Just some info regarding poor billing/CSR service and whatnot. I worked as IT Manager in one of the pre-VerizonWireless entity's major call centers (PrimeCo). The attrition rate is unbelievable. We're talking something like 50% turnover per year from what our experiences were. With that much turnover it's hard to keep trained and knowledgeable staff on hand to take care of the customer.
Each competitor would one-up the other and would then become the flavor of the month. For us it was Aerial (which begat VoiceStream, which un turn begat T-Mobile). CSR's would flock to the competitor and take all of their acquired knowledge. The holes for our company were so bad at one point we resorted to exclusively hiring temps. Talk about a drop in knowledge!
I would be surprised if hardly any of these companies had typically outstanding CSR's. With industry turnover rates and outsourcing concerns it's unfortuntaly the lay of the land.
That's why if I have an imporant question or concern I call in about 2-3 times. That way I have an average answer that might be a little more correct than if I just called in once. Sad, but true...
That's what they got for implementing a Siebel database conversion *presumably* right before the Christmas selling season. Nice move. I used to work for part of the VerizonWireless puzzle between 1996 and 1999. I recall our Siebel implemenation wasn't much better. It was used for GIS-TIS stuff and was really a rocky road for enterprise-wide delivery.
I think due to all of the mergers, acquisitions, and whatnot most of technology and communication companies have internal systems in disarray. It's like a bachelor hooking up with all of these different ladies and moving in together. Hard to keep all of your personal belongings and effects in a nice, organized fashion.
AFAIK the SIM card is a proprietary feature of the GSM cellular transmission method. T-Mobile and Cingular are American GSM carriers. Then you have CDMA carriers like VerizonWireless and Sprint PCS. As for AT&T Wireless I thought that they were still operating on the TDMA cellular transmission method. If so, then the SIM card wouldn't be an option.
Actually I meant SD rather than SmartMedia. Sorry for the brainfart. They are past 1 GB now? Wow. I always crossed SD and SmartMedia's names up. I primarily use CompactFlash storage as a rule.
It's amazing how storage limits can be passed without much significant fanfare. Then I harken back to the days when a 50 MB hard drive was the size of an unabridged Proust novel!
I know that SmartMedia cards are now up to 512MB in size (perhaps even larger from the last time I checked). And they are about the size of a postage stamp. Not 1 GB in size, but probably will be there soon, if not already.
Is this a really earth shattering advance? Perhaps the media composition and the fact that's it's transparent adds to the coolness factor.
I love Corporatespeak. The catchphrases and acronyms that are thrown out there to appear to be in the know. Here's a website that has something that I used to have up on my PC when the boss was on the phone with me. Trying to play the odds.
There's a quote I recall. Not sure of who the originator is. Perhaps a 12-step thing:
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again, only to expect different results.
This was always something I keep in mind when performing IT frontline troubleshooting. But thank God I am not one of the PHB's who need to keep this in mind when in pointless meetings.
Which reminds me of another quote that was said during my days of working for a Fortune 500 company while at their CHQ in meeting after meeting.
Me: You guys have meetings all day. How do y'all get any work done in between?
Not to be a smartass, but I wonder what the systems are like on these vehicles. I saw several stories on CNN stating that the first Rover had to have some excess files removed so that it had more available memory. Plus a couple of reboots. That harkens me back to the days of MS-DOS running memmaker and looking at UMB's, HMA, etc.
I recall reading somewhere that much of the NASA technology behind the Apollo missions could be replaced by a modern day handheld scientific calcluator. What's the story nowadays? You'd think with millions upon millions of budgeted funds the systems would be cutting edge beyond our wildest dreams.
It's all just configuration. There's a simply checkbox that I uncheck so that the supposed sender isn't notified of the infected message. Too bad the AV software doesn't strip the initial sender's mail domain from the message header and automatically send an alert to abuse@whatever.com, postmaster@whatever.com, et. al. At least the headers should be real.
Of course a lot of spam comes through 0wn3d boxes which are acting as drones so most of these headers point to individual boxes which are clueless of their actions.
