Yeah, if you think 6x more expensive isn't horrible. Minus the tax, tag, and dealer prep... a POTS line runs about $12-13 throughout Bellsouth's lands; ISDN is $75-80, except in TN where it's something like $23 (that's what it was last time I looked and B$ stopped updating the ISDN pages about, oh, 25 years ago -- even the ISDN department (all 3 of them?) don't know when those pages were touched or who would. They are now "archived" deep inside the DSL web pages. *sigh*)
That "compact" is that TN ran fiber all over the state. And the TN PUC refuses to let them bilk their customers like they do everywhere else.
And bellsouth.net does charge more for ISDN... $14.95 for 56k dialup, and $20.95 for ISDN (single channel) -- at least in NC. And let's not forget Hellsouth.Net are still the only dumbasses disabling software compression to "speed up signon" -- CCP doesn't add any human measurable time... it takes 30s to login because it takes 30s for the modems to train, and 3s on ISDN where 3s are spent in IPCP while the NAS dhcp's an address for you (it tends to give you the same address every time, tho.)
I don't know where you live, but forming a corporation is alot more involved (and expensive) than a simple 50$ and signing some papers at City Hall. And there are requirements well beyond simply registering the corp.
destroying any remaining materials concerning the Game in your possession or control
The online account created with the cd key cannot be destroyed (because Blizzard's too damned lame to delete a few records) and cannot be transfered (under the terms for the online account.) So, once you've played the game, you cannot transfer and/or destroy everything related to the game. Looks like they paid their lawyers pretty well:-)
(This ranks right ou there with Radio Shack's "acts of God" warantee.)
Actually, PDM isn't that bad these days. There's still a lot of things it won't do, but those things rank above zero on the complicated scale. The 501 comes out-of-the-box in a mostly working state -- sorta like a linksys, but you'll obviously want someone with a brain to configure it for your network. And being a business class hunk of technology, it's not surprising that it takes some knowledge to setup and manage effectively. The documentation and PDM should be enough for 90% of the small businesses where the 501 is targeted. It's not supposed to be a Linksys:-)
I learned to manage Pixen in just a few hours playing with one and reading the mountains of documents (both cisco and non-cisco.) I can make a pix roll over and play dead. Heck, I can make one roll over and be dead *grin* (and sometimes bring it back from the dead.)
That just the way security levels are handled -- it's been like that since before Cisco bought the Pix line. Decending security levels is not restricted... inside@100 can talk to anyone.
Actually, 4 months is pretty good. My personal average is about 6 months of constant bitching to get things "fixed" -- they don't stay fixed, 'tho. (It takes an act of God to get those monkeys to commit something to the main code branch [/main in clearcase].)
The ONS came from Cerent. And Cisco has fixed all of the bugs in the code it purchased from them. There are situations where they cannot fix the bugs that pop up -- and others where marketing tells them not to... don't fix it; make 'em buy the new stuff.
Even Cisco's routers are not 100% Cisco engineered these days -- hardware or software. Cisco has bought their way into just about every market they touch. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Very funny. Then it won't run any of the office applications -- and don't even joke about OpenOffice, that shit's slower than M$'s apps on that thing. And I don't want to spend the rest of my days teaching it's owner to use linux. "Buy a mac mini and leave me alone." *grin*
I know it for a fact. They aren't powering them up for 8hours of use and then shutting them down for 16hours. 5 days a week. In an office where the AC is cut off after hours and on weekends.
How many bad sectors have cropped up on their drives? How many cooling fans are rattling at 1/10th their normal spinning speed? How long does it take for the monitor to reach proper convergance -- i.e. lose the funky multi-color bluring due to the guns not firing correctly until the CRT heats up? (you may not notice it, yet, if the resolution is set low enough.)
Actually, the machine in question is 5 years old. It was built in late '99 to early 2000. It was about 200$ then. We're talking about saving money here, not buying new quad opteron 850's for everyone (which would certainly be state-of-the-art, but not on the same planet as "cheap".) It was an ok machine for the price back then, but today, it's crap -- it's not even heavy enough to be a good door-stop. Install Linux for console only use and it'd be an ok terminal, logger, web server, what-not, but not many people can be productive without a mouse and a GUI.
