Hmm... such a winning reputation. Qwest has been hitting front page news in Nebraska for its announcement that private customer data will be marketing fodder, unless a customer goes through a lengthy opt-out process. Notification of the plan was rather obscure, using Qwest's typical legalese approach.
Nebraska regulatory folks, castrated in 1987 by the stillborn John Decamp "half-dereg" (eliminating controls over incumbants, while not opening up competition), don't know what to do. Fortunately, a sufficient base of pols and consumer activists are firing up legal challenges.
Makes you wonder why Qwest even tries to put on a friendly face - once a thief, always one.
Glad to share... I get a bit wound up when I hear the "saving children" stuff too. I've got a couple myself and they're the most important things in the world to me, but it just offends me to no end when people use them for their own political/economic gain.
Even though This Is Slashdot, and such things are unheard of here...
Oh really? No mysticism on/.? Well, I guess it has been awhile since I've read a JonKatz post...
back up that "evil RF rays" quote with a reference. Was it a US senator or a state senator?
Sure thing: Missouri state rep. Denny Meridith, and Missouri House Bill 999 (2001, tabled).
Full text of the bill is available here. Here's a nice quote from the bill about saving children from death rays:
"It is the intent of the general assembly, due to possibly detrimental health effects, including neurological damage in children under twelve years of age and cancer, caused by the proximity of telecommunication siting towers for wireless telephone service and chronic exposure to electromagnetic fields and radio frequency (RF) emissions generated by such towers, to permit meaningful participation by adjacent landowners in the location of such towers."
He's seeking more sponsors for this year and apparently will focus more on the eyesore nature of towers since his "saving kids from evil RF rays" junk science ploy got trashed and his telephone incumbant backers were embarrassed.
...treat that as a utility, thus which may be handled by a city, or by a small company or the like
I'd be very cautious about the "handled by a city" part - this is often done via a municipal arrangement which sounds well intentioned, but ends up really mucking things up.
In my parts, there are a few municipals that were chartered initially to provide a utility (usually electrical and/or water). Because of the way municipals are managed, the lack of accountability to the city (you typically can't elect/fire them, you can't affect their budget, etc.), they tend to normalize as a mini-monopoly agency with no profit focus and no accountability.
Most in our parts have taken on service after service due to the eagerness for more revenues, power and control. They'll add natural gas service, propane delivery, fuel oil, then migrate into communications: cellular, telephone, cable TV and broadband Internet.
Unfortunately, as they're not market-driven entities, they don't have the natural correcting forces that ensure efficiency. They make up for inefficiency by subsidizing them in their other monopoly areas - e.g. electric rates.
One municipality in the area has hiked their electrical rates to about $0.12/kilowatt hour, whereas the electricity offered just outside town by a coop is $0.06 (with discount programs offering $0.03).
The impact to the town doesn't stop there, either. All of the municipal's services are lousy, but since they have such an established base and the ability to subsidize from their other products, competitors have simply stayed away. The result is quite comperable to the goals of socialism: everyone is equally miserable.
So... get yourself some competitors in your community. Make it easy for them to get in, and don't buy from them if they are lousy. But don't lock yourself into one solution either through the error of municipals or by denying entry via towers and right of ways.
are going to do as much in their power in order to make sure only their service is used over their wire.
Not only is this very true, but the same people are making sure their wire is the only way to get any service to your home or business.
We've seen numerous legislative efforts pop up to block tower construction projects and were surprised at the apparently sudden interest in "protecting property values," "saving children from evil RF rays" (as claimed by a Missouri congressional fool) and "preserving the environment."
What seemed odd was that while communication towers of any height were targeted, high power transmission lines were not. If RF "evil waves", property values and environmental issues were the focus, you'd expect transmission lines to be at the front of the list.
Then we started to see an interesting parallel: the same congressional sponsors were receiving outstanding support from incumbant local telephone companies. In one case, research briefs used by the congresscritter were prepared by a southwestern bell staffer.
The conclusion? Incumbant telephone companies were attempting to kill cellular and fixed wireless broadband competition, while pushing legislation in various states claiming that there was no way they could upgrade their ancient network without taxpayer money.
Once a monopoly, always a monopoly, apparently. The best we can do is watch these corrupt pols and work to throw them out (or at least expose them) when we discover they're using their position to redirect our tax money for the protection of these incumbants.
E-mail went to and fro for a bit - they would not give me the money
Hilarious, and yet so not surprising.
I had a similar situation with a confidentiality and noncompete agreement. I received the sucker a full year after I had been hired by the telecom company as a senior exec (this was better than the time I was handed one to sign before I could receive my earned paycheck in the boss's other hand... quite illegal and unethical.).
Usually these things are negotiated up front and the employer should expect to have to offer an employment contract and pay for the term that isn't void unless the employee commits fraud. The rationale here is that if you're expected to be unemployable and silent for a year or so after leaving the company, the company receives a benefit from this and should pay for it. Upper level execs get this deal all the time if they're any good.
Not only was the document a real dog (prepared by a junior attorney / personal friend to the CEO who'd never worked in corporate law until being hired), and no employment contract offered, but it had hilarious noncompete and confidentiality provisions like: "for the consideration of $10, you will agree that if the company can establish that you've disclosed confidential information outside of the company, you agree to damages of $500,000 per incident." Lovely.
I like the "where's my $10" - in my case, not only were they missing the ten bucks, but they still hadn't payed a salary balloon payment that represented a quarter years pay. I had my attorney whip up a quick letter saying "we would be pleased to review and negotiate this agreement with the company; my client will require your authorization that he will be reimbursed the amount of $185/hour for my services performed through this negotiation." The old "it wouldn't be fair for me to allow you to be put into greater debt to me" line worked well here too.
Tossed that letter back to the lowly HR weasel (who rarely get authorized to spend money) and never heard back. Every time someone asked why I hadn't signed, I referred them to the HR weasel and asked if they'd please hurry up on the authorization:-)
Incidentally, that company went chap-13 during dot-com bust and stiffed everyone on payroll, back wages, etc, but kept enough $$$ to keep the loser attorney and the founders harassing fools that were stupid enough to sign.
Best advice:
- severance should be lump payment of your full salary amount for the duration of your noncompete period
- failure to make the lump sum at termination excuses you from the noncompete *and* confidentility provision (the latter will scare them but you'll probably still be held to state laws which are usually pretty strict)
- if they want to get creative on you, make sure your attorney cost is on their dollar. otherwise they'll keep running up the tab until you give in
Anyone remember that period in the 80's when they tried to charge a license fee for their _runtime libraries_?