I'm not sure about the ATM urban legend. But I have seen a few BSOD's on Windows-based ATM's posted on Internet sites. What Microsoft provides on the server level, the desktop level, the embedded device level, etc. is **hopefully** different versions of what has been so maligned. I thought I read somewhere that Windows versions that run on ATM's are stripped down and minus some of the more exploit-riddled components. Same with Windows-based equipment used at hospitals, utility companies, etc.
Of course some folks make the argument that the very foundation of all Windows software is flawed and the security model it employs is poor from the get-go. If that's the case then we shall see what ill becomes of the RFID pilot project. But if ATM's have run Windows software for years now I would think any major exploits or outages would have certainly been cannon fodder by now. Most exploits are due to Outlook mail clients, Inter Explorer scripting/redirects, and open Internet-facing ports. That **shouldn't** come into play for an ATM connected to a clearinghouse via modem. Right?
Besides VNC you can even run a Windows Terminal Services client. Think it's called WinZConnect or something. I used both awhile back to remotely administer my Windows-based WAN from my Zaurus PDA. The Linux kernel was built with PPTP support so I could use that or OpenSSH tunneling. It was great. Plugged into my cell phone via a CompactFlash card. Anywhere I was I could remote in and do what I needed to.
Long term I was looking to deploy the PDA's as remote salesperson units. They could run wireless VoIP client software, use PIM apps, as well as connect to Intranet resources. But Sharp really dicked over the North American markets by pulling much of the Zaurus line so I put mine up on eBay. The SL-7xx series has to be imported from Japan and reloaded with Americanized stuff. It was cool running gcc, MySQL, Apache, PHP, etc. on my SL-5500 though!
Re:The replacement is already here
on
United Linux Dead
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· Score: 1
Perhaps since companies and groups distributing version of it are trying to gain ground on a huge corporate juggernaut like Microsoft as a legitimate business solution?
Re:What will this do to Oracle support?
on
United Linux Dead
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The UL consortium is what's dissolving. Not SuSE as a company. You should be fine running Oracle on their distro. I know I checked out SuSE for OpenExchange as well and am not concerned if I do pull the trigger and deploy it.
Actually that would mean that Apple is charging per connection, not per user. So if you have 100 users a 10-user license would work as long as your users can be limited to 10 at a time. So lo-and-behold they didn't succumb to what you're asserting.
Job experience doesn't come through rote memorization of textbook materials and hunting down exam cram sites that are based off folks recalling test questions right after taking an exam. And unfortunately that's what a lot of these technical certs have sunken to.
Getting an entry level (some call a "crap") job that builds up experience should then lend itself well to becoming a certified professional that has actual hands-on experience.
What I think is that most introductory level vendor certifications should be either significantly modified to include hands-on work or else they should be scrapped altogether. Then the intermediate level certs might mean more since they will focus on folks that come into the exam with a considerable amount of exposure.
I know I've seen large companies where HR personnel sees some vendor cert (regardless of level) on the resume and assumes that they have their foot in the door. Instead most of the paper experts should have the foot somewhere else.
Personally managing IT teams has perhaps jaded my opinion on this, but I've been burnt too many times in the past where some has put the cart before the horse. Gotten some paper credentials before even attempting to support the vendor's product. It should come the other way around.
I think the ghost of George Plimpton will be haunting the Korean company, since his Intellivision commercials back in the day featured the exact same scroll pad you are referring to.
Maybe Mattel should in turn sue Apple for ripping off the idea!
There's another effective cross platform tool that I'm hooked on. It's called Spambayes and uses similar Bayesian filters. I would say that when the thresholds are correctly set it filters out about 99% of the spam that's out there. Even the haiku, random word, etc. variety. The more spam you get the better the Bayesian analysis becomes. If you're a Microsoft Lookout user you can just have the Junk Mail folder automatically empty out every x number of days and won't have to worry about most spam again.
