I would guess that scroove has a problem with representative democracy, no?
Sure. If it represented me. What do we have (actually supposed to be a republic)is a system that represents those willing to either pay for protection or grease the wheel.
Granted, pretty much the rest of the world works this way, but at least a parasite in a third world nation isn't pretending to be honorable and deserving of great respect.
So which should I respect? People like Jesse Jackson (and his "pay us large sums to give you a clean racial employment bill of health or we'll cause a riot" racket) and Bill "Get Your Pardons Here" Clinton? People that cause greater inefficiency, causing projects, products, etc. to cost more due to their graft expense? (If you really do care about the common man, how about telling him who's paying for these scams?)
Or should I admire people who actually produce things, create solutions to problems, and make life better for people. Hate Gates as you wish, but he's done more for the productivity of the world than probably anyone on this thread.
This is the reason people like JonKatz and other relativists will never be happy nor successful. They're condemned to hate people who have any worth to society, fully knowing that they are expendible and their absence would actually improve the state of things.
As in Kafka's "The Trial," it is always easier in relativist worlds to accept the charge and plea for the mercy of the court. Even when it the charge is not true in objective sense, this is demanded because the subjectivist believes truth is determined by external perception.
Ergo "JonKatz perceives Microsoft as guilty, and therefore should have settled." By Katz not accepting for the resolution of the legal process (which he probably fears due to the fact that the initial judgement was by a judge who by parties on both sides, deviated from acceptable practice.
> He could have accepted relatively generous mediation terms.
Guilt inferred by the charge. The only acceptable plea when charged is guilty. Declaring innocent is an insult to the prosecution. See above.
> He could have lobbied for support in Washington, instead of treating bureaucrats with contempt.
Why? And feed this corrupt animal? Recognize this bastard system? There is a reason people in Washington are suck-ups to folks like Marc Rich - they're parasites. And some folks (like Gates, apparently) prefer to not recognize parasites.
> He could have told DOJ lawyers and the judge the truth in his testimony.
Who's "truth"? JonKatz's "the truth is what we perceive" truth?
> He could have avoided gratuituously offending the judge,
Why? The judge offended persons of reason through his actions. Why should we care not to offend him by disagreeing with them.
> members of Congress
Parasites.
> and the public
What obligation does Gates have to the public? If they don't like his product, they don't buy it.
> thereby tarnishing the previously wholesome image of his company
Tarnished from who's perception? Microsoft's shareholders (owners) probably have a great perception of Microsoft. That's the only perception that matters.
The previously truly democraticaly elected president in Mexico was Francisco I. Madero in 1910, unfortunately for him (and for Mexico) the US did not like him, so they supported a traitor that killed the President and the Vicepresident. Mexico had to endure 80 years of mainly corrupt goverments as a consequence.
And? If it serves our interest, so? What else would you recommend - that we throw away our money on people that work for our ruin? Oh wait, that's right. We/do/ support the United Nations:-)
Welcome to the way the world works. Compete or die. Nothing the past four billion years of life has seen...
As for crappy schools, the notion that the quality of your school should be linked to the money you have (except of course for the 1-2% who can attend very expensive private schools) or the city you live in is a very American one.
Why not? And who's going to pay for it? Americans?
Translation in the educational/medical domain: "So now you will take other people's money away so that less fortunate will have a reasonable life expectancy and even possibly get a decent education
So it's alright to steal to make one's health and education better? Bill Clinton makes more than I do (much of it stolen from you and I, down to the dinnerware and the $750K/month office he wants). You're telling me I can just go in and take stuff out of his office and pawn it since I'd like an MBA? Cool!
We're talking about a divide that might soon become almost as important as the one between people who can read/write, and people who can't.
Where you been for the last four thousand years? You think this is a new thing? We're better off with global literacy then ever before, in spite of people choosing and supporting tyrants and thieves for governments.
In fact that's exactly what 90% of western countries do. Britain and US being two noticeable exceptions
What - steal from their citizens, pocket 70% for "processing fees" and give the other 30% to worthless governments that also pocket 90% and give table scraps to their hostages? No, I'm afraid the US and Britain are both exceptionally well trained at this scam as well.
And where are the Europeans, Japanese and Koreans? Why are they not on the angst trip list?
