Telewest Blueyonder £35/month for 1mbit/s download, 256kbit/s upload (I get £5/month rebate as I have a cable phone, too.)
BT ADSL ~£30/month for 512kbit/s down, 128kbit/s up
If you have a cable phone there's a good deal with Telewest where you pay ~£15 a month for 56K dialup. You can have it on almost all the time but of course you can't accept incoming calls while the modem's connected.
If you're buying broadband from NTL 'cos you're in their area, they just started a 1GB/day download limit. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/22/29 246.html http://www.dont-pay-ntl.co.uk/
At work we have T3, yet pay for transatlantic traffic by the megabyte which seems foolish to me. This is using JANET, the UK joint academic network [http://wwwcache.ja.net/], so presumably it's all arranged centrally and funding allocated by some complex formula derived at an annual conference or something.
In my theory of job hunting, you avoid replying to adverts and using agencies for reasons that we've discussed already in other threads. Go to the Library and find the companies that are local to your location, and that you'd like to work for. You can get phone numbers and addresses, so phone each company and ask for Personnel or Human Resources. Get a name you can send a CV with a covering letter, to. If you get a name rather than writing in without speaking to someone, you have a much greater chance of success.
In your letter you describe the position you're after, and briefly state why you want to work there, and your qualifications in terms of relevant experience. You should structure your CV differently when appropriate, to target it at the company you're writing to.
Some places won't respond, many will say they have a freeze on recruitment and aren't hiring right now, but most will put your CV on file for the future. It may take a few weeks, but after a few interviews and second interviews you'll get an offer. Meanwhile the letters you've written are still seeded about those local companies that you picked out. You may work at one place for awhile, then get offered interviews at other places. It's always easiest to get a job when you already have a job, and you can hold out for one that pays more that your current position.
Using my method, after nine to eighteen months you can have moved position once or twice, and end up with a job you actually like. It does take some effort initially to pump out 5 letters a day, and do a dozen interviews with no offers. But you get better at anything with experience. and job interviews will become less stressful and more routine.
Well, it worked for me. Hope this helps someone out there:-)
One Monday at work we found a water tank in the attic of the admin building had flooded the room below. The carpet was soaked along with a half dozen PCs. I picked one up and water scooshed out from the case. We stacked everthing in a dry room for three days, then plugged it all in again and switched on the power using a long pole. Would you believe it, only a couple of keyboards had died.
On another occasion a collegue managed to plug in a stick of RAM the wrong way around. When removed, it burnt my fingers it was so hot. Feeling certain it would now be dead, I stuck it back in the right way around, but sure enough it worked just fine.
Re:I Get To Experience The Best Of Both Worlds!
on
Snowflake Photos
·
· Score: 1
Cleanest and driest location, eh? The article says for a snowflake you need a speck of dust and some water molecules. How does the clean dry nature of your location increase the complexity of your snowflakes?
Since we're on this topic, here's an email I got this morning, F.Y.I.:
-=- -=- -=- This afternoon [User-Support dude] reported that mail was slow and users were complaining. Cause: [Student's Online Radio Station] relaying spam! This also happened 2 or 3 weeks ago and they found and fixed the problem. (no, it's not an intentional DoS attack) Btw, [Student's Online Radio Station] is the [student] radio station's machine, which is run by students. We do not have rights to administer it.
Have tried to contact the guys who run the machine to point out the problem, but without success. [Our] email config has become a little spaghetti-like and it was not obvious how to nicely block the mail from reaching [their machine] without causing knock-on effects, so - have asked [Networks dude] to break a connection to the machine. He has kindly blocked traffic from outside [Uni] to [Student's Online Radio Station] for me.
Our options were limited because of the add-on network kit on the Student Union subnet, so this is a rather crude way to block spam relaying.
However, cannot allow services to be degraded and they were warned about the problems it causes last time. So, if anyone receives complaint about the block on [this machine], please refer them to myself or Systems Unix. Thank you.
A girl at work had the hiccups. She was plied with cures and sure enough eventually her hiccups subsided. It was a bit cruel, but I told her to cough into her hand, and sure enough her hiccups returned.