There's a flashback. That's when the company I worked for yanked development on Paradox and went to Powerbuilder (and later Access). Borland lost us for certain, and I recall a few other developers in town I knew at the time moved the same way. It just made no sense to our bosses at the time to have to license per seat on what was "our executable" to them - you didn't do that with any compiler product and most IT management back then came from the programming school where your compiled code was yours, not the compiler vendors.
And where's Borland in that market today (after having a sizeable lead)? Guess that's yet another advantage of hiring a Harvard MBA...
I'd expect 24/7 pay-per-view access $10 and up per pay-per-view item... probably $200-$300 worth of use.
24/7 porno A few nights a week at $8 per movie - another $100 or more.
any On-Demand movie I want for free Another $100 or more...
and every single channel they can cram in the cable band. Licensing and fees to the subscription channel providers = perhaps $200 or more depending on your market.
I also expect an unrestricted U/L and D/L line on my Internet connection
UUNET/Sprint T1 = $800/month...
the ability to put up a server See above (included)
tech support for any computer problem I have
Reasonable rate of $65/hour, assuming you're calling only during office hours. Reasonable estimate of 5 hours/month = around $250...
and a 99.9% guaranteed uptime on the line SLA for UUNET/Sprint. See above. Definitely business grade T1 service.
And I want caller ID, call waiting, every single other feature on my phone, the ability to block business (telemarketer) calls, and the best voicemail system known to man.
At least another $100.
TOTAL BILL: $2,000+ / month
And you want this for $200? What the hell are you paying with, Flooz? You'll probably have similar results...
*scoove*
But I wanna pony!
Re:Did someone hire Sculley back?
on
Apple PDA?
·
· Score: 2
Abandond? WebObjects? when did this happen...
Apparently Apple must still/sell/ the product. Support was another matter for us. When we bought it (for a nice pile of cash) back in 97, we discovered the product didn't work and were constantly given stories about how the developers were working on a fix. Boy was there buyers remorse in that case - especially after the strong sales pitch, followed with a "well yes, it doesn't work. we know that but can't help you presently" line. (I'm racking my brains trying to remember what problem we had with it, but I'm just the idiot that authorized the purchase rather than the development team that ended up battling with it. I'm just remembering the consistently dishonest sales group and totally incompetent, unresponsive support organization - they made Microsoft support look like gods). Add that to a few months of meetings with a board that kept on wondering why I wasted money on this failure (they warned against Apple in the first place and we selected it against better judgement).
After a call with our rep who had the latest excuse, our impression was that the product was the latest stillborn Apple abandonware. We shifted development to Microsoft's platform and nailed the product in six months.
If WebObjects is still in use, it's got to be a testiment to how stubbornly stupid Apple users are... a group I was a proud member of for way too long as well.
Let em hang along with Be.
*scoove*
Re:Did someone hire Sculley back?
on
Apple PDA?
·
· Score: 1
Criticism of Apple = Flamebait, eh?
Looks like we need to yank the mod points from Apple freaks.
Bernie has done all of us slashdotters a great benefit by helping instill a meme that simplifies our lives. Just think of the ways we can save time now by immortalizing his name when we refer to disease of high-esteem, nonexistent competency fools that bark empty threats every time their useless lives are recognized for what they are.
For example, someone sent you a totally bogus loser resume?
"Oh geez, get rid of that resume. It's a Bernie Shifman."
Spending the weekend cleaning up a totally fscked up wiring or server job? "Yea, I'm working late on a Bernie Shifman job."
Bernie deserves to be imortalized as the/. poster boy for arrogant incompetence.
*scoove*
p.s. Anyone hear if Bernie's learned of his/. fame? Hey Bernie, your fifteen minutes are ticking!
Did someone hire Sculley back?
on
Apple PDA?
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Apple "we're totally getting out of the PDA business for good" is getting back after trashing the Newton and permanantly pissing off customers like me? And then there was WebObjects (or whatever the heck it was called) that we bought for a nice chunk of change that never really worked and finally got abandoned. Oh, we ran A/UX too... And I should have learned when they dumped the IIgs line.
Yup, nobody abandons customers better than Apple. Nice to see they've got another "lack of focus" they'll be able to kill off a few more customers with.
SacredNaCl writes: I then spent the next 4 months waiting for SWB to throw a switch
Yup... sad that paying off congress critters is better business than hustling to make your customer happy.
Living in Missouri, you've got another problem with some paid flake state representative that wants to ban towers (Missouri HR 999) used to deliver wireless service because "they threaten children." (Tell me, are you Missourians putting playgrounds under the broadcast towers or what?)
Seriously, this critter must have been seeking the junk science award of the year - no explanation how these "evil radio rays" harm the kiddies or anything. Since the bill got tabled due to the junk science approach, Merideth said he'll reintroduce it next year without the "evil kiddie rays" stuff so his opposition doesn't have any substance to argue against.
Oh, and guess who got campaign contributions from the local phone/wireline incumbants who have an interest in making sure there's no rural wireless phone service, wireless broadband, etc?
*scoove*
Remember this holiday season: Friends don't let JonKatz post.
mshiltonj writes...
There will have to be an all-wireless solution. Until then, grab your ankles -- but don't hold your breath.
God I wish I could post & mod at the same time. Need some +++ on your post.
I keep reading posts that presumably are on opposite ends of the political spectrum - e.g. believing the only alternatives are "commercial-free government net" and "big mega corp monolith net." If you understand how wireline broadband works, the two are the same.
A few basic things to understand about getting wire from my business to your house:
1. I need to suck up to the local pols to obtain right of ways. This means lots of lobbying, campaign contributions, and all the usual nice words for bribes. (I've done my time hanging out with lobbyists and pols - I find watching video of bambi being shredded by wolves much less painful).
2. The pols aren't idiots. They know that Mr. Megacorp would blow them away in a second if they had the chance, so when they give the right of way or whatever regulatory approval is required to allow the wires and service, the pol sticks in terms that continue to require the megacorp to pay into the system. (This was Microsoft's major blunder, not their aggressive anti-consumer behavior, in the eyes of the Fed and the hungry little states). Understand: both operate via 'screw or be screwed' - this usually doesn't result in consumer-friendly markets.
3. The pols and the megacorps reach a nice state of symbiosis, both feasting away on the public. It's a rather stable system that unfortunately requires you, the fat and stupid consumer, to be the food source. But hey, you got your stability and your consumer goods. You're happy and couldn't care less.
