Is there usually any sort of markup going on along the line, or are people just passing along their own expenses down the line to the end user?"
The original poster refered to a "rate increase" scenario, such as being slashdotted (though this is almost never the condition seen; more often, it's things like abusive P2P, sustained large-pipe VPN connections to another network, or nonstop downloads of DVDs, MP3s, videos, etc.)
Contrary to common net paranoia, most ISPs don't go chasing after bandwidth abusers unless they really are a problem. Network "policemen" are an expensive distraction from the primary focus of our business, so they don't usually send the heat out unless someone's really out of control.
So per "passing along expense" vs. "marking things up," I wish!!! By the time a customer has been notified of bandwidth or AUP abuse, they've not only consumed much more resource than they've paid for (which typically won't be paid back, even if a rate increase is applied to the subscriber), but they've incurred a hefty administrative expense.
Take your typical/. tech salary, add social security and both sides of income tax, plus health insurance, backoffice costs divided by employee, etc., and you'll have a nice $30+/hour number minimum. Multiply that times a the hours to put into place the management systems, policing time, customer contact time, etc. and you've got a cost well over $500, not including the cost of consumed bandwidth. At the $35 you're paying me, minus the cost of your service, it'll take me 5 or more years to make back that $500 you incurred. I'd rather tighten the noose and encourage you to abuse my competition.
How much of the total costs are tied to infrastructure versus the human component (technicians, sysadmins, technical support and so forth)?
Very good question to raise. In our network, bandwidth costs are only #3 - they follow payroll (people cost) and network infrastructure capital costs (e.g. routers, buildings, towers, switches, servers).
When you're down to a per Mbps/month cost of less than $350 (for both upstream egress to tier one networks and ingress from your customer), bandwidth abusers still can cost you a bit of money (chewing up a sustained 1 Mbps/month while paying $30-$40 for residential service), but the people cost associated with dealing with the abuse is more significant.
Actually, I'd expect more and more providers to pursue a tighter bandwidth model (down from the ~3 Mbps unlimited of early cable modem years) with bandwidth caps being more common. Understand that by making 95% of the customers overjoyed, and either making the 5% bandwidth hogs pay for their use or go to the competition, it makes service better and lower cost for everyone else.
And a final thought: We've seen threads on/. before about profiling customers in other industries - e.g. Delta Skymiles. Don't think your ISP won't model who the good and bad customers are. Instead, count on it and use the system to your advantage, or understand that by being in the bad category, you're going to be treated just as someone with a lousy credit rating has at the bank. We already score customers on support cost - and know when you call in if you're a recurring problem user (blaming us because your MSWord doesn't work right), or if you're a prompt payer that rarely complains.
Thought there have been several responses relating to burstable pricing, it's important to understand that burstable models are more of a marketing concept than a network costing one.
Considering that IP service is in the class of packet sharing telecom - meaning you do not have a fully reserved, "100% yours and only yours" pipe from location A to location Z (end to end), your costing models have to be a bit more complex than adding the sum of the parts. But it should probably start there. Packet share != Overbooking, although packet share networks/can/ permit overbooking to occur.
To explain costing on a more common tier two or smaller level (tier one costing has much more to do with transport costs and a bunch more variables not interesting here), take your typical tier two or smaller ISP who we'll say is connected only to a single upstream, and that upstream provider is a tier one (multihomed at x+ bilateral and/or multilateral facilities; e.g. Sprint or AT&T Worldnet).
That ISP will have: - an egress transport cost: e.g. a T1 to Sprint and perhaps a local loop cost to get to the tier one carrier; sometimes this is bundled by the tier one provider - a facility cost: router, colocation, switching and all the associated things to figure out what to do with customer traffic and send it where - an ingress transport cost: this is the transport cost from the customer to the ISP (e.g. T1 to a local frame relay cloud from the customer, then another portion from the cloud to the ISP, or a similar model in DSL, or a fixed point-to-point line)
Plus applicable switching/routing/data center/network core/backoffice/customer support/billing costs.
Then the fun comes in calculating an aggregate the ISP wishes to use in predicting how many seats it can sell on its T1 until the plane can get full - understanding that if it oversubscribes the T1, it may have the possibility of bumping passengers (such as slow performance; people getting less than what they paid for).
(Note: You'd be surprised how many smaller ISPs don't even understand the concept of aggregation - many rural ISPs in our parts think Internet comes in T1 and put 500 DSL home connections on the T1 without thinking twice. "Order another T1? Why? We already have Internet!" Plus there are other reasons they never go past a single T1 - their Cisco 2600 only has two ports (T1 in, T1 out), they don't know how to load balance more than one T1, and fundamentally it's too expensive for them)
Aggregation becomes the process of determining how to share that cost, since it's a shared network. It includes variables like time of day (business customers will usually demand more bandwidth during business hours; residential after hours, etc.), whether the customer has a bandwidth guarantee in their service level agreement, etc.
After all of this calculation and checking of assumptions, the ISP may calculate it into a cost per Mbps as we do.
so they have to overbook. It's all about getting the most out of what resources you have.
Not always true. Overbooking can be perceived as ineffective loading - an error, in otherwords, to be avoided. Your power utility doesn't run a constantly overbooked network - that'd have serious regulatory and technical consequences. But when you've got very little backoffice expertise in a smaller ISP, they won't know how to develop traffic models and purchase effectively.
Overbooking can be avoided both by developing good subscriber models and by enforcing them (ugly reality: if you're using 1 Mbps up/down sustained and are paying $35/month, you're not paying for what you're consuming and you'll cause a problem somewhere along the line). Additionally, you're going to see better aggregation and closer matches to "what you pay is what you get" as the last mile part of the business matures. Much of the success of an ISP is in how it buys and how closely it matches what was bought with what was sold - you can't run a $2 all-you-can-eat prime rib buffet, nor can you charge $10 for one that has nothing but dinner roles.
Really, overbooking and the opposite end of the spectrum (giving excessive bandwidth without charging for it) are mistakes made early in the development of the business. Successful providers will tighten up both ends, providing the service people ordered and paid for, and smart customers will understand that in order to get what they paid for, they shouldn't also expect a free lunch.
*scoove*
Re:That's because Linux admins are self-taught
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Linux Is Cheaper
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The obvious reason that Linux admins are better sysadmins (overall) and can admin more machines is because they're, er, mostly self-taught.
And I think there's a lot more to this as well. Most Linux admins I've worked with have had deeper expertise in more areas - perhaps due to the requirement of "knowing more" to successfully operate a network application server (which Linux is typically thrown into). Yea, you'll still find a few programming language-centric admins (ugh)... but most are general purposed enough to have discovered how IP works on a server OS.
For instance, you'd better know a bit about IP and network security when setting up an apache webserver, dns server, sendmail or qmail system, etc. Most Linux admins I've dealt with subsequently are rather aware of WAN protocols.
However, throw a MCSE at a OSI layer three to five problem and they'll start blaming the version of the webbrowser or waste significant time in other application-layer space. I'd swear they never mention the OSI 7-layer model in Microsoft class.
What's worse yet is that once these junior badge MCSE techies get their certification, they're convinced they know everything about networks and end up wasting other peoples time chasing down the wrong track. These people are costly and can cause a lot of damage to an organization through their stubborn ignorance.
Maybe it's the learning model predicting the kind of employee; e.g. MCSE is often class-fed, much like cattle finished off at the feed lot. They're spoon fed the standard materials and led to believe they're all special people, sent off to change the world with their new cert. Linux admins, often self-taught, usually succeed by keeping their eyes open to learn things from others and won't spend weeks arguing with you when you're right.
Best hiring decision you can make: pay the extra $10K/year for the "20 foot hole jumper" rather than getting yourself a couple of MCSE "3-foot-hole" types. You'll never regret it.
*scoove*
Re:As long as it doesn't cut into my bandwidth
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Wi-Fi From The Sky
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· Score: 2
could well make it impossible to setup a personal wireless LAN on the ground.
As well as be aware of interference caused to primary and predecessor users.
With amateur radio primary in 2390-2450, other predecessor users active in 2.4 GHz ISM and U-NII bands, they're unlikely to find any frequency available for a 300K square mile range that doesn't intentionally cause interference.
Plus, don't forget that while their signals will be high enough to have LOS, they have one heck of a freespace loss to overcome and certainly would not be in compliance on the return from the subscriber location.
Seems like a financial pitch for a dot-com idea that wasn't killed in the last round. ISM or U-NII band? Unlikely to ever get off the ground. More likely would be an LMDS/MMDS licensed band purchase from one of the folks like AT&T or Sprint.
without anyone realising it was used as the service account for many things, including the backup server
This absolutely screams of bad process design and the blame must go to inept management.