In general, it's easy to blather droll like this post, until you realize that the pathetic world these people live in is the consequence of their choice in government, believe in mysticism, etc. As long as they keep wishing for happiness while supporting corrupt governments, they'll be poor.
*scoove*
You're free to make any decision you want, but you are not free from its consequence.
How about revising the law to apply the same pervasive anti-squatting rules that have been recently added to domain squatters?
E.g. anyone that files a patent and can later be demonstrated to have violated someone elses prior invention (public or patented) can be liable for damages?
The logic here would be that since Altavista obviously didn't look very hard, and obviously misled the patent office (who isn't in the job of making sure Altavista didn't lie on its application), then Altavista should be liable.
In fact, why stop at civil charges? If neglegence was demonstratable, let's throw the CEO in the slammer under criminal charges - theft of intellectual property, fraud, etc.
Bingo. You nailed it. People who make claims like:
Sure it is, but proprietary code is backed by legal liability.
have never bought major commercial software systems. I've got five calling card switches from a worthless vendor who shall remain nameless (and a pack of vicious wolves couldn't drag it from me) that goes down weekly, was written by a couple of contracted college students long gone, horribly documented, and has cost significant revenue loss.
Their response to our troubles? Besides regularly losing trouble tickets and having monthly turnover in their NOC? "Sorry. Your contract says we're not liable other than the cost of the software."
So where has this proprietary software saved me? Oh, and before the response "don't sign a contract that gives away your rights" is made, you try buying anything and specifying that the vendor's boilerplate license gets tossed...
Keeping things in perspective, how are you sure the proprietary, closed source stuff you got from the vendor isn't equally screwed?
We've gotten calling card platforms that were textbook cases for undocumented disasters. Security holes all over the place (thankfully we put them behind as many barriers as possible and never operated them on any public networks, but I've found plenty of the same system sold to other companies on public IPs).
Disgruntled vendor programmer leaves, visits the boxes, and issues himself $100K in calling cards that he sells on the street in NYC...
Happens in closed source, and unlike open source, you have no chance to find the holes and fix them.
Exactly. Unless your vendor provides open source, you're stuck with:
1. developing yourself using their APIs (which usually get documented by a disgruntled unpaid intern). Chance of success: slim
2. developing yourself and talking right to the database. Chance of success: good, except you'll probably invalidate your support contract and possibly hoze up some of the vendor's application.
3. having them develop for you. Chance of success: good, but cost is high and delivery timeframes usually poor.
Also, open source allows you to survive when you either nix your contract with the vendor (so you don't pay annual extortion fees), or they go out of business (which happens on occasion).
While the topic is open source billing, you may find that at some point, the seasoned grey hairs (your ISP's board of directors or investors, for example) in the organization may press for a "real billing system" (read "monolithic ball-o-code that could have been written by Adm. Grace Hopper in 1963).
Being a former ISP startup guy (first in a six-state region - yea) and having spent the last 2.5 years for a larger long distance company, I headed up our search for billing solutions. Here are some things to avoid:
- Convergence: Lots of the billing companies talk convergence (meaning you can bill for radically different things, like long distance, local service, Internet and cable TV... wow!), but until you've seen the code in operation, don't believe them. Convergence to many (like Lucent's Kenan division) means "if you pay us $6 million, we'll start writing code and bill you $350 an hour additional to develop something convergent." Avoid like the plague.
- Big/old vendors: These guys aren't struggling, but most of their new customers are. In fact, the only people I could find doing well on systems like Kenan and Saville were the RBOCs. Must be one of those paradigm things - and trust me, you're not of the same paradigm as they are (thank god).
- Little startups: Some of them have great ideas, but unless your vendor is CMM 2 or greater, they'll have a snowball's chance of being able to manage the system as it grows. There are a couple of notable exceptions, but these are startups that have understood managing complex processes, application design, project management, etc. (Two of the notable exceptions I came across were Telution and Daleen, both competent vendors albeit focused on NT solutions).
- Add-ons: This seems to be one of the games the billing companies play. They know you're not a billing expert, and will leave out tons of things to nail you for later. "Oh, you actually wanted to import Radius data into the system? Oh, the package you bought just bills. You need our $500K mediation package to do that."