So here's a Slashdot primer: when you see posts positioning big corps vs. government (e.g. your run of the mill JonKatz blather), recognize that someone is trying to get you to not notice that you're being set up to be suckered.
In the rare event you don't like being the host to this predatory nonsense, try supporting smaller companies that do a good job. They're the only ones that really give a damn about you...
So how would we replace the university backbones that began the internet?
Eek. Please check into the NSFNET NAP/ANS/Al Gore scam before wishing this monster on us again.
NSFNET was never supposed to evolve into a competitive Internet. Ask any insider about what arranging peering with NSF was like back 'in the day' NSFNET was still alive. Learn about PRD (policy route database) and how ANS used it to attempt to become the Ma Bell of the Internet. Read about how then Senator Al Gore had his fingers in everything, working hard to transition the net to friends.
I don't mean to come across as a bell hater - they're mostly ineffective where I play these days since they have no viable competition to screw and simply flop around like a mostly dead fish absent competition - but seriously, the only thing worse than a corrupt monopoly is a government-mandated corrupt monopoly.
What's very interesting is many of these companies own the means to connect to the Internet
and obtained that exclusive ownership through rather nefarious means. A former Southworstern Bell friend used to brag about how the entire provisioning platform for CLEC/DSL providers to issue orders thru SWBell was a single fax machine (set on the slowest receive speed, and frequently out of paper for days).
No phone orders. No electronic order system. No email requests. One crummy fax machine that was usually down. "Golly Mrs. Jones, I can't understand why your CLEC DSL provider can't get you service. Southworstern Bell would gladly get it for you in a few days if you'd switch your order!"
On my home turf, USWorst beat the colocation orders by stuffing hundreds of desk job folks into recently relocated quarters inside the central office. Imagine freezing your butt off next to a 5ESS switch just so some higher up exec can keep the CLECs out of town. "Sorry, no space left in the central office... wish we could help ya!"
Top that off with their hit squad that serviced cities like Minneapolis, Des Moines, Omaha, etc. that "oopsed" on ISP dedicated lines. "Gosh, did you say that T1 you've been runnin was supposed to be ESF/B8ZS? Golly... looks like it's AMI/D4 now. Guess you'll have to reorder your uplink connection... should be about 35 days by the time we get to fixin it. I could flip the little switch on the CSU/DSU, but hey, I'd be breakin the rules!" (Apparently payola is expected or else it's 'company policy' for you)
I had everything from lost orders (more than 50%), competitive poaching (request a quote to a customer location and discover USWorst sales people getting the lead passed on), intentional interference with hunt groups (killing hunt #2 out of 200+ lines), fraudulant billing putting companies from other states onto my bill (and being told if I didn't pay it by 5 PM, I'd be shut down), etc.
Only the city's top law firm, vicious attorneys and nonstop publicity about their illegal aggression kept us above water. Our competitors who couldn't afford $50K/month for legal fees to combat the LEC? They didn't last long at all.
Combine that with oversight from our elected officials like Louisiana's Tauzin (an EFF watchlist critter and highly effective open Internet killer), and there should be no surprise. We've demanded a spam-favoring Baby Bell monopoly Internet through our votes.
Umm and you really expect to be able to pay residential cable modem rates for that kind of use?
Sounds like the folks in coach are starting to complain.. Seriously tho, why should I pay UUNET/Sprint/etc. $850/mo. for a DS1 when Joe Cablemodem is getting six times the service for $30/month?
Something's got to give, and I doubt it'll be the business price...
I'm banking my money on two Satellite-modem up-and-comers.
Err.. not quite. Having built satellite IP networks, there are limitations that will never permit satellite to come close to ground service. Inherent latency, finite slice of frequency shared across the entire north american continent (vs. shared in a 2-3 mile radius), etc. make satellite a facility of LAST RESORT.
And then there's the whole cost of putting POPs in space, when they do just fine on the ground on a tower.
Really, unless you're in Western Wyoming, there's no advantage with satellite.
Seriously, when I mod, I make sure my own political views don't result in a desire to mod down. But there are those that use moderation to supress opposing viewpoints - that's why it's important to Metamod.
All I can figure is that JonKatz has too many mod points...
I found this part of the release rather interesting:
Libery Alliance conference attendants noted an unusual episode at the conference where Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison showed up midway with a crew of Oracle employees chanting "Oracle today makes Osama go away!"
Later, Ellison offered his company's support and participation in the alliance efforts.
"Oracle would be proud to donate our leading Oracle database software to the alliance project," said Ellison. "To us, it's a matter of killing too birds with a single stone. With the power of Oracle 9i, Liberty's registration information would also serve as a national citizen ID database, protecting all of us from the evils of terrorism."
White House spokespersons had no comment on Oracle's previous offer of its database for a national registration system.
dropping posts is what made a slander lawsuit against Prodigy successful
Likewise, the Compuserve suit of the same era ended up with a Compuserve victory because unlike Prodigy, they didn't guarantee the quality of the environment by filtering content.
Course, I'm still waiting for the proxy/filter lawsuits to start cropping up. "My kids school allowed them to see pr0n so I'm suing for $250 million" stuff...
*scoove*
Surgeon General's Warning: Internet contains porn, violence, bad language, lousy spelling, unreliable service providers and may cause addiction or offense. Turn off your PC and stick to NPR if you may be offended."
maybe my objectivist inclinations are showing, but i really don't like the classification of open source into capitalist and communal.
In fact, what you describe as capitalist (giving software away for cheap/free by making money on the service) is what the market would refer to as pure-play. ALL you do is open source with its revenue hook, be it support, packaging, advertising, whatever. (Pure play open source is counterintuitive by definition because you really can't have a pure play that has a price of $0 - something else has to be the focus).
The alternate model, as long as we're looking at open source as something more than a hobby (my bias, but the article discussed doesn't address hobby programming), is open source as complimentary technology to a business that achieves its revenue from another focus, e.g. manufacturing, telecom, etc.
Like I mentioned, there is a problem classifying any open source effort as pure play. Technically Redhat and other 'pure plays' are actually service businesses with open source as the complimentary technology - and service or support may or may not be the right focus for them.
So shouldn't our discussion focus on what primary focuses work well with open source as a complimentary technology - apparently service/support doesn't work well all the time. Advertising seems to work none of the time (my bias). Since open source = $0 at the cash register for the code itself, there/has/ to be something else to pay the bills.