Some suggestions I'd pass along (having learned the hard way the first time, as well have having played on both tech and manager side of the fence):
- use role accounts/contacts, not personal ones: Domain registration, administrative accounts on servers, contact email addresses for company stuff, etc. should all point to a generic role contact or account. It's easy to map these to the appropriate individual accounts, but avoids the hell of deleting accounts when someone leaves. I've had to personally intervene with countless companies that have had their Internet domains registered in an employee's name (individual, not role) and experienced all sorts of nonsense when the employee left.
- require documentation (and if you're a tech, provide it and maintain even if you're not asked): Too many tech folks act as if knowing and not sharing process information, passwords, etc. is job security. It's not - it only ensures that when you go, they'll get rid of you like ripping off a bandaid, rather than offer obligatory goodies (severance, consulting contracts, etc.). I've been an advisor to many of these episodes where some tech had attained too much system control and refused to share it. The slightest demand for special treatment from these techs usually creates a knee-jerk reaction, but in the end, the tech always loses (so what if he downs the company's server for a few days - he just ensures bad references will spread and he'll be unemployable at any real job). Share your information! Document your password. Give copies to your boss. Being open like this creates trust and you'll be rewarded by knowing more things not usually shared, or in the even of a downturn, you'll probably get favorable treatment or even be retained (because they can trust you).
True, they have to let the little guy use their lines, but they are hardly taking a loss.
Exactly; I'd love a tariff model where I can set rates at 20% or more my costs - bundled or unbundled. (Please, no whining about $32.00/month unbundled copper pairs for DSL not being profitable!)
And don't forget these Bell boys are the definition of "born on second base, thinking they hit a double." I'd sure like to whine about a fat network filled with paying subscribers that I had to maintain.
Still, years of overhead, overpaid suits, union compensation and "lack of effort" rules, etc. have hampered them and leads them down the path of UAL and such.
There'll be some nice assets to snap up in the next 20 years...
Cheaper technologies, like wireless, might well leap ahead of fiber in the race to more bandwidth.
This is what we deal with smack in the middle of fly-over-country USA.
While I've negotiated for over a year with several idle fiber network owners (who still expect rates greater than what the ILEC charges, yet requires me to sink hundreds of thousands of my own capital to build out their fiber to markets where it's usable), we've resorted in nearly every case to tower construction, licensed microwave DS3 deployment, etc. (Funny, we're cheaper *and* faster than fiber, yet have more than enough capacity to feed small towns).
I've argued the concept of "sunk cost" until I've been blue in the face - no good. Many of these guys came out of ILECs and have a fantasy about "price = cost + 40%", rather than understanding "price = what market will bear."
Blame it on too many laid-off Bellheads going to work for network companies.
I think most telcos think of the fiber network as their backbone, and they don't really market it as a service for business.
I think it's more of a "we won't sell anything less than our cost+high margin price." Funny though, nobody's taking.
Perhaps the little wireless companies that are growing strong will have some nice post-bankruptcy networks to buy penny on the dollar.
Phone companies will light up the fiber when it makes fiscal sense to do so.
Except there is little compelling reason to do so...
Folks forget that while running fiber is cheap (relatively so), switching and last mile is not.
I sat through a small community presentation last month on how they want to overbuild the town (population 5,000) with fiber to every home, business, etc. "It'll only cost $2500 per location" was their estimate (double that and take twice as long and you might have a final number:-) ).
Even at their number, who wants to take a $12.5 million risk when at $20/mo. for resi phone service (half of which at most can be allocated for repayment of infrastructure), takes 20+ months for a marginal return? And I'm foolishly assuming 100% marketshare - something I'm certain the incumbant won't let me have, let alone other competitors.
The truth is that the same dollar invested elsewhere generates greater return. Nobody will pay $100/month for phone, even though their current $16-25/month (pre-tax) line sucks. They'll tolerate suck lines at $16-$25 while bitching about it all the time.
Meanwhile, many of these long-line fiber networks still expect the great returns promised in their business plan (written during dot-com). They'll keep asking pre-telco collapse prices until their assets are locked up in bankruptcy.
Look at how many people bitch about taxes, but keep voting Democrat... don't expect a change any time soon in wireline service.
Yea, and if you read drudgereport.com and the Register, you'll find that another 1/3 of Slashdot posts are copied with little creative discovery.
CmdrTaco may claim that most slashdot readers only come in for the headlines and the discussion value is minimal, but for his sake per the total lack of effort in finding Slashdot stories, I pray he's wrong...
The human ear (and the corresponding piece of driver code in the brain) is very sensitive to regularities and irregularities in sounds.
Two additional thoughts/perspectives on this (from a symphony french horn player now broadband guy):
- sound, in learning theory, is very powerful and when combined with other learning mediums (e.g. visual or conceptual) can be a good reinforcer.
Incidentally, if you ever wish to learn morse code, some of the most effective ways to learn it well and quickly are to learn it as sound - not patterns - because of how the brain processes things faster there.
People that try to think of code as "dah - dit - dah" - long/short/long - are crippling themselves and engineering future speed problems. I've actually seen people draw out lines and dots when hearing code, then going back to visually review it all and convert to letters. Audiatory --> Visual --> Conceptual. Ugh!
Instead, by learning it as a language based on sound - they'll be able to reach 30 wpm and greater because of how our brains are designed for optimized processing of language/sound. They'll begin hearing letters without even thinking of dahs and dits, or dashes and periods.
- sound for network testing: Using sound isn't that crazy. We already use Winamp and a 160 Kb shoutcast stream for lots of testing - you can be working on a circuit and immediately recognize you've got a problem when the audio drops, and the loading is nice when you're dealing with broadband residential service. Sure, there are special software tools for this, but none as pleasant to work with as a shoutcast of digitalgunfire.com
"Don't invade countries...otherwise it will become an economic basket case."
You mean, like France and Germany? Japan? South Korea?
Much of the developmental stagnation today has nothing to do with invade/don't invade, former colony/not colony, etc.
It does, however, have a lot to do with cultural ethic - especially those based in mysticism (and nurtured by the ruling elite).
Look at the worst example in the western hemisphere: Haiti. Overwhelmed with mysticism believes that destroy any attempt to create a logical mental framework - voodoo, magic, etc.
Mysticism systems are very good at destroying the ability to corrolate cause/effect (mysticism suppresses the perceived significance of effect - e.g. "the spirits make everything happen") so productive value system elements like "work ethic," "marital stability," education, etc. cannot take root. Why work hard, educate yourself, avoid getting AIDS, etc. when a spirit makes all the difference (and you have none)?
The first and only step for these countries is to plant seeds of reason.
Per Haiti, a good friend of mine (an exceptional radio engineer) contributes much of his time building and maintaining repeater networks, a TV station, and a radio station for a part of rural Haiti. He donates several weeks a year working there as well as many hours a week back home building stuff.
Absent a government that promotes reason, I think efforts like his and others are about the only chance places like Haiti have for progress.
Does the legal community realise that they are in desperate need of lawyers with technical background?
Being an official intellectual property attorney groupie (waaay to many of my friends are in the legal profession), I think there's a plausible explanation as to why there are so few technically savvy attorneys.
Look at one of the fundamental skills most attorneys need: a reasoning ability that permits them to see/argue/communicate/explain either side of an issue. Some would call this relativism, but I think that reflects a deeper personality issue that most attorneys I know don't have - they do have a sense of "one right answer" deep down, but must overcome it in their profession. Plus, much of this kind of problem solving is abstract/extroverted, e.g. dealing with people to wrestle with the problem domain. Often, these dealings are confrontational and you've got to get a high off of such interpersonal confrontation to survive in much of the legal field.
Contrast that with most technical persons and the skillset requirement that they evaluate a rather objective concept-area and determine the "best / correct answer." Relativism and subjectivity never worked very well in computer science. Combine this focus with the non-social interaction (working with machines, not people) and a general dislike of interpersonal confrontation, and you'll see why technical folks exist here and not on the other side.
Most of the IP attorneys I've worked with subsequently have either been attorney minds who dabble in tech (i.e. they laugh at Dilbert, have read Bill Gates's book, and bought Microsoft stock), or techies who got a law degree. Interestingly, the latter never seems to do very well in the legal profession - every single one I've known has gone back to dealing with computers, not people.
Now they come up with a solution designed to do exactly that?
Not exactly a new business model - "get employees hooked on something for free that is a pain in the ass for businesses, then offer an expensive solution to fix it to the businesses."
Remember Pointcast? Early innovator of "push"? Gave away their news receiver/news screen saver and overwhelmed company T1 lines? They later came out with a sort of proxy system for business subscribers that allowed a single thread to be downloaded and then fed to the inside users.
Apparently they didn't sell enough of them. Pointcast as it was known is gone and now points to Infogate, the acquirer of Pointcast technology (can we say 'assets only'?)
Then again, maybe there's something to this break it and offer a fix approach. Imagine IPOs of virus and trojan-writing entities with awesome virus protection scheme revenues. Or what if chinanet.cn (world class sponsorer of spam and intrusion attempts) offered a protection racket?
Internet Insurance, now there's a business model. From that perspective, AOL may have finally found a profitable model.
