Don't Play Their Game - Make a New One!
on
Becoming a CLEC?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Becoming a CLEC is a loosing proposition. You play on your competitors network, on his terms. You're a sharecropper.
Do something different. For example, follow the lead of Hometown Wireless and expand as a wireless ISP. Focus on areas without DSL, cater to customers who don't want home voice service by offering optional VOIP, or who may want a dedicated 54Mbps wireless pipe.
Another example. Focus on the "triple play" of voice, video, and data services. Deploy high speed VDSL gear or ethernet, get your own T1s and your own phone numbers for voice. Use Cisco voice termination equipment over VDSL or ethernet, ang get video feeds from Direct TV.
Someone in another comment said that becomming a CLEC will cost you $500,000. I don't doubt it. There are a lot better and cheaper investment and growth strategies out there for you.
My friends and I have loved Axis and Allies for over a decade now. Between us, we have the original game, and the spinoff games for both the European and Asian theaters.
Hampered by a tedious setup and long turns, A&A is a battle of strategic resources that involves equal parts WWII and trash talk. It is fun to play with three to five players. (With two players, there is less finger pointing amongst the Allies or Axis. What fun is that?)
If you're a geek, you love history, and you've never played it, you really must try it some time.
The whole point of Vonage is that you get a real phone number, and you can call real people at other real phone numbers.
I have a Vonage phone, and when I signed up, they gave me a phone number from my choice of limited exchanges from anywhere in the United States. (By the way, I live in Michigan, what if I were to choose an exchange in the State of New York? Would I be subject to New York regulations? I should not be)
I only call people on the PTSN and cellular network. And if we couldn't communicate, the service would be worthless to me.
It looks like a phone, acts like a phone, and quacks like a phone (duck). We all may have concerns about entrenched government bureaucracies, but Vonage is my home phone company.
I see a regulatory recovery fee on my bill, and 911 works for me (reportedly). (Although 911 service could be a bit better).
There are other services which do not have phone numbers (e.g. MSN Voice Chat, Skype, SIPPhone), but they don't allow me to call the vast majority of people with whom I want to talk. They are not real phones like my Vonage line.
Could You Choose Beta Release Medicine?
on
Cure for Cancer?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The molecular-scale computer could take 10 years to reach clinical trials
If I were dying of cancer in 5 years, and I weren't likely to make it another 5-10 years for this treatment to be deemed "safe and effective", could I try it at my own expense?
My uncle died of inoperative throat cancer. About a year afterwards, I read about a treatment that had just been approved by the FDA using radiation and finely controlled robots that could have saved his life. It was a long shot, but I don't think that he ever had the chance to consider it.
I know that this opens the door to all sorts of criminals, but it could save a lot of lives. Just a modest rant.
" In fact Nicholas, I will paypal you $100 US if you can name three architectural similarities between GConf and the Registry."
I once saw Chris Lahey of Ximian speak, and he said, the best way to describe the GConf was that it was like regedit, but it really wasn't the same thing, honest.
Here are four (rather than just three) archetictural similaries between GConf and the Windows Registry:
1) They both store application preferences
2) They are intended for user preferences - not for configuration of things like Apache - and not for arbitrary data
3) They are both motivated by a desire to make application preferences more manageable for system administrators
4) They provide a preference database, which is like a simple file system
Cha-ching!
All I did was to paraphrase the GConf home page.
"Personally, I'm interested in hybrids but not for fuel efficiency reasons. I'd like to see auto makers combine the output from different energy sources into all-wheel acceleration of a normal car...."
Welcome to the intersection of politics and engineering.
Both Ford and GM looked into making so called "booster hybrids" that would use the electric generator to aid in acceleration and performance, but would not substantially change the EPA recognized mileage of the trucks.
They were in part motivated by several federal and state tax breaks for hybrid electric vehicles.
However, after various politicking, it was agreed (I wish that I still had a link here) that these trucks would not be considered "hybrids" eligible for those tax breaks. This made sense, as the intent of those tax breaks was to improve mileage, not to get autos to go from zero to sixty a half second faster.
