OK, so we go thru all the trouble of detecting, transcribing, translating, digitizing these ancient texts. Has anyone thought of printing them out on archival paper and storing those in a safe place?
In late December, we switch to Constant Contact to email the newsletter.
A number of admins I know block all email originating from Constant Contact as UCE. That's the problem with a lot of 'email marketing firms' - they take legit users along with spammers or quasi-spammers. Unless you decide to truly take control of your email by operating your own mail server, you run the risk of getting caught using an entity that gets blocked for their other clients' activities.
If you include #5, this could apply to the Bush Administration, after all, their fast-tracked deregulation led the financial markets to their current state.
I have done this for about 10 years now, and the *only* reasons I got into it and stayed with it are;
1) I was already doing websites for friends and a couple of clients. I had already had a job being responsible for maintaining someone else's servers. ie there was not a huge learning curve.
2) The company I worked for made the decision to change hardware and software platforms, and sold me their existing gear for pennies. ie no big upfront costs.
3) I now work for a telephone company and can get a circuit to my home for a very reasonable rate. ie low ongoing costs.
In conclusion, unless you have experience, the resources to put together a small server farm, and your ongoing costs can be easily covered (even if some clients leave you), don't do it yourself.
I remember using shotgun modems (and 2-channel analog routers) to double the bandwidth of a single dial-up connection. Yes, you have to have a second phone line, and yes, your ISP has to support two simultaneous sessions on one account, but, since they are living the good life far from the hustle and bustle, I suspect they can afford it.
There are many industries that use special-purpose incandescent bulbs, where a CFL would not work. (I use a special bulb in my darkroom enlarger at home, for example. The color-temperature of the bulb would influence the contrast of the print).
If the market for incandescents shrinks to less than 1% of its current size, will manufacturers still make bulbs available to niche markets?
I work for a regional phone company (CLEC) and we have had years of dealing with the folks at Verizon. They will look for any possible loophole to limit or delay service to us. Techs will claim to be unable to find an address that is a *huge* building, and leave without providing any service. They will re-interpret tariffs to benefit themselves, until our lawyers take it to the PUC.
They are a very aggressive company (in their business practices), so I can't imagine that they are suddenly going to become warm fuzzy kittens to their FIOS customers. Though I have not read them, I would imagine that their TOS (terms of service) probably contain some gotchas that will only surface later, benefiting them over their customers.
I hope their FIOS service is great, stays great, and has happy customers. I just wouldn't be naive enough to take it as a given.
BTW - not all phone companies are dinosaurs or out to screw everyone. Our company offers excellent customer service (a live person when you call!), but, then, we are neither the cheapest nor do we play in the residential space.
I have to second the vote for Pandora. In the last year, I can't count the number of bands that I didn't know about, but now count as favorites, that I first heard on Pandora. Also, I've bought about a dozen albums (CDs) in the last couple months that I would not have bought, had I not been introduced to them on Pandora.
The concept behind Pandora makes so much sense (programming radio stations to play the type of music you like) that I'm suprised more people don't use it. After all, we (here on/.) all have Internet connections and commercial radio tends to suck.
Sidenote: I love that little auto-reply email that CDBaby sends out when you order from them.
The app , which we still run on an OS9 box, is about 500k in size and takes about 10-20MB of RAM when running. It can handle hundreds of domains and thousands of email boxes. It doesn't do everything an MTA might do, but it is simple, fast, and elegant.
Disclaimer; I work for a landline company (voice, LD, Internet), not a cell company. (CLEC on the west coast)
The company I work for has worked hard to provide great customer service, even supporting decentralized customer service departments in each market. (The person you talk to on the phone will likely live in the same city.) When you call, you get a live person, not a routing tree with all those useless choices. Our customers generally give us very high marks, and our churn rate is one of the industry's lowest.
The downsides? We figured out early that we don't want to deal with residential customers - they make way more demands, generate a smaller margin, and are often clueless. And we are usually not the lowest-priced provider.
And yes, we have had a few of those customers that call and call, always trying to squeeze a quarter here, a dollar there. (Calling around to various reps, pretending they hadn't talked to anyone else, and asking for credits against 'bad service'.) I have had the personal privilege of trying to help one of those, then suggesting that 'perhaps another provider might meet their needs better'.
Good customer care costs money and effort - it's a difficult balancing act and requires constant monitoring.
NameMedia recently finished building technology where visitors to niche sites -- say, one on 1957 Mustangs -- will be presented with links to other sites with similar images.
Yes, I'd have to say that the number of people who want to talk about 1957 Mustangs constitute a "niche".
"I promptly dropped the DSL service. It didn't bother me anyway as all my locations have cable and dsl, linked through a BGP topology."