Seems like the/. discussion has been rather one-sided. While I can relate to both sides of the issue (politically leaning libertarian, manager of a rural regional broadband company), I think there are some points to be made that explains the FBI's interest and motivation, as well as the role of the service provider:
A cable company making an example out of customers, or fighting terrorism and REAL crime...
Or hunting down and executing civilians who ignore their authority (Ruby Ridge), dousing with flammable gas and igniting, then denying photographic evidence of shooting civilians as they attempted to flee (Waco), or ignoring evidence of Islamic terrorism in the prosecution of a major case preferring to stick with the politically pleasing but incorrect "angry white male" prosecution (OKC), yes, the FBI does seem to have some priority problems.
I don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist - fortunately there has been enough evidence, charges/convictions against agents and public condemnation for many of those events to provide enough substantiation for reasonable persons. Also, recognizing them as a political organization, not an objective law enforcement organization, clarifies their behavior substantially and explains why good agents are asked to do not-so-good things sometimes.
From this perspective, these actions make sense:
Wonder which the FBI's resources would be better spent at..."
In this case, it appears the FBI is working to establish deterrance on infrastructure crimes. There is considerable fear about the present security of our telecom, power, water, gas pipeline and railroad infrastructure.
I'll guarantee that this case was hand selected by top FBI officials, not a regular response to a service provider complaint. My experience two years ago with absolute disregard by FBI and Secret Service authorities to our exposing a hacking ring that had exploited several foreign embassies in DC and a DC dialup provider was enough to prove that they really don't care about crime unless it suits their political agenda.
Exactly! This is a job for CIVIL courts and local jurisdictions, not the FBI and the Feds.
Except when they need to scare the civilians out of tampering with infrastructure so they can focus on the/real/ bad guys.
IANAL, but this seems to me to be a violation of a CONTRACT, not a criminal act!
I'd absolutely concur, but thanks to popular support of intent crime laws (e.g. hate crimes), you folks have opened the doors to more of these ugly laws. Tampering with your CATV coax or POTS can now be construed as an act of terrorism, thanks to the wonders of "intent."
Unfortunately, the libertarians warned both sides about this encroachment (Democrats for hate crime and excessive intent-based gun laws; Republicans for national defense and terrorist intent laws, and both sides for the mess associated with RIAA "intent to steal intellectual property" laws), but most folks ignored us.
You know the line about having made your bed... election day is Tuesday in the US. Maybe it's a chance to send a message by voting libertarian.
*scoove* (Not associated nor registered with the libertarian party, but disgusted with both major parties)
Email is becoming so important to our everyday lives that maybe laws should be passed to protect email, just like they where passed to protect normal mail
Sure, and you're going to pay $0.35 per message for the protection. Oh, and that's only for non-guaranteed protected email. If you want a guarantee, we'll charge you $3.50.
What? Did you protection comes free? (Need to watch more Sopranos if you did).
Think about why email is free for a moment - you're paying for Internet transport (essentially layers three and four of the OSI model), and you're free to do whatever you want above that.
But now you're asking for application-layer guarantees. Here's what comes with your demand:
- specification of how you may and may not use your application layer. Count on Microsoft Outlook/Outlook Express as the only permitted email client. Do you think we have time to support your Linux system when 90% or more are happy with Outlook?
- creation of rules on what kinds of messages are permitted; e.g. attachments may not exceed 1 MB, must be known and permitted media types (no MP3s or ZIPs since the RIAA will quickly get into this game)
- a fee per message and per month for your "guaranteed email."
- government rules, regulations and restrictions on the whole business.
Understand that the USPS salivates at your demand for safety/protection/guarantee in a world that doesn't have them. They've prepared numerous proposals for guaranteed email (including my favorite that would make my email address something like sam_scoove_1234_north_elm_street_mycity_st@usps.co m ).
So make sure you're ready to pay the price (in dollars and freedom) before you demand big brother makes email "safe" for you.
The complaint here is that her account was not disabled, but she was refused access to it
Novel argument, but there are plenty of examples of how this responsibility is not the service providers.
We bought a house 8 years ago and got a fire sale price on it. Turned out the sellers owed a bunch of "nontraditional financial institution debts" (from gambling and drugs, to some rather scary people).
They did not leave a forwarding address. We continued to receive bank statements, personal letters, etc. for more than a year (the postal service told us we could not reject them; only those folks could request forwaring to a new address - so we had to mark "return to sender" and do the post offices job for more than a year, not to mention dealing with all the people who stopped by in person).
Think about it though and put yourself in the ISP's role. A customer is deliquent on their bill. They've used service without paying for it (a sort of theft). Whenever you finally shut someone off for nonpayment (which takes notices and plenty of time), you're supposed to keep working for free by setting up a "mail bounce" program for them? Or let them keep getting their service?
What do you propose it be replaced with? Socialism? Communism?
although one fears being terribly redundant by saying this, it's an excellent point that has to be made, and illustrates a very critical element about those making the anti-capitalist argument: THEY DO NOT USE REASON and do not "think through their proposal."
when i was foolish enough to argue with these types, I'd constantly hear their response to this question being "anything is better than capitalism." when you bring up examples of alternatives (nearly any good socialist system is effective), they'd respond with "well, at least i'm trying. you have to try *something*."
the only puzzle i'm still left with is why these people, who are usually moderately intelligent, permit themselves to think so sloppily?
unfortunately, i think you've got to look at nihlism, self-hatred, deviance, denial and rationalizing behavior used to cover up these defects as the source for their fragmented thinking.
a rational, non-defective person can understand there really are two types of systems:
1. one based on the right of the individual, where the mechanism for exchange is trade, and the individual has full liberty to trade or not trade.
or
2. one based on holding a gun to people's heads.
unfortunately, even the US has not seen option 1 in true form for 200 years, and the current trend is one of idiots like JonKatz screaming they feel left out in the world without a gun to their head...
KarlMarx writes: That is what a government in a capitalistic economy is for; maintaining a free market by hack-and-slash methods
Really? Avoiding the overused (but accurate) argument that you can't blame a capitalist economy when there isn't one, you've got to look at this behavior for what it is: graft/kickback/payoloa/etc.
Do governments in non-capitalist systems squeeze companies until they get the financial "recognition" they seek? The proper respect? Certainly the US isn't the only nation to treat the private sector as the government's ATM machine?
Having dealt with PTT's (monopoly phone companies) in many middle eastern and south american countries for several years, I was always mildly amused at how the deal never cared about bringing good products to people, having better rates, competition, etc. In some banana republics (specifically recalling one off the coast of Venezuela), the first words out of our PTT hosts' mouthes was "What stuff did you bring for us? Any electronics? Computers? Jewelry? Cash? Let's show what you've got." (Yea, they weren't looking for a fruit basket)
It was always about the money that'd be given to the respective PTT, its government, and the parties at the table (plus everyone they had to pay off).
Microsoft's antitrust was caused by its failure to properly recognize authority, and its successful resolution to the matter an indication that the authorities finally felt satisfied that the payola was mostly sufficient (for now).
Please, don't ever confuse this with capitalism. This is the behavior of a controlled economy.
and per: who can restrict the release of its APIs to major commercial companies only.
Yes, the other shoe dropping in corrupt, controlled economies. Other larger corporations got into the deal-fest too. Their congresscritters remembered their obligations to bring back some goodies for them too.
To you hopeless fools who can't figure this out, it'll never change as long as you don't blame the right source. This system was here before capitalism was ever conceived and will probably outlast it as well.
No, in fact, it may be a good indication the end is near for IBM, and the past decade of "reinvention" was only an anomoly. Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemna has only been delayed.
One of the things I like about Christensen's model is that it illustrates the fallacy of product normalizing on the top 5% of customers. Lucent, Digital, Wang, Nortel, etc. all fell prey to this issue. They listened to their very best paying customers and shifted more and more of their product design to please them.
Think about what IBM customers need supercomputer timesharing access? Probably their top 10% - or less. Can these folks already access timesharing? Certainly. So what's the hype about here?
It'd be one thing if it was a minor effort with big PR fanfare, sending a polite message to IBM's favorite customers that they think about them frequently.
But designating this kind of money and strategic focus? Especially when the focus appears to be a large, centralized and proprietary model (which flies in the face of low-cost, decentralized distributive models e.g. distributed.net, SETI@Home, etc.)?
Time to prepare for the fall... hey, maybe there will be some nice Enron-quality assets at the auction.
Hopefully this will help them retain important members of their sales and service teams.
Yea, they're going to need it. Especially after hiking their rates across the board as an emotional retaliation and blame shift of their troubles to customers "not paying their fair share" according to this Worldcom executive memo.
Hmm... shakey company (understatement), bankruptcy status with a high probability of failure, support people and engineers laid off, sales people too busy on monster.com to answer concerned customer calls, and they hike rates 10% across the board?
We gave Worldcom our response and cancelled the two remaining T1's with them, switching them to Sprint (who gave us, gasp, an even greater discount).
