Try calling 1-800-FUCK-ATT or 1-800-FUCK-MCI. They're collect call services that (obviously) don't use AT&T or MCI. I don't know if they're still around....but still...
You pay the extra $100 for the ability to join to a Windows NT Domain.
(You can't join a domain under XP Home--big subject of dispute at the college...one of the department ordered 100 'copies' of xp, only to find out that they couldn't return them after they didn't consult with us and stick them on their lab pc's)
Look for the Radio Free Linux Project. Yes, I know it's in pre-alpha, but I was interested on working on the project last year, and it seems to be going along well.
Part of my University-Sponsored Employment means I work for Communications Services--dealing with the phones, computers, and backbones as needed to keep them up. What I've come to find out is that most Administration don't want to plan for emergency situations.
We were looking at disaster planning. Since we use NEC Phone Switches, we were taking a look at what would be the first thing to go. Take a fire...you could get a switch in a semi trailer sent up overnight (or something like that), but your Main Distribution Frame (MDF) would be crud--you'd have to re-splice every cable pair that you have in order to restore service to everyone; depending on how bad the fire is, you'd have to resplice your RDF's as well
There are some things that we've thought of...like having a bit of redundancy in our wire plant, but the administration shoots us down every time we bring it up.
I guess what I'm getting at is that there isn't a whole lot of redundancy with SS7. Get into things like Voice Over IP, you'll have some flexability, but if your switch gets royally hosed, you're going to be down unless you've got an extra one sitting in another building with a backup MDF that is current.
even though I work with seven techs. I work at the hell desk of a private college in NW Ohio, where I'm the phone and cable tech. I started out doing PC troubleshooting on the 'front line.' (there's only one extension for the help desk, so only one person at a time runs it)
It is a relaxed work enviornment. We brought our water guns in during the summer, have snowball fights in the winter, and change eachother's passwords on a quazi-daily basis. The things like that interject humour into our lives, and during our meetings and when we communicate, we're always told that we look like we have no stress. It boils down to doing what you enjoy and to make it as comfortable as you can doing it. If that means making-busy that cute freshmen girl's phone so you can go flirt (boss read: fix it), so be it.
Have fun, but introduce it slowly if your department has never seen it before...you never know where it will end up.
Do you know how many radio stations actually *play* CD's anymore? At Every Radio Station I've worked at, CD's come in, get dumped into a computer, and you play the CD's from there. Most record companies know this, and some even offer us our files music already encoded on CD-ROM. IMHO, if the record companies did this to the radio stations, they would shoot themselves in the foot big time.
Don't life insurance companies have an interest in having this called an 'act of war?' The last time I checked, my life insurance policy won't pay out because of acts of war, $DIEITY, etc.
I've heard rumors about the advertising rates on some of the major networks...mind you, just rumors, but it's been said that the rates are nearing Superbowl-level slots for primetime on some of the news channels.
First the insurance companies, next the TV stations...who else will try to profit out of this?
Has anyone seen any gas price increases?? It's rumored to be $5.00 a Gallon in Columbus, but I've also heard something about OPEC stopping production???!?
(and for that I'll be mod'ed to redundant, but who cares)...
I had the Lego Technics sets, and I had both the motor and the pneumantic arm (Made by Parker Hannifin, actually) that they made for a little while. One of my first creations (with both sets) was a 'round up' type ride for my little lego men.
I was looking at the toy section the other day in the mall, and all I could find are very unique sets...they don't have the assortment of pieces that once came, and they don't have the hard-to-find pieces any more (like the one that opened the hanger for the space shuttle lego set). It seems to me that they should open up their production to more types of toys than what they make now...bring back the 'bucket 'o legos' and the technics sets that have the cool little gizmos.
All coming in three weeks. I am lucky enough to be a Level II on the Helldesk (as well as a student worker). The only thing I can say is:
Get a good laptop that has a packet capture device on it. bring a mini-hub and 'sniff' out what they're doing. If they're complaining about not being allowed to get to their public shares, it'll give you a great place to look after all else fails...
Make sure that you carry plenty of 'network install for dummy' type books (ours is called a 1-2-3 book). Some of the (l)users will install most of the stuff themselves...but a lot are scared, or just don't know it.
Aside than that...good luck. I get to go through it Starting September 4.
