Direcway is alright for browsing but its not real useful for much else. They have a fair access policy which limits you to 206Mb down in a four hour period. If you exceed that limit, you won't have access until your average goes down (a few hours).
SSH and VPN work over it, but the latency is pretty bad. I used both a great deal and rely on a dial-up connection for them if I'm doing anything involved. SSL is also tedious through it since it doesn't go through Direcway's proxy...
FTP is pretty poor over it as well - especially if you're uploading. My 56K dial-up connection is about twice as fast for uploads as my Direcway service. Forget about online gaming.
If you just want it for browsing and small downloads, its great. Otherwise, it is certainly not worth the expense. I had Roadrunner for 2 years before moving out to BFE and I'd say calling satellite internet "broadband" is false advertising.
If you've ever worked at a UPS distribution center, you'd wonder how anything gets anywhere in one piece. Its all about getting there ontime and keeping the schedule. If throwing a box marked fragile 30 feet saves 5 seconds, so be it. Time is money after all.
I won't buy a monitor online for this sole reason. I might as well buy one at a local store and drop kick it down my basement stairs 6-7 times before unpacking it if I'm having it shipped.
The work atmosphere is pretty good. Thats about it.
The benefits are lousy. They laid off about 12,000 people earlier this year and another 900 just this month. There is no travel or training anymore for anyone.
The upper management (Ebbers et al) are not doing a very good job and the rumors within the company say they are trying to make the company look good to sell it.
Right now, your chances are slim to none of getting hired there since they are not hiring. New hires require senior VP approval.
I'd wait and see if they get their act together before you look for employment there. I left 14 months ago, but still keep in contact with my friends that are still left there.
Um, I think you may have your parties mixed up here. If there is censoring to be dished out of Washigton it will be the Democratic congressmen who start the ball rolling. Its our liberal left that wants to censor video games, books, television, the internet and our history. Oh, lets not forget, these are the same fine folks who think taking guns away from citizens will cut down on crime - yeah right.
The Attorney General does not make laws, he enforces them. Ashcroft, may support and even agree with some overzealot religious groups, but he cannot do their bidding without Congress making it law. Give the guy a break. I think you're confusing him with his predecessor whos main job was to cover-up and hide the crimes of her boss.
MySql is a nice little database. I love it for small websites that I do on the side. I also use it for various things at home on Linux.
At work I'm an Oracle DBA.
I would not consider MySql for anything "large", in fact I really can't imagine using it for a high volume website with thousands of transactions an hour. Can you say data corruption? How about file contention? I won't even go into the features it lacks compared to an enterprise class RDBS. Its not made for that and I don't think anyone expects it to be.
Now you mentioned Access... Just use Excel, it takes less mouse clicks.
As for MS Sql Server. Well, its a very nice platform to develop on and a pretty good database to boot. Don't expect to put any data warehouses on it and don't think you're going to have thousands of concurrent sessions on it either. That is not a short coming of the RDBS (Sybase has been doing it for years), its the operating system. NT just isn't scalable. If it was, Microsoft might finally be able to transfer Hotmail or their own website onto it:) Hell, they might even chance putting their own critical data on it.
If M$ were to port SQL Server to Unix, Oracle would really have some competition.
The fact is, all RDBS's have their uses. If you need performance, reliability and scalability and a lot of money then buy Oracle, or one of many others that aren't as feature rich, but very good systems - Sybase, Informix, DB2 or MS SQL Server.
UUNet has offices all over the place - Columbus, OH, Ashburn, VA, Ann Arbor, MI, Atlanta, GA, Fairfax, VA and out of the states. They are primarily a Solaris shop worldwide.
What else are you thinking? NT? I suppose you could put a small database like this on NT, but if you have the option to use Linux instead, do it. Any flavor of Unix would be preferred, but Linux x86 will give you the most bang for the buck. As for Sybase... If you can afford Sybase, then you can certainly afford Oracle. Put Oracle 8i on Linux and enjoy. Why settle for the beetle when you can have the Cadillac?