Still, there is fear that by discharging billions of debt in these creative bankruptcies, the real loser will be companies that don't cheat and play by the rules...
I find that dealing with tech support is uniformly frustrating for the advanced user because the providers are so focused on the clueless.
Absolutely concur. I'm one of those half-suit/half-geek oddballs and I spend a good amount of time dealing with embedded system projects (miniturization of router systems we put in ugly places like water towers). I've gotten used to simply waiting for folks to go thru their routine - in fact, I usually either get some good reading material out, sort my files, etc. while dealing with the basic questions.
But putting the service provider hat on, I'm not sure there is a good alternative (but I'm looking for one!!!). For instance, Old Man Kensey writes:
institute an "experienced customer" line
but acknowledges the issue with performance measurement. I'll stick to an even more basic concern: cost.
I hate to say it, but most of the 80% category (clueless users) are pretty easy to help. Like my mother-in-law. They'll write down step-by-step instructions and never deviate. They correctly assume that it probably was something they did that made things wrong, and have a much better attitude to deal with.
The 2% elite geeks never even call unless *we* have something wrong, so they're a breeze too (and have managed to evolve in a hostile world and are pretty savvy at handling their service provider).
It's the 18% "sorta knowledgable" users that cost us bucks on support. You know the type, false high self-esteem, marginal competency. Can use Frontpage so they're a self-declared web guru. Knows how to ping, and thinks he's the inventor of IP. Constantly tinkers with his PC and screws it up, but is certain it was the service provider's doing (even though everything worked until that service pack was applied). They start the support call by yelling at people, send nasty emails demanding to receive a personal apology from the CEO and credit for a year's worth of service, etc.
They'll monopolize the phone. Ask you a thousand questions unrelated to their most recent screwup. They'll suck you dry on support. When you finally figure out how they screwed it up (the one thing they are naturally good at), they assume the problem was secondary and the service provider is just covering up the problem. Then they'll break it again the next day.
It would not cost them a $50 support call to answer direct technical questions from experienced users if they would route questions properly based on their content
But how do I weed out the posers - They're 90% of the self-proclaimed experts, and would be nearly all of my calls.
(Incidentally, we keep a record of the 2% on our network and watch for their communications. They also get bandwidth boosts, doubling their rate shaping limits, as a little thank you for being competent. They thank us back by letting us know when they see something we should know about)
Perhaps the only solution is to charge for support like the phone company did - e.g. "if it's not our network, it's your bill."
Seriously, the only reasonable chance that I can think of...involves getting the law changed.
Aarrrrggg!
We technical-aware people are our own worst enemy, and we ought to *know better*.
This kind of advocacy only sets up false economies (read about rent control in NYC, please) which skew supply/demand to an extreme, and also subvert our rights to an administrative authority who has ulterior motives (e.g. king/emperor/dictator).
There's a really simple model that is well communicated in Ed Yourdon's book, Deathmarch Projects, and the model works well for technical and nontechnical decisions - even deciding what to have for dinner.
Here's a summary of the model (apologies to those that get this and find it redundant - you're not the ones I'm trying to help):
RULE 1: You have three variables: Time, Money, Functionality.
RULE 2: You can solve for one variable as your primary focus, and maybe a second one as a secondary emphasis.
RULE 3: You cannot solve for all three.
Examples:
I've only got $3. I need my lunch in 5 minutes. (1-Money, 2-Time. Don't count on a 5-course meal prepared just for you.)
I want $30 broadband. I want someone to deliver it to me and have it working quickly. (1-Money, 2-Time, prepare to sacrifice functionality)
I need a T1 yesterday. It's gotta do all sorts of VPN, firewalling, filtering, etc. (1-Time, 2-Functionality, open your wallet up!)
I need a very fancy house. I'm pretty short of money right now. (1-Functionality, 2-Money, better get your work clothes on...)
So... what do you make of:
I want cheap broadband. It should come in a convienent package and be installed this week. But it had better not have any spyware, had better work just the way I want, with my OS of choice, allow me to do whatever I want and have no limits.
Solving for all three... if the last two are important to you, you can have it. But count on $75/hour or more...
Though I concur with FatherOfONe's perspective on capitalism, I think he's heading down the wrong tracks on the view of the cable company:
What the Cable company is doing is wrong.
Not if the consumer signed up for it and bought it. Sure, you can skip the fine print, but you're still agreeing to it.
They will probably get sued over this.
Only by an inept attorney who disregards the "binding arbitration" clause of the service agreement. And then after it gets thrown out, the provider may wish to seek recovery for legal costs (which is in my service agreement).
The person didn't agree to any EULA, AND probably more importantly the user didn't get the option to counter the contract.
Sure they did (though I'm not a EULA fan; the service agreement we require people sign to order service does the job just fine). Counter the contract? Hahahaha... yea, I'm going to spend $2,000 in legal fees to get your $30/month business... not.
Specifically they didn't get an option to do a fair negotiation with the company.
There's the menu: which one would you like? Go negotiate with McDonalds over that Big Mac - they'll show you the door.
Seriously, think it's unfair? Then go elsewhere... you're ignoring that at $5 for the combo meal, there is no margin for legal fees, negotiation, sales people, etc.
This cable company is foolish to do this and it will come back to haunt them.
Actually, they're just filtering out the loser customers they don't want. You've heard it before, but ~20% of your customers will cost you most of your expense. Fire them and focus on helping those you can help.
but then they are a monopoly in that area... kinda like socialism...
Then buy elsewhere. Or start one up yourself and take all of those 20% pain in the ass customers. It would only be socialism if someone held a gun to my head and made me provide service to the clueless 20% for the same price as the 80%.
The point is that most internet users don't even know what an IP is
This is true, and I'll play devil's advocate a bit (since I don't see many arguing the service provider's view - even though I personally and professionally object to this level of intrusion, and also perceive an EULA to be rather unenforcable).
They don't care about linux, and they probably aren't even aware that there could be software doing "bad things" on their PC
Exactly. In fact, it gets much worse. They will demand you do things to them that are fundamentally bad... such as a medium-sized business we recently switched over that had been running a T1 with public addresses on every desktop, confidential filesharing servers (with public IPs) with IRC, RPC, NNTP, and thirty other services running, and absolutely *zero* firewalling/security/etc.
They got replaced with a rackmount Mikrotik router system and were immediately firewalled, RFC 1918 standard private IP network, etc.
Their response? Forget about thank you - nothing about complaints that they can't see things from home anymore (no, they won't buy VPN software - think cheap), can't run personal websites on desktops, open relaying on their Exchange server was "broken", etc. Oh, and to explain this to them? "We don't want to know about those details. We just want it to work the way it did before without spending more money."
Users will insist on being stupid about IP, security, etc. (I only mention this because it is part of the mindset you need to understand to see where the service provider is going to come from).
The tech did the EULA for them without consulting them
Come on... do you expect these folks to be experts about business policy? We train our guys to provide option A or B - A = installed our way, B = no install, goodbye and good luck. 90% of the customers are never an issue, but the 10% "I design websites, so therefore I'm a networking expert" types micromanage everything and work hard to screw it all up.
The contract demands the software to be installed. This is a serious problem.
Yes, and back to my clueless business example, here's why they insist upon it:
"Every time you users download something, reconfigure something, whatever, you dick up your IP settings and make me spend $50 per customer service telephone call to fix it."
By loading this software, I ensure that my configuration will probably stay on top of all the nonsense you put in there, and I can actually have a clue what is going on when you manage to screw it up still.
The alternative is $500/month broadband (minimum...), or zero support (which doesn't work, btw - people would still blame the service provider when a tornado obliterates their home, destroys their PC, and "their Internet doesn't work.")
Let's actually discuss ways to resolve it for everyone, rather than trying to make ourselves look clever.
It really comes down to one of two options:
1. Do it yourself. Know how to do all of this stuff as good or better than the service provider (and fake like you're an idiot customer with the spare Wintel box next to your connection for when you have to demonstrate the service provider has a problem).
2. Let your service provider do it all for you. Don't care to learn IP? Don't want to accept responsibility for screwing up your IP service when you load that stupid "dialup optimization" software you saw in a pop-up box, on top of a broadband PPPoE connection? (usually also spyware... ugh) Be my guest... but understand that decision comes with a price. And understand that price usually includes your service provider getting to capture all that data on you, in exchange for protecting you from your own stupidity.
The only other solution I can see is a Spyware-Free certification standard for service providers and software vendors. Establish a neutral entity, develop criteria for membership and verification, and allow people to promote that their product/service is compliant and recognized by the organization. Sort of a BBB approach to the issue...
Slashdot Mirror
Per the original post:
/. tech salary, add social security and both sides of income tax, plus health insurance, backoffice costs divided by employee, etc., and you'll have a nice $30+/hour number minimum. Multiply that times a the hours to put into place the management systems, policing time, customer contact time, etc. and you've got a cost well over $500, not including the cost of consumed bandwidth. At the $35 you're paying me, minus the cost of your service, it'll take me 5 or more years to make back that $500 you incurred. I'd rather tighten the noose and encourage you to abuse my competition.
