There's this little place called Prudhoe Bay. Maybe some of you have heard of it.;-)
All in all a neat picture. Reminds me of one reason I live up here....I can look outside at night and see stars, the aurora and all the wonderful stuff because I don't have millions of people snuggled up next to me.
I have averaged about 10 a month for the last 3 years and I am the hiring supervisor for my team(not HR). A good interview is made up of different types of questions. Technical, situational and warm fuzzies.
These are not just used to get specific answers to the questions but to get to know the person and get them talking. Sure I want to know if they have the technical knowledge to do the job but I also want to know if they'll fit in to the existing team.
Why do I want to know where someone wants to be in 5 years? So I know if it's something I or my company can help them achieve and do their goals conflict with the job. I want to know what makes them tick.
Anyway....back to the certs question. Certs will get you in the door for an interview in alot of cases. Especially if you do not have a degree to back up your claim of having XYZ knowledge. They are "relatively" cheap compared to a formal education and accessible to everyone who's got the motivation to take one.
I've found that cert takers, in general, have been more knowlegdable than folks with 2-4 year degrees. This I think is mainly because they do have real life experiences to back it up whereas college folks may never have touched a computer outside of school.
I saw in a couple of comments that folks referred users off to their ISP for help removing these items. DON'T! Please!
A comparison I had to use yesterday with a customer because they were getting angry that we(ISP) would not help them was:
If you have a car, don't maintain it, ignore the recall notices, drive without your seatbelt and slam it into park while still moving, you're going to have an accident or break the damn thing.
Do not call the DOT/highway department because of it. We can't and are not going to help you.
An ISP's job it to provided a customer an internet connection. Not to be their free tech bitches for any and every issue that comes along. We view virii and spyware as OS issues and not the ISP's connectivity issue.
Our qualifying test is.....if your computer was in perfect working order, can you get on the internet. If it's not.....call us back when it is and we'll help you with the internet.
That may sound a little customer unfriendly but when queue hold times are over 30 minutes and every customer is pissed off, you have to draw the line somewhere.
If we fail to hold computer users responsible for their own actions, we are enablers of the behaviors we are complaining about.
I'm in total agreement with 1 exception. If you want the job and the offer is to your satisfaction....TAKE IT! I do alot of interviewing and hiring at my company and I've had applicants pull the "let me think about it" game. Guess what! I've got 70 other applicants who want this job, I don't have to wait around for you. We are very straight forward about the job's pay and benefit package during the interview process so at the time of the offer a candidate should already have thought it through.
That being said.....to the original post: Explain the gaps in your cover letter if you must but do not omit them or gloss over them. I expect my applicants to have gaps in employment if they've worked in the IT sector for a while. I'm also used to seeing it because the candidate was continuing an education.
Cable companies buy their programs in bundles from the networks. Part of the contract on some of these is that if you air XYZ channel you must also air PDQ.
You can also go to your local sporting goods store and looks at their braces. I picked up one at Sports Auth with similar features for under $20. It had top and bottom braces which are removable and 3 velcro straps for adjustments. It's not a cure but it does help.
Agreed! Whether it be a computer manufacturer or an ISP, Tech Support is a liability to the bottom line. If you have a shitty product or a large customer base, you need more techs on the phones, which means you pay less in salaries, which leads to your quality of service going down the tubes. You can't afford to keep the good techs around so they move off to better paying jobs and you're left with filling the holes with unqualified people. I'm a supervisor in a tech call center and I can tell you that the pressure I get daily is to churn the calls out quickly and make some sales. Keep those hold times and handle times low or else. Sell or upsell this or that product. Hell, these are techs, not salesmen. If they wanted to be in sales they would be working at Best Buy or CompUSA. Consideration to quality comes way down on the list.
Any city has lights on somewhere 24/7. If you look at the Anchorage or Sitka webcams and it's all black.....it's either down or you're in for some nasty weather.
1. This isn't about the RIAA, it's about the cost of providing services. Peering and downstream/upstream links cost money. The more the customers use, the more the ISP pays. The ISP will only contract for the average sustained usage on their network. If they exceed this, they are charged higher rates by the other networks. This is simply what they are trying to pass on to the consumer.
2. Downloading ISOs, sampling songs or listening to internet radio shouldn't put you over your usage limit. Grab a usage meter and see what your monthly usage actually is. You may be surprised. I've only exceeded mine once in 3 years and that was because I did 5-6 ISOs, lots of music transfers and had a temp ftp server up for some 400+mb files.
3. The "average" consumer won't be affected. 95+% of the cable modem users in my area have never gone over their usage. Who does? Jane Doe, single mother of teenage boys who finds this strange program Kazaa on her machine. John Geek who's streaming video of his fish tank, downloading the entire NewsGroup database daily(yes, I have a customer who does this) and running various servers.