"And that's how you get them back" I said as she chased me up and down the stairs.
"Do you want crime to be reduced? "Do you think the Police should be able to check criminal's identities?" "Do you think ID cards are a good idea?"
As opposed to:
"Do you think the government holds too much information on UK subjects?" "Do think people have a right to privacy?" "Do you think ID cards are a bad idea?"
I saw a ~12-14 year old kid have an accident on a motorised go-ped scooter once. He blared (those things are pretty noisy) along beside our queue at the traffic lights, and a little further down slammed into the side of a car that was pulling out. Evidently you can't brake those things quickly in an emergency.
When I was on my way back he was still there, talking to the Police and filling out forms.
My mate was watching Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in the cinema and this guy asnwered his mobile phone. People were throwing popcorn and such at him, and he goes "But it's me Mum!"
I appreciate your comments about my massive data loss situation. My only excuse is that we work to certain 'Service Level Agreements' which allow us to manage such a large installed userbase with a small number of support staff. One of the stipulations in the AUP is that any data the user wants backed up should be kept on the network where we back it up automagically. Currently we backup more than a Terabyte (sic) of data in total.
Users are however asked to backup any data held on their local hard drives themselves, or copy it to the network where we can back it up for them. Evidently this Lecturer hadn't read or hadn't understood her obligations under the AUP, even though she had signed off against them when getting her account.
But back to my question: Do you think the data recovery company could have recovered the data Norton Ghost overwrote, but didn't because it would have been very time consuming or something? If the data was in fact really unrecoverable, then I'd propose Norton Ghost as an effective data stripping device.
I work for a University. A couple of years ago I was called in to fix a PC that had BSOD'd. The data was intact but the OS wouldn't boot. Rather than reinstall from scratch, we use a ghost image with service packs and antivirus etc preinstalled, as we have a lot of PCs to support (>1000 per support person.) I explained to the user that this would wipe their hard drive, and asked if she had backed up her data to the network, as stipulated in the AUP (Acceptable Use Policy). She confirmed that she had, so I reimaged her hard drive and got her back up and running.
That afternoon she rang up in a tizzy, asking where her 'book' was. This (economist) had been writing a book for three years, and the only copy was on that hard drive. We sent the drive to a data recovery service, who charged us £200 to tell us the data was not recoverable. Luckily the user was able to recover most of her data from printouts, fragments she copied to the network, floppies and so-on.
So if you can read data after only overwriting it a couple of times, how come Norton Ghost can render data unrecoverable in one pass?
N.B. The user said she thought I meant had she saved the Word document she was working on at the time. She had saved it, to the local hard drive!
I've been extra careful with Ghost ever since, but still had two more instances of massive data loss, where both times a technician allowed me to Ghost a PC then got irate because I'd ghosted 'the hard drive with the data on it, not the new clean one' after failing to mention there were two hard drives in the PC rather than the usual one.
Warning!! Snood installs Bonzai Buddy!!
on
Snood, the Simple Game
·
· Score: 1, Informative
Gee thanks guys. I downloaded Snood and it installed BonzaiBuddy on my machine. Now I have to run AdAware to kill it, which takes ages.
Just a warning for those of us who prefer to avoid smegware.
I heard an explanation for the necessity of DVD regions which actually made sense. Apparently, a Movie Studio will release a film in a country following a lot of promotion. The profits are then ploughed into promoting the film in another country, pre-release. If the film were released world-wide in one go, the promotion budget would have to be spread out so thinly as to be ineffective.
Now, releasing a new version of a DVD with more extras, only a short while after releasing the 'bare bones' edition - that does seem entirely unfair.
A collegue used to regail me (frequently) with a story about Dr Alan Solomon attending a security device demonstration. The organisers demonstrated their device, claiming that the chip would prevent unauthorised access.
Dr Solomon asked permission to view the device. Before anyone could stop him, he pulled a large screwdriver from his pocket, jimmied open the case, and popped the chip from its socket. In less than a minute, he'd circumvented a complex device using BFI (Brute force and ignorance). Thereafter he was able to access the data the chip supposedly protected.