Understand that for many of us, open source is intelligence we share with other smaller companies to fight the evil incumbants in our industry. Like Afghani expelling Soviet occupation, we'll share weapons, intelligence, whatever to beat them out. It's a competitive advantage.
If we're wise, we'll be happy with our own territories when we've succeeded, since it is unlikely we'll be able to defeat each other without weakening our home turf.
And open source even has a value for the big boys. Release open source that destroys a competitor's pure play proprietary software focus (e.g. StarOffice or other hardware vendors trying to knife Microsoft attempts). Release open source that creates a demand for your product (e.g. AT&T research doing VNC, which chews up a lot more bandwidth and requires faster links). Release open source that makes your technology more usable.
Some interesting points, though I disagree with many of them. Let me contribute a first-hand "I successfully funded a telecom company in this god-awful market" perspectives, sharing what worked and didn't for us and how it relates to open source:
The economy is in the shitter.
Yes, and even more so, big VC-funded entities. More on this in a sec.
This whole article is nearly pointless. Yes, I found it very state-focused, static. Declaring the obvious, but totally missing the point and trend.
Open-source (the business model) was circling the drain before any other sector of industry
Open source, as a sole business focus in itself, was (especially when VC funded, again). Open source as a tool for the post-dotcomveeceedisaster, is actually growing stronger.
Because the high-flying VC money and gold-rush speculation that drove those fat boomtime salaries are what really paid for open-source.
I'd say you're half right. Look at my business: we're a rural broadband provider, up against a couple of VC creations. All of them are gasping for air, desparate for yet another round of money. Apparently $60+ million wasn't enough to pay the Lucent consultants and Harvard MBAs for a year.
Meanwhile, the lean and mean guerrilla companies like ours are growing (mostly because cashflow is easier when you don't have the $60 million monster to feed, not to mention all the VC opinions that come along and feel they have a right to tell you how to operate, who to hire, etc.).
not selling services to free products.
No, but consider open source as an element of (pardon the buzzword bingo word choice) "coopetition" (ack). Look at tools like MRTG, netsaint, netstumbler, etc. We're developing our own tools that will be released as well - they'll never be successfully understood by the VC and Fortune 1000 beasts (e.g. Qwest), since they "don't come from Lucent" and aren't backed by a big name firm.
Instead, we'll end up sharing with other guerrillas, each attacking the telecom beasts from a thousand locations. Once we've dealt with them, it'll be interesting to see how well we play together. I do believe we're seeing an interesting transition here though.
VC's had a few fundamental assumptions that the dot-bomb proved to be flawed, including:
o synergies: more is better. Compaq + HP > Compaq & HP. Economies of scale, leveraged buying, etc. We're finding out that Compaq + HP instead equals Compaq + HP + competing incompatible political structures, new focus on internal battles rather than fighting the outside enemy, balkanization, etc.
o startup + $100 million = a mature company: Why else would you hire a Harvard MBA - I've dealt with dozens of them and can attest to not a single one understanding startup dynamics. They're worse than useless - a bunch of British officers fighting the American revolutionary war. Wrong methods. Wrong scope. Wrong level of granularity applied to project/process management. Only good at spending money and getting out before things blow apart. But VCs thought the presence of $100+ million in funding made things post-startup (since startups don't typically have those kinds of financials!).
So what the hell does this have to do with open source?
The pure-play open source death being reported here and being discussed by underpaidISPTech is a VC anomoly - in south park language, a monkey with three asses. They weren't meant to survive; they were meant to have a high IPO exit that the VC would make a killing on. Everyone was part of that party, and the shills buying this stock finally figured out (dotbomb) and stopped playing.
But open source as a strategic tool for post-dotbomb companies is just beginning. Think about it: I've built mediation systems that are light years ahead of Lucent's Billdats (which comes with a $1.25 million+ pricetag, not including hardware or support) for the cost of Redhat, a $2,000 Pentium III and a week's worth of Perl programming by my team.
If you're in the tech world and want to end up a winner, you've got to read Christensen's Innovator's Dilemna and understand that open source, Linux and such are all disruptive, "trivial technologies." They may not be pure plays for a long time, or forever, but they probably are going to cause significant upheaval within industries.
BTW, in the post-dotbomb, there is compelling evidence that the "all companies must consolidate and get large or else die" may also be a fallacy, primarily created out of the SEC investment models that favor public market investment (and restrict private company investment out of antiquated investor "protection" laws, interestingly supported by... you guessed... large corporations seeking to tie up the capital markets).
Build a company that makes a profit. Don't worry about size. We'll see how this plays out...
*scoove*
I neglected to mention Step #3 that is particularly helpful inducing noise into the email spam channels:
Step 3. Develop noise email identities, particularly focusing on notably abusive spam domains. My favorite here is someuser@chinanet.cn.net (make up your own value for someuser - common names like admin, hostmaster, root, etc. are good to try) - per my experience with Spamcop assessments, Chinanet is about the most frequent spam abuser (and they almost always lie about their email origin identity). These guys literally provide safe harbor to spam terrorists.
Sure, it's fun to route chinanet IP's to a null interface (and probably wise too - countless rogue script-laden emails that fire up a browser and open you up to numerous issues come from chinanet solicitions).
Obviously, chinanet likes spam - so be sure to put them down to receive some!
One effective way to deal with this is maillist pollution with the Jam the Spammers Maillist Game.
Step 1. Start filling out online registrations (probably something you already avoid) and seek out folks that are looking for this type of marketing data (e.g. Radio Shack, Best Buy).
Step 2. Jam their marketing radar with noise. Noise can be incorrect zip codes for you, creative names and addresses, even brand new people that live in exotic places. For instance, I've always figured that the post office at Manville Wyoming must be quite bored, being in the least populated county of the least populated state. Zip code is 82227, which makes it easy to remember. And best of all, General Delivery helps your mailman by letting him toss the junkmail in a tall pile that can be left for a long time. (For a pretty picture of Wyoming's Niobrara county, see this site.)
Remember, the more garbage you dump into their maillists, the less effective those mail lists are that they're selling.
Looking at an recent maillist quote for my metropolitan area, InfoUSA wants $5,000 for a list of businesses complete with fax, email, etc. Imagine how frustrated list buyers get when they discover half of these leads are garbage. The greater the background noise, the less effective the marketing campaign, and the more likely other means will be sought in locating customers.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm... such a winning reputation. Qwest has been hitting front page news in Nebraska for its announcement that private customer data will be marketing fodder, unless a customer goes through a lengthy opt-out process. Notification of the plan was rather obscure, using Qwest's typical legalese approach.