4. Virii will not cause people to go over their limits. In the hey-day of CodeRed and Nimba I had less than 5mb of traffic on 2 web servers. This goes for email also.
5. Shutting down ports won't work. How many times have I seen on/. people complaining that their ISP does allow port xyz traffic. No, let them use the applications they want but make them understand that there are monitary consequences.
6. The "cap" system will work. My ISP(the company I work for) has been using this for 3 years. I don't like the term "cap" because it's not a hard limit but just what you've purchased as part of your package. Sure some customers will do to other services like DSL, but they tend to come back to us because of quality of service.
The ISP's resonsibilities should be: Providing a way to track usage daily. Sending a friendly reminder email if someone is getting close to their "cap". My ISP charges and then credits the first time someone goes over as a warning and courtesy. This saves Jane (above) from being penalized for what her children are doing and gives her a chance to correct it. It's amazing how many don't repeat.
The decrease in speeds on your dialup could be the results of a DAML (Digital Added Main Line) being placed on the line. DAMLs are used to split a single copper pair to handle more than one phone line. LECs use this when it's too expensive to run new copper into an area. This absolutely kills any DSL variant and will significantly decrease dialup speeds. You many want to contact your local repair and have them test the line. What we've run into is that most ILECs will tell you they only have to provide voice quaility service and you're TSOL. You may be able to request a clean copper pair to be run by your telco but the price may be high. Though from what I've seen on the satalite costs it may be a reasonable expenditure. After that, you should look at multilink or "shotgunning". Your ISP may not offer it but it's worth the phone call to check.
My company leaves it up to the consumer to check their usage. We have a tool on our home site where our customer can enter the MAC address(serial number) of their cable modem and be given their monthly usage up to the previous day. This way we don't need to spam the user or have them worry about lost emails. As far as usage limits, we've divided it up into 4 QOS(speeds) w/usage limits. 256/64 get 5gb per month where as 1.5mb/256 gets 20gb. This does satisfy 90% of our users who never go over. Hell, I've only gone over my limit once.
Re:The end of a state of denial
on
Broadband Crackdown
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Granted, many people running Win2K or NT and IIS might not realize the service is running, their computer is infected, they are part of the problem.
This is what we've run into at my company. What our security team did was scan for infected IIS servers and shut down those specific customers. We then contacted them and informed them to patch immediately once we turned them back on. We also warned them that we would scan again that evening and would not hesitate at shutting them down a second time.
About 50% of those contacted had no clue they even had IIS running. This made it very frustrating.
I'm not for or against this project but I thought I'd add clarity to some of the mis-information that has been given.
1.
There is fiber bandwidth the Prudhoe Bay.
2. There is bandwidth to the lower 48. Each OC-48 can be upgraded to an OC-192. Read the page for more details.
I can't answer for other company's redundancy but GCI uses a satilite system if for any reason the fiber goes down. It does cause some hellacious lag but the packets still get there.
3. There are no penguins
4. There are polar bears
5. There are some really huge mosquitoes.
6. No we don't live in igloos and yes, we have indoor plumbing......some of us.....
"Sigh... All I want...full-time connection, static IP, primary/secondary DNS, MX, about US$50-US$60/month."
I work for a CM provider and we do all that you want at reasonable prices. DNS/MX w/static..$50 setup and $10 per month on top of your other services. Basic cable modem service is going to run you $40 per month. We run our network a bit differently from others around the US. We give you dedicated bandwidth and have built the network so that you are *not* competing with your neighbors for bandwidth. We also give you a per month GB limit. Exceed it and it costs you $20 per GB. Great for those MP3 and pr0n junkies. Joe Average User gets 256/64 with 5gb of data transfer for $39.99. Add $10 and upgrade your speed to 512/128 but the data transfer stays the same. Want more GBs? $100 gets you 768/192 w/10gb, $300 is 1024/256 w/17gb. Wanna run a game server? Go ahead. Wanna run a http/ftp server? Go ahead. Wanna have more than one machine hooked up? Go ahead. You can have up to 8 using our DHCP server to assign IPs. You're already paying for the bandwidth....do what you want with it. Our pricing is the same for consumers as it is for business when dealing with the cable modem products. The only catch with all this? You have to move to Alaska.
I'm not sure the Motorola product will be compatable with our current network. I'm thinking not. We're working with Com21 on a similar CM/FW unit. Kaz, the cable modem queen
Slashdot Mirror
There's this little place called Prudhoe Bay. Maybe some of you have heard of it. ;-)
All in all a neat picture. Reminds me of one reason I live up here....I can look outside at night and see stars, the aurora and all the wonderful stuff because I don't have millions of people snuggled up next to me.