And now we learn that the EPA reported mileage is woefully inaccurate for hybrids, coupled with the well known fact that you won't ever get the sticker rated mileage on your new car or truck, and I have to wonder if these so called "booster hybrids" would have given real world drivers better mileage, but that we can't see this due to EPA testing biases.
Which all leads back to what the automakers want. A simple (say $0.75) tax on gas to encourage consumers to choose the best car for them that uses less gas. Whether that be hybrid, unleaded gasoline, high performance diesel, or hydrogen powered.
This diversity of opinion, along with its inexorable and accelerating content growth suggest that Wikipedia, or some similar successor, just may become the standard reference of the earlh 21st century.
These challenges are not the same as X-Prize, as they have shifted from ones directly competing with NASA (e.g. independent, private launch capabilities) towards ones more complimentary to NASA (e.g. better Astronaut gloves, robotic insects).
If the US Government wants to encourage more independent space resarch, the Congress and President must work together to establish goals INDEPENDENT of NASA. One possibility is to simply have the Congress double the prize money for the next few X-Prizes once those details are finalized.
NASA will NOT spend its money to pay for the development of a competing private space industry.
As an American you have the choice to pay for BBC programming (via CDs, DVDs, and cable). I do not choose to watch BBC programming, and I gleefully avoid paying $212.52/year (10 British pounds/month * 12 months * 1.77US$/Pound) for it. Grandmothers who only watch old Arab language video tapes in London have no such luck.
NASA is increasingly isolating itself by insisting that it can simultaneously fix the Space Shuttles, establish a permanent lunar base, and and send humans to Mars.
All on it's own - with a modest international coolition of willing partners.
What's more Canadian than that?
Hockey night in Canada over a 24 pack of Molson XXX's, intoxicated snomobiling with the Bare Naked Ladies on headphones tucked under your took, and an all expenses paid trip to the emergency room.
In
Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut, the program GRIOT was used to:
Statistically predict future events for people based on a series of questions ("Are you married?", "Do you drink every day?"... )
Randomly generate backgrounds for people in the Witness Protection Program or for people using other fake identites
One character claimed to have been on the Phil Donohue Show, but the main character figured that he may have been qouting from his randomly generated GRIOT background. Statistically, every once in a while, GRIOT would have to say that a person had been on a TV show.
* Always shows gracefully parsed packets, even on tagged vlans
* Follows TCP Stream so you can view and analyze XML transactions generated by JavaScript scripts.
* Completely supports almost all protocols e.g. Knows RADIUS options.
* Can use it to examine HTML headers, redirects, and what goofy web pages are doing behind the scenes.
* Works on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS-X (although I never use the last)
When I need a Windows program to do some task, unless there is a program that I know and trust, I always look for a suitable open source solution first.
Open Source acts as a trust mark. I've never even heard of a spyware program released under the GPL.
Yes, I may need to use a DOS prompt and run cdrao and vcdimager with a bunch of confusing flags to burn a VCD from my TV tuner card, but it still works, it doesn't notify a database that I like CSI, it doesn't intentionally degrade the output, and I don't get any unwanted popup messages.
My Smart Channels is a web based knowledge management system designed to eliminate the overhead of traditional knowledge management applications. Its focus is on creating a secure, easy to use KMS which easilly links with external sources such as web pages, e-mails, etc.
It's free as a demo, or the company will set you up with a dedicated server for a fee. I've only seen and used it as a demo.
For our KMS (in a group of about 14 people), I setup PHPWiki, which given the fact that I'm using the default file system based database, I installed and configured in less than 30 minutes.
PHPWiki is straight hyperlinked text only, but it's useful for archiving those "how-to" e-mails that I send over and over. I just cut-n-paste what I wrote before, and send the text along with a link to the original. However, despite my urging, my teammates keep saying "I'll try it", but they haven't put any content on it.
It is a bad thing because managers will artificially lower the scores of employees who are near retirement, or who are more readily replaced.
A true story.
B. was a technician at a large automotive supplier. He was a hard worker, and his manager had given him good rankings for twenty-five years.