I tend to do just about everything on a dual PIII-800 w/1GB, but I'm not doing anything particually computational -- like DVD ripping, cracking keys, etc. The most work this thing does is running QuickPar, infrequently:-) (I have better machines for that.) I have little need for "office productivity" crap; I used to... Visio, powerpoint, access, outlook, blah, blah, blah.
First off. every hospital I've been in has it's own FCC licensed pager system. It'll work for some distance outside the hospital. And certainly works in every little nook and dark corner inside the building. There's a real good reason your cell phone doesn't work in the middle of the hospital -- aside from the fact that you're not supposed to have one on in there... look around next time, see all that shit that's interfering with it? And the further inside you go, the more steal and concrete is hiding you from the tower(s). See, cell phone companies don't hang boosters inside hospitals like they do in malls.
Pagers are unreliable. They are passive, low-power devices. The paging tower has no way of knowing a) the pager even exists, b) is on, c) is in range, or d) received the message intact. Cell phones are bi-directional. When you call one, you know instantly if the call was answered or not and if your message was understood or not. Even the fancy bi-directional pagers give no idication to the originator that their message was received, even if the paging terminal has confirmation from the pager.
I could see the reasoning for carrying both, but that adds to the budget. The cell phone will do everything the pager will (and much more), gives you a phone to answer any "page" which you'll need anyway, and provides immediate indication of receiving power -- no bars means you'll not be getting many calls/pages. Pagers don't have those bars; and those trying to page you don't get a message saying your phone is off the network.
For the record, this PC (dual PIII 800) has Office 97 installed on it. And it's running XP now. Wordpad can eat just about any.doc I've been handed. However, discounting incompatible file versions is just WRONG. When a vendor, customer, or whatever sends you documents that your 8 year old software cannot open, you cannot get your work done. Finding converters, viewers, alternate applications, or asking for it in a different format takes time, often destroys content, and makes you look like an idiot.
The first problem with running software that old is simply that it isn't supported or patched anymore. Office XP includes the business contact manager, something some people seem to be unable to live without. Server based rules (outlook w/ exchange) with expanded functions. Improved security features -- like being able to turn off certain anoying crap like HTML rendering, hard blocking of certain file types (extensions) that can be a domain wide policy... Better junk mail filtering. IMAP support. Support for multiple POP3 accounts. SSL/TLS support for STMP/IMAP/POP. Support for more than one outbound SMTP server. SMTP AUTH that doesn't require M$ f'ing authentication protocol.
And, of course, version compatibility problems when sharing files... open an access db with access 2000 and then try to open it with access 97. They cannot both have the db open at the same time unless 97 opened it first. God help you if some nuts clicks OK to convert the db to access 2000; older versions will never be able to open it again. Open the Outlook rules editor from 97 when 2000 lasted updated the rules and you'll fuck up the rules.
But, you obviously don't care. Or you've not used the newer versions and realized what's been added or changed. And you've never worked anywhere where version compatibility and interoperability were an issue.
Just lock the terminal... this is available in windows and just about every UNIX(tm). Plus, I use screen, so I can detach those sessions and return to them from anywhere (even multiple anywhere's:-))
Turning off the computer will save little in the long run. It'll be dead from daily power cycling in less than a year. Powering off CRT monitors will save money, but they'll be dead just as fast (if not faster.) LCD monitors are the most cost effective in the long run -- 40-80W, power up almost instantly, don't have gun heaters to burn out...
Salaried employees don't get overtime. It's rare (from all the surveys I've seen) for IT staff to be hourly workers -- for this very reason. As an "IT guy" and knowing many more in IT, it's rare for anyone to care that they're working more than 40hr/wk. (spouses, on the other hand, complain a lot.)
Pagers are less reliable with worse coverage. And in many cases, a cell phone is simply cheaper. With a cell phone, you are talking with the person (or can be), so you instantly know if they are aware of a problem and when they'll be in a position to fix it.
