As far as I can see, the only security is the record of the transaction.
Exactly and worse! In fact, if I set myself up as an ACH merchant, all the information needed for me to suck your bank account dry is conveniently printed on the face of every check.
If you don't catch the fraud quickly enough, it could take months to recover your money -- if ever!
Personally, I measure weight in stones and height in hands. But I have to use my left hand when measuring, as my right has swollen to gigantic proportions through use in applying all the manhood enlargement cream I've purchased through email offers. Enhancement cream notwithstanding, I still prefer to measure my "manhood" in millimeters.
I worked at a firm for 4 years. Then they decided they needed a blanket confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement because of certain customer requirements. That was all fine, but they decided to add in stuff about IP rights, conflict of interest and non-compete.
I refused to sign it as it was. This went on for two years until the company president (small firm) finally cornered me and told me to either sign it or don't show up for work on Monday.
I didn't show up for work on Monday. Instead, I faxed the contact to my attorney. When my boss called asking where I was, I told him that I was told not to come in unless I signed the contract, and that on advice of my attorney, I could not sign the contract as-is.
To make a long story short, my boss told me to get my ass into work and "we'll work out the contract." It cost me $400 to get the contract modified, of which I demanded (and received) full compensation by my employer.
I would do the same thing again in a heartbeat, although I probably wouldn't throw salt on the open wound by asking for reimbursement from a prospective employer.
As much as it sucks to have to check with an attorney before signing any legally-binding document, you are a fool to not do so first. The end result can be signifantly more painful and expensive. Just a way of doing business today.
If my experience is the norm, then the majority of ISP's don't give spam or virus filtering a passing thought. Even though there are free tools available to help reduce junk email and viruses, they don't deploy them.
I was just at a customer site on Friday because they called complaining of all the Novarg-infected email they were receiving. Their client-based antivirus was working, so they weren't infected, but I was shocked that their ISP let the virus get that far. When I called the ISP (a large regional outfit) they said they had no plans to implement either spam or virus filtering, due to the "significant cost and support burden."
Your LEC is shafting you long and hard. I'd consider shifting to fixed wireless. You're in the MidWest? Lots of open, flat land? I'd DEFINATELY consider fixed wireless.
And then push VoIP over it and shaft the LEC right back!
*MY* price is *YOUR* price too. My price is from AT&T for an MIS T1 circuit. About $800/month in single quantity for a full T1 with a service level agreement. Anywhere.
AOL, Compuserve and Prodigy did charge per minute. However, nobody would connect if they didn't have something to send or receive. When connected, they were sending and receiving.
In fact, on CompuServe, there were a number of off-line interfaces (TAPCIS is the one I recall using) that would allow you to write, read and reply to email, search for files, and queue file transfers all off-line, then just go on-line for the minimum amount of time needed to transfer the resulting data.
So the effect is you were charged per bit, its just that the per-bit rate varied according to how fast you sent and received them.
I really do work for a small ISP, and our cost for our outbound bandwidth really is $500/mbps.
Bullshit. Your cost for 1.54mpbs (T1) is $500 per month, and a 45mbps (T3) is around $8K/month. That includes the local loop and Internet access. Still, you obviously have to oversell to make a living, but the question is by how much?
This thing only works because at any given moment only 5% of our customers are downloading.
And how do you determine this? Do you actually measure utilization, or just assume? 5% = 20:1 oversell. This may have been fine for dial-up modem, but is it acceptable for always-on service?
But none of that has anything to do with the topic. ISP's believe it is acceptable to advertise always-on service that's 10x, 15x, 20x, even 100x faster than dialup, but also believe its acceptable to penalize paying subscribers for using their service as advertised.
But Microsoft doesn't put the OS on the system. The manufacturer/assembler/integrator does that from an image file that's rarely updated once engineering gets it "just right" for a particular class of PC's.
Joe Luser would have to connect to the web and download the updated CD image himself, which will take more than 20 minutes for all but the fastest cable Internet connections. During this time the system will be scanned at least 4 times by worms such as Nimda, Code.Red and MSBlast.
A new PC with XP and SP1 still requires over 30MB of downloads and 20 minutes of installation time to complete. Once again, the PC will be scanned at least 5 times by worms, unless it is unplugged from the network immediately after the downloads are complete, then it may only be scanned once or twice.
The PC ought to be configured out-of-the-box with the built-in firewall turned-on and nothing allowed into the machine except Microsoft's Windows Update. During the mini-setup, Windows should inform the user:
Access to the Internet is currently limited to Microsoft's WindowsUpdate site only
You must visit WindowsUpdate and download and install all critical updates
Once you install all missing critical updates, the Firewall Wizard will help you configure your system to allow full Internet access.
