at 8:01, and get control of my desktop at 8:15 or so. It happens every morning, and I hate it.
Now, mind you, I'm salaried, so for me it doesn't effect my pay, but if it did, I would be contacting the labor department.
They are dialing each number, one-by-one. They hit my isdn circuits like a hammer, locking up over 300 channels on my T3. They started with the first number on my block, and kept going through till they were done. Many of these numbers were never assigned, so I know they didn't do the research, and they certainly didn't get the info from the state.
The problem with this solution is large, legitimate call centers. Google, for example, has call centers in 10 states. They want all their customers to call a single phone number (in Mountain View), and have their pbx transfer the call to the location that is open, and has the shortest queue. This problem is exacerbated by the use of toll-free numbers (1-800 numbers), where the phone number is owned by a 3rd party and forwarded to a local number. In that case, the company doesn't own the 800 number, nor is it in their blocks of numbers -- yet they probably want to use that number for outgoing calls for both privacy of call center agents, and to properly use their ACD.
This is not always the case. In AT&T world, as long as you sign a waiver, they will pass through whatever number you want. If you leave the CPN blank, it usually inserts our billing number. For a while I was accidently sending 5 digits to MCBI for a block of numbers we owned instead of the 10 digit. People's caller-ids only had the 5 digit.
There are two "caller-id" fields in SS7... BTN (Bill-to number) and CPN (Calling Party Number). CPN is delivered to consumers via Caller-ID and the BTN is used with the phone company to compensate each other for termination charges.
CPN can be declared by the end customer, as long as the telco allows it, the BTN is tied to a physical account number at the LEC. It can't be spoofed because it is completely out of band.
The phone company is legally bound NOT to reveal the BTN information without a court order. This has nothing to do with corporate greed or anything of the like, it's the LAW.
Find a judge who will sign the damned paperwork. You'll get your information within minutes.
There are two "caller-id" fields that are sent in SS7 (the out-of-band signaling that occurs between telcos) -- the BTN (Bill To Number), and the CPN (Calling Party Number). The BTN refers to the actual carrier, and account number that is placing the call, and the CPN is what is displayed by consumer Caller-ID units.
Large customers who have direct access to SS7 information over ISDN would be able to pick up the BTN, which would identify, at the very worst, the caller's local exchange carrier.
The phone companies are not allowed to reveal the BTN to a consumer or police agency without a signed subpoena by a judge with jurisdiction of the crime. The only exception to the rule seems to be the whitehouse, but that is a different matter all together. There are direct FCC violations to reveal that information without the proper paperwork.
As far as the lady keeping her phone number, that is akin to somebody keeping their credit card number after fraud. Yes, it is the number that she has had for years, and its the number that everybody knows, but in all honesty, the number is black listed now. She hasn't had the number for 50 years, as in the 70's going into the 80's NuStar renumber all the phone numbers from 4,5, and 6 digits to 10 digit numbers.
Just to stab Avaya a little bit more
on
Cisco To Buy Jabber
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
At Avaya's latest trade conference this spring (Avaya is Cisco's largest competitor in the PBX/VoIP/Video scape), Avaya introduced a very large partnership with Jabber Inc., to help with presence solutions (Avaya's presence solution, while based on SIMPLE/SIP, is not very well supported outside the SIP world). They were expected to release their product sometime this fall, that would allow true presence aggregation and integration with their many VoIP and Video products.
As of this morning, these partnerships are dead, along with these revolutionary products. Official word is "This acquisition will not harm Avaya or Nortel's existing presence products, but further development on partnership products will no longer continue."
I guess Cisco won't fall behind in this realm after all.
The FCC has been preping this small town for the last 6 months with daily advertisements in the paper, radio ads, etc. There has been so much attention paid, that if things don't go well, there isn't a chance in hell the rest of the nation will go well. Even if it does go well, chances are that things will still be out of whack for the nation. This is just a little stunt for the current FCC to show that they will do right before they leave office (notice that they will be leaving this problem for the new FCC just as they take office, with no time to make any changes to the plan).
