Some people have been branding around figures in the order of USD$50-100K... My initial set up cost in the order of AUS$20K. Take into account the exchange rate of around AUS$1 == USD$0.65 or so at the time and you have a fairly low setup cost... I have however expanded greatly since that time, where I was running a with only 2-3 servers and 10 channels of a E1 line - but all things considered (and I have spoken with other small startups as well) - an ISP can be set up on a budget of less than AUS$30-40K.
Costs may be further reduced if one was to opt for the outsourcing of infrastructure to have a virtual ISP type set up - However I don't know what the economics of this would be line when it came to scaling up in a large way (I have posted some figures for this in another thread in this topic but haven't performed any cost analysis with those figures when scaled to 1000 or more users).
Being in the business myself and at that point of small, but marginally profitable... I must say this is an excellent summary of how it has to be done.
If I hadn't already posted I would be +1-ing informative:)
In Australia, the cost of virtual ISP configurations is normally calculated on a per-line basis rather than per customer. These per- line costs vary widely ranging from $100 per line per month through to $170 per line per month depending on the number of lines leased and the locations over which these are being leased. In some cases, these line leasing costs don't even cover data costs which may be charged at a rate between 10-20 cents per Mb ($100-200 per Gb).
In short, the cost of bandwidth and lines in Australia is prohibitive at best - and there are some larger corporations making an absolute killing from it. Even when you take into consideration our dollars' poor exchange rate compared with the USD (in the order of $1AUD = $0.48-0.50USD), the cost to Internet startups in Australia can be quite restricting.
I do however concur most strongly with your other comments about small start ups consolidating their services and chasing the web and domain hosting for their primary business focus - This too is how I went about setting up my own ISP business here downunder.
I have done this... I have built an ISP from the ground up here in Australia and it is profitable - How did I do it? Simple... I kept the basic principles of business in mind and have keep overheads low and budgeted where possible to work within my means.
Having said this, I can still say though that the number one asset which you can take into this business venture is knowledge. I came to set up my ISP venture after having spent time working for a larger, second tier Internet provider where I had the title of System Administrator. In this role I gained a great deal of information and knowledge in the organisation and administration of an Internet service provider - This in short was invaluable. This knowledge allowed me to set up and configure my own servers, dial-in routers and customer billing systems - I even designed the first web page myself! (and man was it ugly).
I will not say that there wasn't a lot of work involved - but it did allow me to set up an ISP that runs on a profit for minimal outlay.
... one thing which you will always have to remember is that these 'computed' biological systems will never be able to pair up against true biological trials. While these distributed 'find a cure for...' systems may identify drug molecules likely to produce an effect in this closed system, at the end of the day, there will still be 2-5 years worth of FDA/GEPRM trials which could easily prove the 'likely drug molecule' completely ineffective.
Projects such as the Human Genome project may contribute to the formulation of better computational modules for testing, but at the end of the day, we have to remember that these are still only simulated environments.
The original engine that was built by Babbage's engineer, Joseph Clement, consisted of about 2000 parts but was only a small portion of the envisionaged differential engine. The engine was never completed and most of the parts produced were later melted for scrap.
The engine later built by the London Science Museum was completed in 1991. Information on this system can be found at the following sites ;
You have to remember also that the Difference Engine was never actually built - That which sets the CSIRAC computer apart from other systems of its time is that it is still maintained in whole. As the article on th SMH rightly points out, other systems of that time have been cannablised as part of their ongoing development.
Amusing as this is, I think the concern arises not so much because of the breach of the source itself but moreso that this breach of Microsoft security demonstrates an oversight in basic security procedures on Microsoft's part. If this oversight in security (which I believe involved yet another patch to IIS) became evident on Microsoft's own systems, what does this the future hold for client systems?
I mean, if Microsoft can't even get their own security right...
What about web servlets? It is very easy to build java and mod_apache 'servlets' which can attach 'headers' to all web documents served - This is the method which I see these forms of advertising to eventually take.