Thereafter, you must run Automatic Updates or visit WindowsUpdates at least once each month to install the latest updates
If you do not install the latest critical updates on your system within 30 days of release, the firewall will again block your system from the Internet, except for WindowsUpdates.
Free user support for WindowsUpdates and Firewall configuration are available from Microsoft via the PC-Safety hotline (1-866-PC-SAFETY)
Enterprise users can disable this protection at their own risk via group policy objects.
It sounds like you need to find a new place of employment.
Most of the ISP's I work with will unplug a customer's server from the net if the system isn't fixed within two hours.
Sounds like your company either a) has no balls, b) has no scruples, or c) has no respect from your customers (proabably due to a) and/or b)).
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Exactly and worse! In fact, if I set myself up as an ACH merchant, all the information needed for me to suck your bank account dry is conveniently printed on the face of every check.
If you don't catch the fraud quickly enough, it could take months to recover your money -- if ever!
Personally, I measure weight in stones and height in hands. But I have to use my left hand when measuring, as my right has swollen to gigantic proportions through use in applying all the manhood enlargement cream I've purchased through email offers. Enhancement cream notwithstanding, I still prefer to measure my "manhood" in millimeters.
I worked at a firm for 4 years. Then they decided they needed a blanket confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement because of certain customer requirements. That was all fine, but they decided to add in stuff about IP rights, conflict of interest and non-compete.
I refused to sign it as it was. This went on for two years until the company president (small firm) finally cornered me and told me to either sign it or don't show up for work on Monday.
I didn't show up for work on Monday. Instead, I faxed the contact to my attorney. When my boss called asking where I was, I told him that I was told not to come in unless I signed the contract, and that on advice of my attorney, I could not sign the contract as-is.
To make a long story short, my boss told me to get my ass into work and "we'll work out the contract." It cost me $400 to get the contract modified, of which I demanded (and received) full compensation by my employer.
I would do the same thing again in a heartbeat, although I probably wouldn't throw salt on the open wound by asking for reimbursement from a prospective employer.
As much as it sucks to have to check with an attorney before signing any legally-binding document, you are a fool to not do so first. The end result can be signifantly more painful and expensive. Just a way of doing business today.
If my experience is the norm, then the majority of ISP's don't give spam or virus filtering a passing thought. Even though there are free tools available to help reduce junk email and viruses, they don't deploy them.
I was just at a customer site on Friday because they called complaining of all the Novarg-infected email they were receiving. Their client-based antivirus was working, so they weren't infected, but I was shocked that their ISP let the virus get that far. When I called the ISP (a large regional outfit) they said they had no plans to implement either spam or virus filtering, due to the "significant cost and support burden."
Your LEC is shafting you long and hard. I'd consider shifting to fixed wireless. You're in the MidWest? Lots of open, flat land? I'd DEFINATELY consider fixed wireless. And then push VoIP over it and shaft the LEC right back!
*MY* price is *YOUR* price too. My price is from AT&T for an MIS T1 circuit. About $800/month in single quantity for a full T1 with a service level agreement. Anywhere.
Not a good analogy.
AOL, Compuserve and Prodigy did charge per minute. However, nobody would connect if they didn't have something to send or receive. When connected, they were sending and receiving.
In fact, on CompuServe, there were a number of off-line interfaces (TAPCIS is the one I recall using) that would allow you to write, read and reply to email, search for files, and queue file transfers all off-line, then just go on-line for the minimum amount of time needed to transfer the resulting data.
So the effect is you were charged per bit, its just that the per-bit rate varied according to how fast you sent and received them.
But none of that has anything to do with the topic. ISP's believe it is acceptable to advertise always-on service that's 10x, 15x, 20x, even 100x faster than dialup, but also believe its acceptable to penalize paying subscribers for using their service as advertised.
Joe Luser would have to connect to the web and download the updated CD image himself, which will take more than 20 minutes for all but the fastest cable Internet connections. During this time the system will be scanned at least 4 times by worms such as Nimda, Code.Red and MSBlast.
A new PC with XP and SP1 still requires over 30MB of downloads and 20 minutes of installation time to complete. Once again, the PC will be scanned at least 5 times by worms, unless it is unplugged from the network immediately after the downloads are complete, then it may only be scanned once or twice.
The PC ought to be configured out-of-the-box with the built-in firewall turned-on and nothing allowed into the machine except Microsoft's Windows Update. During the mini-setup, Windows should inform the user:
Go out and buy yourself a Linksys (or similar) broadband router for about $50 and put it between the Internet and your LAN.
Also, you may want to consider learning just a little about network security before your next project.
It sounds like you need to find a new place of employment. Most of the ISP's I work with will unplug a customer's server from the net if the system isn't fixed within two hours. Sounds like your company either a) has no balls, b) has no scruples, or c) has no respect from your customers (proabably due to a) and/or b)).