This is what happens when all you care about is the cheapest price. Go to smaller independants and this kind of thing wouldn't be happening. More often than not the service is better from independant ISPs as well as they don't practice this kind of B.S. For that matter, you'd be surprised, prices may very well be the same or even lower. But really, if you're ISP is blocking something you need/want, is a mear $3 a month more really that much more to pay?
America is getting what it deserves in so many ways right now it's not even funny. When you reward behavior like this, you get MORE behavior like this. We are responsible for it because we allow it to happen.
My suggestion would be....get away from the telco ISP and be happy with real quality of service.
Well said. I've recently done an accounting of my business and I've found that I've donated over $50k this year to non-profits and to small businesses that needed a hand. While it's true that a company's main goals is to make money, being a part of the community also creates longevity. I own a small company that's been around for 15 years in a small town. I wouldn't still be around if I didn't make our presence known and make absolutely sure that we were seen in a positive light. So while that $50k is a large sum to me it's also an investment in my community for them to continue to use us for their services and hardware.
Besides, one of my favorite sayings is "I'm in this to make a living, not make a killing".
You know. At first after reading your comment I was sitting here thinking "damn, what an ass". Then I re-read my comment, that's when it clicked. It's been 5 minutes now and I'm still chuckling. Good one...smartass!:P I would mod you Funny, but since you can't mod in comments that you've posted...oh well.
There are plenty of competitors. Just people don't bother to look for them. there are over 5000 independant ISPs in the US. Most of them don't have the advertising budget that SBC, BS, or Verizon have. If it's not on TV, people don't care bother.
I've been around since 1998 selling DSL, many times I couldn't do it at competitive prices with SBC until recently. Now I can sell DSL at the same price, but I still don't have the marketing budget they do. So I only get a few subscribers a month vs 100's or thousands.
The really annoying fact about this is
Customer "they are the only choice"
Me: "No they aren't, we provide the same service but for $5/more a month for 6 months then we are at the same price as they are"
Customer: "oh well that's just too expensive"
Me: "Really? It only costs you $30 more over 6 months for better service, reliability and no call center in india to deal with"
Customer: "But that's just too expensive. But damn those call centers suck"
Me: "That's the best I can do."
6 weeks later same person....
Customer: "I can't pull up any websites can you help?"
Me: "Sure, what's your name so I can get your account information"
Customer: "rumble23453563467@sbcglobal.net" -- eat that spam spiders
Me: "I'm sorry, but I can't assist you, you're not one of my customers"
Customer: "But you fixed my computer and told me you provide DSL 6 months ago and I really don't want to call the SBC customer service Dept. because I can't understand what they are saying and it always takes 2 weeks to get any problems fixed"
Me: "....."
Then all the Small ISPs that don't do that crap will start taking their customers away because they're tired of paying the same price for slower and unreliable service....oh wait, they're doing that now. Guess that's why I've gown 15% in the past 6 months.
Erm, I really hate to be the informer here, but Peachtree is made by Sage. If you're talking about MAS90 or MAS200. You've got ALOT to learn about what a good accounting package is. MAS is a huge hunk of cow dung that is some seriously horrible support. That partly flows from their distribution channel, but either rate, MAS sucks. Try making it work properly on a win2k3 terminal server and see if you aren't pulling your hair out because the people you bought it from can't and won't support it but they'll sure charge you.
Peachtree is much more of a professional product than MAS any day of the week. I will agree that Quickbooks is for SMALL businesses, however.
Either rate, speaking as someone who has spent a large amount of time in accounting software packages this year, I can tell you without a doubt, MAS90 blows, Peachtree is made by Sage which also makes the MAS lines of products. And don't knock Quickbooks for small businesses. Why should a company that's grossing less than $1mil a year spend $600 for a full blown accounting app only to have to turn around and do it again next year?
Obviously the writer of this article hasn't spent 2 weeks on the phone with an ADVANCED technician (in India) that just refused to admit he didn't have a solution to the problem and wouldn't escalate the issue for....get this. Microsoft Office 2000 installation issues on Windows Terminal Server 2003. After I finally got the dude to escalate, it took less than an hour with a guy in Texas to resolve the issue.
Gotta love it when a clean install of win2k3 terminal won't properly run a clean administration install of o2k without registry hacking. I always kind of thought the installations where suppose to do that kind of thing for you. But of course it's sooooo much easier to use Windows than linux. I could have had the same thing setup in linux in under 4 hours.