Looking to trim the workforce in the near future, the company implemented a forced ranking system. Like many companies, this one had a fixed head count that they wanted reduced (about 10-20%).
B.'s manager knew that whomever received a low ranking for three years running would be fired, and B. didn't have a college degree, and he planned on retiring soon, so B. had to go.
Despite doing his job with professionalism just as he had done in the past, B. was given low rankings. When he complained, his manager warned him that there would be consequences if he didn't sign off on his review.
B. was fired after three years.
Actually, B. received a nice severance package, and he was happy to stop working less than a year earlier than his scheduled retirement date, but if given the choice he would have preferred to continue working. He also would have preferred a more honest accessment of his work.
Read The Difference Engine
on
The Zenith Angle
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· Score: 2, Interesting
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling wrote it together.
Bruce Sterling has a adaptive vocabulary, and a sharp wit, but there's something beautifully barren about William Gibson's prose.
Bruce Sterling also focuses a bit more on "the big picture", while Gibson seems to be more intimately familiar with his characters. Sterling's books seem more positive, and Gibson's more dark. (I've read them all).
Overall, they're both great authors, and if you like one, you'll almost certainly like the other.
"things never seem to even come close to what the exchange rate says they "should" be"
That's because your government adds on a 17.5% VAT (Value Added Tax) that is hidden from you. In the USA we have no VAT, but we do have a visible sales tax of up to 10% (usually about 6%) depending on where you live. In Canada, they have both a VAT and sales tax.
Personally, I think that the taxes should be plainly visible so that we citizens can understand them better, but that's probably the reason that they're invisible.
The broadcast flag is old news. The FCC can control hardware, but not software.
Thus the GNU project brings us an open source software tuner, which is not subject to regulation, and can tune/record HDTV.
Check out these HDTV screen shots:
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/hdtv-sample s. html
Sadly, the software controlled tuner cards, powerful processor, DRAM, wide screen monitor, good computer stereo, etc put this toy out of the reach of most geeks - for now.
I had this idea, which I've never implemented, of weighing items with extreme precision using a chaotic system. Since the chaotic system is sensitively dependent upon initial conditions, it should be possible to take measurements over a short period of time and work backwards mathematically to one of several possible initial weights. Eliminate those values that are not possible via other means (negative weights, far too heavy, far too light), and you should end up with an extremely accurate initial weight.
I'm not sure that it would really work in practice, but I just thought it was a neat idea, and vaguely related to the authors' use of an oscilator.
Perhaps if they were able to make the position of the oscilator at any time sensitively dependent on initial conditions, they could invent such a measurment tool (e.g. swing another weight in and out based on the position of the oscilator to slightly modify the local gravity in a nonmodal fashion that would make the oscilator sensitively dependent upon its weight and its inital position)
My differential equations work is so far gone, I couldn't even begin to measure this mathematically anymore.
The State of Michigan created about $1 billion in loan guarantees to bring broadband to every citizen. We have both urban (Detroit, Grand Rapids) and rural areas (the Upper Peninsula)
SBC gets the vast majority of that money.
There are innovative small business people using wireless links between grain towers to bring broadband to rural areas, and they don't get a dime.
Cellular data carriers are also not eligible.
This just makes the inefficient infrastructure of large carriers more cost competitive at taxpayers expense.
Michigan citizens would be better off if they were able to get direct subsidies for a portion of the most expensive basic broadband services. For example, allow me to get a subsidy of $25 on a $100 per month "basic" broadband bill, while my friend gets no subsidy on her $50 per month bill. I could either apply for the subsidy directly, or the carrier could collect it for me and subtract it from my bill with my written permission.
No I did not check the style guide. However, while someone contradictory, you may find some of the things it says interesting.
It says:
"If using American or Imperial, give metric as a courtesy. If using metric, remember that many readers will not know what you mean and will be aided by the equivalent."
It also says (with the original bold):
"Writers are NOT expected or required to follow all or any these rules: the joy of wiki editing is that perfection is not required."