...but it does absolutely nothing about the illegal harvesting of the user's privacy rights online. Is Netscape above the bounds of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (18 USC Section 2510) or the Computer Fraud and abuse act (19 USC Section 1030)? The Honorable Hellerstien didn't address that in his order.
If by some chance when the court addresses this issue, it might have an impact on 'spyware' that is out on the internet right now (like Gator).
By Monday, tho, My bet is that the Smart Download will have quite a prominate click-wrap license agrteement on their webpage where the software once was.
I'm in Lima, and they are letting WCOIL use competive access. As it stands now, You only get 215k/sec uploads with AOLTW, however, you can get 512k/sec uploads with WCOIL.
Win-win.
----
Ian
The Radio Industry has integrated many forms of electronic music storage. Look at ClearChannle Communications for starters. They haven't played a CD in about 3 years. The Radio Station that I worked for used a AudioVault Playback Recording Studio by BEI Electronics to manage music, commercials, and jock liners.
It's easier for radio stations to do it that way. If you are doing production work, you've got the 300 tracks in a hard drive, so more than one person can be recording spots or making promos with a song that might be playing on the air...something you couldn't do with just one CD.
Many stations have a computerized system for transporting commercials over an ISDN line (that format is.MP3 Compression--so all of your national commercials that you hear come from the box if they're played locally) which will format and copy the files that you'd need into the format for your radio station.
----
Ian
ONU's Finest Computer Sciences Geek
We've got a Student/Faculty based Help Desk. They Call in, speak to a Level 1 (Most students), if the level 1 guy/gal can't fix it, we send a tech out and fix the problem.
Not too effective, but it works. ----
Ian
ONU's Finest Computer Sciences Geek
The Server Admin in charge of the POP3 Boxen, refuses to put any email protection in, because he states that 'it's the user's responsibility,' however, the exchange server (*cough*) has an Anti-virus software running.
It's really interesting, because all of the staff use Exchange, whilest the students have to use POP3 for their email...unless you fetch them and have your SMTP software kill all mime-types (gets rid of a lot of them!)
...This university has a acceptable use policy (here) that students and faculty must sign before they're hooked up at the hub.
They also enforce some strange rules. If you're caught running a server of *any* kind without permission, they will bring you up on misconduct charges as well as shut your 'net off.
From a private university, and as a student and fellow slashdotter, I'm only assuming that you've read the Network Terms of Service. If they have a clause that says that 'if you run a server, we have all IP rights.'
Not much help, but I think that they've gone a bit overboard. Free speech is free speech. You're at their university, you're paying for it, and you were delgated a position as student leadership, and as such they permitted you access. You've got every justification to say that the site is yours, and that the content is the user's responsibility.
...What really happens in small market Radio. Sattelite companies like Jones Sattelite Services taken a good 60 to 70% share of small market radio stations. The math is simple:
Cost of Jock: $7-$20/hour
Cost of Jones Sattelite Services: One minute/Hour.
In exchange for using their music and their jocks, you let them play one minute's worth of ads during an hour. Everything's digital until it hits the stations, and they can even use like a song2web interface to show the tracks of the playing songs (as it comes off of the sat receiver) on your webpage to make it 'look' local.
What does this mean for Radio? Not a whole lot of new jobs are being created as old jobs are being phased out.
You integrate something like AudioVault (Audio-on-SCSI-Drive-On-Demand) with a Sattelite Receiver (which they provide for you), 100 lines of code and a sattelite dish can run your station as long as you need it. There are windows for news, weather, and the such, so you can pull a feed from CNN Radio Network News and bump out with a "C" liner into music. Who needs a jock when you've got a PC? ----
Ian
ONU's Finest Computer Sciences Geek
I live in a college town that is very small, and
we use Qwest as our LEC. My friend who works in
the DSL Division at Qwest basically told me it'd
be 2007 before I had a chance to get DSL at my
house. Mind you, 4 blocks up the street they've
got about 10 T3's running into the campus...but
there isn't enough free phone lines to have DSL
on the lines. I'm saving up for wireless network
cards until that time comes... ----
Ian
ONU's Finest Computer Sciences Geek
I could see what would happen if the Script Kiddies of the world used the codes to send the shocks back to the controller through a trojan or a webpage...
Working on a project
(tap tap tappatie type type type)...