Crap, I thought that seemed funny that I was using a philosopher. Thanks for the correction. They have had a few myths that were confirmed. I can't remember what they were off the top of my head. But this particular one after seeing the site you pasted, they had the MIT students come out to CA and have them reproduce their findings. Of course with the wind and cooler air out here from PA they couldn't get it to work.
First off to the poster, it's not a "cable" channel:)
But my question is this....
No offense, but you guys don't have PhDs or anything like that. Doesn't it stand to reason that documented proof that students from MIT that could prove that the Death Ray could be reproduced show that it could be done?
Taking into consideration that atmospheric temperature will affect the amount of heat needed to cause combustion and the fact that the bay area CA is a constantly windy location with cool air constantly coming off the water which will also cool "the target". "The Med" being much warmer as well as closer to the equator (and thus more direct sunlight). Wouldn't those conditions be much easier to cause combustion? As a former welder, I know that during the winter for me to make the same welding runs (I worked out doors) in 5 degree weather vs. 80 degree weather I would have to turn the heat up a bit with the first stick so the metal could warm to a sufficent level. I could then turn the amps back down and follow my heat trail.
Well, my customers say otherwise. Considering last year I sold about $28k worth of Sony products alone...my little dinky store with a crappy website did sell product.
Sure I'm no Micheal Dell or Steve Jobs, and after the HUGE amounts of problems I see from Dell PC's or the lack of good software/hardware for the Mac I wouldn't want to be. We pride ourselves in providing solid products that you don't have to worry about when they will break. We have only had 1 hardware failure in 3 years after it went to the customer and that's over 5000 machines. That's not to say we don't have our fair share of hardware problems, but we catch them before they leave our shop.
Sure the site looks a bit old, that's because it's 5 years old and in the process of being rebuilt. It's also the 4th site my company has had which shows that there's obviously something about our products and services. If you weren't intending on being mean as you put it, then that statement would have been better left unsaid.
Anything that supports Sony's Blu-Ray will not be supported by me personally, or grudgingly from my company. When you can't trust your supplier's scruples, you can't sell their products to the end user.
So, personally, anything using Blu-Ray will not be purchased by me.
Company wise, Blu-Ray will only be used at the express request from the customer.
will turn up lots of interesting results. The fact is that MS poured money into SCO to let them be the "bad guy" in the linux bashing since they already learned that bashing linux directly only hurt them more and brought more attention to linux that otherwise wouldn't have been realized. So they used someone else to do the dirty deed.
Not that I don't believe the proper tool for the proper job, sometimes Windows IS better for a person's needs, but that doesn't change the fact that MS will do anything to attempt to destroy, discredit, dismantle linux because it is the only true threat they face due to their size.
WHO THE HELL CARES ANYMORE?!?! It's obvious that Darl McBride is a litigious bastard and that's how he...well, pretty much earns his living is taking people/companies to court. It's already been all but proven that SCO has no grounds and it's just dragging on now. Plain and simply, this whole move was NOTHING but a stock manipulation for corperate gain. It's also very probable that they were paid to do this by Microsoft and then left out to hang on their own when MS decided to sell off it's preferred stock because MS didn't like the way McBride was handling the situation. Hell, for all we know he approached MS saying "this is what we got, you want to help me fund it?"
Either rate, the effects are all still the same. McBride sued IBM without any proof of wrongdoing. SCO has seriously opened itself up for a plethora of lawsuits with this action and once it's proven in court that there was nothing going on.
We could actually believe half of what the mass media says. And you know, the whole paperless system is a good thing. Not like we don't already cut down enough trees as it is.
Re:Your tax dollars at work ladies and gentlemen
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Ma Bell is Back
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Sure you have a choice, but only because the feds MADE them open up the lines to outside companies. But the thing to remember here is that SBC/Verizon leverage things to their advantage because they own the copper in the ground.
For example, with SBC, I pay $11.50/mth per "primary" DSL. That's my cost to SBC to get a customer to my line. Now I say to my LINE because that doesn't automatically bring it to my network like it does with SBC. We also have to pay for a circuit to go from their network to ours. Right now, that's roughly costing me about $10 per user. Then we add on internet bandwidth costs, server costs, and support costs. There's absolutely NO way I can offer DSL to a customer for $14.95/mth even if it's only for 6 months. It costs me about $27-30/mth to supply that DSL.