There is also an active debate in Wikipedia regarding measurements, which is linked to via the style guide.
Basically, there are many people for whom the English/Imperial measurements make the article more informative.
However, thank you for pointing me toward the style guide. It has many useful standards for unit abreviation, etc.
Someone could probably write a "lint" type checker for Wikipedia to either highlight or fix many of these issues.
Slashdot Mirror
Do something different. For example, follow the lead of Hometown Wireless and expand as a wireless ISP. Focus on areas without DSL, cater to customers who don't want home voice service by offering optional VOIP, or who may want a dedicated 54Mbps wireless pipe.
Another example. Focus on the "triple play" of voice, video, and data services. Deploy high speed VDSL gear or ethernet, get your own T1s and your own phone numbers for voice. Use Cisco voice termination equipment over VDSL or ethernet, ang get video feeds from Direct TV.
Someone in another comment said that becomming a CLEC will cost you $500,000. I don't doubt it. There are a lot better and cheaper investment and growth strategies out there for you.
Hampered by a tedious setup and long turns, A&A is a battle of strategic resources that involves equal parts WWII and trash talk. It is fun to play with three to five players. (With two players, there is less finger pointing amongst the Allies or Axis. What fun is that?)
If you're a geek, you love history, and you've never played it, you really must try it some time.
I have a Vonage phone, and when I signed up, they gave me a phone number from my choice of limited exchanges from anywhere in the United States. (By the way, I live in Michigan, what if I were to choose an exchange in the State of New York? Would I be subject to New York regulations? I should not be)
I only call people on the PTSN and cellular network. And if we couldn't communicate, the service would be worthless to me.
It looks like a phone, acts like a phone, and quacks like a phone (duck). We all may have concerns about entrenched government bureaucracies, but Vonage is my home phone company.
I see a regulatory recovery fee on my bill, and 911 works for me (reportedly). (Although 911 service could be a bit better).
There are other services which do not have phone numbers (e.g. MSN Voice Chat, Skype, SIPPhone), but they don't allow me to call the vast majority of people with whom I want to talk. They are not real phones like my Vonage line.
If I were dying of cancer in 5 years, and I weren't likely to make it another 5-10 years for this treatment to be deemed "safe and effective", could I try it at my own expense?
My uncle died of inoperative throat cancer. About a year afterwards, I read about a treatment that had just been approved by the FDA using radiation and finely controlled robots that could have saved his life. It was a long shot, but I don't think that he ever had the chance to consider it.
I know that this opens the door to all sorts of criminals, but it could save a lot of lives. Just a modest rant.
Tough luck for them. They don't need to use your software,and they don't need to include it in their distributions.
If it were built into Mandrake or Knoppix or Fedora, I'd love the feature and never think twice about it.
" In fact Nicholas, I will paypal you $100 US if you can name three architectural similarities between GConf and the Registry." I once saw Chris Lahey of Ximian speak, and he said, the best way to describe the GConf was that it was like regedit, but it really wasn't the same thing, honest. Here are four (rather than just three) archetictural similaries between GConf and the Windows Registry: 1) They both store application preferences 2) They are intended for user preferences - not for configuration of things like Apache - and not for arbitrary data 3) They are both motivated by a desire to make application preferences more manageable for system administrators 4) They provide a preference database, which is like a simple file system Cha-ching! All I did was to paraphrase the GConf home page.
Welcome to the intersection of politics and engineering.
Both Ford and GM looked into making so called "booster hybrids" that would use the electric generator to aid in acceleration and performance, but would not substantially change the EPA recognized mileage of the trucks.
They were in part motivated by several federal and state tax breaks for hybrid electric vehicles.
However, after various politicking, it was agreed (I wish that I still had a link here) that these trucks would not be considered "hybrids" eligible for those tax breaks. This made sense, as the intent of those tax breaks was to improve mileage, not to get autos to go from zero to sixty a half second faster.
And now we learn that the EPA reported mileage is woefully inaccurate for hybrids, coupled with the well known fact that you won't ever get the sticker rated mileage on your new car or truck, and I have to wonder if these so called "booster hybrids" would have given real world drivers better mileage, but that we can't see this due to EPA testing biases.