/. before about profiling customers in other industries - e.g. Delta Skymiles. Don't think your ISP won't model who the good and bad customers are. Instead, count on it and use the system to your advantage, or understand that by being in the bad category, you're going to be treated just as someone with a lousy credit rating has at the bank. We already score customers on support cost - and know when you call in if you're a recurring problem user (blaming us because your MSWord doesn't work right), or if you're a prompt payer that rarely complains.
Is there usually any sort of markup going on along the line, or are people just passing along their own expenses down the line to the end user?"
The original poster refered to a "rate increase" scenario, such as being slashdotted (though this is almost never the condition seen; more often, it's things like abusive P2P, sustained large-pipe VPN connections to another network, or nonstop downloads of DVDs, MP3s, videos, etc.)
Contrary to common net paranoia, most ISPs don't go chasing after bandwidth abusers unless they really are a problem. Network "policemen" are an expensive distraction from the primary focus of our business, so they don't usually send the heat out unless someone's really out of control.
So per "passing along expense" vs. "marking things up," I wish!!! By the time a customer has been notified of bandwidth or AUP abuse, they've not only consumed much more resource than they've paid for (which typically won't be paid back, even if a rate increase is applied to the subscriber), but they've incurred a hefty administrative expense.
Take your typical
How much of the total costs are tied to infrastructure versus the human component (technicians, sysadmins, technical support and so forth)?
Very good question to raise. In our network, bandwidth costs are only #3 - they follow payroll (people cost) and network infrastructure capital costs (e.g. routers, buildings, towers, switches, servers).
When you're down to a per Mbps/month cost of less than $350 (for both upstream egress to tier one networks and ingress from your customer), bandwidth abusers still can cost you a bit of money (chewing up a sustained 1 Mbps/month while paying $30-$40 for residential service), but the people cost associated with dealing with the abuse is more significant.
So what's the best way to deal with this? Information retrieval charging
Actually, I'd expect more and more providers to pursue a tighter bandwidth model (down from the ~3 Mbps unlimited of early cable modem years) with bandwidth caps being more common. Understand that by making 95% of the customers overjoyed, and either making the 5% bandwidth hogs pay for their use or go to the competition, it makes service better and lower cost for everyone else.
And a final thought: We've seen threads on
*scoove*
Thought there have been several responses relating to burstable pricing, it's important to understand that burstable models are more of a marketing concept than a network costing one.
/can/ permit overbooking to occur.
Considering that IP service is in the class of packet sharing telecom - meaning you do not have a fully reserved, "100% yours and only yours" pipe from location A to location Z (end to end), your costing models have to be a bit more complex than adding the sum of the parts. But it should probably start there. Packet share != Overbooking, although packet share networks
To explain costing on a more common tier two or smaller level (tier one costing has much more to do with transport costs and a bunch more variables not interesting here), take your typical tier two or smaller ISP who we'll say is connected only to a single upstream, and that upstream provider is a tier one (multihomed at x+ bilateral and/or multilateral facilities; e.g. Sprint or AT&T Worldnet).
That ISP will have:
- an egress transport cost: e.g. a T1 to Sprint and perhaps a local loop cost to get to the tier one carrier; sometimes this is bundled by the tier one provider
- a facility cost: router, colocation, switching and all the associated things to figure out what to do with customer traffic and send it where
- an ingress transport cost: this is the transport cost from the customer to the ISP (e.g. T1 to a local frame relay cloud from the customer, then another portion from the cloud to the ISP, or a similar model in DSL, or a fixed point-to-point line)
Plus applicable switching/routing/data center/network core/backoffice/customer support/billing costs.
Then the fun comes in calculating an aggregate the ISP wishes to use in predicting how many seats it can sell on its T1 until the plane can get full - understanding that if it oversubscribes the T1, it may have the possibility of bumping passengers (such as slow performance; people getting less than what they paid for).
(Note: You'd be surprised how many smaller ISPs don't even understand the concept of aggregation - many rural ISPs in our parts think Internet comes in T1 and put 500 DSL home connections on the T1 without thinking twice. "Order another T1? Why? We already have Internet!" Plus there are other reasons they never go past a single T1 - their Cisco 2600 only has two ports (T1 in, T1 out), they don't know how to load balance more than one T1, and fundamentally it's too expensive for them)
Aggregation becomes the process of determining how to share that cost, since it's a shared network. It includes variables like time of day (business customers will usually demand more bandwidth during business hours; residential after hours, etc.), whether the customer has a bandwidth guarantee in their service level agreement, etc.
After all of this calculation and checking of assumptions, the ISP may calculate it into a cost per Mbps as we do.
so they have to overbook. It's all about getting the most out of what resources you have.
Not always true. Overbooking can be perceived as ineffective loading - an error, in otherwords, to be avoided. Your power utility doesn't run a constantly overbooked network - that'd have serious regulatory and technical consequences. But when you've got very little backoffice expertise in a smaller ISP, they won't know how to develop traffic models and purchase effectively.
Overbooking can be avoided both by developing good subscriber models and by enforcing them (ugly reality: if you're using 1 Mbps up/down sustained and are paying $35/month, you're not paying for what you're consuming and you'll cause a problem somewhere along the line). Additionally, you're going to see better aggregation and closer matches to "what you pay is what you get" as the last mile part of the business matures. Much of the success of an ISP is in how it buys and how closely it matches what was bought with what was sold - you can't run a $2 all-you-can-eat prime rib buffet, nor can you charge $10 for one that has nothing but dinner roles.
Really, overbooking and the opposite end of the spectrum (giving excessive bandwidth without charging for it) are mistakes made early in the development of the business. Successful providers will tighten up both ends, providing the service people ordered and paid for, and smart customers will understand that in order to get what they paid for, they shouldn't also expect a free lunch.
*scoove*
The obvious reason that Linux admins are better sysadmins (overall) and can admin more machines is because they're, er, mostly self-taught.
And I think there's a lot more to this as well. Most Linux admins I've worked with have had deeper expertise in more areas - perhaps due to the requirement of "knowing more" to successfully operate a network application server (which Linux is typically thrown into). Yea, you'll still find a few programming language-centric admins (ugh)... but most are general purposed enough to have discovered how IP works on a server OS.
For instance, you'd better know a bit about IP and network security when setting up an apache webserver, dns server, sendmail or qmail system, etc. Most Linux admins I've dealt with subsequently are rather aware of WAN protocols.
However, throw a MCSE at a OSI layer three to five problem and they'll start blaming the version of the webbrowser or waste significant time in other application-layer space. I'd swear they never mention the OSI 7-layer model in Microsoft class.
What's worse yet is that once these junior badge MCSE techies get their certification, they're convinced they know everything about networks and end up wasting other peoples time chasing down the wrong track. These people are costly and can cause a lot of damage to an organization through their stubborn ignorance.
Maybe it's the learning model predicting the kind of employee; e.g. MCSE is often class-fed, much like cattle finished off at the feed lot. They're spoon fed the standard materials and led to believe they're all special people, sent off to change the world with their new cert. Linux admins, often self-taught, usually succeed by keeping their eyes open to learn things from others and won't spend weeks arguing with you when you're right.
Best hiring decision you can make: pay the extra $10K/year for the "20 foot hole jumper" rather than getting yourself a couple of MCSE "3-foot-hole" types. You'll never regret it.
*scoove*
could well make it impossible to setup a personal wireless LAN on the ground.
As well as be aware of interference caused to primary and predecessor users.
With amateur radio primary in 2390-2450, other predecessor users active in 2.4 GHz ISM and U-NII bands, they're unlikely to find any frequency available for a 300K square mile range that doesn't intentionally cause interference.
Plus, don't forget that while their signals will be high enough to have LOS, they have one heck of a freespace loss to overcome and certainly would not be in compliance on the return from the subscriber location.
Seems like a financial pitch for a dot-com idea that wasn't killed in the last round. ISM or U-NII band? Unlikely to ever get off the ground. More likely would be an LMDS/MMDS licensed band purchase from one of the folks like AT&T or Sprint.
*scoove*
without anyone realising it was used as the service account for many things, including the backup server
This absolutely screams of bad process design and the blame must go to inept management.
Some suggestions I'd pass along (having learned the hard way the first time, as well have having played on both tech and manager side of the fence):
- use role accounts/contacts, not personal ones: Domain registration, administrative accounts on servers, contact email addresses for company stuff, etc. should all point to a generic role contact or account. It's easy to map these to the appropriate individual accounts, but avoids the hell of deleting accounts when someone leaves. I've had to personally intervene with countless companies that have had their Internet domains registered in an employee's name (individual, not role) and experienced all sorts of nonsense when the employee left.