Having recently repaired a 5 year old computer -- a K6-2/350 running windows 98, there's no damned way you could get any productive work done with that thing. Just browsing the web is horribly slow. God help you if you have to run any real office applications (word, outlook, access, etc.) 2-3 year old (1GHz+ processor speeds) machines might be passable if your company is flat broke, but those machines are costing the company some employee productivity.
Yes and no. Across a wide enough sample, the 95% number will very likely be true. But in the smaller corners of the net, the number is much smaller. At my previous employer, there were about 10-20 messages dropped at the server from between 400-500 per day. And about 10 spams per week would get past the rules. Of course, that (obviously) wasn't an ISP.:-)
If you knew anything about BGP, you be wouldn't asking such a lame question... you'd go look for yourself. If you don't know where to look, you shouldn't be playing with routers.
That's a nice theory, but it never works in reality. If you're willing to pay for it, someone will be willing to sell it to you. We made an enemy of one of the sales people for canceling one of his contracts sold to a spammer. (yes, I'm leaving names out.) He couldn't understand why we'd discard so much revenue (and thusly, his commission(s).)
UUNet already has a very strong anti-spam policy. And they do rub the noses of their ISP customers in it. (I may still have a few copies.) However, it's obvious they don't universally enforce the policy.
Are you factoring in the cost of the broadband (DSL/Cablemodem) required to use any of the VoIP services? Obviously not. There's no such thing as a "zero cost call" -- your asterisk server came from somewhere and took time to setup, and the network access used for IP-only calls isn't free. Granted they aren't a line item on a bill, but you are paying for them.
And I've known people to use over 2000 mins/month on their cell phone; rare as it may be... 2-3hrs per day on the phone is not really that much for a busy person; it is a bit much for the common housewife. Residential vs. Business is just marketing BS and feature sets. That's the thing about VoIP... it works from any IP address anywhere there's connectivity. The only thing making it residential is that it's in an individual's name (and probablly billed to a residence, but not necessarily.)
[I see you've not seen a family that gossips much. Or been around many teens, before the era of instant messaging.]
Now you're making it complex. Unlimited long-distance is available from numerous LECs. Bellsouth offers this at about 50$ per month, total. And there are zero limits. Cell phones have per minute air-time rates. POTS lines usually don't. (Bellsouth's don't.) So, "your milage will vary." Depending on your exact usage paterns, one may be cheaper than the other. However, base price, per minute over the entire billing period, POTS lines are cheaper. How much does a cell phone plan with 43,830 minutes per month cost? (365.25*24*60 / 12) 2500 is the largest I know about and it's more than Bell's "everything" plan. Mobility is certainly worth something, but there's no rate schedule for it:-)
Technically, it does. It's just not licensed. And it doesn't really make sense when the "inside" interface is a 4-port switch. But all the other Pix's support VLANs (dot1q) if licensed for it.
Even in the late 90's, the technology worked. I remember calling Mylasia over the GRIC network. The delay was about 400ms, so it was a bit odd. Just sitting right here in my apartment, I can hear the delay (more like an echo, really) between VoIP<->POTS on the same router -- it's a digitizing delay that's unnoticable if the phones aren't sitting beside each other.
In most corners of the US, a POTS line will be much cheaper than a cellphone or any of the commercial VoIP systems. And "free" VoIP services just cannot be trusted -- on any level.
Does anyone remember GRIC? Back 'bouts '98 or so, they were building a global voice-over-ip transport system -- basically, a worldwide telco where the calls traversed the internet (or their private, worldwide network) to member sites where the calls are delivered into the PSTN. This looks like the exact same thing minus the custom built (and commercial) transport network -- and possibly call mediation as GRIC took care of billing everyone for their minutes (just as telcos have always done.) [The network they created is still around, but what became of the company doesn't have anything at all to do with voip anymore.]