I'm not hopeful on this one. The last Neison survey showed that 60% of those people who only had OTA service were not aware that their equipment might not work after the transition. This is a problem. Most of these people who were surveyed are probably not tech savvy enough, or they just don't watch the advertisements letting them know. Not everybody can just get up and go to Best Buy and have their sales people tell them what is going on (uh, and incorrectly, I might add. Yes, the only way you can watch TV in the future is if you get this $1,000 tv!).
Very rarely will a station not output the full amount allowed them by the FCC. By outputting more power, they have more reach, and therefore can calculate more people when they present their viewable homes to their advertisers. 99 times out of 100, it's the law that is holding them back. They would all love to be super-stations, I'm sure.
In most areas, stations are using their combined analog and digital power ratings to report to the FCC. In Michigan, analog stations are reducing their power levels this month to what digital was, and digital is getting more power. When the analog is switched off, digital will be at 100%.
One thing to note too, UHF stations (which what all television will be living in after the transition) require more power than VHF (usually by a magnitude of 20x - 30x) because of the frequency difference (higher frequency => more power for same output).
I will only speak of my "division" rather than my university as a whole (which is even more depressing). I work for the Physical Plant of a very large university. The Physical Plant supports a student population of about 50,000, a staff/faculity population of about 12,000, and includes a power plant, water system, transportation system, and all the trades (janitors, plumbers, roofers, electricians, etc).
Within the division, there is an IT department with 8 people supporting the infrastructure and servers, and 10 people supporting a single application on one of the servers (it's our accounting / work order system). Our division has about 1,100 workers. So, in theory, we have a 8:1,100 ratio, and if you include the app developers, it's 18:1,100.
Now this does not include the telecom side of the house (which I work in). We support the entire university (not just this division), and have an IT staff of 4 + 4 skilled (technicians and wirepullers). So for the phones, we have 4:60,000, and cable tv (not in the numbers above) we have 2:60,000. Our fiber optics division is supported by 3 guys.
The "central IT" which supports all student networking and services, and our central servers, such as NTP, LDAP, etc. is about 75 people strong (i am not including managers in these numbers). Now mind you, many departments hire their own IT staff. It is said that there are a total of 300 people categorized as IT workers on our entire campus (this includes my department and division).
We are supported by a wide range of applications and servers, including Sun, Linux, BSD, Windows, Novell and some Apple servers. We usually like to find the best-of-breed for each application instead of tying into a single vendor. This means that there isn't a whole out of Microsoft out there except on the desktop.
But remember, you don't have ANY rights until you are granted them.
Do I have the rights to take your car simply because I saw it in the parking lot? Not unless you granted them to me. In the same, I can't go to a library and photocopy a book, and sell it under my name. I was never granted the rights to do that.
These are not effective rights you are talking about -- these are GRANTED rights. You were granted the rights by purchasing this media to view the content. You are granted rights by the fair use doctrine to make a backup copy of it (although the fair-use doctrine doesn't talk about streamed media, only publicly available media, which RTMP-E may not be considered).
Has this generation gotten so use to getting everything their way that they don't even understand the basics of copyright and piracy? Has the MPAA/RIAA made everybody so jaded that people don't respect any copyright anymore? my god.
Of course, anything I send down to your computer can be cracked. Just thinking of a product that is supported on all the major operating systems, and many of the obscure (Flash Player) that is supposed to support anything encrypted makes me think that the smart kids will break it.
All of the 'encrypted' streams have been broken. Apple's was the quickest, lasting all of a day or so, and Microsoft's didn't last long (even though they tried to protect it by making it only available to Windows users). Adobe's RTMP-E at least lasted just over a year before it went down. We knew it was going to happen, we were just hoping it wouldn't for a while.
FWIW, RTMP-E is the encryption of the stream, with the assumption that the media streamer would be able to dictate if and when it can be 'recorded'. RTMP-E is also used to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.
The only one that I've been told that hasn't been cracked is Motorola's motoQAM MPEG encryption used by their Set Top Boxes. Of course, they make people go through background checks just to get sales calls about the encryptor (DAC 6000).
Ok, I know/.ers love to involve their computer with everything. The suggestions of using modems and pinning out the audio seam pretty innovative, but in all reality when you start to mix non-phone equipment with the phone you will loose quality. Just trust me on this one.