Have you even conducted interviews?
I have averaged about 10 a month for the last 3 years and I am the hiring supervisor for my team(not HR).
A good interview is made up of different types of questions. Technical, situational and warm fuzzies.
These are not just used to get specific answers to the questions but to get to know the person and get them talking. Sure I want to know if they have the technical knowledge to do the job but I also want to know if they'll fit in to the existing team.
Why do I want to know where someone wants to be in 5 years? So I know if it's something I or my company can help them achieve and do their goals conflict with the job. I want to know what makes them tick.
Anyway....back to the certs question.
Certs will get you in the door for an interview in alot of cases. Especially if you do not have a degree to back up your claim of having XYZ knowledge. They are "relatively" cheap compared to a formal education and accessible to everyone who's got the motivation to take one.
I've found that cert takers, in general, have been more knowlegdable than folks with 2-4 year degrees. This I think is mainly because they do have real life experiences to back it up whereas college folks may never have touched a computer outside of school.
I saw in a couple of comments that folks referred users off to their ISP for help removing these items.
DON'T! Please!
A comparison I had to use yesterday with a customer because they were getting angry that we(ISP) would not help them was:
If you have a car, don't maintain it, ignore the recall notices, drive without your seatbelt and slam it into park while still moving, you're going to have an accident or break the damn thing.
Do not call the DOT/highway department because of it. We can't and are not going to help you.
An ISP's job it to provided a customer an internet connection. Not to be their free tech bitches for any and every issue that comes along. We view virii and spyware as OS issues and not the ISP's connectivity issue.
Our qualifying test is.....if your computer was in perfect working order, can you get on the internet. If it's not.....call us back when it is and we'll help you with the internet.
That may sound a little customer unfriendly but when queue hold times are over 30 minutes and every customer is pissed off, you have to draw the line somewhere.
If we fail to hold computer users responsible for their own actions, we are enablers of the behaviors we are complaining about.
I'm in total agreement with 1 exception. If you want the job and the offer is to your satisfaction....TAKE IT!
I do alot of interviewing and hiring at my company and I've had applicants pull the "let me think about it" game.
Guess what! I've got 70 other applicants who want this job, I don't have to wait around for you.
We are very straight forward about the job's pay and benefit package during the interview process so at the time of the offer a candidate should already have thought it through.
That being said.....to the original post:
Explain the gaps in your cover letter if you must but do not omit them or gloss over them. I expect my applicants to have gaps in employment if they've worked in the IT sector for a while. I'm also used to seeing it because the candidate was continuing an education.
Cable companies buy their programs in bundles from the networks. Part of the contract on some of these is that if you air XYZ channel you must also air PDQ.
You can also go to your local sporting goods store and looks at their braces. I picked up one at Sports Auth with similar features for under $20.
It had top and bottom braces which are removable and 3 velcro straps for adjustments.
It's not a cure but it does help.
i could make it my full-time job...what the heck would i list as occupation on my income taxes though...
Trash collector?
Agreed!
Whether it be a computer manufacturer or an ISP, Tech Support is a liability to the bottom line. If you have a shitty product or a large customer base, you need more techs on the phones, which means you pay less in salaries, which leads to your quality of service going down the tubes. You can't afford to keep the good techs around so they move off to better paying jobs and you're left with filling the holes with unqualified people.
I'm a supervisor in a tech call center and I can tell you that the pressure I get daily is to churn the calls out quickly and make some sales.
Keep those hold times and handle times low or else.
Sell or upsell this or that product.
Hell, these are techs, not salesmen. If they wanted to be in sales they would be working at Best Buy or CompUSA.
Consideration to quality comes way down on the list.
Any city has lights on somewhere 24/7. If you look at the Anchorage or Sitka webcams and it's all black.....it's either down or you're in for some nasty weather.
Those of us who live up here already know if it's dark outside and won't bother looking at the site.
let me clarify......my ISP does not carry *all* the groups. The customer is downloading 1-2gb+ daily.
1. This isn't about the RIAA, it's about the cost of providing services.
/. people complaining that their ISP does allow port xyz traffic. No, let them use the applications they want but make them understand that there are monitary consequences.
Peering and downstream/upstream links cost money. The more the customers use, the more the ISP pays. The ISP will only contract for the average sustained usage on their network. If they exceed this, they are charged higher rates by the other networks. This is simply what they are trying to pass on to the consumer.
2. Downloading ISOs, sampling songs or listening to internet radio shouldn't put you over your usage limit.
Grab a usage meter and see what your monthly usage actually is. You may be surprised. I've only exceeded mine once in 3 years and that was because I did 5-6 ISOs, lots of music transfers and had a temp ftp server up for some 400+mb files.