That is, they output a different page to the client - for the same requested URL - dependent upon the referring URL. If the referring URL is a non-advert page, it displays an advert page or pops up an advert window before redirecting through to itself once more, with the new referring URL. Once the advert page has been displayed (ie. the document has referred back to itself), the true page is displayed.
And these are my thoughts at 3.00am... imagine if I wasn't hyped on caffiene!
The risk factors also talk about the possibility of losing key personnel, and state: "In that regard, in July 2000 Irving Miller, our Chairman, co-founder and former Chief Executive Officer, and Iris Miller, President of our Asia Pacific division and co-founder, were terminated without cause." To do so, the company paid the Millers $850,000 in separation fees, and also bought back $7.5 million in stock (at $3.65 per share). And they may not be done paying the Millers yet
Okay... they are trying to raise $60 million dollars which they state they don't expect will last them more than a year with current operating costs... but on top of that there are questions as to pay-out to the original owners who, according to other information still own 30% of the company...
Now call me silly, but I have this strange feeling that a good proportion of this venture capital is going to be spent in further buying the Millers out of the picture rather than for worthwhile business development...
I find that figure surprisingly low... especially given that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 5 men across the entire population suffer from depression in their lives... then considering a select group of that population where conditions are particular stressful and demands of employers are often high, surely the prevalence of depression would be higher and not lower than the population statistics state.
Okay... while a nice reply to comparisons between Red Hat and Microsoft, this letter fails to address any of the real issues at hand...
The question of the shipping of GCC 2.96 is obviously vexed. One other poster on this thread, questioned what the upside of the shipping of GCC 2.96 would be? Unless that can be honestly answered, in the face of the disapproval of the GCC steering committee, then Red Hat may just have to admit that they were wrong in doign so...
Furthermore, the more concerning issue (to my mind) about the automatic update daemon and system stability at the 3 week mark. This was ignored completely in this reply... but raises many SERIOUS questions over quality control with this product. I find it incredible that something such as this could slip through QA and make it out into production ! Does RH actually run these releases up on their own servers first before pumping it out to the community? Or is the open source community the guinea pigs for ongoing RH production? For which I might add RH is profiteering... are we becoming merely pawns for the profit of corporates?
Then again, maybe I am overly critical and paranoid...
another great thing about this book is the excellent reference it provides for sql syntax and data models... I have used it a number of times to extract information on the data structures used by mySQL, a reference which has saved me many hours of parsing through alternate documentation or program source.
... being moderated up as another/. groupie I have to say that that editorial by emmett was one of the best editorial pieces I have ever read on/.... concise, timely, on-topic and balanced.
Okay... I have looked... maybe I am a little dense or something... but unix.com is NOT listed on ebay...
In NONE of the posts or the original story post has there been a link to where on ebay that the domain is being auctioned. Nor does ebay have a listing of it... http://search-desc.ebay.com/search/search.dll?MfcI SAPICommand=GetResult&query=unix&categor yid=&ht=1&st=0&category2=3767&srchdesc=y&maxRecord sPerPage=100&SortProperty=MetaEndSort
I'm probably going to be marked down as a troll for this, but really, should the story have been submitted without even including a link to the ebay auction?
I tried the perl shell out in one of its very earliest releases and found it promising but very rudimentary... with later releases however it has shown itself to improve immensely in useability. It makes it unnecessary to write the small scripts that we do on a day-to-day basis for system admin work.
I strongly suggest others to check this shell out before dismissing it out of hand.
Slashdot Mirror
Some people have been branding around figures in the order of USD$50-100K ... My initial set up cost in the order of AUS$20K. Take into account the exchange rate of around AUS$1 == USD$0.65 or so at the time and you have a fairly low setup cost ... I have however expanded greatly since that time, where I was running a with only 2-3 servers and 10 channels of a E1 line - but all things considered (and I have spoken with other small startups as well) - an ISP can be set up on a budget of less than AUS$30-40K.
Costs may be further reduced if one was to opt for the outsourcing of infrastructure to have a virtual ISP type set up - However I don't know what the economics of this would be line when it came to scaling up in a large way (I have posted some figures for this in another thread in this topic but haven't performed any cost analysis with those figures when scaled to 1000 or more users).