They don't have to pay for the additional line to their network since it's already on their network. They also subsidize that $14.95 with additional phone service fees. To get that $14.95 you have to also have Caller ID, and Call Waiting at the least.
Basically the same thing happens with these other phone providers. But to offer you service so much cheaper, they're doing it by pretty much killing off their profit margin. Basically, they're probably only making $2/mth off your phone service, but they plan make up for that in sheer volume. However they're burning through their investors' money until they reach the break even point.
But then we have to take into consideration the recent FCC ruling that DSL is considered a data service even though it's offered over phone lines. Believe me, SBC and Verizon WILL find a way to try and twist that to their benefit.
The problem boils down to the people who make, judge, enforce, and interpret laws don't really know what's going on in the industry. They may have a little knowledge...enough to be dangerous. Or they're just thinking from a purely political, business, and/or financial standpoint.
anyway, sorry, I digressed considerably there. Point is sure it's possible, but those companies have to pay through the nose to have access to those same services that can't/aren't subsidized from somewhere else. So what will usually happen if they're cutting the price so low like that is service/support ends up suffering.
Re:Your tax dollars at work ladies and gentlemen
on
Ma Bell is Back
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Sure we would. They would be able to charge more for use of fiber lines than copper. That would be where that company would increase it's income by investing in it's infrastructure...which would be all that company was ever allowed to own and operate in.
The point I'm trying to make here is that by allowing a company to control both infrastructure and offer services, they can use that position to unfairly leverage the competition into a no-profit situation or higher prices which of course makes theirs "look" better. Trust me, I'm in ISP and I've been dealing with this crap from SBC for well over 6 years now. They always kept the price point just out of our reach of being able to compete on a level price structure. Granted, that usually makes our service better since we have to justify the cost.
Think of it like this. Microsoft being allowed to write other software that works on their OS probably shouldn't be allowed either. Think about all the times MS has used that OS monopoly to their advantage. Intentionally writting updates that breaks other software functionality such as WordPerfect. There's really no difference, it's just a different arena.
Your tax dollars at work ladies and gentlemen
on
Ma Bell is Back
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· Score: 5, Insightful
So much money was spent to declare an anti-trust/monopoly against the telco giant...now we're just letting it all fall right back into place.
Here's another great one for you, the remedy for the anti-trust/monopoly wasn't really a remedy. Each "baby bell" was still a monopoly in it's region. You don't have a choice what phone carrier to use if you're in SBC's region, same with Verizon, SWBell, whatever.
What NEEDED to be done is one company handles all the infrastructure. They wouldn't be allowed to do ANYTHING other than maintain the lines...that's it....nothing more....ever....period. With an oversight commitee or something to keep them from price gouging or taking advantage of that situation. Then they sell access to those lines to anyone who wanted it. You would then have your choice of phone carriers anywhere in the US as well as internet providers over DSL without having to STILL pay SBC/Verizon/whoever for use of their phone line, plus transport of the DSL.
I can't tell you how many people HATE SBC and refuse to do ANY business with them. But because you have to have an SBC line to get DSL if you're in SBC's region, you're just S.O.L. How is that NOT a monopoly? I mean really.
First off, I don't see how/. is a personal forum for how someone was violated by a naming system and online personalities. Particularly when I've been the victim of NUMBEROUS post deletings, and even a couple of article submission rewrites (posted under anonymous). I've even posted articles as anon 2 days before someone else posts it and theirs gets accepted. So this whole thing is like
*ring ring* "hello? Mister Kettle, it's Mr. Pot on line 2!"
On the other hand, I understand what he's saying. I've used the netname Ozymandias for 15 years. I can't count how many times someone takes it. Particularly when it's someone using it on one of my game servers knowing full well that name is one of the administrators of the server. My name has been my identity online when someone else uses it...I feel violated in so many ways. Particularly when it turns out they're using the name maliciously.
We've already seen how well google handles spamvertising. Google search has become almost completely worthless for the average user, and difficult at best for an advanced user because there's so many "black hat" sites that hit the first page and they haven't been able to anything about that, why would it be any different for other product/services they offer.
The US is considerably further north than where this would have originally have been used. "The Med" is so much closer to the equator that the sun's rays hit it much more directly and thus will generate more heat/power. Plus during this time of year in the S.F. Bay area, it's relatively cool getting down to as low as 45 degrees. Plus the sun is at a much greater angle than if it were during the summer. On top of that, there's a constant cool breeze blowing off the water which will pretty much cool anything off extremely quickly. You can expect an extremely rapid cool down on just about anything in these conditions and it takes much more heat to accomplish the same job.