3. The "average" consumer won't be affected.
95+% of the cable modem users in my area have never gone over their usage. Who does? Jane Doe, single mother of teenage boys who finds this strange program Kazaa on her machine. John Geek who's streaming video of his fish tank, downloading the entire NewsGroup database daily(yes, I have a customer who does this) and running various servers.
4. Virii will not cause people to go over their limits. In the hey-day of CodeRed and Nimba I had less than 5mb of traffic on 2 web servers. This goes for email also.
5. Shutting down ports won't work. How many times have I seen on
6. The "cap" system will work. My ISP(the company I work for) has been using this for 3 years. I don't like the term "cap" because it's not a hard limit but just what you've purchased as part of your package. Sure some customers will do to other services like DSL, but they tend to come back to us because of quality of service.
The ISP's resonsibilities should be:
Providing a way to track usage daily.
Sending a friendly reminder email if someone is getting close to their "cap".
My ISP charges and then credits the first time someone goes over as a warning and courtesy. This saves Jane (above) from being penalized for what her children are doing and gives her a chance to correct it. It's amazing how many don't repeat.
Sorry dude.
Most T1 service has metered usage also. You get x with the plan and you pay x for overages.
The decrease in speeds on your dialup could be the results of a DAML (Digital Added Main Line) being placed on the line.
DAMLs are used to split a single copper pair to handle more than one phone line. LECs use this when it's too expensive to run new copper into an area. This absolutely kills any DSL variant and will significantly decrease dialup speeds. You many want to contact your local repair and have them test the line.
What we've run into is that most ILECs will tell you they only have to provide voice quaility service and you're TSOL.
You may be able to request a clean copper pair to be run by your telco but the price may be high. Though from what I've seen on the satalite costs it may be a reasonable expenditure.
After that, you should look at multilink or "shotgunning". Your ISP may not offer it but it's worth the phone call to check.
My company leaves it up to the consumer to check their usage. We have a tool on our home site where our customer can enter the MAC address(serial number) of their cable modem and be given their monthly usage up to the previous day. This way we don't need to spam the user or have them worry about lost emails.
As far as usage limits, we've divided it up into 4 QOS(speeds) w/usage limits. 256/64 get 5gb per month where as 1.5mb/256 gets 20gb. This does satisfy 90% of our users who never go over. Hell, I've only gone over my limit once.
Granted, many people running Win2K or NT and IIS might not realize the service is running, their computer is infected, they are part of the problem.
This is what we've run into at my company.
What our security team did was scan for infected IIS servers and shut down those specific customers.
We then contacted them and informed them to patch immediately once we turned them back on. We also warned them that we would scan again that evening and would not hesitate at shutting them down a second time.
About 50% of those contacted had no clue they even had IIS running. This made it very frustrating.
I'm not for or against this project but I thought I'd add clarity to some of the mis-information that has been given.
1. There is fiber bandwidth the Prudhoe Bay.
2. There is bandwidth to the lower 48. Each OC-48 can be upgraded to an OC-192. Read the page for more details.
I can't answer for other company's redundancy but GCI uses a satilite system if for any reason the fiber goes down. It does cause some hellacious lag but the packets still get there.
3. There are no penguins
4. There are polar bears
5. There are some really huge mosquitoes.
6. No we don't live in igloos and yes, we have indoor plumbing......some of us.....
My favorite site for photos.
Jan Curtis
Great photos and they update them frequently. We've had some great activity over the last couple of weeks.
"Sigh... All I want...full-time connection, static IP, primary/secondary DNS, MX, about US$50-US$60/month."
I work for a CM provider and we do all that you want at reasonable prices. DNS/MX w/static..$50 setup and $10 per month on top of your other services. Basic cable modem service is going to run you $40 per month.
We run our network a bit differently from others around the US. We give you dedicated bandwidth and have built the network so that you are *not* competing with your neighbors for bandwidth.
We also give you a per month GB limit. Exceed it and it costs you $20 per GB. Great for those MP3 and pr0n junkies.
Joe Average User gets 256/64 with 5gb of data transfer for $39.99. Add $10 and upgrade your speed to 512/128 but the data transfer stays the same.
Want more GBs? $100 gets you 768/192 w/10gb, $300 is 1024/256 w/17gb.
Wanna run a game server? Go ahead.
Wanna run a http/ftp server? Go ahead.
Wanna have more than one machine hooked up? Go ahead.
You can have up to 8 using our DHCP server to assign IPs. You're already paying for the bandwidth....do what you want with it. Our pricing is the same for consumers as it is for business when dealing with the cable modem products.
The only catch with all this? You have to move to Alaska.
I'm not sure the Motorola product will be compatable with our current network. I'm thinking not. We're working with Com21 on a similar CM/FW unit.
Kaz, the cable modem queen