Being in the business myself and at that point of small, but marginally profitable ... I must say this is an excellent summary of how it has to be done.
:)
If I hadn't already posted I would be +1-ing informative
In Australia, the cost of virtual ISP configurations is normally calculated on a per-line basis rather than per customer. These per- line costs vary widely ranging from $100 per line per month through to $170 per line per month depending on the number of lines leased and the locations over which these are being leased. In some cases, these line leasing costs don't even cover data costs which may be charged at a rate between 10-20 cents per Mb ($100-200 per Gb).
In short, the cost of bandwidth and lines in Australia is prohibitive at best - and there are some larger corporations making an absolute killing from it. Even when you take into consideration our dollars' poor exchange rate compared with the USD (in the order of $1AUD = $0.48-0.50USD), the cost to Internet startups in Australia can be quite restricting.
I do however concur most strongly with your other comments about small start ups consolidating their services and chasing the web and domain hosting for their primary business focus - This too is how I went about setting up my own ISP business here downunder.
I have done this ... I have built an ISP from the ground up here in Australia and it is profitable - How did I do it? Simple ... I kept the basic principles of business in mind and have keep overheads low and budgeted where possible to work within my means.
Having said this, I can still say though that the number one asset which you can take into this business venture is knowledge. I came to set up my ISP venture after having spent time working for a larger, second tier Internet provider where I had the title of System Administrator. In this role I gained a great deal of information and knowledge in the organisation and administration of an Internet service provider - This in short was invaluable. This knowledge allowed me to set up and configure my own servers, dial-in routers and customer billing systems - I even designed the first web page myself! (and man was it ugly).
I will not say that there wasn't a lot of work involved - but it did allow me to set up an ISP that runs on a profit for minimal outlay.
I'm just disappointed that it isn't being auctioned off on Ebay ... Wouldn't that be the ultimate embrace of capitalism by the Russian Space Program?
Then again, maybe not *grin*
Projects such as the Human Genome project may contribute to the formulation of better computational modules for testing, but at the end of the day, we have to remember that these are still only simulated environments.
The original engine that was built by Babbage's engineer, Joseph Clement, consisted of about 2000 parts but was only a small portion of the envisionaged differential engine. The engine was never completed and most of the parts produced were later melted for scrap. The engine later built by the London Science Museum was completed in 1991. Information on this system can be found at the following sites ;
http://www.museums.reading.ac.uk/vmoc/babbage/6 2-89.html
http://www.nmsi.ac.uk/on-line/treasure/objects/18
You have to remember also that the Difference Engine was never actually built - That which sets the CSIRAC computer apart from other systems of its time is that it is still maintained in whole. As the article on th SMH rightly points out, other systems of that time have been cannablised as part of their ongoing development.
Rob
http://www.cowsnet.com.au/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux- 2.4.0.tar.bz2 - 2.4.0.tar.bz2.sign - 2.4.0.tar.gz - 2.4.0.tar.gz.sign
http://www.cowsnet.com.au/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux
http://www.cowsnet.com.au/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux
http://www.cowsnet.com.au/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux
Amusing as this is, I think the concern arises not so much because of the breach of the source itself but moreso that this breach of Microsoft security demonstrates an oversight in basic security procedures on Microsoft's part. If this oversight in security (which I believe involved yet another patch to IIS) became evident on Microsoft's own systems, what does this the future hold for client systems?
...
I mean, if Microsoft can't even get their own security right
Just a few random thoughts,
Rob
Ummm, there is a runlevel 5 ... traditionally this is the level of process execution that takes place in XDM execution (multiuser plus X at boot time)
:)
And no, this is definitely NOT a RH only thing - My distro of choice is Slackware
Rob
What about web servlets? It is very easy to build java and mod_apache 'servlets' which can attach 'headers' to all web documents served - This is the method which I see these forms of advertising to eventually take.
... imagine if I wasn't hyped on caffiene!
That is, they output a different page to the client - for the same requested URL - dependent upon the referring URL. If the referring URL is a non-advert page, it displays an advert page or pops up an advert window before redirecting through to itself once more, with the new referring URL. Once the advert page has been displayed (ie. the document has referred back to itself), the true page is displayed.