The demonstrators were aghast, but the lesson was clear. It's possible to bypass complex security using simple tools, especially if you don't mind breaking things.
I propose a shuttle launch, whose mission is to destroy unstable planets in star systems which are to be colonised. We should equip them with 20 self-aware Exponential Thermosteller Devices or "Bombs", and prepare a path for colonisation.
Hey, at least it would in no way be boring, right?
"Under hypnosis, people seem to be able to remember far more details from the past... "
I do believe hypnosis can 'unlock' real memories that are hidden. Police have tried hypnotising witnesses and got them to successfully recall vehicle number plates that they couldn't remember, unhypnotised.
Unfortunately the number is often not remembered correctly. On occasion the hypnosis subject will seemingly fabricate a vehicle licence plate number, if the hypnotist asks for one.
So these memories may be fabricated in some cases, yet the subject may fully believe them to be real. On other occasions it may be possible to get corroborative evidence from a third party.
In the University I work at we had a new management regime imposed on us. After some months we brought out a grievance against the worst of them, who was a horrible bully. Astonishingly, he was not sacked in disgrace. The entire systems team left one by one until there was no-one left (for an entire week, until replacements started arriving).
Then, the network started going tits up. Things got so bad the management were relieved of their responsibilities. One of them has now left under a cloud, and the other won't last past Xmas. Some of the original systems team have returned. The network is steadily improving to pre-management change levels. We have been vindicated!
Slashdot Mirror
NTL put a 1GB/day broadband cap on their UK cable network, yet call their broadband service 'unlimited'.
UK Broadband:
9 246.html
Telewest Blueyonder
£35/month for 1mbit/s download, 256kbit/s upload (I get £5/month rebate as I have a cable phone, too.)
BT ADSL
~£30/month for 512kbit/s down, 128kbit/s up
If you have a cable phone there's a good deal with Telewest where you pay ~£15 a month for 56K dialup. You can have it on almost all the time but of course you can't accept incoming calls while the modem's connected.
If you're buying broadband from NTL 'cos you're in their area, they just started a 1GB/day download limit.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/22/2
http://www.dont-pay-ntl.co.uk/
At work we have T3, yet pay for transatlantic traffic by the megabyte which seems foolish to me. This is using JANET, the UK joint academic network [http://wwwcache.ja.net/], so presumably it's all arranged centrally and funding allocated by some complex formula derived at an annual conference or something.
In my theory of job hunting, you avoid replying to adverts and using agencies for reasons that we've discussed already in other threads. Go to the Library and find the companies that are local to your location, and that you'd like to work for. You can get phone numbers and addresses, so phone each company and ask for Personnel or Human Resources. Get a name you can send a CV with a covering letter, to. If you get a name rather than writing in without speaking to someone, you have a much greater chance of success.
:-)
In your letter you describe the position you're after, and briefly state why you want to work there, and your qualifications in terms of relevant experience. You should structure your CV differently when appropriate, to target it at the company you're writing to.
Some places won't respond, many will say they have a freeze on recruitment and aren't hiring right now, but most will put your CV on file for the future. It may take a few weeks, but after a few interviews and second interviews you'll get an offer. Meanwhile the letters you've written are still seeded about those local companies that you picked out. You may work at one place for awhile, then get offered interviews at other places. It's always easiest to get a job when you already have a job, and you can hold out for one that pays more that your current position.
Using my method, after nine to eighteen months you can have moved position once or twice, and end up with a job you actually like. It does take some effort initially to pump out 5 letters a day, and do a dozen interviews with no offers. But you get better at anything with experience. and job interviews will become less stressful and more routine.
Well, it worked for me. Hope this helps someone out there
One Monday at work we found a water tank in the attic of the admin building had flooded the room below. The carpet was soaked along with a half dozen PCs. I picked one up and water scooshed out from the case. We stacked everthing in a dry room for three days, then plugged it all in again and switched on the power using a long pole. Would you believe it, only a couple of keyboards had died.