- Turn-Key Claims: Most of the bigger boys claim they have turn key packages. What that really means is that they send a dozen programmers, at $350/hour, and get them programming at your location for a half year to write a custom application just for you. Believe it or not, many of the guys who've been in business quite some time don't have anything more than a source library and an Oracle database, which they write a custom application around just for you.
- Integration Labor: Watch this like a hawk and specify in your contract that billed hours don't count unless they're itemized and approved by one of your senior people each week. Our company got its first notice of where it was at with its integration when we got notified that all the hours were used up - and the vendor hadn't even been on site yet! Make sure you specify that they're responsible for a delivered product within those hours, or the overage is their expense (otherwise you end up paying to send their people to tradeshows and golfing in Vegas, as we did).
- Support Contract: You know the pitch you get at your local Best Buy/Circuit City about "for only $69.00 you can add three years of maintenance on that cd player" - support contracts are the margin booster for billing companies. Don't buy open ended contracts - prefer to pay by hour. My experience has been that service has actually been better ala carte.
- Expenses: Most vendors dump travel, lodging, etc. for every visit they make into being your expense. That's fine, as long as you control it and approve where they go, when they come, etc. (When your vendor expenses $350 a night in Omaha Nebraska, something is wrong).
- Revenue-based, Subscription-based, or Seat-based license: Lots of vendors include an "annual license fee" - which means you get to buy their software year after year. And the fee goes up as you grow revenues, number of subscribers, etc. Avoid this, since when you look at the overall billing cost per subscriber, you end up negating any advantage of growth in your subscriber base in many cases.
- Be Creative!: Lots of things (especially the add-ons) can be done in house by your own people for a fraction the cost. Lucent sells a mediation package called Billdats that downloads records from phone switches and puts them in a central space. It uses dedicate x.25 connections to each switch, which cost you an arm and a leg, and last time I was told, it still didn't have support for IP. Save the $500K and buy a really nice Linux or freeBSD box for $20K (lots of drive space). For extra money, Billdats can sort records (grep, comes free in Linux/freeBSD), Billdats can convert from one call record format to another at $70K-$80K per custom format (Perl can do it for your programmers in a couple of hours, $200 probable cost), etc.
Sorry to be so wordy, but I am overjoyed that someone else brought up the topic of open source systems. We did that with our mediation instead of buying Billdats. Funny thing - I showed the Lucent Billdats people our system and said we'd consider theirs if they could beat our little $20K box. Oh, theirs doesn't even come with hardware...:-)
Most of these billing vendors thrive on selling a poorly documented product, not allowing you to maintain it yourself (source code? you should see their response when you ask for it!), charge $350 an hour or more for a half dozen $30K a year interns to learn on your time, and provide horrible support. ISPs that can avoid this have a much better chance of surviving.
But the rest of the billing, provisioning, print-house, and related functionality needs to be included as well. If anyone's interested in a coordinated open source project, email me (scoove@americanrelay.com) - I'm game.
I thought I had heard of these guys - "Network Commerce, Inc" - recently.
They just acquired the domain registrar Registrars.com last week, per this press release.
According to Network Commerce chairman and CEO Dwayne Walker:
"We believe this is an important addition to our technology infrastructure business. We also believe this will be another avenue for expanding our database of registered customers."
Wonder what it'll do for their database of employees...
You do realize that booksellers have to keep the margins up. After all, how do you think they're going to recoop the $8 million they paid Hillary years in advance?
Seems like the still unparalleled Mac game, Bolo, didn't have much of this problem in spite of its significant network play (in fact, the only reason for playing).
Sure, you'd have people firing up Bots, but a cheater in Bolo would quickly got bored.
I'm still terribly surprised that noone has taken up a Linux Bolo... (and given the amount of work I've got this winter, somewhat thankful I don't have that addiction to contend with!)
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is why anyone should give a damn about small population states.
Sonet writes:
they wouldn't bother with legislation for them when it came time to, either.
Absolutely. Legislation for major cities, industrial interests, etc. would be dominant. Consideration for boring things like agriculture would be set aside ("What do you mean ag subsidy? Screw the farmers, we'll get our food at the supermarket!")
Not only would you have a large portion of the nation (geographically) taxed without representation (their vote would always be cancelled out), but you'd have substantial ignorance of "critical but not relevant to all parties" issues as well (e.g. look at who is for killing the ethanol subsidy).
In all, it's a great receipe for disaster, and the nation already had one civil war over lesser differences in perspective and representation.