I sincerely doubt that you got a DSL provider and a cable company to agree to advertise the same routes to your endpoints. You have separate ASNs for each location? And tell us, what hardware do you use that is capable of terminating cable & DSL, and has the OS to do customer-end BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)?
"The tariff schedules are the same for every T1 within any given geography, regardless of who sells it to you, but some telcos can offer bigger discounts off of the tariffed rate if they have lower overhead costs."
Not quite.
I work for a CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier). We have very few tariffs that apply to us regarding the prices we charge our customers. (Mostly, tariffs affect us in terms of what we have to pay ILECs [Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier] for their wholesale or finished services.) We have great flexibility in how we price our products.
The price of a T1 is the result of a mixture of outside costs (leasing the local loop, peering arrangements, CPE, etc.), internal infrastructure costs, overhead costs (including people, buildings, debt payments, etc.), competitive pricing, and profit. If you are innovative, you can find ways to drive the local loop costs (for example) down significantly - can you say HDSL2/4 on short loops? The customer still gets all the functions of a T1.
In determining the price for a given service, you look at the larger picture, sometimes discounting some service because you are also getting other business from that customer that is more profitable. In other words, the price is not etched in stone or determined by tariff - it's based on many factors, including making enough profit to keep the doors open another year.
The fact is that T1s just don't cost as much (either to buy or to sell) as they used to.
The "chilling effect" is already being felt by those of us that use photography as either a hobby or profession. We have to question the reaction we will get to photographing something in public.
I like to shoot cityscapes and industrial-looking areas as a hobby. I now regularly get stopped by either security guards or (very occasionally) the police. The security guards are always convinced that I am doing something strictly illegal (they *always* mention 9/11) and had better stop now. The police just want to know what I am doing.
Does this dampen my enthusiasm for taking those pictures? Sure. I feel like the mindset has taken hold that no one can do anything that even vaguely appears to be out of the ordinary. (Note that there are no laws, that I am aware of, the specifically forbid photographing anything in the public view, with the exception of military installations.) While I am not asserting that taking pictures of things in public is a right, it is also not illegal, so should not be abridged.
As an interesting sidenote, I believe corporations will use/are using this hysteria to increase their own level of 'privacy'. They can claim that photographing their facilities is contrary to 'national security', even when you are photographing from a public sidewalk. I'm sure this makes them feel 'more secure', and would allow them to hide potentially-illegal activity much more easily.
"23% of small-to-medium-sized businesses have already implemented VOIP technology"
I work in CLEC telecom sales, and there is nowhere near that penetration, at least not in the Northwest. We find most businesses are very reluctant to use a technology that may present their business in a bad light to potential customers. eg bad voice quality, even if only occasional, can create an impression of a 'cheap' business, unwilling to spend the resources needed to be professional.
Lots of business owners ask about VoIP, but very few seem to adopt it.
(Note that I am NOT talking about personal or home use - just a traditional, brick-and-mortar business.)
I worked for an ISP that offered incredible customer service. We would take as much time as it took to make the customer happy. We gave advice on hardware and software not related to the online experience. We even offered to go to their house to fix connectivity problems, as a last resort.
In return, most of our customers remained loyal customers despite the fact that we charged a little more than most ISPs.
Unfortunately, this is not a good business model - we were never quite profitable. We ended up getting bought-out by a larger company. Though the current Tech Support is OK, it's nothing like the old days. Now, it's more like "help them, but do it as fast as you can - don't waste time".
How do you find the balance between great service and cost-containment?
The one thing that Apple has done best (at least during some years) is to try out new designs, new ideas. They've shown a willingness to take risks. Whether it's the GUI, Human Interface Guidelines, the Newton, the iMac, or just little touches that make the computing experience a little bit friendlier. They showed us that there was a viable alternative. Sometimes they fail (eMate, CyberDog, eWorld). But in the process, they teach the whole industry a lesson.
With a behmoth like M$ around, we can use more friendly ideas.
1) An understanding wife/husband/SO/roommate. Best to verify this one beforehand.
2) Space in front AND in back. I've been in a lot of LAN 'closets' and that's what they should have remained - closets. Those open, aluminum patch-panel racks, mounted perpendicular to the wall, allow you to reach those tangled cables. It may not look as good, but you'll thank yourself everytime you have to change/add/delete a cable.
3) Adequate AC power wired in BEFORE the first piece of equipment is installed. Try to picture adding an outlet in 6 months...
4) If your boxen aren't real furnaces, try convection cooling. In a semi-enclosed, freestanding rack, I put the greatest heat-generating equipment at the top, with a wide open vent immediately above. And vent(s) at floor level, to bring in the cooler air.
5) Choose a cool place like a basement. Drawing air up across a cool, concrete slab gives you an advantage from the get-go.
