The CMO didn't do anything, did you see any ads for BlackBerry 10? The marketing for the "flagship" product never existed, because the CMO dropped the ball. I'm actually surprised the CFO is leaving, he's been with BlackBerry for a long time. I would expect there to be a top exec shuffle with a new CEO considering the old CXX execs were pretty useless.
We've needed Gnome lite for years, I remember back in the earlier days of Gnome 2 memory use was deplorable then, and its not gotten any better. Along with the Gnome dev team constantly stuffing their opinions down the user's throats saying "Its for your own good, we're the devs, we know better than you." I remember when they decided it was a good idea to make the default action for Nautilus to be spacial, that pissed EVERY gnome user I knew then, and still know including myself off to high hell. The Gnome team has claimed in the past that they have cleaned up bloat, and made it faster, but I really beg to differ. The only reason I'm using Gnome still is because KDE blows, and my distro of choice hasn't implemented Gnome 3 yet. I know when it does, I'm switching to XFCE, I'm sick of the Gnome team and their shit. The bloat, and assuming they know better than me is getting old, and I can't stand it anymore
(We also need slashdot lite, I'm sick of this stupid AJAX shit, let me just post)
Unfortunately both Wind and Mobilicity, as well as Public Mobile only work in the GTA, their networks are tiny. Anywhere else, and you're roaming on robbers and getting raped by roaming charges. Plus, they use the "Other" 3G band, the same one that TMO uses in the states. Depending on where you go Bell/Telus/Robbers will be your best bet. Bell/Telus share the same CDMA and HSPA+ networks, bell owns everything east of manitoba-ish, telus owns the rest and the companies share. If you're going to Ontario, as long as you're below Timmins, you're probably going to have fine coverage, after that, well.... it gets kinda spotty....
Where I live, its one of 2 (and then the resellers). Its either Bell for DSL, or Rogers for cable. All of the third party providers have to use Robbers or Bell as their transport provider to the plug in the wall in your house/apartment/domicile....
Now, TekSavvy is awesome, I have them for my DSL link and static IP I use for my servers. I get notification before scheduled downtime, I have never had an issue with them, and they're fair and affordable. I also have a Rogers cable line because 2.5-3Mbit DSL is just not fast enough when you want to do anything more than browse light pages. Rogers constantly fucks up everything. I had to fight with them to get things set up the first day. Bell Canada is no better, they 'auto-renew' contracts without prior consent, and then attempt to charge you outlandish termination fees. Fuck the big cable/telcos, fuck Cogrobellushaw.
Not only downwind from Nanticoke, but include the steel mills in the industrial sector, the ones for many years that belched out noxious, and toxic fumes completely uncontrolled. Add in the few Coking facilities that Stelco operated, as well as the many other things. There are parts of Hamilton harbour that are considered to be more toxic than nuclear waste dumps due to the concentration of coal tar, and industrial sludge that ended up there. When I lived in Hamilton, everything in my apartment was covered with a film of soot from the truck traffic, the smog, and the steel mills, and I lived on the mountain. However, Hamilton barely gets the brunt of the shit they generate though, it all blows across the bay to Burlington, the smog was insane when I lived in Burlington, there were days during the summer when we were told to not go outside at lunch due to the smog levels, there were days were you couldn't see the lake from a block away there was so much smog. I firmly believe that nuclear power is far safer, think about it how often do reactors meltdown, or catch fire? Now compare that to how much shit that a single coal fired power plant, or anything for that matter belches out into the atmosphere in a given day....
The casino crushed whatever was left of tourism in Niagara Falls NY. Love canal, and Oxychem probably didn't help. Its sad when I have to drive through the area to the Robert Moses parkway, I remember when I was a kid and Niagara Falls NY was just as much of a destination as Niagara Falls Ontario; and I'm only 25! And considering the Robert Moses Parkway, that highway is getting scary, parts of it are starting to fall off the cliffs, and all the state does is move the traffic over a lane to buy a little bit more time... How many more years till that whole part of the rock face is gone due to lack of maintenance....
BIS Can integrate up to 7 Email accounts and Keep them in sync with your device. A BES can do one either Exchange/Novell Groupwise/Domino. Combine a BIS and BES (Its called Enterprise-Prosumer Plus), and you get both features.
You could probably get Teksavvy (www.teksavvy.com). They're technically a Bell DSL re-seller, but their customer services is WAY better, and I feel better giving less money to Bell, and more money to the little guy
...Lastly a white board I think is essential. You need a way for each shift to write things down for the next shift. "This alarm keeps going of. Jim said to call him at home when it does and he'll log in to reset it" etc... Stuff like that is essential. Make them write a date next to each message so you know when somethings old and can probably be erased.