Could it be possible that the founding fathers knew more than Gore attorney David Boies?
It's humerous to think that the FBI would expect us to be satisfied with the an "independent" review that had to pass their screening, after reading the redacted FOIA responses submitted to EPIC.
*scoove*
from the FBI archives, now suitable for general public consumption:
Article ## of the #.#. ############ The ##### of the ###### to be ###### in their #######, houses, ######, and effects, against ############ ######## and ########, shall not be ########, and no ######## shall issue but upon probable #####, supported by #### or ###########, and particularly describing the place to be ########, and the persons or things to be ######.
Actually, it'd appear that Sun's move was an attempt to remove the second tier that was cannibalizing their high-end, 40%+ gross margin servers.
In our shop, we've got a couple of those Sun beasts crated up and going back to their sender after an eval. Instead of $200K worth of Suns, we've plunked down $50K for a bunch of rackmount 2U little Intel boxes that'll be running openBSD. Ten times the performance for 1/4 the cost.
Certainly Sun's seen the threat to their bottom line from lost sales like ours.
It'd be interesting if Sun should snap up Valinux next...
DC's aggressiveness seems more and more foolish, when one looks at who's being alienated (prospective customers, and their partner merchant organizations like RShack).
Usually, it's easy for companies like DC to disregard the negative feedback from the consumer public - just underestimate how many there are in your press releases and write them off as insignificant.
But lose a major vendor and watch the board start issuing pink slips to the CEO, CFO, etc. (Trust me on this one - DC's board is assuredly terrified right now that this could spin out of control and the investors would see their millions evaporate)
So here's a suggestion I just tried - call 1-800-THE-SHACK (1-800-843-7422) and try to order the free CueCat drivers for Linux. (Come on, you know they must be there. How else could they give out these free critters without supporting a significant part of the market)
After a few minutes of toll-free operator-assisted futility, ask them for the support number for the drivers. You've heard them mentioned on the Internet. If you're like me, you're not ordering all that stuff from RShack until you get them and try out this neat scanner!
Perhaps if RShack gets enough of these calls, they'll ask DC where this software is. Groveling, anybody? Major coup for open source over PHBs and their IP attorneys?
DC's also alienating a potential market... while I'd agree that a good amount of their business would be from AOL'ers, there are a surprising number of hackers that shop Radio Shack. (Geez... how many times do I go there for batteries and walk out having spent $200?!!)
Amateur radio hobbyists, especially those from the Linux community, end up sending part of their paychecks to places like RShack. I'm there at least once a week buying stuff. But how can I use the CueCat when the DC PHB's forgot to develop a Linux driver for it? Sorry boys, but the five boxes down in my shack don't have a single Microsoft product on them!
Instead of firing up the attorneys, why not pull the Microsoft "embrace and extend" trick. Grab those drivers, thank the community, contribute $10,000 to/., Freshmeat or an alternate Linux/open source community site as a thank you, extend the functionality, and re-release them back to the community (under GPL, of course). Make them simple to install, include some goodies, whatever. In otherwords, make a superior open source product.
Instead of boycotts, hacking and general disasterous public relations that is a serious abuse of their investor's bucks, you might find a bunch of new customers (who are usually the bigger spenders at RShack) who'd cost you only an occasional un-intercepted barcoding scan of their books in the home library.
*scoove*
"Poor sportsmanship: They just can't stand to see the other man win."
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, you're referring to Andy Grove (Chairman of Intel) and his book Only the Paranoid Survive.
Software. Hardware. What's the difference.
*scoove*
I would guess that scroove has a problem with representative democracy, no?
Sure. If it represented me. What do we have (actually supposed to be a republic)is a system that represents those willing to either pay for protection or grease the wheel.
Granted, pretty much the rest of the world works this way, but at least a parasite in a third world nation isn't pretending to be honorable and deserving of great respect.
So which should I respect? People like Jesse Jackson (and his "pay us large sums to give you a clean racial employment bill of health or we'll cause a riot" racket) and Bill "Get Your Pardons Here" Clinton? People that cause greater inefficiency, causing projects, products, etc. to cost more due to their graft expense? (If you really do care about the common man, how about telling him who's paying for these scams?)
Or should I admire people who actually produce things, create solutions to problems, and make life better for people. Hate Gates as you wish, but he's done more for the productivity of the world than probably anyone on this thread.