- require documentation (and if you're a tech, provide it and maintain even if you're not asked): Too many tech folks act as if knowing and not sharing process information, passwords, etc. is job security. It's not - it only ensures that when you go, they'll get rid of you like ripping off a bandaid, rather than offer obligatory goodies (severance, consulting contracts, etc.). I've been an advisor to many of these episodes where some tech had attained too much system control and refused to share it. The slightest demand for special treatment from these techs usually creates a knee-jerk reaction, but in the end, the tech always loses (so what if he downs the company's server for a few days - he just ensures bad references will spread and he'll be unemployable at any real job). Share your information! Document your password. Give copies to your boss. Being open like this creates trust and you'll be rewarded by knowing more things not usually shared, or in the even of a downturn, you'll probably get favorable treatment or even be retained (because they can trust you).
*scoove*
And I'll bite too...
True, they have to let the little guy use their lines, but they are hardly taking a loss.
Exactly; I'd love a tariff model where I can set rates at 20% or more my costs - bundled or unbundled. (Please, no whining about $32.00/month unbundled copper pairs for DSL not being profitable!)
And don't forget these Bell boys are the definition of "born on second base, thinking they hit a double." I'd sure like to whine about a fat network filled with paying subscribers that I had to maintain.
Still, years of overhead, overpaid suits, union compensation and "lack of effort" rules, etc. have hampered them and leads them down the path of UAL and such.
There'll be some nice assets to snap up in the next 20 years...
*scoove*
The reason being that it is far easier/cheaper to construct towers than it is to lay lines.
Not to mention safer and less prone to disappearing from theft or civil war!
*scoove*
Cheaper technologies, like wireless, might well leap ahead of fiber in the race to more bandwidth.
This is what we deal with smack in the middle of fly-over-country USA.
While I've negotiated for over a year with several idle fiber network owners (who still expect rates greater than what the ILEC charges, yet requires me to sink hundreds of thousands of my own capital to build out their fiber to markets where it's usable), we've resorted in nearly every case to tower construction, licensed microwave DS3 deployment, etc. (Funny, we're cheaper *and* faster than fiber, yet have more than enough capacity to feed small towns).
I've argued the concept of "sunk cost" until I've been blue in the face - no good. Many of these guys came out of ILECs and have a fantasy about "price = cost + 40%", rather than understanding "price = what market will bear."
Blame it on too many laid-off Bellheads going to work for network companies.
I think most telcos think of the fiber network as their backbone, and they don't really market it as a service for business.
I think it's more of a "we won't sell anything less than our cost+high margin price." Funny though, nobody's taking.
Perhaps the little wireless companies that are growing strong will have some nice post-bankruptcy networks to buy penny on the dollar.
*scoove*
Phone companies will light up the fiber when it makes fiscal sense to do so.
Except there is little compelling reason to do so...
Folks forget that while running fiber is cheap (relatively so), switching and last mile is not.
I sat through a small community presentation last month on how they want to overbuild the town (population 5,000) with fiber to every home, business, etc. "It'll only cost $2500 per location" was their estimate (double that and take twice as long and you might have a final number:-) ).
Even at their number, who wants to take a $12.5 million risk when at $20/mo. for resi phone service (half of which at most can be allocated for repayment of infrastructure), takes 20+ months for a marginal return? And I'm foolishly assuming 100% marketshare - something I'm certain the incumbant won't let me have, let alone other competitors.
The truth is that the same dollar invested elsewhere generates greater return. Nobody will pay $100/month for phone, even though their current $16-25/month (pre-tax) line sucks. They'll tolerate suck lines at $16-$25 while bitching about it all the time.
Meanwhile, many of these long-line fiber networks still expect the great returns promised in their business plan (written during dot-com). They'll keep asking pre-telco collapse prices until their assets are locked up in bankruptcy.
Look at how many people bitch about taxes, but keep voting Democrat... don't expect a change any time soon in wireline service.
*scoove*
Are 3 dupes in a day worse than 1 tripe?
Yea, and if you read drudgereport.com and the Register, you'll find that another 1/3 of Slashdot posts are copied with little creative discovery.
CmdrTaco may claim that most slashdot readers only come in for the headlines and the discussion value is minimal, but for his sake per the total lack of effort in finding Slashdot stories, I pray he's wrong...
*scoove*
The human ear (and the corresponding piece of driver code in the brain) is very sensitive to regularities and irregularities in sounds.
Two additional thoughts/perspectives on this (from a symphony french horn player now broadband guy):
- sound, in learning theory, is very powerful and when combined with other learning mediums (e.g. visual or conceptual) can be a good reinforcer.
Incidentally, if you ever wish to learn morse code, some of the most effective ways to learn it well and quickly are to learn it as sound - not patterns - because of how the brain processes things faster there.
People that try to think of code as "dah - dit - dah" - long/short/long - are crippling themselves and engineering future speed problems. I've actually seen people draw out lines and dots when hearing code, then going back to visually review it all and convert to letters. Audiatory --> Visual --> Conceptual. Ugh!
Instead, by learning it as a language based on sound - they'll be able to reach 30 wpm and greater because of how our brains are designed for optimized processing of language/sound. They'll begin hearing letters without even thinking of dahs and dits, or dashes and periods.
- sound for network testing: Using sound isn't that crazy. We already use Winamp and a 160 Kb shoutcast stream for lots of testing - you can be working on a circuit and immediately recognize you've got a problem when the audio drops, and the loading is nice when you're dealing with broadband residential service. Sure, there are special software tools for this, but none as pleasant to work with as a shoutcast of digitalgunfire.com
*scoove*
"Don't invade countries...otherwise it will become an economic basket case."
You mean, like France and Germany? Japan? South Korea?
Much of the developmental stagnation today has nothing to do with invade/don't invade, former colony/not colony, etc.
It does, however, have a lot to do with cultural ethic - especially those based in mysticism (and nurtured by the ruling elite).
Look at the worst example in the western hemisphere: Haiti. Overwhelmed with mysticism believes that destroy any attempt to create a logical mental framework - voodoo, magic, etc.
Mysticism systems are very good at destroying the ability to corrolate cause/effect (mysticism suppresses the perceived significance of effect - e.g. "the spirits make everything happen") so productive value system elements like "work ethic," "marital stability," education, etc. cannot take root. Why work hard, educate yourself, avoid getting AIDS, etc. when a spirit makes all the difference (and you have none)?
The first and only step for these countries is to plant seeds of reason.
Per Haiti, a good friend of mine (an exceptional radio engineer) contributes much of his time building and maintaining repeater networks, a TV station, and a radio station for a part of rural Haiti. He donates several weeks a year working there as well as many hours a week back home building stuff.
Absent a government that promotes reason, I think efforts like his and others are about the only chance places like Haiti have for progress.
*scoove*
Does the legal community realise that they are in desperate need of lawyers with technical background?
Being an official intellectual property attorney groupie (waaay to many of my friends are in the legal profession), I think there's a plausible explanation as to why there are so few technically savvy attorneys.
Look at one of the fundamental skills most attorneys need: a reasoning ability that permits them to see/argue/communicate/explain either side of an issue. Some would call this relativism, but I think that reflects a deeper personality issue that most attorneys I know don't have - they do have a sense of "one right answer" deep down, but must overcome it in their profession. Plus, much of this kind of problem solving is abstract/extroverted, e.g. dealing with people to wrestle with the problem domain. Often, these dealings are confrontational and you've got to get a high off of such interpersonal confrontation to survive in much of the legal field.
Contrast that with most technical persons and the skillset requirement that they evaluate a rather objective concept-area and determine the "best / correct answer." Relativism and subjectivity never worked very well in computer science. Combine this focus with the non-social interaction (working with machines, not people) and a general dislike of interpersonal confrontation, and you'll see why technical folks exist here and not on the other side.
Most of the IP attorneys I've worked with subsequently have either been attorney minds who dabble in tech (i.e. they laugh at Dilbert, have read Bill Gates's book, and bought Microsoft stock), or techies who got a law degree. Interestingly, the latter never seems to do very well in the legal profession - every single one I've known has gone back to dealing with computers, not people.
*scoove*
Now they come up with a solution designed to do exactly that?
Not exactly a new business model - "get employees hooked on something for free that is a pain in the ass for businesses, then offer an expensive solution to fix it to the businesses."
Remember Pointcast? Early innovator of "push"? Gave away their news receiver/news screen saver and overwhelmed company T1 lines? They later came out with a sort of proxy system for business subscribers that allowed a single thread to be downloaded and then fed to the inside users.
Apparently they didn't sell enough of them. Pointcast as it was known is gone and now points to Infogate, the acquirer of Pointcast technology (can we say 'assets only'?)
Then again, maybe there's something to this break it and offer a fix approach. Imagine IPOs of virus and trojan-writing entities with awesome virus protection scheme revenues. Or what if chinanet.cn (world class sponsorer of spam and intrusion attempts) offered a protection racket?