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Yeah, if you think 6x more expensive isn't horrible. Minus the tax, tag, and dealer prep... a POTS line runs about $12-13 throughout Bellsouth's lands; ISDN is $75-80, except in TN where it's something like $23 (that's what it was last time I looked and B$ stopped updating the ISDN pages about, oh, 25 years ago -- even the ISDN department (all 3 of them?) don't know when those pages were touched or who would. They are now "archived" deep inside the DSL web pages. *sigh*)
That "compact" is that TN ran fiber all over the state. And the TN PUC refuses to let them bilk their customers like they do everywhere else.
And bellsouth.net does charge more for ISDN... $14.95 for 56k dialup, and $20.95 for ISDN (single channel) -- at least in NC. And let's not forget Hellsouth.Net are still the only dumbasses disabling software compression to "speed up signon" -- CCP doesn't add any human measurable time... it takes 30s to login because it takes 30s for the modems to train, and 3s on ISDN where 3s are spent in IPCP while the NAS dhcp's an address for you (it tends to give you the same address every time, tho.)
I don't know where you live, but forming a corporation is alot more involved (and expensive) than a simple 50$ and signing some papers at City Hall. And there are requirements well beyond simply registering the corp.
- destroying any remaining materials concerning the Game in your possession or control
The online account created with the cd key cannot be destroyed (because Blizzard's too damned lame to delete a few records) and cannot be transfered (under the terms for the online account.) So, once you've played the game, you cannot transfer and/or destroy everything related to the game. Looks like they paid their lawyers pretty well(This ranks right ou there with Radio Shack's "acts of God" warantee.)
Actually, PDM isn't that bad these days. There's still a lot of things it won't do, but those things rank above zero on the complicated scale. The 501 comes out-of-the-box in a mostly working state -- sorta like a linksys, but you'll obviously want someone with a brain to configure it for your network. And being a business class hunk of technology, it's not surprising that it takes some knowledge to setup and manage effectively. The documentation and PDM should be enough for 90% of the small businesses where the 501 is targeted. It's not supposed to be a Linksys :-)
I learned to manage Pixen in just a few hours playing with one and reading the mountains of documents (both cisco and non-cisco.) I can make a pix roll over and play dead. Heck, I can make one roll over and be dead *grin* (and sometimes bring it back from the dead.)
That just the way security levels are handled -- it's been like that since before Cisco bought the Pix line. Decending security levels is not restricted... inside@100 can talk to anyone.
Actually, 4 months is pretty good. My personal average is about 6 months of constant bitching to get things "fixed" -- they don't stay fixed, 'tho. (It takes an act of God to get those monkeys to commit something to the main code branch [/main in clearcase].)
- Can we say "No one ever got fired for buying [Cisco]." yet?
Nope. You've obviously never been in a non-Cisco shop. People tend to form fierce loyalties to the evil's they know.The ONS came from Cerent. And Cisco has fixed all of the bugs in the code it purchased from them. There are situations where they cannot fix the bugs that pop up -- and others where marketing tells them not to... don't fix it; make 'em buy the new stuff.
Even Cisco's routers are not 100% Cisco engineered these days -- hardware or software. Cisco has bought their way into just about every market they touch. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Very funny. Then it won't run any of the office applications -- and don't even joke about OpenOffice, that shit's slower than M$'s apps on that thing. And I don't want to spend the rest of my days teaching it's owner to use linux. "Buy a mac mini and leave me alone." *grin*
I know it for a fact. They aren't powering them up for 8hours of use and then shutting them down for 16hours. 5 days a week. In an office where the AC is cut off after hours and on weekends.
How many bad sectors have cropped up on their drives? How many cooling fans are rattling at 1/10th their normal spinning speed? How long does it take for the monitor to reach proper convergance -- i.e. lose the funky multi-color bluring due to the guns not firing correctly until the CRT heats up? (you may not notice it, yet, if the resolution is set low enough.)
Actually, the machine in question is 5 years old. It was built in late '99 to early 2000. It was about 200$ then. We're talking about saving money here, not buying new quad opteron 850's for everyone (which would certainly be state-of-the-art, but not on the same planet as "cheap".) It was an ok machine for the price back then, but today, it's crap -- it's not even heavy enough to be a good door-stop. Install Linux for console only use and it'd be an ok terminal, logger, web server, what-not, but not many people can be productive without a mouse and a GUI.