6) Invest in a KVM switch, if you have several servers. Swapping cables all the time is for weenies.;-)
7) Assuming you're using an enclosed rack (or even if you're not), consider wire-mesh shelving. I've gone over to the local Home Depot and purchased that white, vinyl-over-steel stuff for very little $$$. Allows the air to flow nicely.
8) Cable-ties can be your friend. Keep that install something you can be proud to show your wife/husband/SO/roommate. You never know when you might need to justify that second rack....
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so we go thru all the trouble of detecting, transcribing, translating, digitizing these ancient texts. Has anyone thought of printing them out on archival paper and storing those in a safe place?
A number of admins I know block all email originating from Constant Contact as UCE. That's the problem with a lot of 'email marketing firms' - they take legit users along with spammers or quasi-spammers. Unless you decide to truly take control of your email by operating your own mail server, you run the risk of getting caught using an entity that gets blocked for their other clients' activities.
If you include #5, this could apply to the Bush Administration, after all, their fast-tracked deregulation led the financial markets to their current state.
Google? I still visit the Mother Gopher for all my informational needs!
I have done this for about 10 years now, and the *only* reasons I got into it and stayed with it are;
1) I was already doing websites for friends and a couple of clients. I had already had a job being responsible for maintaining someone else's servers. ie there was not a huge learning curve.
2) The company I worked for made the decision to change hardware and software platforms, and sold me their existing gear for pennies. ie no big upfront costs.
3) I now work for a telephone company and can get a circuit to my home for a very reasonable rate. ie low ongoing costs.
In conclusion, unless you have experience, the resources to put together a small server farm, and your ongoing costs can be easily covered (even if some clients leave you), don't do it yourself.
I remember using shotgun modems (and 2-channel analog routers) to double the bandwidth of a single dial-up connection. Yes, you have to have a second phone line, and yes, your ISP has to support two simultaneous sessions on one account, but, since they are living the good life far from the hustle and bustle, I suspect they can afford it.
There are many industries that use special-purpose incandescent bulbs, where a CFL would not work. (I use a special bulb in my darkroom enlarger at home, for example. The color-temperature of the bulb would influence the contrast of the print).
If the market for incandescents shrinks to less than 1% of its current size, will manufacturers still make bulbs available to niche markets?
I work for a regional phone company (CLEC) and we have had years of dealing with the folks at Verizon. They will look for any possible loophole to limit or delay service to us. Techs will claim to be unable to find an address that is a *huge* building, and leave without providing any service. They will re-interpret tariffs to benefit themselves, until our lawyers take it to the PUC.
They are a very aggressive company (in their business practices), so I can't imagine that they are suddenly going to become warm fuzzy kittens to their FIOS customers. Though I have not read them, I would imagine that their TOS (terms of service) probably contain some gotchas that will only surface later, benefiting them over their customers.
I hope their FIOS service is great, stays great, and has happy customers. I just wouldn't be naive enough to take it as a given.
BTW - not all phone companies are dinosaurs or out to screw everyone. Our company offers excellent customer service (a live person when you call!), but, then, we are neither the cheapest nor do we play in the residential space.
The concept behind Pandora makes so much sense (programming radio stations to play the type of music you like) that I'm suprised more people don't use it. After all, we (here on /.) all have Internet connections and commercial radio tends to suck.
Sidenote: I love that little auto-reply email that CDBaby sends out when you order from them.
The app , which we still run on an OS9 box, is about 500k in size and takes about 10-20MB of RAM when running. It can handle hundreds of domains and thousands of email boxes. It doesn't do everything an MTA might do, but it is simple, fast, and elegant.
I've been using it for about 10 years.
The company I work for has worked hard to provide great customer service, even supporting decentralized customer service departments in each market. (The person you talk to on the phone will likely live in the same city.) When you call, you get a live person, not a routing tree with all those useless choices. Our customers generally give us very high marks, and our churn rate is one of the industry's lowest.
The downsides? We figured out early that we don't want to deal with residential customers - they make way more demands, generate a smaller margin, and are often clueless. And we are usually not the lowest-priced provider.
And yes, we have had a few of those customers that call and call, always trying to squeeze a quarter here, a dollar there. (Calling around to various reps, pretending they hadn't talked to anyone else, and asking for credits against 'bad service'.) I have had the personal privilege of trying to help one of those, then suggesting that 'perhaps another provider might meet their needs better'.
Good customer care costs money and effort - it's a difficult balancing act and requires constant monitoring.
http://www.marketcircle.com/iphoney/
It only works on the Mac.
I wonder how they got the information to build this....
Yes, I'd have to say that the number of people who want to talk about 1957 Mustangs constitute a "niche".
I sincerely doubt that you got a DSL provider and a cable company to agree to advertise the same routes to your endpoints. You have separate ASNs for each location? And tell us, what hardware do you use that is capable of terminating cable & DSL, and has the OS to do customer-end BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)?