Which all leads back to what the automakers want. A simple (say $0.75) tax on gas to encourage consumers to choose the best car for them that uses less gas. Whether that be hybrid, unleaded gasoline, high performance diesel, or hydrogen powered.
This diversity of opinion, along with its inexorable and accelerating content growth suggest that Wikipedia, or some similar successor, just may become the standard reference of the earlh 21st century.
These challenges are not the same as X-Prize, as they have shifted from ones directly competing with NASA (e.g. independent, private launch capabilities) towards ones more complimentary to NASA (e.g. better Astronaut gloves, robotic insects).
If the US Government wants to encourage more independent space resarch, the Congress and President must work together to establish goals INDEPENDENT of NASA. One possibility is to simply have the Congress double the prize money for the next few X-Prizes once those details are finalized.
NASA will NOT spend its money to pay for the development of a competing private space industry.
I had a hard time installing LTSP for a demo until a friend suggested using the K12LTSP Iso images. Installation was completely painless using them.
As an American you have the choice to pay for BBC programming (via CDs, DVDs, and cable). I do not choose to watch BBC programming, and I gleefully avoid paying $212.52/year (10 British pounds/month * 12 months * 1.77US$/Pound) for it. Grandmothers who only watch old Arab language video tapes in London have no such luck.
All on it's own - with a modest international coolition of willing partners.
Sound familiar?
What's more Canadian than that? Hockey night in Canada over a 24 pack of Molson XXX's, intoxicated snomobiling with the Bare Naked Ladies on headphones tucked under your took, and an all expenses paid trip to the emergency room.
- Statistically predict future events for people based on a series of questions ("Are you married?", "Do you drink every day?"
... )
- Randomly generate backgrounds for people in the Witness Protection Program or for people using other fake identites
One character claimed to have been on the Phil Donohue Show, but the main character figured that he may have been qouting from his randomly generated GRIOT background. Statistically, every once in a while, GRIOT would have to say that a person had been on a TV show.* Always shows gracefully parsed packets, even on tagged vlans * Follows TCP Stream so you can view and analyze XML transactions generated by JavaScript scripts. * Completely supports almost all protocols e.g. Knows RADIUS options. * Can use it to examine HTML headers, redirects, and what goofy web pages are doing behind the scenes. * Works on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS-X (although I never use the last)
Open Source acts as a trust mark. I've never even heard of a spyware program released under the GPL.
Yes, I may need to use a DOS prompt and run cdrao and vcdimager with a bunch of confusing flags to burn a VCD from my TV tuner card, but it still works, it doesn't notify a database that I like CSI, it doesn't intentionally degrade the output, and I don't get any unwanted popup messages.
My Smart Channels is a web based knowledge management system designed to eliminate the overhead of traditional knowledge management applications. Its focus is on creating a secure, easy to use KMS which easilly links with external sources such as web pages, e-mails, etc.
It's free as a demo, or the company will set you up with a dedicated server for a fee. I've only seen and used it as a demo.
For our KMS (in a group of about 14 people), I setup PHPWiki, which given the fact that I'm using the default file system based database, I installed and configured in less than 30 minutes.
PHPWiki is straight hyperlinked text only, but it's useful for archiving those "how-to" e-mails that I send over and over. I just cut-n-paste what I wrote before, and send the text along with a link to the original. However, despite my urging, my teammates keep saying "I'll try it", but they haven't put any content on it.
It is a bad thing because managers will artificially lower the scores of employees who are near retirement, or who are more readily replaced.
A true story.
B. was a technician at a large automotive supplier. He was a hard worker, and his manager had given him good rankings for twenty-five years.
Looking to trim the workforce in the near future, the company implemented a forced ranking system. Like many companies, this one had a fixed head count that they wanted reduced (about 10-20%).
B.'s manager knew that whomever received a low ranking for three years running would be fired, and B. didn't have a college degree, and he planned on retiring soon, so B. had to go.