Internet Insurance, now there's a business model. From that perspective, AOL may have finally found a profitable model.
*scoove*
Seems like the /. discussion has been rather one-sided. While I can relate to both sides of the issue (politically leaning libertarian, manager of a rural regional broadband company), I think there are some points to be made that explains the FBI's interest and motivation, as well as the role of the service provider:
/real/ bad guys.
A cable company making an example out of customers, or fighting terrorism and REAL crime...
Or hunting down and executing civilians who ignore their authority (Ruby Ridge), dousing with flammable gas and igniting, then denying photographic evidence of shooting civilians as they attempted to flee (Waco), or ignoring evidence of Islamic terrorism in the prosecution of a major case preferring to stick with the politically pleasing but incorrect "angry white male" prosecution (OKC), yes, the FBI does seem to have some priority problems.
I don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist - fortunately there has been enough evidence, charges/convictions against agents and public condemnation for many of those events to provide enough substantiation for reasonable persons. Also, recognizing them as a political organization, not an objective law enforcement organization, clarifies their behavior substantially and explains why good agents are asked to do not-so-good things sometimes.
From this perspective, these actions make sense:
Wonder which the FBI's resources would be better spent at..."
In this case, it appears the FBI is working to establish deterrance on infrastructure crimes. There is considerable fear about the present security of our telecom, power, water, gas pipeline and railroad infrastructure.
I'll guarantee that this case was hand selected by top FBI officials, not a regular response to a service provider complaint. My experience two years ago with absolute disregard by FBI and Secret Service authorities to our exposing a hacking ring that had exploited several foreign embassies in DC and a DC dialup provider was enough to prove that they really don't care about crime unless it suits their political agenda.
Exactly! This is a job for CIVIL courts and local jurisdictions, not the FBI and the Feds.
Except when they need to scare the civilians out of tampering with infrastructure so they can focus on the
IANAL, but this seems to me to be a violation of a CONTRACT, not a criminal act!
I'd absolutely concur, but thanks to popular support of intent crime laws (e.g. hate crimes), you folks have opened the doors to more of these ugly laws. Tampering with your CATV coax or POTS can now be construed as an act of terrorism, thanks to the wonders of "intent."
Unfortunately, the libertarians warned both sides about this encroachment (Democrats for hate crime and excessive intent-based gun laws; Republicans for national defense and terrorist intent laws, and both sides for the mess associated with RIAA "intent to steal intellectual property" laws), but most folks ignored us.
You know the line about having made your bed... election day is Tuesday in the US. Maybe it's a chance to send a message by voting libertarian.
*scoove*
(Not associated nor registered with the libertarian party, but disgusted with both major parties)
Email is becoming so important to our everyday lives that maybe laws should be passed to protect email, just like they where passed to protect normal mail
o m ).
Sure, and you're going to pay $0.35 per message for the protection. Oh, and that's only for non-guaranteed protected email. If you want a guarantee, we'll charge you $3.50.
What? Did you protection comes free? (Need to watch more Sopranos if you did).
Think about why email is free for a moment - you're paying for Internet transport (essentially layers three and four of the OSI model), and you're free to do whatever you want above that.
But now you're asking for application-layer guarantees. Here's what comes with your demand:
- specification of how you may and may not use your application layer. Count on Microsoft Outlook/Outlook Express as the only permitted email client. Do you think we have time to support your Linux system when 90% or more are happy with Outlook?
- creation of rules on what kinds of messages are permitted; e.g. attachments may not exceed 1 MB, must be known and permitted media types (no MP3s or ZIPs since the RIAA will quickly get into this game)
- a fee per message and per month for your "guaranteed email."
- government rules, regulations and restrictions on the whole business.
Understand that the USPS salivates at your demand for safety/protection/guarantee in a world that doesn't have them. They've prepared numerous proposals for guaranteed email (including my favorite that would make my email address something like sam_scoove_1234_north_elm_street_mycity_st@usps.c
So make sure you're ready to pay the price (in dollars and freedom) before you demand big brother makes email "safe" for you.
*scoove*
The complaint here is that her account was not disabled, but she was refused access to it
Novel argument, but there are plenty of examples of how this responsibility is not the service providers.
We bought a house 8 years ago and got a fire sale price on it. Turned out the sellers owed a bunch of "nontraditional financial institution debts" (from gambling and drugs, to some rather scary people).
They did not leave a forwarding address. We continued to receive bank statements, personal letters, etc. for more than a year (the postal service told us we could not reject them; only those folks could request forwaring to a new address - so we had to mark "return to sender" and do the post offices job for more than a year, not to mention dealing with all the people who stopped by in person).
Think about it though and put yourself in the ISP's role. A customer is deliquent on their bill. They've used service without paying for it (a sort of theft). Whenever you finally shut someone off for nonpayment (which takes notices and plenty of time), you're supposed to keep working for free by setting up a "mail bounce" program for them? Or let them keep getting their service?
*scoove*
good points from dytin...
What do you propose it be replaced with? Socialism? Communism?
although one fears being terribly redundant by saying this, it's an excellent point that has to be made, and illustrates a very critical element about those making the anti-capitalist argument: THEY DO NOT USE REASON and do not "think through their proposal."
when i was foolish enough to argue with these types, I'd constantly hear their response to this question being "anything is better than capitalism." when you bring up examples of alternatives (nearly any good socialist system is effective), they'd respond with "well, at least i'm trying. you have to try *something*."
the only puzzle i'm still left with is why these people, who are usually moderately intelligent, permit themselves to think so sloppily?
unfortunately, i think you've got to look at nihlism, self-hatred, deviance, denial and rationalizing behavior used to cover up these defects as the source for their fragmented thinking.
a rational, non-defective person can understand there really are two types of systems:
1. one based on the right of the individual, where the mechanism for exchange is trade, and the individual has full liberty to trade or not trade.
or
2. one based on holding a gun to people's heads.
unfortunately, even the US has not seen option 1 in true form for 200 years, and the current trend is one of idiots like JonKatz screaming they feel left out in the world without a gun to their head...
*scoove*
KarlMarx writes:
That is what a government in a capitalistic economy is for; maintaining a free market by hack-and-slash methods
Really? Avoiding the overused (but accurate) argument that you can't blame a capitalist economy when there isn't one, you've got to look at this behavior for what it is: graft/kickback/payoloa/etc.
Do governments in non-capitalist systems squeeze companies until they get the financial "recognition" they seek? The proper respect? Certainly the US isn't the only nation to treat the private sector as the government's ATM machine?
Having dealt with PTT's (monopoly phone companies) in many middle eastern and south american countries for several years, I was always mildly amused at how the deal never cared about bringing good products to people, having better rates, competition, etc. In some banana republics (specifically recalling one off the coast of Venezuela), the first words out of our PTT hosts' mouthes was "What stuff did you bring for us? Any electronics? Computers? Jewelry? Cash? Let's show what you've got." (Yea, they weren't looking for a fruit basket)
It was always about the money that'd be given to the respective PTT, its government, and the parties at the table (plus everyone they had to pay off).
Microsoft's antitrust was caused by its failure to properly recognize authority, and its successful resolution to the matter an indication that the authorities finally felt satisfied that the payola was mostly sufficient (for now).
Please, don't ever confuse this with capitalism. This is the behavior of a controlled economy.
and per:
who can restrict the release of its APIs to major commercial companies only.
Yes, the other shoe dropping in corrupt, controlled economies. Other larger corporations got into the deal-fest too. Their congresscritters remembered their obligations to bring back some goodies for them too.
To you hopeless fools who can't figure this out, it'll never change as long as you don't blame the right source. This system was here before capitalism was ever conceived and will probably outlast it as well.
*scoove*
This won't revolutionize anything...
No, in fact, it may be a good indication the end is near for IBM, and the past decade of "reinvention" was only an anomoly. Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemna has only been delayed.
One of the things I like about Christensen's model is that it illustrates the fallacy of product normalizing on the top 5% of customers. Lucent, Digital, Wang, Nortel, etc. all fell prey to this issue. They listened to their very best paying customers and shifted more and more of their product design to please them.
Think about what IBM customers need supercomputer timesharing access? Probably their top 10% - or less. Can these folks already access timesharing? Certainly. So what's the hype about here?
It'd be one thing if it was a minor effort with big PR fanfare, sending a polite message to IBM's favorite customers that they think about them frequently.
But designating this kind of money and strategic focus? Especially when the focus appears to be a large, centralized and proprietary model (which flies in the face of low-cost, decentralized distributive models e.g. distributed.net, SETI@Home, etc.)?
Time to prepare for the fall... hey, maybe there will be some nice Enron-quality assets at the auction.
*scoove*
Hopefully this will help them retain important members of their sales and service teams.
Yea, they're going to need it. Especially after hiking their rates across the board as an emotional retaliation and blame shift of their troubles to customers "not paying their fair share" according to this Worldcom executive memo.