Isn't that what a good ticketing system is for? Cut a ticket, send out an email thread, have a shift handover list for every team, and so the incoming team knows what the hell is going on they can find the email with the corresponding ticket number
I work in a NOC, 12hr rotating shifts, and we work 24/7/365 (and 366 on leap years:)). What I recommend is very comfortable fully adjustable high back chairs with a head rest.
As for monitors, you need to give them fully adjustable mounts, with nice high quality wide screen displays (Some may say standard aspect ratio, but seriously, widescreen would make my job SO much easier). 4 Monitors would be good too, 3 is good, 4 would be far better. Give them a powerful computer, and make sure they are kept up to date hardware wise, plus, if these people are technical, and you're giving them the keys to your castle, make sure they have admin rights on their own machines so they can fix minor issues without calling your IT Disservice Desk. Give them relatively unfiltered internet, night shifts get VERY boring. Make sure every telephone has a corded and cordless headset for comfortable use, holding a handset to the ear for long periods is hopeless, and wireless is good for short calls, but you need wired for anything long.
As for lighting, task lighting that the users can control is very important, as well as dimable overhead reflective lighting is important. As for desks, adjustable hight is important for comfortable use, and make them BIG. As for your video wall, make it a good size, and have it easily changeable if someone notices something important is missing, give them TV, hell, if you can, give them 2 'tvs', one for news, one for something else, and give them the ability to change the channels if they want to watch a hockey game at night, or if the olympics are on, etc, etc, etc.... Make sure the enviromental controls are good, and not constantly changing. Give them the ability to play music for the whole operation center, entertainment is BIG when working long shifts.
Give them a lounge to relax in before shift, or on lunch, or after shift. I think thats everything I can think of for now
CDMA carrierS are Bell Canada and Telus, who also operate HSPA+ networks, Rogers is a pure GSM carrier who completely owns fido.
Roaming Data is fucking expensive, I speak from experience as someone who travels to the US very frequently. My solution to avoid these costs was to buy a US cell phone, on Pay as you go.
NOW, to answer this poor guy's question...
There is no easy way, all these solutions recommending google voice are phenomenal, until you realize that google voice doesn't work properly with most Canadian numbers. What I would recommend is a dual radio device, something like the BlackBerry Tour, or 8800. That way you can have a CDMA carrier, and a GSM carrier, both numbers are associated to the device, so both numbers will work. You could get a Rogers/Fido SIM with a monthly BB data plan and a sprint/vzw/whoever CDMA phone plan. When you go home to the states, cancel the data on the GSM carrier, pick it up on the CDMA carrier. This is probably your most affordable and easiest method, however its still is needlessly complex.
I wish you luck with whatever you do, as I'd love to figure it out for myself cause its painful to be without my BB when I'm in the states for more than a few days:S
Future Shop is the definition of scum in the consumer electronics field.
Try walking in to buy a single Bluray, or DVD, and they'll try to sell you a new TV, bluray player, receiver, speakers, and beer fridge, because they get a commission off every sale. Canadian Best Buy is by far the LEAST scummy big box store out there in Canada. Plus, Future Shop's return policy is terrible in comparison to BB canada (I've put it to the test a few times unintentionally)
You just need to train them better... Tell them "If you buy it and it breaks, I refuse to support it, and you fix it yourself." I did it with my sister. She bombed her XPS, I told her I'll tell you how to re-install your OS from DVD, but I'm not doing any of it, and I won't be home to help. She did it, no problems. My parents learned their lesson a few years back when my mom bombed her machine 3 times in a week, and I told her she wasn't allowed to use windows anymore. I installed Ubuntu, and she learned that you don't have to install everything you see, and that firefox is far better than IE. My dad learned because my mom learned, and now I only have to fix the occasional broken hardware on their domain managed laptops.
I guess the fact that I get free car repairs for fixing the computers is a bonus too >.>
And Cogeco, and Shaw, both of which have hands in rogers, and vice versa, all the cable companies, except videotron (which btw is only available in quebec, and no one cares about quebec), own large shares of each other, so when one rapes their customers, they all benefit
There's still a free version: free.grisoft.com and select the first one with 'basic' protection, then click through the upselling, and a page or 2 later it takes you to the free download. I agree, AVG used to be a very good product. I still recomend it, but when I install it, I make sure that the LinkScanner is disabled, I found it annoying the first time I saw it, so I uninstalled AVG and made sure it wasn't there the second time.