Nebraska regulatory folks, castrated in 1987 by the stillborn John Decamp "half-dereg" (eliminating controls over incumbants, while not opening up competition), don't know what to do. Fortunately, a sufficient base of pols and consumer activists are firing up legal challenges.
Makes you wonder why Qwest even tries to put on a friendly face - once a thief, always one.
*scoove*
Glad to share... I get a bit wound up when I hear the "saving children" stuff too. I've got a couple myself and they're the most important things in the world to me, but it just offends me to no end when people use them for their own political/economic gain.
*scoove*
Even though This Is Slashdot, and such things are unheard of here...
/.? Well, I guess it has been awhile since I've read a JonKatz post...
Oh really? No mysticism on
back up that "evil RF rays" quote with a reference. Was it a US senator or a state senator?
Sure thing: Missouri state rep. Denny Meridith, and Missouri House Bill 999 (2001, tabled).
Full text of the bill is available here. Here's a nice quote from the bill about saving children from death rays:
"It is the intent of the general assembly, due to possibly detrimental health effects, including neurological damage in children under twelve years of age and cancer, caused by the proximity of telecommunication siting towers for wireless telephone service and chronic exposure to electromagnetic fields and radio frequency (RF) emissions generated by such towers, to permit meaningful participation by adjacent landowners in the location of such towers."
He's seeking more sponsors for this year and apparently will focus more on the eyesore nature of towers since his "saving kids from evil RF rays" junk science ploy got trashed and his telephone incumbant backers were embarrassed.
*scoove*
...treat that as a utility, thus which may be handled by a city, or by a small company or the like
I'd be very cautious about the "handled by a city" part - this is often done via a municipal arrangement which sounds well intentioned, but ends up really mucking things up.
In my parts, there are a few municipals that were chartered initially to provide a utility (usually electrical and/or water). Because of the way municipals are managed, the lack of accountability to the city (you typically can't elect/fire them, you can't affect their budget, etc.), they tend to normalize as a mini-monopoly agency with no profit focus and no accountability.
Most in our parts have taken on service after service due to the eagerness for more revenues, power and control. They'll add natural gas service, propane delivery, fuel oil, then migrate into communications: cellular, telephone, cable TV and broadband Internet.
Unfortunately, as they're not market-driven entities, they don't have the natural correcting forces that ensure efficiency. They make up for inefficiency by subsidizing them in their other monopoly areas - e.g. electric rates.
One municipality in the area has hiked their electrical rates to about $0.12/kilowatt hour, whereas the electricity offered just outside town by a coop is $0.06 (with discount programs offering $0.03).
The impact to the town doesn't stop there, either. All of the municipal's services are lousy, but since they have such an established base and the ability to subsidize from their other products, competitors have simply stayed away. The result is quite comperable to the goals of socialism: everyone is equally miserable.
So... get yourself some competitors in your community. Make it easy for them to get in, and don't buy from them if they are lousy. But don't lock yourself into one solution either through the error of municipals or by denying entry via towers and right of ways.
*scoove*
are going to do as much in their power in order to make sure only their service is used over their wire.
Not only is this very true, but the same people are making sure their wire is the only way to get any service to your home or business.
We've seen numerous legislative efforts pop up to block tower construction projects and were surprised at the apparently sudden interest in "protecting property values," "saving children from evil RF rays" (as claimed by a Missouri congressional fool) and "preserving the environment."
What seemed odd was that while communication towers of any height were targeted, high power transmission lines were not. If RF "evil waves", property values and environmental issues were the focus, you'd expect transmission lines to be at the front of the list.
Then we started to see an interesting parallel: the same congressional sponsors were receiving outstanding support from incumbant local telephone companies. In one case, research briefs used by the congresscritter were prepared by a southwestern bell staffer.
The conclusion? Incumbant telephone companies were attempting to kill cellular and fixed wireless broadband competition, while pushing legislation in various states claiming that there was no way they could upgrade their ancient network without taxpayer money.
Once a monopoly, always a monopoly, apparently. The best we can do is watch these corrupt pols and work to throw them out (or at least expose them) when we discover they're using their position to redirect our tax money for the protection of these incumbants.
*scoove*
E-mail went to and fro for a bit - they would not give me the money
Hilarious, and yet so not surprising.
I had a similar situation with a confidentiality and noncompete agreement. I received the sucker a full year after I had been hired by the telecom company as a senior exec (this was better than the time I was handed one to sign before I could receive my earned paycheck in the boss's other hand... quite illegal and unethical.).
Usually these things are negotiated up front and the employer should expect to have to offer an employment contract and pay for the term that isn't void unless the employee commits fraud. The rationale here is that if you're expected to be unemployable and silent for a year or so after leaving the company, the company receives a benefit from this and should pay for it. Upper level execs get this deal all the time if they're any good.
Not only was the document a real dog (prepared by a junior attorney / personal friend to the CEO who'd never worked in corporate law until being hired), and no employment contract offered, but it had hilarious noncompete and confidentiality provisions like: "for the consideration of $10, you will agree that if the company can establish that you've disclosed confidential information outside of the company, you agree to damages of $500,000 per incident." Lovely.
I like the "where's my $10" - in my case, not only were they missing the ten bucks, but they still hadn't payed a salary balloon payment that represented a quarter years pay. I had my attorney whip up a quick letter saying "we would be pleased to review and negotiate this agreement with the company; my client will require your authorization that he will be reimbursed the amount of $185/hour for my services performed through this negotiation." The old "it wouldn't be fair for me to allow you to be put into greater debt to me" line worked well here too.
Tossed that letter back to the lowly HR weasel (who rarely get authorized to spend money) and never heard back. Every time someone asked why I hadn't signed, I referred them to the HR weasel and asked if they'd please hurry up on the authorization:-)
Incidentally, that company went chap-13 during dot-com bust and stiffed everyone on payroll, back wages, etc, but kept enough $$$ to keep the loser attorney and the founders harassing fools that were stupid enough to sign.
Best advice:
- severance should be lump payment of your full salary amount for the duration of your noncompete period
- failure to make the lump sum at termination excuses you from the noncompete *and* confidentility provision (the latter will scare them but you'll probably still be held to state laws which are usually pretty strict)
- if they want to get creative on you, make sure your attorney cost is on their dollar. otherwise they'll keep running up the tab until you give in
*scoove*
Anyone remember that period in the 80's when they tried to charge a license fee for their _runtime libraries_?