This is the reason people like JonKatz and other relativists will never be happy nor successful. They're condemned to hate people who have any worth to society, fully knowing that they are expendible and their absence would actually improve the state of things.
Jon "Monk Tooey" Katz writes:
> He could have settled.
As in Kafka's "The Trial," it is always easier in relativist worlds to accept the charge and plea for the mercy of the court. Even when it the charge is not true in objective sense, this is demanded because the subjectivist believes truth is determined by external perception.
Ergo "JonKatz perceives Microsoft as guilty, and therefore should have settled." By Katz not accepting for the resolution of the legal process (which he probably fears due to the fact that the initial judgement was by a judge who by parties on both sides, deviated from acceptable practice.
> He could have accepted relatively generous mediation terms.
Guilt inferred by the charge. The only acceptable plea when charged is guilty. Declaring innocent is an insult to the prosecution. See above.
> He could have lobbied for support in Washington, instead of treating bureaucrats with contempt.
Why? And feed this corrupt animal? Recognize this bastard system? There is a reason people in Washington are suck-ups to folks like Marc Rich - they're parasites. And some folks (like Gates, apparently) prefer to not recognize parasites.
> He could have told DOJ lawyers and the judge the truth in his testimony.
Who's "truth"? JonKatz's "the truth is what we perceive" truth?
> He could have avoided gratuituously offending the judge,
Why? The judge offended persons of reason through his actions. Why should we care not to offend him by disagreeing with them.
> members of Congress
Parasites.
> and the public
What obligation does Gates have to the public? If they don't like his product, they don't buy it.
> thereby tarnishing the previously wholesome image of his company
Tarnished from who's perception? Microsoft's shareholders (owners) probably have a great perception of Microsoft. That's the only perception that matters.
*scoove*
What does it mean when you read a slashdot thread description and you can immediately identify the source of the submission as JonKatz?
Besides the obligatory 40,000 word submission (words are cheap when you're Katz), the typical relativistic garbage is easy to spot, like:
- man's pride in his work is evil
- man exists to serve others
- he who takes pride in his work and opposes parasites must be destroyed
Since all JonKatz posts are the same (in intent/meaning), let's save everyone the time and have him put up a URL pointing to his original post.
*scoove*
The previously truly democraticaly elected president in Mexico was Francisco I. Madero in 1910, unfortunately for him (and for Mexico) the US did not like him, so they supported a traitor that killed the President and the Vicepresident. Mexico had to endure 80 years of mainly corrupt goverments as a consequence.
/do/ support the United Nations:-)
And? If it serves our interest, so? What else would you recommend - that we throw away our money on people that work for our ruin? Oh wait, that's right. We
Welcome to the way the world works. Compete or die. Nothing the past four billion years of life has seen...
*scoove*
As for crappy schools, the notion that the quality of your school should be linked to the money you have (except of course for the 1-2% who can attend very expensive private schools) or the city you live in is a very American one.
Why not? And who's going to pay for it? Americans?
Translation in the educational/medical domain: "So now you will take other people's money away so that less fortunate will have a reasonable life expectancy and even possibly get a decent education
So it's alright to steal to make one's health and education better? Bill Clinton makes more than I do (much of it stolen from you and I, down to the dinnerware and the $750K/month office he wants). You're telling me I can just go in and take stuff out of his office and pawn it since I'd like an MBA? Cool!
We're talking about a divide that might soon become almost as important as the one between people who can read/write, and people who can't.
Where you been for the last four thousand years? You think this is a new thing? We're better off with global literacy then ever before, in spite of people choosing and supporting tyrants and thieves for governments.
In fact that's exactly what 90% of western countries do. Britain and US being two noticeable exceptions
What - steal from their citizens, pocket 70% for "processing fees" and give the other 30% to worthless governments that also pocket 90% and give table scraps to their hostages? No, I'm afraid the US and Britain are both exceptionally well trained at this scam as well.
And where are the Europeans, Japanese and Koreans? Why are they not on the angst trip list?
In general, it's easy to blather droll like this post, until you realize that the pathetic world these people live in is the consequence of their choice in government, believe in mysticism, etc. As long as they keep wishing for happiness while supporting corrupt governments, they'll be poor.
*scoove*
You're free to make any decision you want, but you are not free from its consequence.