On another occasion a collegue managed to plug in a stick of RAM the wrong way around. When removed, it burnt my fingers it was so hot. Feeling certain it would now be dead, I stuck it back in the right way around, but sure enough it worked just fine.
Cleanest and driest location, eh? The article says for a snowflake you need a speck of dust and some water molecules. How does the clean dry nature of your location increase the complexity of your snowflakes?
http://snowflakebentley.com/
Since we're on this topic, here's an email I got this morning, F.Y.I.:
-=- -=- -=-
This afternoon [User-Support dude] reported that mail was slow and users were complaining. Cause: [Student's Online Radio Station] relaying spam! This also happened 2 or 3 weeks ago and they found and fixed the problem. (no, it's not an intentional DoS attack) Btw, [Student's Online Radio Station] is the [student] radio station's machine, which is run by students.
We do not have rights to administer it.
Have tried to contact the guys who run the machine to point out the problem, but without success. [Our] email config has become a little spaghetti-like and it was not obvious how to
nicely block the mail from reaching [their machine] without causing knock-on effects, so - have asked [Networks dude] to break a connection
to the machine. He has kindly blocked traffic from outside [Uni] to [Student's Online Radio Station] for me.
Our options were limited because of the add-on network kit on the Student Union subnet, so this is a rather crude way to block spam relaying.
However, cannot allow services to be degraded and they were warned about the problems it causes last time. So, if anyone receives complaint about the block on [this machine], please refer them to myself or Systems Unix. Thank you.
Cheers,
[System Admin Dude]
-=- -=- -=-
Many years ago I went to school next to the Unilever building on the Victoria Embankment in London UK.
You got the impression of unspeakable evil burning deep inside. It was like walking past 'Wolfram and Hart' every morning.
A girl at work had the hiccups. She was plied with cures and sure enough eventually her hiccups subsided. It was a bit cruel, but I told her to cough into her hand, and sure enough her hiccups returned.
"And that's how you get them back" I said as she chased me up and down the stairs.
> Yes Minister fan?
:-)
Yes, I was thinking of Humphry Appleby's explanation but I couldn't find it on Google
Well spotted
The Survey probably said:
"Do you want crime to be reduced?
"Do you think the Police should be able to check criminal's identities?"
"Do you think ID cards are a good idea?"
As opposed to:
"Do you think the government holds too much information on UK subjects?"
"Do think people have a right to privacy?"
"Do you think ID cards are a bad idea?"
Zeropaid
has 12 P2P apps for Linux, 17 for Mac and 55 for Windows. If Kazaa were stopped you could still search Fasttrack using Imesh, Grokster or Morpheus.
I recommend Soulseek for music.
Told ya :-)
Choking hazard?
I saw a ~12-14 year old kid have an accident on a motorised go-ped scooter once. He blared (those things are pretty noisy) along beside our queue at the traffic lights, and a little further down slammed into the side of a car that was pulling out. Evidently you can't brake those things quickly in an emergency.
When I was on my way back he was still there, talking to the Police and filling out forms.
My mate was watching Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in the cinema and this guy asnwered his mobile phone. People were throwing popcorn and such at him, and he goes "But it's me Mum!"
He's lucky to have got out alive.
I appreciate your comments about my massive data loss situation. My only excuse is that we work to certain 'Service Level Agreements' which allow
us to manage such a large installed userbase with a small number of support staff. One of the stipulations in the AUP is that any data the user wants backed up should be kept on the network where we back it up automagically. Currently we backup more than a Terabyte (sic) of data in total.
Users are however asked to backup any data held on their local hard drives themselves, or copy it to the network where we can back it up for them. Evidently this Lecturer hadn't read or hadn't understood her obligations under the AUP, even though she had signed off against them when getting her account.
But back to my question: Do you think the data recovery company could have recovered the data Norton Ghost overwrote, but didn't because it would have been very time consuming or something? If the data was in fact really unrecoverable, then I'd propose Norton Ghost as an effective data stripping device.