*BZZTTTT* OUCH!
Or what happens when your nine year old sticks them on his head and starts gaming? I see some warning, Not to be used as an ECT Device)
----
Ian
ONU's Finest Computer Sciences Geek
Flash animations are what the business owners want. I know HTML, and being the broke college guy that I am, I've had to create a few flash-based webpages that I abhore, that the business owners and such actually like.
Flash, when used right can create wonderful webpages, cool games, and other applications for the web. It can integrate that into one file (which takes forever to load on a dial-in connection), and present a look of continuity to the user. When flash is used wrong, you get shotty webpages (at best) that frustrate the user. You get nasty-grams in your email box from users who don't have a flash-compatiable browser (can we say lynx)? You also get the numerous requests from the person who you're doing the webpage for to spruce it up.
What does this all mean? Flash is a cool tool that Macromedia sells a little bit of and that people crack the rest of. It's for those 'gee, whiz' sites that you want to impress future clients with once it looks ok, but is horrible beyond anything but simple forms. Who on their right mind would try to program a shopping cart frontend using flash? There's no way to pull the descriptions or the prices from the server (this is important if you're dealing with pricing changes), there's no on-the-fly loading of images (meaning a 5 minute pre-loader for people on dial in connections), and there's no real support (if you screw up lasso or another shopping cart, there are mailing lists that can give you help or support).
All of these make Flash a tool, and you've got to decide if that tool is right for your website.
As a former Radio Jock who is now a College Student, I can say that this is already happening. If the station isn't owned by ClearChannel Communications, it's probably a local station trying to survive. Radio DJ's are expensive. A station can save a lot of money by getting a sattelite dish, a contract with WestWood One, and a Computer to play "96FM" or Whatever when the jock in California pushes the button to make it sound like a local radio station.
I still don't see it as a big deal. ----
Ian
ONU's Finest Computer Sciences Geek
The Ohio Lawmakers are attempting to push through a law where the receipient of spam can take the offenders to small claims court if they dishonor a request to be taken off an opt-in list.
For each piece of spam, you're entitiled to 100 bucks; however it has to go through small claims court.
They've got to send you a spam, you call them to be taken off (If you can't call them, you win) the list, and if they email you again, they're hit.
I heard it on the radio today, and thought it would go well with this.
Ian
Slashdot Mirror
Try calling 1-800-FUCK-ATT or 1-800-FUCK-MCI. They're collect call services that (obviously) don't use AT&T or MCI. I don't know if they're still around....but still...
(You can't join a domain under XP Home--big subject of dispute at the college...one of the department ordered 100 'copies' of xp, only to find out that they couldn't return them after they didn't consult with us and stick them on their lab pc's)
Look for the Radio Free Linux Project. Yes, I know it's in pre-alpha, but I was interested on working on the project last year, and it seems to be going along well.
Part of my University-Sponsored Employment means I work for Communications Services--dealing with the phones, computers, and backbones as needed to keep them up. What I've come to find out is that most Administration don't want to plan for emergency situations.
We were looking at disaster planning. Since we use NEC Phone Switches, we were taking a look at what would be the first thing to go. Take a fire...you could get a switch in a semi trailer sent up overnight (or something like that), but your Main Distribution Frame (MDF) would be crud--you'd have to re-splice every cable pair that you have in order to restore service to everyone; depending on how bad the fire is, you'd have to resplice your RDF's as well
There are some things that we've thought of...like having a bit of redundancy in our wire plant, but the administration shoots us down every time we bring it up.
I guess what I'm getting at is that there isn't a whole lot of redundancy with SS7. Get into things like Voice Over IP, you'll have some flexability, but if your switch gets royally hosed, you're going to be down unless you've got an extra one sitting in another building with a backup MDF that is current.
even though I work with seven techs. I work at the hell desk of a private college in NW Ohio, where I'm the phone and cable tech. I started out doing PC troubleshooting on the 'front line.' (there's only one extension for the help desk, so only one person at a time runs it)
It is a relaxed work enviornment. We brought our water guns in during the summer, have snowball fights in the winter, and change eachother's passwords on a quazi-daily basis. The things like that interject humour into our lives, and during our meetings and when we communicate, we're always told that we look like we have no stress. It boils down to doing what you enjoy and to make it as comfortable as you can doing it. If that means making-busy that cute freshmen girl's phone so you can go flirt (boss read: fix it), so be it.