How about revising the law to apply the same pervasive anti-squatting rules that have been recently added to domain squatters?
E.g. anyone that files a patent and can later be demonstrated to have violated someone elses prior invention (public or patented) can be liable for damages?
The logic here would be that since Altavista obviously didn't look very hard, and obviously misled the patent office (who isn't in the job of making sure Altavista didn't lie on its application), then Altavista should be liable.
In fact, why stop at civil charges? If neglegence was demonstratable, let's throw the CEO in the slammer under criminal charges - theft of intellectual property, fraud, etc.
*scoove*
I switched to Google. Why haven't you?
Bingo. You nailed it. People who make claims like:
Sure it is, but proprietary code is backed by legal liability.
have never bought major commercial software systems. I've got five calling card switches from a worthless vendor who shall remain nameless (and a pack of vicious wolves couldn't drag it from me) that goes down weekly, was written by a couple of contracted college students long gone, horribly documented, and has cost significant revenue loss.
Their response to our troubles? Besides regularly losing trouble tickets and having monthly turnover in their NOC? "Sorry. Your contract says we're not liable other than the cost of the software."
So where has this proprietary software saved me? Oh, and before the response "don't sign a contract that gives away your rights" is made, you try buying anything and specifying that the vendor's boilerplate license gets tossed...
*scoove*
Keeping things in perspective, how are you sure the proprietary, closed source stuff you got from the vendor isn't equally screwed?
We've gotten calling card platforms that were textbook cases for undocumented disasters. Security holes all over the place (thankfully we put them behind as many barriers as possible and never operated them on any public networks, but I've found plenty of the same system sold to other companies on public IPs).
Disgruntled vendor programmer leaves, visits the boxes, and issues himself $100K in calling cards that he sells on the street in NYC...
Happens in closed source, and unlike open source, you have no chance to find the holes and fix them.
So, which would you prefer?
*scoove*
Exactly. Unless your vendor provides open source, you're stuck with:
1. developing yourself using their APIs (which usually get documented by a disgruntled unpaid intern). Chance of success: slim
2. developing yourself and talking right to the database. Chance of success: good, except you'll probably invalidate your support contract and possibly hoze up some of the vendor's application.
3. having them develop for you. Chance of success: good, but cost is high and delivery timeframes usually poor.
Also, open source allows you to survive when you either nix your contract with the vendor (so you don't pay annual extortion fees), or they go out of business (which happens on occasion).
*scoove*
While the topic is open source billing, you may find that at some point, the seasoned grey hairs (your ISP's board of directors or investors, for example) in the organization may press for a "real billing system" (read "monolithic ball-o-code that could have been written by Adm. Grace Hopper in 1963).
:-)
Being a former ISP startup guy (first in a six-state region - yea) and having spent the last 2.5 years for a larger long distance company, I headed up our search for billing solutions. Here are some things to avoid:
- Convergence: Lots of the billing companies talk convergence (meaning you can bill for radically different things, like long distance, local service, Internet and cable TV... wow!), but until you've seen the code in operation, don't believe them. Convergence to many (like Lucent's Kenan division) means "if you pay us $6 million, we'll start writing code and bill you $350 an hour additional to develop something convergent." Avoid like the plague.
- Big/old vendors: These guys aren't struggling, but most of their new customers are. In fact, the only people I could find doing well on systems like Kenan and Saville were the RBOCs. Must be one of those paradigm things - and trust me, you're not of the same paradigm as they are (thank god).
- Little startups: Some of them have great ideas, but unless your vendor is CMM 2 or greater, they'll have a snowball's chance of being able to manage the system as it grows. There are a couple of notable exceptions, but these are startups that have understood managing complex processes, application design, project management, etc. (Two of the notable exceptions I came across were Telution and Daleen, both competent vendors albeit focused on NT solutions).
- Add-ons: This seems to be one of the games the billing companies play. They know you're not a billing expert, and will leave out tons of things to nail you for later. "Oh, you actually wanted to import Radius data into the system? Oh, the package you bought just bills. You need our $500K mediation package to do that."
- Turn-Key Claims: Most of the bigger boys claim they have turn key packages. What that really means is that they send a dozen programmers, at $350/hour, and get them programming at your location for a half year to write a custom application just for you. Believe it or not, many of the guys who've been in business quite some time don't have anything more than a source library and an Oracle database, which they write a custom application around just for you.