I don't mean to belittle anything that's been done thus far, but the bay area is a cold place when along the waterfront...even during the summer. Mark Twain once said the coldest winter he ever endured was the summer he spent in San Francisco. Since combustion is directly related to heat, and the amount of "power" generated from the sun's energy would be considerably greater if you get a more direct path, it would seem to me that it's possible to do this in the right conditions.
Besides, I don't really hold too much stock in the Myth Busters anyway. They aren't scientists, they're special effects guys, and I've seen several myth's they've busted that I've seen happen.
You know, had it been GAIM that was approached to port their software to SCO, very few people would get upset. While I'm NOT a fan of SCO, quite the opposite, actually, it shouldn't be a problem for a company to get paid to port their software to SCO. Isn't that part of the foundation of OSS? It's not like they are selling to SCO, they are making a port of the same software TO SCO.
Until some of this rhetoric that the F/OSS community has goes away, it won't be taken seriously in many of the "larger" corperations.
Oh, I did. I sent emails out to 3 different people including the sales director, and wrote a letter to corp headquarters explaining why I would no longer consider using Suse in any small or large deployments. I was also good enough to include the salesman's name:)
Sure large companies will want it that way, but turning away even one customer for sales is usually a bad idea no matter what your goals are. You never know when a small sale will turn into multi-million dollars.
For example, MAS90 has a buttload of resellers everywhere. I recently ran into a problem with it and terminal services. The company I was working for had 21 licenses and they purchased it from a "smaller" reseller. We were having problems with getting it working under terminal services and finally after several weeks of phone tag (and support charges for doing nothing) I contacted another company for some support assistance. They charged a fee since we hadn't purchased through them, of course, but they were able to resolve the problem in a timely manner. In the 2 months since then, I have sent that company about $100k worth of sales, not to mention the additional for support contracts and other services they may offer.
Similar experiences with all kinds of companies even. Like XO, I purchased a T1 from them to see how well they handle things. No return phone calls, no delivery date (finally found out from the SBC line tech of all places when it would be up). Ended up having to relocated the line during the contract, so we were smacked with a $750 contract change fee, and again, no delivery date, no return phone calls. So here it is more than 30 days after putting in the transfer, I don't know if the line's up, when it will be...nothing. I still haven't heard from the rep. So since this guy can't seem to return a phone call for a simple request for a delivery date on a T1, they won't be getting the OC3 and OC12 contracts I will be moving/renewing at the beginning of next year.
Moral to the story? Never turn something away because it's too small, Never treat a small client like @#$% because it could be a test of your services before much larger purchases are made. I would never invest my companies reputation on a first time contract with a company that could potentially cost me tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.
When I spoke with a salesmen about becoming a potential reseller/OEM of Suse, the salesman I was speaking with said "If you're only going to sell 2 or 3 licenses a month it's not worth my time. We want large deployments." He said that about 5 times in a 15 minute conversation.
I might not be a $1mil/mth salesman, but I can tell you from a purchaser's perspective it doesn't matter how much or how little you sell, being told @#$% like that really just flat out ticks a person off. The specific job I was bidding on would have been 50 desktop licenses and 2 servers, but because of that kind of comments that were repeatedly said to me...well, Redhat won the contract instead of Suse.
I've never really been impressed with Suse in the first place, but the customer had heard good things about it and wanted to go that direction to replace MS desktops and Novell servers in their business. After explaining the situation I had run into with the Suse sale tactics, they decided to follow my previous suggestion. So not only did they lose a customer that had specifically requested it, they lost a company that would have been selling their products and promoting it.
So yeah, doing B.S. like that is going to hurt the bottom line and one can only hope that the salesman I spoke with is one that ends up on the unemployment line. Granted, it would take ALOT more than that to make me consider Suse again simply because that guy should NEVER have been allowed to be talking to the public about buying products.
That microsoft actually invented. Just one....seriously. I've been trying to think of something for the past 5 years and I draw a blank.
Now....I'm not talking about "inventing a way to make it work on Windows". I'm talking about INVENTING something, not just taking someone else's idea and running with it.