Have fun, but introduce it slowly if your department has never seen it before...you never know where it will end up.
Do you know how many radio stations actually *play* CD's anymore? At Every Radio Station I've worked at, CD's come in, get dumped into a computer, and you play the CD's from there. Most record companies know this, and some even offer us our files music already encoded on CD-ROM.
IMHO, if the record companies did this to the radio stations, they would shoot themselves in the foot big time.
Don't life insurance companies have an interest in having this called an 'act of war?' The last time I checked, my life insurance policy won't pay out because of acts of war, $DIEITY, etc.
I've heard rumors about the advertising rates on some of the major networks...mind you, just rumors, but it's been said that the rates are nearing Superbowl-level slots for primetime on some of the news channels.
First the insurance companies, next the TV stations...who else will try to profit out of this?
Just my thoughts/$.02 worth.
Has anyone seen any gas price increases?? It's rumored to be $5.00 a Gallon in Columbus, but I've also heard something about OPEC stopping production???!?
(and for that I'll be mod'ed to redundant, but who cares)...
I had the Lego Technics sets, and I had both the motor and the pneumantic arm (Made by Parker Hannifin, actually) that they made for a little while. One of my first creations (with both sets) was a 'round up' type ride for my little lego men.
I was looking at the toy section the other day in the mall, and all I could find are very unique sets...they don't have the assortment of pieces that once came, and they don't have the hard-to-find pieces any more (like the one that opened the hanger for the space shuttle lego set). It seems to me that they should open up their production to more types of toys than what they make now...bring back the 'bucket 'o legos' and the technics sets that have the cool little gizmos.
All coming in three weeks. I am lucky enough to be a Level II on the Helldesk (as well as a student worker). The only thing I can say is:
Get a good laptop that has a packet capture device on it. bring a mini-hub and 'sniff' out what they're doing. If they're complaining about not being allowed to get to their public shares, it'll give you a great place to look after all else fails...
Make sure that you carry plenty of 'network install for dummy' type books (ours is called a 1-2-3 book). Some of the (l)users will install most of the stuff themselves...but a lot are scared, or just don't know it.
Aside than that...good luck. I get to go through it Starting September 4.
ONU Comm Serv Help Desk
We Have Microsoft Office XP Running on Win 2000 Boxes...I've installed them myself.
----
Ian
...but it does absolutely nothing about the illegal harvesting of the user's privacy rights online. Is Netscape above the bounds of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (18 USC Section 2510) or the Computer Fraud and abuse act (19 USC Section 1030)? The Honorable Hellerstien didn't address that in his order.
If by some chance when the court addresses this issue, it might have an impact on 'spyware' that is out on the internet right now (like Gator).
By Monday, tho, My bet is that the Smart Download will have quite a prominate click-wrap license agrteement on their webpage where the software once was.
IANAL...yet.
----
Ian
lynx -source http://gognome.com | sh
----
Ian
I'm in Lima, and they are letting WCOIL use competive access. As it stands now, You only get 215k/sec uploads with AOLTW, however, you can get 512k/sec uploads with WCOIL. Win-win.
----
Ian
It's easier for radio stations to do it that way. If you are doing production work, you've got the 300 tracks in a hard drive, so more than one person can be recording spots or making promos with a song that might be playing on the air...something you couldn't do with just one CD.
Many stations have a computerized system for transporting commercials over an ISDN line (that format is .MP3 Compression--so all of your national commercials that you hear come from the box if they're played locally) which will format and copy the files that you'd need into the format for your radio station.
----
Ian
ONU's Finest Computer Sciences Geek
We've got a Student/Faculty based Help Desk. They Call in, speak to a Level 1 (Most students), if the level 1 guy/gal can't fix it, we send a tech out and fix the problem.
Not too effective, but it works.
----
Ian
ONU's Finest Computer Sciences Geek
The Server Admin in charge of the POP3 Boxen, refuses to put any email protection in, because he states that 'it's the user's responsibility,' however, the exchange server (*cough*) has an Anti-virus software running.
It's really interesting, because all of the staff use Exchange, whilest the students have to use POP3 for their email...unless you fetch them and have your SMTP software kill all mime-types (gets rid of a lot of them!)