I work for a University. A couple of years ago I was called in to fix a PC that had BSOD'd. The data was intact but the OS wouldn't boot. Rather than reinstall from scratch, we use a ghost image with service packs and antivirus etc preinstalled, as we have a lot of PCs to support (>1000 per support person.) I explained to the user that this would wipe their hard drive, and asked if she had backed up her data to the network, as stipulated in the AUP (Acceptable Use Policy). She confirmed that she had, so I reimaged her hard drive and got her back up and running.
That afternoon she rang up in a tizzy, asking where her 'book' was. This (economist) had been writing a book for three years, and the only copy was on that hard drive. We sent the drive to a data recovery service, who charged us £200 to tell us the data was not recoverable. Luckily the user was able to recover most of her data from printouts, fragments she copied to the network, floppies and so-on.
So if you can read data after only overwriting it a couple of times, how come Norton Ghost can render data unrecoverable in one pass?
N.B.
The user said she thought I meant had she saved the Word document she was working on at the time. She had saved it, to the local hard drive!
I've been extra careful with Ghost ever since, but still had two more instances of massive data loss, where both times a technician allowed me to Ghost a PC then got irate because I'd ghosted 'the hard drive with the data on it, not the new clean one' after failing to mention there were two hard drives in the PC rather than the usual one.
Gee thanks guys. I downloaded Snood and it installed BonzaiBuddy on my machine. Now I have to run AdAware to kill it, which takes ages.
Just a warning for those of us who prefer to avoid smegware.
I heard an explanation for the necessity of DVD regions which actually made sense. Apparently, a Movie Studio will release a film in a country following a lot of promotion. The profits are then ploughed into promoting the film in another country, pre-release. If the film were released world-wide in one go, the promotion budget would have to be spread out so thinly as to be ineffective.
Now, releasing a new version of a DVD with more extras, only a short while after releasing the 'bare bones' edition - that does seem entirely unfair.
A collegue used to regail me (frequently) with a story about Dr Alan Solomon attending a security device demonstration. The organisers demonstrated their device, claiming that the chip would prevent unauthorised access.
Dr Solomon asked permission to view the device. Before anyone could stop him, he pulled a large screwdriver from his pocket, jimmied open the case, and popped the chip from its socket. In less than a minute, he'd circumvented a complex device using BFI (Brute force and ignorance). Thereafter he was able to access the data the chip supposedly protected.
The demonstrators were aghast, but the lesson was clear. It's possible to bypass complex security using simple tools, especially if you don't mind breaking things.
Are you willing to entertain a few concepts?
I propose a shuttle launch, whose mission is to destroy unstable planets in star systems which are to be colonised. We should equip them with 20 self-aware Exponential Thermosteller Devices or "Bombs", and prepare a path for colonisation.
Hey, at least it would in no way be boring, right?
"Under hypnosis, people seem to be able to remember far more details from the past... "
I do believe hypnosis can 'unlock' real memories that are hidden. Police have tried hypnotising witnesses and got them to successfully recall vehicle number plates that they couldn't remember, unhypnotised.
Unfortunately the number is often not remembered correctly. On occasion the hypnosis subject will seemingly fabricate a vehicle licence plate number, if the hypnotist asks for one.
So these memories may be fabricated in some cases, yet the subject may fully believe them to be real. On other occasions it may be possible to get corroborative evidence from a third party.
I have moderator points, but where's the "+1 Southpark reference" modifier?
Try Soulseek [http://www.slsk.org/] if Kazaa doesn't have the music you want. It's the best since Audiogalaxy got stopped.
In the University I work at we had a new management regime imposed on us. After some months we brought out a grievance against the worst of them, who was a horrible bully. Astonishingly, he was not sacked in disgrace. The entire systems team left one by one until there was no-one left (for an entire week, until replacements started arriving).
Then, the network started going tits up. Things got so bad the management were relieved of their responsibilities. One of them has now left under a cloud, and the other won't last past Xmas. Some of the original systems team have returned. The network is steadily improving to pre-management change levels. We have been vindicated!