Looking at all of the broadbased effects that spam has --- added network traffic, open SOCKS proxy exploits, open SMTP relay exploits, trojan host takeovers, lost business time/productivity, added storage allocation --- it really is high time that the standard governing organizations expand the SMTP protocol in to a stack that includes more sophisticated mechanisms to ensure message integrity. A sender verification token of some sort. Be it a PKI check, a site certificate, a challenge/response between sender and receiver mailhost, etc.
Since supposedly the spammers can hide their tracks well perhaps whatever commercial product being spammed should be targeted by the authorities. The websites and entities in question would certainly be less likely to hook up with spammers then I would think.
Another acronym to throw out there. Implementations of the SNMP standard. That certainly opened up a can of worms for awhile there for unpatched vendor equipment which had public still listed as a valid SNMP community.
It won't if you disable Active Scripting under the IE Internet Zone. You should only have Active Scripting enabled for the Trusted Zone, so that you have to manually add sites to your 'okay' list. If you follow the recommended security model you can't launch any URL's out of Outlook. Guaranteed. I rolled out these registry changes to all of my company sites' workstations and so far so good.
You sir shouldn't have the ability to launch URL's out of Outlook at all if you had locked down IE Active Scripting so that it was disabled for all non-Trusted Sites. And also changed your default Outlook mail format set to Plain Text rather than HTML.
All of this means that your system will be wide open for all sorts of cross-site certification and scripting 'sploits. I'd do some research if I were you, since Microsoft left the most recent slew of IE holes unpatched.
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Each competitor would one-up the other and would then become the flavor of the month. For us it was Aerial (which begat VoiceStream, which un turn begat T-Mobile). CSR's would flock to the competitor and take all of their acquired knowledge. The holes for our company were so bad at one point we resorted to exclusively hiring temps. Talk about a drop in knowledge!
I would be surprised if hardly any of these companies had typically outstanding CSR's. With industry turnover rates and outsourcing concerns it's unfortuntaly the lay of the land.
That's why if I have an imporant question or concern I call in about 2-3 times. That way I have an average answer that might be a little more correct than if I just called in once. Sad, but true...
I think due to all of the mergers, acquisitions, and whatnot most of technology and communication companies have internal systems in disarray. It's like a bachelor hooking up with all of these different ladies and moving in together. Hard to keep all of your personal belongings and effects in a nice, organized fashion.
AFAIK the SIM card is a proprietary feature of the GSM cellular transmission method. T-Mobile and Cingular are American GSM carriers. Then you have CDMA carriers like VerizonWireless and Sprint PCS. As for AT&T Wireless I thought that they were still operating on the TDMA cellular transmission method. If so, then the SIM card wouldn't be an option.
It's amazing how storage limits can be passed without much significant fanfare. Then I harken back to the days when a 50 MB hard drive was the size of an unabridged Proust novel!
Is this a really earth shattering advance? Perhaps the media composition and the fact that's it's transparent adds to the coolness factor.
I love Corporatespeak. The catchphrases and acronyms that are thrown out there to appear to be in the know. Here's a website that has something that I used to have up on my PC when the boss was on the phone with me. Trying to play the odds.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again, only to expect different results.
This was always something I keep in mind when performing IT frontline troubleshooting. But thank God I am not one of the PHB's who need to keep this in mind when in pointless meetings. Which reminds me of another quote that was said during my days of working for a Fortune 500 company while at their CHQ in meeting after meeting.
Me: You guys have meetings all day. How do y'all get any work done in between?
PHB: That's the idea!
I recall reading somewhere that much of the NASA technology behind the Apollo missions could be replaced by a modern day handheld scientific calcluator. What's the story nowadays? You'd think with millions upon millions of budgeted funds the systems would be cutting edge beyond our wildest dreams.
Am I just being cynical?
Since we're so fat as Americans shouldn't we add another branch to the *BSD tree and call it OBSD?
Of course a lot of spam comes through 0wn3d boxes which are acting as drones so most of these headers point to individual boxes which are clueless of their actions.