What I would suggest is that you get a nice Uniden or Cortelco phone. Uniden's you can find at pretty much any Best Buy or Target. Cortelco's are available at Greybar or similar contractor stores. Most of these phones have speakerphone and a headset plug.
In the phone world, headset plugs come in pretty much three styles -- separated MIC/LINE (used mostly with computers), Cell-Phone combined (mini, mono connector that carries both in one plug), and a QuickDisconnect (flat, 4-connector headset used by people in the PBX world). Unidens and Cortelco's will most likely have the cell-phone combined connector. You can walk over the the cell-phone side of whatever store you are at and get a descent headset.
All of these phones have mute buttons, that are usually very easy to find.
There is no need to add the complexity and unreliability of adding in components that aren't designed to do this task. Remember, it is your job on the line, so you may want to spend the $25 for the solution above and do it right.
Why do you think VW would convert the car to gas, instead of diesel? VW has lots of diesel cars, most of which are sold in the USA (Jetta, Rabbit, Passat, just to name some of their most popular models).
In the USA, things are a bit different. We pay to recieve cell calls and sms's. HOWEVER, when we call a cell phone, the rate is the same as if we called a land-line (unlike most places in europe, where calling a cell phone is usually 1.5x the cost of a land-line).
Just a different way of doing things.
I run the SIP gateway for a Major university. We run the SIP gateway in such a way for other universities to bypass toll charges when we call each other. It works great -- other universities can call my email address and my desk phone will ring.
The problem is that spammer (SPITters?) are now searching for the SIP TXT DNS records and spamming those domains. They setup a VoIP connection to my SIP gateway and try, one-by-one to dial each number in my PBX. 0@uni.edu, 1@uni.edu, 2@uni.edu, until they start getting people. What we have seen is they play a short message (usually about 30 seconds or so) about some "male enhancement" drug or something. They fill up our trunks really quickly.
The problem is, unlike real phone calls and paper marketing, there is no cost-for-entry for this type of marketing. People can have a single computer hooked up to the internet make 1,000 of calls an hour. This would normally cost you major money to run this type of call center.
They did not get called out because of their large screen -- rather it was because they had :
- A large screen
- Invited the 'public' to view the event
- Charged for admission to the event
The NFL has no problem with home-viewings (even if it is on a 100' television!). It is when people make it a public showing. Charging admission makes it even less 'legal'. You must purchase a license for the public showing to make it legal.
I try to promote FOSS projects as much as I can -- however it is the community that often kicks themselves in the butt. Often times I have received calls from friends or co-workers that installed a one-off OSS project that I recommended. Usually when they took the time to find the proper support for something that is broken, people's responses are "Well, go fix it!", or "Download the latest code from the SVN, change XYZ to file ZZZ.cpp and compile." They have no idea what an SVN is, let alone an idea of how to use it, or compile the results.
Lots of these people just want to use their computer. Paying some company $50 is no big deal if they can call them up and complain about a bug or mis-guided feature. Heck, they don't mind paying the $150 for Office because they know it is a well-supported community, and just about everybody can help them. (OpenOffice is making great strides in this area too).
I tried this before. During my review (I had been with the company 5 year at that point), I was told that over the last 5 years, I could be attributed to $6 million in savings or additional revenue to the company (it was a small company, with a gross profit of about $12M/year and about 80 employees). In telling him that people in my position at other small companies were valued at about $60k/year, and I felt I was worth a similar amount (I think I was making something like $50k at that point), he asked me to turn in my keys on the spot. I was called a traitor and selfish for asking for a reference letter, and not a 'team player'. I guess the working overtime, nights and weekends all the time was worthless to them.
But that's OK, because I'm now at my dream job that I hope to hold for a very long time.
Slashdot Mirror
FlexBuilder is available for Linux... http://labs.adobe.com/
I don't see products like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc being ported to Linux, well, because Linux folk just won't buy them. If it's not free, then people complain that it costs. If it is free, then they complain that it's not open source, if it is open source, then they complain they aren't doing it right. We've seen it time and time again...
As far as competing with Microsoft, personally, I think this is the best time TO compete with them. They are in a situation where they are spread dangerously thin, don't have a working business model to move them forward in the next 5 years, and their popularity is teetering.