Windows? Xerox Scandisk? Symantec/Norton.Net? Please, it's just another coding language DOS? Sold, and then purchased from the person that wrote it
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This is what happens when all you care about is the cheapest price. Go to smaller independants and this kind of thing wouldn't be happening. More often than not the service is better from independant ISPs as well as they don't practice this kind of B.S. For that matter, you'd be surprised, prices may very well be the same or even lower. But really, if you're ISP is blocking something you need/want, is a mear $3 a month more really that much more to pay?
America is getting what it deserves in so many ways right now it's not even funny. When you reward behavior like this, you get MORE behavior like this. We are responsible for it because we allow it to happen.
My suggestion would be....get away from the telco ISP and be happy with real quality of service.
Well said. I've recently done an accounting of my business and I've found that I've donated over $50k this year to non-profits and to small businesses that needed a hand. While it's true that a company's main goals is to make money, being a part of the community also creates longevity. I own a small company that's been around for 15 years in a small town. I wouldn't still be around if I didn't make our presence known and make absolutely sure that we were seen in a positive light. So while that $50k is a large sum to me it's also an investment in my community for them to continue to use us for their services and hardware.
Besides, one of my favorite sayings is "I'm in this to make a living, not make a killing".
You know. At first after reading your comment I was sitting here thinking "damn, what an ass". Then I re-read my comment, that's when it clicked. It's been 5 minutes now and I'm still chuckling. Good one...smartass! :P I would mod you Funny, but since you can't mod in comments that you've posted...oh well.
*Grumble* sorry about that....damn HTML formatting by default.....fixed now atleast
There are plenty of competitors. Just people don't bother to look for them. there are over 5000 independant ISPs in the US. Most of them don't have the advertising budget that SBC, BS, or Verizon have. If it's not on TV, people don't care bother. I've been around since 1998 selling DSL, many times I couldn't do it at competitive prices with SBC until recently. Now I can sell DSL at the same price, but I still don't have the marketing budget they do. So I only get a few subscribers a month vs 100's or thousands. The really annoying fact about this is Customer "they are the only choice" Me: "No they aren't, we provide the same service but for $5/more a month for 6 months then we are at the same price as they are" Customer: "oh well that's just too expensive" Me: "Really? It only costs you $30 more over 6 months for better service, reliability and no call center in india to deal with" Customer: "But that's just too expensive. But damn those call centers suck" Me: "That's the best I can do." 6 weeks later same person.... Customer: "I can't pull up any websites can you help?" Me: "Sure, what's your name so I can get your account information" Customer: "rumble23453563467@sbcglobal.net" -- eat that spam spiders Me: "I'm sorry, but I can't assist you, you're not one of my customers" Customer: "But you fixed my computer and told me you provide DSL 6 months ago and I really don't want to call the SBC customer service Dept. because I can't understand what they are saying and it always takes 2 weeks to get any problems fixed" Me: "....."
Then all the Small ISPs that don't do that crap will start taking their customers away because they're tired of paying the same price for slower and unreliable service....oh wait, they're doing that now. Guess that's why I've gown 15% in the past 6 months.
Erm, I really hate to be the informer here, but Peachtree is made by Sage. If you're talking about MAS90 or MAS200. You've got ALOT to learn about what a good accounting package is. MAS is a huge hunk of cow dung that is some seriously horrible support. That partly flows from their distribution channel, but either rate, MAS sucks. Try making it work properly on a win2k3 terminal server and see if you aren't pulling your hair out because the people you bought it from can't and won't support it but they'll sure charge you.
Peachtree is much more of a professional product than MAS any day of the week. I will agree that Quickbooks is for SMALL businesses, however.
Either rate, speaking as someone who has spent a large amount of time in accounting software packages this year, I can tell you without a doubt, MAS90 blows, Peachtree is made by Sage which also makes the MAS lines of products. And don't knock Quickbooks for small businesses. Why should a company that's grossing less than $1mil a year spend $600 for a full blown accounting app only to have to turn around and do it again next year?
Obviously the writer of this article hasn't spent 2 weeks on the phone with an ADVANCED technician (in India) that just refused to admit he didn't have a solution to the problem and wouldn't escalate the issue for....get this. Microsoft Office 2000 installation issues on Windows Terminal Server 2003. After I finally got the dude to escalate, it took less than an hour with a guy in Texas to resolve the issue.
Gotta love it when a clean install of win2k3 terminal won't properly run a clean administration install of o2k without registry hacking. I always kind of thought the installations where suppose to do that kind of thing for you. But of course it's sooooo much easier to use Windows than linux. I could have had the same thing setup in linux in under 4 hours.