----
Ian
ONU's Finest Computer Sciences Geek
They also enforce some strange rules. If you're caught running a server of *any* kind without permission, they will bring you up on misconduct charges as well as shut your 'net off.
From a private university, and as a student and fellow slashdotter, I'm only assuming that you've read the Network Terms of Service. If they have a clause that says that 'if you run a server, we have all IP rights.'
Not much help, but I think that they've gone a bit overboard. Free speech is free speech. You're at their university, you're paying for it, and you were delgated a position as student leadership, and as such they permitted you access. You've got every justification to say that the site is yours, and that the content is the user's responsibility.
----
Ian
ONU's Finest Computer Sciences Geek
...What really happens in small market Radio. Sattelite companies like Jones Sattelite Services taken a good 60 to 70% share of small market radio stations. The math is simple:
Cost of Jock: $7-$20/hour
Cost of Jones Sattelite Services: One minute/Hour.
In exchange for using their music and their jocks, you let them play one minute's worth of ads during an hour. Everything's digital until it hits the stations, and they can even use like a song2web interface to show the tracks of the playing songs (as it comes off of the sat receiver) on your webpage to make it 'look' local.
What does this mean for Radio? Not a whole lot of new jobs are being created as old jobs are being phased out.
You integrate something like AudioVault (Audio-on-SCSI-Drive-On-Demand) with a Sattelite Receiver (which they provide for you), 100 lines of code and a sattelite dish can run your station as long as you need it. There are windows for news, weather, and the such, so you can pull a feed from CNN Radio Network News and bump out with a "C" liner into music. Who needs a jock when you've got a PC?
----
Ian
ONU's Finest Computer Sciences Geek
I live in a college town that is very small, and
we use Qwest as our LEC. My friend who works in
the DSL Division at Qwest basically told me it'd
be 2007 before I had a chance to get DSL at my
house. Mind you, 4 blocks up the street they've
got about 10 T3's running into the campus...but
there isn't enough free phone lines to have DSL
on the lines. I'm saving up for wireless network
cards until that time comes...
----
Ian
ONU's Finest Computer Sciences Geek
I could see what would happen if the Script Kiddies of the world used the codes to send the shocks back to the controller through a trojan or a webpage...
Working on a project
(tap tap tappatie type type type)...
*BZZTTTT* OUCH!
Or what happens when your nine year old sticks them on his head and starts gaming? I see some warning, Not to be used as an ECT Device)
----
Ian
ONU's Finest Computer Sciences Geek
Flash animations are what the business owners want. I know HTML, and being the broke college guy that I am, I've had to create a few flash-based webpages that I abhore, that the business owners and such actually like.
Flash, when used right can create wonderful webpages, cool games, and other applications for the web. It can integrate that into one file (which takes forever to load on a dial-in connection), and present a look of continuity to the user. When flash is used wrong, you get shotty webpages (at best) that frustrate the user. You get nasty-grams in your email box from users who don't have a flash-compatiable browser (can we say lynx)? You also get the numerous requests from the person who you're doing the webpage for to spruce it up.
What does this all mean? Flash is a cool tool that Macromedia sells a little bit of and that people crack the rest of. It's for those 'gee, whiz' sites that you want to impress future clients with once it looks ok, but is horrible beyond anything but simple forms. Who on their right mind would try to program a shopping cart frontend using flash? There's no way to pull the descriptions or the prices from the server (this is important if you're dealing with pricing changes), there's no on-the-fly loading of images (meaning a 5 minute pre-loader for people on dial in connections), and there's no real support (if you screw up lasso or another shopping cart, there are mailing lists that can give you help or support).
All of these make Flash a tool, and you've got to decide if that tool is right for your website.
----
Ian
ONU's Finest Computer Sciences Geek
I still don't see it as a big deal.
----
Ian
ONU's Finest Computer Sciences Geek
The Ohio Lawmakers are attempting to push through a law where the receipient of spam can take the offenders to small claims court if they dishonor a request to be taken off an opt-in list. For each piece of spam, you're entitiled to 100 bucks; however it has to go through small claims court. They've got to send you a spam, you call them to be taken off (If you can't call them, you win) the list, and if they email you again, they're hit. I heard it on the radio today, and thought it would go well with this. Ian