There's a flashback. That's when the company I worked for yanked development on Paradox and went to Powerbuilder (and later Access). Borland lost us for certain, and I recall a few other developers in town I knew at the time moved the same way. It just made no sense to our bosses at the time to have to license per seat on what was "our executable" to them - you didn't do that with any compiler product and most IT management back then came from the programming school where your compiled code was yours, not the compiler vendors.
And where's Borland in that market today (after having a sizeable lead)? Guess that's yet another advantage of hiring a Harvard MBA...
*scoove*
I'd expect 24/7 pay-per-view access
$10 and up per pay-per-view item... probably $200-$300 worth of use.
24/7 porno
A few nights a week at $8 per movie - another $100 or more.
any On-Demand movie I want for free
Another $100 or more...
and every single channel they can cram in the cable band.
Licensing and fees to the subscription channel providers = perhaps $200 or more depending on your market.
I also expect an unrestricted U/L and D/L line on my Internet connection
UUNET/Sprint T1 = $800/month...
the ability to put up a server
See above (included)
tech support for any computer problem I have
Reasonable rate of $65/hour, assuming you're calling only during office hours. Reasonable estimate of 5 hours/month = around $250...
and a 99.9% guaranteed uptime on the line
SLA for UUNET/Sprint. See above. Definitely business grade T1 service.
And I want caller ID, call waiting, every single other feature on my phone, the ability to block business (telemarketer) calls, and the best voicemail system known to man.
At least another $100.
TOTAL BILL: $2,000+ / month
And you want this for $200? What the hell are you paying with, Flooz? You'll probably have similar results...
*scoove*
But I wanna pony!
Abandond? WebObjects? when did this happen...
/sell/ the product. Support was another matter for us. When we bought it (for a nice pile of cash) back in 97, we discovered the product didn't work and were constantly given stories about how the developers were working on a fix. Boy was there buyers remorse in that case - especially after the strong sales pitch, followed with a "well yes, it doesn't work. we know that but can't help you presently" line. (I'm racking my brains trying to remember what problem we had with it, but I'm just the idiot that authorized the purchase rather than the development team that ended up battling with it. I'm just remembering the consistently dishonest sales group and totally incompetent, unresponsive support organization - they made Microsoft support look like gods). Add that to a few months of meetings with a board that kept on wondering why I wasted money on this failure (they warned against Apple in the first place and we selected it against better judgement).
Apparently Apple must still
After a call with our rep who had the latest excuse, our impression was that the product was the latest stillborn Apple abandonware. We shifted development to Microsoft's platform and nailed the product in six months.
If WebObjects is still in use, it's got to be a testiment to how stubbornly stupid Apple users are... a group I was a proud member of for way too long as well.
Let em hang along with Be.
*scoove*
Criticism of Apple = Flamebait, eh?
Looks like we need to yank the mod points from Apple freaks.
*scoove*
Bernie has done all of us slashdotters a great benefit by helping instill a meme that simplifies our lives. Just think of the ways we can save time now by immortalizing his name when we refer to disease of high-esteem, nonexistent competency fools that bark empty threats every time their useless lives are recognized for what they are.
/. poster boy for arrogant incompetence.
/. fame? Hey Bernie, your fifteen minutes are ticking!
For example, someone sent you a totally bogus loser resume?
"Oh geez, get rid of that resume. It's a Bernie Shifman."
Spending the weekend cleaning up a totally fscked up wiring or server job? "Yea, I'm working late on a Bernie Shifman job."
Bernie deserves to be imortalized as the
*scoove*
p.s. Anyone hear if Bernie's learned of his
Apple "we're totally getting out of the PDA business for good" is getting back after trashing the Newton and permanantly pissing off customers like me? And then there was WebObjects (or whatever the heck it was called) that we bought for a nice chunk of change that never really worked and finally got abandoned. Oh, we ran A/UX too... And I should have learned when they dumped the IIgs line.
Yup, nobody abandons customers better than Apple. Nice to see they've got another "lack of focus" they'll be able to kill off a few more customers with.
*scoove*
SacredNaCl writes: I then spent the next 4 months waiting for SWB to throw a switch
Yup... sad that paying off congress critters is better business than hustling to make your customer happy.
Living in Missouri, you've got another problem with some paid flake state representative that wants to ban towers (Missouri HR 999) used to deliver wireless service because "they threaten children." (Tell me, are you Missourians putting playgrounds under the broadcast towers or what?)
Seriously, this critter must have been seeking the junk science award of the year - no explanation how these "evil radio rays" harm the kiddies or anything. Since the bill got tabled due to the junk science approach, Merideth said he'll reintroduce it next year without the "evil kiddie rays" stuff so his opposition doesn't have any substance to argue against.
Oh, and guess who got campaign contributions from the local phone/wireline incumbants who have an interest in making sure there's no rural wireless phone service, wireless broadband, etc?
*scoove*
Remember this holiday season: Friends don't let JonKatz post.
mshiltonj writes...
There will have to be an all-wireless solution. Until then, grab your ankles -- but don't hold your breath.
God I wish I could post & mod at the same time. Need some +++ on your post.
I keep reading posts that presumably are on opposite ends of the political spectrum - e.g. believing the only alternatives are "commercial-free government net" and "big mega corp monolith net." If you understand how wireline broadband works, the two are the same.
A few basic things to understand about getting wire from my business to your house:
1. I need to suck up to the local pols to obtain right of ways. This means lots of lobbying, campaign contributions, and all the usual nice words for bribes. (I've done my time hanging out with lobbyists and pols - I find watching video of bambi being shredded by wolves much less painful).
2. The pols aren't idiots. They know that Mr. Megacorp would blow them away in a second if they had the chance, so when they give the right of way or whatever regulatory approval is required to allow the wires and service, the pol sticks in terms that continue to require the megacorp to pay into the system. (This was Microsoft's major blunder, not their aggressive anti-consumer behavior, in the eyes of the Fed and the hungry little states). Understand: both operate via 'screw or be screwed' - this usually doesn't result in consumer-friendly markets.
3. The pols and the megacorps reach a nice state of symbiosis, both feasting away on the public. It's a rather stable system that unfortunately requires you, the fat and stupid consumer, to be the food source. But hey, you got your stability and your consumer goods. You're happy and couldn't care less.
So here's a Slashdot primer: when you see posts positioning big corps vs. government (e.g. your run of the mill JonKatz blather), recognize that someone is trying to get you to not notice that you're being set up to be suckered.