Crap, I thought that seemed funny that I was using a philosopher. Thanks for the correction. They have had a few myths that were confirmed. I can't remember what they were off the top of my head. But this particular one after seeing the site you pasted, they had the MIT students come out to CA and have them reproduce their findings. Of course with the wind and cooler air out here from PA they couldn't get it to work.
First off to the poster, it's not a "cable" channel :)
But my question is this....
No offense, but you guys don't have PhDs or anything like that. Doesn't it stand to reason that documented proof that students from MIT that could prove that the Death Ray could be reproduced show that it could be done?
Taking into consideration that atmospheric temperature will affect the amount of heat needed to cause combustion and the fact that the bay area CA is a constantly windy location with cool air constantly coming off the water which will also cool "the target". "The Med" being much warmer as well as closer to the equator (and thus more direct sunlight). Wouldn't those conditions be much easier to cause combustion? As a former welder, I know that during the winter for me to make the same welding runs (I worked out doors) in 5 degree weather vs. 80 degree weather I would have to turn the heat up a bit with the first stick so the metal could warm to a sufficent level. I could then turn the amps back down and follow my heat trail.
Well, my customers say otherwise. Considering last year I sold about $28k worth of Sony products alone...my little dinky store with a crappy website did sell product.
Sure I'm no Micheal Dell or Steve Jobs, and after the HUGE amounts of problems I see from Dell PC's or the lack of good software/hardware for the Mac I wouldn't want to be. We pride ourselves in providing solid products that you don't have to worry about when they will break. We have only had 1 hardware failure in 3 years after it went to the customer and that's over 5000 machines. That's not to say we don't have our fair share of hardware problems, but we catch them before they leave our shop.
Sure the site looks a bit old, that's because it's 5 years old and in the process of being rebuilt. It's also the 4th site my company has had which shows that there's obviously something about our products and services. If you weren't intending on being mean as you put it, then that statement would have been better left unsaid.
Anything that supports Sony's Blu-Ray will not be supported by me personally, or grudgingly from my company. When you can't trust your supplier's scruples, you can't sell their products to the end user.
So, personally, anything using Blu-Ray will not be purchased by me.
Company wise, Blu-Ray will only be used at the express request from the customer.
I guess things like this really had nothing to do with it....
h tm
o ck&sm=Yahoo!+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&cop=& ei=UTF-8
http://www.practical-tech.com/business/b05212003.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=microsoft+sco+st
will turn up lots of interesting results. The fact is that MS poured money into SCO to let them be the "bad guy" in the linux bashing since they already learned that bashing linux directly only hurt them more and brought more attention to linux that otherwise wouldn't have been realized. So they used someone else to do the dirty deed.
Not that I don't believe the proper tool for the proper job, sometimes Windows IS better for a person's needs, but that doesn't change the fact that MS will do anything to attempt to destroy, discredit, dismantle linux because it is the only true threat they face due to their size.
WHO THE HELL CARES ANYMORE?!?! It's obvious that Darl McBride is a litigious bastard and that's how he...well, pretty much earns his living is taking people/companies to court. It's already been all but proven that SCO has no grounds and it's just dragging on now. Plain and simply, this whole move was NOTHING but a stock manipulation for corperate gain. It's also very probable that they were paid to do this by Microsoft and then left out to hang on their own when MS decided to sell off it's preferred stock because MS didn't like the way McBride was handling the situation. Hell, for all we know he approached MS saying "this is what we got, you want to help me fund it?"
Either rate, the effects are all still the same. McBride sued IBM without any proof of wrongdoing. SCO has seriously opened itself up for a plethora of lawsuits with this action and once it's proven in court that there was nothing going on.
We could actually believe half of what the mass media says. And you know, the whole paperless system is a good thing. Not like we don't already cut down enough trees as it is.
Sure you have a choice, but only because the feds MADE them open up the lines to outside companies. But the thing to remember here is that SBC/Verizon leverage things to their advantage because they own the copper in the ground.
For example, with SBC, I pay $11.50/mth per "primary" DSL. That's my cost to SBC to get a customer to my line. Now I say to my LINE because that doesn't automatically bring it to my network like it does with SBC. We also have to pay for a circuit to go from their network to ours. Right now, that's roughly costing me about $10 per user. Then we add on internet bandwidth costs, server costs, and support costs. There's absolutely NO way I can offer DSL to a customer for $14.95/mth even if it's only for 6 months. It costs me about $27-30/mth to supply that DSL.