Its not slimey, its a good idea in concept, unfortunately implementation was poor. Slimey is Norton Internet Securities' "BLOCK ALL SSL/TLS SITES EXCEPT SYMANTEC" when the license expires scam; or McAffee's "Uninstall and you may as well reformat cause I'm not going anywhere method"; or for that matter, that shitty trend micro product that every damn ISP bundles for 'free' with their service. Anyways, getting off topic.
AVG is still a good product, its just their implementation of a specific concept was poor, it may very well be something that marketing got a hold of before it was ready and started claiming it would be there when it shouldn't have been.
Why bother, the PS3 has DLNA support. Install TVersity (this is the windows option, I'm sure theres something for the mac and linux as well) on your desktop, set it up to transcode and upscale, plug a network cable into your PS3, and go... I use it almost every day for music, and movies.
In Canada from what I've read and interpreted from the Laws regarding it, it is called "Theft of a Wireless Communications Signal" or something along those lines. Its punished the same way as people who stupidly put up antennas and broadcast shit over registered radio bands and then claim they didn't know.
Truthfully, I use open wireless occasionally, but I use it to quickly check email or other low bandwidth things, which I tunnel through a secured VPN to my personal network, as well, I have the endpoint set to re-direct all traffic over the VPN. Now I just need to find my tinfoil hat so they can't read my brainwaves.
When I was in high school about 2.5 years ago, the Sysadmin there decided he wanted to install keyloggers on all the computers in
a) The school library (they were also running NetOP to spy on students who were trying to work....)
b) The Cisco Lab (thereby unknowingly to us breaking our signed contracts which stated we would not distribute the cisco networking academy curriculum)
He then gave the password to access these keyloggers to his lackies, who were no more than stupid students, who blatently used these key loggers to steal people's passwords, and get others in trouble...
We never did anything about it, we were going to complain to the board, but we figured no one would listen to us anyways... Now that I think about it, I regret getting that dumbass fired for revealing private information... It could have also contributed to the student records server getting hacked later in that year...
For those wondering, I went to Denis Morris High School
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The CMO didn't do anything, did you see any ads for BlackBerry 10? The marketing for the "flagship" product never existed, because the CMO dropped the ball. I'm actually surprised the CFO is leaving, he's been with BlackBerry for a long time. I would expect there to be a top exec shuffle with a new CEO considering the old CXX execs were pretty useless.
We've needed Gnome lite for years, I remember back in the earlier days of Gnome 2 memory use was deplorable then, and its not gotten any better. Along with the Gnome dev team constantly stuffing their opinions down the user's throats saying "Its for your own good, we're the devs, we know better than you." I remember when they decided it was a good idea to make the default action for Nautilus to be spacial, that pissed EVERY gnome user I knew then, and still know including myself off to high hell. The Gnome team has claimed in the past that they have cleaned up bloat, and made it faster, but I really beg to differ. The only reason I'm using Gnome still is because KDE blows, and my distro of choice hasn't implemented Gnome 3 yet. I know when it does, I'm switching to XFCE, I'm sick of the Gnome team and their shit. The bloat, and assuming they know better than me is getting old, and I can't stand it anymore
(We also need slashdot lite, I'm sick of this stupid AJAX shit, let me just post)
Unfortunately both Wind and Mobilicity, as well as Public Mobile only work in the GTA, their networks are tiny. Anywhere else, and you're roaming on robbers and getting raped by roaming charges. Plus, they use the "Other" 3G band, the same one that TMO uses in the states. Depending on where you go Bell/Telus/Robbers will be your best bet. Bell/Telus share the same CDMA and HSPA+ networks, bell owns everything east of manitoba-ish, telus owns the rest and the companies share. If you're going to Ontario, as long as you're below Timmins, you're probably going to have fine coverage, after that, well.... it gets kinda spotty....
As an example, here's Bell's coverage map:
http://www.bell.ca/shopping/PrsShpWls_Coverage.page
Where I live, its one of 2 (and then the resellers). Its either Bell for DSL, or Rogers for cable. All of the third party providers have to use Robbers or Bell as their transport provider to the plug in the wall in your house/apartment/domicile....
Now, TekSavvy is awesome, I have them for my DSL link and static IP I use for my servers. I get notification before scheduled downtime, I have never had an issue with them, and they're fair and affordable. I also have a Rogers cable line because 2.5-3Mbit DSL is just not fast enough when you want to do anything more than browse light pages. Rogers constantly fucks up everything. I had to fight with them to get things set up the first day. Bell Canada is no better, they 'auto-renew' contracts without prior consent, and then attempt to charge you outlandish termination fees. Fuck the big cable/telcos, fuck Cogrobellushaw.