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Direcway is alright for browsing but its not real useful for much else. They have a fair access policy which limits you to 206Mb down in a four hour period. If you exceed that limit, you won't have access until your average goes down (a few hours).
SSH and VPN work over it, but the latency is pretty bad. I used both a great deal and rely on a dial-up connection for them if I'm doing anything involved. SSL is also tedious through it since it doesn't go through Direcway's proxy...
FTP is pretty poor over it as well - especially if you're uploading. My 56K dial-up connection is about twice as fast for uploads as my Direcway service. Forget about online gaming.
If you just want it for browsing and small downloads, its great. Otherwise, it is certainly not worth the expense. I had Roadrunner for 2 years before moving out to BFE and I'd say calling satellite internet "broadband" is false advertising.
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If you've ever worked at a UPS distribution center, you'd wonder how anything gets anywhere in one piece. Its all about getting there ontime and keeping the schedule. If throwing a box marked fragile 30 feet saves 5 seconds, so be it. Time is money after all.
I won't buy a monitor online for this sole reason. I might as well buy one at a local store and drop kick it down my basement stairs 6-7 times before unpacking it if I'm having it shipped.
The work atmosphere is pretty good. Thats about it.
The benefits are lousy. They laid off about 12,000 people earlier this year and another 900 just this month. There is no travel or training anymore for anyone.
The upper management (Ebbers et al) are not doing a very good job and the rumors within the company say they are trying to make the company look good to sell it.
Right now, your chances are slim to none of getting hired there since they are not hiring. New hires require senior VP approval.
I'd wait and see if they get their act together before you look for employment there. I left 14 months ago, but still keep in contact with my friends that are still left there.
Um, I think you may have your parties mixed up here. If there is censoring to be dished out of Washigton it will be the Democratic congressmen who start the ball rolling. Its our liberal left that wants to censor video games, books, television, the internet and our history. Oh, lets not forget, these are the same fine folks who think taking guns away from citizens will cut down on crime - yeah right. The Attorney General does not make laws, he enforces them. Ashcroft, may support and even agree with some overzealot religious groups, but he cannot do their bidding without Congress making it law. Give the guy a break. I think you're confusing him with his predecessor whos main job was to cover-up and hide the crimes of her boss.
MySql is a nice little database. I love it for small websites that I do on the side. I also use it for various things at home on Linux. At work I'm an Oracle DBA. I would not consider MySql for anything "large", in fact I really can't imagine using it for a high volume website with thousands of transactions an hour. Can you say data corruption? How about file contention? I won't even go into the features it lacks compared to an enterprise class RDBS. Its not made for that and I don't think anyone expects it to be. Now you mentioned Access... Just use Excel, it takes less mouse clicks. As for MS Sql Server. Well, its a very nice platform to develop on and a pretty good database to boot. Don't expect to put any data warehouses on it and don't think you're going to have thousands of concurrent sessions on it either. That is not a short coming of the RDBS (Sybase has been doing it for years), its the operating system. NT just isn't scalable. If it was, Microsoft might finally be able to transfer Hotmail or their own website onto it :) Hell, they might even chance putting their own critical data on it.
If M$ were to port SQL Server to Unix, Oracle would really have some competition.
The fact is, all RDBS's have their uses. If you need performance, reliability and scalability and a lot of money then buy Oracle, or one of many others that aren't as feature rich, but very good systems - Sybase, Informix, DB2 or MS SQL Server.
I like it. I kinda miss the boxes, but I can live without them :) Good work.
UUNet has offices all over the place - Columbus, OH, Ashburn, VA, Ann Arbor, MI, Atlanta, GA, Fairfax, VA and out of the states. They are primarily a Solaris shop worldwide.
What else are you thinking? NT? I suppose you could put a small database like this on NT, but if you have the option to use Linux instead, do it. Any flavor of Unix would be preferred, but Linux x86 will give you the most bang for the buck. As for Sybase... If you can afford Sybase, then you can certainly afford Oracle. Put Oracle 8i on Linux and enjoy. Why settle for the beetle when you can have the Cadillac?