In the rare event you don't like being the host to this predatory nonsense, try supporting smaller companies that do a good job. They're the only ones that really give a damn about you...
*scoove*
So how would we replace the university backbones that began the internet?
Eek. Please check into the NSFNET NAP/ANS/Al Gore scam before wishing this monster on us again.
NSFNET was never supposed to evolve into a competitive Internet. Ask any insider about what arranging peering with NSF was like back 'in the day' NSFNET was still alive. Learn about PRD (policy route database) and how ANS used it to attempt to become the Ma Bell of the Internet. Read about how then Senator Al Gore had his fingers in everything, working hard to transition the net to friends.
I don't mean to come across as a bell hater - they're mostly ineffective where I play these days since they have no viable competition to screw and simply flop around like a mostly dead fish absent competition - but seriously, the only thing worse than a corrupt monopoly is a government-mandated corrupt monopoly.
*scoove*
What's very interesting is many of these companies own the means to connect to the Internet
and obtained that exclusive ownership through rather nefarious means. A former Southworstern Bell friend used to brag about how the entire provisioning platform for CLEC/DSL providers to issue orders thru SWBell was a single fax machine (set on the slowest receive speed, and frequently out of paper for days).
No phone orders. No electronic order system. No email requests. One crummy fax machine that was usually down. "Golly Mrs. Jones, I can't understand why your CLEC DSL provider can't get you service. Southworstern Bell would gladly get it for you in a few days if you'd switch your order!"
On my home turf, USWorst beat the colocation orders by stuffing hundreds of desk job folks into recently relocated quarters inside the central office. Imagine freezing your butt off next to a 5ESS switch just so some higher up exec can keep the CLECs out of town. "Sorry, no space left in the central office... wish we could help ya!"
Top that off with their hit squad that serviced cities like Minneapolis, Des Moines, Omaha, etc. that "oopsed" on ISP dedicated lines. "Gosh, did you say that T1 you've been runnin was supposed to be ESF/B8ZS? Golly... looks like it's AMI/D4 now. Guess you'll have to reorder your uplink connection... should be about 35 days by the time we get to fixin it. I could flip the little switch on the CSU/DSU, but hey, I'd be breakin the rules!" (Apparently payola is expected or else it's 'company policy' for you)
I had everything from lost orders (more than 50%), competitive poaching (request a quote to a customer location and discover USWorst sales people getting the lead passed on), intentional interference with hunt groups (killing hunt #2 out of 200+ lines), fraudulant billing putting companies from other states onto my bill (and being told if I didn't pay it by 5 PM, I'd be shut down), etc.
Only the city's top law firm, vicious attorneys and nonstop publicity about their illegal aggression kept us above water. Our competitors who couldn't afford $50K/month for legal fees to combat the LEC? They didn't last long at all.
Combine that with oversight from our elected officials like Louisiana's Tauzin (an EFF watchlist critter and highly effective open Internet killer), and there should be no surprise. We've demanded a spam-favoring Baby Bell monopoly Internet through our votes.
Don't like it? Don't elect this funny speakin' Bell lacky crap.
*scoove*
Umm and you really expect to be able to pay residential cable modem rates for that kind of use?
Sounds like the folks in coach are starting to complain.. Seriously tho, why should I pay UUNET/Sprint/etc. $850/mo. for a DS1 when Joe Cablemodem is getting six times the service for $30/month?
Something's got to give, and I doubt it'll be the business price...
*scoove*
I'm banking my money on two Satellite-modem up-and-comers.
Err.. not quite. Having built satellite IP networks, there are limitations that will never permit satellite to come close to ground service. Inherent latency, finite slice of frequency shared across the entire north american continent (vs. shared in a 2-3 mile radius), etc. make satellite a facility of LAST RESORT.
And then there's the whole cost of putting POPs in space, when they do just fine on the ground on a tower.
Really, unless you're in Western Wyoming, there's no advantage with satellite.
*scoove*
Especially when this Slashdot post about Oracle comes out a day after my prediction. Called that move a day in advance.
Seriously, when I mod, I make sure my own political views don't result in a desire to mod down. But there are those that use moderation to supress opposing viewpoints - that's why it's important to Metamod.
All I can figure is that JonKatz has too many mod points...
*scoove*
I found this part of the release rather interesting:
Libery Alliance conference attendants noted an unusual episode at the conference where Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison showed up midway with a crew of Oracle employees chanting "Oracle today makes Osama go away!"
Later, Ellison offered his company's support and participation in the alliance efforts.
"Oracle would be proud to donate our leading Oracle database software to the alliance project," said Ellison. "To us, it's a matter of killing too birds with a single stone. With the power of Oracle 9i, Liberty's registration information would also serve as a national citizen ID database, protecting all of us from the evils of terrorism."
White House spokespersons had no comment on Oracle's previous offer of its database for a national registration system.
*scoove*
dropping posts is what made a slander lawsuit against Prodigy successful
Likewise, the Compuserve suit of the same era ended up with a Compuserve victory because unlike Prodigy, they didn't guarantee the quality of the environment by filtering content.
Course, I'm still waiting for the proxy/filter lawsuits to start cropping up. "My kids school allowed them to see pr0n so I'm suing for $250 million" stuff...
*scoove*
Surgeon General's Warning: Internet contains porn, violence, bad language, lousy spelling, unreliable service providers and may cause addiction or offense. Turn off your PC and stick to NPR if you may be offended."
maybe my objectivist inclinations are showing, but i really don't like the classification of open source into capitalist and communal.
/has/ to be something else to pay the bills.
In fact, what you describe as capitalist (giving software away for cheap/free by making money on the service) is what the market would refer to as pure-play. ALL you do is open source with its revenue hook, be it support, packaging, advertising, whatever. (Pure play open source is counterintuitive by definition because you really can't have a pure play that has a price of $0 - something else has to be the focus).
The alternate model, as long as we're looking at open source as something more than a hobby (my bias, but the article discussed doesn't address hobby programming), is open source as complimentary technology to a business that achieves its revenue from another focus, e.g. manufacturing, telecom, etc.
Like I mentioned, there is a problem classifying any open source effort as pure play. Technically Redhat and other 'pure plays' are actually service businesses with open source as the complimentary technology - and service or support may or may not be the right focus for them.