Despite doing his job with professionalism just as he had done in the past, B. was given low rankings. When he complained, his manager warned him that there would be consequences if he didn't sign off on his review.
B. was fired after three years.
Actually, B. received a nice severance package, and he was happy to stop working less than a year earlier than his scheduled retirement date, but if given the choice he would have preferred to continue working. He also would have preferred a more honest accessment of his work.
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling wrote it together.
Bruce Sterling has a adaptive vocabulary, and a sharp wit, but there's something beautifully barren about William Gibson's prose.
Bruce Sterling also focuses a bit more on "the big picture", while Gibson seems to be more intimately familiar with his characters. Sterling's books seem more positive, and Gibson's more dark. (I've read them all).
Overall, they're both great authors, and if you like one, you'll almost certainly like the other.
"things never seem to even come close to what the exchange rate says they "should" be"
That's because your government adds on a 17.5% VAT (Value Added Tax) that is hidden from you. In the USA we have no VAT, but we do have a visible sales tax of up to 10% (usually about 6%) depending on where you live. In Canada, they have both a VAT and sales tax.
Personally, I think that the taxes should be plainly visible so that we citizens can understand them better, but that's probably the reason that they're invisible.
The broadcast flag is old news. The FCC can control hardware, but not software.
e s. html
Thus the GNU project brings us an open source software tuner, which is not subject to regulation, and can tune/record HDTV.
Check out these HDTV screen shots:
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/hdtv-sampl
Sadly, the software controlled tuner cards, powerful processor, DRAM, wide screen monitor, good computer stereo, etc put this toy out of the reach of most geeks - for now.
I had this idea, which I've never implemented, of weighing items with extreme precision using a chaotic system. Since the chaotic system is sensitively dependent upon initial conditions, it should be possible to take measurements over a short period of time and work backwards mathematically to one of several possible initial weights. Eliminate those values that are not possible via other means (negative weights, far too heavy, far too light), and you should end up with an extremely accurate initial weight.
I'm not sure that it would really work in practice, but I just thought it was a neat idea, and vaguely related to the authors' use of an oscilator.
Perhaps if they were able to make the position of the oscilator at any time sensitively dependent on initial conditions, they could invent such a measurment tool (e.g. swing another weight in and out based on the position of the oscilator to slightly modify the local gravity in a nonmodal fashion that would make the oscilator sensitively dependent upon its weight and its inital position)
My differential equations work is so far gone, I couldn't even begin to measure this mathematically anymore.
The State of Michigan created about $1 billion in loan guarantees to bring broadband to every citizen. We have both urban (Detroit, Grand Rapids) and rural areas (the Upper Peninsula)
SBC gets the vast majority of that money.
There are innovative small business people using wireless links between grain towers to bring broadband to rural areas, and they don't get a dime.
Cellular data carriers are also not eligible.
This just makes the inefficient infrastructure of large carriers more cost competitive at taxpayers expense.
Michigan citizens would be better off if they were able to get direct subsidies for a portion of the most expensive basic broadband services. For example, allow me to get a subsidy of $25 on a $100 per month "basic" broadband bill, while my friend gets no subsidy on her $50 per month bill. I could either apply for the subsidy directly, or the carrier could collect it for me and subtract it from my bill with my written permission.
It says:
"If using American or Imperial, give metric as a courtesy. If using metric, remember that many readers will not know what you mean and will be aided by the equivalent."
It also says (with the original bold):
"Writers are NOT expected or required to follow all or any these rules: the joy of wiki editing is that perfection is not required."
There is also an active debate in Wikipedia regarding measurements, which is linked to via the style guide.
Basically, there are many people for whom the English/Imperial measurements make the article more informative.
However, thank you for pointing me toward the style guide. It has many useful standards for unit abreviation, etc.
Someone could probably write a "lint" type checker for Wikipedia to either highlight or fix many of these issues.
I updated the article to include English Units (a.k.a. Imperial Units) in addition to the Metric Units presented.
BTW, I like metric, but it has it's problems too. You'll note that metric time has never caught on:
http://zapatopi.net/metrictime.html