While I don't work for a call center, my office computer does take an average of 10 - 15 minutes to boot up. Crappy networking, crappy filer, and a poor setup causes my 500MB profile to go across the network, at the same time that everybody else is logging in too. I hit the power button at 8am, get my login prompt at 8:01, and get control of my desktop at 8:15 or so. It happens every morning, and I hate it.
Now, mind you, I'm salaried, so for me it doesn't effect my pay, but if it did, I would be contacting the labor department.
We do, it is just not exposed to consumers. The phone company has VERY good records for this stuff.
Wrong:
They are dialing each number, one-by-one. They hit my isdn circuits like a hammer, locking up over 300 channels on my T3. They started with the first number on my block, and kept going through till they were done. Many of these numbers were never assigned, so I know they didn't do the research, and they certainly didn't get the info from the state.
The problem with this solution is large, legitimate call centers. Google, for example, has call centers in 10 states. They want all their customers to call a single phone number (in Mountain View), and have their pbx transfer the call to the location that is open, and has the shortest queue. This problem is exacerbated by the use of toll-free numbers (1-800 numbers), where the phone number is owned by a 3rd party and forwarded to a local number. In that case, the company doesn't own the 800 number, nor is it in their blocks of numbers -- yet they probably want to use that number for outgoing calls for both privacy of call center agents, and to properly use their ACD.
This is not always the case. In AT&T world, as long as you sign a waiver, they will pass through whatever number you want. If you leave the CPN blank, it usually inserts our billing number. For a while I was accidently sending 5 digits to MCBI for a block of numbers we owned instead of the 10 digit. People's caller-ids only had the 5 digit.
There are two "caller-id" fields in SS7... BTN (Bill-to number) and CPN (Calling Party Number). CPN is delivered to consumers via Caller-ID and the BTN is used with the phone company to compensate each other for termination charges.
CPN can be declared by the end customer, as long as the telco allows it, the BTN is tied to a physical account number at the LEC. It can't be spoofed because it is completely out of band.
The phone company is legally bound NOT to reveal the BTN information without a court order. This has nothing to do with corporate greed or anything of the like, it's the LAW.
Find a judge who will sign the damned paperwork. You'll get your information within minutes.
There are two "caller-id" fields that are sent in SS7 (the out-of-band signaling that occurs between telcos) -- the BTN (Bill To Number), and the CPN (Calling Party Number). The BTN refers to the actual carrier, and account number that is placing the call, and the CPN is what is displayed by consumer Caller-ID units.
Large customers who have direct access to SS7 information over ISDN would be able to pick up the BTN, which would identify, at the very worst, the caller's local exchange carrier.
The phone companies are not allowed to reveal the BTN to a consumer or police agency without a signed subpoena by a judge with jurisdiction of the crime. The only exception to the rule seems to be the whitehouse, but that is a different matter all together. There are direct FCC violations to reveal that information without the proper paperwork.
As far as the lady keeping her phone number, that is akin to somebody keeping their credit card number after fraud. Yes, it is the number that she has had for years, and its the number that everybody knows, but in all honesty, the number is black listed now. She hasn't had the number for 50 years, as in the 70's going into the 80's NuStar renumber all the phone numbers from 4,5, and 6 digits to 10 digit numbers.
At Avaya's latest trade conference this spring (Avaya is Cisco's largest competitor in the PBX/VoIP/Video scape), Avaya introduced a very large partnership with Jabber Inc., to help with presence solutions (Avaya's presence solution, while based on SIMPLE/SIP, is not very well supported outside the SIP world). They were expected to release their product sometime this fall, that would allow true presence aggregation and integration with their many VoIP and Video products.
As of this morning, these partnerships are dead, along with these revolutionary products. Official word is "This acquisition will not harm Avaya or Nortel's existing presence products, but further development on partnership products will no longer continue."
I guess Cisco won't fall behind in this realm after all.