And these are my thoughts at 3.00am
The risk factors also talk about the possibility of losing key personnel, and state: "In that regard, in July 2000 Irving Miller, our Chairman, co-founder and former Chief Executive Officer, and Iris Miller, President of our Asia Pacific division and co-founder, were terminated without cause." To do so, the company paid the Millers $850,000 in separation fees, and also bought back $7.5 million in stock (at $3.65 per share). And they may not be done paying the Millers yet
... they are trying to raise $60 million dollars which they state they don't expect will last them more than a year with current operating costs ... but on top of that there are questions as to pay-out to the original owners who, according to other information still own 30% of the company ...
...
Okay
Now call me silly, but I have this strange feeling that a good proportion of this venture capital is going to be spent in further buying the Millers out of the picture rather than for worthwhile business development
Just a thought that struck me
Rob
I find that figure surprisingly low ... especially given that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 5 men across the entire population suffer from depression in their lives ... then considering a select group of that population where conditions are particular stressful and demands of employers are often high, surely the prevalence of depression would be higher and not lower than the population statistics state.
My $0.02
Rob
Okay ... while a nice reply to comparisons between Red Hat and Microsoft, this letter fails to address any of the real issues at hand ...
...
... but raises many SERIOUS questions over quality control with this product. I find it incredible that something such as this could slip through QA and make it out into production ! Does RH actually run these releases up on their own servers first before pumping it out to the community? Or is the open source community the guinea pigs for ongoing RH production? For which I might add RH is profiteering ... are we becoming merely pawns for the profit of corporates?
...
The question of the shipping of GCC 2.96 is obviously vexed. One other poster on this thread, questioned what the upside of the shipping of GCC 2.96 would be? Unless that can be honestly answered, in the face of the disapproval of the GCC steering committee, then Red Hat may just have to admit that they were wrong in doign so
Furthermore, the more concerning issue (to my mind) about the automatic update daemon and system stability at the 3 week mark. This was ignored completely in this reply
Then again, maybe I am overly critical and paranoid
Rob
http://www.envador.com/Photos/PVCII/Index.html
:)
Very cool pics
Rob
another great thing about this book is the excellent reference it provides for sql syntax and data models ... I have used it a number of times to extract information on the data structures used by mySQL, a reference which has saved me many hours of parsing through alternate documentation or program source.
... being moderated up as another /. groupie I have to say that that editorial by emmett was one of the best editorial pieces I have ever read on /. ... concise, timely, on-topic and balanced.
Write more editorials please emmett.
Rob
AY! ... man didn't know that you actually posted here ...
rob_au == doctorbob
:)
Rob
cost of UoSat-12 satellite ... $150 million
... $9.95
... priceless !
cost of dialup access with AOL
ability to spam from outer space
:)
Rob
... and it causes the satellite to crash, does it *REALLY* crash ... :)
Rob
I need more sleep or caffiene ... :(
Okay ... I have looked ... maybe I am a little dense or something ... but unix.com is NOT listed on ebay ...
... http://search-desc.ebay.com/search/search.dll?MfcI SAPICommand=GetResult&query=unix&categor yid=&ht=1&st=0&category2=3767&srchdesc=y&maxRecord sPerPage=100&SortProperty=MetaEndSort
In NONE of the posts or the original story post has there been a link to where on ebay that the domain is being auctioned. Nor does ebay have a listing of it
I'm probably going to be marked down as a troll for this, but really, should the story have been submitted without even including a link to the ebay auction?
My $0.02
Rob
I tried the perl shell out in one of its very earliest releases and found it promising but very rudimentary ... with later releases however it has shown itself to improve immensely in useability. It makes it unnecessary to write the small scripts that we do on a day-to-day basis for system admin work.
I strongly suggest others to check this shell out before dismissing it out of hand.
Rob
that 'find the black dot picture' ... almost caused me to have an epileptic fit in the same way as strobelights ...
... I'm not diagnosed as epileptic!
and the *really* weird thing
:)
Rob