They don't have to pay for the additional line to their network since it's already on their network. They also subsidize that $14.95 with additional phone service fees. To get that $14.95 you have to also have Caller ID, and Call Waiting at the least.
Basically the same thing happens with these other phone providers. But to offer you service so much cheaper, they're doing it by pretty much killing off their profit margin. Basically, they're probably only making $2/mth off your phone service, but they plan make up for that in sheer volume. However they're burning through their investors' money until they reach the break even point.
But then we have to take into consideration the recent FCC ruling that DSL is considered a data service even though it's offered over phone lines. Believe me, SBC and Verizon WILL find a way to try and twist that to their benefit.
The problem boils down to the people who make, judge, enforce, and interpret laws don't really know what's going on in the industry. They may have a little knowledge...enough to be dangerous. Or they're just thinking from a purely political, business, and/or financial standpoint.
anyway, sorry, I digressed considerably there. Point is sure it's possible, but those companies have to pay through the nose to have access to those same services that can't/aren't subsidized from somewhere else. So what will usually happen if they're cutting the price so low like that is service/support ends up suffering.
Sure we would. They would be able to charge more for use of fiber lines than copper. That would be where that company would increase it's income by investing in it's infrastructure...which would be all that company was ever allowed to own and operate in.
The point I'm trying to make here is that by allowing a company to control both infrastructure and offer services, they can use that position to unfairly leverage the competition into a no-profit situation or higher prices which of course makes theirs "look" better. Trust me, I'm in ISP and I've been dealing with this crap from SBC for well over 6 years now. They always kept the price point just out of our reach of being able to compete on a level price structure. Granted, that usually makes our service better since we have to justify the cost.
Think of it like this. Microsoft being allowed to write other software that works on their OS probably shouldn't be allowed either. Think about all the times MS has used that OS monopoly to their advantage. Intentionally writting updates that breaks other software functionality such as WordPerfect. There's really no difference, it's just a different arena.
So much money was spent to declare an anti-trust/monopoly against the telco giant...now we're just letting it all fall right back into place.
Here's another great one for you, the remedy for the anti-trust/monopoly wasn't really a remedy. Each "baby bell" was still a monopoly in it's region. You don't have a choice what phone carrier to use if you're in SBC's region, same with Verizon, SWBell, whatever.
What NEEDED to be done is one company handles all the infrastructure. They wouldn't be allowed to do ANYTHING other than maintain the lines...that's it....nothing more....ever....period. With an oversight commitee or something to keep them from price gouging or taking advantage of that situation. Then they sell access to those lines to anyone who wanted it. You would then have your choice of phone carriers anywhere in the US as well as internet providers over DSL without having to STILL pay SBC/Verizon/whoever for use of their phone line, plus transport of the DSL.
I can't tell you how many people HATE SBC and refuse to do ANY business with them. But because you have to have an SBC line to get DSL if you're in SBC's region, you're just S.O.L. How is that NOT a monopoly? I mean really.
First off, I don't see how /. is a personal forum for how someone was violated by a naming system and online personalities. Particularly when I've been the victim of NUMBEROUS post deletings, and even a couple of article submission rewrites (posted under anonymous). I've even posted articles as anon 2 days before someone else posts it and theirs gets accepted. So this whole thing is like
*ring ring* "hello? Mister Kettle, it's Mr. Pot on line 2!"
On the other hand, I understand what he's saying. I've used the netname Ozymandias for 15 years. I can't count how many times someone takes it. Particularly when it's someone using it on one of my game servers knowing full well that name is one of the administrators of the server. My name has been my identity online when someone else uses it...I feel violated in so many ways. Particularly when it turns out they're using the name maliciously.
We've already seen how well google handles spamvertising. Google search has become almost completely worthless for the average user, and difficult at best for an advanced user because there's so many "black hat" sites that hit the first page and they haven't been able to anything about that, why would it be any different for other product/services they offer.
The US is considerably further north than where this would have originally have been used. "The Med" is so much closer to the equator that the sun's rays hit it much more directly and thus will generate more heat/power. Plus during this time of year in the S.F. Bay area, it's relatively cool getting down to as low as 45 degrees. Plus the sun is at a much greater angle than if it were during the summer. On top of that, there's a constant cool breeze blowing off the water which will pretty much cool anything off extremely quickly. You can expect an extremely rapid cool down on just about anything in these conditions and it takes much more heat to accomplish the same job.