So shouldn't our discussion focus on what primary focuses work well with open source as a complimentary technology - apparently service/support doesn't work well all the time. Advertising seems to work none of the time (my bias). Since open source = $0 at the cash register for the code itself, there
Understand that for many of us, open source is intelligence we share with other smaller companies to fight the evil incumbants in our industry. Like Afghani expelling Soviet occupation, we'll share weapons, intelligence, whatever to beat them out. It's a competitive advantage.
If we're wise, we'll be happy with our own territories when we've succeeded, since it is unlikely we'll be able to defeat each other without weakening our home turf.
And open source even has a value for the big boys. Release open source that destroys a competitor's pure play proprietary software focus (e.g. StarOffice or other hardware vendors trying to knife Microsoft attempts). Release open source that creates a demand for your product (e.g. AT&T research doing VNC, which chews up a lot more bandwidth and requires faster links). Release open source that makes your technology more usable.
*scoove*
Some interesting points, though I disagree with many of them. Let me contribute a first-hand "I successfully funded a telecom company in this god-awful market" perspectives, sharing what worked and didn't for us and how it relates to open source:
The economy is in the shitter.
Yes, and even more so, big VC-funded entities. More on this in a sec.
This whole article is nearly pointless.
Yes, I found it very state-focused, static. Declaring the obvious, but totally missing the point and trend.
Open-source (the business model) was circling the drain before any other sector of industry
Open source, as a sole business focus in itself, was (especially when VC funded, again). Open source as a tool for the post-dotcomveeceedisaster, is actually growing stronger.
Because the high-flying VC money and gold-rush speculation that drove those fat boomtime salaries are what really paid for open-source.
I'd say you're half right. Look at my business: we're a rural broadband provider, up against a couple of VC creations. All of them are gasping for air, desparate for yet another round of money. Apparently $60+ million wasn't enough to pay the Lucent consultants and Harvard MBAs for a year.
Meanwhile, the lean and mean guerrilla companies like ours are growing (mostly because cashflow is easier when you don't have the $60 million monster to feed, not to mention all the VC opinions that come along and feel they have a right to tell you how to operate, who to hire, etc.).
not selling services to free products.
No, but consider open source as an element of (pardon the buzzword bingo word choice) "coopetition" (ack). Look at tools like MRTG, netsaint, netstumbler, etc. We're developing our own tools that will be released as well - they'll never be successfully understood by the VC and Fortune 1000 beasts (e.g. Qwest), since they "don't come from Lucent" and aren't backed by a big name firm.
Instead, we'll end up sharing with other guerrillas, each attacking the telecom beasts from a thousand locations. Once we've dealt with them, it'll be interesting to see how well we play together. I do believe we're seeing an interesting transition here though.
VC's had a few fundamental assumptions that the dot-bomb proved to be flawed, including:
o synergies: more is better. Compaq + HP > Compaq & HP. Economies of scale, leveraged buying, etc. We're finding out that Compaq + HP instead equals Compaq + HP + competing incompatible political structures, new focus on internal battles rather than fighting the outside enemy, balkanization, etc.
o startup + $100 million = a mature company: Why else would you hire a Harvard MBA - I've dealt with dozens of them and can attest to not a single one understanding startup dynamics. They're worse than useless - a bunch of British officers fighting the American revolutionary war. Wrong methods. Wrong scope. Wrong level of granularity applied to project/process management. Only good at spending money and getting out before things blow apart. But VCs thought the presence of $100+ million in funding made things post-startup (since startups don't typically have those kinds of financials!).
So what the hell does this have to do with open source?
The pure-play open source death being reported here and being discussed by underpaidISPTech is a VC anomoly - in south park language, a monkey with three asses. They weren't meant to survive; they were meant to have a high IPO exit that the VC would make a killing on. Everyone was part of that party, and the shills buying this stock finally figured out (dotbomb) and stopped playing.
But open source as a strategic tool for post-dotbomb companies is just beginning. Think about it: I've built mediation systems that are light years ahead of Lucent's Billdats (which comes with a $1.25 million+ pricetag, not including hardware or support) for the cost of Redhat, a $2,000 Pentium III and a week's worth of Perl programming by my team.
If you're in the tech world and want to end up a winner, you've got to read Christensen's Innovator's Dilemna and understand that open source, Linux and such are all disruptive, "trivial technologies." They may not be pure plays for a long time, or forever, but they probably are going to cause significant upheaval within industries.
BTW, in the post-dotbomb, there is compelling evidence that the "all companies must consolidate and get large or else die" may also be a fallacy, primarily created out of the SEC investment models that favor public market investment (and restrict private company investment out of antiquated investor "protection" laws, interestingly supported by... you guessed... large corporations seeking to tie up the capital markets).
Build a company that makes a profit. Don't worry about size. We'll see how this plays out...
*scoove*
I neglected to mention Step #3 that is particularly helpful inducing noise into the email spam channels:
Step 3. Develop noise email identities, particularly focusing on notably abusive spam domains. My favorite here is someuser@chinanet.cn.net (make up your own value for someuser - common names like admin, hostmaster, root, etc. are good to try) - per my experience with Spamcop assessments, Chinanet is about the most frequent spam abuser (and they almost always lie about their email origin identity). These guys literally provide safe harbor to spam terrorists.
Sure, it's fun to route chinanet IP's to a null interface (and probably wise too - countless rogue script-laden emails that fire up a browser and open you up to numerous issues come from chinanet solicitions).
Obviously, chinanet likes spam - so be sure to put them down to receive some!
*scoove*
One effective way to deal with this is maillist pollution with the Jam the Spammers Maillist Game.
Step 1. Start filling out online registrations (probably something you already avoid) and seek out folks that are looking for this type of marketing data (e.g. Radio Shack, Best Buy).
Step 2. Jam their marketing radar with noise. Noise can be incorrect zip codes for you, creative names and addresses, even brand new people that live in exotic places. For instance, I've always figured that the post office at Manville Wyoming must be quite bored, being in the least populated county of the least populated state. Zip code is 82227, which makes it easy to remember. And best of all, General Delivery helps your mailman by letting him toss the junkmail in a tall pile that can be left for a long time. (For a pretty picture of Wyoming's Niobrara county, see this site.)
Remember, the more garbage you dump into their maillists, the less effective those mail lists are that they're selling.
Looking at an recent maillist quote for my metropolitan area, InfoUSA wants $5,000 for a list of businesses complete with fax, email, etc. Imagine how frustrated list buyers get when they discover half of these leads are garbage. The greater the background noise, the less effective the marketing campaign, and the more likely other means will be sought in locating customers.
Start your jamming!
*scoove*