The FCC has been preping this small town for the last 6 months with daily advertisements in the paper, radio ads, etc. There has been so much attention paid, that if things don't go well, there isn't a chance in hell the rest of the nation will go well. Even if it does go well, chances are that things will still be out of whack for the nation. This is just a little stunt for the current FCC to show that they will do right before they leave office (notice that they will be leaving this problem for the new FCC just as they take office, with no time to make any changes to the plan).
I'm not hopeful on this one. The last Neison survey showed that 60% of those people who only had OTA service were not aware that their equipment might not work after the transition. This is a problem. Most of these people who were surveyed are probably not tech savvy enough, or they just don't watch the advertisements letting them know. Not everybody can just get up and go to Best Buy and have their sales people tell them what is going on (uh, and incorrectly, I might add. Yes, the only way you can watch TV in the future is if you get this $1,000 tv!).
Very rarely will a station not output the full amount allowed them by the FCC. By outputting more power, they have more reach, and therefore can calculate more people when they present their viewable homes to their advertisers. 99 times out of 100, it's the law that is holding them back. They would all love to be super-stations, I'm sure.
In most areas, stations are using their combined analog and digital power ratings to report to the FCC. In Michigan, analog stations are reducing their power levels this month to what digital was, and digital is getting more power. When the analog is switched off, digital will be at 100%.
One thing to note too, UHF stations (which what all television will be living in after the transition) require more power than VHF (usually by a magnitude of 20x - 30x) because of the frequency difference (higher frequency => more power for same output).
I will only speak of my "division" rather than my university as a whole (which is even more depressing). I work for the Physical Plant of a very large university. The Physical Plant supports a student population of about 50,000, a staff/faculity population of about 12,000, and includes a power plant, water system, transportation system, and all the trades (janitors, plumbers, roofers, electricians, etc).
Within the division, there is an IT department with 8 people supporting the infrastructure and servers, and 10 people supporting a single application on one of the servers (it's our accounting / work order system). Our division has about 1,100 workers. So, in theory, we have a 8:1,100 ratio, and if you include the app developers, it's 18:1,100.
Now this does not include the telecom side of the house (which I work in). We support the entire university (not just this division), and have an IT staff of 4 + 4 skilled (technicians and wirepullers). So for the phones, we have 4:60,000, and cable tv (not in the numbers above) we have 2:60,000. Our fiber optics division is supported by 3 guys.
The "central IT" which supports all student networking and services, and our central servers, such as NTP, LDAP, etc. is about 75 people strong (i am not including managers in these numbers). Now mind you, many departments hire their own IT staff. It is said that there are a total of 300 people categorized as IT workers on our entire campus (this includes my department and division).
We are supported by a wide range of applications and servers, including Sun, Linux, BSD, Windows, Novell and some Apple servers. We usually like to find the best-of-breed for each application instead of tying into a single vendor. This means that there isn't a whole out of Microsoft out there except on the desktop.
But remember, you don't have ANY rights until you are granted them. Do I have the rights to take your car simply because I saw it in the parking lot? Not unless you granted them to me. In the same, I can't go to a library and photocopy a book, and sell it under my name. I was never granted the rights to do that. These are not effective rights you are talking about -- these are GRANTED rights. You were granted the rights by purchasing this media to view the content. You are granted rights by the fair use doctrine to make a backup copy of it (although the fair-use doctrine doesn't talk about streamed media, only publicly available media, which RTMP-E may not be considered). Has this generation gotten so use to getting everything their way that they don't even understand the basics of copyright and piracy? Has the MPAA/RIAA made everybody so jaded that people don't respect any copyright anymore? my god.
Of course, anything I send down to your computer can be cracked. Just thinking of a product that is supported on all the major operating systems, and many of the obscure (Flash Player) that is supposed to support anything encrypted makes me think that the smart kids will break it. All of the 'encrypted' streams have been broken. Apple's was the quickest, lasting all of a day or so, and Microsoft's didn't last long (even though they tried to protect it by making it only available to Windows users). Adobe's RTMP-E at least lasted just over a year before it went down. We knew it was going to happen, we were just hoping it wouldn't for a while. FWIW, RTMP-E is the encryption of the stream, with the assumption that the media streamer would be able to dictate if and when it can be 'recorded'. RTMP-E is also used to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.