I don't mean to belittle anything that's been done thus far, but the bay area is a cold place when along the waterfront...even during the summer. Mark Twain once said the coldest winter he ever endured was the summer he spent in San Francisco. Since combustion is directly related to heat, and the amount of "power" generated from the sun's energy would be considerably greater if you get a more direct path, it would seem to me that it's possible to do this in the right conditions.
Besides, I don't really hold too much stock in the Myth Busters anyway. They aren't scientists, they're special effects guys, and I've seen several myth's they've busted that I've seen happen.
You know, had it been GAIM that was approached to port their software to SCO, very few people would get upset. While I'm NOT a fan of SCO, quite the opposite, actually, it shouldn't be a problem for a company to get paid to port their software to SCO. Isn't that part of the foundation of OSS? It's not like they are selling to SCO, they are making a port of the same software TO SCO.
Until some of this rhetoric that the F/OSS community has goes away, it won't be taken seriously in many of the "larger" corperations.
Oh, I did. I sent emails out to 3 different people including the sales director, and wrote a letter to corp headquarters explaining why I would no longer consider using Suse in any small or large deployments. I was also good enough to include the salesman's name :)
Sure large companies will want it that way, but turning away even one customer for sales is usually a bad idea no matter what your goals are. You never know when a small sale will turn into multi-million dollars.
For example, MAS90 has a buttload of resellers everywhere. I recently ran into a problem with it and terminal services. The company I was working for had 21 licenses and they purchased it from a "smaller" reseller. We were having problems with getting it working under terminal services and finally after several weeks of phone tag (and support charges for doing nothing) I contacted another company for some support assistance. They charged a fee since we hadn't purchased through them, of course, but they were able to resolve the problem in a timely manner. In the 2 months since then, I have sent that company about $100k worth of sales, not to mention the additional for support contracts and other services they may offer.
Similar experiences with all kinds of companies even. Like XO, I purchased a T1 from them to see how well they handle things. No return phone calls, no delivery date (finally found out from the SBC line tech of all places when it would be up). Ended up having to relocated the line during the contract, so we were smacked with a $750 contract change fee, and again, no delivery date, no return phone calls. So here it is more than 30 days after putting in the transfer, I don't know if the line's up, when it will be...nothing. I still haven't heard from the rep. So since this guy can't seem to return a phone call for a simple request for a delivery date on a T1, they won't be getting the OC3 and OC12 contracts I will be moving/renewing at the beginning of next year.
Moral to the story? Never turn something away because it's too small, Never treat a small client like @#$% because it could be a test of your services before much larger purchases are made. I would never invest my companies reputation on a first time contract with a company that could potentially cost me tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.
When I spoke with a salesmen about becoming a potential reseller/OEM of Suse, the salesman I was speaking with said "If you're only going to sell 2 or 3 licenses a month it's not worth my time. We want large deployments." He said that about 5 times in a 15 minute conversation.
I might not be a $1mil/mth salesman, but I can tell you from a purchaser's perspective it doesn't matter how much or how little you sell, being told @#$% like that really just flat out ticks a person off. The specific job I was bidding on would have been 50 desktop licenses and 2 servers, but because of that kind of comments that were repeatedly said to me...well, Redhat won the contract instead of Suse.
I've never really been impressed with Suse in the first place, but the customer had heard good things about it and wanted to go that direction to replace MS desktops and Novell servers in their business. After explaining the situation I had run into with the Suse sale tactics, they decided to follow my previous suggestion. So not only did they lose a customer that had specifically requested it, they lost a company that would have been selling their products and promoting it.
So yeah, doing B.S. like that is going to hurt the bottom line and one can only hope that the salesman I spoke with is one that ends up on the unemployment line. Granted, it would take ALOT more than that to make me consider Suse again simply because that guy should NEVER have been allowed to be talking to the public about buying products.
That microsoft actually invented. Just one....seriously. I've been trying to think of something for the past 5 years and I draw a blank.
.Net? Please, it's just another coding language
Now....I'm not talking about "inventing a way to make it work on Windows". I'm talking about INVENTING something, not just taking someone else's idea and running with it.
Windows? Xerox
Scandisk? Symantec/Norton
DOS? Sold, and then purchased from the person that wrote it
The list goes on and on and on......