- Integration Labor: Watch this like a hawk and specify in your contract that billed hours don't count unless they're itemized and approved by one of your senior people each week. Our company got its first notice of where it was at with its integration when we got notified that all the hours were used up - and the vendor hadn't even been on site yet! Make sure you specify that they're responsible for a delivered product within those hours, or the overage is their expense (otherwise you end up paying to send their people to tradeshows and golfing in Vegas, as we did).
- Support Contract: You know the pitch you get at your local Best Buy/Circuit City about "for only $69.00 you can add three years of maintenance on that cd player" - support contracts are the margin booster for billing companies. Don't buy open ended contracts - prefer to pay by hour. My experience has been that service has actually been better ala carte.
- Expenses: Most vendors dump travel, lodging, etc. for every visit they make into being your expense. That's fine, as long as you control it and approve where they go, when they come, etc. (When your vendor expenses $350 a night in Omaha Nebraska, something is wrong).
- Revenue-based, Subscription-based, or Seat-based license: Lots of vendors include an "annual license fee" - which means you get to buy their software year after year. And the fee goes up as you grow revenues, number of subscribers, etc. Avoid this, since when you look at the overall billing cost per subscriber, you end up negating any advantage of growth in your subscriber base in many cases.
- Be Creative!: Lots of things (especially the add-ons) can be done in house by your own people for a fraction the cost. Lucent sells a mediation package called Billdats that downloads records from phone switches and puts them in a central space. It uses dedicate x.25 connections to each switch, which cost you an arm and a leg, and last time I was told, it still didn't have support for IP. Save the $500K and buy a really nice Linux or freeBSD box for $20K (lots of drive space). For extra money, Billdats can sort records (grep, comes free in Linux/freeBSD), Billdats can convert from one call record format to another at $70K-$80K per custom format (Perl can do it for your programmers in a couple of hours, $200 probable cost), etc.
Sorry to be so wordy, but I am overjoyed that someone else brought up the topic of open source systems. We did that with our mediation instead of buying Billdats. Funny thing - I showed the Lucent Billdats people our system and said we'd consider theirs if they could beat our little $20K box. Oh, theirs doesn't even come with hardware...
Most of these billing vendors thrive on selling a poorly documented product, not allowing you to maintain it yourself (source code? you should see their response when you ask for it!), charge $350 an hour or more for a half dozen $30K a year interns to learn on your time, and provide horrible support. ISPs that can avoid this have a much better chance of surviving.
But the rest of the billing, provisioning, print-house, and related functionality needs to be included as well. If anyone's interested in a coordinated open source project, email me (scoove@americanrelay.com) - I'm game.
*scoove*
I thought I had heard of these guys - "Network Commerce, Inc" - recently.
They just acquired the domain registrar Registrars.com last week, per this press release.
According to Network Commerce chairman and CEO Dwayne Walker:
"We believe this is an important addition to our technology infrastructure business. We also believe this will be another avenue for expanding our database of registered customers."
Wonder what it'll do for their database of employees...
You do realize that booksellers have to keep the margins up. After all, how do you think they're going to recoop the $8 million they paid Hillary years in advance?
*scoove*
Sounds like it's time to go after mom and dad for civil charges related to the fraud since they were junior's legal guardians up until recently...
*scoove*
Silly me... just searched and found both LinBolo and WinBolo. Santa's early!
http://www.irchelp.org/winbolo/
*scoove*
Seems like the still unparalleled Mac game, Bolo, didn't have much of this problem in spite of its significant network play (in fact, the only reason for playing).
Sure, you'd have people firing up Bots, but a cheater in Bolo would quickly got bored.
I'm still terribly surprised that noone has taken up a Linux Bolo... (and given the amount of work I've got this winter, somewhat thankful I don't have that addiction to contend with!)
Hohoho everyone...
*scoove*
...where's he been the past eight years when he had time to do this?
*scoove*
It's as if we need to put up a poster in the top 20 cities:
"The Electoral College: Created to keep idiots like you in check."
Thank goodness most voluntarily give up their guns. Now if we could just make that abortion pill mandatory...
*scoove*
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is why anyone should give a damn about small population states.
Sonet writes:
they wouldn't bother with legislation for them when it came time to, either.