The only one that I've been told that hasn't been cracked is Motorola's motoQAM MPEG encryption used by their Set Top Boxes. Of course, they make people go through background checks just to get sales calls about the encryptor (DAC 6000).
Ok, I know /.ers love to involve their computer with everything. The suggestions of using modems and pinning out the audio seam pretty innovative, but in all reality when you start to mix non-phone equipment with the phone you will loose quality. Just trust me on this one.
What I would suggest is that you get a nice Uniden or Cortelco phone. Uniden's you can find at pretty much any Best Buy or Target. Cortelco's are available at Greybar or similar contractor stores. Most of these phones have speakerphone and a headset plug.
In the phone world, headset plugs come in pretty much three styles -- separated MIC/LINE (used mostly with computers), Cell-Phone combined (mini, mono connector that carries both in one plug), and a QuickDisconnect (flat, 4-connector headset used by people in the PBX world). Unidens and Cortelco's will most likely have the cell-phone combined connector. You can walk over the the cell-phone side of whatever store you are at and get a descent headset.
All of these phones have mute buttons, that are usually very easy to find.
There is no need to add the complexity and unreliability of adding in components that aren't designed to do this task. Remember, it is your job on the line, so you may want to spend the $25 for the solution above and do it right.
Why do you think VW would convert the car to gas, instead of diesel? VW has lots of diesel cars, most of which are sold in the USA (Jetta, Rabbit, Passat, just to name some of their most popular models).
In the USA, things are a bit different. We pay to recieve cell calls and sms's. HOWEVER, when we call a cell phone, the rate is the same as if we called a land-line (unlike most places in europe, where calling a cell phone is usually 1.5x the cost of a land-line). Just a different way of doing things.
I run the SIP gateway for a Major university. We run the SIP gateway in such a way for other universities to bypass toll charges when we call each other. It works great -- other universities can call my email address and my desk phone will ring. The problem is that spammer (SPITters?) are now searching for the SIP TXT DNS records and spamming those domains. They setup a VoIP connection to my SIP gateway and try, one-by-one to dial each number in my PBX. 0@uni.edu, 1@uni.edu, 2@uni.edu, until they start getting people. What we have seen is they play a short message (usually about 30 seconds or so) about some "male enhancement" drug or something. They fill up our trunks really quickly. The problem is, unlike real phone calls and paper marketing, there is no cost-for-entry for this type of marketing. People can have a single computer hooked up to the internet make 1,000 of calls an hour. This would normally cost you major money to run this type of call center.
Adobe opened up the RTMP protocol a few months ago with the release of the "BlazeDS" project. http://opensource.adobe.com/
They did not get called out because of their large screen -- rather it was because they had :
- A large screen
- Invited the 'public' to view the event
- Charged for admission to the event
The NFL has no problem with home-viewings (even if it is on a 100' television!). It is when people make it a public showing. Charging admission makes it even less 'legal'. You must purchase a license for the public showing to make it legal.
I try to promote FOSS projects as much as I can -- however it is the community that often kicks themselves in the butt. Often times I have received calls from friends or co-workers that installed a one-off OSS project that I recommended. Usually when they took the time to find the proper support for something that is broken, people's responses are "Well, go fix it!", or "Download the latest code from the SVN, change XYZ to file ZZZ.cpp and compile." They have no idea what an SVN is, let alone an idea of how to use it, or compile the results.
Lots of these people just want to use their computer. Paying some company $50 is no big deal if they can call them up and complain about a bug or mis-guided feature. Heck, they don't mind paying the $150 for Office because they know it is a well-supported community, and just about everybody can help them. (OpenOffice is making great strides in this area too).
I tried this before. During my review (I had been with the company 5 year at that point), I was told that over the last 5 years, I could be attributed to $6 million in savings or additional revenue to the company (it was a small company, with a gross profit of about $12M/year and about 80 employees). In telling him that people in my position at other small companies were valued at about $60k/year, and I felt I was worth a similar amount (I think I was making something like $50k at that point), he asked me to turn in my keys on the spot. I was called a traitor and selfish for asking for a reference letter, and not a 'team player'. I guess the working overtime, nights and weekends all the time was worthless to them. But that's OK, because I'm now at my dream job that I hope to hold for a very long time.