Bill getting slammed about the three-fingered salute
Bill at the Windows 98 premiere watching the demo blue screen
I'd almost feel sorry for the guy, but he's worth more than most countries and can do whatever the hell he wants.
Of course some folks make the argument that the very foundation of all Windows software is flawed and the security model it employs is poor from the get-go. If that's the case then we shall see what ill becomes of the RFID pilot project. But if ATM's have run Windows software for years now I would think any major exploits or outages would have certainly been cannon fodder by now. Most exploits are due to Outlook mail clients, Inter Explorer scripting/redirects, and open Internet-facing ports. That **shouldn't** come into play for an ATM connected to a clearinghouse via modem. Right?
Long term I was looking to deploy the PDA's as remote salesperson units. They could run wireless VoIP client software, use PIM apps, as well as connect to Intranet resources. But Sharp really dicked over the North American markets by pulling much of the Zaurus line so I put mine up on eBay. The SL-7xx series has to be imported from Japan and reloaded with Americanized stuff. It was cool running gcc, MySQL, Apache, PHP, etc. on my SL-5500 though!
Perhaps since companies and groups distributing version of it are trying to gain ground on a huge corporate juggernaut like Microsoft as a legitimate business solution?
The UL consortium is what's dissolving. Not SuSE as a company. You should be fine running Oracle on their distro. I know I checked out SuSE for OpenExchange as well and am not concerned if I do pull the trigger and deploy it.
Uhhhh. It was, like, a joke. I guess a poor one from what I gather...
Actually that would mean that Apple is charging per connection, not per user. So if you have 100 users a 10-user license would work as long as your users can be limited to 10 at a time. So lo-and-behold they didn't succumb to what you're asserting.
Getting an entry level (some call a "crap") job that builds up experience should then lend itself well to becoming a certified professional that has actual hands-on experience.
What I think is that most introductory level vendor certifications should be either significantly modified to include hands-on work or else they should be scrapped altogether. Then the intermediate level certs might mean more since they will focus on folks that come into the exam with a considerable amount of exposure.
I know I've seen large companies where HR personnel sees some vendor cert (regardless of level) on the resume and assumes that they have their foot in the door. Instead most of the paper experts should have the foot somewhere else.
Personally managing IT teams has perhaps jaded my opinion on this, but I've been burnt too many times in the past where some has put the cart before the horse. Gotten some paper credentials before even attempting to support the vendor's product. It should come the other way around.
Maybe Mattel should in turn sue Apple for ripping off the idea!
Then the hotter sister (Nicole Eggert) moved on to "Baywatch." Moral of the story - keep an eye on hotter sister.
Looking at all of the broadbased effects that spam has --- added network traffic, open SOCKS proxy exploits, open SMTP relay exploits, trojan host takeovers, lost business time/productivity, added storage allocation --- it really is high time that the standard governing organizations expand the SMTP protocol in to a stack that includes more sophisticated mechanisms to ensure message integrity. A sender verification token of some sort. Be it a PKI check, a site certificate, a challenge/response between sender and receiver mailhost, etc.
Since supposedly the spammers can hide their tracks well perhaps whatever commercial product being spammed should be targeted by the authorities. The websites and entities in question would certainly be less likely to hook up with spammers then I would think.
Another acronym to throw out there. Implementations of the SNMP standard. That certainly opened up a can of worms for awhile there for unpatched vendor equipment which had public still listed as a valid SNMP community.
It won't if you disable Active Scripting under the IE Internet Zone. You should only have Active Scripting enabled for the Trusted Zone, so that you have to manually add sites to your 'okay' list. If you follow the recommended security model you can't launch any URL's out of Outlook. Guaranteed. I rolled out these registry changes to all of my company sites' workstations and so far so good.
All of this means that your system will be wide open for all sorts of cross-site certification and scripting 'sploits. I'd do some research if I were you, since Microsoft left the most recent slew of IE holes unpatched.
What the hell is ReadHat? Sounds like some flunky on from the "The Electric Company" kid's show.