Not only downwind from Nanticoke, but include the steel mills in the industrial sector, the ones for many years that belched out noxious, and toxic fumes completely uncontrolled. Add in the few Coking facilities that Stelco operated, as well as the many other things. There are parts of Hamilton harbour that are considered to be more toxic than nuclear waste dumps due to the concentration of coal tar, and industrial sludge that ended up there. When I lived in Hamilton, everything in my apartment was covered with a film of soot from the truck traffic, the smog, and the steel mills, and I lived on the mountain. However, Hamilton barely gets the brunt of the shit they generate though, it all blows across the bay to Burlington, the smog was insane when I lived in Burlington, there were days during the summer when we were told to not go outside at lunch due to the smog levels, there were days were you couldn't see the lake from a block away there was so much smog. I firmly believe that nuclear power is far safer, think about it how often do reactors meltdown, or catch fire? Now compare that to how much shit that a single coal fired power plant, or anything for that matter belches out into the atmosphere in a given day....
I'd sell it to someone I really didn't like........
The casino crushed whatever was left of tourism in Niagara Falls NY. Love canal, and Oxychem probably didn't help. Its sad when I have to drive through the area to the Robert Moses parkway, I remember when I was a kid and Niagara Falls NY was just as much of a destination as Niagara Falls Ontario; and I'm only 25! And considering the Robert Moses Parkway, that highway is getting scary, parts of it are starting to fall off the cliffs, and all the state does is move the traffic over a lane to buy a little bit more time... How many more years till that whole part of the rock face is gone due to lack of maintenance....
BIS Can integrate up to 7 Email accounts and Keep them in sync with your device. A BES can do one either Exchange/Novell Groupwise/Domino. Combine a BIS and BES (Its called Enterprise-Prosumer Plus), and you get both features.
You could probably get Teksavvy (www.teksavvy.com). They're technically a Bell DSL re-seller, but their customer services is WAY better, and I feel better giving less money to Bell, and more money to the little guy
...Lastly a white board I think is essential. You need a way for each shift to write things down for the next shift. "This alarm keeps going of. Jim said to call him at home when it does and he'll log in to reset it" etc... Stuff like that is essential. Make them write a date next to each message so you know when somethings old and can probably be erased.
Isn't that what a good ticketing system is for? Cut a ticket, send out an email thread, have a shift handover list for every team, and so the incoming team knows what the hell is going on they can find the email with the corresponding ticket number
I work in a NOC, 12hr rotating shifts, and we work 24/7/365 (and 366 on leap years :)). What I recommend is very comfortable fully adjustable high back chairs with a head rest.
As for monitors, you need to give them fully adjustable mounts, with nice high quality wide screen displays (Some may say standard aspect ratio, but seriously, widescreen would make my job SO much easier). 4 Monitors would be good too, 3 is good, 4 would be far better. Give them a powerful computer, and make sure they are kept up to date hardware wise, plus, if these people are technical, and you're giving them the keys to your castle, make sure they have admin rights on their own machines so they can fix minor issues without calling your IT Disservice Desk. Give them relatively unfiltered internet, night shifts get VERY boring. Make sure every telephone has a corded and cordless headset for comfortable use, holding a handset to the ear for long periods is hopeless, and wireless is good for short calls, but you need wired for anything long.
As for lighting, task lighting that the users can control is very important, as well as dimable overhead reflective lighting is important. As for desks, adjustable hight is important for comfortable use, and make them BIG. As for your video wall, make it a good size, and have it easily changeable if someone notices something important is missing, give them TV, hell, if you can, give them 2 'tvs', one for news, one for something else, and give them the ability to change the channels if they want to watch a hockey game at night, or if the olympics are on, etc, etc, etc.... Make sure the enviromental controls are good, and not constantly changing. Give them the ability to play music for the whole operation center, entertainment is BIG when working long shifts.
Give them a lounge to relax in before shift, or on lunch, or after shift. I think thats everything I can think of for now
CDMA carrierS are Bell Canada and Telus, who also operate HSPA+ networks, Rogers is a pure GSM carrier who completely owns fido.
:S
Roaming Data is fucking expensive, I speak from experience as someone who travels to the US very frequently. My solution to avoid these costs was to buy a US cell phone, on Pay as you go.
NOW, to answer this poor guy's question...