Not quite.
I work for a CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier). We have very few tariffs that apply to us regarding the prices we charge our customers. (Mostly, tariffs affect us in terms of what we have to pay ILECs [Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier] for their wholesale or finished services.) We have great flexibility in how we price our products.
The price of a T1 is the result of a mixture of outside costs (leasing the local loop, peering arrangements, CPE, etc.), internal infrastructure costs, overhead costs (including people, buildings, debt payments, etc.), competitive pricing, and profit. If you are innovative, you can find ways to drive the local loop costs (for example) down significantly - can you say HDSL2/4 on short loops? The customer still gets all the functions of a T1.
In determining the price for a given service, you look at the larger picture, sometimes discounting some service because you are also getting other business from that customer that is more profitable. In other words, the price is not etched in stone or determined by tariff - it's based on many factors, including making enough profit to keep the doors open another year.
The fact is that T1s just don't cost as much (either to buy or to sell) as they used to.
The "chilling effect" is already being felt by those of us that use photography as either a hobby or profession. We have to question the reaction we will get to photographing something in public.
I like to shoot cityscapes and industrial-looking areas as a hobby. I now regularly get stopped by either security guards or (very occasionally) the police. The security guards are always convinced that I am doing something strictly illegal (they *always* mention 9/11) and had better stop now. The police just want to know what I am doing.
Does this dampen my enthusiasm for taking those pictures? Sure. I feel like the mindset has taken hold that no one can do anything that even vaguely appears to be out of the ordinary. (Note that there are no laws, that I am aware of, the specifically forbid photographing anything in the public view, with the exception of military installations.) While I am not asserting that taking pictures of things in public is a right, it is also not illegal, so should not be abridged.
As an interesting sidenote, I believe corporations will use/are using this hysteria to increase their own level of 'privacy'. They can claim that photographing their facilities is contrary to 'national security', even when you are photographing from a public sidewalk. I'm sure this makes them feel 'more secure', and would allow them to hide potentially-illegal activity much more easily.
I work in CLEC telecom sales, and there is nowhere near that penetration, at least not in the Northwest. We find most businesses are very reluctant to use a technology that may present their business in a bad light to potential customers. eg bad voice quality, even if only occasional, can create an impression of a 'cheap' business, unwilling to spend the resources needed to be professional.
Lots of business owners ask about VoIP, but very few seem to adopt it.
(Note that I am NOT talking about personal or home use - just a traditional, brick-and-mortar business.)
I worked for an ISP that offered incredible customer service. We would take as much time as it took to make the customer happy. We gave advice on hardware and software not related to the online experience. We even offered to go to their house to fix connectivity problems, as a last resort.
In return, most of our customers remained loyal customers despite the fact that we charged a little more than most ISPs.
Unfortunately, this is not a good business model - we were never quite profitable. We ended up getting bought-out by a larger company. Though the current Tech Support is OK, it's nothing like the old days. Now, it's more like "help them, but do it as fast as you can - don't waste time".
How do you find the balance between great service and cost-containment?
The one thing that Apple has done best (at least during some years) is to try out new designs, new ideas. They've shown a willingness to take risks. Whether it's the GUI, Human Interface Guidelines, the Newton, the iMac, or just little touches that make the computing experience a little bit friendlier. They showed us that there was a viable alternative. Sometimes they fail (eMate, CyberDog, eWorld). But in the process, they teach the whole industry a lesson.
With a behmoth like M$ around, we can use more friendly ideas.
1) An understanding wife/husband/SO/roommate. Best to verify this one beforehand.
;-)
2) Space in front AND in back. I've been in a lot of LAN 'closets' and that's what they should have remained - closets. Those open, aluminum patch-panel racks, mounted perpendicular to the wall, allow you to reach those tangled cables. It may not look as good, but you'll thank yourself everytime you have to change/add/delete a cable.
3) Adequate AC power wired in BEFORE the first piece of equipment is installed. Try to picture adding an outlet in 6 months...
4) If your boxen aren't real furnaces, try convection cooling. In a semi-enclosed, freestanding rack, I put the greatest heat-generating equipment at the top, with a wide open vent immediately above. And vent(s) at floor level, to bring in the cooler air.
5) Choose a cool place like a basement. Drawing air up across a cool, concrete slab gives you an advantage from the get-go.
6) Invest in a KVM switch, if you have several servers. Swapping cables all the time is for weenies.
7) Assuming you're using an enclosed rack (or even if you're not), consider wire-mesh shelving. I've gone over to the local Home Depot and purchased that white, vinyl-over-steel stuff for very little $$$. Allows the air to flow nicely.
8) Cable-ties can be your friend. Keep that install something you can be proud to show your wife/husband/SO/roommate. You never know when you might need to justify that second rack....