Absolutely. Legislation for major cities, industrial interests, etc. would be dominant. Consideration for boring things like agriculture would be set aside ("What do you mean ag subsidy? Screw the farmers, we'll get our food at the supermarket!")
Not only would you have a large portion of the nation (geographically) taxed without representation (their vote would always be cancelled out), but you'd have substantial ignorance of "critical but not relevant to all parties" issues as well (e.g. look at who is for killing the ethanol subsidy).
In all, it's a great receipe for disaster, and the nation already had one civil war over lesser differences in perspective and representation.
Could it be possible that the founding fathers knew more than Gore attorney David Boies?
The technician license requires no code.
General and Extra license classes require only 5 words per minute now - which should make it easy for most folks.
*scoove* aka K1JRS
It's humerous to think that the FBI would expect us to be satisfied with the an "independent" review that had to pass their screening, after reading the redacted FOIA responses submitted to EPIC.
*scoove*
from the FBI archives, now suitable for general public consumption:
Article ## of the #.#. ############
The ##### of the ###### to be ###### in their #######, houses, ######, and effects, against ############ ######## and ########, shall not be ########, and no ######## shall issue but upon probable #####, supported by #### or ###########, and particularly describing the place to be ########, and the persons or things to be ######.
Actually, it'd appear that Sun's move was an attempt to remove the second tier that was cannibalizing their high-end, 40%+ gross margin servers.
In our shop, we've got a couple of those Sun beasts crated up and going back to their sender after an eval. Instead of $200K worth of Suns, we've plunked down $50K for a bunch of rackmount 2U little Intel boxes that'll be running openBSD. Ten times the performance for 1/4 the cost.
Certainly Sun's seen the threat to their bottom line from lost sales like ours.
It'd be interesting if Sun should snap up Valinux next...
*scoove*
DC's aggressiveness seems more and more foolish, when one looks at who's being alienated (prospective customers, and their partner merchant organizations like RShack).
Usually, it's easy for companies like DC to disregard the negative feedback from the consumer public - just underestimate how many there are in your press releases and write them off as insignificant.
But lose a major vendor and watch the board start issuing pink slips to the CEO, CFO, etc. (Trust me on this one - DC's board is assuredly terrified right now that this could spin out of control and the investors would see their millions evaporate)
So here's a suggestion I just tried - call 1-800-THE-SHACK (1-800-843-7422) and try to order the free CueCat drivers for Linux. (Come on, you know they must be there. How else could they give out these free critters without supporting a significant part of the market)
After a few minutes of toll-free operator-assisted futility, ask them for the support number for the drivers. You've heard them mentioned on the Internet. If you're like me, you're not ordering all that stuff from RShack until you get them and try out this neat scanner!
Perhaps if RShack gets enough of these calls, they'll ask DC where this software is. Groveling, anybody? Major coup for open source over PHBs and their IP attorneys?
*scoove*
DC's also alienating a potential market... while I'd agree that a good amount of their business would be from AOL'ers, there are a surprising number of hackers that shop Radio Shack. (Geez... how many times do I go there for batteries and walk out having spent $200?!!)
/., Freshmeat or an alternate Linux/open source community site as a thank you, extend the functionality, and re-release them back to the community (under GPL, of course). Make them simple to install, include some goodies, whatever. In otherwords, make a superior open source product.
Amateur radio hobbyists, especially those from the Linux community, end up sending part of their paychecks to places like RShack. I'm there at least once a week buying stuff. But how can I use the CueCat when the DC PHB's forgot to develop a Linux driver for it? Sorry boys, but the five boxes down in my shack don't have a single Microsoft product on them!
Instead of firing up the attorneys, why not pull the Microsoft "embrace and extend" trick. Grab those drivers, thank the community, contribute $10,000 to
Instead of boycotts, hacking and general disasterous public relations that is a serious abuse of their investor's bucks, you might find a bunch of new customers (who are usually the bigger spenders at RShack) who'd cost you only an occasional un-intercepted barcoding scan of their books in the home library.
*scoove*
"Poor sportsmanship: They just can't stand to see the other man win."
download MSR's IPv6 kit for Win2K
install
connect to 6Bone via Freenet6
install critical applications to test IPv6, like Quake
Enjoy!
Implementation data for other OS's is here.
*scoove*