Hmm... shakey company (understatement), bankruptcy status with a high probability of failure, support people and engineers laid off, sales people too busy on monster.com to answer concerned customer calls, and they hike rates 10% across the board?
We gave Worldcom our response and cancelled the two remaining T1's with them, switching them to Sprint (who gave us, gasp, an even greater discount).
Still, there is fear that by discharging billions of debt in these creative bankruptcies, the real loser will be companies that don't cheat and play by the rules...
*scoove*
I find that dealing with tech support is uniformly frustrating for the advanced user because the providers are so focused on the clueless.
Absolutely concur. I'm one of those half-suit/half-geek oddballs and I spend a good amount of time dealing with embedded system projects (miniturization of router systems we put in ugly places like water towers). I've gotten used to simply waiting for folks to go thru their routine - in fact, I usually either get some good reading material out, sort my files, etc. while dealing with the basic questions.
But putting the service provider hat on, I'm not sure there is a good alternative (but I'm looking for one!!!). For instance, Old Man Kensey writes:
institute an "experienced customer" line
but acknowledges the issue with performance measurement. I'll stick to an even more basic concern: cost.
I hate to say it, but most of the 80% category (clueless users) are pretty easy to help. Like my mother-in-law. They'll write down step-by-step instructions and never deviate. They correctly assume that it probably was something they did that made things wrong, and have a much better attitude to deal with.
The 2% elite geeks never even call unless *we* have something wrong, so they're a breeze too (and have managed to evolve in a hostile world and are pretty savvy at handling their service provider).
It's the 18% "sorta knowledgable" users that cost us bucks on support. You know the type, false high self-esteem, marginal competency. Can use Frontpage so they're a self-declared web guru. Knows how to ping, and thinks he's the inventor of IP. Constantly tinkers with his PC and screws it up, but is certain it was the service provider's doing (even though everything worked until that service pack was applied). They start the support call by yelling at people, send nasty emails demanding to receive a personal apology from the CEO and credit for a year's worth of service, etc.
They'll monopolize the phone. Ask you a thousand questions unrelated to their most recent screwup. They'll suck you dry on support. When you finally figure out how they screwed it up (the one thing they are naturally good at), they assume the problem was secondary and the service provider is just covering up the problem. Then they'll break it again the next day.
It would not cost them a $50 support call to answer direct technical questions from experienced users if they would route questions properly based on their content
But how do I weed out the posers - They're 90% of the self-proclaimed experts, and would be nearly all of my calls.
(Incidentally, we keep a record of the 2% on our network and watch for their communications. They also get bandwidth boosts, doubling their rate shaping limits, as a little thank you for being competent. They thank us back by letting us know when they see something we should know about)
Perhaps the only solution is to charge for support like the phone company did - e.g. "if it's not our network, it's your bill."
*scoove*
Seriously, the only reasonable chance that I can think of ...involves getting the law changed.
Aarrrrggg!
We technical-aware people are our own worst enemy, and we ought to *know better*.
This kind of advocacy only sets up false economies (read about rent control in NYC, please) which skew supply/demand to an extreme, and also subvert our rights to an administrative authority who has ulterior motives (e.g. king/emperor/dictator).
There's a really simple model that is well communicated in Ed Yourdon's book, Deathmarch Projects, and the model works well for technical and nontechnical decisions - even deciding what to have for dinner.
Here's a summary of the model (apologies to those that get this and find it redundant - you're not the ones I'm trying to help):
RULE 1: You have three variables: Time, Money, Functionality.
RULE 2: You can solve for one variable as your primary focus, and maybe a second one as a secondary emphasis.
RULE 3: You cannot solve for all three.
Examples:
I've only got $3. I need my lunch in 5 minutes. (1-Money, 2-Time. Don't count on a 5-course meal prepared just for you.)
I want $30 broadband. I want someone to deliver it to me and have it working quickly. (1-Money, 2-Time, prepare to sacrifice functionality)
I need a T1 yesterday. It's gotta do all sorts of VPN, firewalling, filtering, etc. (1-Time, 2-Functionality, open your wallet up!)
I need a very fancy house. I'm pretty short of money right now. (1-Functionality, 2-Money, better get your work clothes on...)
So... what do you make of:
I want cheap broadband. It should come in a convienent package and be installed this week. But it had better not have any spyware, had better work just the way I want, with my OS of choice, allow me to do whatever I want and have no limits.
Solving for all three... if the last two are important to you, you can have it. But count on $75/hour or more...
*scoove*
Though I concur with FatherOfONe's perspective on capitalism, I think he's heading down the wrong tracks on the view of the cable company:
What the Cable company is doing is wrong.
Not if the consumer signed up for it and bought it. Sure, you can skip the fine print, but you're still agreeing to it.
They will probably get sued over this.
Only by an inept attorney who disregards the "binding arbitration" clause of the service agreement. And then after it gets thrown out, the provider may wish to seek recovery for legal costs (which is in my service agreement).
The person didn't agree to any EULA, AND probably more importantly the user didn't get the option to counter the contract.
Sure they did (though I'm not a EULA fan; the service agreement we require people sign to order service does the job just fine). Counter the contract? Hahahaha... yea, I'm going to spend $2,000 in legal fees to get your $30/month business... not.
Specifically they didn't get an option to do a fair negotiation with the company.
There's the menu: which one would you like? Go negotiate with McDonalds over that Big Mac - they'll show you the door.
Seriously, think it's unfair? Then go elsewhere... you're ignoring that at $5 for the combo meal, there is no margin for legal fees, negotiation, sales people, etc.
This cable company is foolish to do this and it will come back to haunt them.
Actually, they're just filtering out the loser customers they don't want. You've heard it before, but ~20% of your customers will cost you most of your expense. Fire them and focus on helping those you can help.
but then they are a monopoly in that area... kinda like socialism...
Then buy elsewhere. Or start one up yourself and take all of those 20% pain in the ass customers. It would only be socialism if someone held a gun to my head and made me provide service to the clueless 20% for the same price as the 80%.
*scoove*
The point is that most internet users don't even know what an IP is
This is true, and I'll play devil's advocate a bit (since I don't see many arguing the service provider's view - even though I personally and professionally object to this level of intrusion, and also perceive an EULA to be rather unenforcable).
They don't care about linux, and they probably aren't even aware that there could be software doing "bad things" on their PC
Exactly. In fact, it gets much worse. They will demand you do things to them that are fundamentally bad... such as a medium-sized business we recently switched over that had been running a T1 with public addresses on every desktop, confidential filesharing servers (with public IPs) with IRC, RPC, NNTP, and thirty other services running, and absolutely *zero* firewalling/security/etc.
They got replaced with a rackmount Mikrotik router system and were immediately firewalled, RFC 1918 standard private IP network, etc.
Their response? Forget about thank you - nothing about complaints that they can't see things from home anymore (no, they won't buy VPN software - think cheap), can't run personal websites on desktops, open relaying on their Exchange server was "broken", etc. Oh, and to explain this to them? "We don't want to know about those details. We just want it to work the way it did before without spending more money."
Users will insist on being stupid about IP, security, etc. (I only mention this because it is part of the mindset you need to understand to see where the service provider is going to come from).
The tech did the EULA for them without consulting them
Come on... do you expect these folks to be experts about business policy? We train our guys to provide option A or B - A = installed our way, B = no install, goodbye and good luck. 90% of the customers are never an issue, but the 10% "I design websites, so therefore I'm a networking expert" types micromanage everything and work hard to screw it all up.
The contract demands the software to be installed. This is a serious problem.
Yes, and back to my clueless business example, here's why they insist upon it:
"Every time you users download something, reconfigure something, whatever, you dick up your IP settings and make me spend $50 per customer service telephone call to fix it."
By loading this software, I ensure that my configuration will probably stay on top of all the nonsense you put in there, and I can actually have a clue what is going on when you manage to screw it up still.
The alternative is $500/month broadband (minimum...), or zero support (which doesn't work, btw - people would still blame the service provider when a tornado obliterates their home, destroys their PC, and "their Internet doesn't work.")
Let's actually discuss ways to resolve it for everyone, rather than trying to make ourselves look clever.
It really comes down to one of two options:
1. Do it yourself. Know how to do all of this stuff as good or better than the service provider (and fake like you're an idiot customer with the spare Wintel box next to your connection for when you have to demonstrate the service provider has a problem).
2. Let your service provider do it all for you. Don't care to learn IP? Don't want to accept responsibility for screwing up your IP service when you load that stupid "dialup optimization" software you saw in a pop-up box, on top of a broadband PPPoE connection? (usually also spyware... ugh) Be my guest... but understand that decision comes with a price. And understand that price usually includes your service provider getting to capture all that data on you, in exchange for protecting you from your own stupidity.
The only other solution I can see is a Spyware-Free certification standard for service providers and software vendors. Establish a neutral entity, develop criteria for membership and verification, and allow people to promote that their product/service is compliant and recognized by the organization. Sort of a BBB approach to the issue...
*scoove*