:-) (I have better machines for that.) I have little need for "office productivity" crap; I used to... Visio, powerpoint, access, outlook, blah, blah, blah.
I tend to do just about everything on a dual PIII-800 w/1GB, but I'm not doing anything particually computational -- like DVD ripping, cracking keys, etc. The most work this thing does is running QuickPar, infrequently
First off. every hospital I've been in has it's own FCC licensed pager system. It'll work for some distance outside the hospital. And certainly works in every little nook and dark corner inside the building. There's a real good reason your cell phone doesn't work in the middle of the hospital -- aside from the fact that you're not supposed to have one on in there... look around next time, see all that shit that's interfering with it? And the further inside you go, the more steal and concrete is hiding you from the tower(s). See, cell phone companies don't hang boosters inside hospitals like they do in malls.
Pagers are unreliable. They are passive, low-power devices. The paging tower has no way of knowing a) the pager even exists, b) is on, c) is in range, or d) received the message intact. Cell phones are bi-directional. When you call one, you know instantly if the call was answered or not and if your message was understood or not. Even the fancy bi-directional pagers give no idication to the originator that their message was received, even if the paging terminal has confirmation from the pager.
I could see the reasoning for carrying both, but that adds to the budget. The cell phone will do everything the pager will (and much more), gives you a phone to answer any "page" which you'll need anyway, and provides immediate indication of receiving power -- no bars means you'll not be getting many calls/pages. Pagers don't have those bars; and those trying to page you don't get a message saying your phone is off the network.
For the record, this PC (dual PIII 800) has Office 97 installed on it. And it's running XP now. Wordpad can eat just about any .doc I've been handed. However, discounting incompatible file versions is just WRONG. When a vendor, customer, or whatever sends you documents that your 8 year old software cannot open, you cannot get your work done. Finding converters, viewers, alternate applications, or asking for it in a different format takes time, often destroys content, and makes you look like an idiot.
The first problem with running software that old is simply that it isn't supported or patched anymore. Office XP includes the business contact manager, something some people seem to be unable to live without. Server based rules (outlook w/ exchange) with expanded functions. Improved security features -- like being able to turn off certain anoying crap like HTML rendering, hard blocking of certain file types (extensions) that can be a domain wide policy... Better junk mail filtering. IMAP support. Support for multiple POP3 accounts. SSL/TLS support for STMP/IMAP/POP. Support for more than one outbound SMTP server. SMTP AUTH that doesn't require M$ f'ing authentication protocol.
And, of course, version compatibility problems when sharing files... open an access db with access 2000 and then try to open it with access 97. They cannot both have the db open at the same time unless 97 opened it first. God help you if some nuts clicks OK to convert the db to access 2000; older versions will never be able to open it again. Open the Outlook rules editor from 97 when 2000 lasted updated the rules and you'll fuck up the rules.
But, you obviously don't care. Or you've not used the newer versions and realized what's been added or changed. And you've never worked anywhere where version compatibility and interoperability were an issue.
Just lock the terminal... this is available in windows and just about every UNIX(tm). Plus, I use screen, so I can detach those sessions and return to them from anywhere (even multiple anywhere's :-))
Turning off the computer will save little in the long run. It'll be dead from daily power cycling in less than a year. Powering off CRT monitors will save money, but they'll be dead just as fast (if not faster.) LCD monitors are the most cost effective in the long run -- 40-80W, power up almost instantly, don't have gun heaters to burn out...
translation: the company spent a ton of money building something they didn't need at all.
(Liebert makes climate controlled racks -- Foundation Series "mini-computer room". I've seen 'em on eBay for ~3k$US + freight shipping.)
Salaried employees don't get overtime. It's rare (from all the surveys I've seen) for IT staff to be hourly workers -- for this very reason. As an "IT guy" and knowing many more in IT, it's rare for anyone to care that they're working more than 40hr/wk. (spouses, on the other hand, complain a lot.)