There is no easy way, all these solutions recommending google voice are phenomenal, until you realize that google voice doesn't work properly with most Canadian numbers. What I would recommend is a dual radio device, something like the BlackBerry Tour, or 8800. That way you can have a CDMA carrier, and a GSM carrier, both numbers are associated to the device, so both numbers will work. You could get a Rogers/Fido SIM with a monthly BB data plan and a sprint/vzw/whoever CDMA phone plan. When you go home to the states, cancel the data on the GSM carrier, pick it up on the CDMA carrier. This is probably your most affordable and easiest method, however its still is needlessly complex.
I wish you luck with whatever you do, as I'd love to figure it out for myself cause its painful to be without my BB when I'm in the states for more than a few days
Future Shop is the definition of scum in the consumer electronics field.
Try walking in to buy a single Bluray, or DVD, and they'll try to sell you a new TV, bluray player, receiver, speakers, and beer fridge, because they get a commission off every sale. Canadian Best Buy is by far the LEAST scummy big box store out there in Canada. Plus, Future Shop's return policy is terrible in comparison to BB canada (I've put it to the test a few times unintentionally)
You just need to train them better... Tell them "If you buy it and it breaks, I refuse to support it, and you fix it yourself." I did it with my sister. She bombed her XPS, I told her I'll tell you how to re-install your OS from DVD, but I'm not doing any of it, and I won't be home to help. She did it, no problems. My parents learned their lesson a few years back when my mom bombed her machine 3 times in a week, and I told her she wasn't allowed to use windows anymore. I installed Ubuntu, and she learned that you don't have to install everything you see, and that firefox is far better than IE. My dad learned because my mom learned, and now I only have to fix the occasional broken hardware on their domain managed laptops.
I guess the fact that I get free car repairs for fixing the computers is a bonus too >.>
And Cogeco, and Shaw, both of which have hands in rogers, and vice versa, all the cable companies, except videotron (which btw is only available in quebec, and no one cares about quebec), own large shares of each other, so when one rapes their customers, they all benefit
Samba isn't AD support, it uses the old method of logging in that was used with NT4, the name currently escapes my memory.
There's still a free version: free.grisoft.com and select the first one with 'basic' protection, then click through the upselling, and a page or 2 later it takes you to the free download. I agree, AVG used to be a very good product. I still recomend it, but when I install it, I make sure that the LinkScanner is disabled, I found it annoying the first time I saw it, so I uninstalled AVG and made sure it wasn't there the second time.
Its not slimey, its a good idea in concept, unfortunately implementation was poor. Slimey is Norton Internet Securities' "BLOCK ALL SSL/TLS SITES EXCEPT SYMANTEC" when the license expires scam; or McAffee's "Uninstall and you may as well reformat cause I'm not going anywhere method"; or for that matter, that shitty trend micro product that every damn ISP bundles for 'free' with their service. Anyways, getting off topic.
AVG is still a good product, its just their implementation of a specific concept was poor, it may very well be something that marketing got a hold of before it was ready and started claiming it would be there when it shouldn't have been.
Why bother, the PS3 has DLNA support. Install TVersity (this is the windows option, I'm sure theres something for the mac and linux as well) on your desktop, set it up to transcode and upscale, plug a network cable into your PS3, and go... I use it almost every day for music, and movies.
In Canada from what I've read and interpreted from the Laws regarding it, it is called "Theft of a Wireless Communications Signal" or something along those lines. Its punished the same way as people who stupidly put up antennas and broadcast shit over registered radio bands and then claim they didn't know. Truthfully, I use open wireless occasionally, but I use it to quickly check email or other low bandwidth things, which I tunnel through a secured VPN to my personal network, as well, I have the endpoint set to re-direct all traffic over the VPN. Now I just need to find my tinfoil hat so they can't read my brainwaves.
When I was in high school about 2.5 years ago, the Sysadmin there decided he wanted to install keyloggers on all the computers in
a) The school library (they were also running NetOP to spy on students who were trying to work....)
b) The Cisco Lab (thereby unknowingly to us breaking our signed contracts which stated we would not distribute the cisco networking academy curriculum)
He then gave the password to access these keyloggers to his lackies, who were no more than stupid students, who blatently used these key loggers to steal people's passwords, and get others in trouble...
We never did anything about it, we were going to complain to the board, but we figured no one would listen to us anyways... Now that I think about it, I regret getting that dumbass fired for revealing private information... It could have also contributed to the student records server getting hacked later in that year...
For those wondering, I went to Denis Morris High School