Pagers are less reliable with worse coverage. And in many cases, a cell phone is simply cheaper. With a cell phone, you are talking with the person (or can be), so you instantly know if they are aware of a problem and when they'll be in a position to fix it.
Having recently repaired a 5 year old computer -- a K6-2/350 running windows 98, there's no damned way you could get any productive work done with that thing. Just browsing the web is horribly slow. God help you if you have to run any real office applications (word, outlook, access, etc.) 2-3 year old (1GHz+ processor speeds) machines might be passable if your company is flat broke, but those machines are costing the company some employee productivity.
Yes and no. Across a wide enough sample, the 95% number will very likely be true. But in the smaller corners of the net, the number is much smaller. At my previous employer, there were about 10-20 messages dropped at the server from between 400-500 per day. And about 10 spams per week would get past the rules. Of course, that (obviously) wasn't an ISP. :-)
If you knew anything about BGP, you be wouldn't asking such a lame question... you'd go look for yourself. If you don't know where to look, you shouldn't be playing with routers.
That's a nice theory, but it never works in reality. If you're willing to pay for it, someone will be willing to sell it to you. We made an enemy of one of the sales people for canceling one of his contracts sold to a spammer. (yes, I'm leaving names out.) He couldn't understand why we'd discard so much revenue (and thusly, his commission(s).)
UUNet already has a very strong anti-spam policy. And they do rub the noses of their ISP customers in it. (I may still have a few copies.) However, it's obvious they don't universally enforce the policy.
Are you factoring in the cost of the broadband (DSL/Cablemodem) required to use any of the VoIP services? Obviously not. There's no such thing as a "zero cost call" -- your asterisk server came from somewhere and took time to setup, and the network access used for IP-only calls isn't free. Granted they aren't a line item on a bill, but you are paying for them.
And I've known people to use over 2000 mins/month on their cell phone; rare as it may be... 2-3hrs per day on the phone is not really that much for a busy person; it is a bit much for the common housewife. Residential vs. Business is just marketing BS and feature sets. That's the thing about VoIP... it works from any IP address anywhere there's connectivity. The only thing making it residential is that it's in an individual's name (and probablly billed to a residence, but not necessarily.)
[I see you've not seen a family that gossips much. Or been around many teens, before the era of instant messaging.]
Now you're making it complex. Unlimited long-distance is available from numerous LECs. Bellsouth offers this at about 50$ per month, total. And there are zero limits. Cell phones have per minute air-time rates. POTS lines usually don't. (Bellsouth's don't.) So, "your milage will vary." Depending on your exact usage paterns, one may be cheaper than the other. However, base price, per minute over the entire billing period, POTS lines are cheaper. How much does a cell phone plan with 43,830 minutes per month cost? (365.25*24*60 / 12) 2500 is the largest I know about and it's more than Bell's "everything" plan. Mobility is certainly worth something, but there's no rate schedule for it :-)
Technically, it does. It's just not licensed. And it doesn't really make sense when the "inside" interface is a 4-port switch. But all the other Pix's support VLANs (dot1q) if licensed for it.
*cough*GRIC*cough*
Even in the late 90's, the technology worked. I remember calling Mylasia over the GRIC network. The delay was about 400ms, so it was a bit odd. Just sitting right here in my apartment, I can hear the delay (more like an echo, really) between VoIP<->POTS on the same router -- it's a digitizing delay that's unnoticable if the phones aren't sitting beside each other.
In most corners of the US, a POTS line will be much cheaper than a cellphone or any of the commercial VoIP systems. And "free" VoIP services just cannot be trusted -- on any level.
Does anyone remember GRIC? Back 'bouts '98 or so, they were building a global voice-over-ip transport system -- basically, a worldwide telco where the calls traversed the internet (or their private, worldwide network) to member sites where the calls are delivered into the PSTN. This looks like the exact same thing minus the custom built (and commercial) transport network -- and possibly call mediation as GRIC took care of billing everyone for their minutes (just as telcos have always done.) [The network they created is still around, but what became of the company doesn't have anything at all to do with voip anymore.]